The memory of Zuckerberg blabbering about Facebook positive social impact and mission of "Making the world more open and connected" triggers strong cognitive dissonance when reading this article.
Same as when remembering the "Don't be evil" moto from Google.
I'm wondering if at some level we always knew it would end up like this. What kind of moral shield can we claim from this mess ? I'm afraid it's actually very little
And AFAIK Brin & Page and Zuckerberg still maintain majority voting control over their companies. They could enforce any policy they wanted from on high, and the worst that would happen is the number next to their name would go down a bit. Brin & Page could give the order to make Search work again or you're all fired, and Zuck could mandate no censorship of minorities or else, but they don't. There's nobody to shift blame to; this is just what billions of dollars does to "free-spirited hackers".
The lesson, to me, is remembering company mottos like these are meaningless because corporations are fundamentally amoral. They are made of people, yes, and these people do have moral values, but the corporation as a whole doesn't. Whatever tagline, whatever "inclusivity commitment", whatever "anti-discrimination" policies, whatever "diversity makes us stronger" motto: all of those are shallow, meaningless taglines. The corporation will adopt them when it will help their business, and ditch them just as fast when it doesn't (e.g. when a powerful politician doesn't like it and can harm your business).
Next time your company makes you sit through one of these trainings, for whatever so-called value, remember: the company doesn't believe in it. It only believes in making money.
>I'm wondering if at some level we always knew it would end up like this
A very deep level. The level that joked about "pride month" being thrown put like Christmas decorations on July 1st.
The more positive sentiment back then is that bigotry wouldn't ever be profitable again as the world experienced more experiences and built more empathy. Of course, I can only laugh hysterically at poor 2014/2015 me.
Julian Assange wrote an excellent book on this topic called "when Google met wikileaks" about a decade ago which i found to be eye-opening. The backdrop is the "arab spring" uprisings of the early 10s, which were widely touted by leaders in both silicon Valley and Washington as an example of the positive impacts of social media, a mere five years before this opinion was suddenly reversed when some of these positive effects came home.
The titular event is an account of when one of Google's executives came to britain to meet him in person (at this point he's fighting extradition to the United States but has not yet sequestered himself inside the Ecuadorian embassy). From the conversation Assange gets the impression that the Google exec is acting as an unofficial envoy of the US state department in hopes of convincing him to "play ball" by publishing more and more information which will advance the arab spring narrative. The rest of the book is his own personal investigation into the incestuous links between US foreign policy, social media corporations and the so-called "arab spring".
>I'm wondering if at some level we always knew it would end up like this.
Everyone always knew. The criticisms get lumped in with with the unreasonable nay-sayers because it makes them easier to dismiss.
The honest people I know working for obvious evil will acknowledge it and say they're just doing it for a paycheck. But this gives most people cognitive dissonance and they'll find better rationalization. See also: every cope post on hacker news by someone defending a company they're pretending not to work for.
As a state tends toward either communism or capitalism, it starts dictating the economy more and more, until it hits the ceiling and becomes a totally dictated war economy, where a fundamentally fascist ideology replaces previous values. At that point, war is inevitable, because a war economy requires active warfare, and war provides ample opportunies for pilfering at multiple levels, both home and abroad.
Fascism is not to blame, it is a means to an end for the economy at large. Ultimately, the issue is uneven distribution of wealth and power.
Repro Uncensored, an NGO tracking digital censorship against movements focused on gender, health and justice, said that it had tracked 210 incidents of account removals and severe restrictions affecting these groups this year, compared with 81 last year.
Meta denied an escalating trend of censorship. “Every organisation and individual on our platforms is subject to the same set of rules, and any claims of enforcement based on group affiliation or advocacy are baseless,” it said in a statement, adding that its policies on abortion-related content had not changed.
Has The Guardian confirmed the facts either way? Or are they just reporting what people say without digging deeper?
I think reporting ought to try to get to some level of truth through rigor.
Wouldn't the same rule applying to everyone be consistent with the censorship, if every org is subject to the same strict censorship on reproductive themes and sexual orientation ?
They have been reporting on this trend for a considerable time. Confirmation bias is obviously a risk but I don't see any particular reason to doubt their reporting because they are reporting on organisations who do long-term tracking and saying so. Reporting what concerned and informed people say is still one of the jobs of journalism after all.
They do some data-oriented investigations with partners but their budget is very finite as an organisation.
This is not a new behavior for Facebook. Back when I was on Facebook (left in 2016) the LGBT groups I was part of kept constantly getting banned or suspended, but they never once acted on a report I sent them from people posting blatantly racists content or inciting violence.
Someone could post that all black people are stupid and were better off enslaved and Facebook would respond to a report saying it doesn't violate any policies, but someone posting a shirtless photo of themselves to an lgbt group gets it shutdown for a week.
> Has The Guardian confirmed the facts either way? Or are they just reporting what people say without digging deeper?
This reads like what you’re accusing them of doing. The way you’re asking the questions communicates skepticism in favor of facebook’s official statement. Facebook’s track record on policing content is not exactly one that inspires confidence in their narrative.
Has The Guardian confirmed the facts either way? Or are they just reporting what people say without digging deeper?
I think reporting ought to try to get to some level of truth through rigor.
I think I'm getting bored with all the deflection bots and puppets on HN saying, "Don't discuss the issue in the OP's article! Look over here, instead!"
I always wonder, when it's so clear some corporate decision will cause social harm, what the story the perpetrators tell themselves is to avoid feeling guilt or responsibility.
Nobody believes themselves to be the bad guy, but many people frequently make decisions that cause harm.
Pretty sure many of Meta's tech workers are furious about these actions, as they were in the previous story where 404media published a number of employee comments:
Aside from prizing their salary more than the guilt, if it was "so clear" it wouldn't be a controversial issue. For some in Meta they could very well think that the opposite caused social harm, either in absolute terms ("abortion is a sin/murder") or in relative terms ("has its uses, but we go too far and make it too easy"). Why the assumption those working in tech would be liberal? Thiel isn't.
The Corporate religion demands unwavering profit orientation. "Ethics" is just barely maintained right above the limits of market research. All for the betterment of man, amirite?
These people only think in terms of money. Their bank accounts will tell them if it was the right decision or not.
Someone like Zuck actively isolates themselves: from buying huge tracts of land to literally isolate themselves, building underground shelters, hiring security to keep riff-raff away, etc. They have no concept of society. They just don't see themselves living in the same world as we do.
To complete sister comments: people who go work for Meta already have their priorities in place or won't have these kind of conundrums.
A few elite people are poached, some are acquihired, but most applied to get the job. I believe if you can make it to Meta you can make it to equivalent mega companies, it's a choice.
I mean, you've got to imagine that Facebook tends to drive people who would be worried about such things away; if you had any sense of responsibility and could get another job, why would you stay? It's not like this is the first problem Facebook has had...
There's no story. You need to remember - big corporations are not your friend. They're your enemy. They don't care about you. They don't care about doing good. They care about money. They care about control. They care about their stock price. That's it.
You might ask - but what about the people who work at those corporations? And that's also pretty simply explained by this classic quote: it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
You have the point of view that having publicly available queer content and abortion information is a good thing, something I generally agree with.
But not everyone think that way, some think that by limiting access to abortion information, they are actually saving (unborn) lives. Some people think that "sex positive" movements are morally questionable and help spread infection. For them, they are the good guys and they think that Meta is finally doing the right thing.
These are divisive political subjects and political parties with these ideas get elected for a reason. In a democracy, parties will not promote ideas that no one agree with, they need the votes, so if they are promoting them, it means that for a large part of the population, it is the right thing to do. HN is a bubble with mostly liberal ideas, we have to understand it for what it is.
That's in addition to the idea that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it". But it applies more to activities that are almost universally recognized as bad rather than partisan ideas, things like scamming.
Welcome to the world of antisocial personality disorders. The rationale goes:
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
It's called the "narcissist's prayer", it's what narcissists and sociopaths tell themselves to absolve themselves of accountability. Whatever the situation, they have an excuse as to how it's not their fault. It's like the stages of grief but for people trying to avoid consequences or guilt for their actions.
And if you read further than the very first line...
>A message from Meta to the group dated 13 November said its page “does not follow our Community Standards on prescription drugs”, adding: “We know this is disappointing, but we want to keep Facebook safe and welcoming for everyone.”
>“The disabled accounts were correctly removed for violating a variety of our policies including our Human Exploitation policy,” it added.
... which is much more in-line with the idea that the actual reason is ideological positions. And if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the article you'll see that the "nudity" that was banned was not nudity at all. So non-nude they actually included the drawing in the Guardian article itself.
> The offending post was an artistic depiction of a naked couple, obscured by hearts.
that's a pretty heavily-worked little phrase. What is "non-explicit" nudity? That sounds to me like starting at the violation and then working backward to ensure that the people they want to be violators turn out to be violators.
I know it's against HN rules to ask if people have read the article, but you clearly didn't read the article.
The "non-sexual nudity" example is at the bottom of the article. It's a stylized cartoon drawing of a nude man and woman with arms around each others' waists viewed from the back as they walk along a path. There is a heart strategically placed around waist level so you can't even see their whole butts.
It's about the tamest artistic depiction of nudity you can imagine, certainly something that is totally fine anywhere else on Facebook. Very clear that this is a bullshit excuse being used by Meta.
Wow. I'm very involved in LGBTQ, sex positive and poly communities and locally and I have to say I hadn't noticed this yet. For IM we mainly use telegram, not WhatsApp, but Instagram is used the most as a social network, by far. "What's your Insta" is a standard line when you meet someone at a party. But everything is small scale and not big enough to be on the global radar.
It does mean that people will see more and more bans now when they are reported by haters. I guess it's time for a new common social media network. But which? It'll be hard to get traction for fediverse networks in such a diverse and non technical community.
I don't really understand why though. I understand they're against LGBTQ for religious reasons or something but why try to ban it? They can just like... not follow the content they don't like? The algorithm does the rest. And the content on insta is already very mild. No nudity etc.
Members of any social activists groups seem likely to me to be of the more forceful vocal type and abortion and "queer groups" (that seems crazy broad to me) are two categories that particularly attract people with strong feelings.
It's not surprising to me that people in those groups would get banned more than others, especially the queer one because the topic of the group is explicitly sexual and I could see their posts more often crossing the ban line.
Now if all members of those groups are getting banned, that's surprising but I doubt there's anything malicious here (unless you consider their general content policy malicious).
On one hand i love that nowadays there's an alternative to giving people you just met your phone number. On the other hand, I loathe the fact that it was post-acquisition instagram that filled that gap...
As long as you support social media companies censoring people you don't like, you're in a weaker position arguing against their censorship of people you do like. There should be a strong social objection to all such censorship, but I don't know how we get there from here. All the justifications for censorship during Covid were corrosive, "The 1st amendment only protects you from _government_ censorship, etc."
At this point, nobody trusts the other side to "play fair" and reciprocate, which makes standing on principle feel like a loss. If all sides stood up just a little bit for the principle of "I don't agree with that person, but I defend his right to voice himself", we'd all be better off.
I agree, we should play fair and form opinions using principles more, but I think there is a caveat to that. If what you are defending actually causes a considerate amount of harm or violence then I think you need to start to think in a more nuanced way and weighting the pro and cons
There's a difference between, say, restricting posting of targeted harassing hate speech, or incorrect medical advice that can harm people, versus restricting people from posting about themselves, if it mentions things they can't change (their race, disability, sexual orientation, etc.)
Indeed, the two are so different that being in favor of the former doesn't at all weaken the argument against doing the latter.
It turns out there's a middle ground between "no content moderation" and "restrict people for discussing some innocent physiological aspect of themselves they can't change", and that middle ground can be totally ok
Just like there's a totally-ok middle ground between libertarians who oppose any regulation at all, and authoritarians who want to control literally everything
This once again brings up the point that while Meta and other "single company" social networks can easily exclude you, you can't get excluded on Nostr.
It's designed in a way that that's not even a thing. Anyone can create account locally on their computer or mobile phone (even completely offline) and that's it.
If you save & store your "notes" or "posts", you can always re-broadcast them later to different "relay" servers - and this is what your app can do for you anyway.
Protip: don't use Facebook. Meta doesn't control the internet. Post whatever you like. I'm sick of people kowtowing to these platforms; people are increasingly censoring themselves, afraid to even post a picture with a word like "kill", "murder", "suicide", etc. (regardless of context) without obscuring the offending word in some way.
It's interesting how they're so concerned with censorship now. Weren't they the ones who were all up in arms about censoring everyone with right-wing views? But now that the script has flipped, suddenly it's a problem. It's not like we didn't try to warn them that if they force open the floodgates of censorship, then it can happen to them too. Maybe, just maybe, we should all stop trying to control what other people think and say. Mind your fucking business and leave other people alone. I hope this gets resolved. I don't believe that anyone should be censored, whether they agree with my views and beliefs or not.
I think the key thing (which we used to understand but seem to have forgotten) is that restrictions (including censorship) should be based on conduct, not opinion. Someone spamming commercial links, crap flooding, posting child pornography, even constant off-topic posting etc can justifiably be censored on a platform based on their conduct. But as soon as you advocate for censoring someone purely based on an opinion then you're making it dramatically easier for someone who shares your opinion to be censored later on. Although if we're being intellectually honest, even if there hadn't been any banning of wrongthink in the past, this kind of thing might still have happened anyway given the current administration and their allies. But it's definitely made it easier.
I remember when Alex Jones (or someone of that ilk) was being "de-platformed" by Google, Facebook, etc. Not only were people cheering for it, they were denying that being banned from YouTube (for example) was censorship since "there are other video hosting platforms" (yeah, there are but also not really) and "it's only censorship when it's the government who legally restrict you from speech".
(And Alex Jones is a detestable piece of shit just in case you think I'm a fan. But to paraphrase an old saying, freedom of expression is only a principle if it applies to people you utterly despise).
Not just them. Anyone being slightly critical of vaccines, Russiagate, etc. Anyone warning about building this censorship apparatus. To paraphrase "Man for All Seasons," they crushed every law to get to the devil.
Now the Devil has turned, and there are no laws to protect them from it.
Who is this nebulous 'they'? The woke? The queer? Or the people in favor of abortion? The way people use 'they' in these arguments implies some level of equal power. And in this same thread in an entirely separate post you go directly to bat in favor of censorship as long as it's part of a 'content policy', which indicates that you're not actually being forthright with what you truly believe.
I know it's a hot take, but I strongly believe that some things are good, and some things are bad. I don't think it's necessary to pick either "all things are good" or "all things are bad".
Like, killing is bad. But if I'm alive in WW2 times and I see Nazi soldiers shooting Jewish protestors on the street, I'm going to be horrified, while if I see Jewish protestors shooting Nazi soldiers on the street, I'm going to be significantly less horrified. One could even argue the latter is a good thing.
Right wing views like taking away rights, eliminating trans people, murdering civilians in fishing boats, extraordinary renditions of brown people without cause, ... ? Fuck you.
reproduction and abortion has nothing to do with fake news tho. you're lumping groups of people into a side to justify your bigoted, selfish and ignorant views.
Looking at all this as an outsider, I'm a bit baffled at the responses. Basically, it seems to me that the vast majority of Americans want this.
And by "this" I mean that they want organizations to proactively make changes that fit with the policies of whoever is in power, even if there's no actual laws that make them do this. When Democrats ran the place, big tech was going out of their way to out-woke one another, with product announcement videos somehow starting with land acknowledgements and the likes, and now the same companies are going out of their way to out-dumb one another and this is just one of many examples.
I mean, America is a place with only two sides, and both sides are very on board with having their particular preferences and ideas enforced informally without any sort of legal framework. I think it would be useful for a lot more of the outrage to be directed at that fact.
Just.. be against all of this! This shit where legally you can do whatever the fuck you want but actually in reality you're going to get in serious trouble if you don't toe the party line, and oh by the way the party line switches every 4 years... that's no way to run a business! It's banana republic stuff.
I mean I agree that there's a difference in scale, in that censoring access to abortion advice is actively harmful and most things people felt they had to do under Biden (eg land acknowledgements, DEI trainings etc) are just cringe. But come on, don't politicize everything! It will only come to bite you back in the arse, as this episode illustrates beautifully.
When one side is actively trying to make most people miserable, poor, or dead, while the other side is trying to save people from ruining their lives (e.g. through an unwanted pregnancy), or just be proud of who they are without hurting others, the whole "both sides" argument reaaaly doesn't work. You're comparing the issues of being cringe with committing human rights violations?
I hate political posts on a tech news site, especially ycombinator.
These problems will never be solved and only cause agitation on both sides.
Closing the ycombinator tab for the day.
We have Trump blabbering about EU censorship, but here's the US oligarch's social network doing it at his orders.
The "bastion of free speech" is exporting its censorship to other countries... If I'm an EU lawmaker, I'd honestly use this to just ban Zuckerberg's entire social media sites and get it over with
It's not about that. It's about making the subject taboo so that people will be ashamed to talk about it.
If the religious conservatives actually cared about children's lives they'd provide free healthcare, great schooling and opportunities for them. As it stands they only care about them until they're born. Then the amount of care drops sharply especially if they happen to be of the "wrong" colour.
It's much more about suppression of women's rights than actual care about children.
As the Democrats reminded us regularly back when they had total control of social media, freedom of speech as a legal principle only applies to government actions.
Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.
lta|2 months ago
Same as when remembering the "Don't be evil" moto from Google.
I'm wondering if at some level we always knew it would end up like this. What kind of moral shield can we claim from this mess ? I'm afraid it's actually very little
gary_0|2 months ago
the_af|2 months ago
Next time your company makes you sit through one of these trainings, for whatever so-called value, remember: the company doesn't believe in it. It only believes in making money.
johnnyanmac|2 months ago
A very deep level. The level that joked about "pride month" being thrown put like Christmas decorations on July 1st.
The more positive sentiment back then is that bigotry wouldn't ever be profitable again as the world experienced more experiences and built more empathy. Of course, I can only laugh hysterically at poor 2014/2015 me.
bell-cot|2 months ago
Roughly speaking, the folks who truly cared knew.
Corporations have obvious market/regulatory incentives to say they're good guys.
Most people want to believe such statements, with the immediate incentive being a happier worldview.
Incentives for an extremely powerful corporation to actually be good are far weaker.
unknown|2 months ago
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dfxm12|2 months ago
Persecuting marginalized people and supporting authoritarian regimes is the logical path for capitalism, yes.
snickerbockers|2 months ago
The titular event is an account of when one of Google's executives came to britain to meet him in person (at this point he's fighting extradition to the United States but has not yet sequestered himself inside the Ecuadorian embassy). From the conversation Assange gets the impression that the Google exec is acting as an unofficial envoy of the US state department in hopes of convincing him to "play ball" by publishing more and more information which will advance the arab spring narrative. The rest of the book is his own personal investigation into the incestuous links between US foreign policy, social media corporations and the so-called "arab spring".
YcYc10|2 months ago
d--b|2 months ago
dogleash|2 months ago
Everyone always knew. The criticisms get lumped in with with the unreasonable nay-sayers because it makes them easier to dismiss.
The honest people I know working for obvious evil will acknowledge it and say they're just doing it for a paycheck. But this gives most people cognitive dissonance and they'll find better rationalization. See also: every cope post on hacker news by someone defending a company they're pretending not to work for.
griffel|2 months ago
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cluckindan|2 months ago
Fascism is not to blame, it is a means to an end for the economy at large. Ultimately, the issue is uneven distribution of wealth and power.
newsclues|2 months ago
andsoitis|2 months ago
Meta denied an escalating trend of censorship. “Every organisation and individual on our platforms is subject to the same set of rules, and any claims of enforcement based on group affiliation or advocacy are baseless,” it said in a statement, adding that its policies on abortion-related content had not changed.
Has The Guardian confirmed the facts either way? Or are they just reporting what people say without digging deeper?
I think reporting ought to try to get to some level of truth through rigor.
makeitdouble|2 months ago
"we're consistent" doesn't mean "we're fair"
exasperaited|2 months ago
They do some data-oriented investigations with partners but their budget is very finite as an organisation.
malfist|2 months ago
Someone could post that all black people are stupid and were better off enslaved and Facebook would respond to a report saying it doesn't violate any policies, but someone posting a shirtless photo of themselves to an lgbt group gets it shutdown for a week.
classified|2 months ago
SecretDreams|2 months ago
Information literally moves faster on socials than it does from need sources and those things come with far less "truth through rigor".
I agree news sources should do leg work.. but in a world where nobody cares about the facts when spreading a story, is there still a point?
Forgeties79|2 months ago
This reads like what you’re accusing them of doing. The way you’re asking the questions communicates skepticism in favor of facebook’s official statement. Facebook’s track record on policing content is not exactly one that inspires confidence in their narrative.
joemazerino|2 months ago
[deleted]
reaperducer|2 months ago
I think reporting ought to try to get to some level of truth through rigor.
I think I'm getting bored with all the deflection bots and puppets on HN saying, "Don't discuss the issue in the OP's article! Look over here, instead!"
spicyusername|2 months ago
Nobody believes themselves to be the bad guy, but many people frequently make decisions that cause harm.
afavour|2 months ago
One person makes a “decision making framework” but doesn’t make any individual decision themselves.
Then another person makes the individual decision, but based on the decision making framework, so they feel no personal responsibility for the choice.
perihelions|2 months ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178 ("[flagged] Total Chaos at Meta: Employees Protest Zuckerberg's Anti LGBTQ Changes (404media.co)")
https://www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-meta-r... ( https://archive.is/R1c7S )
duskdozer|2 months ago
s1mplicissimus|2 months ago
coldtea|2 months ago
MadcapJake|2 months ago
CyberMacGyver|2 months ago
Remember how Mark was caught on hot mic saying ‘I wasn’t sure what number you wanted, Mr. President’ after lying about it on camera[0]
[0]https://www.businesstoday.in/world/us/story/i-wasnt-sure-wha...
dfxm12|2 months ago
Someone like Zuck actively isolates themselves: from buying huge tracts of land to literally isolate themselves, building underground shelters, hiring security to keep riff-raff away, etc. They have no concept of society. They just don't see themselves living in the same world as we do.
makeitdouble|2 months ago
A few elite people are poached, some are acquihired, but most applied to get the job. I believe if you can make it to Meta you can make it to equivalent mega companies, it's a choice.
rsynnott|2 months ago
kouteiheika|2 months ago
You might ask - but what about the people who work at those corporations? And that's also pretty simply explained by this classic quote: it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
xdkyx|2 months ago
GuB-42|2 months ago
But not everyone think that way, some think that by limiting access to abortion information, they are actually saving (unborn) lives. Some people think that "sex positive" movements are morally questionable and help spread infection. For them, they are the good guys and they think that Meta is finally doing the right thing.
These are divisive political subjects and political parties with these ideas get elected for a reason. In a democracy, parties will not promote ideas that no one agree with, they need the votes, so if they are promoting them, it means that for a large part of the population, it is the right thing to do. HN is a bubble with mostly liberal ideas, we have to understand it for what it is.
That's in addition to the idea that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it". But it applies more to activities that are almost universally recognized as bad rather than partisan ideas, things like scamming.
jfindper|2 months ago
I forget the exact statistic, but CEOs are disproportionately sociopaths (compared to the whole population).
So, no story required because there's no guilt felt.
drcongo|2 months ago
greekrich92|2 months ago
alistairSH|2 months ago
And Meta in particular - just look at the founder/leader. The “CEOs are all sociopaths” trope exists because of people like Zuck.
ModernMech|2 months ago
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
It's called the "narcissist's prayer", it's what narcissists and sociopaths tell themselves to absolve themselves of accountability. Whatever the situation, they have an excuse as to how it's not their fault. It's like the stages of grief but for people trying to avoid consequences or guilt for their actions.
watwut|2 months ago
elif|2 months ago
However the very first line reveals what the actual reason probably was: "posts showing non-explicit nudity triggering warnings"
alistairSH|2 months ago
superkuh|2 months ago
>A message from Meta to the group dated 13 November said its page “does not follow our Community Standards on prescription drugs”, adding: “We know this is disappointing, but we want to keep Facebook safe and welcoming for everyone.”
>“The disabled accounts were correctly removed for violating a variety of our policies including our Human Exploitation policy,” it added.
... which is much more in-line with the idea that the actual reason is ideological positions. And if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the article you'll see that the "nudity" that was banned was not nudity at all. So non-nude they actually included the drawing in the Guardian article itself.
> The offending post was an artistic depiction of a naked couple, obscured by hearts.
ratelimitsteve|2 months ago
that's a pretty heavily-worked little phrase. What is "non-explicit" nudity? That sounds to me like starting at the violation and then working backward to ensure that the people they want to be violators turn out to be violators.
madeofpalk|2 months ago
saubeidl|2 months ago
As a European, it is a very American Puritan thing to have.
Sanzig|2 months ago
I know it's against HN rules to ask if people have read the article, but you clearly didn't read the article.
The "non-sexual nudity" example is at the bottom of the article. It's a stylized cartoon drawing of a nude man and woman with arms around each others' waists viewed from the back as they walk along a path. There is a heart strategically placed around waist level so you can't even see their whole butts.
It's about the tamest artistic depiction of nudity you can imagine, certainly something that is totally fine anywhere else on Facebook. Very clear that this is a bullshit excuse being used by Meta.
bruncisuaw|2 months ago
[deleted]
psyclobe|2 months ago
[deleted]
wkat4242|2 months ago
It does mean that people will see more and more bans now when they are reported by haters. I guess it's time for a new common social media network. But which? It'll be hard to get traction for fediverse networks in such a diverse and non technical community.
I don't really understand why though. I understand they're against LGBTQ for religious reasons or something but why try to ban it? They can just like... not follow the content they don't like? The algorithm does the rest. And the content on insta is already very mild. No nudity etc.
parineum|2 months ago
Members of any social activists groups seem likely to me to be of the more forceful vocal type and abortion and "queer groups" (that seems crazy broad to me) are two categories that particularly attract people with strong feelings.
It's not surprising to me that people in those groups would get banned more than others, especially the queer one because the topic of the group is explicitly sexual and I could see their posts more often crossing the ban line.
Now if all members of those groups are getting banned, that's surprising but I doubt there's anything malicious here (unless you consider their general content policy malicious).
lopis|2 months ago
Gagarin1917|2 months ago
Wow interesting, I thought social media was more an embarrassing thing to admit you participated in these days.
quantummagic|2 months ago
At this point, nobody trusts the other side to "play fair" and reciprocate, which makes standing on principle feel like a loss. If all sides stood up just a little bit for the principle of "I don't agree with that person, but I defend his right to voice himself", we'd all be better off.
sambuccid|2 months ago
beej71|2 months ago
Does the First Amendment not also give you editorial control over your websites, including which third-party content you host?
ImPostingOnHN|2 months ago
Indeed, the two are so different that being in favor of the former doesn't at all weaken the argument against doing the latter.
It turns out there's a middle ground between "no content moderation" and "restrict people for discussing some innocent physiological aspect of themselves they can't change", and that middle ground can be totally ok
Just like there's a totally-ok middle ground between libertarians who oppose any regulation at all, and authoritarians who want to control literally everything
hamdingers|2 months ago
fhdhdbdb|2 months ago
phoehne|2 months ago
nout|2 months ago
It's designed in a way that that's not even a thing. Anyone can create account locally on their computer or mobile phone (even completely offline) and that's it. If you save & store your "notes" or "posts", you can always re-broadcast them later to different "relay" servers - and this is what your app can do for you anyway.
snarfy|2 months ago
lunias|2 months ago
aoeusnth1|2 months ago
josefritzishere|2 months ago
Linguist6514|2 months ago
DharmaPolice|2 months ago
I remember when Alex Jones (or someone of that ilk) was being "de-platformed" by Google, Facebook, etc. Not only were people cheering for it, they were denying that being banned from YouTube (for example) was censorship since "there are other video hosting platforms" (yeah, there are but also not really) and "it's only censorship when it's the government who legally restrict you from speech".
(And Alex Jones is a detestable piece of shit just in case you think I'm a fan. But to paraphrase an old saying, freedom of expression is only a principle if it applies to people you utterly despise).
Ygg2|2 months ago
Not just them. Anyone being slightly critical of vaccines, Russiagate, etc. Anyone warning about building this censorship apparatus. To paraphrase "Man for All Seasons," they crushed every law to get to the devil.
Now the Devil has turned, and there are no laws to protect them from it.
fzeroracer|2 months ago
immibis|2 months ago
Like, killing is bad. But if I'm alive in WW2 times and I see Nazi soldiers shooting Jewish protestors on the street, I'm going to be horrified, while if I see Jewish protestors shooting Nazi soldiers on the street, I'm going to be significantly less horrified. One could even argue the latter is a good thing.
thrw443|2 months ago
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hiddencost|2 months ago
SG-|2 months ago
j3th9n|2 months ago
skrebbel|2 months ago
And by "this" I mean that they want organizations to proactively make changes that fit with the policies of whoever is in power, even if there's no actual laws that make them do this. When Democrats ran the place, big tech was going out of their way to out-woke one another, with product announcement videos somehow starting with land acknowledgements and the likes, and now the same companies are going out of their way to out-dumb one another and this is just one of many examples.
I mean, America is a place with only two sides, and both sides are very on board with having their particular preferences and ideas enforced informally without any sort of legal framework. I think it would be useful for a lot more of the outrage to be directed at that fact.
Just.. be against all of this! This shit where legally you can do whatever the fuck you want but actually in reality you're going to get in serious trouble if you don't toe the party line, and oh by the way the party line switches every 4 years... that's no way to run a business! It's banana republic stuff.
I mean I agree that there's a difference in scale, in that censoring access to abortion advice is actively harmful and most things people felt they had to do under Biden (eg land acknowledgements, DEI trainings etc) are just cringe. But come on, don't politicize everything! It will only come to bite you back in the arse, as this episode illustrates beautifully.
lopis|2 months ago
cramcgrab|2 months ago
Fraterkes|2 months ago
eudamoniac|2 months ago
- Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences
- Are you saying Facebook should be forced to platform speech it doesn't like?
- Xkcd "showing you the door"
Did I miss any? Heavy pendulums hurt to be struck by.
aa_is_op|2 months ago
The "bastion of free speech" is exporting its censorship to other countries... If I'm an EU lawmaker, I'd honestly use this to just ban Zuckerberg's entire social media sites and get it over with
baggachipz|2 months ago
d--b|2 months ago
I don't know who's behind this, but they're delusional.
NicuCalcea|2 months ago
Yes.
bell-cot|2 months ago
Zuck has seen that the current regime strongly incentives certain sorts of compliance. He is showing them the outcome which they desire.
lopis|2 months ago
wkat4242|2 months ago
If the religious conservatives actually cared about children's lives they'd provide free healthcare, great schooling and opportunities for them. As it stands they only care about them until they're born. Then the amount of care drops sharply especially if they happen to be of the "wrong" colour.
It's much more about suppression of women's rights than actual care about children.
alex1138|2 months ago
But everyone always excuses it. "He was young when he wrote those IMs"
throwaway613745|2 months ago
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EverydayBalloon|2 months ago
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mesk|2 months ago
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draw_down|2 months ago
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rodwyersoftware|2 months ago
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jas39|2 months ago
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otikik|2 months ago
blitz_skull|2 months ago
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xchip|2 months ago
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dalben|2 months ago
otikik|2 months ago
Aren't you tired of "playing a character" in your life? That is a very lonely way of living. I know because I did. Still do, but less so now.
jjulius|2 months ago
I know. Doesn't bother me at all. Good for them, I'm glad they do something that makes 'em happy.
NicuCalcea|2 months ago
fwip|2 months ago
greekrich92|2 months ago
hiddencost|2 months ago