Thread

Meta Blocks President Lula's Facebook Page, Campaign Ads 2 Weeks from Election

471 points · 303 comments · rbanffy

condenser · 1790500806 · focus · HN ↗
Facebook election interference has been going on for a long time in Europe. It's a two-tier system where parties outside the establishment have a far lower ban-threshold.
1. actionfromafar · 1790501877 · focus · HN ↗
  Isn't it probably an n-tier system which is pay to play?
  1. mondomondo · 1790504459 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  2. typicalbot · 1790505443 · focus · HN ↗
    the pay-to-play claim is wrong, the issue is the ban threshold itself, post certain topics from the "wrong" political side and you get banned almost instantly, the same ideas posted repeatedly from the other prefered side of the us gov face no consequences on especially meta and twitter
2. NinjaTrance · 1790505241 · focus · HN ↗
  They changed their name to "Meta" after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
  1. callc · 1790514922 · focus · HN ↗
    If they changed their name to “Flobular” it wouldn’t change a thing.
    They’re Facebook in many people’s minds.
    “Meta” doesn’t convey the same meaning that “Facebook” does. And it’s also squatting on an important term in English. Mets is used all over the language, like metaphysical.
    No thanks, I’ll use Facebook
    mindslight · 1790515268 · focus · HN ↗
    How committed are you? A one letter change gets you to Faceboot, as in "a boot stamping on a human face - forever". Just sayin'.
    callc · 1790532621 · focus · HN ↗
    It just comes naturally to me, I know them as Facebook.
    There’s some effect of corporate name changing in order to have a reputational reset. I’m opposed to that.
    Real people OTOH I’m happy to call them whatever they wish
    mindslight · 1790607830 · focus · HN ↗
    Right on, I agree with you on all points. I just found it easy enough to change that last letter to a 't'.
    Because in addition to simply opposing corpos' name resets, I'll go even further by modifying their names to better label their behavior. Corpos spend gobs of cash on naming and branding - it must mean something. So why not embrace that dynamic from an individualist perspective?
    kps · 1790517087 · focus · HN ↗
    > They’re Facebook in many people’s minds.
    And Meta loves it. People can ‘not use Facebook’ while living on WhatsApp and Instagram.
  2. onionisafruit · 1790517027 · focus · HN ↗
    Was the name change related to publicity from that? My memory is that it was part of an attempt to be the new Second Life. But on the other hand I tend to be naive.
    pohl · 1790518809 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, they did it to break the association with their brand (“reputation laundering”) and then they got into 3D to throw some chaff. Seems to have worked for them.
3. mc32 · 1790505406 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
  1. LtWorf · 1790508406 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    lesuorac · 1790509304 · focus · HN ↗
    Say what you want.
    Pretty much every time somebody backs up these kinds of claims it shows something else.
    1) posts going out 500 times a day in all caps (who is arguing you can’t suppress spam?)
    2) the post that you read and so clearly wasn’t suppressed.
    3) they’re linking to a low scoring comment
    LtWorf · 1790509664 · focus · HN ↗
    Socials should do no scoring whatsoever. Once you score you are editorialising which means you should have a director that is liable for everything published.
    If you don't want that, no editorialising, let people see just the people they follow or what their friends share and that is it.
    Can't have it both ways.
    lesuorac · 1790514009 · focus · HN ↗
    They absolutely should do scoring. Imagine i posted this comment as a response to every single other comment here.
    Nobody is going to want to use a platform with spam.
    margalabargala · 1790519273 · focus · HN ↗
    No, they should not do scoring. The end result is strictly better. Like you said, no one is going to want to use a platform with so much spam.
    LtWorf · 1790525171 · focus · HN ↗
    > Imagine i posted this comment as a response to every single other comment here.
    I don't know you, this is not a social. If we were friends and you did that I'd unfriend you and be done.
    The alternative being having human moderators, which socials don't want to have because it costs money.
    lesuorac · 1790530928 · focus · HN ↗
    This is social media.
    You may not feel that way and thats fine. Just like people think the world is flat. Nothing you do is going to be affected by that ignorance.
    LtWorf · 1790539371 · focus · HN ↗
    Changing definitions of words to win imaginary arguments. Ok you won.
    lesuorac · 1790557147 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
    Words change around you. Much like how Republican doesn’t mean fiscal responsibility or small government for many decades.
  2. icantevenhold · 1790510493 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  3. rapind · 1790514172 · focus · HN ↗
    Look up Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It explains the current situation and should be obvious that it's less than perfect. Basically without this then online platforms would be responsible for the content they host (publishers) and would have been sued into oblivion before any of them got up and running... especially Facebook with it's beginnings. So to compensate there's the good samaritan provision which is the whole censorship thing from the right's perspective (like back during Covid) and the protection from being a publisher let's them host hate speech from the left's perspective.
    Personally I think making them public square is probably the only real solution if you want to keep social media and avoid this drama, or make them liable as publishers and these platforms will disappear overnight (maybe the best result?!?)...
    This carries over into LLMs I presume, which have bias and I assume are not being sued for the content the publish? I'm not really sure about how it applies to LLMs to be honest.
    Regardless, other countries will have different laws, that have different takes on censorship and what private companies are responsible for.
    mc32 · 1790514784 · focus · HN ↗
    Ok, but here we have people not from Brazil claiming that a private company is guilty of censorship but also was not guilty of censorship when government "embeds[1]" in the US would flag what they labeled disinformation and blocked discussion on Covid, Covid origins, laptops with evidence, suspended political accounts in the US, etc. So, it seems people want to have it both ways -essentially they want to censor things they disagree with and also don't want censorship of things they agree with.
    [1] Of course, that was plainly censorship with a veneer of plausible deniability (it assumed those embeds could only be truthful and unbiased and in no way politically motivated).
    rapind · 1790515189 · focus · HN ↗
    Who are these "people"? I'm certainly not one of them, and I consider myself a progressive.
    mcmcmc · 1790518877 · focus · HN ↗
    > Basically without this then online platforms would be responsible for the content they host (publishers) and would have been sued into oblivion before any of them got up and running... especially Facebook with it's beginnings.
    I don’t see this as a problem. They could just as easily have changed their business model and invested more heavily in content moderation. Maybe it wouldn’t have been as profitable, but profit is a great motivator to do bad things.
    lokar · 1790520397 · focus · HN ↗
    The whole SV VC industry (and this site) start from a position that their business has a right to be profitable, so any law in the way of that is unjust.
  4. UncleMeat · 1790515611 · focus · HN ↗
    What people are objecting to is how this relates to facebook's recently stated principles. They'd said that things like deplatforming Trump were mistakes and that they won't do these sorts of things again. And then...
4. LtWorf · 1790508251 · focus · HN ↗
  Facebook marked a video where a famous Italian author was saying what he was going to vote and why as "fake news". Of course he's opposing the current right wing pro-USA government.
  edit: yes please, as usual, keep downvoting factual information.
5. mcv · 1790518761 · focus · HN ↗
  Can't we just ban Facebook everywhere? I bet that will make a lot of people a lot happier in a lot of different ways. It's ridiculous how much power over our lives and our internet experience we've given to American Big Tech companies. Time to roll it back.
  1. betaby · 1790519839 · focus · HN ↗
    > Can't we just ban Facebook everywhere?
    That's not that EU asks. EU asks to have a direct interface to delete posts EU elites don't like.
    bigyabai · 1790529605 · focus · HN ↗
    If you think the US elites don't have a Zuckerberg-shaped button to delete posts they don't like, boy do I have a bridge to sell you.
    mcv · 1790531619 · focus · HN ↗
    That is exactly what this article is about. Censoring people in order to interfere with an election, most likely on direct behalf of Donald Trump. That is far beyond anything the EU would ever ask for.
6. barbazoo · 1790545745 · focus · HN ↗
  Careless people, the book talks about it too.

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