Thread

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

471 points · 303 comments · rbanffy

ocd · 1790503961 · focus · HN ↗
He said the thing that Canada, Greenland, Cuba, and various other countries are worried about, but is either publicly ignored in the US or dismissed as "trolling" by the president.
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/25/lula-says-trump-wants-to-colonise-and-capture-brazils-resources-by-meddling-in-election" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/25/lula-says-trum...
1. AnimalMuppet · 1790512425 · focus · HN ↗
  That would require that Meta is carrying water for Trump. I don't think I see that as very likely.
  1. delecti · 1790514083 · focus · HN ↗
    "Likely" or not has nothing to do with it, it's well documented. <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/mark-zuckerbergs-meta-donates-1-million-to-trumps-inaugural-fund-32a999c1" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/tech/mark-zuckerbergs-meta-donates-1-mil...
    dmix · 1790515575 · focus · HN ↗
    Meta restored Lula's FB account hours after it got flagged for content that as posted on their page. That is a pretty weak basis for a conspiracy theory.
    rbanffy · 1790516653 · focus · HN ↗
    Did they anticipate there would be large numbers of attempts to report the page and cause it to be automatically flagged and/or blocked?
    I am sure the American president is target for such efforts as well and provides ample material for rules violations.
    SpicyLemonZest · 1790522031 · focus · HN ↗
    As the source article covers, they’ve been facing a number of complaints from human rights organizations that they are being insufficiently censorious regarding the Brazilian election, failing to swiftly take down some things which ethical standards and Brazilian law require. So that presumably influenced their policy. A lot of people seem to have an idea that Facebook’s election policy should quickly block all the bad ads with no risk of blocking any good ones, and that’s just not possible.
    sprinkly-dust · 1790535750 · focus · HN ↗
    One paper that really hammers this point: Inherent Trade-Offs in Algorithmic Fairness [1]
    The example they focus on is different but the general principles and takeaways are very powerful and applicable to all classification problems including content flagging.
    [1]: <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3219617.3219634" rel="nofollow">https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3219617.3219634
    owebmaster · 1790543703 · focus · HN ↗
    Wake me up when the right wing guy in the corporations pockets is banned by mistake
    rbanffy · 1790597854 · focus · HN ↗
    Is there a betting market for that?
    specialist · 1790517332 · focus · HN ↗
    IIRC, profiles of public officials are (or should be) handled differently.
    JoshTriplett · 1790521402 · focus · HN ↗
    Only insofar as more careful review. Otherwise, no, they shouldn't. Exactly the same policies on content should be applied uniformly to everyone.
    lemmetellya · 1790523858 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree with both of you.
    They should be handled differently [than they are today]. They should not be handled differently [than any other persons]. Meta should be giving everyone careful review.
    parineum · 1790515606 · focus · HN ↗
    donating money to the president and their party is something nearly every national corporation does. Using their corporate power to do political favors is not. those are two very different things.
    thrance · 1790520325 · focus · HN ↗
    That's not a campaign donation, this is straight up a gift to show loyalty to the new guy, after he won the election. But that's not the only thing, for just one more example, look at Zuckerberg getting on Joe Rogan weeks after the election to praise "masculine energy", wearing a ridiculous haircut and necklace, just to pander to the Right.
    [deleted] · 1790564955 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]

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