Live data from Hacker News

Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

business-review.eu

341–350 of 381 posts

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#341
post #187

I'm a Romanian and I can confirm that posts and accounts have been blocked, probably because of being reported by the other side. On the other hand, folks, this is a little reminder that censorship is a doubly edged knife ;-) So next time you call for censoring "fake news", think again, because it's not you who will benefit from it. A couple of years back I was enthusiastic about the rise of social media for informin…

For now you may think facebook merely facilitates regression. Eventually we'll see them enable repression. The gap is narrow, when one decides to manipulate people by manipulating the news feed they see as well as selling screen space in that "news feed". Here is an example of the unfortunate side effects of manipulation: One month ago a dear friend of mine posted an obit for her mother. Facebook did not include it i…

It's funny how people who complain about facebook the most are the ones who treat it super seriously. Or why do you allow such stupid feature as "news feed" to be the primary source of your news and then complain about its uselessness?

Facebook is awesome for chatting with friends, organizing events and sometimes even for posting updates about yourself, for those who want to see them. You don't need the news feed for any of that.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody is forcing you to use Facebook. EVERY zombie contact of mine contaminated by Facebook is forcing me to use it. This argument is a fallacy as FB is everywhere. The rest of the internet IS NOT still here as almost all content creators are hooked or moving to facebook, youtube and instagram. The only "opt out" available is to tear it down.

Maybe you need better friends

This is for sure but 70% of my country is a facebook zombie.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#343

If you still use facebook on a daily basis, you are in part responsible for what is happening to the free web. Sorry. I said it. I'm getting bummed at the frequency I hear the excuse, "But I don't have a choice, network effects..blah blah blah." Doing the right thing isn't fucking easy. So stop the excuses.

It helps me organize events and keeping up with events of my friends. Or for just keeping up with friends I can't meet at the moment. It is useful tool. Sorry, I said it. I'm getting annoyed how people like you are always eager to blame facebook for their inability to actually improve their lives with it. It is really easy, so stop the excuses and learn something new. You might realize why people use it and maybe finally appreciate it.

Or learn how to actually make an alternative. No, Mastodon is not even close to it.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#344
post #108

I think what many people don't know or understand, is that facebook is not the internet. So when you write something at facebook you ask a company to host your story under their domain. And as the company is held responsible for what they host, they have to review everything before publishing it. When we wrote forum posts back in the day, it was no different. If the forum operator didn't like what you wrote, he just…

>I think what many people don't know or understand, is that facebook is not the internet. The Internet is whatever people will engage with. That is something the creators and early adopters (30-50 year olds) will have to come to grips with, as we did when Gopher and other protocols were ignored.

People engage with many more sites than just facebook.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#345
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like “National Socialist German Workers' Party”?! I always found it funny they call it far right .

That's called branding. The name was chosen to be appealing to the German people, not to be an accurate description of their form of government. Unless you think North Korea (official name "Democratic People's Republic of Korea") is actually a democratic republic, this should not be a difficult concept to understand.

It wasn’t just the name: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Economics

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#346
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialism - “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole“

That definition clearly excludes any dictatorship because a dictatorship is by definition controlled by a dictator, not by the community as a whole.

"Community as a whole" is keyword for the State/Goverment, as the practical representant of the community. And the dictator is/controls the state.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#347
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These services don’t control ‘the’ flow of information, they are entirely additive to what we had before. They very much do control the flow by "personalizing" the content people see and don't see based on how likely somebody is to click something for ad-revenue. That's the direct result of the "capitalist nature" of these platforms; If they can't monetize it, it's of no interest to them, so they try to capitalize…

> Surfacing news about how refugees are not raping everything in sight won't do much for a user who has a very clear anti-refugee bias, such a user won't be very likely to click such news as such they won't be surfaced to the user. But if you surface news about how Germany is supposedly on the brink of collapse because refugees are roaming free as raping herds, to that very same user, then you will most likely just h…

> It's strange how you - out of all possible kinds of stories that might go viral on social media - choose to evoke a charicature of the mass influx of "refugees" into Germany and its consequences on public order and on the safety of women in public places.

How is that "strange"? I chose that example on purpose because it's as relevant as it's ever gonna be and it's exactly with that topic where these dynamics have become especially bad if not straight up dangerous. At this point, some people are living pretty much in alternative realities.

> This is strange because your view seems to be that a benevolent govenment can protect hapless citizens from fake news stories by censoring social media.

I didn't make any statements along those lines, at all. So please don't try to strawman me just for the sake of derailing this discussion into "Germany is actually on the brink of collapse!". Just taking a look at one of your "sources" (religionofpeace.com, really?) speaks bounds and volumes where you are coming from and what you are trying to do here.

I could now spend time and effort trying to explain to you what actually happened New Year`s Eve in Cologne, how foreign outlets mistranslated the numbers of attendees at the Domplatte with the number of perpetrators. How New Years Eve is pretty much always chaos on the brink of anarchy (the combination of alcohol and fireworks tends to do that), how the term "Taharrush" didn`t even exist prior to 2016, as it`s a made-up term resulting from a word-to-word translation from German to Arabic of the term "Gruppenvergewaltigung" by the BND, and not some "cultural thing that every Arab speaker knows because group raping is just a normal thing over there".

If you'd actually read your own sources, like number 7 about the Mass sexual assaults in Egypt, you'd realize this was a tactic employed by the Egyptian state/government to intimidate protesters and not something that's "just a cultural thing of Muslims".

How the vast majority of these "sexual assaults" had actually been cases of petty theft, where the "sexual advances" are only used to mask the perp stealing the victim's belongings and not actual rapes.

I could explain to you how it`s always the "bad headlines" that spread around, but never reports when it turns out that said headlines had been completely made up, as those never penetrate into the echo chambers as they'd contradict the established narrative of said echo chamber. Like it happened in Frankfurt last New Years Eve [0].

This goes on and on, to "community maps" [1] supposedly listing crimes by refugee but when actually looking through the pins you realize quickly: Many pins are duplicates, many cases don't have anything to do with refugees at all, it's all just there to create and support a narrative in a "shoveling bullshit" way.

By now it's become literally impossible to Google any unbiased news about any of this as the searches are dominated by the same few headlines spread across hundreds of blogs repeating the same tired narratives.

But you made up your mind about the situation already, it won't matter what I say or link here, nothing is gonna change your mind because disregarding me is as easy as claiming that every MSM has "bias" or how the "benevolent Governments" are in on it and now censor all the social media everywhere, hiding all these refugee crimes for their secret agenda of "replacing white people" or whatever.

Tbh I'm simply tired of it all, the hate, the lies, the lies for the sake of creating hate and violence. I wish there'd be an easy solution to any of this, but contrary to some populist claims, there ain't.

[0] https://www.thelocal.de/20170214/mass-sexual-assaults-by-ref...

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1_rNT3k2ZXB-f9z-2nS...

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#348

If you still use facebook on a daily basis, you are in part responsible for what is happening to the free web. Sorry. I said it. I'm getting bummed at the frequency I hear the excuse, "But I don't have a choice, network effects..blah blah blah." Doing the right thing isn't fucking easy. So stop the excuses.

You can still use Facebook and still not be part of the problem if you use it to post anti-social-media articles. That's seems a lot better than just deleting your account in protest.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#349
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without Capitalism we wouldn’t have anything like Facebook or Twitter. These services don’t control ‘the’ flow of information, they are entirely additive to what we had before. Arguing that we have worse options for communication now is bizarre. So what is the non capitalist alternative? State controlled social media services? Really? That would be a better option in Romania right now? Facebook is far from perfect, I…

> Without Capitalism we wouldn’t have anything like Facebook or Twitter. So, like, three gifts at once? Though, citation needed. The web was created by public funds, in a European public institution. The internet by army funds, in a US public institution. What we call capitalism is just a way of organizing the economy that emerged circa 14-15th century (people have almost always bought and sold things, but not in a c…

I didn’t say internet, I said Facebook and Twitter. Both were both founded with VC funds.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#350
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without Capitalism we wouldn’t have anything like Facebook or Twitter. So, like, three gifts at once? Though, citation needed. The web was created by public funds, in a European public institution. The internet by army funds, in a US public institution. What we call capitalism is just a way of organizing the economy that emerged circa 14-15th century (people have almost always bought and sold things, but not in a c…

I didn’t say internet, I said Facebook and Twitter. Both were both founded with VC funds.

That's true, what I said was, we had internet and web without VC money. So who's to say we couldn't have a (e.g. distributed) social net without those? An without the garbage that comes with for-profit social networks (ads, surveillance, etc).
Post reply on HN