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Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

andrewducker.dreamwidth.org

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Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#51

Post by corywatilo »

The same thing happened to my domain name about a month ago. (I also posted about it here.) This is happening more and more frequently, and the fact they block entire domains rather than a specific subdomain is really poor design.

I finally got it unblocked, but only thanks to a former colleague (engineer) who now works at Facebook. If that didn't work, my next step was going to be filing a lawsuit, just to try to get their attention.

A summary from spending a month trying to get this fixed:

1. The "Report" link doesn't actually do anything, or if it does, you have to get loads of people reporting to surface it to a human.

2. The best resolution may be through Ads billing, by trying to post an ad and reporting a problem displaying an ad.

3. This affects a lot more than just blocking links. It also affects messages in private DMs (including from a Facebook for Business inbox), links on Instagram, any Facebook APIs you may be using, and even getting password reset emails to that domain.

For more context, here's my post: https://watilo.com/facebooks-community-standards-censorship-...

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#52

Post by strogonoff »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #45
strogonoff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you imagine content discovery in an app for an open-source blogging platform (self-hosted instances) could work?

It's not self-hosted. (You can download the source and host it yourself if you like though. But Dreamwidth itself is hosted at Dreamwidth.org)

I have read that page and was speaking of discovering self-hosted instances through the app.

If the hypothetical app is to be used with the main instance only, then there’s no challenge (unless there is risky/restricted content on the main instance, so the app is not allowed by Apple/Google and others).

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#53

Post by [deleted] »

rowanG077 wrote: post #18
AndrewDucker wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's an actually good blogging site. Main thing it has against it is the lack of an app. (And that Facebook has just blocked it)

The lack of an app is something for it. Literally every app of some website has the worse experience. Even worse the website will keep begging you to install their shitty app.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#54

Post by annadane »

bzb3 wrote: post #50
annadane wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think this is a justification to do this? On Hacker News? Really? I do not understand the mindset of some people

I didn't say it was a good reason, I'm saying that's probably the cause they got banned.

That's fair and I'm sorry. Still, we should demand better from these platforms, it's not enough

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#56

Post by pjc50 »

leereeves wrote: post #43
goatinaboat wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

demanded that we censor some of our users' content (mostly involving people talking about sex, usually fictionally, in explicit terms Livejournal was a hotbed of dubious fanfic (shall we say) in which one or more characters was underage. Maybe such a thing is technically not illegal but even so, many left that platform once it started to develop a reputation for it. Then it went bust and was sold to a Russian company…

> Dreamwidth [is] what's known as a "code fork" of LiveJournal: the software that runs LiveJournal was free and open source software, licensed under the GNU GPL, which meant anyone could copy it and improve it. Sounds like Dreamwidth is an entirely different site from Livejournal, it just uses the same open source code. How does dubious fanfic on Livejournal relate to the banning of Dreamwidth? If that fanfic migrate…

Many users migrated wholesale.

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#57

Post by danaris »

seesawtron wrote: post #42
andybak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does the internet in general. It's still poor form to block entire platforms without warning.

Recently Indian government blocked Tik-Tok. Does anyone know if they gave a warning to the users or the app developers? One can argue that governments should have the right to censorship when its a matter of urgency or emergency or national security (though this is debatable), does the same power lie with Facebook (or any other platform) to exercise a censorship on its users? It goes back to the big debate whether th…

There's a clear reason to block TikTok as a platform, whether you personally agree with it or not: Concerns about its relationship to the Chinese government.

Dreamwidth has no such potential pitfalls as a whole platform.

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#58

Post by auganov »

seesawtron wrote: post #29

In the past there was a news about Paypal banning Dreamwidth. Not sure if its related: "About six months after opening, PayPal -- our payment processor at the time -- demanded that we censor some of our users' content (mostly involving people talking about sex, usually fictionally, in explicit terms) that was legal and protected speech but that they felt violated their terms for using PayPal." HN discussion on it: ht…

Seems like nowadays, to grow a user-driven content/social site you just have to be backed by a big player or grow extremely fast to be too big to censor. Or pick a category that somehow totally flies under the radar.

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#59

Post by [deleted] »

corywatilo wrote: post #51

The same thing happened to my domain name about a month ago. (I also posted about it here.) This is happening more and more frequently, and the fact they block entire domains rather than a specific subdomain is really poor design. I finally got it unblocked, but only thanks to a former colleague (engineer) who now works at Facebook. If that didn't work, my next step was going to be filing a lawsuit, just to try to ge…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook has blocked Dreamwidth

#60

Post by peroporque »

scarface74 wrote: post #49
seesawtron wrote: post #29

In the past there was a news about Paypal banning Dreamwidth. Not sure if its related: "About six months after opening, PayPal -- our payment processor at the time -- demanded that we censor some of our users' content (mostly involving people talking about sex, usually fictionally, in explicit terms) that was legal and protected speech but that they felt violated their terms for using PayPal." HN discussion on it: ht…

“Protected Speech” means that the government can’t censor it, not private corporations.

That's not the point.

The point is: do you want to live in a world where a handful of authoritarian corporations decide, what you can publicly say and what not?

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