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Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

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Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#171
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be more reasons to see Mastodon as a potential threat. There's something of a different paradigm to it. First of all it is decentralized (federated), and anyone can spin up servers for themself or a community of users, set their own topic and rules (CoC, ToS) and connect with the larger social network (the Fediverse). Second of all this fediverse is based on open-standards and anyone can develop their own s…

What happened to Bluesky? They made a bunch of promises and it sort of... disappeared after that.

They recently hired Jay Graber as project lead: https://twitter.com/arcalinea/status/1427314482154414080

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's one job that doesn't exactly depend on what location you're working from...

I disagree with the notion that anyone anywhere can do the job. These moderators don't just moderate the rants your grandma posts about shopping malls. There's a documentary about what the content moderation people do, and they end up seeing horrific stuff like (sexual) child abuse, gore, and all the other worst thing humanity has to offer. Many of these people end up depressed or in therapy. I don't know if Facebook…

Isn’t it a bit silly that these Big Brother companies (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) are so afraid of global communication being taken over by small, yet persuasive groups, that they set about to take over global communication by their…small, yet persuasive company?

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#173
post #18

Remember private platform and only governments can censor. Also first amendment. Free speech only applies to government not private companies. They can show you door if you try to use their platform to market your competing product...

This is not surprising as there is no such thing as 'free speech' on private platforms like Facebook.

I thought that the author of this post knew this given the mass de-platforming going on throughout the years.

This shows once again that it can happen to anyone. Facebook and the rest of them will never change.

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#174
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be more reasons to see Mastodon as a potential threat. There's something of a different paradigm to it. First of all it is decentralized (federated), and anyone can spin up servers for themself or a community of users, set their own topic and rules (CoC, ToS) and connect with the larger social network (the Fediverse). Second of all this fediverse is based on open-standards and anyone can develop their own s…

What happened to Bluesky? They made a bunch of promises and it sort of... disappeared after that.

Current hypothesis is that they're just moving slowly, there are signs of life

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#175
post #156

Yep. Facebook censored me for linking to an entry about COVID-19 growth on my personal webpage — https://samiam.org/COVID-19 for the record — saying the post violated Facebook’s community standards, falsely claiming it was spam (no, I do not have a single ad over on my personal website). Also, interviewing for a job at Facebook has been one of the worst job interview experiences I have ever had.

Tell me more about what happened at your Facebook interview

They asked a lot of really senior-level questions about B-trees. Since I tend to use hashes instead of B-trees for my data structures, I was caught completely flat footed.

To interview for Facebook, study B-trees like crazy (no, the recruiters did not warn me about this).

Also, after the interview, the recruiters at Facebook I was in contact with completely ghosted me. Very rude.

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#176

A social media platform refused to let you advertise a competing social media platform. Is this really news? Isn't this just business as usual in corporate America?

If this is the case its actually anti-competitive and supposed to be against the law. Obviously there is a difference between braking the law and getting caught though.

supposedly* breaking the law. /s

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#177
post #8

I doubt anyone at Facebook is freaking out about Mastodon and setting out to censor all mention of it. It's probably just a keyword or link that tends to co-appear with other, actually rule-breaking content, and some automated system has learned to block it. Still, it does seem like the sort of thing that could get Facebook in trouble with a regulator if you squint at it.

What is the violation? I'm serious. If I post a link to a target product page on walmart it will be taken down. I'm sure amazon does the same. Do business have to allow you to promote their competitors? Such a weird thing for regulators to be chasing - there seems to be so many more obvious issues than this. Is this a political winner - in other words, does the average person think I can put of Burger King flyers in…

Walmart is not a site devoted to helping users created and share their content, and they are open about their moderation rules, a good ethical standard.

Walmart's legalese:

> C. Prohibited Content

> * contains advertisements, solicitations, or spam links to other web sites or individuals, without prior written permission from Walmart;

https://www.walmart.com/help/article/walmart-com-terms-of-us...

Facebook on the other hand, promotes itself for creating and sharing user content. If it then moderates in ways that are not disclosed, opaque, and with little recourse, their deceptive behavior is neither ethic or in line with how they promote themselves as a service.

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#178
post #4

Censorship is always abused. Maybe this time or maybe not. But it's always abused. And yes, it's worse than misinformation.

Any platform where people can speak to an audience needs some kind of 'censorship', otherwise you'll quickly find it's a platform solely for trolls and the like.

Re: Facebook Censored Me For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon

#180
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Facebook's upper management is definitely not freaking out about Mastodon. However, from my own experience working at a large, somewhat ethically-challenged organisation (not fb), it would not surprise me in the least if they gently yet actively pushed down a competitor, provided it can be done discreetly.

There are far more discreet approaches than marking these messages as spam and notifying users. My guess is that an actual person reported this as spam and Facebook automatically accepted the report.

Re: discreet, how true.. since their news feed prioritization algorithm is a black box they can just rank posts about Mastodon very low, so low they'd probably show your American contacts ads about monkey-proofing your house (something relevant for India) before showing that post...
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