Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta • Hacker News Board

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#91

Post by barbariangrunge » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 2:15 PM UTC

djschnei wrote: post #46

holoduke wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the service itself will be crap once run by governments. But at least things are covered by law. things like fair hearings and proper customer support. Now you can be banned from those ecosystems just like they do in dictorial states.

ummmm, have you seen our criminal justice system?

Can ordinary citizens without millions of dollars even access the basic torte system against somebody bigger than themselves? The legal system is effectively unavailable to most citizens outside of small claims court because of the combination of precedent (ie, the need to spend a million dollars researching to know what the law is), and the stalling/creating expensive burdens tactics etc

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#92

Post by wpietri » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 2:15 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #62

indymike wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why massive companies like Meta and Alphabet needs to be nationalised. No. Giving this additional power to the government will not have the outcome you want. When something becomes too powerful, the solution is not to further concentrate that power into less accountable hands.

> into less accountable hands. While I'm not totally behind "nationalize all the things", do you really think the government is less accountable than Meta? (or Alphabet etc?) I guess that raises the question "accountable to whom", but in general, for all it's problems with accountability (and there are many), and acknolwedging that different US governments can stack up differently (say local vs federal) -- I'd still…

If you haven't noticed, we're living in an era of rising authoritarianism: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2022/global-ex...

Companies are held accountable via market pressure, public relations pressure, investor pressure, and government/regulatory pressure. Governments, just via voters. Given that authoritarians of various stripes are working hard to neutralize or delegitimize voting and election results, yes, I think that giving Facebook to governments that are or may soon become authoritarian is absolutely at risk of reducing total accountability.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#93

Post by wpietri » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

rmah wrote: post #71

jrochkind1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> into less accountable hands. While I'm not totally behind "nationalize all the things", do you really think the government is less accountable than Meta? (or Alphabet etc?) I guess that raises the question "accountable to whom", but in general, for all it's problems with accountability (and there are many), and acknolwedging that different US governments can stack up differently (say local vs federal) -- I'd still…

Why would you risk everything to start a company only to be forced to give up most of it to other people? Why would others invest (i.e. buy stock) in your company only to give up control to non-owners?

Wait, so you're saying most entrepreneurs aren't creating new things just to change the world, to make a difference, to put a dent in the universe, to fulfill a deep vision, and/or because their team or their userbase is like a family? I find it hard to believe that VCs, would-be billionaires, and their extensive PR teams have been lying to us all these years.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#94

Post by indymike » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

DangitBobby wrote: post #82

indymike wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, it depends on the governance obviously. Three reasons why nationalization is a bad idea: * Power disparity. As it is, Facebook is destroying people and business without any accountability. Now we hand that to the state who: * Has all the incentive to destroy anything that competes, and the government has the ultimate way to do it: just outlaw the competition. If you think the product is bad today, imagine how…

> Has all the incentive to make people use it. So, it becomes oppressive and horrible and the government decides, hey, let's make everyone use this thing for essential services like payments and democracy! Any examples of this? The USPS doesn't seem to have much power and other shipping companiea do alright.

> The USPS doesn't seem to have much power and other shipping companiea do alright.

Last I looked UPS and Fedex are legally barred from competing for letter postage and can only ship parcels (so the hack is the overnight envelope which packages your letter in a parcel.

Bonus: The postal service can arrest you and prosecute you. Last I looked, UPS and FedEx cannot.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#95

Post by sigio » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

seszett wrote: post #41

snowwrestler wrote: post #31

Why not use full domains for a service like this? Instead of client.your domain.tld, register client-your domain.tld. This would prevent one bad actor from nuking your whole business. Yes it has a cost, but it’s like $10 a year for a new domain, which I bet pales in comparison to other direct costs of running a SaaS.

They provide webshops for 60€/year and a .be or .nl domain costs 15€/year, so 25% of that. That's a lot.

A .nl domain name costs < $5... be probably <$10, but still.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#96

Post by jmull » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

My guess is there’s a “sheeps-clothing.stamhoofd.shop”. Since the users’ shops are hosted on a subdomain, one bad acting user can cause the whole domain to get blamed. Meta’s enforcement bots have, of course, zero nuance or understanding of this kind of thing. I doubt they would care about trampling small non-profits in any case.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#97

Post by tialaramex » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #83

simonbackx wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question! I would also like to know the answer. I've scanned through our sites and couldn't find any malicious content... My guess is that the block was automated, and might have been caused by a fake spam report. There can be some competition between non-profits (e.g. two scouting groups in the same local area). Maybe they started to report each other as a joke.

A large percentage of users use the "report spam" button as an unsubscribe/delete button in their email client.

Right, from a user's point of view labelling it "Spam" has the same effect as when you put letters unread on that pile by the door, "I don't want to read this". Should they? Doesn't matter. Years back we even had users who were paying us to send them specific emails and would mark it as spam.

The use of "users marked this as spam" as a signal is a cheap but lousy shortcut and it's bad news that we became reliant upon it.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#98

Post by jrochkind1 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #92

jrochkind1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> into less accountable hands. While I'm not totally behind "nationalize all the things", do you really think the government is less accountable than Meta? (or Alphabet etc?) I guess that raises the question "accountable to whom", but in general, for all it's problems with accountability (and there are many), and acknolwedging that different US governments can stack up differently (say local vs federal) -- I'd still…

If you haven't noticed, we're living in an era of rising authoritarianism: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2022/global-ex... Companies are held accountable via market pressure, public relations pressure, investor pressure, and government/regulatory pressure. Governments, just via voters. Given that authoritarians of various stripes are working hard to neutralize or delegitimize voting and election resul…

What a world, where we're arguing about which unaccountable abusive gigantic entity we'd rather be abused by.

I still find it shocking to think that Meta is more accountable (to society?) than government. It seems to be arguing over how low the bar can be, since Meta has very very little accountability. Like, as in the thread we are actually on, they can decide to ruin someone else's business with no notice or consequences or even acknowledgement there's any reason they ought not to. "Market pressure" and "investor pressure" don't seem to be doing much good in accountability to society, do they?

And you mention "government pressure" as something making them accountable to society right after arguing that government is less accountable than Meta is without government control, which seems odd.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#99

Post by squarefoot » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

base wrote: post #13

I don't have a specific solution for you, but I also run a domain with some thousands of subdomains and is always a fight to not be banned from Google, Meta, internet operators etc. Sometimes is enough one bad actor under one of your subdomains to have a full ban on the whole domain. What I suggest is for your and your clients to contact Meta through the Business Center support. Their support for paying clients is mu…

> Their support for paying clients is much better.

One could argue that is the whole point behind making life for non paying users harder.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#100

Post by warbeforepeace » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #5

paintman252 wrote: post #2

This is why massive companies like Meta and Alphabet needs to be nationalised. They simply have too much power over lives of billions. This article is just another reminder of this. At scale that Meta operates, this algorithmically decided domain blockings mean nothing to them, but everything to hundred's of non-profits. There need to be legally mandated protections so things like this never happen again.

Nationalisation wouldn't fix it. There are plenty of rules and procedures in every nation which screw over random 'little guys'... For example, "oh, you have a disability and can't work? Here, have some state support. Oh - we just found you helped look after your neighbours children once. That counts as work. Therefore you lied to us. Thats fraud. All your state support will now be withdrawn."

Look how well the US government handled the small business loans during covid. It wasn't the small businesses really getting them.