Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

simonbackx.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 180 posts

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

#141

Post by Thorrez »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #55

Are any of the sites using FB events/analytics? It depends on what the non-profit sites are doing, but the Facebook rules for prohibited domains [1] seem to include what a lot of non-profits may do: "Predominantly target or serve an audience likely to have suffered from mental, emotional, financial or physical harm, or facing severe economic hardship that directly affects housing, food security or freedom." I'm guess…

That page says that if you have such a site, FB will stop collecting analytics/tracking data from the site. It doesn't say FB will block posts mentioning the site.

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

#142

Post by midislack »

simonbackx wrote: post #34
midislack wrote: post #23

First thing I always wonder with these, what did your customer(s) do wrong?

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.

Too bad they won't actually say what the trigger even is. Could be one mass email.

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

#143

Post by base »

theanonymousone wrote: post #137
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…

Then how come GeoCities, Heroku, Vercel, GH Pages and others survived?

They workout the issues like everyone else, and at a certain size the issue is minimized as you are either in several whitelists or human moderators recognise your domain.

Most of those services also let clients setup their own domain name, so a ban is a more of a inconvenience to deal, than business critical like in OP case.

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

#144

Post by niuzeta »

danpalmer wrote: post #128
rendaw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who on Facebook's side resolved the problem in the end?

Not certain. Our ads account manager (or maybe the old account manager) found the internal ticket and I suspect told them that it was looking really bad for Facebook and that they were at risk of losing us.

By the time the communication was sent to all the users, wouldn't it have been too late? "Lose" the account or not, I don't imagine the company ever wanted to deepen the relationship with Facebook.

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

#145

Post by is_true »

psychoslave wrote: post #40
is_true wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be ok with the chinese or argentinian government running Alphabet or Meta? I don't think most government are better than any corporation.

Last time I checked, free access to education, care and protection against many abuses where provided by governmental organisms. "government are better than any corporation" (or its reverse) means nothing if you don’t provide some specific topics and possible metrics to evaluate them. Also, not all government and corporations behaves in the very same way.

Sorry, don't have time to show you that most governments do shitty things to people all the time.

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

#146

Post by zpthree »

anderspitman wrote: post #116

It's worth remembering what the long-term solutions to these types of issues are. For Facebook: decentralized social networks built on open protocols. For the ISP: normalizing the use of VPNs (through a local server) for all internet traffic. Yes there are tradeoffs. I'm personally happy to make them.

how exactly can a decentralized network do better at moderation than a centralized one?

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

#147

Post by wpietri »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #98
wpietri wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conseq…

> I still find it shocking to think that Meta is more accountable (to society?) than government.

That is not something I said. I'm not even sure it's quantifiable enough to say "more" or "less", as the kinds and mechanisms of accountability are so different.

> arguing that government is less accountable than Meta

I did not say that either. My point is that an authoritarian government nationalizing Facebook is even worse in accountability terms that either one on its own.

> "Market pressure" and "investor pressure" don't seem to be doing much good in accountability to society, do they?

I think your baseline is off. The social media platforms have made huge strides since their early days. Could they do more? Yes. Could they be worse? Incredibly so.

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

#148

Post by nullc »

pmontra wrote: post #104

Did anybody ever sued a FAANG for this sort of things (or the ToS that allow them) and got a ruling?

It doesn't matter what the rules say-- these companies have legal departments better funded than those of states. They can just tie you up in expensive litigation for the rest of their life. They're largely immune to oversight by the courts as a result, which is presumably a part of why they behave this way.

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

#149

Post by nullc »

MBCook wrote: post #108
Roark66 wrote: post #106

I'm sorry to hear of the op's troubles with meta, but this "No fake-news, crypto-currencies, violence, porn, or illegal activities... " is a very strange sentence. Why would the author lump "crypto currencies" along with fake-news, violence and porn? Of course this doesn't take away from the validity of their claim and I wish this stupid shadowban is lifted. Also I hope (at least in Europe) we can get some laws passe…

My guess is there is a TON of scamming related to crypto. All those comments on Twitter or YouTube (for example) pretending to be someone important trying to get people to send a little to get a lot as a “bonus for readers” or something like that. Plus scam coins, etc. It’s probably far easier for them to just say “none of that” until it gets easier to tell the good from the bad.

The irony is that the platforms are still flooded with crypto scams, I know on twitter and youtube at least they don't even respond to reports on them 99% of the time-- even when it's the same obvious scam messaged reposed twenty times in a short interval--, but then they'll capriciously ban legitimate material because it mentioned bitcoin.

It's not hard to imagine that a lot of these companies are now using outsourced 'moderation' where the moderators themselves are the scammers, intentionally permitting scams and intentionally flagging legit stuff. But sadly the truth is probably more boring, indifference instead of intrigue.

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

#150

Post by yellowapple »

dymk wrote: post #134
another_story wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think Facebook isn't getting something out of allowing users to sign into other sites through them?

You think the site isn't getting something out of allowing users to click a social media button to sign in?

It's almost as if the button is mutually beneficial and that only a greedy moron would threaten to break it unless paid yet more money.
Post reply on HN