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

simonbackx.com

151–160 of 180 posts

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

#151

Fun story. At my previous company we had "Sign in with Facebook" – whatever your opinions on it are, it was probably the right thing for the company at that time. Facebook decided to "audit" us to make sure we were doing sign in right. The tested it incorrectly, told us we were at fault and needed to fix it, and gave us 2 weeks to do so. We scrambled to figure out what the issue was, only to find after they eventuall…

We removed "Sign in with Facebook" from our public learning management system (we provide content to the public) instead of continuing to jump through their insane requests and demands.

OAuth in general feels like an increasingly bad idea. Log into everything with Google? Oops, one arbitrary account lock from Google and you're beyond fucked.

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

#153
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies explicitly and intentionally cultivated profit models built around providing services for free and subsidizing them with data collection and advertising. Their low revenue-per-user is a direct result of that, and if they can't afford to provide proper moderation, that's entirely their fault, and does not absolve them of the responsibility to provide it anyway.

Exactly. If your car company cannot be profitable with airbags, then you shouldn't be in the car business (to use an analogy).

This is the absolute best analogy I've ever seen for this situation. Kudos.

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

#154
post #92

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…

A lot of modern censorship is a mix of algorithms, and government pressuring corporations to take actions the government wants to do but legally cannot (eg. due to 1A concerns). There are huge swathes of society (mostly those who'd also be concerned with eg. "rising authoritarianism") who cheer political censorship and want more and more of it. See how eg. the press reacted to the possibility of Elon buying Twitter and saying he wants to decrease freedom of speech? They took it as an act of war.

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

#155

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?

By giving users the tools to moderate their own content. If you're peering with an instance that seems to pass on a lot of bad/dangerous content, then block the instance. You can use public blocklists on your instance if you want, but it should be your choice.

Also, it should be noted that blocklists are not a solution for things like phishing. Things like MFA and WebAuthn are the solution.

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

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We removed "Sign in with Facebook" from our public learning management system (we provide content to the public) instead of continuing to jump through their insane requests and demands.

OAuth in general feels like an increasingly bad idea. Log into everything with Google? Oops, one arbitrary account lock from Google and you're beyond fucked.

I agree. And besides that I also think it's an incredibly bad idea to train users, who are technically not very firm, to enter their credentials on some random page that asks for it.

I'm a pro and even I can't tell how this is supposed to be safe. How would you explain the security aspects to someone who can't distinguish between google-search and the browsers address-bar?!

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We removed "Sign in with Facebook" from our public learning management system (we provide content to the public) instead of continuing to jump through their insane requests and demands.

OAuth in general feels like an increasingly bad idea. Log into everything with Google? Oops, one arbitrary account lock from Google and you're beyond fucked.

not if but when

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

#158
post #92

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…

government is via consent which literally includes all the other things you mentioned

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

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

That was what the original comment I was replying to said, "less accountable hands". I replied mainly to question that. Then you disagreed with me, I guess I misunderstood about what you were disagreeing with me, sorry.
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