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Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE

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Re: Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE

#101

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tclancy wrote: post #73
jazzypants wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buddy... Are you a doctor? Are you a scientist? Why do you think that you have an inalienable right to proselytize your "health practices" on a public forum? My experience was that there wasn't nearly enough moderation on social media about Covid. The absurd amount of misinformation was the final straw that finally got me to leave Facebook and Instagram.

Because giving every maniac an equal voice and hearing them out is asymmetric. They have the burden of proof to have said “my perfectly validated facts I’ve learned in two decades as a scientist” or whatever if they wanted to provide that context. Then again, here I am arguing in good faith with you, so more the fool I.

> They have the burden of proof

This isn’t how the algorithm works. It costs less than $10k to get some conspiratorial nonsense circulating nowadays, and less than $1mm to flood the zone.

Re: Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE

#102

Post by yojo »

0x5FC3 wrote: post #18

Social media companies post record earnings year after year from their ads business while increasingly proving to be harmful to society. They do the bare minimum in terms of content moderation and bots while priming the algorithms to maximize revenue. The good ol' privatized profits, socialized harm model. In a just world, would social media platforms be taxed higher on corporate revenue and how would that pan out? M…

I’m taking it as a given that any sufficiently large social network is a gigantic propaganda machine of interest to domestic and foreign nation-state actors.

Entertaining the thought experiment where all the normies join the fediverse: now you’ve got a big juicy target maintained by hobbyists.

When it’s Lazarus Group vs Randall, the over-worked sys admin who stood up a node in his spare time, who do you think wins?

Social networks are cancer. Just ban the lot of them and move on.

Re: Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE

#103

Post by Pay08 »

outside1234 wrote: post #21
ktm5j wrote: post #12

Do folks have a suggestion for a Facebook alternative? I'm about fed up with the state of things, but still want to feel connected to social circles (even if they're online only) and politics (ideally without the hate spam bots).

Bluesky

Bluesky both isn't an alternative to Facebook and is generally terrible too.

Re: Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE

#104

Post by Pay08 »

forshaper wrote: post #89
ktm5j wrote: post #12

Do folks have a suggestion for a Facebook alternative? I'm about fed up with the state of things, but still want to feel connected to social circles (even if they're online only) and politics (ideally without the hate spam bots).

The software is never the issue with this, it's where people are that's the problem. Though I did witness my age-peer friend groups finally switching to Signal in the late 2010s (away from Facebook Messenger), I don't actually know what convinced them. The security-conscious minority element had been pushing it since it started but were generally mocked. I think it finally showed up in a New York Times article, which…

I'm curious why WhatsApp isn't much more popular in the USA. Is it the lack of anonymity?

Re: Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE

#106

Post by [deleted] »

haritha-j wrote: post #34
graemep wrote: post #3

The title should read "Saudi Arabia". Cutting a country name in half (unless its an accepted way of abbreviating it) is not a good say of modifying a headline. What is next? Zealand ?

Some people I know from Saudi Arabia refer to it as Saudi, so maybe thats the better word? I've never heard anyone call it Arabia.

[deleted]

Re: Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE

#107

Post by bawolff »

graemep wrote: post #3

The title should read "Saudi Arabia". Cutting a country name in half (unless its an accepted way of abbreviating it) is not a good say of modifying a headline. What is next? Zealand ?

Especially when arabia by itself kind of means the arabian peninsula, not saudi arabia.

Re: Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE

#108

Post by Pay08 »

alex1138 wrote: post #92
some_furry wrote: post #4

Disappointing but not surprising. This is what happens when you're a billion dollar company and your ethical bone is tied to "we fully comply with the law". You get compliance by default , even if doing so would exacerbate human rights abuses.

I don't know the list of everything they've complied with but contrary to Google who once(?) refused to remove pirate bay results, Facebook blocked it even in private messages Zuck doensn't care. His motto is 'dumb fucks'. And that wasn't a joke. It's how he sees people

I still remember when Messenger would block certain links, including links to news outlets to curry favour with organisations and governments.

Re: Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE

#109

Post by underlipton »

0x5FC3 wrote: post #18

Social media companies post record earnings year after year from their ads business while increasingly proving to be harmful to society. They do the bare minimum in terms of content moderation and bots while priming the algorithms to maximize revenue. The good ol' privatized profits, socialized harm model. In a just world, would social media platforms be taxed higher on corporate revenue and how would that pan out? M…

I would like someone to come up with a way to block tracking and complicate their data collection processes, with consumers able to remove those features selectively in return for cash payments from Meta et al. The problem is that consumers don't have control of their data and are grossly under-compensated for it (primarily with access to broken, predatory services that are mostly designed to extract even more money from their pockets). There needs to be a rebalancing; tech ads should be stupidly low-margin because data sales are actually compensated correctly.

Re: Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE

#110

Post by marcosdumay »

haritha-j wrote: post #34
graemep wrote: post #3

The title should read "Saudi Arabia". Cutting a country name in half (unless its an accepted way of abbreviating it) is not a good say of modifying a headline. What is next? Zealand ?

Some people I know from Saudi Arabia refer to it as Saudi, so maybe thats the better word? I've never heard anyone call it Arabia.

"Arabia" is the name of the entire peninsula. There's half a dozen countries there.
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