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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

#132

Post by krapp »

dotcoma wrote: post #118

Remember when they told us that social media would "spread democracy" ?

It can and does. The power of social media to spread ideas and accelerate political action is why fascists took it over and co-opted it. That's why we're fed the narrative that social media is evil and needs to be regulated or banned at all costs.

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

#134

Post by krapp »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #37
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).

[flagged]

I mean, you're commenting in text format on a web forum to strangers using pseudonyms right now. Why is that valid but the use of social media isn't?

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

#135

Post by ktm5j »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #130
ktm5j wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will do as I please, thanks.

You asked for a suggestion, they gave you one. And this is your response?

Are you serious? He didn't answer my question, he jumped all over me judging my choices and insinuated that I don't get enough real life human interaction.. so yes that's my response.

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

#138

Post by 0x5FC3 »

pear01 wrote: post #127
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…

The problem with this summation is the government is complicit in their actions. Thus it undermines this simple private gain, public pain argument. A lot of the times when Meta does something like this the fact the governments in question essentially demand that action seems to be ignored. Would you have a better view of corporate power if corporations could unilaterally ignore the laws of sovereign countries in whic…

I hear you, there are countless problems to solve. My "..in a just world.." was doing a lot of heavy lifting.

> I mean at least they are giving you a free service and you essentially take part in a transaction.

Yes, it is akin to a transaction, but we cannot ignore the power imbalance between the user and the corporation. They actively engineer their platforms to keep you glued to the screen. It is far from free. You pay with time, money spent on whatever is advertised to you and a lot of other things.

My proposal was analogous to say tobacco tax or carbon tax and the like. We somehow made it essential to be on social media, it is proven to be harmful, policy action to shift priorities.

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

#139

Post by Cider9986 »

Pay08 wrote: post #104
forshaper wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, I don't see any indication it has anything to do with the "anonymity". Very few people, even technical people care about anonymity to the extent that they try to achieve it in everyday life.

It is frequently confused with privacy, however. (https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/why-privacy-matters/)

iMessage is the dominant messenger because most people have iPhones combined with the fact that SMS has long been free and unlimited, so people don't see the problem of using it with the occasional Android user.

Really, it's all about the defaults. Even though everyone uses iPhones, they still use the calling feature from their cellular provider, because Apple doesn't push FaceTime as the default calling mechanism.

Signal is gaining popularity because there are people that care about using it over iMessage.

Signal is 100x better than WhatsApp, but it feels so unstable using any centralized messenger that has complete control over the software and the users. No centralized service can truly be relied on, non-profit or for-profit. But clearly that's what has to happen in order for the service to become mainstream, so it's an acceptable compromise for me. It's not like I can't say Signal does great things for privsec and metadata reduction.

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