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

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

alqst.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 512 posts

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

#181

Post by pibaker »

yojo wrote: post #102
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? S…

You are worrying about domestic nation state actors, and you are calling social media to be banned by whom? Some mysterious administrative entity that is surely not a part of the domestic nation state doing the very propaganda you are railing against?

Surely the people with the power to ban the lot of social media don't have their own propaganda to shove down your throat. Surely they will only ban the bad ones where foreign agents spread dangerous ideas and keep the good ones where only upright citizens of their own country can talk about how great everything is.

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

#182

Post by idle_zealot »

repeekad wrote: post #163
svachalek wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't ban the users or the internet, you make it illegal to do shitty psyops on the public. They were making plenty of money on chronological friend feeds.

How do you ban psyops? Require every user register with a gov ID so there’s someone to go after? What’s a psyop vs a grassroots contrarian movement like LGBT used to be? Anonymity online seems the ultimate double edge sword. I prefer privacy over government prescribed safety.

You investigate and punish groups found to be running psyops, simple as. No need to automate the whole process with ID checks, these organizations make and spend money so the tracks are there to find. If suspected drag them into discovery and gather evidence like you would for financial fraud or criminal conspiracy.

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

#183

Post by Natfan »

dotcoma wrote: post #157
krapp wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you remember cases in which it "accelerated political action" ?

famously the Arab spring

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

#186

Post by Natfan »

dotcoma wrote: post #157
krapp wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you remember cases in which it "accelerated political action" ?

also BLM, israel palestine

and the genocide in myanmar, that was definitely accelerated political action

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

#187

Post by dnnddidiej »

maratc wrote: post #96
saghm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about "Meta blocks human rights accounts for audiences in Saudi Arabia and UAE"? I don't think "reaching" adds much to the headline

> "Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE" 79 chars.

Saudi Arabia is a city in UAE?

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

#188

Post by ericmay »

SoftTalker wrote: post #146
diydsp wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The worst of both worlds.. 1. Whatever the govt wants 2. Their own mods to max profit. Corporations were conceived specifically to remove responsibility. They should not be this widely available.

Not sure what anyone expects Meta to do differently here. Meta has basically two choices: they can obey the local law in places where they operate, or they can choose to not operate there.

The United States and its businesses are continually faced with a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation when it comes to operating in countries which have poor human rights records claims, whether that's China or Saudi Arabia or others.

If the company doesn't operate in the country, a competitor will, and the United States in particular will be criticized for failure to compete, losing ground to China (or some other actor), and of losing soft power. If the American company does decide to comply with the laws of the host nation, they're evil and bad, and they're an example of fascism or being complicit in human rights violations. These charges are never levered at other countries or their companies, strictly American ones. For example, France sells weapons to Saudi Arabia.

Certain loud groups also like to complain when the United States takes forceful action to prevent those same human rights violations. They want the US to withdraw from the world, but they also want the US to be at fault for withdrawing and leaving others to suffer. We should ignore what they say and do what we think is right and in our best interest.

We're not going to change these countries by refusing to operate in them and we're just going to cede ground to a competitor for on change and no advantage. We're unwilling to fight or go to war over these things either, so we might as well learn to live with some countries doing some bad things or having some human rights violation and hope we can change them over time. In other words, it's fine that Meta operates in the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia even with the human rights violations.

EU member states are happy to sell weapons to these countries. Who cares if we let them on Facebook too?

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

#189

Post by krapp »

dotcoma wrote: post #157
krapp wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you remember cases in which it "accelerated political action" ?

There have been plenty. Surely you aren't arguing that social media has never done so. Arguably social media has been one of the most catalyzing political forces in human history. And bearing in mind that "political action" can be in any direction, I found some examples. I didn't work very hard because this could have literally been a Google search on your part.

Arab Spring

Nepalese Discord Protests

Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine

2009 Iranian presidential election protests

2011 Egyptian revolution

#BlackLivesMatter

#MeToo

Hong Kong protests

#NoKings protests

Yellow Vest protests (France)

Anti-Israel/Pro-Palestine protests

Anti-vaccine protests during COVID

Rohingya genocide

GamerGate

Post reply on HN