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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

#271

Post by rileymat2 »

philipallstar wrote: post #177
rileymat2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not opposite, a different problem. If you remove one viewpoint because of government mandate, while still carrying the other, your platform is creating a biased viewpoint to influence people, that’s on the platform.

The platform deciding to obey local laws is not "on the platform". It's on the local laws.

The choices between not operating in that jurisdiction, accepting the legal consequences that jurisdiction can enforce or obeying the laws in that jurisdiction is certainly on a choice of the platform. And the resulting product is their responsibility and a reflection on them for better or worse.

There have been numerous cases of companies ignoring local law for both good and bad.

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

#272

Post by jjulius »

senordevnyc wrote: post #251
jjulius wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, OP did - the alternative to social media is not more social media, which is a view shared by many. OP didn't judge you, they stated their opinion and asked you to soul search. If you truly feel that judged and offended, and I say this with kindness, perhaps you would do well to ask yourself why.

Haha, they didn't say they were offended, they just rejected the (clearly judgmental and off-topic) advice. They specifically asked for a Facebook alternative, including for online-only social groups they find important, so the advice to "just do real human connection without social media" is pretty useless. And shit like "Is it so important to share a photo with strangers?" is clearly judgmental and dismissive. Love…

I hope you have a pleasant day. :)

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

#273

Post by jjulius »

ktm5j wrote: post #237
jjulius wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, OP did - the alternative to social media is not more social media, which is a view shared by many. OP didn't judge you, they stated their opinion and asked you to soul search. If you truly feel that judged and offended, and I say this with kindness, perhaps you would do well to ask yourself why.

Wow okay, whatever you say man..

/shrug

Hope you have a good day!

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

#274

Post by pear01 »

runtime_terror wrote: post #233
pear01 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Wouldn't it normatively be more in keeping with a proper distinction between public and private to say lobby your congressman to stop the ceaseless funding and weapon deployments to countries in the ME that don't share our values? If an individual lobbying the government wouldn't be overpowered by monied corporate interest in the government, maybe. Sadly that's not the case, at least in the US. > The NSA has all yo…

The Iran war is unpopular because of prices at the pump. Prior interventions in Iran (and elsewhere) that also violated rights did not garner the same reaction because to the average American they incurred no cost. If for some reason the war had caused prices to go lower the war would be popular. The fact you think otherwise would lead me to simply conclude you are in denial re the psyche of the American electorate.

You aren't telling me anything I don't already know. You cannot be pro democracy and at the same time treat the electorate like children. Propaganda is part of electioneering. Parties advocating for their own interests should be a feature in a healthy democracy. Are you suggesting the electorate is incapable of dealing with their basic obligations as citizens of a free society? And your scapegoat for this is the corporations?

What is your theory of democracy if the population is so susceptible to "corporate lobbyists"? Why trust such a body to make decisions if it can't even cope with basic propaganda?

Have you been to red counties? I think you are severely over-indexing on your own biases. Corporate lobbying has nothing on tribalism, racism, and general parochialism. You seem to be well read enough when it comes to history. I am surprised your assessment of human nature has not caught up.

The fact is most Americans don't care. If they did they would elect different leaders. If your theory is that the electorate is simply brainwashed well that seems to me as much an indictment on the notion of democracy itself as a criticism of any allegedly brainwashing entity.

Of course I put blame on citizens. Your attempt to shift all the blame to "corporate lobbyists" is about as convincing as the "they were about to get a nuclear weapon" responsibility shift.

Citizens are responsible because in a democracy they are the ultimate arbiters. You don't get to shift the responsibility, it's not optional. The notion of democracy itself rests on it. If you feel a need to control what information citizens consume so that you can personally legitimize their decisions I would suggest to you perhaps you don't really believe in democracy. As George Carlin said, garbage in garbage out.

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

#275

Post by nailer »

Georgelemental wrote: post #249
noname120 wrote: post #180

Do they have a choice? It’s either that or they are shown the door, in which case they will probably be replaced by worse local alternatives in terms of freedom of speech and gov influence

Russia and China can do that, but I am not sure Saudi and UAE reasonably could. Too small and too enmeshed with the US empire

Saudi could - I think people accept Saudi is a religious oligarchy - but the UAE is a playground of international people avoiding tax and ostensibly a first world country, Facebook being banned would highlight how ridiculous the government that did that is.

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

#276

Post by nailer »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #211
iAMkenough wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they have a choice. Profits are more important than values.

Right, but it should be acknowledged that this is likely an amoral decision on Facebook's part (or more charitably, a pragmatic decision) not an immoral one. The governments that forced these changes in the first place are of course acting immorally, that's not in dispute.

Facebook acquiscing to dictatorships that block human rights organizations is immoral.

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

#277

Post by jmyeet »

What's funny is the Meta, Twitter, Google, etc are doing everything China gets accused of doing. Trillion dollar companies move in lockstep with US domestic and foreign policy.

My position is that these companies are already violating Section 230 so that's the first thing you could attack them on. Section 230 shields "interactive computer services" from strict liability for third-party content. It's enabled the likes of Wordpress and Geocities and the original version of Youtube so they caqnq't be sued for defamation for what users post. This is distinct from, say, CNN, NYT, WaPo, Fox and other media companies that do have strict liability because they're first-party publishers.

My position is that an algorithmic feed and selective distribution turns such companies, which includes social media companies, from platforms into publishers (Section 230 doesn't use that language specifically; it's paraphrased).

Twitter pushes Elon Musk onto everyone's feeds. That's not a "platform". Twitter should be legally liable for doing that. Meta's Jordana Cutler essentially boasted about suppressing pro-Palestinian content [1], in effect consciously pushing pro-Israeli content. How is that different to just publishing the exact same content? I don't think it is.

The other way to handle this is as a product liability issue. Just like tobacco companies, social media companies should be sued for the foreseeable and known harm they produce, such as targeting minors, allowing advertisers to target minors, addictive behavior, pushing dangerous ideas (eg eating disorder content) and so on.

[1]: https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti...

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

#278

Post by autoexec »

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…

> now you’ve got a big juicy target maintained by hobbyists.

You'd have a much larger number of targets which makes things somewhat more difficult for those looking to exploit them since they'd have to track down the various platforms and navigate a variety of systems each with their own rules and culture. Fewer of them would allow ads at all and none of them would match facebook in terms of being as easy to weaponize. "Pay us to attack this platform's userbase" is a core part of facebook's business model.

You'd also be much better off when the people maintaining the system are hobbyists because they actually care about the platform and moderation. That's a massive improvement over facebook which does as little as they possibly can, only enough to be able to claim that they do "something" at the next congressional hearing, while still making sure that they can actively censor what they want. Moderation on major social media platforms seem to frustrate the efforts of legitimate users more than spammers and scammers.

I'd put my money on "Randall, the over-worked sys admin" over the half-assed AI moderator bots employed by Musk and Zuckerberg

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