Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram

#111

Post by davidt84 » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 12:30 PM UTC

Retr0id wrote: post #92

davidt84 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? It's a request to anyone reposting it.

Even a repost can't edit/add a CW (which is why adding a CW to your post, counter-intuitively, will often net your post more visibility, since many feel uncomfortable reposting un-CW'd posts)

No, you're talking about boosting (equivalent to retweeting).

As you say, you can't add a CW doing that.

So, people re-post manually (the content of the post, and/or a link to the post) with a CW.

The request is not to do that.

Re: Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram

#112

Post by ffsm8 » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 12:52 PM UTC

vladms wrote: post #74

ffsm8 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am against almost all kinds of censorship, the only times I personally believe things should be censored if it's inciting violence/death threats to people. And even then I feel like censorship is probably the wrong way to do it. And from that perspective, these quotes you're currently touting are ripped out of their context, making them sound asinine despite being mostly on point, fundamentally. Twitter, Facebook,…

What is censorship for you personally? I don't have a clear definition in mind (because I think is hard), but something along the lines of "the ones with overwhelming power should not be able to impose what ideas are spread". Why I think is hard it's because multiple rules can be made to make it impossible to spread ideas: talking loudly in the street => you disturb the neighbors; you send mails with pamphlets => it'…

I completely agree that it's a very hard topic from the perspective of actually maintaining a healthy social media site.

Most of them have a vision for their platform, i.e. town hall for Twitter, family and friend conversations for Facebook etc.

To adhere to this image they filter out spam etc. now, filtering out obnoxious content just becomes one more rule and thus the slippery slope begins.

But to answer your question: for me, any kind of interference such as deleting/hiding content or algorithmically influence which content is shown is censorship on social media platforms, and the user should be responsible for applying such censorship.

I.e. provide a UI which let the user configure their own preferences. But actually nailing such a feature with a good UX ain't easy, and how to actually implement it isn't either, so that's just a pipedream, realistically speaking.

Re: Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram

#113

Post by rofo1 » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 1:03 PM UTC

cauch wrote: post #81

rofo1 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You have the opinion that Musk's gesture was perfectly innocent. Others don't think so. It's your opinion, and it's a valid hypothesis. But the other opinions are as valid as yours. They are implying that Musk is not nice and don't give him the benefice of the doubt. You are implying that people criticizing Musk are not nice, and don't give them the benefice of the doubt. The parallel with "democrats doing Nazi salut…

> The parallel with "democrats doing Nazi salute" is pretty poor: of course people will not assume it was the intention for someone who has, by the ideas they defend and by their acts, demonstrated they are strongly opposed to the Nazi ideas. But it is not the case here.

You have to prove that. You cannot just randomly keep saying it as a starting position because you hope nobody will call that out. He has shown support for free markets, reducing regulations, reducing taxes/gov. spending (within budget and small at that) and for limited government in general. How is that support for the National-Socialists?

> I'm not sure how sympathetic he is with Nazi ideas (but I would not be surprised he would be sympathetic to the core concepts, he is promoting the same family of ideas grounded in the same roots),

Again, you have to prove this. Be concrete: which ideas precisely? Which "concepts", which "family"?

Re: Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram

#114

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 1:19 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #82

AnonHP wrote: post #64

I understand that this post is flagged because it can start flame wars and “not curious conversations”, but I’m curious about what people here from different parts of the world are seeing for these search terms. If censorship is indeed happening either due to manual flags or “AI” algorithms, people need to know what’s happening and if this is just anecdotal or geography specific or could be spreading to other countri…

UK: can confirm that '#democrat' gives "we've hidden these results". While typing in the search box it auto-suggests "democrats crying memes", which is not hidden.

Mentioned this to people at lunch and it's already been "corrected".

Re: Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram

#115

Post by underseacables » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

argsnd wrote: post #5

#fuckbiden works, #fucktrump gets censored. They better have a good explanation for why this is a bug.

This really just goes back to the fact that it's a private net work and they can do what they want. Even if it is censored, what can you do about?

Re: Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram

#116

Post by janice1999 » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 1:36 PM UTC

zesterer wrote: post #80

Rodeoclash wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot tech your way out of this.

Decentralisation is a socio-political solution, not a technical solution. It directly addresses the problem of media ownership and proliferation.

It's a limited solution at best. You can't win a tech arms race with the very people who control the core infrastructure, write the laws and run the police. Just ask the pro-Democracy protestors in Hong Kong.

Re: Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram

#117

Post by Dracophoenix » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 1:42 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #56

ta8645 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question for the people who find this outrageous, why didn't you find the opposite situation just as outrageous? For years, liberals have been tacitly and often explicitly endorsing censorious behavior of Twitter, Meta and others as not only legitimate, but desirable. And this outcome is exactly why that was a dangerous position to embrace. Because, soon enough, someone you don't agree with will come into power.…

I’ve always been in favor of censoring based on facts. It’s just a shame that one side of the political divide is a lot more prone to… completely ignore the truth. That means it looks like you’re censoring their speech, when what you are really censoring is nonsense.

Who decides what a fact is and by what manner is information determined to be factual? In 2020, many major social media sites censored the New York Post's story regarding the Hunter Biden laptop scandal citing the report as political mis- or disinformation. The same laptop that many denied the very existence of became a lynchpin in securing Hunter Biden's guilt during his subsequent tax fraud case.

Re: Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram

#118

Post by 93po » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 1:57 PM UTC

sirsinsalot wrote: post #98

AnonHP wrote: post #64

I understand that this post is flagged because it can start flame wars and “not curious conversations”, but I’m curious about what people here from different parts of the world are seeing for these search terms. If censorship is indeed happening either due to manual flags or “AI” algorithms, people need to know what’s happening and if this is just anecdotal or geography specific or could be spreading to other countri…

HN flags and removes lots of this sort of discussion for not aligning with their goals (imho, anecdotally). Censorship is a creeping disease that already has its foot over the winning line.

moderation to keep things on-topic is not the same as censorship. spaces are allowed to, and should, exist for certain topic areas.

Re: Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram

#119

Post by 93po » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 1:58 PM UTC

argsnd wrote: post #5

#fuckbiden works, #fucktrump gets censored. They better have a good explanation for why this is a bug.

my interesting anecdote from chatgpt testing a year or two ago, whenever it started getting popular, was that it would give me tips on assassinating trump but not biden

disclosure: i was not planning on this in any way, it was only for testing purposes

Re: Meta Censoring '#Democrat' on Instagram

#120

Post by cauch » Tue, Jan 21, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

rofo1 wrote: post #113

cauch wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the opinion that Musk's gesture was perfectly innocent. Others don't think so. It's your opinion, and it's a valid hypothesis. But the other opinions are as valid as yours. They are implying that Musk is not nice and don't give him the benefice of the doubt. You are implying that people criticizing Musk are not nice, and don't give them the benefice of the doubt. The parallel with "democrats doing Nazi salut…

> The parallel with "democrats doing Nazi salute" is pretty poor: of course people will not assume it was the intention for someone who has, by the ideas they defend and by their acts, demonstrated they are strongly opposed to the Nazi ideas. But it is not the case here. You have to prove that. You cannot just randomly keep saying it as a starting position because you hope nobody will call that out. He has shown supp…

I had this kind of discussions before but unfortunately it is usually a waste of time, as any consensus amongst experts is waved away.

> He has shown support for free markets, reducing regulations, reducing taxes/gov. spending (within budget and small at that) and for limited government in general. How is that support for the National-Socialists?

I think this sentence already is quite telling. For example, Nazi privatized the German industry massively in the 30s, and there was a full wing of the Nazi party defending free markets and low government, with people like for example Walther Funk. They also had the support of big private industry leaders like Friedrich Thyssen. The opposed wing of the party, containing for example Göring, who were advocating for a deeper control by the state on economy in order to build up the army, got the favor of Hitler just before the war. But it does not mean that the Nazi ideology was incompatible with pro free market, low regulations and low government ideals: there were plenty of proper Nazi that were openly defending these ideals.

> Which "concepts", which "family"?

Well, that is usually where the well is poisoned. For example, AfD in Germany is widely recognised as grounded in Nazi values (the fact that it is the relevant party that attracts the most people who consider themselves as proper Nazi is a very good clue: why the self-recognized Nazi likes this party so much if this party does not share any of their values?). But then, it is easy to just say "na-ah, they have nothing to do with Nazi values", even if it does not correspond to the simple facts. Yet, Musk has recently openly supported this party. There are plenty of political party in Germany and in Europe. He could have not supported any party, the same way he did not in France, in Spain, in Italy, ... or he could have defended values, or he could have defended other parties that are basically pushing for the same economic policies that Musk is probably interested in. It is difficult to understand why Musk is suddenly entering the debate JUST to defend parties with strong nationalistic and xenophobic roots (not used as an insult, it's just a fact of what their policies are) if Musk does not share these values, and these values are indeed the values shared by the Nazi party.