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The dark side of account bans

madelinemiller.dev

21–30 of 120 posts

Re: The dark side of account bans

#21

I've reported a lot of prostitution ads on Instagram, but they always responded to the report with "we found nothing wrong". After reporting these ads, Meta decided I liked them and started showing me more and more, but I've given up on reporting them, since no action is taken. Meta seem to not actually check reports. My theory is that they just rely on some percentage of reports maybe relating to followers, reports,…

I suspect not reacting to that kind of problem is intentional. Just like YouTube didn't do anything against the pirated music uploads in the 2010 years, simply because being able to play your favourite pop song via YouTube was attractive to early users. Same with audio books these days. Some pirated accounts are being used to upload complete Audible books. They dont even bother to remove the "This isAudible" intro, which apparently could easily be used to autodetect such uploads. As said, I am guessing porn ads do provide Meta some form of income, and thats why they don't do anything about it. Big tech is shady like f**.

Re: The dark side of account bans

#22
post #15

> I couldn’t access their menus. They were only on Instagram, and it’d force a sign in before showing me the content. > so many restaurants and cafes here purely use Instagram (or sometimes Facebook) to host their menus. That's idiotic. Really, reaaaally idiotic. Like, "talk to the manager and tell them they are doing a very stupid thing" levels of idiotic. This "we're too modern and digital to get out heads out of o…

[deleted]

Re: The dark side of account bans

#23
post #13

This author sticking around is far more than that community deserves. If I ever received that sort of message from a user of anything I'd built, I'd walk away forever.

What if that was actually what the troll wanted?

Not sure if I'd care. Depends on the context, but sometimes letting the bullies win is worth it for your own peace.

Re: The dark side of account bans

#24
post #7

I had a reddit account permanently banned for saying something to the effect that a certain out of control billionaire could be dealt with by launching him into space in an electric vehicle that one of his companies manufactures. Apparently "reddit legal" thought that was a credible threat. I find that strangely encouraging.

Reads like a good decision on the side of Reddit. If you can't see how this type of statement is not OK, even after the fact, shows banning you was the right decision.

Re: The dark side of account bans

#25

I've reported a lot of prostitution ads on Instagram, but they always responded to the report with "we found nothing wrong". After reporting these ads, Meta decided I liked them and started showing me more and more, but I've given up on reporting them, since no action is taken. Meta seem to not actually check reports. My theory is that they just rely on some percentage of reports maybe relating to followers, reports,…

I believe that part of the problem is how trigger happy the platforms are to reports of CSAM and other "black issues". They don't do any research, they just ban and call it a day. Your government could go to them and say, "hey, you should do due research before banning a user,", and the platform will turn back and say "you passed a law last month where I would be banned from operating in the country if I allowed any photo of somebody under 18 wearing less than a full-body skimo wolly suit, but I'm not allowed to ask for an ID to know the user's age. What am I supposed to do? Deploy a trigger happy AI? I just did!"

So, in a sense, we live in the best world possible.

May I suggest that you just block and mute the prostitutes, if they offend your sensibilities? That's what I do. Because in the next iteration of censorship, we might lose the social networks altogether.

Re: The dark side of account bans

#26

I've reported a lot of prostitution ads on Instagram, but they always responded to the report with "we found nothing wrong". After reporting these ads, Meta decided I liked them and started showing me more and more, but I've given up on reporting them, since no action is taken. Meta seem to not actually check reports. My theory is that they just rely on some percentage of reports maybe relating to followers, reports,…

[deleted]

Re: The dark side of account bans

#27
post #25

I've reported a lot of prostitution ads on Instagram, but they always responded to the report with "we found nothing wrong". After reporting these ads, Meta decided I liked them and started showing me more and more, but I've given up on reporting them, since no action is taken. Meta seem to not actually check reports. My theory is that they just rely on some percentage of reports maybe relating to followers, reports,…

I believe that part of the problem is how trigger happy the platforms are to reports of CSAM and other "black issues". They don't do any research, they just ban and call it a day. Your government could go to them and say, "hey, you should do due research before banning a user,", and the platform will turn back and say "you passed a law last month where I would be banned from operating in the country if I allowed any…

Meta don't seem to care much about actual CSAM at all.

I have a throwaway account on Facebook that follows no pages and has no friends. In the absence of anything else to go on, Facebook somehow decided that I would most like to see anti-vax conspiracy, flat earth theory and child sexual abuse material.

Every report I've made about the CSAM has met the same "we found nothing wrong" response, and it keeps bubbling up in my feed.

Re: The dark side of account bans

#28
post #15

> I couldn’t access their menus. They were only on Instagram, and it’d force a sign in before showing me the content. > so many restaurants and cafes here purely use Instagram (or sometimes Facebook) to host their menus. That's idiotic. Really, reaaaally idiotic. Like, "talk to the manager and tell them they are doing a very stupid thing" levels of idiotic. This "we're too modern and digital to get out heads out of o…

[deleted]

Re: The dark side of account bans

#29
post #25

I've reported a lot of prostitution ads on Instagram, but they always responded to the report with "we found nothing wrong". After reporting these ads, Meta decided I liked them and started showing me more and more, but I've given up on reporting them, since no action is taken. Meta seem to not actually check reports. My theory is that they just rely on some percentage of reports maybe relating to followers, reports,…

I believe that part of the problem is how trigger happy the platforms are to reports of CSAM and other "black issues". They don't do any research, they just ban and call it a day. Your government could go to them and say, "hey, you should do due research before banning a user,", and the platform will turn back and say "you passed a law last month where I would be banned from operating in the country if I allowed any…

> we might lose the social networks altogether.

Don't tempt me with a better world.

Re: The dark side of account bans

#30
post #24
post #7

I had a reddit account permanently banned for saying something to the effect that a certain out of control billionaire could be dealt with by launching him into space in an electric vehicle that one of his companies manufactures. Apparently "reddit legal" thought that was a credible threat. I find that strangely encouraging.

Reads like a good decision on the side of Reddit. If you can't see how this type of statement is not OK, even after the fact, shows banning you was the right decision.

Well... getting rid of too powerful people by means of executing them has been a staple of societies across all cultures for millennia.

The fact that people openly cheer on re-introducing this, or on those following through with such plans (Luigi), is just showing how fed up wide masses of society are - and Reddit's admins have been hellbent on quenching even verbal forms of dissatisfaction.

The problem is, all that does is keeping pressure bottling up and eventually, if the issues with inequality and absurd amounts of power grabbing aren't dealt with, the explosion will be much harder than if people had a relatively safe way of voicing their dissent.

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