Live data from Hacker News

FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

twitter.com

381–390 of 488 posts

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next tweet in the thread shows them. First pic is cropped (not sure why)

the tweet appears to be intentionally deceptive. They cropped the first picture just to remove the exclamation mark.

Is this about the exclamation mark though ? Or about the censorship ?

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#382

I find it confusing that a community that frequently acknowledges that free services treat their users as the product simultaneously has expectations that the free service should amplify their speech. This, like many similar posts here, isn’t censorship. If you want to spread your idea (any idea at all) without hindrance, don’t do it on an advertisement platform.

Facebook is not a free service. Users pay with their time, attention and mindshare. Mindshare is a limited and valuable resource.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#383
post #10

This has been happening for years. Just try sending a message containing the string `joebiden.info` and see what happens. We’re way past the rubicon. Get your information as best you can and just hope you’re somewhat aligned with the mainstream.

Just tried it and it sends without an issue

Seems a bit random. That worked for me and also a 1337x.to link worked but I've had the latter blocked in the past - it's a torrent tracker.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#384
As a facebook and messenger user I'm fine with them censoring stuff. I use it to send holiday pics to friends and family etc. If idiots want to cause people to die by pushing covid misinformation then fine censor away. There are other forums if you want uncensored stuff.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#386
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News does it. Reddit does it sitewide. Individual moderators do it sitewide. Shadowbanning is an essential tool for moderation, for dealing with trolls, spammers, abusive people. You can argue the tool is being used too widely by Facebook, but it is silly to pontificate against the practice as a whole. You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet.

>You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet. Respectfully disagree. Watching things get disappeared on Reddit sent me in to an anxiety spiral. I'll take goatse links over that shit any day of the week.

Goatse links would be the least of your problems. I’m imagining my Gmail account without the spam filter. Everything showing up in my inbox, not just the stuff in my spam folder, but also all the stuff they silently drop that I don’t even see. Email would be unusable.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The censorship is intentional, but the silence is a bug in the react code. You can look at the console in chrome devtools to see. There is an error message informing the viewer that their message was censored. The message is incorrectly hidden when you send additional message. Also refresh the page and the messages disappear from the viewer.

But it's that silence which deceives the user into thinking that the message never arriving is a technical malfunction and not intentional censoring. How many times, do you think the user would see the censoring message and be cool with it? Maybe once or twice, then they will stop using FB likely forever and tell all their friends. But does FB want that? Hell no, they want to retain the user for data collection and a…

Re your last paragraph. Would that really work though? You subpoena the person who wrote the code and ask them under oath. I wouldn’t perjure myself to protect the company, would you?

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#388
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your definition of evil?

That's an almost impossibly broad question to answer. In the context of this conversation? Moderation is evil because it is destructive, repressive, exploitable for the cause of tyranny (eg silencing dissent) and is the opposite of that which is good (freedom of expression, freedom of thought, free flow of information). Like any other violence, there are times when it's warrented but it's always a balance. The greate…

Some would say that what is true is good, and what is false is evil, when it comes to communicating or sharing knowledge. In that case Facebook is doing the right thing.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#389
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they just get twice as annoyed when they realize that not only were they banned, but they were silently banned and wasted time writing posts that went straight to /dev/null? The only time shadowbanning seems like a good solution is outright commercial spam and link farming, where slowing them down is a win in itself.

I’ve run a forum for 15+ years and found shadowbanning vital in dealing with nutbags. As OP said, some people will pursue you personally and get obsessive. They have one forum they are obsessed with. You have thousands of users that are potentially like this.

Is it difficult to run a forum without the users learning your real identity? That seems like the way to go, but I have no experience with that sort of thing.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#390
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN would be a useless trove of violence and hate if all [dead] comments were automatically unhid. Folks who are into 8chan might be into a community like that, but I personally much prefer the moderated approach taken today.

> HN would be a useless trove of violence and hate if all [dead] comments were automatically unhid. I read with showdead=yes and it is nowhere near that description. In fact dead posts are not even that common on most articles. And most of the dead posts, while on average low quality, are very rarely hateful or anything like that.

I read with showdead=yes as well and can vouch for your experience. You are not contradicting the parent post, IIUC, however: I take it seattle_spring was talking about how HN would be if it lacked the system or something like it at all.
Post reply on HN