381–390 of 903 posts
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[flagged]
There needs to be a a new button on the various social media channels. One click and it fills a reply with: "One can advocate for the Palestinian State and the rights of its people, seeking a peaceful and fair resolution to the conflict, without being aligned with Hamas. Furthermore, employing a false dichotomy, where one is either labeled as a supporter of a cause or, or that of an extremist group, is counter-produc…
Interestingly if you read the actual report from HRW, it sounds like most of the material they are referring too was legitimately taken down because it supported violence, according to Meta's policies. For example, the phrase "from the river to the see" is considered hateful by many, so it was taken down. In other cases the content praised attacks by Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the US go…
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst...
Personally, I oppose both Russian expansionism and the genocidal antisemitic Hamas terrorist movement, so the Meta policy aligns with my views. But I am deeply uncomfortable with having a small cabal of Silicon Valley executives define the acceptable bounds of discourse for the rest of society. It would be better if they allowed all legal content no matter how objectionable and gave individual users tools to block what they don't want to see.
To quote the actual report: "This distribution of cases does not necessarily reflect the overall distribution of censorship."
They asked people to self-report instances. There is probably selection bias (maybe they advertised only to the pro-palestian crowd. Maybe the israeli crowd thinks HRW is biased and didn't want to engage. Maybe something else). There is probably also base rate falacy involved which isn't accounted for.
This just isnt the right type of study to determine if meta has a bias in censorship.
Interestingly if you read the actual report from HRW, it sounds like most of the material they are referring too was legitimately taken down because it supported violence, according to Meta's policies. For example, the phrase "from the river to the see" is considered hateful by many, so it was taken down. In other cases the content praised attacks by Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the US go…
And yet when Russia invaded Ukraine, Meta changed their policy and made it acceptable to advocate violence against Russians. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst... Personally, I oppose both Russian expansionism and the genocidal antisemitic Hamas terrorist movement, so the Meta policy aligns with my views. But I am deeply uncomfortable with having a small cabal of Silicon Valley executives de…
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I mean, yeah, but you could also do a lot of high powered randomized trials about kinds of cookies and learn that 80% of people always prefer eating the cookies with cocaine in them.
That's a different argument, and not one I really care about. It's no more "addictive" than tv and way less harmful
Eh this is really tricky, for exampe if I open instagram, Threads or tiktok 9/10 posts will be pro-palestinian with 1 being pro-israeli. Then some of the propalestinian post will be calling for genocide or celebrating the massacre of oct 7. IMO you shouldn't censor anything. That's the only solution. When something is propaganda or false just quickly tag it as such with why it is false like Xitter does.
> IMO you shouldn't censor anything. That's the only solution. Full disclosure: I work for Meta, but not on ranking, and my opinions are my own. Edit: this isn't specific to Meta; it's common to all content platforms. This is really hard. There's universally objectionable material like CSAM. That's (politically) easy to exclude. There are leaked state secrets the public should know. There's hate speech (laws vary by…
People say they want kind, honest car salesmen, but that doesn't scale for the kind of overleveraged floor plans and impulsive, short-term thinking that characterize most dealerships.
Interestingly if you read the actual report from HRW, it sounds like most of the material they are referring too was legitimately taken down because it supported violence, according to Meta's policies. For example, the phrase "from the river to the see" is considered hateful by many, so it was taken down. In other cases the content praised attacks by Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the US go…
> Human Rights Watch also found repeated inaccurate application of the “adult nudity and sexual activity” policy for content related to Palestine. In every one of the cases, we reviewed where this policy was invoked, the content included images of dead Palestinians over ruins in Gaza that were clothed, not naked. For example, multiple users reported their Instagram stories being removed under this policy when they posted the same image of a Palestinian father in Gaza who was killed while he was holding his clothed daughter, who was also killed.
... so no nudity, no sexual activity
> For example, a Facebook user post that said, “How can anyone justify supporting the killing of babies and innocent civilians…” was removed under Community Standards on “bullying and harassment.” Another user posted an image on Instagram of a dead child in a hospital in Gaza with the comment, “Israel bombs the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City killing over 500…” which was removed under Community Guidelines on “violence and incitement.”
... arguing _against_ violence is flagged as harassment. Image and statement about Israeli action flagged as incitement
> In one case, an Instagram user received a warning that the comment she posted “may be hurtful to others.” The comment, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, consisted of nothing more than a series of Palestinian flag emojis.[77] In other cases, Meta hid the Palestinian flag from comment sections or removed it on the basis that it “harasses, targets, or shames others.”[78]
...that's just kinda indefensible.
> Many users reported posts on Instagram being removed when they criticized the Israeli government, including the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no matter how nuanced or careful their posts were. Meta removed these posts under its “Dangerous Organizations or Individuals” and hate speech rules, respectively.
... which is crazy since there have been plenty of reasons to criticize Netanyahu well before the Oct 7 attacks.
On the topic of "From the river to the sea", they specifically mention that posts with this phrase, as well as others
> such as “Free Palestine,” “Ceasefire Now,” and “Stop the Genocide,” were repeatedly removed by Instagram and Facebook under “spam” Community Guidelines or Standards without appearing to take into account the context of these comments.
I.e. Meta's own cited policy was not that it "is considered hateful" as you say, but that this political expression was labeled as spam. That sounds pretty bogus.
As for the "is considered hateful by many", that's true, but is also subjective, and very tangled given that prominent Israeli conservatives have used very similar phrasing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea#Simi...
If someone actually praising the Oct 7 attacks or something gets flagged/banned/etc, then sure, Meta is just applying its policies. That does not seem to be what's happening here. It's true that the report doesn't give numbers for these specific treatments, and the authors have a limited and biased view based on who responded to their call for evidence. But the limited view doesn't seem to be of Meta even-handedly and competently applying their policies.
_However_, I don't want to attribute everything to malice where incompetence may be at least a partial explanation. If motivated 3rd parties are repeatedly flagging a photo of a clothed, dead Palestinian as "nudity", and Meta's systems are built with the assumption that such user-provided flags are presumed trustworthy, then we could easily see how someone posting that photo would get incorrectly/inappropriately flagged.
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> IMO you shouldn't censor anything. That's the only solution. Full disclosure: I work for Meta, but not on ranking, and my opinions are my own. Edit: this isn't specific to Meta; it's common to all content platforms. This is really hard. There's universally objectionable material like CSAM. That's (politically) easy to exclude. There are leaked state secrets the public should know. There's hate speech (laws vary by…
"People say "just show the posts in chronological order," but this doesn't scale for humans reading it, especially as you follow more people." That's just rationalizing a business decision. Nobody is saying there should be no algorithmic timeline. If it "doesn't scale" for my own timeline, that's 100% on me. Why take away the decision or "nudge" into the other direction? If the algorithmic timeline really were THAT b…
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I think the problem with the right wing politicians was that they were presenting their warped view of reality as fact?
That's what everyone says when they want to censor someone they don't like
Of course if you are already disinclined to accept that because it doesn’t align with your view of reality, there’s not much I can say to change it.
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>People say "just show the posts in chronological order," but this doesn't scale for humans reading it, especially as you follow more people. I fail to see how this is a problem. Much less one that necessitates spending billions of dollars developing sorting and recommendation algorithms to solve. Unless your priority is not "show the user what they have explicitly requested to see". Users were perfectly happy when t…
I did work on ranking at Meta. The vast majority of people really do not prefer the chronological feed. We validated this by extraordinarily high powered randomized trials, including with surveys. No more than 20% of people preferred a chronological feed in any experiment I saw.
If I see a post on mastodon, it's from someone I follow or a post that someone I follow thought was worth sharing. That's a genuine interaction between humans. I get to decide what's in my feed based on who I follow and the filters I set up. The system is designed only to connect me with people I choose to follow.
Meanwhile, an algorithmic feed with no options is designed for one thing: manipulating users to optimize "engagement". That by definition requires ignoring what users prefer. I really shouldn't have to explain that this is a bad thing.