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Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

theguardian.com

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Re: Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

#411

Post by crakhamster01 »

calamari4065 wrote: post #289
dehrmann wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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 don't use FB anymore, but Instagram has reverse chronological feed as an option if you want to use it. Majority of users prefer algorithmic, so that's the default, but I do tap the chronological feed every once.

Re: Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

#412

Post by grzm »

busymom0 wrote: post #410
eganist wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they generally stand down heated topics even when it's something the hive mind would agree with. There are delicate ways of talking about these things that GP and plenty of others have a history of having a hard time employing. At this point I've been entrenched enough in discussion long enough to appreciate how this place is moderated by dang etc

You mean pg? Or am I out of loop on who GP is?

GP = grandparent: some comment upthread. (parent of parent when used literally).

Re: Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

#413

Post by fourseventy »

kahnclusions wrote: post #372
fourseventy wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if the left wing politicians dont also present warped facts.

Not to the same degree or extent… the departure from reality and rejection of any facts they don’t like, rejection of scientific thinking, is waaaaay way more of a right wing problem.

[flagged]

Re: Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

#414

Post by turquoisevar »

rayiner wrote: post #380
mgraczyk wrote: post #336

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…

> For example, the phrase "from the river to the see" is considered hateful by many The phrase has its origins in Arab nationalism. It was coined in 1960 by the PLO to refer to the goal of an Arab state that occupies the entirety of what was Mandatory Palestine. If you ignore the subtext of “what happens to the Jews in that situation” I suppose you can make a case for it. It’s like the confederate flag. In the 20th c…

[flagged]

Re: Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

#415

Post by slim »

rayiner wrote: post #380
mgraczyk wrote: post #336

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…

> For example, the phrase "from the river to the see" is considered hateful by many The phrase has its origins in Arab nationalism. It was coined in 1960 by the PLO to refer to the goal of an Arab state that occupies the entirety of what was Mandatory Palestine. If you ignore the subtext of “what happens to the Jews in that situation” I suppose you can make a case for it. It’s like the confederate flag. In the 20th c…

[flagged]

Re: Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

#416

Post by boston_clone »

orenlindsey wrote: post #337
boston_clone wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's correct to classify this particular instance as either left- or right-wing; additionally, misinformation should be censored. From the article: >Examples it cites include content originating from more than 60 countries, mostly in English, and all in “peaceful support of Palestine, expressed in diverse ways”. Even HRW’s own posts seeking examples of online censorship were flagged as spam This issue se…

Supporting Palestine is generally a left-wing view (proof: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/07/11/american-views... ). So Meta is censoring a mostly left-wing viewpoint.

What you've cited is US-centric; it's both reductive and fallacious to categorize this as left- or right-wing, when again, the article states that this phenomenon was observed in more than 60 countries.

Perhaps where you're located it is a predominately left-wing viewpoint, but the rest of the world in general is very much against what Israel is and has been doing.

The casual admission that support of war crimes / apartheid being a US right-wing viewpoint is somewhat unsurprising, though.

Re: Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

#417

Post by paulmd »

hipadev23 wrote: post #340
rightbyte wrote: post #273

It boils down to the algorithmic feed, where Zuckerberg decides what the users see and not the users. Old Facebook didn't have that problem, where there more or less was a chronological order of friends' post. That systems also did not have any problem with "troll farms" (do those even exist, anyway?) since those could not reach you in the first place. On places like Reddit, I get this feeling that some bot network c…

> The atmosphere is way to aligned to be real. I think it’s identical here on HN. Upvoting, downvoting, and using flagging to suppress contrary opinions is rampant and has a huge negative impact toward discussion. I think it’s just the topic du jour on HN is less escalated (usually opinions of tech choices) so it doesn’t seem as extreme.

Be sure to turn on showdead, it absolutely should be enabled with the amount of suppression and brigading and rules-lawyering that takes place

Re: Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

#418

Post by sudopluto »

CommanderData wrote: post #211

[flagged]

People always talk about ending the killing of children... I think the best way to stop children from being in harm in the first place.

Hamas's strategy of using children as human shields will be validated if they escape destruction, inviting them to do it again and again.

War is hell, in this case I have zero sympathy for the people who have repeatably started war after war after war, condemning the future of their children in the name of religion / ethnicity. 20% of Israel is Arab / Muslim, they are not the bad guys here.

Re: Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

#419

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #380
mgraczyk wrote: post #336

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…

> For example, the phrase "from the river to the see" is considered hateful by many The phrase has its origins in Arab nationalism. It was coined in 1960 by the PLO to refer to the goal of an Arab state that occupies the entirety of what was Mandatory Palestine. If you ignore the subtext of “what happens to the Jews in that situation” I suppose you can make a case for it. It’s like the confederate flag. In the 20th c…

[deleted]

Re: Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

#420

Post by paulmd »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #361
ThinkBeat wrote: post #317

This is something people have to relearn over and over again. A lot of the people who are not upset with Meta limiting opinions and content related to the war in Gaza¹. Were gloating and happy when Meta limited opinions and content from right wing politicians² not so long ago. Once you invite censorship for content you dont like, how can you expect it wont bite you in the ass later on. This is why freedom of speech i…

Freedom of speech is drastically compromised when there's a lower and lower ceiling of freedom of thought. Meta or any platform limiting speech is a 2x "win" because it also limits further proliferation of such ideas. That is, people can't think what they aren't aware of. People can't change their minds when the alternatives are limited.

Even here there are some thoughts you are not allowed to voice. And I’m not just talking about violence/etc but calling out ideas too vigorously etc will get you censored here too. “Flamewar style” is the trope used to justify it.

and in general this site also has a massive trend of people who are losing a debate leaning in to rules-lawyering as a means of suppressing disagreement etc.

“sorry sir you’re not allowed to mention that they didn’t read the literally-one-line parent comment and are replying to the exact opposite of the argument it’s making! Flagged my good sir, this is a forum for civil debate!”

A truly open and free debate includes the freedom to point out that the moon is not made of cheese and in fact I do think less of you for arguing that it is. But that’s back to the “flamewar style”. In reality not everyone is engaging in good faith or isn’t just part of some shitty bandwagon/etc and banning the ability to call that out just lowers the debate, because now it becomes a deliberate strategy that is formed by the rules themselves. Gameplaying rules-lawyering maximalists will ruin anything.

at some level, anti-censorship and curation are fundamentally opposed goals. You can’t have a high level of discourse and also be covering 101-level or incoherent arguments. And attempting to do so produces a false equivalence which results in worse outcomes for truth-seeking. The moon is not made of green cheese and it’s a waste of everyone’s time to rebut that in every single thread, against someone who doesn’t want to admit that it’s an incoherent position.

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