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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

#491

Post by nox100 »

slim wrote: post #404
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…

removal of content is really like 10% of the cases. the most worrisome type of suppression of speech is what they call "shadow banning" which is really "reach limiting". to the extent people now refrain from using the word "Palestine" to avoid metas algirithms. I experienced this myself. We have a draft law in parliament concerning boyocott of israel. I posted a status about the law (notice it's unrelated to war or a…

I posted 2 things recently. One was link to a game, another to an anime (neither related in any way shape or form to wars nor any news or politics what-so-ever. I got zero responses, not even likes/hearts/laughs. So I assumed FB decided not to show them to any of my friends. "Zero reach".

How do you know the reason for your reason for zero reach is any different than mine? I assumed Meta's algo decided none of my friends would be interested in what I posted, not that I was being censored.

They did respond to my next 2 posts so no idea the difference.

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

#492

Post by oglop »

This comment section is a blast.

Btw, just saying “this phrase is considered hateful by many” is inane. Many people find many things hateful but they don’t get the same weird instant “you bigot!” label as some of what I see directed towards Palestinian supporters. It’s nuts.

I have no dog in the fight. Just giving some useless anecdotes for people to get angry over.

But also, 1000 is not that many in the grand scheme of things like Meta said.

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

#493

Post by dlubarov »

sudosysgen wrote: post #472
dlubarov wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> precision weapons tend to reduce civilian casualties Yes, but normally the user is targeting military assets and trying to minimize collateral damage. I think it's clear that Hamas has the opposite goal, since they typically lob unguided rockets in the general direction of population centers.

That makes no sense. If all you had were unguided rockets, where else could you possibly aim them? There is no other target where they would have any effect at all, because all high value targets are too small to be hit a +/- 500m weapon. If your goal was just to hit a population center, I fail to understand the point of guided rockets. Seems much more effective to just make more dumb rockets. Even compared to target…

I disagree that dumb rockets are more effective. Hamas, PIJ, etc. have only managed to kill 28 after launching something like 20k dumb rockets. There are many examples of modern precision weapons causing more deaths with a single strike.

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

#494

Post by LtWorf »

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…

I've seen comments saying "yes please, show me more bombings, I love to see them die" not taken down, because "them" was palestinians.

I wonder how long the comment would have been up, if it was referring to the other side instead.

edit: I see from the downvotes that my experience doesn't fit your bias. Sorry people -_-

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

#495

Post by dang »

neonsunset wrote: post #325
dang wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop taking HN threads further into flamewar. Your account has a long history of doing this, and we've warned you many times. To continue doing it is not ok, and on this topic least of all. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460722 (Jan 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33209948 (Oct 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32922335 (Sept 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31010834 (Apri…

It's only a flamewar when you and PG, as it happens on a weekly basis, disagree with the comment :)

Then I must disagree with everybody, as I moderate comments from all sides of these. Anyone who looks fairly through my posting history can see that for themselves.

Everyone with strong feelings on a topic feels like the mods are secretly against their view and moderating in favor of the other side [1]. I think it's because we're all hard-wired to notice the things we dislike and to weight them much more heavily [2].

In this context, it only takes 2 or 3 datapoints (actually, it probably only takes 1) of a moderator scolding a comment that you agree with for you to feel this way ((Btw, pg has had nothing to do with HN moderation for almost 10 years.)

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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

#496

Post by strken »

slim wrote: post #404
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…

removal of content is really like 10% of the cases. the most worrisome type of suppression of speech is what they call "shadow banning" which is really "reach limiting". to the extent people now refrain from using the word "Palestine" to avoid metas algirithms. I experienced this myself. We have a draft law in parliament concerning boyocott of israel. I posted a status about the law (notice it's unrelated to war or a…

I wonder if the word Palestine (and potentially also Israel) trips some ML systems up. I put "Palestinian values" into a random sentiment analysis tool and it's ranked lower than most other countries. They'd both be (understandably) linked to negative content.

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

#497

Post by seanmcdirmid »

LtWorf wrote: post #494
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…

I've seen comments saying "yes please, show me more bombings, I love to see them die" not taken down, because "them" was palestinians. I wonder how long the comment would have been up, if it was referring to the other side instead. edit: I see from the downvotes that my experience doesn't fit your bias. Sorry people -_-

Doesn’t Facebook have a report button? I’m pretty sure comments like that would be taken down if you reported them, it’s really a no brainer whatever “them” refers to.

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

#498

Post by Aeolun »

canadiantim wrote: post #408
Aeolun wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m fairly certain this was found to be true by various sources. 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.

If you provided the sources it would help to atleast have a productive discussion of the merits of that point of view. Without the sources it just sounds like you don't like right-wing politicians.

While that is true, I have found that quoting sources doesn’t particularly help unless people are already inclined to believe me, so it just wastes my time to find them every time.

Might be cynical, but ultimately I don’t really believe I can change any minds just with a comment. If you ask why I make the comment in the first place then, that’s a good question.

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

#499

Post by dang »

sampo wrote: post #311
dang wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get hit by Community Notes How does that work? can anyone post a "community note", or by what process is that decided?

https://help.twitter.com/en/using-x/community-notes

Thanks! But I didn't find a clear description there of how this works. What elevates an ordinary comment to a "community note" and what determines whether a "community note" stays up as a sort of verdict on the original post? This seems like a hard thing to get right at scale. If you rely on voting (i.e. likes or whatever), you'll just end up with a parallel comment system, no more authoritative than the original one. So there must be some other process deciding which proposed notes get this special status.

(Perhaps I should add: yes, I'm being lazy; no, I'm not being critical - I just want someone to explain this to me so I don't have to work to find out.)

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

#500

Post by underdeserver »

kar5pt wrote: post #437

Their methodology seems really flawed. They cherry picked a thousand instances of wrongly removed content, but how many posts do you think there are about the conflict on Facebook and Instagram? Tens of millions? They have no way of knowing how representative that sample is.

Exactly. Whatever your opinions on Israel and Gaza, putting out a report so cherry-picked on such a small, unrepresentative sample only serves to show HRW's biases.
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