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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

#511

Post by ImHereToVote »

anigbrowl wrote: post #454
bitwize wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My engineer brain wants to solve this by giving users more visibility into moderation decisions. Visibility into moderation decisions makes them more gameable/exploitable/circumventable. The whole purpose of moderation is to remove unwanted speech; justifying the fairness of such removal is only secondary, and can be elided if it interferes with the primary goal. Hence "You have been banned because your posts viola…

This is basically an argument for getting rid of laws and ruling by fiat, with a judicial process that amounts to repeating 'you know what you did' whether or not that is honest.

If I have a boot on my throat, it better be privately owned.

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

#512

Post by seanmcdirmid »

selcuka wrote: post #505
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The report button is rather useless unless it's a delicate issue that Facebook wants to distance themselves from. I find it hard to believe that nobody reports such comments. Probably many people do, but they get the stock reply "this comment does not violate our community standards".

I would be really really surprised if some comment so brazen wasn’t auto deleted on flagging. Saying you want someone to die is very straightforward reason to delete without much thought.

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

#513

Post by LtWorf »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #497
LtWorf wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I reported them, yes. Facebook said they didn't violate policy.

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

#514

Post by trhway »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #453
trhway wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Per the report, they've gone far beyond just banning calls for violence. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38750605

Not really. This pro-Hamas/pro-Palestinian propaganda is full of outright lies and is de-facto material support for Hamas terrorist activity. And of course as such it violates pretty much almost all of the FB rules.

Speaking about lies. Lets look at a pretty typical one mentioned by GGP.

>“Israel bombs the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City killing over 500…”

Running that news directly from the Hamas' mouth, the CNN even had to use the photo of large destruction from completely unrelated location (could be easily checked using satellite images for example). Later the real photos appeared. CNN updated the article

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/middleeast/gaza-hospital-expl...

and you can see that the explosion didn't even make any crater in the pavement to speak of. While these windshields and windows are cracked, the cars at 30-40 ft even still have their windshields and windows. The cars closer are mostly damaged by fire, and only the closest few have blast damage. The solar panels on the roof of the 2 story building next to the parking lot are undamaged (just look at that "house of card" installation of the panels - them still where means no blast wave reached them). There is no way for that explosion to damage the hospital building, and not surprisingly there aren't photos of such a damage. That explosion couldn't kill people beyond the distance of about 30ft. I.e. only people near those damaged cars could have been killed. Even if there was a crowd, such weak explosion doesn't kill beyond the first couple rows of people. So, we're talking at worst 10-20 people, if those for some reason crowded right near those damaged cars (in the middle of the night, why?).

Now, where did the warhead came from? The explosion, judging by night video of it and the described damage on the photos, does look like a rocket of Grad class, definitely not larger. Israel doesn't use such weak warheads in its stand-off weapons. Whereis Hamas does use thousands of such rockets. And these rockets, mostly built by Hamas in underground shops, have high rate of failure, i.e. Gaza is regularly showered with tens of malfunctioning Hamas rockets. And there is even a video from that night with a salvo of Hamas rockets with at least one going in that direction.

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

#515

Post by selcuka »

reissbaker wrote: post #474
abeppu wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the actual report, I really disagree with your assessment. It sounds like there's a bunch of nonsense in there where Meta is _not_ living up to its own policies, and is flagging stuff disingenuously. > 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 i…

I think without actual access to the material it's pretty hard to say. For example, the report highlights that someone commented with nothing but a series of Palestinian flags to someone's post, and their comment was flagged and removed. However, they don't share what the original post was; responding with a series of Palestinian flags to an Israeli hostage relative's post about their kidnapped sibling, for example,…

This is a bit too much of reading between the lines, suspiciously so.

> Why does the report only say that the man was fully clothed?

It does not. This is misrepresenting what is written in the report, to say the least. There are two such examples in the report (not sure if they refer to the same image): The first one is "image of a Palestinian father in Gaza who was killed while he was holding his clothed daughter, who was also killed" and the other one is "an image of a fully clothed man holding a girl, both deceased". Obviously in both pictures both man and the woman are dead, debunking your "male members of Hamas holding nude or partially-nude dead women" theory.

> However, they don't share what the original post was; responding with a series of Palestinian flags to an Israeli hostage relative's post about their kidnapped sibling, for example, would be clear harassment and abuse.

Again, this is just a guess and not factual information. In fact, the report has a link to the original source in footnote 78 (https://theintercept.com/2023/10/28/instagram-palestinian-fl...) and one of the comments Instagram has hidden was on a pro-Palestinian post:

> In one, a user commented on an Instagram video of a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Jordan with green, white, and black heart emojis corresponding to the colors of the Palestinian flag, along with emojis of the Moroccan and Palestinian flags.

Also:

> The Intercept reviewed several hidden comments containing the Palestinian flag emoji that had no reference to Hamas or any other banned group.

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

#516

Post by uoaei »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #512
selcuka wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The report button is rather useless unless it's a delicate issue that Facebook wants to distance themselves from. I find it hard to believe that nobody reports such comments. Probably many people do, but they get the stock reply "this comment does not violate our community standards".

I would be really really surprised if some comment so brazen wasn’t auto deleted on flagging. Saying you want someone to die is very straightforward reason to delete without much thought.

So you're just going to assume the problem doesn't exist because you'd be surprised if it did? There's skepticism, and then there's sticking your head in the sand...

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

#517

Post by hutzlibu »

kelnos wrote: post #260
hutzlibu wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you would have more moral justification to limit spreading their hate and propaganda which this was about. Also, it seems you are shadowbanned. You might want to reread and reflect some of your comments and then contact dang.

> But you would have more moral justification to limit spreading their hate and propaganda which this was about. Absolutely not. There's no moral justification for murder.

Who was talking about murder? This was about cencorship.

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

#518

Post by uoaei »

selcuka wrote: post #501
mgraczyk wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my first hand experience designing these algorithms at Meta and running experiments, and listening to feedback from accounts, I would guess that you are not getting reach because your followers do not interact with what you post. In almost every case people call "shadow ban", the cause was occasionally an actual bug (code doing something undesired and unexpected) or far more often people posting bad content. The…

> The ML is good enough to know whether your followers want to engage with political content. If they don't, Facebook will show them less of it. This is a very simplistic explanation. If the GP is a political activist and "always comments on draft laws", I would expect their followers to be willing to engage with political content.

It would explain a lot about how Meta operates that the engineers don't factor things like this in.

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

#519

Post by bjourne »

reissbaker wrote: post #474
abeppu wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the actual report, I really disagree with your assessment. It sounds like there's a bunch of nonsense in there where Meta is _not_ living up to its own policies, and is flagging stuff disingenuously. > 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 i…

I think without actual access to the material it's pretty hard to say. For example, the report highlights that someone commented with nothing but a series of Palestinian flags to someone's post, and their comment was flagged and removed. However, they don't share what the original post was; responding with a series of Palestinian flags to an Israeli hostage relative's post about their kidnapped sibling, for example,…

NGO Monitor is itself not a credible source. See http://policyworkinggroup.org.il/report_en.pdf

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

#520

Post by mrpopo »

Tostino wrote: post #480
sgregnt wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At the beginning of the conflict..."

Yes... You had plenty of people saying "this is going to be your own version of Afghanistan/Iraq if you decide to do what you want to do..." Israel wanted revenge, not a solution. Their strategy has guaranteed that there will be another cycle of violence as the kids that grew up seeing their parents blown up in airstrikes are understandably going to be ripe for recruiting into whatever organization steps into power i…

It's simply their strategy, really. Turning Palestinians desperate so they turn to violence ("terrorism"), in order to justify turning their territory into even more of a shit hole, so Palestinians who can't take it anymore will emigrate, until the "problem" is gone.
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