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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

#561

Post by sudosysgen »

dlubarov wrote: post #486
anigbrowl wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all you have are unguided rockets, you're going to point them wherever they're most likely to hit something. If/when you have guidance systems, you can afford to be selective and concentrate on high value targets. That's how it goes in asymmetric warfare.

Given Hamas' explicit genocidal goals, I think we can expect some portion of their strikes will simply aim to maximize Jewish deaths, even as others may target specific military assets. See for example Russia's recent Hroza strike ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hroza_missile_attack ), which killed 59 at a memorial service. Hamas can't really do strikes like that today; they would just miss with overwhelming probabil…

The Iskander missile has a 1500lb warhead. Compare the number of deaths it causes to the number of deaths a single unguided Israeli bomb causes in Gaza when it hits a populated building, and you will soon realize that the guidance is not the determining factor here, it's just the mass of explosives.

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

#562

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

peyton wrote: post #200
GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notably, Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch) was released in Jan 2021. Elon just flipped the feature flag.

Worth noting Birdwatch launched alongside the ability to report tweets for misinformation, a feature Elon disabled. For that reason it’s difficult to conceive of Community Notes today as a simple continuation of the Birdwatch effort.

I think he was right to disable the ability for Community Notes to actually report and remove tweets. First, it's a vector for abuse. Second, misinformation is a loaded term and having the context along side the content is more important for an informed public.

Of course anything illegal or against ToS should be removed and only be the purview of Twitter's moderation team (or what's left of it).

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

#563

Post by rightbyte »

arp242 wrote: post #560
oefrha wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never seen a flamewar on this topic? What? Do you have showdead on? I flagged this one, because “discussions” on this topic are mostly hot garbage, they are dominated by extremely motivated people shitting canned flamebait all over the place, especially early on. Indeed by the time I saw and flagged this there were already like four or five people doing exactly that, and by keeping it up, more of this type of…

> What? Do you have showdead on? I was joking – "woosh" as I believe the kids say. And this is why I'd be in favour of a "topic ban".

The problem with topics bans is that you can sabotage topics you don't like to silence them. E.g. Rust evangelicals could have been silenced quite easely by flame baiting their posts.

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

#564

Post by cf1241290841 »

underdeserver wrote: post #503
cf1241290841 wrote: post #351

I believe its relevant to mention that this doesnt have to be ill intent on part of Meta. Israeli intelligence is spending a lot of resources on influencing narratives. Its not surprising that this would include exploiting and influencing moderation. And its not like social media sites figured out perfect moderation yet, they are an easy target for such determined influences.

Israeli intelligence is likely spending virtually no resources at all on influencing narratives. And if they are, they are failing spectacularly. More likely, the ministry of the exterior, the IDF spokesperson office, and civilian operations are trying to influence narratives. From what I can tell these other efforts are not doing so well either.

I think you are wrong on both parts.

Cognitive / Narrative warfare has become part of standard doctrine for most major militaries.

Earlier discussion about "corporate" spin offs from the intelligence sector. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34803779

Looking how many countries backed the current Israeli government for how long despite targeting the civilian population, as well as stuff like OP on most major platforms they seem to be horrifically effective.

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

#565

Post by reissbaker »

ignoramous wrote: post #332
dlubarov wrote: post #121

Are you saying that changes on Israel's part could cause Hamas to stop their aggression? That seems very unlikely - Hamas doesn't even pretend to be open to peaceful coexistence with Israel. Their best offer was a 10-year ceasefire in exchange for 1967 borders. Or that it could lead to Gazans overthrowing Hamas? It's possible, but it would take a violent rebellion since Hamas doesn't hold elections, and realistically…

> Their best offer was a 10-year ceasefire in exchange for 1967 borders. That was 2004. By 2017, their asks, for all intents and purposes, were the same as the PA: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/01/hamas-new-char...

Even their updated 2017 demands did not include peace with Israel if met. They offered only a ceasefire in exchange for 1967 borders, not a permanent peace deal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas

Anyway, they've shown their true colors at this point; very different statements recently:

> Since the shocking Hamas attack on Oct. 7, in which Israel says about 1,400 people were killed — most of them civilians — and more than 240 others dragged back to Gaza as captives, the group’s leaders have praised the operation, with some hoping it will set off a sustained conflict that ends any pretense of coexistence among Israel, Gaza and the countries around them. “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us,” Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told The Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/world/middleeast/hamas-is...

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

#566

Post by arp242 »

rightbyte wrote: post #563
arp242 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What? Do you have showdead on? I was joking – "woosh" as I believe the kids say. And this is why I'd be in favour of a "topic ban".

The problem with topics bans is that you can sabotage topics you don't like to silence them. E.g. Rust evangelicals could have been silenced quite easely by flame baiting their posts.

Some people really don't need a whole lot of baiting; for example there's a top-level comment that reads (entire comment): "'peaceful support of Palestine'", without condemning Hamas is still pro-Hamas action in this case."

Never mind the stuff that's just outright beyond the pale.

So we can start with that.

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

#567

Post by throwaway17421 »

krembo wrote: post #525
mongol wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why "From the river to the see" would be hateful in isolation. Certainly some people who say it may have hateful thoughts in their minds, but wishing for palestinian land where Israel is now is not hateful in itself.

Don't you really understand why it's an hateful speech when you wish my country stop to exists?

[flagged]

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

#568

Post by sampo »

dang wrote: post #499
sampo wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Be a verified (by phone number, no need to pay) twitter user. Apply to be a Community notes contributor. Wait. If accepted, you start with 0 points. Twitter will start to show you proposed (as opposed to published) community notes. You can vote yes / no. If a note you voted yes (or no) will get enough other yes (no) votes to get published (rejected), you will get 1 point. If you voted "wrong", you will lose a point. After you have a certain number of points (I think 5), you can also write proposed notes yourself, not just vote. If your note gets rejected, you lose 5 points.

But twitter is not only counting the yes / no votes. They need people who have voted differently on some previous notes, to agree in their votes on this note, before their algorithm makes the decision to publish or reject the note.

A lot of proposed notes will never get enough votes to be decidedly published or rejected, so they will linger in the "proposed" stage forever.

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

#569

Post by baobabKoodaa »

bjourne wrote: post #483
rayiner wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Comparing the chant "from the river to the sea" with the confederate flag is completely preposterous. The chant is a call for liberation . Anyone who has a problem with someone's freedom is themselves a racist and probably has a lot of views in common with what the confederate flag stands for. Fwiw, the phrase was coined by Jewish settlers in the 1930's ( https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2018-12-16/ty-artic..…

Yes, "liberation" of the land currently occupied by jews. Just need to find a solution for them. Preferrably something final.

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

#570

Post by hutzlibu »

Chris2048 wrote: post #392
hutzlibu wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because the discussion is not of very high quality? Look how many downvotes there are already, it is an emotional topic and yes, even here people are having problems with maintaining a civil debate about a controversial topic. And others don't want all that flame war here, so they flag it, simple as that.

The mechanism of downvoting is supposed to remove low quality posts. If someone if uncivil, downvote or flag them. Soon enough they'll get the hint or be warned. > others don't want all that flame war here That doesn't make sense. If you don't want to participate, then ignore the post. actively preventing others participating is something else - I think "censor" is more appropriate in that case.

Well, the space on the front page is limited. And there are lots of other controversial topics - potentially taking all the space.

And some want only technical topics or mainly technical. So "curating" is more appropriate I think.

(But personally I did participate ... so much that I am rate limited again)

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