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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

#631

Post by user_named »

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…

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

#632

Post by bromuro »

abeppu wrote: post #387
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…

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…

> 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.

Am one of those ? I always mark these as spam as I try to keep my account politics free. I have some friends that are obsessed with the Palestinian cause and there was a time this stuff would constantly appear in my feed.

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

#633

Post by dotandgtfo »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #607
sam0x17 wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe this, but the sad reality of modern society is that the current "meta" is suppressing viewpoints that damage society from your point of view, and if you decide not to play the meta by, say, opting for carte blanche free speech, others who have damaging views that actively harm your position will embrace this "meta" instead and YOUR views will eventually be suppressed (see Karens flooding local schoo…

>The sad reality of modern society is that the current "meta" is suppressing viewpoints that damage society from your point of view, My viewpoint is freedom of speech regardless of my opinion of it, or yours. “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell > If you decide not to play the meta by, say, opting for carte blanche free speech, others who…

The position you have about this topic serves the status quo of corporations and advertisers deciding on what speech is acceptable. That is the status quo today with the major tech platforms. Personally I find it detestable. And you'd find your viewpoints a bit extreme in countries around the world. Nazi speech in Germany is banned for a good reason and is popular with the populace.

And sharing quotes by long dead authors is hardly relevant to the systems we've built today which reward inflammatory speech for the sake of monetizing eyeballs. Personally I find that more dystopian than setting some rules for engagement about how you discuss sensitive topics, like we have here on HN. But that's expensive to do so these platforms just deplatform such content no matter how inflammatory or neutrally it is presented.

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

#634

Post by welzel »

Sometimes i feel that reporters should be needed to add a basic statistical analysis before they are allowed to claim something like censorship.

How much content is posted every day on meta? How many content removal decisions are taken every day by meta?

Hint: Over 1 billion Stories are posted every day.

So even if 1049 content removals would happen on a single day - but this "evidence" is collected over a much longer time period.

You have to read about HRW and its campaign against Israel to maybe understand why HRW continue to post this type of propaganda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Human_Rights_Watc...

The guardian did a very bad job at picking up this biased content.

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

#635

Post by [deleted] »

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...

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

#636

Post by havelhovel »

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.

> Human Rights Watch published a call for evidence of online censorship…from the main Human Rights Watch accounts on Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), and TikTok.

I don’t see how HRW can post this in good conscience without acknowledging the huge potential for voluntary response bias in this survey. Pro-Israel voices have been skeptical of HRW’s perceived Anti-Israel bias[1] for over a decade. They are not going to be following or engaging with HRW accounts, and their voices are most likely fewer in number overall[2]. The fact that 1,049 of the 1,050 comments submitted for HRW’s review were Pro-Palestine should be a red flag, not the core piece of evidence.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204619004574318...

[2] https://wpde.com/amp/news/nation-world/support-for-palestine...

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

#637

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…

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

#638

Post by qwertthrowway »

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…

This is a very inaccurate comparison. Palestinians faced the violent expulsion of the Nakbah, and before that in the British mandate period there were attacks from violent Zionist groups. Currently, Palestine is militarily occupied and colonized. In this context, from the river to the sea must be understood as a desire for freedom and for justice.

The oppression faced under occupation by people in the West Bank and in Gaza for over 70 years now reminds us of how situations like Apartheid in South Africa formally continued until 1994.

To dismiss as simple “Jew hate” is really not the correct context; very disappointing to see these broad generalizations dismiss the fundamental needs for human life.

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

#639

Post by abeppu »

bromuro wrote: post #632
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…

> 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. Am one of those ? I always mark these as spam as I try to keep my account politics free. I have some friends that are obsessed with the Palestinian cause and there was a time this stuff would constantly appear in my feed.

I think that's borderline abusive. A message is not spam just because you don't want to see it. A good faith expression of a viewpoint in an appropriate context is not spam. If Meta is doing a bad job picking stuff for your feed, flagging other people's comments or posts inappropriately is not the answer. In the same way, it would be abusive for me to flag your response just because I didn't enjoy it.

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

#640

Post by baybal2 »

rshaban wrote: post #592
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…

"Supported violence" is a wild thing to ... // Compare; at some point, I began to receive an almost unrelenting stream of advertisements for weapons, body armor, etc. Tanks, even. Crazy things. SO much violence is advertised on "Meta"; it's only... """ a specific kind of violence """ that seems to be prohibited, by Meta, namely anti-Israeli violence.

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