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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

#641

Post by mgraczyk »

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.

Well no, the rule is just not what you think it is. Meta doesn't ban supporting tools that can be used for violence, Meta bans support for violent acts.

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

#642

Post by boston_clone »

rightbyte wrote: post #588
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…

> misinformation should be censored. This is such a fallacy. When the ones in power don't allign with your view, your view will be "missinformation". The Vietnam war, Iraq war all got started on made up missinformation. Guess what kind of "missinformation" any laws about it would target?

How is it a fallacy? I mean misinformation by definition; you’re correct that power structures may distort truth to achieve an objective, and that’s not good - that’s the prima facie misinformation I’m talking about here.

I agree it would have been better if news outlets like the NYT didn’t regurgitate things like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as factual, but that will happen when the intelligence community is embedded at said news organizations.

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

#643

Post by mgraczyk »

two_in_one wrote: post #487
slim wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> people now refrain from using the word "Palestine" to avoid metas algirithms It wasn't algorithm, or glitch, or bug. It was a decision made by humans, including you know who. It's a form of crowd control. That's why it's important to have several channels for 'producers'. For others it's a good idea to have several sources. You'll see much more even if each source represents a single side (which is usually the case…

It's difficult for anyone who doesn't work there to know, but I would guess based on what I know of how ranking decisions are made that you are mistaken. For example I worked there prior to the 2020 election and on Instagram there was no specific ranking rule of any kind related to keywords like that, and no intentional bias to push up one side or another in any way, outside of ads and government officials.

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

#644

Post by mgraczyk »

uoaei wrote: post #518
selcuka wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We did, they do. When I was there people did "calibration studies" for certain sensitive categories to understand and fix any model biases that would rank content higher for undesirable or unexpected reasons.

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

#645

Post by mgraczyk »

Joeri wrote: post #545
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…

I feel a deep discomfort with algorithms optimizing for “engaging” content like this. It feels to me like a form of algorithmic brainwashing, capturing people in filter bubbles. I would prefer it if there were laws against platforms making visibility decisions for the user. If people choose to be in a bubble, that’s a form of personal freedom, if an unknowable algorithm chooses for them, not so much.

Most people on Meta's product follow too many accounts to see everything everyone posts. In an alternate reality where ranking is illegal, the game would be different and worse. Accounts would just repost the same content over and over every few minutes to stay at the top of the feed, or some other strategy to get distribution.

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

#646

Post by mgraczyk »

strken wrote: post #496
slim wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes that's definitely possible. It's the sort of thing that Meta has teams to try to avoid, but in fast moving information landscapes it's sometimes difficult to keep up.

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

#647

Post by boston_clone »

SgtBastard wrote: post #585
boston_clone wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 / ap…

> "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..." The "rest of the world" in general supports a ceasefire in the Gaza strip as evidenced by recent UN votes. I'm not aware of any Anglosphere, European or Asian nation describing Israel's actions as either war-crimes or perpetuating apartheid. While I'm happy to be…

The majority of the UN has consistently recognized and attempted to resolve what Israel is doing, as evidenced by their voting history in the years (decades?) prior to the events of the last few months.

For your situational awareness, sarge - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_war_crimes

Don’t just downvote; lmk what you think!

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

#648

Post by edanm »

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 :)

I don't think that's fair. dang is a great moderator, and this is a particularly tough subject to moderate - as he says, every side tends to feel that people are biased against them, and to some extent it's true. (If you wonder how people can be biased against both sides - it can be different groups of people. E.g. the UN is biased against Israel, but the US is biased for Israel.)

I don't know if pg is still involved in moderation decisions on HN. He's widely considered anti-Israel, by most Israeli techies at least, but I don't think this necessarily means anything about HN. (And although I don't know pg personally, I'm willing to give quite a bit of benefit of the doubt to him, and I'd bet that his personal integrity would keep him out of directly intervening in moderating HN about this topic.)

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

#650

Post by Robotbeat »

cogman10 wrote: post #309
Robotbeat wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you, but it’s important to realize how strong the impulse is to overlook, explain-away, or pretend not to see bad behavior on one’s own side.

Certainly, so do you have examples of what I should be watching out for? (Preferably with links)

If you can’t see bad behavior on both sides when it’s pretty obvious here, I’m not sure it’s worth my time providing specifics. I suspect it’ll just be explained away. “From the River to the Sea,” for example. Just wink nod “that’s not what it means”
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