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Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request

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Re: Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request

#71
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon and Bezos aren't more powerful than Kuwait. Kuwait is a sovereign government, with authority to write laws, raise an army, and do whatever it wants with its 5M+ citizens (draft them, imprison people, execute people, etc.) with pretty much no consequence unless they're absurdly reckless. There is more to power than money.

Kuwait cannot do any of that unilaterally. They are a vassal state in the american hegemony.

> They are a vassal state in the american hegemony.

Whatever happened to just calling a country an ally? "Vassal state in the American hegemony" does sound a lot cooler I guess.

Re: Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I once spent an hour or so tracking down and reading parts of the twitter files specifically highlighted by people loudly complaining about them (as I figured those would be the worst bits) and it was mostly pretty yawn-worthy in context. That might be why they didn't get more attention.

So you're saying that the FBI using Twitter as a proxy to violate US citizens First Amendment right is not an issue? Because that's my entire point. There is absolutely no context that okays the FBI doing this, once you open pandoras box, you allow other administrations (including the current) to use the same "power" that they should have never had to begin with.

Re: Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be protected by safe harbour provisions, or you can editorialise your content. I don't think you should have both. Free speech does not cover scams and fraud, something that happens on their platform. Society doesn't take any action against them for publishing illegal content, scams, libel, fraud, because they aren't a newspaper. They're more like a newspaper printing house. In my opinion they should probably…

> You can be protected by safe harbour provisions, or you can editorialise your content. I don't think you should have both. That's hilariously impractical. Just because you want to and can moderate some things doesn't mean you can guarantee rapid moderation of illegal stuff. When your platform is nominally open to everyone, and has millions of users, that just doesn't work out well.

Maybe platforms shouldn't be allowed to grow too large to manage themselves. Maybe, if strong self-regulation were a requirement, Meta and other companies wouldn't be market behemoths throwing their weight around in lobbying money to guarantee themselves monopolies while avoiding as much real scrutiny as possible.

Re: Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can be protected by safe harbour provisions, or you can editorialise your content. Aha, now this is an interesting distinction. I'm not an expert in this, as you might imagine, but what counts as editorialising? To my naive eyes, having an algorithm that re-arranges posts, or injects new subjects seems like editorialising to me.

I'm also not a lawyer, I was making that as a more vague moral distinction on the topic of free speech and accountability. For practical reasons I think those algorithms are absolutely necessary. We need spam filters. A good line to draw would be "bring your own algorithm". A technical challenge to be sure, bit breaking up social media backend providers and content filtering seems like one of the only safe ways to al…

Even spam filters are problematic.

At first, its just unsolicited commercial crap.

Then its non-corporate allowed unsolicited commercial crap.

Then its 'hide commercial crap in posts to deceive'.

Then its 'fuck over screen readers by aligning everything weird like FB to prevent finding commercial crap'

Then its "hey we can add these other non-spam categories (like Palestine) to silence them".

Re: Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request

#76
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes quite a bit further: the Muslim Brotherhood are fascists (as in actual fascists) and (religous) racists, of the supremacist kind. They are in control of the most famous university in islamic countries: Al-Azhar. Long ago they were a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and today are known for being the parent organization of Hamas and they are supporting the genocide in Sudan (meaning they are sponsoring Arabs committi…

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And that's supposed to explain it? They knew about the holocaust and chose to support it. Was there a reason for that? Yes, of course.

That's not the point.

The point is they supported it, knowing full well what they were supporting.

Re: Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request

#77
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Free speech is fundamentally about the government restricting your speech, not private platforms. There is no constitutional right to post on Facebook. Amazing how certain people do their best to ignore this, every single time.

There are laws the restricting speech. There are laws for preventing people from platforms in some cases.

Talk of what's in the constitution doesn't really matter. This person may seem not protected but a different government could go after meta for foreign influence.

It's also a lesson not to trust companies who have a global presence because they are as good as who they do business with.

Re: Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request

#78
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Free speech is fundamentally about the government restricting your speech, not private platforms. There is no constitutional right to post on Facebook. Amazing how certain people do their best to ignore this, every single time.

> Free speech is fundamentally about the government restricting your speech, not private platforms.

A corporate charter is granted at the BEHEST of the People and the Government.

They are at best an artificial entity, and should be an extension of the laws binding government.

Frankly, the current situation of "You can say whatever you want legally (well, not really), but your job will fire you for it and youll end up in a homeless encampment". Yeah, thats real freedom.

So basically its real freedom for the Musks and Trumps of the world to sieg heil on stage, but fuck the citizenry for their attempt at speaking out.

Re: Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request

#79
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Free speech” has never meant you can say or do anything you want.

Which is true here, except "do anything you want" is "be displeasing to Kuwait". It's all "they're a private company, they can ban anyone they want" right up until they ban someone who promoters of that idea don't like. Then they're suddenly horrible people for being a private company that bans anyone they want.

> It's all "they're a private company, they can ban anyone they want" right up until they ban someone who promoters of that idea don't like. Then they're suddenly horrible people for being a private company that bans anyone they want.

If they are NOT acting as an impartial aggregator and only censoring/deleting when the law demands, then they should NOT be covered under Section 230.

Thats quite simple.

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