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FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

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Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#91
post #78
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News does it. Reddit does it sitewide. Individual moderators do it sitewide. Shadowbanning is an essential tool for moderation, for dealing with trolls, spammers, abusive people. You can argue the tool is being used too widely by Facebook, but it is silly to pontificate against the practice as a whole. You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet.

>You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet. I remember the uncensored internet -it was vastly superior to what we have now. Vastly.

So were the people who used it. Times have changed. Maybe the last time you went to a bar you saw the bouncer eject some hulking meth-head, drool dribbling down his bib, for getting handsy with strangers and throwing a bottle at the bartender. Well, that meth-head has a social media presence today too.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#92
post #18

It's one thing to censor, but it's another to intentionally deceive your users into believing that they sent something.

> It's one thing to censor !!! Are we nonchalantly accepting its OK to censor and moving on to the argument about deceiving users? Edit: should add more context to this. I don't think we should be casually OK with censorship. Next thing you know, FB will silently(or not) start censoring political opponents, activists they don't like, etc. I am quite unsettled by how the west is doing the same as China. Censorship is…

>Are we nonchalantly accepting its OK to censor and moving on to the argument about deceiving users?

Personally I'm disturbed at the non-chalant attitude taken towards shadow moderation in this thread. Shadow banning and shadow moderation may make one's job easier but it has a disastrous effect on the forum or community by injecting a definite level of deceit into the moderator/poster relationship.

Any forum where shadow bans /shadow moderation are practiced the moderators by definition can not be trusted.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#93
post #18

It's one thing to censor, but it's another to intentionally deceive your users into believing that they sent something.

The censorship is intentional, but the silence is a bug in the react code. You can look at the console in chrome devtools to see. There is an error message informing the viewer that their message was censored. The message is incorrectly hidden when you send additional message.

Also refresh the page and the messages disappear from the viewer.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#94
post #78
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News does it. Reddit does it sitewide. Individual moderators do it sitewide. Shadowbanning is an essential tool for moderation, for dealing with trolls, spammers, abusive people. You can argue the tool is being used too widely by Facebook, but it is silly to pontificate against the practice as a whole. You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet.

>You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet. I remember the uncensored internet -it was vastly superior to what we have now. Vastly.

Vaaaaaastly!

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#95
post #18

It's one thing to censor, but it's another to intentionally deceive your users into believing that they sent something.

When sending torrent links (Ubuntu / Arch iso even), FB blocks it. Usually they show a red exclamation point on the message for me so this is quite weird. Of course, this is one of the reasons I don't use FB anymore.

This one also shows a red exclamation point, but because of a bug the exclamation point goes away after you send more messages. You can see it in the twitter screenshots or replicate yourself by sending any gnews link on messenger

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#96
post #78
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News does it. Reddit does it sitewide. Individual moderators do it sitewide. Shadowbanning is an essential tool for moderation, for dealing with trolls, spammers, abusive people. You can argue the tool is being used too widely by Facebook, but it is silly to pontificate against the practice as a whole. You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet.

>You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet. I remember the uncensored internet -it was vastly superior to what we have now. Vastly.

It was not because uncensored content. It was bastly superior because there was a lack of comercialization. Before SEO, before targeted ads, an internet made by educacional institutions and people with hobbies.

Nowadays allow everybody to post anything and you will only see SPAM for the rest of you life, it will become impossible to see anything of value.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#97
post #41

Microsoft silently censored MSN chats 20 years ago. Couldn't talk about PHP programming easily because any message with 'index.php' was silently dropped. Blew my mind they would dare do that, but I've since learned this is common practice at all major chat apps. If they don't like a message you are sending they are likely to silently drop it and let you think it was delivered. Just no care at all for the user experie…

>Blew my mind they would dare do that, but I've since learned this is common practice at all major chat apps.

I'm sure Discord will be no exception -though I can't think of any current examples that apply to it.

That makes me worry about the way that it's displacing/has displaced IRC.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#98
post #54
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News does it. Reddit does it sitewide. Individual moderators do it sitewide. Shadowbanning is an essential tool for moderation, for dealing with trolls, spammers, abusive people. You can argue the tool is being used too widely by Facebook, but it is silly to pontificate against the practice as a whole. You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet.

Hold your horses. It is not "the internet". It is private chat. You need to understand difference between communication that is meant to be public from one that is meant to be private. Law makes clear distinction.

Facebook is not an outlier in this case: Reddit shadowbans affect DMs too.

Not sure why you brought the law up, as far as I know what FB is doing is 100% legal.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#99
post #45

This has been happening for years. Just try sending a message containing the string `joebiden.info` and see what happens. We’re way past the rubicon. Get your information as best you can and just hope you’re somewhat aligned with the mainstream.

Reddit was also silently removing comments containing joebiden.info Not sure if they still are

One of my comments in Reddit was changed by admins. It was something related with d...

Not directly related with my comment but this is a proof https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/23/reddit-huffman-trump/

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#100
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I actually really would. I grew up with the uncensored internet and it was, on the whole, less abusive and manipulative than today's internet culture.

It’s way more likely to me that this is simply because the Internet used to be the (nearly) exclusive domain of people who were culturally like you: educated, technologically sophisticated, libertarian-leaning affluent white males. Not that you’re necessarily any or all of these things, but if you were around for “the uncensored Internet” you likely felt comfortable with that as your cultural in-group. I say this as…

You didn’t make a point in your reply.
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