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

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/21/meta-facebook-instagram-pro-palestine-censorship-human-rights-watch-report

by cratermoon • 3 years ago

648 492 3 years ago

theguardian.com

mc32• 3 years ago

What was it we used to hear? Their platform, their rules?

The fact is people are unprincipled and will either complain about free speech or will clamor for it, or complain about censorship or clamor for it depending on point of view.

I wish people were principled and stood on principle and not what dog they have in a fight.

djohnston• 3 years ago

Yep, everyone is full of shit and self interested. Accepting that makes it easy to tune out weak rhetoric from all sides.

g8oz• 3 years ago

You could try paying attention to human rights reports instead of assuming a false equivalence.

CM30• 3 years ago

Sadly I agree with this. It seems like the best summary of how most people treat free speech is basically:

"If my side is the underdog, talk about how important it is and complain that we're being censored, and if my side is winning, talk about how it's not necessary and those people can go elsewhere"

It was extremely obvious when Twitter was bought by Musk and the rules changed to favour far right wing content and rhetoric. Suddenly all the folks talking about that XKDC comic and no free speech on a private platform had a very different tune once their side was the one getting banned or censored there...

If you disagree with how a platform is run, go somewhere else.

zen928• 3 years ago

I agree that it's sad you agree with this.

Tadpole9181• 3 years ago

The vast majority of people are principled on outcomes, not the details of how to get there.

So when aiding in an attempted coup or a coordinated effort to manipulate votes to subvert democratic institutions, their principles are focused on stopping that from happening. But we simultaneously admire the founding fathers - who committed a coup and massaged democracy to embed their own power and ideals. And it's regularly asked (though less commonly with time) why Germans didn't just "kill Hitler", by people who would call the assassination of Abraham Lincoln appalling. Because it aligns with their principles for the outcome of "a better world for people", which is what they actually care about.

Being dogmatic on the implementation details is important as a preventative measure for abuse by bad actors later, mostly. But forgetting that the end goal is a more just world is just as deadly, because it can let institutions be warped and abused, even if they technically don't break "principles". Plus, I think the last 100 years have made it fairly clear that the real threats and tyrant don't care, they'll just break your principled rules and just... Do it?

Anyway, I find it curious that you call "being against an active genocide of a race of people, the murder of innocent women and children in their open-air prison" a simple "dog in the fight". As if stopping thousands of deaths isn't worth breaking a principle or two? Now I don't know enough about the situation to say that's what's happening or not, but that's what these people are the very least feel. Try to use that perspective when engaging the discussion.

whats_a_quasar2• 3 years ago

The platforms are large enough now that there is a public interest in the moderation decisions that they make. Like a utility or a mail carrier or an internet service provider, if you reach a certain size in an industry that tends towards a natural monopoly, then the public has an interest in regulating your behavior towards neutrality.

Chris2048• 3 years ago

Their platform, their rules?

This works at a national level too: "our country, our rules (laws)"

And FB and the like have been found to break a number of laws in the past: https://edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/12-billion-euro-fine-f...

Perhaps alternative planforms would have a better chance if FB played fair?

JoshTriplett• 3 years ago

What was it we used to hear? Their platform, their rules?

Yes, and it's absolutely still their platform and their rules. And people also have every right to criticize that platform and its rules, as they're doing. What Meta is doing is wrong, but it should emphatically not be illegal.

cscurmudgeon• 3 years ago

What Meta is doing is wrong

The very first example in the report is "river to the sea" which is arguably a dog whistle for genocide. Parts of liberal Europe have banned this slogan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea#Lega...

UrineSqueegee• 3 years ago

Eh this is really tricky, for exampe if I open instagram, Threads or tiktok 9/10 posts will be pro-palestinian with 1 being pro-israeli. Then some of the propalestinian post will be calling for genocide or celebrating the massacre of oct 7.

IMO you shouldn't censor anything. That's the only solution. When something is propaganda or false just quickly tag it as such with why it is false like Xitter does.

rottencupcakes• 3 years ago

Twitter has surprisingly become much better since Elon purchased it. The community tags are great and non-partisan, they fairly report on all inaccuracy.

Even advertisers aren’t immune, I’ve seen community tags on paid ads calling them out for being drop shippers.

GaryNumanVevo2• 3 years ago

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

cmur• 3 years ago

I have had the opposite experience with X, I find it hard to escape any cheap rage bait on my feed regardless of how I would tag or hide pages. It’s interesting you have this experience, though.

brightball• 3 years ago

In a 2 day span I saw George Soros and Tucker Carlson get hit by Community Notes.

Gave me some hope that Elon is serious.

anigbrowl7• 3 years ago

Pointing out yet again that Community Notes long precedes Musk's purchase of Twitter. It got going in early 2021; I was one of the first batch to sign up for it, although I think it had been in developments for a year or so before that. January 6 rattled a lot of people at Twitter so I suspect that influenced the timing of the rollout.

Perhaps the confusion is that CN was originally called 'Birdwatch' and people don't realize they're the same thing.

d3w4s9• 3 years ago

I guess you haven't read any news for a while.

Advertisers are fleeing Twitter and nobody knows how much longer Twitter will exist, because, well, they don't want their ads to be displayed next to Nazi content, in any circumstances.

If you find Twitter better, good for you for swimming in that kind of content.

dehrmann2• 3 years ago

IMO you shouldn't censor anything. That's the only solution.

Full disclosure: I work for Meta, but not on ranking, and my opinions are my own. Edit: this isn't specific to Meta; it's common to all content platforms.

This is really hard. There's universally objectionable material like CSAM. That's (politically) easy to exclude. There are leaked state secrets the public should know. There's hate speech (laws vary by country). Sexual material (laws vary). Nudity (laws and customs vary). Then there's libel (which is hard and slow to prove). That's just on the legal side. That's what you're calling for, but that's hard enough. I have no idea how Kiwi Farms and 4chan do it.

Then there's ranking. Maybe the posts are there if you know where to look, but realistically, you'll never see them. People say "just show the posts in chronological order," but this doesn't scale for humans reading it, especially as you follow more people.

mcny• 3 years ago

but this doesn't scale for humans reading it, especially as you follow more people.

Just having the option to not see anything I am not explicitly following and always seeing posts in reverse chronological order would be nice.

Right now I barely ever go to Facebook because my timeline is a mess. I've manually unfollowed all my friends and yet the spam comes through.

HashThis• 3 years ago

What you are effectively saying is "people in Meta will decide to be on one political side or the other. They will pick one political side to lose. They will sort/rank to be effectively censored (not scene in common usage). Pretend that can't be escaped". It can be escaped. Having the power to censor one political side is just too addicting for meta to use the self-control to not abuse that power. That is what is happening.

ignoramous8• 3 years ago

This is really hard. There's universally objectionable material like CSAM. That's (politically) easy to exclude.

You're right. Instagram feeds can get quite 4chan esque: https://www.wsj.com/tech/meta-instagram-video-algorithm-chil... Even so, TFA claims that Meta has figured out a way to suppress pro-Pal content... so clearly, something's up?

wernercd• 3 years ago

"this doesn't scale" Yet it did fine for years before removing sane options.

calamari40652• 3 years ago

People say "just show the posts in chronological order," but this doesn't scale for humans reading it, especially as you follow more people.

I fail to see how this is a problem. Much less one that necessitates spending billions of dollars developing sorting and recommendation algorithms to solve.

Unless your priority is not "show the user what they have explicitly requested to see".

Users were perfectly happy when twitter, Facebook, tumblr, MySpace, and literally every other site was a reverse chronological feed. Now that they aren't, we have federated social media with no algorithm, just reverse chronological. People are perfectly happy with it now, same as always.

If you follow too many people to keep up with, the problem is that you follow too many people. Users will self regulate. If you give them filtering and sorting tools, they'll use them.

It's crazy that we keep reinventing the same solutions and wonder why heaping additional complexity on top of the original idea does nothing but make it worse. You'd figure that someone somewhere would be at least aware of what came before, but apparently not.

We're just gonna keep inventing wheels, and keep touting how many more edges this new wheel has compared to the last one until we get back to round and wonder where it all went wrong.

octacat3• 3 years ago

Does not scale, sure, if 2 posts are from random people I am not interested in, 2 posts are ads. Repeat. That is the current feed on instagram.

whstl• 3 years ago

"People say "just show the posts in chronological order," but this doesn't scale for humans reading it, especially as you follow more people."

That's just rationalizing a business decision. Nobody is saying there should be no algorithmic timeline. If it "doesn't scale" for my own timeline, that's 100% on me. Why take away the decision or "nudge" into the other direction?

If the algorithmic timeline really were THAT better, there would be zero need to remove the chronological option or "forget" when the user sets it as an option. People would just use it.

jancsika• 3 years ago

People say "just show the posts in chronological order," but this doesn't scale for humans reading it, especially as you follow more people.

People say they want kind, honest car salesmen, but that doesn't scale for the kind of overleveraged floor plans and impulsive, short-term thinking that characterize most dealerships.

tsol• 3 years ago

This isn't a universal problem though: only Instagram and Facebook have these accusations

oooyay• 3 years ago

"People say "just show the posts in chronological order," but this doesn't scale for humans reading it, especially as you follow more people."

I'm not sure I agree with you. I'm in 40+ IRC channels and multiple networks. I have an IRC Bouncer with playback enabled and my window stops when I log off at the place where I left off. I can easily scroll back to the bottom an see what's current. Same thing goes for Discord and Slack.

I have never in my life thought, "wow I wish I could get a summary of all the dumb shit said in ##chat and ##politics in the same place when I come back." Maybe, just maybe, I don't need to know the highlights of everything that's happened since I last logged on?

arp2424• 3 years ago

IMO you shouldn't censor anything. That's the only solution. When something is propaganda or false just quickly tag it as such with why it is false like Xitter does.

It seems to me this just moves the problem, because then we'd be having discussions about how this stuff is wrongly tagged, no? Also who does the tagging? Random users? See how well that will work.

And I'm fairly certain Twitter still removes stuff? If I post "gas the Jews" or "gas the Arabs" I wouldn't expect that to stay up?

octacat3• 3 years ago

Even tricker that if there is not enough moderation, Apple could remove your app or some government would ban it.

lostlogin• 3 years ago

IMO you shouldn't censor anything. That's the only solution.

The two things that immediately come to my mind are the organisation of the genocide of Rohingya [1] and the live streaming of the Christchurch mosque massacre [2]. Both of these were promoted by Facebook too I believe.

Free speech absolutists see no issue with allowing that content to exist. I believe in free speech, but believe it has limits. It’s good to see the FB employee, dehrmann, with sane (personal) comments.

[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/29/facebook-new...

wvenable• 3 years ago

IMO you shouldn't censor anything.

What is the platform for? Checking out pictures of your grandchildren and keeping up on with the knitting group or is it for an international propaganda war? If you censor nothing then it's no longer a platform, it's a war zone. You can argue that the censorship is unfair, politically skewed, etc but you can't argue that it shouldn't be done at all or there won't be one inch of the Internet not dedicated to this and every other conflict everywhere.

If HN itself went completely uncensored it would become useless to us almost immediately. Who ever posts most, wins.

pityJuke• 3 years ago

Eh this is really tricky, for exampe if I open instagram, Threads or tiktok 9/10 posts will be pro-palestinian

Yeah. I don't think I've seen any pro-Israeli content on Instagram, just overwhelming comment spam on random posts asking said content creator to acknowledge Palestine.

As for Threads, both are common.

perfectritone• 3 years ago

At the beginning of the conflict I noticed my feed was fully leaning towards supporting Israel, even if it was only the posts of 3 people. Somehow the 30+ people demanding the stop to the bombing of civilians didn't really start appearing until late November.

They were posting the entire time, but Meta's algorithm decided not to show it to me.

sgregnt• 3 years ago

"At the beginning of the conflict..."

Tostino• 3 years ago

Yes... You had plenty of people saying "this is going to be your own version of Afghanistan/Iraq if you decide to do what you want to do..."

Israel wanted revenge, not a solution. Their strategy has guaranteed that there will be another cycle of violence as the kids that grew up seeing their parents blown up in airstrikes are understandably going to be ripe for recruiting into whatever organization steps into power in place of Hamas.

cthaeh• 3 years ago

Can someone explain how every single post about Palestine/Israel is flagged and removed the instant it hits front page?

I have seen this with around 4-5 threads personally and who knows how many I missed

dang9• 3 years ago

Users are flagging them. I don't think it's hard to understand why: it's a divisive and flameprone topic.

Two positions that people urge us to take (different people, obviously) are (1) treat it as off topic and flag everything; or (2) have no limits, which means letting it dominate the front page. Neither of these positions are viable for HN. For reasons why I say that, see past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... - these are general explanations, not specifically about Gaza, but they apply to that also.

HN has had at least two major related threads so far:

The pro-Israel information war - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 - Dec 2023 (1673 comments)

'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 - Dec 2023 (1309 comments)

Here are some explanations I posted the last time this question of flags came up, in case helpful at all:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657829

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527

Obviously we want commenters to have thoughtful, respectful, open conversation with each other rather than just fighting a war on HN. Equally obviously, it's pretty hard to avoid the latter. These things can only be 'graded on a curve', i.e. moderation has to shift somewhat, relative to the topic - not to do that would be expecting people not to be human, which is a losing proposition. But that does not mean the rules somehow switch off. Accounts that break the HN guidelines egregiously (such as by getting aggressive or posting in the flamewar style) are going to get warned and/or banned, regardless of who they're battling for or against. More than that, I'm not sure what we can do.

user982• 3 years ago

Have you noticed any patterns or organization in the flagging and voting of this subject, or does it all look organic?

cratermoon• 3 years ago

Thank you dang for allowing this discussion. Our profession needs to wrestle with issues like this openly, and do so in a respectful way in the spirit of John Milton and John Stewart Mill.

verse• 3 years ago

posting in the flamewar style

What is the flamewar style?

anigbrowl7• 3 years ago

The pro-Israel information war - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 - Dec 2023 (1673 comments)

I posted that one, and while it went somewhat well by the standards of such a controversial topic, it was still contentious and had a lot of bad feeling. I submitted it because there was a nexus to both the dynamics of influence operations and individual movers and shakes in the SV community.

In general I think submitting on a topic like this requires some sort of hacker-specific angle - involving people in the industry, or the impact of technological change, or a new dynamic emerging from some unexpected source (eg cheap consumer-tech drones in the Ukraine conflict).

It's not that other topics shouldn't be discussed on HN, anything sufficiently unusual to be news cn be worth a look. But we should also be mindful that if the community can't provide more than baseline insight/expertise on a trending news topic, the resulting discussion will probably be shallow and have little value.

asylteltine• 3 years ago

Because it doesn’t belong here and it’s inflammatory. Also most articles are heavily biased but claim not to be. For example, they trust numbers given by an internationally recognized terrorist organization. But tell me again how it’s not biased.

cultofmetatron8• 3 years ago

I've also had my por palestinian posts flagged. the really insane thing is I never call for violence and every assertion I make about human rights violations I make gets backed up with a link to a documentary or news story. I even tryto avoid using aljezeera as a my lone source. Over the last to months I've spent a lot of time researching teh history of the conflict and it becomes clear that the israeli side depends on people being apathetic to whats going on.

Tainnor2• 3 years ago

it becomes clear that the israeli side depends on people being apathetic to whats going on.

this is flamebait

quitit• 3 years ago

Possibly due to the topic attracting emotional, inflammatory responses rather than an objective, on-topic discussion.

Some people can't resist and have to turn every thread into a battlefield as if this achieves something on the ground. (Often citing the exact same disinformation that has been propagating across social media.)

whats_a_quasar2• 3 years ago

This post was flagged, but I don't think it should have been and I hope it stays up. I have been grateful that HN hasn't had the same level of animosity about the conflict in Gaza as other places on the internet. But this news article is about a core issue in tech, and should be discussed on HN. The whole world now uses social media to communicate, which means that when there's a war, partisans of both sides will be motivated to fight out the propaganda war on the platforms that tech built.

I wonder if there will ever be a way for a global-sized platform which uses algorithmic content feeds to convincingly show moderation neutrality on a topic like this. The HRW report has 1,000 examples of peaceful pro-Palestinian content that was removed by Meta. But only Meta themselves has the information to know whether there is systematic bias. So we get a situation where people sympathetic to both sides both come away feeling that the platform is biased. I think the U.S. culture war has similar dynamics.

My engineer brain wants to solve this by giving users more visibility into moderation decisions. Maybe statistics on deleted posts, more legible moderation rules, publicly posted justifications for moderation decisions. Another part of my brain thinks that maybe this is just an unsolvable problem for social reasons in a community that's global-scale. I'm not sure. I do feel like this is still Meta's job, part of their cost of doing business, and if they put something like 5% of their revenue into moderation the situation would be a lot better.

In the meantime I find myself personally trying to cut out as many algorithmic feeds as I can from my life. I prefer the curation of a news website or podcast, small group discussions, or 1:1 communication with people I trust. Algorithmic feeds are easy but so far have never done a good job covering issues where there is real conflict between two groups.

throwaway55479• 3 years ago

That is "the beauty" of this conflict (if something this heinous could ever have a beautiful side): It poses many interesting technical challenges. But, quite understandably, people everywhere (including HN) are fast to move the "warring" right onto our screens (hence the flagging).

So, as you mentioned, algorithmic feeds is one of them. There are many others like how to create temporary infrastructure for such a besieged, war-torn city [0].

I suppose many would say, "This goes for all wars, what is special about this one?" Well, I would argue this is a "special conflict". It is one of (if not THE) longest-running military occupation in the world [1], where, coincidentally, the US spends its largest tax-payers-funded foreign aid [2].

Edit: And because many are now commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, it is worth recalling that it is also special for being that birth's place (spiritually, if not literally).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38673300

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_occupations

[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/which-countries-receive-...

nomdep• 3 years ago

PS: For many (myself included), Christmas is about loving your family and not “the birth of Jesus Christ”, even if their mothers see it that way

bitwize• 3 years ago

My engineer brain wants to solve this by giving users more visibility into moderation decisions.

Visibility into moderation decisions makes them more gameable/exploitable/circumventable. The whole purpose of moderation is to remove unwanted speech; justifying the fairness of such removal is only secondary, and can be elided if it interferes with the primary goal.

Hence "You have been banned because your posts violate our Terms of Service" messages with no further explanation, and things like shadowbanning. It sucks to be on the receiving end of these things but they make online communities much more pleasant.

infotainment2• 3 years ago

Exactly; consider the "censorship" that everyone generally agrees with, spam filtering. If the precise nature of the spam filter is known (keyword lists, etc), then it becomes much easier to design emails that avoid being filtered.

anigbrowl7• 3 years ago

This is basically an argument for getting rid of laws and ruling by fiat, with a judicial process that amounts to repeating 'you know what you did' whether or not that is honest.

gumballindie2• 3 years ago

My engineer brain wants to solve this by giving users more visibility into moderation decisions.

Politics are not an engineer’s job, nor is content moderation.

heresie-dabord• 3 years ago

this news article is about a core issue in tech

I agree. Let's assume that a Social-Media Business (SMBiz) gains sufficient value from hosting topical discussion to want to continue. But there is cost, reputational risk, and lawyers are expensive. How can SMBiz effectively moderate a conversation/debate/flamewar about a controversial event or subject, especially when the SMbiz wants to maximise user engagement while respecting laws and government requests?

Like it or not, that's the business reality. People who want a truly neutral discussion platform that operates with transnational freedom and total personal freedom will find that their ideals alone are not enough to sustain the business.

Prior Art: People often say that HN's Dang and Slashdot's moderation system are the best examples of "effective moderation" that we know. If the moderation is effective, it means SMBiz is attentive to topics and comments and discussion is insightful and interesting; it isn't overwhelmed by frivolity, falsehoods, defamation, and death threats (FFDDs). If the job is done well, SMBiz may even receive accolades. See Reddit's recent experience with its moderators for a negative example.

Here are some of the rules that will need to be applied, in stochastic FIFO order. Items are lettered for reference.

a= At all times, keep a clear eye on the business equation. Effective moderation will have a significant cost. At any scale!

b= Seed the discussion with verified accounts/users. Reputation must be earned and maintained. See Prior Art.

c= Rate limiting, especially for controversial topics. No short, stupid Reddit posts. People must weigh their words. Sometimes, the microphone must be disabled.

d= No flamewars, no propaganda, no falsehoods. See Prior Art. Lock any discussion that achieves high FFDDs. Throw away accounts, ban offenders. Make it sting.

e= No anonymity unless a verified account/user has sufficient reputation to post in anonymous mode. But it costs in ReputationCoin.

f= No bots, no bridages. See Prior Art to estimate workload and infrastructure.

g= Enable and reward trusted moderators. See Prior Art.

= = = Final Notes

My engineer brain wants to solve this

I get that you are very interested in the Moderation Problem, but I think this wording wins no support. Backers will say that you are way out of your social depth, and people in the debate will dismiss your intent as naivety or bike-shedding (frivolous or misplaced optimisation) or a combination of the two.

One important reason why HN succeeds because Dan G (who is indeed attentive, and principled) rejects the most ungovernable type of conversation: flamewars.

convincingly show moderation neutrality on a topic like this

There is no neutrality, of course. SMBiz can state its bias and interests clearly. But it will be hard to make a profit from achieving neutrality because strident factions in polarised debate do not want neutrality.

dlubarov6• 3 years ago

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 it would probably take generations for sentiment to change. It would be hard for Israelis to just accept that they will be attacked for generations, with increasing sophistication (mainly thanks to Iran's support), with no response.

sudosysgen8• 3 years ago

This is greatly complicated by the fact that Israel materially supported Hamas and saw it as useful.

Ultimately Israelis don't have to suffer serious attacks from Hamas. Hamas doesn't have that power, militarily - only gross incompetence from the IDF allows that kind of attack.

On the other hand, Israel is not facing good geopolitical headwinds. As Yemen demonstrated, they are extremely vulnerable to a blockade. One day, in the not so distant future, the US won't be able to intercept all the missiles of Israel's enemies on its behalf, and Israel will have to contend with the threat of a total blockade.

So Israel desperately needs to make amends with its Arab neighbors, and it can stop any real attack from Hamas. That makes the situation pretty different and assymetrical.

It also bears note that, if you judge Gaza as a country, it would not be able to cause any act of agression, as the Israeli blockade alone constitutes an act of war and a casus belli. That of course doesn't justify Hamas's inhuman war crimes, but acting as if war is unprovoked is not consistent with reality - Israel has never, by the definitions in international law, stopped actively waging war against Gaza.

dlubarov6• 3 years ago

I agree Israel ought to be able to prevent similar ground invasions, but what about rockets?

The Iron Dome has been relatively effective so far, but the technological gap won't last forever. Hamas has already acquired rockets like the Fajr-5, despite the blockade. Once they start using guidance systems, the destruction will be much greater, and 90% interception rate won't be good enough.

Even if Israel could limit the damage in the long term, it doesn't seem politically viable to just tolerate repeated attacks with no response. So I think it's inevitable that Israel will have to remove Hamas from power, no matter the geopolitical cost.

edanm• 3 years ago

Ultimately Israelis don't have to suffer serious attacks from Hamas. Hamas doesn't have that power, militarily - only gross incompetence from the IDF allows that kind of attack.

While there were gigantic failures that no one denies, possibly to the level of gross incompetence, Israel is also fighting against a real enemy, not some cartoon. Hamas is also smart, is increasingly well-armed, and can wait many years until the next attack. It's not clear that Israel can defend against every conceivable attack that Hamas can mount, and staying completely vigilant all the time is very costly economically, too. (I'll note that Hamas puts a lot of money and labor into these attacks, but they are pretty freely stealing from their people; the Israeli government can't do the same.)

It's true that, on its own, Hamas can't actually conquer Israel. But it can clearly carry out massive attacks that kill thousands and completely upend all life in Israel, and it's possible that they can keep doing this every couple of years.

So Israel desperately needs to make amends with its Arab neighbors, and it can stop any real attack from Hamas. That makes the situation pretty different and assymetrical.

Actually, Israel is on relatively good terms with all its Arab neighbors (relative to the past), and was on the verge of formalizing those good relations with Saudi Arabia. That's one of the reasons for this Hamas attack - to try and stop the Israeli-Arab peace process, because they feel (very likely correctly) that it leaves the Palestinians in a worse situation.

It also bears note that, if you judge Gaza as a country, it would not be able to cause any act of agression, as the Israeli blockade alone constitutes an act of war and a casus belli.

Well, they did elect Hamas and fairly quickly start to shoot rockets at Israel. And by that token they are also at war with Egypt.

Gaza isn't a fully independent country, obviously, but it's also not under full military occupation like it was before. People insisting on one or the other usually have a point that it helps them prove, but reality is more complicated.

I do believe that it is directionally true that Gazans could've made far more of their situation once Israel withdrew, and Hamas has basically squandered that opportunity by turning to violence.

itsoktocry3• 3 years ago

in the not so distant future, the US won't be able to intercept all the missiles of Israel's enemies on its behalf, and Israel will have to contend with the threat of a total blockade.

The US + Israel + allies can/will absolutely level these countries if necessary. Both history and current events demonstrate that. Do you really think they are at the mercy of what Yemen does?

geysersam• 3 years ago

would probably take generations for sentiment to change

It will likely take forever unless steps are taken to initiate a peace process.

zo1• 3 years ago

Honestly I'm not sure how we can start a peace process after the terrorist atrocities that were committed?

At this point I think the best is to just evacuate all Palestinians to the rest of the Arab countries as refugees and then just leave the contested territory as unoccupied and "dmz" like for both sides.

And honestly where tf is the UN in all of this?

ignoramous8• 3 years ago

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...

reissbaker9• 3 years ago

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...

dang9• 3 years ago

(This was originally a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38746496, but I detached it from there, i.e. moved it to the top level, because this subthread is better than the surrounding flamewar it was in.)

londons_explore2• 3 years ago

One day, there will be a bigish war, and comms between the sides will be cut off, either by law, or all comms links severed.

At that point, every global business will have to figure out how to split their business in two, their database in two, their server infrastructure in two, etc. and have both halves work.

I suspect that few businesses have prepared for such an eventuality, and I suspect severe disruption can be expected when it happens.

For anyone designing something new today, the main prep you can do is to never use sequences for database ID's. By using random id's, you can mostly let your replicated database partition itself, and a later merge isn't too hard as long as most users have been operating on only one side of the divide.

krisoft• 3 years ago

At that point, every global business will have to figure out how to split their business in two, their database in two, their server infrastructure in two, etc. and have both halves work.

Or give up serving one side. Probably the one the executives of the company don't live in. Like how many companies stopped operating in Russia after their war in Ukraine got into high gear.

hx8• 3 years ago

In such a situation, I foresee something more like the splitting of the Roman Empire. There's no reason to stop serving global customers just because the users are separated from HQ. Especially if the servers are already on both sides of the geo-political border.

londons_explore2• 3 years ago

Did many businesses stop operating in russia? Or did many of those shops/restaurants/etc physically located in Russia simply rename and continue operations independent from the parent company?

For example, Mcdonalds is now operated as Vkusno i tochka [1], and has awfully similar menu and branding to Mcdonalds.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vkusno_i_tochka

owlstuffing• 3 years ago

“halves”

NikolaNovak• 3 years ago

I love, in honestly both somewhat sarcastic but mostly very real sense, that hacker news discussion of global thermonuclear war...is how to prepare your database unique ID scheme for unforeseen sharding :->

morkalork2• 3 years ago

We may be living in a radiological hellscape but at least we won't have ID collisions!

dekhn• 3 years ago

"The great EU/US Spanner schism of 2032"

mensetmanusman• 3 years ago

Just do what everyone does to fragile egos. You show Russia and China what they believe, and you show the rest of the world something else.

preommr• 3 years ago

For anyone designing something new today, the main prep you can do

"Our new SaaS offers high security, reslience to deal with usage spikes, and compatability with doomsday scenarios where fascist governments have taken over during war-time while implementing draconic wars that are to sure to end with society as a dystopian nightmare. Oh, and we're Soc 2 compliant."

8note• 3 years ago

These types of things are already arriving via data sovereignty laws.

Any global business will arrive in such a war already having split businesses

charcircuit• 3 years ago

This already exists with China. You have to run a Chinese version of your infra that is separate from the global version.

anigbrowl7• 3 years ago

In such dire straits as you describe, companies and individuals will likely be forbidden to provide any sort of commercial services to the opposing side.

fngjdflmdflg• 3 years ago

Any distributed database worth its salt is already using UUIDs of some sort.

RcouF1uZ4gsC2• 3 years ago

I think most companies will naturally align a certain way and there won’t be a big deal compared to the actual war.

The Western companies: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon will all align with the US

The European companies will align with the US as well

The Chinese companies Huwaei, ByteDance, Alibaba will align with China.

orenlindsey2• 3 years ago

Censorship has been done to both people with right-wing views and left-wing views. It's not a question of if it's been done.

We need to stop censorship of people on both sides. Obviously, this is very hard (or it would have been done by now). My idealist brain wants some big, overarching solution but I don't think that's really possible.

RangerScience• 3 years ago

There’s a good piece from someone (formerly?) at Reddit about how to do moderation without consideration if content; I’m not expressing a take either way behind it being worth a look.

boston_clone6• 3 years ago

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 seems almost parallel to the paradox of tolerance in that algorithms which promote content at a global scale - largely without human oversight - should not be unregulated.

It is factual to say that human rights violations are occurring in Palestine. It is also factual to say that people have a right to defend themselves, and to recognize that atrocities are atrocious. But to silence the already-oppressed furthers oppression, and Meta is to blame here, again.

We should also consider the potential implications that Meta, with a market capitalization of hundreds of billions of dollars, has in regard to US foreign policy vis-a-vis support of Israel.

orenlindsey2• 3 years ago

Supporting Palestine is generally a left-wing view (proof: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/07/11/american-views...).

So Meta is censoring a mostly left-wing viewpoint.

logicchains• 3 years ago

misinformation should be censored.

Misinformation is just information that people in power don't want people knowing.

rightbyte6• 3 years ago

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?

psyman• 3 years ago

Not only Meta, but Reddit, Google as well

rightbyte6• 3 years ago

It boils down to the algorithmic feed, where Zuckerberg decides what the users see and not the users. Old Facebook didn't have that problem, where there more or less was a chronological order of friends' post. That systems also did not have any problem with "troll farms" (do those even exist, anyway?) since those could not reach you in the first place.

On places like Reddit, I get this feeling that some bot network control most subs. It seems to be major manipulation of down votes and upvotes. The atmosphere is way to aligned to be real.

octacat3• 3 years ago

In the incoming world of AI generated garbage content, Meta decided to kill feeds from your friends and pages you follow. That is "great" strategic planning.

hipadev23• 3 years ago

The atmosphere is way to aligned to be real.

I think it’s identical here on HN. Upvoting, downvoting, and using flagging to suppress contrary opinions is rampant and has a huge negative impact toward discussion. I think it’s just the topic du jour on HN is less escalated (usually opinions of tech choices) so it doesn’t seem as extreme.

paulmd3• 3 years ago

Be sure to turn on showdead, it absolutely should be enabled with the amount of suppression and brigading and rules-lawyering that takes place

smt88• 3 years ago

using flagging to suppress contrary opinions is rampant and has a huge negative impact toward discussion

I've had showdead turned on for years and have rarely seen contrary opinions flagged, if ever.

The main things I see flagged are personal attacks, open bigotry, flaming, etc. Occasionally I used to see anti-CCP comments flagged, but I haven't seen that in a while. I'd be interested to see some examples where you think something was unjustly flagged.

rightbyte6• 3 years ago

It is not as bad on HN. I mean, we disagree right now, right?

It is not about technical topics but about the persons. HN got better discussion climate about the Israel-Hamas war too, then say Reddit.

On some half-obvious corporate shill post I've gotten some 'unfair' (according to me) grey out down votes for being critical, where it was obvious that none but shills would care enough to downvote. So the problem do exist, but it ain't too bad.

Reddit is a whole other league of bad.

Der_Einzige• 3 years ago

I’ve had my spicy posts get downvoted within 10 seconds of me making the post. Impossible for that to always be organic. Glad others observe this here. Dang will of course deny this happens, but it is happening for sure.

wslh• 3 years ago

On another news, the UN, which is a political international organization, and not a company or an "app", have a large blind spot for many attrocities around the world.

It is important to criticize those apps but most important to look at the reality you really face, like "Denmark and Germany arrest terror suspects planning attacks in Europe" [1].

Also, you can follow by the HRW 2023 report [2]. I think they forgot to put an executive summary that gives you a quick glance around the world. [3] helps.

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/europe/article/2023/12/14/denmark-...

[2] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023

[3] https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2023/01/World%...

karim79• 3 years ago

Whataboutism[0] at its finest.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

zawaideh• 3 years ago

Hashtags like #GazaStarving got banned on Instagram for no reason. Yea there is bad censorship.

taskforcegemini• 3 years ago

are the pictures of the hostages being removed for no reason?

gumballindie2• 3 years ago

I have nearly no followers on Threads and follow only 2-3 people yet somehow I am bombarded with pro palestine content on the odd occasion i open it. I somehow doubt the guardian is right on this one. This “newspaper” is known to gave all sorts of dubious agendas.

dventimi• 3 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20181105214850/https://www.alter...

23B1• 3 years ago

People still use Facebook?

ignoramous8• 3 years ago

Instagram, yes. Some billion of them, I'd hazard a guess.

b0ner_t0ner• 3 years ago

(Depending on your country) Whatsapp has Channels, some of those news channels' views are completely one-sided.

ThinkBeat2• 3 years ago

This is something people have to relearn over and over again.

A lot of the people who are not upset with Meta limiting opinions and content related to the war in Gaza¹. Were gloating and happy when Meta limited opinions and content from right wing politicians² not so long ago.

Once you invite censorship for content you dont like, how can you expect it wont bite you in the ass later on.

This is why freedom of speech is an important principle. That overshadows how someone "feels" about speech.

Everyone is in favor of freedom of speech. ""Dictators such as Stalin and Hitler, were in favor of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise." -Noam Chomsky

Slightly related though originating from a different context.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak for me. —Martin Niemöller

Which in this context I use it to highlight that the protection of freedom of speech is not something you can ignore because you dont care about a topic. One must speak out against censorship and against limiting freedom of speech, whenever it is being limited. If we dont, then it becomes a bit more limited, and a little bit more, and eventually it will strike upon something you do care about, and it is far too late to speak up.

¹,² For this post I am assuming this is accurate. But i cannot prove either.

Aeolun5• 3 years ago

I think the problem with the right wing politicians was that they were presenting their warped view of reality as fact?

fourseventy• 3 years ago

As if the left wing politicians dont also present warped facts.

canadiantim3• 3 years ago

That's what everyone says when they want to censor someone they don't like

echelon• 3 years ago

"Freedom of speech for me, not for thee."

Those at both sides of the political horseshoe [1] want it this way, and do not believe the pendulum will swing out of their favor.

The best way to enshrine this in society is with new legislation to protect our means of communication (won't happen) or robust P2P social protocols (also probably won't happen).

Remember that the ACLU used to defend everyone. Even distasteful groups such as the KKK, neo-Nazis, Nation of Islam, NAMBLA, Westboro Baptist Church. And that's what it takes to defend free speech. Defending even the speech and the people you don't like.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

abeppu4• 3 years ago

While I agree that one's views on censorship should not be based on whether one agrees or disagrees with the views presently impacted, I don't think your comparisons are reasonable for multiple reasons:

- Stalin and Hitler were _state_ censorship, where the state itself (and its heavy-handed use of force) were used to silence dissent. Meta is not a state, and Meta is not itself using force.

- When Niemöller says "they came for ...", he doesn't mean shadow-banning social media accounts. Silencing accounts on social media isn't _nothing_ but it's also definitely not equivalent to being sent to a prison camp.

- I think there is a legitimate broader question about what "censorship" should mean when talking about companies whose products involve communication. A requirement that user-provided messages should have equal reach irrespective of what they're saying seems to is in tension with the firm having its own freedom to not put certain things on their screens, on pages with their branding.

One must speak out against censorship and against limiting freedom of speech, whenever it is being limited.

- I also think there's a legitimate question of whether people have a right to spread false information, including deliberate misinformation, irrespective of the platform. Claims that a chemical is medically effective in treating a specific disease need to be backed by clinical evidence. Intentionally lying to harm someone's reputation is defamation. "Censorship" in the form of "you can't criticize The Party" or "you can't publish that novel with its dangerous ideas" seems pretty different from "you can't say that your horse drug treats covid". Perhaps all viewpoints should have the same freedoms of expression, but we don't get to have our own facts. One can have principled reasons for believing that not all speech should be equally free.

belorn• 3 years ago

I don't think the question will land on the issue if people have a right to spread false information. Instead the big question will be if people have a right to decide which information is false and which is not. If people do not have this right, and we instead want a small elected people to have a exclusive right to define which information is false, then what form of process should those people be elected.

A common argument of anti-censorship advocacy is to only allow censorship if a court of law has agrees to it, and then only if that law is identical in every country. Only then do we have a direct link between elected people who has mandate to define what is true and what is false.

With the covid chemical in question one should ask why the person who suggested horse drugs was not charged and found guilty in the country where they reside. Why did the law allow people to provide harmful medical advice in time of a pandemic?

chiefalchemist3• 3 years ago

Freedom of speech is drastically compromised when there's a lower and lower ceiling of freedom of thought. Meta or any platform limiting speech is a 2x "win" because it also limits further proliferation of such ideas.

That is, people can't think what they aren't aware of. People can't change their minds when the alternatives are limited.

paulmd3• 3 years ago

Even here there are some thoughts you are not allowed to voice. And I’m not just talking about violence/etc but calling out ideas too vigorously etc will get you censored here too. “Flamewar style” is the trope used to justify it.

and in general this site also has a massive trend of people who are losing a debate leaning in to rules-lawyering as a means of suppressing disagreement etc.

“sorry sir you’re not allowed to mention that they didn’t read the literally-one-line parent comment and are replying to the exact opposite of the argument it’s making! Flagged my good sir, this is a forum for civil debate!”

A truly open and free debate includes the freedom to point out that the moon is not made of cheese and in fact I do think less of you for arguing that it is. But that’s back to the “flamewar style”. In reality not everyone is engaging in good faith or isn’t just part of some shitty bandwagon/etc and banning the ability to call that out just lowers the debate, because now it becomes a deliberate strategy that is formed by the rules themselves. Gameplaying rules-lawyering maximalists will ruin anything.

at some level, anti-censorship and curation are fundamentally opposed goals. You can’t have a high level of discourse and also be covering 101-level or incoherent arguments. And attempting to do so produces a false equivalence which results in worse outcomes for truth-seeking. The moon is not made of green cheese and it’s a waste of everyone’s time to rebut that in every single thread, against someone who doesn’t want to admit that it’s an incoherent position.

nradov2• 3 years ago

I agree with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that Congress should consider extending common carrier rules to large social media platforms and force them to carry all legal content. This would in a sense be a form of "compelled speech" in that those companies would have to expend resources to distribute communicates that their management finds objectionable, but at scale the marginal costs would be virtually zero. And they would still be able to give individual users the tools to filter out or block content that they don't want to see.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-th...

eviks• 3 years ago

At scale the marginal cost would be the platform losing users to smaller platforms with less compelled garbage

And at another scale another cost would be that you're compelled to say something you find objectionable

Tainnor2• 3 years ago

Legal according to whom? The laws are different in different countries.

cvalka• 3 years ago

Unworkable. Relevancy neutrality is unworkable. Think his idea through. Justice Thomas is not an independent thinker. Justice Scalia was an independent thinker, justice Thomas is malleable by the conservative Zeitgeist. Please take his ideas with a grain of salt.

sam0x17• 3 years ago

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 school boards to get basic LGBT literature banned, who have no problem being hypocritical about the fact that they just want to censor things they disagree with but will leave literal Nazi literature alone). It's an arms race of who can control the dialogue and get their views in front of the most eyeballs, unfortunately, and if you fail to see it that way, you will lose.

In the face of fascism, restraint in the name of principles make you weaker than the fascist.

ThinkBeat2• 3 years ago

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 have damaging views that actively harm your position will embrace this "meta"

My viewpoint is freedom of speech regardless of my opinion of it, or yours. If people express viewpoints I do not agree with I will fight for their right to say it. That is what freedom of speech means.

Which is why ACLU defended a Nazi group´s right to protest.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” ― S.G. Tallentyre, The Friends of Voltaire

I dont care who is doing the burning, nor why they are doing it. People burning or banning books is the antithesis of freedom of speech. Something I clearly reject.

. It's an arms race of who can control the dialogue and get their views in front of the most eyeballs, unfortunately, and if you fail to see it that way, you will lose. In the face of fascism, restraint in the name of principles make you weaker than the fascist.

You appear to advocate that your opinion of the world must be the true opinion, and thus, needs to be enforced and dissent silenced lest our nation becomes "facist"¹

This means that you become the arbiter of what is truth and what is not. What is harmfull or not. Or yu delegate this ot the state, or to private corporations or all of the above. That is the definition of an autocracy in my opinion.

You would probably be more comfortable in Saudi Arabia where dissent is dealt with in a proactive manner.

“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” -- Oscar Wilde

¹ https://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc

trhway2• 3 years ago

May it be that Meta is just doing it job by weeding out fakes? Most of the pro-Hamas/pro-Palestinian propaganda that I saw contradicts the facts to say the least (or in the best case is only single-sourced with the source being either Hamas itself or a cozy affiliate of a Hamas like those Gaza offices of UN agencies).

Btw, Meta is outlawed (declared "extremist", it is somewhat like "material supporter of terrorism" status in US) in Russia for refusing to bend to Russian authorities and to carry only official Russian, completely false, propaganda.

LtWorf4• 3 years ago

It might be that outside of your circles, people do have different opinions, without them being bots.

Last elections fb was spamming me with trump propaganda. I don't know anyone who voted for trump, for the simple reason that I don't live in USA. And yet I still got the propaganda… I understand the russians might not want USA propaganda and might want their own instead.

trhway2• 3 years ago

I'm not talking about opinions. I'm taking about propaganda and facts which that propaganda contradicts. For illustration, I've just posted an example of such propaganda and the facts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38751882

mgraczyk18• 3 years ago

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 government.

From HRWs descriptions it sounds like the bulk of the "1049" content removals were clear violations of Meta's policies against support for violence.

Regardless of whether you agree, these don't seem surprising to me on light of Meta's own rules. There are of course a small number of exceptions listed.

rayiner5• 3 years ago

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 century there was an effort to rehabilitate it (as in the Dukes of Hazzard) as a symbol of anti-authoritarianism. And that’s the only connotation lots of people have of it. But it has a pretty unpleasant historical context.

At the very least it’s a dog whistle to the large fraction of the Muslim world that hates Jews: https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/adls-global-100-survey-wh.... Americans who use this phrase should really travel to the Muslim world to understand the antisemitism that’s just in the air. You can’t travel to my “moderate Muslim” country with an Israeli passport. Guess why that is?

api• 3 years ago

there was an effort to rehabilitate it (as in the Dukes of Hazzard) as a symbol of anti-authoritarianism

Never got that one. Nothing like the flag of a breakaway state founded to preserve chattel slavery as a symbol of… anti-authoritarianism?

ahazred8ta• 3 years ago

During the Civil Rights Era there were radical leftist groups that used the flag. The YPO in Chicago was allied with the Black Panthers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Patriots_Organization (ditto Southern Student Organizing Committee)

bjourne6• 3 years ago

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...) and ADL is an anti-Palestinian hate organization whose opinions no one should take seriously.

You can’t travel to my “moderate Muslim” country with an Israeli passport. Guess why that is?

Perhaps for exactly the same reason Russian passport holders aren't welcome in a lot of places?

qwertthrowway2• 3 years ago

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.

nradov2• 3 years ago

And yet when Russia invaded Ukraine, Meta changed their policy and made it acceptable to advocate violence against Russians.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst...

Personally, I oppose both Russian expansionism and the genocidal antisemitic Hamas terrorist movement, so the Meta policy aligns with my views. But I am deeply uncomfortable with having a small cabal of Silicon Valley executives define the acceptable bounds of discourse for the rest of society. It would be better if they allowed all legal content no matter how objectionable and gave individual users tools to block what they don't want to see.

singleshot_• 3 years ago

If social media platforms all provided the same service, there would be only one. The way it is today, each of them makes a very specific set of editorial decisions, which is why we have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gab, etc. If every network put all the power in the users' hands, the dynamics of network effects would take over and we would be left with one social network.

I'm not saying this would be worse for the users, because I agree that "allow all content + powerful filtering tools" would suit me just fine. But it's worth noting that there would be a real serious monopoly problem if there were no conscious choices to differentiate. This would conflict with your main point of friction here: that a bunch of SV nerds shouldn't get to define our Overton window. If one platform provided free speech + filters, and became the only game in town, it wouldn't be long before we were back in the situation we're in today, except the group of toxic SV billionaires running the show would be even smaller.

abeppu4• 3 years ago

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 invoked, the content included images of dead Palestinians over ruins in Gaza that were clothed, not naked. For example, multiple users reported their Instagram stories being removed under this policy when they posted the same image of a Palestinian father in Gaza who was killed while he was holding his clothed daughter, who was also killed.

... so no nudity, no sexual activity

For example, a Facebook user post that said, “How can anyone justify supporting the killing of babies and innocent civilians…” was removed under Community Standards on “bullying and harassment.” Another user posted an image on Instagram of a dead child in a hospital in Gaza with the comment, “Israel bombs the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City killing over 500…” which was removed under Community Guidelines on “violence and incitement.”

... arguing _against_ violence is flagged as harassment. Image and statement about Israeli action flagged as incitement

In one case, an Instagram user received a warning that the comment she posted “may be hurtful to others.” The comment, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, consisted of nothing more than a series of Palestinian flag emojis.[77] In other cases, Meta hid the Palestinian flag from comment sections or removed it on the basis that it “harasses, targets, or shames others.”[78]

...that's just kinda indefensible.

Many users reported posts on Instagram being removed when they criticized the Israeli government, including the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no matter how nuanced or careful their posts were. Meta removed these posts under its “Dangerous Organizations or Individuals” and hate speech rules, respectively.

... which is crazy since there have been plenty of reasons to criticize Netanyahu well before the Oct 7 attacks.

On the topic of "From the river to the sea", they specifically mention that posts with this phrase, as well as others

such as “Free Palestine,” “Ceasefire Now,” and “Stop the Genocide,” were repeatedly removed by Instagram and Facebook under “spam” Community Guidelines or Standards without appearing to take into account the context of these comments.

I.e. 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.

As for the "is considered hateful by many", that's true, but is also subjective, and very tangled given that prominent Israeli conservatives have used very similar phrasing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea#Simi...

If someone actually praising the Oct 7 attacks or something gets flagged/banned/etc, then sure, Meta is just applying its policies. That does not seem to be what's happening here. It's true that the report doesn't give numbers for these specific treatments, and the authors have a limited and biased view based on who responded to their call for evidence. But the limited view doesn't seem to be of Meta even-handedly and competently applying their policies.

_However_, I don't want to attribute everything to malice where incompetence may be at least a partial explanation. If motivated 3rd parties are repeatedly flagging a photo of a clothed, dead Palestinian as "nudity", and Meta's systems are built with the assumption that such user-provided flags are presumed trustworthy, then we could easily see how someone posting that photo would get incorrectly/inappropriately flagged.

reissbaker9• 3 years ago

I think without actual access to the material it's pretty hard to say. For example, the report highlights that someone commented with nothing but a series of Palestinian flags to someone's post, and their comment was flagged and removed. However, they don't share what the original post was; responding with a series of Palestinian flags to an Israeli hostage relative's post about their kidnapped sibling, for example, would be clear harassment and abuse. (And these kinds of abusive comments are extremely common.)

The report also has some pretty strange language, like mentioning that a post which was flagged for nudity contained a picture of a dead woman, and a fully-clothed man holding her body. But... There are so, so many pictures of fully-clothed, male members of Hamas holding nude or partially-nude dead women they abducted and/or raped before murdering. Why does the report only say that the man was fully clothed? Maybe it's just a grammatical error, but they're really light on the details, and releasing the underlying data would answer a lot of questions.

Personally I am suspicious of HRW's report, since they've been caught releasing misleading reports in the past, and the director of HRW's Israel/Palestine division is a BDS activist [1]. Obviously your viewpoint may be different, but without access to the underlying information it's pretty hard to make a compelling case to either side... Which to me points to the report being more worthy of suspicion, since if it was clear-cut, they'd easily convince more people of their correctness by releasing the data.

1: https://www.ngo-monitor.org/fact-sheet-on-omar-shakirs-bds-c...

bromuro• 3 years ago

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.

slim2• 3 years ago

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 anything in the news rights now) and it got almost zero reach. it's not subtil. It's like two orders of magnitude less reach. I know it because I'm a political activist and I always comment on draft laws.

mgraczyk18• 3 years ago

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 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.

two_in_one2• 3 years ago

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, 'democracies' are no different).

nox100• 3 years ago

I posted 2 things recently. One was link to a game, another to an anime (neither related in any way shape or form to wars nor any news or politics what-so-ever. I got zero responses, not even likes/hearts/laughs. So I assumed FB decided not to show them to any of my friends. "Zero reach".

How do you know the reason for your reason for zero reach is any different than mine? I assumed Meta's algo decided none of my friends would be interested in what I posted, not that I was being censored.

They did respond to my next 2 posts so no idea the difference.

strken• 3 years ago

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.

bjourne6• 3 years ago

The problem is that the rules aren't applied fairly or evenly. See this example from twitter: https://twitter.com/PalestineNW/status/1738711045265392028

mgraczyk18• 3 years ago

That's Twitter, not owned by Meta

ajmurmann2• 3 years ago

Three of those are religions and one of those is an ethnicity as well. One of those also has seen almost constant persecution during history. It's concerning that this needs to be pointed out

sarafiq• 3 years ago

So the phrase "from the river to the sea" is hateful to many but when it comes to disrespect Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) or Quran then it becomes freedom of speech no matter a vast majority of world population hates it. Hypocrisy to say the least!

peyton2• 3 years ago

Both are hateful to many and both are protected from laws by Congress. Facebook can remove whatever it wants on their platform.

krembo7• 3 years ago

Let's make it simpler- disrespect for Muhamad is a disrespect to a religion based on crusades and a prophet who is a declared pedophile according to their scripts (married and had sex with Aisha when she was 6yo). Calling "from the river to the sea" is a call for genocide of the Jewish people. So, can you pick a side already of which of the calls is legit and which not?

faeriechangling5• 3 years ago

I have no problem taking down "From the river to the sea" type content so long as we also take down Greater Israel type content.

danenania• 3 years ago

Having social media companies attempting to guess at the intention behind ambiguous phrases seems like a bad idea.

Some people are certainly implying support for genocide when they say "from the river to the sea", while others are not. Same for "Greater Israel".

The only sane place to draw the line imo is at explicit support for hatred or violence. Even that standard can be fuzzy, but if there's a reasonable doubt about intent, I don't think we want corporations or governments making those judgments.

smsm429• 3 years ago

I don't remember a single instance of a mass protest on campus or in the streets, in US or in Europe or in Israel, where the protestors would demand that Israel occupies Egypt, Iraq and Syria, throw their population into the sea (or into the desert) and establish a Judaic theocracy on the freshly liberated land. I can believe that whatever is meant by "Greater Israel" among 8 billions of people would be some that support that idea, because any crazy idea can find a person crazy enough to support it. However, comparing this idea to the level of support slogans like "from the river to the sea" enjoy right now - with thousands openly proclaiming them, and on many campuses also proceeding to attack Jewish students under them - is just non-sensical. There's no "Greater Israel" movement worth talking about seriously - but there's very much movement in support of genocide of Jews, and it's very visible and prominent.

verulito• 3 years ago

Having (Jewish) Israeli, pre-Israeli, and pre-pre-Israli heritage, I don't personally find "From the River to the Sea" offensive but I do find it non-constructive and insensitive. Globalize the intifada otoh is awful.

I follow this topic daily, on twitter, in telegram (both Israeli and Arab groups), and among the thousands of Jews I know across the world on FB (from anti-Zionist Jews to Orthodox). This is the first time I've ever seen the phrase "Greater Israel" mentioned. I'll go research it now but it strikes me as a manufactured obscurity, while "From the River to the Sea" is prevasive.

LtWorf4• 3 years ago

I've seen comments saying "yes please, show me more bombings, I love to see them die" not taken down, because "them" was palestinians.

I wonder how long the comment would have been up, if it was referring to the other side instead.

edit: I see from the downvotes that my experience doesn't fit your bias. Sorry people -_-

seanmcdirmid5• 3 years ago

Doesn’t Facebook have a report button? I’m pretty sure comments like that would be taken down if you reported them, it’s really a no brainer whatever “them” refers to.

krembo7• 3 years ago

Maybe the "them" was referred to hamas terrorists?

itsoktocry3• 3 years ago

I've seen comments saying "yes please, show me more bombings, I love to see them die" not taken down, because "them" was palestinians.*

Do you have any proof of this whatsoever? First that these posts actually exist (this I believe) and that the reason they weren't taken down was because they were about Palestinians (versus, say, overlooked so far)?

mongol3• 3 years ago

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.

krembo7• 3 years ago

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

drawkward4• 3 years ago

It isnt hateful in isolation. It could be hateful, it could also just represent a statement of solidarity with Palestinians or support for a two state solution.

itsoktocry3• 3 years ago

I don't see why "From the river to the see" would be hateful in isolation.

It's crazy to me the a lot of the same crowd saying, "I don't see how this is hateful" are the same people who told us that the "Okay" symbol meant "white power" and was literal violence.

bsaul11• 3 years ago

yes the problem is most likely that a lot of people have become hamas's defenders recently for some uncomprehensible reasons. Like finding them justifications, or supporting them on the ongoing war. It's pretty insane if you think about.

I remember some people in the arab world took side for ben laden on 9/11 but this time it's happening in the west too.

faeriechangling5• 3 years ago

I recall PLENTY of "The west deserved 9/11 due to imperialism" sentiments, although not people who actually supported Osama Bin Laden.

I see similar sentiments around this war all the time, "Israel deserved this terrorist attack due to imperialism" but again really not much actual support for Hamas.

mpweiher• 3 years ago

a lot of people have become hamas's defenders recently for some uncomprehensible reasons

Jonathan Haidt explains:

Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Campus

https://www.afterbabel.com/p/antisemitism-on-campus

The interesting thing is that the explanation largely preceded these events, he and Greg Lukianoff documented this in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind.

cultofmetatron8• 3 years ago

yes the problem is most likely that a lot of people have become hamas's defenders recently for some incomprehensible reasons.

when the "good guys" indiscriminately kill over 15000 children in the span of two months, I dunno what you expect but its certainly not "uncomprehensible"

rshaban• 3 years ago

"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.

mgraczyk18• 3 years ago

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.

Qiu_Zhanxuan2• 3 years ago

Seems you haven't read the actual report, HRW clearly points inconsistencies in the application of Meta's policies that amounts to censorship of any support to Palestine.

__loam2• 3 years ago

I've seen reports of hate speech in Hebrew getting a pass while Arabic users are having rules enforced in an overly broad way. Regardless of your views on the conflict, it is a bit chilling that a massive corporation is now the arbiter of speech for much of the internet now.

DiogenesKynikos17• 3 years ago

The irony of banning the phrase, "From the river to the sea" is that in almost every Israeli school, there are maps on the wall that show Israel extending from the river to the sea.[0]

Greater Israel, extending from the river to the sea, with the Palestinians as stateless people with no rights, is a de facto reality, and has been for 56 years now.

0. This is a typical map. The only indication that there is any Palestinian territory at all is that the tiny "Area A" regions are in a different color. East Jerusalem and the vast majority of the West Bank are simply shown as belonging to Israel. https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9fb3beb756529713386cc...

mgraczyk18• 3 years ago

That's bad too

drawkward4• 3 years ago

Furthermore, a soverign Israel "from the river to the sea" was a founding tenet of Israel's Likud party, of which Netanyahu is a member.

It is no longer an explicit goal of Likud.

rayiner5• 3 years ago

with the Palestinians as stateless people with no rights, is a de facto reality, and has been for 56 years now.

Remind me, what was it that happened 56 years ago?

lovelyviking11• 3 years ago

The irony of banning the phrase, "From the river to the sea" …

The irony is to talk about the irony without realising the extreme nature of the phrase “From the river to the sea…” for any of the sides. Someone can as easily adapt the same phrase for calls to remove non-jewish population from the land yet the commentator felt the urge to see the irony in “banning the phrase” (as he put it) without thinking through the outcome of using such phrase in all of it’s dangerous aspects.

every Israeli school, there are maps on the wall that show Israel extending from the river to the sea.[0]

The linked map is from post on quora [1] which does not state that.

To the question : “What borders does Israel show in maps in school textbooks?”

It states the following:

“ It really depends on the age.

TLDR - the books mostly show area international borders with markings for area A, But don’t shy away from the existence of the P.A. In higher grades, they show the evolution of the borders, and the idea that nothing is really fixed or “promised”.

Long answer:

I’ve made a small check on books available on my Child’s elementary school online website. …”

Notice “ elementary school online website.” while commentator states: “ in almost every Israeli school, there are maps on the wall”

Even this one post from only one school speaks about variety of maps presented to children but commentator simply ignores that.

Commentator takes 1 of 10 maps posted there. The one for the smallest age and claims “This is a typical map”

The real irony though is vivid if one looks at the official logo of PLO here [2] who’s chairman is Mahmoud Abbas. It shows the whole map “from the river to the sea” without any marking for Israel. Commentator criticises Israeli maps for only :“ "Area A" regions are in a different color.” and forgot to mention that PLO does not have any color for Israel in fact. The logo is currently on the official PLO web site.

Palestinians as stateless people with no rights, is a de facto reality, and has been for 56 years now.

The third irony is mentioning “56 years” and forgetting to mention that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 [2] pretty much to the border before 1967.

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-borders-does-Israel-show-in-maps-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizat...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaz...

anone9462• 3 years ago

Greater Israel, extending from the river to the sea, with the Palestinians as stateless people with no rights, is a de facto reality, and has been for 56 years now.

"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" in a nutshell

alternative_a3• 3 years ago

For example, the phrase "from the river to the [sea]" is considered hateful by many, so it was taken down.

That’s convenient. Zionism, the ideology and its propaganda, “is considered hateful by many” too. Actually, that happy slogan of “from this body of water to that other body of water is all our precious” is shared by both parties. Israel’s flag even has it diagrammed in case you missed the slogans. The two blue lines are RIVERS. One in Egypt the other in Iraq. Believe me that many many find that “ambition” harboring “violent intent” one way or another and don’t like it.

So, Is Facebook really concerned about sensitive feelings of “many”?

incrudible• 3 years ago

The two blue lines are RIVERS. One in Egypt the other in Iraq.

This sounded suspicious to me, and brief research shows it to be untrue.

smsm429• 3 years ago

Yes, it is convenient for potential victims of genocide that calling for genocide of those people is considered calling for genocide. It's also true. "From the river to the sea" is calling for the genocide of Israel population. It was known before, and Hamas proudly demonstrated it just now, there can not be any misunderstanding what they meant.

The lines on the flag have zero to do with rivers, it's a symbolic representation of a talith, a prayer garment, which can be seen in any synagogue. Try to get a bit of factual information before you go around spreading nonsense.

cf12412908413• 3 years ago

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.

underdeserver3• 3 years ago

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.

cf12412908413• 3 years ago

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.

xenospn• 3 years ago

Odd. When I open instagram reels all I see are pro-Palestinian posts, including the now intolerable “threads” box. I doubt that report is accurate.

bawolff• 3 years ago

Kind of a click-bait headline.

To quote the actual report: "This distribution of cases does not necessarily reflect the overall distribution of censorship."

They asked people to self-report instances. There is probably selection bias (maybe they advertised only to the pro-palestian crowd. Maybe the israeli crowd thinks HRW is biased and didn't want to engage. Maybe something else). There is probably also base rate falacy involved which isn't accounted for.

This just isnt the right type of study to determine if meta has a bias in censorship.

nosefurhairdo• 3 years ago

The paragraph in question:

Human Rights Watch solicited cases of any type of online censorship and of any type of viewpoint related to Israel and Palestine. Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report, 1,049 cases documented involved examples of online censorship and suppression of content in support of Palestine, while one case contained an example of removal of content in support of Israel.[2] This distribution of cases does not necessarily reflect the overall distribution of censorship.

So HRW may as well not have looked at the other side of the issue. They also complained that Meta's policies are informed by the United States' designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization.

I get the sense these sorts of reports are designed to turn into headlines.

zer0zzz• 3 years ago

I get the sense these sorts of reports are designed to turn into headlines.

Bingo.

kar5pt2• 3 years ago

HRW has a reputation for being biased against Israel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Human_Rights_Wa... . Regardless of whether that's true, it could explain why pro-Israel folks wouldn't want to engage with them.

havelhovel3• 3 years ago

I think this report actually demonstrates the anti-Israel bias HRW has been accused of. HRW points to the 9,500 content takedown requests that Israel has made as one of "four underlying, systemic factors that contributed to the [pro-Palestine] censorship." But knowing that a single Reddit post can receive more than 9,500 comments within a day[1], and that some percentage of the takedown requests likely relate to posts that threaten operational secrecy or the right to privacy of victimized Israelis, leads me to the exact opposite conclusion: that Israel's takedown requests are neither intended to censor pro-Palestine voices nor, if that were the intent, large enough in number to have an impact. Since the report provides no context for the numbers it reports makes me think the authors are more interested in pushing the idea that Israel controls the online narrative than they are in understanding what is actually happening on these platforms.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/news/top/?sort=top&t=year

kar5pt2• 3 years ago

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.

underdeserver3• 3 years ago

Exactly. Whatever your opinions on Israel and Gaza, putting out a report so cherry-picked on such a small, unrepresentative sample only serves to show HRW's biases.

havelhovel3• 3 years ago

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...

mathgradthrow• 3 years ago

I have a suspicion that this article is vaguely a response to the previous report that TikTok overwhelmingly censors content in accordance with China's official position.

kredd• 3 years ago

That entire report was very weird as they compared some uploaded videos with specific hashtags on TikTok vs Instagram. I just don’t understand how that methodology can fly when TikTok is banned in some places, while IG is banned in different ones. So obviously you’ll get stuff anout Hong Kong protests on IG, but not on TikTok since it’s not available in Hong Kong.

There’s also no reliable way of finding where the data is being uploaded from, so huge bot-farms in India wouldn’t push much in TikTok either, cause again, it’s banned there. As much as I hate TT/IG, we shouldn’t try to prove our point with extremely unreliable studies.

oglop• 3 years ago

This comment section is a blast.

Btw, just saying “this phrase is considered hateful by many” is inane. Many people find many things hateful but they don’t get the same weird instant “you bigot!” label as some of what I see directed towards Palestinian supporters. It’s nuts.

I have no dog in the fight. Just giving some useless anecdotes for people to get angry over.

But also, 1000 is not that many in the grand scheme of things like Meta said.

yolkedgeek• 3 years ago

Meta is as rigged and rotten as it gets. I live in Iran and whenever I have posted something political (not just rants, something serious) or any serious about the gov, it always got taken down. During the Woman,Life,Freedom movement everybody reported how instagram would take down important rebel news and posts and journalisms. you would think meta would work against something like the Islamic republic but it seems like it love all corrupt dictator governments. Let it be Islamic republic or Israel.

Thank god I have left all meta platforms for about 3 years now. But anyone who claims Meta is not pure evil is either evil themself or really really stupid.

ChatGTP2• 3 years ago

Hamas is a terrorist organization, apparently backed by Iran, and are constantly spreading misinformation online, this is why it's censored?

I sometimes open "The Guardian" and the amount of times they quote "The Gaza Health Ministry", which would be no more trust worthy than the North Korean or Chinese health ministry, is fucking ridiculous.

If people thought about thing more critically then we wouldn't have to sensor everything but people don't they eat it up, and get all conspiratorial.

On the other hand, I think Meta have built a shit product that requires an insane level of censoring to keep even remotely civil. Unfortunately this flawed product has dire impacts on democratic societies.

tmnvix2• 3 years ago

Hamas is a terrorist organization

You seem to be making the mistake that many do and conflating Hamas with the Palestinian people. The article is not about posts in support of Hamas.

ChatGTP2• 3 years ago

Good luck just "untangling" Hamas and the palestinians though.

welzel• 3 years ago

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.

mvuijlst• 3 years ago

Well, yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Israel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_United_States_for... etc.

Does the existence of these Wikipedia articles now mean that I can call any information put out by Israel or the United States "biased content" and just disregard it?

havelhovel3• 3 years ago

No. The comment you're replying to explicitly calls out the poor methodology this report is based on and the lack of subject matter expertise shown by the authors. The Wikipedia article is supplementary information that situates this critique within a wider context. They are not saying you should dismiss the report simply because of the Wikipedia article.

stuckinhell• 3 years ago

extremely disturbing

happytiger• 3 years ago

No matter what your views, we should all be very concerned that a technology company that specializes in social connections is controlling what people can say to one another.

This combined with the close government coordination that was recently exposed is deeply concerning.

‘Disinformation’ seems to be more and more just ‘opinions we don’t like or support’ and this episode should serve as a warning to use all to limit their power before it’s too late.

And I don’t care if you like Triden or Brump: this shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

invig• 3 years ago

Trying to keep everyone happy is keeping no one happy.

nikolay• 3 years ago

Meta and YouTube seem to have started to shadowban pro-Palestine sentiment materials.

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

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