YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Meta censored the No Kings Instagram account during a nationwide campaign

101 points slowin 5 hours ago 18 comments

gnabgib 5 hours ago | parent

Discussion (600 points, 11 days ago, 424 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50136881

slowin 5 hours ago | parent

Why on earth is that flagged?

slim 2 hours ago | parent

Some king with flagging power flagged it

cosmicgadget 2 hours ago | parent

The headline is old news but the shifting explanations is entertaining.

"Claude's fault."

solid_fuel 47 minutes ago | parent

After the crap they pulled in the latest Brazilian election, there is no reason to give Facebook the benefit of the doubt. They are obviously and intentionally trying to use their extreme influence over online communities to influence elections.

Watch for more fuckery during the current US election season.

pino83 23 minutes ago | parent

People give away our planet and our souls to Facebook since decades now. Everyone knew someone who was uncomfortable with that and who asked whether a little less Facebook wouldn't be more healthy. These ones got ignored.

So, well, I don't like fascists. But if Facebook now makes use of the fact that you gave our world to them, it's hard to blame them for that.

People failed in that regard. Not Facebook. They succeeded. People failed.

freejazz 10 minutes ago | parent

Oh yeah, no murderers, just a system that makes them...

40four 34 minutes ago | parent

Meta can act like they don't know what's happening, but they do. As do all the other tech giants. They've been censoring and curating people feeds for a long time. This story is amusing since it's one instance where a "Team Blue" was affected. In general, it's usually "Team Red" channels are the ones getting censored.

There is an interesting project America's Digital Shield that studies these practices (https://americasdigitalshield.com/). They capture "ephemeral" content from search results and social feeds from volunteers, with a balanced distribution of the political spectrum.

Basically, the idea is that none of the content we get fed from tech giants is unbiased, even search results are manipulated to affect people one way or the other, especially when it comes to politics and elections. It's pretty upsetting once you understand what's happening.

kaldev 22 minutes ago | parent

I felt like this whole thing is extremely inorganic. Funded by a WalMart heiress, website went up hours before a massive NYT ad buy, and (in my opinion) what felt like lot of coordinated / paid / botted engagement.

Idk, I don't want the internet to be dictated by followers/engagement that can be easily botted via a SMM panel for pennies.

jfengel 8 minutes ago | parent

How do I get in on that gig? I showed up because I thought I was protecting democracy from a felon who is taking billions in bribes. Like a chump!

jeremyjh 2 minutes ago | parent

It’s really hard to believe how much people hate that dumb motherfucker?

gigatexal 12 minutes ago | parent

When the Dems take Congress good ol’ Zuck will be woke again. The man has no spine. And because he doesn’t his share price has skyrocketed.

jfengel 4 minutes ago | parent

Congress is largely impotent. Even if Democrats take both houses, it won't be by a veto-proof majority. Congress was designed to be "deliberative", so it has ceded more and more power to the executive branch just so anything actually gets done.

Zuckerberg knows that the power is on Pennsylvania Avenue, not 1st St. Maybe he'll change his mind in a couple of years, but he's going to spend those years doing his best to ensure that he doesn't have to.

gigatexal 1 minute ago | parent

Step 1 take Congress. Step 2 in 2028 take the White House. Step 3 start fixing all the damage of the last 2 Trump administrations. I’m long the US. We will get there.

Of course he knows where his bread is buttered. And he will cozy up to the new powers too. He has no spine. No moral code. It’s all power and money and meta. Fine. Good for shareholders. Bad for young men everywhere trying to pattern themselves after these barrons of industry.

Kalanos 6 minutes ago | parent

such hypocrisy because free speech is always their excuse not in intervene in algorithms

Ancalagon 5 minutes ago | parent

Getting the sense Meta's internal slogan is literally: "Be Evil."

ks2048 2 minutes ago | parent

“Move fast and break democracy”