6 ms·

Facebook blocks Pulitzer-winning reporter over Malta government exposé

159 points by a_w 9y ago

necessity 9y ago
Says the socialist The Guardian who cherry picks who writes for it lol
- orf 9y ago
  Like every newspaper ever?
  - minxomat 9y ago
    Or every business?
- distances 9y ago
  Most of your recent comments seem to have been been downvoted. Time for some self-reflection, maybe?
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    In this case you're probably right but having most or even all of your recent comments downvoted doesn't mean much. For instance nickpsecurity could post anything at all and you can expect it to be downvoted.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      I'm not seeing any gray here https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nickpsecurity https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nickpsecurity Maybe the hive mind is not that aggressive after all?
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        It usually corrects itself after a while, HN is 'self repairing'.
  - ue_ 9y ago
    The fact that other people don't like what you have to say means that you have to reflect on what you're saying? Maybe, but that only applies if you're seeking for approval. Many people are not, they want to communicate their thoughts, feelings and ideas regardless of whether some people with more than 500 points click the little downward-pointing triangle. And I think that's a better way to comment, rather than self-censure based on what a certain group of people like or don't like.
    - vidarh 9y ago
      You're not communicating if people reflexively downvote you. I'm used to expressing unpopular sentiments in many circumstances, but at some point if you want to communicate rather than troll you need to try to at least adapt the style to the medium. Case in point, calling The Guardian "socialist" here will offend both a lot of Guardian readers and a lot of socialists (many of whom read the Guardian, but still don't find it remotely socialist), and yet it serves no purpose in the comment. It ends up drawing attention away from the point he tried to make (poorly).
      - ue_ 9y ago
        > You're not communicating if people reflexively downvote you. I don't really understand this; most likely I think that you are communicating, and people don't like what they're reading. Sure, posts that don't communicate are downvoted, but so are posts that do communicate. I haven't actually read the comment we're talking about, because I can't, but my point of contention is that receiving downvotes should be considered as some sacred message to re-think your life. It shouldn't, it just shows that an elite group of HN users have decided they don't like what you're saying. It might be for good reasons or bad reasons. In the past I have tried to reach out to HN's medium, writing posts I think are thought out, non-attackative, presenting an interesting viewpoint etc. only to have them downvoted 2 or 3 times, and I suspect it's because I espouse a particular political viewpoint, even when on topic. Some other of my comments have been upvoted, with much the same content. I have discovered that it's very hard to predict if your comment will be upvoted or downvoted, so I stopped caring so much. It's clear that the HN mods or perhaps PG himself want to manipulate people into espousing points that everyone else likes, even going so far as to gray out comments to make them harder to read, of course so that people won't want to read them. I found that I was being stopped from posting things I thought were interesting or perhaps controversial, and instead I was searching for things that would get me upvotes. This is in stark contrast to the old style imageboards, in which everyone's post is given an equal footing. Downvoting is a dirty little system, and it's one of the things keeping me from posting more on this site, which is filled with relatively intelligent discussion on all sorts of topics. And do not start me talking about how the HN moderators have decided that sometimes "You're submitting too fast, please slow down" when I want to post something in quick succession (about twice per hour even). It makes it impossible for me to have discussions here with this. I don't know if it affects other people (I suspect it does not), but it's so frustrating. Sometimes I have to collate two or three posts into one to avoid being prevented from posting. Reddit doesn't do that, the imageboards don't do that, in fact almost no other forum does this.
- sctb 9y ago
  Would you please not troll like this here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ComodoHacker 9y ago
Note that the posts in question where in Maltese and were shared about 1000 times. So it's most probably just local mods team collaborating with Maltese government.
- LukaD 9y ago
  Does that make it any better?
yeukhon 9y ago
I am in depression so sometimes I get very cynical and very sick I go on FB to vent. I wrote multiple status posts the other day, some mentioning suicidal tenancy. In one of the posts I said I hate my life, my life suck. Well, the next day FB deleted that particular post, but left the rest untouched despite the survivors clearly are more serious mentioning suicide. I don't mind they deleted it I was going to anyway, but it's odd they would consider my own cynical comment about my life being suck as a violation of their community rule, but the rest aren't.
- Helmet 9y ago
  It sounds like you are going through a very difficult time. I hope you can get help soon. In case you get down again, below is the website and phone number for the suicide prevention hotline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
  - yeukhon 9y ago
    Thank you. I have been struggling with this for a few months now. I have had multiple depressions in the past. I am better, with family.
    - didgeoridoo 9y ago
      It's excellent you're feeling better, but depression with suicidal ideation is unfortunately a medical problem that doesn't go away on its own. Please consider seeking professional help right away — the sooner the better, because it will be much more difficult to motivate yourself to get help if and when the badness returns.
      - yeukhon 9y ago
        Yes I do but I am actually scared to tell them. Because my last therapist said in his practice he has to report it which means I have to go back to hospital. Last time I went (well back in Feb) I was admitted under voluntary terms and while the place isn't bad it did feel like a jail because I would miss being out there hearing people on the street. I probably should write a blog post when I recover...
johnnydoe9 9y ago
A friend posted screenshots from the movie Spotlight, before the credits the list of churches and it got deleted for hurting religious sentiments. He tried to fight it but didn't win. The caption was just "something needs to be done about this"
phantom_oracle 9y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the real issue here is that in 2017 (and beyond), the only way/place that you will be able to reach an audience is via these walled-gardens known as Facebook/Twitter/etc. This is the same company that fought against US legislature (SOPA or whatever it was called) but created its own non-neutral internet.org for the third-world. The only race that these giant advertising media/companies are in is the race for: total-observation and unlike the evil government from 1984 , these leech-like data-harvesting entities are celebrated by their peers for re-inventing MySpace and IRC over and over again.
- k-mcgrady 9y ago
  Hasn't it always been like this though apart from a brief window in maybe the 00's? Prior to blogging taking off you needed money and real world marketing to reach an audience through books/magazines/newspapers/music/film. The owner of the garden has just changed (and it's less restrictive than Wallmart ever was.
  - mercer 9y ago
    'Messages' are ultimately at the mercy of the medium. Having the medium owned by one corporation, even if it's not abused right now, strikes me as worse than having a sizable of 'elite' companies, each with their own (often explicit) biases, competing for attention. Whether the latter is worse than a gaggle of bloggers trampling all over the plants, I'm not so sure anymore. But either option still seems better than a handful of corporations owning the garden.
    - k-mcgrady 9y ago
      I guess looking to the future there could be issues but as FB/Twitter/Tumblr rely on lots of people posting I don't see it as a likely eventuality as it's not in their best interests to severely restrict content. So for now I would argue it's still much better than in the past but I agree that might not always be the case.
- vivekd 9y ago

159 points by a_w 9y ago

necessity 9y ago

Says the socialist The Guardian who cherry picks who writes for it lol

orf 9y ago
Like every newspaper ever?
- minxomat 9y ago
  Or every business?
distances 9y ago
Most of your recent comments seem to have been been downvoted. Time for some self-reflection, maybe?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  In this case you're probably right but having most or even all of your recent comments downvoted doesn't mean much. For instance nickpsecurity could post anything at all and you can expect it to be downvoted.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    I'm not seeing any gray here https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nickpsecurity https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nickpsecurity Maybe the hive mind is not that aggressive after all?
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      It usually corrects itself after a while, HN is 'self repairing'.
- ue_ 9y ago
  The fact that other people don't like what you have to say means that you have to reflect on what you're saying? Maybe, but that only applies if you're seeking for approval. Many people are not, they want to communicate their thoughts, feelings and ideas regardless of whether some people with more than 500 points click the little downward-pointing triangle. And I think that's a better way to comment, rather than self-censure based on what a certain group of people like or don't like.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    You're not communicating if people reflexively downvote you. I'm used to expressing unpopular sentiments in many circumstances, but at some point if you want to communicate rather than troll you need to try to at least adapt the style to the medium. Case in point, calling The Guardian "socialist" here will offend both a lot of Guardian readers and a lot of socialists (many of whom read the Guardian, but still don't find it remotely socialist), and yet it serves no purpose in the comment. It ends up drawing attention away from the point he tried to make (poorly).
    - ue_ 9y ago
      > You're not communicating if people reflexively downvote you. I don't really understand this; most likely I think that you are communicating, and people don't like what they're reading. Sure, posts that don't communicate are downvoted, but so are posts that do communicate. I haven't actually read the comment we're talking about, because I can't, but my point of contention is that receiving downvotes should be considered as some sacred message to re-think your life. It shouldn't, it just shows that an elite group of HN users have decided they don't like what you're saying. It might be for good reasons or bad reasons. In the past I have tried to reach out to HN's medium, writing posts I think are thought out, non-attackative, presenting an interesting viewpoint etc. only to have them downvoted 2 or 3 times, and I suspect it's because I espouse a particular political viewpoint, even when on topic. Some other of my comments have been upvoted, with much the same content. I have discovered that it's very hard to predict if your comment will be upvoted or downvoted, so I stopped caring so much. It's clear that the HN mods or perhaps PG himself want to manipulate people into espousing points that everyone else likes, even going so far as to gray out comments to make them harder to read, of course so that people won't want to read them. I found that I was being stopped from posting things I thought were interesting or perhaps controversial, and instead I was searching for things that would get me upvotes. This is in stark contrast to the old style imageboards, in which everyone's post is given an equal footing. Downvoting is a dirty little system, and it's one of the things keeping me from posting more on this site, which is filled with relatively intelligent discussion on all sorts of topics. And do not start me talking about how the HN moderators have decided that sometimes "You're submitting too fast, please slow down" when I want to post something in quick succession (about twice per hour even). It makes it impossible for me to have discussions here with this. I don't know if it affects other people (I suspect it does not), but it's so frustrating. Sometimes I have to collate two or three posts into one to avoid being prevented from posting. Reddit doesn't do that, the imageboards don't do that, in fact almost no other forum does this.
sctb 9y ago
Would you please not troll like this here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ComodoHacker 9y ago

Note that the posts in question where in Maltese and were shared about 1000 times. So it's most probably just local mods team collaborating with Maltese government.

LukaD 9y ago
Does that make it any better?

yeukhon 9y ago

I am in depression so sometimes I get very cynical and very sick I go on FB to vent. I wrote multiple status posts the other day, some mentioning suicidal tenancy. In one of the posts I said I hate my life, my life suck. Well, the next day FB deleted that particular post, but left the rest untouched despite the survivors clearly are more serious mentioning suicide. I don't mind they deleted it I was going to anyway, but it's odd they would consider my own cynical comment about my life being suck as a violation of their community rule, but the rest aren't.

Helmet 9y ago
It sounds like you are going through a very difficult time. I hope you can get help soon. In case you get down again, below is the website and phone number for the suicide prevention hotline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
- yeukhon 9y ago
  Thank you. I have been struggling with this for a few months now. I have had multiple depressions in the past. I am better, with family.
  - didgeoridoo 9y ago
    It's excellent you're feeling better, but depression with suicidal ideation is unfortunately a medical problem that doesn't go away on its own. Please consider seeking professional help right away — the sooner the better, because it will be much more difficult to motivate yourself to get help if and when the badness returns.
    - yeukhon 9y ago
      Yes I do but I am actually scared to tell them. Because my last therapist said in his practice he has to report it which means I have to go back to hospital. Last time I went (well back in Feb) I was admitted under voluntary terms and while the place isn't bad it did feel like a jail because I would miss being out there hearing people on the street. I probably should write a blog post when I recover...

johnnydoe9 9y ago

A friend posted screenshots from the movie Spotlight, before the credits the list of churches and it got deleted for hurting religious sentiments. He tried to fight it but didn't win. The caption was just "something needs to be done about this"

phantom_oracle 9y ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the real issue here is that in 2017 (and beyond), the only way/place that you will be able to reach an audience is via these walled-gardens known as Facebook/Twitter/etc. This is the same company that fought against US legislature (SOPA or whatever it was called) but created its own non-neutral internet.org for the third-world. The only race that these giant advertising media/companies are in is the race for: total-observation and unlike the evil government from 1984 , these leech-like data-harvesting entities are celebrated by their peers for re-inventing MySpace and IRC over and over again.

k-mcgrady 9y ago
Hasn't it always been like this though apart from a brief window in maybe the 00's? Prior to blogging taking off you needed money and real world marketing to reach an audience through books/magazines/newspapers/music/film. The owner of the garden has just changed (and it's less restrictive than Wallmart ever was.
- mercer 9y ago
  'Messages' are ultimately at the mercy of the medium. Having the medium owned by one corporation, even if it's not abused right now, strikes me as worse than having a sizable of 'elite' companies, each with their own (often explicit) biases, competing for attention. Whether the latter is worse than a gaggle of bloggers trampling all over the plants, I'm not so sure anymore. But either option still seems better than a handful of corporations owning the garden.
  - k-mcgrady 9y ago
    I guess looking to the future there could be issues but as FB/Twitter/Tumblr rely on lots of people posting I don't see it as a likely eventuality as it's not in their best interests to severely restrict content. So for now I would argue it's still much better than in the past but I agree that might not always be the case.
vivekd 9y ago