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1) It's still censorship, even if it's not government censorship. The word applies. 2) It's perfectly fair, and a good idea, to call out a thing as bad even i

1) It's still censorship, even if it's not government censorship. The word applies. 2) It's perfectly fair, and a good idea, to call out a thing as bad even if it's legal.

dheera 5y ago
Exactly this. Starting about a month ago FB changed all their algorithms and a lot of independent artists are seeing 50%+ reductions in engagement across Instagram and Facebook. I have artistic hobby pursuits and can confirm. Many times I'll post a piece of work and my friends won't even see it in their feeds because FB is gatekeeping content between artists and voluntary followers now, in favor of "influencer" content from cash-cow accounts that don't produce any art of their own. It's sickening to say the least. Yes it's legal as of now but we should really be having a discussion about whether it should be okay to have a non-transparent gatekeeping algorithm between people who mutually chose to follow each other. Personally I'd prefer that if if someone voluntarily follows someone, they should have a legal obligation to not hinder any communication. That person chose to subscribe, and they can choose to unsubscribe at any time. What they are doing is tantamount to the USPS paging through your magazine subscriptions and trashing some of them as the mailman feels that day.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  It's crappy clearly, but I guess I am skeptical that it'd be easy to fix with regulation, at least it'd certainly take some very careful legislating to reign in. I suspect it would founder on pretty much the same problem we started with, FB's lawyers would say "we need to make money off this circus Your Honor, so of course we stacked the deck; if these rubes don't like it, they can always switch to Ello, it's a free country."
  - _yoqn 5y ago
    Might be easier if we repeal their section 230 protections and then put the top FB/Meta brass in jail for fraud. It would never happen but imposing this kind of accountability will definitely make the power drunk tech elites think twice.
annoyingnoob 5y ago
If you can make Facebook say things you want them to say, can Facebook make you say things that Facebook wants to say? Why does your speech come before Facebook's speech on Facebook's private platform? Is auto-block a single post really censorship? Did they block everything from this person? Did they stop this person from similar speech elsewhere?

1) It's still censorship, even if it's not government censorship. The word applies. 2) It's perfectly fair, and a good idea, to call out a thing as bad even if it's legal.

dheera 5y ago

Exactly this. Starting about a month ago FB changed all their algorithms and a lot of independent artists are seeing 50%+ reductions in engagement across Instagram and Facebook. I have artistic hobby pursuits and can confirm. Many times I'll post a piece of work and my friends won't even see it in their feeds because FB is gatekeeping content between artists and voluntary followers now, in favor of "influencer" content from cash-cow accounts that don't produce any art of their own. It's sickening to say the least. Yes it's legal as of now but we should really be having a discussion about whether it should be okay to have a non-transparent gatekeeping algorithm between people who mutually chose to follow each other. Personally I'd prefer that if if someone voluntarily follows someone, they should have a legal obligation to not hinder any communication. That person chose to subscribe, and they can choose to unsubscribe at any time. What they are doing is tantamount to the USPS paging through your magazine subscriptions and trashing some of them as the mailman feels that day.

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
It's crappy clearly, but I guess I am skeptical that it'd be easy to fix with regulation, at least it'd certainly take some very careful legislating to reign in. I suspect it would founder on pretty much the same problem we started with, FB's lawyers would say "we need to make money off this circus Your Honor, so of course we stacked the deck; if these rubes don't like it, they can always switch to Ello, it's a free country."
- _yoqn 5y ago
  Might be easier if we repeal their section 230 protections and then put the top FB/Meta brass in jail for fraud. It would never happen but imposing this kind of accountability will definitely make the power drunk tech elites think twice.

annoyingnoob 5y ago

If you can make Facebook say things you want them to say, can Facebook make you say things that Facebook wants to say? Why does your speech come before Facebook's speech on Facebook's private platform? Is auto-block a single post really censorship? Did they block everything from this person? Did they stop this person from similar speech elsewhere?