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Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel
- aerodog 3y agoX's spat with the ADL revealed how substantial their lobby power is. That ad revenue plunged 60% due to their prejudices (against Elon and his management) testifies to a strong hold they have on media of all types. I don't trust Meta to reverse their behaviors like this, which they have likely done many, many times.
- notahacker 3y agoNot gonna lie, I'm not struggling to think of reasons why Twitter's ad revenue dropped that don't involve the ADL...
- Ygg2 3y agoWould it explain why it fell in US and EU, but not Asia?
- meepmorp 3y agoAre you saying the only plausible explanation is, "the Jews?"
- Ygg2 3y agoNo. Where did you hallucinate me saying that? According to Elon it's just the ADL lobbied hard in US & EU.
- hhh 3y agoAnd why did they lobby? It’s not like Twitter has become some utopia since he bought it. It’s gone to shit and is increasingly filled with a huge amount of racist and antisemitic sentiment. After that, there’s (exaggerated) a billion crypto scams.
- Ygg2 3y agoCould be millions of reasons. Maybe they don't like way Elon is running the place. Maybe they lost contacts in purges Elon did. They disagree with people he let onto the platform.
- stephen_g 3y agoAs if that had anything to do with it? Twitter under Musk has been a disaster, I’m not surprised companies are withdrawing from it. A lot of dropping off who were once very active users too, and basically no part of any of that has anything to do with the ADL.
- bad_user 3y agoTwitter's ad revenue plunged due to mismanagement and current economic conditions. Lest we forget, when Musk took over, the workforce dropped by 80%, which meant, first of all, that a lot of advertisers lost over night their contacts at Twitter. And while moderation may have stayed in place, Elon Musk also started unblocking far-right accounts and he can't keep his mouth shut. I can't speak for Asia, but multinational brands (like Coca-Cola) are actively avoiding controversy and you don't need activists for such an effect.
- Ygg2 3y agoFair points, but I sense a discrepancy. If multinationals are leaving X in droves, why wouldn't they leave it in Asia?
- stonogo 3y agoBecause the hate and outrage peddlers that Musk un-banned are not posting in anything but English.
- notahacker 3y agoand it's a relatively marginal revenue stream that was expected to grow, and Elon's erratic behaviour and vice signalling garners few column inches there.
- bakuninsbart 3y agoFor the same reason Musk's invitation to cover the legal costs of people getting cancelled for what they post on twitter didn't apply to the Saudi man who was sentenced to death: What happens in other parts of the world isn't of much interest to Americans.
- caeril 3y ago> multinational brands (like Coca-Cola) are actively avoiding controversy You think that multinational brands (like Adidas, Target, PepsiCo, and Anheuser-Busch) have been striving to avoid controversy lately? Really? It's more correct to say that multinational brands avoid controversy in one political direction. They seem to have no qualms embracing it in the other.
- csomar 3y agoMaybe the cooling of the tech sector in the US/EU has something to do with it. Tech in Asia seems to be fine.
- jiofj 3y ago[flagged]
- camillomiller 3y agoDid you just really take Elon Musk's completely random figure of ads revenue drop as fact?
- drexlspivey 3y agoI'm sure you are a better authority to report on the company's revenue than the owner
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y agoThe drop isn’t nearly as up for debate as the cause is. Let’s not get distracted here. Some people need more evidence than this before they place blame on a group with such a history of prejudice against them. Hell, I’m from a country that is far less touchy about the plight of the Jewish people compared to, say, the US. But inferring anything from this correlation without considering the wider context is absurd. GP very obviously thinks that using 2-3x more words to essentially say “Jews control the media” gives their comment more intellectual standing
- rfrey 3y agoI must be mistaken, but your comment really sounds like you're blaming Twitter's revenue problems -- easily explained by mismanagement -- on an all powerful cabal of Jews.
- NotSuspicious 3y agoMore like an institution that defames organizations, took until 2007 to recognize the Armenian Genocide and is propped up by an Apartheid State. Admittedly, their point is an oversimplification (X has many problems), but it's dishonest to equate criticism of the ADL to "the Jews run the world".
- bad_user 3y agoIt's not dishonest, because the accusation that Twitter has lost its ads revenue due to ADL is bollocks. And when such accusations are so unreasonable, given everything else that happened (e.g., Twitter's workforce plummeting, unblocking far right accounts, or Elon Musk not able to keep his mouth shut), one has to consider antisemitism.
- sek 3y agoYou are totally right, the whole statement is ironically antisemitism here on Hacker News: Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg and Israel.... what is the connection. It's clear the poster is on X/Twitter and you can see what Elons behaviour perpetuates. Elon Musk doesn't know how the advertising business works, get's rid of moderation and let's banned people back. Which obviously leads to an increase of antisemitism on Twitter and the ADL justly fights against it. Now after the lawsuit this guy thinks: Elon is a genius, it must be the jews who control the media who have prejudices against Elon and his management.
- blueflow 3y agoYou talk about Elon and Twitter users like some specific people talk about Soros and the Jews. Both are a form of blaming groups of people for some random, different person deeds. Not acceptable.
- blueflow 3y agoDo you have sources on the X - ADL connection? I thought that was just a conspiracy theory.
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y agoIt is. Computer nerds undeniably buy into anti-Semitic conspiracies more than other conspiracies because of the amount of peddling they get in silly 4chan et al culture.
- blueflow 3y agoThats why i'm asking for evidence
- tohnjitor 3y agohttps://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1699472464076525970 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1699472464076525970 It's not the first time the ADL has lead a pressure campaign on advertisers of a social media company. They did the something similar with Facebook in 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/06/29/adl-ceo-facebook-advertising-boycott-content-moderation-policy-squawk-box.html https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/06/29/adl-ceo-facebook-adver...
- mschuster91 3y ago> X's spat with the ADL revealed how substantial their lobby power is. Lol what? Advertisers literally pulled out because their ads showed up to actual Nazi, holocaust denying content. The ADL didn't (have to) do anything, the brands' brand safety teams did.
- tohnjitor 3y agoThis opinion piece, written by an attorney who worked as an intern at ADL in the 1980s, agrees with Musk. https://www.newsweek.com/adl-has-lost-its-way-elon-musk-right-stand-censorship-opinion-1824691 https://www.newsweek.com/adl-has-lost-its-way-elon-musk-righ...
- formerly_proven 3y agoFew things are more emblematic of Musk’s descent into madness than tweeting to dozens of millions of his acolytes that the (((jews))) are engineering his failures.
- twen_ty 3y agoI'm sorry but under Elon X has become a platform where racists, xenophobes, conspiracy theorists, antisemites, islamophobes etc. have thrived - the ADL blame game from Elon smells of deflection from the reality that advertisers don't want to be associated with a platform that mainstreams unhinged content.
- msegal 3y agoBy lumping ADL and Meta together, and saying "they" have a strong hold on media of all types, this post crosses the line.
- Z7YCx5ieof4Std 3y agoAnd now the Streisand effect will come into play. Where can I find this documentary with English subtitles
- belter 3y agohttps://youtu.be/cnj0rmnsAdI https://youtu.be/cnj0rmnsAdI
- _aaed 3y agoThis has no English subtitles
- belter 3y agoNot from YouTube but there are some free services. "How to Translate YouTube Videos for Free" - https://www.kapwing.com/resources/how-to-translate-youtube-videos-for-free/ https://www.kapwing.com/resources/how-to-translate-youtube-v...
- bmicraft 3y agoOr alternatively you could give as a short summary of why you posted the link?
- draw_down 3y ago[dead]
- jacooper 3y ago[flagged]
- actuator 3y agoNot that it justifies the deletion, I wonder how a state sponsored propaganda outlet came to be regarded well among global audiences. It would be interesting to read up on what they have done to garner that image.
- helboi4 3y agoWow I have heard so much that Al Jazeera is pretty reliable, never did I realise until I read your comment that they are owned by Qatari monarchy. Qatar, the country everyone was practically calling us to boycott in the 2022 World Cup. Not suitable to hold the World Cup but suitable for us to get news from apparently. They do generally seem to have a high quality of journalism though so I am suprised at how they maintain at least a decent amount of integrity.
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y agoIt is what it is. AJ’s bias really comes into play when talking about Qatar. Otherwise, their record speaks for itself.
- helboi4 3y agoMakes sense and I can probably deal with that since I really do tend to find quality articles from them, and most global news is not about Qatar. However, does Qatar have any allies that they are also likely to be biased about? Or does the influence not extend that far?
- sfjailbird 3y agoYes. Articles on Turkey or India are likely to be positive. They are Qatar's most strategic regional allies.
- actuator 3y agoThat is wildly inaccurate. If anything among the Middle East countries India is aligned more with UAE, which till recently Qatar was more at odds with
- throwaway914 3y agoI know I'm naive: I don't understand why US companies are so sensitive to respecting Israel. I don't know why our gov is so sensitive to this either. Israel - like all countries - deserves criticism, no? This can't purely be about respecting the billions spent on US weapons to defend Israel, right? I genuinely do not understand, because I think they'd happily buy from the military anyway.
- draw_down 3y ago[dead]
- froggysnail 3y ago[flagged]
- sshine 3y agoCan we get a spoiler?
- Takennickname 3y ago[flagged]
- greggsy 3y agoOk now what… This isn’t a very informative or insightful comment.
- terrybingus 3y ago[flagged]
- sunshinerag 3y agoIQ isn’t a real measure of anything
- actuator 3y ago
- boomboomsubban 3y agoI'm not defending the deletion, but couldn't the acts on the show have violated TOS in a variety of ways? Creating fake pages and conducting any kind of experiment secretly probably violate the terms in some kind of way. Still wrong to target the host, but I could see how they could justify it.
- throwzp 3y ago[flagged]
- hnfong 3y agoBy your logic The White House's page should be banned as well.
- hammon 3y ago[dead]
- daliz 3y agoClassic Meta.
- redox99 3y agoModeration really varies a lot depending both on the language and the group being criticized. For example on twitch, Spanish streamers[1] say a lot of things that would get an English streamer canceled and/or banned for saying it. And for other languages I'm sure the gap is even bigger. The same with the group being criticized. Criticism against Russians is not moderated the same way as criticism against Jewish people. To be clear I'm not in favor of hate speech, I'm just pointing out that moderation isn't 100% equal. [1] I mean the language of the stream, not the nationality of the streamer
- zarzavat 3y ago> Criticism against Russians is not moderated the same way as criticism against Jewish people. People are not criticizing ethnic Russians. They are criticizing citizens of the Russian state, which includes people who aren’t ethnically Russian but doesn’t include people who are ethnically Russian in e.g. Ukraine. It’s arguable how much responsibility Russian citizens have for the present situation but it’s more than zero. Similarly while it’s fine to criticize Israelis for the actions of Israel, it’s not fine to criticize Jewish people in general for it.
- yakireev 3y ago> People are not criticizing ethnic Russians. Some do, and are rarely denounced for that. Alas.
- edanm 3y ago> Similarly while it’s fine to criticize Israelis for the actions of Israel, it’s not fine to criticize Jewish people in general for it. I agree, kind of, but let's also please realize that it's similar to criticizing US citizens for the actions of the US state. I wouldn't criticize the average American for the actions of the CIA or for the war in Afghanistan, because the average American might or might not agree with those actions. In other words, I think it's correct to criticize the country, but incorrect to criticize specific people unless they are personally doing bad things.
- Simulacra 3y agoI used to be a supporter of Israel, but our support of Israel causes way too many problems, both foreign and domestic, and I think it's time for America to separate from Israel permanently.
- tamimio 3y agoSo the journalist makes a documentary about how Facebook censors people, and a day later he gets censored, I think that just makes his documentary stronger! Also, when the internet will ever learn, if you try to censor something you will just give it more exposure, I personally would never know about this documentary but now I will watch it.
- bmicraft 3y agoThe Streisand effect works when people try to hide information, I'm not so sure it will work against companies as big as Facebook
- andrewinardeer 3y agoI'm leaning towards the scenario where an organized group mass reported his profile after the show aired and Meta's Lord Algorithm nuked the page. I'm also willing to bet that when it gets manually reviewed it will be reinstated.
- stareatgoats 3y agoThis makes me think that the reason I was thrown out of Facebook is because I followed some Palestinian pages there. Not because I necessarily a supporter of the whole "Palestinian cause", because I think the whole thing is honestly a mess perpetrated by forces with ulterior motives on both sides. But I like to keep informed. I never got an explanation from fb at the time, but now when I try to log in it states a reason: I have broken community rules regarding "dangerous people and organizations". Which is really a laughable accusation regarding me, a convinced pacifist since 50 years back. But I'm honestly concerned that this might have further implications for me. Who else gets to know that I'm considered associated with "dangerous persons or organizations"? Anyway, we are as a society still grappling for how to deal with the sudden and immense power over public opinion generation as well peoples most private lives that social media companies have acquired lately. I don't have a complete solution, but this is untenable.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoCoca-Cola is a dangerous organization, polluting with plastic bottles and giving people diabetes. They have known this for a while they do nothing about it. Should Coca-Cola and its followers also be banned? Who decides where the line of "dangerous" is drawn?