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The Day Instagram Blocked Democracy
- ulfw 2y agoWe should have never allowed tech companies to get this big. Nothing good comes out of media being centralised in the hand of the few.
- Matthyze 2y agoMy (quite uninformed) take is that it was a show of loyalty from Zuckerberg or Meta to the Trump administration. Tech oligarchs have been trying to curry favor after Trump's win. Due to Meta's previous stance on fact-checking, Meta might have been asked to demonstrate its loyalty.
- celdon25 2y ago> "The Day" So it was fine when they were censoring republicans, but only became "the day of infamy" when blocking the left... Zero acknowledgement or mention in the article about the history of censorship against the right. I thought they believed in equity?
- Matthyze 2y agoYou might argue that forms of fact-checking or moderation of controversial content constituted censorship, but you cannot believe that that equates to such explicit silencing of political opponents.
- secretsatan 2y agoWhen did they censor the republicans?
- cbeach 2y agoDid you forget that Meta chose to shut down the account of a democratically-elected sitting Republican president? Or is that (and other scandals eg the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story) a distant and obscure memory?
- cbeach 2y ago[flagged]
- dscottboggs 2y agoOr maybe they think your post is not of value? Lol
- wklauss 2y agoNo the same case. Donald Trump's account was banned due to his role in inciting an insurrection but you could still find republican content posted by other users with hashtags. I'd expect the same treatement if a democratic leader tried to incite a violent mob to assault the capitol.
- cbeach 2y agoWhen the Capitol riot happened, Trump was tweeting to demand the protesters act peacefully and within the law. If Trump was truly an insurrectionist, then that’s a very strange way to incite insurrection.
- TMWNN 2y agoMy "favorite" bit of misinformation about the Capitol riot (out of so, so many) is about Donald Trump Jr. For many, many months prosecutors and the media talked about him as being an unindicted co-conspirator, and how that that Nixonesque adjective would/should surely be adjusted any day now. Then ... it turns out that Jr. repeatedly begged his father (via messages to Mark Meadows) to do whatever he could to stop the rioting.
- rofo1 2y agoTrump was banned from Facebook and Twitter. They didn't seem to have a problem with this. It's interesting how the brainwashing works: they always find a reason for whatever they do. "Empathy", "sympathy", "compassion" for whatever evil they do. "We are protecting innocent people from the Dangerous Thoughts". When other groups do it to them, then they cry in the media in which they control. The solution is simple: we should not censor free speech. IT WILL be turned against you. This should be a principled position, not one that depends on whether you like one party or another party...
- GJim 2y ago> Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter For misinformation and inciting violence. Not because of his politics.
- GJim 2y agoThe above is a proven factual statement that has been downvoted due to tribal politics. Very sad to see, and indicative of the poor state of political discourse.
- snowfarthing 2y agoIf Democrats can incite violence and post information with impunity, yet Republicans get fact-checked out the wazoo (by Democrats, no less!) ... it's very hard for us to take the claim that this wasn't "because of his politics".
- karles 2y ago[flagged]
- jampekka 2y agoI didn't agree with the Trump ban and a lot of other "content moderation" (which affected the left wing too). But in the case of Trump he was banned due to the incitement of violence/revolt in the Capitol Hill incident and the attempts to overturn election results.
- kwar13 2y agoMeta and Zuckerberg never believed in democracy. Just the highest bidder.
- NVHacker 2y agoCan Democracy be blocked by Instagram ?
- bsnsxd 2y agoI sincerely hope this attempt of a technocrat oligarchy to be the downfall of social media as we know it, we lived without them, everyone has been on and off at some point even after joining in, even younger generations, so everyone knows we can easily unplug with net positive impact in our lives. And that's all it takes for their power to vanish like smoke in the wind.
- willis936 2y agoTechnocracy means "rule by experts". What we have is a plain oligarchy. These people are not experts in the areas they dictate.
- mewc 2y ago[flagged]
- null_investor 2y agoMark Zuckerberg is a lizard, he made the right call to bow to Trump. Now Meta will continue to destroy the world's mental health until the situation worsens more. Trump was a hope that this Meta non-sense would end, but both became allies and forgot about the so many studies that shows how it's a toxic digital product. It will now take longer for humanity to understand that Meta platforms are worse than cigarettes, but doesn't come with any labelling.
- cbeach 2y ago[flagged]
- rob74 2y agoIf it was left-wing people spreading e.g. vaccine disinformation (which is now on the way of becoming official policy in the US - I hope not too many people will die because of this), I would want those fact-checked as well, but for some reason most lunatics seem to gravitate to the right side of the political spectrum. Maybe reading the Bible too literally already predisposes you to rejecting science, and from there it's just a small step to believe made-up stories on other topics too?
- unsnap_biceps 2y agoBold of you to assume most Christians have read the Bible. In my experience they only listen to what ever the pastor quotes.
- rickydroll 2y agoThe only people who think that the political right is censored are the political right. A few studies have been done on this topic, and consistently, they have found that right-wing messages get promulgated much faster and further than anything on the left or progressive sides. https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/quick-take/more-evidence-that-conservatives-are-not-unfairly-censored-on-social-media/ https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/quick-take/more-evidence-that-cons... Another reason why right-wings may think they are being censored is because of hate speech. Our AI overlords are already helping us identify hate speech sources, allowing us to sandbox them further. https://www.psypost.org/new-machine-learning-model-finds-hate-tweeting-mainly-originates-from-right-leaning-figures/ https://www.psypost.org/new-machine-learning-model-finds-hat... FTA: > Another interesting finding from the study came from applying the model to the PubFigs dataset. Of the 1,133 tweets classified as hate speech, 1,094 were posted by right-leaning figures, while only 39 came from left-leaning figures. In terms of abusive content, right-leaning figures contributed 5,029 out of the total 5,299 abusive tweets, with only 270 coming from the left-leaning group. This means that left-leaning figures accounted for just 3.38% of the hate speech and 5.14% of the abusive content in the dataset
- danpalmer 2y agoI’ve seen a bit of how these sorts of things work and I’m going to give Meta the benefit of the doubt for the initial block, I’d like to think their leadership isn’t that brazen, and the fact this was fixed suggests an error. One bad piece of content (possibly related to critique of the incoming regime) tripped up an automated filter and took down a keyword at an unfortunate time. What’s inexcusable is that it took so long to fix it. Taking so long caused the appearance of a strong political statement, and the fact that it took so long at least makes a statement about the importance of an issue like this in the company.
- wklauss 2y agoThis is a very unlikely scenario, given how many hashtags were blocked and how specific they were.
- chikere232 2y agoand the timing... Zuck lost any benefit of the doubt by publically removing fact checkers and the "the company needs to become more masculine" bs.
- Matthyze 2y agoAnd—more than anything—the timing.
- danpalmer 2y agoThen why did they "fix" it? They were related hashtags. My guess is a few bad posts on those hashtags that polluted them in some way, such that automated systems decided to classify those hashtags as bad. I'd bet that such a system exists, that's just basic responsibility.
- fencepost 2y agoIt's entirely believable that this showed up because of a bug, but it also seems likely that the bug was in setting it to full blocking vs some kind of deprioritization.
- thih9 2y agoDid anyone successfully move away from instagram? I have an account and sharing photos to a community there (people who I know irl and random strangers) brings me joy. I also have a pixelfed account but I know no people there and I was unsuccessful in switching. I’d love to hear what others used or did that worked for them.
- te_chris 2y agoStopped looking at it more than once a week
- throwaway290 2y agoYou can do the same on any blogging platform like any Twitter clone or such, no?
- thih9 2y agoYes, but it's theory vs practice. I'm interested in stories and impressions from people who are actually doing it. Are you using twitter or blogging like this? How do you like it?
- throwaway290 2y agoDid it on Twitter. It has no grid but has communities and lots of photographers. Now though a bit of an exodus and more spam
- thih9 2y agoThanks for writing, sounds interesting. And yes, Twitter does not look stable at the moment. A blog, ideally a self hosted one, sounds perfect; but I don't know how to approach community interactions there. To clarify, I'd like to post personal photos and interact with viewers; I don't want to make money in any way. I'm curious how this works in 2025, I'd love to hear more if anyone has anything to share.
- 2y ago
- fbfactchecker 2y ago[flagged]
- ss64 2y agoThis algorithmic filtering is almost certainly still in place, they just dialled it back from 100% ban to some lower percentage. The only way to win against this is to close all your Meta accounts and never look back. It seems hard to do, but once you rip the plaster off it is actually quite a relief.
- anal_reactor 2y agoI keep Messenger though because some people I know from offline life keep using it and won't switch. Same with WhatsApp. These two don't have intrusive algorithms fortunately.
- demothrowaway 2y agoWhy has this been flagged and removed from the front-page?
- dscottboggs 2y agoDo you really need to ask?
- x11antiek 2y agoIt seems like a standard practice on HN nowadays. I am afraid some mods may be politically charged. See the following thread for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716926
- oooyay 2y agodang is about as politically neutral as it gets, but it's become very apparent that anything that points to something negative that may loosely relate to Conservatives or the Republican party will get flagged by users.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- docpop 2y agoSad to see it getting flagged here, especially given the context of my post. I do appreciate that it got shared here and all the comments so far. I put a lot of work into this and I really appreciate that people are sharing it around.
- JohnTHaller 2y agoFolks who believe their feelings trump facts
- xtiansimon 2y agoSeems like an oxymoron.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hintymad 2y agoI hope this serves a cautionary tale to the left. If you think it's righteous to block or cancel someone who offends you on your moral or political ground, someday someone in power can do the same to you. That's why I'm all for free speech, even when some speech may offends someone. Well, I got downvoted every time when I say this, so it really shows what the left are.
- subsistence234 2y ago"it's different when we do it..."
- raxxor 2y agoTo be honest, they aren't the ones that started it. I remember sites like reddit removing subs with fans of Donald Trump and Twitter censorships was very prevalent as well. You might disagree that liking Trump is a good choice, I cannot dispute that, but nevertheless people fell over themselves to ban it everywhere. I don't think this kind of revanchist behavior is sensible, but it also isn't "blocking democracy" either. Or at least someone would need an honest attempt explaining why such removals are unjustified and in a way that addresses shortcomings here for all platforms and political directions. Government influence on online discourse is a negative, you could argue that voting for an idiot is then the next best compromise.