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Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE
- matonseca 5mo agoBig platforms optimize for engagement because it works financially, but society ends up paying the externalities. That incentive mismatch is the real problem.
- skeledrew 5mo agoWell, it's that or the accounts get removed completely. Sometimes you have to pick your fight, and this doesn't look like one that's worth it.
- p-e-w 5mo agoNot true, there’s a third option: Stop operating in those countries. Which used to be a common choice for tech companies, until it somehow became unthinkable for some reason.
- strictnein 5mo agoIs it better for human rights for a channel of communication to exist only if every single person can use it? Or is it a net positive for these communication channels to exist, albeit in an imperfect form?
- microtonal 5mo agoMeta has also been regularly nuking/blocking rights-related accounts in countries that do support human rights. E.g. in The Netherlands. First they did a mass block last December, then again in April: https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/237924/meta-verwijdert-instagram-accounts-van-queerorganisaties-je-voelt-je-kwetsbaar https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/237924/meta-verwijdert-instagra... Some were reinstated again, but not all and not after they have been offline for to long.
- p-e-w 5mo agoThe Netherlands supports precisely those human rights that aren’t inconvenient for them. Just like every other country. There is no fundamental distinction here.
- microtonal 5mo agoWhich is relevant to my comment how? (The Dutch government certainly rejects LGBTQ censorship.)
- genghisjahn 5mo agoI don't know if everything in the book "Careless People" is accurate, but there's a lot of quoted emails saying that this is all part of Meta's playbook.
- ZetsuBouKyo 5mo agoOperating in these countries helps gather information in them.
- ReptileMan 5mo agoIt's called shareholders. When you need a single person with a single share to be able to sue the company for not doing its fiduciary duty that is the result.
- tejohnso 5mo agoMeta is not a political or moral entity, it's a for profit tech company. I don't see why it would be expected to make judgement calls on government requirements. Are we expecting Meta to take a political stance for or against specific policies in every country in which it operates? How would its politics be determined? I think the sensible thing for the corporation to do is to operate as widely as possible and follow the rules where it operates. Governments suppress information all the time. We know of a huge list of thousands of documents and terabytes of video implicating people in child abuse and as important as that is, we aren't getting all of the information. That's the government position. Redact and suppress. It's up to the people to demand transparency from their government and if they don't demand it and fight for it, they won't get it. Corporations like Meta aren't there to help fight the power.
- drowntoge 5mo agoBeing a for-profit company does not automatically give you a free pass to do anything in the name of profit and claim immunity if your actions harm certain people. Individuals can (and will) expose and condemn for-profits for policies they believe cause them harm in order to attach some semblance of accountability to a corporation that would otherwise completely ignore their interests. This is effectively a way of exerting some form of voting power over the decision-making algorithm of the profit-driven body. And something that might make an entity solely focused on profit reconsider running over the concerns of those affected, precisely because they made taking that route less profitable for it. This is not only perfectly legitimate, it is also one of the most powerful ways for consumers to challenge plutocratic forces.
- tejohnso 5mo ago> Being a for-profit company does not automatically give you a free pass to do anything in the name of profit and claim immunity Okay but that's not what were talking about. We're talking about Meta following the rules specified by the government of a country in which they operate. They don't need immunity to follow the rules.
- pesus 5mo ago
- skeledrew 5mo agoThat 3rd choice is invalid because it assumes Meta (or any other large enough company) cares about a given tiny subset of its users. A company exists to make profit, with care about users only a by-product of that, in as much as showing care increases user affinity and more users means more profit. And there's a far less negative effect on profit to be rid of a few users than get into the bad books of an entire country.
- dfxm12 5mo agoThis is a false dichotomy, especially in light of the article mentioning that Twitter hasn't blocked accounts that KSA asked them to block.
- skeledrew 5mo agoIt boils down to how risk-averse a given company is. Meta tends to be extremely risk-averse, because they have more to lose IMO.
- chadgpt3 5mo agoThe third option is to ignore them and let them block you. In a democracy this causes lots of public outrage and might be reversed. Not sure how it goes in authoritarian monarchies.
- patrickmay 5mo agoThis is the answer. Stop operating in authoritarian states and ignore their laws. If those states want to censor what their population can see, it's on them to establish a firewall.
- Pay08 5mo agoYou do realise that most of the world compromises of authoritarian states, right? Not to mention, authoritarianism by whose standards? I know a lot of people that would say EU countries are authoritarian.
- greentea23 5mo agoWhile we're fantasizing about evil people doing the noble thing: the fourth option is for Meta to takes its vast wealth and help build resilient uncensorable communications instead of doubling down on centralized and surveilled social networks.
- skeledrew 5mo agoThat's not in the best interests of the company. Getting blocked would mean the loss of access to a far greater market than those few accounts they're blocking.
- graemep 5mo agoThe title should read "Saudi Arabia". Cutting a country name in half (unless its an accepted way of abbreviating it) is not a good say of modifying a headline. What is next? Zealand ?
- b40d-48b2-979e 5mo agoArabia existed before the Saudis. It will exist after.
- esquivalience 5mo agoYes, but it means something different to the name of the country. It means a region.
- redsocksfan45 5mo ago[dead]
- BeetleB 5mo agoGeographically Arabia is more than just Saudi Arabia, so the title is inaccurate.
- ImJamal 5mo agoWhile true, they mentioned another country on the Arabian peninsula so you could assume it is the country.
- input_sh 5mo agoThe title as it is right now is 79 characters long, the limit is 80.
- saghm 5mo agoWhat about "Meta blocks human rights accounts for audiences in Saudi Arabia and UAE"? I don't think "reaching" adds much to the headline
- some_furry 5mo agoDisappointing but not surprising. This is what happens when you're a billion dollar company and your ethical bone is tied to "we fully comply with the law". You get compliance by default, even if doing so would exacerbate human rights abuses.
- alex1138 5mo agoI don't know the list of everything they've complied with but contrary to Google who once(?) refused to remove pirate bay results, Facebook blocked it even in private messages Zuck doensn't care. His motto is 'dumb fucks'. And that wasn't a joke. It's how he sees people
- Pay08 5mo agoI still remember when Messenger would block certain links, including links to news outlets to curry favour with organisations and governments.
- anonym29 5mo agoI look forward to the day that society finally decides to hold Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Apple etc accountable for their transgressions against humanity. Some say it will never happen, but they said that about the now-dying tobacco industry, too.
- osullish 5mo ago[flagged]
- jmye 5mo ago> now not only are people made redundant, but in a small market like here in Ireland they're outed as a poor performers. I don't know - I've said before, but the bigger red flag to me would be either that they worked for Meta at all, or that they didn't leave of their own accord. Any big tech company pretending someone was let go, as part of a mass lay-off, for performance reasons is generally going to rate as about as truthful as saying it's "because of AI", if I'm looking at hiring. Not to erase that Meta is an absolutely shitty company run by a literal ghoul enabled by tens of thousands of "people" who are happy to make giving teenage girls depression in return for ad clicks their entire life's work.
- microtonal 5mo agoI wish I could get my friends to stop using WhatsApp I communicate with direct family and many friends through Signal. Don't tell them to replace WhatsApp by Signal. Ask them to install Signal besides WhatsApp. Both can exist at the same time and this is a route with much less friction and slowly builds the network effect.
- smashah 5mo agoMeta (trillion dollar company) also targets 15 year old OSS maintainers with legal threats.
- ktm5j 5mo agoDo folks have a suggestion for a Facebook alternative? I'm about fed up with the state of things, but still want to feel connected to social circles (even if they're online only) and politics (ideally without the hate spam bots).
- outside1234 5mo agoBluesky
- Pay08 5mo agoBluesky both isn't an alternative to Facebook and is generally terrible too.
- microtonal 5mo agoMastodon has been great for me to follow niches I'm interested in.
- stvltvs 5mo agoThe trick is to get your friends and family to jump ship with you.
- jjulius 5mo agoI jumped ship, and the friends and family who are important to me are still on the ship, by and large. Yet I've never felt as though I'm missing out. We communicate via alternative forms (texts, calls, hanging out in person) and I have never felt disconnected. The whole trope about people being worried about missing out is misplaced - that feeling is exactly what these products are designed to imbue in their users. Ultimately, if you value others, you'll make the effort to connect somehow, and if they value you, they'll return that energy. If that two-way street doesn't exist, if they're not willing to give back a similar effort, then why do we need to know what they're doing or thinking every day?
- stvltvs 5mo ago
- rvz 5mo ago"principles", "Big Tech", "morals", "money", "ethics" and "I work at a big tech company" are all oxymorons.
- nalekberov 5mo agoThat or they will be blocked completely. Who's naive enough to think that big corporations like Meta would care about human rights?
- 0x5FC3 5mo agoSocial media companies post record earnings year after year from their ads business while increasingly proving to be harmful to society. They do the bare minimum in terms of content moderation and bots while priming the algorithms to maximize revenue. The good ol' privatized profits, socialized harm model. In a just world, would social media platforms be taxed higher on corporate revenue and how would that pan out? Maybe we'll be left with small federated platforms without algorithms and ads.
- larodi 5mo agoSadly I dare not say anything rude against Facebook and its policies, as it gets immediately devoted for presumably harsh language or incitement of hatred. Well I really hate everything there is about FB in 2026 and have avoided it by all means possible ever since 2017. My actual FB is now called HN, but... I guess 1) HN has its own limits; 2) everything is fine, look the other way and it will go.
- mannanj 5mo agoIs this not a Straw Man, as I'm hearing you say "they do the bare minimum in terms of content moderation and bots" whereas if as the title of the article claims, meta is instead "blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences" then the problem is that the content moderation itself is the problem, not "not doing enough" in content moderation. It's their content moderation and perhaps bot policies causing damage. I have first hand experience with how harmful their policies were during the SARS-COV-2 era, where I and peers who shared about health practices we were following with decades of experience to help improve our health were moderated and censored due to Facebook policies.
- jazzypants 5mo agoBuddy... Are you a doctor? Are you a scientist? Why do you think that you have an inalienable right to proselytize your "health practices" on a public forum? My experience was that there wasn't nearly enough moderation on social media about Covid. The absurd amount of misinformation was the final straw that finally got me to leave Facebook and Instagram.
- WhereIsTheTruth 5mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Ember_Wipe 5mo ago[flagged]
- AussieWog93 5mo agoMaybe I'm fatigued by a decade straight of people co-opting the language of human rights and progressivism in order to push the most insane agendas possible, or maybe I'm just the particular brand of contrarian that is common to HN, but I find it hard to take either the title or the article at face value. Who writes a carefully worded statement like this, in multiple languages, but then "accidentally" forgets to include details about who was blocked and why?
- nixon_why69 5mo agoThey did say who was blocked, they list 2 NGOs and 2 individuals by name, while also saying "100 others" in the second paragraph. They link to Meta's transparency report for the "100 others".
- AussieWog93 5mo agoThere you go. I skipped over that. Both of the activists mentioned by name seem to be genuinely brave people standing up for real human rights.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- cs02rm0 5mo agoThe UAE is in Arabia. It's not in Saudi Arabia.
- wotsdat 5mo ago[dead]
- bogota 5mo agoIs HN just reddit now? The comments on this are beyond stupid and add nothing of value or thought.
- Cider9986 5mo agoNo, it's not. There are a lot more thoughtful comments and some questioning the headline for its clickbait. I agree there are a lot more low quality comments, though. It depends on the article.
- alex1138 5mo agoThere has been a bit of a trend. I do appreciate dissenting comments on HN even when I've gotten a bit defensive over them
- poolnoodle 5mo agoAgreed. The quality of comments has really declined.
- loeg 5mo agoDid you have a different account before a year ago? HN discourages the same individual rotating accounts.
- senordevnyc 5mo agoIt's gotten almost unbearable in the last couple years. The amount of hate, cynicism, bitterness, etc. towards almost everything (currently AI, capitalism, anyone successful, etc) is just ridiculous. It's sad, I've been a heavy user for almost twenty years now, and I find it borderline intolerable most days.
- loeg 5mo agoIncreasingly so :(.
- pembrook 5mo agoI've been saying this for the past year or so. Something happened during the pandemic where too many normies got hired into tech and then started larping around here. The quality of comments here is now just emotional mainstream nonsense, compared to the annoyingly autistic (but often intelligent) analysis that used to be commonplace.
- mmastrac 5mo agoMeta is the worst of the worst. I don't use it other than a tombstone account with some family connections and a separate burner account we use for Facebook marketplace.
- greentea23 5mo agoThis is how everyone talks about their use of Meta products: "I don't use them except for those times I use them...". We all need to actually boycott and actively help create alternatives or these little bits of fabricated need will keep them in business forever.
- mmastrac 5mo agoI doubt my semi-monthly marketplace usage is contributing more than it costs. If everyone used just the bare minimum free feature set, the company would not be viable.
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 5mo agoI don't think facebook is viable counting only usage. It's only viable because having a Facebook account means you have Meta apps, so you can be tracked and your behavior and opinions sold. Regardless of how often you open the app.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- hu3 5mo agoDo you boycott Apple and Google too? Because they have to comply with debatable laws just as Meta. See drama about Apple maps for Taiwan/China for example.
- slumberlust 5mo agoSo you do use them. Twice.
- throwaway613746 5mo ago
- netdur 5mo ago[flagged]
- dbvn 5mo agoA pro-democracy group in a non-democratic country got banned? whaaaaa? ... I mean their ideal outcome would be the toppling of the current government, so ya
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- groundzeros2015 5mo agoWhat is a “human rights account”? Another reading of this headline is “Meta blocks western propaganda…l
- marcosdumay 5mo agoNah, if the Saudi and the UAE governments don't like it, it's certainly about human rights.
- megous 5mo agoYou can read the article, look up the names online and see for yourself.
- groundzeros2015 5mo agoYep, as I described.
- Georgelemental 5mo agoIf it was western propaganda, it would be pro-Saudi and pro-UAE
- groundzeros2015 5mo agoCare to characterize these ideals for us then?
- Georgelemental 5mo agoIdeals? I didn't say anything about ideals. Cynicals, though…
- throwaway5752 5mo agoEvery developer, and particularly every developer at Meta or who is thinking about working at or with Meta, should read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People It is useful, because instead of being surprised and reading this article, you can nod your head and go about your day because you already knew they were a company that was rotten to its core.
- booleandilemma 5mo agoTrashy behavior from a trashy company.
- nephihaha 5mo agoSocial media and Google tends to agree with the government of the place wherever they're in. That isn't democracy and we should probably realise it has done that in the west as well.
- LogicFailsMe 5mo agoThe AMC TV series The Audacity has a scene where one of the tech sociopaths says that if one of the other tech sociopaths goes through with a plan to utterly destroy privacy (as a service) that it will cause the government to finally pass real privacy laws and then all the other sociopaths will gang up on him. Zuckerberg proves otherwise IMO. There doesn't seem to be a bottom to how low they can go.
- dotcoma 5mo agoRemember when they told us that social media would "spread democracy" ?
- krapp 5mo agoIt can and does. The power of social media to spread ideas and accelerate political action is why fascists took it over and co-opted it. That's why we're fed the narrative that social media is evil and needs to be regulated or banned at all costs.
- dotcoma 5mo agoDo you remember cases in which it "accelerated political action" ?
- Natfan 5mo agofamously the Arab spring
- Natfan 5mo agoalso BLM, israel palestine and the genocide in myanmar, that was definitely accelerated political action
- krapp 5mo agoThere have been plenty. Surely you aren't arguing that social media has never done so. Arguably social media has been one of the most catalyzing political forces in human history. And bearing in mind that "political action" can be in any direction, I found some examples. I didn't work very hard because this could have literally been a Google search on your part. Arab Spring Nepalese Discord Protests Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine 2009 Iranian presidential election protests 2011 Egyptian revolution #BlackLivesMatter #MeToo Hong Kong protests #NoKings protests Yellow Vest protests (France) Anti-Israel/Pro-Palestine protests Anti-vaccine protests during COVID Rohingya genocide GamerGate
- 5mo ago
- GeoAtreides 5mo agoLet's not forget about the slave markets mobile apps: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50228549 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50228549
- shell0x 5mo ago“Meta blocks Western propaganda from reaching the Middle East” would be a good title
- dnnddidiej 5mo agoDoes propaganda just mean opinion now?
- Georgelemental 5mo agoLol at the idea of "Western propaganda" being opposed to these regimes. They are friends with Our Greatest Ally, so they are friends with us
- tempaccountabcd 5mo ago[dead]
- aurareturn 5mo agoIf Meta operates in Saudi Arabia and UAE, shouldn't they follow their laws?
- NewJazz 5mo agoNah fuck that.
- ornornor 5mo agoIf it’s legal to eat babies in a country, does it make it morally ok to do it too while visiting?
- aurareturn 5mo agoThen Meta should exit that country.
- ornornor 5mo agoIf they had a moral compass. They’ve proven time and again they don’t.
- aurareturn 5mo agoMeta should exit the US too because the US does {x} that I don't agree with. But Meta doesn't have a moral compass.
- ornornor 5mo ago> But Meta doesn't have a moral compass. Exactly.
- davorak 5mo ago> Meta should exit the US too because the US does {x} that I don't agree with. This can be a real argument and conversation but we would need to know what {x} is and the causal chain that leads the world to be better after Meta leaves the US.
- abdelhousni 5mo agoAt least we can't blame meta for inconsistency ...
- cphoover 5mo agoAt the same time they are enacting another round of massive layoffs. Why does this company deserve tax-breaks on their AI data-centers again?
- WhereIsTheTruth 5mo agoIf Meta (a US company) blocks a NGO at home, is this a US problem or a UAE problem? Why make it sound like it's a UAE problem? Since y'all are pro at censorship, you may have the answer to my question? https://i.imgur.com/dauVR5A.png https://i.imgur.com/dauVR5A.png
- altruios 5mo agoThe way to fix social media is to get off of social media.
- jjulius 5mo agoThis shouldn't be downvoted, it's absolutely correct.
- noname120 5mo agoIt’s off-topic.
- jjulius 5mo agoIt's not off-topic to suggest using something other than social media to communicate in a thread about social media silencing speech.
- Pay08 5mo agoI've asked this to someone else already, but what would that be? It's not like the Saudi government is just going to let you take out TV ads.
- pessimizer 5mo ago[flagged]
- fluffybucktsnek 5mo agoOne of the points of consumer articulation is to prevent incentives to being "unable to file without facebook". And, where I live, taxis still exist, although as expensive as before.
- thrance 5mo ago"Just remember to put plastics in the yellow bin and you can save the planet!" Individual action is not an effective response.
- noname120 5mo agoDo they have a choice? It’s either that or they are shown the door, in which case they will probably be replaced by worse local alternatives in terms of freedom of speech and gov influence
- iAMkenough 5mo agoYes, they have a choice. Profits are more important than values.
- Ajedi32 5mo agoRight, but it should be acknowledged that this is likely an amoral decision on Facebook's part (or more charitably, a pragmatic decision) not an immoral one. The governments that forced these changes in the first place are of course acting immorally, that's not in dispute.
- nailer 5mo agoFacebook acquiscing to dictatorships that block human rights organizations is immoral.
- lostlogin 5mo agoIt is. It’s not as bas as the time they helped organise a genocide though, so there is that.
- echoangle 5mo agoI don’t think that’s what amoral means. It’s not malicious but doing something that hurts others just because you gain money from it isn’t amoral just because you’re not doing it just to inflict pain. Hyperbolic example: If your boss tells you to kill the next customer or you won’t get paid, doing the killing isn’t amoral.
- Ajedi32 5mo ago
- hirako2000 5mo agoArabia isn't a place.
- jexe 5mo agoIt's clear time and again that having short-term growth at all costs means you can't have principles.
- autoexec 5mo agoIt means having short-term growth at all costs will be your only principle
- archagon 5mo agoI think you can have principles. They just need to be chiseled unambiguously into your articles of incorporation.
- HDBaseT 5mo agoI'm confused on the "short term growth" comment. Meta (Facebook) has been around for two decades at this point and I cannot remember the last time morals were even in the discussion with Meta/Facebook.
- Danox 5mo agoThey have no morals money as their God…
- orochimaaru 5mo agoBoth are major suppliers of oil and petroleum products. You have short term principles too. It’s not like you’re not buying things linked to Saudi Arabia or UAE for lack of human rights. If you do business in a country you’re expected to follow the laws of the country. The device you made the comment from is most likely made in China or has several parts made there. But Meta is evil… I don’t like meta for their creepiness factor. Outrage on this one though is unwarranted. It puts their local employees at risk of prosecution.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Frieren 5mo ago
- rahadbhuiya 5mo ago[dead]
- 8eye 5mo agoPut social media onto torrent. Make reshares a seed, have it where users can use their device or a remote device to hold the seed.
- eloisius 5mo agoThis is sort of what Scuttlebutt did. You receive and distribute posts by anyone you follow, creating a decentralized network, not just a federated one. I enjoyed checking it out briefly a few years ago, but there really wasn’t that much to see, and it would randomly cause your computer to run hot and eat up gigs of storage. I also worry about inadvertently storing copies of illegal images on this kind of network.
- 8eye 5mo agoThat’s the beauty of this design, you only seed what you share. If something is not worth seeding, you don’t share it. You are only responsible for the seed you selected to reseed. That also acts as a verifier in case someone edits the comment later on. You put an id based on the timestamp and every user uses a signature that allows others to verify original source. The client could theoretically auto trust certain signatures if it is proven to be from a trusted user.
- yieldcrv 5mo agoThey can’t publish a gag order they receive from a United States authority either I would take most of these comments seriously if the respondents acted like they knew that But in the demand from the article, I agree that it would be helpful to know the rules behind the censorship requests, but if they are remotely similar to the rules in democracies and republics that people are inspired by, then it comes with a gag order
- NewCzech 5mo agoI'm in the UAE right now. The site www.alqst.org is blocked here. I had to turn on a VPN to read the article. Here, it's not even allowed to read about what's not allowed!
- cebert 5mo agoAren’t you afraid of using a VPN and their being ramifications?
- AdieuToLogic 5mo ago> Aren’t you afraid of using a VPN and their being ramifications? Depending on the sophistication of the VPN software being used network traffic can appear to monitors as UDP[0] packets superficially similar to what many video games produce. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol
- fragmede 5mo agoOkay, but user NewCzech posting to HN in the UAE could probably be deanonymized by the UAE for posting their comment, if the government got really interested in the matter.
- ceheaaf 5mo agoUsing a common VPN on a residential IP caused my entire internet connection to be blocked for a few hours at a time after ~10 minutes, verified over a few weeks with ~3 intermittent attempts. Make of that what you will.
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 5mo agoCurious as to wether iodine works
- neop1x 5mo agoCurrently the best VPN-alternative seem to be Project X https://xtls.github.io/en/ https://xtls.github.io/en/ It is flexible and well tested in China but configuring it properly is quite difficult.
- GolfPopper 5mo agoFacebook ip list at Github for those who aren't already blocking it: https://gist.github.com/Whitexp/9591384 https://gist.github.com/Whitexp/9591384
- cryo32 5mo agoAnyone who has read Careless People will not be surprised at this. Meta is a scourge.
- melespara 5mo ago[dead]
- neksn 5mo ago[dead]
- poolnoodle 5mo agoTroll.
- embedding-shape 5mo agoYes, I speak for whole of HN, and I previous said it's good that US follows local laws so I'll speak for whole of HN again and say we also like this because again foreign company needs to follow local law. Everyone happy now?
- draw_down 5mo ago[dead]
- wagwang 5mo agoBesides, half of these organizations are probably CIA fronts anyways
- mikestew 5mo agoDoes this mean HN users are only happy when US companies are forced to follow whatever regulations HN users like, but not others? Seems hypocritical. It just means HN hasn’t yet held the vote to decide what we collectively think on the matter. The vote takes place tomorrow, and you need 500 karma to be eligible to vote. In seriousness, what an immature view of the world to think an online forum has a hive mind that can be called out for hypocrisy.
- nekzn 5mo agoYou probably realise that this website has a voting system (that’s what the small icons next to all comments do; they are not meant to be triangles but arrows). Through this voting system users can show their support or disapproval of any content posted by other users. When a majority of users consistently upvote the same set of opinions positively, you can tell how that majority feels about some matter.
- insane_dreamer 5mo agowe need a tax on ad revenue specifically; that would go a long way in benefiting society
- alizamm095 5mo ago[dead]
- yubblegum 5mo ago> Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Arabia and the UAE That's just social media. Wait until CBDCs are rolled out globally and we'll what else can get blocked.
- Danox 5mo agoOf course they do I will never use their site knowing play nor will I ever pay for anything that they make…
- jmyeet 5mo agoWhat's funny is the Meta, Twitter, Google, etc are doing everything China gets accused of doing. Trillion dollar companies move in lockstep with US domestic and foreign policy. My position is that these companies are already violating Section 230 so that's the first thing you could attack them on. Section 230 shields "interactive computer services" from strict liability for third-party content. It's enabled the likes of Wordpress and Geocities and the original version of Youtube so they caqnq't be sued for defamation for what users post. This is distinct from, say, CNN, NYT, WaPo, Fox and other media companies that do have strict liability because they're first-party publishers. My position is that an algorithmic feed and selective distribution turns such companies, which includes social media companies, from platforms into publishers (Section 230 doesn't use that language specifically; it's paraphrased). Twitter pushes Elon Musk onto everyone's feeds. That's not a "platform". Twitter should be legally liable for doing that. Meta's Jordana Cutler essentially boasted about suppressing pro-Palestinian content [1], in effect consciously pushing pro-Israeli content. How is that different to just publishing the exact same content? I don't think it is. The other way to handle this is as a product liability issue. Just like tobacco companies, social media companies should be sued for the foreseeable and known harm they produce, such as targeting minors, allowing advertisers to target minors, addictive behavior, pushing dangerous ideas (eg eating disorder content) and so on. [1]: https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palestine-censorship-sjp/ https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti...
- drumhead 5mo agoThey're like vampires we invited in to our houses. And now we cant get rid of them.
- righthand 5mo agoI thought they stopped moderating for “community notes”.
- pembrook 5mo agoCan just re-title this to: "[Company] forced to follow local laws where it operates as always has been the case" Meta also had to block legitimate coverage in the US during the Covid pandemic because it conflicted with whatever the mainstream narrative was at the time, due to government forcing their hand. If you're mad at any company that's following laws you don't like, you should direct your ire at the government that created the laws or policies, not at the companies that have no power to overrule said governments. On one hand HN gets mad when big tech is perceived to have too much power, then on the other hand HN gets mad when big tech doesn't have enough power. It doesn't seem very coherent, just a mob getting angry at random emotional triggers.
- wotsdat 5mo ago[dead]
- like_any_other 5mo agoMany are saying Meta has to comply with local law, and, fair enough. But does anyone know - when someone in that region tries to view a blocked post or account - do they see the post, but the content is censored over with a black bar with "Censored by order of the UAE"? Do such censored posts show up in recommendation feeds, promoted at equal rates as non-censored content, so that it is obvious something is there that you are forbidden from seeing? Or is the content simply absent, and unless you directly visit the banned accounts, you don't even know anything was censored?
- jeffwask 5mo agoI would like to congratulate Meta on this day as they layoff more people for AI. I hope all your platforms burn to ash.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Razengan 5mo agoApple's iCloud Private Relay is also disabled in Dubai/UAE. All that masquerading as a paragon of privacy but it never works where it's actually needed.
- Matl 5mo agoAnd yet both countries, unlike Iran, are US and European buddies. Because it's not about democracy, it's about playing ball and letting Israel occupy Palestine in peace.
- atlasagentsuite 5mo ago[dead]
- TacticalCoder 5mo agoOh now there are human rights issues in Saudi Arabia and the UAE? Maybe in Somalia and Iran too? I'm shocked.
- ljliajlsj 5mo agoFriendly reminder that if you work for facebook, you're a bad person. No one gets to use the "I didn't know about this" excuse in 2026. Facebook is poison.
- Thive 5mo ago[dead]
- stopbulying 5mo ago[dead]
- m0skit0 5mo agoThe article also exists in English: https://www.alqst.org/en/posts/1190 https://www.alqst.org/en/posts/1190
- Ecys 5mo ago[flagged]
- throwaway2037 5mo ago> Since 30 April 2026, Gulf-focused NGOs ALQST for Human Rights and Democratic Diwan, as well as Saudi researcher Abdullah Alaoudh and human rights defender Yahya Assiri, have had their Facebook accounts rendered “unavailable” in Saudi Arabia at the request of the Saudi government, in a form of “geo-blocking”. Similar restrictions have been imposed in the UAE I believe in digital sovereignty. These countries should be able to decide what content is visible to normie users. (Note: Here the term "normie" means people who do not use VPNs.) Would we have the same level of response if GCC gov'ts also blocked alcohol or gambling or adult content websites? (Friendly reminder: GCC citizens are 95%+ Moslems.)
- zhouquanxi 5mo ago[flagged]