dgoldstein05 days ago
My bet is that some sort of auto ban logic kicked in, maybe due to abuse of reporting features. It'd if course be worse if a human moderator took it down or affirmed such a decision but not impossible.
Meta and other big tech usually over-relies on automated enforcement because it's easier on their wallets than hiring enough moderators to keep up in near-real time. And it's hella easy for a group of motivated people to coordinate flagging of content, which the automation often takes at face value.
Clearly having public spaces in private hands like this is tricky, as if we try to require better moderation that ends up to expensive, private interests will probably find a way to just kick anything controversial / political off their platforms.
motionlessveloc5 days ago
Agree, especially given the suspension only lasted 90 minutes.
If Meta actually wanted to deplatform the No Kings, they would nuke it permanently and handwave terrorism or national security or something. (See also, Reddit's long track record of nuking inconvenient subs like /r/TheDonald, back in the days when they were out of favor.)
jibalt5 days ago
r/TheDonald wasn't nuked because of "inconvenience", but rather because the mods were unable or unwilling to control hate speech, threats of violence, and other abusive behavior. Nor was there a "long track record" -- it was one of about 2000 subs that were nuked in one major purge (many of them were inactive). As for "back in the days", Reddit still bans such behavior.
j0275 days ago
The suspension that was public facing lasted 90 minutes, but they couldn’t log into the account for hours
See https://bsky.app/profile/ezralevin.bsky.social/post/3my43atj...
intended4 days ago
> like /r/TheDonald
Lets people forget, theDonald created entirely new ways of trolling r/all and by extension everyone who never wanted anything to do with them.
This included having multiple posts trend one beneath the other to let people know what they thought.
This is ignoring the stuff that happened within the subreddit. When they got booted and went to whatever the other site was they were overrun with hate speech so bad that even their own mods had to reintroduce bans.
threatofrain5 days ago
I'm not sure why you think Meta would take such a heavy approach, as opposed to just the right amount at the right time for the minimal price and the least commitment.
missmewiththatl5 days ago
As if auto-moderation is an excuse? In past Meta/Facebook has heavily hired human moderators.
We're seriously not going to start abdicating responsibility to automated machines, are we?
jibalt5 days ago
That's a done deal -- Facebook started letting their human moderators (and other contracted workers) go in 2023, and then switched to "free speech" automated moderation in Jan 2025.
One of the contributing factors was a $52 million settlement in 2020 for causing PTSD in those human moderators -- dealing with all that abusive shit was very emotionally taxing.
intended4 days ago
I agree with most, except the settlement is definitely not the straw that broke the camels back. Meta has larger contracts than that with smaller outsourcers.
Trust and safety is a cost center, and not valued in Tech.
jibalt4 days ago
Odd that your brain turned "one of the contributing factors" into "the straw that broke the camel's back".
ethbr15 days ago
In the before times, we used government regulation to enforce private company responsibility in accordance with authority.
If Meta and X want to be a public square, then one of the costs should be hiring enough human moderators to rapidly review critical cases (political, health, hate/conspiracy, etc).
If they don't... fine, then make money doing something else.
But at their current scale, this is really a resource allocation question about whether their margin is a few points higher or lower.
Absolving themselves of democratic responsibilities in exchange for a few bucks is gross.
jibalt4 days ago
I don't know why you're telling ME this, I'm just the messenger. But also it's quite confused:
> If Meta and X want to be a public square, then one of the costs should be hiring enough human moderators to rapidly review critical cases (political, health, hate/conspiracy, etc).
They did that. Then they decided to no longer do so -- "should" is a noise word. It's your opinion and clearly they don't care.
> If they don't... fine, then make money doing something else.
Who are you even addressing? "Hey Meta, make money doing something else!" -- only in some bizarre narcissistic fantasy world does say such things have any effect.
> Absolving themselves of democratic responsibilities in exchange for a few bucks is gross.
Um, yes. Now grow up.
landr0id5 days ago
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.
An account was suspended for 90 minutes. Why is the automatic assumption that it was malicious?
In fact, if Meta had protections against this I’m sure some people would be crying about “obvious political favoritism”.
Hopefully they can move the needle that makes the system in general harder to abuse. But wow, the outrage is insane.
xethos5 days ago
> Why is the automatic assumption that it was malicious?
Because the business model is malicious.
Meta has, quite intentionally, wedged itself in-between large amounts of human interaction. They know some people are malicious. They know the machine will frequently make the wrong call, because the auto-moderator can neither reason, nor account for context.
But hiring enough moderators to run moderation through the computer, provide a default "suggested" action, and having a human approve or deny, would be too expensive. It would demolish their profit, and may even pull Meta from black to red, financially. Their business model relies on making the wrong call, and having outrage bring it to the attention of actual Meta staff to correct it.
Meta does not get to blame the computer they put in charge of moderation instead of hiring adequate staff; computers can never be held accountable, so accountability moves up the chain to the people that programmed the computer and left it in charge.
wallst075 days ago
Meta isn't blaming anything, it's the process. And no process will be perfect, thats the 'damnd if you do/don't'
This is only going to be serious to people who care about the subject itself and maybe any actual harm done in those 90 minutes, which I see as nothing.
ethbr15 days ago
It's entirely feasible for Meta to hire, train, and continually staff high quality human moderators to make important calls.
This isn't some nebulous 'We're not even sure if it's possible!'
It's just Meta being cheap and preferring to enrich its shareholders at the cost of everyone else.
alex11383 days ago
How much did they spend on Metaverse? I hope I'm not just throwing out figures irresponsibly, feel free to fact check me, but I heard one figure of 80 billion? I mean, it was enough to rebrand their entire 'business' (bullshit pivot; extortion) around
Zuck recently bought a castle. I bet none of his vast wealth goes to improving his platforms
nfw25 days ago
they probably can reduce the error rate and triage false positives basically instantly with ai, but we all know how society feels about that
nfw25 days ago
you abdicate responsibility to an automated system whenever you deposit a check into an atm (which you probably don't because you use the banking system in an even more automated way)
if the accusation is political cronyism then yes, whether it was automated or discretionary is obviously relevant
ethbr15 days ago
There's a big deterministic gulf between numerical OCR and judging whether a particular piece of free text is breaking TOS.
nfw24 days ago
I think the best to measure the metaphorical size of said gulf is by studying outcomes empirically. If a technically non-deterministic system operates as precisely as a deterministic system does in practice, the rhetorical size of the gulf seems pretty small.
ethbr14 days ago
There's no world in which those are close, because the former requires mapping pixels to numbers and the latter inferring meaning from prose.
afavour5 days ago
Yes, no matter what happened Meta are responsible and should provide answers.
There’s still an important distinction to make though: if it was automated then the No Kings page was not deliberately targeted for political reasons.
dgoldstein02 days ago
Not targeted by Meta at least. I've heard plenty of stories of people getting banned due to other users flagging - and that's definitely an abusable vector.
IAmBroom3 days ago
Agreed, but Meta will never tell us if the action was deliberate, so we are reduced to guessing from shreds of evidence.
jelloroll425 days ago
Meta put it's thumb in the scale against Lula in Brazil. Why would this be any different?
james_david5 days ago
What evidence do you have that it was an autoban?
biophysboy5 days ago
Autobans happen to ad accounts on FB all the time.
brettermeier5 days ago
And this account posted ads?
biophysboy5 days ago
It is not an ad account - the other reply is stupid. I am saying ad accounts deal with this crap from FB all the time. Add this instance to the pile. It is the price of surrendering comms and marketing to a gigantic behemoth.
SV_BubbleTime5 days ago
> And this account posted ads?
I mean… it is for a “No Kings” rally. Yes. It’s main job is advertising. Yes.
gizzlon5 days ago
Autoban? I thought they have whitelists of accounts it leaves alone, for this exact reason.
It's possible, of course, but taking anything Meta says at face value is very naive IMO. It's just as possible that they let it be banned and then measured the response, to determine if they continue the ban
[deleted]5 days agocollapsed
kelnos5 days ago
Perhaps, but why were the owners of the account then unable to sign into it after it was restored?
owebmaster5 days ago
Time and time again we see cases of non-aligned targets of censorship as some sort of autoban or technical issue. It's a lie and repeating it only help the liars.
dgoldstein02 days ago
Why should we doubt it's an auto ban?
To be clear I totally think we should demand better off their automated systems. Just because they made a robot do things and the robot did it wrong doesn't absolve them of any responsibility. They just are too cheap to pay enough actual people to be in the loop of automated decisions or quickly reviewing them.
iAMkenough5 days ago
Hopefully it's a lesson learned by those involved.
Don't use platforms like this to organize in the future.
reverius425 days ago
Don't use the only platforms that have millions of people on them to organize millions of people in the future?
iAMkenough5 days ago
Yeah. Stuff still gets done without Meta in the loop. They’re not a dependency for democracy.
Also curious where the “millions” estimate for No Kings events today comes from.
jibalt5 days ago
There were plenty of other outlets for communicating about the rallies -- there was no dependency, and thus there is no logical reason to stop using Facebook.
The estimate has been reported by major news outlets (e.g., https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/...) and comes from a variety of evidence. If you're actually curious then you can research it.
thiht5 days ago
Don’t use JUST platforms like that. Use Instagram, but also have a dedicated website
johnnyanmac5 days ago
Quite a few political channels I follow take the time every video to mention this very thing happening and urging you to sign up for an ol' fashioned mailing list for that reason. One or two might plug the mailing list instead of urging to subscribe to the channel itself.
jibalt5 days ago
Logic failure. There is no reason to use fewer channels.
afavour5 days ago
Come on. You’re not going to organize a political movement over RSS in 2026.
iAMkenough5 days ago
I like that RSS was the best alternative you could think of.
finebalance5 days ago
I wonder if these free-speech absolutists will rail about this? Something tells me probably not.
ThrowawayR25 days ago
I condemn deplatforming regardless of who it's being done to.
rectang5 days ago
Avoiding deplatforming entirely is impossible. Either you allow brigading and harassment which deplatforms the targets of harassment (who find it effectively impossible to use the service), or you deplatform the brigaders by denying them access to the fora of their targets.
ThrowawayR25 days ago
It is extraordinary to watch the group now being themselves deplatformed still arguing against those who oppose deplatforming.
sillyfluke5 days ago
>It is extraordinary
It is actually very banal.
The group now being themselves jailed still argue against those who categorically oppose jails.
You don't need to agree in order to understand the logic.
One side believes it is the "why" in the act that determines rightness or wrongness, the other side believes (if that is their genuine position) the act by itself is categorically wrong.
[deleted]5 days agocollapsed
nfw25 days ago
what about child porn distributors, they get to stay too?
ThrowawayR24 days ago
Let's dissect the parent poster's question for instructional purposes:
- If the answer is yes, then the parent poster would excoriate the respondent for being a horrible person.
- If the answer is no, then the parent poster would triumphantly crow that the respondent is not actually against deplatforming / pro-free speech after all.
Astute HN readers should immediately be able to spot the problem: the false dilemma fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma). They have set up an imaginary "free speech absolutist" who must be 100% against any and all speech restrictions if they do not support deplatforming, which is obviously nonsensical; few, if any, such people exist.
So we see that it is an attempt at a gotcha but it doesn't hold up when examined. I have no idea why people think it's clever.
nfw24 days ago
> I condemn deplatforming regardless of who it's being done to
The parent's post is the one who took an absolute stance on deplatforming. I did not invent the stance. You didn't say "I condemn deplatforming", you specifically added a clause that seems to specify that your belief disregards circumstance.
> "They have set up an imaginary "free speech absolutist" who must be 100% against any and all speech restrictions if they do not support deplatforming"
I did not do this. In fact, it would exclude my own belief, which is that I am generally against deplatforming, but admit there are extraordinary circumstances that should be exceptions, like the case of child porn.
Astute HN readers should immediately be able to tell that I am ironically doing the opposite of the accusation, which is pointing out how absolute binaries on this issue don't hold up to scrutiny. Now poster is falling back on a textbook motte-and-bailey claiming to not have said what they did and has retreated to an easier position to defend.
Or perhaps they meant something different by "regardless of who it's being done to", say, that some deplatforming is justified by the exceptional nature of the circumstance but not by preconceived notions of the one being deplatformed. If that's the case, then clarify it rather than attacking me for interpreting your statement in a reasonable way.
rectang5 days ago
Back before Gawker went kaput I used to spend a bunch of time in the comment sections at Jezebel and The Root. Jezebel in particular had a huge problem with highly-motivated trolls.
Sometimes the trolling took the form of high-volume contrarian posting, but the trolls would also post porn and pictures of gendered violence in the comments on nearly every single article.
The way Jezebel dealt with it was through a variant of commenter whitelisting. Unapproved commenters (including yet-to-be-banned trolls) would have their comments in a purgatory until approved, visible only to those who have opted in.
A community like Jezebel cannot exist when supposed free-speech absolutists have their way and protect the trolls. When the free speech of trolls is prioritized, their targets are denied freedom of assembly and freedom of association.
These are all private fora so the US Bill of Rights doesn't actually come into play. But what episodes like today remind us is that the commitment of platforms like Meta and X to ensuring full participation by their political enemies is weak.
nfw24 days ago
agreed generally, but one could argue that if a company is going to claim impunity for damages for a statement made on their platform because they are operating as a "virtual town square" rather than as a publisher, then they are obligated to permit speech in a way that is congruous with how a public space operates.
rectang4 days ago
That approach sounds promising at first, and I'm interested in exploring it. But it seems to me as though it's not the tool which would allow unpopular groups to hold conversations without interference.
When meeting in an actual, physical town square, a group like the Jezebel.com commenters (or to pluck a group from elsewhere on the political spectrum, second amendment activists) doesn't have the right to be free from criticism. They could hold a rally there, or they could protest other groups, but they don't have the right to shut down those who would protest civilly against them.
What unpopular groups need is a private forum where they can congregate and exercise their right to freedom of association by excluding those who would disrupt their activities.
_heimdall5 days ago
I've never understood the phrase "free speech absolutist." We either have free speech or we don't, there is no in between.
I personally don't think hate speech should be illegal. If someone feels that way I'd rather know it and act accordingly than them keep it to themselves.
Others may well disagree with my view there and that's totally fine, but they do want limits to what one can say which means they don't want free speech.
verdverm5 days ago
> there is no in between
However there is a difference. A balance of free speech on social media could look like
1. Anyone can say anything they want
2. The algorithms are simplified such that they are chronological and your direct network, rather than the anxiety boosting, "editorial" choice in promoting or limiting the speech of others, especially with how reposts and quote tweets amplify a given post.
We need to rethink and regulate algorithms while we are working on Ai regulation. Let's not let the tech companies that brought us the mess we are in slip by in this moment of seemingly bipartisan cooperation.
Let us also make targeted advertising illegal to remove the incentives that make the "anxiety algorithms" so profitable. Go back to a world of context based advertising like magazines.
_heimdall5 days ago
One huge distinction to raise here is that free speech is a protection between the individual and the state. Corporations are free to regulate speech on their own platform, especially when users agree to terms of service that stipulate as much.
We can debate where the line on regulation should fall, but that isn't a free speech debate.
verdverm5 days ago
At the same time, the people can petition the state to regulate corporations use of our speech, and generally our data
They have been abusing their power, something has to change
_heimdall5 days ago
Totally agree here, once the state compels a private company to regulate speech it should become a free speech issue.
I haven't seen anyone show that here yet, though the Twitter files did show that for example.
verdverm5 days ago
The state is not regulating speech in my scenario, it is regulating algorithms and the relative promotion/limitation of another person's speech.
We have considered algorithms to be a form of speech, because it is an "editorial" process, but this does not seem to be what they actually do. Similar to how Ai output is not copyrightable, social media feed algorithms that work on big data should not be considered an "editorial" process. There is no human involved in making decisions, just like Ai. Thus, if we regulate algorithms, we are not regulating speech, we are regulating a process, albeit a digital one with less case law.
_heimdall4 days ago
Regulating the algorithms would be extremely difficult and I don't expect regulators would be able to do it in a clear enough way that it keeps up with whatever tech companies try next.
Much simpler would be to clarify that algorithmically curated feeds of user content do not fall under the protections shielding the hosting company from liability. It seems reasonable to me that the intent of said protections was was to avoid scenarios where the website is in no way directly involved in the content creation itself, once the company decides what and how to show it that seems outside the original intent.
verdverm3 days ago
Yup, critics of Section 230 often cite the possibility doing so will chill speech, that companies will start taking things people say down, to avoid any chance of liability.
Perhaps instead of putting bounds (through laws) on what they cannot do, perhaps we list only what they are allowed to do (for algorithmic feeds), eg. can only show content from direct connections in chronological order. I do expect many people (currently believe) they like being able to discover new content outside of their network.
Whatever we come up with, which would benefit the people, I suspect will have big impacts on their profits. At the same time, if they do not have to spend vast resources to understand our nuances and target ads specifically to use, their cost centers would also be impacted.
I'm a growing proponent of ending targeted advertising. If we start with that, much of the incentives for our current algorithms (social, search, news) would seem to be removed from the equations.
gewetensleegte4 days ago
> We either have free speech or we don't, there is no in between.
huh, but everywhere in the world where they put value on having free speech, the situation is "somewhere in between"
Capricorn24815 days ago
You probably shouldn't be able to threaten somebody or direct people to kill somebody, so I guess by your definition, I don't believe in free speech.
_heimdall5 days ago
Threats are the gray area. I don't view words as violent action, people can say whatever they want. A person acting on it is a different story, including preparations like a person collecting materials for a bomb or something like that.
I could care less if someone wants to say they're going to hurt me. My beef is when they actually try to do it.
VectorLock5 days ago
Some people may not be as privileged to be immune to being terrorized by violent threats as you are.
_heimdall5 days ago
If the act is only words then it doesn't require privilege, I'm honestly curious how you would connect the two.
Words aren't terrorism or violent. That doesn't mean people can't interpret them that way and feel harm, but a word alone can't harm anyone.
johnnyanmac5 days ago
>If the act is only words then it doesn't require privilege, I'm honestly curious how you would connect the two.
Because words carry weight based on who says them. Which is based on power/privileged. The president making an announcement about MedBeds would cause a much bigger conversation than a crackpot conspiracy group on Facebook. And that's sadly not belittling the FB group (give who I've seen fall for it), that's demonstrating how much more authority the president's words have.
>but a word alone can't harm anyone.
In the same way a pebble can't harm you, but it can be holding back a rockslide that can cause mass damage.
_heimdall5 days ago
> In the same way a pebble can't harm you, but it can be holding back a rockslide that can cause mass damage.
That analogy doesn't hold. For one thing a pebble can in fact hurt you by itself. For another, the words still wouldn't be what harmed you, the actions people took later are what harmed you and those are what would be illegal.
VectorLock3 days ago
The fear and anxiety caused by threats issued by those with the capability and proclivity for violence against those with no defense against it is the injury.
koolba5 days ago
> I don't view words as violent action, people can say whatever they want.
Where does that put someone calling out a public hit? It is just words after all.
> I could care less if someone wants to say they're going to hurt me. My beef is when they actually try to do it.
They say there’s no atheists in foxholes.
_heimdall5 days ago
When you say "calling out a public hit" what do you mean exactly?
Vaguely saying "someone should" is very different from offering a bounty or plotting to do it yourself.
koolba5 days ago
Run the full range. From, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” all the way to “10K to whoever takes out heimdall”.
_heimdall5 days ago
The former isn't a legal issue, in my opinion. The latter would be as its actively offering a reward or bounty for a hit.
Capricorn24815 days ago
So words aren't violent action in anyway, because you haven't acted on anything. But offering money is violent enough to be legal even though you haven't paid anyone?
_heimdall5 days ago
Speech isn't violence because its nothing more than words and our speech is a protected right. Offering money to murder someone is almost certainly illegal because they are doing more than talking, they are choosing to collude in the act of murder and a jury is much more likely to agree there.
My point wasn't that money had to change hands or be offered, I was responding to an earlier comment. A person directly taking part in plotting to commit murder I'd also likely breaking the law and likely to lose a jury trial if they are actively plotting a murder whether money I'd involved or not. Saying "someone should" simply isn't a plot.
Capricorn24814 days ago
But I wasn't saying "someone should", I was talking about a person with a following saying "go kill this person." I said "direct people to kill someone."
Your distinction that money has to be offered seems completely arbitrary. It implies people only do things for money and are otherwise impervious to influence. You really underestimate the level of stan culture America has.
When you believe that is okay and libel is also okay, by your standards, I can tell the world my neighbor is a pedophile who assaulted me as a child, and ask people to decapitate his whole family. And as long as I don't offer money, that's fine.
roryirvine5 days ago
And yet the former led directly to Thomas à Becket's death and is the classic example of giving direction through indirection. It was much more consequential than an unknown stranger on the internet offering a bounty.
But, strictly speaking, neither of those are threats. In English law, they'd be more likely to be prosecuted as Soliciting to Murder or Conspiracy to Murder - I imagine there are similar offences in America.
unethical_ban5 days ago
Calls to violent or hateful ideology (brown people are all bad because of their skin color, judge a class of people based solely on their born traits) leads to nasty outcomes. We learned that many times through history, notably in the mid 20th century.
charcircuit5 days ago
Believing that people's behavior is not based off born traits also will lead to nasty outcomes.
_heimdall5 days ago
What is your argument here? That hate, violence etc is genetic?
_heimdall5 days ago
The real question there is who is to blame, the person who days something hateful or the one who acts on it?
Don't forget that we also learned in the 20th century that millions can support and die for genocide while only a few dozen will be charged while the rest returned home. We also learned that the winner of said conflict can wipe out entire cities and go home the victor without consequence.
lovich5 days ago
> The real question there is who is to blame, the person who days something hateful or the one who acts on it?
Both? It’s not hard to share the blame.
calvinmorrison5 days ago
[flagged]
root_axis5 days ago
So are you saying free speech doesn't exist? What's your point by casting this in absolute terms?
_heimdall5 days ago
No my point is that free speech isn't a spectrum, we either can say whatever we want or we can't. As far as whether we have it, no in the US we don't have it today as certain speech is still made illegal.
I don't cast free speech in absolute terms, I take issue with those that do since it isn't a spectrum.
johnnyanmac5 days ago
Free speech isn't a spectrum in the same way altruism isn't a spectrum. We probably all agree there is no true speech, so we change "free" (as in true freedom) to "free" (as in "liberty") and establish a spectrum anyway.
No one wants "true" free speech anyway. an age of social media + deepfakes means true free speech is legalizing slander/libel. And we know the lies will persist much longer than it deserves.
As well as inciting violence. We don't even need to reach "hate speech" on the spectrum in order to talk about intolerable speech everyone agrees should be punished on.
_heimdall5 days ago
I'm impressed that you can speak for everyone collectively here.
I take issue with any law that limits speech, including libel, regardless of who says it. Such laws remove agency, and therefore a level of responsibility, from those who hear the speech and choose to act on it.
In the same way that I strongly disagree with laying any blame on a woman for dressing a certain way before being attacked, I don't blame a person for saying something before another person takes an action we've deemed illegal.
root_axis3 days ago
> As far as whether we have it, no in the US we don't have it today as certain speech is still made illegal
Right, like everywhere on the planet, hence why I ask if you're saying it doesn't exist. It sounds like your answer is yes.
stonedivot3 days ago
Should you be able to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater as a prank?
[deleted]5 days agocollapsed
sohrob5 days ago
Your hunch is right because most of them are frauds who only support free speech if that speech is the kind they agree with.
matheusmoreira4 days ago
I condemn all forms of censorship.
jameslk5 days ago
Kind of a weird comment to make. Are you admitting they were right, or are you supporting the right for platforms to censor?
Or are you trying to elicit emotions?
Capricorn24815 days ago
It's not weird at all, it's pointing out most free speech absolutists just mean speech for themselves and their friends. Musk will be silent about this.
_heimdall5 days ago
Those aren't free speech advocates, and there is no absolutism with speech - you either have free speech or you don't.
tfrancisl5 days ago
Classic no true Scotsman. All the people who proclaim to be absolutists or advocates but dont meet my definition clearly are not.
_heimdall5 days ago
That makes no sense. Free speech is clearly defined, say what you want and the government has no authority to censor you. Anything short of that isn't free speech, and creating some middle ground between "free speech" and "absolutism" is nothing more than an attempt to move the goal posts.
What most people seem to miss is that companies like Facebook aren't the government and therefore aren't held to the standard of free speech. Signal ng up for an account and agreeing to their terms gives them authority to censor.
shimman5 days ago
While free speech may be defined, "free speech advocates" routinely do not care about free speech. They often use it as a rally cry to push their views onto others while working to ensure speech they don't like is silenced.
It's similar to how neoliberals say they care about humans when in reality they only care about corporations. Messaging doesn't always match optics.
_heimdall5 days ago
Those people simply don't earn the term "free speech advocates" then. Someone can claim the banner, but if they don't live up to the term itself it doesn't matter what flag they want to fly.
tfrancisl5 days ago
Again, no true scotsman. If all the people who call a spade a diamond get together and call themselves spade-truthers, their perspective is spade-trutherism, however much that upsets true spade-trutherists.
_heimdall5 days ago
How would you propose defining free speech beyond the freedom to say whatever you wish to say without government censorship?
You can claim no true Scotsman, but you need to back it up with reasonable alternatives to alternative definitions of the same term.
[deleted]4 days agocollapsed
shimman3 days ago
That's fine but you're just one person with this one opinion who doesn't matter, while free speech advocates tend to act as the total opposite.
Political movements don't care what a single individual thinks.
Once again the optics doesn't match the messaging.
gewetensleegte4 days ago
> you either have free speech or you don't
except for everywhere in the real world, where you have "free speech, kinda"
brettermeier5 days ago
At least in germany there are more gradient,you can't say anything but most things. And thats ok i'd say.
_heimdall5 days ago
That's totally reasonable. I don't fault people for wanting limitations on speech, I just take issue with drawing a line between free speech and "absolute" free speech.
Germany may not have free speech, and if the German people don't want it that's totally fine.
ThrowawayR25 days ago
"Free speech absolutist" was a strawman used against anybody who spoke out against deplatforming as a dangerous idea, which included a lot of liberals. (The pro-deplatforming crowd are very much not liberals.)
Watching the pro-deplatformers get burned by their own illiberalism is very satisfying; watching some of them not having learned any lesson from it, doubly so.
Capricorn24814 days ago
> "Free speech absolutist" was a strawman used against anybody who spoke out against deplatforming as a dangerous idea, which included a lot of liberals
Definitely not on the scale you're implying. People disagreed on who should be deplatformed. People generally didn't call you a "free speech absolutist" if you didn't self identify as such. That was a term people dubbed themselves (and often failed to live up to).
You're making it sound like there's a large group of people that were concerned about deplatforming in general and they were randomly and derogatorily labeled free speech absolutists against their will, to shut the conversation down. Maybe that happened in a few very specific places on the internet, but that's not what the broader conversation was.
jameslk5 days ago
So wait… are you supporting Meta’s censorship here or not? Another weird comment
It just seems like these comments want to stir the pot
Capricorn24815 days ago
Do I support a ban with no reasoning behind it? Not particularly.
[deleted]5 days agocollapsed
Meekro5 days ago
Right winger and free speech absolutist here. I do condemn it. The fact that it was only for 90 minutes does somewhat lessen the blow, though.
howunfortunate5 days ago
The irony of your comment getting immediately flagged.
slibhb5 days ago
What tells you that? Do you have evidence? Or just a vague sense that no one actually has any principles?
My experience is that, for the most part, the people who criticized woke censorship are also critics of the Trump administration and its lawlessness.
lovich5 days ago
The most famous free speech absolutist is Elon Musk and he’s not only not a critic of the Trump administrations lawlessness but a direct participant in it. Also censors a lot of shit on Twitter that he doesn’t like.
slibhb4 days ago
Yes, Elon has disgraced himself. But the majority of anti-woke, free-speech advocates have seamlessly transitioned to criticizing Trump.
Just look at the signatories of the Harper's letter: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
The vast, vast majority have gone on to criticize Trump in his second term.
Capricorn24814 days ago
There's maybe 40 people on this list you could remotely consider "critics of woke censorship." And they are certainly not critics of censorship, wholesale. JK Rowling is a billionaire who has used her fortune to threaten legal action against multiple critics, forcing them to retract what they wrote about her. That does not sound like someone who is against censorship to me. Or is censorship okay as long as it's not "Woke"?
And even if your description did apply to everyone on this list, so what? A small handful of academics write a letter condemning Trump. How did you spin that into "People that criticize woke censorship don't like Trump." Are you under the impression that the world is comprised of ivory tower academics, and everyone else is a non-entity?
If you were paying attention at all, you'd see the entire anti-woke movement has become a young person's game, and it's completely divorced from censorship. It's more about open, malicious resentment towards anything non-white, now.
slibhb4 days ago
That whole letter is criticizing woke censorship. So everyone on that list is a critic. And it's not all academics.
It's very clear to observers of reality that the vast, vast majority of prominent people and organizations who criticized wokeness have moved on to criticzing Trump. For the most part, "free speech advocates" are just normal liberals with principles, but that doesn't stop people in every one of these threads calling out "free speech" like it's something insidious.
_heimdall5 days ago
I'd fall into this bucket. I both disagree with much of what people consider wokism and think Trump is a gigantic ass hat.
wisty5 days ago
Why would pro free speech people be right wing?
noosphr5 days ago
Because for the last 10 years anyone who was pro free speech was called a fascist in the US.
8note5 days ago
i havent really seen proper breaches of free speech until those same people got power, like the government coming in to strip people's education visas or greencards for having the illegal opinions about israel
noosphr5 days ago
[flagged]
0dayz5 days ago
Okay? That doesn't say much about what they do today nor if you are against this censorship.
saelthavron5 days ago
It wasn't censorship. Their activity hit a limit and triggered an automated suspension.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/meta-says-suspe...
0dayz5 days ago
Sure, that doesn't change the question though, a lot of folks are only free speech for their cause or interest while cheers on when others speech is restricted, thus I'm curious if said poster is different.
gelly3215 days ago
Free speech is not freedom from free speech being used against you. You don't just get to say what you want and everyone else shuts up about it. How absolutely myopic do you have to be to think this way?
myvoiceismypass4 days ago
Holy hyperbole!
gewetensleegte4 days ago
And you have literal fascists in power right now, where did they come from?
morkalork5 days ago
Well when you put it like that, were right wing folks ever really pro free speech?
wisty5 days ago
Mostly no, but the people who ARE pro free speech (e.g. libertarians) have mostly found the right to be slightly more tolerant.
howunfortunate5 days ago
[flagged]
arealaccount5 days ago
I think you two are saying the same thing.
Elon (and others) will stay silent unless pressed on the issue, and even then it’s betting odds.
howunfortunate5 days ago
I'm definitely not saying the same thing.
I expect almost zero hypocrisy from "free speech absolutists", I expect them to be ideologically consistent and loud about it. FIRE in particular has a tremendous track record of doing so.
Elon is a bit of an outlier in his more hypocritical track record.
johnnyanmac5 days ago
> Elon is a bit of an outlier
Not these days, sadly.
UncleMeat5 days ago
eh. FIRE exempts universities like Liberty from its evaluation of free speech on campus because its free speech restrictions are expected. It also rated public universities in Florida well, despite stated positions that they will comply with Florida legislation to restrict speech on campus.
Lukianoff wrote The Coddling of the American Mind, in which he complains about student speech.
FIRE is indeed not as hypocritical as most "free speech absolutists." But boy howdy do they have different bars for different groups.
howunfortunate4 days ago
> Lukianoff wrote The Coddling of the American Mind, in which he complains about student speech.
You must not have read it. Because the complaints are about _restrictions_ on student speech...
UncleMeat4 days ago
There are ample examples in the book where student speech is what he complains about. He just merely frames this as threats to the speech of others.
howunfortunate4 days ago
If you're talking about the Heckler's Veto, then...I guess?
But: 1. It's trivially true the Hecklers Veto results in less speech, not more, and most "free speech absolutists" on both sides oppose it
2. This is not a double standard; he also opposes the right wing using the Hecklers Veto
UncleMeat4 days ago
No I am not talking about that.
Do you genuinely believe that if Columbia University had an official policy that deadnaming a trans person was an expellable offense and that the official position of the university was that the Israeli occupation of Gaza was a crime and that advocating for Zionist policies was against the rules that Lukianoff would consider this acceptable and that FIRE would take it off their list of criticized universities, as they have done for Liberty?
kenjackson5 days ago
Not a single pro free speech right source will say anything negative about this.
unethical_ban5 days ago
The roles reversed? I'm not following.
superb_dev5 days ago
“Cancel culture”
howunfortunate5 days ago
[flagged]
jakelazaroff5 days ago
Which of those is an example of someone's rights being trampled?
howunfortunate5 days ago
[flagged]
mafuy5 days ago
... which already happened repeatedly?
lovich5 days ago
This is one of the last social media sites I can still speak on.
I got banned from Reddit for quoting Trump verbatim.
intended4 days ago
Theres many parts of reddit you wouldnt get banned for quoting Trump verbatim.
howunfortunate4 days ago
There really are not. I think it's hard for "non-heretics" to understand just how tight of a fist most online forums keep.
I invite you to try it! Pick a few heretical statements like "Islamic migration has been a disaster for Europe" or "It seems like this trans thing is socially contagious for young girls" and post them in relevant threads on the top 50 Reddit subs.
You will get immediately banned from 95% of these subs, and might last 2 weeks or so in the remaining 5%.
jakelazaroff4 hours ago
Again, which rights are being trampled?
intended4 days ago
I know about it exceedingly well.
You would get banned from 80% of subs for being off topic.
You would get banned because repeating dog whistles of hate groups is the fastest way to get identified with hate groups.
I have seen what happens multiple times when these statements are posted. To the point that those communities got mentioned in Time magazine as examples of hate groups.
If you think this is a tight fist, consider that the communities that did leave Reddit and go to Parler/whatever, reintroduced moderation rules themselves.
AlexeyBelov4 days ago
Those types of comments are constantly posted to Reddit right now. It's a smaller number of subreddits than before the rightoid exile, but there are still a few popular ones.
lovich3 days ago
No, this was by the Admins. It was a quote of one his threats. His speech is ban-able sitewide for us plebs if you repeat it
gfody5 days ago
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams was a great read, highly recommend
kingcauchy5 days ago
Also Dark Money by Jane Mayer
[deleted]5 days agocollapsed
rasso5 days ago
I'd really like to understand why posts like this often get flagged on HN. It's not because of flamewar in the comments section, is it? The upvotes/comments ratio looks normal to me. Can someone explain? In any case, thanks to the OP for the link.
TrackerFF5 days ago
My guess: Bots paid by those supporting the current administration are brigading these threads, and flagging the threads.
One theory I've seen over and over again, as to why the current admin is cozying up with Russia, is that their bot farms and influencing campaigns are very good at what they do, and aligned enough to keep them up and running - purely out of self interest.
wallst075 days ago
I flag some of these, I'm not a bot.
There must be some law on the internet that states something like : Anything I don't agree with or can't explain must be bots on the internet.
sethammons5 days ago
And you flagged it because? Without a reason, people make up their own. I think many assume bots because the other explanation means facing uncomfortable truths, like 30% of people supporting the existing Trump admin and being anti these protests.
ethbr14 days ago
A lot of tech folks see tech as apolitical, and especially in a hyper-charged political climate (the world, currently) they don't want "politics".
What I think that fails to realize is that so much of our technological world is defined by political decisions.
Failing to be aware of them and engaged in them (to a reasonable degree: it's a slippery slope) cedes those decisions to people who are technically ignorant.
pnt124 days ago
Completely agree. When more people ignore politics, the more politicians can ignore them.
In my country, there have been pacific protests about housing. They were faced with police brutality, but this only increased the people protesting and making demands. Some politicians initially said they wouldn't change policies, but seeing so many people involved, now some are changing their stance.
Politics have gotten really divisive, but ignoring them is not the answer.
wallst073 days ago
You are assuming wrong, and I'll make the counterclaim that others, like me, are hyper aware of how political decisions affect all areas of life and are tired of the same repeated rants. Some ideology will never be agreed to.
Since everything has some political lens and the same repeated talking lines continue, and go way off topic. The discussion becomes meaningless.
So that's my reason. You can even say that these are extreme and must be destroyed, that makes the point more clear on why the flags happen. It's not bots, its people.
swed4205 days ago
It'd be nice if HN made the flagger specify a reason (or select a previously specified reason), and then display these tallies to all users.
Ideally that'd expose lazy flagging as well as cut down on these inevitable "why was it flagged?" threads.
ThrowawayR24 days ago
The moderators have previously addressed this question many, many times, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378818
rasso3 days ago
Thank you for that link. That absolutely makes sense. I'll not complain again :)
lovich5 days ago
You can vouch for flagged comments but not for flagged posts.
The flagging system makes it easy for any sort of coordinated brigading or organic dislike to hide posts that some people don’t want seen
georgemcbay5 days ago
> I'd really like to understand why posts like this often get flagged on HN.
YC is a fairly pro-oligarchy/pro-authoritarian organization and the in-group protects itself.
See: funding flock (and dozens of other authoritarian-adjacent surveillance/defense companies), YC CEO Garry Tan's recent political advocacy history, etc.
You don't say "We need more billionaires" unless you are pro-oligarchy/pro-authoritarian (or unless you are ignorant of history and fundamentally don't understand how inevitable it is that unaddressed extreme wealth inequality always leads to oligarchy and authoritarianism).
https://x.com/garrytan/status/1942992514954224025
Threads like this always get flagged as soon as they gain any sort of traction. Free speech for me, but not for thee.
bradlys5 days ago
Because this is just a thread for people to whine about Meta with no real solutions. Most threads about Meta have nothing constructive or insightful to say at all.
And, in this case, it lasted all of 90 minutes and speaks of a typical autoban ML feature. This happens all the time. False positives are going to happen constantly with a company that literally has 4 billion people use.
timcobb4 days ago
this is less of an excuse than ever because AI
user9825 days ago
Strange how this keeps happening to Meta:
"Meta employees said Lula's accounts were hindered during Brazil election, Folha reports" (https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-l...)
Meta employees acknowledged in internal communications that the Instagram accounts of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were hindered by restrictions during the country's election, newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported on Friday, citing messages it reviewed.
The messages also acknowledged the platform recommended the profile of challenger Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, as well as his WhatsApp channel, according to the report.
Meta said the technical issues cited in the report were already public and the conversations it referenced related solely to the severity of the issues, not political interference. "Any suggestion that Meta favors one side is false," it added in a statementjaybrendansmith5 days ago
This post is 100% relevant to hacker news. Why is it flagged? Who is flagging these posts? Do we have a Russian bot problem?
ThrowawayR24 days ago
The moderators have previously addressed this question many, many times, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378818
kevmo5 days ago
You realize HN is a Y Combinator project, right? It is functionally run by Big Tech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator
Posts critical of oligarchy often shoot to number 1, then magically disappear from the homepage. It's a moderation decision.
"The revolution will not be televised."
jacquesm4 days ago
I doubt it is a moderation decision. But there are plenty of people in big-tech here that have flagging powers and there are also plenty of people who may decide it doesn't belong here. HN has a strange relationship to politics. On the one hand HN wants to be an a-political safe space where you can discuss technology without politics and without considering the political ramifications of various actions, on the other it is abundantly clear that many of the people active here have a direct effect on the outcome of some of this stuff, either because they are employed with the companies (and by the people) that do so, because they invest in them or because they are big names when it comes to technology. It takes - by my estimate - about 40 flags to push an article with this many upvotes off the homepage.
I wrote about it in 2017:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14468554
The hypocrisy is - to me, at least - evident: you can't claim to be 'improving the world' according to your own vision of what that world should look like without serious consideration of the political angle. At the same time this is precisely the fig leaf many of the biggest politically influential companies hide behind. Flock, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX and many others make their bread and butter out of various aspects of the surveillance state and they wield their political clout like every other weapon in their arsenal. Having a forum like HN question your choices in life can't be easy. So the flag button is a simple way to get rid of any personal doubts.
edit: I just re-read that thread, it is really interesting to do so in the light of the present day political climate and the upcoming elections. Also interesting how the view on Elon Musk changed over the years.
jameslk4 days ago
The comments in the HN post you linked do a very good job of explaining why HN is working as expected when political posts get flagged
Quoting tptacek from your link: “Politics often literally prevents us from discussing technical stories, by forcing us to wade through banal political detritus to get to the comments that have anything to do with the technical issues.”
HN guidelines make it clear: “Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.”
It may be that there are politics in everything, but that doesn’t mean we need to discuss those politics here. Especially because those politics usually drown out the curiosity. Curiosity is what makes HN interesting for so many
kevmo3 days ago
Flagging powers is moderation.
ryandrake4 days ago
Yea, a lot of people blame HN, but when these articles get flag-censored, it's because human beings are abusing the "flag" button as a mega-downvote to try to erase things, often things that make them feel uneasy about their politics or their employer or how they choose to make their money. Or, they are just hero worshipers who flag anything critical of their hero.
HN's system of treating flagging as a mega-downvote doesn't help, but ultimately I don't think they are putting that much weight on the scale themselves.
jacquesm4 days ago
Either that or it is set up in such a way that that isn't necessary. Because if certain articles get flagged disproportionally and you have the ability to selectively revive them then you achieve the same thing. It's always difficult to separate HN from YC and YC is investor in more than one company that does very questionable things.
Keep in mind that Start-up School featured Musk, Zuckerberg and Altman, that Altman at some point ran YC and that they're investors in Flock. All of these guys use their money to influence politics and legislation, I think it is safe to assume that there is a link, even though we don't know how much of a link there is, just like it is safe to assume that both Tom and Dan are doing their level best to keep HN working despite an onslaught of trash. None of these are mutually exclusive. But I really think it is a step too far to assume that they put their thumb on the scale in an active way.
andersonmvd5 days ago
Meta is also influencing Brazil's election: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-l... - other social networks as well.
weknowbetter5 days ago
I'm literally begging people to start using the Fediverse at this point.
fullshark5 days ago
It doesn't have what people want (an audience)
noosphr5 days ago
And we replace one tyrant for dozens. It's not much of an improvement.
creata5 days ago
I don't know much about the Fediverse, but if you can easily move your account or data from one tyrant to another (and it looks like you can) then that is a huge improvement.
NegativeLatency5 days ago
You can even become your own tyrant
superkuh5 days ago
What the big social networks provide is the ability to transact money. No distributed non-corporation system can ever provide the money flows that make people use corporate social networks. Or, they can, but the instant they do they're legally attacked and destroyed. So no independent/distributed network can ever really draw those people who make up the majority who are chasing money or following those who chase money. The audience won't exist.
augment_me5 days ago
No-one cares, peoples family and friends are not on the Fediverse.
My realization that it was cooked was when I was doing my comp sci PhD where everyone in our group fully understood the implications of data, dependency, ads, surveillance capitalism but 3 out of 20 agreed to download Signal instead of WhatsApp/Messenger.
You are asking for too much sadly.
nunez4 days ago
I agree with you but I also understand your peer group.
WhatsApp solves so many communication problems. It's a single protocol that can do text, audio and video calling. It works on low- and high-bandwidth connections. Everybody already has it, so it's functionally as ubiquitous as the phone itself.
Signal also has the "it's another app" problem. WhatsApp didn't have this problem initially because it was cheaper than texting in its heyday. Thus, having it on your phone made a lot of sense. Now that texting and video calling are functionally free and WhatsApp is ubiquitous, getting people onto something else is much more of an investment.
iMessage + FaceTime will be the next big platform if Apple decides to make it work across the pond. It has everything WhatsApp has while being disassociated from Meta.
rocketpastsix5 days ago
the learning curve to understanding the fediverse is too high for most people. They just want to log in, have everything in one place, and not care how it got there.
digestm5 days ago
Fediverse is fine, are there any other platforms that work around such censorship?
blueblazin5 days ago
The fediverse sucks and only people in their small tech bubbles don't seem to realize that the vast majority of people do not know or care about things like "federated social media".
We just need someone* to create a "WoW Classic" version of a social network so that we can get back on it and this time try to make it work. Social media is one of the worst things that has happened to humanity since the web was created. But it used to be good. So it's incomprehensible to me why no one has made a social networking site matching old facebook and without the awfulness added later.
* Maybe some of us can do it, send me a message.
weknowbetter4 days ago
It's fine if people don't care about the federated aspect but I don't think we can rely on a corporation to solve this problem. Even a small one. Federation solves a real technical problem whether end users care or not.
caned5 days ago
We need the kind of populace that will care about - and demand - federated communications immune to censorship. Until then, we're entitled only to continue consuming garbage.
koolba5 days ago
> According to the organizers, Meta failed to respond to their team for approximately 90 minutes while the account was offline during the peak of their national day of action and livestream.
Is it really that unusual to contact a large tech company and not get a response for (egad!) 90 minutes?
unethical_ban5 days ago
When you have possibly hundreds of thousands of followers organizing political action, one would hope there is an on-call that can respond in less time than an IT guy fixing a camera system for a SMB.
WarmWash5 days ago
Ok, so what is the actual reason it was suspended?
Edit: They hit a rate limit and tripped an automated suspension.
qwerpy5 days ago
The bright minds here are busy posting Trump inauguration photos, trying to “gotcha” free speech advocates, and talking about prison time for tech CEOs. Quite the imagination these guys have!
afavour5 days ago
It was literally today that we heard about TikTok banning the account for the Musk movie because it’s politically inappropriate. This is hardly coming out of nowhere.
nfw25 days ago
interesting, did they turn the account back on after 90 minutes?
finebalance5 days ago
lol. 16 years after the first protests started being coordinated over social media, Meta, the largest social media company in the world whose tech folks are probably paid in the millions at the highest level, still hasn't figured out a way to avoid trampling over legitimate dissent for purely 'innocent, technocratic reasons'?
jacquesm5 days ago
I don't know if you remember the inauguration photograph but it is pretty clear that this is one big family now.
To save you some searching:
https://www.gettyimages.nl/detail/nieuwsfoto's/guests-includ...
zeven75 days ago
How weird still that that is the world we live in now. I would have never predict that photograph 1 year before it was taken.
kevmo5 days ago
You should read A People's History of the United States!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_Un...
sudo_cowsay5 days ago
I read this for my AP USH class. It's an interesting read that gives a little bit of very _interesting_ point on stuff. It's a fun book to read.
calvinmorrison5 days ago
more fun, 'A Renegade History of the United States'
tfrancisl5 days ago
Down voted for suggesting the most salient analysis of US history. Sad!
derektank5 days ago
Well yeah, Donald Trump was threatening to imprison Zuck a year before it was taken
zeven75 days ago
He also threatened to imprison Hillary Clinton. ~~She wasn't at the inauguration.~~
legrangramgroum5 days ago
No she was there with her husband.
zeven75 days ago
I stand corrected. Still, Trump threatened to imprison other people who didn’t start dressing like a bro and talking differently after the election - and who still aren’t imprisoned.
andsoitis5 days ago
They are there as representatives of their companies. They have a fiduciary duty to do what they think is best for the company and its shareholders.
Hillary doesn't need to do anything like that. But even she was there.
We each have a lens on reality, your lens' aperture is skewed on this specific aspect.
zeven75 days ago
The parent implied Zuckerberg was there because he was afraid of retaliation
andsoitis5 days ago
That might be true. However, I would bet that he was also there because he sees an opportunity to wield influence to the benefit of his corporation (or limit negative consequences). Either way, ethics isn't the main driving force for being nor not being there for someone like that - it is mostly about economic power, I think.
jacobolus5 days ago
Trump, just now:
"This is a much more powerful term. I can do stuff that's unbelievable. I called Google, Google Maps. They wouldn't have taken my call in the first term. Now they kiss my ass."
mayukh5 days ago
It was always this world. Except there were no pictures and definitely no social media back then. Welcome to reality.
bamboozled5 days ago
Why ?
thatsabadlook5 days ago
Loss of accountability and deregulation leads to oligarchy. If we are lucky, this will take decades to clean up.
ceroxylon5 days ago
Reminds me that Plato viewed oligarchy as being better than democracy, as long as laws are being upheld. When laws are not being upheld, a lawless democracy is better than a lawless oligarchy.
apsurd5 days ago
It's an obvious flaw in hindsight. In an oligarchy, how exactly are laws upheld? The Oligarchs got there by being above the law and in our age of instant information the People see full-view what it takes to win. Nobody wants to be the sucker when everyone is getting theirs.
kevmo5 days ago
All of those people belong in prison.
jacquesm5 days ago
They do, but I stopped subscribing to the just world hypothesis a couple of decades ago. There is just too much broken and money has too much power to be reined in by justice.
ambione5 days ago
nah respectfully, to hell with this doomerism. these people and groups have names. their deeds have paper trails. For every single one of them, there's millions of us. It's a matter of sorting out the polluted discourse, remembering we have 99% more in common than otherwise, organizing, electing grassroots politicians who truly represent the people and our interests, and then finally holding them accountable through prosecution.
jacquesm5 days ago
I'll take that bet. $1000 that five years from now none of these fat cats are behind bars. I'm good for the money.
BorisMelnik5 days ago
I would also take that bet, but when the pain gets great enough people do come out and vote historically anyway
Loughla5 days ago
People coming out when they felt great pain is what got us Donald Trump. I don't know if you remember the 2016 election, but I do. People were RABID for Trump. Something something be careful what you wish for.
ScoobleDoodle5 days ago
In 2016 the tone was wanting for an outsider not a political insider. Trump was the only outsider on the final ticket.
On the Democratic ticket Bernie Sanders would have been the outsider. But the Democratic National Committee under Debbie Wasserman Shultz made sure to avoid a vote by the people of the Democrat party and put in their chosen one, insider Hillary Clinton.
BorisMelnik4 days ago
nah still only 60 something percent turnout
Loughla4 days ago
Guess how that compares to prior elections.
lostlogin5 days ago
> People were RABID for Trump.
‘Were’? Has that changed? They got exactly what they voted for.
Loughla5 days ago
I was not trying to say they aren't still. I was just saying that in 2016 they were out in droves voting for him.
lostlogin5 days ago
[flagged]
tokioyoyo5 days ago
I’ll add another $1000 in support. It’s funny/sad how fast things change, especially one’s values given the circumstances.
bdangubic5 days ago
[flagged]
tomhow5 days ago
WTF? Vile comments like this are not allowed here, no matter who or what they're about. You may not owe big-tech CEOs better, but you most certainly owe this community better if you want to participate here. Any more of this and we'll have to ban the account. This really shouldn't be hard to understand. Good grief. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ThrowawayR24 days ago
Could we please also get some moderator discouragement for Luigi (not the video game character) and guillotine references in this and other submissions, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50137449 ? I would rather not have Hacker News be populated by people hinting at violence as a solution to society's ills. Thanks!
bdangubic4 days ago
do some research about Zuck and see whether he deserves a lot more “vile” comments about him than my PG-13 comment above. in any normal society he’d be on Rickers getting his face tatted
tomhow4 days ago
As I said, it doesn’t matter if you or anyone thinks he “deserves” anything. That’s completely irrelevant. What matters is the standard we have for the kind of discussion that belongs here. The only reason this place exists for you to post this garbage is that other people make the effort to raise the standards. If that’s not something you’re willing to do, find some place else that’s more welcoming of this kind of thing.
bdangubic4 days ago
sorry to burst your bubble but cussing is perfectly fine here (two comments on the first page of “comments” currently includes language which is significantly north of what I said (plus what I said is actually factual, check Zuck and Meta-DEI (that is what company was called when Mr. Biden was the President)
tomhow4 days ago
People who care about contributing earnestly include links when they want to cite examples of other bad comments. Stop playing puerile games and stop acting like a jerk. This site is for thoughtful people who have things of substance to contribute. The guidelines clearly ask everyone to avoid sneering, swipes, political/ideological battle and flamebait.
And honestly, if you care about addressing serious problems in the world, there are countless more effective ways to do it than this. Posting this kind of trash is just a waste of everyone’s time, yours most of all.
bdangubic4 days ago
honestly not sure what in particular triggered you about my comment but defending Zuck might not be the hill you want to die on. I do agree that my comment is not kind/appropriate/… but some people like Zuck deserve it from time to time
gnabgib4 days ago
You've ignored a lot of HN rules and guidelines, and are trying to pick a fight with a mod.. Is this the hill you want to die on?
tomhow4 days ago
Stop trying to deflect from your own appalling conduct. It’s nothing to do with being triggered or defending particular individuals or dying on hills. These are all tropes to make it seem like it has some grand significance. This is bog standard, mundane moderation. If someone attacked you like this here, I’d stand up against it just as staunchly. I fact I’d probably ban them instantly, without warning. I have a job to do and that job is to uphold the guidelines, which are intended to maintain basic standards. If you’re not willing to hold yourself to basic standards, you don’t belong here. Big tech CEOs aren’t reading your garbage but fellow community members are, and you owe it to them to either contribute things that are worth reading, or to keep quiet.
ambione5 days ago
you'd likely be right. I'm not contesting that. The world and its people have been utterly raped to ashes, yet the apocalyptic rapture the parties responsible have been building their doomsday shelters for has never and will never arrive. Instead from these ashes we are seeing change emerging. It's slow sure, and hell maybe it won't be enough, but the grassroots ARE giving the old corrupt institutions something to sweat about (on 'both sides' if you'd like to see it that way). People are increasingly having less and less to lose. Get informed. inform others. organize with them. build community with them. The weight we hold together outweighs the solipsistic vampires. Have hope even if it's irrational, that's when we need it most. materialize it. DO something with it - even if we don't get to enjoy the fruits that may come of it; at least those who come after us will, and that's worth something. Besides, they're banking on your apathy as well.
cindyllrn5 days ago
[dead]
hackyhacky5 days ago
> For every single one of them, there's millions of us.
Yes, the ruling elite are typically outnumbered by the masses. It matters little: by historical standards, the ruling powers have virtually always leveraged their power to exploit those who don't have power. No reason to assume that streak will end.
myvoiceismypass4 days ago
For every single one of them, there's millions of sycophants cheerleading their every move.
apsurd5 days ago
it’s sinister because I believe most of us (by definition) think of ourselves as part of the people but as one has ambitions and becomes capable, the pull of “success” spares nobody.
Flock is dystopian. It’s also non ironically pitched as solving crime. it’s also our friendly neighborhood YC company.
daveguy5 days ago
The work was done to put dumpty behind bars with evidence of his crimes in multiple jurisdictions. And enough people got manipulated by social media campaigns in the 4 years after the 2020 elections that most of them didn't even know the facts of the cases. There's a reason dumpty works with those in the photo. It's because they have created an effective and customizable propaganda campaign tool.
stackghost5 days ago
Fascism has never been defeated without violence, but Americans are too complacent to rise up in arms, despite the societal gun fetish.
It’s over.
apsurd5 days ago
its a weird thing to wish for violence in this case. but i agree and just now France is in the news again for violent protests. They’ve seen the movie and they’re now vigilant.
USA has its comforts, that’s like the entire sell. Huge homes, huge lawns, huge plates, huge cars. Huge Walmarts. (the world cup brought some tourists and on X the Japanese shared their Walmart experience as basically a trip to Disneyland). Add movies, reality tv shows, game studios, and now gambling on anything because gambling in the stock market isn’t enough juice.
fuck we’re cooked.
stackghost5 days ago
Nobody sane actually wishes for violence. But sometimes it is required. I legitimately do not think the United States is coming through the other side of this intact. I don't see how there can possibly be a peaceful transfer of power. The concern is how many of us you take with you as your country spirals into authoritarianism.
I make fun of the French as much as anyone but one thing about them I really respect is the way they are keen to protest rather than simply roll over and let their government fuck them, as Americans and Brits do.
tstrimple5 days ago
"The base violence necessary for change"
shawn_w5 days ago
The people with the gun fetish are largely on the side of the fascists.
nullsanity5 days ago
Heck yeah. My mom's generation refused to buy milk when it raised in price. This one sat back and let freedoms be destroyed. People are starting to realize that sitting on their butts, doomscrolling and accepting the status quo does nothing.
Protests and Boycotts don't work when doomers sit there yapping about how they don't work instead of participating. Counter movement bot farms encourage them to do so. We've all got to unplug, wake up, stand up, and live on our feet rather than die on our knees.
z0ltan5 days ago
[dead]
shimman5 days ago
You don't need a just world to imprison tech CEOs. These people are hated by the vast majority of the public and they are hoarding all the wealth. Society is at it's breaking point and we have a very convenient scape goat that everyone rightfully hates sitting right there.
The universe may not be just, but it seems to set many things in motion if you want to participate.
wallst075 days ago
There are lots of people in SF that belong in prison.
kcplate5 days ago
What law do you believe that they have broken?
Jcampuzano25 days ago
Combined, their companies have broken basically every law in the book that you could when it comes to privacy and copyright.
nfw25 days ago
How copyright applies to ai training hasn't been established.
shimman5 days ago
Good news, Congress can change the law to be whatever society wants.
nfw25 days ago
congress can not pass ex post facto laws making things in the past retroactively illegal, it's in the constitution
shimman4 days ago
Good news! That has nothing to do with writing laws that could force these companies to open everything up about the models if Congress decides to do so.
There's no law in the constitution stating that you're allowed to steal all of humanities offerings and sell it back to to the public.
nfw24 days ago
Claims of "stealing" IP rests on copyright law which doesn't exist yet or is unclearly specified.
wallst075 days ago
Which one specifically, with evidence? And if you're saying the current admin is protecting them, the acts shouldn't have been occurring previously?
Jcampuzano24 days ago
Dude you could literally just type any of the company's names and add the word "lawsuit" after it and see a plethora of lawsuits that were either lost or settled, and the majority of them are privacy related.
Its hard to believe just how many of you are this defensive of these companies and are just completely disingenuous, as if they give a shit about you.
I literally just typed "google lawsuit" and these came up.
https://www.federalcellularclassaction.com/
https://www.googleassistantprivacylitigation.com/file\
https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-approves-68-million-goo...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/new-mexico-jury-finds-fa...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/...
otterley4 days ago
[flagged]
jacquesm4 days ago
You can mail [email protected] if you want to ping a mod.
wallst074 days ago
Go ahead ping a mod, what did I saw that was wrong?
If you want to run to a parent or a teacher anytime your belief system is challenged that says more about you than me?
otterley3 days ago
> what did I saw [sic] that was wrong?
That adults attracting, grooming, and having sex with minors isn't pedophilia. You're sick and need therapy urgently.
wallst073 days ago
A good sign that you are on the losing end of a argument is when you start to attack someone, you may need to look into that, or not, I don't care.
https://www.thecarlatreport.com/blogs/2-the-carlat-psychiatr...
https://blog.atsa.com/2019/08/the-jeffrey-epstein-case-and-w...
https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/news/why-language-matters/paed...
I highly doubt you will read any of these, god forbid you have someone close to you actually a victim of pedophilia.
otterley3 days ago
These blogs lend no unequivocal support to you.
Don’t deflect. This is your problem, no one else’s. Seek help.
kcplate5 days ago
Specifically?
Jcampuzano24 days ago
Stop being disingenuous, it takes a literal 2-second search to find a plethora of examples.
kcplate4 days ago
You are posting links to civil judgements instead of criminal ones. This thread branch is about putting folks into prison. I am asking where these people have been convicted of a criminal offense where the punishment is prison. Do you have anything there? Because last I understood, the government needs to prove you guilty before they can incarcerate you in a prison.
senordevnyc5 days ago
Gasp, not copyright! Quick, get the pitchforks!!
gilrain5 days ago
What sort of lion lives in the sea?
mindslight5 days ago
It would be quicker if you listed what laws you think they haven't broken. And remember, the bar for conspiracy is quite low.
kcplate5 days ago
Perhaps you could just provide us one law deserving prison that they have broken instead of waving off the question?
mindslight4 days ago
lol, so reactionaries can derail the conversation with "well ackshually" as if amateur message board comments require the same level of formality as a court? I've been in enough ice-agent-murders-a-protestor threads to know to steer clear of that noise.
This regime have flagrantly violated their oaths of office, outright ignoring their Constitutional roles and instead acting in bad faith to achieve their own personal/political goals. These types of crimes aren't generally formalized and written down, which is why "high crimes and misdemeanors" is never defined out despite clearly being a thing. And as I said, the bar for conspiracy is quite low - investigation/discovery is when we find out exactly how much individual tech ceos have actively collaborated rather than merely placated.
We can save the formalities and technicalities, some of which will undoubtedly require novel precedents, for if they actually do see the inside of jail cells. But worries about how that might play out should not prevent us from demanding justice for what by all measures appears to be a concerted attack on the United States!
kcplate4 days ago
First, you seem to want to take this to politician place, I was asking about the crimes ypthat these executives have committed and convicted of that deserve prison.
> These types of crimes aren't generally formalized and written down
Then they aren't crimes. To have a crime you need a law first. Someone then has to break that law. You need an authority that recognizes and can enforce that law. Then you need a conviction under that law and a legal authority that can met out punishment. If you don't have a law, you cant have a crime and you cant have a conviction for it.
> But worries about how that might play out should not prevent us from demanding justice for what by all measures appears to be a concerted attack on the United States!
So your solution is “lets make what they did illegal now, and then convict them for a current law for something they did in the past that wasn’t illegal at the time they did it”?
Seems to me to be a dangerous precedent to set and one that will be used against you whenever power shifts (and power always shifts).
mindslight3 days ago
You seemingly have no idea about the actual work that needs to be performed by investigators, prosecutors, and judges - all bona fide skilled professions! And then based on that ignorance you blast me for not having done all of that work in a order to write a message board comment.
I don't know what you mean by "take this to politician place". The topic is inherently political. We're talking about an apparent conspiracy to overthrow the Constitutional United States Government and replace it with unaccountable corporate government, spearheaded by the reactionaries in office working from the inside to paralyze and demolish the Constitutional government.
That behavior is most certainly in the realm of criminality, despite there not being a law that directly states it. Rather it's the kind of thing that needs to be decomposed into specific chargeable crimes by prosecutors, after having been investigated for the extent of communications, agreements, etc that effect the conspiracy. And then judges make an actual decision which intrinsically creates new precedents (ie common law) because these type of things don't happen every day.
kcplate3 days ago
> I don't know what you mean by "take this to politician place"
Well, you wrote this, didn’t you?
>> This regime have flagrantly violated their oaths of office, outright ignoring their Constitutional roles and instead acting in bad faith to achieve their own personal/political goals.
You turned a simple question about what crimes were committed and convicted by tech leaders that deserved prison and decided to loop in a diatribe against the current administration. You apparently have an axe there you want to grind. So be it, but perhaps grind away on another thread appropriate to that topic.
> That behavior is most certainly in the realm of criminality, despite there not being a law that directly states it. Rather it's the kind of thing that needs to be decomposed into specific chargeable crimes by prosecutors, after having been investigated for the extent of communications, agreements, etc that effect the conspiracy. And then judges make an actual decision which intrinsically creates new precedents (ie common law) because these type of things don't happen every dao.
So…your answer is “no, they have not committed a crime for which they can be put in prison, but you really hope that some prosecutors and judges can get together to invent some way to parse legal behavior you disagree with into creating a precedent that can bypass congress’s responsibility to make law”. Good to know.
It is shit like this that make people like you fucking scare the shit out of me…way more than some tech bro training AI on copyrighted material (And to put that in perspective, I am one of those people who think AI is probably gonna eventually kill us).
mindslight3 days ago
You keep playing coy as to the actual arguments being made. If you look at only one piece of a three piece whole, of course it looks incomplete. The entire point is that the big picture sure looks like these tech ceo's are conspiring to overthrow the Constitutional government. The topic for this thread, right here, is an action that fits the pattern.
> your answer is “no, they have not committed a crime for which they can be put in prison, but you really hope that some prosecutors and judges can get together to invent some way to parse legal behavior you disagree with into creating a precedent that can bypass congress’s responsibility to make law"
Uh, no, unequivocally. You're putting words in my mouth, of a hypberbolic straw man that you have created. As I said, you seem to be utterly ignorant about what is required for the legal system to actually operate - it's not a computer programming language. I suspect you know this, but it's just yet another thing you're playing coy about.
kcplate3 days ago
If I am misunderstanding what you are talking about, then that is more about your inability to successfully communicate than any problem I have.
mindslight2 days ago
Coy. It's a three letter word. You should be able to figure that one out.
kcplate2 days ago
Yep, and “off-topic rant” contains twelve letters, a space, and a dash.
jiggawatts5 days ago
Every AI company has flagrantly violated copyright, to begin with.
But that's not the point!
The point is that the laws are written by the oligarchs, for the oligarchs.
Laws are made to protect wealth and power, so of course the wealthy and powerful haven't "broken" them.
nfw25 days ago
A flagrant violation requires clearly established jurisprudence. What is considered fair use has always been nebulous, and to the extent that there are standards on it, it's mainly through established precedence, of which there is none on AI training.
One can argue that the closest thing to an AI's training on a book is a person reading a book and remembering the details, which i'm sure you reject, but it's not prima facie unreasonable.
senordevnyc5 days ago
This is genuinely so funny to me.
Five years ago this site was ready to burn you at the stake if you defended copyright laws, which clearly were only written to protect the rich and powerful, like Disney!
Now those laws are obviously there to defend the little guy against the oligarchs, and we should ready our pitchforks to march on Silicon Valley for daring to violate our precious copyright laws!!
ftmch5 days ago
I think HN takes issue with the hypocrisy of the matter. Copyright law was used to punish regular people for consuming illegal media, but AI tech companies are forgiven for using the same illegal methods to run a business.
senordevnyc4 days ago
That’s completely understandable, but that’s not what I see from HN. If you were outraged when individuals were prosecuted for copyright and then you demand that OpenAI be prosecuted for it, you’re the hypocrite.
kcplate5 days ago
It’s remarkable to me the number of people on this site whose “heartfelt convictions” change with the direction of the political winds.
[deleted]5 days agocollapsed
kevmo5 days ago
RICO, sexual assault of minors, treason, labor laws, drug laws, and probably a million other things.
dmix5 days ago
I've noticed a number of your politically charged comments tend to rank highly on HN these days, jacquesm. So just to be clear, you are implying that this temporary account suspension is a plot by Mark Zuckerberg to suppress a major political group in the US and Meta is okaying this internally to gain preferential treatment from the US government?
ls-a5 days ago
[dead]
bvcp5 days ago
hn is becoming reddit every day
wallst075 days ago
There is a thread about about why posts like this get flagged...
This thread is the reason, it's like people off meds posting here about unrelated topics, crazy town.
root_axis5 days ago
I've been seeing variations of this stupid comment for like 15 years on this site.
bvcp5 days ago
respectfully your ad hominem reflects more poorly on you intellectual capacity than mine
jamienk5 days ago
They looks like degenerates - in the photo they really are sickeningly grotesque! It's not Felliniesque because they have their own, new style of hideousness: putrid, plastic, shiny, smug, weak, and radically vulgar!
awakeasleep5 days ago
scotty795 days ago
Is it surprising? Zuckerberg kissed the ring, did he not?
kevmo5 days ago
Zuckerberg is the ring.
plandis5 days ago
If Instagram is not a platform but instead an arbiter of speech they should be held legally liable what is said on the platform.
_heimdall5 days ago
They should be held accountable as long as they decide what to promote. If posts were still following a non-algorithmic approach of chronological listings for those you follow, seems like they shouldn't be held responsible.
alex11383 days ago
No matter what side you're on in a given issue there's a clear problem with certain platforms having things taken down but god help you if you report something horrible, it will never be removed
This is especially bad with Facebook (properties). Everyone else is really bad about various aspects, but only Zuck has as much contempt for people as he does
There was an episode where Google was asked to remove Pirate Bay from search results and they declined to do so. Facebook blocked it - even in private messages
throwaway14925 days ago
> Free speech for me but not for thee
Tiktok banned the account promoting a Musk documentary too. Oh how the cookie crumbles!
https://www.theverge.com/tech/1013453/tiktok-bans-alex-gibne...
imbnwa5 days ago
In case people don't click the link:
>While TikTok has no official affiliation with Elon Musk, part owner Larry Ellison appears in the film via a text message offering to help Musk fund his Twitter purchase.
>Last month, YouTube, Meta, X, and TikTok all faced backlash for rejecting ads for the film. YouTube and Google quickly reversed course, calling it an “error.” However, TikTok and X have refused to change their stance, and neither platform has allowed paid advertisements for the film.
k3105 days ago
From Indivisible [0]
> Today, amidst a historic day of thousands of rallies to mobilize early voting and fight against Trump’s election sabotage, Meta suspended the primary No Kings Instagram account without warning or reason.
> After intense backlash, Meta made the account visible again 90 minutes into the suspension, giving the appearance that everything was normal. But it blocked the account admin from posting for another three hours -- censoring the NO Kings coalition in the middle of today’s historic day of action.
xvxvx5 days ago
Do people actually expect these companies to be fair and impartial? Seriously, you may as well have a No Kings account on Truth Social while you’re at it.
mung5 days ago
Yes, yes I do. that should be the standard.
apsurd5 days ago
should
It's not your fault but we're too far down the rabbit hole of The United States of Incorporation. A company is not the Government. Intentionally so. But it's all fucked through money influence. So no, a company will never have your public interest in mind. By design.
jlarocco5 days ago
We're talking about the dorm room project of a rich kid who stole the idea from his friends and thinks his users are "dumb f**s".
There's really no reason to expect anything from Meta except for it to do what's best for Zuckerburg.
mung5 days ago
I guess it depends on what you mean by "expect". I'm under no illusions that Facebook and its management are trash. In that sense I don't expect much. But not expecting better is letting them off the hook.
jmclnx5 days ago
From the wayback machine, I could not get into the linked article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20261018012124/https://meidasnew...
CuriouslyC5 days ago
Instagram is trash. Stop wasting your time.
alex11383 days ago
I still refuse to sign up for it so long as they have their "Fuck you, logged-out user" popup
It's not because of 'scraping'. They literally just want user count
People loved IG pre-FB acq. Then Zuck had his "IG can hurt us" emails, other private messages with one of the IG co-founders ("Zuck will go into destroy mode") and now we have photography being gatekept
jauntywundrkind5 days ago
Mundus Sine Caeasaribus. https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/mark-zucke...
[deleted]5 days agocollapsed
prajaybasu5 days ago
Reddit astroturfing seems to have spread here
Oh well. I've heard this on Reddit for years: "̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ Meta can ban whoever they want, they are a private company". Just a hint of schadenfreude.
nfw25 days ago
there's some pretty impressive delusion in this thread, but thinking reddit is going to astroturf hacker news i think wins the top prize
wookmaster5 days ago
We have other options, yet we still keep using Meta. They're tied to all sorts of unethical stuff. Why. Stop using Meta.
DivingForGold5 days ago
Heh. Zuck got a call from "The King" and The King told him he better behave. Take down that site ... Zuck knows who holds the DOJ over his head ... and from where the money flows
nfw25 days ago
No one cares about these protests who isn't already voting blue. If anything it alienates the majority of people who find endless futile protests annoying. Shutting down the account intentionally is so extraordinarily stupid politically that it seems pretty plausible that it was algorithmically flagged.
Trump has done many genuinely scary things but shutting down a social media account then turning it back on 90 minutes later is not exactly sending tanks into Tiananmen Square.
HeavenFox5 days ago
Look, as much as we hate Meta... doesn't Hanlon's razor apply here - "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"? Could it be that the account triggered some automated system?
tomrod5 days ago
Maybe if this was Dickson's party in 2008. A massive political event in 2026 is the hottest midterm to date? You can discount Hanlon's razor. It's not an infinite excuse any more than the book Infinite Jest was either unending or funny.
nfw25 days ago
Yeah and nothing convinces the undecided independents, who now are mostly paranoid schizophrenics, to vote for you like appearing to shut down free assembly
tomrod4 days ago
Sorry, I'm not sure how to interpret your comment, no judgement here. Are you saying it was false-flag / targeting second-order effects instead of the main effect of disconnecting reporting and organization on events by the No Kings account?
biophysboy5 days ago
I am 99% sure it was an automated system false positive, but it is annoying that we all have to rely on these capricious systems. That is in itself a problem with massive scale platforms. It confirms my silly hot take that all online communities should not be bigger than 10k people. That keeps the number of bad eggs legible to an actual human moderator, and keeps the discussion less mob like
Veserv5 days ago
No. Hanlon’s razor explains that stupidity can cause the same amount of harm as intentional evil and is thus just as bad.
If harms are excused because they were not made with evil intentions then the Nazis who just liked making the numbers go up in a orderly fashion should be considered blameless.
nfw25 days ago
that's absolutely not what hanlon's razor says. it's an epistemological rule of thumb, not a moral argument.
Veserv5 days ago
They literally trotted out Hanlon’s razor as a moral argument that we should not blame Meta since it was probably just a whoopsie-doodle. This is a very common moral argument that people implicitly make or explicitly advance when using it.
I am pointing out how that is a absurd moral argument deriving from the rule of thumb. If anything, the corollary is the literal opposite.
Any stupidity indistinguishable from malice should be treated the same.
The usage as a epistemological rule of thumb just points out how great harm is usually caused by stupidity, intentional or otherwise, rather than intentional desire to cause the specific harm. If you aim to reduce great harms targeting just malice is not merely inadequate, it is likely missing the overwhelming majority.
nfw25 days ago
One should try their best to make sense of reality before making moral arguments. That's what epistemological tools are for, like Hanlon's razor. Whether moral implications are downstream is unrelated to what the razor is, which you claimed to know but don't.
You seem to be claiming that intent is not related to justice or blame, which would result in an inhumanely cruel justice system where punishments don't fit crimes.
But don't worry, I attribute your proposal to stupidity not malice
Veserv5 days ago
I see that you are unaware of basic legal/moral concepts like “negligence” [1] if you think such standards are inhumanely cruel.
Thankfully, legal systems are not that inhumanly stupid.
nfw24 days ago
negligence as a cause carries a different legal weight than malicious intent, eg. manslaughter is a different crime that murder. a system that disregards intent, as you seem to be advocating with statements like "any stupidity indistinguishable from malice should be treated the same." would treat manslaughter and murder as the same crime.
runarberg5 days ago
Marx’ counter-Razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by class interest.
nfw25 days ago
marx's ideas famously have never missed
docmars5 days ago
It is pretty funny seeing the reaction to this considering what conservatives had to deal with for around 6 years and continue to experience on major platforms.
Maybe leftists should sit this one out and reflect on what they promoted during that time. A taste of one's own medicine is humbling from time to time.
ethbr15 days ago
If by "conservatives" you mean hate speech and vaccine conspiracies, then sure.
If by "conservatives" you mean conservative political speech, I'd love to see some examples.
kurtoid5 days ago
I'm fairly certain that page is AI-written - see the paradium link in the footer
yieldcrv5 days ago
product liability means the product is the liability
awacs5 days ago
Oh the days of watching Silicon Valley and loving this crazy, but quirky but seemingly good intentioned industry to work in. Maybe this is who they always were, but either way, how many billions do these CEOs need in exchange for the good of society is the question I ask.
jacquesm5 days ago
> Maybe this is who they always were
Absolutely. But they were super good at getting smart people to pull their carts.
tdeck5 days ago
Soon they won't need to bother convincing people to work on their software, or at least that's the dream.
ethin5 days ago
The (only) part of this that I find rather ironic (and kind of funny) is that these idiotic companies never seem to learn a thing. Nearly every single time they take something like this down, it just draws even more attention to it (the Streisand effect).
johnnyApplePRNG5 days ago
The balls on this Zuck, I tell ya ... grinds my gears.
[deleted]5 days agocollapsed
dodger-dog5 days ago
90 minutes. Trump was kicked off social media for how long?
It can't be only wrong when it is done to your interests. It has to be either right or wrong across the board.
The more you dislike someone and their views, the more your principles and values are tested.
I"m assuming you value things like freedom of speech, liberty, freedom, democracy, progressive liberal ideas, and that sort of thing. If all you can about is power and winning, then never mind.
not_kurt_godel5 days ago
No one who values democracy is complaining about Trump getting kicked off social media for inciting a mob to kill the vice president certifying the election in the Capitol building.
plazmatic5 days ago
[dead]
dmix5 days ago
(for 90 minutes)
Which reminds me of this month's HN post about Lula's FB account getting taken down https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49864642 , which turned out to only be for a couple hours after some content post got auto-flagged, before being restored by Meta. But the HN thread was a long discussion about it being a conspiracy by the US government to conduct election interference in Brazil.
PaulDavisThe1st5 days ago
A judge in Brasil read the situation differently than you, it appears:
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/south-america/brazil-lula-wins...
and Meta employees have commented also:
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-l...
dmix5 days ago
According to Meta their account was deactivated "for just over 1 hour" before being restored https://about.fb.com/br/news/2026/10/a-meta-nao-esta-interfe...
The rest of the complaints are around exact term search/AI results which are notoriously inconsistent if you've ever done SEO/AEO. So not exactly the strongest evidence.
I'm not fan of Meta or their severe lack of transparency in moderation, but this stuff is so political it's basically impossible to debate on facts. Likewise Brazil's courts are notoriously political, notoriously pro-censorship of social media (including fining FB well before Trump for not deleting posts on gov demand), and your first link is a judge appointed by one of Lula's ex staff (Dilma Rousseff).
matheusmoreira4 days ago
> Likewise Brazil's courts are notoriously political, notoriously pro-censorship of social media
Only against the right wing's Bolsonaro. The left wing's Lula can do and is doing everything they punished Bolsonaro for back in 2022.
ImPostingOnHN5 days ago
According to the actual court findings, Facebook blocked or hindered Lula's campaign for weeks, not hours. This was already explained to you before you made this post [0]. For further findings of fact, just read what the judges wrote after the investigation (I'm sure you're a nice, smart person, but obviously your opinions don't overrule Brasil's supreme court's findings).
Also, taking the word of the attacker that their crime wasn't that bad, or was an accident, without evidence, is pretty silly behavior, especially when it's facebook, with their long history of malfeasance and deception.
> this stuff is so political it's basically impossible to debate on facts.
It really isn't. Courts deal with the facts in political situations all the time. Here, they looked at the facts and made their decision. You can disagree, but it's not like you're "debating" a court ruling in doing so. The excuses you're tossing out were already tried and ruled dishonest by the courts, all the way up to the supreme court.
Also, your note about Facebook being fined for refusing to block right-wing hate speech and disinformation is actually counting against your claim that the courts are biased and Facebook is not. What happened to the blocks happening across the board irrespective of politics? Right-wing hate speech and disinformation is allowed, but innocuous left-wing mainstream political movements and politicians get blocked right before an election? That illustrates the exact opposite of what you claim. We're gonna need evidence to believe your and Facebook's unconvincing claims of an "accident" here.
matheusmoreira4 days ago
> obviously your opinions don't overrule Brasil's supreme court's findings
Their findings? You mean their purely political, pre-determined sentences that they justify after the fact with some reasonable sounding legalese slop? I'd take literally any random HN commenter's opinion over theirs any day.
Next year we're going to impeach a significant number of those "judges". I'm really looking forward to it.
PaulDavisThe1st4 days ago
Not to worry ... by providing any legalese slop to go with their rulings, they're ahead of more than half the SCOTUS decisions over the last two years!
Oh wait, we can't impeach US supreme court justices ... ah well, nevertheless.
matheusmoreira4 days ago
It's becoming clear that judges are the weakest point of democracy. The potential for a juristocracy was always there...
ImPostingOnHN4 days ago
> Oh wait, we can't impeach US supreme court justices
You actually can! I think it hasn't been common due to the precedent it would set.
ImPostingOnHN4 days ago
> Their findings? You mean their purely political, pre-determined sentences that they justify after the fact with some reasonable sounding legalese slop?
You're repeated these claims, but they are not convincing with regards to this matter:
On the one hand, we have the entire court system of an entire country;
On the other hand, we have you. And Facebook.
Sorry, but you and Facebook are less trustworthy, less authoritative, and Facebook at least has shown themselves to be more partisan, too.
If this was actually an accident as you're claiming, then Facebook should be able to apologize, and explain exactly what happened, and what part of their "algorithm" caused it to disproportionately target mainstream left-wing politicians and political movements, and how they plan to fix it and make things right, and how people can verify that they have done so. Have they done any of that?
matheusmoreira4 days ago
> On the other hand, we have you.
Appeals to authority are bad in general. Appealing to these particular authorities is just absolute nonsense.
I'd rather people actually think about what I am saying. Evaluate the logic of the arguments I post in good faith, and either accept the argument or refute it.
> If this was actually an accident as you're claiming
I have never claimed that. Not once.
Let's make it clear: I'm not denying that Meta engaged in "interference".
My point is I couldn't care less what Meta did or did not do. The truth is after what I witnessed in 2022 it doesn't matter what big tech does, they can never exceed the crimes of the supreme court itself.
In 2022 the supreme court engaged in a blatantly unconstitutional censorship and political persecution campaign against Bolsonaro and the Brazilian right wing. People have already perished in prison because of them.
Watching people fret over the Facebook accounts of Lula at this point is just black comedy.
Want to trust an authority? Then trust the authority of the Brazilian people. Trust democratically elected senate we just voted into power for the express purpose of ending the reign of these judge-god-kings. Their fall is highly anticipated.
Once that problem's been solved, then we can care about whether some social media company's algorithms are fair.
PaulDavisThe1st4 days ago
> Once that problem's been solved, then we can care about whether some social media company's algorithms are fair.
The dilemma comes in large part from whether or not you think some social media company's algorithms played a role in the senate you just voted into power. I suspect you do not (i.e. you see the senate result as a true, democratic expression of the will of the people of Brasil). Your view is not universally held, however.
matheusmoreira4 days ago
X published their feed algorithms on GitHub:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49310291
I support that transparency. Meta should do the same.
Same reason why I defend the paper trail in the voting machines. I don't want anyone accusing us of any manipulation when we finally win.
ImPostingOnHN4 days ago
>> On the other hand, we have you.
> Appeals to authority are bad in general.
I'm appealing to the evidence, which also happens to be what the authorities say. Given that you have neither evidence nor authority in this discussion about whether Facebook's actions were accidental, your claims remain unconvincing on either count.
> I have never claimed that. Not once.
> Let's make it clear: I'm not denying that Meta engaged in "interference".
You are right, I mistakenly confused you for the other poster I replied to, who started this thread by claiming Facebook's actions were all accidental. I'm sorry.
> In 2022 the supreme court engaged in a blatantly unconstitutional censorship and political persecution campaign against Bolsonaro and the Brazilian right wing.
Was that before or after Bolsonaro attempted to overthrow the government with a coup/putsch [0][1]? Most people are not free speech absolutists in all cases, and incitement to insurrection is a common and commonly accepted exception to free speech worldwide.
0 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Brazilian_co...
1 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_January_Bras%C3%ADlia_attack...
matheusmoreira4 days ago
> I'm appealing to the evidence, which also happens to be what the authorities say.
I don't think I'm expressing myself properly.
I'm way past the point of caring about evidence and fairness.
Lula's been on a electoral crimes spree since he lost the first round of the presidential election earlier this month. He's doing the exact same things Bolsonaro did in 2022, only with complete impunity. Bolsonaro was relentlessly censored and fined for doing the exact same things Lula is doing now. Where the hell are these "judges" now?
Evidence? Nobody is disputing the evidence. The point is none of this matters because the judiciary itself is corrupt and cannot be trusted. The entire institution is too far gone.
That's the point I made in my original reply. Their "findings" are tainted and irrelevant, regardless of evidence.
I'll start caring about this evidence when these "judges" start applying their own precedents to the left wing as a whole and to Lula personally. Not one second before.
And everybody knows they won't actually do it, which is why we voted in senators to impeach them.
> Was that before or after
Obviously, political censorship during the election could only have taken place before the election. The court's profoundly destabilizing actions led directly to January 8th.
However, it actually started years before those events. The supreme court created the "fake news" inquisition in 2019. They are literally the victims, investigators, prosecutors, judges and executioners in a perpetual trial of wildcard crimes against themselves with a jurisdiction covering the entire Brazilian territory. This inquisition is active to this day, and they used it to essentially usurp all power.
I don't really want to hear about any "putsch" until the day I see those "judges" in prison. My position is Brazil ceased to be a democracy the second these unelected judges started that inquisition, and it is pointless to even discuss elections until the entire institution is abolished. I don't care how it's done, so long as it gets done.
PaulDavisThe1st4 days ago
> Evidence? Nobody is disputing the evidence.
You have disputed the evidence (e.g. was the outage for hours, or days or weeks ?)
matheusmoreira4 days ago
No. I disputed the court's "findings". The opinions of partidarian judges are worthless and should be summarily dismissed.
If you personally witnessed Meta influence the elections, then I'm willing to hear you and consider what you say. If you quote judges, then I'm not.
ImPostingOnHNa day ago
ok, thank you for sharing that about yourself
Im sorry you're having a bad time
phendrenad25 days ago
The complexity of the world is reaching the limits of the average human's cognitive ability, and this deficiency is manifesting as people actively rejecting facts and choosing to believe abstract generalizations. I.E. it "makes sense" that Meta and Trump are working together to overthrow governments, so they take the intellectual shortcut to believe that any similar fact is literally true.
dmix5 days ago
I miss being able to dismiss right wing QAnon posters as just dumb American Facebook boomers.
Conspiracy posting is now sadly fully mainstream in multiple countries, especially (ironically for Meta) among the youth raised on social media, and it's exhausting reading it all them time.
When news is only consumed before any facts are established this is the end result...
ImPostingOnHN5 days ago
the article already specified that the group was banned during the early 90 minutes of the march, and organizers were banned from posting for several hours during it as well.
what do you think you're adding by repeating what the article said? you emphasize 90 minutes as if that makes it okay (obviously it does not).
also, the other example you cited of Facebook disproportionately blocking left-wing political causes lasted for several weeks[0], not several hours.
0: https://novaramedia.com/2026/09/28/facebook-blocks-lulas-cam...
dmix5 days ago
> what do you think you're adding by repeating what the article said?
That auto-moderation of social media always has false positives like this? This was always a predictable outcome from aggressively moderating social media with algorithms. Humans only ever get involved after the fact (in this case after 90 minutes).
The only reason this is newsworthy is that the media could spin it as some sort of intentional move by humans at Meta, without evidence, because it happened to vaguely coincide with some event date. Otherwise this happens every single day if you search social media for "my account was suspended".
ImPostingOnHN5 days ago
> That auto-moderation of social media always has false positives like this?
Only it doesn't. We don't see right-wing politicians being blocked on Facebook. No Bolsonaro blocking. Only left-wing political causes. Can you give some examples from the last couple years, of Facebook blocking right-wing candidates or right-wing mainstream political movements, immediate before an election?
> Humans only ever get involved after the fact (in this case after 90 minutes).
Several hours, not 90 minutes, but even then, that doesn't excuse it -- the human intervention should come before blocking of political causes. Moreover, this doesn't seem coincidental, given the above point of how infrequently and selectively it happens.
> The only reason this is newsworthy is
...because people find it newsworthy. Simple as that. Sorry if you personally prefer that it not be reported, personally I'd prefer that it didn't happen.
dmix5 days ago
So your theory is Meta let some protest organize on their social media for years, then 90 minutes before one of their many protests start they'd take down a single page on only one of their platforms (Instagram), as a way to stop the protests from happening? Then Mark Zuckerberg told them to restore it within a short timeframe for plausible deniability?
ImPostingOnHN5 days ago
I go where the evidence points. Meta has not provided sufficient evidence to conclude that this was an accident. Given their track record of blocking left-wing political politicians and causes over the last couple years (and their even longer track record of malfeasance and deception), they do not have the benefit of the doubt, especially when they are not transparent about what happened.
The article makes it pretty clear: Left-wing political figures blocked from posting to facebook for several hours (not 90 minutes) right when the event occurred. Can't get much clearer than that. Then enough furor erupted to unblock them, or the event ended and then they were unblocked.
It fits with their track record, e.g. blocking/hampering Brazilian left-wing candidate communications for weeks until a court ordered them to stop. If you have a theory about both these things being an accident (while the corresponding right-wing causes were all conveniently given a pass), we're gonna need more evidence from you to back that theory.
dmix5 days ago
Strong claims need strong evidence. So the choices are between a) Some conjecture that a social media account was briefly taken down as part of a right-wing conspiracy by a major publicly traded US corporation OR b) yet another example in a long history of accounts being auto-flagged by overly-aggressive algorithms and then later being restored by a human moderator without proper transparency.
ImPostingOnHN5 days ago
Strong claims need strong evidence. So the choices are between:
a) oops, they accidentally blocked ONLY left-wing political candidates and causes right before an election, ever since the US started having a right-wing president with a track record of interfering in elections on behalf of right-wing causes, totally a coincidence, people, or
b) yet another example in a facebook's history of blocking left-wing political candidates and causes, right before an election, ever since the US started having a right-wing president with a track record of interfering in elections on behalf of right-wing causes
Obviously Facebook does not have the benefit of the doubt, given their long history of malfeasance, deception, and nontransparency, so A is a pretty strong claim, and thus we can go with B until you have strong evidence otherwise. I don't think anyone here on HN can say "I trust facebook to be honest and transparent, to admit, explain, and atone for their malfeasance without prompting, and to always make choices that best reflect the will of the people" with a straight face these days. In fact, we still don't even have transparency into the very incidents we're discussing (likely due to deception and malfeasance, if we're going based off past behavior and proper Bayesian priors).
Indeed, if it was actually an accident, then that means that after Facebook's Lula scandal, they had the opportunity to stop this sort of thing from happening, and made the choice not to do so. That was their choice, making it no longer an accident in this case. There's no escaping accountability for that choice.
Back to our earlier request: can you give some examples from the last couple years, of Facebook blocking major right-wing candidates or major right-wing mainstream political movements, immediately before an election? If it was just an accident, and these accidents happen all the time without respect for politics, we should expect to see an equal number of blocks applied to both sides in the same situation. Do we? I don't think so.
muglug5 days ago
It was an account with a few thousand followers. Nobody I know (in Brooklyn) follows the account.
I've seen more coverage of a brief 90-minute ban than I have of the protests themselves.
Trump and the Republicans are as unpopular as ever, but I don't think the No Kings protests are moving the needle right now.
afavour5 days ago
> Organizers of the protests estimated that the protests drew nearly 7 million attendees,[17][18] while a partnership between data journalist G. Elliott Morris and the Xylom, an independent Atlanta-based science newsroom, estimated 5 million to 6.5 million participants. Either estimate would make this one of the largest single-day protests in American history.[19]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2025_No_Kings_protests
muglug5 days ago
You're not comparing like with like.
Today's protests seem aimed around GOTV, rather than opposing specific policies. It makes sense that they wouldn't have the same draw.
The main organising IG account for the protests is https://www.instagram.com/50501movement, with almost 900k followers.
nemo44x5 days ago
Patriot. God bless, Mr. Zuckerberg.
tdeck5 days ago
Frankly I'm not sure why they would bother.
The organizers of No Kings may be well-intentioned, but the rallies themselves seem to be maximally engineered to make people feel like they've done their part resisting without materially affecting anything. Why would anyone in Trump's coalition feel threatened by them at this point?
jacquesm5 days ago
Ask Ceausescu.
tdeck5 days ago
Ceausescu was ousted by a permitted street protest that lasted a few hours as scheduled and then everyone went back to brunch?
nfw25 days ago
you are exactly proving the point, the protests seem engineered to make people think they are doing something tantamount to ousting communist dictators when they really don't seem to be doing much at all except maybe annoying the moderates already on their side
jacquesm5 days ago
I don't know if that's true. Protests - or in fact, any large scale ability to organize people - have the potential for action baked in. Remember that the fall of the USSR started with some relatively mild protests.
It wasn't long before there were Zomo's in the streets of Gdansk, Poznan, Warsaw and many other places to try to curb those protests and that in turn is what led to the fall of the Polish regime.
nfw25 days ago
what actions specifically are baked in in this case. you think these protestors are on their way to toppling the federal government?
jacquesm5 days ago
They could for instance call a nationwide strike if there are tricks around election day.
tdeck4 days ago
That only works if you have a highly organized movement whose members are accustomed to the idea that they might have to sacrifice something. Unfortunately I don't see the potential for that in the No Kings style of biannual Facebook mobilizing with zero real movement building. Instead No Kings is conditioning their followers that a symbolic self-limiting action that leads to no change should be followed by...occasionally more of the exact same. No Kings attendees aren't even an organized economic boycott force.
nfw23 days ago
any resistance movement that includes my suburban 60-year-old soccer mom who doesn't like bad words or the subway probably isn't storming any bastilles any time soon
jmclnx5 days ago
This is yet another reason people in the US needs to get out and vote. People need to come out in mass to take back their country. But since most people in the US are being deluded, I expect the US will never recover from Trump and the very rich.
And now for a big BS quote from the article, which we all know is false.
>There is no evidence at the moment that the suspension was politically motivated
prajaybasu5 days ago
> This is yet another reason people in the US needs to get out and vote. People need to come out in mass to take back their country.
Like what happened in 2024?
jmclnx5 days ago
About 2,000,000 less people voted in 2024 than in 2020. Those 2 million could have changed the results
Gualdrapo5 days ago
> I expect the US will never recover from Trump and the very rich.
The thing is that they are also dragging many other countries into that misery. Just look at here at Latin America.
alexx-devv5 days ago
[flagged]
throwaway6137465 days ago
[dead]
dingaling9115 days ago
[flagged]
josho5 days ago
I'm sorry what⁉ what covid conspiracy theory has been proven correct?
Meekro5 days ago
"Proven" is too strong, but some COVID experts now consider the lab leak hypothesis plausible. It used to be that you could get banned from social media (mostly Facebook and pre-Musk twitter) for promoting it.
runarberg5 days ago
I was there and I remember this. Joe Biden was one of the people pushing the now completely debunked lab-leak conspiracy theory at the time. So no, you did not get banned. You had the president of the USA spreading the same bullshit as you.
It was a racist conspiracy theory back then as well, even when the president of the USA was pushing this crap.
jacquesm5 days ago
Hm. That's not what I remember. I remember he ordered an investigation into the origins of the virus but I don't remember him singling out China as the origin. That was Trump, who called it a 'Chinese virus'.
runarberg5 days ago
He ordered an investigation into the origin of the Virus at a time when these racist conspiracy theories were proliferating, while at the same time he did not exclude investigating these obviously racist conspiracy theories. He played right into the hands of racist conspiracy theorists.
To me, and to many of us on the left wing, it was obvious what he was doing. The theory of natural origin had become the de-facto scientific consensus when he started this “investigation”. That is he was muddying the waters and trying to stir up anti-China sentiment among Americans in his political favor.
dingaling9115 days ago
[flagged]
dingaling9115 days ago
1. Origin
2. Vax did nothing for the most part
3. Lockdowns were bsmung5 days ago
1. Origin is still not conclusive. 2. wtf. that is total bullshit, I'm not even going to bother with that. 3. I came from a country that locked down early for a month. We spend the following summer going to the beach and concerts while the rest of the world suffered on the news. Had other nations actually implemented such a policy quickly and properly, covid could have been controlled. But they didn't. They did it piecemeal.
dingaling9114 days ago
There were countries that never locked down that did fine as well. Sweden, for example.
You confuse corruption with a proper scientific approach.
runarberg4 days ago
Sweden also had a lockdown.
Your narrative is ahistoric. It is pseudoscientific and conspiratorial.
dingaling9114 days ago
Sweden did not have a lockdown, I know because I was there. It was voluntary. What the actual heck is going on when you are willing to lie this much.
runarberg4 days ago
Ban on gatherings of more then 7 people, schools going remote, travel restrictions, etc. Sounds like a lockdown to me, albeit not as aggressive as the rest of Europe. But the laxer lockdown also resulted in more people dying from the virus, so I don’t think you have a case here.
What is going on here, is that you have bought into Covid conspiracy theories, and you are in some sort of a groupthink mode, where you believe your ingroup of conspiracy theorists are right by default and the rest of the world has gone insane.
dingaling9114 days ago
I was definitely at gatherings of more than 7 people.
Look, you can cry all you want about it.
In the end, Sweden fared better.
Since you claim to like Science (TM), here you go:
> In Sweden, the excess mortality rate of 158/100,000 was among the lowest, ranked 37th among 42 countries, and not very different from other Nordic countries
runarberg5 days ago
Origin is as good as conclusive. These lab-leak conspiracy theories are nothing but crackpot anti-asian racism, and have been from the beginning. Covid had a natural origin and spread from a wet market in Wuhan. We know this.
There are some missing pieces, such as how long the virus had been circulating in bats, which other animals it had crossed over, were there unidentified cases in humans in China before the Wuhan wet-market spread? etc. But one thing is for sure, this virus was not made in a lab, and Chinese scientists did not do anything to cause it’s spread.
yieldcrv5 days ago
you’re 6 years older and can’t understand the difference between slow down transmission and no transmission, with the former being the goal and that was successful in places with higher distancing and vaccination rates. can’t understand the difference between less severe symptoms versus none at all, with the former again being the goal
as a betting man, I bet you still don’t realize that every issue with the vaccine was a default issue with catching actual covid
pasta675 days ago
During covid a lot of cancer patients died - for obvious reasons but you are going to repeat like a parrot complete bs.
dingaling9115 days ago
Hey man, they're never going to see it.
Just let it go. It's a religion now.
yieldcrv4 days ago
the medical availability could have been implemented better
runarberg5 days ago
1. Covid had a natural origin and spread from a wet market in Wuhan, China
2. Most vaccines were effective and helped reduced the severity of Covid. Vaccines saved lives.
3. Lockdowns were extremely effective in slowing down the spread of the virus in its initial stages, before we had enough life-saving vaccines to protect the most vulnerable from the virus. Lockdowns saved millions of lives.
SV_BubbleTime5 days ago
>Covid had a natural origin and spread from a wet market in Wuhan, China
What an amazing coincidence that the virus came from the same city that the China’s only level four bio lab happens to be in, the one with records destroyed, the same one that the US was with one step removed from NIH to EcoHealth Alliance was directly performing gain of research on coronaviruses at, a fact that Fauci’s own emails confirm as it was his buddy Peter Daszak’s name on so that when he testified that the US was not doing GoF that he was still perjuring himself just not immediately provable.
I get why people get so confused because it truly is just such a neat coincidence.
pasta675 days ago
1. Lol. The virus was related to bats that live 1000 miles from Wuhan. The main issue is that China lied when people already were dead from Covid.
2. Vaccines were completelly ineffective. Virus adapted much faster and became less lethal - as expected. Or rather immunity of organism of people stopped overreact to something that was never lethal, unless you had no immunity. Sweden is top example of how to deal with covid by doing nothing. My home country vaccinated over 80% population and had the highest fatality rate per population from blood clots mainly. Corruption kills people.
3. Lockdowns were too late. Because of China. Lockdowns for various reasons did not work - healthy looking people were spreading covid for months before and during lockdown - it seems that you still do not realize that major part of people got through covid without life threatening complications.
LYK-love5 days ago
You know that China informed the UN in the first time when they confirmed the virus right? Just because your country ignored some messages from China (as usual), doesn't mean China didn't do it's job.
The history: 1. The virus was firstly reported by a docker working in Wuhan, but the govt doesn't take it seriously. 2. The covid spreads and Chinese govt started to lockdown. Also the govt informed the U.N. 3. Covid spreads globally.
So can you tell me what China lied about covid?
pasta675 days ago
Hah, Chinese shill is telling me a history.
wonnage5 days ago
Pass the blunt my guy
dalemhurley5 days ago
There was about 50 different origin conspiracies.
Vaccine absolutely was proven to work in reducing deaths and building immunity in the community.
Lockdowns absolutely slowed the spread of COVID to allow the hospital systems to rationalise the limited PPE.
pasta675 days ago
>>>There was about 50 different origin conspiracies.
50 bat species?
>>>Vaccine absolutely was proven to work
There were at least couple of vaccines.Yeah they worked - some % died from complications of blood clotting...
>>>Lockdowns absolutely slowed the spread of COVID to allow the hospital systems to rationalise the limited PPE.
BS! Hospitals stopped to work - except for emergency situations. I had a surgery that had to be postponed for couple of years. The backlog from covid took years to clear up.
There were some revelations to me because of covid: 1. Majority of people appears to be unable to think by themselves. 2. The absolute stupidity and greed among officials - especially WHO was hilarious. 3. People here parrot "official" texts, that were fabricated in anticipation of mass panic or covering their asses. None of that has anything to do with covid and actual history of events.
dalemhurley5 days ago
Really? I missed the evidence that the vaccine was mind a controlled experiment linked to 5G funded by Bill Gates that killed everyone who had the vaccine within 6 months.
jacquesm5 days ago
Being dead would explain why I feel a bit tired lately.
bediger40005 days ago
Come, come, my good sir! COVID conspiracy theorists proven correct? Did 5G phone signals activate tiny robots in the COVID vaccine? No. Does the COVID vaccine work? It's not 100% effective, but mortality data certainly shows that those vaccinated are less likely to die. Time to do some research, update your priors, my friend.
benthecarman5 days ago
[flagged]
kevmo5 days ago
[flagged]
Barrin925 days ago
with the next change of administration there needs to be an investigation into every single one of these techbros and a Roosevelt treatment of the tech sector and corporate power.
You've got to hand it to Thiel, at least like other people of questionable political persuasion he's already fled to Argentina, gonna get crowded there in the future
paulsutter5 days ago
The good news is that the protests are working. Number of kings holding steady at zero.
spolitry5 days ago
What is the value on trolling like this?
nfw25 days ago
what is the value of asking the value of trolling, you have a downvote
lifeisloving5 days ago
I would be more suspicious if No Kings wasn't an equally shady/opaque organization actively working overtime to subvert real leftist movememts from gaining traction in the US.
caned5 days ago
I'm genuinely curious. Can you elaborate?
lifeisloving5 days ago
Its just your typical dark money poltical antics, funded by questionable people. It came out of nowhere with hundreds of millions in nationwide funding with teams of publicists and graphic designers. You should always be suspicious of these well funded, spontaneous but benign political movements.
It's a cathartic ritual organized and funded by billionaires that acts as a quartely pressure valve for the working class during the Trump administration. It prevent frustrations from boiling over (like in France) here during this time so the ruling class can push forward with their agenda.
It hijacks all momentum from local political organizing that actually have teeth. It funnels the energy back to the Democratic party, who serves the billionaires just as much as the Republicans.
moomoo115 days ago
or maybe the leftist movements are also just as batshit insane as those they claim to "oppose" but so many people are brain broken these days it is impossible to have that discussion lol
throwawayfifo4 days ago
Oh how the tables have turned! "It's a private platform, they can ban whomever they want" leftists chanted! "I never thought leopards would eat MY face," sobs leftist who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
honeycrispy5 days ago
It's weird to me to protest no kings now when 2020-21 is still so fresh in the mind. The circumstances of today pale in comparison.
spolitry5 days ago
I have no idea what you are trying to dog whistle
nfw25 days ago
its not a dog whistle if you just state your belief openly like this person did
jleyank5 days ago
The internet routes around damage. If these social media companies prove they're favouring the government rather than their customers, hackers or AI will just replace them. Won't be as pretty, perhaps, but it won't block or snoop so much. These companies haven't built up any goodwill to protect them.
cisc5 days ago
> If these social media companies prove they're favouring the government
They favour themselves. And if to best position themselves they must suck up to the government then that's what they'll do. Every time.
> rather than their customers
Who do you think their customers are? They aren't the users. The users are the product, the cattle farmed by social media companies.
The customers are the advertisers. Advertisers don't want filthy protesters tarnishing their shiny brands.
jethro_tell5 days ago
But, they have built up moats via generally unregulated anti-competitive behavior. Also of note, the ISPs are owned by the same class of people, they aren't routing around anything, they are taking our money and cashing checks.
Which would be praise worthy if it was a net neutrality stance, but it's not.
[deleted]5 days agocollapsed