You're parsing the meaning from his sentence wrong.
Clearly, when he said "I vow to loosen restrictions on online speech", what he actually meant was "I vow to loosen [the circle of people who get to set] restrictions on online speech".
At this point Meta doesn't even worry about these news and specially right now that it is trying to please the current adminstration. Over the years I see it got a lot of bad press but they continue to grow their revenue. Investors are happy, nothing else matters probably for the company .
Cambridge Analytica resulted in them largely closing off their API which depending on your view on platform monetization vs moat of less easily accessible social graph was a bullish thing for the company. It was quite a manufactured scandal in my opinion.
They just learned, like every single company, that nobody has willpower, ability or memory to keep up with the news. Wait a week or two, say nothing, people will forget. The product is intrenched enough in the society that nobody will move unless something happens to the product itself.
Frankly, can’t really judge them. That is probably the optimal thing to do in the current business environment.
We’re talking about posts promoting prescription medications. There were always strict rules about this on Facebook (banned by default) and the fact that most of these posts ever stayed up was more likely a result of oversight and possibly politics in the first place. You certainly don’t see almost anything about other prescription meds.
> "The company restored some of the accounts and posts on Thursday, after The New York Times asked about the actions."
It would appear the posts were OK after all.
> You certainly don’t see almost anything about other prescription meds.
I get pretty much non-stop Ozempic ads on Facebook.
> "Aid Access, one of the largest abortion pill providers in the United States, said some posts were removed on its Facebook account and blurred out on its Instagram account since November, with more posts blurred in recent days. The abortion pill service said it has been blocked from accessing its Facebook account since November, and its Instagram account was suspended last week, though it has since been restored."
You don't think the November timing is the slightest bit suspicious?
Having trouble getting past the paywall. Can you confirm that these were posts directly promoting the prescription drugs, or were other posts by this organization also hidden?
>At this point Meta doesn't even worry about these news and specially right now that it is trying to please the current adminstration
You may not agree with the current administration, but they won the popular vote. What would you rather them do, defy the current administration? Sounds pretty anti-democratic to me. Am I missing a deeper principle here or is it just a matter of "companies should do what I think is right"?
I would rather companies do whatever they thought was best with no regards to the current administration, unless forced by law to take some action. Large companies feeling like they need to take actions to please the current President is not great.
They didn’t. They won 49.8%. But I’ve got to be honest, any logic along those lines rings very hollow these days. We’ve been told over and over about the “tyranny of the majority” being why a number of sparsely populated states get a disproportionate vote on the country’s destiny. To pivot just because the popular vote flipped to the other side (which, again, it didn’t) feels very… convenient.
I definitely think it's better for companies to do what's right than what's wrong, and I'm not sure I follow your implication that this is a shallower principle than calibrating what I think companies should do against the winner of the most recent federal elections. It would be a harder question if there were a law which requires Instagram or Facebook to block and hide posts from abortion pill providers, but there isn't.
> You may not agree with the current administration, but they won the popular vote
A republican candidate narrowly won the popular vote for the first time in 20 years, a metric that has no value in our system of government. And somehow you think this factoid puts the current administration in a position where they dare not be defied? Give me a fucking break.
> You may not agree with the current administration, but they won the popular vote. What would you rather them do, defy the current administration? Sounds pretty anti-democratic to me.
Does this concept of yours apply to, say, the Heritage Foundation, Musk's Twitter, Fox News, etc. during the Biden presidency?
Obviously they are trying to curry favour at the moment and don't care what reasonable people might think. My instinct is that it will all prove to have been futile and they will be hung out to dry.
At some point the people at the top turnover. Zuck might just hang in there long enough to step into that role. The resources at his disposal certainly don’t hurt his chances.
I hate how Zuckerberg tiptoes around Section 230; that's what his hyper-masculine phase is about. Pretending medical information shows up on your front door, pretending Cambridge Analytica doesn't show up, pretending you're acting in good faith. It's all pretend. Sure, this child's HIPAA package was posted on Facebook, we don't know what that is. Instead of exporting a child's medical information to a local church, we're exporting it out of the country. That's what good faith means because I'm a philanthropist and I'm a philanthropist for doing so; we developed Zstandard.
There is almost always a non-malicious explanation when it comes to complex technology systems acting in ways that appear politically malicious. You’d think the hackernews crowd would bias towards curiosity over impulsivity.
Now every time you get the urge to log back in, switch to a neglected activity/interest to focus in on. In 30-60 days (I can’t remember the grace period) you’ll have a deeper understanding of this interest and be Facebook free.
jk, of course it isn't fair to judge anyone for not leaving social media - it's actually quite valuable at times and going without it feels like missing out.
Serious question: If you never log back in, what does it matter if you have an account or not? An account I never use doesn't appear to have any affect on me.
Readit News
It is funny how loosening restrictions somehow seems to result in more moderation of specific topics, tags, etc.
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Clearly, when he said "I vow to loosen restrictions on online speech", what he actually meant was "I vow to loosen [the circle of people who get to set] restrictions on online speech".
Obviously.
/s
At this point?
Over the last decade, they've had like a dozen major scandals (hundreds of millions of passwords in plaintext, cambridge analytica, etc.).
They've never worried.
Frankly, can’t really judge them. That is probably the optimal thing to do in the current business environment.
(Yeah, deleted FB almost a decade ago. I had tried to convince myself Instagram was different somehow.)
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https://www.facebook.com/business/help/263390265553560?id=43...
I find it very doubtful that post-election Meta policy had anything to do with this.
It would appear the posts were OK after all.
> You certainly don’t see almost anything about other prescription meds.
I get pretty much non-stop Ozempic ads on Facebook.
> "Aid Access, one of the largest abortion pill providers in the United States, said some posts were removed on its Facebook account and blurred out on its Instagram account since November, with more posts blurred in recent days. The abortion pill service said it has been blocked from accessing its Facebook account since November, and its Instagram account was suspended last week, though it has since been restored."
You don't think the November timing is the slightest bit suspicious?
You may not agree with the current administration, but they won the popular vote. What would you rather them do, defy the current administration? Sounds pretty anti-democratic to me. Am I missing a deeper principle here or is it just a matter of "companies should do what I think is right"?
defying an administration that you disagree with, within the rule of law, is just about the most American and democratic thing I can imagine.
this is a corporation, not an arm of the government.
They didn’t. They won 49.8%. But I’ve got to be honest, any logic along those lines rings very hollow these days. We’ve been told over and over about the “tyranny of the majority” being why a number of sparsely populated states get a disproportionate vote on the country’s destiny. To pivot just because the popular vote flipped to the other side (which, again, it didn’t) feels very… convenient.
A republican candidate narrowly won the popular vote for the first time in 20 years, a metric that has no value in our system of government. And somehow you think this factoid puts the current administration in a position where they dare not be defied? Give me a fucking break.
Does this concept of yours apply to, say, the Heritage Foundation, Musk's Twitter, Fox News, etc. during the Biden presidency?
I hope you're right
That's what came to mind when I saw the title. Relatedly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37248748
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No ads from what I can see and very little disturbing posts so far, and I can have my daily dose of #britishshorthair
jk, of course it isn't fair to judge anyone for not leaving social media - it's actually quite valuable at times and going without it feels like missing out.
GDPR applies to data subjects who are "in the Union", regardless of residency or citizenship.
Be interesting to see how they justify that under the GDPR regulations ("right to be forgotten") for European/UK users.