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Meta shuts down global accounts linked to abortion advice and queer content

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The memory of Zuckerberg blabbering about Facebook positive social impact and mission of "Making the world more open and connected" triggers strong cognitive dissonance when reading this article.

Same as when remembering the "Don't be evil" moto from Google.

I'm wondering if at some level we always knew it would end up like this. What kind of moral shield can we claim from this mess ? I'm afraid it's actually very little

1 month agoby lta

Repro Uncensored, an NGO tracking digital censorship against movements focused on gender, health and justice, said that it had tracked 210 incidents of account removals and severe restrictions affecting these groups this year, compared with 81 last year.

Meta denied an escalating trend of censorship. “Every organisation and individual on our platforms is subject to the same set of rules, and any claims of enforcement based on group affiliation or advocacy are baseless,” it said in a statement, adding that its policies on abortion-related content had not changed.

Has The Guardian confirmed the facts either way? Or are they just reporting what people say without digging deeper?

I think reporting ought to try to get to some level of truth through rigor.

1 month agoby andsoitis

I always wonder, when it's so clear some corporate decision will cause social harm, what the story the perpetrators tell themselves is to avoid feeling guilt or responsibility.

Nobody believes themselves to be the bad guy, but many people frequently make decisions that cause harm.

1 month agoby spicyusername

I think the headline is implying that they were targeted for their ideological positions.

However the very first line reveals what the actual reason probably was: "posts showing non-explicit nudity triggering warnings"

1 month agoby elif

Wow. I'm very involved in LGBTQ, sex positive and poly communities and locally and I have to say I hadn't noticed this yet. For IM we mainly use telegram, not WhatsApp, but Instagram is used the most as a social network, by far. "What's your Insta" is a standard line when you meet someone at a party. But everything is small scale and not big enough to be on the global radar.

It does mean that people will see more and more bans now when they are reported by haters. I guess it's time for a new common social media network. But which? It'll be hard to get traction for fediverse networks in such a diverse and non technical community.

I don't really understand why though. I understand they're against LGBTQ for religious reasons or something but why try to ban it? They can just like... not follow the content they don't like? The algorithm does the rest. And the content on insta is already very mild. No nudity etc.

1 month agoby wkat4242

As long as you support social media companies censoring people you don't like, you're in a weaker position arguing against their censorship of people you do like. There should be a strong social objection to all such censorship, but I don't know how we get there from here. All the justifications for censorship during Covid were corrosive, "The 1st amendment only protects you from _government_ censorship, etc."

At this point, nobody trusts the other side to "play fair" and reciprocate, which makes standing on principle feel like a loss. If all sides stood up just a little bit for the principle of "I don't agree with that person, but I defend his right to voice himself", we'd all be better off.

1 month agoby quantummagic

Meta is trying to position themselves to receive a taxpayer AI bailout. Don't let them get away with it.

1 month agoby fhdhdbdb

But they won't shut down not scam ads. That was worth 16 billion to them in 2024.

1 month agoby phoehne

This once again brings up the point that while Meta and other "single company" social networks can easily exclude you, you can't get excluded on Nostr.

It's designed in a way that that's not even a thing. Anyone can create account locally on their computer or mobile phone (even completely offline) and that's it. If you save & store your "notes" or "posts", you can always re-broadcast them later to different "relay" servers - and this is what your app can do for you anyway.

1 month agoby nout

They block and ghost posts containing the word ICE

1 month agoby snarfy

Protip: don't use Facebook. Meta doesn't control the internet. Post whatever you like. I'm sick of people kowtowing to these platforms; people are increasingly censoring themselves, afraid to even post a picture with a word like "kill", "murder", "suicide", etc. (regardless of context) without obscuring the offending word in some way.

1 month agoby lunias

Is this what he meant by making the company more masculine?

1 month agoby aoeusnth1

So corporate censorship?

1 month agoby josefritzishere

It's interesting how they're so concerned with censorship now. Weren't they the ones who were all up in arms about censoring everyone with right-wing views? But now that the script has flipped, suddenly it's a problem. It's not like we didn't try to warn them that if they force open the floodgates of censorship, then it can happen to them too. Maybe, just maybe, we should all stop trying to control what other people think and say. Mind your fucking business and leave other people alone. I hope this gets resolved. I don't believe that anyone should be censored, whether they agree with my views and beliefs or not.

1 month agoby Linguist6514

Looking at all this as an outsider, I'm a bit baffled at the responses. Basically, it seems to me that the vast majority of Americans want this.

And by "this" I mean that they want organizations to proactively make changes that fit with the policies of whoever is in power, even if there's no actual laws that make them do this. When Democrats ran the place, big tech was going out of their way to out-woke one another, with product announcement videos somehow starting with land acknowledgements and the likes, and now the same companies are going out of their way to out-dumb one another and this is just one of many examples.

I mean, America is a place with only two sides, and both sides are very on board with having their particular preferences and ideas enforced informally without any sort of legal framework. I think it would be useful for a lot more of the outrage to be directed at that fact.

Just.. be against all of this! This shit where legally you can do whatever the fuck you want but actually in reality you're going to get in serious trouble if you don't toe the party line, and oh by the way the party line switches every 4 years... that's no way to run a business! It's banana republic stuff.

I mean I agree that there's a difference in scale, in that censoring access to abortion advice is actively harmful and most things people felt they had to do under Biden (eg land acknowledgements, DEI trainings etc) are just cringe. But come on, don't politicize everything! It will only come to bite you back in the arse, as this episode illustrates beautifully.

1 month agoby skrebbel

I hate political posts on a tech news site, especially ycombinator. These problems will never be solved and only cause agitation on both sides. Closing the ycombinator tab for the day.

1 month agoby cramcgrab

- It's not censorship because it's a private company

- Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences

- Are you saying Facebook should be forced to platform speech it doesn't like?

- Xkcd "showing you the door"

Did I miss any? Heavy pendulums hurt to be struck by.

1 month agoby eudamoniac

We have Trump blabbering about EU censorship, but here's the US oligarch's social network doing it at his orders.

The "bastion of free speech" is exporting its censorship to other countries... If I'm an EU lawmaker, I'd honestly use this to just ban Zuckerberg's entire social media sites and get it over with

1 month agoby aa_is_op

Do people really think that those seeking an abortion will find it harder because Meta banned a few accounts.

I don't know who's behind this, but they're delusional.

1 month agoby d--b

Mark Zuckerberg is a sociopath, it's been obvious for years

But everyone always excuses it. "He was young when he wrote those IMs"

1 month agoby alex1138

Freedom of speech protection seems to be very important in the US. /s

1 month agoby mesk