111 comments
I did after yesterday’s story. It’s only a matter of time before you don’t even have to interact with their AI tools to kick off them showing you yourself in generated content. No thanks! They make it damn obscure to find too. I had to click a direct link to the option from their help pages.
I deleted my Facebook account back in 2015. I was in high school and going through a deep depression/mental break down. I remember feeling so much relief as the days went on. I don't think I was ever designed to handle social media properly. I doubt I'm the only one either.
I started college around 2005, when Facebook was still “exclusive to .edu college email addresses” and it was novel at the time, mostly because it was unfortunately exclusive.
My 3rd year I trimmed my friends list down from 10k to 1k, people I actually at least remembered having a conversation with. The next I took it down to about 300 people, and realized “I see or communicate with these people outside of this website already” and killed my account.
Best decision I ever made relative to the topic of social media.
no one is designed to handle social media at scale. Our brains are calibrated to express empathy at different levels for finite numbers of people who are of a given proximity to us (emotionally and physically) — e.g. the smaller and closer the group, the more capable of empathy (and thus worthy of exposure to nuanced feelings and more frequent exposure) we are.
Being bombarded with the thoughts and takes (especially when distorted in content and exposure frequency by an ad platform disguised as a social media site) of thousands of people — only a few of whom you can possibly know closely — is a recipe for mass psychosis.
Deleting my Instagram account has affected me in a similar way. I'm very grateful to myself for making that decision.
I deleted my FB account a long long time ago and then a few years later I wanted to make a new one for business reasons and they blocked me from doing so.
I’m not saying don’t delete your account - I still don’t have one, but be aware that it may not be as simple as just creating a new one if you change your mind in the future.
Same. I have Instagram and Threads accounts, but I tried to get Facebook back about 5 years after deleting it and immediately got asked for ID and then was banned with no appeal possible. I guess they take deleting your account very personally.
> got asked for ID and then was banned with no appeal possible
This is exactly what happened to me as well.
Same. I had a deactivated account from 2015 I could no longer access .
Subsequent attempts to make new ones were instantly banned for “no reason.”
They did work with me to reinstate the 2015 account. And it’s never been banned or suspended since. I don’t really use it anyway.
But that’s how they are. They trust older accounts. New ones are treated like criminals.
But if the deactivated account was still there for you to try and access and for fb to reactivate it and then you come and try to impersonate that old account with a new one the system has good reasons not let you do that and not telling the potential identity thief about these reasons is the right way to do it.
I see your point: Facebook is known for having “shadow profiles” on people who have never used Facebook in their lives.
So to them, “this is the profile we’ve decided is amy “ and “this one isn’t.” Even if it is….
I agree with you too and I think most of this is automated. A client triggered this like you did and the only way I found was to get a dedicated phone with a new sim (for social media accounts). I don't even dare to check if the trigger account is still there (they promised to delete it after some time) - I know the one from before that, which triggered the ban is still fine - nothing happening there in 8 years. Why can't it be simple like skype in the old days when Mum made a new account every time she forgot her password...
I think it mainly affects users who opted into FB's SSO feature across their other services.
Aren't most services demanding multifactor id these days? Ostensibly to defend against fraud, but nicely dovetails into their surveillance databases.
Get a headset. You can get a FB account with one and better still there is actually some customer service.
A headset...? You need to provide more details.
Meta Quest
Meta Quest is exactly what deleting facebook account should be named :)
You couldn't use a secondary or business email account to sign up?
Probably, but I already didn't like FB. I was just doing it as a checkbox to say we were on FB too. Once they were actively hostile to me it was no longer worth it. As a matter of course, I try not to interact with hostile people or companies if I can help it.
This might be a way to protect people who really don't want an account from having their identity stolen. If you deleted your account, one of your connections could see that and make another one in your name to mess you up.
Akin to FOMO? Some services will retain your used account usernames post-deletion while others do not. IIRC, facebook does the former.
I don't know what you mean. People are saying that Facebook wouldn't allow them to reuse their own old username. I think it's to prevent identity theft as someone could pick up any deleted username and pretend to be the old owner. They could even re-add the old owner's old connections to establish the scam. A few people might think "I thought I was already connected to this guy!" but most wouldn't think twice if they saw that the username and photo were the same.
I think it makes sense to allow reuse of usernames, but only after a sufficiently long period of time. I don't know if 20 years is enough, but something in that ballpark would be needed to reduce the risk of identity theft.
I find it very easy to stay off their feed of algorithmic garbage, but unfortunately despite being (imo) less usable than Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace is what everyone around me uses.
This is the only thing keeping me from deleting my Facebook account. I recently moved and wanted to sell some things. Listed about 8 things on Craigslist and got some shady replies.
I listed the same 8 things on Facebook Marketplace and sold everything within days...
Made a very fake account filled with very fake info, using a blurry profile picture of a random person on LinkedIn who looks very vaguely like me.
Might as well poison the well if I'm going to have the account for marketplace
I applaud the tutorial, but even so it's easier said than done. I deleted mine maybe 10 years ago, before they offered a hard delete option, so all you had to do to un-delete it was log in. Then, Comcast email (yes I used a Comcast email when i created my FB account in like 2008, whatever) got owned and so too did my facebook account. I started getting texts from friends the other week saying my account was alive and posting crypto scams. No way to recover it, since the email was gone. All the account recovery options (even though they have my current email) led to the same void, so now I'm permanently locked out. Facebook is scum of the earth.
I can't delete my account because they blocked any access until I upload a passport scan (despite never IDing previously). Guessing it got triggered by switching IPs/proxies. Any appeal attempts went unanaswered. It does suck that I lost a bunch of personal connections and that they (illegally in the EU I guess) deny me rights to access and delete my data for years now.
When it’s in a status where they’re demanding ID it “should be” deactivated.
Now they will delete the account after some time if if you refuse to give them ID. But they didn’t always do that, which meant they had your data and refuse to give it up. Basically forever.
They’re not a great company and they don’t care about anything. You might be better off claiming you live in California USA and demanding they delete it under CCPA, than to try as EU Right to be forgotten or EU privacy. And that’s dismal too because your laws are supposed to be better than ours.
You should be able to get a UPS store Mail Drop for a month or two while you correspond with them and or the California attorney generals office and raise some hell. Yes it’s garbage to suggest this but it works. They take ID and all that over the web to open a mailbox and “voila I live in California now.” If you have any friends online there , just ask if you can “live there” and get some mail there while you write letters to the AG and or meta
https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa
They *have to* comply with the California request. I had to resort to this to get Kinto Share to stop accessing my background and credit every year. (Another trash fire company that doesn’t care how much you beg threaten or cry.)
tell them you are from the EU: my friend was pissed and solved this way (choose France or Italy, the nastiest I've read)
as if facebook does not know he is not? :)
at my time (3 years ago) I remember it was possible with some push (I remember I did not need a vpn)
My instant thought was this was an article from the past and why is it reposted now !! Almost after a decade we are back to this headline again. Probably we will read something like this after another 10 years.
group fitness scheduling platforms use facebook login and disseminate information through their business page, if you hard delete your account you’re hard blocking yourself from local small businesses. what’s so hard about just not using it?
I deleted my Facebook account years ago and recently tried to re-create a new one. I had to use a different email address but even after doing so and sending them a picture of me as requested, they won't let me re-create an account. Apparently my brand new account that I never used doesn't adhere to their community standards about the integrity of accounts.
I asked them to review their decision and it was a NO... and there are no other remedies.
I kept it and Instagram around for years for older relatives and Marketplace and then by coincidence I’m trying to cut back on internet use and read more so I deleted it over NY this year. It’s surprisingly annoying to do, but the worst thing is having to recover access to anything I logged in with Facebook for.
I deleted my FB account six years ago, and I don't miss it. I use Twitter, Reddit, and occasionally IG (I don't post anything there).
Before Facebook introduced the option to unsend or delete sent messages, you could only remove them from your view.
Does anyone know if there is an option to restore them, so you can then remove them from the people you've sent them to?
Before I delete my account, I'd like to make sure I delete as many messages I sent to people also.
Deleted mine after they refused to let me make a comment on an unrelated group that Gatwick Airport is horrible on a Monday morning. Figured the algorithmic moderation was terrible and likely to waste my time conforming to some narrow and undefined form of speech. Not allowed to make a rational criticism.
Then two days later, rather than fix that, they announce the change to moderation methodology which has benefits to the highest bidder rather than the community.
Smells like another cesspit like X in the making.
Gone! Both are bad. The problem is the platform existing at this point.
> Smells like another cesspit like X in the making.
You act like Facebook isn't already a cesspit. Anyone who claims any mainstream social network site isn't a cesspit is being fruitful with the truth, they're the sum of humanity and humanity sucks.
Oh there’s cesspits and there’s cesspits.
Facebook at least had some small community groups and market place utility.
While I'm all on board with deleting Facebook accounts - and deleting Facebook itself - the timing of this push is odd. Now that Facebook claims to open up the platform for a wider view than just the desired narrative is the time to get rid of your account? Please explain to me how it was better to be held on a short leash than to be allowed to run out that leash a little bit.
I never had a Facebook account and as such I can not delete it but had I had one the time to delete it would have been when they started censoring anything which went against the desired narrative - probably around the time of the SARS2 unpleasantness - and not now that they claim to have been too censorious and 'promise' to allow more free speech. The same thing happened when Musk turned Twitter into X which makes me wonder why some people are so eager to embrace the censor and shun those places where he was kicked to the curb (even if I don't trust anything Zuckerberg says on this subject, he has shown his true colours a long time ago and they are dark and unpleasant to look at).
At any moment in time there are peopl "only realizing it now", so any time of a push for deletion of FB account is a good time. Maybe not the best, but a good one.
Excluding hate, bigotry and wilful ignorance isn't being "held on a short leash", it's just excluding hateful people from spreading hate.
That can be very subjective. Facebook tolerated groups where online dating users doxed and smeared each other. What passes for "hate" these days is ridiculous, and they only care about certain views deemed unpopular anyway rather than the entire set of awful content.
Also on the subject of FB moderation, I distinctly remember seeing a photo in my timeline that was censored like adult content. I clicked it, and it turned out to be some Christian thanking Jesus for something good. Real hateful content, that.
> Facebook tolerated groups where online dating users doxed and smeared each other.
This hasn’t been proven as the case is still ongoing. Also the plaintiff in this case got arrested last year for tax fraud
People have documented it. I didn't know there was a lawsuit but these groups definitely existed and managed to continue at least for long enough for them to be exposed. There was at least one of these groups in several major cities.
> There was at least one of these groups in several major cities.
Is there an "are we dating the same guy?" group for every city? Sure I believe that. Do 100% of those groups commit Doxing? Well, that I'm not so sure of.
In fact, I've literally never heard of that before, it doesn't sound like the objective of the group. So I googled it and I found one case where a guy is arguing that people in the group manipulated his messages and so he's suing Meta for Doxing.
Also, if you read closely you might be confused like I was. Defamation is not Doxing.
So if you have evidence of Doxing in these groups I would love to see it.
>Is there an "are we dating the same guy?" group for every city? Sure I believe that. Do 100% of those groups commit Doxing? Well, that I'm not so sure of.
That is literally the point of the group. They are violating the privacy of users on the regular, whether or not they actually give out whole names, addresses, or whatever. This WAS widely reported.
>Also, if you read closely you might be confused like I was. Defamation is not Doxing.
You have to correctly identify someone to effectively defame them. It's implied in the group name. That involves violating their privacy, which is essentially a form of doxxing (as far as dating online goes). Posting and/or offering up details of dates along with names, photos, or even phone numbers is all enough to identify many people on apps and in real life. And if not technically doxxing, even getting people identified to the point where they are excluded from dates is nasty behavior. You essentially can't defend yourself from these accusations, and in most cases you won't EVER find out that there are vicious rumors against you circulating among potentially thousands of people.
You can find plenty of information about people's experiences of being targetted by those groups. Here's a pretty good link to get started I think: https://www.vice.com/en/article/are-we-dating-the-same-guy-f...
Anyway, my point in all of that is to say that Facebook tolerated these groups for a long time, despite their vicious and secretive attacks on people, and violations of privacy. Their moderation team cares more about people posting wholesome religious memes and funny political commentary than content that is definitively toxic. We don't hear a lot about these groups because their membership is locked down. They exist(ed) in many major cities. I think they are thankfully falling out of fashion because their members are way too petty and toxic even for each other. But I don't know that for sure, as I can't join one even if I find it.
Even if you believe that women sharing notes with each other is "petty and toxic", just think of it as an incentive for men to behave themselves appropriately.
There wouldn't be any need for or interest in such groups if there wasn't such a problem overall. Keep in mind that this is the sex responsible for over 95% of violence, sexual assault and rape. Is it any wonder women are being cautious while seeking out a partner?
>Even if you believe that women sharing notes with each other is "petty and toxic", just think of it as an incentive for men to behave themselves appropriately.
You don't know what it's like to be a man. Some women are crazy, and their word is taken by default. You can double that effect easily by not giving the guy a chance to find out or issue a defense. I'm quite sure a lot of the complaints are based on practically nothing. Stuff like the guys fashion sense, choice of venue, what he talked about or didn't talk about, politics, "He told us different things about X" (nevermind opinions change and people tell white lies to get along), and private matters shared with ONE other person. Guys aren't trying to broadcast their life on a billboard just to get laid, OK?
>There wouldn't be any need for or interest in such groups if there wasn't such a problem overall. Keep in mind that this is the sex responsible for over 95% of violence, sexual assault and rape. Is it any wonder women are being cautious while seeking out a partner?
Being cautious is one thing. Spreading vicious rumors and making fun of people secretly with much of the dating population is another. Any real safety problem can get a user banned from an app, and the police might be interested if there's anything more than a hunch to justify the claim.
I think my really long comment in response to someone else in this thread explains the expectation of privacy very well. Women expect privacy, often to the point of not giving out real names or phone numbers. Guys have many of the same actual issues with that. A psycho woman can set your car on fire, kill your dog, get you robbed by her drug dealer, etc.
It would be interesting to see where people draw the line. Do you think it's cool to record the date and upload it to the group? Because that is technically legal in some places, and it is toxic behavior. Now what if you transcribe it and post that instead? What they do in spreading rumors is not far from either of those things.
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> That involves violating their privacy, which is essentially a form of doxxing (as far as dating online goes).
No buddy. Doxing is not identifying that you dated the same person, it's almost exclusively providing their address.
> In the United States, the act of publishing someone's personal information is not, in and of itself, illegal.
> However, the act can lose First Amendment protection if it's part of an effort to truly threaten or harm someone, if it intentionally inflicts emotional distress, or if it invades someone's privacy by revealing a highly offensive personal fact about that person without providing the public information about a matter of public concern.
Basically, if it's newsworthy it is protected as long as you're not inciting violence or publishing highly personal information that isn't relevant like their exact address.
The only reason anyone should hyperfocus on this issue is if you're someone with a very dark past and you're afraid it will catch up with you, or perhaps a nice person who is just too paranoid.
In reality, false allegations of rape are incredibly rare and even then a rape allegation is not actually going to exclude you from that whole pool of potential relationships. A lot of the people in those groups have bad reputations. Leaving multiple reports on ex's makes you look undiscerning and people do pay attention to these things.
There are two sides to every story and a lot of people want to hear both sides. I don't always agree with this outlook. But the reality is one bad review on a "are we dating the same guy" thread is not deathknell you seem to believe it is.
> Facebook tolerated these groups for a long time, despite their vicious and secretive attacks on people
I mean if those attacks are based in fact then.... I dk what you're saying. You think we should censor everyone so they can't say anything negative ever?
Should we also ban history books that don't paint us as saviors?
If your best friend hits you up in DMs and tells you the girl you just went out on a date beat him, are you gonna call the cops on him?
>No buddy. Doxing is not identifying that you dated the same person, it's almost exclusively providing their address.
I don't think there is a universal definition of it, and even if there was this is toxic behavior. People on dating websites have a higher expectation of privacy than people on the Internet in general. I'm pretty sure you could be banned from a dating website for having participated in one of these groups, if only the victims would know about it. Especially if you were to switch the genders.
>Basically, if it's newsworthy it is protected as long as you're not inciting violence or publishing highly personal information that isn't relevant like their exact address.
It might be protected but it is certainly nastier content than things that ARE actively moderated on Facebook, which is my entire point. These groups are private because the information in them is so toxic, that nobody in them wants to stand by it. You could argue that some people might share legitimate concerns about "safety" of dating a specific person, but the same kind of concerns (if substantiated or plausible) could get the accused banned from the dating website or something.
>The only reason anyone should hyperfocus on this issue is if you're someone with a very dark past and you're afraid it will catch up with you, or perhaps a nice person who is just too paranoid.
There are many reasons to be concerned about this. There's the general privacy issue (even private things like "this guy has a lot of money" are private and can cause a lot of damage, perhaps leading to a robbery). Secondly, some people are petty, vengeful, and willing to lie. I've known several people like that. The fact is that if one of these people puts on a persona of credibility, they can cause a lot of trouble for you, not least of which is that other people won't date you.
>In reality, false allegations of rape are incredibly rare and even then a rape allegation is not actually going to exclude you from that whole pool of potential relationships. A lot of the people in those groups have bad reputations. Leaving multiple reports on ex's makes you look undiscerning and people do pay attention to these things.
The content in these groups is far more petty than that. The content shared about you could be stuff like, what kind of job you said you had, how you reacted to her telling you that she was promiscuous to some extent, the size and proportions of your genitalia, details about your family or past relationships, etc., all of which can be made up to make you sound very undesirable.
>There are two sides to every story and a lot of people want to hear both sides. I don't always agree with this outlook. But the reality is one bad review on a "are we dating the same guy" thread is not deathknell you seem to believe it is.
The reality is that one bad review can destroy your dating life, especially if these groups are allowed to flourish. Dating is so hard for a lot of people that if even one person is turned off by a bad review, that essentially ruins their whole love life. I hate to make it gender-specific but most attractive women have literally hundreds of choices in men, and even a slight doubt about a guy who is not absolutely stunning will rule him out.
>I mean if those attacks are based in fact then.... I dk what you're saying. You think we should censor everyone so they can't say anything negative ever?
I'm saying that it is hypocrisy to allow extreme toxicity in these groups but not very mildly "problematic" content elsewhere. If the goal of moderation is to reduce toxicity and potentially illegal content, then allowing this at all means they've failed. If you were the victim of one of these attacks you'd never know it, unless a member of one of those groups told you.
>If your best friend hits you up in DMs and tells you the girl you just went out on a date beat him, are you gonna call the cops on him?
That example is not comparable at all. If anyone beats up another person, the victim has legal recourse if they want it. People have been successfully convicted of assault for even spitting on another person. Guys have been convicted of rape with no witnesses or physical evidence at all (although this is thankfully rare). False rape reports carry weight, and they are not as uncommon as you think.
If you want a comparable example, it would be something like a group of guys creating a Facebook group to share photos, names, and identifying information about women they dated along with details about their experiences, including a hot/crazy scale rating and a bedroom rating. They could also report such things as cup size and which psychoactive medications the women are taking. Now further imagine that the group was restricted to men only. How far do you think that would fly? Should it be allowed on Facebook, where your whole family and friend circle can easily access it? Is that less toxic than Jesus memes and obviously AI deepfake memes of political figures?
Another similar idea would be for delivery drivers to start a group sharing how much people tip, how many people were seen living in each person's house, and offering up details to confirm who placed the order. It is technically within their free speech rights to talk about where they drove all day and what they saw, right? They can even take pictures of all your cars and license plates from the street and share those too. So you could certainly imagine members of that group refusing to deliver to your house because you left a bad tip one time. Hell, the other day a delivery driver stabbed a pregnant woman to death because she only gave a $2 tip (I think more was offered as well, and she didn't have change!).
It would be hard to classify these groups as a form of harassment, but that's probably the closest thing you could call it. It might be legal but it certainly isn't pleasant, and being pleasant is one of the apparent goals of the platform. Conveying accurate information is also a goal of the platform. But the only people who are likely to defend those being smeared are the victims, who are banned from the groups. Courts have upheld that platforms like Facebook can censor people, for better or worse. Censoring this type of privacy-violating, toxic content would be one of the better cases.
To be clear, you think the change to specifically allow (verbatim from the new Meta training materials)
““Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit,” “Jews are flat out greedier than Christians,” and “Trans people are immoral.””
is a net improvement?
Encountering views that you find objectionable is the price of free speech.
What free speech? The moderation changes explicitly say you cannot label Republicans as mentally-ill, for example, but you can label gay people as mentally ill. If you are cherry-picking who can say what, this is not free speech, so don't label it as so.
Funny, I just signed up for a Facebook account this week after the news,having deleted mine in 2017. In my opinion, they are taking a step in the right direction. Clearly others disagree, which is their right. What isn't someone's right is to dictate truth, which is what Facebook will ostensibly do less of. Bravo
Part of the pushback is because they are still dictating what you can say except for some very particular exceptions which give away their true intentions. You're still not allowed to call someone mentally ill as an insult, unless you're doing it homophobically or transphobically, in which case it's now explicitly allowed.
https://bsky.app/profile/esqueer.net/post/3lf72fz3fas22
If they'd removed that rule altogether then it could be handwaved as merely "free speech absolutism", for better or worse, but officially stating that certain minorities are acceptable targets of abuse that's otherwise forbidden is something else entirely.
I’m still shaken by this, two days later.
It’s not a mistake or some kind of ambiguous rule that could be misread. Following is the direct quote from Meta’s new guidelines. You can’t insult people based on:
Mental characteristics, including but not limited to allegations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and mental illness, and unsupported comparisons between PC groups on the basis of inherent intellectual capacity. We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like “weird.”
They’re carving out specific minorities to exclude them from protections afforded to everybody else.
It’s exactly like saying: “You can’t doxx anyone on our platform, except Jews because that’s political and religious discourse about where heathens live.”
So here we are in 2025, and this barely gets a mention in the press because they’re so overwhelmed by the president-elect pretending to invade Denmark and whatever.
I’m a middle-aged bisexual man. My childhood and early teenage years coincided with the darkest times of the HIV epidemic. At 13 I was deadly afraid of AIDS, and I’m still trying to overcome the internalized homophobia from those times. For years I just tried to blend in, dated women, eventually got married, had children. I thought society had made real progress, but now it’s starting to dawn on me that it’s a mirage like Roe vs Wade or 1920s Berlin, and it can be stripped away at any time. And I feel like a miserable coward for all these years “just minding my own business” and never stepping up to support the community in any way, letting somebody else do the work. That needs to change. I’ll rather be mentally ill than hide in the shadows.
The resurgence in homophobia (amongst other things) is very concerning. Hell, you have people in this very thread that are making homophobic comments openly, attached to their real name and business portfolio. It seems they've stopped even pretending to not be hateful. I can only hope this is a temporary phenomenon.
Yup. The line about the "non serious usage of 'weird'" is another blatant sign of their true intentions. There's no reason to specify that unless you're upset over it because it was used against conservatives.
Zuckerberg, Musk, Thiel, that Vader without a helmet looking Google bro Schmidt? Super fucking weird people. And not in a good way.
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"freedom of speech, but only if it's statistically common" is a very strange take.
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The new Meta rules have a carve-out that allows allegations of mental illness and abnormality based on gender and sexual orientation, but no other reason.
You’re seemingly making the argument that this is good because those allegations are statistically popular.
If you support freedom of speech, shouldn’t all insults be allowed rather than just those targeted at a specific group?
Unfortunately that is the position of many religious groups (including in the US) and populations in non-Western countries (e.g. Middle East).
Lets give them time to cook. It's likely the team refactoring these rules are mostly the same team that was leading the previous censorship. It's going to take some time to open back up.
You think they sent Zuck out there to talk about half-baked ideas ?
That's great, what was it you were worried you couldn't say there?
I consume on social platforms, rather than creating. I was growingly aware of the platform's bias on the content I saw and opted out for reality (as close as one can get to it, anyway). The changes this week are a step in the right direction as other viewpoints are more possible, let alone tolerated.
> opted out for reality (as close as one can get to it, anyway)
I'm genuinely curious to know what about reality warrants "as close as one can get to it". In my experience, every time I close the browser and step outside I'm generally convinced that what I'm experiencing is real.
Precisely. As humans, we use our senses to discover what is true and to what degree. When online, there's always a reality distortion machine running; the question is how much distortion is taking place
Depending on the website owners or influences there are always things you cannot freely say. Even here on this forum.
And what is that? Maybe I'm not deep enough into HN to know about this.
Eh, I'm just assuming OP holds views that a lot of people here disagree here with (thus end up getting downvoted), and writes it off as "not allowed to say it" here. That's usually the gist of why people complain about freedom of speech nowadays, regardless of their ideology. Yes, I understand there are billions of exceptions, and I understand how users get banned for "wrong think". But that happens literally everywhere, and all you have to do is to be loud enough to piss of the right people.
Everyone wants to be liked, and search for the venues where they can express their views where they would be a part of majority. Basically the reason why people skew towards echo-chambers, in real and digital life.
> That's usually the gist of why people complain about freedom of speech nowadays
At least in lower-stakes online forums, what really grinds my gears is a lack of transparency, where a site or service doesn't explain the moderation or even hides that any action was taken at all.
One example from yesterday of “what can’t be said”:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42630197
or
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42630067
Or let’s say, it technically can be said, but you get somehow punished (flagged, downvoted, etc) so you learn not to do it anymore. The incentive is simply not there.
There is a logic, the “community” flags to protect their own interests (financial investments, friends working there, etc).
And since the community is from the same group, they defend the same interests.
The more freely we can talk about a topic, the more genuine and thought-provoking interactions it can create (without intentionally hurting the others obviously).
If you filter too much, you get this LinkedIn-bullshit and it makes a message board super boring, as you live in a closed bubble.
Downvotes don't hurt me. They stop being a disincentive when there is no clear reason for them. It's often people just misunderstanding, misinterpreting or misreading comments and the replies keep flowing anyway.
It's not like you get paid for getting upvoted and a making any kind of joke is usually the fastest way to a downvote.
Please enlighten us.
That makes me think of the rejoinder: "It was for States Rights to do what?"
This is a very myopic take on things.
> dictate truth
What about the damage done by the millions of lies that people post on the platform to spread their bigoted agendas? What about how these platforms' algorithms ostensibly promote hatred and shocking material?
Just look at the Rohingya massacre [0] and tell me you're OK with it.
[0] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
Opting for community notes rather than provably biased fact-checkers is akin to massacre, got it.
That’s a shallow take. Opting for community notes without any fact checking will transform truth from facts to “loudest voice”. So, who can yell louder will be accepted as the flag of truth, which is very dangerous.
Of course, if you like your propaganda well-done, Facebook will be a great place for that.
I've found X's community notes for the most part to be informative and "neutral", they're usually used to add context to posts when people cut the important parts out.
The feature was not bad when it was first introduced, but I don't know how it fares against brigading and more targeted psyops by bigger actors.
Also are we absolutely sure that community notes have immunity from moderators and they're not manipulated in any way?
Community notes are indeed a good feature at first blush, but considering the current climate of "freedom of speech / post-truth / let's move fast and break society norms", it's more dangerous than a group of allegedly biased fact checkers.
It's a way of deregulating the social media platforms to level of utilities which carry whatever passes through them without prejudice, and shifting blame to the people for believing what they read.
The thing they're designing is very ripe for manipulating people en masse.
You're right, it's a shallow take in response to a straw man of my position. Clearly content moderation is a HARD problem and the decision-makers at Facebook know this better than almost anyone. They made a decision that presumably was in their best interest, of which I happen to support.
> They made a decision that presumably was in their best interest
They're making a decision based on political pressure.
How do you know? Occam's razor suggest that the fact checkers did indeed veer too far left of the American public.
From here, Occam’s razor suggest that big companies want to be cozy with the new president, so they can continue getting what they want.
Money doesn’t care about wings.
That new president was elected by most Americans, and had 'get men out of womens sports' as an official part of their platform.
Errm, history is full of bad leaders who were elected by people and by democratic means. I won’t start a list here, but their effects on our world is pretty profound.
So, being elected is by no means an indicator of any sort.
Nobody in this thread is stating that Trump is either good or bad, that is a straw man you have created to argue with.
Being elected is obviously an indicator of the will of the people. The platform that leader was elected on includes items that went against the left leaning of third-party so-called fact checking services. This is easily variable by looking at the platform of the winning party and the policies of the so-called fact checkers.
> Nobody in this thread is stating that Trump is either good or bad
That's true, incl. me.
> that is a straw man you have created to argue with.
Did I said or implied Trump is bad? No. What I said is, being elected is not an indicator of goodness of badness of a leader, and said that there's a large list, without giving any names, because goodness and badness is subjective.
> Being elected is obviously an indicator of the will of the people.
Yes. That part is true, too. People wanted that particular flavor this time, and will decide whether they liked the experience or not.
> The platform that leader was elected on includes items that went against the left leaning of third-party so-called fact checking services.
"So-called" from your perspective, so from that point on your opinions are biased, and there's no point on arguing any further.
Of course you're free to vote for whoever you want, and AFAICS, the person you support has won. Congrats. My only hope is what you get in the end won't be more than what you bargained for.
BTW, on that "getting men out of women's sports" thing, watch this video [0]. In the end, performance is enhanced so much, the gap between genders are closed nevertheless. On the other hand, gender in Olympic games are determined with genetic testing anyway, so your looks doesn't have any effect on whom you compete with.
Maybe we should prevent this in the future, so humans can compete with their true potential, not with "monstrous performances" enabled by designer drugs and doping. So there's a whole forest running when people are looking to the wrong tree.
> Did I said or implied Trump is bad
Yes, you wrote history is full of bad leaders. Nobody is discussing whether Trump is good or bad.
> Nobody is discussing whether Trump is good or bad.
Exactly. I said "we'll see", not "Trump is bad".
> Occam's razor
* Trump has explicitly threatened to jail Mark Zuckerberg [1]
* Trump has threatened to use the justice system against his enemies
* Trump's 'best mate' (who's about to get a job in government) owns a rival social network
* Facebook banned Trump over the Jan 6th insurrection
* Trump could use the banning of TikTok as leverage
With all that Occam's Razor tells you that an authoritarian leader is taking over the USA and the oligarchy that are the tech-billionaires are lining up behind him lest they feel his wrath.
These are extremely dangerous times for the US. An authoritarian leader paired with an extreme concentration of power (the tech companies). You have something approaching a turnkey feudal system. With willing participants.
[1] https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-threatens-to-impriso...
"Donald Trump threatens to imprison Mark Zuckerburg for 'rest of his life' if 'he does anything illegal' over election"
Lying through omission. The rest isn't worth responding to.
Not sure what anyone here gains from a reductive comment like this. In case it wasn't clear, obviously that's not what I'm saying -- I was curious why you'd be OK with a reduction in fact checking when the platform is a means to such despicable acts.
After living in China for 10 years and experiencing true suppression of freedom of speech, the desire of many here in America to silence others in the name of curbing "misinformation" is wild to me. I have no desire to replicate what they have in China here in America. Free speech is a precious thing on this planet. The only acceptable solution to speech one doesn't like or agree with is more free speech. Silencing people that you don't agree with is not something anyone should support.
It's the cult of superficial thought. Hate speech is a small price to pay for the fight against censorship. But there is a not-insignificant amount of people that look at the hate speech, think it should be censored because it's bad, and literally think no further about the potential consequences of censorship.
Yes, lies are bad and dangerous, but censorship is much worse and far more dangerous.
Yeah I think this subject is a lot more nuanced than what people like to admit. We shouldn't allow hate speech and misinformation to flourish, but what constitutes as such is in many cases subjective, and leaving that up to corporate oligarchs, or anybody for that matter, is a scary thought.
Misinformation is why we ended up in Iraq. Misinformation caused January 6th.
As anti-maskers laid dying in their hospital beds they denounced the misinformation they had been fed. Lets not pretend that misinformation is entirely impotent.
And let’s not pretend like the internet hasn’t exploded the reach misinformation.
How about we settle for a middle ground where Americans are allowed free speech on American platforms but let’s not give foreign actors/governments the same freedom?
Best not to confuse the right to "free speech," with others publishing it electronically.
Is this some kind of really meta joke or irony?
> meta joke
Is this some kind of…