Remember them talking about how they engaged in experiments on their users by trying to influence their mood via intentionally showing their various groups different types of content algorithmically on their news feed? Or when they intentionally kept crashing their Android app to see what’s their user retention rate even on faulty software? Or just open up the app on two phones of the exact similar make and model and see the app menu?
My personal anecdote and experience with this is that they also use random errors to disguise bans. I have a personal and a dev account which I made the first time I accidentally got banned for 24 hours because it also reset OAuth app keys, the next time I got banned I logged in to my dev acct. and tried to make a post, since they managed to associate the two accounts, I ended up banned on that one, too. But it didn’t say that, it kept throwing random errors as if it was only a backend issue. These disappeared once my main ban was gone.
So all in all my point is, people should understand that the platform outright does these kinds of things and use or find alternatives based on that
I also own an Oculus and have given credit for the Quest in the past as the closest thing to mainstreaming VR to date, it's unfortunate that it operates under Facebook but it's probably the only hardware business they'll have that'll hold any interest to me. I have a separate account for mine because I don't trust or like them (and I really dislike "social" features in games). That being said, I expect it to get caught up and destroyed eventually so I hope at that point the hacker community will have an answer to keep it working outside of the Facebook ecosystem. (There may already be one, I have not checked.)
!!!
Are we nonchalantly accepting its OK to censor and moving on to the argument about deceiving users?
Edit: should add more context to this. I don't think we should be casually OK with censorship. Next thing you know, FB will silently(or not) start censoring political opponents, activists they don't like, etc. I am quite unsettled by how the west is doing the same as China. Censorship is just casually taken as granted now. I don't think counter arguments hold for "private platforms". At some point, it becomes public square when a billion+ people use your platform.
Personally I'm disturbed at the non-chalant attitude taken towards shadow moderation in this thread. Shadow banning and shadow moderation may make one's job easier but it has a disastrous effect on the forum or community by injecting a definite level of deceit into the moderator/poster relationship.
Any forum where shadow bans /shadow moderation are practiced the moderators by definition can not be trusted.
They already do. [1]
1. https://crimethinc.com/2020/08/19/on-facebook-banning-pages-...
Also refresh the page and the messages disappear from the viewer.
I think this "bug" is intentional and done for plausible deniability in case of a lawsuit: "See, there is transparence. It was just a bug in the code. Human error."
Posts with links tend to be censored out more often. For example if I post a link to a charity donation website often my friends don't see it in their feed, but if I don't post the link and only state the name, they see it.
I've used it before as a moderator. For the above reasons, but mostly because I'm lazy and don't want to deal with angry people. Still censorship though. I think that ideally censorship ought to be communicated.
Ostensibly used for spam/troll countermeasures. In practice used to dick with whoever they choose for whatever reasons please their black little hearts.
Reddit and Twitter are notorious for it. Other "social media" organisms too.
AND ANOTHER MORE IMMEDIATE EXAMPLE
Consider the way that downvotes progressively remove a post from view.
It's a way of crowdsourcing the task of censorship.
Many hands make light work.
And the blame is neatly spread around.
And the actual shape of the censorship, the form being conformed to, is only indirectly controlled by the admins. Thus more blame neatly escaped.
It's goddamn elegant is what it is!
You can argue the tool is being used too widely by Facebook, but it is silly to pontificate against the practice as a whole.
You reaaaaallly would not like the uncensored internet.
You need to understand difference between communication that is meant to be public from one that is meant to be private.
Law makes clear distinction.
Respectfully, speak for yourself.
I remember the uncensored internet -it was vastly superior to what we have now.
Vastly.
Does it really work? A lot of people have no trouble working out that it has happened to them. The theory is that a troublemaker won't realise they've been banned, and so will continue sending their trouble into the void instead of coming back as a new account to cause more trouble that everyone else can see. In practice, it doesn't take long for the troublemaker to work out what is going on, so this only slows them down slightly at best. For some major sites, people have even created shadowban detection tools, so even troublemakers who are too clueless to work it out for themselves can discover it.
This site only really has half-shadowbanning. A lot of people have showdead on, read the dead comments too, and vouch for interesting/constructive ones. Maybe that works for this site; but even if that is true, it doesn't really tell us how well a pure shadowban implementation, without showdead, works. Very few sites with shadowbanning have an equivalent to showdead.
Respectfully disagree. Watching things get disappeared on Reddit sent me in to an anxiety spiral.
I'll take goatse links over that shit any day of the week.
You can take issue with the censoring (and I do) but it’s not silently censoring which is much worse.
We’re way past the rubicon. Get your information as best you can and just hope you’re somewhat aligned with the mainstream.
Not sure if they still are
Not directly related with my comment but this is a proof https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/23/reddit-huffman-trump/
This, like many similar posts here, isn’t censorship. If you want to spread your idea (any idea at all) without hindrance, don’t do it on an advertisement platform.
Well it can't be really free or the service would not survive is it? It's like a club having free entrance / you pay otherwise.
And the fact that it's not unexpected doesn't make it not censorship, or not worth pointing out.
Tell that to the dozens of SMS I receive on a regular basis trying to scam me I guess?
https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-confirms-scans-mess...
- we should know that messenger being "subject to community guidelines" means silent censorship
- Zuckerberg saying something publicly means it is justified
I would disagree with both of those implied assumptions
"As people around the world confront this unprecedented public health emergency, we want to make sure that our Community Standards protect people from harmful content and new types of abuse related to COVID-19. We're working to remove content that has the potential to contribute to real-world harm, including through our policies prohibiting coordination of harm, sale of medical masks and related goods, hate speech, bullying and harassment and misinformation that contributes to the risk of imminent violence or physical harm. As the situation evolves, we continue to look at content on the platform, assess speech trends, and engage with experts, and will provide additional policy guidance when appropriate to keep the members of our community safe during this crisis."
Edit : it appears that it is not e2e by default
(Sometimes the comment can also dissapear from your UI as well - I've tried editing a comment, but it fails saving and after page refreh the comment dissapeared. Reproduced that multiple times.)
Do you have this on screenshot by any chance or can you make one? It seems way too ridiculous and out of place - but then, I stopped using fb few years ago so things could "change"
If HN/Reddit think that you are posting promotions, *HN silently censors your post, claims it was posted*
The purpose of shadow banning is to make it less obvious to the spammer that they triggered the spam filter, so they get less signals to work around.
Same as websites who, instead of blocking access to (computer) users they think are scrapers, change slight details in pages like for prices and whatnot.
A - They have unShadowbanned all previously Shadowbanned users?
OR
B - They are no longer actively shadowbanning users, but previous victims of Shadowbanning are going to stay that way?
Am asking since there is a big difference between the two.
Pro-gay or pro-weed activists, heck even pro-civil rights activists used to be kooky nutjobs of their time.
We haven't arrived at the end of our moral or legislative evolution. We need to hear some voices that are considered kooky.
For a recent example, see Lenore Skenazy and her free-range parenting. This definitely seems kooky to a paranoid, helicopter parent part of the population. What if this part of the population holds the Delete button?
The Japanese "set precedent" by bombing Pearl Harbour. How many seaports of the US have been bombed by a foreign power since then?
The US dropped two nukes on Japan. Did it "set precedent" for nations to nuke each other willy-nilly in wars since then?
Besides, we’re not talking about political opinions here. If they ever do that (which is unlikely), then we can become justifiably upset. That’s a hill worth dying on — this one is not.
Edgy comment, but unfortunately, even with all the sophisticated jargon and advanced mathematics, economics isn't a real science with objective truths, but medicine is. Don't get me wrong, I too believe that capitalism is the only form of economic system that works, but to equate socialists (however misguided you think they are) with anti-vaxxers is a bit much.
If they don't like a message you are sending they are likely to silently drop it and let you think it was delivered. Just no care at all for the user experience at a base level.
I'm sure Discord will be no exception -though I can't think of any current examples that apply to it.
That makes me worry about the way that it's displacing/has displaced IRC.
What good is decentralizing the transport, if the sites and destinations and applications aren't?
Here’s another one: Google can use your aggregate data along with other sources to determine whether you seem like someone favorable to the regime or not. If not, the probability distribution shifts in a way that directs you toward certain jobs and so forth that keep you from what the refine doesn’t want you near. It’s like a BigTech version of providence, except unlike divine providence, they don’t care about you.
Or if they don’t like you, reveal unflattering information about you to people you know in ways that look like search results.
Lots of possibilities. People are also too complaisant to protest things like these even when it’s made public.
I abandon such applications without hesitation.
The error can be seen in some of the screenshots. It briefly shows "couldn't send" and if you refresh the page the messages disappear forever.
It’s like asking why scientists would ever invent atomic bombs, they do it to stop Hitler, its only later that those in charge decide it would be good idea to drop a couple on civilian populations.
"Another day, another dollar"
I mean, I don’t work there, but that’s what I’d think.
Doesn't make it okay.
It is always "a bug" or some other excuse. Then we find out later it wasn't a bug after all.
If you lie frequently enough you loose right for benefit of the doubt.
Ultimately I stopped sharing links over several third party services that I've used for years and have transitioned to other services instead.
I had multiple reports of censoring people discussing my depaywalling of a large cache of public domain historical scholarly papers [1], and went and checked for myself. Messages which included the link to the documents were reported as delivered but not actually delivered.
I believe they may have started it at the time of one of the high profile wikileaks document dumps.
This experiences is part of why I and my partner have since refused to use their services.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/swartz-supporter...
Sharing torrent links, pastebin and a few other sites that can be used for non-legal purposes.
Honestly, do you want FB deciding what is "truth" for you?
Do you really think that these companies are on your side or are your friends?
Dopamine addicition is also real.
People should realize how dangerous it can be, when the main goals of these companies are to get their users to spend as much as time possible on their platforms to watch ads. But many have other things to do, than think stuff like this.
It's better to just use something else.
If you don't need or want a crypto wallet or dapp browser, then simply don't use those parts of the app.
Relevant specs:
Relevant repos:
https://github.com/status-im/status-react
https://github.com/status-im/status-desktop
There are trade-offs, for sure: since there's (deliberately) no integration with contact lists (address books) of the OS or other apps, your social circle probably isn't using the app already, or in any case isn't discoverable.
The public chats facility has turned out to be too spam-prone for "well known" / advertised chats, e.g. #status. However, if you create a public chat that has some unguessable component (e.g. #myfriends-a9e72ab5) and you share it with friends (even lots) in a reasonably private context, then the chances of it being spammed or randomly joined are quite low. Note that public chats, while "public", are still E2EE, using a chat's name as the basis for a symmetric key.
1-to-1 and private group chats are highly secure; the latter have a max size, and depending on their size and your device, sending messages can be a little slow.
Creating a robust alternative to the existing public chats facility has involved a lot of work: the forthcoming Communities feature provides a discord-like facility whereby founders/admins of communities can take advantage of various mechanisms for moderation and governing membership. The Communities feature can already be enabled in advanced preferences of both mobile and desktop apps, but note it's a WIP.
The moderation mechanisms for Communities don't undermine the no-censorship principle of Status because:
(1) Any user can create a community.
(2) A community's rules are managed by those with a stake in the community: there's no override by Status-the-org nor anyone else.
(3) The underlying nodes of the network form a decentralized p2p network, i.e. there's no central actor/authority that controls the flow of messages.
Re: (3), running a Status node should be simple and incentivized.
The "incentivized" aspect is a challenging problem and not solved yet. Long story short, engineering an incentivized decentralized messaging network (it's not a blockchain!) is harder than incentivizing a blockchain network.
That being said, the "simple" aspect isn't too difficult to solve, sneak peek:
https://github.com/status-im/status-node
Finally, with pertinent laws and regulations in flux across the globe, there could come a day when binaries aren't readily available (from app stores, GitHub, etc.), but thankfully there's always `git clone` and `make`.
Disclosure: I'm a core contributor at Status.
Who in their right mind would say China is a dictatorship?
/s
Facebook censors anyone from sharing that report.
Here's the link to try yourself: https://www.doherty.edu.au/uploads/content_doc/DohertyModell...
My company asked me to create a Twitter account. I deleted it a month later.
The soln to bad speech is better speech.
If you want to communicate or reach out to people, you go where the people are. Currently that's FB.
On a separate note, the problem with saying that the solution to bad speech is better speech is that it doesn't take crapflooding by bad actors into account. Your good speech is kinda worthless if it's drowned out by disinformation, lies or just plain non-sense.
Edit: steganography, not stenography.
There's nothing wrong with private businesses removing content they don't deem appropriate. There is also nothing wrong with silencing users obviously lying. Thinking differently totally misunderstands social media as a medium.
When “the private business” is a group so large and dominant in their field that they can stop threats by absorbing them, lawsuits, or other tactics, they aren’t just “a private company” anymore.
Your comment reeks of someone who doesn’t think it will ever be themselves that will be censored.
I could same the same about yours.
> Your comment reeks of someone who doesn’t think it will ever be themselves that will be censored.
Not super concerned with social media posts being taken down, no, as that's always been happening. Websites moderate their content. What's the surprise?
Also amusing name.
When I attempt to navigate to gnews.org the site is very slow, and I wonder if Facebook is having trouble assigning some kind of risk factor to it, then giving up, but ends up sending a "success" response anyway, whereby the front end just assumes the message was sent property and pushes it to your message cache without attempting to fetch it over the network.
edit: since this has been down voted, could you explain why you think I'm wrong?
But well, maybe it is shitty coder(s) mishandling timeouts.
It seems generally less believable that Facebook would censor people without telling them.
Other commenters [0] appear to believe the same as I do, and note that FB typically informs the user that their action/behavior is against the site's terms of use.
