Posted by ta988 12/11/2025
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
It allows one to disavow any sense of social reciprocity after becoming obscenely rich.
I was curious, so I looked through his Wikipedia page -- it says he donated $1m to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in 2009 (which helped his family move to USA when he was a child). Even the NYT article notes that "The gift is small, given Mr. Brin’s estimated $16 billion in personal wealth" :D
(this is like you making $1m annually and donating $62.50)
Brin didn't go to every high school: he went to the one he did.
And maybe he had a terrible experience and thought it contributed nothing to his success... but that's kind of a dick perspective at a certain level of wealth, especially if a school has needs (and they always do).
In anything less than a fully-equalizing society, philanthropy still has a place.
(Said as someone who thinks higher wealth brackets, including my own, should be taxed more heavily)
The parent commenter put it well, philanthropy is just the rich convincing [America] that things are fine.
That's the thing, you can only have that kind of number for so many years before you start really not wanting it to get down.
And chances are they have been buying quite a bit of lifestyle by borrowing against that number. Because selling would strip them of that voting control you pointed out. Then they can't really afford the number to go down, because the borrowing is effectively a cascade, so in reality they aren't anywhere close to free in their decisions.
(but I'd imagine that they are quite capable of deluding themselves into believing that the decisions they have to take to keep the number up are what they actually want)
They can indeed do with their toys whatever they want. They just don't want to put up with the bother of other investors trying to get rid of them, or the orange guy not sending them a Christmas card, or having a little less than infinite money.
Even if that control is only nominal, of it comes at the price of anticipating every wish institutional investors might have and obediently following them to the (unwritten) letter.
Why shouldn't this be classified as a mental illness? Imagine a monkey hoarding more food than they could possibly eat, to the point that it lies next to them rotting away, while members of their tribe are dying from starvation. We'd immediately say that there is something wrong with that money, but why do we feel it is normal that some humans hoard an insane amount of money?
Having a billionaire who believes they aren't rich enough and need to make more money is like an anorexia patient believing they aren't skinny enough and need to lose more weight.
Next time your company makes you sit through one of these trainings, for whatever so-called value, remember: the company doesn't believe in it. It only believes in making money.
I don't think it's a benefit to society that corporations behave like amoral sociopaths. It should be in their interest to correct that behavior.
However, my point is this (slightly exaggerated) timeline:
1. "Diversity makes us stronger! Discrimination is bad! Power to women! Respect gender identities! Stop fake news!".
2. Go do all these trainings to improve yourself on those topics. We mandate this because we care, it's our inner moral fiber!
3. (election happens, government changes)
4. Actually, forget all of the above. The previous administration forced us, we now believe otherwise and we're decommissioning all those programs. Sorry we forced you!
So in the end, no value a corporation espouses is genuine, unless it's making money. So all those trainings? Fake. All those "values"? Fake. Individuals within the company may care, but the company as a whole doesn't (and let's face it, the CEO and board don't either, and never did).
If we're feeling charitable, we could argue any given company reflects the current (corporate) consensus about what's good/safe for business and for society, but always dressed in the language of "we genuinely believe this, it's heartfelt, and we're also trend setters because we care!". It's this last part that is 100% fake. At best they do what's safe for the current social/business climate; nothing is "heartfelt". If it was heartfelt, they would stand up to the bullies instead of saying "we never believed it, it was forced on us by the past evil administration!".
This is the ultimate rub.
There are constructions that corporations can implement in order to enforce values, but they fundamentally mean giving up control.
Because at root, control by people prioritizing making money above all else is what causes these decisions to be reevaluated. Aka when following principles has a serious financial cost.
Public benefit corp, non-profit, independent board, etc. are options.
Google, Facebook, OpenAI... at this point it shouldn't surprise anyone when 'you were saying something about best intentions' goes awry.
Hell, OpenAI's wriggling to get out of its charter (and honestly, its difficulty in doing so) and NewsCorp's attempt to forcibly assign control counter to trust planning should point out that 'Yes, you can make it harder to be evil.'
Google just didn't.
A very deep level. The level that joked about "pride month" being thrown put like Christmas decorations on July 1st.
The more positive sentiment back then is that bigotry wouldn't ever be profitable again as the world experienced more experiences and built more empathy. Of course, I can only laugh hysterically at poor 2014/2015 me.
Roughly speaking, the folks who truly cared knew.
Corporations have obvious market/regulatory incentives to say they're good guys.
Most people want to believe such statements, with the immediate incentive being a happier worldview.
Incentives for an extremely powerful corporation to actually be good are far weaker.
Persecuting marginalized people and supporting authoritarian regimes is the logical path for capitalism, yes.
The titular event is an account of when one of Google's executives came to britain to meet him in person (at this point he's fighting extradition to the United States but has not yet sequestered himself inside the Ecuadorian embassy). From the conversation Assange gets the impression that the Google exec is acting as an unofficial envoy of the US state department in hopes of convincing him to "play ball" by publishing more and more information which will advance the arab spring narrative. The rest of the book is his own personal investigation into the incestuous links between US foreign policy, social media corporations and the so-called "arab spring".
He's a notorious fan of unbridled American imperial power and "realpolitik" and brought Kissinger in multiple times to Google for "fireside chat" sessions.
Which always went over very... poorly... with the broader set of employees who used to get seriously annoyed at this. The reception was never good.
https://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-27...
>In the end, the most charitable interpretation of Assange’s “dissembling” as Mueller calls it, in the Seth Rich hoax is that he genuinely couldn’t rule out the possibility that Rich was his source. The Mueller report demolished that final moral refuge. Rich had been dead four days when Assange received the DNC files.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#WikiLeaks_...
>As director Tennant has pointed out, secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, and willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical, or radiological material
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTDO-kuOGTQ
Anyways I might care more about Seth Rich "conspiracy theories" if anybody had bothered to investigate what happened to him instead of chalking it up as a "robbery gone wrong" (in which nothing of value was stolen) and calling it a day. In about six more months it will have gone unsolved for an entire decade.
Everyone always knew. The criticisms get lumped in with with the unreasonable nay-sayers because it makes them easier to dismiss.
The honest people I know working for obvious evil will acknowledge it and say they're just doing it for a paycheck. But this gives most people cognitive dissonance and they'll find better rationalization. See also: every cope post on hacker news by someone defending a company they're pretending not to work for.
Do you think people should be allowed to control their own body? Why/why not?
> If you want control over your body, exercise that control to not get pregnant in the first place.
So you are of the opinion that if someone "screwed up" something, essentially made a mistake, they should have no options to correct that mistake?
What about if someone else made them pregnant without their consent? Would bodily autonomy become more important in your mind then, or same "don't get pregnant in the first place" apply, even if it's outside of their control?
You mean the woman who lost their medical license after clearly not understanding how abortions work?
> It also says that Torres has made “public statements related to the practice of medicine which violate the high standards of honesty, diligence, prudence, and ethical integrity demanded from physicians licensed to practice in Alabama.” - https://cbn.com/news/us/abortionist-who-gloated-about-cuttin...
> I think we would be better off if people experienced the consequences of their actions
I think so too, but not everything is under your control, like pregnancy. And sometimes you try to do everything you can in terms of preventing pregnancy, yet it happens anyways, is it really compassionate to punish people who made mistakes? As a Christian (maybe you're atheist), I just cannot comprehend the lack of compassion for people and forcing them to have a unintentional pregnancy.
I'm not sure where you live, but most places on earth have a really shit situation wherever humans live, which is called involuntary sexual intercourse, if you haven't heard about it before, I guess consider yourself lucky. For the rest of the people who do experience that though, I feel a lot of compassion, and whatever they need and want to do to heal from that sort of trauma, should be OK, as long as they're not hurting other humans.
> Humanity was just fine for millennia
You also don't seem to grasp the long history of abortion, probably longer than even written history which is just 5000 years.
> By making abortions accessible, you make abortions necessary
Accessible or not, abortions are sometimes necessary, and sometimes the most compassionate route. If you were Christian, you might have understood, so I hope whatever degeneracy your chosen religion seems to have forced upon you, eventually lets up so you too can start to see compassion against your fellow human beings.
Oh dear. Your jewish overlords must be so proud of your sociopathic evangelism of whoredom and baby murder.
This isn't how being queer works!
https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/history-of-left-handedness
Did it become trendy? Or did we just stop beating it out of people?
The allegation is grooming: that one group of people is actively persuading another.
If you're going to broaden the definition of grooming so absurdly to include normal things in culture you just don't like then it seems like you should allow people to conclude your intent is to diminish the seriousness of things that actually are grooming.
Irrespective of the upthread discussion, MAGA is absolutely both being racist and quite actively grooming people, particularly children, to be racist. That's fairly overt.
Honestly it's rather creepy and I hope you one day consider what you are saying.
Again: it is an active, targeted process aimed at someone who does not necessarily know they are being changed.
Grooming has never been as broad a concept as you are talking about such that it just means changes in the moral or social landscape that some find undesirable.
It has always meant a form of targeted attention (even in the literal sense of care and attention to a specific animal). Social liberalisation you do not care for is not grooming.
I won't keep you any longer.
Yes, intentionally targeting kids with an ideology is grooming. It is preparing them to be amenable to your ideology to increase acceptance of it in the broader culture. At least that's the most innocuous reading of it.
Boy Scouts? Religious youth camps? Are we banning these, too?
Then you're just making pointless noise.
It does not, no. You cannot be "groomed" into being attracted to a different sex.
This was created today as well https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=vincom
… is a deliberate bad faith characterisation.
Isn't bad faith argument immoral?
Fascism is not to blame, it is a means to an end for the economy at large. Ultimately, the issue is uneven distribution of wealth and power.
That is not something I wrote.
This is not a useful definition of fascism, if that is what you mean. Fascism can exist entirely independently of capitalism, and has done.
Is it possible for fascism to thrive in a regulation-free capitalist world? Apparently yes. But they are not necessarily coupled.
It's a common misperception that fascism necessarily involves a merger of state and corporate power. Rather in a fascist regime, companies have no more choice in whether they further the state's aims and align with its goals than individual citizens have; they just have more devastating impacts.
As to whether Meta is aligning with the administration's goals, I don't know whether it is happening, consciously or unconsciously, in this case, but we know for certain there has been deliberate and conscious alignment elsewhere, because Zuckerberg made a big deal out of it.
> This is not a useful definition of fascism, if that is what you mean. Fascism can exist entirely independently of capitalism, and has done.
I think you should look up the definition and history of fascism. You're correct about totalitarism, but fascism is by definition capitalist.
What do you mean? The defining feature of capitalism is private/corporate ownership of the means of production which is a core part of fascism as well.
Fascist corporatism is as radically opposed to capitalism as Leninist “democratic centralism” is (and, arguably, despite the opposing rhetorical stance, in very much the same substantive direction in practice.)
I think it is you who should look up the definition and history of fascism.
Fascism usually exists in a capitalist context — but "by definition"? No.
Because there is literally no evidence he ever said it. It's a widespread but false attribution, as I outlined in another comment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46239664
This attribution leads to a truly fundamentally broken reduction of what Mussolini actually thought fascism was (though his own definition of it was largely pseudointellectual drivel).
But even then, "corporatism" doesn't mean "capitalism" at all.
It’s a lot easier to juice the profits of your megacorp when the power of government is vested in a single, friendly individual. Of course ten seconds of thinking exposes the fragility of such a system (they may turn on you, they may be replaced, they may destroy the entire country, etc). But Capitalism itself encourages short term, winner-takes-all all thinking. If you don’t cozy up to the wanna be autocrat and help them attain more power, you will be outcompeted by someone who does.
The path of a greedy corporate executive is practically pre-ordained in such a situation. The only question is whether the wanna be autocrat succeeds to become the real deal.
I suppose you mean this famous quote:
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power"
I have news: this is bullshit.
This quote is literally falsely attributed to Mussolini. There is no evidence whatsoever that he said it. It's also somewhat at odds with things he did say (though most of that was pseudointellectual gibberish) and the way he ruled.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Benito_Mussolini
It's simply wrong. It is one of the great falsely-attributed quotations that will not die.
https://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/02/07/fake-quote-...
It's central to the 21st century misunderstanding of Fascism and it is the convenient misattribution that will not die. (Also what I was referring to up thread)
And what "corporatism" means, in a Fascist context, is not what western readers think it might mean. It is a term talking about collective organisation, not capitalism.
It's part of why the word "fascist" is so completely blunted to the point of uselessness in US debate.
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.
"we're consistent" doesn't mean "we're fair"
― Anatole France
Same goes for Meta, at one point it becomes blatantly obvious that you cannot trust any of their statements, because they turn out again and again to not be true.
Are all accounts linked to abortion or queer content now gone from Facebook? I don’t believe that’s the case, right?
Do all the reported accounts and content get nuked ? Potentially yes ?
Is that what the guardian claimed?
That would mean Facebook's response is either blatantly false, or deceptively using weasel wording.
They do some data-oriented investigations with partners but their budget is very finite as an organisation.
Someone could post that all black people are stupid and were better off enslaved and Facebook would respond to a report saying it doesn't violate any policies, but someone posting a shirtless photo of themselves to an lgbt group gets it shutdown for a week.
This is also why I keep saying that the Discord model is the future of social media, not Facebook or Twitter. Turns out that when you can allow users to exert meaningful control over their social spaces, instead of relying on the judgment of some of the most sociopathic, self-interested and immoral people in tech, you can create actual communities.
Curious what it is about Discord you think is different enough from other social media to warrant this claim. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other, just curious.
Instead, it harkens back to the older era of web forums and IRC channels where communities were siloed and moderated by actual humans using moderation tools, permission abstractions, and even bot API's that are actually fit for purpose.
The key advantage that Discord has over the pre-social-media status quo is that Discord gives the ability for users to moderate their social spaces without the overhead of having to run their own forum software or intuit the arcane NickServ/ChanServ deep majick. The friction for creating a new social space is quite low, and joining one of those spaces is as simple as obtaining an invite - which can either be publicly posted or only handed out to specific users on a case by case basis.
Sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are antithetical to this - they want you to throw you in the deep end and get hooked by engagement-bait. Reddit was probably the closest prior art, but Reddit still gamified engagement using voting, kept the walls between subreddits very thin, and refused to give moderators adequate tools to properly moderate their subreddits. As time has gone on, further changes to Reddit's structure and userbase have turned moderators from being community curators to doing free janitorial work for a tech company.
I've been part of several gun rights groups on Facebook, both for political advocacy and plan information sharing, that have been banned without warning. Meanwhile there are groups where nothing is ever posted that isn't for sale - I haven't seen one of those taken down for several years now, and many of them are scoped to an entire state and have tens of thousands of users.
No it is not. When I say “my husband and I”, I am asserting a fact and who I am as a gay guy and I’m not stating anything sexual.
> being US companies retain a puritanical attitude
I do not know that to be true. The US is an also a playground of very explicit pornographic online services. But everything has its place.
There is a real practical problem that is not easily solvable, and that is how to draw a reasonable line at scale across different cultures and legal frameworks. Anyone saying it is easy or clear is not a serious thinker.
Information literally moves faster on socials than it does from need sources and those things come with far less "truth through rigor".
I agree news sources should do leg work.. but in a world where nobody cares about the facts when spreading a story, is there still a point?
I might be an illogical optimist, but I undoubtedly believe that’s the job of journalists and newspaper editors in such a world. To FIGHT false narratives and misinformation.
We're asking credible news sources to fit a gun fit with sticks.
This reads like what you’re accusing them of doing. The way you’re asking the questions communicates skepticism in favor of facebook’s official statement. Facebook’s track record on policing content is not exactly one that inspires confidence in their narrative.
I am entitled to a dose of healthy skepticism.
If I believed that Meta is suspending accounts for the mere fact that they link to abortion information or non-pornographic queer content, rather some other policy reason, then I WOULD dig deeper because apparently The Gaurdian can’t be bothered to.
However, I don’t believe that to be the case by the mere fact that there are millions of accounts active that DO link to queer content or abortion information.
Heck, Planned Parenthood has an active Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/plannedparenthood/
I do not believe that that is The Guardian’s goal with this reporting. If it were, wouldn’t it make more sense to list the organizations (provide actionable information), rather than spending time telling a story?
I also have a hard time seeing the harm or the size thereof without knowing more context about any of the organizations, what they do, and how much they rely or depend on Facebook to be effective.
If I were an organization that had my Facebook account suspended unfairly or unjustly, I would simply find a different way to stay in touch with others. Meta does not owe me anything
The Guardian article interviews several people whose accounts have been shut down. Are you proposing that all those people are lying, or is there perhaps the possibility of Facebook not telling the whole truth? Should you not be skeptical of Facebook's "we didn't do anything" claim as well?
I totally believe that those accounts have been shut down (without checking even one), but I do not buy that it is for the mere fact that they link to abortion info or queer content which is the framing in the article and a lot of the assumption in this discussion thread, because the counter evidence is clear and voluminous.
I get that people are passionate about topics that are important to them, but I will also say that one ought to keep a level head, even if only for one’s one emotional resilience.
I also accept that people need to vent (against corporations, rich people, government, etc.) and I try to give people the space to do so even when I think they’re wrong. At the same time, I think what is more helpful is to lean in with curiosity and not to assume you’re right.
But that's just a steelman. If I were to guess as to what is actually going on, I would suspect that it's due some sort of automated reporting system that has been successfully gamified in the case of smaller content creators, and there's simply no human oversight of these features.
That said, IMHO trying to tease out if Meta is banning these accounts out of maliciousness or depraved indifference is a distinction without a difference. At the end of the day, the buck still stops with Meta.
So they should explain the situation rather than dropping a generic “our policies are great and this is fine.” We’ve seen them be inconsistent in their enforcement time and time again and with Zuckerberg openly kissing the Trump admin’s ring as he once again shifts course with the political winds, some of us (rightfully) think it is likely Facebook, not The Guardian, that is wrong here. Yes we need more clarification from both parties but my money is on TG.
Your skepticism is warranted but it is misdirected IMO.
I think reporting ought to try to get to some level of truth through rigor.
I think I'm getting bored with all the deflection bots and puppets on HN saying, "Don't discuss the issue in the OP's article! Look over here, instead!"
Nobody believes themselves to be the bad guy, but many people frequently make decisions that cause harm.
One person makes a “decision making framework” but doesn’t make any individual decision themselves.
Then another person makes the individual decision, but based on the decision making framework, so they feel no personal responsibility for the choice.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178 ("[flagged] Total Chaos at Meta: Employees Protest Zuckerberg's Anti LGBTQ Changes (404media.co)")
https://www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-meta-r... ( https://archive.is/R1c7S )
I can attest that you don't need them to have a job or function in society.
I don't use Meta products, and haven't for many years. But I still have a Facebook account, because a) deleting it would be a fairly rigorous process, and b) as long as I maintain the account, I have some control over the information about me that Meta maintains; if I deleted the account, they would maintain a "shadow profile" for me that I had no control over, and (for instance) any photos tagged as containing me, I would not be able to go in and untag.
Unfortunately, it's not, at least for Whatsapp.
That's a part of the issue - as there is no open access federation requirement, there are messenger islands. Whatsapp for the non-tech folks, Telegram for those who either are wary of Meta, want gambling, or a service decidedly not affiliated with the American judicial sphere, Signal and Threema for the utter nerds/journalists/activists, iMessage for the Apple crowd, or the now-defunct rich bro network of Blackberry. SMS, MMS or its replacement RCS that the carriers are trying (and failing) to push, I don't even count these given how faded to irrelevance they all are. Oh, and then there are (particularly in the Asian market) all the country specific "everything in one"-apps that Musk tried and failed to convert X to.
And particularly among the non-tech folks, no way to get them to use anything but Whatsapp. Network effects are a thing, hence the EU's push to break up the walled gardens at least a tiny tiny bit, but it will take years until it's implemented.
But you're assuming these messaging apps are something we need and have to have and then solving backward from there.
While I certainly recognize that a society may have made the mistake of going all-in on a proprietary app in order to participate in society (whoops!), I can tell you for a fact that it's not required for any given society to function because I don't have any of these apps and just use SMS and e-mail and I am able to work, coordinate events with friends, make dinner reservations, and send funny videos. I can also vouch for the United States, specifically that such apps aren't required.
So we can clearly separate out that we don't need these apps to function as a society - we can go back to the question of morality. In the US if you are "against" Meta or Mark Zuckerberg or whatever, you can just delete the apps because you don't need them.
My genuine hope would be the other prisoners would be more successful in avoiding the need for any professional services rendered [read this as a survivor, which I am].
You cannot cure these abusers here on Earth — you have to send them somewhere else.
Yes, I do believe Luigi to be the Patron Saint of Denials...
This is the future we've created for all persons, corporate and not.
#FAFO #FreeLuigi
Remember how Mark was caught on hot mic saying ‘I wasn’t sure what number you wanted, Mr. President’ after lying about it on camera[0]
[0]https://www.businesstoday.in/world/us/story/i-wasnt-sure-wha...
Someone like Zuck actively isolates themselves: from buying huge tracts of land to literally isolate themselves, building underground shelters, hiring security to keep riff-raff away, etc. They have no concept of society. They just don't see themselves living in the same world as we do.
A few elite people are poached, some are acquihired, but most applied to get the job. I believe if you can make it to Meta you can make it to equivalent mega companies, it's a choice.
You might ask - but what about the people who work at those corporations? And that's also pretty simply explained by this classic quote: it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
This isn't high school. This is about real people having real experiences of fear, stress, violence, and horror facilitated by deliberate cultural engineering.
If the very talented and smart people don't get that, that's a them problem.
Yes it does. That is the only thing that makes enemies.
Note: I do like my neighbor!
If I’m queer and Facebook is actively censoring queer content then that’s more significant to me than just being a difference of opinion. The company is actively suppressing my way of life.
Maybe the word “enemy” is too much but if so I think describing the idea as “sad” is equally as so. Giving a corporation a pass on behaviour you consider abhorrent simply because it’s a company and not a person seems pretty sad to me.
Why queer community will not find an alternative app?
They do everything they can to become the central place for online communication and profit enormously from that. But they reject any of the responsibility that ought to come along with that, the refrain being what you're saying here: "well, you can always just go somewhere else"
Except that when online communication is as deeply siloed as it is it's extremely difficult to set up an alternative. How will people even find out about it when their entire online lives are lived on Facebook? This capture is exactly what Meta wants. Remember internet.org?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet.org
Picking and choosing which services people can use is Zuckerberg's explicit goal.
Like not every social media is good for everything
Top software engineering content is also not on facebook
But answer the question, why should they have to?
Just like restaurant owner can kick you, they also can.
If you dont agree with it, then vote for social media being treated as infrastructure like roads
What I'm asking you is: why should they have to find a new place?
At this point we have gone in a circle, I must assume I won't get a genuine answer to the only thing I have asked despite trying to engage genuinely in conversation. Have a good day.
If they believe that someone is harming them, then they should stay with them?
Because it erases our existence, which is what a substantial slice of straight society wants. Queer content and spaces are important for queer adults, because it gives us places to comfortably be ourselves without feeling subject to leering or judgement from bigots, and safety in numbers in case someone starts something. It gives us people to be among who we can talk to, form community with, and support one another. And for people just coming up, it's literally lifesaving. Numerous studies have shown that queer-leaning teens and kids are MUCH safer when they have access to safe places to explore who they are, even if they don't "turn out" that way, prevents awful, irreversible things. [1,2,3] Not to mention it can be lifesaving also when their parents are bigots themselves and they need a way out.
> Sure, maybe you don’t like the censorship, but how does that make them your enemy?
The bridge between "they suppress expressions of who I am" and "they participate in my extermination" has been proven to be quite short and easily traversed for queers many times, and for racial groups, and for religious groups too. [4]
By your definition they may not be my enemy today, but they may be in a short period of time.
> If you don’t like their content, simply move along.
This is actually great advice for people who keep trying to take down queer content.
Edit: And this is exactly what figures like Breitbart have been openly trying to do for over a decade. And it isn't just him either, you have the Family Research Council, Fox News hosts, Daily Wire personalities like Matt Walsh, and Libs of TikTok have all made careers out of normalizing queer erasure. For them, "winning the culture war" is not only their stated, in-text goal, it's a means of pushing us out of public life: sometimes just running us out of town, other times things too ugly to say aloud.
1. AFSP – LGBTQ youth face higher suicide risk, but affirming spaces cut that risk significantly. https://afsp.org/preventing-suicide-in-lgbtq-communities/ 2. Springer (2025) – Queer teens are 5–8× more likely to attempt suicide; supportive spaces reduce risk. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12310-025-09797-4 3. Trevor Project (2020) – Having even one affirming space lowers suicide attempts by 35%. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/lgbtq-gende... 4. Oxford Research Encyclopedia (2019) – History shows censorship of queer spaces often escalates into violence and erasure. https://oxfordre.com/politics/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore...
There's also a difference between not amplifying something and actively suppressing it. Neutral omission is one thing; deliberate censorship is another. When queer content is singled out for removal, it sends a message: you don’t belong here. That's erasure.
History shows us that erasure is rarely neutral. It's part of a continuum: silence leads to exclusion leads to violence. Pretending censorship is harmless ignores the fact that queer people have lived through this cycle many times before, and we're far from alone.
Why are you conflating "not pushing" with "actively censoring"?
Lots of very talented and smart people work for big tobacco, Aramco, Stake (crypto gambling), Kick (streaming of crypto gambling), Purdue (made billions on manufacturing an opioid epidemic), DuPont, Shein, Nestlé, NSO group, the GEO group (private prison industry), Clearview (facial recognition at scale including for ICE) and indeed Meta.
I don't think we should hate them or show them hatred. I don't think that if you're working at a company that's suppressing someone's way of life you're somehow above criticism or contempt.
I don't mean to be a dick, but no, the question was what is a reasonable cause to bash someone if it's not disliking what they do. I don't know if these weird Socratic replies are meant to be thoughtful but they read as dismissive and condescending.
But hey, I can also play stupid games!
> The question is, why do you feel the need to bash them?
Why do you feel the need to defend them? (I answer this question less flippantly below.)
> Do you feel the need to say ugly things to your grocery store because they don’t actively have the goods you want?
Is not stocking garbanzo beans censorship? Why do you think this is equivalent?
> Do you feel the need to bash the coders of YouTube because they have ads or censor content?
Depends what Youtube is advertising. Depends what they're censoring.
> Are they your enemy because they hire a certain type of person?
Who'd they hire?
...
There is a difference between my grocery store stocking or not stocking something and having problems with a multi-national trillion dollar company that has wedged itself itself into most people's daily lives and has a history of censoring content to curry favour with authoritarians.
I sympathize with the folks who are working there trying to change things for the better, and I sympathize with the people who are legitimately stuck for whatever reason (don't know a lot about visas to the US, but those are probably a good reason). I also think they're tough enough to take it when they dunked on, and have the reading comprehension to realize that when people are critical of Facebook employees, there's context where it absolutely makes sense. Being a Facebook employee is not an identity, it's just a job. Facebook has pivoted to censoring queer content at a time when queer people are being marginalized after years of gains. Most of my ire is directed at the executives and management, but yeah, if you work at Facebook knowing what they do, you're not getting a pass.
BTW - Meta wedged itself into most people's lives because the people let it happen. It started off well enough, but just like many companies, they adjusted their content based on the people consuming the platform. Its (Meta's) survival is based on getting views and posting ads. That's the business model. If they started showing content that appealed to a small percentage of their viewership, they would probably go out of business.
Also, simping for these companies is such a bad look.
Not only bash but zsh, fish and sh them as well.
Its not personal, and they operate outside of human morality so it doesn't even make sense to call them evil. But they'll still eat you.
I've come to strongly dislike this quote, because it's so often used on HN to decide that whoever's disagreeing with you is doing it for simple, stupid and greedy reasons, thus absolving you of the duty to think a bit about whether there might be nuance you're missing.
But not everyone think that way, some think that by limiting access to abortion information, they are actually saving (unborn) lives. Some people think that "sex positive" movements are morally questionable and help spread infection. For them, they are the good guys and they think that Meta is finally doing the right thing.
These are divisive political subjects and political parties with these ideas get elected for a reason. In a democracy, parties will not promote ideas that no one agree with, they need the votes, so if they are promoting them, it means that for a large part of the population, it is the right thing to do. HN is a bubble with mostly liberal ideas, we have to understand it for what it is.
That's in addition to the idea that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it". But it applies more to activities that are almost universally recognized as bad rather than partisan ideas, things like scamming.
I'm not sure I agree with this, though I suppose it depends on what one defines as "liberal."
>In a democracy, parties will not promote ideas that no one agree with, they need the votes, so if they are promoting them, it means that for a large part of the population, it is the right thing to do.
I would say instead that it means that for a large part of the voting population, the ideas are not objectionable enough for them to vote differently or abstain. People are already voting in spite of the disconnect between the policies they support and the policies that actually get implemented [0]
[0] https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_th...
I forget the exact statistic, but CEOs are disproportionately sociopaths (compared to the whole population).
So, no story required because there's no guilt felt.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair
And Meta in particular - just look at the founder/leader. The “CEOs are all sociopaths” trope exists because of people like Zuck.
Donald Trump's co-opted the religious nuts that are anti-abortion and anti-LGBT, and Zuck is more than happy to please him rather than risk prosecution and losing his money or freedom. What a model of cowardice.
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
It's called the "narcissist's prayer", it's what narcissists and sociopaths tell themselves to absolve themselves of accountability. Whatever the situation, they have an excuse as to how it's not their fault. It's like the stages of grief but for people trying to avoid consequences or guilt for their actions.
However the very first line reveals what the actual reason probably was: "posts showing non-explicit nudity triggering warnings"
[1] https://imginn.com/p/ClT7Cufrk0k/
>A message from Meta to the group dated 13 November said its page “does not follow our Community Standards on prescription drugs”, adding: “We know this is disappointing, but we want to keep Facebook safe and welcoming for everyone.”
>“The disabled accounts were correctly removed for violating a variety of our policies including our Human Exploitation policy,” it added.
... which is much more in-line with the idea that the actual reason is ideological positions. And if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the article you'll see that the "nudity" that was banned was not nudity at all. So non-nude they actually included the drawing in the Guardian article itself.
> The offending post was an artistic depiction of a naked couple, obscured by hearts.
Given Meta, I’m more inclined to believe code bugs in an automated clean up job which they then move into their appeals process to get corrected.
that's a pretty heavily-worked little phrase. What is "non-explicit" nudity? That sounds to me like starting at the violation and then working backward to ensure that the people they want to be violators turn out to be violators.
As a European, it is a very American Puritan thing to have.
Somewhere along the way we decided that kids can't see boobs until they're 21, but should be fine watching people get murdered.
I don't have the words for it, but it seems like everyone is fine with MASSIVE violence in every piece of media. I feel like I've lost the plot somewhere.
They have become remarkably sexless, practically no titillation to be found anywhere
Yes, the highest-grossing movies (Marvel, etc) tend to be mostly sexless (aside from tight-fitting costumes and dirty jokes).
But, there are always plenty of critically acclaimed Hollywood movies with lots of sex. Poor Things being a recent example.
Movies that everyone sees that penetrate the public consciousness
> there are always plenty of critically acclaimed Hollywood movies
Movies that only critics see or care about are not blockbusters
However, it isn't universal. It is a specific ideological choice - that's my point!
It's not some neutral statement, it's a codified ideological creed.
Also, Facebook doesn't need to become a porn site when Porn Hub already has comments.
I know it's against HN rules to ask if people have read the article, but you clearly didn't read the article.
The "non-sexual nudity" example is at the bottom of the article. It's a stylized cartoon drawing of a nude man and woman with arms around each others' waists viewed from the back as they walk along a path. There is a heart strategically placed around waist level so you can't even see their whole butts.
It's about the tamest artistic depiction of nudity you can imagine, certainly something that is totally fine anywhere else on Facebook. Very clear that this is a bullshit excuse being used by Meta.
"the organisation had received a message almost every week from Meta over the past year saying that its page “didn’t follow the rules”"
If you are getting content violation notices every week for a year, it is certainly not all because of this one cartoon.
[2] https://imginn.com/p/DCmnH4WPbXa/
[3] https://imginn.com/p/C-dBMzXRqnu/
> Fatma Ibrahim, the director of the Sex Talk Arabic, a UK-based platform which offers Arabic-language content on sexual and reproductive health, said that the organisation had received a message almost every week from Meta over the past year saying that its page “didn’t follow the rules” and would not be suggested to other people, based on posts related to sexuality and sexual health.
If you're getting a warning every week for a year, I would like to see the other 51 non cherry-picked examples that they didn't give to the guardian. Based on a quick look at some of their posts that are still publically available, I think Meta is completely justified in restricting visibility of some of these posts.
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.
Members of any social activists groups seem likely to me to be of the more forceful vocal type and abortion and "queer groups" (that seems crazy broad to me) are two categories that particularly attract people with strong feelings.
It's not surprising to me that people in those groups would get banned more than others, especially the queer one because the topic of the group is explicitly sexual and I could see their posts more often crossing the ban line.
Now if all members of those groups are getting banned, that's surprising but I doubt there's anything malicious here (unless you consider their general content policy malicious).
On insta we just want to communicate and organise parties together. Behind closed doors where were yes, we often do freaky (yet consensual) things to each other ;) But the photos will not end up on insta as we obey the policy. In fact these events have very strict no-camera rules anyway.
It's always been a bit difficult and most people create several 'backup' accounts already that people can follow in advance in case they get banned. Sometimes that's justified according to the policy, usually it's not. The moderation policies have always been a bit erratic with instagram, even worse since they fired all of their moderators last year and moved a lot of it to AI.
The bans don't appear to be targeting these groups otherwise the groups would be empty. Instead, it appears that the bans are toward a subset of the groups.
My speculation is that, due to the nature of the groups (sexuality and abortion), it seems very reasonable to me to expect that the more vocal members of the groups might post content that is against Facebook guidelines.
So when you say "we", I'm not sure who you're referring to because I'm likely not talking about you.
> Sometimes that's justified according to the policy, usually it's not.
Says everyone who's ever been banned from anywhere. If people are often getting banned amd don't change their behavior, they'll probably continue to be banned on their alts, especially since alts to avoid bams are usually a banable offense itself.
Facebook's policies are probably stupid, I don't know, but they are their policies and if someone can't figure out what crosses the line after multiple bans, I think that's on them. If you don't like their policies, there are a lot of other places to go rather than creating a bunch of alta on a service that doesn't want you to do what you want to do on it.
Wow interesting, I thought social media was more an embarrassing thing to admit you participated in these days.
One of the reasons was that Instagram until about 2 years ago was pretty cool about just showing you people you follow instead of dumping unwanted algorithmic shit on you. But after the rise of tiktok they have unfortunately mirrored that. You can still switch to following in the app but it keeps switching back.
It also gives the ability to follow people without giving your phone number which is really important because most of us aren't even known by our real names.
So it’s become an embarrassment within the last 2 years. Yeah, this is what I’m talking about.
It's just that it is harder to follow the people and organisations/parties I want now because there's other crap in between that I didn't ask for. Same thing that facebook did decades ago but instagram held off on for much longer.
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.
Does the First Amendment not also give you editorial control over your websites, including which third-party content you host?
Indeed, the two are so different that being in favor of the former doesn't at all weaken the argument against doing the latter.
It turns out there's a middle ground between "no content moderation" and "restrict people for discussing some innocent physiological aspect of themselves they can't change", and that middle ground can be totally ok
Just like there's a totally-ok middle ground between libertarians who oppose any regulation at all, and authoritarians who want to control literally everything
The only way this works, is if we become more accepting of opinions we fundamentally truly disagree with. Anything short of that, and you're always going to run into people who draw the line in a way you find harmful.
What if they change the law to say that hate speech against ethnic minorities is legal?
Taking the current law, at any given moment, as our standard for ethics is not a tenable position.
My personal take is, it's very different saying "I'm against murder", and saying "that man is a murderer". We have libel laws to protect individuals from slander, and I think that's a good thing. But I don't think there should be any prohibition on talking about policy in general.
So it should be legal and tolerated for people to loudly proclaim "all white people are racist", but not put up a billboard of some white dude, and claim he is a racist, unless you're prepared to defend that allegation in court.
Because again, that is exactly the rhetoric we're discussing: Rhetoric which says 'X is mentally ill, grooming children for sexual activity, and should be executed'.
If it's okay to say it when X is an LGBT person, or all LGBT people, then it is also okay to say it when X is you. So why try to sue for something you are okay with?
Conversely, if it is inappropriate censorship to try to moderate such messaging when X is an LGBT person, or all LGBT people, then it is also inappropriate censorship to try to moderate such messaging when X is you.
After all, no line means no line, right? That's what the minorities in question are being subjected to, that's the sort of rhetoric we're discussing. Indeed, such a billboard would be as much about "protecting the children" as the example OP gave.
Is it? According to who? After all, anybody can say "A is just another way of saying B" (especially if they ignore the differences), but it doesn't make it true. To wit: the differences I cited prove that there are differences.
> The only way this works, is if we become more accepting of opinions we fundamentally truly disagree with.
Historically speaking, accepting violence against minorities, and the rhetoric which fosters it, has not "worked" for the minorities.
Medical advice was quite different between nations. Doctors and chief epidemiologists gave their advice, sometimes opposite advice to others, grounded in scientific beliefs that the individual held at the time. One of the biggest controversy and debates was the effectiveness of non-N95 surgical mask against airborne virus particles. Different studies gave different results, and depending on which culture, country and professional you asked you got different medical advice. It only got more muddled when it came to outdoor vs indoor.
That is just one example. It is well known in medical research that culture has a major impact on research findings and should not be overlooked. What is correct or incorrect is not obvious in a international context, and what help people in one place can be directly harmful in an other.
We've tried this. This is what lead to Florida removing the vaccine mandate, something that is going to cause real harm because people have bought into a shared delusion. This tolerance of fundamental disagreements has metastasized into people committing real harm using the power of the state rather than any sort of centrist utopia.
1. "We've tried this [and it doesn't work]" is not a position you really want to hold. If we, all, stop trying this, things are going to look very heterosexual and very White. The current progressive zeitgeist is a direct result of the majority accepting foreign opinions of minorities.
1. Removing a mandate is not "using the power of the state", it's explicitly not using the power of the state.
No, it's not. There are laws in several countries of what kind of things you can publish in public. Sure, the line is definitely blurry, but there are lots of cases where it's not. Of course, Meta being an American company often means that local laws have less of an effect.
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.