A specific injunction against calling transgender or non-binary people “it” has been deleted. A new section has been added making clear that “we do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation”. It said this was a reflection of “political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird’”.
It should also be possible now to say transgender people “do not exist”
Meta has deleted warnings against self-admission of racism, homophobia and Islamophobia. It has also deleted warnings against expressions of hate, such as calling people “cunt”, “dick” and “asshole”.
Boomer radicalization is a valid concern... if they're already somewhat using WhatsApp that seems like a good way to push them. As you say no feed. It sucks that it's Meta but should be...
Boomer radicalization is a valid concern... if they're already somewhat using WhatsApp that seems like a good way to push them. As you say no feed. It sucks that it's Meta but should be comparitively harmless.
If Signal is a non starter then so are a lot of other less maintream options.
I can't speak for your relatives, obviously, but as an android user with a mostly iphone family, group chats with them are excruciating. Every time someone "reacts" to a message or photo, I get a...
I use iMessage with friends, but for some reason older family members are against this.
I can't speak for your relatives, obviously, but as an android user with a mostly iphone family, group chats with them are excruciating. Every time someone "reacts" to a message or photo, I get a separate notification and a message describing their reaction. My sister will send one (1) cute photo of her kid, and I'll get 12 notifications. "Mom loved a photo" "dad loved a photo" "[Brother] loved a photo" "[Brother's Girlfriend] loved a photo" and on and on. The first time it happened I was at work and didn't look at my phone when the picture came through. Then my phone started blowing up. I thought there was an emergency, I was legitimately panicking. Now I've told them that I can't get group chats from iphones because I just cannot stand it.
I would be more than happy to use this app if everyone in my family committed to not using the reactions, but that's not going to happen. It's habit at this point. Maybe it could work for your family, though?
I've read that this has gotten better recently (in the last few months). iOS 18 supports RCS, which makes it work better with Google Messages, and better notifications is one of the things that...
I've read that this has gotten better recently (in the last few months). iOS 18 supports RCS, which makes it work better with Google Messages, and better notifications is one of the things that has supposedly improved.
(My experience with iMessage is that it keeps going to my Macs and iPad unless I'm careful to log out everywhere.)
I looked at the amount of Google services I have to enable on Graphene OS to get RCS to work and decided against it. I didn't ditch Google only to crawl back for a bit of semi flaky rich messaging.
I looked at the amount of Google services I have to enable on Graphene OS to get RCS to work and decided against it. I didn't ditch Google only to crawl back for a bit of semi flaky rich messaging.
Interesting! I can't think of a way to try it out that doesn't obliterate my escape hatch, though. I can't very well tell my family that it started working and then suddenly stopped again if it's...
Interesting! I can't think of a way to try it out that doesn't obliterate my escape hatch, though. I can't very well tell my family that it started working and then suddenly stopped again if it's still super annoying, haha.
@em-dash liked a tildes post My "solution" to this was to send equally annoying manually typed notifications back to people who do this until they get the hint. My friends may well be easier to...
If you're concerned about insufficient moderation, it's kind of weird to think of Signal as a possible solution, since by design, messages are private and can't be moderated. The only thing...
If you're concerned about insufficient moderation, it's kind of weird to think of Signal as a possible solution, since by design, messages are private and can't be moderated.
The only thing preventing Signal from being used to spread hate messages is that it's not yet popular enough to get that kind of attention.
(Or maybe it is used to spread hate messages, but we don't know about it because the conversations are private?)
I'm wondering how Signal might be used to spread anything, as so far as I know there's no public groups to join, and someone would have to know your number to send you anything directly, like sms....
I'm wondering how Signal might be used to spread anything, as so far as I know there's no public groups to join, and someone would have to know your number to send you anything directly, like sms.
Public groups seems more the purvey of Telegram or Discord or something.
For rich group messaging I did in fact get my parents to use Signal, so at least I can stay in touch with them and send them photos and "yes, we're coming over on Sunday" messages. Though...
For rich group messaging I did in fact get my parents to use Signal, so at least I can stay in touch with them and send them photos and "yes, we're coming over on Sunday" messages.
Though sometimes the messages devolve into SMS because reasons.
I won't use Whats App (they use that too) because Meta. And certainly not fb messenger.
I've noticed a bad shift in attitudes from them in the last couple of years though, and from the fragments I can see from facebook being not logged in (because, of course all their posts are public visibility), it's an awful place.
I've advised them not to share so broadly and be careful what they post online, but what else can I do?
Hae alook at Matrix.org and their app called Element. It is open source and checks the boxes. But it is hard to get into. I have technically very experienced friend and if I didn't ask hin to join...
Hae alook at Matrix.org and their app called Element. It is open source and checks the boxes.
But it is hard to get into. I have technically very experienced friend and if I didn't ask hin to join me there, ge would want to skip the hoops by himself. It's too hard for Average Joes, you would have to set that up.
But be ready for questions on "How is this different to WhatsApp?" Or "Why this looks like this andnot that?" or ulimately "Why use this when he/she has WhatsApp already?".
People can't see the good you are trying to bring them. They'd rather stay on the train they already ride.
This is actually even worse in context: If I'm reading this correctly, it seems like allegations of mental illness are prohibited unless the allegation is predicated on sexual or gender identity....
we do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation
This is actually even worse in context:
Do not post: ... Content targeting a person or group of people on the basis of their protected characteristic(s) (in written or visual form) with: ... Insults, including those about: ... 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.
If I'm reading this correctly, it seems like allegations of mental illness are prohibited unless the allegation is predicated on sexual or gender identity. In other words, you can't call someone insane apropos of nothing, but you can say "you are trans and therefore you are insane."
The most charitable reading I can make of this is: you can't insult anyone by calling them mentally ill, but you can assert (perhaps only in a "non-insulting" manner?) that, say, being transgender is a mental illness.
If we're being really charitable, maybe we say that you can assert that being transgender is a mental illness in general, but you can't call any specific person mentally ill. I think that this is an unlikely reading. And it would be trivial to get around: if you're in an argument with a trans person, just slip "trans people are insane" anywhere you like in your post. You won't have literally insulted anyone in particular, but your intent will be unmistakable. No, the more likely reading is that you can indeed call specific people mentally ill on the basis of sexual or gender identity.
what we call protected characteristics (PCs): race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, and serious disease. Additionally, we consider age a protected characteristic when referenced along with another protected characteristic. We also protect refugees, migrants, immigrants, and asylum seekers from the most severe attacks (Tier 1 below), though we do allow commentary on and criticism of immigration policies. Similarly, we provide some protections for non- protected characteristics, such as occupation, when they are referenced along with a protected characteristic. Sometimes, based on local nuance, we consider certain words or phrases as frequently used proxies for protected characteristics.
It seems like Facebook is doubling down on being a cesspool, hoping it will boost engagement. I've been mulling on the idea of a form of revenge - handing my social media accounts off to spammers...
It seems like Facebook is doubling down on being a cesspool, hoping it will boost engagement.
I've been mulling on the idea of a form of revenge - handing my social media accounts off to spammers and scammers, and if asked simply saying I got hacked and I don't care enough about those platforms to get my accounts back.
Frankly, at this point, the only thing that's stopping me is that I actually wouldn't know how. Compromised social media accounts are clearly in demand, but I actually don't know where to begin when it comes to "Hey, you can have this account for free without having to hack it."
This isn’t really revenge against Meta as much as it is putting all of your friends and family at risk of being scammed by someone pretending to be you.
This isn’t really revenge against Meta as much as it is putting all of your friends and family at risk of being scammed by someone pretending to be you.
True, and I'm also not sure what would happen if there was a "login with facebook" that I had used previously and forgotten about. I've been pondering ways to deal with the potential fallout -...
True, and I'm also not sure what would happen if there was a "login with facebook" that I had used previously and forgotten about. I've been pondering ways to deal with the potential fallout - perhaps changing my name/personal info and removing vulnerable contacts before I do so.
I suppose it's a matter of how likely it is that whoever gets my account will try and pretend to be me in a spear phishing attack, as opposed to changing it to pictures of an AI supermodel and spamming about weight loss pills.
Personally, I look at it as a form of enshittification accelerationism. You want to turn your platform into a cesspool? Fine, let me give you kindling for the fire. Anything for engagement, right?
Yeah, I’ve had a few friend clones attempt to con me. The difference is that the fakes aren’t technically my friend yet, making it pretty obvious they’re fake. If someone I’m already official...
Yeah, I’ve had a few friend clones attempt to con me. The difference is that the fakes aren’t technically my friend yet, making it pretty obvious they’re fake. If someone I’m already official friends with got hacked or sold then reached out while continuing to played the role, I’d be much less likely to suspect anything is amiss and maybe get scammed.
Create a marketplace listing for a car or something and wait for a scammer with a link to a fake login page. Like @DrStone says though, I would be concerned about putting your family at risk as a...
Frankly, at this point, the only thing that's stopping me is that I actually wouldn't know how.
Create a marketplace listing for a car or something and wait for a scammer with a link to a fake login page.
Like @DrStone says though, I would be concerned about putting your family at risk as a result. I'd also be worried about my own digital security as well... who knows what else you might leak including all the info in your account and anything you've used Facebook to login to.
ALTERNATIVELY you could just look at what other scammers do and post the same Elon Musk crypto scam videos or whatever they're doing now and also message a bunch of your contacts with obvious scamy conversations.
My personal lexical boundaries (is that a thing?) is that login is usually a noun — e.g. “this is my login and password” — whereas log in is usually a verb. I don’t think I clearly understand my...
Edit: log in to, log into, login to... IDK.
My personal lexical boundaries (is that a thing?) is that login is usually a noun — e.g. “this is my login and password” — whereas log in is usually a verb.
I don’t think I clearly understand my own usage of into versus in to other than vibes as I reread my own message before sending.
Also, I think “I put my login into the password manager” feels valid, so at this stage I don’t even know.
Yeah they're even doing stuff as petty as removing LGBTQ themes from messenger. And far deeper things like removal of tampons from mens' bathrooms that were there for transgender and nonbinary...
Yeah they're even doing stuff as petty as removing LGBTQ themes from messenger.
And far deeper things like removal of tampons from mens' bathrooms that were there for transgender and nonbinary employees
It's very clear this is very much align-with-MAGA behavior that includes increasing erasure of LGBTQ+ representation both online and offline.
Fuck these platforms and their MAGA-sympathizing leadership forever (and any techbros that defend them).
Profit and cozying up to power (whether via fear or being emboldened) are their motives and they will fall in line behind anyone no matter how awful or fascist or whatever, as long as it benefits them.
I have informed my few remaining group chats on Messenger that I will likely be deleting my Facebook accounts entirely this year. Now to find a way to jailbreak my Quest 2 to be out of Facebook's...
I have informed my few remaining group chats on Messenger that I will likely be deleting my Facebook accounts entirely this year. Now to find a way to jailbreak my Quest 2 to be out of Facebook's control.
If you find a way, I’m also interested, although I suspect my Quest 3 is probably even more locked down. I did at least create a brand new dummy account just for my quest account, so hopefully...
If you find a way, I’m also interested, although I suspect my Quest 3 is probably even more locked down.
I did at least create a brand new dummy account just for my quest account, so hopefully that avoids cross contamination, but I think it’s just a matter of time before Meta finds a way to pass information between different apps on my phone regardless of login, and decide to merge my accounts.
It drives me nuts that people have moved away from reliable source of information to these cheetos puffs platforms with profiles that may not even be a real person. I also don't understand how...
It drives me nuts that people have moved away from reliable source of information to these cheetos puffs platforms with profiles that may not even be a real person. I also don't understand how older people are falling for this
Glad you brought it back to TikTok. It turns out the “internet” of the late 1990s to early 2010s that, I assume, lots of Tildes users grew up with, was an anomaly. Average persons had to learn how...
Glad you brought it back to TikTok.
It turns out the “internet” of the late 1990s to early 2010s that, I assume, lots of Tildes users grew up with, was an anomaly. Average persons had to learn how to deal with duct-taped-together technical artifact that made thousands of unique attempts of forming communities, setting policies. Forums, video game servers, niche interest websites. You had communities form that, in size, resembled real-life communities where you could know everyone, see different personalities and have human discussions.
All that stuff has been absorbed into maybe five major “hubs” that unify policy and tone. Meta is certainly the largest. This headline is an example of why monopolies are a bad idea. Ironically, both the rich and the left would agree. Only that the right’s solution is to take over the monopolies rather than to break them.
Even Tildes is a place where I generally do not recognize usernames (with a few major exceptions). It’s as if I was screaming replies at a disembodied opinion. It could be a Russian troll farm employee. It could be an AI. I do not even really care. It’s bizarre. And a place like TikTok, X or Reddit is the same but increased by a factor of 1000 or more.
I generally am starting to think of many lived experiences this way. Every generation's experiences I think can be said to be anomalous in many ways. I know a lot of people talk about how older...
It turns out the “internet” of the late 1990s to early 2010s that, I assume, lots of Tildes users grew up with, was an anomaly.
I generally am starting to think of many lived experiences this way. Every generation's experiences I think can be said to be anomalous in many ways. I know a lot of people talk about how older generations used to have it so good because colleges didn't cost as much, families could live off 1 income etc. and that those generations screwed it up for everyone else. I think those were just anomalies. They were never sustainable. I don't mean that to say that all of the good things of the past were destined to go away or that the country was doomed to failure from then on, I mean it in the sense that I think many of those things were results of circumstances that changed over time. There was a time where families survived off 1 income because women weren't really allowed to do much of anything in some cases, society was built around it working that way. Then when they did finally get more rights, those things still take time to fully change courses but inevitably things do change and adapt to the new circumstances, and for a window of time there was a case where families being able to live off 1 income was still the standard and women had more rights and freedoms concurrently.
Mind you the mention of women not having full-time careers relative to today isn't meant to convey that it's the sole or even the most dominant factor to why families can't survive on one income, I'm not making that claim, it's just an example of how I think we could identify other things like that which changed over time and led to that experience being an anomaly. The same could be true if you go back to how black people or other minorities have been treated in the US and factors that changed how people perceived the lived experiences of the past. The great parts were great, the bad parts were bad, but when it comes to remembering the great and wishing they were around again, we often neglect to remember the bad or neglect to consider that they were ever somehow related.
Facebook prior to about 2020 or 2021 was a great place. 95% of the things in my feed were from people or groups I had explicitly decided to connect with. At some point, they obviously flicked some...
Facebook prior to about 2020 or 2021 was a great place. 95% of the things in my feed were from people or groups I had explicitly decided to connect with. At some point, they obviously flicked some switch after which a lot of memes and ads started pouring into my feed. I'm sure they were laughing all the way to the bank after that one.
What I find interesting is that Facebook, given its vast amount of collected raw data over 2 decades and employing lots of people in the social sciences field, probably knows how social contagion works over the internet. I wonder if there's a similar situation to tobacco companies and lung cancer prior to 1990, that they know something they won't say because it would hurt their bottom lines. So instead of informing everyone, they just use the knowledge to optimize for maximum outrage probably which leads to more clicks which leads to more profit.
And now -- I suppose, probably -- trying to save their asses from some hazy thing the Trump admin is going to force on them.
This is the changelog (click Changelog and Jan 7 for the diff) https://transparency.meta.com/en-gb/policies/community-standards/hateful-conduct/ Can I recommend to actually read sources before...
This is the changelog (click Changelog and Jan 7 for the diff)
And that diff also clearly shows they have added this text for example: I haven't gone through every point, but it doesn't seem like the journalistic summary on these changes are completely out of...
And that diff also clearly shows they have added this text for example:
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.”
I haven't gone through every point, but it doesn't seem like the journalistic summary on these changes are completely out of line.
Update -- I was on my phone when I reviewed the changes, so now I see what happened with the "china virus" thing I mentioned in the sibling comment. I want to address this because it's a radically...
Update -- I was on my phone when I reviewed the changes, so now I see what happened with the "china virus" thing I mentioned in the sibling comment. I want to address this because it's a radically obvious example of a journalist taking something and creating a narrative out of it.
Meta updated its "Hateful Conduct" policies. Overall, the changes are not something you can "read into" very much; a lot of them are simplifications, clarifications, etc.
There /are/ some questionable, explicit choices being made. In fact, there's exactly two of them. The one you mentioned, and this one:
+++We do allow content arguing for gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs. We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when the content is based on religious beliefs.
This is basically carving an exception for religion and discussion of gender limitations on mil/law/teaching jobs. I personally think it's a stupid addition, but as a reminder it's not Meta endorsing it, it's Meta saying "we won't enforce our policies on such contexts". Why? Probably not "because Zuck is a fascist", but more likely because the enforcement is either too difficult on those cases, it's too much of a grey area, and/or it's causing a lot of false negatives. And given the backlash they face whenever they enforce their policies, I cannot really blame them. They've been moving towards a system where they can wash their hands of this stuff and let the community sort it out.
IDK, I think social media is toxic AF, but it is probably for the better that they're moving to community notes overall anyway.
Now on the other hand, you have this which was removed:
---Content targeting a person or group of people on the basis of their protected characteristic(s) with claims that they have or spread the novel coronavirus, are responsible for the existence of the novel coronavirus, are deliberately spreading the novel coronavirus.
Okay so they're basically removing an explicit mention of covid-19 in the policy. Robert Booth takes this removal and claims:
The changes may also mean it is acceptable to post about the “China virus”, a term the US president-elect, Donald Trump, has frequently used in relation to coronavirus.
Implying that the removal was explicitly made so that Trump & co can start saying "China virus". Something which is contradicted by line 2 of the policy:
We define hateful conduct as direct attacks against people — rather than concepts or institutions— on the basis of what we call protected characteristics (PCs): race, ethnicity, national origin
And more explicitly mentioned in Tier 1 (do not post):
Dehumanizing speech in the form of comparisons to or generalizations about animals, pathogens, or other sub-human life forms, including: [...] Bacteria, viruses, or microbes
So clearly it's been removed in order to be generalized to all viruses, and now it's a news item spreading shit on Meta.
You know what? I /fucking hate/ Meta with a passion. Why do I have to defend this inane crap? This is just people making their own agenda and picking their own little microwars. And I'll tell you what, being as involved as I am in the actual war in Ukraine really gives you perspective on how ridiculous those microwars are.
And fuck anybody abusing the reader trust built up through decades of professional journalism, to further their own pointless personal agenda.
Why do you feel the need to defend it? Facebook has done nothing to encourage anyone to defend its actions, what with the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the genocide in Myanmar/Burma and now, the...
Just Facebook's controversies page alone should give one pause over assuming that Facebook has good intentions behind any of its actions, particularly considering its advent was so that Mark Zuckerberg could rate the attractiveness of women on campus.
The truth matters, and is worth defending, even if you don't like the party in question. Facebook does enough bad things as you say that you don't need to make shit up.
The truth matters, and is worth defending, even if you don't like the party in question. Facebook does enough bad things as you say that you don't need to make shit up.
But as has been stated, no one's "making shit up". These have been valid interpretations, as far as I can see, of how Facebook's new policies can take shape. That, combined with Facebook's...
But as has been stated, no one's "making shit up". These have been valid interpretations, as far as I can see, of how Facebook's new policies can take shape. That, combined with Facebook's long-running history of supporting such interpretations (i.e., being bad and allowing racism/etc to permeate the platform), suggests to me that these takes are quite valid.
The point more was that you were implying it wasn’t worth, or is immoral to, “defend facebook” when the original user was trying to determine the actual changes in their moderation policy, because...
The point more was that you were implying it wasn’t worth, or is immoral to, “defend facebook” when the original user was trying to determine the actual changes in their moderation policy, because Facebook is bad.
I would argue that it is completely irrelevant how bad or good some entity is when trying to figure out what they’re really doing. This isn’t the propaganda arm of a government.
If someone claimed that Hitler was a cannibal Satanist, I would argue against that, not out of love for Hitler but because it’s not reality.
Apologies for the late reply ... I've been rate-limited. Calling Hitler a cannibal Satanist is not reality, and it's provably not reality. Calling an interpretation of the change in moderation...
Apologies for the late reply ... I've been rate-limited.
Calling Hitler a cannibal Satanist is not reality, and it's provably not reality. Calling an interpretation of the change in moderation rules by a company with a spotty track record towards enforcing them "wrong" seems off-base to me. "The written truth" here is only what is explicitly written into the rules themselves, which explicitly allows people to insult others based on their gender identity and "perceived" mental illness. From https://transparency.meta.com/en-gb/policies/community-standards/hateful-conduct/ (emphasis mine):
Do not post:
[...]
Tier 2
Content targeting a person or group of people on the basis of their protected characteristic(s) (in written or visual form) with:
[...]
Insults, including those about:
Character, including but not limited to allegations of cowardice, dishonesty, basic criminality, and sexual promiscuity or other sexual immorality.
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.”
This, combined with Zuckerberg's right-wing tilting and claiming that people leaving his platforms are only "virtue signaling", suggests to me that these rule changes do not have anyone's best interests in mind - and an interpretation of such, while valid, is misguided in my opinion.
There is "the written truth", and there is "the (whole) truth". "The truth" does matter, and it must in many cases be allowed to extend beyond just the written word. It has to consider who's saying it, what their motivations are, and other factors. Just reiterating the rules doesn't tell the full extent of the truth of the matter; what is and is not possible matters, who is making the changes matters, who is affected by the rules changes matters.
One similar example I've seen was someone on Bluesky explaining how the recent rule changes could be of benefit to sex workers. Which is probably true! However, that's probably not the intended consequence of the rule changes, and should Facebook/Threads/Instagram start looking more and more pro-sex worker ... do you think that'll last? Or do you think the rules will be further adjusted to eliminate their presences?
I haven't researched the Meta rule changes enough to opine on it, my issue is with statements like this And I suppose my main point is that Adys was not "defending Facebook", they were searching...
I haven't researched the Meta rule changes enough to opine on it, my issue is with statements like this
Why do you feel the need to defend it? Facebook has done nothing to encourage anyone to defend its actions
And I suppose my main point is that Adys was not "defending Facebook", they were searching for the truth. That the truth they arrived at after their research happened be more in Facebook's favor than the narrative in the article should have no bearing on what they found.
I think this conflation of "X is bad; you should never say anything good about X" is very harmful in general. Nuance matters.
I phrased my response of "Why do you feel the need to defend it?" specifically because Adys said "Why do I have to defend this inane crap?" It was a direct reference to the words chosen by the...
And I suppose my main point is that Adys was not "defending Facebook", they were searching for the truth.
I phrased my response of "Why do you feel the need to defend it?" specifically because Adys said "Why do I have to defend this inane crap?" It was a direct reference to the words chosen by the person to whom I was responding, using their own language as a sort of rhetorical flourish. Adys themselves stated that they were put into a position where they felt the need to "defend Facebook".
I won't continue to reiterate on what I feel "truth" means, suffice it to say I do agree that nuance matters - which is why I'm stressing the importance of not just reading the written words, but also understanding who wrote them and why, given the context of everything going on right now.
My personal view is not that "[Facebook] is bad; you should never say anything good about [Facebook]". Rather, my view is "[Facebook], like most social media, is bad; you should consider why they are making the changes they are making and whether they are intended to actually help people."
These are issues of humanity, so there is no "truth" per se. Saudi Arabia treats women like 2nd class citizens, but their perspective isn't a "lie" per se. Just vile in my personal perspective. We...
These are issues of humanity, so there is no "truth" per se. Saudi Arabia treats women like 2nd class citizens, but their perspective isn't a "lie" per se. Just vile in my personal perspective.
We can't really be "objective" about topics like this. But meta will try in order to absolve as much personal responsibility as possible.
Basically what @stu2b50 said -- but beyond that, it's not just that "the truth matters", it's that quality, unbiased news institutions matter, and we're losing them everywhere left and right...
Basically what @stu2b50 said -- but beyond that, it's not just that "the truth matters", it's that quality, unbiased news institutions matter, and we're losing them everywhere left and right [edit: pun not intended].
An the people willingly or unwillingly falling for the clickbait and feeding the rage-inductive algorithms are part of the problem.
This is what we need to fix. Meta's approach to a dying social network doesn't matter two bits. The spread of quality information is what matters.
Apologies for the late reply ... I got rate-limited. I agree, but Facebook is not a news institution (although that is debatable, as they could be considered a publisher ... but that's a whole can...
Apologies for the late reply ... I got rate-limited.
quality, unbiased news institutions matter, and we're losing them everywhere left and right [edit: pun not intended].
I agree, but Facebook is not a news institution (although that is debatable, as they could be considered a publisher ... but that's a whole can of worms).
An the people willingly or unwillingly falling for the clickbait and feeding the rage-inductive algorithms are part of the problem.
The people you're arguing with - myself included - aren't falling for clickbait though. We've read the changes and are positing interpretations of the consequences of those changes. Even the original journalist has posited what they feel the changes may mean.
Please understand, falling for clickbait is definitely a problem, but there needs to be an understanding that "an interpretation of what changes to moderation policies means" is not the same as "clickbait". The title of the article is "Revisions of ‘hateful conduct’: what users can now say on Meta platforms", with the subheadline "Meta’s rewritten policies mean different things may be allowed to pass on Facebook, Instagram and Threads". None of that is clickbait.
We need to be careful when we start claiming that interpretation of anything is "clickbait", or "biased" as though a bias is inherently a negative thing. I'll let you know that my view is that there is no unbiased journalism, and there never has been. Everyone - every person, every journalist, every editor, every publisher - has biases at work in everything they do; it's impossible not to! Those biases find their way, one way or another, into everything we do. Often, when we ask for something to be "unbiased", what we're really asking for (in my opinion) is that something be unoffensive, "diplomatic", and "fair to both sides".
But sometimes, there are no "both sides". When the written policy of Facebook states, per the article:
A specific injunction against calling transgender or non-binary people “it” has been deleted. A new section has been added making clear that “we do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation”. It said this was a reflection of “political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird’”. It also says the policies are designed to allow room for types of speech including people calling “for exclusion or [using] insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration or homosexuality”.
... it's hard not to see that as Facebook explicitly allowing (and by extension, encouraging) mis-gendering people.
In addition, we now have Mark Zuckerberg saying, on Threads, that people leaving his platforms over the rule change are "virtue signaling".
So yes, policies may be written to be "unbiased" - but look at the people drafting them. They are not unbiased.
I'm talking about The Guardian, sorry if it was unclear. Is he wrong? If so how?
I agree, but Facebook is not a news institution (although that is debatable, as they could be considered a publisher ... but that's a whole can of worms).
I'm talking about The Guardian, sorry if it was unclear.
In addition, we now have Mark Zuckerberg saying, on Threads, that people leaving his platforms over the rule change are "virtue signaling".
More rate-limiting ... Assuming that you truly don't understand the meaning, "virtue signaling" has become a buzzword to the right-wingers in the United States, as a way of downplaying the...
More rate-limiting ...
Assuming that you truly don't understand the meaning, "virtue signaling" has become a buzzword to the right-wingers in the United States, as a way of downplaying the intentions behind someone's actions. In this case, Zuckerberg is trying to imply that people aren't quitting Meta's services because of honest-to-goodness belief that Meta is doing wrong - he's claiming that they are doing so as a way of proving to others how good they are, without actual moral or ethical belief behind it.
Look to what the right-wing in the USA has done with other words and phrases - "critical theory", "politically correct", "woke", "DEI", the list goes on and on. The actual meaning of the words/phrases gets twisted by the right-wing until it no longer means what it was originally used for. So while the words "virtue signal" may literally mean one thing, the implication of its use by someone like Mark Zuckerberg indicates that their meaning lies elsewhere.
The popular usage of the term “virtue signaling” is predicated on the idea that people can’t possibly be sincere about their values, even when they are making actual material sacrifices to align with their values. It’s maddening.
So yes, Mark Zuckerberg is "wrong". There may be some people that are quitting his services in an effort to "virtue signal" in the fashion he implies, but I think that most people that are quitting are doing so because Facebook is actively harmful in a lot of different ways, and the recent changes to their moderation practices are simply the last straw for a lot of folks.
This ties into the "written truth" versus "whole truth" view of things that I have, where if you only read the words as-written without having the context of who wrote them, and where and why they were written ... then you end up missing a lot of the important details. It is very easy to write a set of rules to abide by, only to not follow them based on various interpretations and meanings.
It's not how I read it at all. In fact, to me, Zuck's post reads the opposite. I read "virtue signaling" as in "[those] people are quitting purely on moral grounds" -- as in, they're quitting on...
In this case, Zuckerberg is trying to imply that people aren't quitting Meta's services because of honest-to-goodness belief that Meta is doing wrong - he's claiming that they are doing so as a way of proving to others how good they are, without actual moral or ethical belief behind it.
It's not how I read it at all. In fact, to me, Zuck's post reads the opposite. I read "virtue signaling" as in "[those] people are quitting purely on moral grounds" -- as in, they're quitting on moral grounds rather than have a justification to say the product is worse off.
And one reason I agree wholeheartedly with that take is that I believe anybody who's still using Facebook today out of their own free will has no realistic justification of being on a higher moral ground. Facebook [the platform] has never been a justifiably ethical product. This isn't a tipping point. There was never even a tipping point, the product was built pre-tipped.
I'm not saying that this definitely isn't what Zuckerberg meant, but this is not in line with the common usage of the term "virtue signaling". In common usage, "virtue signaling" carries an...
It's not how I read it at all. In fact, to me, Zuck's post reads the opposite. I read "virtue signaling" as in "[those] people are quitting purely on moral grounds" -- as in, they're quitting on moral grounds rather than have a justification to say the product is worse off.
I'm not saying that this definitely isn't what Zuckerberg meant, but this is not in line with the common usage of the term "virtue signaling". In common usage, "virtue signaling" carries an accusation of inauthenticity; i.e., you're only (or, at least, primarily) doing the thing because you want to be seen doing a (supposed) good thing, not for the thing itself. That's what the word "signaling" is there for---it implies that the action is performed not for its own sake, but to communicate something.
It's an insult in the same family as "sheeple" and "NPC", because it implies that peoples' actions are being shaped more by social pressures than by rationality.
If Zuckerberg didn't mean that, then he chose his words poorly.
Sure I understand this meaning. To this point Zuck thinks the moral ground is inauthentic— because of course, if he’s leader at Meta he’s not going to think they’re doing something unethical, so...
Sure I understand this meaning. To this point Zuck thinks the moral ground is inauthentic— because of course, if he’s leader at Meta he’s not going to think they’re doing something unethical, so if people think they are, they must be wrong.
He’s also diminishing the amount of people involved.
It’s leader/yes man brain. I didn’t question the actual definition of virtue signaling, just the interpretation of the overall meaning of the post.
There's a difference between thinking that people are doing something because of an incorrect moral assessment, and thinking that people are doing something not for any moral reason, but simply...
Sure I understand this meaning. To this point Zuck thinks the moral ground is inauthentic— because of course, if he’s leader at Meta he’s not going to think they’re doing something unethical, so if people think they are, they must be wrong.
There's a difference between
thinking that people are doing something because of an incorrect moral assessment, and
thinking that people are doing something not for any moral reason, but simply due to social pressures; e.g., to fit in, or because everyone else is doing it.
Number 2 is what I mean when I say "inauthentic", and it is what "virtue signalling" implies. It doesn't mean that people are incorrect; it means that their actions are motivated by the desire to be seen doing something that other people think is good, not by any authentically-held moral beliefs.
This is what Zuckerberg is implicitly saying about his critics. Again, he's basically calling them sheeple and posers.
And frankly, it's extremely upsetting to me that we're now in an era where this is something that the head of one of the largest corporations in the world can just say that about people, and not only will there be no consequences, but he'll actually benefit from it.
It's poisoning the well. Not "wrong" if you want to take a legal definition of "virtue signaling", but the implications of this are clear. Much more dishonest than any "clickbait" The Guardian posted.
Is he wrong? If so how?
It's poisoning the well. Not "wrong" if you want to take a legal definition of "virtue signaling", but the implications of this are clear. Much more dishonest than any "clickbait" The Guardian posted.
I'm interpreting this as "don't compare humans to animals, viruses, or other life-forms in a derogatory fashion" and having nothing to do with COVID. This doesn't preclude many forms of hate...
Dehumanizing speech in the form of comparisons to or generalizations about animals, pathogens, or other sub-human life forms, including: [...] Bacteria, viruses, or microbes
I'm interpreting this as "don't compare humans to animals, viruses, or other life-forms in a derogatory fashion" and having nothing to do with COVID.
This doesn't preclude many forms of hate speech, lies, and combinations thereof.
I agree it’s not completely out of line, but it’s also clearly a take on a set of changes that is exaggerating a lot. I don’t understand where they’re getting the whole “china virus” bit for example.
I agree it’s not completely out of line, but it’s also clearly a take on a set of changes that is exaggerating a lot. I don’t understand where they’re getting the whole “china virus” bit for example.
Honestly I don't understand why he's doing this. He already has billions more than he could possibly use in a lifetime. He already has a stranglehold on online social activity, event planning,...
Honestly I don't understand why he's doing this. He already has billions more than he could possibly use in a lifetime. He already has a stranglehold on online social activity, event planning, messaging, and even VR gaming for generations. He has majority ownership of Facebook voting shares such that nobody can ever oust him and he can do whatever he wants with the company.
Why turn the company into something so awful over the last decade? Surely the money he earns, which means nothing to him because he is already in the top 100 richest people in human history, is not worth the damage to society? Surely it doesn't make him feel good to radicalise old lonely people or advertise the vulnerable into crypto and gambling and ponzi scheme scams?
The same goes for other billionaires like Musk, Bezos, and Bloomberg, though. What is so broken in their minds that makes them prefer wrecking the world to doing something -- anything -- good? I'm not even asking for true good, they could simply stay neutral and not make the world worse. But instead these people make their lowest level employees work insane hours, force RTO for tech workers who can easily work remote or hybrid, push low level workers to piss in bottles without bathroom breaks, bust unions whenever possible, and traumitize other low level employees used for content moderation.
Am I crazy for thinking that these billionaires aren't even human any more? I cannot begin to imagine the shame and moral panic I would experience if I was calling the shots at these companies. I suspect most people with moral codes feel the same.
As per usual in these conversations: Hot take inbound. I think there are a few things going on, most of which revolves around power. If you have basically unlimited money, what is the next form of...
As per usual in these conversations: Hot take inbound.
I think there are a few things going on, most of which revolves around power. If you have basically unlimited money, what is the next form of currency? Power. You can't always get everything by buying things directly, but you can get them if you hold the keys to the kingdom. Musk can't personally finance going to Mars, but the collective of the US can. Peter Thiel can't buy his warped conservative, fascist ideal world, but the levers of power can make it so. Power is an extension of capital to make your dreams reality.
And they have moral codes, their moral codes are just warped. Elon Musk is a proponent of eugenics - a point he dog whistles with fair regularity. He has a guiding north star, that is surprisingly not unlike Hitler's: He wants to optimize humanity into the smartest, most attractive, efficient race possible. The problem, well there are so many problems with that, but the main one is that all "traits" of humanity are subjective. Before folks dogpile, I'm not calling him Hitler. I'm just pointing out that the "ideals" Hitler was appealing to and the ones that Musk is are very similar.
Lastly, they are all chronically out of touch. They are surrounded by yes men. I imagine most of the end up "believing the hype" about themselves and we end up here. Each billionaire has their own path to becoming a crusty piece of shit, but I'd wager most of them already had a certain amount of narcissism/sociopathy, had those inclinations turbo charged by traditional success and yes men, viewed themselves as "special" which warped their own moral compass, insulated themselves to interact with only folks on a similar trajectory, and realized power is the final form of capital. We saw this with the robber barons of the 20th century and we're just rinse and repeating a 21st century technocrat version.
Great take! I actually just finished reading The Power Broker tonight, and your points about power, money, and yes men certainly resonate with that book in mind. Hopefully they'll follow Moses'...
Great take! I actually just finished reading The Power Broker tonight, and your points about power, money, and yes men certainly resonate with that book in mind. Hopefully they'll follow Moses' trajectory and collapse within the next decade now that they're in the yes men phase.
I think this sums it up very well. I especially believe that money ceases to become any kind of driving force for people like this, and maybe it never really was. I think they are driven by power,...
I think this sums it up very well. I especially believe that money ceases to become any kind of driving force for people like this, and maybe it never really was. I think they are driven by power, control and grand visions. It's no coincidence that many billionaires continue to keep working long after they've earned enough to live on for the rest of their lives. They are often very driven and can't stop, even after they've "made it".
A few "highlights":
Glad I left. Sad my family hasn’t. In fact most of them are doubling down on the platform as they get older.
Boomer radicalization is a valid concern... if they're already somewhat using WhatsApp that seems like a good way to push them. As you say no feed. It sucks that it's Meta but should be comparitively harmless.
If Signal is a non starter then so are a lot of other less maintream options.
To be honest, many already are radicalized.
I can't speak for your relatives, obviously, but as an android user with a mostly iphone family, group chats with them are excruciating. Every time someone "reacts" to a message or photo, I get a separate notification and a message describing their reaction. My sister will send one (1) cute photo of her kid, and I'll get 12 notifications. "Mom loved a photo" "dad loved a photo" "[Brother] loved a photo" "[Brother's Girlfriend] loved a photo" and on and on. The first time it happened I was at work and didn't look at my phone when the picture came through. Then my phone started blowing up. I thought there was an emergency, I was legitimately panicking. Now I've told them that I can't get group chats from iphones because I just cannot stand it.
I would be more than happy to use this app if everyone in my family committed to not using the reactions, but that's not going to happen. It's habit at this point. Maybe it could work for your family, though?
I've read that this has gotten better recently (in the last few months). iOS 18 supports RCS, which makes it work better with Google Messages, and better notifications is one of the things that has supposedly improved.
(My experience with iMessage is that it keeps going to my Macs and iPad unless I'm careful to log out everywhere.)
I looked at the amount of Google services I have to enable on Graphene OS to get RCS to work and decided against it. I didn't ditch Google only to crawl back for a bit of semi flaky rich messaging.
Interesting! I can't think of a way to try it out that doesn't obliterate my escape hatch, though. I can't very well tell my family that it started working and then suddenly stopped again if it's still super annoying, haha.
@em-dash liked a tildes post
My "solution" to this was to send equally annoying manually typed notifications back to people who do this until they get the hint.
My friends may well be easier to condition than your family.
I don't think my family would even notice. Maybe if there were 7 of me.
If you're concerned about insufficient moderation, it's kind of weird to think of Signal as a possible solution, since by design, messages are private and can't be moderated.
The only thing preventing Signal from being used to spread hate messages is that it's not yet popular enough to get that kind of attention.
(Or maybe it is used to spread hate messages, but we don't know about it because the conversations are private?)
I'm wondering how Signal might be used to spread anything, as so far as I know there's no public groups to join, and someone would have to know your number to send you anything directly, like sms.
Public groups seems more the purvey of Telegram or Discord or something.
Signal supports group join links and QR codes, so to my understanding public groups do exist.
For rich group messaging I did in fact get my parents to use Signal, so at least I can stay in touch with them and send them photos and "yes, we're coming over on Sunday" messages.
Though sometimes the messages devolve into SMS because reasons.
I won't use Whats App (they use that too) because Meta. And certainly not fb messenger.
I've noticed a bad shift in attitudes from them in the last couple of years though, and from the fragments I can see from facebook being not logged in (because, of course all their posts are public visibility), it's an awful place.
I've advised them not to share so broadly and be careful what they post online, but what else can I do?
Hae alook at Matrix.org and their app called Element. It is open source and checks the boxes.
But it is hard to get into. I have technically very experienced friend and if I didn't ask hin to join me there, ge would want to skip the hoops by himself. It's too hard for Average Joes, you would have to set that up.
But be ready for questions on "How is this different to WhatsApp?" Or "Why this looks like this andnot that?" or ulimately "Why use this when he/she has WhatsApp already?".
People can't see the good you are trying to bring them. They'd rather stay on the train they already ride.
This is actually even worse in context:
If I'm reading this correctly, it seems like allegations of mental illness are prohibited unless the allegation is predicated on sexual or gender identity. In other words, you can't call someone insane apropos of nothing, but you can say "you are trans and therefore you are insane."
The most charitable reading I can make of this is: you can't insult anyone by calling them mentally ill, but you can assert (perhaps only in a "non-insulting" manner?) that, say, being transgender is a mental illness.
If we're being really charitable, maybe we say that you can assert that being transgender is a mental illness in general, but you can't call any specific person mentally ill. I think that this is an unlikely reading. And it would be trivial to get around: if you're in an argument with a trans person, just slip "trans people are insane" anywhere you like in your post. You won't have literally insulted anyone in particular, but your intent will be unmistakable. No, the more likely reading is that you can indeed call specific people mentally ill on the basis of sexual or gender identity.
Protected characteristics:
It seems like Facebook is doubling down on being a cesspool, hoping it will boost engagement.
I've been mulling on the idea of a form of revenge - handing my social media accounts off to spammers and scammers, and if asked simply saying I got hacked and I don't care enough about those platforms to get my accounts back.
Frankly, at this point, the only thing that's stopping me is that I actually wouldn't know how. Compromised social media accounts are clearly in demand, but I actually don't know where to begin when it comes to "Hey, you can have this account for free without having to hack it."
This isn’t really revenge against Meta as much as it is putting all of your friends and family at risk of being scammed by someone pretending to be you.
True, and I'm also not sure what would happen if there was a "login with facebook" that I had used previously and forgotten about. I've been pondering ways to deal with the potential fallout - perhaps changing my name/personal info and removing vulnerable contacts before I do so.
I suppose it's a matter of how likely it is that whoever gets my account will try and pretend to be me in a spear phishing attack, as opposed to changing it to pictures of an AI supermodel and spamming about weight loss pills.
Personally, I look at it as a form of enshittification accelerationism. You want to turn your platform into a cesspool? Fine, let me give you kindling for the fire. Anything for engagement, right?
Those duplicate accounts already exist. For whatever reason, one specific uncle is a favorite for them to clone.
Yeah, I’ve had a few friend clones attempt to con me. The difference is that the fakes aren’t technically my friend yet, making it pretty obvious they’re fake. If someone I’m already official friends with got hacked or sold then reached out while continuing to played the role, I’d be much less likely to suspect anything is amiss and maybe get scammed.
I don't think you "stick it to the man" by being part of the problem.
Part of the problem? Garbage on Meta platforms isn't a problem, it's a symptom. The problem is with Meta itself.
Create a marketplace listing for a car or something and wait for a scammer with a link to a fake login page.
Like @DrStone says though, I would be concerned about putting your family at risk as a result. I'd also be worried about my own digital security as well... who knows what else you might leak including all the info in your account and anything you've used Facebook to login to.
ALTERNATIVELY you could just look at what other scammers do and post the same Elon Musk crypto scam videos or whatever they're doing now and also message a bunch of your contacts with obvious scamy conversations.
Edit: log in to, log into, login to... IDK.
My personal lexical boundaries (is that a thing?) is that login is usually a noun — e.g. “this is my login and password” — whereas log in is usually a verb.
I don’t think I clearly understand my own usage of into versus in to other than vibes as I reread my own message before sending.
Also, I think “I put my login into the password manager” feels valid, so at this stage I don’t even know.
So it seems unchanged, but you can now say nasty shit about LGBTQIA+ people AND admit openly that you are a bigot.
Some additional context:
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-meta-hate-speech-content-moderation/
Read the article. It's damning.
Yeah they're even doing stuff as petty as removing LGBTQ themes from messenger.
And far deeper things like removal of tampons from mens' bathrooms that were there for transgender and nonbinary employees
It's very clear this is very much align-with-MAGA behavior that includes increasing erasure of LGBTQ+ representation both online and offline.
Fuck these platforms and their MAGA-sympathizing leadership forever (and any techbros that defend them).
Profit and cozying up to power (whether via fear or being emboldened) are their motives and they will fall in line behind anyone no matter how awful or fascist or whatever, as long as it benefits them.
I have informed my few remaining group chats on Messenger that I will likely be deleting my Facebook accounts entirely this year. Now to find a way to jailbreak my Quest 2 to be out of Facebook's control.
If you find a way, I’m also interested, although I suspect my Quest 3 is probably even more locked down.
I did at least create a brand new dummy account just for my quest account, so hopefully that avoids cross contamination, but I think it’s just a matter of time before Meta finds a way to pass information between different apps on my phone regardless of login, and decide to merge my accounts.
It drives me nuts that people have moved away from reliable source of information to these cheetos puffs platforms with profiles that may not even be a real person. I also don't understand how older people are falling for this
Glad you brought it back to TikTok.
It turns out the “internet” of the late 1990s to early 2010s that, I assume, lots of Tildes users grew up with, was an anomaly. Average persons had to learn how to deal with duct-taped-together technical artifact that made thousands of unique attempts of forming communities, setting policies. Forums, video game servers, niche interest websites. You had communities form that, in size, resembled real-life communities where you could know everyone, see different personalities and have human discussions.
All that stuff has been absorbed into maybe five major “hubs” that unify policy and tone. Meta is certainly the largest. This headline is an example of why monopolies are a bad idea. Ironically, both the rich and the left would agree. Only that the right’s solution is to take over the monopolies rather than to break them.
Even Tildes is a place where I generally do not recognize usernames (with a few major exceptions). It’s as if I was screaming replies at a disembodied opinion. It could be a Russian troll farm employee. It could be an AI. I do not even really care. It’s bizarre. And a place like TikTok, X or Reddit is the same but increased by a factor of 1000 or more.
I generally am starting to think of many lived experiences this way. Every generation's experiences I think can be said to be anomalous in many ways. I know a lot of people talk about how older generations used to have it so good because colleges didn't cost as much, families could live off 1 income etc. and that those generations screwed it up for everyone else. I think those were just anomalies. They were never sustainable. I don't mean that to say that all of the good things of the past were destined to go away or that the country was doomed to failure from then on, I mean it in the sense that I think many of those things were results of circumstances that changed over time. There was a time where families survived off 1 income because women weren't really allowed to do much of anything in some cases, society was built around it working that way. Then when they did finally get more rights, those things still take time to fully change courses but inevitably things do change and adapt to the new circumstances, and for a window of time there was a case where families being able to live off 1 income was still the standard and women had more rights and freedoms concurrently.
Mind you the mention of women not having full-time careers relative to today isn't meant to convey that it's the sole or even the most dominant factor to why families can't survive on one income, I'm not making that claim, it's just an example of how I think we could identify other things like that which changed over time and led to that experience being an anomaly. The same could be true if you go back to how black people or other minorities have been treated in the US and factors that changed how people perceived the lived experiences of the past. The great parts were great, the bad parts were bad, but when it comes to remembering the great and wishing they were around again, we often neglect to remember the bad or neglect to consider that they were ever somehow related.
Facebook prior to about 2020 or 2021 was a great place. 95% of the things in my feed were from people or groups I had explicitly decided to connect with. At some point, they obviously flicked some switch after which a lot of memes and ads started pouring into my feed. I'm sure they were laughing all the way to the bank after that one.
What I find interesting is that Facebook, given its vast amount of collected raw data over 2 decades and employing lots of people in the social sciences field, probably knows how social contagion works over the internet. I wonder if there's a similar situation to tobacco companies and lung cancer prior to 1990, that they know something they won't say because it would hurt their bottom lines. So instead of informing everyone, they just use the knowledge to optimize for maximum outrage probably which leads to more clicks which leads to more profit.
And now -- I suppose, probably -- trying to save their asses from some hazy thing the Trump admin is going to force on them.
Honestly didn't expect Zucc fascism arc in 2025.
My repulsion from Meta products continues to be justified.
This is the changelog (click Changelog and Jan 7 for the diff)
https://transparency.meta.com/en-gb/policies/community-standards/hateful-conduct/
Can I recommend to actually read sources before trusting a journalist’s takes on them and claiming there’s a Zuckerberg fascist arc?
And that diff also clearly shows they have added this text for example:
I haven't gone through every point, but it doesn't seem like the journalistic summary on these changes are completely out of line.
Update -- I was on my phone when I reviewed the changes, so now I see what happened with the "china virus" thing I mentioned in the sibling comment. I want to address this because it's a radically obvious example of a journalist taking something and creating a narrative out of it.
Meta updated its "Hateful Conduct" policies. Overall, the changes are not something you can "read into" very much; a lot of them are simplifications, clarifications, etc.
There /are/ some questionable, explicit choices being made. In fact, there's exactly two of them. The one you mentioned, and this one:
This is basically carving an exception for religion and discussion of gender limitations on mil/law/teaching jobs. I personally think it's a stupid addition, but as a reminder it's not Meta endorsing it, it's Meta saying "we won't enforce our policies on such contexts". Why? Probably not "because Zuck is a fascist", but more likely because the enforcement is either too difficult on those cases, it's too much of a grey area, and/or it's causing a lot of false negatives. And given the backlash they face whenever they enforce their policies, I cannot really blame them. They've been moving towards a system where they can wash their hands of this stuff and let the community sort it out.
IDK, I think social media is toxic AF, but it is probably for the better that they're moving to community notes overall anyway.
Now on the other hand, you have this which was removed:
Okay so they're basically removing an explicit mention of covid-19 in the policy. Robert Booth takes this removal and claims:
Implying that the removal was explicitly made so that Trump & co can start saying "China virus". Something which is contradicted by line 2 of the policy:
And more explicitly mentioned in Tier 1 (do not post):
So clearly it's been removed in order to be generalized to all viruses, and now it's a news item spreading shit on Meta.
You know what? I /fucking hate/ Meta with a passion. Why do I have to defend this inane crap? This is just people making their own agenda and picking their own little microwars. And I'll tell you what, being as involved as I am in the actual war in Ukraine really gives you perspective on how ridiculous those microwars are.
And fuck anybody abusing the reader trust built up through decades of professional journalism, to further their own pointless personal agenda.
Why do you feel the need to defend it? Facebook has done nothing to encourage anyone to defend its actions, what with the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the genocide in Myanmar/Burma and now, the fact that Facebook is increasingly getting closer to Trump and other right-wing fascist supporters.
Facebook has done nothing to encourage you to defend it; so why do it?
EDIT to add: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Criticisms_and_controversies
Just Facebook's controversies page alone should give one pause over assuming that Facebook has good intentions behind any of its actions, particularly considering its advent was so that Mark Zuckerberg could rate the attractiveness of women on campus.
The truth matters, and is worth defending, even if you don't like the party in question. Facebook does enough bad things as you say that you don't need to make shit up.
But as has been stated, no one's "making shit up". These have been valid interpretations, as far as I can see, of how Facebook's new policies can take shape. That, combined with Facebook's long-running history of supporting such interpretations (i.e., being bad and allowing racism/etc to permeate the platform), suggests to me that these takes are quite valid.
The point more was that you were implying it wasn’t worth, or is immoral to, “defend facebook” when the original user was trying to determine the actual changes in their moderation policy, because Facebook is bad.
I would argue that it is completely irrelevant how bad or good some entity is when trying to figure out what they’re really doing. This isn’t the propaganda arm of a government.
If someone claimed that Hitler was a cannibal Satanist, I would argue against that, not out of love for Hitler but because it’s not reality.
Apologies for the late reply ... I've been rate-limited.
Calling Hitler a cannibal Satanist is not reality, and it's provably not reality. Calling an interpretation of the change in moderation rules by a company with a spotty track record towards enforcing them "wrong" seems off-base to me. "The written truth" here is only what is explicitly written into the rules themselves, which explicitly allows people to insult others based on their gender identity and "perceived" mental illness. From https://transparency.meta.com/en-gb/policies/community-standards/hateful-conduct/ (emphasis mine):
This, combined with Zuckerberg's right-wing tilting and claiming that people leaving his platforms are only "virtue signaling", suggests to me that these rule changes do not have anyone's best interests in mind - and an interpretation of such, while valid, is misguided in my opinion.
There is "the written truth", and there is "the (whole) truth". "The truth" does matter, and it must in many cases be allowed to extend beyond just the written word. It has to consider who's saying it, what their motivations are, and other factors. Just reiterating the rules doesn't tell the full extent of the truth of the matter; what is and is not possible matters, who is making the changes matters, who is affected by the rules changes matters.
One similar example I've seen was someone on Bluesky explaining how the recent rule changes could be of benefit to sex workers. Which is probably true! However, that's probably not the intended consequence of the rule changes, and should Facebook/Threads/Instagram start looking more and more pro-sex worker ... do you think that'll last? Or do you think the rules will be further adjusted to eliminate their presences?
I haven't researched the Meta rule changes enough to opine on it, my issue is with statements like this
And I suppose my main point is that Adys was not "defending Facebook", they were searching for the truth. That the truth they arrived at after their research happened be more in Facebook's favor than the narrative in the article should have no bearing on what they found.
I think this conflation of "X is bad; you should never say anything good about X" is very harmful in general. Nuance matters.
I phrased my response of "Why do you feel the need to defend it?" specifically because Adys said "Why do I have to defend this inane crap?" It was a direct reference to the words chosen by the person to whom I was responding, using their own language as a sort of rhetorical flourish. Adys themselves stated that they were put into a position where they felt the need to "defend Facebook".
I won't continue to reiterate on what I feel "truth" means, suffice it to say I do agree that nuance matters - which is why I'm stressing the importance of not just reading the written words, but also understanding who wrote them and why, given the context of everything going on right now.
My personal view is not that "[Facebook] is bad; you should never say anything good about [Facebook]". Rather, my view is "[Facebook], like most social media, is bad; you should consider why they are making the changes they are making and whether they are intended to actually help people."
These are issues of humanity, so there is no "truth" per se. Saudi Arabia treats women like 2nd class citizens, but their perspective isn't a "lie" per se. Just vile in my personal perspective.
We can't really be "objective" about topics like this. But meta will try in order to absolve as much personal responsibility as possible.
Basically what @stu2b50 said -- but beyond that, it's not just that "the truth matters", it's that quality, unbiased news institutions matter, and we're losing them everywhere left and right [edit: pun not intended].
An the people willingly or unwillingly falling for the clickbait and feeding the rage-inductive algorithms are part of the problem.
This is what we need to fix. Meta's approach to a dying social network doesn't matter two bits. The spread of quality information is what matters.
Apologies for the late reply ... I got rate-limited.
I agree, but Facebook is not a news institution (although that is debatable, as they could be considered a publisher ... but that's a whole can of worms).
The people you're arguing with - myself included - aren't falling for clickbait though. We've read the changes and are positing interpretations of the consequences of those changes. Even the original journalist has posited what they feel the changes may mean.
Please understand, falling for clickbait is definitely a problem, but there needs to be an understanding that "an interpretation of what changes to moderation policies means" is not the same as "clickbait". The title of the article is "Revisions of ‘hateful conduct’: what users can now say on Meta platforms", with the subheadline "Meta’s rewritten policies mean different things may be allowed to pass on Facebook, Instagram and Threads". None of that is clickbait.
We need to be careful when we start claiming that interpretation of anything is "clickbait", or "biased" as though a bias is inherently a negative thing. I'll let you know that my view is that there is no unbiased journalism, and there never has been. Everyone - every person, every journalist, every editor, every publisher - has biases at work in everything they do; it's impossible not to! Those biases find their way, one way or another, into everything we do. Often, when we ask for something to be "unbiased", what we're really asking for (in my opinion) is that something be unoffensive, "diplomatic", and "fair to both sides".
But sometimes, there are no "both sides". When the written policy of Facebook states, per the article:
... it's hard not to see that as Facebook explicitly allowing (and by extension, encouraging) mis-gendering people.
In addition, we now have Mark Zuckerberg saying, on Threads, that people leaving his platforms over the rule change are "virtue signaling".
So yes, policies may be written to be "unbiased" - but look at the people drafting them. They are not unbiased.
I'm talking about The Guardian, sorry if it was unclear.
Is he wrong? If so how?
More rate-limiting ...
Assuming that you truly don't understand the meaning, "virtue signaling" has become a buzzword to the right-wingers in the United States, as a way of downplaying the intentions behind someone's actions. In this case, Zuckerberg is trying to imply that people aren't quitting Meta's services because of honest-to-goodness belief that Meta is doing wrong - he's claiming that they are doing so as a way of proving to others how good they are, without actual moral or ethical belief behind it.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Virtue%20Signal
Look to what the right-wing in the USA has done with other words and phrases - "critical theory", "politically correct", "woke", "DEI", the list goes on and on. The actual meaning of the words/phrases gets twisted by the right-wing until it no longer means what it was originally used for. So while the words "virtue signal" may literally mean one thing, the implication of its use by someone like Mark Zuckerberg indicates that their meaning lies elsewhere.
See also: https://bsky.app/profile/trungles.com/post/3lfdnnajp3c2h
in the event the link dies, it is a person named Trung Le Nguyen saying:
So yes, Mark Zuckerberg is "wrong". There may be some people that are quitting his services in an effort to "virtue signal" in the fashion he implies, but I think that most people that are quitting are doing so because Facebook is actively harmful in a lot of different ways, and the recent changes to their moderation practices are simply the last straw for a lot of folks.
This ties into the "written truth" versus "whole truth" view of things that I have, where if you only read the words as-written without having the context of who wrote them, and where and why they were written ... then you end up missing a lot of the important details. It is very easy to write a set of rules to abide by, only to not follow them based on various interpretations and meanings.
It's not how I read it at all. In fact, to me, Zuck's post reads the opposite. I read "virtue signaling" as in "[those] people are quitting purely on moral grounds" -- as in, they're quitting on moral grounds rather than have a justification to say the product is worse off.
And one reason I agree wholeheartedly with that take is that I believe anybody who's still using Facebook today out of their own free will has no realistic justification of being on a higher moral ground. Facebook [the platform] has never been a justifiably ethical product. This isn't a tipping point. There was never even a tipping point, the product was built pre-tipped.
I'm not saying that this definitely isn't what Zuckerberg meant, but this is not in line with the common usage of the term "virtue signaling". In common usage, "virtue signaling" carries an accusation of inauthenticity; i.e., you're only (or, at least, primarily) doing the thing because you want to be seen doing a (supposed) good thing, not for the thing itself. That's what the word "signaling" is there for---it implies that the action is performed not for its own sake, but to communicate something.
It's an insult in the same family as "sheeple" and "NPC", because it implies that peoples' actions are being shaped more by social pressures than by rationality.
If Zuckerberg didn't mean that, then he chose his words poorly.
Sure I understand this meaning. To this point Zuck thinks the moral ground is inauthentic— because of course, if he’s leader at Meta he’s not going to think they’re doing something unethical, so if people think they are, they must be wrong.
He’s also diminishing the amount of people involved.
It’s leader/yes man brain. I didn’t question the actual definition of virtue signaling, just the interpretation of the overall meaning of the post.
There's a difference between
Number 2 is what I mean when I say "inauthentic", and it is what "virtue signalling" implies. It doesn't mean that people are incorrect; it means that their actions are motivated by the desire to be seen doing something that other people think is good, not by any authentically-held moral beliefs.
This is what Zuckerberg is implicitly saying about his critics. Again, he's basically calling them sheeple and posers.
And frankly, it's extremely upsetting to me that we're now in an era where this is something that the head of one of the largest corporations in the world can just say that about people, and not only will there be no consequences, but he'll actually benefit from it.
It's poisoning the well. Not "wrong" if you want to take a legal definition of "virtue signaling", but the implications of this are clear. Much more dishonest than any "clickbait" The Guardian posted.
I'm interpreting this as "don't compare humans to animals, viruses, or other life-forms in a derogatory fashion" and having nothing to do with COVID.
This doesn't preclude many forms of hate speech, lies, and combinations thereof.
I agree it’s not completely out of line, but it’s also clearly a take on a set of changes that is exaggerating a lot. I don’t understand where they’re getting the whole “china virus” bit for example.
Honestly I don't understand why he's doing this. He already has billions more than he could possibly use in a lifetime. He already has a stranglehold on online social activity, event planning, messaging, and even VR gaming for generations. He has majority ownership of Facebook voting shares such that nobody can ever oust him and he can do whatever he wants with the company.
Why turn the company into something so awful over the last decade? Surely the money he earns, which means nothing to him because he is already in the top 100 richest people in human history, is not worth the damage to society? Surely it doesn't make him feel good to radicalise old lonely people or advertise the vulnerable into crypto and gambling and ponzi scheme scams?
The same goes for other billionaires like Musk, Bezos, and Bloomberg, though. What is so broken in their minds that makes them prefer wrecking the world to doing something -- anything -- good? I'm not even asking for true good, they could simply stay neutral and not make the world worse. But instead these people make their lowest level employees work insane hours, force RTO for tech workers who can easily work remote or hybrid, push low level workers to piss in bottles without bathroom breaks, bust unions whenever possible, and traumitize other low level employees used for content moderation.
Am I crazy for thinking that these billionaires aren't even human any more? I cannot begin to imagine the shame and moral panic I would experience if I was calling the shots at these companies. I suspect most people with moral codes feel the same.
As per usual in these conversations: Hot take inbound.
I think there are a few things going on, most of which revolves around power. If you have basically unlimited money, what is the next form of currency? Power. You can't always get everything by buying things directly, but you can get them if you hold the keys to the kingdom. Musk can't personally finance going to Mars, but the collective of the US can. Peter Thiel can't buy his warped conservative, fascist ideal world, but the levers of power can make it so. Power is an extension of capital to make your dreams reality.
And they have moral codes, their moral codes are just warped. Elon Musk is a proponent of eugenics - a point he dog whistles with fair regularity. He has a guiding north star, that is surprisingly not unlike Hitler's: He wants to optimize humanity into the smartest, most attractive, efficient race possible. The problem, well there are so many problems with that, but the main one is that all "traits" of humanity are subjective. Before folks dogpile, I'm not calling him Hitler. I'm just pointing out that the "ideals" Hitler was appealing to and the ones that Musk is are very similar.
Lastly, they are all chronically out of touch. They are surrounded by yes men. I imagine most of the end up "believing the hype" about themselves and we end up here. Each billionaire has their own path to becoming a crusty piece of shit, but I'd wager most of them already had a certain amount of narcissism/sociopathy, had those inclinations turbo charged by traditional success and yes men, viewed themselves as "special" which warped their own moral compass, insulated themselves to interact with only folks on a similar trajectory, and realized power is the final form of capital. We saw this with the robber barons of the 20th century and we're just rinse and repeating a 21st century technocrat version.
Great take! I actually just finished reading The Power Broker tonight, and your points about power, money, and yes men certainly resonate with that book in mind. Hopefully they'll follow Moses' trajectory and collapse within the next decade now that they're in the yes men phase.
There's a reason he idolizes Augustus, to the point of copying his basic-ass haircut.
I think this sums it up very well. I especially believe that money ceases to become any kind of driving force for people like this, and maybe it never really was. I think they are driven by power, control and grand visions. It's no coincidence that many billionaires continue to keep working long after they've earned enough to live on for the rest of their lives. They are often very driven and can't stop, even after they've "made it".
The world has truly gone nuts.