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Meta to get rid of factcheckers and recommend more political content (FB, Insta, Threads)

I don't know if the change has happened yet, but this morning FB was suggesting a Fox News page to me .

No thanks
 
A mate has just given me a good tip if anyone else wants to avoid all the unwanted AI bullshit and/or right-wing suggested content.

Go to Feeds and click Friends or Groups or Pages and you get just that - stuff posted by friends or within groups or things you actively follow. The only interruptions are adverts for dull and ordinary stuff, which are just annoying rather than infuriating.

Doesn't stop your mates or groups or pages you follow posting crap, but at least you can bin or mute them.
That’s helpful.

Now I can see the info I need and less of “Photos of Exeter past and present” with comments like “BACK IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS WHEN YOU COULD PARK ANYWHERE FOR FREE AND THERE WERE NO WOKES”
 
Honestly I reckon there's money in someone recreating a purely social Facebook type site, not trying to be cool or cutting edge, just aim it at boring old gen x and boomers and charge a small monthly fee, like £3 (maybe after a few free months to get it rolling, but be transparent it'll be a small charge after a time). No ads, no algorithms, just a chronological feed of what your contacts are doing, their photos, memes etc. If you get a couple million users you've got millions of quid a month coming in.
Don't give me ideas!
 
This just shows the myth of a 'liberal elite' running everything. Its capitalists running everything and if they think adopting a liberal stance is more profitable to their companies they'll adopt a liberal stance. If they think colluding with fascism and rightwing populism will be more profitable, they'll bend the knee, like they're all doing now to the rapist fascist maniac Trump.
 
This just shows the myth of a 'liberal elite' running everything. Its capitalists running everything and if they think adopting a liberal stance is more profitable to their companies they'll adopt a liberal stance. If they think colluding with fascism and rightwing populism will be more profitable, they'll bend the knee, like they're all doing now to the rapist fascist maniac Trump.
Absolutely, it's always been capitalists tolerating liberalism until they don't, for example when woke consciousness starts pointing out that capitalism is the reason everything is shit. That's why they are so much harsher about 'wokeness' than 'political correctness' or 'the loony left that came before- because being 'woke' (if done correctly) is explicitly anti capitalist.
 
Valérie Hayer, an MEP and the leader of the centrist Renew Europe grouping in the European parliament, said: “The EU will remain uncomfortable for social media giants by standing up for the integrity and independence of free expression and democratic processes. Europe will never accept manipulation and disinformation as a standard for society. By abandoning factchecking in the US, Meta is making a profound strategic and ethical mistake.

 
I still find this astonishing:

The changes to Meta’s global policies on hateful content now include allowing users to call transgender people “it”, with the guidelines stating: “We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation.”
 
Main things I note is that there is nothing about the huge amount of scam advertising on Fb, or their use of algorithms that are designed to create “engagement” by amplifying the most base instincts of users.
One of our local marketplaces has been completely taken over by scam ads, report them and FB deny they are problematic.. it’s advertising US fake food banks and cheap yard sales. The marketplace is based in Portugal. Really easy for FB to tell if they gave a shit
 
One of our local marketplaces has been completely taken over by scam ads, report them and FB deny they are problematic.. it’s advertising US fake food banks and cheap yard sales. The marketplace is based in Portugal. Really easy for FB to tell if they gave a shit

Totally, I tried reporting some clear scams for a while and they just said it did not violate any of their standards.
 
Honestly I reckon there's money in someone recreating a purely social Facebook type site, not trying to be cool or cutting edge, just aim it at boring old gen x and boomers and charge a small monthly fee, like £3 (maybe after a few free months to get it rolling, but be transparent it'll be a small charge after a time). No ads, no algorithms, just a chronological feed of what your contacts are doing, their photos, memes etc. If you get a couple million users you've got millions of quid a month coming in.
I've never understood why this hasn't happened already.
 
Totally, I tried reporting some clear scams for a while and they just said it did not violate any of their standards.

This loophole - where social media firms can pretend they aren't running a marketplace, are publishers or are profiting from the content on their sites whilst doing all of that - really needs to be closed now.

If they were a physical marketplace they'd be at least investigated if people were being ripped off constantly, and if they were publishing / profiting from libels in "legacy" media they'd be sued alongside the author. Closing this loophole would have the benefit of not being a "free speech" argument too, as of course everyone else has to play by the same rules.
 
This loophole - where social media firms can pretend they aren't running a marketplace, are publishers or are profiting from the content on their sites whilst doing all of that - really needs to be closed now.

If they were a physical marketplace they'd be at least investigated if people were being ripped off constantly, and if they were publishing / profiting from libels in "legacy" media they'd be sued alongside the author. Closing this loophole would have the benefit of not being a "free speech" argument too, as of course everyone else has to play by the same rules.

In this case I didn’t get the sense of them running a marketplace, just taking ad cash from very dodgy people.

Not disagreeing with anything you say, obv, and I could be wrong about their level of involvement.

I think the “publishing” bit is more thorny.
 
In this case I didn’t get the sense of them running a marketplace, just taking ad cash from very dodgy people.

Not disagreeing with anything you say, obv, and I could be wrong about their level of involvement.

I think the “publishing” bit is more thorny.

TBF I think the publishing bit is the easy one; they sell ads based on the content, have editorial control over the content (at least in terms of approving or banning it after a complaint and in Twitter's case boosting it), they can monetize the content and they licence the content from the creator. Any legislation would need some safeguards - eg: libel action could only be taken against the company as well as the OP after it was brought to the attention of the company and they made a decision to leave it up there, or there were significant negative impacts on the person / people affected - but IMHO it needs to happen.
 
TBF I think the publishing bit is the easy one; they sell ads based on the content, have editorial control over the content (at least in terms of approving or banning it after a complaint and in Twitter's case boosting it), they can monetize the content and they licence the content from the creator. Any legislation would need some safeguards - eg: libel action could only be taken against the company as well as the OP after it was brought to the attention of the company and they made a decision to leave it up there, or there were significant negative impacts on the person / people affected - but IMHO it needs to happen.

Imo this is a much bigger can of worms that I’m a little too drunk/tired to go into detail on right now, but it relates to the effects on how any actions would affect the internet in general.

I agree that they should be held to standards in terms of the advertising they host. And a whole bunch of other standards too in terms of their algorithms. It gets more complicated if you are talking about them being responsible for the user content they transmit.
 
I'm just waiting for the day when they start to come for sites like this... :(
Just a matter of time if the current direction of society continues.
Whilst acknowledging the vileness of present right wing thinking, I do hope we on the left can be honest enough with ourselves to own our contribution to the erosion of free speech in modern society
 
Honestly I reckon there's money in someone recreating a purely social Facebook type site, not trying to be cool or cutting edge, just aim it at boring old gen x and boomers and charge a small monthly fee, like £3 (maybe after a few free months to get it rolling, but be transparent it'll be a small charge after a time). No ads, no algorithms, just a chronological feed of what your contacts are doing, their photos, memes etc. If you get a couple million users you've got millions of quid a month coming in.
Mastodon is this. You can even setup your own one just for your mates but also follow people in the wider network if you want.

Here's an example of a service provider that does this. Lots of people seems to use this: Masto.host - Fully Managed Mastodon Hosting

There's also an instance in Canada that is run like you describe: Cooperative non-profit social media for Canada - CoSocial Community Cooperative
 
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The right. The Powers That Be. The people that shut down dissenting voices when society - or those with power - lurch to the right.

But I'm just thinking out aloud and describing nothing more than a personal hunch.
I seem to remember Facebook group deleting a group of well over 220k members discussing vaccine injuries a couple of years back. Bang! Disappeared overnight.

The Powers That Be ay? :)
 
Facebook has always had loads of rightwing/conspiriloon stuff on it though.

Not sure how these changes will work in the uk with the new social media law coming into effect soon (thread on that somewhere). Maybe this is just for america.
 
Just a matter of time if the current direction of society continues.
Whilst acknowledging the vileness of present right wing thinking, I do hope we on the left can be honest enough with ourselves to own our contribution to the erosion of free speech in modern society
How has this site led to the "erosion of free speech in modern society," exactly?
 
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