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ocd 4 hours ago [-]
He said the thing that Canada, Greenland, Cuba, and various other countries are worried about, but is either publicly ignored in the US or dismissed as "trolling" by the president.
And Meta (or the US government) seems determined to prove him right
Insanity 1 hours ago [-]
Meta == US gov.
It’s another tool in their toolbox. You shouldn’t trust US tech any more than Chinese tech. If anything, probably should trust it less than Chinese tech.
avaer 15 minutes ago [-]
Interesting that people trust foreign tech/government over their own to represent their interests. Not saying you're wrong.
wongarsu 6 minutes ago [-]
For Brazilians and about half of HN readers Meta and Chinese companies are both foreign tech
mc32 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
crisdias 2 hours ago [-]
There is actually a very popular meme in Brazil for what you just did, where a character appears out of nowhere to ask, "What about Lula?" — meaning that if one can find any act (or accusation) of malice from Lula or his party, anything bad the other side does is justifiable and Lula (or his supporters) can't complain.
It's called "whataboutism" in general. The word is used to easily wave away criticism of the other side of the argument without actually addressing it.
brookst 42 minutes ago [-]
“But her emails!” / “but her laugh” / “but he wore a tan suit” for instance. All used to excuse high crimes and thefts of billions of dollars.
vintermann 42 minutes ago [-]
Complaining about whataboutism can be its own kind of whataboutism. I wish people I politically sympathize with would stop giving their enemies good points.
iamnothere 27 minutes ago [-]
Yes, it’s not whataboutism if it’s part of a discussion about bipartisan corruption, for instance. Or when discussing the causes of conflict between two countries. It’s a problem when it is used without context to deflect from the bad actions of one actor or one “side”.
KingOfCoders 1 hours ago [-]
I think there is a difference of a country governing who can say what in that country vs. a foreign company. I don't care if you call it censorship or whatever, it's foreign companies meddling in political affairs.
US companies can meddle as much as they want in US affairs, I don't care. But not in the country I'm in.
Arodex 1 hours ago [-]
By "the government", you mean "courts"?. I understand you may be confused as Trump imagines the law bends to his will, and you never heard of separation of powers.
Can you show us which court order Meta is following to ban Lula's page? Please.
bakugo 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
mc32 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
owebmaster 2 hours ago [-]
The creator of this website, derechadiario, is in jail for murder attempt, corruption, fake news and bot manipulation. It seems his minions are also working here.
Pointing out an issue with one action doesn't mean approval of other actions. You don't have to invent an conspiracy.
cramer4next 2 hours ago [-]
I think it does when you don't see the same level of rage when its exactly the same thing. Its called polorization. If you accepted it the first time you've all ready approved it universally.
urbsgpw 1 hours ago [-]
I think if you are a partisan you're always going to find differences in the two scenarios which are meaningful enough to explain to yourself and others why your outrage (or lack of it) is warranted.
And here's the thing, I'm sure there are meaningful differences. But then again there's also loads of similarities. A similar thing on the geopolitical stage is the status of Kosovo. The moment it was accepted as a separate entity you opened a floodgate. President of Croatia had a very nice clip about it a while ago, basically accepting both things to be true at once: Kosovo is a state that we need to accept but we also need to admit it was illegally taken from Serbia. This sort of duality (what Nader called being able to walk and chew gum at the same time, although for a completely different situation, I forget what the topic was) is very rare.
On HN i made the mistake of defending, for lack of a better word, a certain tech oligarch who shall not be named where I eventually made a similar point to yours and got downvoted to oblivion.
I could understand the framing being: all censorship is bad (even though I suppose this view would be called childish by some). I could also understand the framing that there is too much concentration of power in the hands of these corporations (and then the inevitable cries to break them up or nationalize them). But, for example, just pointing out that nobody was against these same practices when they were aimed at the other end of the political spectrum (SF billionaires were the darlings of the Democrat and not Republican establishment) causes such outrage from what I would guess are generally well meaning and intelligent people, that it boggles the mind.
It really seems to be something in our species that turns us into crusaders for certain topics. I can very well imagine that this same biological(?) impulses, where you are incredibly convinced in your own morality, must have led to the spread of early christianity (and then to the same or even larger degree, Islam). And it has to come from a place of conviction because otherwise u cant explain the zeal. And anybody who isn't as convinced (maybe partially agreeing) gets dealt with viciously. I'm making Tom Hollands point (in a very erratic manner), that what we consider modern universalism (aka wokeness) is a natural continuation of christianity. I would just go further and say that I think there is something in us all (to varying degrees) that we want to spread a certain gospel of what it is to be a moral person. And if someone disagrees they are not moral.
Levitz 2 hours ago [-]
Pointing out that these criticisms seem completely unprincipled is not inventing a conspiracy.
shevy-java 2 hours ago [-]
Which conspiracy exactly?
It is clear that we do not see all communication. Governments become increasingly deceitful and secretive - the US government is the best example, but the same applies to other governments (just look at the garbage produced by the russian government, they almost outperform the current US administration with total crap, like what Lavrov recently babbled about - what pile of nonsense). And companies - they are alo secretive. So which conspiracy exactly is meant here? It's not that I disagree with your prior statement, but I want to know which conspiracy you assume to be here to exist, or to NOT exist. Because what you wrote is very unspecific - you insinuate that there may not be a conspiracy. How do you conclude that?
I concur with Levitz's statement too, with regards to conspiracy or "inventing" one - so, which specific conspiracy was meant?
AnimalMuppet 1 hours ago [-]
That would require that Meta is carrying water for Trump. I don't think I see that as very likely.
Meta restored Lula's FB account hours after it got flagged for content that as posted on their page. That is a pretty weak basis for a conspiracy theory.
rbanffy 16 seconds ago [-]
Did they anticipate there would be large numbers of attempts to report the page and cause it to be automatically flagged and/or blocked?
I am sure the American president is target for such efforts as well and provides ample material for rules violations.
parineum 18 minutes ago [-]
donating money to the president and their party is something nearly every national corporation does. Using their corporate power to do political favors is not. those are two very different things.
50 minutes ago [-]
penguin_booze 49 minutes ago [-]
The same old cool-aid: the label on bottle reads "freedom". But if you look at the ingredients: greed, gluttony, looting, bullying, spread american culture, slavery, surveillance - the full nth-amendmend package. Dosages may vary.
condenser 4 hours ago [-]
Facebook election interference has been going on for a long time in Europe. It's a two-tier system where parties outside the establishment have a far lower ban-threshold.
NinjaTrance 3 hours ago [-]
They changed their name to "Meta" after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
callc 29 minutes ago [-]
If they changed their name to “Flobular” it wouldn’t change a thing.
They’re Facebook in many people’s minds.
“Meta” doesn’t convey the same meaning that “Facebook” does. And it’s also squatting on an important term in English. Mets is used all over the language, like metaphysical.
No thanks, I’ll use Facebook
mindslight 23 minutes ago [-]
A one letter change gets you Faceboot, as in "a boot stamping on a human face - forever". Just sayin'.
LtWorf 2 hours ago [-]
Facebook marked a video where a famous Italian author was saying what he was going to vote and why as "fake news". Of course he's opposing the current right wing pro-USA government.
edit: yes please, as usual, keep downvoting factual information.
mc32 3 hours ago [-]
During Covid I was told that when Meta censors speech it’s not censorship because it’s a private company -despite much of the contentious censorship at that time being precipitated by Biden admin “embeds”?
Why is this action by a private company now considered censorship but wasn’t back then?
Moreover why are people not complaining about Lula mandating the censorship on X of about 600 opposition leaders? Why is that not called out? Oh, they like that censorship.
Look up Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It explains the current situation and should be obvious that it's less than perfect. Basically without this then online platforms would be responsible for the content they host (publishers) and would have been sued into oblivion before any of them got up and running... especially Facebook with it's beginnings. So to compensate there's the good samaritan provision which is the whole censorship thing from the right's perspective (like back during Covid) and the protection from being a publisher let's them host hate speech from the left's perspective.
Personally I think making them public square is probably the only real solution if you want to keep social media and avoid this drama, or make them liable as publishers and these platforms will disappear overnight (maybe the best result?!?)...
This carries over into LLMs I presume, which have bias and I assume are not being sued for the content the publish? I'm not really sure about how it applies to LLMs to be honest.
Regardless, other countries will have different laws, that have different takes on censorship and what private companies are responsible for.
mc32 31 minutes ago [-]
Ok, but here we have people not from Brazil claiming that a private company is guilty of censorship but also was not guilty of censorship when government "embeds[1]" in the US would flag what they labeled disinformation and blocked discussion on Covid, Covid origins, laptops with evidence, suspended political accounts in the US, etc. So, it seems people want to have it both ways -essentially they want to censor things they disagree with and also don't want censorship of things they agree with.
[1] Of course, that was plainly censorship with a veneer of plausible deniability (it assumed those embeds could only be truthful and unbiased and in no way politically motivated).
rapind 25 minutes ago [-]
Who are these "people"? I'm certainly not one of them, and I consider myself a progressive.
UncleMeat 18 minutes ago [-]
What people are objecting to is how this relates to facebook's recently stated principles. They'd said that things like deplatforming Trump were mistakes and that they won't do these sorts of things again. And then...
icantevenhold 2 hours ago [-]
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LtWorf 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
lesuorac 2 hours ago [-]
Say what you want.
Pretty much every time somebody backs up these kinds of claims it shows something else.
1) posts going out 500 times a day in all caps (who is arguing you can’t suppress spam?)
2) the post that you read and so clearly wasn’t suppressed.
3) they’re linking to a low scoring comment
LtWorf 2 hours ago [-]
Socials should do no scoring whatsoever. Once you score you are editorialising which means you should have a director that is liable for everything published.
If you don't want that, no editorialising, let people see just the people they follow or what their friends share and that is it.
Can't have it both ways.
lesuorac 44 minutes ago [-]
They absolutely should do scoring. Imagine i posted this comment as a response to every single other comment here.
Nobody is going to want to use a platform with spam.
actionfromafar 4 hours ago [-]
Isn't it probably an n-tier system which is pay to play?
typicalbot 3 hours ago [-]
the pay-to-play claim is wrong, the issue is the ban threshold itself, post certain topics from the "wrong" political side and you get banned almost instantly, the same ideas posted repeatedly from the other prefered side of the us gov face no consequences on especially meta and twitter
mondomondo 3 hours ago [-]
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abroszka33 4 hours ago [-]
I hope Lula wins and they will ban Facebook for good after the elections. This is an attack on Brazil’s sovereignty.
subw00f 46 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, me too, but he’s a coward. I wish there would be an actual leftist running for president this year.
tryauuum 4 hours ago [-]
nothing good usually comes out of governments censoring internet
ben_w 4 hours ago [-]
In this case, the unelected leadership of Facebook is apparently censoring the free speech of a political candidate.
I don't really know anything about Lula (I wouldn't have known this was Brazil if it wasn't explicitly mentioned, I only know from the Wikipedia page 30 seconds ago that their full name is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and "Lula" is a nickname), so I can't say if they're "fine" or "evil", but one does not simply get to disregard the implications of censorship (of anyone, let alone a political party) when it happens to be done by a private corporation.
Especially when it's a foreign private corporation that's already deeply suspicious for political interference in multiple nations, as Meta is.
42 minutes ago [-]
tryauuum 3 hours ago [-]
It feels like your treat the facebook as some common good, and censorship made by it thus preposterous, something which should be punished
But it's a multimillion dollar corporation in a foreign country, to me the idea they owe you something is strange
---
Governments are still more powerful than corporations, this is why I am more afraid of the censorship of the internet by governments than of it by corporations
vincnetas 3 hours ago [-]
"Governments are still more powerful than corporations" at this point i would not be so sure anymore. especially when some of corporations have full weight of us goverment behind them.
brookst 40 minutes ago [-]
Not coincidentally, there’s a word for the consolidation of government and corporate power.
BLKNSLVR 2 hours ago [-]
All the more reason to ban Meta. If Meta are actively taking sides in Brazilian elections, then the site _should_ be banned, even if it's temporary for the lead-up to the election.
Meta can do whatever they want, but so can a sovereign nation if they deem Meta was actively subverting their democratic process.
> Governments are still more powerful than corporations
Corporations aren't all equal. And Meta is one of the most unequal. Add to that the relationship with Trump's government, and your 'corporations' argument is meaningless.
If it were some other mutli-national that doesn't have its own massively popular news platform, I'd be much more likely to agree.
LtWorf 2 hours ago [-]
Facebook has to follow the law like everyone else… I know they don't like to but…
hvb2 28 minutes ago [-]
Spoiler, they only follow court orders. You can violate the law as long as you want until there's a judge saying you do. This is just modus operandi for any big corp in America nowadays.
2 hours ago [-]
bakugo 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
icantevenhold 2 hours ago [-]
You’re inventing a person that thinks COVID censorship was good and this censorship is bad and then you are getting mad at this fictional person (which might just as well exist but no one here made that argument)
Sounds to me like you just want to be mad
yostrovs 45 minutes ago [-]
You are erasing a real person, with real lived experience, that exists by the count of millions.
catlifeonmars 45 minutes ago [-]
You’re assuming that the people in this thread made a different argument about platform censorship before and therefore hold a double standard. May I suggest you stop arguing against the straw man you put up?
phatfish 2 hours ago [-]
You are right, and it's the reason Meta and all the other American billionaire owned platforms need to be null routed outside of the US.
ModernMech 3 hours ago [-]
You’re conflating the first amendment with free speech generally. They are different (related) concepts. The person you’re replying to did not appeal to the first amendment.
bakugo 3 hours ago [-]
I'm not conflating anything, I'm simply repeating what I was told hundreds of times in the past by others in their defense of social media censorship, such as when Twitter banned Trump. So, is it different now?
rpgbr 3 hours ago [-]
Are you aware that US laws don't apply in other countries?
ericmay 2 hours ago [-]
Well sometimes they do. Plus if another country is regulating or doing something to a company from your country I think it’s fair to have an opinion about it.
Plus a number of folks use the universality of their preferred politics when another country does something they like or don’t like. “International law”, “rules-based order”, those sorts of things. It’s pretty common to see.
ModernMech 3 hours ago [-]
No, it’s not different now because you’re conflating two different things. One is the first amendment cited in Twitter case. The other is free speech cited here.
Did Twitter violate the principles of free speech by shutting Trump down? Well he was using his speech to foment an insurrection and caused a mob to sack the Capitol so yes, Twitter, within the bounds of the first amendment, for an eminently justifiable reason (to preserve democracy), attacked Trump’s speech, which is against free speech, yet preserves free speech, because the alternative was allowing insurrection to continue. The first amendment cannot hold under a dictatorship, as we are seeing right now as all press are (were? Are they complying with the order?) illegally banned from the White House.
It’s not straightforward but it’s consistent.
megous 3 hours ago [-]
"A private corporation has the right to restrict speech on their own platform at their discretion."
Not really. Let's say Meta banned all blacks from advertising on facebook tomorrow. That would run against federal law.
If a company openly acts as an enemy of the democratic process, I'm not sure it's the same as censoring a random porn site.
petcat 4 hours ago [-]
It depends on which side of the "democratic process" benefits the most. It's the eternal debate.
throwaway27448 2 hours ago [-]
Surely meta sides on the side that's more willing to pay them. While this is in line with "democracy" it seems distinctly bad
nasmorn 4 hours ago [-]
The platform want to be both just neutral platforms and police content. This is ridiculous. Either be liable for the rape threats or don’t interfere at all.
_ink_ 4 hours ago [-]
I agree platforms are not neutral anymore. They decide what people see. They are entirely responsible for the feed. They should be liable accordingly.
throwaway27448 3 hours ago [-]
> nothing good usually comes out of governments censoring internet
First of all, nothing good has ever come out of meta.
Secondly, restricting election interference seems like an unalloyed positive.
basilikum 3 hours ago [-]
You don't need to censor access to the platform itself. Just declare the group for what it is: a criminal cartel. Then just make it illegal to do business with criminal organizations: no Brazilian ads on Facebook anymore.
grommz 2 hours ago [-]
> nothing good usually comes out of governments censoring internet
wrong. Blocking Facebook in China because they didn't follow domestic laws was the best thing that happened to the Chinese internet. It enabled the growth of domestic platforms like WeChat, Weibo and Tiktok.
cassianoleal 4 hours ago [-]
This is not censoring "the Internet". Meta and Facebook are a private company incorporated in a foreign country.
abyssin 4 hours ago [-]
And their size puts them in a different class. If a foreign entity has effective powers that make it similar in some ways to a foreign state, it makes sense to treat it as such.
throwaway27448 2 hours ago [-]
Ok so sanction and fine their ass until they start behaving. If we can sanction north korea for having an ideology we don't like, surely brazil can sanction meta's ass for trying to blatantly meddle in another state's affairs. Bar every employee from traveling there. Freeze any assets. Use diplomacy to pressure the US to press charges. Make them come to heel for chrissake
zapkyeskrill 4 hours ago [-]
And they can stay private and isolated to that foreign country. Everyone happy
tryauuum 3 hours ago [-]
how do you block access to it without going to TCP/IP level? And when governments do that, everything goes to shit
cassianoleal 3 hours ago [-]
Make it illegal. Make it illegal for local advertisers to do business with them. Sanction individuals that cannot be locally prosecuted. Sanction the company.
It's already a requirement that to operate in Brazil they need local representation. Someone local who can be prosecuted, even if it's just a proxy - I'm hazy on the details but I remember reading about this at one point when they went after Twitter.
Is it going to fully stop Brazilians from using the service? Most likely not, but it will almost certainly reduce their usage, and the remaining users become a less profitable product to Meta, since they're not going to see ads for companies they can actually spend money on.
This changes incentives and may well be enough to make Meta rethink their policies. Or not, but then its effects can be measured and adjusted.
twoodfin 2 hours ago [-]
So actual government censorship.
phatfish 2 hours ago [-]
Better than Facebook censorship. I can vote for my government. I have no control over the whims of Zuck (or the US Gov).
oblio 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, like the US government already does with about 10 countries on this planet.
NikolaNovak 3 hours ago [-]
Not supporting the idea, but this feels like the traditional technical details vs practical real world solution.
Rather than banning individuals right to access a site, and then playing technical whackamole, you make that company's ability to operate in a country illegal. this puts the incentives and the technical onus where it belongs.
Again not saying they should or I support the notion of banning a site. Just that there are practical legislative solutions.
subw00f 48 minutes ago [-]
Facebook is not the internet. If anything, their existence is a net negative for the internet.
Hoasi 4 hours ago [-]
Facebook is not the internet.
bel8 4 hours ago [-]
Didn't t Brazil also ban discord screen sharing and camera?
I often use Study Together which is a large discord server (50k users online) for folks to work and study in groups/body doubles, but someone told me a lot of Brazilians have to use VPN to circumvent the ban.
Facebook is hardly a neutral part of the internet.
gloomyday 3 hours ago [-]
Meta is not the Internet. It is a company.
tryauuum 60 minutes ago [-]
it's a part of internet. To properly block it, you need to block it on the IP level
laerus 3 hours ago [-]
Then they should go wild on a governmental campaign about how FB is bad for mental health with daily TV, radio ads etc. Fight fire with fire.
croes 4 hours ago [-]
But isn’t this the internet censoring a government?
bjt12345 3 hours ago [-]
Actually, the Australian government censored the internet for children and it appears to be working out as being good.
ipaddr 2 hours ago [-]
Appears is the key word as most have gotten around the ban while others move to other sites usually from China.
oblio 2 hours ago [-]
Laws can be iterated on.
vrganj 3 hours ago [-]
Private companies are censoring the internet right now to interfere with democracy.
This ideological fear of democratic structures ignores the very real threat of autocratic, privately owned structures consolidating more and more power.
The only viable counterweight to corporate power is public power.
tjpnz 4 hours ago [-]
They don't have to censor the internet. They just have to make it illegal for their citizens to do business with Meta.
tryauuum 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, this would be a better outcome. Or at least make it illegal for politicians to use facebook / TikTok
From where I am, one third of politicians in recent elections have tiktok. It's a shame, everyone knows about human rights violation in China but the european politicians have no issues with using tiktok.
surgical_fire 3 hours ago [-]
This is less like censoring the internet and more like banning lead-based paint.
andrepd 4 hours ago [-]
Even less good comes out of corpos doing it, yet we accept it as the status quo. The ubiquity and totalitarian control exerted by the big platforms is something even the media moguls of the 90s couldn't even dream of.
And it wasn't that long ago.
phatfish 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe not when internet was an open platform. Now it is controlled by a few American billionaires that love they have a US Gov administration that thinks the same way as them.
throw_m239339 3 hours ago [-]
Right, don't ban them that's bad for free speech, just impose huge fines on Facebook to bankrupt them.
vachina 3 hours ago [-]
Depends on who the government is. You can’t realistically give anyone full write access to your populace.
criley2 2 hours ago [-]
Conflating "the internet" with "~Trillionaire owned, oligarchy controlled, American social media" is certainly a choice.
I'll say the opposite: Every single place that has banned American social media is better for it. Every group of people denied access to American social media are healthier and happier for it.
4ndrewl 1 hours ago [-]
And yet this is somehow better?
altmanaltman 4 hours ago [-]
But something good comes out of facebook being able to censor the internet?
Its like throwing a grenade into a goverment building and being surprised that the government now wants to prosecute you. It is a fair prosecution based on actions in that case.
Banning facebook might actually be a moral good for the internet but that's my personal opinion.
llm_nerd 2 hours ago [-]
Eh, as a staunch free speech advocate, I absolutely want Meta and X banned from Canada. That doesn't stem free speech at all, and is akin to banning a propaganda arm of a hostile foreign government.
They are cancerous propaganda/idiocracy funnels that are destructive to every Western country. They should not be freely operating anywhere but American America of America, Inc (TM Trump Inc).
cindyllm 2 hours ago [-]
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avazhi 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ben_w 4 hours ago [-]
What you call "leaching" we call "comparative advantage" on good days, and "dear god just ban it all already" on bad days.
What you call "I mean seriously aside from Airbus and ASML wtf even goes on over there in terms of actual technological development", Trump calls "a trade deficit" and tries to stop.
(The "deficit" becomes almost, not perfectly but relatively, neutral if you include the digital stuff like FB).
avazhi 4 hours ago [-]
Just ban it and make your own social networks then? Surely it’s easy and straightforward to do.
If the social networks provide no value then ban them. And if they do but they are so harmful then create your own.
AKA everything looks easy when it isn't your field.
avazhi 3 hours ago [-]
Did I really need the /s tag?
sjbzbeiks 4 hours ago [-]
I mean … that would have large large costs when the Americans retaliate. I don’t think this is the easy call you claim it is for Europe.
avazhi 4 hours ago [-]
That’s my point. The Europeans heavily rely on America for all sorts of shit, but all the Europeans do is whine and complain about literally everything. I’m no trump or Facebook/zuckerberg fan, nor do I even live in America.
But it’s actually laughable how much the Europeans complain about the Americans/American big tech while at the same time inventing no alternatives themselves and in fact relying on America for a whole host of shit, notably their defence. AI is another great example where the Europeans won’t cease complaining but don’t have and apparently won’t have a single frontier model of their own. Mistral is the best they’ve got lol.
Europeans love to berate and criticise others for building something but won’t build it themselves (and they still use what’s being built in the end).
Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
ben_w 4 hours ago [-]
> But it’s actually laughable how much the Europeans complain about the Americans/American big tech while at the same time inventing no alternatives themselves and in fact relying on America for a whole host of shit, notably their defence. AI is another great example where the Europeans won’t stfu with their whining but don’t have and apparently won’t have a single frontier model of their own. Mistral is the best they’ve got lol.
That's like criticising people for complaining about cigarettes when they don't even have their own cigarette companies.
> Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
No it’s not. There are several European efforts to develop AI, they just aren’t good at it and it isn’t anywhere near frontier level. The analogy is that the Europeans are trying to make their own cigarettes but can’t do it as well as the cigarette makers they are criticising and fining constantly.
glerk 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
cassianoleal 4 hours ago [-]
Actually, elections in Brazil are highly regulated and rules are enforced in the name of fairness. If Meta/Facebook want to keep serving the Brazilian public, they need to abide by local laws.
Brazil is not a "little corporation with a fancy flag". Brazil is a democratic republic. The largest in Latin America, and one of the largest in the world.
ben_w 4 hours ago [-]
> Your little corporation with a fancy flag and its “sovereignty” isn’t scaring anyone.
Do I misunderstand, or are you calling Brazil, the nation whose population is around 214 million, a "little corporation"?
glerk 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
vrganj 3 hours ago [-]
That entity is the democratic representation of those two hundred million people. What you are suggesting is nothing less than colonial disenfranchisement of Latin America. I guess it wouldn't be the first time?
glerk 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
NicuCalcea 4 hours ago [-]
Corporations can host whatever they want and governments can ban them for it.
cassianoleal 4 hours ago [-]
And can also criminally prosecute the individuals responsible for those decisions if the law says so.
croes 4 hours ago [-]
If you reach a certain market power it isn’t so easy anymore.
If you become something like public infrastructure you have to act like one or reduce your importance
Etiquette8790 1 hours ago [-]
American terrorists cry wolves about election interference in their country during election period. But the real fact is they interfere in democracy and democratic process across every part of the world. This is to help bolsenaro and destroy BRICS.
throwaway27448 3 hours ago [-]
I don't understand why countries don't simply block facebook, instagram, etc. There's zero upside to allowing them.
literalAardvark 3 hours ago [-]
I'm just as confused as you are.
The economic value seems literally negative and the influence on the discourse massive and much too unpredictable.
The recent Romanian election where a focused botnet created a pro russian candidate from thin air 2 weeks before the election _and got him elected president_ should really be proof enough that the state of things is unnatural.
raddan 2 hours ago [-]
I hadn’t heard of this, so here’s more context [1] for the curious.
Because western democracies are about freedom of speech and access to information ?
jareklupinski 2 hours ago [-]
> why countries don't simply block facebook
because everyone currently in power has used it to get there
why would they block their best weapon?
rapind 26 minutes ago [-]
In an ideal society, I think you just tax digital ads to help compensate for the damage from this attention economy. Maybe even use that money for education?
puelocesar 13 minutes ago [-]
You have to understand the president position is extremely weak, since he’s a centrist posing as left wing, there’s a lot of scrutiny on all his actions and he has very little support in congress, since it’s a very conservative country politically dominated by evangelicals and big farmers.
Blocking Facebook would be deeply damaging for him, they would quick him out even before the election
sva_ 42 minutes ago [-]
But many countries do: China, Russia, North Korea, Myanmar, [...].
Do you think it is aspirational to join that club? Because I don't think so.
parineum 13 minutes ago [-]
I'm against government building a scaffold to be able to block selective parts of the Internet because the block list always expands and never retracts.
firtoz 3 hours ago [-]
The people rely on them too much, sadly
_bent 2 hours ago [-]
People in Iran or China don't rely on Facebook and Instagram.
Before Facebook penetrated Europe in ~2010, each local market was dominated by copycat services like StudiVZ or Hyves, which then vanished within 2 years.
When the US floated the idea of banning TikTok, some people felt compelled to download Chinese social media apps.
If a country was to ban Facebook from operating in their country, people would be on an alternative 2 weeks after.
There are reasons why a Facebook ban would be hard to enact, but dependence on the product is not one of them
icantevenhold 2 hours ago [-]
I think you’re not aware how deeply engrained WhatsApp and instagram are in Brasil.
I think dependence is definitely a problem because everyone would get mad at you for having to switch. Sure in the long run it wouldn’t be an issue but immediately you will lose some voters
ByThyGrace 19 minutes ago [-]
Didn't Brazil massively adopt Bsky as an alternative to X? And in a very short timespan too? Did they turn around on that?
subw00f 44 minutes ago [-]
When WhatsApp was banned for a day, people immediately migrated to Telegram. This is not an excuse.
fg137 2 hours ago [-]
This may sound weird, but: Alternatives will appear, just like how Chinese people have been able to live their lives without access to Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp etc. The alternatives may not be good -- I'd argue the Chinese version of Google (Baidu) is quite a lot worse in many ways -- but they work and are good enough for most people.
throwaway27448 2 hours ago [-]
That's not weird at all. This is the very schumpeterian premise this forum is built on.
crisdias 2 hours ago [-]
Because people cry "censorship" — just like we are seeing here in the comments.
subw00f 45 minutes ago [-]
Well, with all due respect, fuck them. If they’re so desperate, let them use VPNs.
icantevenhold 2 hours ago [-]
Brasil pretty much runs on WhatsApp and instagram - they are by faaaaaar the most popular communication platforms.
It’s cooked.
fleroviumna 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
MrToadMan 4 hours ago [-]
A more accurate headline would be 'temporarily blocked' given the first line below the heading is 'The page is now back online' and it seems to have been brought back online the same day.
throwaway27448 3 hours ago [-]
I can't find the postmortem. Do you know where the posted it?
amelius 4 hours ago [-]
I would be in favor of blocking ALL political expressions on social media a few weeks before elections.
But this case is something else entirely.
bilekas 36 minutes ago [-]
It's difficult to completely block all political expression, but I think it's a no brainer to simply not allow any political advertising money to be accepted. From the pacts or anyone. When you're taking money to promote a political opinion you've become part of that influence.
Social media is too powerful and influential to be allowed continue unchecked. Falsities, defamation cases all take too long for the election cycle. So you get garbage in, and then you get a populist TV show host as president who doesn't understand economic interests rates, international trade, pain points of international war.
anon109 1 hours ago [-]
Many countries already have electoral silence (but it's limited to one or two days usually).
crisdias 2 hours ago [-]
Saying "no political expression this week" is a political expression that usually favors the status quo.
rdsubhas 1 hours ago [-]
I think you're taking it too far.
Exactly 48 hours (before and on the day of election), banning electoral advertising is the right thing, gives voters the mental space to make up their own decision. It's the silence period.
Add much as I hate the lead up to elections, I love the day before and on, where it becomes purely personal.
bilekas 34 minutes ago [-]
That's simply not true though. There are cases when no answer is an answer. But this is simply not participating. As they shouldn't.
krior 4 hours ago [-]
Define political expression.
tene80i 3 hours ago [-]
The law isn’t code. It doesn’t require formal definition of all boundaries.
Then people will carve around the edges. Also do you need to moderate every single post or comment by anyone? That's not free also.
tene80i 3 hours ago [-]
Speech is already not entirely free and it works fine. You can’t scream “murder all the X” in a theatre. It doesn’t break the concept of freedom to have regulations, and assuming nothing can be regulated just leads to governance by corporation.
parineum 12 minutes ago [-]
> You can’t scream “murder all the X” in a theatre
You actually can.
amelius 3 hours ago [-]
It can be worked out. It does not need to be perfect. I see no need to start an endless discussion on it here.
dmix 45 minutes ago [-]
According to Google, Meta restored their account within hours after it got flagged for some content.
This happens all the time on these social media websites. Automatic flagging of content, human reviewers restore it.
largbae 35 minutes ago [-]
Whether you're for or against Lula, the only logical position is to oppose censorship. Eventually the tool gets used against you too.
aretology 36 minutes ago [-]
The problem is that US needs subservient explorable countries for its resources, and that's exactly what the other candidate will drliver.
forinti 1 hours ago [-]
The US proves "every accusation is a confession" and "accuse them of what you do and call them what you are".
KingOfCoders 1 hours ago [-]
The US empire at work. Luckily for all of us its 1955 and the empire is on its last legs.
tremon 55 minutes ago [-]
why is it 1955? Do you see parallels between how trans people are treated today and the start of the civil rights movement?
KingOfCoders 49 minutes ago [-]
No, the British Empire, the one dominating before the US, finally ended in 1956. We'll see if the Russian empire collapses before the US one.
smallerfish 3 hours ago [-]
Everybody in tech should read Careless People, not just to learn details about Meta. I'm sure many of us (myself included) have worked at places where the technical challenge outweighs any concerns about the overall company's mission or effect on the world at large. In Facebook's case they have a lot of blood on their hands.
renatovico 2 hours ago [-]
Brasil is never block Facebook at all, WhatsApp is the most used app and Instagram too, only TikTok is relevant competitor, but recent the brazil governor block meta from try control payments like eu did with Gatekeeper rules, sorry but yes this is right vs left but is lot more is about civ social and work class fight, the social media is the New press and society is manipuled
nalekberov 2 hours ago [-]
Did you understand what you wrote here?
lifeisstillgood 3 hours ago [-]
In the same way USA is realising “holy crap all our stuff is made in China”, every non-US company is realising “holy crap, all our news and information runs through a couple of American web sites”
Yes this looks like a overly enthusiastic attempt to block disinformation during an election (a good thing, and also LuLa will be sailing close to that line if not over it)
But Brazils most famous election candidate just booked his whole campaign on Facebook. I bet he prints the flyers in Brazil, I bet he speaks on Brazilian TV and radio, appears on Brazilian podcasts, but the globalisation race means he has to use American social media.
The only response is going to be Balkanisation or ending curation by algorithm.
Interesting
N_Lens 5 hours ago [-]
Calculated & orchestrated I believe.
Zestymarble45 5 hours ago [-]
Having worked ad review, mass flags like this are usually a dumb classifier, not a plan.
Alien1Being 3 hours ago [-]
Meta and Mark are the new Murdoch.
Evil always finds new acolytes.
dkobia 3 hours ago [-]
No one used to care about elections in other countries, but it seems political polarization is truly globalized now. An election in one country seems to carry such heavy stakes for citizens elsewhere. Why? Transnational disinformation? Sad time.
cloudie78 3 hours ago [-]
Waiting for people to realise that this is not a recent Facebook specific development.
bell-cot 4 hours ago [-]
If giant foreign corporations, American interventions, or just Zuck were sufficiently unpopular in Brazil, then this could help Lula on election day.
Anyone familiar, to comment?
owebmaster 2 hours ago [-]
Pretty much the opposite, influencers depend on it and have a disproportional "influence" and audience given by Meta to keep pushing their agenda
jdw64 4 hours ago [-]
Last time I looked, Lula was favored, but this time it seems he's about even with the far-right opponent, Flávio. How do you think it'll turn out?
theaustein7 30 minutes ago [-]
Flavio is the favorite on exchange betting markets. Not by much though... he's rated a 57% chance to win the presidency.
aprilthird2021 32 minutes ago [-]
Trump will pull his favorite move a fake promise of cold hard cash to vote for his preferred candidate bc he's the least America First president there ever was
dotcoma 5 hours ago [-]
They never said "Don't do evil".
Zuck famously said, of his users: "dumb fucks".
BLKNSLVR 2 hours ago [-]
Sadly he wasn't, and still isn't, wrong.
Doesn't mean he's not a totally corrupt shell of a human being though.
hkt 3 hours ago [-]
Remember when Facebook was a nice place to talk to your friends,and not an arm of the American state whipping up hatred, spreading misinformation, and interfering with elections?
To those who work there, I'd be fascinated to hear an explanation that isn't about dollars.
TheFuntastic 2 hours ago [-]
Careless People (the book) is a great study on how Facebook ran out of growth in western territories (due to market saturation), combined with a callous disregard for the consequences to regular people - led to an ever increasing willingness to deploy political levers in order to keep the hyper growth train running...
icantevenhold 1 hours ago [-]
I genuinely cant remember that - maybe there was a golden age before it went international but I pretty much used to use fb only for consuming political rage bait (luckily i stopped many years ago)
Ylpertnodi 2 hours ago [-]
> Remember when Facebook was a nice place to talk to your friends,
No.
I tried it for a week, 20 years ago.
Fb bastards still have my info, but I am not signing in ever again.
petesergeant 4 hours ago [-]
I mean by all means ban Meta everywhere, but this is a Reddit post linking to a substack post that’s a republish of a heavily politicized new source, and fails to mention the page was restored the same day, and also fails the very basic journalist standard of approaching Meta for comment, so I think we can do a little better here?
The good ole "If it fits my agenda it's true" test
pestatije 5 hours ago [-]
"your account violates our terms of use, if you think that is not the case tell us why not"
michelb 4 hours ago [-]
Here we go again
shevy-java 2 hours ago [-]
Not surprising - Suckerberg is one of the BigBro oligarchs running the USA right now. I think the bigger issue is that so many people helped empower these dictator-like corporations in the first place. That is actually a big problem, that the society world-wide depends on these private companies so much. Why do we not have working alternatives here that are decoupled from these corporations? (I could add US-centric corporations, but let's be honest - other companies as big may behave in the same way. It is also clear that current legislation is ineffective; Suckerberg should be held accountable and be in jail, without way to buy himself out here.)
cindyllm 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
johnnyApplePRNG 4 hours ago [-]
Trump is pro Israel. Zuck bends over backwards to get Trump elected.
Lula is against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Zuck blocks his entire campaign page.
I wonder why?
irusensei 2 hours ago [-]
Imagine processing everything in life through Israel vs Palestine lens.
amelius 4 hours ago [-]
Trump is friends with Bolsonaro.
cassianoleal 4 hours ago [-]
It depends on when you ask him. Sometimes Bolsonaro "was actually a pretty good guy", other times he's "just a guy I know".
conartist6 3 hours ago [-]
Disgusting. They bent over 5x backwards not to meddle in election politics for Trump (that is: in the era after they banned him for violating policies)
stefantalpalaru 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
raverbashing 4 hours ago [-]
Much ado about nothing:
- Meta didn't block their page, they blocked their Ad account.
- The account has been reestablished already
This was probably because their campaign shipped complete misinformation about the opposing candidate (with several profiles boosting the same misinformation) but when they do it, that's cool, right?
icantevenhold 1 hours ago [-]
Pretty damming quote from Zuckerberg tho:
“Vamos trabalhar com o presidente Trump para pressionar os governos ao redor do mundo que estão perseguindo empresas americanas”, afirmou Mark Zuckerberg.
raverbashing 51 minutes ago [-]
True, at this time (not that it was ever better) we can't expect anything but this kind of attitude from him
gyanchawdhary 3 hours ago [-]
I see most of the comments here being pretty critical of Metas intervention ... Back in 2021 though .. this post seemed to have the opposite effect ..
How is that remotely similar? Trump was banned for condoning political violence after losing an election
gyanchawdhary 2 hours ago [-]
I guess you should zoom out a bit then and understand the abstract of what i said ;)
OrdersOfMagnitu 5 hours ago [-]
are they even allowed to do that, damn
go_elmo 4 hours ago [-]
Trump approves this message
bonoboTP 4 hours ago [-]
There is no win here. In Europe they simply quit the political advertisement business and simply don't do political ads. Such clear rules work much better. No politics or any politics, free speech etc. Of course nobody really wants free speech. Only free speech for the "correct" side and silence the "dangerous" other side. It's always like that. So then it becomes a game of blaming social media either way. "They allow too much propaganda for Bad Party A! This is misinformation and election interference!" "They banned my preferred Good Party A (same party)! This is censorship and election interference!"
There are no easy answers here, and every side just wants social media to support their side and suppress the others.
alex43578 4 hours ago [-]
I guess the challenge comes in even defining "political" ads. Is an ad about expensive gas prices or egg prices political? Unless you put such a huge ring fence around any topics of economy, immigration, law, crime, etc; I can think of a number of effective messages that aren't inherently political, but would activate an audience aligned with a political affiliation.
bonoboTP 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, but it puts friction on it. Perfect vs good etc.
For example, you can't advertise overtly for political candidates or parties. You can't advertise if you are a political party or an org that has candidates for election. Of course they will then use supposedly independent orgs who are totally not affiliated with the party, but again it's some friction.
In Hungary, since Fb banned political ads in the EU, the previous governing party had a much harder time in advertising themselves, they tried but didn't manage to go around the rules at scale.
> defining "political" ads
Yes, and people will also complain that you now suppress serious conversations about people's lives and want them to live in some rose tinted walled garden where they can only post wholesome sanitized corporate friendly content etc.
And anyway in the last decade or more, there was a big push to say that "everything is political", you must always speak up for your ideas even in unrelated venues and spaces, etc., so yes it becomes very hard to delineate this because again, realistically, the problem is not political vs not political but my side vs their side.
codedokode 3 hours ago [-]
And also you can masquerade political ads as ads for a newspaper article, for example: "Governor A opens a new school" or "Party A declares amazing plans for next 5 years" (actually done here by ruling party, to work around election ad laws and limitations).
tremon 47 minutes ago [-]
A few years ago, in NL they banned a campaign from the Brandwondenstichting (foundation for treating burn victims) because it used photos from actual burn scars to warn the public. Ostensibly, the reason given was that it upset their delicate eyes -- which was the entire point of the campaign. The campaign itself was not political, but Facebook choosing to apply their weak US sensibilities to a Dutch campaign surely was a political act.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/25/lula-says-trum...
https://tenor.com/pt-BR/view/e-o-pt-e-o-lula-pt-lula-gif-174...
US companies can meddle as much as they want in US affairs, I don't care. But not in the country I'm in.
Can you show us which court order Meta is following to ban Lula's page? Please.
And here's the thing, I'm sure there are meaningful differences. But then again there's also loads of similarities. A similar thing on the geopolitical stage is the status of Kosovo. The moment it was accepted as a separate entity you opened a floodgate. President of Croatia had a very nice clip about it a while ago, basically accepting both things to be true at once: Kosovo is a state that we need to accept but we also need to admit it was illegally taken from Serbia. This sort of duality (what Nader called being able to walk and chew gum at the same time, although for a completely different situation, I forget what the topic was) is very rare.
On HN i made the mistake of defending, for lack of a better word, a certain tech oligarch who shall not be named where I eventually made a similar point to yours and got downvoted to oblivion.
I could understand the framing being: all censorship is bad (even though I suppose this view would be called childish by some). I could also understand the framing that there is too much concentration of power in the hands of these corporations (and then the inevitable cries to break them up or nationalize them). But, for example, just pointing out that nobody was against these same practices when they were aimed at the other end of the political spectrum (SF billionaires were the darlings of the Democrat and not Republican establishment) causes such outrage from what I would guess are generally well meaning and intelligent people, that it boggles the mind.
It really seems to be something in our species that turns us into crusaders for certain topics. I can very well imagine that this same biological(?) impulses, where you are incredibly convinced in your own morality, must have led to the spread of early christianity (and then to the same or even larger degree, Islam). And it has to come from a place of conviction because otherwise u cant explain the zeal. And anybody who isn't as convinced (maybe partially agreeing) gets dealt with viciously. I'm making Tom Hollands point (in a very erratic manner), that what we consider modern universalism (aka wokeness) is a natural continuation of christianity. I would just go further and say that I think there is something in us all (to varying degrees) that we want to spread a certain gospel of what it is to be a moral person. And if someone disagrees they are not moral.
It is clear that we do not see all communication. Governments become increasingly deceitful and secretive - the US government is the best example, but the same applies to other governments (just look at the garbage produced by the russian government, they almost outperform the current US administration with total crap, like what Lavrov recently babbled about - what pile of nonsense). And companies - they are alo secretive. So which conspiracy exactly is meant here? It's not that I disagree with your prior statement, but I want to know which conspiracy you assume to be here to exist, or to NOT exist. Because what you wrote is very unspecific - you insinuate that there may not be a conspiracy. How do you conclude that?
I concur with Levitz's statement too, with regards to conspiracy or "inventing" one - so, which specific conspiracy was meant?
I am sure the American president is target for such efforts as well and provides ample material for rules violations.
They’re Facebook in many people’s minds.
“Meta” doesn’t convey the same meaning that “Facebook” does. And it’s also squatting on an important term in English. Mets is used all over the language, like metaphysical.
No thanks, I’ll use Facebook
edit: yes please, as usual, keep downvoting factual information.
Why is this action by a private company now considered censorship but wasn’t back then?
Moreover why are people not complaining about Lula mandating the censorship on X of about 600 opposition leaders? Why is that not called out? Oh, they like that censorship.
https://derechadiario.com.ar/us/argentina/x-revelo-source-co...
Personally I think making them public square is probably the only real solution if you want to keep social media and avoid this drama, or make them liable as publishers and these platforms will disappear overnight (maybe the best result?!?)...
This carries over into LLMs I presume, which have bias and I assume are not being sued for the content the publish? I'm not really sure about how it applies to LLMs to be honest.
Regardless, other countries will have different laws, that have different takes on censorship and what private companies are responsible for.
[1] Of course, that was plainly censorship with a veneer of plausible deniability (it assumed those embeds could only be truthful and unbiased and in no way politically motivated).
Pretty much every time somebody backs up these kinds of claims it shows something else.
1) posts going out 500 times a day in all caps (who is arguing you can’t suppress spam?)
2) the post that you read and so clearly wasn’t suppressed.
3) they’re linking to a low scoring comment
If you don't want that, no editorialising, let people see just the people they follow or what their friends share and that is it.
Can't have it both ways.
Nobody is going to want to use a platform with spam.
I don't really know anything about Lula (I wouldn't have known this was Brazil if it wasn't explicitly mentioned, I only know from the Wikipedia page 30 seconds ago that their full name is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and "Lula" is a nickname), so I can't say if they're "fine" or "evil", but one does not simply get to disregard the implications of censorship (of anyone, let alone a political party) when it happens to be done by a private corporation.
Especially when it's a foreign private corporation that's already deeply suspicious for political interference in multiple nations, as Meta is.
But it's a multimillion dollar corporation in a foreign country, to me the idea they owe you something is strange
---
Governments are still more powerful than corporations, this is why I am more afraid of the censorship of the internet by governments than of it by corporations
Meta can do whatever they want, but so can a sovereign nation if they deem Meta was actively subverting their democratic process.
> Governments are still more powerful than corporations
Corporations aren't all equal. And Meta is one of the most unequal. Add to that the relationship with Trump's government, and your 'corporations' argument is meaningless.
If it were some other mutli-national that doesn't have its own massively popular news platform, I'd be much more likely to agree.
Sounds to me like you just want to be mad
Plus a number of folks use the universality of their preferred politics when another country does something they like or don’t like. “International law”, “rules-based order”, those sorts of things. It’s pretty common to see.
Did Twitter violate the principles of free speech by shutting Trump down? Well he was using his speech to foment an insurrection and caused a mob to sack the Capitol so yes, Twitter, within the bounds of the first amendment, for an eminently justifiable reason (to preserve democracy), attacked Trump’s speech, which is against free speech, yet preserves free speech, because the alternative was allowing insurrection to continue. The first amendment cannot hold under a dictatorship, as we are seeing right now as all press are (were? Are they complying with the order?) illegally banned from the White House.
It’s not straightforward but it’s consistent.
Not really. Let's say Meta banned all blacks from advertising on facebook tomorrow. That would run against federal law.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1981
First of all, nothing good has ever come out of meta.
Secondly, restricting election interference seems like an unalloyed positive.
wrong. Blocking Facebook in China because they didn't follow domestic laws was the best thing that happened to the Chinese internet. It enabled the growth of domestic platforms like WeChat, Weibo and Tiktok.
It's already a requirement that to operate in Brazil they need local representation. Someone local who can be prosecuted, even if it's just a proxy - I'm hazy on the details but I remember reading about this at one point when they went after Twitter.
Is it going to fully stop Brazilians from using the service? Most likely not, but it will almost certainly reduce their usage, and the remaining users become a less profitable product to Meta, since they're not going to see ads for companies they can actually spend money on.
This changes incentives and may well be enough to make Meta rethink their policies. Or not, but then its effects can be measured and adjusted.
Rather than banning individuals right to access a site, and then playing technical whackamole, you make that company's ability to operate in a country illegal. this puts the incentives and the technical onus where it belongs.
Again not saying they should or I support the notion of banning a site. Just that there are practical legislative solutions.
I often use Study Together which is a large discord server (50k users online) for folks to work and study in groups/body doubles, but someone told me a lot of Brazilians have to use VPN to circumvent the ban.
https://www.studytogether.com/discord
This ideological fear of democratic structures ignores the very real threat of autocratic, privately owned structures consolidating more and more power.
The only viable counterweight to corporate power is public power.
From where I am, one third of politicians in recent elections have tiktok. It's a shame, everyone knows about human rights violation in China but the european politicians have no issues with using tiktok.
And it wasn't that long ago.
I'll say the opposite: Every single place that has banned American social media is better for it. Every group of people denied access to American social media are healthier and happier for it.
Its like throwing a grenade into a goverment building and being surprised that the government now wants to prosecute you. It is a fair prosecution based on actions in that case.
Banning facebook might actually be a moral good for the internet but that's my personal opinion.
They are cancerous propaganda/idiocracy funnels that are destructive to every Western country. They should not be freely operating anywhere but American America of America, Inc (TM Trump Inc).
What you call "I mean seriously aside from Airbus and ASML wtf even goes on over there in terms of actual technological development", Trump calls "a trade deficit" and tries to stop.
(The "deficit" becomes almost, not perfectly but relatively, neutral if you include the digital stuff like FB).
If the social networks provide no value then ban them. And if they do but they are so harmful then create your own.
A tri polar world technologically would be great.
https://xkcd.com/793/
AKA everything looks easy when it isn't your field.
But it’s actually laughable how much the Europeans complain about the Americans/American big tech while at the same time inventing no alternatives themselves and in fact relying on America for a whole host of shit, notably their defence. AI is another great example where the Europeans won’t cease complaining but don’t have and apparently won’t have a single frontier model of their own. Mistral is the best they’ve got lol.
Europeans love to berate and criticise others for building something but won’t build it themselves (and they still use what’s being built in the end).
Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
That's like criticising people for complaining about cigarettes when they don't even have their own cigarette companies.
> Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
That would be stuff like this, in order to give the legal cover needed to resist counterclaims by the USA: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-se...
Brazil is not a "little corporation with a fancy flag". Brazil is a democratic republic. The largest in Latin America, and one of the largest in the world.
Do I misunderstand, or are you calling Brazil, the nation whose population is around 214 million, a "little corporation"?
If you become something like public infrastructure you have to act like one or reduce your importance
The economic value seems literally negative and the influence on the discourse massive and much too unpredictable.
The recent Romanian election where a focused botnet created a pro russian candidate from thin air 2 weeks before the election _and got him elected president_ should really be proof enough that the state of things is unnatural.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/articles/cqx41x3gn5zo
because everyone currently in power has used it to get there
why would they block their best weapon?
Blocking Facebook would be deeply damaging for him, they would quick him out even before the election
Do you think it is aspirational to join that club? Because I don't think so.
If a country was to ban Facebook from operating in their country, people would be on an alternative 2 weeks after. There are reasons why a Facebook ban would be hard to enact, but dependence on the product is not one of them
I think dependence is definitely a problem because everyone would get mad at you for having to switch. Sure in the long run it wouldn’t be an issue but immediately you will lose some voters
But this case is something else entirely.
Social media is too powerful and influential to be allowed continue unchecked. Falsities, defamation cases all take too long for the election cycle. So you get garbage in, and then you get a populist TV show host as president who doesn't understand economic interests rates, international trade, pain points of international war.
Exactly 48 hours (before and on the day of election), banning electoral advertising is the right thing, gives voters the mental space to make up their own decision. It's the silence period.
Add much as I hate the lead up to elections, I love the day before and on, where it becomes purely personal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
You actually can.
This happens all the time on these social media websites. Automatic flagging of content, human reviewers restore it.
Yes this looks like a overly enthusiastic attempt to block disinformation during an election (a good thing, and also LuLa will be sailing close to that line if not over it)
But Brazils most famous election candidate just booked his whole campaign on Facebook. I bet he prints the flyers in Brazil, I bet he speaks on Brazilian TV and radio, appears on Brazilian podcasts, but the globalisation race means he has to use American social media.
The only response is going to be Balkanisation or ending curation by algorithm.
Interesting
Evil always finds new acolytes.
Anyone familiar, to comment?
Zuck famously said, of his users: "dumb fucks".
Doesn't mean he's not a totally corrupt shell of a human being though.
To those who work there, I'd be fascinated to hear an explanation that isn't about dollars.
No. I tried it for a week, 20 years ago. Fb bastards still have my info, but I am not signing in ever again.
This would be better, but I guess less anger-tormenting and also you’ll need to translate it yourself: https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/politica/noticia/2026-09/me...
Lula is against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Zuck blocks his entire campaign page.
I wonder why?
- Meta didn't block their page, they blocked their Ad account.
- The account has been reestablished already
This was probably because their campaign shipped complete misinformation about the opposing candidate (with several profiles boosting the same misinformation) but when they do it, that's cool, right?
“Vamos trabalhar com o presidente Trump para pressionar os governos ao redor do mundo que estão perseguindo empresas americanas”, afirmou Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25672461
its funny how the tables have turned
There are no easy answers here, and every side just wants social media to support their side and suppress the others.
For example, you can't advertise overtly for political candidates or parties. You can't advertise if you are a political party or an org that has candidates for election. Of course they will then use supposedly independent orgs who are totally not affiliated with the party, but again it's some friction.
In Hungary, since Fb banned political ads in the EU, the previous governing party had a much harder time in advertising themselves, they tried but didn't manage to go around the rules at scale.
> defining "political" ads
Yes, and people will also complain that you now suppress serious conversations about people's lives and want them to live in some rose tinted walled garden where they can only post wholesome sanitized corporate friendly content etc.
And anyway in the last decade or more, there was a big push to say that "everything is political", you must always speak up for your ideas even in unrelated venues and spaces, etc., so yes it becomes very hard to delineate this because again, realistically, the problem is not political vs not political but my side vs their side.