https://web.archive.org/web/20261018012124/https://meidasnew...
If harms are excused because they were not made with evil intentions then the Nazis who just liked making the numbers go up in a orderly fashion should be considered blameless.
Which reminds me of this month's HN post about Lula's FB account getting taken down https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49864642 , which turned out to only be for a couple hours after some content post got auto-flagged, before being restored by Meta. But the HN thread was a long discussion about it being a conspiracy by the US government to conduct election interference in Brazil.
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/south-america/brazil-lula-wins...
and Meta employees have commented also:
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-l...
The rest of the complaints are around exact term search/AI results which are notoriously inconsistent if you've ever done SEO/AEO. So not exactly the strongest evidence.
I'm not fan of Meta or their severe lack of transparency in moderation, but this stuff is so political it's basically impossible to debate on facts. Likewise Brazil's courts are notoriously political, notoriously pro-censorship of social media (including fining FB well before Trump for not deleting posts on gov demand), and your first link is a judge appointed by one of Lula's ex staff (Dilma Rousseff).
Conspiracy posting is now sadly fully mainstream in multiple countries, especially (ironically for Meta) among the youth raised on social media, and it's exhausting reading it all them time.
When news is only consumed before any facts are established this is the end result...
what do you think you're adding by repeating what the article said? you emphasize 90 minutes as if that makes it okay (obviously it does not).
also, the other example you cited of Facebook disproportionately blocking left-wing political causes lasted for several weeks[0], not several hours.
0: https://novaramedia.com/2026/09/28/facebook-blocks-lulas-cam...
That auto-moderation of social media always has false positives like this? This was always a predictable outcome from aggressively moderating social media with algorithms. Humans only ever get involved after the fact (in this case after 90 minutes).
The only reason this is newsworthy is that the media could spin it as some sort of intentional move by humans at Meta, without evidence, because it happened to vaguely coincide with some event date. Otherwise this happens every single day if you search social media for "my account was suspended".
I've seen more coverage of a brief 90-minute ban than I have of the protests themselves.
Trump and the Republicans are as unpopular as ever, but I don't think the No Kings protests are moving the needle right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2025_No_Kings_protests
Today's protests seem aimed around GOTV, rather than opposing specific policies. It makes sense that they wouldn't have the same draw.
The main organising IG account for the protests is https://www.instagram.com/50501movement, with almost 900k followers.
The organizers of No Kings may be well-intentioned, but the rallies themselves seem to be maximally engineered to make people feel like they've done their part resisting without materially affecting anything. Why would anyone in Trump's coalition feel threatened by them at this point?
And now for a big BS quote from the article, which we all know is false.
>There is no evidence at the moment that the suspension was politically motivated
Like what happened in 2024?
The thing is that they are also dragging many other countries into that misery. Just look at here at Latin America.
You've got to hand it to Thiel, at least like other people of questionable political persuasion he's already fled to Argentina, gonna get crowded there in the future
It's a cathartic ritual organized and funded by billionaires that acts as a quartely pressure valve for the working class during the Trump administration. It prevent frustrations from boiling over (like in France) here during this time so the ruling class can push forward with their agenda.
It hijacks all momentum from local political organizing that actually have teeth. It funnels the energy back to the Democratic party, who serves the billionaires just as much as the Republicans.
They favour themselves. And if to best position themselves they must suck up to the government then that's what they'll do. Every time.
> rather than their customers
Who do you think their customers are? They aren't the users. The users are the product, the cattle farmed by social media companies.
The customers are the advertisers. Advertisers don't want filthy protesters tarnishing their shiny brands.
Which would be praise worthy if it was a net neutrality stance, but it's not.
I am pointing out how that is a absurd moral argument deriving from the rule of thumb. If anything, the corollary is the literal opposite.
Any stupidity indistinguishable from malice should be treated the same.
The usage as a epistemological rule of thumb just points out how great harm is usually caused by stupidity, intentional or otherwise, rather than intentional desire to cause the specific harm. If you aim to reduce great harms targeting just malice is not merely inadequate, it is likely missing the overwhelming majority.
You seem to be claiming that intent is not related to justice or blame, which would result in an inhumanely cruel justice system where punishments don't fit crimes.
But don't worry, I attribute your proposal to stupidity not malice
Thankfully, legal systems are not that inhumanly stupid.
It wasn't long before there were Zomo's in the streets of Gdansk, Poznan, Warsaw and many other places to try to curb those protests and that in turn is what led to the fall of the Polish regime.
Only it doesn't. We don't see right-wing politicians being blocked on Facebook. No Bolsonaro blocking. Only left-wing political causes. Can you give some examples from the last couple years, of Facebook blocking right-wing candidates or right-wing mainstream political movements, immediate before an election?
> Humans only ever get involved after the fact (in this case after 90 minutes).
Several hours, not 90 minutes, but even then, that doesn't excuse it -- the human intervention should come before blocking of political causes. Moreover, this doesn't seem coincidental, given the above point of how infrequently and selectively it happens.
> The only reason this is newsworthy is
...because people find it newsworthy. Simple as that. Sorry if you personally prefer that it not be reported, personally I'd prefer that it didn't happen.
The article makes it pretty clear: Left-wing political figures blocked from posting to facebook for several hours (not 90 minutes) right when the event occurred. Can't get much clearer than that. Then enough furor erupted to unblock them, or the event ended and then they were unblocked.
It fits with their track record, e.g. blocking/hampering Brazilian left-wing candidate communications for weeks until a court ordered them to stop. If you have a theory about both these things being an accident (while the corresponding right-wing causes were all conveniently given a pass), we're gonna need more evidence from you to back that theory.
a) oops, they accidentally blocked ONLY left-wing political candidates and causes right before an election, ever since the US started having a right-wing president with a track record of interfering in elections on behalf of right-wing causes, totally a coincidence, people, or
b) yet another example in a facebook's history of blocking left-wing political candidates and causes, right before an election, ever since the US started having a right-wing president with a track record of interfering in elections on behalf of right-wing causes
Obviously Facebook does not have the benefit of the doubt, given their long history of malfeasance, deception, and nontransparency, so A is a pretty strong claim, and thus we can go with B until you have strong evidence otherwise. I don't think anyone here on HN can say "I trust facebook to be honest and transparent, to admit, explain, and atone for their malfeasance without prompting, and to always make choices that best reflect the will of the people" with a straight face these days. In fact, we still don't even have transparency into the very incidents we're discussing (likely due to deception and malfeasance, if we're going based off past behavior and proper Bayesian priors).
Indeed, if it was actually an accident, then that means that after Facebook's Lula scandal, they had the opportunity to stop this sort of thing from happening, and made the choice not to do so. That was their choice, making it no longer an accident in this case. There's no escaping accountability for that choice.
Back to our earlier request: can you give some examples from the last couple years, of Facebook blocking major right-wing candidates or major right-wing mainstream political movements, immediately before an election? If it was just an accident, and these accidents happen all the time without respect for politics, we should expect to see an equal number of blocks applied to both sides in the same situation. Do we? I don't think so.
Meta and other big tech usually over-relies on automated enforcement because it's easier on their wallets than hiring enough moderators to keep up in near-real time. And it's hella easy for a group of motivated people to coordinate flagging of content, which the automation often takes at face value.
Clearly having public spaces in private hands like this is tricky, as if we try to require better moderation that ends up to expensive, private interests will probably find a way to just kick anything controversial / political off their platforms.
If Meta actually wanted to deplatform the No Kings, they would nuke it permanently and handwave terrorism or national security or something. (See also, Reddit's long track record of nuking inconvenient subs like /r/TheDonald, back in the days when they were out of favor.)
See https://bsky.app/profile/ezralevin.bsky.social/post/3my43atj...
We're seriously not going to start abdicating responsibility to automated machines, are we?
One of the contributing factors was a $52 million settlement in 2020 for causing PTSD in those human moderators -- dealing with all that abusive shit was very emotionally taxing.
An account was suspended for 90 minutes. Why is the automatic assumption that it was malicious?
In fact, if Meta had protections against this I’m sure some people would be crying about “obvious political favoritism”.
Hopefully they can move the needle that makes the system in general harder to abuse. But wow, the outrage is insane.
if the accusation is political cronyism then yes, whether it was automated or discretionary is obviously relevant
There’s still an important distinction to make though: if it was automated then the No Kings page was not deliberately targeted for political reasons.
It's possible, of course, but taking anything Meta says at face value is very naive IMO. It's just as possible that they let it be banned and then measured the response, to determine if they continue the ban
Don't use platforms like this to organize in the future.
One theory I've seen over and over again, as to why the current admin is cozying up with Russia, is that their bot farms and influencing campaigns are very good at what they do, and aligned enough to keep them up and running - purely out of self interest.
The flagging system makes it easy for any sort of coordinated brigading or organic dislike to hide posts that some people don’t want seen
YC is a fairly pro-oligarchy/pro-authoritarian organization and the in-group protects itself.
See: funding flock (and dozens of other authoritarian-adjacent surveillance/defense companies), YC CEO Garry Tan's recent political advocacy history, etc.
You don't say "We need more billionaires" unless you are pro-oligarchy/pro-authoritarian (or unless you are ignorant of history and fundamentally don't understand how inevitable it is that unaddressed extreme wealth inequality always leads to oligarchy and authoritarianism).
https://x.com/garrytan/status/1942992514954224025
Threads like this always get flagged as soon as they gain any sort of traction. Free speech for me, but not for thee.
And, in this case, it lasted all of 90 minutes and speaks of a typical autoban ML feature. This happens all the time. False positives are going to happen constantly with a company that literally has 4 billion people use.
My realization that it was cooked was when I was doing my comp sci PhD where everyone in our group fully understood the implications of data, dependency, ads, surveillance capitalism but 3 out of 20 agreed to download Signal instead of WhatsApp/Messenger.
You are asking for too much sadly.
We just need someone* to create a "WoW Classic" version of a social network so that we can get back on it and this time try to make it work. Social media is one of the worst things that has happened to humanity since the web was created. But it used to be good. So it's incomprehensible to me why no one has made a social networking site matching old facebook and without the awfulness added later.
* Maybe some of us can do it, send me a message.
Edit: They hit a rate limit and tripped an automated suspension.
Is it really that unusual to contact a large tech company and not get a response for (egad!) 90 minutes?
To save you some searching:
https://www.gettyimages.nl/detail/nieuwsfoto's/guests-includ...
Tiktok banned the account promoting a Musk documentary too. Oh how the cookie crumbles!
https://www.theverge.com/tech/1013453/tiktok-bans-alex-gibne...
>While TikTok has no official affiliation with Elon Musk, part owner Larry Ellison appears in the film via a text message offering to help Musk fund his Twitter purchase.
>Last month, YouTube, Meta, X, and TikTok all faced backlash for rejecting ads for the film. YouTube and Google quickly reversed course, calling it an “error.” However, TikTok and X have refused to change their stance, and neither platform has allowed paid advertisements for the film.
> Today, amidst a historic day of thousands of rallies to mobilize early voting and fight against Trump’s election sabotage, Meta suspended the primary No Kings Instagram account without warning or reason.
> After intense backlash, Meta made the account visible again 90 minutes into the suspension, giving the appearance that everything was normal. But it blocked the account admin from posting for another three hours -- censoring the NO Kings coalition in the middle of today’s historic day of action.
Oh well. I've heard this on Reddit for years: "̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ Meta can ban whoever they want, they are a private company". Just a hint of schadenfreude.
It's not your fault but we're too far down the rabbit hole of The United States of Incorporation. A company is not the Government. Intentionally so. But it's all fucked through money influence. So no, a company will never have your public interest in mind. By design.
There's really no reason to expect anything from Meta except for it to do what's best for Zuckerburg.
"Meta employees said Lula's accounts were hindered during Brazil election, Folha reports" (https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-l...)
Meta employees acknowledged in internal communications that the Instagram accounts of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were hindered by restrictions during the country's election, newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported on Friday, citing messages it reviewed.
The messages also acknowledged the platform recommended the profile of challenger Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, as well as his WhatsApp channel, according to the report.
Meta said the technical issues cited in the report were already public and the conversations it referenced related solely to the severity of the issues, not political interference. "Any suggestion that Meta favors one side is false," it added in a statementTrump has done many genuinely scary things but shutting down a social media account then turning it back on 90 minutes later is not exactly sending tanks into Tiananmen Square.
It can't be only wrong when it is done to your interests. It has to be either right or wrong across the board.
The more you dislike someone and their views, the more your principles and values are tested.
I"m assuming you value things like freedom of speech, liberty, freedom, democracy, progressive liberal ideas, and that sort of thing. If all you can about is power and winning, then never mind.
I feel completely certain folks like FIRE / Lukianoff will immediately and loudly condemn this.
I would bet very good money every right leaning pro-free speech justice will condemn this.
I would even bet money Elon would condemn it if pressed on the issue, but probably won't be loud about it (which is the technically correct PR since he owns a competitor).
Edit: I personally strongly condemn it as well, though admit to some small schadenfreude. It can be hard to believe when "the roles reversed" meme actually ends up happening. And I do expect this was a genuine automation mistake by Meta given the quick apology.
Elon (and others) will stay silent unless pressed on the issue, and even then it’s betting odds.
I personally don't think hate speech should be illegal. If someone feels that way I'd rather know it and act accordingly than them keep it to themselves.
Others may well disagree with my view there and that's totally fine, but they do want limits to what one can say which means they don't want free speech.
However there is a difference. A balance of free speech on social media could look like
1. Anyone can say anything they want
2. The algorithms are simplified such that they are chronological and your direct network, rather than the anxiety boosting, "editorial" choice in promoting or limiting the speech of others, especially with how reposts and quote tweets amplify a given post.
We need to rethink and regulate algorithms while we are working on Ai regulation. Let's not let the tech companies that brought us the mess we are in slip by in this moment of seemingly bipartisan cooperation.
Let us also make targeted advertising illegal to remove the incentives that make the "anxiety algorithms" so profitable. Go back to a world of context based advertising like magazines.
Or are you trying to elicit emotions?
My experience is that, for the most part, the people who criticized woke censorship are also critics of the Trump administration and its lawlessness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_Un...
Because the business model is malicious.
Meta has, quite intentionally, wedged itself in-between large amounts of human interaction. They know some people are malicious. They know the machine will frequently make the wrong call, because the auto-moderator can neither reason, nor account for context.
But hiring enough moderators to run moderation through the computer, provide a default "suggested" action, and having a human approve or deny, would be too expensive. It would demolish their profit, and may even pull Meta from black to red, financially. Their business model relies on making the wrong call, and having outrage bring it to the attention of actual Meta staff to correct it.
Meta does not get to blame the computer they put in charge of moderation instead of hiring adequate staff; computers can never be held accountable, so accountability moves up the chain to the people that programmed the computer and left it in charge.
Sometimes the trolling took the form of high-volume contrarian posting, but the trolls would also post porn and pictures of gendered violence in the comments on nearly every single article.
The way Jezebel dealt with it was through a variant of commenter whitelisting. Unapproved commenters (including yet-to-be-banned trolls) would have their comments in a purgatory until approved, visible only to those who have opted in.
A community like Jezebel cannot exist when supposed free-speech absolutists have their way and protect the trolls. When the free speech of trolls is prioritized, their targets are denied freedom of assembly and freedom of association.
These are all private fora so the US Bill of Rights doesn't actually come into play. But what episodes like today remind us is that the commitment of platforms like Meta and X to ensuring full participation by their political enemies is weak.
Also curious where the “millions” estimate for No Kings events today comes from.
The estimate has been reported by major news outlets (e.g., https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/...) and comes from a variety of evidence. If you're actually curious then you can research it.
I mean… it is for a “No Kings” rally. Yes. It’s main job is advertising. Yes.
I expect almost zero hypocrisy from "free speech absolutists", I expect them to be ideologically consistent and loud about it. FIRE in particular has a tremendous track record of doing so.
Elon is a bit of an outlier in his more hypocritical track record.
Not these days, sadly.
It is actually very banal.
The group now being themselves jailed still argue against those who categorically oppose jails.
You don't need to agree in order to understand the logic.
One side believes it is the "why" in the act that determines rightness or wrongness, the other side believes (if that is their genuine position) the act by itself is categorically wrong.
I don't cast free speech in absolute terms, I take issue with those that do since it isn't a spectrum.
No one wants "true" free speech anyway. an age of social media + deepfakes means true free speech is legalizing slander/libel. And we know the lies will persist much longer than it deserves.
As well as inciting violence. We don't even need to reach "hate speech" on the spectrum in order to talk about intolerable speech everyone agrees should be punished on.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/meta-says-suspe...
(You may not agree with the meme, I'm just telling you that the meme exists)
Hillary doesn't need to do anything like that. But even she was there.
We each have a lens on reality, your lens' aperture is skewed on this specific aspect.
"This is a much more powerful term. I can do stuff that's unbelievable. I called Google, Google Maps. They wouldn't have taken my call in the first term. Now they kiss my ass."
We can debate where the line on regulation should fall, but that isn't a free speech debate.
They have been abusing their power, something has to change
I haven't seen anyone show that here yet, though the Twitter files did show that for example.
I got banned from Reddit for quoting Trump verbatim.
Yes, the ruling elite are typically outnumbered by the masses. It matters little: by historical standards, the ruling powers have virtually always leveraged their power to exploit those who don't have power. No reason to assume that streak will end.
Flock is dystopian. It’s also non ironically pitched as solving crime. it’s also our friendly neighborhood YC company.
It’s over.
USA has its comforts, that’s like the entire sell. Huge homes, huge lawns, huge plates, huge cars. Huge Walmarts. (the world cup brought some tourists and on X the Japanese shared their Walmart experience as basically a trip to Disneyland). Add movies, reality tv shows, game studios, and now gambling on anything because gambling in the stock market isn’t enough juice.
fuck we’re cooked.
Protests and Boycotts don't work when doomers sit there yapping about how they don't work instead of participating. Counter movement bot farms encourage them to do so. We've all got to unplug, wake up, stand up, and live on our feet rather than die on our knees.
The universe may not be just, but it seems to set many things in motion if you want to participate.
I could care less if someone wants to say they're going to hurt me. My beef is when they actually try to do it.
Words aren't terrorism or violent. That doesn't mean people can't interpret them that way and feel harm, but a word alone can't harm anyone.
Where does that put someone calling out a public hit? It is just words after all.
> I could care less if someone wants to say they're going to hurt me. My beef is when they actually try to do it.
They say there’s no atheists in foxholes.
Vaguely saying "someone should" is very different from offering a bounty or plotting to do it yourself.
Don't forget that we also learned in the 20th century that millions can support and die for genocide while only a few dozen will be charged while the rest returned home. We also learned that the winner of said conflict can wipe out entire cities and go home the victor without consequence.
But that's not the point!
The point is that the laws are written by the oligarchs, for the oligarchs.
Laws are made to protect wealth and power, so of course the wealthy and powerful haven't "broken" them.
One can argue that the closest thing to an AI's training on a book is a person reading a book and remembering the details, which i'm sure you reject, but it's not prima facie unreasonable.
Five years ago this site was ready to burn you at the stake if you defended copyright laws, which clearly were only written to protect the rich and powerful, like Disney!
Now those laws are obviously there to defend the little guy against the oligarchs, and we should ready our pitchforks to march on Silicon Valley for daring to violate our precious copyright laws!!
What most people seem to miss is that companies like Facebook aren't the government and therefore aren't held to the standard of free speech. Signal ng up for an account and agreeing to their terms gives them authority to censor.
Germany may not have free speech, and if the German people don't want it that's totally fine.
Watching the pro-deplatformers get burned by their own illiberalism is very satisfying; watching some of them not having learned any lesson from it, doubly so.
It just seems like these comments want to stir the pot
Both? It’s not hard to share the blame.
Because words carry weight based on who says them. Which is based on power/privileged. The president making an announcement about MedBeds would cause a much bigger conversation than a crackpot conspiracy group on Facebook. And that's sadly not belittling the FB group (give who I've seen fall for it), that's demonstrating how much more authority the president's words have.
>but a word alone can't harm anyone.
In the same way a pebble can't harm you, but it can be holding back a rockslide that can cause mass damage.
I make fun of the French as much as anyone but one thing about them I really respect is the way they are keen to protest rather than simply roll over and let their government fuck them, as Americans and Brits do.
But, strictly speaking, neither of those are threats. In English law, they'd be more likely to be prosecuted as Soliciting to Murder or Conspiracy to Murder - I imagine there are similar offences in America.
On the Democratic ticket Bernie Sanders would have been the outsider. But the Democratic National Committee under Debbie Wasserman Shultz made sure to avoid a vote by the people of the Democrat party and put in their chosen one, insider Hillary Clinton.
It's similar to how neoliberals say they care about humans when in reality they only care about corporations. Messaging doesn't always match optics.
My point wasn't that money had to change hands or be offered, I was responding to an earlier comment. A person directly taking part in plotting to commit murder I'd also likely breaking the law and likely to lose a jury trial if they are actively plotting a murder whether money I'd involved or not. Saying "someone should" simply isn't a plot.
You can claim no true Scotsman, but you need to back it up with reasonable alternatives to alternative definitions of the same term.