It got less media play but the founder of the Hind Foundation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hind_Rajab_Foundation) that is going after IDF soldiers for war crimes that happened in Gaza got his Instagram account taking down at the same time, but it wasn't restored:
It seems that there are repeated waves of account deletions affecting those not in power and only if you raise a huge stink is it undone but only on a per-account basis. And each of these waves slowly erodes those voices. It sort of feels like a strategy.
At least you didn’t organize on BlueSky, where nobody would show up but you’d be villainized by 100 people for some minor transgression they found in your post.
Brad Lander is posting on BlueSky about him and a bunch of other American Jews and Israelis who were assisting with a olive harvest and essentially acting as human shields against settlers.
IDF detained the Americans but let him go because he's a public figure. The rabbis are still detained. Go figure.
Amazingly, the top replies to their post about targeted harassment are from accounts trying to redirect anger at several accounts that are common targets for dogpiling. It's deeply baked into the BlueSky culture and I don't know how it came to be like that.
I've tried to prune my feed to keep it out, but now the problem is that journalists I follow eventually find themselves targeted by a BlueSky dogpiling campaign and leave the platform.
It would be interesting to figure out if these that do the dogpiling are real users or not. It does not reflect my experience on BlueSky. But I am just a single datapoint.
A lot of the dogpiling is from people who come out and say some dumb shit and demand respect. When they get ridicule for their ridiculous take, they play the victim.
That being said, there's also the tumblr->twitter->bluesky contingent who have always loved dogpiling and they're mostly there because the site doesn't have musk boosting nazi posters.
Someone dubbed "the running of Will Stancil" which I think describes a particular phenomenon of anti-engagement. I think there are some of anti- derangements about.
But generally these things cluster very strongly around specific people.
Alas Journalists I think are high value targets. Ideally they'd use tools like blocklists to help each other defend against dog piling. Ideally we'd have more automated response systems to detect and manage problems, which we could build, because of how Bluesky data is (so far, "spaces" incoming which change the gane) all public data. Blocking posts etc. The ability to handle this problems is much higher on Bluesky than elsewhere.
This can happen on Bluesky. It sucks. But for most people it's not an issue at all. It does unfortunately drive off some higher profile people though.
It's intrinsic to the medium. The Twitter-like format is inherently toxic and irredeemable. It can't be fixed.
The microblogging format with likes and reposts selects for short highly viral stuff that pokes at the brain stem. Rage bait, trolling, lynch mobs, and stupid brain rot stuff are all ideal forms of content for this medium. Nuanced and genuinely insightful ideas are too long.
I think short form content in general is bad. Short form video seems to be less actively toxic but more brainless and attention-destroying. Short form content is the refined sugar (or in some cases the crack or the fentanyl) of discourse.
Reddit-style sites (like this one) are better but still suffer from these problems. HN avoids the worst of it by having a culture and mod policy of downvoting trolling and low-effort crap.
We're at the dawn of the Third Age of the Internet.
Someone has to be the Frodo to take Facebook & Twitter's rings into Mount MySpace and melt them down to join with the legacy media that came before them :)
Without the discussion getting crazy, as a participant, do you think No Kings is poorly named? For an outsider like myself, it seems like a confusing movement. I mean the guy was elected, so obviously not a king. And couldn't even change the name of the art center, so not that powerful. So the king thing seems misplaced? And when they ask the people at the protest, they can't seem to articulate what the point is, except they don't like the guy's policies and conduct.
Kings disregard democracy and do what they want. This is precisely what this elected official continues to attempt to do. No kings is a reminder that he and all other elected officials are not kings.
"No kings is a reminder that he and all other elected officials are not kings."
It would be great if the "other elected officials" part turns out to be true, but my in my experience I don't see that happening. Have there been any policy proposals out of No Kings that would create better oversight and accountability?
The No Kings protesters seem to want to disregard democracy because they don't like the current president. Repeatedly claimling the sky will fall given an election result seems to be undemocratic. Which certainly goes both ways, but right now it is the democrats who have fallen into this line of thinking. What has he done that is any more undemocratic than previous presidents?
Like first of all I would call a person who tries to pass the checks and balances of a democracy, even if they fail, the target of the ideals or “no kings”
And while we can disagree with the extent to which any one act or bribe elevates someone to dictator, and whether or not all the accusations are true, can you not understand why someone caught up in the narrative ecosystem happening over the past few years may develop the perspective that Trump is trying to consolidate power?
Also “no folks who incrementally Test the limits of power and fail” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
I just watched Trump talk for 5 minutes sitting at the desk in the oval office about how he gets to choose what he likes and the blathering about a seriously good question being 'fake news'. The president acting like a petulant toddler makes me feel like the name couldn't be more appropriate.
> I mean the guy was elected, so obviously not a king.
The point of the protest is to prevent him from making himself a king.
> And couldn't even change the name of the art center, so not that powerful.
This is really weak cherry picking. He has successfully removed medical care from millions of Americans, started foreign wars of aggression, destabilised several countries, probably tanked US international reputation for a generation... he is incredibly powerful.
He tried to overturn an election, his destruction of executive agencies is both unprecedented in scope and illegal in manner, he breaks the law constantly to enrich himself, and he repeatedly ignores the will of the legislature. It isn't "I don't like his tax rates, he's a king". His conduct is anti-democratic.
One of the first AI slop nonsense coming out of the White House was Trump wearing a crown on a mock Time magazine cover with "Long Live The King" printed on it.
Most political movements (and arguments) in the US use hyperbole. No Kings is hyperbolic to show disapproval of Trump's actions. This single-sided bias on a conceptual is also a hall mark of most political movements in the US. It's fine if someone takes a similar action that I see as good, but it's bad if I think it's bad.
Before I get hated out of existence, please note that I don't like either party or political tactics in general because they've devolved into politically commercialized populism without any empathy or critical thought. Just as an example, deportations under Trump are roughly on trend with Obama, Trump targeting activities are similar to Obama targeting conservative groups with the IRS, Obama lied in the SoTU about the gender wage gap, Obama was hard on journalists (highest prosecutions?) Like Trump has been, and Obama ignored court orders such as issuing immigration permits in violations of a order similar to Trump ignoring orders. I could sit here and hope that any of these abuses results in better oversight, but that would be naive based on the history.
Edit: if you're going to disagree, at least contribute to the discussion.
No Kings is a catchall for no tyrants or authoritarians. It's what the founding fathers were worried bout when setting up the US representative democracy with checks and balances and a constitution. They didn't want a president to act like a tyrant or a king.
And somehow the federalist society folks stick their head in the mud and make up some nonsensical interpretation, violating the clear and obvious interpretation, to justify further eroding rights and democracy. A party of greedy and traitorous fools taking down the country they pretend to love, enriching themselves at every step.
NoKings has name recognition. I volunteer with my local Indivisible, but people know this name far less.
Trump acts like a king, even if he was elected. He gets tributes and requires deference, clearly visible from the foreign and corporate donations, and behavior of the Republican Party. Or take the "super intelligence" thing, him dictating what a technology shall be called, lest you become an ENEMY OF AMERICA. Or the repeated attempts to silence the media. If we consider the Kennedy Center you brought up, Trump's name was on there, then removed by court order. His response was to close it in spite. The Kennedy Center remains closed to this day, until he gets his way.
Trump has tried to violate most of the Bill of Rights. There are reasons people see every day for why NoKings sticks and resonates.
I do agree NoKings (and broadly the far left) have really bad messaging, a product of echo chambers (imo). I suspect the Democrats will learn the wrong lessons from the midterms... sigh.
You and others are not able to say anything of substance other than repeating the claim that he acts like a king without saying what actions are making you think that. Do you think Obama was a king, given his control and adverserial relationship with the press?
It's also incredibly ironic that the claim that democracy was on the line during the last presidential election given that the democrats first fielded a candidate whose health concerns were downplayed and then a candidate who was not elected in the primary.
Obama certainly did his part in strengthening executive power and your attention to the role that Democrats played in this is well deserved. This whataboutism, however, does not absolve the Republicans who are pushing the Unitary Executive theory -- of which a monarchy is the ultimate expression. Therefore, the name "no kings" -- a catchy title that captures the undeniable thrust of the founding of the USA and warns of the end of the slope our country is accelerating down.
I can't take it seriously when someone compares Obama's comments about, say, Fox, vs. how Trump behaves.
The scope and the shamelessness of his behavior is unprecedented. Nothing any other president has done compares to what Trump has done, with the negative impact to the country, with such explicit opposition to American interests.
Off the top of my head: Illegal tariffs, sicking ICE on society with brutality, trying to overturn elections, constantly lying about election security to sow doubt in our democracy, declaring that any election he or the GOP loses is illegitimate, declaring that anyone who criticizes him is an enemy of the state, enriching himself and his friends with bribes and insider deals 10x what anyone could possibly claim any other politician in the US has done, selling pardons and stopping DOJ investigations for money, destroying the independent agencies that serve the country.
People use the phrase “no kings” because “oligarchy” is too big of a word for Americans to understand. I am not being facetious. Most Americans are very poorly educated and read at an 8th grade level, at best. Other comments noting that it is a better slogan and historical links to the country’s founding are also correct. It’s simple and everyone can understand it.
Don’t worry No Kings day is a joke organized by a Never Trumper and with the goal of making sure nobody protests like France and instead protest in a way where it’s just a humiliation ritual.
To each their own, but I would not like to be in France during those riots. (Also, does the outburst of violence actually result in more changes being done? If no, then what’s the point; if yes, then the most violent organiser policy wins; does not seem like a winning strategy)
I think I understand why people make this connection but I don't actually think there is one. Freedom of speech is possibly the #1 thing people get confused over, due to the similarities between "I don't like your speech" and "I want your speech to stop" and "I want the government to stop your speech."
What I'm seeing is an argument for, "I don't like Facebook's speech. I think you shouldn't like it either. So I think we should all walk away."
An informed and educated populace is essential to the function of any universal democracy. The regulation of capital is essential to maintain efficient markets. It follows that the regulation of capital with respect to communications is necessary to maintain democracy and efficient markets under a notionally capitalist system.
There's clear moral valence to this issue. The popular (mis)understanding of freedom of speech as applied to corporations is in direct contradiction to the notional principles of western sociopolitical ideology. Resolving this conflict is only difficult because of our conditioning.
"Freedom of speech" is used as shorthand for both the general culture of open listening to disagreeable views, and for a series of laws related to the first amendment.
98% of the time people are talking about the former, and the only ones confused are the people assuming they're talking about the latter and linking the face-palm-worthy "showing them the door" XKCD.
There's also a blurring of private/public in certain instances. There were cases in the 1980's regarding free speech rights in a shopping mall. Privately owned, but a public space (defacto public square).
> 98% of the time people are talking about the former
I'd say damn near 100% of those 98% will still cite the constitution, sometimes even crying "1st amendment!" in lieu of "free speech," so I'd say your overall point is wrong. They are basically saying both at the same time, with intent, while still not understanding it.
That is true. I remember the second of the two inventors on the early mRNA patents had some concerns, and suddenly his interviews got taken down. And everyone seemed happy about it. The first inventor was all in, and had many interviews posted.
I think the main reaction (at least in tech circles) is that companies like Meta have the power, the legal protection, the political cover, and the indifference to shut down anyone on their platform. So making them the sole provider for your tech and communication is a huge risk.
And this incident (negligent takedown of a community on an important day) demonstrates the point perfectly.
Which is one of many reasons why social media, along with the internet in general, ought to be treated as a public utility rather than a private for-profit business.
You've erected a strawman. The argument was not "free speech doesn't apply to companies", it was the exact opposite, i.e. a company's prerogative to control speech on their platform comes downstream of their own free speech rights. This remains true today and the article does not argue otherwise.
I think there is still consistency between these two things.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that I have to tolerate a business platforming hate speech. Any platform that stands behind the "free speech" of neo-nazi groups, white supremacists, and violent nationalists deserves criticism for turning a blind eye to what they are enabling. The First Amendment wasn't built to protect citizens' speech from each other; it was built to protect us from government censorship. Facebook doesn't have a legal responsibility to protect that, and I as a consumer can expect them to take an ethical stand against things like ethnic cleansing.
And that is exactly the point the author here is making. Facebook, X (Twitter), even places like Fediverse instances and Bluesky/AtProto sites are privately run spaces with no obligation to respect your freedom of speech.
If you choose these spaces to organize your political cause, you put your movement into another person's hands. Stop doing that. Host your own infrastructure, make it easy to recover and migrate, and start organizing outside of corporate-controlled areas.
Turning to Facebook for political organizing "because everyone is there" is like doing your town-hall meetings at Walmart "because everyone shops there", and then wondering why small businesses don't feel represented in your town anymore.
It's easy to blame big tech, but you can also ask your local bar why they only advertise events through Mark Zuckerberg, and ask why their website is mostly just links to Mark Zuckerberg's websites. Ask them if they have considered that Mark Zuckerberg might not a good obligatory middleman between them and their customers. The core problem is that people have accepted the lie that these corporate-controlled spaces are "the public square", when they are the exact opposite.
Not everyone thinks we should be free to spread hate. Germany has good historical reasons to ban holocaust denial. Rawanda has good reasons to ban genocidal speech. No more going on the radio to say, "Cut down the tall trees".
The reason to not platform hate speech is the same reason you're not allowed to yell fire in a theater or bomb in an airport without their being one. Or say you're going to kill the president. Even the US has limits on what can be said, including liability laws. You can't just defame your neighbor and not face legal repercussions if they take you to court.
One can imagine this argument during the Salem Witch trials. "She's a witch" wasn't just a joke back then. It could get someone burned at the stake.
It is very delicious poetic justice. Some liberals warned repeatedly that deplatforming would backfire but were shouted down and ridiculed by illiberal activists hellbent on silencing their foes.
Personally I find censoring all links to the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story a couple weeks before a presidential election to be much, much more egregious.
(To be perfectly clear disrupting protests is also very bad!)
No. "They" cheered when it was used to deplatform hate speech.
Deplatforming people organizing a peaceful protest is very different. If you cannot understand how that is different, then I worry about your critical thinking skills.
was peaceful dissent about certain policies of 2020-2022 also "hate speech"? because, if I recall correctly, it was being suppressed with unprecedented zeal on every single platform. again, with applause.
These conversations often end up in some weird motte and bailey where you argue that you care about free speech, but it turns out that you actually just thought COVID was not real/not significant/not dangerous/not an emergency. So your issue ends up not being that they made a decision on it (free speech concern), but that you feel it was the wrong decision (content-specific concern).
So before we go back and forth on the intricacies of content moderation, can you briefly describe your beliefs on COVID?
Ultimately the platform, and yes there are huge grey areas. I don’t think this instance lands in one of them and that’s why Facebook isn’t even claiming it does.
It seems like you’re trying to avoid dealing with the substance of the issue for some reason.
Usually local police if they are on the scene. If they start seeing violence, they start telling people to disperse, followed by tear gas and then rubber bullets.
Most people haven’t spent any time moderating online communities, so they don’t have to test their beliefs against reality. This is fine, frankly you saved yourself being stuck in a fractal hell scape.
However holding to this idea that the “opposition” was deplatformed, is superstition.
I’ve seen communities start with 0 moderation, and become wastelands filled with hate speech, misogyny and harassment. Which then forces moderation to be introduced.
This happens so often, that this happened to the hate groups who were kicked off of Reddit.
Communities have celebrated the introduction of moderation, and celebrated the imposition of rules that mean you can’t be harassed, attacked and targeted.
part of the challenge is that like the car, social media has reorganized societal "infrastructure" itself, such that just a reflexive "the old fashion way" leans on a social organization that doesn't exist anymore
I don’t buy that. The old way still exists, it’s just way less convenient. It reminds me of punk rock bands that self published and followed the DIY approach versus bands that sold out the record label approach. It’s hard to DIY but you can do it if you really want to.
Oh how the tables have turned! "It's a private platform, they can ban whomever they want" leftists chanted ad nauseam! "I never thought leopards would eat MY face," sobs leftist who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
This is a real problem but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with Zuckerberg or Meta in particular. The article admits it's unlikely that this hour-long ban was a top-down decision. People get banned with no recourse on all the big platforms.
But yes, a solution is for people to host their own content/sites. Or "protocols not platforms"
>a solution is for people to host their own content/sites.
In a perfect world yes. In the reality we live in no.
Why is this the case?
1. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. Can you afford a terabyte of data a second coming your way? Probably not. So you put it behind CF, but now you're vulnerable to their policies closing you down.
2. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. What are you going to do against floods of child porn or death threats posted by users pretending to be on your side, but actually working for the opposition?
3. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. You are now in charge of your website security. Are you any good at it? How are you going to pay for it to be secured? How do you trust the people doing the security?
4. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. How do you plan on getting people to come to your site? If it's upsetting enough to the powers that be any messages containing links to your site will disappear from Meta/X/Google. You are going to have to find neat an interesting, and probably expensive ways to get your message out.
We have consolidated the internet down to a point where it is very very easy for a few small groups to control the general discussion, especially across large diverse groups of people.
Most of this is mitigated completely by making everything read-only except for a small number of users you know personally. That doesn't actually preclude most kinds of political work (e.g. noticeboards for protest organising). It does preclude social media, obviously.
I don't use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. I feel like people at least need to go on strike once in a while. Stop using those shitty services for a few days or a week so the landlords will make them slightly less shitty.
Hey metabagel! It's me, Mark Zuckerberg, please come back! Our Q4 earnings report will be due before you know it and our board will have my feet to the literal FIRE if you're not on our platform(s). Please reconsider!
That's what it started out as, for sure. However, is it really "staying in touch" these days or is it simply reacting to and maybe adding a response to whatever status or content was placed in your feed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some anti-Facebook snob looking down on everyone else. But I have greatly reduced my use of the platform and only really use it for some groups I'm part of. While I do interact with family and friends, saying I use Facebook to "stay in touch" these days is a bit of a reach in most cases.
I miss out on all the big and little announcements. Sometimes, a family member will forward information to me about a death or a graduation. I find out about these things when I find out about them, just like we used to before the internet.
I dropped Facebook when I realized that their app was snooping on who I called and who called me.
>How does that work? People post on FB or IG, AND THEN phone you / write a letter? doubtful...
why is this doubtful?
i am also disconnected from fb/ig/etc. and that is exactly what happens. family or close friends make a post for something important, and i get a call or text. for smaller stuff i get caught up at some point whenever we next talk on the phone for a regular catch up.
I usually find out much later, and possibly never. This is how things were before the internet. We didn't know everything going on in everyone's life.
In the case of major events, my brother usually lets me know, for example the death of an aunt. Everyone close to me knows I don't use FB, so if they want me to be aware of something in particular, they can text or call me.
In what sense are they shitty? They are actually usable by normal people. This is a big reason they are popular.
I don't like (most of) the content on those sites. This is not surprising. The content is aimed at people who can't use Signal. Such a person is different from me in many ways.
Widespread algorithmic control and corporate spam spreads architecture?
>They are actually usable by normal people.
Usability is just one dimension. If your site is perfectly usable, yet steals your credit card number and sells it to the highest bidder, it is still a shitty site, just not in usability.
>This is a big reason they are popular.
Really FB/Meta became popular long before they were at their current level of shittiness. Really FB wrote the modern book on new levels of shittiness like selling social graphs and tracking people along with connecting all kinds of other data and stealing information from your phone with overly huge permissions and data gathering.
Facebook is cluttered with ads and distracting posts (not from your friends and family). If you use it often enough, you probably stop seeing how terrible it is. Try looking at it with fresh eyes sometime.
Twitter boosts Elon Musk and the things he is interested in.
This is a solution looking for a problem. Right now, Meta products are the most efficient way for people to organize a protest, even when it's not reliable, so that's what people will use. If it's no longer a reliable way to organize, people will naturally move to something else without much convincing like they do in places like Hong Kong. It's good to have a backup, but it does not make sense to expect them to avoid the largest social media platforms.
> But there is a better solution: build tools that are open, decentralized, and user controlled. And then actually use them instead of just giving more power to Mark Zuckerberg to shut down a protest organization’s account in the middle of one of its big protests.
The problem with that is people are "lazy": they're typically not going to expend extra effort that's not needed to solve the problem in front of them. It's pervasive, and it's one of the big reasons "friction" reducing technology can be really problematic: it turns necessary behaviors into issues of self-discipline (e.g. exercise becomes forcing yourself to haul yourself to the gym regularly in your spare time, instead just walking everywhere because you have to in order to go about your day).
So, IMHO, if you want people to use "open, decentralized, and user controlled" tools in 2026, you have to ban the centralized alternatives. Otherwise you're yelling at clouds, as most people will default to the lowest friction alternative they have access to.
I tried to get a family member to use Signal, and she eventually gave up on it, because she couldn't handle switching back and forth between Messages and Signal. It's very difficult to get people to migrate to better platforms when they have that mindset.
That's why we need to separate the protocol from the UI. There is absolutely no good reason why the different platforms should disallow communication with each other.
I used to use a multiprotocol client, Pidgin, to chat with people on a couple of different platforms. But of course now a lot of chat is on things like Facebook and Google Chat which are supported only by plugins.
But even that is still not enough because I will have to have an account on each of the platforms.
Chat really needs to be like email or SMS; you ought not to need an account with the provider of the person you are sending messages to.
Think about how long it took to get email spam under control (and even so it remains a problem). Think about the ongoing problems with spam phone calls. Now pretend you are someone with no technical background, someone who only sees the UI and does not really understand what happens behind it -- you are not seeing spam on closed systems, you are seeing spam on open systems, what are you going to choose? Also keep in mind that there are worse forms of abuse than spam.
But seriously, there's zero incentive for the folks building these clients to make them interoperable. In fact there may even be disincentive, since the more folks they have on their platform, the more valuable the platform is.
The EU forced Apple to use USB-C on iPhones, because it was stupid and wasteful for people to have two different types of chargers in their home for their small electronic rechargeable devices. Government does have the power to regulate things like this. They would need to be educated to understand the importance and benefit of it.
I don't understand why having more than one chat app is too much for some people. I use signal, whatsapp, discord, irc, google chat, email and messenger without complaint. I can't force people to use my platform of choice so I have to compromise and use what they do with little to no notice on my end. Sure, I am not happy with this situation but I accept it and move on while keeping an eye out for alternatives.
Every app you add to your phone is another potential vulnerability. I'm not installing a random discord or irc app just because that's someone's preferred platform. In fact I haven't installed any chat/message apps at all, I use the Messages app from Apple.
And what if you want to contact someone? Are they on signal or WhatsApp or telegram? Or is it discord? Which server? How can I find that thing someone sent? Let me just open all those apps and start searching
I think you underestimate how little tolerance the average person has for this kind of friction. These huge platforms win because everyone is on them and it all just works.
You are speaking as someone who gives a shit about technology. Many people don't. "Just another account" is a big ask for many, as lots of people don't have password managers. There are a whole shit ton of people who want to use as few apps as they can. Even lots of tech-savvy people, myself included, feel this way.
> After that you forget it exists until someone messages you.
Until you get a random notification asking you to take steps to keep your account active or whatever. You may not care about this, but many people get stressed out about this kind of thing.
Consider the opposite direction: what if you want to message someone? What if you haven't messaged them in a while? Imagine you have seven messaging apps installed, some of the names you've forgotten ("Discord", is that obviously a messaging app?). Imagine you know that they're reachable somewhere just not exactly where.
> If you want people to adopt your thing, it's got to make their life easier, right now, full stop.
But somewhat counterintuitively, you can do that by making their life a little harder first.
For example: leave Facebook/WhatsApp, refuse to communicate over SMS. Have good reasons for each, so you don't come off as unnecessarily difficult. Explain that Signal is far more secure and private than either and just as easy to use. Then using Signal is making it easier to communicate with you. It worked for me.
I left the whole Facebook ecosystem about 10 years ago, but never deleted my account. I left it up as a tombstone that makes it very clear I'm not there and tells people how to contact me.
The network effect is powerful. But we also need to be honest with ourselves. Signal is an objectively worse client than Messages, especially when the average person does not value privacy.
Apparently, activists need something that is "open, decentralized, and user controlled". Those activists choose to use facebook. That tells me they are at least one of two things:
1. Too stupid to make a plan that could possibly work
2. Too lazy to execute on a plan that could possibly work
Knowing this is a useful signal. It tells me their judgment is terrible, and I should not listen to them ;)
> Apparently, activists need something that is "open, decentralized, and user controlled". Those activists choose to use facebook. That tells me they are at least one of two things:
> 1. Too stupid to make a plan that could possibly work
> 2. Too lazy to execute on a plan that could possibly work
Your comment is a pretty good example of what not to do: society/technology makes good choices harder, so flog individuals about their lack of self-discipline when they don't do yet-another hard thing. People only have so much time and self-discipline, have some empathy.
The only thing the flogging does is give the flogger the chance to feel unjustifiably superior.
> Knowing this is a useful signal. It tells me their judgment is terrible, and I should not listen to them ;)
What you're doing is a generalized method to dismiss anything and anyone:
1. Find a thing.
2. Search for some aspect that isn't perfect. Viciously criticize that aspect.
3. Dismiss the whole thing on account of that aspect.
The only thing that using Instagram tells me about these activists is that they weren't setting out to solve some ideological communication technology problem. They had other priorities.
And you are expecting countries to play by the rules when their existence in under threat. The EU will get people off Google, off Facebook, off fucking Pinterest even if it means moving back to Teletext.
Idk who you’re talking to or what you’re talking about.
I certainly don’t “expect” (in the normative sense) countries to continue relying on these services. Breaking network effects is hard, but I wouldn’t blame a country for trying and I’d probably be happy with them succeeding (to the extent they facilitate free expression of their people).
I would consider myself an activist, but not the Blue MAGA variety. Too much of the issue is people still think they can change minds online. In reality you are just chanting to the base, a negative feedback cycle for bad ideas that do not resonate with those outside your group.
Instead, go to where people all are, real life in the real world. I go out and talk to people all the time. I listen to them before telling them. I'm more interested in getting people talking than I am in changing their minds (right now) and providing them with ideas they are unlikely to hear online. I see my "sapphire gals" (retired nokingers) becoming less extreme, not repeating the shallow talking points. I hear them asking new questions.
Talking and working with others in person is 100x better.
This is overly harsh; it starts with the (flawed IMO) perspective that people are dedicated "professional" activists rather than amateurs from many different backgrounds who come together around something they care about and grow/evolve/deppen over time. It makes complete sense that they use tools in front of them AND don't necessarily get -what are quite subtle angles to most - all the issues with their use. It doesn't make them lazy or stupid, but if you have the skills & talents to help with this yet do nothing you might be projecting...
More likely these activists chose the most convenient platform for getting their message out. IG is popular and that makes it an obvious choice. Also keep in mind that activists will generally use what they are already familiar with, and Facebook runs three of the most popular platforms i.e. platforms that activists were probably already using before they became activists.
The only reason activists would switch to something else is if Facebook gives them a reason to do so. I doubt this one incident is enough of a reason.
They need to reach people where they are, so basically all the platforms where people hang out. It's not the activists who are lazy - it's people in general, who continue to use FB even though it is cluttered with ads and other distractions.
It's because the corporations were all banding together to censor their opponents a few years ago, so they got used to the idea that large corporations are your friends. The left took an opportunistic stance on this instead of a principled one, despite the fact that they're the side that on paper is supposedly opposed to letting corporations turn into pseudo-governments.
The problem is not that people are lazy; the problem with open systems is that they are much harder to moderate and people want effective moderation. Usenet was open, decentralized, and wound up dying because there were too many problems with moderation and white supremacists etc. would show up and flood NGs with their nonsense.
There are also legal issues that kill decentralized/user-controlled systems. Copyright and child abuse are the most prominent, along with terrorism and drug trafficking. Who gets sued or prosecuted when the system is open, decentralized, and user-controlled? The users, and that's why peer-to-peer filesharing died, why so few people are willing to host a Tor exit node, etc. Before talking about banning centralized systems we need to talk about updating the legal system so that it does not force centralization, which is a much bigger project and much harder to get right.
The moderation problem wouldn't have been hard to solve on USENET, it's just that nobody wanted to do it. It could work exactly like moderation does on Mastodon, where each admin is responsible for the content on their server(s). There isn't a technical reason why you couldn't do that, and even give individuals moderation rights on specific lists. Of course, this only affects your particular news server, but it lets the white supremacist post their insane ramblings over on Giganews, while you and I read less toxic version of the thread over on Cozy News. If you don't like the moderation on your server, go find another one.
> that's why peer-to-peer filesharing died
p2p file sharing is still huge, though. Most people just put their seedboxes behind a VPN to avoid getting DMCA notices.
Repeal section 230. If they want to shape speech for their own agenda then they should be liable.
Right now they have it both ways. They have the users, money, and data and they speak through their moderation decisions while being legally immune from consequences.
And they literally exercise more editorial control and reach than any magazine or newspaper editorial board ever did.
Section 230 was a Trojan Horse.
If they want to be treated like an innocent carrier (i.e., telco), they must kill their algorithms.
No news media company writes or says the reports of the journalists they publish or broadcast, but they are nevertheless responsible for that content.
If social media wants to control the algorithmic feed for profit, they must be like any media, "fully responsible for their content", and must be held accountable for it.
I've never had a phone company disconnect a phone call because they didn't like what I was saying
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54552101
Twitter was stopping people from tweeting or sending direct messages containing links to the New York Post article about Hunter Bidens Laptop in October of 2020. They put their thumb on the scale.
We need something different than "repeal 230" because this is largely believed to be something that will chill speech. Platforms will take down speech out of an abundance of caution.
I'm not exactly sure what the answer is, but we can place two constraints
1. Anyone can say anything online, free speech for individuals
2. Algorithms that act as "editors" are not free speech and should be regulated.
Perhaps the answer is to say that social media algorithms can only be chronological and M0% from your direct network.
Reposts and quotes seem to be one of the core features that enable virality and dog piling. We need to "slow the spread" - to borrow a phase from one of our least favorite times.
Another thing we need is a privacy preserving method for proving humanism online.
Banning targeted advertising is higher on my list of priorities. That business line is one of the most toxic for humanity. Let's go back to placement advertising.
For the record, the account was suspended because it tripped an automated rate limiter. They then had to get in touch with a human to restore the account.
That's pretty boring, platform agnostic, and not particularly inciteful though I suppose.
Unfortunately the truth is, way too.many people use Facebook and Instagram way too much, and oftentimes you need to cast a wide net so you can reach people where they are.
It's a combination of ignorance and indifference. One of my social groups is around a sport, no necessity for knowledge around technology, and they will never ever leave Facebook. Those roots got laid down 15+ years ago and I would guess about 40% use FB as their sole social media, and another 50% use 1-2 other sites e.g. Instagram or Tiktok, types that are well known. The rest are aware of the existence of other sites and can explore more widely.
If Facebook is really a "utility" then it should not arbitrarily pull the plug on accounts with no recourse. Other utilities have due process for cutting off access: written notice with a clear reason, a chance to dispute, etc. That's because utilities are regulated.
What Facebook has is an opaque process run by AI with no way for most people to appeal.
"Kings" as such aren't the problem as much as "CEOs" as such are any problem. There are good kings who cared about their country and bad kings who didn't. Before Henry VIII there were rules in place to restrict the obedience to kings only as long as the kings obey the rules. In 1570, Pope Pius V then told people that the English government is a lost cause and they were free to disobey Queen Elizabeth I (he actually commanded them to disobey, talk about anarchism!).
Then later in history you had Robbespierre who campaigned on "democracy" and "we must overthrow the monarchy, then things will be great" ... only to installed himself as a dictator, because only he knew the true morality that people should obide by ("terror is a virtue"). No kings... and then what? No CEOs... and then what? Then we just get a different king / CEO / whatever. Their true shackles are in the people themselves, in their own behaviour, in whom they give attention to. Don't give attention to Facebook and Zuck will have no power.
>Unfortunately, most of the “solutions” to this problem that people are suggesting are some form of “force Mark Zuckerberg to be better and not shut off the account we like.” But that’s no way to build a better world. It is, also, the exact same response that MAGA folks had when Donald Trump was banned from social media in the wake of the January 6th insurrection. Their response was to try to force platforms to host the content of people MAGA supported. That cannot be a workable solution, because as political fortunes shift, forcing platforms to host the worst people’s accounts is unworkable for basically everyone.
The bit about "the worst people's accounts" just sounds like a refutation of everything else in the article. The problem was always that it was up to interpretation who "the worst people" are.
IDK why so many people want to die on this hill of not forcing social media companies to extend free-speech rights to their userbase. Facebook didn't accidentally wind up in this position where their TOS can effectively censor entire political movements on the Zuck's whim. They spent decades purposefully angling for this by acquiring competitors and encouraging people to use their platform for any and all communication. They own the audience.
>But there is a better solution: build tools that are open, decentralized, and user controlled. And then actually use them instead of just giving more power to Mark Zuckerberg to shut down a protest organization’s account in the middle of one of its big protests.
Not happening LOL. The decentralized platforms have been there for 10-20 years, hardly anybody uses them.
Back when the shoe was on the other foot, the right tried to make *several* alternative platforms and there was widespread collusion amongst all levels of infrastructure providers to push them off the internet. The same will happen to any platform which seeks to effect political change and attains enough critical mass that it could plausibly do so.
That is the main issue. I am on mastodon but following someone on another instance of mastodon is not easy for "regular people". Until that is solved people will stick to items like twitter and meta.
AFAIK, most people on Bluesky are on the "main" instance, so that tends to end up being a centralized community which can suffer from the same issues.
Mastodon has a serious discovery problem. IIRC, searches are only within your own instance, except for hashtag searches. This appears to have been an intentional design decision to prevent brigading / pile-ons.
For me, I found it too difficult to locate "my peeps" on other instances, so I switched to Bluesky.
Stupidity is when I bulk post my back catalogue of TikToks. Malice is when a protest that attracted 9 million Americans last time they organized one gets taken down. Notable accounts get special treatment.
Friendly PSA, hopefully unnecessary: If you attend one of these 'No Kings' gatherings, or any similar gathering, please coordinate with your friends/associates beforehand and leave your phone at home. Or, turn-off your phone or, at the very least, disable all the radios (airplane mode). Also, try to cover your face - Covid mask or big hat and sunglasses, and don't wear any identifying clothing, like the name of your employer. All that might sound paranoid - that's what all my friends tell me. That might be true, but I'm confident DHS also attends these gatherings to collect data. And that data is used to create named lists, the ones you don't wanna be on.
I think people in the West have little experience living under totalitarian regime.
Typical ways of overcoming censorship is creating own lingo, so that it goes past censors or distribution of physical leaflets, underground press and organising resistance offline.
Bsky and HN manipulate social network effects too with their discourse controls
None of the faceless legal corporate entities should be trusted; many explicitly argued against common carrier to preserve power over discourse that benefits them
Got suspended on Bsky for pointing out they too rely on data centers; free speech is not possible online.
Not even talking about toxic political speech, just physical fucking truth that might impact the bottom line for a small team of tech bros.
There will be no doubting the genius of the SV PhD crowd never mind they too, a minority of the global population, are temporary and deluded self selecting meat suits with no ability to ensure the future cares about their effort; it's all so clearly just selfish laziness
Am raising my kids to be prepared to denigrate and marginalize Millennials as Millennials hit their glazed over elder phase so my kids generation can be free of the same thought policing and social conservatism
even if they were despicable, kiwifarms is case study for this, you can't give yourself a platform, they were DDOSed into oblivion when cloudflare dropped them, donations were blocked by payments processors, etc.
When people want moderation they cry at Zuck, when people get moderated they cry at Zuck. When people are given free and open systems they cry that it’s icky and weird.
can't even take this shit seriously anymore. for years when the left controlled twitter they ruled with an iron fist. twitter, meta (then FB), instagram, youtube, would somehow "completely randomly" come to the same conclusions to deplatform people all at once. even now, britain arrests people for wrong think social media posts. people like james damore lost his job for saying the most innocuous milk toast shit you could imagine. and everyone was fine with it, so long as they were the ones calling the shots.
all the bullshitting about complaining about centralization, third party this and that, freedom of speech, can't take that shit seriously. somehow they uniquely find only violations of these from people in the "other" side of the aisle. it's just so exhausting and obviously bad faith engagement. and the right isn't really any better, they do the same thing, just flipped. i think it's about time we mostly just admit: libertarians are fools (that used to be me LOL), and nobody in western culture genuinely cares about "free speech". everything they support is free speech, everything they dislike is "hate speech" (notice how the narrative changed). it's all so obvious to anyone who zooms out and looks at the larger trends. just get over it and embrace authoritarianism. just be honest about who you are.
A strong culture of free speech is the clear solution to the problem you're describing. I.e. when both political factions censor, the only solution is a strong preference for free speech regardless of who is in power.
that's like saying the solution is for everything to just be perfect. well of course. the problem is, that's not a realistic solution. the whole "No kings" movement in itself is an example of this. trump isn't a king nor is he trying to be, and most of the shit he does is rather milk toast. yet where were the "no kings" protestors when we were discussing forced vaccines? oh that's right, most supported it. where were the "my body my choice" people when we were discussing forced vaccines or else you can't work and feed your family? or yeah as it turns out in that case, it's not really your choice (in any realistic sense).
if the No Kings people truly want to be taken seriously, the best thing they can do is just admit they are wrong about their whole schtick. unfortunately the chances of that happening are exactly zero % since pride stands in the way.
watch and observe. literally nobody believes in free speech. people believe in policies and agendas, and "freedom" is just a tool used to push it. the right wing does this, especially in economics, all the time, where they want the rich to be "free" to fuck the poor. take a step back, observe the trends, and be honest with yourself, and it will be quite obvious that freedom itself is just a tool used in politics, nobody actually believes in it as an end to aspire to. this isn't 1980 anymore. milton friedman is long gone.
The media is mostly MAGA owned. Here's a short list:
- TikTok is controlled by Larry Ellison
- CBS news is controlled by Ellison's son
- The Ellisons will soon own CNN as well
- Twitter is controlled by Musk
- Facebook, Instagram and Threads are under Zuck
- WaPo and Amazon Prime by Bezos
- Old time favourites like Fox and WSJ owned by Murdoch
The owners of this media are also very explicitly involved in pro-Trump editorial content. In short, the playing field is wildly lopsided and unreliable and no tech (decentralized social media, lol) solution will work. Ultimately people will have to elect politicians to explicitly break up and clamp down on this hive of scum and villainy, but people aren't there yet, mentally. Such a solution seems wildly inappropriate today, but my guess is that another 10 years of the last two years will change a lot of minds.
These individuals are all sucking up to the president, but to call them "MAGA owned" is a stretch. They'll kiss whichever ass - democrat or republican - next fills the president's chair, it's just with this emperor-magpie it's very straightforward and easy: shiny & bright == good.
The internet has always had moderation, WTH are you talking about?
It was the right who wanted to repeal Section 230 and have the government take over all social media platforms and regulate them, and make it illegal to ban their speech. The left never wanted anything of the sort.
It's the Right wing politicians too. Look at Texas and pornography laws or the IRL book bans. We live in a politics of Win At All Costs, Dominate Those Who Think Differently, i.e utterly broken and anti-democratic.
The problem is the Oligarchy, the are thick from money, power, and hubris
eh, shit's always off the rails for leftists. it's a huge grift that they have to keep going. that's why places like france, which have implemented many, many of the changes that leftists in America want, still protest non stop. protesting is the grift. you can have government spending at like 50% of GDP (france was 57% recently) funding an endless welfare state with free education, worker protections, unfettered illegal immigration, every leftist wet dream you can realistically think of, and they still protest.
the grift works though, in part because the changes they protest for usually take a toll on the system over time, until the system soft or hard collapses. then you get social unrest. that's exactly you're seeing in france now. i dont even feel bad for france.
Protests worked in Hungary and Poland to help gain widespread support and eventually vote the authoritarians out of office. You want everyone to know there are many people resisting the leadership abusing power.
I don’t really know or care about what’s going on in France.
But characterizing opposition to Trump as “just leftists perma-complaining,” is incorrect. He’s the least popular POTUS in American history.
This administration has been repeatedly found in court to be violating the law and the US Constitution. It is not a partisan expectation or leftist complaint that the government must follow the law.
https://www.instagram.com/Aboujahjah/
They also removed the account of slain Palestinian journalists, this time including Pulitzer winning Al Jazeera's Anas Al-Sharif - although it seems it is back now: https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkx0kN5mUZDFsw7OgRiY3ElLx9DgjM...
It seems that there are repeated waves of account deletions affecting those not in power and only if you raise a huge stink is it undone but only on a per-account basis. And each of these waves slowly erodes those voices. It sort of feels like a strategy.
IDF detained the Americans but let him go because he's a public figure. The rabbis are still detained. Go figure.
https://bsky.app/profile/safety.bsky.app/post/3mukm26duos2c
Amazingly, the top replies to their post about targeted harassment are from accounts trying to redirect anger at several accounts that are common targets for dogpiling. It's deeply baked into the BlueSky culture and I don't know how it came to be like that.
I've tried to prune my feed to keep it out, but now the problem is that journalists I follow eventually find themselves targeted by a BlueSky dogpiling campaign and leave the platform.
The earliest bluesky users tended to be the most toxic users of old Twitter, it's not too surprising
That being said, there's also the tumblr->twitter->bluesky contingent who have always loved dogpiling and they're mostly there because the site doesn't have musk boosting nazi posters.
But generally these things cluster very strongly around specific people.
Alas Journalists I think are high value targets. Ideally they'd use tools like blocklists to help each other defend against dog piling. Ideally we'd have more automated response systems to detect and manage problems, which we could build, because of how Bluesky data is (so far, "spaces" incoming which change the gane) all public data. Blocking posts etc. The ability to handle this problems is much higher on Bluesky than elsewhere.
This can happen on Bluesky. It sucks. But for most people it's not an issue at all. It does unfortunately drive off some higher profile people though.
It's intrinsic to the medium. The Twitter-like format is inherently toxic and irredeemable. It can't be fixed.
The microblogging format with likes and reposts selects for short highly viral stuff that pokes at the brain stem. Rage bait, trolling, lynch mobs, and stupid brain rot stuff are all ideal forms of content for this medium. Nuanced and genuinely insightful ideas are too long.
I think short form content in general is bad. Short form video seems to be less actively toxic but more brainless and attention-destroying. Short form content is the refined sugar (or in some cases the crack or the fentanyl) of discourse.
Reddit-style sites (like this one) are better but still suffer from these problems. HN avoids the worst of it by having a culture and mod policy of downvoting trolling and low-effort crap.
There's no reason why Emperor Zuck's court can't be disrupted by some monkey king yet to appear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
Which is to say that it matters very much? The dollar only has value because people say so as well.
Someone has to be the Frodo to take Facebook & Twitter's rings into Mount MySpace and melt them down to join with the legacy media that came before them :)
It would be great if the "other elected officials" part turns out to be true, but my in my experience I don't see that happening. Have there been any policy proposals out of No Kings that would create better oversight and accountability?
Can you recall any other instance where FoxNews boycotted the White House press pool in support of left wing media outlets?
That is unprecedented as far as I know. What did Trump do that inspired FoxNews to make this choice?
why tho? it's No King_s_
you can have one
Like first of all I would call a person who tries to pass the checks and balances of a democracy, even if they fail, the target of the ideals or “no kings”
And while we can disagree with the extent to which any one act or bribe elevates someone to dictator, and whether or not all the accusations are true, can you not understand why someone caught up in the narrative ecosystem happening over the past few years may develop the perspective that Trump is trying to consolidate power?
Also “no folks who incrementally Test the limits of power and fail” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
The point of the protest is to prevent him from making himself a king.
> And couldn't even change the name of the art center, so not that powerful.
This is really weak cherry picking. He has successfully removed medical care from millions of Americans, started foreign wars of aggression, destabilised several countries, probably tanked US international reputation for a generation... he is incredibly powerful.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/the-slopagan...
Before I get hated out of existence, please note that I don't like either party or political tactics in general because they've devolved into politically commercialized populism without any empathy or critical thought. Just as an example, deportations under Trump are roughly on trend with Obama, Trump targeting activities are similar to Obama targeting conservative groups with the IRS, Obama lied in the SoTU about the gender wage gap, Obama was hard on journalists (highest prosecutions?) Like Trump has been, and Obama ignored court orders such as issuing immigration permits in violations of a order similar to Trump ignoring orders. I could sit here and hope that any of these abuses results in better oversight, but that would be naive based on the history.
Edit: if you're going to disagree, at least contribute to the discussion.
Trump acts like a king, even if he was elected. He gets tributes and requires deference, clearly visible from the foreign and corporate donations, and behavior of the Republican Party. Or take the "super intelligence" thing, him dictating what a technology shall be called, lest you become an ENEMY OF AMERICA. Or the repeated attempts to silence the media. If we consider the Kennedy Center you brought up, Trump's name was on there, then removed by court order. His response was to close it in spite. The Kennedy Center remains closed to this day, until he gets his way.
Trump has tried to violate most of the Bill of Rights. There are reasons people see every day for why NoKings sticks and resonates.
I do agree NoKings (and broadly the far left) have really bad messaging, a product of echo chambers (imo). I suspect the Democrats will learn the wrong lessons from the midterms... sigh.
It's also incredibly ironic that the claim that democracy was on the line during the last presidential election given that the democrats first fielded a candidate whose health concerns were downplayed and then a candidate who was not elected in the primary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
Try out some Michael Sandel content, see if it speaks to you more than your preferred wing of the Oligarchs.
The scope and the shamelessness of his behavior is unprecedented. Nothing any other president has done compares to what Trump has done, with the negative impact to the country, with such explicit opposition to American interests.
Off the top of my head: Illegal tariffs, sicking ICE on society with brutality, trying to overturn elections, constantly lying about election security to sow doubt in our democracy, declaring that any election he or the GOP loses is illegitimate, declaring that anyone who criticizes him is an enemy of the state, enriching himself and his friends with bribes and insider deals 10x what anyone could possibly claim any other politician in the US has done, selling pardons and stopping DOJ investigations for money, destroying the independent agencies that serve the country.
It's urging/educating people to rely on Facebook as little as possible, since it is not committed to being a neutral platform.
If you support free speech, you should support facebook's right to express their own political views.
But that does not mean you have to support facebook's political views, or the way they exercise them!
When I see comments like this, I despair at how poorly people understand the basic concept of free speech. Hopefully you're just trolling.
What I'm seeing is an argument for, "I don't like Facebook's speech. I think you shouldn't like it either. So I think we should all walk away."
Suppression of misinformation during one era is suppression of protests in another era.
You're right that the reality of the current day is what TFA is about - but GP is mentioning that we built this reality.
There's clear moral valence to this issue. The popular (mis)understanding of freedom of speech as applied to corporations is in direct contradiction to the notional principles of western sociopolitical ideology. Resolving this conflict is only difficult because of our conditioning.
98% of the time people are talking about the former, and the only ones confused are the people assuming they're talking about the latter and linking the face-palm-worthy "showing them the door" XKCD.
I'd say damn near 100% of those 98% will still cite the constitution, sometimes even crying "1st amendment!" in lieu of "free speech," so I'd say your overall point is wrong. They are basically saying both at the same time, with intent, while still not understanding it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18764523
And this incident (negligent takedown of a community on an important day) demonstrates the point perfectly.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that I have to tolerate a business platforming hate speech. Any platform that stands behind the "free speech" of neo-nazi groups, white supremacists, and violent nationalists deserves criticism for turning a blind eye to what they are enabling. The First Amendment wasn't built to protect citizens' speech from each other; it was built to protect us from government censorship. Facebook doesn't have a legal responsibility to protect that, and I as a consumer can expect them to take an ethical stand against things like ethnic cleansing.
And that is exactly the point the author here is making. Facebook, X (Twitter), even places like Fediverse instances and Bluesky/AtProto sites are privately run spaces with no obligation to respect your freedom of speech.
If you choose these spaces to organize your political cause, you put your movement into another person's hands. Stop doing that. Host your own infrastructure, make it easy to recover and migrate, and start organizing outside of corporate-controlled areas.
Turning to Facebook for political organizing "because everyone is there" is like doing your town-hall meetings at Walmart "because everyone shops there", and then wondering why small businesses don't feel represented in your town anymore.
It's easy to blame big tech, but you can also ask your local bar why they only advertise events through Mark Zuckerberg, and ask why their website is mostly just links to Mark Zuckerberg's websites. Ask them if they have considered that Mark Zuckerberg might not a good obligatory middleman between them and their customers. The core problem is that people have accepted the lie that these corporate-controlled spaces are "the public square", when they are the exact opposite.
The reason to not platform hate speech is the same reason you're not allowed to yell fire in a theater or bomb in an airport without their being one. Or say you're going to kill the president. Even the US has limits on what can be said, including liability laws. You can't just defame your neighbor and not face legal repercussions if they take you to court.
One can imagine this argument during the Salem Witch trials. "She's a witch" wasn't just a joke back then. It could get someone burned at the stake.
(I dislike Musk for many reasons but you cannot tell me there were 'no problems' with old Twitter or that every criticism was a 'nothingburger')
(To be perfectly clear disrupting protests is also very bad!)
Deplatforming people organizing a peaceful protest is very different. If you cannot understand how that is different, then I worry about your critical thinking skills.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
These conversations often end up in some weird motte and bailey where you argue that you care about free speech, but it turns out that you actually just thought COVID was not real/not significant/not dangerous/not an emergency. So your issue ends up not being that they made a decision on it (free speech concern), but that you feel it was the wrong decision (content-specific concern).
So before we go back and forth on the intricacies of content moderation, can you briefly describe your beliefs on COVID?
It seems like you’re trying to avoid dealing with the substance of the issue for some reason.
Most people haven’t spent any time moderating online communities, so they don’t have to test their beliefs against reality. This is fine, frankly you saved yourself being stuck in a fractal hell scape.
However holding to this idea that the “opposition” was deplatformed, is superstition.
I’ve seen communities start with 0 moderation, and become wastelands filled with hate speech, misogyny and harassment. Which then forces moderation to be introduced.
This happens so often, that this happened to the hate groups who were kicked off of Reddit.
Communities have celebrated the introduction of moderation, and celebrated the imposition of rules that mean you can’t be harassed, attacked and targeted.
But yes, a solution is for people to host their own content/sites. Or "protocols not platforms"
In a perfect world yes. In the reality we live in no.
Why is this the case?
1. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. Can you afford a terabyte of data a second coming your way? Probably not. So you put it behind CF, but now you're vulnerable to their policies closing you down.
2. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. What are you going to do against floods of child porn or death threats posted by users pretending to be on your side, but actually working for the opposition?
3. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. You are now in charge of your website security. Are you any good at it? How are you going to pay for it to be secured? How do you trust the people doing the security?
4. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. How do you plan on getting people to come to your site? If it's upsetting enough to the powers that be any messages containing links to your site will disappear from Meta/X/Google. You are going to have to find neat an interesting, and probably expensive ways to get your message out.
We have consolidated the internet down to a point where it is very very easy for a few small groups to control the general discussion, especially across large diverse groups of people.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some anti-Facebook snob looking down on everyone else. But I have greatly reduced my use of the platform and only really use it for some groups I'm part of. While I do interact with family and friends, saying I use Facebook to "stay in touch" these days is a bit of a reach in most cases.
I dropped Facebook when I realized that their app was snooping on who I called and who called me.
How does that work? People post on FB or IG, AND THEN phone you / write a letter? doubtful...
why is this doubtful?
i am also disconnected from fb/ig/etc. and that is exactly what happens. family or close friends make a post for something important, and i get a call or text. for smaller stuff i get caught up at some point whenever we next talk on the phone for a regular catch up.
In the case of major events, my brother usually lets me know, for example the death of an aunt. Everyone close to me knows I don't use FB, so if they want me to be aware of something in particular, they can text or call me.
I don't like (most of) the content on those sites. This is not surprising. The content is aimed at people who can't use Signal. Such a person is different from me in many ways.
Widespread algorithmic control and corporate spam spreads architecture?
>They are actually usable by normal people.
Usability is just one dimension. If your site is perfectly usable, yet steals your credit card number and sells it to the highest bidder, it is still a shitty site, just not in usability.
>This is a big reason they are popular.
Really FB/Meta became popular long before they were at their current level of shittiness. Really FB wrote the modern book on new levels of shittiness like selling social graphs and tracking people along with connecting all kinds of other data and stealing information from your phone with overly huge permissions and data gathering.
Twitter boosts Elon Musk and the things he is interested in.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk...
I don't have specific complaints about Instagram or TikTok, other than the algorithm is controlled by oligarchs.
The problem with that is people are "lazy": they're typically not going to expend extra effort that's not needed to solve the problem in front of them. It's pervasive, and it's one of the big reasons "friction" reducing technology can be really problematic: it turns necessary behaviors into issues of self-discipline (e.g. exercise becomes forcing yourself to haul yourself to the gym regularly in your spare time, instead just walking everywhere because you have to in order to go about your day).
So, IMHO, if you want people to use "open, decentralized, and user controlled" tools in 2026, you have to ban the centralized alternatives. Otherwise you're yelling at clouds, as most people will default to the lowest friction alternative they have access to.
I used to use a multiprotocol client, Pidgin, to chat with people on a couple of different platforms. But of course now a lot of chat is on things like Facebook and Google Chat which are supported only by plugins. But even that is still not enough because I will have to have an account on each of the platforms.
Chat really needs to be like email or SMS; you ought not to need an account with the provider of the person you are sending messages to.
Think about how long it took to get email spam under control (and even so it remains a problem). Think about the ongoing problems with spam phone calls. Now pretend you are someone with no technical background, someone who only sees the UI and does not really understand what happens behind it -- you are not seeing spam on closed systems, you are seeing spam on open systems, what are you going to choose? Also keep in mind that there are worse forms of abuse than spam.
Maybe aside from the increased attack surface and trust issues...
But seriously, there's zero incentive for the folks building these clients to make them interoperable. In fact there may even be disincentive, since the more folks they have on their platform, the more valuable the platform is.
There are certainly parts of my life that would be more optimized if that weren't a constraint.
I think you underestimate how little tolerance the average person has for this kind of friction. These huge platforms win because everyone is on them and it all just works.
> After that you forget it exists until someone messages you.
Until you get a random notification asking you to take steps to keep your account active or whatever. You may not care about this, but many people get stressed out about this kind of thing.
If you want people to adopt your thing, it's got to make their life easier, right now, full stop.
But somewhat counterintuitively, you can do that by making their life a little harder first.
For example: leave Facebook/WhatsApp, refuse to communicate over SMS. Have good reasons for each, so you don't come off as unnecessarily difficult. Explain that Signal is far more secure and private than either and just as easy to use. Then using Signal is making it easier to communicate with you. It worked for me.
I left the whole Facebook ecosystem about 10 years ago, but never deleted my account. I left it up as a tombstone that makes it very clear I'm not there and tells people how to contact me.
1. Too stupid to make a plan that could possibly work
2. Too lazy to execute on a plan that could possibly work
Knowing this is a useful signal. It tells me their judgment is terrible, and I should not listen to them ;)
> 1. Too stupid to make a plan that could possibly work
> 2. Too lazy to execute on a plan that could possibly work
Your comment is a pretty good example of what not to do: society/technology makes good choices harder, so flog individuals about their lack of self-discipline when they don't do yet-another hard thing. People only have so much time and self-discipline, have some empathy.
The only thing the flogging does is give the flogger the chance to feel unjustifiably superior.
> Knowing this is a useful signal. It tells me their judgment is terrible, and I should not listen to them ;)
What you're doing is a generalized method to dismiss anything and anyone:
1. Find a thing.
2. Search for some aspect that isn't perfect. Viciously criticize that aspect.
3. Dismiss the whole thing on account of that aspect.
The only thing that using Instagram tells me about these activists is that they weren't setting out to solve some ideological communication technology problem. They had other priorities.
TFA (and you) are just discounting the power of network effects. Tells me that your judgment is poor and I should not listen to you ;)
(yes, there were "irc channels" on telext)
I certainly don’t “expect” (in the normative sense) countries to continue relying on these services. Breaking network effects is hard, but I wouldn’t blame a country for trying and I’d probably be happy with them succeeding (to the extent they facilitate free expression of their people).
Instead, go to where people all are, real life in the real world. I go out and talk to people all the time. I listen to them before telling them. I'm more interested in getting people talking than I am in changing their minds (right now) and providing them with ideas they are unlikely to hear online. I see my "sapphire gals" (retired nokingers) becoming less extreme, not repeating the shallow talking points. I hear them asking new questions.
Talking and working with others in person is 100x better.
The only reason activists would switch to something else is if Facebook gives them a reason to do so. I doubt this one incident is enough of a reason.
Amazing.
There are also legal issues that kill decentralized/user-controlled systems. Copyright and child abuse are the most prominent, along with terrorism and drug trafficking. Who gets sued or prosecuted when the system is open, decentralized, and user-controlled? The users, and that's why peer-to-peer filesharing died, why so few people are willing to host a Tor exit node, etc. Before talking about banning centralized systems we need to talk about updating the legal system so that it does not force centralization, which is a much bigger project and much harder to get right.
> that's why peer-to-peer filesharing died
p2p file sharing is still huge, though. Most people just put their seedboxes behind a VPN to avoid getting DMCA notices.
Right now they have it both ways. They have the users, money, and data and they speak through their moderation decisions while being legally immune from consequences.
Section 230 was a Trojan Horse.
If they want to be treated like an innocent carrier (i.e., telco), they must kill their algorithms.
No news media company writes or says the reports of the journalists they publish or broadcast, but they are nevertheless responsible for that content.
If social media wants to control the algorithmic feed for profit, they must be like any media, "fully responsible for their content", and must be held accountable for it.
I'm not exactly sure what the answer is, but we can place two constraints
1. Anyone can say anything online, free speech for individuals
2. Algorithms that act as "editors" are not free speech and should be regulated.
Perhaps the answer is to say that social media algorithms can only be chronological and M0% from your direct network.
Reposts and quotes seem to be one of the core features that enable virality and dog piling. We need to "slow the spread" - to borrow a phase from one of our least favorite times.
Another thing we need is a privacy preserving method for proving humanism online.
You do realize that will accomplish the exact opposite of what you're trying to achieve right?
That's pretty boring, platform agnostic, and not particularly inciteful though I suppose.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
What Facebook has is an opaque process run by AI with no way for most people to appeal.
Then later in history you had Robbespierre who campaigned on "democracy" and "we must overthrow the monarchy, then things will be great" ... only to installed himself as a dictator, because only he knew the true morality that people should obide by ("terror is a virtue"). No kings... and then what? No CEOs... and then what? Then we just get a different king / CEO / whatever. Their true shackles are in the people themselves, in their own behaviour, in whom they give attention to. Don't give attention to Facebook and Zuck will have no power.
The bit about "the worst people's accounts" just sounds like a refutation of everything else in the article. The problem was always that it was up to interpretation who "the worst people" are.
IDK why so many people want to die on this hill of not forcing social media companies to extend free-speech rights to their userbase. Facebook didn't accidentally wind up in this position where their TOS can effectively censor entire political movements on the Zuck's whim. They spent decades purposefully angling for this by acquiring competitors and encouraging people to use their platform for any and all communication. They own the audience.
>But there is a better solution: build tools that are open, decentralized, and user controlled. And then actually use them instead of just giving more power to Mark Zuckerberg to shut down a protest organization’s account in the middle of one of its big protests.
Not happening LOL. The decentralized platforms have been there for 10-20 years, hardly anybody uses them.
Back when the shoe was on the other foot, the right tried to make *several* alternative platforms and there was widespread collusion amongst all levels of infrastructure providers to push them off the internet. The same will happen to any platform which seeks to effect political change and attains enough critical mass that it could plausibly do so.
That is the main issue. I am on mastodon but following someone on another instance of mastodon is not easy for "regular people". Until that is solved people will stick to items like twitter and meta.
AFAIK, most people on Bluesky are on the "main" instance, so that tends to end up being a centralized community which can suffer from the same issues.
For me, I found it too difficult to locate "my peeps" on other instances, so I switched to Bluesky.
Typical ways of overcoming censorship is creating own lingo, so that it goes past censors or distribution of physical leaflets, underground press and organising resistance offline.
even OAI and Ant are better options
None of the faceless legal corporate entities should be trusted; many explicitly argued against common carrier to preserve power over discourse that benefits them
Got suspended on Bsky for pointing out they too rely on data centers; free speech is not possible online.
Not even talking about toxic political speech, just physical fucking truth that might impact the bottom line for a small team of tech bros.
There will be no doubting the genius of the SV PhD crowd never mind they too, a minority of the global population, are temporary and deluded self selecting meat suits with no ability to ensure the future cares about their effort; it's all so clearly just selfish laziness
Am raising my kids to be prepared to denigrate and marginalize Millennials as Millennials hit their glazed over elder phase so my kids generation can be free of the same thought policing and social conservatism
Meta Takes Down No Kings Instagram During Protest Day
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50136881
Kind of hurts/helps the point, but yeah generally, you should run your own website? Is this the return of the old web?
https://www.nokings.org
all the bullshitting about complaining about centralization, third party this and that, freedom of speech, can't take that shit seriously. somehow they uniquely find only violations of these from people in the "other" side of the aisle. it's just so exhausting and obviously bad faith engagement. and the right isn't really any better, they do the same thing, just flipped. i think it's about time we mostly just admit: libertarians are fools (that used to be me LOL), and nobody in western culture genuinely cares about "free speech". everything they support is free speech, everything they dislike is "hate speech" (notice how the narrative changed). it's all so obvious to anyone who zooms out and looks at the larger trends. just get over it and embrace authoritarianism. just be honest about who you are.
if the No Kings people truly want to be taken seriously, the best thing they can do is just admit they are wrong about their whole schtick. unfortunately the chances of that happening are exactly zero % since pride stands in the way.
watch and observe. literally nobody believes in free speech. people believe in policies and agendas, and "freedom" is just a tool used to push it. the right wing does this, especially in economics, all the time, where they want the rich to be "free" to fuck the poor. take a step back, observe the trends, and be honest with yourself, and it will be quite obvious that freedom itself is just a tool used in politics, nobody actually believes in it as an end to aspire to. this isn't 1980 anymore. milton friedman is long gone.
- TikTok is controlled by Larry Ellison
- CBS news is controlled by Ellison's son
- The Ellisons will soon own CNN as well
- Twitter is controlled by Musk
- Facebook, Instagram and Threads are under Zuck
- WaPo and Amazon Prime by Bezos
- Old time favourites like Fox and WSJ owned by Murdoch
The owners of this media are also very explicitly involved in pro-Trump editorial content. In short, the playing field is wildly lopsided and unreliable and no tech (decentralized social media, lol) solution will work. Ultimately people will have to elect politicians to explicitly break up and clamp down on this hive of scum and villainy, but people aren't there yet, mentally. Such a solution seems wildly inappropriate today, but my guess is that another 10 years of the last two years will change a lot of minds.
We got Internet moderation.
Watch out what you wish for.
It was the right who wanted to repeal Section 230 and have the government take over all social media platforms and regulate them, and make it illegal to ban their speech. The left never wanted anything of the sort.
It's the Right wing politicians too. Look at Texas and pornography laws or the IRL book bans. We live in a politics of Win At All Costs, Dominate Those Who Think Differently, i.e utterly broken and anti-democratic.
The problem is the Oligarchy, the are thick from money, power, and hubris
There’s a reason autocrats hate protests. It’s because they’d much rather that opposition become doubtful of whether other opposition exist out there.
the grift works though, in part because the changes they protest for usually take a toll on the system over time, until the system soft or hard collapses. then you get social unrest. that's exactly you're seeing in france now. i dont even feel bad for france.
But characterizing opposition to Trump as “just leftists perma-complaining,” is incorrect. He’s the least popular POTUS in American history.
This administration has been repeatedly found in court to be violating the law and the US Constitution. It is not a partisan expectation or leftist complaint that the government must follow the law.