Comment on Meta cancelled climate change ads, then cancelled a local newspaper that reported about the ads, then a blogger who reported on the paper's cancellation, and now has escalated to blocking all of LGF for posting the blogger's story

some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Hard disagree with this person.

  They’re position basically boils down to “Facebook won’t tell us what problems were identified with the domains that caused the blocks, but it’s better to have guards against malicious domains than not”. That is a false dichotomy.

  A better response is, “unless Facebook is actually disclosing what issues with the domains caused the flagging, we should not allow them to block news websites, especially when they’ve been critical of Facebook”. To do otherwise is basically just giving them carte blanche to block domains whenever they want to, and assuming on their behalf that they’re being honest and benevolent.

  They go on to make excuses for Meta all throughout the article:

  Whatever issue Facebook flagged regarding those ads — Kendall is not clear, and I suspect that is because Facebook is not clear either

  And even their sarcastic comment that

  If you wanted to make a kind-of-lame modern conspiracy movie

  is a completely unwarranted dismissal of assertions that Meta polices political content on their platforms, which we in fact know they do. Reporting has shown that Meta does actively take political stances and translate those into actions and policies in their sites.

  Hanlon’s Razor is about assumptions sans evidence, because of the natural human tendency to automatically interpret actions that harm you as intentional. It’s not, however, meant to discount evidence of patterns of behavior.

  And this is not a new, one-off behavior on Facebook’s part:

  The climate divide: How Facebook’s algorithm amplifies climate disinformation - Feb2022

  Facebook did not label over 50% of posts from top climate change deniers, says new report - Feb2022

  Facebook’s New Ad Policies Make It Harder for Climate Groups to Counter Big Oil - Mar2022

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  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Thank you

    The writer also totally skips over, as far as I can tell, the escalating series of blocks of additional outlets who were covering the story. With each additional one, it becomes geometrically less likely that it was just the kind of mistake he is claiming is a plausible explanation (which, he then parlays into arguing that it means it is the plausible explanation).

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  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Interesting take. You’ve certainly got me thinking about it a bit more.

    I won’t try to interpret the author’s intent because that’s for him to do and I don’t want to speak on his behalf. But I do think he’s right about the tone of the response to the error being wildly wrong. News orgs should be dispassionate and I don’t get a sense that they were at all.

    I think Meta fucks up. I think mass media is terrible at understanding what they’re reporting about. I think conservatives in particular see boogie men everywhere. Anyway, I’d read Nick’s piece earlier in the day and that had been my only exposure to the story, so I chose to link to it because to me it was a reasonable response.

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• NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is a well written and a very rational take on the situation. Nick is probably right.

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  • chahk@beehaw.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Nice try, Nick.

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