Meta Censors #Democrat when searched for

Comments

• lemmylommy@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This is not mildly infuriating. Its incredibly worrying.

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  • Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    someone should make c/incrediblyworrying

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• AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Running Shortlist includes blocking hashtags for: democrat (but not republican) voteblue (but not votered) presidentbiden (but not president harris) kamala liberal liberals leftist leftists barackobama (but not presidentobama) obama (but not obamas) berniesanders votebiden (votekamala, votetrump works tho) democracy (WOW) presidentcarter fuckputin makeamericasmartagain libertarian (for some reason) igcensorship factsoverfiction fuckdemocrats fuckrepublicans bluewave (redwave still works, shocker) politicalleft (blocked, but politicalright isn’t) fascism fascist antifascism prochoice

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  • zakobjoa@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    From Germany: about half of these still work for me. But only half.

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    • AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Some have started working for me again, #democrat works again, but not #prochoice #kamala or #fuckputin

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    • Peter_Arbeitsloser@feddit.org ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Me too, I tried just a few. On pc #antifascist , #fascist and #democracy didn’t work. On a mobile phone from my colleague #democracy worked though.

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  • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Well fuck.

    presidentbiden (but not president harris)

    barackobama (but not presidentobama)

    votebiden (votekamala, votetrump works tho)

    presidentcarter

    libertarian (for some reason)

    These are some odd censorship choices. In America, libertarian is short for (not really anarcho) anarcho-capitalist and they tend to vote right wing. They’re the tea party essentially and trumps election is a culmination of the tea party’s power. I consider myself a left libertarian / anarcho-communist but we are not that common in America. Unfortunately.

    And why censor Carter? He’s dead. And why biden but not Harris? So odd.

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  • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    igcensorship

    This one’s funny. I wonder if they’ll go recursive and add “igcensorshipcensorship” next.

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  • intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What app are you searching for hashtags in? Is that facebook?

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    • AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      This is my instagram, I deleted facebook

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• JustJack23@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Image

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• lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Meta says its working urgently to fix a problem with Instagram which results in a “results hidden” message when users search for the terms “Democrat” or “Democrats”.

  If that’s hard to fix, I recommend shutting down the servers forever.

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  • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Makes me wonder if it was something like a lot of people were scrolling those hashtags and leaving hate comments and it triggered some automated hide feature and now they’re trying to find some middle ground. That’s being very generous to Meta though.

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    • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I hope you’re right but something tells me this was intentional

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  • Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It’s hard emotionally

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• TheBat@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Time in USA: 1935, Germany

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  • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Image

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    • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Don’t share this. The stylization is too cool to allow the assholes to see it and use it.

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  • finder585@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Maybe we are witnessing a modern day version of the Business Plot.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

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• FreakinSteve@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Just tried it. It works fine. Granted, most results are from fascist accounts, but it does work

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  • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net ⁨9⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    I wonder if that may be the cause of the block in the original post — i.e. if the fascist accounts were posting lots of “sensitive” content (such as stuff that would, in a different era, been far more likely to be removed if reported), then it might appear like the censorship that OP saw. I vaguely recall an instance of something similar happening, and if so, the “censorship” would be an automated error, and it being visible now would be after the manual intervention.

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• CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  What was that story warning people that if they use RedNote they’ll experience ‘Chinese style censorship’ for the first time? Looks like they didn’t even have to switch apps in the end.

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  • fuck_u_spez_in_particular@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah the US is making China look tame… Fucked up world we live in… Definitely the wrong timeline…

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• CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  What’s a two party state that’s one party down?

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  • T00l_shed@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Sounds a bit like a…dictatorship

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• FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’m not sure how many years of headlines you all need before you just stop using these services. You already know they artificially lower your engagement, so you’re just literally wasting your time at this point. (If you’re not a fascist, that is.)

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  • Evotech@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Preaching to the choir here

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• eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Maybe this will hopefully get people to stop using the garbage platform that enabled Trump and aided a literal genocide because they didn’t hire anyone fluent in the language of the people being exterminated.

  I can’t wait for the day Zuckerberg loses all his money and dies alone because he alienated himself from anyone who cared about him.

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• Fizz@lemmy.nz ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I dont even know how to react to this. It feels like my reaction to everything has been holy shit this is fucking insane. I’m burnt out, I just need to tend to my own garden. I cant have sympathy for people who support the right and these stupid social media platforms.

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  • snekerpimp@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I have that same thought, but then I think this is exactly how all the non-Jewish people felt as hitler was rising to power. I end up getting even more angry and looking up where to buy fertilizer.

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    • dragonfucker@lemmy.nz ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Love the double entendre. Are you tending your garden harder, or blowing up Parliament?

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  • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That’s kind of the point. A constant barrage of stupid and dangerous shit to keep you enraged until you burn put. You cannot stay enraged for four years and nobody will care to do anything if it’s a constant stream of small and big steps to fascism. They’re not removing all liberties at once, but in a lot of steps so that it becomes impossible to agree on which step becomes the straw to break the camel’s back.

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  • superkret@feddit.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Protip: Disconnect yourself from the online media circus.
    Bring yourself up to speed with current developments once a week.
    And focus your energy on helping people around you who need help.

    You can’t stop fascism all by yourself. But you can affect your immediate surroundings.
    And if enough people do that, there will be resistance everywhere.

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• RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  German news magazine Der Spiegel wrote they had talked to a Meta representative and they said “This is definitely an error and we will fix it fast”

  My personal take: An incident like this illustrates how vulnerable we are to being censored and silenced when using social media and communication channels owned by billionaires. It’s time not only to leave those platforms but to educate your friends and family why this is absolutely necessary. No more excuses.

  Original: Update, 13.30 Uhr: Auf SPIEGEL-Anfrage hat sich Meta inzwischen kurz und knapp zu dem Phänomen geäußert. »Dies ist eindeutig ein Fehler, den wir schnell beheben werden«, so eine Sprecherin des Konzerns.

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  • scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I know as a software engineer I frequently accidentally release bugs that block entire political parties after their opponents take power. It’s one of those things most people forget to write unit tests for.

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    • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Could’ve happened to anybody, really.

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    • WeUnite@lemm.ee ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yes, and automatically follow JD Vance and Trump. Totally a bug /s

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    • jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      No no, the bug is it told you it hid results instead of just secretly hiding them. Hiding them was the intended behavior.

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  • phughes@lemmy.ca ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    At the moment a search for #democrat on my facebook page returns a bunch of posts saying that searches for #democrat are blocked and a bunch (more recent ones) saying it isn’t.

    I was skeptical that this was an outrage campaign but with a real news source having a quote verifying the behavior from the company (the above referenced article was on the Der Spiegel front page and the update is at the bottom.) I’m less skeptical.

    Pushing through a change doesn’t happen by accidentally clicking on a button. Where I work it’s a multistep process requiring manager approval. Even if the block happened by mistake it still means there was a mechanism in place to make it happen, configured so that it only censored left leaning hashtags. This is “not good.”

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    • Live_your_lives@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an AI or other automated system blocking it, because an outright block instead of a shadow ban seems unlikely to have been done by human hands. But that just indicates that there are systemic issues or biases that clearly favor one party over the other, and that’s not much better.

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  • AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    They will now shadow ban these topics, so people can catch them red handed. But users will just never see it in their feed

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    • RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yeah, that was my thought too. What a dumb way to censor by search input instead of censoring the output.

      It probably went like this at Meta: Product Manager: Hey we just got this word filter list from HQ to be implemented ASAP. Devs: Sure thing boss.

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  • spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    they said “This is definitely an error and we will fix it fast”

    I’m pretty sure that’s literally what they always say.

    Like, has a mainstream brainwashing platform ever admitted to making the change and owning up to it? As far as I can remember, these features keep accidentally getting thought up, coded and released into the production product.

    I’m at the point where there is no benefit of the doubt, especially with malicious actors like Twitter and Facebook. If there isn’t proof they didn’t intend to release it (and you can’t exactly prove a negative), it was on purpose.

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• BigMacHole@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Don’t worry! Free Speech Republicans AGAINST Censorship will be FURIOUS when they hear about this!

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• Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Looks like Zuckerberg needs a “red shell”…

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  • ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I vote for the blue shell, it never misses

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• 9point6@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I thought they were gonna promote more political content

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  • ThoGot@lemm.ee ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah but only the “right” political conten

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• PanArab@lemm.ee ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Benito Mussolini is often attributed with the quote: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

  No one can argue the US isn’t corporatist.

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• Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Every day is a day closer to the electorate realizing certain luxuries have been removed from their cages. Here’s hoping it’s sooner rather than later. And don’t be pathetic and turn to the democrats to help you. They were bought and paid for and will be lucky not to be disappeared.

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  • houstoneulers@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Luigi, that you?

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    • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Ugh, excuse me, I’m a “dirty lib” and you can check my credentials on that one.

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• aramova@infosec.pub ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The Product Manager made the mistake of having the keyword be overtly banned by the SWEs.

  What was intended was an algorithmic change to hide the content entirely and divert to “acceptable” topics while obfuscating the ban.

  It will be corrected shortly.

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• thepreciousboar@lemm.ee ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  “Fact checkers are politically sided”

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• KurtVonnegut@mander.xyz ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Is this true? Can anyone confirm this?

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  • 0x0@programming.dev ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Confirmed in instagram in the EU.

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  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I just confirmed it in the US. #republican returns plenty of results.

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    • RiceManatee@lemmy.ca ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Strangely, this is also the case in Australia.

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  • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yes, I confirmed. I live in Germany and hashtags like democrat or berniesanders are blocked and hashtags like Republican and donaldjtrump are not blocked.

    I was only on Instagram for my friends to exchange reels and post life updates like once a year but this crosses another line. Migrating from all these monopolies is such a tax on my time but this is a small way to hurt these big giants.

    I recommend everyone do the same when they have the time. I’d like to learn about RSS feeds and go back to a bunch of individual blogs for friends and family. Decentralized power is I guess the most important characteristic to look for these days. Fuck, this correction period is going to suck.

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  • vfsh@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Image

    Confirmed

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    • intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Not confirmed by me. Just searched this in instagram.

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  • xnx@slrpnk.net ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Happens if you search #berniesanders too but mot #donaldtrump

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  • RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Just tested in in the EU with a friend’s Instagram account. It’s real.

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  • Garyx23x@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Also happening on TikTok now after the “ban”.

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  • AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You can google it, it’s like that for many people.

    I can search #domocrat again, but not #fuckputin or #prochoice etc.

    You can also test for yourself, this screenshot was from my instagram search

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• Kalysta@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Blocking hashtags while pretending to be more free speech.

  I hope meta goes down in flames

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• ThaMunsta@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Confirming this was the last straw and the moment I uninstalled all meta apps

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• sudo@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Zuckerburg is furious that dems dragged him before congress and tried to blame Trump winning on Facebook.

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• Pot8o@slrpnk.net ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Australia checking in…yeah nah it’s happening here too. Shitcunts.

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• floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The USA becoming a one-party nation in real time

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• kat_angstrom@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  WTF

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• uberdroog@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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• AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  So Zuck has declared the Democratic Party an unlawful extremist organisation before the government could do so?

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• weastie@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Scary if true, but I’m in the US and everything seems to be working for me. It could have been a temporary bug that was already fixed? Not sure

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• Death_to_cumskins@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s not censorship. It’s a private company that is regulating the content on its platform.

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