Meta to bar Russian state media from running ads, monetizing on platform | Hacker News Reader

Meta to bar Russian state media from running ads, monetizing on platform

reuters.com

75 pointscaaqil43 comments

They will keep selling pro-fascist ads to anyone who doesn't overtly present as part of the Russian government. This is another total dodge from the blue site.

So I guess this whole time Facebook could tell which ads were funded by Russian state media and they were happy to take the money. Or, they have no way of knowing so this is an empty threat. Neither is a good look.

Translation: meta to take unlimited advertising revenue from Russian state sponsored proxies.

I wish Facebook had banned Russian state interference and advertisements before the invasion..

Yeah, IMHO they should just get rid of all political content altogether

That is what is happening in the non-free world.

No it's not. In the non-free world text itself is censored. Nobody prevents you from sending News article links via Whatsapp, who cares. But people constructing SEO-optimized fakenews links is really bad and IMHO there is no way to prevent that without putting in the work that actual journalists and publishers do. People can still visit the news sites (in the "free world") directly. In fact maybe this would stop the bankruptcy of the news outlets that's been going on since more than a decade

Enjoy your China. Almost no politics, almost no internets.

What I'm saying is, FB is amazingly bad at handling news content. Everything they do in this directions backfires badly, becoming a cesspool of misinformation leading to riots etc. I mean if people link content anyway, why don't people just visit it directly?

I mean with the inception of Google News, people thought News has little value because it is so repetitive and many news outlets went bankrupt leading to less and less reflected news to what we have now. I think if people would go for (Online) Newspaper subscriptions instead of just clicking on the most flashy FB post, this would surely make the world a better place and would be quite contrary to China where Newspapers are censored

Given that most of the Russian funded stuff on there is not directly by their state media, this achieves very very little.

It's (un)funny to see all those "we're not into politics" services taking action now. Trust noone.

I don't think it's a trust issue. They stayed neutral for a while and were criticized for not doing enough by mainstream media, the logical outcome is that they remove and ban more content.

They are not into politics, they are into money. If 90% of the world is against a war you can make more profit catering to them. Nothing personal, kid.

Ironic that this may be the only somewhat reasonable set of sanctions to come from the corpo side yet.

Meta Platforms, absolute scum. They're giving a platform for far-right political groups across the EU, therefore aiding their operation. We have reported several popular Facebook groups, pages and profiles that spread hateful content, some of them the official pages of far-right politicians. Absolutely nothing is taken down if the content is not in English, and the influence of these entities are growing by the day on Facebook.

Facebook rarely takes down non-English content that breaks their terms of service. Meta Platforms simply does not care. The attention of the media is focused on English content, and Meta only reacts in a meaningful way when they're called out in major news stories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5jtFqWq5iU

Meta Platforms was fine with aiding the radicalization of the Russian population in the past decade, and it will continue to do nothing, except offer token concessions to insert itself in the news cycle for cheap PR wins.

Oh, they rarely take down English content in the US either. When I deactivated my account I had an inbox full of "This does not violate our community standards" notes.

(Conveniently for them, they don't put the thing you flagged next to their reply so you can't collect screenshots of fascist agitprop in juxtaposition to their apathy.)

> far-right political groups across the EU

Please provide some examples of what you consider to be "far right". I'm afraid that right-of-centre and Euro-sceptic views are being labelled "far right", which doesn't help us fight actual Fascists, Nazis, racists, social Darwinists, bigots and neo-colonialists. It dilutes the meaning of those terms.

[edit] I didn't see your link because you edited it in.

Facebook is full of hateful content that is illegal to post online in certain member states, do a search for German terms on Facebook to see for yourself. Then repeat the search using other European languages. Also look up antivax terms, and enjoy the Facebook groups with hundreds of thousands of followers, blaming minorities for the pandemic, and for having to wear masks.

>We have reported

>the official pages of far-right politicians

That seems anti-democratic of you. Don't you believe in people being able to vote for things you don't agree with?

> that spread hateful content

This is the key bit, not the far-right bit. Depends rather on what OP considers "hateful content" though.

Is Meta coordinating with the Biden administration? A company its size should not be interfering in foreign policy without direction from the White House.

This is not interfering in foreign policy. It's a private company (pretending to) not sell their services to someone.

Why did they ever allow this?

Oh right, Yuri Milner gave Facebook hundreds of millions of dollars, given to him by Putin.

I don’t want social media platforms picking political winners and losers, whether their choice aligns with my personal politics or not.

This is no ordinary political disagreement, however. Russia is committing a crime, plain and simply. I doubt you would want murderers advertise for their cause on Facebook.

> I doubt you would want murderers advertise for their cause on Facebook.

Why not? The Unabomber Manifesto is freely available, and I would not want it censored by private parties.

If anyone should decide that "this content constitutes a dangerous incitement to murder and cannot be allowed to stay online", it should be a duly appointed court, not some random Facebook employees or contractors.

Facebook is engaging in vigilantism. Let them coordinate with the White House. Banks don’t get to unilaterally pull this stunt.

Personal politics is bickering about the tax rate, not defending war crimes. It is insane that people are pretending that these issues are equivalent.

It saddens me that human lives, war crimes and families losing loved ones is somehow equated to ‘my personal politics’.

It’s personal politics because the situation in Ukraine is very complex and there are multiple ways to see it. Unfortunately if you get your information exclusively from the US media you’re less likely to see it that way.

This is a pretty extreme form of amoral nihilism given the situation in Ukraine.

But they already do by letting more money win with more ads.

They are not this is just a business decision if 90% of your userbase around the world is against a war you cater to them and not to the 10% that do. It's that fucking easy. It's money not politics if people like you would start to understand that it is about profits for them and nothing else you would certainly get a better grasp of the world around you... but better bash on the same brainddead argument like in the last 6 years.

I don’t care what their motivation is, I don’t want them doing it. The dangers to society of these platforms deciding who gets to express an opinion outweighs the damage that can be wrought by the expression of bad ideas. Of course you’re free to disagree, though respectful disagreement is appreciated.

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