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Comment by ronsor | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is also full of drug and malware shops and advertisements for such.

Yep, and I think we’re way too soft on Meta for what they push and profit from on FB and Instagram.

Meta will take down those ads if reported.

What is important when it comes to regulators is not whether you fail to comply or not. It is whether you take your responsibility to comply seriously e.g. timely responses to information requests, continuous process improvement etc.

The Via Rail scam card ads have been on facebook for months. You can figure out it's a scam with a 2 second google search:

https://www.facebook.com/viarailcanada/posts/scam-warning-av...

I reported it (like others in this thread), but facebook said it didn't break any rules. I requested another review, and they said the same thing, with no way for me to make any comments or replies.

Perhaps they will remove certain ads if it's instantly obvious that it is illegal, but overall they're pretty terrible at moderation.

For the VIA thing, I have legitimately earned VIA Preference Points for surveys [0] and have heard of them being offered as survey rewards at my alma mater of Queen’s University (where VIA use is pretty heavy).

[0] https://campaign.askingcanadians.com/faq/via

So I can see some of those offers being legitimate.

Meta being bad at following their policies is a different problem than a platform whose policies say they won’t stop abuse. You can argue which problem is worse, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that the world should treat the two problems the same.

The priority for regulators are money laundering, sanctions evasion, terrorism, CSAM, trafficking etc.

Serious crimes where people's lives are at stake.

Scams in general are towards the bottom on everyone's priority list.

Why are you changing the focus to regulators and not meta moderation which is what you claimed that is done? (and many proved in this thread that no they don't remove content that breaks local laws).

Because company behaviour is a reflection of the laws in the places it operates.

I regularly report scam ads as well as obvious catfishing friend requests from obviously fake accounts whose only post is a sketchy URL to some "sex chat". Almost all of the reports are rejected.

It seems obvious to me that Meta's moderation is mostly about pretending just enough for regulators to go away, and no more. Hell, Meta probably indirectly makes money from these scams by targeting more scams at the people who fall for them, at a premium. Meta makes money, scammers make money, regulators are content. It's a win-win-win.

No they won't. I report all the time and every one of them they told me they reviewed it and disagree the ads/posts are against the law.

like they did with Cambridge Analytica I guess...

Does that justify it then?

It shows what the EU action is about. It's not about telegram's supposed crimes, whatever you think they are, because other platforms are full of the same crimes.

The difference is that other platforms give EU states access to people's private messages. If you go into the technicalities of what EXACTLY this means, it started with a list of 27 organizations that got blanket access, without judicial oversight (because all of the different rules from the member states apply. Some do not require judicial oversight). Organized long ago by Interpol. It grew from there, exactly as people expected.

Oh and in case you're wondering. This already exists. It is NOT about the new EU directive ("directive 92"). This is about delivering specific individual's messages, when specifically asked to, and maybe blocking them.

Which EU action? France which arrested Durov is not the EU. The EU can't arrest anyone, only the member states can. Durov was not arrested because of the EU DSA.

> The difference is that other platforms give EU states access to people's private messages.

Which other platforms are you talking about because both Signal and WhatsApp are e2e encrypted?

Why do you think this is an EU action and not just France?

France has much tougher laws on this than the rest of the EU.

In fact when publishing to the App Store as a developer you are primarily asked 2 questions.

1) What types of encryption you implement

2) Whether you are planning on making your app available in France

…and Mastodon, and… basically all social media.

So it’s likely another reason but the authorities are using legal pretenses to arrest this guy.

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