https://bsky.app/profile/esqueer.net/post/3lf72fz3fas22
If they'd removed that rule altogether then it could be handwaved as merely "free speech absolutism", for better or worse, but officially stating that certain minorities are acceptable targets of abuse that's otherwise forbidden is something else entirely.
It’s not a mistake or some kind of ambiguous rule that could be misread. Following is the direct quote from Meta’s new guidelines. You can’t insult people based on:
Mental characteristics, including but not limited to allegations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and mental illness, and unsupported comparisons between PC groups on the basis of inherent intellectual capacity. We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like “weird.”
They’re carving out specific minorities to exclude them from protections afforded to everybody else.
It’s exactly like saying: “You can’t doxx anyone on our platform, except Jews because that’s political and religious discourse about where heathens live.”
So here we are in 2025, and this barely gets a mention in the press because they’re so overwhelmed by the president-elect pretending to invade Denmark and whatever.
I’m a middle-aged bisexual man. My childhood and early teenage years coincided with the darkest times of the HIV epidemic. At 13 I was deadly afraid of AIDS, and I’m still trying to overcome the internalized homophobia from those times. For years I just tried to blend in, dated women, eventually got married, had children. I thought society had made real progress, but now it’s starting to dawn on me that it’s a mirage like Roe vs Wade or 1920s Berlin, and it can be stripped away at any time. And I feel like a miserable coward for all these years “just minding my own business” and never stepping up to support the community in any way, letting somebody else do the work. That needs to change. I’ll rather be mentally ill than hide in the shadows.
Everyone wants to be liked, and search for the venues where they can express their views where they would be a part of majority. Basically the reason why people skew towards echo-chambers, in real and digital life.
At least in lower-stakes online forums, what really grinds my gears is a lack of transparency, where a site or service doesn't explain the moderation or even hides that any action was taken at all.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42630197
or
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42630067
Or let’s say, it technically can be said, but you get somehow punished (flagged, downvoted, etc) so you learn not to do it anymore. The incentive is simply not there.
There is a logic, the “community” flags to protect their own interests (financial investments, friends working there, etc).
And since the community is from the same group, they defend the same interests.
The more freely we can talk about a topic, the more genuine and thought-provoking interactions it can create (without intentionally hurting the others obviously).
If you filter too much, you get this LinkedIn-bullshit and it makes a message board super boring, as you live in a closed bubble.
It's not like you get paid for getting upvoted and a making any kind of joke is usually the fastest way to a downvote.
I'm genuinely curious to know what about reality warrants "as close as one can get to it". In my experience, every time I close the browser and step outside I'm generally convinced that what I'm experiencing is real.
> dictate truth
What about the damage done by the millions of lies that people post on the platform to spread their bigoted agendas? What about how these platforms' algorithms ostensibly promote hatred and shocking material?
Just look at the Rohingya massacre [0] and tell me you're OK with it.
[0] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
Of course, if you like your propaganda well-done, Facebook will be a great place for that.
They're making a decision based on political pressure.
Money doesn’t care about wings.
So, being elected is by no means an indicator of any sort.
Being elected is obviously an indicator of the will of the people. The platform that leader was elected on includes items that went against the left leaning of third-party so-called fact checking services. This is easily variable by looking at the platform of the winning party and the policies of the so-called fact checkers.
That's true, incl. me.
> that is a straw man you have created to argue with.
Did I said or implied Trump is bad? No. What I said is, being elected is not an indicator of goodness of badness of a leader, and said that there's a large list, without giving any names, because goodness and badness is subjective.
> Being elected is obviously an indicator of the will of the people.
Yes. That part is true, too. People wanted that particular flavor this time, and will decide whether they liked the experience or not.
> The platform that leader was elected on includes items that went against the left leaning of third-party so-called fact checking services.
"So-called" from your perspective, so from that point on your opinions are biased, and there's no point on arguing any further.
Of course you're free to vote for whoever you want, and AFAICS, the person you support has won. Congrats. My only hope is what you get in the end won't be more than what you bargained for.
BTW, on that "getting men out of women's sports" thing, watch this video [0]. In the end, performance is enhanced so much, the gap between genders are closed nevertheless. On the other hand, gender in Olympic games are determined with genetic testing anyway, so your looks doesn't have any effect on whom you compete with.
Maybe we should prevent this in the future, so humans can compete with their true potential, not with "monstrous performances" enabled by designer drugs and doping. So there's a whole forest running when people are looking to the wrong tree.
Yes, you wrote history is full of bad leaders. Nobody is discussing whether Trump is good or bad.
Exactly. I said "we'll see", not "Trump is bad".
> Errm, history is full of bad leaders who were elected by people and by democratic means.
You then wrote that being elected is by no means and indicator. It is not an indication of being good or bad, but rather an indication of the will of people. Which in this case, for the fifth time is that men should be out of women’s spaces.
I don’t think this conversation is working. We have very different ways of engaging in debate.
Yes.
> It is not an indication of being good or bad, but rather an indication of the will of people.
I did tell "elected by people and by democratic means", which squarely means "this was the will of the people", so we have no disagreements on that front.
> Which in this case, for the fifth time is that men should be out of women’s spaces.
?
> I don’t think this conversation is working.
That's absolutely correct.
> We have very different ways of engaging in debate.
Yes. I won't argue about that further.
Have a good day.
* Trump has explicitly threatened to jail Mark Zuckerberg [1]
* Trump has threatened to use the justice system against his enemies
* Trump's 'best mate' (who's about to get a job in government) owns a rival social network
* Facebook banned Trump over the Jan 6th insurrection
* Trump could use the banning of TikTok as leverage
With all that Occam's Razor tells you that an authoritarian leader is taking over the USA and the oligarchy that are the tech-billionaires are lining up behind him lest they feel his wrath.
These are extremely dangerous times for the US. An authoritarian leader paired with an extreme concentration of power (the tech companies). You have something approaching a turnkey feudal system. With willing participants.
[1] https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-threatens-to-impriso...
Lying through omission. The rest isn't worth responding to.
Also are we absolutely sure that community notes have immunity from moderators and they're not manipulated in any way?
Community notes are indeed a good feature at first blush, but considering the current climate of "freedom of speech / post-truth / let's move fast and break society norms", it's more dangerous than a group of allegedly biased fact checkers.
It's a way of deregulating the social media platforms to level of utilities which carry whatever passes through them without prejudice, and shifting blame to the people for believing what they read.
The thing they're designing is very ripe for manipulating people en masse.
Yes, lies are bad and dangerous, but censorship is much worse and far more dangerous.
As anti-maskers laid dying in their hospital beds they denounced the misinformation they had been fed. Lets not pretend that misinformation is entirely impotent.
And let’s not pretend like the internet hasn’t exploded the reach misinformation.
How about we settle for a middle ground where Americans are allowed free speech on American platforms but let’s not give foreign actors/governments the same freedom?
Is this some kind of…