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Comment by pbiggar | Hacker News Reader

Another source of allegations about the behaviour at Meta comes from 7amleh's report on how they systematically suppressed what Americans and others were allowed see about Israel's invasion of Palestine.

https://7amleh.org/storage/Advocacy%20Reports/Delete%20the%2...

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Note that all the replies to this have conveniently steered the conversation into fighting over the Israel-Palestine war and gotten us to not talk about the actual point, that FB very credibly worked alongside the US gov't to suppress what Americans saw about the war on social media, lots of times suppressing actual journalists with press vests who were reporting from within Gaza at a time when formal press were banned by Israel from entering Gaza (meaning reliance on the ones already inside was crucial)

This paper seems to mainly suggest that the suppression is happening on the internal platforms that Meta's employees and content-moderators use, for discussions, rather than that they're censoring what I would see an an end user?

Yes, that is the mechanism of how the suppression is pushed internally. For details of the actual suppression, see these reports / documentaries:

- https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/20/meta-systemic-censorship...

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmnQhEQIjKc

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12btf2Oq820

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeaJJU2zHh8 (haven't read this one, but it's from the BBC. For more details on how the BBC restricts Palestine content, see this piece: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/bbc-civil-war-gaza-israel-bia...)

You're right, this report isn't about the actual censorship of end-user content, but that was also quite widespread. Zuck even himself admitted how the US government would pressure them to censor certain things, but he discussed it in the context of COVID. Similar things happened about Israel-Palestine as well

Americans are one of the most, if not the most, propagandized populations on the planet, and the worst part is a large cohort of them fully believe they aren’t.

Don't forget the Germans.

... changes what exactly? Certainly not the required ignorance to stay in your propaganda sphere.

Social media has democratized propaganda.

Political messages often come from ostensibly small, independent outlets now - outlets whose incentives are no better than those of governments.

A show might be hosted by a couple teenagers in hoodies, but if the hosts are audience-captured, or supported by powerful interests, or just hold strong, irrational views, it's still just bad propaganda.

>Social media has democratized propaganda.

I find this sentence very wrong since the corporations or algorithms are not really under democratic controll.

You even continue to implicate that small creators are blown out of (democratic) proportion.

  the corporations or algorithms are not really under democratic control

That is true. Social media is democratic only to a point. If it were truly representative of the general public, it might be an improvement (or less sensational, at least).

Re: small creators. There are many creators who seem small - like Joe Rogan - but actually operate on a scale that places intense pressures on them. People tend to give more trust to 'influencers' than they should because they seem relatable.

For what it's worth, Americans still have access to opposing viewpoints. You can view Press TV, Russia Today, etc. Authoritarian states will ban completely access to news it doesn't want its population to read

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