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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

A company's impact on the world isn't a good/bad binary, it comes in degrees. In the case of Meta, they are _aggressively_ promoting far-right wing propaganda (or at least that's my feed, and what appears to be the general consensus on the Internet), and they are clearly very close with the far-right Trump administration. Never mind "ordinary" bad things like pushing ads, building addictive ad tech, etc.

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What groups do you subscribe to? My feed is mostly relatives, friends and their photos. Occasionally there are panels with people I don't subscribe to, which you can press X on and you won't see them again.

I don't subscribe to any groups except maybe a neighborhood association or similar. I was basically inactive on Facebook from 2014 until the last year. I've never been remotely right-wing and while I'm sure I have some old acquaintances who have become MAGA, the overwhelming majority of my Facebook friends are decent people--either normies, moderates, or left of center.

> you can press X on and you won't see them again.

I'm not worried about Facebook showing me propaganda, I'm worried about Facebook aggressively propagandizing society at large.

Man, are people on HN still this unaware of how personalization algorithms work at all?

They don't _have_ to propagandize for one particular pole by default.

Right, in the tech world it’s a continuum between “do no evil (fingers crossed behind back)” and “They trust me. Dumb fucks”

Also notable that they willingly and knowingly allowed FB to be used to facilitate genocide, which makes them culpable in it.

Can you elaborate?

I'm referring to the 2016 genocide in Myanmar:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/amnesty-report-finds-...

https://systemicjustice.org/article/facebook-and-genocide-ho...

In short:

> Facebook contributed to a genocide in Myanmar. Scholars, reporters, and United Nations investigators agree that the social media giant played a role in an explosion of ethnic conflict in 2017 that led to the death and displacement of hundreds of thousands Rohingya Muslims in Northern Myanmar.

Thank you

> they are _aggressively_ promoting far-right wing propaganda

In my feed, they are aggressively pushing an approximately equal mix of woke propaganda, far-right propaganda, funny memes, and discussions of literature and philosophy. It just depends on what the Meta model decided you and your friends are into.

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