> When the newly reopened Teatre Raval, which seats 193 spectators, asked Meta, the parent company of the two social media sites, why its publicity had been blocked, it was told “any mention of civil rights, feminism or social reform [topics that are central to Woolf’s work] are usually classified as ‘social topics’ by our automatic system” and are filtered out.

That’s Meta response. There is no mention of any regulation in that article.

So how exactly is an ad for a play by an author who died 85 years ago political and requiring regulation? A person who died so long ago that, even in the EU with its onerous copyright regime, her work is in the public domain!?

It is a general thing that people only want to ban or regulate things that are against the social standards of their political organization, feminism and civil rights are two things that are pretty central to the EU. I know they must be, because I always read American right-wing commentators say about how feminism and civil rights are destroying the EU. For this reason I do not believe it is actually normal compliance with any regulation, it is malicious compliance meant to undermine the regulation.

I am sure some person who is glad for the malicious compliance would like to make a statement to the effect that it is the EU's fault that Meta has done it this way, so allow me to forestall it with some other observations.

If Meta feels the law requires them to remove ads for any art that supports a cause, including causes that are considered mainstream and accepted in the EU, then almost no art can ever advertised.

Guernica may not be shown, as it was anti-fascist, AND I should note Picasso's works are still under copyright so we know that's got to be regulated STAT!

The works of anyone who has ever been against slavery must not be mentioned, no Twain, Melville, Stowe, etc. etc.

But let's not stop there, surely Shakespeare's Richard III did not support that fellow's claims to the throne of England and we should not discuss it, don't tell me anything about it being a long time ago - if for Meta Virginia Wolf springs eternal then surely Shakespeare should get the same benefit of censorship. Dante's taking sides in the civil wars that damaged the Italy of his time should allow us to throw him off the platform as well!

There is very little art and few artists in this world that have been so anodyne that Meta could not censor them for having supported a social issue. I certainly hope they will do so, and quickly, so that people may be persuaded to abandon the platform. I also hope that this post is clear enough that I don't have to hear any more about how Meta had to do it the way they did, as I have recently been talking with my ex-wife, so my allowance for hearing dumb stuff is all used for today.

>If people choose en masse to change

This is nearly saying "If people stop murdering each other we won't have murder any more". Well, yea no shit, a tautology is a tautology. The question is how do you elicit social change in an environment that is actively fighting back against you doing so and has a massive amount more information than you do.

One of the key points here is you live outside the US so it's much more likely that your communities are far less digitally integrated and have a much different history of social change and dynamics. For example car culture presents an absolutely massive amount of friction to social change. It literally physically separates us at much larger distances than states that do not have car culture. There is also the fact the modern social media swept over the US first drawing in most of the population long before we recognized the dangers of it. Government agencies and businesses moved a healthy amount of their communications to things like social media platforms. The network effects are powerful.

The next thing I'd like you to do is get on social media where all these people you want to change are and tell them to get off.... oooh, your account was banned. These companies are organisms that will fight back against what your trying. You forget the tobacco companies fought in the US for 30+ years inventing entirely new methods of propaganda before we developed laws to protect the rest of us against smoke in public.

You are not talking about a choice. You are talking about a war that is actively being fought.

Sounds like the coal miners in West Virginia whose livelihoods depend on coal production.