Birbla

Discussion summary

Meta has restricted human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia and UAE. Discussions include criticism of big tech companies' alignment with US policies and concerns about comment quality on HN.

What the discussion says

  • Meta's censorship in Middle East raises free speech concerns.
  • Tech giants are accused of aligning with US foreign policy.
  • Comment quality on HN has declined, with more cynicism and low-effort posts.
“Meta blocks human rights accounts in Saudi Arabia and UAE.”
— Anonymous
“Big tech companies are doing what China is accused of.”
— jmyeet

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  • Hacker News
  • I would like to congratulate Meta on this day as they layoff more people for AI. I hope all your platforms burn to ash.
    by jeffwask
  • If Meta operates in Saudi Arabia and UAE, shouldn't they follow their laws?
    by aurareturn
  • Meta is the worst of the worst. I don't use it other than a tombstone account with some family connections and a separate burner account we use for Facebook marketplace.
    by mmastrac
  • The way to fix social media is to get off of social media.
    by altruios
  • Social media companies post record earnings year after year from their ads business while increasingly proving to be harmful to society. They do the bare minimum in terms of content moderation and bots while priming the algorithms to maximize revenue. The good ol' privatized profits, socialized harm model.

    In a just world, would social media platforms be taxed higher on corporate revenue and how would that pan out? Maybe we'll be left with small federated platforms without algorithms and ads.

    by 0x5FC3
  • Do they have a choice? It’s either that or they are shown the door, in which case they will probably be replaced by worse local alternatives in terms of freedom of speech and gov influence
    by noname120
  • It's clear time and again that having short-term growth at all costs means you can't have principles.
    by jexe
  • I'm in the UAE right now.

    The site www.alqst.org is blocked here. I had to turn on a VPN to read the article.

    Here, it's not even allowed to read about what's not allowed!

    by NewCzech

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