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- Hacker News
- > To resolve the situation, Meta recommended removing “key words” so that the text doesn’t appear to encourage activism.
Move along now, don’t make a racket, don’t do anything to disturb count Zuckerberg and his masters. Go away with your progressive ideas like… Allowing women to express themselves.
by latexr - Why meta is not fully banned in the EU is beyond me :)
I know banning or forcing meta to obey laws in the US is impossible due to bribes (political contributions), but in the EU I would think meta could at the very least be reined in.
by jmclnx - Is this an EU or Spain issue? I regularly attend at a theatre in Chicago that has socially "sensitive" plays. I often see their ads on Facebook.by aworks
- Meta has a complicated history with Barcelona.
They had a huge moderation centre in the city operated by a company called Telus, which incidentally happened to be located in the iconic Glories tower - formerly Torre Agbar - which is shaped like a huge vibrator. I always thought it was ironic that Meta towered over the city's skyline like a huge dick. In fairness they had no hand in its construction (it was made by the water company) and they only rented some of its floors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_Gl%C3%B2ries
But one day to the next they fired all the more than 2000 moderators in search of cheaper pastures like Colombia. They are now being sued for allegedly trying to avoid unionisation and a lawsuit of psychological harm by the moderators: https://www.thelocal.es/20260916/meta-faces-lawsuit-in-spain...
So Barcelona does not love Meta (anymore). I doubt this factors into this but it is a pretty sad coincidence.
by welwala - Appears to be a response to EU regulation in 2025 banning political/electoral advertising [1]:
> Ending Political, Electoral and Social Issue Advertising in the EU in Response to Incoming European Regulation
I guess rather than micro-regulate what constitutes "designed to influence an election/referendum, voting behavior, or a legislative/regulatory process", they just decided to refuse to run ads for anything potentially politically or socially "sensitive".
I'm guessing that they also refuse to run ads for things that are less socially acceptable such as anti-feminism which I would say is a good thing.
[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2025/07/ending-political-electoral...
by petcat - We don't have to put up with this. We simply choose to. But our laws could be whatever we want them to be.by colingauvin
- The article doesn't mention this, of course, but Meta prohibits "socially sensitive" advertising due to the EU's TTPA law, or "Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising."
It imposes substantial bureaucratic compliance burden on advertising platforms to accept ads that deal with political issues.
Meta decided that the revenue wasn't worth the compliance burden, so they do not accept any political advertising at all. They filter anything that smells like political or social issues, whether it be a campaign about anti-immigration or a play about feminism, because if they accept it they will get heavily fined by the EU.
This is why Meta does not ban this advertising outside of the EU. It's a EU regulatory problem. The Register does not mention this anywhere in the article.
by mediaman