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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Pro@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world

On January 7, 2025, Meta announced sweeping changes to its content moderation policies, including the end of third-party fact-checking in the U.S., and rollbacks to its hate speech policy globally that remove protections for women, people of color, trans people, and more. In the absence of data from Meta, we decided to go straight to users to assess if and how harmful content is manifesting on Meta platforms in the wake of January rollbacks.

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[-] anachrohack@lemmy.world 29 points 1 month ago

Meta is the enemy of all of mankind

[-] FenrirIII@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

Social Media in general is our most self-destructive invention yet

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 18 points 1 month ago
[-] rumba@piefed.zip 5 points 1 month ago

My #$%^ HOA only socializes through FB groups. Been trying to drum up interest in a defederated Frendica or something, but can't get any traction :( I've unliked all the stuff and unfollowed everything else, but I can't GTFO of it any further without being unable to deal with my neighbors civilly

[-] Glent@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago

Abandon civility, throw tomahawk instead. Your reputation will precede you. Their fear of you will bring about civility. You got this.

[-] rumba@piefed.zip 2 points 1 month ago

"Honey, We got a letter from the HOA, they've revoked our pool privileges, you wouldn't know anything about that you'd you?"

[insert Krumbobulous Michael here I go killing again meme]

[-] Coyote_sly@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Your HOA?

Sounds like you add by subtraction twice by deleting Facebook.

[-] opavader@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

any of the popular social media is now heavily infested with propaganda bots or fake promoted slop.

niche forum and sparse space like lemmy are the only thing left to have any decent interactions. even lemmy.world was heavily brigaded during election.

[-] riskable@programming.dev 7 points 1 month ago

To me, this is like saying, "4chan has turned into a cesspool!" Yeah: It was like that from the start. YOU were the ones that assumed it was ever safe!

You're posting stuff on the public Internet to a website for adults where literally anyone can sign up and comment FFS.

If you want good moderation you need community moderation from people in that community. Not some giant/evil megacorp!

There's all sorts of tools and platforms that do this properly, easily, and for free. If you don't like Meta's websites move off of them already!

[-] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

FB at least did a mediocre job at curbing hate speech. Then the progressive backlash against genAI broke the techbros so much they went full fash, since 2023.

[-] Plesiohedron@lemmy.cafe 0 points 1 month ago

People in the community with special power and anonymity. No. That doesn't work either.

[-] andyburke@fedia.io 6 points 1 month ago

Leave that website.

There is no fixing it.

[-] Lemminary@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago
[-] andyburke@fedia.io 1 points 1 month ago
[-] dylanmorgan@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

This headline is garbage. You could put just about any Fortune 500 company’s name in there and the headline would still be accurate.

[-] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

the url too. meta was never safe, and was never intended to be safe. the only way to make it safe is to shut it down.

[-] jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago

why should anyone want it to be safe?

[-] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 4 points 1 month ago
[-] Pro@programming.dev -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)
[-] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

Corporate-run social media needs to die.

[-] Zenith@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

Idk I’ve never considered forums where you talk to strangers to be social media. If I don’t know anyone it’s not “social” to me, it’s one step away from talking to myself to be on a site like Lemmy or Reddit

[-] SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Remember when, at the dawn of the decade, conservative media would whine about "BIG TECH CENSORSHIP!"?

Those were the days. /s

[-] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The CEO is a genocidal zio. USA is a hate group. What else do people expect?

[-] bizarroland@fedia.io 3 points 1 month ago

Facebook: makes a system where the only way to get engagement is to hatepost.

People on facebook: hateposts

People: "How could this happen?"

[-] baduhai@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 month ago

I do wonder, are seeing more hate, more fear and less freedom because there is more hate, more fear and less freedom, or are we seeing these things because they are now no longer deleted, and there is the same amount of it?

Either way there is no fix for facebook and other facebook owned platforms. Get rid of this shit.

Honestly, probably both. The fact that stuff isn't being deleted anymore and that they make carve-outs in the rules for hate against specific minorities would embolden people to post more hateful content.

[-] CitizenKong@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

The headline confuses me. Has Facebook ever done something else?

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Historically ('10s era) they were very focused on being "family friendly" and censoring anything they considered violent, sexual, perverse, deliberately deceptive, or otherwise upsetting to your middle-aged middle-income housewife/grandma.

Post-COVID, Zuckerberg's been increasingly blackpilled, with an eye towards shock-jock engagement bait over any kind of civil moderation, fact-checking of misinformation, or discouragement of fraud/scam posts. So a site plenty of users have historically complained about feeling cloistered and sterile in the Disney-fied sense is now a total madhouse of AI slop, bum-fights clips, drop-shipper spam, and bargain basement rumor-mongering.

We've gone from a space that's Mormon-style conservative to Fight Club-coded conservative.

[-] CitizenKong@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Ok, but there had been plenty of criticism before that, specifically how readily the algorithm funnels the user into alt-right echo chambers.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago

That was more YouTube than Facebook.

[-] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago

The accusations are leveled at all social media.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Different applications employ different strategies for sifting content.

Facebook (and Google) pivoting to pure engagement bait was a more recent development, closer to 2018+, and synced up with their AI obsessions.

[-] BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago

I'm not convinced that much of it is real. Many accounts have to be fake. Surely people can't be as stupid as they appear. I think it's AI's funded or designed to be so stupidly biased.

[-] Zexks@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

This kind of thinking is how we end up with extremist politicians like trump. YES PEOPLE ARE THIS STUPID. LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE ARE THIS STUPID. Stop trying to ignore reality.

[-] BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

A bit of both I think.

As a Facebook group administrator I get to see a fair bit of definite fake stuff. Any time someone posts anything with the word stolen for example, a number of fake accounts will attempt to post with names of people who 'can help get your things back'.

They recently got a bit more advanced and will sometimes use 'I'm new here" type posts or similar tricks to try to trick the admin into letting them into the group. It's a public group, hence a juicy target. There's several tricks an AI can use.

That said, we have a fair share of legit nutters, rednecks, NIMBYs, homophobes etc as well - I just suspect some of the EV and renewable energy hatred for example, on Facebook is manufactured.

[-] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Yes and no.

Yes people are this stupid. But also bot networks. But also alt accounts. And many of those stupid people let the algorithm to pick them their political views, which is manipulated by both the bot activity and the platform holders.

[-] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

That nerdy guy who wants to be an MMF fighter sure is angry, you can tell by his business.

I look forward to the day when the people wake up and drag the oppressors into the streets.

[-] HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The ones who have hate in their hearts can now shows us all their true colors.

That's a good thing in my eyes. Let them show us exactly who they are.

[-] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

How about... stop using META?

[-] Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago

I think most of us, here, have. It really is mostly old folks and idiots left now.

Someone mentioned here, their hoa uses fb as their digital square, and my park union does too. I just don't get to get involved with the park union, Facebook unfortunately, has become ingrained in many community oriented organizations. I hate it. I refuse to go back there.

I don't understand why people are ao eager to give their money and privacy to billionaires.

[-] nonentity@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

Friends don’t let friends use Facebook[1].

[1]Corporations are the only ‘persons’ it’s acceptable to explicitly deadname.

[-] shiroininja@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

This is why I’ve switched back to the old internet. Chat like irc/matrix for social interaction. RSS for information. And webrings for browsing the personal garden websites that used to constitute the internet before social media took over. It’s been great.

The good internet magazine has been writing about this and is my inspiration

As well as the internet history podcast.

I mean look at what social media took from us. Have fun exploring that webring and following link after link to new web rings and personal gardens. I love it. Reminds me of the early 00s

[-] Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 month ago

There’s no speech police in the real world, you don’t need it online either.

[-] fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 0 points 1 month ago

That is the most simplistic, uneducated opinion on the subject that is possible to make. You should be ashamed.

[-] Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works -2 points 1 month ago

If that’s the case, it should be easy enough for you to come up with an actual argument against it.

[-] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago

There are speech police in the real world. Workplaces don't allow you to use slurs or to harass your co-workers. That's just one example. In fact, any social group that I can think of will punish you for saying something. Some are more lenient than others, but every one has a line that you cannot cross.

[-] lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com -1 points 1 month ago

There are speech police in the real world. Workplaces don’t allow you to use slurs or to harass your co-workers.

That "speech police" traces to the government in the form of labor laws & regulations in the remit of the EEOC, eg, Title 7 of Civil Rights Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Americans with Disabilities Act. Employers didn't conceive of such workplaces policies on their own to invite lawsuits & put targets on their backs.

These laws do not apply to social media as a communication platform. Offensive expression doesn't deny equal access/opportunities to platform resources they are under any legal obligation to provide. Should we put much confidence in social media companies voluntarily assuming unnecessary obligations just because?

It never made sense.

[-] Plesiohedron@lemmy.cafe -2 points 1 month ago

Tbf, having a central authority dictate the truth to you ain't so great.

Neither is having classes of people who you aren't allowed to offend.

[-] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago

Tbf, having a central authority dictate the truth to you ain't so great.

I don't think the phrase "third-party fact checkers" (plural) implies a central authority.

Neither is having classes of people who you aren't allowed to offend.

Facebook can't stop you from offending people. What they can do is make it slightly more difficult by disallowing slurs, etc.

this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
160 points (96.5% liked)

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