Comment by selcuka | Hacker News Reader

Comment by selcuka | Hacker News Reader

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This is a bit too much of reading between the lines, suspiciously so.

> Why does the report only say that the man was fully clothed?

It does not. This is misrepresenting what is written in the report, to say the least. There are two such examples in the report (not sure if they refer to the same image): The first one is "image of a Palestinian father in Gaza who was killed while he was holding his clothed daughter, who was also killed" and the other one is "an image of a fully clothed man holding a girl, both deceased". Obviously in both pictures both man and the woman are dead, debunking your "male members of Hamas holding nude or partially-nude dead women" theory.

> However, they don't share what the original post was; responding with a series of Palestinian flags to an Israeli hostage relative's post about their kidnapped sibling, for example, would be clear harassment and abuse.

Again, this is just a guess and not factual information. In fact, the report has a link to the original source in footnote 78 (https://theintercept.com/2023/10/28/instagram-palestinian-fl...) and one of the comments Instagram has hidden was on a pro-Palestinian post:

> In one, a user commented on an Instagram video of a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Jordan with green, white, and black heart emojis corresponding to the colors of the Palestinian flag, along with emojis of the Moroccan and Palestinian flags.

Also:

> The Intercept reviewed several hidden comments containing the Palestinian flag emoji that had no reference to Hamas or any other banned group.

Please make your substantive points without swipes such as "Again, you are making up things". This is against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

When someone else's information is wrong, you're of course welcome to correct it, but please do so by providing correct information and omit swipes and other flamebait, which only degrade discussion and evoke worse from others.

I know that's not easy to do when emotions are running high, but it's something we all need to work on—and it's the same for everyone, regardless of which side they're on in any conflict.

Fair point, I think the latest edit is more civilised.

But it's not that the guy's "information is wrong", it's that he has produced some hypothetical examples of things that might be the case, but also might not.

"responding with a series of Palestinian flags to an Israeli hostage relative's post about their kidnapped sibling, for example, would be clear harassment and abuse."

This is a hypothetical. The poster is literally "making up things."

Ok, but it doesn't change the moderation point about swipes. Commenters here need to edit them out* because they move conversations flameward and evoke worse from others. As one can always make one's substantive points without resorting to them, this shouldn't be a problem.

* This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You are misquoting the source — I'm not "making up things." I referenced the three Palestinian flags, not the heart emojis:

> In another, a user posted just three Palestinian flag emojis. Another screenshot seen by The Intercept showed two hidden comments consisting only of the hashtags #Gaza, #gazaunderattack, #freepalestine, and #ceasefirenow.

The Intercept does not provide the context on the posts that the flag comments were on, or the hashtags — and visibly-Jewish people across social media have been barraged since Oct. 7th by strangers brigading their completely-unrelated posts with comments like this, and are targeted for harassment just for being Jewish; I think being suspicious of the context is fairly natural. And please refrain from personal attacks.

Re: the man holding the girl — yes, I am referring to the one in which both are deceased, but only the man is referenced as being fully-clothed; members of Hamas can be deceased too. Maybe the girl is also fully-clothed, but not releasing any of the data doesn't help build confidence.

> And please refrain from personal attacks.

You are right. I had already edited my post before you posted your response.

> I referenced the three Palestinian flags, not the heart emojis

> members of Hamas can be deceased too. Maybe the girl is also fully-clothed

These sound highly nitpicky and like hypotheses that are hard to justify (a Hamas terrorist raping and killing a woman, then getting killed himself and taken a picture of, while the woman is still in his arms, naked? Really?).

I think we are missing the semantics here. My points were:

- Instagram/Facebook/etc can censor comments as simple as emojis, even though they were posted as comments to pro-Palestinian stories.

- They also censor pictures for nudity, even though they are not. Note that even though the reports is ambiguous about one of such photos, it clearly says that the man and his daughter, both deceased, are fully clothed.

IDK — I just find it hard to believe that Instagram is intentionally censoring pro-Palestine posts that do not otherwise violate their policies, and the accusation is coming from an actor that is fairly biased and isn't releasing their underlying data. No doubt sometimes things get flagged incorrectly, e.g. the heart emojis — I didn't dispute those ones. But having personally seen the abuse of random Jewish accounts by people spamming Palestinian flags at strangers, I am suspicious of the cases where there isn't any context being given, especially since the source is unreliable and isn't sharing details. Same goes for photos that aren't shared.

"Human Rights Watch solicited cases of any type of online censorship and of any type of viewpoint related to Israel and Palestine. Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report, 1,049 cases documented involved examples of online censorship and suppression of content in support of Palestine, while one case contained an example of removal of content in support of Israel."

Even ignoring the self-selection sampling issues here, .01% is not exactly something to just wave off.

If HRW has lost all credibility, then giving Meta the benefit of the doubt and ignoring this report makes sense. However, if you think there’s a chance that HRW might be telling the truth, then it’s worth examining your existing assumptions on how Meta decides what content to allow on its platform.

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