Meta employees say Lula’s accounts restricted in Brazil election: Report | Hacker News Reader

Meta employees say Lula’s accounts restricted in Brazil election: Report

aljazeera.com

192 pointsnidnogg145 comments

It is somewhat confusing to me that more countries don't treat Meta as a political threat. China's approach to restricting access to western internet companies looks more and more reasonable in hindsight. The US tech giants appear to be politically active and becoming more and more willing to influence elections. I don't like the strategic situation of any anti-US political parties with Facebook in the mix (not a comment on Lula, about whos policies I know little).

That being said, it is a complex issue. There are countries that refuse to embrace US style free speech and so there is a natural pressure to move political speech to US-controlled media platforms as a result. The average quality of the chatter is higher.

Have you read "Careless People"?

If you did (or do read at some point) the final 10-15 chapters detail exactly why Facebook/Meta should be treated as a threat.

Meta is a threat. A mind virus. Just like Elon’s mind virus X.

Everything in the attention economy is. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. They are paired with some genuine uses like sharing knowledge or connecting with distant friends/family but ultimately the main engine in them is to steal attention and that will always be their most prominent effect on society.

I mean, there are plenty of social media mind viruses. But Zuck and Sheryl exhibit especially naked intent to get in bed with any dictator who will let them in, at the drop of a hat. The only metric they care about is growth. If burning America to the ground improved their numbers they would do it.

We've gotten through that threat twice now in Brazil. Lula has just cast out the Meta-assisted side as of yesterday's poll results [1]!

Exciting times

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237485

> The US tech giants appear to be politically active

Appear ? They are the arms of the CIA.

Uh, I wouldn't constrain them like that. More like they leverage the CIA, among others.

> It is somewhat confusing to me that more countries don't treat Meta as a political threat

Lobbying and bribes aren't confusing

They do, but the US government threatens them into stopping or protects them from consequences (and this is not a new thing under Trump)

There is a lot of money involved in getting Bolsonaro back in power:

> Brazil’s government announced Friday that annual deforestation in the Amazon fell to its lowest level since records began in 1988 [. . .] During Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, from 2019 to 2022, Amazon deforestation surged by about 60% [0]

This highlights the greatest difference between these two candidates (imo), one wants to preserve the 'lungs of the Earth', the other wants to rip them out for profit and give the world a middle finger on their way out.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/brazil-amazon-deforestation-lula-...

Well that sucks then: https://polymarket.com/event/brazil-presidential-election

80% chance Bolsonaro wins.

Interestingly, had a big dip in the last few hours. Here's the actual live results: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/oct/25...

As of writing, 0.2% of districts have been counted with Lula leading.

Glad to have been proven wrong for trusting prediction markets.

https://globalelectionsimulator.com/brazil/

  Bolsonaro 52.26%
  Lula      47.74%

Election starts a few hours from now. We'll know the results by tonight.

FWIW, these two datums aren't mutually exclusive.

If you have a high enough degree of certainty somebody could have a 99% chance of winning with an expected 50.1%/49.9% split. For the split to mean anything you need to know the confidence/variance.

Language is funny: where did you first encounter "datums"? Do you intend a semantic distinction from "data"?

They, I presume, intended to reference each separate datum; the first being "80% chance Bolsonaro wins" and the second being the most likely expected split.

I would guess they encountered it via a vaguely classical adjacent education or reading background, in that a (non geodesy / survey related) datum is a singular thing given, granted, assumed as fact, used in a reasoning chain.

More simply, the singular of data.

S'all Latin to me.

Facebook: demonstrates obvious risks to democracy

Polymarket: Hold my beer.

brazilians are extremely poor, even with the programmes that try to masquerade the numbers.

why would they care about the amazon if they barely have any money?

climate pov is a first world luxury. no one serious about this election would even attempt to make.

Because the rain in most of Brazil depend on the Amazon. If the forest is gone, we will have desertification in the most populous regions of Brazil. The southeast is already facing droughts periodically, and it will get worse with more deforestation. With less rain we will produce less food, which means not only that food will become more expensive in Brazil (and a lot of people will face hunger), but we also depend on the agricultural output to avoid a trade deficit. Less rain means less food exports which means less dollars getting into Brazil, which will, among other things, turn Brazil into a hotter Argentine.

https://piaui.uol.com.br/web/six-conclusions-about-model-of-...

No seriously. There's a flying river, kilometers high in the sky, that goes from the Amazon to various Brazilian regions. It transports more water than the Amazon river itself (which is already the river with the highest discharge of the world). The water source is transpiration from Amazonian trees. Without the trees, the flying river is gone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_river

> Less rain means less food exports which means less dollars getting into Brazil

Why not industrialize instead of exporting soy and meat until the end of time?

I'm all for industrializing Brazil, I'm not defending the current economic model. I'm just describing the Brazilian economy the way it is.

Also, it's not really possible to industrialize the country by destroying the Amazon. There is no button that turns the forest into a top tier semiconductor industry or anything like that, that's pure fantasy. And the people destroying the forest now is doing this to raise cattle to export meat, exactly the thing you are criticizing.

The only thing that destroying the forest will accomplish is to make Brazil inhospitable, desertified, unable to support its huge population. That's not climate nonsense like you say in another comment.

> Also, it's not really possible to industrialize the country by destroying the Amazon.

Flávio Bolsonaro proposed the creation of railways in the Brazilian north and northeast. These efforts are always paralyzed by leftist environmental NGOs, and leftist parties like PSOL have taken these environmental battles all the way up to the supreme court.

So, do you support Bolsonaro's proposal?

Are you prepared to sacrifice the climate for national development?

This is what this comes down to.

Why not both?

Sure. Industrialization comes first though. We can care about jungles if we ever reach superpower status.

This climate nonsense is a tax on developing nations. We're sacrificing for the planet, meanwhile the US puts a couple centuries of distance between us.

Brazil's poor industrialisation isn't an issue caused by caring about the climate though. Destroying the Amazon to continue the same bullshit of exporting unprocessed minerals won't improve Brazilian society.

Why exactly is Brazil disadvantaged about climate policies to industrialise given it has enormous potential in renewables (hydro, solar, wind)? Could even have more nuclear power. Industrialisation accelerates with cheap energy which Brazil has plenty of.

Have you thought that maybe the nonsense is coming from inside your skull?

Flávio Bolsonaro proposed the creation of railways in the Brazilian north and northeast. Historically, efforts like these always end up abandoned due to complaints from leftist environmental NGOs. Leftist parties like PSOL have taken these environmental battles all the way up to the supreme court, which just sits on it without deciding for years.

So, are you prepared to ignore the complaints of the environmentalists?

It's a stupid proposal, railways should cover the most populous and economically active areas first since rail in Brazil is nearly non-existent outside of transporting raw mined ore. Replace the fucking trucks going up and down Brazil's south-southeast, which historically the car lobby blocked that to push for more trucks and cars. I'm very sure environmentalists would support a push to replace those trucks with rail.

Are you prepared to understand you are being swindled?

Unfortunately I have a few like you in my family, completely rotten brains from antipetismo and falling for stupidity like "building railways on the most difficult and least economically active area of the country", do you understand you are being lied to?

Nobody is "falling" for anything. I just used Bolsonaro's debate promise for the sake of argument. I agree that we should keep prioritizing the development of the south and southeast, and I have nothing against new railways there.

As for the rest of your comment, the truth is I don't particularly care either way. There is exactly one thing, and one thing alone, that I want from this government:

Impeachment and imprisonment of the supreme court judges.

They have four years to put those judges in jail. If they do, I am satisfied. If not, I will never vote for them ever again. It's that simple. I'm aware of the possibility that they could turn out to be swindlers. I'm using frontier AIs to monitor every last one of them.

> I'm using frontier AIs to monitor every last one of them

The jokes write themselves.

You don't track the activities of your elected representatives? How else would you know if they did what you voted on them for? How is this a joke?

If I had a button that would burn that entire jungle down and replace it with a top tier national semiconductor industry, I'd press it twice.

Only university leftists care about the Amazon to the point they sacrifice national interests for it. Completely disconnected from reality.

> Europe is not worried about the trees in the Amazon, they want the subsoil.

Dr. Enéas Carneiro.

It's all about the rare earths.

You need to go for a walk in nature. There’s more to life than semi-conductors. Sad!

Wanna trade?

Transfer all your technology to us. We'll give you the Amazon.

You're cutting down your rainforest (one of your greatest assets) so middle/upper class people in Sao Paulo can do Churrasco 3X a week and have so much meat left over they have to throw it away. It has nothing to do with technological development, sorry.

Amazon region is rich in rare earths, which are of industrial and geopolitical importance. Should Brazil ever develop advanced semiconductor industries, we might need to exploit those natural resources.

I take it you won't object then?

Sure, I won't object if you have a few mines for rare earths, if you stop deforestation for cattle feed (90%) and deforestation for cheap metals (iron etc - which is the other 10%). 1% for rare earths would be fine tbh. However this is not why the rainforest is being cut down. It's being cut down so that people can eat beef multiple times per week (with the resulting public health crisis that will come from that).

Brazil is literally the world's soy farm, and even that position is shaky since China continues to invest in Africa to cut us out and France continues to block European economic deals with Brazil.

Why on Earth would I want to stop deforestation? Sounds like something that will obviously harm the only major industry we still have.

Because deforestation will mean your farmers across the country won't get reliable rainfall. That sounds like something will obviously harm your entire agriculture industry and also put your food supply at risk.

And for what? Completely unnecessary decadent meat consumption (50% more meat consumption per capita than Germany)? Good luck with that.

You say that as though the Amazon is the only place on earth rich in rare earth minerals. It isn't - many places have them, a number have more than the Amazon.

Rare earths are not rare - the 'free minerals' are rare (non existent) to find "just laying about" as they bind to other elements and compounds in complex hard to unbind ways.

What the planet is rather short of is good, high quality, original condition rain forests.

Amazon also contains petroleum. Would you oppose Petrobrás if it decided it was worth it to get it out of the ground?

"i'm sorry you can't afford food, but have you thought about going on a hike?"

Meat consumption per capita (kg/person)

US 122.1

Brazil 104.6

France 80.3

Germany 70.7

World average 45.1

Rainforests are being cut down to feed cattle so people can eat beef multiple times per day. It has nothing to do with not being able to afford food.

liar, liar, pants on fire.

I'll link what you're referring to - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person

It's the meat supply not consumption :) Very disingenuous to include world average there too. The number is brought down but countries whose main diets are vegetable based.

That's meat supply inside the country, domestic, not including exports.

FAO figures: production + imports − exports (± stock changes) = meat available in the country

Or, if you prefer a Brazilian source, here is one confirming 105kg per person of 'internal availability' inside the country after exports: https://seucreditodigital.com.br/disponibilidade-carnes-bras...

Brazil's 104.6 is what is available after net exports. With exports it's more like 148(!)

And yes of course vegetable based diets are included. That's a perfectly reasonable and in many ways healthier diet, followed by individuals in countries across the world. It makes no sense to exclude it.

am I talking with an LLM?

you don't even acknowledge that you're wrong on your initial response and just pivot to the first thing you could anchor on (vegetarian diets).

There is effectively no practical difference between supply and consumption once you isolate domestic use?

What do you think happens to that supply if it isn't exported? Why do you think they supply that much if no one is eating it?

Maybe this is helpful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

Seems like a false dichotomy, don't see how sacrificing jungle would get Brazil a top-tier semiconductor industry.

And I guess the native peoples living in the Amazon are not university leftists.

I'm not into Brazilian politics, the little I know seems to indicate that it's a choice between a rock and a hard place (both seem to have corruption allegations). The objective aspect I can judge is whom Trump strongly supports. US influence in South America is a pretty bloody chapter in history.

> don't see how sacrificing jungle would get Brazil a top-tier semiconductor industry.

It wouldn't. It was just a rhetorical device to express the fact I care far more about national industrial and economic development than some jungle.

> US influence in South America is a pretty bloody chapter in history.

I agree, but Lula's no paragon here. He's had ~20 years to undo the neoliberal privatization policies enacted as of the Washington Consensus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus

Instead of actually reindustrializing Brazil, he anesthetized the population with handouts and lined his pockets. Meanwhile, banks are literally raking in record profits.

It’s sad but it’s real and it’s happening. In Brazilian news, this is actively being exploded upon and it is not reaching mainstream media properly.

[1] - https://www.instagram.com/reel/De2BfVRD30o

[2] - https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/16/meta-employees-...

I wouldn't attribute an eventual Lula defeat to this, however.

His 3rd term was terrible, dozens of new taxes were implemented, living costs rose, purchasing power declined, and it became obvious that he was governing through the supreme court. His campaign was overconfident and taken completely off guard when they got utterly eviscerated in the 1st round of elections earlier this month. Left wing desperation was palpable.

Partidarian judges and journalists did everything they could to help Lula, but after the presidential debates on live television, it's pretty much over. There's just no way this guy is even fit to lead the nation ever again.

I'd just like to note: this article has 107 comments, of which you've posted 29, all in support of Bolsonaro and using the same rhetorical tactics as Trump supporters keep using.

I'm always active in threads about Brazil. I've been commenting on Brazilian politics here on HN for years now. You can look my comments up if you want.

For the record, I don't like Bolsonaro very much precisely because he's too aligned with Trump. It's unfortunate, but there is no right wing in Brazil without Bolsonaro right now. He's currently the only person who can get Lula out.

The only politician that truly represents me is the late Dr. Enéas Carneiro. He advocated for a strong interventionist and protectionist state, national industry and development, and nuclear weapons. He's the complete opposite of Bolsonaro, and rather closer to the Chinese Communist Party.

You'll also often see me speak out against the numerous abuses of the Brazilian supreme court, which I have been tracking for years. My position is that they have silently usurped all power in the nation since at least 2019, and that they engaged in outright criminal conduct in the 2022 election in order to get Lula elected. There's a good chance they'll finally be impeached next year.

I have no idea what you mean by "Trump supporter tactics". I don't really socialize with MAGA people and generally avoid debating American politics. I'm just trying to honestly express what I think here. English language provides a good filter for intelligent discourse compared to the average Brazilian forum.

Funny, that sounds exactly like what an American right-winger would say about Biden in 2024.

I guess Brazil is about to experience a shit-show similar to what the US is going through now, then. Not much hope left anywhere.

Lula went on national television and said he's going to end police in reply to Bolsonaro vowing to classify the drug traffickers as narcoterrorists.

It's not even a lie. These leftists do want to abolish the police and create a bolivarian national guard or whatever.

He said this despite the fact organized drug gangs have been known to wage literal drone warfare in Rio de Janeiro. I'm not even kidding.

https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/nacional/sudeste/rj/operacao-no...

I seriously doubt he's going to recover from this.

>Lula went on national television and said he's going to end police in reply to Bolsonaro vowing to classify the drug traffickers as narcoterrorists.

Without knowing much about Brazilian politics, all I can say is that I strongly doubt this. And at least a quick Google AI question suggests that your statement is not just off but completely false.

You can doubt all you want. It's on the record. It was said in national television.

He literally said those words. I heard them. Whole nation heard them. I saved a video of it.

Most charitable interpretation possible is he's too senile and doesn't know what he's saying anymore. Not a good look either way.

He also closed the 1st presidential debate by saying that if he won, Brazil would end. Just another one of those moments.

You and everyone else who's seen them know: these presidential debates are a JOKE. Just straight up biased towards high impact cuts for people zoned out of their minds on echo chambered social feeds

I know. Doesn't change the fact he said it and went viral on social media two days before the election. Whatever it is he was trying and failing to say, I seriously doubt he's going to recover from the attempt.

I wouldn't put much stock into the "fact checking" newspapers that AIs are sourcing truth from either. Those are all known to be biased towards him. They'll do everything in their power to paint him in a favorable light.

> Anyone who thinks like you do will get voted out with extreme prejudice.

> I know. Doesn't change the fact he said it and went viral on social media

These are post-truth comments. You don't care about how things really work, you just care about winning over the other post-truth incompetent. It doesn't matter if you are right or left, this stuff is what is sinking the world.

I do care about how things work. It's a fact that this viral stuff could sink him when election begins in a few hours. It's also a fact that these leftists totally hate the "fascist" police and want to destroy it. My honest opinion is he merely revealed his true colors in public, but if you think otherwise I'll respect it.

By how things work, I mean the truth of how things work. The truth is that he didn't mean to abolish the police. But you repeated that as if it was true. You spread the "viral stuff" and then in the next comment you say that it's a "fact" that the viral stuff could sink him. Your words are all over the place - post truth. The reason this is a problem is that the truth is out there and it bites hard when the post truth people govern based on fairy tales.

> The truth is that he didn't mean to abolish the police.

Doubt. See my other reply:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229237

When I did a quick search in brave it agreed with the statement: "Yes, during a televised debate on October 23, 2026, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stated that his government would "end the police" if reelected. The comment occurred while he was discussing the approval of the PEC da Segurança (Security Public Amendment) and the creation of a new Ministry of Public Security. "

I tried google and he did in fact say it: "During the TV Globo presidential debate on October 23, 2026, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stated: "Aprovada a PEC da Segurança eu vou criar o Ministério e ai você vai ver o que é um governo acabar, sabe, com a polícia e deixar o território livre""

Although google says that he might have been being sarcastic, and gave some additional defenses. I googled "Did Lula say he was going to end police recently?" and got these responses.

Im surprised that you got such a different result in such a short time frame, especially the "completely false" thing, as it's not far off the direct quote. What did you google?

That guy it's being malicious.

Lula said on debate he was gonna end "milicias", and by mistake, he said "policias".

Milicia it's basically a narco/cartel, and Flavio Bolsonaro it's accused of being part of it.

I did a quick search and found it was a gaffe that was corrected in the debate afterwards. The video section was isolated/clipped and spread on TikTok, etc.

Surely there must be an official fact-checking website for the election.

Brazilian leftists in general do have a history of radical opposition to the military police. Some radical left parties propose abolishing it outright. "The military police has got to end" is even a line in at least one leftist movie, uttered by a "fascist" police officer no less. It's definitely an idea in the memespace of the Brazilian left.

So in my opinion this "gaffe" is just him revealing his true colors in public. Like when someone gets drunk and starts saying what they're really thinking.

There were numerous fact checking services, none of them particularly trustworthy. The "official" fact checking came from Globo, which hosted the debate. They're known to be biased towards him. They literally helped him out during the debate when he started screwing up his time management.

I had Astra perform a thorough fact checking on both debates, and the fact checking of Globo and other major newspapers. It found a certain degree of favoritism towards Lula.

Ending the military police doesn't mean to end the police. It means replacing them with civil forces, trained to deal with the civilian population rather than being trained in a military fashion.

Also... Globo are known to be biased towards Lula? This is a joke, right? Their very owners invited Flávio Surubinha for a "casual" lunch on the day of his interview. Lula didn't get the same treatment.

> It means replacing them with civil forces

In other words, ending the military police. Replacing something with something else implies the destruction of the original.

They already ended it in practice. Nobody sane wants to sign up to be a military police officer in 2026. Anyone who does will end up getting sued by the very state they're supposed to be protecting before they're even out of the police academy, and it will screw up their future concurso options. São Paulo police forces had to expand their recruitment efforts to the whole country in order to find people dumb enough to sign up for it. The future is bleak.

> trained to deal with the civilian population rather than being trained in a military fashion

... The civilian drug trafficker population? The ones that walk around the favelas with pistols and assault rifles? The ones that drop grenades on police and rival gangs with drones?

Starting to wonder if you even live here.

> This is a joke, right?

No.

> Their very owners invited Flávio Surubinha for a "casual" lunch on the day of his interview.

Must not have been a good lunch then. Their journalists were literally sitting among Lula's people during the debate. They repeatedly tried to help him out with his time management instead of just shutting up and allowing him to screw it up. Their post-debate "fact checking" was also quite generous towards the old man. Bolsonaro: "Fake!!1". Lula: "Well see, it's not quite like that".

> In other words, ending the military police. Replacing something with something else implies the destruction of the original.

Sure but your original rhetoric made it seem like they wanted to stop policing. The change is one to make the police work for the civilian population, as opposed to the current training they receive where the population is the enemy.

> They already ended it in practice. Nobody sane wants to sign up to be a military police officer in 2026.

Because of body cams? Interesting.

> Anyone who does will end up getting sued by the very state they're supposed to be protecting before they're even out of the police academy

Really? Sued for what?

> ... The civilian drug trafficker population? The ones that walk around the favelas with pistols and assault rifles? The ones that drop grenades on police and rival gangs with drones?

This is a straw man. Obviously protecting the civilian population means fighting criminals, and they need to be trained for that. The vast majority of people in these communities are not criminals though, but they're seen and treated as that.

Starting to wonder if you've ever visited one or if you know people who live in them.

> Their post-debate "fact checking" was also quite generous towards the old man. Bolsonaro: "Fake!!1". Lula: "Well see, it's not quite like that".

He could have just stopped lying. Oh wait, that's actually not in his interest as then no one who's not a die hard Bolsonarista would vote for him.

> Sure but your original rhetoric made it seem like they wanted to stop policing.

If they didn't want that, they wouldn't demilitarize the police. Or vote against harsher sentences. Or defend early exit for criminals. Or turn police work into a legal nightmare.

> Sued for what?

For actually using their guns.

> Obviously protecting the civilian population means fighting criminals

They wouldn't demilitarize the police if it was that obvious.

Criminals? More like enemy combatants. Leadership, territory, army, laws, tribunals, even taxes. Drug gangs are their own nations and have pulled off an unannounced secession. The government needs to declare war on them and mobilize literal soldiers.

> they need to be trained for that

Yes, and equipped for that. In other words, they need to be military police.

> Starting to wonder if you've ever visited one or if you know people who live in them.

Worked in one. SUS primary care. Place I attended to got robbed during my time there. Government was dumb enough to buy some nice screens to display information on.

Coworker of mine saw a guy get executed right in front of him once. Responded to a 192 call and ended up face to face with a drug trafficker the second he hopped out of the ambulance, who then fired three shots into the patient who was agonizing on the floor, finishing him off. "Alright, you can take him now, doctor". To this day, ambulances do not drive up to the place where this happened without police escort.

> no one who's not a die hard Bolsonarista would vote for him

You're replying to one. Flávio is literally the anti-left, anti-worker's party, anti-supreme court vote. People can just pick their favorite reason.

You do know that the military polices are state-level, not Union/Federation, right?

I'm going to guess your experiences are either in SP or RJ. Neither have been governed by PT or anyone left-wing in a long time!

MG.

Yeah ok, then you did have 1 left-wing Government within the last few decades. Still, one.

Given all the egregious things Trump has said on national TV and had the MAGA folks contort themselves into knots trying to explain and justify what he said, It's hardly the political death sentence that it used to be.

I don't doubt it. His fans will vote for him no matter what he says or what he does. He literally got a call from Epstein while in jail and nobody cares.

Anything could happen in the next few hours... Just saying that it doesn't look good for him.

At the same time, some candidates from the opposition are getting more views than Beyoncé and other artists known globally.

https://sleepinggiantsbrasil.com/biblioteca/visualizacoes-de... (portuguese)

To save others a couple clicks:

> [Auto-Translated] The Sleeping Giants Brazil report analyzes 300 Reels of 30 Instagram profiles to investigate evidence of algorithmic favoring to federal deputy Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG). Its ten videos totaled 410.5 million views, nearly three times the total of the 90 videos of the other nine MPs analyzed. In views by follower, its performance was 17.2 times the typical value of these deputies, 29.3 times that of the largest Brazilian profiles and 33.7 times that of the largest profiles in the world. His average viewing was behind only Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, surpassing celebrities such as Selena Gomez, Beyoncé and Justin Bieber. The study documents a persistent disparity that requires more transparency from the Meta, although public data does not allow it to determine its causes.

Both sides are pulling record levels of engagement. It's a colosseum out there. But yes, one of the sides is more automated as usual. Most of the left engagement is human driven.

Looks at least partially organic to me, the guy is very cute and looking at his youtube video it is full of female commenters and has 2.7m subscribers.

So he is a celebrity and not just a politician, probably a lot of women are in love with him.

At a certain point the big social media companies are going to have to publish their algorithms and/or let you choose your own re: friends updates, friends of friends, things your friends or friends of friends liked, etc. Make your algorithm too opaque and you run the risk of outrage engagement showing up as "the platform pushed this" whatwver that happens to be.

I would go further and make them liable for what they show. Sure it's user created content. But the feed is entirely curated by them. They decide what to show and what not and they should be liable as such.

The US government is not a fan of other sovereign nations (even Western-aligned ones) from gaining "algorithmic sovereignty", as was seen when Australia tried to do so recently and received a stern threat from the US State Department.

Algorithms are something we should definitely regulate, as a generalization of social media and Ai decisions over human lives.

I'd like to see something like ATProtocol feeds forced upon these companies, anyone can create any kind of feed, it works in all clients.

X did publish their algorithms.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49310291

They set the standard in transparency.

I suspect this has been part of 4chan’s lasting appeal: a dead simple algorithm that can be independently verified via timestamps.

I don't think anything will force them to do this. Can you elaborate on why you think they'll be forced to do this?

Well traditional publishers are responsible for the content of what shows up in their medium. Nobody would argue that the NYT shouldn't be responsible for what op-eds they publish.

New media outlets/websites do have a carve-out in the law to not be responsible for what people post there, presumably because "they (the platform) don't really have control over what people post" which is largely true.

But it's only largely true as long as new media outlet/platform isn't doing editorial work ala deciding which op-eds to show everyone and which ones to bury. But, their algorithms are de-facto editorial policy.

When you only saw updates from your friends or friends-of-friends or whatever there was no editorial policy because THEY didn't decide what you saw, YOU did. YOU were in charge of what you saw by who you associated with. The algorithm was a 1:1 correlation between your friends and what you saw.

That is no longer the case. My Facebook feed is at least 70% not updates from my friends but rather random crap that FB decides to show me. That's much closer to NYT deciding which articles/op-eds to put into the paper than it is running some kind of "people post what they want and find what they want" thing like the forums of the old days were.

Will a new law get written? I don't know. Will the tech companies allow you algorithmic choice to try and avoid getting regulated? I don't know. But there's a lot of latent discontent around how corrosive social media is by constantly stoking outrage/anger/whatever. I don't think it would necessarily be good if they got regulated but to me it's absolutely believable that it could happen.

meta employees will look at this and think that their job isn't political. what a j o k e.

More people should be aware of the Buddhist precept of “right livelihood”.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50122713

Title: Meta employees say Lula’s accounts restricted in Brazil election: Report

> don't editorialize.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Apologies! Fixed the title now

It’s just a technical issue that seems to magically and repeatedly happen in favor of right wing interests. Crazy how that just works out some times.

Whoopsie! A slight technical error that aligns with the politics of the White House, it's wild how that happens from time to time to time to time...

It's not the white house, it is always the right wing. When the white house is left wing Facebook is still right wing.

Because capital is right wing and capital will act to preserve and concentrate power.

The Brazilian left has done much worse than whatever it is that Meta is doing.

> We have defeated Bolsonarism!

Luís Roberto Barroso, former Brazilian Supreme Court Justice.

Facebook has also made content decisions that have hurt right wing interests in the past, such as in 2020 when they banned several accounts affiliated with Bolsonaro

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/facebook-suspends-disi...

Did you expect more from FaceBook?

If anything, many in Brazil feel a social media decline or stagnation. Orkut was poised to restart here and was met with great anticipation. Good market to new novel social media ideas.

Somehow something like Baidu web doesn’t seem too bad now. Brazil could use some sovereign tech.

I hope to see Mark dragged in front of congress every day of his life next year.

No, the last thing US Democrats need is to squander their time on endless questioning.

Some of that is going to be inevitable for impeachment and conviction of course, which are most certainly necessary for traitor Grump and his Supreme Council justifiers as well.

But as for this issue? Strike the root, don't get bogged down in endless bickering about how power was probably abused. Rather, put an end to the capabilities being available to abuse to begin with. Imagine a US GDPR, along with anti-trust legislation/enforcement that un-ties Faceboot-the-app from Faceboot-the-hosting-service, mandating open APIs that facilitate vibrant competition in both markets.

To clarify, this was the nicest thing I could have said about Mark that wouldn't get my comment flagged. I have no confidence that any of these people will be held accountable by a Democratic majority.

Sure, but why make it personal in the first place?

These people are personally responsible for untold suffering and strife, for sure. But if you make it personal, you're just facilitating different shitheads taking their place. Whereas what we actually need to move forward as a society is regulations diminishing and restraining their power over our individual lives.

For flexing muscles and advancing U.S. foreign policy goals abroad? Doubt it.

"Any suggestion that Meta favors one side is false"

Weird how it keeps happening (e.g. just last week, Instagram and the No Kings account), and it's always to the benefit of right-wing extremists. I'm sure it's just an accident, though, surely they wouldn't lie on the internet.

They also repeatedly suspended Dutch LGBTQIA+ accounts:

https://nltimes.nl/2026/04/23/meta-suspends-dozens-dutch-lgb...

It's time countries started suspending Facebook/Instagram for meddling in national affairs.

The American propaganda platforms (especially Meta and X) have been weaponised to interfere in foreign elections for a long time. Brazil is just the latest example from South America. It is also happening in Europe. It is a stated goal of the Trump regime to change European governments which are not aligned with Trumpism. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/12/donald...

I do believe the US interference in flipping most of latin america to the right the last few years reached levels we haven't seen in decades and the magnitude of the machinery behind that is something we have never seen before. Trump surely got quite a few puppet governments with the likes of Milei, Noboa, here with the incredibly corrupt de la espriella and now Brazil in the verge to have another Bolsonaro.

Brazilian left isn't much better. It's essentially a branch of the US democratic party. Nothing but minorities, progressive nonsense. Harmless stuff for the leftists to debate. The stuff that actually hurts the bottom line of capitalists? That's off limits. Bankers are raking in record profits under Lula.

After the left got eviscerated earlier this month in the 1st round of elections, some Brazilians went to the Chinese embassy and begged for foreign intervention. This sparked something of a cultural exchange on X when actual Chinese people showed up and started debating politics with them. The tentative alliance broke down the second Brazilian leftists started defending drugs and LGBT. What about the common worker's needs? Nothing. The workers are right wing now.

It was very educational.

I only use FB occasionally for marketplace with an empty account. All that it's ever suggesting in the home feed is hateful, right-wing content. Never anything positive. It's so sad that that's what drives the metrics these people care about. If this is your job, shame on you!

Don't be fooled. Whatever it is that Meta is doing, it's only a fraction of what Lula, his party and his supreme court ministers did to the Brazilian right wing. Censorship was the least of it.

I'm not even denying that it's happening. I'm just saying I don't care.

Is this a Trump thing?

Like is the motivation to please Trump and ask for stuff/be left alone? Or is Zuckerberg really gone full right wing globally?

No, it's the lawnmower analogy again: Zuckerberg has no political views, he just thinks that Trump will restrict him less/allow him to make more money/is easier to exploit.

It would absolutely strike me as a Trump thing, yes. We have a habit of mirroring the US, and it shows

Facebook always aligns with the right wing no matter if the white house is left wing or right wing.

Possibly. All things point to Bolsonaro's son winning the election today. He's a Trump ally.

If the Brazilian right wins, then it will mean that not a single left wing party has won an election in South America since the end of USAID.

Right wing winning in South America is nothing new, especially when the US decides to back the right wing (either through elections or through coups).

Historically, it is one of the main reasons why South America is the hellscape it is.

And, by the looks of it, it will keep being a hellscape.

Leftists have been in power in Brazil for around 20 years now. Two thirds of my life.

Right wing victory might not be unheard of, but it's definitely been a while.

Yes, yes. The famous leftist Jair Bolsonaro, preceeded by the communist Michel Temer in that period attest to your moronic view of recent history.

Also, would be very good to take notice that through most times while the "leftist" government was in power it had to deal with a reactionary congress.

Bolsonaro is literally the only exception. Temer is just what was left after Dilma was impeached, I wouldn't exactly call it a "victory". Before Lula, Brazil was essentially centrist.

Bolsonaro is only "extreme right" by Brazilian standards. Debating with Chinese people taught me that he's more like center-left if compared to the Chinese Communist Party. A surprising result: clearly, there is still plenty of room for further radicalization. I did count him as right wing, though.

> Bolsonaro is only "extreme right" by Brazilian standards.

You're hopeless. The same kind of mouth-breather that claims Nazis are left wing because the party has "socialist" in its name.

Either way, extreme right or no, Bolsonaro is extreme stupid. One of the most retarded politicians to disgrace South America. His son proves that the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Okay? I have no idea why you're lashing out, but I'm not going to reply anymore.

I think it's more that they happen to be aligned. Left-wing parties are more likely to tax and regulate Meta than radical right parties. So it's for their own profit. But Trump is also mostly there for enriching the oligarchy, he often has the same priorities.

damned if you do, damned if you don't

By which frame of comparison do you say they were ever "damned even though they didn't"?

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