Why Did Meta Suspend a US Senate Candidate's Instagram in the Middle of a Rally?

It's a slippery slope from Yelp reviews to genetically engineered super soldiers.

Social media explains the Fermi Paradox. Once it arises technical civilizations regress.

Do you know how the Enterprise is this huge ship that carries a huge population, but yet very few people are seen working in each department? Yeah, the rest of them just stay in their bunks doomscrolling, subsisting on Doritos and soda from the replicator ("Diet Coke, cold"). A significant part of government provided basic housing is on starships, because it gives their working crews a sense of importance. When a ship is in range of other ships, space stations, or planets, transporter technology is used to seamlessly reallocate the population. The residents would notice if they bothered to look out their windows, but they mostly don't. It's also why the rest of the ship is so austere - the working crew knows that indulging base material desires is the fast track to becoming a bunk dweller.

In Star Trek they don’t have television. I remember there was an episode where it is mentioned as a dead medium from the 20th century.

I’m guessing they don’t have films either.

They do have written books though.

Now the Star Trek TNG film Star Trek First Contact takes place in the 21st century and features rock and roll and characters talking in “modern” parlance.

I’m guessing that in between the 21st century and the 24th century mankind advanced and stopped watching tv and movies and went back to reading books.

Perhaps they advanced and abandoned social media as well. The Star Trek’s version of forums and the internet could be an idealized version of Hacker News where everyone actually follows the rules and Dang the AI moderator can just chill and not do much. It’s very possible.

How can they not have social media in a universe where FTL communications and travel exist? Unthinkable!

Maybe they had it and wisely decided to get rid of it.

Just look at the shenanigans Meta pulled in Brazil election.

It doesn’t help that Zuckerberg is recorded pledging his loyalty to Trump.

After what Facebook tried pulling in Brazil, it is incredibly naive to think this was just another oopsie-daisy that once again, one that just so happens to impact the left, again.

This is the same site owner that allows Alberta pro-separatism pages to operate out of Kenya and India with impunity.

> You have this regional Florida race

It's a statewide race.

> They see an issue with their Instagram account which gets fixed an hour later and they immediately think it's Zuck behind the scenes in his war room following her race and rally with a big red button on his desk to cut her off at the crucial window. Incredible stuff.

This isn't the first time Meta has pulled the plug on rallies and leftwing organizations [1]. It's also not out of character for them to try and push right wing narratives. [2]

[1] https://www.ms.now/news/instagram-shut-down-a-no-kings-accou...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

I mean, companies are responsible for the actions of their employees within a certain scope and it is not outside the realm of possibility that an individual interested in curtailing the momentum of this candidate works at Meta in a capacity that would allow interfering with the account.

Accusing them without due evidence is sloppy, but it's not like the claim carries genuinely zero possibility of being true.

You honestly think meta couldn’t setup an automated system to target democratic candidate’s accounts and mess with them during a scheduled rally or live stream? As if zuck has to personally do anything to make that happen? This is hardly tinfoil hat territory, it would be trivial to put in place, and until I see it is coincidentally happening to their R counterparts, it tracks with Zuck’s current political leanings.

Were any of the candidates blocked here inciting a violent insurrection in an attempt to overturn an election? Because I'm pretty comfortable with that being grounds for blocking.

It's perfectly possible to have a consistent stance on the tool and feel differently about the tool's application in different circumstances.

You're implying that if two things occurred with inverted political parties, then they can't also have other differences. I think there's a probably a name for this fallacy, considering how common it is.

If you have two instances in mind that you think actually are the same except for the inverted political parties, and you can find somebody here who disagrees on that pair, then that would make sense to engage with, rather than this vague broad implication of hypocrisy.

> decide where you stand on the tool/weapon based on foundational principles

If you actually do this, then it doesn’t matter whether the outcomes seem to help one party vs another.

The second part of your comment invalidates the test in the first part of your comment.

It's the simplest explanation, but it's also the explanation you or I would reach for as a fig leaf if we were trying to get away with something shady.

I guess the best approach is to look at a string of such events, and see if they add up to a consistent pattern of behaviour. The longer the string, the less likely it is to be accidental. (But this assumes the bad actor isn't trying to cover their tracks in active ways. Ho hum).

The change I would like to see: feeds must be in date order, most recent first. Posts should only appear in feeds if you have actively chosen to "follow" the originating account in some way.

I honestly think these two simple changes would solve many of the problems we have today, as a society.

Source? I recall major platforms suspending accounts that were literally posting nazi propaganda in violation of platform rules. I don’t recall a single instance of meta suspending the page of an otherwise rule-abiding Republican candidate’s account in the middle of a rally.

Is there evidence that Facebook meddled in elections to benefit Democrats under a Democratic administration?