Meta Censors #Democrat when searched for

This is not mildly infuriating. Its incredibly worrying.

Running Shortlist includes blocking hashtags for:

democrat (but not republican)

voteblue (but not votered)

presidentbiden (but not president harris)

kamala

liberal

liberals

leftist

leftists

barackobama (but not presidentobama)

obama (but not obamas)

berniesanders

votebiden (votekamala, votetrump works tho)

democracy (WOW)

presidentcarter

fuckputin

makeamericasmartagain

libertarian (for some reason)

igcensorship

factsoverfiction

fuckdemocrats

fuckrepublicans

bluewave (redwave still works, shocker)

politicalleft (blocked, but politicalright isn't)

fascism

fascist

antifascism

prochoice

Time in USA: 1935, Germany

I thought they were gonna promote more political content

German news magazine Der Spiegel wrote they had talked to a Meta representative and they said "This is definitely an error and we will fix it fast"

My personal take: An incident like this illustrates how vulnerable we are to being censored and silenced when using social media and communication channels owned by billionaires. It's time not only to leave those platforms but to educate your friends and family why this is absolutely necessary. No more excuses.

Original: Update, 13.30 Uhr: Auf SPIEGEL-Anfrage hat sich Meta inzwischen kurz und knapp zu dem Phänomen geäußert. »Dies ist eindeutig ein Fehler, den wir schnell beheben werden«, so eine Sprecherin des Konzerns.

Meta says its working urgently to fix a problem with Instagram which results in a "results hidden" message when users search for the terms "Democrat" or "Democrats".

If that's hard to fix, I recommend shutting down the servers forever.

Looks like Zuckerberg needs a "red shell"..

I'm not sure how many years of headlines you all need before you just stop using these services. You already know they artificially lower your engagement, so you're just literally wasting your time at this point. (If you're not a fascist, that is.)

"Fact checkers are politically sided"

Benito Mussolini is often attributed with the quote: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

No one can argue the US isn't corporatist.

Is this true? Can anyone confirm this?

What's a two party state that's one party down?

Australia checking in.....yeah nah it's happening here too. Shitcunts.

What was that story warning people that if they use RedNote they'll experience 'Chinese style censorship' for the first time?

US using the old if you can't beat em approach

The USA becoming a one-party nation in real time

WTF

Maybe this will hopefully get people to stop using the garbage platform that enabled Trump and aided a literal genocide because they didn't hire anyone fluent in the language of the people being exterminated.

I can't wait for the day Zuckerberg loses all his money and dies alone because he alienated himself from anyone who cared about him.

The Product Manager made the mistake of having the keyword be overtly banned by the SWEs.

What was intended was an algorithmic change to hide the content entirely and divert to "acceptable" topics while obfuscating the ban.

It will be corrected shortly.

Blocking hashtags while pretending to be more free speech.

I hope meta goes down in flames

So Zuck has declared the Democratic Party an unlawful extremist organisation before the government could do so?

Just tried it. It works fine. Granted, most results are from fascist accounts, but it does work

Confirming this was the last straw and the moment I uninstalled all meta apps

Is this pre active censorship on the term “Democrat”. Or are posts using the term getting flagged for other terms. I can imagine there is an increasing amount of hate speech circling there. Both scenarios are worrying in different ways.

Just testing the new Great American Firewall!

Zuckerburg is furious that dems dragged him before congress and tried to blame Trump winning on Facebook.

Scary if true, but I'm in the US and everything seems to be working for me. It could have been a temporary bug that was already fixed? Not sure

Seems to work on my FB account in the US. It seems to be posts complaining about it though but still pulling up popular searches of the term.

I deleted my Instagram accounts so I can't check there.

Move fast and censor things

And so it begins, this might be the start of the digital war. Let's hope they won't make it into a physical one.

I wonder if this is Trump doing censorship or China doing censorship making it look like Trump doing censorship.

Nah. I'll die on that particular hill.

Maybe it's just a bug.

For another data point I can search any of those terms on the shortlist that was posted just fine, using Facebook on the website. Either searching for posts or videos. May be app specific or something that was very temporary? Located in US. No Instagram account.

Welcome to what yall did to republicans for 4 years