Technology @lemmy.world fossilesque @mander.xyz 2d ago

Instagram hides search results for 'Democrats'

www.bbc.co.uk Instagram hides search results for 'Democrats'

Meta says it is working quickly to resolve the problem, which has prompted accusations of bias on social media.

Technology @lemmy.ml fossilesque @mander.xyz 2d ago

www.bbc.co.uk /news/articles/c4g32yxpdz0o

31 comments

I look forward to Republicans in the House holding hearings to get to the bottom of this. Because Republicans held hearings when they accused social media of censoring conservative opinions. Because Republicans care about free speech. And even though this effects free speech of the other party, Republicans still care about free speech, right? Republicans will hold social media companies accountable for any censorship of political speech, right? Guys? There are going to be hearings right? Well, at least if not journalists are going to press those committee members about the inconsistency, right? Journalists will surely do their jobs. Right guys?
"If these issues are not resolved quickly they risk fuelling conspiracy theories and damaging Meta's reputation."

Meta has a reputation? Surely, that thing was mutilated beyond all recognition a decade ago. And conspiracy theories are Meta's bread and butter.

While users who type "#Democrat" or "#Democrats" see no results, the hashtag "Republican" returns 3.3 million posts on the social media platform.

By manually searching Instagram for "Democrats", rather than clicking on a hashtag, users are greeted by a screen reading "we've hidden these results".

"Results for the term you searched for may contain sensitive content," it says.

There are also limited results when people search for "Republicans" as opposed to "Republican".

And I'm sure the "free-speech absolutists" were up in arms. /s

TBH, if you're searching Facebook for information, all you're gonna get is ragebait anyway, even when it works. Also, why are you still on Facebook?
- They say "resolved quickly" as if it was an error and not something intended.
  
  It was either a test or a flex. It was certainly not a mistake in terms of…oh, I accidentally uploaded a censor list to the platform.
  
  the error was that it didn't show the curated results they intended and instead showed nothing
  
  Normally I'd apply Hanlon's Razor and give the benefit of the doubt, but Meta lost the right to charitability long ago and deserves no such kindness or respect until they have a long pattern of acting in the public's interests.
  
  Likely they were training their AI to lean right and it went nuts. No human would be dumb enough to sign off on something that blatant.
- Zuck is just following the orders he got at Mar-a-Lago.
- I think "explicitly allowing hate speech with examples" has done most of the recent damage to whatever their "reputation" is at this point.
  
  Them actively suppressing non-fashy political views is basically expected.
Meta says its working urgently to fix a problem

WTF BBC

it’s
- The BBC have been getting worse and worse about this. Back when I had a twitter account, I'd screenshot their mistakes, circle them in red, give corrections and tell them "Must do better."
- That is tame for them. I’m convinced no one prof reads their articles anymore.
  
  prof
  
  the joke writes itself
Wild how they turned one of the most wholesome social networks (as wholesome as social media can be) into just another politics filled hole.
- Yep, I deleted my account after all of this was proven.
Is there a list of alternatives we can provide to the old folks to get them off of the nazi apps? (Meta, twitter, instagram, etc)
- Meta (Facebook) -> Friendica (?)
  
  Twitter/Threads -> Mastodon
  
  Instagram -> Pixelfed
  
  Reels/TikTok -> Loops
  
  Reddit -> Lemmy
  
  WhatsApp -> Signal
  
  Discord -> Matrix, encryption enabled
  
  SoundCloud -> Funkwhale
  
  Windows -> Linux Mint
  
  Mac -> Asahi Linux
  
  Android -> LineageOS/GrapheneOS
  
  Netflix -> Jellyfin + Arr stack
Well it’s been quick to start the limitation of options… not their first rodeo it seems.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!
My conspiracy theory here is that the person tasked with implementing The new policy filters Was either pissed off and or lazy And just use the most obvious filter they could come up with
- I'm working on a theory about your capitalization choices. Secret message when unscrambled:
  
  B E S U R E T O D R I N K Y O U R O V A L T I N E
  
  Voice to text is hit or miss. When I'm lazy about fixing typos that's WhAt HAAPenS
- They're probably showing up on this chart. They should keep going.
They found out. Quickly half fix it for a little while
We need a different party on the left anyway.
- I'll be at this one
Playing devil's advocate, could it have been used to avoid persecution of these people now that the Emperor has returned and the crazies think they have mandate to "hunt"? There's a non negligible chance that whoever decided this, lives in California, and thinks of themselves as quite liberal, they're just too greedy to quit the job at Meta because that 6-7 figure income is worth it even when it means being complicit to the 4th Reich.
the same platform that is home to (going worse) 9/11, racism, antisemitism, sexism, edge lord neo-nazism and worst of all homophobia/transphobia

31 comments