Tag: facebook

EU Officials Pressure Meta and X to Enforce Censorship: Threats Linked to “Fact-Checkers” and Disinformation Investigations

This week’s statement by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the realization that Meta’s policy shift regarding free speech on the giant’s social platforms doesn’t necessarily end with the US – is clearly sending shivers down the spine of a particular political class in Europe.

The one that, at least currently, gets to do all the talking – and gets that talking reported as gospel by legacy media.

And so, officials in a number of EU countries as well as some members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are scrambling to respond to Meta’s announcement – in a way, it seems, simply as an emergency measure to protect their narrow political, rather than what may be their nations’ long term, greater interest.

The people’s interest, meanwhile, is always the same: being able to speak freely as the very first point of assurance, that we do indeed, live in a democratic way.

But – the bureaucracy obviously has a different agenda.

Meta, as the first of the true tech giants to “turn the free speech ship around” does appear to be following in the footsteps of what Twitter/X has already been doing for several years.

And Meta’s change in policy is, in the grand scheme of things, still minor – Meta is simply now dropping the notorious third-party “fact-checkers.”

But, a number of EU officials and representatives of various agencies are wasting no time making themselves and their priorities known. And free speech, by way of welcoming less online censorship, does not come across as any priority.

Instead, they are warning Meta against abandoning the services of the “Censorship Central” – aka, “fact-checkers” – while at the same time looking to “energetically” pursue the existing investigation against X.

German Federal Network Agency head Klaus Muller is one of those appearing to be trying to stem the free speech tide, all the way to threatening to impose “sanctions” against Meta – should the company decide to extend its new, freedom-respecting policies to Europeans, after Americans start enjoying this privilege first.

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Here’s Everything You Still Can’t Say on “Free Speech” Meta Platforms

Meta’s recent announcement of plans to “restore free expression” on its platforms is accompanied by an extensive list of content restrictions, raising questions about the breadth of speech allowed under the new rules. While CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed the company is “getting back to its roots” with a focus on open discourse, the detailed policies suggest significant limitations remain.

The updated guidelines categorize prohibited content into two tiers. Tier 1 bans dehumanizing speech, such as comparisons to “animals” or “pathogens,” and stereotypes such as claiming that certain groups control financial, political, or media institutions. Allegations of serious immorality or criminality, such as calling someone a terrorist or pedophile, are also prohibited.

The policy also forbids mocking alleged hate crime victims, using targeted slurs, or expressing harmful wishes, such as hoping someone contracts a disease or experiences a disaster. Even expressions as simple as saying someone “makes me vomit” fall under the banned list when targeting individuals based on protected characteristics.

Tier 2 extends restrictions to statements that support exclusion or segregation, such as denying someone access to spaces, jobs, or social services. Insults based on character, mental capacity, or physical worth are similarly prohibited, though some exceptions are made for gender-based insults in specific contexts, like romantic break-ups.

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Facebook Claims it Will Allow More Free Speech Now

Admitting it has gone too far, Meta’s platforms of Facebook and Instagram are ending their ‘fact checking’ programs and restrictions on speech to allegedly restore free expression, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a video posted Tuesday.

“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said. “More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.” 

The shift to an X-style model with community notes replacing the heavy hand of internet censorship will be rolled out over the next few months, according to Zuckerberg.

“This is a great opportunity for us to reset the balance in favor of free expression. As Mark says in that video, what we’re doing is we’re getting back to our roots and free expression,” Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan said in an interview with Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” Tuesday.

The fact checking program was put in place following the Democrats loss of the 2016 election. Its purpose was to manage user’s content and censor what it deemed as ‘misinformation’. The move was initiated by political pressure, explained Zuckerberg.

“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth,” Zuckerberg said. “But fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the U.S.”

Meta’s man went on to discuss specific topics that will no longer be taboo on his website.

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Meta’s Re-Education Era Begins

Like law enforcement in some repressive virtual regimes, Meta is introducing the concept of re-education of “citizens” (users), as an alternative to eventually sending them to “jail” (imposing account restrictions).

But this only applies to “first-time offenders,” that is, those who have violated Meta’s community standards for the first time, and if that violation is not considered to be “most severe.”

The community standards now apply across Meta’s platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads – while the new rule means that instead of collecting a strike for a first policy violation, users who go through “an educational program” can have it deleted.

There’s also “probation” – those who receive no strike for a year after that will again be eligible to participate in the “remove your warning” course. This applies to Facebook profiles, pages, and Instagram profiles.

Meta first introduced the option for creators last summer and is now expanding it to everyone. In announcing the change of the policy, the tech giant refers to “research” that showed most of those violating its rules for the first time “may not be aware they are doing so.”

This is where the “short educational program” comes in, as a way to reduce the risk of receiving that first strike, and Meta says the program is designed to help “better explain” its policies.

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Facebook Fails to Silence Smith & Wesson

One can always count on social media to carry out the regime’s anti-American agenda.

Social media giant Facebook has long been a thorn in the side of gun owners ever since Donald Trump was first elected in 2016. Since that period, Big Tech has taken it upon itself to become the private enforcement arm of the managerial state. In effect, Big Tech companies have functioned as Pinkerton-style law enforcement agencies who do the regime’s dirty work of censoring any individuals or organizations who voice explicitly right-wing views on issues ranging from immigration to gun rights.

Facebook’s privatized tyranny was on full display when the social media giant indefinitely suspended the account of legendary firearms manufacturer Smith & Wesson on Nov. 22, 2024. Smith & Wesson was founded by gunmakers Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson by 1852 and has remained one of the U.S.’ flagship gun manufacturers. Smith & Wesson has a large social media following with over 1.6 million users. Facebook’s act of censorship against Smith & Wesson was not by accident and was certainly done to send a message.

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Meta Pushes for a Digital ID Revolution

Meta is coming out as a supporter of age verification, and the proposal the giant is putting forward exposes and sums up many of the points critics have been consistently making.

A blog post by Meta VP and Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis proposes to implement age verification at the operating system/app stores level.

Although the narrative around child safety and difficulties of parenting “in the digital age” dominates the article, “the meat of it” are the implications that this approach brings with it: namely, it creates a situation where, down the line, people would be forced to link real-world identity to their phone’s operating system (OS).

And everything they do using the phone is exposed to that OS.

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Meta Brings Back Face Scanning

After three years, Meta’s apps will once again include facial recognition (this is currently in the testing phase). The giant is “selling” the move to its users as a way to fight scammers and make account recovery easier.

The feature was abandoned because of widespread criticism of this tech, but Facebook and Instagram users can now expect to have it back on their apps.

The first scenario involves deploying facial recognition to remove what is known as celeb-bait ads, which use photos of public figures to get users to visit scam websites.

Meta said that if it suspects this is happening, faces in the ad will be compared to the public figure’s Facebook and Instagram profile photos using facial recognition.

For now, the feature is applied to a group of celebrities and public figures, on an “opt-out” basis. The company also revealed that since it is happening in real-time, the process is “faster and more accurate” than when done manually.

And now, onto “ordinary people.” The second test involves getting the apps’ users to take video selfies and upload them to Meta. Once again, facial recognition will be used to match these to people’s profile photos, this time in order to speed up the account recovery process.

Meta is clearly counting on the “convenience factor” to persuade users that subjecting themselves to facial recognition carried out by a tech juggernaut is a good idea.

Another promise is that the process will help when accounts are believed to be compromised by hackers logging in with stolen credentials.

The inevitable question is, what happens to this sensitive personal biometric data, especially once in the hands of Meta? The company said it will not use it for any other purposes, that it will be encrypted, and “immediately” deleted once a comparison has been made.

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Meta’s Israel Policy Chief Tried to Suppress Pro-Palestinian Instagram Posts

A former senior Israeli government official now working as Meta’s Israel policy chief personally pushed for the censorship of Instagram accounts belonging to Students for Justice in Palestine — a group that has played a leading role in organizing campus protests against Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

Internal policy discussions reviewed by The Intercept show Jordana Cutler, Meta’s Israel & the Jewish Diaspora policy chief, used the company’s content escalation channels to flag for review at least four SJP posts, as well as other content expressing stances contrary to Israel’s foreign policy. When flagging SJP posts, Cutler repeatedly invoked Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy, which bars users from freely discussing a secret list of thousands of blacklisted entities. The Dangerous Organizations policy restricts “glorification” of those on the blacklist, but is supposed to allow for “social and political discourse” and “commentary.” 

It’s unclear if Cutler’s attempts to use Meta’s internal censorship system were successful; the company declined to say what ultimately happened to posts that Cutler flagged. It’s not Cutler’s decision whether flagged content is ultimately censored; another team is responsible for moderation decisions. But experts who spoke to The Intercept expressed alarm over a senior employee tasked with representing the interests of any government advocating for restricting user content that runs contrary to those interests.

“It screams bias,” said Marwa Fatafta a policy adviser with the digital rights organization Access Now, which consults with Meta on content moderation issues. “It doesn’t really require that much intelligence to conclude what this person is up to.”

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Facebook Faces Heat for Blocking Report on Arrest of US Journalist in Israel

Facebook has come under scrutiny for censoring an article by Matt Orfalea that reported on the arrest of American journalist Jeremy Loffredo in Israel. Loffredo was arrested shortly after publishing a detailed investigative report on Iranian missile strikes near significant Israeli military and intelligence locations, including an Israeli Air Force base and Mossad headquarters.

Loffredo has since been released pending an investigation and is not allowed to leave the country.

Orfalea’s article highlighted the circumstances surrounding Loffredo’s arrest and his findings that reportedly contradicted some official Israeli statements about the missile attacks.

According to the Times of Israel, as noted by Orfaela, “The exact locations of such impacts and damage are barred from publication by the IDF censor.”

Facebook’s censorship of Orfalea’s piece raises significant concerns about freedom of the press and the role of social media platforms in moderating content related to sensitive geopolitical issues. Orfalea questioned the transparency and fairness of Facebook’s content moderation processes, especially given the public interest in Loffredo’s arrest and the broader implications for press freedom.

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PimEyes Says Meta Glasses Integration Could Have ‘Irreversible Consequences’

Two Harvard students made headlines after converting Meta’s smart glasses into a device that automatically captures people’s faces with facial recognition and runs them through face search engines. One of the companies providing the face search function, PimEyes, is not too happy about it.

AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio released a video of themselves using the smart glasses to identify people on the street and look up their personal information through services such as PimEyes. The students used the integrated camera on Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses to capture live video through Instagram and ran it through their software I-XRAY.

“We stream the video from the glasses straight to Instagram and have a computer program monitor the stream,” Nguyen says in the video. “We use AI to detect when we’re looking at someone’s face, then we scour the internet to find more pictures of that person. Finally, we use data sources like online articles and voter registration databases to figure out their name, phone number, home address and relatives names and it’s all fed back to an app we wrote on our phone.”

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