[hagbard_c]

While I'm all on board with deleting Facebook accounts - and deleting Facebook itself - the timing of this push is odd. Now that Facebook claims to open up the platform for a wider view than just the desired narrative is the time to get rid of your account? Please explain to me how it was better to be held on a short leash than to be allowed to run out that leash a little bit.

I never had a Facebook account and as such I can not delete it but had I had one the time to delete it would have been when they started censoring anything which went against the desired narrative - probably around the time of the SARS2 unpleasantness - and not now that they claim to have been too censorious and 'promise' to allow more free speech. The same thing happened when Musk turned Twitter into X which makes me wonder why some people are so eager to embrace the censor and shun those places where he was kicked to the curb (even if I don't trust anything Zuckerberg says on this subject, he has shown his true colours a long time ago and they are dark and unpleasant to look at).

[ruthmarx]

Excluding hate, bigotry and wilful ignorance isn't being "held on a short leash", it's just excluding hateful people from spreading hate.

[wakawaka28]

That can be very subjective. Facebook tolerated groups where online dating users doxed and smeared each other. What passes for "hate" these days is ridiculous, and they only care about certain views deemed unpopular anyway rather than the entire set of awful content.

Also on the subject of FB moderation, I distinctly remember seeing a photo in my timeline that was censored like adult content. I clicked it, and it turned out to be some Christian thanking Jesus for something good. Real hateful content, that.

[hmcq6]

> Facebook tolerated groups where online dating users doxed and smeared each other.

This hasn’t been proven as the case is still ongoing. Also the plaintiff in this case got arrested last year for tax fraud

[wakawaka28]

People have documented it. I didn't know there was a lawsuit but these groups definitely existed and managed to continue at least for long enough for them to be exposed. There was at least one of these groups in several major cities.

[hmcq6]

> There was at least one of these groups in several major cities.

Is there an "are we dating the same guy?" group for every city? Sure I believe that. Do 100% of those groups commit Doxing? Well, that I'm not so sure of.

In fact, I've literally never heard of that before, it doesn't sound like the objective of the group. So I googled it and I found one case where a guy is arguing that people in the group manipulated his messages and so he's suing Meta for Doxing.

Also, if you read closely you might be confused like I was. Defamation is not Doxing.

So if you have evidence of Doxing in these groups I would love to see it.

[wakawaka28]

>Is there an "are we dating the same guy?" group for every city? Sure I believe that. Do 100% of those groups commit Doxing? Well, that I'm not so sure of.

That is literally the point of the group. They are violating the privacy of users on the regular, whether or not they actually give out whole names, addresses, or whatever. This WAS widely reported.

>Also, if you read closely you might be confused like I was. Defamation is not Doxing.

You have to correctly identify someone to effectively defame them. It's implied in the group name. That involves violating their privacy, which is essentially a form of doxxing (as far as dating online goes). Posting and/or offering up details of dates along with names, photos, or even phone numbers is all enough to identify many people on apps and in real life. And if not technically doxxing, even getting people identified to the point where they are excluded from dates is nasty behavior. You essentially can't defend yourself from these accusations, and in most cases you won't EVER find out that there are vicious rumors against you circulating among potentially thousands of people.

You can find plenty of information about people's experiences of being targetted by those groups. Here's a pretty good link to get started I think: https://www.vice.com/en/article/are-we-dating-the-same-guy-f...

Anyway, my point in all of that is to say that Facebook tolerated these groups for a long time, despite their vicious and secretive attacks on people, and violations of privacy. Their moderation team cares more about people posting wholesome religious memes and funny political commentary than content that is definitively toxic. We don't hear a lot about these groups because their membership is locked down. They exist(ed) in many major cities. I think they are thankfully falling out of fashion because their members are way too petty and toxic even for each other. But I don't know that for sure, as I can't join one even if I find it.

[zelphirkalt]

At any moment in time there are peopl "only realizing it now", so any time of a push for deletion of FB account is a good time. Maybe not the best, but a good one.

[batiudrami]

To be clear, you think the change to specifically allow (verbatim from the new Meta training materials)

““Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit,” “Jews are flat out greedier than Christians,” and “Trans people are immoral.””

is a net improvement?

[wertigon]

Encountering views that you find objectionable is the price of free speech.

[tail_exchange]

What free speech? The moderation changes explicitly say you cannot label Republicans as mentally-ill, for example, but you can label gay people as mentally ill. If you are cherry-picking who can say what, this is not free speech, so don't label it as so.