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Facebook ban on discussing Linux?
- iefbr14 2y agoI didn't notice. Maybe because I have a long list of facebook domains in my hosts.deny.
- Igrom 2y agoSurely that's the result of a rogue moderator's overreach.
- jdxcode 2y agoI agree, overzealousness sounds like the most likely reason for this. > Starting on January 19, 2025 Facebook's internal policy makers decided that Linux is malware and labelled groups associated with Linux as being "cybersecurity threats". The author gives no evidence to back up on this claim.
- paulnpace 2y ago> The author gives no evidence to back up on this claim. How can one provide evidence that something is not being displayed on a website? Isn't this, like, a formal fallacy, or something? > We've been hearing all week from readers who say they can no longer post about Linux on Facebook or share links to DistroWatch. Some people have reported their accounts have been locked or limited for posting about Linux.
- fau 2y agoYou've implied it's impossible to give such evidence and then you've immediately proved yourself wrong by giving it. But anyway, they're not asking for evidence that something isn't being displayed. They're asking for evidence that 'Starting on January 19, 2025 Facebook's internal policy makers decided that Linux is malware and labelled groups associated with Linux as being "cybersecurity threats"'.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago> I agree, overzealousness sounds like the most likely reason for this. Who was overzealous if not one or more internal policy makers?
- bagels 2y agoMachine learning algorithms? Someone hacked Facebook to block Linux? So, there are other options besides overzealous policy makers.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y agoThat sounds like a distinction without a difference. It doesn’t seem to meaningfully refute the point; it’s just hung up on the semantics of “policy-maker”. Who cares that the policy-maker is an algorithm?
- rnd0 2y agoI attempted to post the distrowatch link to my feed and it was blocked as 'spam'. That seems pretty automated to me.
- blast 2y agoOr some overly optimistic attempt at AI moderation.
- not2b 2y agoTheir "moderators" are bots, not humans, so it seems that the bots have "decided" that Linux-related links are malware or something.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago> Starting on January 19, 2025 Facebook's internal policy makers decided that Linux is malware and labelled groups associated with Linux as being "cybersecurity threats". That's quite the statement to make without any source to back it up; I wonder what the evidence for this is.
- paulnpace 2y ago[flagged]
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoI can't speak for anyone else, it just seems that statement is a very specific accusation with nothing backing it up. I'm curious, that's all. It is very much possible that there's some evidence of policy makers discussing this, or even a public statement; nothing to do with "proving a negative".
- paulnpace 2y ago[flagged]
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago[flagged]
- paulnpace 2y ago[flagged]
- jsnell 2y agoHow is this asking to prove a negative?
- soneil 2y agoSurely this is entirely the opposite of proving a negative? It's a direct, testable, provable claim.
- lexicality 2y agoI'm genuinely surprised that people were using facebook of all things to discuss Linux distros. The idea of having to wade through AI generated pictures of Shrimp Jesus and my mad uncle posting about his latest attempts to turn lead into gold (yes, really) to find out about new distros to try seems very alien to me.
- UntitledNo4 2y agoI want to know more about your uncle. I'm not on Facebook, but that would make me consider joining...
- lexicality 2y agoIt's entertaining in the abstract but fairly depressing when he's telling you in person that he's spending his children's inheritance on turning lead slightly yellow. Still, on the bright side, he seems to have stopped talking about the "globalists" so much.
- Detrytus 2y agoGlobalists are history now, Trump will take care of them :)
- knowitnone 2y agoI'm sure lead technically can be turned into gold or anything for that matter with enough energy
- perihelions 2y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20250127020059/https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20250127#sitenews https://web.archive.org/web/20250127020059/https://distrowat...
- benrutter 2y agoIf I'm reading right, the same facebook who announced a week or so ago that they where scaling back all moderation and validation around online safety, are now putting a blanket ban on users discussing such a fundamental aspect of modern technology that facebook itself runs on it? If this is a genuine policy, I'm at a complete loss to understand Facebook's stance on anything.
- nonrandomstring 2y ago[flagged]
- dingnuts 2y ago[flagged]
- spencerflem 2y agoyea this is true - & also not a democrat & also upset with some of the stuff they've censored in the past too W/ that said, censoring anti trans stuff and racist stuff makes the platform more pleasant for me, whereas what they're doing now does not
- Conscat 2y agoAs a trans occasional-user of Facebook, I never saw any censoring of transphobic hate speech. During any administration, I was fed very many posts from nominally pro-queer visibility pages that existed primarily to bait interaction from vehemently transphobic or homophobic users. I saw everything you could imagine stated with zero repercussions from site staff or even the consensus of other users.
- spencerflem 2y agoThey made it completely legal now, my understanding was that it used to be at least nominally against the rules. Totally agreed that it has always sucked though.
- udev4096 2y agoNo one, more than linux users, cares about privacy and freedom. What is even the point of using crapbook? Everyone in linux community is either hanging out on IRC or matrix or have self hosted forums
- em-bee 2y agoto talk to people who are not yet using linux?
- sophacles 2y agoWhat? Google is a linux user - I doubt they care about privacy or freedom. Same with facebook - that company uses linux a lot while actively opposing privacy. Lots of people use linux because it's a good OS, irrespective of privacy concerns (see the occasional flareup about some software or another automatically shipping off bug reports - some people don't care, others are incredibly concerned).
- paulnpace 2y agoWhy is this submission flagged?
- beardyw 2y agoPeople flag stuff.
- RandomBacon 2y agoHN moderation outsourced to FB? /joke
- kbelder 2y agoLook at the quality of the posts. This is an obvious mistake, it's obvious Facebook isn't deliberately banning Linux posts, it's obvious their moderation is incorrectly flagging some posts for some reason, it'll get fixed. It could have been an interesting story and discussion about problems with false positives and automated moderating, or about the lack of human contact at Facebook scale, but instead it's just passionate screeds from too easily excitable posters. (I didn't flag it, btw.)
- dredmorbius 2y ago<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20users%20flagged%20it&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>
- beardyw 2y agoI am getting no response on that link.
- vmilner 2y agoDistrowatch seems to be under heavy load (probably because of this news story)
- polotics 2y agoI do confirm that i explicitly tested this with my super unused facebook account, just stating that i was testing restrictions on talking about Linux, the text was: """I don't often (or ever) post anything on Facebook, but when I do, it's to check if they really, as announced on hckrnews, are restricting discussing Linux. So here's a few links to trigger that: https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/ https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/ ... https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/ https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/""" and indeed within seconds I got the following warning: """ We removed your post The post may use misleading links or content to trick people to visit, or stay on, a website. """. This is one massive wow considering how much Facebook runs on Linux.
- zdp7 2y agoI just tried the same two URLs. I also got a message saying the post was removed.
- krisoft 2y agoA user who never posts anything suddenly posting a message containing urls might in itself be a signal that something is weird. It would be an interestint test to post something not linux related and see how that fares.
- darig 2y ago[dead]
- Vrondi 2y agoAny user ever posting URLs should never ever be removed. The Web should be allowed to exist. This is utterly despicable behavior.
- quesera 2y agoInsanity. Absolutely. Maybe. Clearly there's a need for some kind of bad-url blocker. You don't want compromised accounts (or clueless people) sharing nefarious links to trusted friends. And clearly blocking distrowatch etc is bizarre overreach. And probably not intended behaviour -- it just makes no sense. The web exists just fine. Using Facebook as a front end to the web is a terrible idea though.
- boozerloozer 2y ago[flagged]
- oliwarner 2y agoThis should not be flagged. Post itself is a little light on evidence, but there are people here already who've tried to post Linuxey things, and have seen it in action.
- johnea 2y agoI notice a lot of topics being flagged recently. I would ask flaggers to simply skip those posts and let people who are interested in discussing those topics have their discussion. Shutting down other peoples conversations is a disturbing trend and it is giving HN more of a one sided echo chamber feel.
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoTech censorship, especially during the pandemic, made some giddy with power that they thought would extend to everything forever.
- lproven 2y ago@dang: I do not know why this is flagged, but I think it's a significant development and it shouldn't be. Even LWN is covering it. https://lwn.net/Articles/1006328/ https://lwn.net/Articles/1006328/
- LorenDB 2y agoAnybody here have connections at Meta? Seems like this should be fixed.
- dang 2y agoI've turned the flags off now. It's not a very good thread, though—mostly jokes and generic reactions, which is what happens when an article contains little information, but the information it does contain is provocative. (Edit: the comments got somewhat better through the afternoon.) These little scandals nearly always turn out to be glitchy emphemera in the Black Box of $BigCo, rather than a policy or plan. I imagine that's the case here too. Why would Facebook ban discussion of the operating system it runs on, after 20+ years? (Btw: @dang doesn't work - if you want reliable message delivery you need to email hn@ycombinator.com)
- lproven 2y ago
- everdrive 2y agoSomewhat ironic given that actual linux packages are mirrored there. http://www.fedora.mirror.facebook.net/ http://www.fedora.mirror.facebook.net/
- bluedino 2y agoReminds me of when they do 'firewall updates' at work, and many of the common open-source repositories/hosting etc are blocked. I understand than some malicious software may use things like curl, but it's also annoying to have to re-create the same ticket and submit to internal IT, and then if someone working on the ticket hasn't done this before, they close it, we have to have a meeting about why we need access to that site...
- devnullbrain 2y agoThe inverse isn't tolerated. If you're a software developer, you get tested for IT knowledge with phishing emails. Yet in IT it's perfectly normal to have an ignorance of the core needs of the developers - and computing itself - that results in reduced productivity or shadow IT systems. It's not an exaggeration to say I've experienced it at every employer I've had.
- psunavy03 2y agoWas reading a news article the other day that described wget as a "hacking tool" and about rolled my eyes into the back of my head.
- userbinator 2y agoRemember the old saying, "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission".
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoI was on a penetration testing team at a large corp that doesn't specialize in cybersecurity and I downloaded Metasploit and about 15 minutes later an IT person came up to my desk to talk about the malware I just downloaded. I had to walk him to my manager to get him to understand what it was and why it was okay for me to download it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bawolff 2y agoFacebook seems to be going really heavy handed with moderation. They also blocked some wikimedia sites like https://meta.wikimedia.org https://meta.wikimedia.org and https://species.wikimedia.org https://species.wikimedia.org
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- numbsafari 2y ago[flagged]
- dmix 2y agoMeta barely changed their moderation policy. The community standard docs which list every violation are still extremely long and cover a large swath of speech https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/ https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/, to which they only added 2 bullet point exceptions (and eventually the future addition of community notes)
- sunshowers 2y agoThe exceptions are not minor. Some groups can be called mentally ill, but other similarly situated groups cannot. It's a capitulation to the idea that speech standards should be determined by public opinion and not by reason, evidence and a scientific mindset.
- dmix 2y ago> speech standards should be determined by public opinion and not by reason, evidence and a scientific mindset. Yes this is largely a debate between a top-down technocratic worldview vs democratic/meritocratic one. The point is FB is still very much on the former highly centralized expert-defined guideline/automated system side while only making small moves in the other direction with community notes. Maybe they'll keep going in that direction but what they say vs do is an important distinction.
- cess11 2y agoPerhaps they've become closer buddies with MICROS~1. I wouldn't be surprised if they did this in exchange for "AI" compute, i.e. that losing the Linux audience is worth less than being seen favourably by elder oligarchs.
- kristiandupont 2y agoMS doesn't care about Linux any more like they did in the 90's and 00's.
- cess11 2y agoSure they do. They really, really don't want government agencies and non-techies to realise that there is a better option for most everyday computer tasks.
- James_K 2y ago> Starting on January 19, 2025 Facebook's internal policy makers decided that Linux is malware I'm glad someone finally said it.
- bombcar 2y agoIt's been known for over 20 years: https://homestarrunner.com/sbemails/118-virus https://homestarrunner.com/sbemails/118-virus
- GuB-42 2y agoOk, what's the true story? It is obviously allowed to discuss Linux. There is plenty of discussion about Linux on Facebook, including some about the recent "ban". My guess is that some automated scanner found something wrong about the linked page. Maybe there is some link to a "hacking"-oriented distro, maybe some torrents, some dubious comment, etc... Probably a false positive, it happens.
- mr_toad 2y agoProbably some jobsworth decided that free software = piracy. I knew a company that leapt to the same conclusion regarding GitHub.
- School-Cotton 2y agoMeta is one of the biggest contributors to free software in the world. They certainly don’t believe that it’s equivalent to piracy. If your guess is indeed what happened, it will be corrected by higher-ups soon.
- graemep 2y agoIt is perfectly possible that someone at a lower level, especially a non-technical person, would believe that. Moderators are not going to be highly paid and skilled people. It has to get to the attention of higher ups. The one time I have reported a comment to FB, it was horrible racism (said "do not interbreed with [group x] because they are [evil - not sure of exact wording]" and got a reply saying that it did not violate community standards.
- etc-hosts 2y agoI thought Facebook fired all the human moderators ?
- BlueTemplar 2y agoBut at this point, in 2025, it's perfectly reasonable for GAFAMs (and other Russian/Chinese/USian infocoms) to be blocked (ideally at the state level). And particularly in the context of work primarily about communication or computing : having an official Xitter account for a journalist or a GitHub account for a software developer is like promoting a brand of cigarettes or opiates by a doctor - a violation of professional deontology.
- nottorp 2y agoI think they're wrong about the policy. It's more likely that the policy is "let's run the moderation bots unattended to save costs" and is actually site agnostic. It's just some "AI" hallucinating.
- BryanLunduke 2y agoNo, Facebook is Not Censoring "Linux", Only "DistroWatch". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOdMTS6XVu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOdMTS6XVu4
- tombert 2y ago[flagged]
- paulnpace 2y agoI'm not watching a 20 minute video on the topic, but there is a user in an HN comment[1] stating links to debian.org and qubes-os.org were removed by facebook. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42840143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42840143
- tored 2y agoThus Facebook is not censoring Linux discussions or Linux content, what DistroWatch claimed, it blocks linking to what Facebook deems as malicious links (correctly or incorrectly), something a lot of software does these days. This is what the yanks call "a complete nothing-burger".
- boomboomsubban 2y agoFacebook has been blocking distrowatch at least part of the time for three years now, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29529312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29529312 I've been perplexed for years, I wonder if it went unnoticed all this time or they reverted then reimplement the ban.
- loeg 2y agoIt's probably a recurrence of the same issue. If your domain links to content that AVs flag as malware, it gets blocked on FB. Distrowatch is likely uniquely susceptible to this because they're constantly linking to novel, 3rd-party tarballs (via the "Latest Packages" column). In this case, it was the Privoxy 4.0.0 release from the 18th. You can see it linked in this Jan 19 snapshot of the site: https://web.archive.org/web/20250119125004/https://distrowatch.com/#:~:text=privoxy%20%E2%80%A2-,4.0.0,-01/17 https://web.archive.org/web/20250119125004/https://distrowat...
- rob74 2y agoRight, a proxy focused on privacy and removing ads. Of course that's "malware" to Facebook, a site recommending devilry such as this must be silenced at all cost...
- loeg 2y agoBuddy. Not everything is a conspiracy theory. https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/c08e2ba0049307017bf9d8a63dd2a0dfb96aa0cdeb34ae007776e63eba62a26f https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/c08e2ba0049307017bf9d8a6...
- ulrikrasmussen 2y agoIt's either intentional, which would be puzzling and unsettling, or it's a bug which has gone unnoticed. In any case it is proof that big tech is in no shape to take on the responsibility for moderating discourse on the internet. This reminds me of the bug that falls into a typewriter in the beginning of the movie "Brazil" which causes a spelling error and the arrest and execution of a random innocent person. Granted, this type of automated banning without any ability to involve a real human is not costing any lives (yet), but I am increasingly worried about how big tech is becoming a Kafkaesque lawnmower. One thing is to deliberately censor speech that you do not like, another is to design a system where innocent and important speech is silently censored and noone in charge even notices.
- Swoerd 2y ago[flagged]
- ditto664 2y ago[flagged]
- insane_dreamer 2y agoSo this is what Zuck meant when he said Meta was "getting back to its roots"? (And I thought he was talking about reviving Facemash)
- nu2ycombinator 2y agoInteresting. Same Facebook, refuses take action on reports submitted on fake accounts created to spam people and harassment videos.
- lukaslalinsky 2y agoYeah, I was really surprised by this. Last year, I reported a number of people, who were trying to scam me (via Messenger messages related to Marketplace listings). Not only did Facebook did not see anything wrong with the accounts and scammy messages, I was flagged for sending useless reports.
- guappa 2y agoI suspect that the report button doesn't actually cause any human to be involved in the process.
- swiftcoder 2y agoit (used to) in aggregate trigger human review (i.e. if many people report the same post). However, the humans who reviewed it were underpaid, overworked, and unlikely to have any context, so the output was not necessarily better than the automated system...
- buyucu 2y agothis is why content moderation is a really bad idea. the false positives are going to dominate any moderation you do.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoI'd assert that using private walled gardens as primary distribution channels is the root bad idea here.
- buyucu 2y agothey go together. once you have a walled garden, the temptation to moderate/censor it is too large. censorship was practically impossible in the old internet before social media.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoIt was also largely unnecessary because folks hadn't normalized acting like wild animals in online spaces, tools for automating acting like a wild animal online were lacking, and reach was extremely limited so there was little financial incentive for private interests to engage with the space in any way. All of which takes a back seat to folks more or less agreeing that online is where bullshit lived and only an embarrassing rube would take any of it seriously. The great irony here being the amount of bullshit online has only increased decade over decade yet weirdly at some point folks started taking it seriously, with utterly predictable results.
- duxup 2y agoBot or ML gone wrong and it misunderstood the mention of Linux when associated with bad things and just equated them?
- beretguy 2y agoFacebook is a cyber security threat.
- kazinator 2y agoDidn't Zuck recently announce that he's getting rid of fact checkers, on the pretext that the parties hired to do fact checking are biased and introduce censorship and unfair false positives that get accounts shut down? Was it just a cost reduction: fact checking takes effort and those checkers have to be paid? With the result being situations like this?
- notfed 2y agoYes, which makes this claim more extraordinary. (And to be fair, I don't think there's extraordinary evidence presented here.)
- maeil 2y agoIt doesn't; it makes the ban more likely if anything. See how on certain topics the censorship immediately increased as Musk took over Twitter.
- NikkiA 2y ago> Was it just a cost reduction No, it was clearly an attempt to court Trump, unfortunately 'not enough ass kissing, yet' according to the trump team.
- unicornporn 2y agoBoth. Clearly both.
- the-grump 2y agoTheir phrasing was "mainstream discourse" wouldn't be censored. I guess Linux needs to go mainstream first.
- DoctorOW 2y agoI'm pretty sure we're entering the year of the Linux desktop :)
- grazing_fields 2y ago[dead]
- hsuduebc2 2y agoLol. So glad they let literal lies and propaganda going with community notes but keep something usefull. Garbage as always.
- Beretta_Vexee 2y agoMy wife was temporarily banned for a photo of a marble statue. My mother receives invitations to groups that share photos of migrants drowned in the Mediterranean. Don't use Facebook, and certainly don't depend on it. Edit: Recently, a lot of associations working to prevent HIV, sexually-transmitted diseases and family planning have been progressively de-listed, or their content blocked and their accounts banned, all over the world on all META platforms. This is the true face of freedom of expression according to META and its “community rules”. Meta censorship of abortion pill content (french) : https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/veille-sanitaire/veille-sanitaire-du-lundi-27-janvier-2025-4294121 https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/veille-sanit...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rglover 2y agoThis is the trouble with automation. It's clear this isn't a malicious post, it just matched some keywords their moderation bot identified as such. I think a lot of the censorship problems would be resolved if they just shut the bots off and relied on user flagging. Does that require a lot more people? Sure. But the long-run result would be far more people would use and trust these networks (covering the revenue of hiring moderators). I know I'd be a lot happier if there was a thinking human deciding my fate than a random script that only a few people know the inner-workings of. As-is, it seems like a lot of these social networks are just shooting themselves in the foot just to avoid costs and get a false sense of control over the problem.
- maybesomaybenot 2y agoUm, no. I don't want to see pics of NSFL gore before the userbase has had a chance to remove them. Which is what most moderators spend time removing from FB, to the point where it psychologically traumatizes them.
- rglover 2y agoYou don't have to. That's actually a place where automation could help. You could just use image detection and auto-tag stuff as to what you think it contains. Then, have a list of sensitive tags that are automatically blurred out in the feed (and let users customize the list as they see fit). If it's something trending towards illegal, toss it into an "emergency" queue for moderators to hand-verify and don't make it visible until it's been checked. So in your example, if someone uploads war imagery, it would be tagged as "war," "violence," "gore" and be auto-blurred for users. That doesn't mean the post or account needs to be outright nuked, just treated differently from SFW stuff.
- maybesomaybenot 2y agoYou assume automation solves the problem. If it did, Facebook wouldn't be hiring close to 100,000 humans to inspect content.
- vcryan 2y agoDump Facebook.
- assimpleaspossi 2y agoWhat am I missing here? Why would anyone go to Facebook to discuss Linux?
- mindcrime 2y agoI'm not convinced this is intentional. I think their auto-moderation stuff is just buggy lately. To illustrate part of why I say that: Yesterday I tried to submit a link to a Youtube video of the Testament song "Native Blood". Nothing terribly controversial about that, and I'm nearly 100% sure I've posted that song before with no problems. But it kept getting denied with some "link not allowed because blah, blah" error. So is "Native Blood" banned on FB? Well, I tried a link to a different video of the same song, and was able to submit it just fine. This feels like a bug to me, and I wouldn't be surprised if similar bugs were interfering with other people trying to post stuff. Granted that's just speculation so take this for what it's worth.
- IgorPartola 2y agoI thought they were going to go full free speech. /s Seriously, if you haven’t already, sign up for a Mastodon account. This is the motivation you need. Encourage some friends and family members to connect with you there.
- thefounder 2y agoFacebook is just a website. Move on!
- loeg 2y agoDistrowatch was blocked for linking to an AV-flagged privoxy 4.0.0 tarball. The same kind of anti-malware blocking you'd expect for a mass-market, non-technical audience. Nothing to do with "speech" or Linux in general. Some context: https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/site-support/26448/ https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/site-support/26448/
- amatecha 2y agoWell, that doesn't explain why someone else in this discussion had their post removed, as there was no mention of distrowatch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42840143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42840143
- loeg 2y agoProbably entirely unrelated to the distrowatch thing.
- amatecha 2y agoWho knows? The article says "I've tried to appeal the ban and was told the next day that Linux-related material is staying on the cybersecurity filter." -- presumably we could ask Distrowatch to share the exact wording of the response they got back, but the fact FB apparently responded in such a way suggests it wasn't a filter specific to Distrowatch.
- loeg 2y agoI think the Distrowatch author is just missummarizing the interaction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42848244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42848244
- amatecha 2y agoMaybe! We're all just speculating about the degree of accuracy here. I messaged them on Mastodon to see if they will clarify the text. Will post back if I hear from them.
- habibur 2y agoI get blocked anytime I share my github project.
- fortran77 2y agoTheir filters are comically bad. I belong to a Selectric Typewriter enthusiats group and we keep having to re-word things so they don't go into a black hole. Typewriter parts like "operational shaft" or "type ball" or even brand names of gun cleaners and lubricants that are popular with typewriter folks will cause a post not to appear.
- emmelaich 2y agoOh just stop it you, I feel my loins tingling.
- userbinator 2y agoLike the others have mentioned, I don't think this is anything more sinister than AI moderation gone wild.
- amatecha 2y agoI'd argue that automated ""AI""-driven moderation is actually more sinister than a human being deciding it. Censorship and control over communication by automated processes should be held to a very high standard (and probably regulated, I'd think). From IBM in 1979: "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision." ( https://web.archive.org/web/20221216204215/https://twitter.com/bumblebike/status/832394003492564993 https://web.archive.org/web/20221216204215/https://twitter.c... )
- hn_acc1 2y agoYeah, these days it's basically the opposite: since a computer making a decision means we (in the C-suite) can't be held accountable, ALL decisions should be made by computer..
- amatecha 2y agohaha, I was thinking something along those lines as I was typing the prior msg! "oh, machine algo, not our fault. we'll try to fix it in the future" >_>
- hansvm 2y agoI wonder how thinly veiled those decisions can be and still fly under a court's radar [0]. [0] https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/algo?ht-comment-id=12011194 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/algo?ht-comment-id=1201119...
- stonesthrowaway 2y ago[flagged]
- itsmartapuntocm 2y agoFacebook explicitly told them that Linux was remaining on their cybersecurity filter.
- loeg 2y agoI suspect the author is summarizing the response in an inaccurate way. I suspect the response was that distrowatch is remaining filtered (because it linked to a tarball that AVs flag as malware). If your domain links to content that AVs flag as malware, it gets blocked on FB. This is probably not shocking? Distrowatch is likely uniquely susceptible to this because they're constantly linking to novel, 3rd-party tarballs ("Latest Packages" column).
- itsmartapuntocm 2y agoI hope that’s the case. It’s certainly a lot less chilling than intentional censorship.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago> If your domain links to content that AVs flag as malware, it gets blocked on FB. This is probably not shocking? Getting banned for linking to a tarball that is falsely flagged as malware is shocking, in particular if there is no easy way to appeal.
- loeg 2y agoThere is a way to appeal, but bad actors also try to use it.
- chris_wot 2y agoAnother great reason to not use Facebook or any other social media.
- kussenverboten 2y agodiscuss GNU instead... or maybe microcontrollers
- hn_acc1 2y agoWonder if someone used "qubes" as a way to work around a ban on "pubes" and the filter thought it was porn?
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI recall a headline from (checks notes) 2014. Linux users are extremists according to the NSA (http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extremist-forum-and-its-readers-get-flagged-extra-surveillance http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extrem...). I imagine something about that caused certain lists to be populated in certain ways, and no linux user cares enough about Facebook to help them correct the problem.
- hansvm 2y agoI cared tiny bit. I even went out and bought a phone so that I could "prove I was a real person" or whatever to try to make a FB account. Account creation failed, my IP was banned, and I just blocked every FB domain and haven't looked back.
- kouru225 2y agoAh shit I guess they’ve been storing my browsing history then…
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- imchillyb 2y agoCan't sell Linux users AI. Inability to market directly is antithesis to Facebook and its ilk. Linux gives users control. That is the very last thing anyone in power wants anyone else to have.
- docmars 2y agoWelcome to 2020 Facebook, except they're coverage of valid topics to ban and censor has expanded more broadly now. This might've been avoided had more of its users sent a message 4-5 years ago that social media censorship isn't acceptable in a society that prides itself on free speech.
- zactato 2y agoIt makes sense I assume Facebook doesn't want anything posted on FB that can't be turned into a racist diatribe. There's not a whole lot of racism potential in Kernel tuning. Maybe you could squeeze in anti-Finnish rant about Linus, but it would be minimal
- rolandog 2y agoMy hypothesis is that they're now censoring things that seem "lefty".
- guappa 2y agoThey have been censoring lefty things for ages… It's well known how you could be openly nazi but never openly communist.
- DidYaWipe 2y agoThere's no excuse for Facebook's behavior, but... Who savvy enough to use Linux also uses Facebook?
- Iolaum 2y agoThe ones who have family and friends that use it.
- BlueTemplar 2y agoAt which point you should start protecting your loved ones by having a conversation about this not being acceptable behavior ? Platforms seem to get a lot more leeway than abusing drugs (alcohol,smoking...) for some reason ?
- DidYaWipe 2y agoHahaha, I was going to make a similar retort but couldn't be bothered. Fortunately, my parents rejected Facebook from the start; and they're online plenty. We're all going to have to start having the same conversations about LinkedIn, AKA Facebook Pro.
- funcDropShadow 2y agoDidn't Mark Zuckerberg say he would reduce censorship on FB just a few weeks ago?
- aurelien 2y agoFor information X and Meta are not Social Network but Identity Tracing Network. Give their database to bot for search and destroy and you will understand by how many will survive. Good luck!
- 7bit 2y agoI thought Zuckerberg was removing any fact checkers and platform censoring. I'm thoroughly confused. But maybe since Zuckerbergs death the company changed directions again.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoThe cost of pissing of devs is so high, why cant companies just knuckle under- stop attacking add-blocking browsers like firefox or dev-operating systems. Why would you want to enter that world of pain of getting a ton of adversaries with while balancing on stack o swiss-cheese and duct tape? What is going wrong in those decision maker heads.
- akurilov 2y agoAfter the ethnic cleaning of the Linux maintainers list I would say I'm not impressed
- germandiago 2y agoWell, my confidence in the owner of this company is as high as... so I am not surprised that if he is paid (I have no idea this os the case in this very situation), he will no wonder do what the money dictates without any consideration whatsoever. Did anyone see the ridiculous change he made after years of selling (at least in Europe) fact checking, following censorship and teaming up, the scandal selling data to influence an election before. I do not expect anything nice from this leadership. That is why I stopped using Facebook years ago as much as I could.
- yuvalr1 2y agoMaybe it is about time that we stop relying on closed gardens, censored and managed on a whim, and start reclaiming our internet and freedom back, publishing in open platforms?
- BlueTemplar 2y agoOpen platforms are still subject to all of this, the only thing they give is that you don't need to create an account to see the contents of a link. Avoid platforms altogether.
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- Lardsonian 2y agoInteresting, lets just see what Facebook runs on...
- Craggles086 2y agoSounds like it is DistroWatch that is being censored, and not the entire Linux ecosystem. All the Linux reviews that I have been warned about or have been removed have been links to DistroWatch. https://youtu.be/xOdMTS6XVu4?si=BzT8MufRwxe-Tvba https://youtu.be/xOdMTS6XVu4?si=BzT8MufRwxe-Tvba