Meta == US gov. It’s another tool in their toolbox. You shouldn’t trust US tech any more than Chinese tech. If anything, probably should trust it less than Chinese tech.

"Likely" or not has nothing to do with it, it's well documented. https://www.wsj.com/tech/mark-zuckerbergs-meta-donates-1-mil...

If the title of this article is not sufficiently eloquent, the photo should finish the job

https://www.wired.com/story/tech-ceos-donald-trump-white-hou...

Meta hired Dina Powell McCormick into a position directly under Zuckerberg after the election and appointed Dana White to their board of directors. Is that enough water?

Zuckerberg started pandering to the Trump admin mere months after he took office, publicizing "evidence" consisting of a few emails from Biden admin officials as proof of widespread government manipulation of tech platforms that Trump rightly put a stop to in the name of free speech.

At the time the story blew up on HN drawing lots of outrage from the self-styled free speech maximalists. Now, of course, there's comparative silence from that crowd after regular stories about the FCC routinely weaponizing licenses to enforce preferred speech, lawsuit threats against Wikipedia, coercion of universities to suppress specific political views, etc. But at the time it was a big thing and a political gift to the Trump admin's public image.

What universe have you been in for the past decade? Meta is hand in glove with authoritarian interests, including in the US.

> Can't we just ban Facebook everywhere?

That's not that EU asks. EU asks to have a direct interface to delete posts EU elites don't like.

Was the name change related to publicity from that? My memory is that it was part of an attempt to be the new Second Life. But on the other hand I tend to be naive.

If they changed their name to “Flobular” it wouldn’t change a thing.

They’re Facebook in many people’s minds.

“Meta” doesn’t convey the same meaning that “Facebook” does. And it’s also squatting on an important term in English. Mets is used all over the language, like metaphysical.

No thanks, I’ll use Facebook

In this case, the unelected leadership of Facebook is apparently censoring the free speech of a political candidate.

I don't really know anything about Lula (I wouldn't have known this was Brazil if it wasn't explicitly mentioned, I only know from the Wikipedia page 30 seconds ago that their full name is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and "Lula" is a nickname), so I can't say if they're "fine" or "evil", but one does not simply get to disregard the implications of censorship (of anyone, let alone a political party) when it happens to be done by a private corporation.

Especially when it's a foreign private corporation that's already deeply suspicious for political interference in multiple nations, as Meta is.

If a company openly acts as an enemy of the democratic process, I'm not sure it's the same as censoring a random porn site.

> nothing good usually comes out of governments censoring internet

wrong. Blocking Facebook in China because they didn't follow domestic laws was the best thing that happened to the Chinese internet. It enabled the growth of domestic platforms like WeChat, Weibo and Tiktok.

The platform want to be both just neutral platforms and police content. This is ridiculous. Either be liable for the rape threats or don’t interfere at all.

> nothing good usually comes out of governments censoring internet

First of all, nothing good has ever come out of meta.

Secondly, restricting election interference seems like an unalloyed positive.

In terms of internet hygiene, a better solution might be to just exclude the USA from the existing network.

I hadn’t heard of this, so here’s more context [1] for the curious.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/articles/cqx41x3gn5zo

"created a pro russian candidate from thin air 2 weeks before the election"

The way you phrased this made it seem like the candidate didn't exist. The candidate was a real person, but just wasn't well known or polling very well before winning.

Because western democracies are about freedom of speech and access to information ?

People in Iran or China don't rely on Facebook and Instagram. Before Facebook penetrated Europe in ~2010, each local market was dominated by copycat services like StudiVZ or Hyves, which then vanished within 2 years. When the US floated the idea of banning TikTok, some people felt compelled to download Chinese social media apps.

If a country was to ban Facebook from operating in their country, people would be on an alternative 2 weeks after. There are reasons why a Facebook ban would be hard to enact, but dependence on the product is not one of them

This may sound weird, but: Alternatives will appear, just like how Chinese people have been able to live their lives without access to Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp etc. The alternatives may not be good -- I'd argue the Chinese version of Google (Baidu) is quite a lot worse in many ways -- but they work and are good enough for most people.