Meta is downranking/hiding political content on Threads. The company says Threads will “not recommend any content/accounts that post about politics.”
Here’s the issue: what counts as “politics” is often any news abt people who have had their whole existence politicized, such as news about Black people, LGBTQ people, disabled ppl, women, etc. Climate scientists, public health experts etc also considered “political” https://www.axios.com/2024/02/09/meta-political-content-moderation-threads
@textualdeviance certainly.
But why is this a problem when one instance on the fediverse does this?
@berkes
It's not a little instance saying "no politics please, fun only here". It's a multi-millions users social network. And it's not even "this is forbidden by the rules you signed", it's "continue talking, we'll just lower the volume of your mic".
Even if you're not a part of Threads, this is a problem. Why ? For the same reason having Twitter bought by a racist queerphobe anti-semitism libertarian asshole whom love to share Nazi propaganda to millions of people is a problem.
When you stream opinions to so many people, especially on politics, you have a responsibility about how it is made.
@themeowcate @textualdeviance must we patrol the fediverse to keep it friendly? Must we keep multi-million-users instances away from the fediverse? And who must do that? And how do we control the people who patrol?
I'm not countering your arguments, they ring true, but incite so many more questions. Many of which are hypothetical. Some of which are relevant today, imo.
I just don't think of Thread as an instance on the Fediverse until they are communicating with the fedivers (last I heard they don't ?) 🤷♀️ A lot of thread users also don't know about the fedivers so the "choixe of your instance" isn't really respected.
Those are great questions, but we also must not look at big instances the same way. The biggest mastodon instance is (...
...) not the same as Thread which has the backing of META, and need ads (so algorithms and shadow messages ). One is done based on an ideology, the other is made only to make money 🤷♀️
Also, if may be an European stance, but having general rules is necessary, even against "freedom of speak".
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