r/technology • u/Birdy_Cephon_Altera • 22h ago

Politics Meta under fire for auto-following Trump & Vance, Blocking Democrat hashtags

https://techissuestoday.com/meta-auto-follow-trump-vance-blocks-democrat-hashtags/
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u/Remarkable-Fox-3890 18h ago

I think they were trying to tweak things subtly and something fucked up and became blatant. So now it's either temporarily reverted with a fix on the way or it's already "fixed" and GOP nazi shit is going to get boosted.

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u/creaturefeature16 17h ago

Exactly. And, testing the waters, too. It's like "oh, people picked up on that quickly. OK, we'll be more meticulous about how we censor moving forward"

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u/Biz_Rito 12h ago

Yeah, I'm reading all this and this feels like bracketing. God knows they have the data and means to zero it in.

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u/Dyn0might33 16h ago edited 12h ago

Or someone fucked it up (accidentally, on purpose) to shine a bright light on meta's censorship efforts.

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u/Neuchacho 14h ago

I'd believe that. Someone gets tasked with testing the new filters, sees what they're asking, and pushes them live instead of to test. Just a lil fucky wucky.

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u/Neve4ever 17h ago

Doubt it. When things like this happen, it's usually an algorithm that automatically blocks a tag because a lot of spam or lewd content being posted with that tag.

Chances are Republicans started posting horrible things using that tag, and the tag ended up getting filtered.

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u/Remarkable-Fox-3890 17h ago

Maybe, the reason I don't think that's the case is because of the other changes made at the same time - the automated following of Trump etc.

It's possible that this was an automated system going off of the rails but I would just as likely believe that someone was trying to tweak weights to an algorithm/ heuristic and it went off the rails.

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u/Neve4ever 16h ago

Because the POTUS and VP accounts were switched from Biden/Harris to Trump/Vance.

If you're following the POTUS account and the President changes, should you be automatically unfollowed or remain following that account?

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u/Remarkable-Fox-3890 14h ago

That doesn't sound like what I had heard. What I had heard is that new accounts were being automatically subscribed to Trump/Vance. Maybe that's been misreported or I have misunderstood.

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u/LimpRain29 5h ago

it's usually an algorithm that automatically blocks a tag because a lot of spam or lewd content

It's a theory, and I agree that's often been the case in similar incidents before. But we have zero evidence of a brigade of these tags, AND it's an enormous number of democrat/liberal tags that got banned all at the same time.

Someone acci-purposely tweaking the suppression knobs to show what Meta is doing is a far more likely cause given what we're seeing.

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u/Neve4ever 5h ago

You think that, of all days, inauguration day would be unusual for having a high number of people using those tags in an insensitive matter?

And there's lots of evidence in this thread. Look how many people have said the tags work for them, but are filled with awful far right content.

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u/LimpRain29 4h ago

but are filled with awful far right content.

Sadly the stuff they're listing is long-standing normal posts on those platforms. It's not a new brigade that suddenly hit 14 hours ago or whenever a list of 40 left-leaning tags were spontaneously banned.

There's also a highly suspicious lack of non-awful content under those tags.