> That auto-moderation of social media always has false positives like this?

Only it doesn't. We don't see right-wing politicians being blocked on Facebook. No Bolsonaro blocking. Only left-wing political causes. Can you give some examples from the last couple years, of Facebook blocking right-wing candidates or right-wing mainstream political movements, immediate before an election?

> Humans only ever get involved after the fact (in this case after 90 minutes).

Several hours, not 90 minutes, but even then, that doesn't excuse it -- the human intervention should come before blocking of political causes. Moreover, this doesn't seem coincidental, given the above point of how infrequently and selectively it happens.

> The only reason this is newsworthy is

...because people find it newsworthy. Simple as that. Sorry if you personally prefer that it not be reported, personally I'd prefer that it didn't happen.

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dmix 2 hours ago | parent [-]

So your theory is Meta let some protest organize on their social media for years, then 90 minutes before one of their many protests start they'd take down a single page on only one of their platforms (Instagram), as a way to stop the protests from happening? Then Mark Zuckerberg told them to restore it within a short timeframe for plausible deniability?

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ImPostingOnHN 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I go where the evidence points. Meta has not provided sufficient evidence to conclude that this was an accident. Given their track record of blocking left-wing political politicians and causes over the last couple years (and their even longer track record of malfeasance and deception), they do not have the benefit of the doubt, especially when they are not transparent about what happened.

The article makes it pretty clear: Left-wing political figures blocked from posting to facebook for several hours (not 90 minutes) right when the event occurred. Can't get much clearer than that. Then enough furor erupted to unblock them, or the event ended and then they were unblocked.

It fits with their track record, e.g. blocking/hampering Brazilian left-wing candidate communications for weeks until a court ordered them to stop. If you have a theory about both these things being an accident (while the corresponding right-wing causes were all conveniently given a pass), we're gonna need more evidence from you to back that theory.

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dmix 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Strong claims need strong evidence. So the choices are between a) Some conjecture that a social media account was briefly taken down as part of a right-wing conspiracy by a major publicly traded US corporation OR b) yet another example in a long history of accounts being auto-flagged by overly-aggressive algorithms and then later being restored by a human moderator without proper transparency.

	▲	ImPostingOnHN 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Strong claims need strong evidence. So the choices are between: a) oops, they accidentally blocked ONLY left-wing political candidates and causes right before an election, ever since the US started having a right-wing president with a track record of interfering in elections on behalf of right-wing causes, totally a coincidence, people, or b) yet another example in a facebook's history of blocking left-wing political candidates and causes, right before an election, ever since the US started having a right-wing president with a track record of interfering in elections on behalf of right-wing causes Obviously Facebook does not have the benefit of the doubt, given their long history of malfeasance, deception, and nontransparency, so A is a pretty strong claim, and thus we can go with B until you have strong evidence otherwise. I don't think anyone here on HN can say "I trust facebook to be honest and transparent, to admit, explain, and atone for their malfeasance without prompting, and to always make choices that best reflect the will of the people" with a straight face these days. In fact, we still don't even have transparency into the very incidents we're discussing (likely due to deception and malfeasance, if we're going based off past behavior and proper Bayesian priors). Indeed, if it was actually an accident, then that means that after Facebook's Lula scandal, they had the opportunity to stop this sort of thing from happening, and made the choice not to do so. That was their choice, making it no longer an accident in this case. There's no escaping accountability for that choice. Back to our earlier request: can you give some examples from the last couple years, of Facebook blocking major right-wing candidates or major right-wing mainstream political movements, immediately before an election? If it was just an accident, and these accidents happen all the time without respect for politics, we should expect to see an equal number of blocks applied to both sides in the same situation. Do we? I don't think so.