Yet another Hacker News

Zuckerberg's Meta Takes Down No Kings Instagram During Protest Day

327 points DeepLogin 1 hour ago 161 comments

jleyank 1 hour ago | parent

The internet routes around damage. If these social media companies prove they're favouring the government rather than their customers, hackers or AI will just replace them. Won't be as pretty, perhaps, but it won't block or snoop so much. These companies haven't built up any goodwill to protect them.

jethro_tell 1 hour ago | parent

But, they have built up moats via generally unregulated anti-competitive behavior. Also of note, the ISPs are owned by the same class of people, they aren't routing around anything, they are taking our money and cashing checks.

Which would be praise worthy if it was a net neutrality stance, but it's not.

cisc 55 minutes ago | parent

> If these social media companies prove they're favouring the government

They favour themselves. And if to best position themselves they must suck up to the government then that's what they'll do. Every time.

> rather than their customers

Who do you think their customers are? They aren't the users. The users are the product, the cattle farmed by social media companies.

The customers are the advertisers. Advertisers don't want filthy protesters tarnishing their shiny brands.

DivingForGold 1 hour ago | parent

Heh. Zuck got a call from "The King" and The King told him he better behave. Take down that site ... Zuck knows who holds the DOJ over his head ... and from where the money flows

jacquesm 1 hour ago | parent

I don't know if you remember the inauguration photograph but it is pretty clear that this is one big family now.

To save you some searching:

https://www.gettyimages.nl/detail/nieuwsfoto's/guests-includ...

kevmo 55 minutes ago | parent

All of those people belong in prison.

jacquesm 53 minutes ago | parent

They do, but I stopped subscribing to the just world hypothesis a couple of decades ago. There is just too much broken and money has too much power to be reined in by justice.

ambione 41 minutes ago | parent

nah respectfully, to hell with this doomerism. these people and groups have names. their deeds have paper trails. For every single one of them, there's millions of us. It's a matter of sorting out the polluted discourse, remembering we have 99% more in common than otherwise, organizing, electing grassroots politicians who truly represent the people and our interests, and then finally holding them accountable through prosecution.

jacquesm 39 minutes ago | parent

I'll take that bet. $1000 that five years from now none of these fat cats are behind bars. I'm good for the money.

tokioyoyo 20 minutes ago | parent

I’ll add another $1000 in support. It’s funny/sad how fast things change, especially one’s values given the circumstances.

ambione 20 minutes ago | parent

you'd likely be right. I'm not contesting that. The world and its people have been utterly raped to ashes, yet the apocalyptic rapture the parties responsible have been building their doomsday shelters for has never and will never arrive. Instead from these ashes we are seeing change emerging. It's slow sure, and hell maybe it won't be enough, but the grassroots ARE giving the old corrupt institutions something to sweat about (on 'both sides' if you'd like to see it that way). People are increasingly having less and less to lose. Get informed. inform others. organize with them. build community with them. The weight we hold together outweighs the solipsistic vampires. Have hope even if it's irrational, that's when we need it most. materialize it. DO something with it - even if we don't get to enjoy the fruits that may come of it; at least those who come after us will, and that's worth something.

BorisMelnik 16 minutes ago | parent

I would also take that bet, but when the pain gets great enough people do come out and vote historically anyway

Loughla 7 minutes ago | parent

People coming out when they felt great pain is what got us Donald Trump. I don't know if you remember the 2016 election, but I do. People were RABID for Trump. Something something be careful what you wish for.

hackyhacky 36 minutes ago | parent

> For every single one of them, there's millions of us.

Yes, the ruling elite are typically outnumbered by the masses. It matters little: by historical standards, the ruling powers have virtually always leveraged their power to exploit those who don't have power. No reason to assume that streak will end.

stackghost 17 minutes ago | parent

Fascism has never been defeated without violence, but Americans are too complacent to rise up in arms, despite the societal gun fetish.

It’s over.

apsurd 12 minutes ago | parent

it’s sinister because I believe most of us (by definition) think of ourselves as part of the people but as one has ambitions and becomes capable, the pull of “success” spares nobody.

Flock is dystopian. It’s also non ironically pitched as solving crime. it’s also our friendly neighborhood YC company.

kcplate 32 minutes ago | parent

What law do you believe that they have broken?

jiggawatts 21 minutes ago | parent

Every AI company has flagrantly violated copyright, to begin with.

But that's not the point!

The point is that the laws are written by the oligarchs, for the oligarchs.

Laws are made to protect wealth and power, so of course the wealthy and powerful haven't "broken" them.

kevmo 20 minutes ago | parent

RICO, sexual assault of minors, treason, labor laws, drug laws, and probably a million other things.

Jcampuzano2 20 minutes ago | parent

Combined, their companies have broken basically every law in the book that you could when it comes to privacy and copyright.

gilrain 16 minutes ago | parent

What sort of lion lives in the sea?

thatsabadlook 47 minutes ago | parent

Loss of accountability and deregulation leads to oligarchy. If we are lucky, this will take decades to clean up.

zeven7 46 minutes ago | parent

How weird still that that is the world we live in now. I would have never predict that photograph 1 year before it was taken.

kevmo 35 minutes ago | parent

You should read A People's History of the United States!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_Un...

calvinmorrison 33 minutes ago | parent

more fun, 'A Renegade History of the United States'

tfrancisl 21 minutes ago | parent

Down voted for suggesting the most salient analysis of US history. Sad!

derektank 35 minutes ago | parent

Well yeah, Donald Trump was threatening to imprison Zuck a year before it was taken

zeven7 13 minutes ago | parent

He also threatened to imprison Hillary Clinton. She wasn't at the inauguration.

legrangramgroum 5 minutes ago | parent

No she was there with her husband.

jamienk 18 minutes ago | parent

They looks like degenerates - in the photo they really are sickeningly grotesque! It's not Felliniesque because they have their own, new style of hideousness: putrid, plastic, shiny, smug, weak, and radically vulgar!

CuriouslyC 1 hour ago | parent

Instagram is trash. Stop wasting your time.

k310 1 hour ago | parent

From Indivisible [0]

> Today, amidst a historic day of thousands of rallies to mobilize early voting and fight against Trump’s election sabotage, Meta suspended the primary No Kings Instagram account without warning or reason.

> After intense backlash, Meta made the account visible again 90 minutes into the suspension, giving the appearance that everything was normal. But it blocked the account admin from posting for another three hours -- censoring the NO Kings coalition in the middle of today’s historic day of action.

[0]https://indivisible.actionkit.com/mailings/view/127823

jmclnx 1 hour ago | parent

This is yet another reason people in the US needs to get out and vote. People need to come out in mass to take back their country. But since most people in the US are being deluded, I expect the US will never recover from Trump and the very rich.

And now for a big BS quote from the article, which we all know is false.

>There is no evidence at the moment that the suspension was politically motivated

Gualdrapo 53 minutes ago | parent

> I expect the US will never recover from Trump and the very rich.

The thing is that they are also dragging many other countries into that misery. Just look at here at Latin America.

prajaybasu 46 minutes ago | parent

> This is yet another reason people in the US needs to get out and vote. People need to come out in mass to take back their country.

Like what happened in 2024?

scotty79 1 hour ago | parent

Is it surprising? Zuckerberg kissed the ring, did he not?

kevmo 54 minutes ago | parent

Zuckerberg is the ring.

honeycrispy 1 hour ago | parent

It's weird to me to protest no kings now when 2020-21 is still so fresh in the mind. The circumstances of today pale in comparison.

spolitry 53 minutes ago | parent

I have no idea what you are trying to dog whistle

xvxvx 1 hour ago | parent

Do people actually expect these companies to be fair and impartial? Seriously, you may as well have a No Kings account on Truth Social while you’re at it.

mung 53 minutes ago | parent

Yes, yes I do. that should be the standard.

jlarocco 21 minutes ago | parent

We're talking about the dorm room project of a rich kid who stole the idea from his friends and thinks his users are "dumb f**s".

There's really no reason to expect anything from Meta except for it to do what's best for Zuckerburg.

kurtoid 1 hour ago | parent

I'm fairly certain that page is AI-written - see the paradium link in the footer

dingaling911 1 hour ago | parent

And during Biden they took down COVID "conspiracy theorists" who were eventually proven correct.

Do not get mad at companies who just need to survive to the next admin without any more issues.

Edit: see how well the brainwashing worked below.

josho 56 minutes ago | parent

I'm sorry what⁉ what covid conspiracy theory has been proven correct?

dingaling911 56 minutes ago | parent

  1. Origin
  2. Vax did nothing for the most part
  3. Lockdowns were bs

runarberg 52 minutes ago | parent

1. Covid had a natural origin and spread from a wet market in Wuhan, China

2. Most vaccines were effective and helped reduced the severity of Covid. Vaccines saved lives.

3. Lockdowns were extremely effective in slowing down the spread of the virus in its initial stages, before we had enough life-saving vaccines to protect the most vulnerable from the virus. Lockdowns saved millions of lives.

pasta67 31 minutes ago | parent

1. Lol. The virus was related to bats that live 1000 miles from Wuhan. The main issue is that China lied when people already were dead from Covid.

2. Vaccines were completelly ineffective. Virus adapted much faster and became less lethal - as expected. Or rather immunity of organism of people stopped overreact to something that was never lethal, unless you had no immunity. Sweden is top example of how to deal with covid by doing nothing. My home country vaccinated over 80% population and had the highest fatality rate per population from blood clots mainly. Corruption kills people.

3. Lockdowns were too late. Because of China. Lockdowns for various reasons did not work - healthy looking people were spreading covid for months before and during lockdown - it seems that you still do not realize that major part of people got through covid without life threatening complications.

yieldcrv 51 minutes ago | parent

you’re 6 years older and can’t understand the difference between slow down transmission and no transmission, with the former being the goal and that was successful in places with higher distancing and vaccination rates. can’t understand the difference between less severe symptoms versus none at all, with the former again being the goal

as a betting man, I bet you still don’t realize that every issue with the vaccine was a default issue with catching actual covid

pasta67 24 minutes ago | parent

During covid a lot of cancer patients died - for obvious reasons but you are going to repeat like a parrot complete bs.

dingaling911 18 minutes ago | parent

Hey man, they're never going to see it.

Just let it go. It's a religion now.

mung 50 minutes ago | parent

1. Origin is still not conclusive. 2. wtf. that is total bullshit, I'm not even going to bother with that. 3. I came from a country that locked down early for a month. We spend the following summer going to the beach and concerts while the rest of the world suffered on the news. Had other nations actually implemented such a policy quickly and properly, covid could have been controlled. But they didn't. They did it piecemeal.

dalemhurley 47 minutes ago | parent

There was about 50 different origin conspiracies.

Vaccine absolutely was proven to work in reducing deaths and building immunity in the community.

Lockdowns absolutely slowed the spread of COVID to allow the hospital systems to rationalise the limited PPE.

wonnage 47 minutes ago | parent

Pass the blunt my guy

Meekro 48 minutes ago | parent

"Proven" is too strong, but some COVID experts now consider the lab leak hypothesis plausible. It used to be that you could get banned from social media (mostly Facebook and pre-Musk twitter) for promoting it.

runarberg 20 minutes ago | parent

I was there and I remember this. Joe Biden was one of the people pushing the now completely debunked lab-leak conspiracy theory at the time. So no, you did not get banned. You had the president of the USA spreading the same bullshit as you.

It was a racist conspiracy theory back then as well, even when the president of the USA was pushing this crap.

dalemhurley 51 minutes ago | parent

Really? I missed the evidence that the vaccine was mind a controlled experiment linked to 5G funded by Bill Gates that killed everyone who had the vaccine within 6 months.

jacquesm 40 minutes ago | parent

Being dead would explain why I feel a bit tired lately.

bediger4000 50 minutes ago | parent

Come, come, my good sir! COVID conspiracy theorists proven correct? Did 5G phone signals activate tiny robots in the COVID vaccine? No. Does the COVID vaccine work? It's not 100% effective, but mortality data certainly shows that those vaccinated are less likely to die. Time to do some research, update your priors, my friend.

dmix 1 hour ago | parent

(for 90 minutes)

Which reminds me of this month's HN post about Lula's FB account getting taken down https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49864642 , which turned out to only be for a couple hours after some content post got auto-flagged, before being restored by Meta. But the HN thread was a long discussion about it being a conspiracy by the US government to conduct election interference in Brazil.

ImPostingOnHN 56 minutes ago | parent

the article already specified that the group was banned during the early 90 minutes of the march, and organizers were banned from posting for several hours during it as well.

what do you think you're adding by repeating what the article said? you emphasize 90 minutes as if that makes it okay (obviously it does not).

also, the other example you cited of Facebook disproportionately blocking left-wing political causes lasted for several weeks[0], not several hours.

0: https://novaramedia.com/2026/09/28/facebook-blocks-lulas-cam...

dmix 52 minutes ago | parent

> what do you think you're adding by repeating what the article said?

That auto-moderation of social media always has false positives like this? This was always a predictable outcome from aggressively moderating social media with algorithms. Humans only ever get involved after the fact (in this case after 90 minutes).

The only reason this is newsworthy is that the media could spin it as some sort of intentional move by humans at Meta, without evidence, because it happened to vaguely coincide with some event date. Otherwise this happens every single day if you search social media for "my account was suspended".

ImPostingOnHN 47 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

dmix 45 minutes ago | parent

So just to be clear 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?

ImPostingOnHN 42 minutes 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.

dmix 37 minutes 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 31 minutes 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.

PaulDavisThe1st 22 minutes ago | parent

A judge in Brasil read the situation differently than you, it appears:

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/south-america/brazil-lula-wins...

and Meta employees have commented also:

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-l...

dmix 7 minutes ago | parent

According to Meta their account was deactivated "for just over 1 hour" before being restored https://about.fb.com/br/news/2026/10/a-meta-nao-esta-interfe...

The rest of the complaints are around exact term search/AI results which are notoriously inconsistent if you've ever done SEO/AEO. So not exactly the strongest evidence.

I'm not fan of Meta or their severe lack of transparency in moderation, but this stuff is so political it's basically impossible to debate on facts. Likewise Brazil's courts are notoriously political, notoriously pro-censorship of social media (including fining FB well before Trump for not deleting posts on gov demand), and your first link is a judge appointed by one of Lula's ex staff (Dilma Rousseff).

phendrenad2 13 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

gfody 1 hour ago | parent

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams was a great read, highly recommend

kingcauchy 40 minutes ago | parent

Also Dark Money by Jane Mayer

weknowbetter 1 hour ago | parent

I'm literally begging people to start using the Fediverse at this point.

fullshark 56 minutes ago | parent

It doesn't have what people want (an audience)

noosphr 51 minutes ago | parent

And we replace one tyrant for dozens. It's not much of an improvement.

creata 37 minutes ago | parent

I don't know much about the Fediverse, but if you can easily move your account or data from one tyrant to another (and it looks like you can) then that is a huge improvement.

NegativeLatency 5 minutes ago | parent

You can even become your own tyrant

superkuh 37 minutes ago | parent

What the big social networks provide is the ability to transact money. No distributed non-corporation system can ever provide the money flows that make people use corporate social networks. Or, they can, but the instant they do they're legally attacked and destroyed. So no independent/distributed network can ever really draw those people who make up the majority who are chasing money or following those who chase money. The audience won't exist.

augment_me 48 minutes ago | parent

No-one cares, peoples family and friends are not on the Fediverse.

My realization that it was cooked was when I was doing my comp sci PhD where everyone in our group fully understood the implications of data, dependency, ads, surveillance capitalism but 3 out of 20 agreed to download Signal instead of WhatsApp/Messenger.

You are asking for too much sadly.

rocketpastsix 34 minutes ago | parent

the learning curve to understanding the fediverse is too high for most people. They just want to log in, have everything in one place, and not care how it got there.

digestm 24 minutes ago | parent

Fediverse is fine, are there any other platforms that work around such censorship?

blueblazin 16 minutes ago | parent

The fediverse sucks and only people in their small tech bubbles don't seem to realize that the vast majority of people do not know or care about things like "federated social media".

We just need someone* to create a "WoW Classic" version of a social network so that we can get back on it and this time try to make it work. Social media is one of the worst things that has happened to humanity since the web was created. But it used to be good. So it's incomprehensible to me why no one has made a social networking site matching old facebook and without the awfulness added later.

* Maybe some of us can do it, send me a message.

Barrin92 1 hour ago | parent

with the next change of administration there needs to be an investigation into every single one of these techbros and a Roosevelt treatment of the tech sector and corporate power.

You've got to hand it to Thiel, at least like other people of questionable political persuasion he's already fled to Argentina, gonna get crowded there in the future

finebalance 1 hour ago | parent

I wonder if these free-speech absolutists will rail about this? Something tells me probably not.

wisty 54 minutes ago | parent

Why would pro free speech people be right wing?

noosphr 52 minutes ago | parent

Because for the last 10 years anyone who was pro free speech was called a fascist in the US.

0dayz 47 minutes ago | parent

Okay? That doesn't say much about what they do today nor if you are against this censorship.

saelthavron 24 minutes ago | parent

It wasn't censorship. Their activity hit a limit and triggered an automated suspension.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/meta-says-suspe...

gelly321 25 minutes ago | parent

Free speech is not freedom from free speech being used against you. You don't just get to say what you want and everyone else shuts up about it. How absolutely myopic do you have to be to think this way?

morkalork 52 minutes ago | parent

Well when you put it like that, were right wing folks ever really pro free speech?

wisty 51 minutes ago | parent

Mostly no, but the people who ARE pro free speech (e.g. libertarians) have mostly found the right to be slightly more tolerant.

jameslk 46 minutes ago | parent

Kind of a weird comment to make. Are you admitting they were right, or are you supporting the right for platforms to censor?

Or are you trying to elicit emotions?

Capricorn2481 43 minutes ago | parent

It's not weird at all, it's pointing out most free speech absolutists just mean speech for themselves and their friends. Musk will be silent about this.

_heimdall 33 minutes ago | parent

Those aren't free speech advocates, and there is no absolutism with speech - you either have free speech or you don't.

tfrancisl 17 minutes ago | parent

Classic no true Scotsman. All the people who proclaim to be absolutists or advocates but dont meet my definition clearly are not.

_heimdall 15 minutes ago | parent

That makes no sense. Free speech is clearly defined, say what you want and the government has no authority to censor you. Anything short of that isn't free speech, and creating some middle ground between "free speech" and "absolutism" is nothing more than an attempt to move the goal posts.

What most people seem to miss is that companies like Facebook aren't the government and therefore aren't held to the standard of free speech. Signal ng up for an account and agreeing to their terms gives them authority to censor.

jameslk 26 minutes ago | parent

So wait… are you supporting Meta’s censorship here or not? Another weird comment

It just seems like these comments want to stir the pot

ThrowawayR2 26 minutes ago | parent

"Free speech absolutist" was a slur against anybody who spoke out against deplatforming as a dangerous idea, which included a lot of liberals. (The pro-deplatforming crowd are very much not liberals.)

Watching the pro-deplatformers get burned by their own illiberalism is very satisfying; watching some of them not having learned any lesson from it, doubly so.

Meekro 40 minutes ago | parent

Right winger and free speech absolutist here. I do condemn it. The fact that it was only for 90 minutes does somewhat lessen the blow, though.

howunfortunate 24 minutes ago | parent

The irony of your comment getting immediately flagged.

_heimdall 37 minutes ago | parent

I've never understood the phrase "free speech absolutist." We either have free speech or we don't, there is no in between.

I personally don't think hate speech should be illegal. If someone feels that way I'd rather know it and act accordingly than them keep it to themselves.

Others may well disagree with my view there and that's totally fine, but they do want limits to what one can say which means they don't want free speech.

Capricorn2481 35 minutes ago | parent

You probably shouldn't be able to threaten somebody or direct people to kill somebody, so I guess by your definition, I don't believe in free speech.

_heimdall 31 minutes ago | parent

Threats are the gray area. I don't view words as violent action, people can say whatever they want. A person acting on it is a different story, including preparations like a person collecting materials for a bomb or something like that.

I could care less if someone wants to say they're going to hurt me. My beef is when they actually try to do it.

koolba 17 minutes ago | parent

> I don't view words as violent action, people can say whatever they want.

Where does that put someone calling out a public hit? It is just words after all.

> I could care less if someone wants to say they're going to hurt me. My beef is when they actually try to do it.

They say there’s no atheists in foxholes.

_heimdall 13 minutes ago | parent

When you say "calling out a public hit" what do you mean exactly?

Vaguely saying "someone should" is very different from offering a bounty or plotting to do it yourself.

koolba 10 minutes ago | parent

Run the full range. From, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” all the way to “10K to whoever takes out heimdall”.

slibhb 34 minutes ago | parent

What tells you that? Do you have evidence? Or just a vague sense that no one actually has any principles?

My experience is that, for the most part, the people who criticized woke censorship are also critics of the Trump administration and its lawlessness.

_heimdall 30 minutes ago | parent

I'd fall into this bucket. I both disagree with much of what people consider wokism and think Trump is a gigantic ass hat.

howunfortunate 28 minutes ago | parent

Have anyone in mind?

I feel completely certain folks like FIRE / Lukianoff will immediately and loudly condemn this.

I would bet very good money every right leaning pro-free speech justice will condemn this.

I would even bet money Elon would condemn it if pressed on the issue, but probably won't be loud about it (which is the technically correct PR since he owns a competitor).

Edit: I personally strongly condemn it as well, though admit to some small schadenfreude. It can be hard to believe when "the roles reversed" meme actually ends up happening. And I do expect this was a genuine automation mistake by Meta given the quick apology.

arealaccount 18 minutes ago | parent

I think you two are saying the same thing.

Elon (and others) will stay silent unless pressed on the issue, and even then it’s betting odds.

ThrowawayR2 23 minutes ago | parent

I condemn deplatforming regardless of who it's being done to.

jmclnx 58 minutes ago | parent

From the wayback machine, I could not get into the linked article:

https://web.archive.org/web/20261018012124/https://meidasnew...

jauntywundrkind 57 minutes ago | parent

Mundus Sine Caeasaribus. https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/mark-zucke...

throwaway1492 57 minutes ago | parent

> Free speech for me but not for thee

Tiktok banned the account promoting a Musk documentary too. Oh how the cookie crumbles!

https://www.theverge.com/tech/1013453/tiktok-bans-alex-gibne...

user982 56 minutes ago | parent

Strange how this keeps happening to Meta:

"Meta employees said Lula's accounts were hindered during Brazil election, Folha reports" (https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-l...)

  Meta employees acknowledged in internal communications that the Instagram accounts of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were hindered by restrictions during the country's election, newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported on Friday, citing messages it reviewed.

  The messages also acknowledged the platform recommended the profile of challenger Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, as well as his WhatsApp channel, according to the report.

  Meta said the technical issues cited in the report were already public and the conversations it referenced related solely to the severity of the issues, not political interference. "Any suggestion that Meta favors one side is false," it added in a statement

paulsutter 55 minutes ago | parent

The good news is that the protests are working. Number of kings holding steady at zero.

spolitry 54 minutes ago | parent

What is the value on trolling like this?

nfw2 33 minutes ago | parent

what is the value of asking the value of trolling, you have a downvote

kevmo 55 minutes ago | parent

Countdown til this gets taken down.

awacs 54 minutes ago | parent

Oh the days of watching Silicon Valley and loving this crazy, but quirky but seemingly good intentioned industry to work in. Maybe this is who they always were, but either way, how many billions do these CEOs need in exchange for the good of society is the question I ask.

jacquesm 52 minutes ago | parent

> Maybe this is who they always were

Absolutely. But they were super good at getting smart people to pull their carts.

tdeck 31 minutes ago | parent

Soon they won't need to bother convincing people to work on their software, or at least that's the dream.

johnnyApplePRNG 53 minutes ago | parent

The balls on this Zuck, I tell ya ... grinds my gears.

HeavenFox 52 minutes ago | parent

Look, as much as we hate Meta... doesn't Hanlon's razor apply here - "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"? Could it be that the account triggered some automated system?

runarberg 46 minutes ago | parent

Marx’ counter-Razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by class interest.

tomrod 43 minutes ago | parent

Maybe if this was Dickson's party in 2008. A massive political event in 2026 is the hottest midterm to date? You can discount Hanlon's razor. It's not an infinite excuse any more than the book Infinite Jest was either unending or funny.

nfw2 5 minutes ago | parent

Yeah and nothing convinces the undecided independents, who now are mostly paranoid schizophrenics, to vote for you like appearing to shut down free assembly

Veserv 23 minutes ago | parent

No. Hanlon’s razor explains that stupidity can cause the same amount of harm as intentional evil and is thus just as bad.

If harms are excused because they were not made with evil intentions then the Nazis who just liked making the numbers go up in a orderly fashion should be considered blameless.

biophysboy 19 minutes ago | parent

I am 99% sure it was an automated system false positive, but it is annoying that we all have to rely on these capricious systems. That is in itself a problem with massive scale platforms. It confirms my silly hot take that all online communities should not be bigger than 10k people. That keeps the number of bad eggs legible to an actual human moderator, and keeps the discussion less mob like

yieldcrv 50 minutes ago | parent

product liability means the product is the liability

WarmWash 49 minutes ago | parent

Ok, so what is the actual reason it was suspended?

Edit: They hit a rate limit and tripped an automated suspension.

qwerpy 14 minutes ago | parent

The bright minds here are busy posting Trump inauguration photos, trying to “gotcha” free speech advocates, and talking about prison time for tech CEOs. Quite the imagination these guys have!

ethin 49 minutes ago | parent

The (only) part of this that I find rather ironic (and kind of funny) is that these idiotic companies never seem to learn a thing. Nearly every single time they take something like this down, it just draws even more attention to it (the Streisand effect).

koolba 48 minutes ago | parent

> According to the organizers, Meta failed to respond to their team for approximately 90 minutes while the account was offline during the peak of their national day of action and livestream.

Is it really that unusual to contact a large tech company and not get a response for (egad!) 90 minutes?

dgoldstein0 48 minutes ago | parent

My bet is that some sort of auto ban logic kicked in, maybe due to abuse of reporting features. It'd if course be worse if a human moderator took it down or affirmed such a decision but not impossible.

Meta and other big tech usually over-relies on automated enforcement because it's easier on their wallets than hiring enough moderators to keep up in near-real time. And it's hella easy for a group of motivated people to coordinate flagging of content, which the automation often takes at face value.

Clearly having public spaces in private hands like this is tricky, as if we try to require better moderation that ends up to expensive, private interests will probably find a way to just kick anything controversial / political off their platforms.

motionlessveloc 22 minutes ago | parent

Agree, especially given the suspension only lasted 90 minutes.

If Meta actually wanted to deplatform the No Kings, they would nuke it permanently and handwave terrorism or national security or something. (See also, Reddit's long track record of nuking inconvenient subs like /r/TheDonald, back in the days when they were out of favor.)

j027 5 minutes ago | parent

The suspension that was public facing lasted 90 minutes, but they couldn’t log into the account for hours

See https://bsky.app/profile/ezralevin.bsky.social/post/3my43atj...

james_david 21 minutes ago | parent

What evidence do you have that it was an autoban?

biophysboy 10 minutes ago | parent

Autobans happen to ad accounts on FB all the time.

iAMkenough 14 minutes ago | parent

Hopefully it's a lesson learned by those involved.

Don't use platforms like this to organize in the future.

reverius42 6 minutes ago | parent

Don't use the only platforms that have millions of people on them to organize millions of people in the future?

andersonmvd 42 minutes ago | parent

Meta is also influencing Brazil's election: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-l... - other social networks as well.

plandis 39 minutes ago | parent

If Instagram is not a platform but instead an arbiter of speech they should be held legally liable what is said on the platform.

_heimdall 17 minutes ago | parent

They should be held accountable as long as they decide what to promote. If posts were still following a non-algorithmic approach of chronological listings for those you follow, seems like they shouldn't be held responsible.

tdeck 39 minutes ago | parent

Frankly I'm not sure why they would bother.

The organizers of No Kings may be well-intentioned, but the rallies themselves seem to be maximally engineered to make people feel like they've done their part resisting without materially affecting anything. Why would anyone in Trump's coalition feel threatened by them at this point?

jacquesm 36 minutes ago | parent

Ask Ceausescu.

tdeck 30 minutes ago | parent

Ceausescu was ousted by a permitted street protest that lasted a few hours as scheduled and then everyone went back to brunch?

benthecarman 37 minutes ago | parent

based

nfw2 10 minutes ago | parent

No one cares about these protests who isn't already voting blue. If anything it pushes the majority of people who find endless futile protests annoying. Shutting down the account intentionally is so extraordinarily stupid politically that it seems pretty plausible that it was algorithmically flagged.

Trump has done many genuinely scary things but shutting down a social media account then turning it back on 90 minutes later is not exactly sending tanks into Tiananmen Square.