[HN Gopher] Instagram and Facebook Blocked and Hid Abortion Pill...
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Instagram and Facebook Blocked and Hid Abortion Pill Providers'
Posts
Author : ceejayoz
Score : 158 points
Date : 2025-01-31 19:51 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| cozzyd wrote:
| just deleted my Facebook account... (which I've had for nearly 20
| years... but this made me unreasonably angry).
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Genocide in Myanmar didn't do the trick for ya?
|
| jk, of course it isn't fair to judge anyone for not leaving
| social media - it's actually quite valuable at times and going
| without it feels like missing out.
| righthand wrote:
| Now every time you get the urge to log back in, switch to a
| neglected activity/interest to focus in on. In 30-60 days (I
| can't remember the grace period) you'll have a deeper
| understanding of this interest and be Facebook free.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| I have some bad news for you, my friend. Your account has never
| been deleted and never will be. But thanks for finally
| quitting.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Your account has never been deleted and never will be.
|
| Be interesting to see how they justify that under the GDPR
| regulations ("right to be forgotten") for European/UK users.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| One of our EU devs tried to exercise his GDPR rights to be
| exempt from automated decision making (there was a clear
| app review bug; thousands of apps impacted at the time). It
| was quite impossible to do so.
| cozzyd wrote:
| I'm a dual US/EU citizen. Can I use the GDPR?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Serious question: If you never log back in, what does it
| matter if you have an account or not? An account I never use
| doesn't appear to have any affect on me.
| tshaddox wrote:
| They've got:
|
| 1) your social connections as of your last usage of the
| account
|
| 2) your behavior profile from all across the web
|
| 3) potential ongoing new information about you based on the
| activity of your social connections
| pesus wrote:
| > your social connections as of your last usage of the
| account
|
| Would deleting all posts/friends before deleting the
| account make a difference?
| ryandrake wrote:
| OK, so let's say I used a Facebook account 10 years ago
| (I didn't). And they know: Roughly (by IP geolocation)
| where I lived three homes ago, that I liked Fallout 3,
| and who three of my high school buddies were, none of
| whom do anything with me or live within 1000 miles of me.
| Now I no longer use Facebook or any of Meta's web sites.
| What can they do with this old-ass information (or even
| any accurate new information that they could magically
| derive from it), that would affect my life today?
| sophacles wrote:
| There are some social ramifications. I haven't used my
| Facebook account in years. Around the holidays I happened
| to run into an old college buddy and we caught up a bit. It
| was great, but there was a bit of awkwardness around how he
| had been in town a couple times and hit me up on facebook
| to get together, but I had never responded... It's all good
| between us now that that has been cleared up, however I
| sure do wish that he didn't think I was blowing him off and
| he had known to try another contact method. We missed some
| good times together.
|
| It's not huge in the grand scheme of things, but it's
| something to consider.
| spencerflem wrote:
| More proof for anyone who needs it about the aims of the TikTok
| ban -
|
| We want proud American censorship, not commie Chinese ones
| brookst wrote:
| I despise Facebook, but given a choice of US youth being
| indoctrinated by Facebook, by TikTok/CCP, or both... the choice
| is pretty clear. Sure, I'd like a "none of the above" option
| but that is not on the table. Wake me when it is.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| none of the above is easy.
|
| craigslist used to have free personals, and escort ads.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I'd like neither too, but at least it's nice to be able to
| pick instead of having the govt decide for me
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Honestly, the choice _is_ clear: the CCP is clearly not doing
| as much damage to our youth as our own companies are. Which
| is more important for U.S. youth to know about, Tienanmen
| Square or abortion, Winnie the Pooh or jury nullification?
| And that 's just the censorship aspect of this; surveillance
| remains a bigger factor IMO. Which organization is more
| likely to be used by an American cop to track the ex-
| girlfriend they domestically abused: TikTok or Facebook?
|
| It seems like your entire argument here is just vague
| sinophobic hand-waving. Do you have even a single example of
| TickTock/CCP harming American youth that hasn't been done
| worse by US social media and government?
|
| To be clear, I'm not arguing that China is better than the US
| in any general way, I'm specifically making the claim that
| American government and social media harms Americans more
| than any other government or social media harms Americans.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Why is it clear that your life won't suffer more under
| domestic control than foreign control, other than reflexive
| jingoism? Domestic control has more direct levers and the
| gloves are off right now.
| tivert wrote:
| > Why is it clear that your life won't suffer more under
| domestic control than foreign control, other than reflexive
| jingoism? Domestic control has more direct levers and the
| gloves are off right now.
|
| Because foreigners are even _less_ accountable to Americans
| and even _less_ interested in their well being than any
| domestic group? It just stands to reason, there 's not even
| the weak ties of being members of the same group.
|
| I mean, to be a little outlandish: if there was a conflict,
| and some foreign adversary could transmit a mind virus to
| Americans that would cause them to go on murderous rampages
| and kill everyone, they'd probably do it. It'd be an
| instant win, and there'd be some sweet, sweet land to
| colonize afterwards.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Because foreigners are even less accountable to
| Americans and even less interested in their well being
| than any domestic group?
|
| That is not _necessarily_ true. The Hitlers and Putins of
| the world will happily sacrifice their own citizenry and
| their country 's future for more power in the moment.
| It's entirely possible for some foreigners to hold more
| goodwill towards a country than its own leadership.
|
| > I mean, to be a little outlandish: if there was a
| conflict, and some foreign adversary could transmit a
| mind virus to Americans that would cause them to go on
| murderous rampages and kill everyone, they'd probably do
| it. It'd be an instant win, and there'd be some sweet,
| sweet land to colonize afterwards.
|
| Several countries are entirely capable of doing this with
| nukes.
| olyjohn wrote:
| That's not a choice. I can choose CenturyLink or Comcast, but
| neither actually gets me good internet at a reasonable price.
| agnosticmantis wrote:
| False dichotomy, when you could have both, and they can have
| non-overlapping censorship criteria.
|
| What one censors the other doesn't, and you get less
| censorship when there are more options available.
| 50208 wrote:
| There is a clear trajectory for Tik-Tok to be force sold to a
| Musk type who can bend it to conservative American
| disinformation, supposedly better than CCP disinformation?
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Mr. Zuckerberg vowed to loosen restrictions on online speech_
|
| It is funny how loosening restrictions somehow seems to result in
| more moderation of specific topics, tags, etc.
| margalabargala wrote:
| You're parsing the meaning from his sentence wrong.
|
| Clearly, when he said "I vow to loosen restrictions on online
| speech", what he actually meant was "I vow to loosen [the
| circle of people who get to set] restrictions on online
| speech".
|
| Obviously.
|
| /s
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| Every time conservatives win a victory for freedom the total
| number of things you're actually capable of doing goes down.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Freedom from religion is not one of the rights Americans
| have.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Double speak from people in power, as usual.
| cdme wrote:
| They don't want free speech, they want a captive audience to
| harass.
| srameshc wrote:
| At this point Meta doesn't even worry about these news and
| specially right now that it is trying to please the current
| adminstration. Over the years I see it got a lot of bad press but
| they continue to grow their revenue. Investors are happy, nothing
| else matters probably for the company .
| hammock wrote:
| I wonder if this has always been true
| trhway wrote:
| Seems to be. Zuck recently, once Trump came in, clearly
| stated that the Biden admin forced him to censor Covid info.
| Now he censors what Trump wants him to.
|
| I wouldn't blame him. Case in point - Durov(Telegram) had
| opposite, government defying position, until he spent some
| time recently in the French prison. After some time there he
| made a public statement to the effect that he "has recognized
| the faults and mistakes of his previous ways".
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _At this point Meta doesn 't even worry about these news_
|
| At this point?
|
| Over the last decade, they've had like a dozen major scandals
| (hundreds of millions of passwords in plaintext, cambridge
| analytica, etc.).
|
| They've never worried.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| They just learned, like every single company, that nobody has
| willpower, ability or memory to keep up with the news. Wait a
| week or two, say nothing, people will forget. The product is
| intrenched enough in the society that nobody will move unless
| something happens to the product itself.
|
| Frankly, can't really judge them. That is probably the
| optimal thing to do in the current business environment.
| spencerflem wrote:
| People keeping up with the news doesn't do much either when
| our lawmakers are bought and paid for.
|
| And yes its the right "business move" but I have plenty of
| hate left in my heart for buisnessmen.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Yeah totally fair. But honestly, I would blame the
| people. Eventually they are the ones that vote for
| politicians that result in uneven game field, so
| businesses end up playing ball. And I know, leadership
| needs to have some sort of shame, empathy, morality and
| etc., but US isn't Japan where some sort of participation
| of leadership in sexual misconduct between third parties
| can bring down a TV company to their knees. And i'm not
| saying whether one is better than the other, it's just
| what it is.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Lots of blame to go around. I can have it my heart to
| blame the voters, the systems set up to make sure the
| voters never get a good choice, the slavers that made
| that system, the apathetic, the opportunistic, the
| greedy, the domineering.
|
| Overall though, I feel like if I'm going to single anyone
| out, its those with the most power and those benefiting
| the most.
| collingreen wrote:
| This is a phenomenal comment that really resonates with
| me; thanks for putting it so succinctly.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I don't think "keeping up with the news" is really the
| problem. The problem is that "the news" is primarily about
| entertainment, not information, and so it isn't
| _actionable_. If you care about being informed about
| actionable information, then your good sources of
| information are RSS, long-form articles, books, etc.
| tclancy wrote:
| Eh, you can still judge them.
| Amezarak wrote:
| We're talking about posts promoting prescription medications.
| There were always strict rules about this on Facebook (banned
| by default) and the fact that most of these posts ever stayed
| up was more likely a result of oversight and possibly politics
| in the first place. You certainly don't see almost anything
| about other prescription meds.
|
| https://www.facebook.com/business/help/263390265553560?id=43...
|
| I find it very doubtful that post-election Meta policy had
| anything to do with this.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > "The company restored some of the accounts and posts on
| Thursday, after The New York Times asked about the actions."
|
| It would appear the posts were OK after all.
|
| > You certainly don't see almost anything about other
| prescription meds.
|
| I get pretty much non-stop Ozempic ads on Facebook.
|
| > "Aid Access, one of the largest abortion pill providers in
| the United States, said some posts were removed on its
| Facebook account and blurred out on its Instagram account
| since November, with more posts blurred in recent days. The
| abortion pill service said it has been blocked from accessing
| its Facebook account since November, and its Instagram
| account was suspended last week, though it has since been
| restored."
|
| You don't think the November timing is the _slightest_ bit
| suspicious?
| Amezarak wrote:
| No, I don't.
|
| To regard it as suspicious I would have to know:
|
| - Has this happened before? - are they actually compliant
| with the rules? Or are they being banned and then unbanned
| because we're sympathetic to them? - was anyone mass
| reporting them? Was this human or automatic? - how often
| are these things banned?
|
| It's really a miracle most of these outfits are operating
| at all. In most cases we're talking about filling out an
| anonymous form to get prescription medication. It's not
| legal. Some of them try to provide a form of legality as a
| cover ("we definitely have a doctor review your anonymous
| form") but not anything that would hold up to scrutiny.
| It's not surprising that very few of them are likely
| following Facebooks rules on top of that.
|
| Of course maybe they should be legal and the situation
| should be totally different, but Facebook banning grey
| market prescription drug sellers that almost certainly
| violate their rules is not surprising. It's also not
| surprising they ease up when the NYT asks about it even if
| there are rule violations because I doubt Meta wants any
| part of this debate.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > In most cases we're talking about filling out an
| anonymous form to get prescription medication.
|
| Best of luck shipping pills to "nobody".
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| Having trouble getting past the paywall. Can you confirm that
| these were posts directly promoting the prescription drugs,
| or were other posts by this organization also hidden?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| more likely they paid for this to be printed.
| devindotcom wrote:
| paid the new york times for a critical article with a triple
| byline?
| gruez wrote:
| >At this point Meta doesn't even worry about these news and
| specially right now that it is trying to please the current
| adminstration
|
| You may not agree with the current administration, but they won
| the popular vote. What would you rather them do, defy the
| current administration? Sounds pretty anti-democratic to me. Am
| I missing a deeper principle here or is it just a matter of
| "companies should do what I think is right"?
| cess11 wrote:
| Yes, you should defy the fash whenever you encounter them and
| regardless of the size of the movement they've managed to
| rally.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I definitely think it's better for companies to do what's
| right than what's wrong, and I'm not sure I follow your
| implication that this is a shallower principle than
| calibrating what I think companies should do against the
| winner of the most recent federal elections. It would be a
| harder question if there were a law which requires Instagram
| or Facebook to block and hide posts from abortion pill
| providers, but there isn't.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > You may not agree with the current administration, but they
| won the popular vote. What would you rather them do, defy the
| current administration? Sounds pretty anti-democratic to me.
|
| Does this concept of yours apply to, say, the Heritage
| Foundation, Musk's Twitter, Fox News, etc. during the Biden
| presidency?
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| I would rather companies do whatever they thought was best
| with no regards to the current administration, unless forced
| by law to take some action. Large companies feeling like they
| need to take actions to please the current President is not
| great.
| roughly wrote:
| If you want to wave the flag of "the people's will", well:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/13/broad-
| public...
| n42 wrote:
| > defy the current administration? Sounds pretty anti-
| democratic to me
|
| defying an administration that you disagree with, within the
| rule of law, is just about the most American and democratic
| thing I can imagine.
|
| this is a corporation, not an arm of the government.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Well, just deleted my Instagram account after this latest
| bullshit. Maybe it just has to reach a tipping point.
|
| (Yeah, deleted FB almost a decade ago. I had tried to convince
| myself Instagram was different somehow.)
| beardyw wrote:
| Obviously they are trying to curry favour at the moment and don't
| care what reasonable people might think. My instinct is that it
| will all prove to have been futile and they will be hung out to
| dry.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, most likely. Zuck'll get the Rudy Giuliani treatment
| eventually.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| it all depends on which platform can deliver votes.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Also hope you're right on this, but I fear it may not
| matter much anymore.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| Fascism needs enemies more than allies. Everyone gets
| Giuliani'd eventually.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I suspect we'll be in this administration for a long time
|
| I hope you're right
| blogabegonija wrote:
| I have weird feeling their experiment block/unblock account
| tactics is somewhat profitable. While some users are closing
| their accounts, new ones engadges. while bad publicity is always
| somewhat reasonable.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Cheerleading for the COVID/Biden era of social media moderation
| seems to have been predicated on the belief that the Democrats
| would always be in power. It was always just a matter of time
| before these systems were turned against those on the left.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Unless you consider Biden leftist, they always have been. Even
| when he was around, you'd get muted for talking about
| Palestine.
|
| Also, if we're playing a game of 'who started it', look at the
| response to the artists and activists against the Global War on
| Terror. The OG cancel culture
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The OG cancel culture
|
| Hardly the OG. We've kicked people out of our social groups
| since before we had language; all the other primates do it
| naturally in the wild just like we do.
|
| McCarthy's blacklists, Focus on the Family trying to knock
| shows off the air, tarring and feathering during the
| revolution, the Alien and Sedition Acts... this country has
| _always_ practiced cancel culture.
| spencerflem wrote:
| ^^ very true, shouldn't have called it that
|
| Hate the idea that the right never would have done all the
| things they promised they want to do, if Biden hadn't
| "started it". As if the problem of Biden is that he was too
| radical, went too far, and did too much lol
| ADeerAppeared wrote:
| This is a hilarious claim given that none of the current action
| is going through the legislative path, and the tech
| billionaires freely bend the knee to Trump even before the
| inauguration.
|
| What's even the material point here? That "the left" pierced
| the taboo on speech censorship? Trump's currently wiping his
| ass with the separation of powers enshrined in the
| constitution. He does not care about taboo.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Political speech is supposed to have certain protections...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Under what law?
|
| They've every _legal_ right to do this.
| 50208 wrote:
| The fake conservative "shadow ban" is now coming into effect
| against their enemies. They do what they condemn in others.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| Is this the free speech I've heard so much about?
| TheChaplain wrote:
| If anyone is interested in an instagram alternative, I humbly
| suggest Pixelfed.
|
| No ads from what I can see and very little disturbing posts so
| far, and I can have my daily dose of #britishshorthair
| eCa wrote:
| And for those so inclined, not too difficult to install your
| own instance (the official install guide has a couple of
| unnecessary pitfalls though).
| chadbennett wrote:
| https://archive.is/7KeTI
| smittywerben wrote:
| I hate how Zuckerberg tiptoes around Section 230; that's what his
| hyper-masculine phase is about. Pretending medical information
| shows up on your front door, pretending Cambridge Analytica
| doesn't show up, pretending you're acting in good faith. It's all
| pretend. Sure, this child's HIPAA package was posted on Facebook,
| we don't know what that is. Instead of exporting a child's
| medical information to a local church, we're exporting it out of
| the country. That's what good faith means because I'm a
| philanthropist and I'm a philanthropist for doing so; we
| developed Zstandard.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I'm beginning to think that putting likely sociopaths in charge
| of companies specializing in tools to enable human connections
| might not be a good thing for society.
| cab11150904 wrote:
| Good. How is this a problem. Private platforms have the right to
| do this.
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