Or maybe AfD hasn’t targeted you for other reasons, so you’re not fighting against a marketing team to avoid the videos, only against the “pure” form of the algorithm.
From my experience Youtube simply recommends more of the type of videos that you actually watched. Watch history overpowers basically anything else you do, your subscriptions have little to no influence. A single click on a 'wrong' video, and you'll get tons of similar ones in your recommendations feed for weeks to come, especially when you end up clicking some of the newly recommend videos. It requires purging unwanted topics from the watch history to actually get rid of them, which so far worked very reliable for me.
I find a lot of social media algorithms are "dumb" in that they will see someone share something saying "x sucks" and interpret that as one being interested in "x".
Either that or it's deliberately showing people stuff it knows they will hate to harvest hate scrolling.
You can say many bad things about Google, but I think they are still "California liberals" on social issues.
I get AfD content recommendations (lurid, trashy stuff of uhm uncertain truth value) a propos of nothing in the village I grew up in - they are popular there with about 25% in the 2025 election. The region is not even in the east or particularly suffering economically. I don't get these recommendations in Berlin. It seems regional.
The owners of these companies are very much conservative though, not out of any ideology mind you, but because they correctly identify that this is the party that best suits their class interests of fucking over everyone and everything else in order to get richer.
I was careful to say socially and I generally agree with you, but Trump is currently just turning everything into shit that he touches. If you don't directly participate in his grift, you probably lose economically because of him. So I'm not sure how useful it is to back him for economic reasons.
To be more precise, capital only seeks to grow its relative power over labor. Making everything shittier is part of it. If you want a clear image of what it is that these people want, look at Russia: a shithole where a few oligarchs hold absolute power, are bound to no laws and lord over a poor, indoctrinated and hopeless populace. Sure, these oligarchs would be richer if Russia was more prosperous, but they don't care about that.
I assume you know what you are talking about but some other experts would perhaps say that Russia is a place where power is highly concentrated but wealthy elites - including oligarchs - depend critically on the Kremlin. They run Russia to the extent they go along with the Kremlin. Sure, political dissent faces substantial repression but the population is diverse and should not be reduced to stereotypes.Not everyone can be described as poor, indoctrinated and hopeless, by any means.
True, I think "poor, indoctrinated and hopeless" was a poor choice of words on my part. "Apathetic" fits better. The Russian population is so used to getting fucked over by their government, they don't expect anything better, and don't believe things can change for the better. This is the most dangerous feature of our age of Neoliberalism, creating apathy and hopelessness in the face of rampant corruption and austerity.
Capital only seeks to grow its relative power over labor. Making everything shittier is part of it.
The exact same can be said of labor. There’s nothing unique to “capital” (ie, rich people) here, it’s just how humans are. By nature, we care more about how big of a slice of the pie we’re getting relative to our neighbors, even if that means we all get a smaller slice than we otherwise would have. That’s exactly what the tragedy of the commons is about.
The miracle of modernity is that we’ve built institutions that incentivize individuals to act in ways that we otherwise wouldn’t, for the greater good. It’s a delicate balance, but capital isn’t unique in its propensity to upset that balance.
He turns everything to shit, but the it's even more shitty for poorer people. When the rebuilding happens, the rich class will have even more relative power. It's like causing a stock to crash so that you can buy more of it before reversing the crash. (A dump-and-pump?)
Indeed. US tech has been actively conspiring in lying to the American populace about everything in Canada from politics, election results, public opinion in Canada, resources needed by the US from Canada, etc. They're interfering in the affairs of any country that won't bend to their will.
A lot of bots of US origin are propagating false narratives posing as citizens of these countries.
I love how everyone from every political background thinks big tech has it out for them specifically. No, it couldn't be that algorithms are stochastic and random and sometimes ban random people. The tech companies are trying to manipulate everyone, every single side, into some goal only they understand.
Somehow none of the hundreds of thousands of software engineers that have worked there have managed to uncover exactly what this purpose is despite having access to the monorepos and visibility into the recommendation engine pipelines.
On the modern internet, people confuse conspiratorial thinking for well-reasoned thinking. But an idea is not correct just because it is interesting or exciting.
The manipulation is not in the algorithm but in the controls the algo offers, either to the company or to financial friends of the company. It's pretty blatant the way Meta is pushing far right politics everywhere in Europe, pushing pro Israeli propaganda while silencing opposing opinions.
It's not a secret that Meta is selling political preferences on its platform, as they have been for decades. Several Meta employee have blown the whistle about it already.
This is the conspiracy theory thinking GP was referring to. There’s no evidence for any of it, it’s all vibes.
I favorite reels that are pro-Palestinian, and now my feed is packed with anti-Zionist reels. I literally don’t think I’ve ever seen a pro-Israel reel.
I have multiple examples of "neutral" content being invaded by Israeli propaganda, and Facebook even admits they will only show "select comments" and won't allow you to see any other. Even sub comments won't show all responses but only pro Israeli. It's pretty clear that Meta favors these, and it's not just because of external actors trying to influence.
There is evidence here of influence on the Brazilian elections. They were working with Cambridge Analytics to influence British elections.
There has been multiple whistleblowers saying they are offering political favors. There as studies showing they do indeed prefer certain parties.
How long can we keep our heads in the sand? When will it be enough
They are beholden to the current US admin - as always - only good thing is that the current admin is so blatant that maybe one day even the Germans will realize that you need to have your own social media just you have your own national tv, newspapers etc.
> realize that you need to have your own social media
How could that be made to happen? Should EU somehow move to federated (let’s say per country) instances of Mastodon or something? Or one big platform? How would regular folks get used to it? And how could those initiatives be prevented from falling into irrelevance when network effects are at play?
I agree with the idea, it’s just that there’s the usual hurdles there aren’t necessarily good answers for that I know of.
You can still have Facebook, its just if you're german your home server is a german one, with algorithms running on german servers, staffed by Germans and subject to German oversight. It would still even be one big global network.
All which would be owned by a US entity after all, and still at the whims of Meta executives. CLOUD Act makes stuff like that impossible to trust, anything going through US infrastructure or administration needs to be considered compromised at this point.
Amazon/AWS tried this route with their "sovereign cloud" which still ends up being beholden exactly the same way as "real AWS", so what's even the point? Who is even falling for these "tricks"?
Right until the Germans decide that something should be blocked globally, not just in Germany. And now you have a problem, because there are going to be 150 other countries demanding the same kind of treatment.
It might work, but it also might bloat the whole operation so much that the social network becomes non-functional.
>We already prevailed in a similar legal case in Germany in 2021-2023 in which we learned an important lesson: we tried to use geoIP blocking as a “hack” in a similar circumstance at the start of the legal proceedings, allowing us to continue services in Germany until the case concluded. The plaintiff (Sony Music Entertainment GmbH) then used a VPN to access the blocked content from Germany in circumvention of the geoIP blocking. The court agreed with Sony in their assertions of noncompliance, and we were fined for contempt of court.
I guess it was Germany after all.
If free DNS is supposed to be able to block people who use a VPN to circumvent a geoIP block, then the court is effectively demanding global reach for their blocking orders. It doesn't matter whether the court doesn't have the expertise in this, it only matters that they made such a moronic decision.
The way it should've happened is that over the last 20 years EU governments should have tried to keep tech companies doing well in Europe.
We had video streaming sites like youtube. We had cellphone manufacturers. We had chat applications.
But the conditions for these companies were better outside of Europe. Now we're stuck with everything not made in Europe. (South Korea is more relevant in consumer tech than the EU.)
European governments still haven't swapped off MS.
I’m not following. Youtube has always been an American company. YouTube was founded in San Mateo, California, USA, and it was an American company the whole time before Google bought it.
Perhaps I wasn't very clear - we had video streaming sites before youtube. The local sites could not keep up with youtube.
Could a European competitor have even existed when even youtube struggled with the GEMA lawsuit for over half a decade? And that by the end of it they still had to pay?
The Chinese did it. We broke Boeings monopoly with Airbus.
I realize these are heavy handed approaches - but shows what can get done.
Perhaps smaller scale things can work as well: Ie supporting alternatives when they occur - ie tiktok back when it was kinda Chinese - use the China threat to enforce objective standards - rather than just following the us stance.
Use existing monopoly legislation.
All creating an open market place for social media that allows for newcomers and local alternatives rather than the single monopoly that is the situation now.
Notably Germany used to have its own social media. SchülerVZ/StudiVZ/MeinVZ was like Facebook, but German (and with three networks targeted at school kids, university students and everyone, respectively). They did well initially. But by 2011 Facebook had the lead, and from there network effects did the rest to cement Facebook as the winner
No, we had way more. I enjoyed being member of a local social media webiste (a elaborate forum) in my teens.
And StudiVZ, which I never liked, made that slowly die out. Facebook came later.
I would very much prefer to still be part of local social media (where you could resolve issues with the admin directly), but federated to other networks.
Well the solution is pretty simple: geo block US owned social media and wait a two days for people to move to the best EU alternative. One you remove the foreign subsidized option with complete market share capture, there will be options that can finally compete.
Both the US and the EU are already doing this exact thing with cars, basically.
But the reason is not sovereignty - it's to make sure people can't receive communications not approved by the (fascist*) French government.
* Please do not mince words or make excuses. We know they are fascist because they're shooting the population in the streets and turning off the internet, just like bad countries do. So far this is isomorphic to the Arab Spring.
As a EU citizen I believe in the citizen's freedom to pick their social media platform, but when it comes to official accounts (e.g. government, the president or prime ministers, etc) I've always believed we should favour open protocols and federation. Public funding of course. Probably an unpopular opinion.
How is Russia currently moving everyone from Telegram onto some "Max" app? How has China managed to keep the likes of Meta out?
B-but the EU can't do that!
It absolutely can. Just like it can push Chat Control down everyone's throats even though if you held a referendum on it it would be voted down (no, most Jacques the plumbers on the street don't want mass surveillance even if it's "against crime").
> They are beholden to the current US admin - as always
They have, as the joke goes, more money than God and influence all over the world. They are beholden to no one. They have the resources to fight in court against decisions they don’t believe in, and all the lobbying they need to shape established laws.
They choose their actions, and their actions are their own. Every single dollar they donate to the current president but not the previous one is an admission of their allegiance and (lack of) morals.
Having principles and standing for them costs money, and these societal parasites subsist on money and influence. Make no mistake, they will sell their own mother to further their goals, but they don’t have to while they can keep selling everyone else’s.
Or maybe the reason more bribes are paid to the current administration is that the current administration is more receptive to bribes? The ROI on gifts to Trump is probably higher than on gifts to Biden so it makes sense to give more.
That’s not the argument. Unfortunately, reading comprehension and engaging in good faith continues to decline rapidly on HN.
Not being beholden to someone does not mean you have power over them. For example: you are not beholden to me and thus don’t have to do anything I say; but that doesn’t mean I have to do anything you say either, I’m not beholden to you.
> They have, as the joke goes, more money than God and influence all over the world. They are beholden to no one.
The administration can take over them with the snap of a finger if they so desire. They have absolutely no power.
The best example of that is the BBC suit, where the only reason it's happening is because the US doesn't have any control over the entity because it's British.
> The administration can take over them with the snap of a finger if they so desire.
No, no they cannot. They sure want you to believe that, though, and the longer that fantasy is left unchecked, the more power it gets. The current administration is not omnipotent, and that is exemplified by the times it was pushed back (not by the bootlicker CEOs at major US tech companies, obviously).
Like John Oliver said, use the four key words that make weak bullies go away: “fuck you, make me”.
one day they will realize - everobody realized long time ago, its info war friend.
Germans for example own 90% of polish media and are growing our younglings to be ashamed to be polish
> Germans will realize that you need to have your own social media just you have your own national tv
There is a national broadcast apparatus in Germany, directly funded by the people in form of mandatory household monthly contributions. It definitely needs improvements and is far from ideal but it doesn’t work at behest of government (budget pressures, etc.). It was designed to resist the top down pressure from the admins (lessons learned from what Nazis did). AfD along with some private news networks backed by the likes of Telekom are really pushing to abolish it.
Germany is even more corrupt than the current US but is more subtle about it. I'd almost rather have German media censored by the US than by Germany, because the US can't arrest German people in Germany for their posts, but the German government does.
I agree with the general claim of their safer space.
Yet, I see several possibilities why that ended in an unnecessary aggression police operation -- esp. LKA in every federal state seems to overcompensate for non-action on devastating crime.
I don't see the connection. Explanation welcome.
Esp. since I don't won't to have a last word on a topic I don't know enough about.
At this point sociala media has become a television, on twitter I just unfollowed everyone who have't followed back and I keep seeing the same antisemitic, antimuslim, anti-EU, anti-woman, anti-immigrant shit. My SO happens to see very similar posts to the point that I can't show her a funny post because she would have already seen it. There are some different posts of course but the money shot is mostly the same.
They probably show posts based on location and background, so essentially just like Fox, CNN, MSNBC but everyone sees theirs from the same screen with the same agenda pushed from all of them.
I have almost no reason to look at my facebook feed, check it perhaps once every 1-2 weeks in case something important was only posted there (not that this helps as they don't show me all actual friends actual updates). Recent visit was 50% ads, 25% recommended or weirdly boosted content, including a post from Mark Zuckerberg promoting his AI, and a post whose content I forget from the White House (I live in Germany, the last time I even visited the USA was 2018).
I think the most charitable explanation for this is that it's because polarizing content (aka ragebait) gets views/plays, which the ranking algorithms directly optimize for.
Also, this isn't a new phenomenon. If you're interested, I'd recommend reading Shoshana Zuboff's 2018 book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
I look for stuff I need on a search engine, watch the video I need only (mostly tutorials) and then leave. I never follow YouTube recommendations anymore - that’s how it keeps you hooked and feeds you what they want you to watch. (It’s also nonsensical and blatantly obvious these days - I went in to watch a video on how to tie a bow tie, why is there a recommendation on “Bolsonaro has Lula shaking in his pants, find out why??”
We banned YouTube for casual entertainment at home years ago - one of the best decisions we ever made, other than the toxic content pushing, it’s also so ad-infested it’s totally worthless anyway.
I remember when YouTube was “better than tv! Content on demand, no ads!”. Those days are long gone
The answer implies a misunderstandng the dynamics of this system.
There is very little chance that Meta is doing algorithmic political adjustments at the behest of Zuck.
It's conspiracy theory without a shred of evidence.
As much as Zuck is a maligned actor, that's not how these things work thee.
X - yes, that could happen there, Meta and Google are different kinds of organizations.
Meta is feeding you click bait without bother.
YouTube is feeding you clickbait wit some concern, especially for advertisers.
X is almost entirely feeding you clickbait, and very aggressively amplifying clickbait voices, and heavily promoting those voices Elon wants promoted.
None of them are making up and promoting magical weird memes.
Edit: I should add, the political interference will directly happen but in a censorial way. If they can do something under the cover of 'upsets advertisers' - they will do that
YouTube wouldn't take ads for the film attacking Elon. I this is one of those Type B kinds of influences, not amplifying or making clickbait but a form of narrative censorship. But - they will do it within the limits and constraints of their own system. They are not sneaking into the lab and magically adjusting the algo. They are finding corporate/legal justification and doing it within that framework. If investors push hard enough and there's any thread of concern, lawyers can make a case. Elon might have threatened to sue, or do all sorts of things, and YT comes up with an excuse for whatever.
Finally - there is state intervention. State actors will ask them to do stuff. Sometimes through process aka FBI requests, sometimes through influence 'for state interests'. Again more on the Type B side.
You may see this kind of activity in trying to stop AfD etc later. German State might make the case that ABC actors are known to promote Nazi propaganda, this is illegal in Germany, you will be fined and banned unless you remove x y and z accounts etc etc.. That could happen for sure, even with dubious legal considerations all the way around.
Why should I believe your claim that AfD content is getting pushed on YouTube? Isn't it more likely that you personally hate AfD and so you find it salient and enraging whenever you see any AfD content at all yourself, regardless of exactly how YouTube's recommendation algorithm works on your account or whether they treat AfD particularly differently than any other political content? Are you actually measuring this?
To be clear I think it's entirely possible that YouTube is adjusting its recommendation algorithm to show AfD content to people more (or perhaps less) than would happen "organically", because AfD is a salient political party in German politics and YouTube knows this. But how do you determine what is the correct amount of AfD content to be recommended to people in a politically-neutral way, that doesn't end up amounting to you arguing that the YouTube algorithm is only fair if it censors political content you personally think is bad?
Even out of political reasoning, they are rigged for engagement and as it turns out fear mongering and hate bring a lot of engagement.
What are people going to watch between a 3 hours in depth debate about the future of the country on topics such as ecology, finance, social security and pension systems VS hundreds of reels about ImMiGrAnT RiOtS in paris?
Which is evidence of how extraordinary his actions were in January 2021, and how extraordinarily well the billionaire owners of American media (including Zuck) have managed to retcon it as something else.
I search about vaza jato then I search for less biased sources of his convictions:
Wasn't Lula convicted in 3 levels up to a federal court called STJ?
And then a single federal court judge who never submitted the case to colleagues, simply declared his judgement void based in technicalities?
And then all the investigation restarted from scratch, but since by law he was too old, his crimes prescribed in half the time and he was never investigated again.
The cherry on the top is that this single judge who declared his convictions null was appointed by the felon's political party.
So about a dozen different judges, in municipal, state and federal levels, analysed his multiple charges and declared him guilty in some of them. Then a single federal court judge appointment by the suspect's political party voided all of them.
If you understand what vaza-jato is about you know these convictions were part of a political project then. Fast forward almost ten years and we have the Master scandal which mensalão pales in comparison, all architected and executed by the far right parties.
You forgot to mention the judge who personally coordinated with the prosecutor to convict Lula in the first place was later appointed as Bolsonaro's minister of Justice. And ever since then, idiots like to pretend lawfare is not a thing unless done to one of Bolsonaro's ball lickers.
Ask any neurologist near you, and they will readily confirm how Trump exhibits all signs of dementia and mental decline on national TV every single day.
You don’t get it. When Biden blathered and fell asleep he was senile. When Trump spews word salad and falls asleep it’s clearly some brilliant strategy.
That’s because Trump sends better primate dominance signals than Biden, therefore everything he does is right. That’s how it works. Just ask the brain stem.
Yes, Republicans (overly cynical) have resignedly accepted their politicians are idiots and thus elected the most egregious buffoon, while Democrats (overly idealistic) were shocked their party could be more disconnected from reality.
The surprise is not that he was kicked off the main social media companies, the surprises are that the wheels of US justice turned so slowly that Trump got a chance to be re-elected rather than life in prison, and likewise that the US electorate went for him.
He was given far more leeway than any user in the history of social media.
The fact that they didn't ban him for so long weighs toward being partial to not banning politicians. Which seems to be the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
And I sort of wonder what point you’re trying to make, because you could take two lessons away -
One, Trump may not have been reelected if meta hadn’t banned him. So maybe it was another case of meta trying to help republicans.
Or, if Trump hadn’t been reelected, maybe the republicans wouldn’t be facing one of the worst midterm routes in history.
But honestly I’m not actually sure the point you’re trying to make. Meta hired a Republican strategist into their c suite since then. Sooo much has happened, there’s a lot of historical context to try to put it in.
At a point on time, there should be more structured and unbiased content in social media before elections in democratic countries to help people make their decisions.
This should be regulated to avoid interference from anyone.
The biggest problem now is that the billionaires behind social media nowadays will push for a liberal / right wing agenda in the west for their own interests.
It's interesting times where American Billionaires are deciding the politics in USA, South America and Europe.
I am sure that everyone involved must be feeling invincible but this is how you build resentment that will last and in most cases result in conflicts or regulations. Probably Musk, Zuckerberg and Thiel will be fine but they will destroy the prospects of the upcoming libertarians and cement the Chinese dominance as they don't have a problem of unruly billionaires and the problem of someone getting rich by doing one thing getting the right to do decide on everything and screw it up for everyone. Sad, I really don't want to live in a China-style political system.
You can resent them all you like; they don’t care as long as nothing is done to them, and nothing is being done. Resentment is worthless without action.
Resentment isn't worthless, the current political climate is a result of overshoot of a resentment towards some liberal policies. The next cycle will overshoot too.
The difference is that US Billionaires are doing it without being elected or officially assuming power to do so. In Europe it is important to keep it official as you can just burn their palaces and run them through the guillotine, which even feels wrong saying it in open on US based forum but that's how it has been since many many generations. Europe has seen so many January 6th over they years.
You know how they say that USA is a very new country and that even some pub in Europe can have longer history? Well, that's true but it doesn't mean that European countries have centuries of continued administration, most are a few decades old as a result of revolution or a war.
Europe is a very violent place for politicians, politicians being oversees and untouchable is a very new phenomenon.
Literally right now France is adopting the policy normally seen in fascist countries, of blocking all social media whenever protesters threaten to actually achieve results.
This… is how it has been for over a century, at this point - with reference to American billionaires specifically. Much of the shape of the modern world is the outcome of political influence by American financial giants, from pre-war industrial staging to post-war outright restructuring of global financial systems to ensure capital flows were favourable to the U.S. - I mean, for God’s sake, Bretton Woods, lend lease, the U.K. aerospace and nuclear programmes.
Strip it back to just billionaires, or their equivalent over time, and thus it always was.
People talk about the “new world order” as though this is some novel concept - but you can saunter back in time past the east India company, the bourbons, the holy Roman emperors, Rome, Greece, Sumeria, and see the same pattern played out throughout history. True power sits with wealth - an impoverished ruler relies on others for his means, and has no power of his own.
The wealthy, those with power, have always decided for the rest, have always had outsized influence, as long as there have been societies with the concept of “mine” and “yours”.
Things like these happen if a state fails to secure its information space. Giving control over it to foreign entities means providing population wide manipulative power to foreign entities with adversarial intentions.
Every state should have foreign agent laws (NGOs must register and must be transparent over their financials). Every state should have control over their information space (especially educational, social and news media). Russia and China understood, Brazil and Europe did not.
It is not so black white. It is a dilemma. There is great value in freedom of expression. But fake expression with the explicit intention to mislead is not so good. It would be best if the population would be better at distinguishing truth from falsehood. Unfortunately much of the population seems to be at a level close to cattle.
The idea that you can't have a foreign nation control the main channels that the population gets their news from, and that their population spends hours a day of their free time staring at, is black and white. And that's the core.
>Giving control over it to foreign entities means providing population wide manipulative power to foreign entities with adversarial intentions.
Alternatively, this blatant use of any tool available to influence non enemy states is disgusting, and forces everyone to a "everyone loses" scenario. Shifting the focus to an insufficiently defended victim removes the focus from the nature of the aggression.
That's an interpretation I've already seen in other replies. But that's not the idea.
Just visit the website of the NED and look at the many projects the US government finances around the world to meddle in these countries politically in favor of US interests[1]. Nations have to protect themselves against these foreign influences, otherwise they will be eaten alive.
NGOs are just one tool of exerting political influence in foreign nations.
Much more powerful are proprietary digital services like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Their algorithms control what information people consume every day. If you are the CIA or the NED, that's the tool you need to exert influence on the thinking of the predominantly younger people in foreign countries (e.g. flush anti-China news into the Facebook feeds of younger users in Myanmar or Thailand).
That's why the US government wanted to move control of TikTok within the US to a domestic organization. They knew what was going on.
EDIT: Just take a look at the NED website about Asia[1]. They don't even hide it: 295 projects in 13 Asian countries with a budget of over 50M$ to promote 'democracy' (i.e. US interest, anti-China propaganda). These countries need to act aggressively against these NGOs, because these NGOs do not act in the interests of the country and it's people.
Careful what you’re applying spatial terms to. “Information space” might sound clever to you, but you’re basically redefining hearts & minds in territorial terms, which is really no different than saying that people are the sovereign territory of their countries. Down that road lies a fork in the road, one path takes you back to serfdom, the other way straight to fascism. Neither is a particularly pleasant place to visit, and once you’re there, leaving is rather difficult.
It's rather strange to see such shameless apologetic of Putinism on HN. Yeah right, let's give the government more power and control over the information, what could go wrong???!
Big tech is so rigged (intensional or not), the question if it is socially net negative has become rhetorical.
You might simply have been engaging with related content unknowingly, even if it's only one critical of them.
Either that or it's deliberately showing people stuff it knows they will hate to harvest hate scrolling.
I get AfD content recommendations (lurid, trashy stuff of uhm uncertain truth value) a propos of nothing in the village I grew up in - they are popular there with about 25% in the 2025 election. The region is not even in the east or particularly suffering economically. I don't get these recommendations in Berlin. It seems regional.
If you don't then actions might be taken against you see CBS and other media having to pay.
DoJ choosing who to look at.
The exact same can be said of labor. There’s nothing unique to “capital” (ie, rich people) here, it’s just how humans are. By nature, we care more about how big of a slice of the pie we’re getting relative to our neighbors, even if that means we all get a smaller slice than we otherwise would have. That’s exactly what the tragedy of the commons is about.
The miracle of modernity is that we’ve built institutions that incentivize individuals to act in ways that we otherwise wouldn’t, for the greater good. It’s a delicate balance, but capital isn’t unique in its propensity to upset that balance.
A lot of bots of US origin are propagating false narratives posing as citizens of these countries.
Somehow none of the hundreds of thousands of software engineers that have worked there have managed to uncover exactly what this purpose is despite having access to the monorepos and visibility into the recommendation engine pipelines.
On the modern internet, people confuse conspiratorial thinking for well-reasoned thinking. But an idea is not correct just because it is interesting or exciting.
It's not a secret that Meta is selling political preferences on its platform, as they have been for decades. Several Meta employee have blown the whistle about it already.
I favorite reels that are pro-Palestinian, and now my feed is packed with anti-Zionist reels. I literally don’t think I’ve ever seen a pro-Israel reel.
There is evidence here of influence on the Brazilian elections. They were working with Cambridge Analytics to influence British elections.
There has been multiple whistleblowers saying they are offering political favors. There as studies showing they do indeed prefer certain parties.
How long can we keep our heads in the sand? When will it be enough
How could that be made to happen? Should EU somehow move to federated (let’s say per country) instances of Mastodon or something? Or one big platform? How would regular folks get used to it? And how could those initiatives be prevented from falling into irrelevance when network effects are at play?
I agree with the idea, it’s just that there’s the usual hurdles there aren’t necessarily good answers for that I know of.
Amazon/AWS tried this route with their "sovereign cloud" which still ends up being beholden exactly the same way as "real AWS", so what's even the point? Who is even falling for these "tricks"?
It might work, but it also might bloat the whole operation so much that the social network becomes non-functional.
>We already prevailed in a similar legal case in Germany in 2021-2023 in which we learned an important lesson: we tried to use geoIP blocking as a “hack” in a similar circumstance at the start of the legal proceedings, allowing us to continue services in Germany until the case concluded. The plaintiff (Sony Music Entertainment GmbH) then used a VPN to access the blocked content from Germany in circumvention of the geoIP blocking. The court agreed with Sony in their assertions of noncompliance, and we were fined for contempt of court.
I guess it was Germany after all.
If free DNS is supposed to be able to block people who use a VPN to circumvent a geoIP block, then the court is effectively demanding global reach for their blocking orders. It doesn't matter whether the court doesn't have the expertise in this, it only matters that they made such a moronic decision.
We had video streaming sites like youtube. We had cellphone manufacturers. We had chat applications.
But the conditions for these companies were better outside of Europe. Now we're stuck with everything not made in Europe. (South Korea is more relevant in consumer tech than the EU.)
European governments still haven't swapped off MS.
Could a European competitor have even existed when even youtube struggled with the GEMA lawsuit for over half a decade? And that by the end of it they still had to pay?
I realize these are heavy handed approaches - but shows what can get done.
Perhaps smaller scale things can work as well: Ie supporting alternatives when they occur - ie tiktok back when it was kinda Chinese - use the China threat to enforce objective standards - rather than just following the us stance.
Use existing monopoly legislation.
All creating an open market place for social media that allows for newcomers and local alternatives rather than the single monopoly that is the situation now.
They are the minimum.
And StudiVZ, which I never liked, made that slowly die out. Facebook came later.
I would very much prefer to still be part of local social media (where you could resolve issues with the admin directly), but federated to other networks.
Both the US and the EU are already doing this exact thing with cars, basically.
https://www.blast-info.fr/articles/2026/information-exclusiv...
But the reason is not sovereignty - it's to make sure people can't receive communications not approved by the (fascist*) French government.
* Please do not mince words or make excuses. We know they are fascist because they're shooting the population in the streets and turning off the internet, just like bad countries do. So far this is isomorphic to the Arab Spring.
B-but the EU can't do that!
It absolutely can. Just like it can push Chat Control down everyone's throats even though if you held a referendum on it it would be voted down (no, most Jacques the plumbers on the street don't want mass surveillance even if it's "against crime").
They have, as the joke goes, more money than God and influence all over the world. They are beholden to no one. They have the resources to fight in court against decisions they don’t believe in, and all the lobbying they need to shape established laws.
They choose their actions, and their actions are their own. Every single dollar they donate to the current president but not the previous one is an admission of their allegiance and (lack of) morals.
Having principles and standing for them costs money, and these societal parasites subsist on money and influence. Make no mistake, they will sell their own mother to further their goals, but they don’t have to while they can keep selling everyone else’s.
The problem is that the same is true for many politicians. They do a lot of lobbying in Europe too.
That’s not the argument. Unfortunately, reading comprehension and engaging in good faith continues to decline rapidly on HN.
Not being beholden to someone does not mean you have power over them. For example: you are not beholden to me and thus don’t have to do anything I say; but that doesn’t mean I have to do anything you say either, I’m not beholden to you.
The administration can take over them with the snap of a finger if they so desire. They have absolutely no power.
The best example of that is the BBC suit, where the only reason it's happening is because the US doesn't have any control over the entity because it's British.
No, no they cannot. They sure want you to believe that, though, and the longer that fantasy is left unchecked, the more power it gets. The current administration is not omnipotent, and that is exemplified by the times it was pushed back (not by the bootlicker CEOs at major US tech companies, obviously).
Like John Oliver said, use the four key words that make weak bullies go away: “fuck you, make me”.
https://youtu.be/ohPToBog_-g?t=1610
What's different for this administration is that neither the Congress, Senate or Supreme Court will opose them.
There is a national broadcast apparatus in Germany, directly funded by the people in form of mandatory household monthly contributions. It definitely needs improvements and is far from ideal but it doesn’t work at behest of government (budget pressures, etc.). It was designed to resist the top down pressure from the admins (lessons learned from what Nazis did). AfD along with some private news networks backed by the likes of Telekom are really pushing to abolish it.
I agree with the general claim of their safer space. Yet, I see several possibilities why that ended in an unnecessary aggression police operation -- esp. LKA in every federal state seems to overcompensate for non-action on devastating crime.
I don't see the connection. Explanation welcome. Esp. since I don't won't to have a last word on a topic I don't know enough about.
They probably show posts based on location and background, so essentially just like Fox, CNN, MSNBC but everyone sees theirs from the same screen with the same agenda pushed from all of them.
I have almost no reason to look at my facebook feed, check it perhaps once every 1-2 weeks in case something important was only posted there (not that this helps as they don't show me all actual friends actual updates). Recent visit was 50% ads, 25% recommended or weirdly boosted content, including a post from Mark Zuckerberg promoting his AI, and a post whose content I forget from the White House (I live in Germany, the last time I even visited the USA was 2018).
Also, this isn't a new phenomenon. If you're interested, I'd recommend reading Shoshana Zuboff's 2018 book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
I look for stuff I need on a search engine, watch the video I need only (mostly tutorials) and then leave. I never follow YouTube recommendations anymore - that’s how it keeps you hooked and feeds you what they want you to watch. (It’s also nonsensical and blatantly obvious these days - I went in to watch a video on how to tie a bow tie, why is there a recommendation on “Bolsonaro has Lula shaking in his pants, find out why??”
We banned YouTube for casual entertainment at home years ago - one of the best decisions we ever made, other than the toxic content pushing, it’s also so ad-infested it’s totally worthless anyway.
I remember when YouTube was “better than tv! Content on demand, no ads!”. Those days are long gone
AfD is controversial - it's click bait - the algorithm is feeding 'action' - that's the problem.
There is very little chance that Meta is doing algorithmic political adjustments at the behest of Zuck.
It's conspiracy theory without a shred of evidence.
As much as Zuck is a maligned actor, that's not how these things work thee.
X - yes, that could happen there, Meta and Google are different kinds of organizations.
Meta is feeding you click bait without bother.
YouTube is feeding you clickbait wit some concern, especially for advertisers.
X is almost entirely feeding you clickbait, and very aggressively amplifying clickbait voices, and heavily promoting those voices Elon wants promoted.
None of them are making up and promoting magical weird memes.
Edit: I should add, the political interference will directly happen but in a censorial way. If they can do something under the cover of 'upsets advertisers' - they will do that
YouTube wouldn't take ads for the film attacking Elon. I this is one of those Type B kinds of influences, not amplifying or making clickbait but a form of narrative censorship. But - they will do it within the limits and constraints of their own system. They are not sneaking into the lab and magically adjusting the algo. They are finding corporate/legal justification and doing it within that framework. If investors push hard enough and there's any thread of concern, lawyers can make a case. Elon might have threatened to sue, or do all sorts of things, and YT comes up with an excuse for whatever.
Finally - there is state intervention. State actors will ask them to do stuff. Sometimes through process aka FBI requests, sometimes through influence 'for state interests'. Again more on the Type B side.
You may see this kind of activity in trying to stop AfD etc later. German State might make the case that ABC actors are known to promote Nazi propaganda, this is illegal in Germany, you will be fined and banned unless you remove x y and z accounts etc etc.. That could happen for sure, even with dubious legal considerations all the way around.
To be clear I think it's entirely possible that YouTube is adjusting its recommendation algorithm to show AfD content to people more (or perhaps less) than would happen "organically", because AfD is a salient political party in German politics and YouTube knows this. But how do you determine what is the correct amount of AfD content to be recommended to people in a politically-neutral way, that doesn't end up amounting to you arguing that the YouTube algorithm is only fair if it censors political content you personally think is bad?
What are people going to watch between a 3 hours in depth debate about the future of the country on topics such as ecology, finance, social security and pension systems VS hundreds of reels about ImMiGrAnT RiOtS in paris?
As soon as they start interfering with democratic processes in other countries, it's imperialism.
Wasn't Lula convicted in 3 levels up to a federal court called STJ?
And then a single federal court judge who never submitted the case to colleagues, simply declared his judgement void based in technicalities?
And then all the investigation restarted from scratch, but since by law he was too old, his crimes prescribed in half the time and he was never investigated again.
The cherry on the top is that this single judge who declared his convictions null was appointed by the felon's political party.
So about a dozen different judges, in municipal, state and federal levels, analysed his multiple charges and declared him guilty in some of them. Then a single federal court judge appointment by the suspect's political party voided all of them.
He also didn't rape children and steal billions while destroying the world economy...
That’s because Trump sends better primate dominance signals than Biden, therefore everything he does is right. That’s how it works. Just ask the brain stem.
The surprise is not that he was kicked off the main social media companies, the surprises are that the wheels of US justice turned so slowly that Trump got a chance to be re-elected rather than life in prison, and likewise that the US electorate went for him.
The fact that they didn't ban him for so long weighs toward being partial to not banning politicians. Which seems to be the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
One, Trump may not have been reelected if meta hadn’t banned him. So maybe it was another case of meta trying to help republicans.
Or, if Trump hadn’t been reelected, maybe the republicans wouldn’t be facing one of the worst midterm routes in history.
But honestly I’m not actually sure the point you’re trying to make. Meta hired a Republican strategist into their c suite since then. Sooo much has happened, there’s a lot of historical context to try to put it in.
The Ayatollah.
This should be regulated to avoid interference from anyone.
The biggest problem now is that the billionaires behind social media nowadays will push for a liberal / right wing agenda in the west for their own interests.
I am sure that everyone involved must be feeling invincible but this is how you build resentment that will last and in most cases result in conflicts or regulations. Probably Musk, Zuckerberg and Thiel will be fine but they will destroy the prospects of the upcoming libertarians and cement the Chinese dominance as they don't have a problem of unruly billionaires and the problem of someone getting rich by doing one thing getting the right to do decide on everything and screw it up for everyone. Sad, I really don't want to live in a China-style political system.
If I have to choose between being subject of the Chinese Communist party or American psychopath billionaires, I'll gladly choose the party.
You know how they say that USA is a very new country and that even some pub in Europe can have longer history? Well, that's true but it doesn't mean that European countries have centuries of continued administration, most are a few decades old as a result of revolution or a war.
Europe is a very violent place for politicians, politicians being oversees and untouchable is a very new phenomenon.
Strip it back to just billionaires, or their equivalent over time, and thus it always was.
People talk about the “new world order” as though this is some novel concept - but you can saunter back in time past the east India company, the bourbons, the holy Roman emperors, Rome, Greece, Sumeria, and see the same pattern played out throughout history. True power sits with wealth - an impoverished ruler relies on others for his means, and has no power of his own.
The wealthy, those with power, have always decided for the rest, have always had outsized influence, as long as there have been societies with the concept of “mine” and “yours”.
Every state should have foreign agent laws (NGOs must register and must be transparent over their financials). Every state should have control over their information space (especially educational, social and news media). Russia and China understood, Brazil and Europe did not.
Alternatively, this blatant use of any tool available to influence non enemy states is disgusting, and forces everyone to a "everyone loses" scenario. Shifting the focus to an insufficiently defended victim removes the focus from the nature of the aggression.
It clearly is an enemy state. The US, that is.
Just visit the website of the NED and look at the many projects the US government finances around the world to meddle in these countries politically in favor of US interests[1]. Nations have to protect themselves against these foreign influences, otherwise they will be eaten alive.
NGOs are just one tool of exerting political influence in foreign nations.
Much more powerful are proprietary digital services like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Their algorithms control what information people consume every day. If you are the CIA or the NED, that's the tool you need to exert influence on the thinking of the predominantly younger people in foreign countries (e.g. flush anti-China news into the Facebook feeds of younger users in Myanmar or Thailand).
That's why the US government wanted to move control of TikTok within the US to a domestic organization. They knew what was going on.
EDIT: Just take a look at the NED website about Asia[1]. They don't even hide it: 295 projects in 13 Asian countries with a budget of over 50M$ to promote 'democracy' (i.e. US interest, anti-China propaganda). These countries need to act aggressively against these NGOs, because these NGOs do not act in the interests of the country and it's people.
[1]: Example: https://www.ned.org/region/asia-2/