alt Hacker NewsMeta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE
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Do they have a choice? It’s either that or they are shown the door, in which case they will probably be replaced by worse local alternatives in terms of freedom of speech and gov influence
Social media companies post record earnings year after year from their ads business while increasingly proving to be harmful to society. They do the bare minimum in terms of content moderation and bots while priming the algorithms to maximize revenue. The good ol' privatized profits, socialized harm model.
In a just world, would social media platforms be taxed higher on corporate revenue and how would that pan out? Maybe we'll be left with small federated platforms without algorithms and ads.
I'm in the UAE right now.
The site www.alqst.org is blocked here. I had to turn on a VPN to read the article.
Here, it's not even allowed to read about what's not allowed!
Meta is the worst of the worst. I don't use it other than a tombstone account with some family connections and a separate burner account we use for Facebook marketplace.
Well, it's that or the accounts get removed completely. Sometimes you have to pick your fight, and this doesn't look like one that's worth it.
If Meta operates in Saudi Arabia and UAE, shouldn't they follow their laws?
I would like to congratulate Meta on this day as they layoff more people for AI. I hope all your platforms burn to ash.
Put social media onto torrent. Make reshares a seed, have it where users can use their device or a remote device to hold the seed.
Remember when they told us that social media would "spread democracy" ?
Anyone who has read Careless People will not be surprised at this.
Meta is a scourge.
The UAE is in Arabia. It's not in Saudi Arabia.
A pro-democracy group in a non-democratic country got banned? whaaaaa? ... I mean their ideal outcome would be the toppling of the current government, so ya
Facebook ip list at Github for those who aren't already blocking it:
> Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Arabia and the UAE
That's just social media. Wait until CBDCs are rolled out globally and we'll what else can get blocked.
Let's not forget about the slave markets mobile apps:
Of course they do I will never use their site knowing play nor will I ever pay for anything that they make…
Maybe I'm fatigued by a decade straight of people co-opting the language of human rights and progressivism in order to push the most insane agendas possible, or maybe I'm just the particular brand of contrarian that is common to HN, but I find it hard to take either the title or the article at face value.
Who writes a carefully worded statement like this, in multiple languages, but then "accidentally" forgets to include details about who was blocked and why?
They're like vampires we invited in to our houses. And now we cant get rid of them.
“Meta blocks Western propaganda from reaching the Middle East” would be a good title
Big platforms optimize for engagement because it works financially, but society ends up paying the externalities. That incentive mismatch is the real problem.
At least we can't blame meta for inconsistency ...
Do folks have a suggestion for a Facebook alternative? I'm about fed up with the state of things, but still want to feel connected to social circles (even if they're online only) and politics (ideally without the hate spam bots).
At the same time they are enacting another round of massive layoffs.
Why does this company deserve tax-breaks on their AI data-centers again?
And yet both countries, unlike Iran, are US and European buddies. Because it's not about democracy, it's about playing ball and letting Israel occupy Palestine in peace.
Arabia isn't a place.
Friendly reminder that if you work for facebook, you're a bad person. No one gets to use the "I didn't know about this" excuse in 2026. Facebook is poison.
What is a “human rights account”? Another reading of this headline is “Meta blocks western propaganda…l
Apple's iCloud Private Relay is also disabled in Dubai/UAE.
All that masquerading as a paragon of privacy but it never works where it's actually needed.
Can just re-title this to: "[Company] forced to follow local laws where it operates as always has been the case"
Meta also had to block legitimate coverage in the US during the Covid pandemic because it conflicted with whatever the mainstream narrative was at the time, due to government forcing their hand.
If you're mad at any company that's following laws you don't like, you should direct your ire at the government that created the laws or policies, not at the companies that have no power to overrule said governments.
On one hand HN gets mad when big tech is perceived to have too much power, then on the other hand HN gets mad when big tech doesn't have enough power. It doesn't seem very coherent, just a mob getting angry at random emotional triggers.
I thought they stopped moderating for “community notes”.
They can’t publish a gag order they receive from a United States authority either
I would take most of these comments seriously if the respondents acted like they knew that
But in the demand from the article, I agree that it would be helpful to know the rules behind the censorship requests, but if they are remotely similar to the rules in democracies and republics that people are inspired by, then it comes with a gag order
Trashy behavior from a trashy company.
Social media and Google tends to agree with the government of the place wherever they're in. That isn't democracy and we should probably realise it has done that in the west as well.
Every developer, and particularly every developer at Meta or who is thinking about working at or with Meta, should read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People
It is useful, because instead of being surprised and reading this article, you can nod your head and go about your day because you already knew they were a company that was rotten to its core.
Oh now there are human rights issues in Saudi Arabia and the UAE? Maybe in Somalia and Iran too?
I'm shocked.
I look forward to the day that society finally decides to hold Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Apple etc accountable for their transgressions against humanity.
Some say it will never happen, but they said that about the now-dying tobacco industry, too.
we need a tax on ad revenue specifically; that would go a long way in benefiting society
If Meta (a US company) blocks a NGO at home, is this a US problem or a UAE problem?
Why make it sound like it's a UAE problem?
Since y'all are pro at censorship, you may have the answer to my question?
That or they will be blocked completely.
Who's naive enough to think that big corporations like Meta would care about human rights?
"principles", "Big Tech", "morals", "money", "ethics" and "I work at a big tech company" are all oxymorons.
The AMC TV series The Audacity has a scene where one of the tech sociopaths says that if one of the other tech sociopaths goes through with a plan to utterly destroy privacy (as a service) that it will cause the government to finally pass real privacy laws and then all the other sociopaths will gang up on him.
Zuckerberg proves otherwise IMO. There doesn't seem to be a bottom to how low they can go.
Many are saying Meta has to comply with local law, and, fair enough. But does anyone know - when someone in that region tries to view a blocked post or account - do they see the post, but the content is censored over with a black bar with "Censored by order of the UAE"? Do such censored posts show up in recommendation feeds, promoted at equal rates as non-censored content, so that it is obvious something is there that you are forbidden from seeing?
Or is the content simply absent, and unless you directly visit the banned accounts, you don't even know anything was censored?
Disappointing but not surprising. This is what happens when you're a billion dollar company and your ethical bone is tied to "we fully comply with the law". You get compliance by default, even if doing so would exacerbate human rights abuses.
The title should read "Saudi Arabia". Cutting a country name in half (unless its an accepted way of abbreviating it) is not a good say of modifying a headline. What is next? Zealand ?
Is HN just reddit now? The comments on this are beyond stupid and add nothing of value or thought.
It's clear time and again that having short-term growth at all costs means you can't have principles.