from Hacker News

The Day Instagram Blocked Democracy

by klez on 1/22/25, 9:12 AM with 75 comments

• by kwar13 on 1/22/25, 9:25 AM

  Meta and Zuckerberg never believed in democracy. Just the highest bidder.

• by ss64 on 1/22/25, 10:02 AM

  This algorithmic filtering is almost certainly still in place, they just dialled it back from 100% ban to some lower percentage.

  The only way to win against this is to close all your Meta accounts and never look back. It seems hard to do, but once you rip the plaster off it is actually quite a relief.

• by thih9 on 1/22/25, 9:32 AM

  Did anyone successfully move away from instagram?

  I have an account and sharing photos to a community there (people who I know irl and random strangers) brings me joy. I also have a pixelfed account but I know no people there and I was unsuccessful in switching.

  I’d love to hear what others used or did that worked for them.

• by ulfw on 1/22/25, 9:18 AM

  We should have never allowed tech companies to get this big. Nothing good comes out of media being centralised in the hand of the few.

• by bsnsxd on 1/22/25, 9:27 AM

  I sincerely hope this attempt of a technocrat oligarchy to be the downfall of social media as we know it, we lived without them, everyone has been on and off at some point even after joining in, even younger generations, so everyone knows we can easily unplug with net positive impact in our lives. And that's all it takes for their power to vanish like smoke in the wind.

• by NVHacker on 1/22/25, 9:26 AM

  Can Democracy be blocked by Instagram ?

• by xtiansimon on 1/22/25, 12:48 PM

  Seems like an oxymoron.

• by raxxor on 1/23/25, 8:08 AM

  To be honest, they aren't the ones that started it. I remember sites like reddit removing subs with fans of Donald Trump and Twitter censorships was very prevalent as well. You might disagree that liking Trump is a good choice, I cannot dispute that, but nevertheless people fell over themselves to ban it everywhere.

  I don't think this kind of revanchist behavior is sensible, but it also isn't "blocking democracy" either. Or at least someone would need an honest attempt explaining why such removals are unjustified and in a way that addresses shortcomings here for all platforms and political directions.

  Government influence on online discourse is a negative, you could argue that voting for an idiot is then the next best compromise.

• by Matthyze on 1/22/25, 9:24 AM

  My (quite uninformed) take is that it was a show of loyalty from Zuckerberg or Meta to the Trump administration. Tech oligarchs have been trying to curry favor after Trump's win. Due to Meta's previous stance on fact-checking, Meta might have been asked to demonstrate its loyalty.

• by demothrowaway on 1/22/25, 10:04 AM

  Why has this been flagged and removed from the front-page?

• by hintymad on 1/22/25, 5:36 PM

  I hope this serves a cautionary tale to the left. If you think it's righteous to block or cancel someone who offends you on your moral or political ground, someday someone in power can do the same to you. That's why I'm all for free speech, even when some speech may offends someone. Well, I got downvoted every time when I say this, so it really shows what the left are.

• by null_investor on 1/22/25, 9:29 AM

  Mark Zuckerberg is a lizard, he made the right call to bow to Trump.

  Now Meta will continue to destroy the world's mental health until the situation worsens more.

  Trump was a hope that this Meta non-sense would end, but both became allies and forgot about the so many studies that shows how it's a toxic digital product.

  It will now take longer for humanity to understand that Meta platforms are worse than cigarettes, but doesn't come with any labelling.

• by danpalmer on 1/22/25, 9:30 AM

  I’ve seen a bit of how these sorts of things work and I’m going to give Meta the benefit of the doubt for the initial block, I’d like to think their leadership isn’t that brazen, and the fact this was fixed suggests an error. One bad piece of content (possibly related to critique of the incoming regime) tripped up an automated filter and took down a keyword at an unfortunate time.

  What’s inexcusable is that it took so long to fix it. Taking so long caused the appearance of a strong political statement, and the fact that it took so long at least makes a statement about the importance of an issue like this in the company.

• by Nuzzerino on 1/22/25, 9:24 AM

  > "The Day"

  So it was fine when they were censoring republicans, but only became "the day of infamy" when blocking the left...

  Zero acknowledgement or mention in the article about the history of censorship against the right.

  I thought they believed in equity?