214
Facebook admits that the Linux topic crackdown was 'in error' and has been fixed
(www.tomshardware.com)
do a bad thing
get caught
oops, it was just an error
repeat
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
214 points (98.6% liked)
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Classic abuser behaviour.
Seems they're introducing lots of errors lately... First Pixelfed, now entire Linux...
Don't forget about all the searches for #Democrats and the like mysteriously returning zero results.
It was only "in error" because they were caught.
How does blocking Linux benefit them?
deals with Microsoft or any other competitor who may want to silence alternatives.
This was the exact same line of thinking I went down.
I mean it makes sense. Both M$ and Apple (and Google with vanilla Android) are quite surveillance-centric, it only makes sense to try to keep the population under a watchful eye to stay ahead of any potential challenges to their authority. They hate the thought of people doing anything digitally that they can't keep tabs on.
I don't know what pisses me off more, that Facebook does this kind of stuff, or that they're utter snively cowards when called out for their crap moves.
They are trying to see what they can get away with.
Uh-huh. The error was that they were caught doing it.
funny how they never make errors in favour of anyone else but themselves
Another noticer spotted
How many errors was it just this year?
Oh come on it's only been 31 for the whole year!
(this joke doesn't work in 2 days please add +1 to each day)
Ain't no way it's a error.
Daddy is making his lists, he is checking them twice...
Linux enjoyers are domestic terrorists 🤡
If not wanting to format my machine every year to keep it from bogging down makes me a terrorist, well, shit.
Distrowatch doesn’t research anything and cries foul without second thought because Meta is evil
But it's not Distrowatch's job to verify an opaque censorship process. Meta is the one who created their filters and their filters are not open for public review. So it is entirely incumbent for Meta to handle the matter.
Distrowatch is correct to cry foul because that's literally all they can do. It's not like they can suggest a patch on github or something.
We have to remember that black box logic is wholly owned by the author of the logic. If it ain't working, then yeah, cry foul, there's no additional research to be done. That's literally the entire point of obfuscating logic in a service, to ensure that nobody else can review the internals.
Meta was completely in the wrong. Distrowatch called them out on their fuckery. That is exactly how the system is supposed to work when a company blackboxes their shit.
Facebook support (person making around $3.5 per month in some third world country) doesn’t know difference between specific Linux distro and Linux itself, tells Distrowatch that Linux is now banned
Very likely. Run a shit company, get shit results. Distrowatch running with "Linux is now banned on Facebook" is not a result of lack of research, it's the result of a company that just gave up on giving a fuck.
Our standards for companies have really fucking eroded over time and boy oh boy do CEOs eat that shit up. Meta has a systemic failure on-going in their company to which the C-Staff do NOT care one bit about. This episode is a manifestation of those failures. Meta has to up their fucking game here.
This notion that Distrowatch should have.... That's like saying someone who cut their mouth on glass in their McDonald's burger is to blame for not first checking their burger for glass. The glass shouldn't fucking be there in the first place. Customers have a reasonable expectation that a company isn't a dumpster fire and it isn't incumbent on the customers to ensure they aren't stepping into a goddamn disaster zone.
I just really need people to understand, we have got to upper our expectations of companies. Because every time we let something like "oh well Distrowatch should have known they were talking to a complete moron", we are letting these asshats who are currently enriching themselves on the United State's taxpayer's dime, get away with it.
Meta was fucking up badly and Distrowatch was letting everyone know in medias res how Meta was fucking up. This is 100% Meta fucked up. Don't want $3.50/mo employees giving shit answers? Likely a good way for Meta to solve that is to NOT have fucking $3.50/month employees. It's a pretty clear strategy for them to consider. Till then, they're likely going to be handing out bullshit answers that contain no sense of logic and we ought to fucking call them out on it.
We live in everyone is dumb timeline
I'm not going to have this, "well people should have known better." We ought not excuse Meta for this monumental fuck up. This is theirs to own. Everyone cannot randomly research every line of bullshit that's pandered off by companies. There is just no time for that non-sense. If Distrowatch says "Meta told us Linux is banned" and provides the email to back it up, then until Meta says otherwise, that should be taken as the gospel of the company. If Meta thinks that it shouldn't have gone the way it went, then Meta needs to fix their fucking hiring policies.
WE HAVE GOT TO STOP EXCUSING THESE PEOPLE. They are NOT going to act better if we give them even a single centimeter.
I get what you are saying, but this isn't Distrowatch's thing to reevaluate how stories hit the front page. Meta fucked up every step of the way. And for a company that's pulling down a seven digit multiple value to what Distrowatch pulls in a year. Meta can fucking figure it out because they have access to a ten million fold more resources.
That's just my two cents on this explanation.