Zuck’s Moderation Changes And My Blog

~ Veselin

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is changing its moderation policy. The announcement was posted on Threads in 6 points and struck me as unusual. I went over these points several times and used ChatGPT to additionally separate the meaning from the PR. Came up to the conclusion that three things were announced and wrapped in zuckspeak:

  • Meta will cut moderation
  • Meta will relocate teams out of California and Texas
  • Meta will support a future initiative by president Trump

From the point of view of a personal blogger who actively uses Facebook, Threads, and formerly Instagram, Meta is my second-biggest source of traffic. I’m interested in them being successful and helping me succeed as well. Unfortunately, I’ve experienced problems with their services and think the problems are not going anywhere with these changes.

The problems that I’ve experienced with Facebook:

  • Publicize is no longer possible to my profile. I need to manually add my blog posts. This is likely to keep the traffic within the platform, which is something OpenAI, Google, and X also do
  • AI moderation bans/removes my blog posts, for example it banned this scary post and this photo of a bridge in my neighborhood
  • The moderation decisions are not reversible. Didn’t get a response to any appeal
  • Algorithmic deprioritization of manually shared posts if they contain external links
  • Propaganda/triggering articles reach my attention due to insufficient filtering of fake news
  • The response to any report I filed against hate speech was that that it doesn’t violate their guidelines (but my fitness achievements violated them)

So whatever moderation they do, it likely hides humans behind multiple layers of automation that leave bloggers vulnerable to frequent unfair treatment.

The problems that Facebook likely needs to solve and are lurking in the 6 changes:

  • Many parents from my generation consider Facebook and Instagram as not appropriate for children. We are raising a generation that’s banned from using these services and lives on Youtube, TikTok, and a few messenger apps. Some of these kids are already entering the work force and not spending any time or money on Meta.
  • Some social networks thrive because they allow X-rated content (Reddit, X)

My expectation for changes based on these observations

  • I think Zuckerberg expresses support to the new administration with a hope to get TikTok banned and Meta not banned, which can direct some young users to Instagram
  • I think they’ll let X-rated content slip in on all platforms to increase engagement, following similar moves by other networks, and label that a battle for the freedom of speech.

I don’t expect that any personal blogger will benefit from the changes unless they’re involved in whistleblowing/political criticism. Meanwhile, bloggers like me will continue to be banned when posting about outdoor walking.

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26 thoughts on “Zuck’s Moderation Changes And My Blog”

      1. What I’m hearing these days is Facebook is the biggest problem. Like you so many are getting post deleted or there account put on hold. What a hassle. Elon is smart, he see’s an opening and jumps on it. If he’s allowed to do what Trump is claiming, we’re in for some big changes that will negatively affect most, except the super rich.

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      2. Yeah, X is somehow just half-dead, which makes it less important. I have 2700 followers there and when I tweet, I get like 3 clicks. Do I really have 2700 followers if nobody reads what I write?

        Facebook also annoys the local governments by allowing groups to be sold and renamed. Like, I buy a book about second hand TVs and rename it to “Supporters of Russia” – and it’s fine.

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      4. X shows the number of views a tweet gets. I experimented and OC tweets without links get like 100-300 views while a blog link gets 30. This makes me believe that they don’t show tweets with links to the entire audience.

        Also, out of my 2700 followers, at least 2400 are ghosts, maybe more.

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  4. I would ban myself from using it, Facebook is terribly boring. I prefer the follow-back sentiment, even when there’s no real sense of place by someone. Facebook seems to be all about gathering an address and every bit of data about each person on Earth.

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    1. I stopped posting there, felt like next step is to permanently ban my account. One of my friends suggested that links should be posted as comments to original notes, which seems to be the way.

      Too much hassle.

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  10. Facebook is not getting any better tbh. Search option doesn’t work at all. And my feed is populated with posts from pages that I didn’t even followed. I am highly doubtful about their community guidelines and etc. Flagged a post saying I tried to upload something inappropriate and I didn’t even post anything that day except shared a post that had nothing to do with their claims. Disappointing!

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  13. Facebook ? Meta ? Wtf is that !?

    I have my blog, i´m in a blogring, i have a phonenumber and an emailadress. And i use signal, viber and Threema. I don´t use this “social media” – crap. For what ? For watching people doing stupid things or see what eat or to see Kardashians plasticass ?

    Nope… No-one needs this wanna-be-social-things… write a letter or make a phonecall 🙂 

    Please remember the following: The Cardassians are part of the Star Trek universe (Deep Space Nine, 1993 – 1999), the Kardashians are a useless fairground troupe who live off selfies and interviews.

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