https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/launchpad/location/#TRPL...
On the other hand, there is stuff like this where they created another arbitrary "voluntary" mechanism to punish the companies for banning too much. I think ultimately the EU just wants a set of rules to use as a pretense to levy fines on big tech.
Yup, "victim" of exactly that here. Had a restaurant with a Facebook + Instagram page, as bunch of people find new places that way apparently, maybe 20-30% of the people we talked to found us via those properties, so hard to just give up even if you disagree, unless you're in a really great location already, which we weren't.
At one point, our Instagram page was banned, no reason provided, and impossible to reach a human, the Facebook page continued working without issues. Must have reached out and "appealed" like 10 times, eventually we gave up and the page seems to remain banned today still.
On the first day Meta banned the account for impersonation. Protest was closed automatically within a hour with the usual "sorry you aint happy with this but the ban stands" response.
There was no way to contact a human about this... unless you buy meta premium support or whatever that is called. That will give you a human handler to contact!
This person asked for a paper work to verify. Next day after receiving the paper work, account was unbanned. For 15 minutes. It was then banned automatically for impersonation.
At this point the handler suggested not naming the account after politician but instead making it "Fans of the Jane Doe " page or something like that.
My understanding is that this was then escalated to one of ministries who did reach out Meta in Poland with request for explanations, after which account was unbanned and flagged as verified by Meta to exclude it from future automatic bans.
I don't think Meta crates economic civic value.
The time spent away from Meta would be better used for almost any other purpose.
Feels 'authoritarian' but the same reason FB/IN is bad for teens is the same reason it's bad for regular people.
I mean, obviously we can't go around banning companies, but still ... it would be good.
But ...
This whole "hate speech" is nothing but censorship. I understand that these greedy US giant corporations ruin a lot and abuse the heck out of everyone, but the EU is also incredibly incompetent here. What the heck is even "hate" speech? We are forbidden from criticism? The USA has the freedom of speech amendment. What's the EU solution here - arbitrary censorship? I totally disagree with that notion, and whether it is Meta or anyone else, this is a principle question. The EU should use all that money to invest into more important things than this fakeroy "hate" speech.
I guess Zucki, Meta and SV folks (proofed on HN itself) just drunk too much "EU is declining because of regulation" and it will end like Lightning and Apple.
I would be interested to see how many EU government jobs the US tech fines are supporting. Maybe Meta or Google is indirectly the largest employer in Brussels?
This is just an uninformed EU rant.
Sorry, but if it wouldn't have been banned then there would be 1000x legitimately looking fake BOT accounts impersonating every politician in Europe, which IMHO is a lot worse considering the disinformation campaigns of trolls and foreign adversaries, so of course Meta would err on the side of caution here and assume every account of a politician is 99,9999% gonna be a bot and just ban it instantly.
The only correct solution is META having human support staff on call for such situations which i thought they did in Dublin, at least last time I checked ~8 or so years ago.
I think that premise is wrong - there are many interest groups, and by luck/lobbying/reaching critical mass/... they manage to put one of their interests into a law.
Is removing CSAM censorship? What about snuff?
If no, then where do you draw the line? Why can't our democratically elected governments decide what is and isn't lawful? Why should foreign Big Capital be allowed to decide instead?
But this here is already a prior problem - you depend on these US companies in the first place.
The EU could easily make it free to have a homepage associated for no cost. That would be something. Everyone gets a homepage for free, say, one business per EU citizen. Why is the system screwing us over to depend on US companies here?
>Under EU law, online platforms should "engage in good faith" with the body, but its decision is not legally binding.
It's fine if you just want to see Facebook suffer but let's not pretend they are breaking the law.
Whether it is desirable censorship or not is generally a separate issue from whether or not it is censorship, unless, for example, you have previously adopted a rule that the particular actor committing the censorship shall not engage in censorship at all, in which case they are, of course, inherently the same question. (Where this gets hairy is when one likes to pretend that one has such a rule for a particular actor, but actually really would prefer that actor to censor certain things, which sometimes occurs with modern liberal democratic regimes, and especially frequently occurs with a particular North American one which has what superficially looks like a very strong restriction in that area in its Constitution.)
the benefit to the business is not that they have a homepage. its that facebook/instagram bring hundreds of thousands of eyes to the page that otherwise would not see it.
The only way I've seen around the impenetrable US social media network effects is to isolate your people either through restricting access or naturally occurring low bilingualism.
The western world speaks English online, so the latter is unlikely to happen and the former would be a final admission that our cultural values mean nothing in practice.
Not really? The upstream problem is getting customers, and the concrete problem is that these humongous American advertising agencies are too big to care about customer services for their smallest clients.
Switching to a EU administrated advertising agency is not obviously better, because that's another big organisation but with even less ties to the local level. The one upside is that a EU level organisation can be legally compelled to fix problems, but even then don't expect it to happen quickly.
"We won't remove this because it doesn't violate our content policy - just block the user if you don't like it".
Yeah just seen someone's head cut off with a machete. Not even joking. That'll stay with me forever.
Don't judge, the friend is interested in the way they find interesting solutions to bypass censorship, more than the content. Or so he says. And LOL, no, I'm not "the friend".
This to say, that they are absolutely not in control of their platforms, except for heavily political content, and speech-related content. Flash a vulva quickly enough by using smart lighting, and they won't catch it. I guess we'll still have that in our dystopian future.
Zuckerberg social medias are but a cancer to society. That has become fundamentally clear. They need to be so heavily regulated that they become unrecognizable, or they should be destroyed with all means possible (legally, of course).
You should be able to see criticism is fine, while calling people "stupid monkeys" is not.
But this isn't even about the EU's definition: Facebook & co have their own definition of hate speech, and they are not holding it up.
[0] https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/ju...
Meanwhile if you're even slightly dickish to one of these people you will get immediately warned or shadowbanned. Meanwhile the post, get notified 9 months later that they reviewed it and found it doesn't violate their terms of service.
I don't use Facebook so no idea if this is true or not personally, but ChatGPT seems to think this isn't true and that if it does happen it's probably a mistake?
(Not that I think it's a good suggestion, but this is a bad reason not to do it).
Please don't do this.
Quote an authoritative source, not some AI bot known for ~hallucinating~ bullshitting.
This goes double when dealing with such an emotive subject.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/dec/11/m...
Meta is a garbage company. An absolutely fetid cancer on humanity that offers zero good and all bad.
Most companies have good and bad. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Valve, and so on. They have the things that should be criticized, but have some good they bring to the world. Meta -- just a malignant, cancerous venue for stupidity. An organization that exists on the backs of scammers, cons, hate, disinformation, and so on. Like use Instagram for a day and it's just amazing that this hive of villainy and scum hasn't been banned every country worldwide but the one where the plutocrats run the country.
'Because Advertising' has to be the worst reason imaginable to keep a system in place.
The features of 'WhatsApp' should be a standard or de facto standard, that comes with every plan globally.
WhatsApp only exists because Carrier incumbents are unwieldy and stupid - I worked with them for years, they're incapable of an ounce of innovation, and tried to control the entire mobile web.
If you're old enough, you'll might recall 10 cent WAP pages.
They fought desperately to control every inch, the iPhone broke their control, it would have been slow moving without Jobs breaking their hold, now Apple has a similar control, ableit much more capable.
These social media companies have created an environment where they are the dominant, near-exclusive, medium for communication in our digital age. If you are running a consumer-facing business in 2026 you *must* be on these platforms.
Given that these companies have actively pursued these positions they now hold, do you not feel they have a responsibility to be fair, reliable and trustworthy? That they have some obligation to their users, paying or not. They are choosing to offer the service for free, and they do make money on you regardless.
Losing your business accounts on Meta or Tiktok or Youtube can have catastrophic real-world consequences. And mistakes happen all the time, so you can't realistically assume every ban or cancellation is justified or correct.
Businesses can lose a lot traffic by not being present on Facebook and Instagram, so being unjustifiably banned is doing measurable financial harm in many cases.
Even as an individual it can be a huge pain to not have Facebook. The local individual sales market (e.g. classified ads) is dominated by Facebook Marketplace now, for example, and not having access to that market makes it difficult to sell things.
Meta has a responsibility to the community because of their position as the de facto platform for many activities. They've even intentionally positioned themselves to dominate. Having laws requiring them to act responsibly is totally justifiable.
Enough of the real world interfaces with online services that arbitrary bans cause actual damages, more harm than banning an annoying player from your obscure MUD.
Plenty of options for chat apps where your account is essentially your phone number. People would quickly organize around one of the options.
What an odd question. Of course not. You've built your business on their platform and you've (for lots of non-specific, general "you"'s) decided to cede your business to their whims. Plenty of businesses exist just fine with no social media presence and plenty of people are not too brain-rotted to find them.
But more to the point, I don't feel Meta has any responsibility to anyone. I feel the government in my country has a responsibility to regulate them and to levy devastating and potentially existential fines if they break those regulations. It's absurd to think these companies have any obligation to you (you in general, not you specifically) just because you can't figure out how to function without them.
Not if it's managed by a company, in which case it's a means to turn a profit. A common good needs to be managed by the community to which it's providing said good, or by an entity that's legally bound to ensure it remains "good" for the community.
The US has squandered a massive amount of goodwill since the first Trump presidency.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93European_Union_C...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Combat_Air_Programme
What authoritative source did the parent post for their assertion?
What do we want from companies? Companies tied to a real identity, social networking. You want a way for people to message you -
...oops https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433
...oops https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6090712
...oops https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1c0xfdz/messenger...
...and a way to see people's status updates.
...oops https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719
Seriously has any CEO of a tech company been caught doing what MZ has done? Oops. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16770818, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122)
5 days ago
Imran Rahman-JonesTechnology reporter

Getty Images
An independent body which hears disputes from social media users in the EU says Meta virtually never replies when it raises cases of people who say they have been wrongly banned from their accounts.
Appeals Centre Europe looked at 4,600 cases of Facebook, Instagram and Threads users who said they had been wrongly banned, but Meta provided evidence in fewer than 100 of these cases.
Last year, the BBC was contacted by hundreds of Facebook and Instagram users in countries around the world, including the UK, who claimed they had been wrongly banned and had no way of getting their accounts back.
Meta has been contacted for comment.
Appeals Centre Europe is one of a number of independent dispute settlement bodies which allow people in the EU to challenge social media platforms' decisions including on account bans and content moderation.
Its report shows only a snapshot of the wider social media landscape in Europe, where hundreds of millions of pieces of content are taken down by platforms every year for a variety of reasons.
Under EU law, online platforms should "engage in good faith" with the body, but its decision is not legally binding.
Account bans were the biggest issue reported to it in the year leading up to March 2026.
"In the vast majority of cases related to account suspensions, platforms are unable or unwilling to provide the content which allows us to independently review their decisions," it said in its transparency report.
Meta provided relevant content for fewer than 100 out of more than 4,600 account ban cases, the report said, "causing significant frustration among users".
Some spoke of the profound personal toll it has taken on them, including concerns that the police could become involved, and the effect bans could have on their online businesses.
Meta repeatedly refused to comment on the problems its users faced - though it frequently overturned bans when the BBC raised individual cases with it.
The Appeals Centre report also made judgements on content flagged to it which users said should be taken down, including more than 1,400 cases of content flagged as hate speech.
"In more than two-thirds of our decisions about hate speech, we found that platforms failed to enforce their own policies and left up hateful content," chief executive Thomas Hughes said.
He cited examples including misogynistic, racist, homophobic and transphobic posts.
On TikTok, 83% of potential hate speech was not taken down, followed by 74% for Instagram.
On Facebook the figure was 61%, while on YouTube it was 58%.
One example of a decision where Appeals Centre Europe disagreed with platforms included when racist comments comparing black footballers to monkeys were left up on Instagram following a Champions League match.
In another instance it said antisemitic videos on YouTube that were shared by prominent figures in Poland were allowed to remain on the site, which it said directly contradicted the platform's hate speech policy.
And it noted an AI-generated video about the Russia-Ukraine war was also allowed to stay up on TikTok, which it believed was in breach of its rules on misinformation.
However, social media companies did not provide relevant content for review in 72% of the more than 10,000 reports.
"In the nearly 3,000 decisions where we were able to review the content, we disagreed with the platform 59% of the time," the dispute body said.
Appeals Centre Europe added it did not receive consistent data on whether their decisions were implemented or not, and was "pushing platforms to provide this".

EPA
YouTube said it was committed to engaging with bodies such as Appeals Centre Europe
TikTok would not give the BBC an on-the-record response, but according to the company, it engaged with the Appeals Centre through meetings and emails.
In the same period, another transparency report said it removed 112 million pieces of content, including videos, comments and adverts, which broke its terms of service.
YouTube said its hate speech policy "outlines clear guidelines prohibiting content that promotes violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on certain attributes. We enforce this policy rigorously."
The company said it was committed to engaging with out-of-court dispute bodies such as Appeals Centre Europe, and had reached an agreement to share disputed content with them.

