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Richard Stallman (rms@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 11:46:34 JST Richard Stallman

[1/5] https://actionnetwork.org/letters/meta-reinstate-fact-checking?nowrapper=true
Everyone: call on Meta to resume fact-checking, because facts are not decided by what more people think or whether one view's supporters can intimidate the other views' supporters. Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.) First, make sure you have deactivated
In conversation about a day ago from mastodon.xyz permalink
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1. The JavaScript Trap - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
  
  from mailto:webmasters@gnu.org
2. Meta Reinstate Fact Checking
  
  from Inequality Media Civic Action
  
  This is how fascism starts. State takeover of the media starts with voluntary self-censorship. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is falling all over himself with his Trump-directed apologies for ever thinking Facebook should be responsible for preventing itself from becoming an X-like cesspool of lies and disinformation. Announcing the end of fact-checking on his platforms, Zuckerberg says he thinks it will “take another ten years” of fact-free operation before Meta is “back to the place that it maybe could have been if I hadn’t messed that up in the first place.” Zuckerberg cites the “cultural tipping point” of Trump’s election as the deciding factor in choosing to dismantle Meta’s entire fact-checking apparatus. By which he means, his need to align with power rather than speak truth to it. Trump is plenty pleased with Zuckerberg’s kow-towing, which comes on the heels of the Meta CEO’s recent ring-kissing trip to Mar-A-Lago. The president-elect praised the move, saying “I think they’ve come a long way.” Could his threats to put Zuckerberg in prison have caused the change in policy, a reporter asked. “Probably,” said the dictator-to-be. Fascism starts with just this kind of full-blown appeasement. Meta must protect its users from malicious content, not censor their own fact-checking to curry favor with Trump and give in to his autocratic bullying. Not only will Zuckerberg release most of the 40,000 fact checkers based in hundreds of small organizations he has hired to check on the accuracy of his platforms’ posts, but he also announced Meta will be moving what little remains of his “trust and safety” workers from California to Texas, “where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.” So Texas workers will be less “biased” than California workers? As Dan Evon of the nonprofit News Literacy Project notes, the move “provides an air of legitimacy to a popular disinformation narrative: that fact-checking is politically biased.” Yet the political bias of Zuckerberg’s announcement is impossible to miss. Not only will these changes allow, in his words, more “bad stuff” to circulate on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, but Meta will be retooling its AI systems, eliminating the demotion of problematic content such as posts that describe homosexuality as a mental illness. Facebook has already been taking steps in this direction, such as allowing candidates in the 2024 election to claim without evidence that the 2020 election was “stolen” and scaling back its Voter Information Center, replacing continuous updates about the election from groups like the Bipartisan Policy Center with static links to government websites. No doubt Zuckerberg also has his eyes on thwarting the FTC’s lawsuit to break up Meta. Trump’s pick to replace Lina Khan as FTC Chair, Andrew Ferguson, has already signaled he plans to target not the biggest conglomerates, but rather those companies that “facilitate or promote censorship.” Instead of fact-checking, Meta will follow the lead of Musk’s X by providing user-generated “Community Notes.” However, not only will these posts be drowned out among other user content, but to be posted they will require agreement among ideologically divergent users. In other words, these notes will need to be MAGA-friendly to even show up on the site. Click ‘START WRITING’ to sign and send a direct message to tell Mark Zuckerberg and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and Threads: The truth is not based on public opinion. Meta has a public responsibility to prevent massive misinformation. Reinstate fact checking now!
- Richard Stallman (rms@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 11:46:39 JST Richard Stallman
  in reply to
  
  [4/5] that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done. This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result
  
  In conversation about a day ago permalink
- Richard Stallman (rms@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 11:46:41 JST Richard Stallman
  in reply to
  
  [3/5] side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter. Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely _by running_ that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows: First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit
  
  In conversation about a day ago permalink
- Richard Stallman (rms@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 11:46:42 JST Richard Stallman
  in reply to
  
  [2/5] JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in. I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!" They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one. To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right
  
  In conversation about a day ago permalink
- Richard Stallman (rms@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 11:46:49 JST Richard Stallman
  in reply to
  
  [5/5] of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
  
  In conversation about a day ago permalink

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