Facebook denies intentionally blocking searches for Cyclone Alfred
www.abc.net.au
Despite hundreds of thousands of accounts talking about Cyclone Alfred on Facebook, social media giant Meta was blocking or hiding search results about the impending storm before being contacted by ABC NEWS Verify.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/19124166

Social media giant Meta blocked or hid Facebook search results for “Cyclone Alfred” ahead of the tropical storm bearing down on Australia’s east coast.

The platform is a key communication channel for emergency coverage in Australia and is used to help broadcast evacuation orders and other updates to residents during a crisis.

Tropical Cyclone Alfred is expected to make landfall between the Gold Coast and southern parts of Wide Bay region as early as Thursday evening as a category two cyclone.

It is forecast to bring destructive winds and the risk of life-threatening flooding.

But general searches about cyclones or “TC Alfred” did produce information and articles in the search results, indicating some kind of throttling about the term Cyclone Alfred specifically.

[…]

The Queensland government has urged the community to visit its disaster monitoring website for the most up-to-date information.

  • Salvo@aussie.zoneEnglish
    8·
    24 hours ago

    I love to bash Meta, but this is purely a problem for two reasons;

    A) /a certain demographic/ only get their News from one source. This is the same problem regardless of where you get your News from.

    B) News feeds and filtering is automated. There are no human editors; it is all algorithmic. Simple user-defined algorithms are OK, but the more they get modified by Fake Understanding, the less useful they become.