[HN Gopher] Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his ...
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Things from leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg and his employees
Author : tech-historian
Score : 122 points
Date : 2020-06-03 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| yalogin wrote:
| I don't think the policy will ever be black and white like that
| in terms of free speech. If that is the case no social media
| company will have any terms and conditions on their site, other
| than don't spam us. All of them will have the same free speech
| limitations that the country has.
|
| For example will facebook be ok if the next democratic president
| says "we will stone carl if this post gets 10k upvotes" will it
| be ok? Lines are always drawn and they are always in he sand. Its
| just that FB decided that is where they want to draw that line.
| Everyone will have their own opinion on whether its good or not.
| uniqueid wrote:
| I like very much the approach the author took to writing this
| piece. He does a great job of putting the situation in context
| (ie: his "the optimists and the pessimists" positioning).
| elwell wrote:
| > Zuckerberg's decision was supported by the majority of the
| company, but that people who agreed with it were afraid to speak
| out for fear of appearing insensitive
|
| I find that interesting and dangerous.
| 54351623 wrote:
| Most jobs in the world aren't going to require their employees
| to represent a company that is presenting itself as the arbiter
| or defining absolute of free speech. Hell, most jobs it matters
| very little who you vote for or what you believe, even in the
| government. If these employees are uncomfortable with the
| position their employer is putting them in they may want to
| reevaluate their life choices.
| tech-historian wrote:
| It's not entirely clear how they came to that conclusion
| without any data to back it up. How could they know? Was there
| an internal survey or something?
|
| Or perhaps Facebook employees generally lean right maybe? Any
| FB employees here care to comment?
| Verdex wrote:
| Well, I don't they did this, but it's an interesting
| technique used for this sort of scenario. Unfortunately, I
| can't find a wiki article to explain it (I think it's
| something like the hugh-jones coin or something).
|
| Anyway, I think the idea was someone needed statistics on how
| many people were stealing things after some sort of event,
| but obviously they couldn't just ask people because who would
| admit to breaking the law.
|
| So what you do is you ask the question: "Are you stealing"
| then you have the person flip a coin out of your view. If the
| coin is heads then they answer honestly, but if the coin is
| tails, then they always answer yes. This way the person in
| question has plausible deniability (I didn't steal, I said
| that I did because the coin came up tails). Then once you
| have the data you just need to divide by half and maybe tweak
| some other parameters, but you end up with realistic data (or
| so the statisticians say).
| singhrac wrote:
| The method is called randomized response, iirc.
| Aunche wrote:
| That was the perspective of a single Facebook employee that
| the reporter interviewed.
| elwell wrote:
| Even if it wasn't the majority that felt that way, it's
| interesting to me that they felt "afraid to speak out for
| fear of appearing insensitive". The situation is so
| polarizing and dramatic, we can't hope to find an optimal
| solution.
| ve55 wrote:
| I think it's a mistake to assume that anyone who doesn't want
| to fact-check/remove Trump's posts has to lean right
| politically. There's a lot of other reasons they can have.
|
| What if all of Trump's worst posts were removed, such that
| every potential voter reading them then has a less-aligned
| view of what he supports, and decides to vote for him, when
| they would not have had his posts not been selectively
| filtered? Just one of many possibilities
| stOneskull wrote:
| i think that the president should be able to speak to the
| people, and half the people want to hear it. those who
| don't want to hear it shouldn't block it from the others.
| it's jiggled into such a drama. a headache over nothing.
| zuck was right, about transcending the feelings, and going
| by principles.
| carapace wrote:
| I think the idea that POTUS needs Twitter to speak to the
| people is problematic.
| neonate wrote:
| Any Facebook employees want to give us an inside view about
| this? Throwaway account if needed?
| Diederich wrote:
| Most of the folks I've spoken to don't agree with Zuck's
| position, which I find disappointing and unsurprising.
|
| Facebook and to a lesser extent other big social media is in
| an impossible position.
|
| In my opinion: "Over time, in general we tend to add more
| policies to restrict things more and more," he said. "If
| every time there's something that's controversial your
| instinct is, okay let's restrict a lot, then you do end up
| restricting a lot of things that I think will be eventually
| good for everyone." is right on target.
|
| I don't mean to understate or under-appreciate the damage and
| impact various posts can and do have. This one post by Trump
| will likely cause tangible harm.
|
| There are absolutely no unambiguously good and correct
| decisions here. Facebook and the others are in completely
| uncharted waters.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| This is an entirely unsurprising result of eliminating
| reasonable discussion and rendering it professionally untenable
| to support the president.
|
| Welcome to the life of a conservative in tech. I'm pretty sure
| there are a lot of us, but I have no way of knowing for sure,
| because it's clear that speaking about our political beliefs
| can lead to negative repercussions in our career. Good luck
| getting a job or investment after you've publicly posted
| anything in line with Trump's agenda (which, btw, about 60
| million people seem to at least partly agree with).
|
| The result is that the only conservatives remaining in public
| view are the loony ones who can afford to speak out without
| risking their job, don't care about their corporate reputation,
| or have to post from pseudonyms. People on the left see this
| and conclude that everyone on the right is an extremist,
| further assuring them that their leftist views are "on the
| right side of history."
|
| There should be a term for "liberal privilege" when you're able
| to post your political views under your real name.
| alea_iacta_est wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure there are a lot of us, but I have no way of
| knowing for sure
|
| Just created a new account just to tell you we're at least 2
| conservatives in tech. Pretty sure I'll get angry and abandon
| this account very soon again because of the liberal bias
| here, and their adoration for the downvote button, but
| whatever, anything for a conservative colleague :)
|
| > There should be a term for "liberal privilege" when you're
| able to post your political views under your real name.
|
| They can post under their real name, doesn't mean it's not
| gonna cost them someday for a future job or who knows what,
| karma works in complex ways.
| throwaway6274 wrote:
| I don't support Trump and am not even conservative but look
| how I got downvoted when I pointed out that someone
| misquoted him. Sorry, you want to claim that conservatives
| ignore facts and then proceed to downvote me when I
| literally reference Trump's verbatim quote from Twitter to
| correct your misquoted version?
|
| I almost think Trump keeps winning elections out of a sense
| of schadenfreude. No one likes the guy, but when you
| constantly get downvoted and people attempt to silence any
| minor disagreement from the party line, it sure makes you
| want to vote for him out of spite (I won't though).
| wbronitsky wrote:
| I do not think we should make people who spread hate feel
| comfortable spreading that hate. The president is
| unequivocally spreading hate and inciting violence. He should
| not be able to do that when doing that is against the TOS of
| the site he is doing it on. Said another way, why does he get
| to incite violence on twitter, yet I do not?
|
| There is a distinct difference between expressing a political
| view, such as that we should have the government spend less
| money, and inciting random citizens to commit violent acts
| against a perceived enemy.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| > I feel like this is a misreading of the situation.
|
| I was referring to the quote from the article "that people
| who agreed with [Zuckerberg's decision] were afraid to
| speak out for fear of appearing insensitive," so I don't
| think it's a misreading of the situation. On the contrary,
| I'm expressing my lack of surprise, given my personal
| experience as a conservative in tech with a 98% liberal
| peer group. I am unable to talk freely about my political
| beliefs in the same way that, say, Biden or Bernie
| supporters are. I would be labeled a racist simply for
| agreeing with any republican point of view. Whereas I
| routinely see friends on Facebook getting hundreds of likes
| on statuses that call republican politicians "vile" or
| "scum."
|
| As an aside, what's particularly frustrating is how many
| people assume or expect that I hold the same views as them
| when in casual conversation. Someone will bring up Trump as
| if it's a foregone conclusion that he's a racist sociopath
| and anyone who supports him is one too, and I just have to
| nod along and laugh with them, or find a way to change the
| subject, lest I be "outed" as some sort of violent
| extremist for supporting the president.
|
| > The president is unequivocally spreading hate and
| inciting violence
|
| Unequivocally? I think you could find a lot of people who
| disagree with this assessment of his words. Who's to decide
| what is "unequivocally" an incitement of violence?
|
| > There is a distinct difference between expressing a
| political view, such as that we should have the government
| spend less money, and inciting random citizens to commit
| violent acts against a perceived enemy.
|
| This is a strawman, because I haven't seen Trump "inciting
| random citizens to commit violent acts." Regardless, of
| course there is a difference between political speech and
| inciting violence. But who is to be the arbiter of it?
| Because from what I've seen, certain people on the left can
| twist almost anything outside of their agenda to fit their
| definition of "violence." As a contrived example, some on
| the left would be "offended" by the suggestion that "a
| country is not a country without a strong border," equating
| it to "locking kids in cages." Is it violence to advocate
| for strong borders and criminal consequences for illegal
| immigration? Or is it political speech? What about when the
| president says it?
| wbronitsky wrote:
| > Trump as if it's a foregone conclusion that he's a
| racist sociopath
|
| You are totally correct. I do think this. I have ample
| evidence that backs up my case as well. I think the quote
| "when they start looting, we start shooting" which was
| hidden by Twitter for inciting violence, is enough for
| me.
|
| > This is a strawman, because I haven't seen Trump
| "inciting random citizens to commit violent acts."
|
| I don't think we can have a real conversation because we
| disagree about the basic facts on the ground.
|
| Trump, from my position, is clearly, repeatedly and
| blatantly pushing people to violence using Twitter. In
| fact, even Twitter thinks so.
| throwaway6274 wrote:
| > "when they start looting, we start shooting"
|
| Umm... except that's not what he said though. If it was,
| I would completely agree with you that it is an
| incitement (more accurately, a proclamation) of violence.
| But what he actually said was:
|
| "when the looting starts, the shooting starts"
|
| And, per Wikipedia:
|
| "He said that he was not aware of the phrase's 'racially-
| charged history'. He added that he didn't know where the
| phrase had originated, and that his intent in using it
| was to say 'when there's looting, people get shot and
| they die.'"
|
| So his statement is not an incitement, but a prediction.
| You may believe that Trump is lying about his intention,
| but that's a different debate.
| sultanofswing wrote:
| So at worst we have someone who is intentionally inciting
| violence.
|
| At best we have a leader of our country too irresponsible
| to do due diligence on his own posts to the entire free
| world. He has literally infinite resources at his
| disposal to communicate effectively about this.
|
| Being a hateful bigot and or an ignoramus should both be
| unacceptable positions for the leader of the US.
| Furthermore this isn't the first time he's said or done
| hateful / bigoted / ignorant things / lied so you'll
| excuse people if they don't give him the 'benefit of the
| doubt'.
| bryan_w wrote:
| > Being a hateful bigot and or an ignoramus should both
| be unacceptable positions for the leader of the US
|
| That's something you take up at the ballot box or with
| your Congressperson/governer, not Facebook.
| ve55 wrote:
| It's unfortunate, but I've seen it happen a lot at companies
| like this, from what I've spoken about privately.
|
| The worst part is those I speak to have very modest views, good
| intentions, and have put thought into it. But they're terrified
| of ever speaking up at the workplace for fear of what those
| that are most radicalized might try in response.
| Pils wrote:
| In some ways this seems endemic to all organizations with
| >1000 or so people. It's crazy the extent that white
| nationalist orgs have infiltrated Law Enforcement/US
| military.
|
| That being said, in many ways companies/organizations are
| simply biased samples of the cultural milieu, so I'm not sure
| there is an easy company-level policy for changing this.
| Given the Banjo/Clearview.ai KKK/alt-right stuff, the fear of
| radicalized tech employees is definitely a matter of real
| concern, but it's definitely a hard problem.
| prh8 wrote:
| Are you implying that these people agreeing with his
| decision are from white nationalist orgs?
|
| Or that they fear people from those orgs?
|
| If 1, that seems unlikely that would be the majority of
| people. If 2, well, that's the opposite of the case here.
| jancsika wrote:
| It's difficult to see this article from that perspective
| given the clear mendacity and sleight of hand at play from
| Zuckerberg.
|
| It's not like a Facebook feed is the deterministic result of
| a given user's subscriptions to friends and businesses, as if
| Facebook were a kind of user-friendly clone of a FOSS mailing
| list. Facebook engineers the contents of the feed in a way
| that is typically inscrutable to the user, and often
| harmful-- driving division and filter bubbles in order to
| keep up engagement. It's democratic in exactly the same way
| that Las Vegas would be democratic if you removed every
| single regulation on the gambling industry there.
|
| So I'm perfectly happy to concede that even in a system
| designed with dark patterns to eat as much users' attention
| as possible-- well past the scant value they receive from
| using that system-- it'd be even worse to censor the POTUS
| account. But I highly doubt that's the kind of reasoned
| defense you're talking about. Any Facebook employee uttering
| that knows the next question coming is why they work for a
| company that employs so many dark patterns to generate so
| much anger and misinformation among its userbase.
|
| Edit: clarification
| muzika wrote:
| I don't voice my politically-incorrect views at work either,
| because I know it won't do me any good.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| I wouldn't say it is dangerous, more like it is obvious. I very
| rarely agree with everything my company does and yet I don't
| feel put off by that. The world of total conformity is the
| really scary thing, we will cease to be humans by then.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The danger is that what people think and what people are
| willing to say are systematically diverging. If true, that
| means that anyone who's trying to observe what people think
| and make decisions based on it will consistently get things
| wrong.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| That is kinda temporary, in normal companies mistakes get
| accountability and executives are fired. In the end, you
| can get on the "design by committee" trap.
|
| The problem here might be the monopoly, so it doesn't
| matter how bad the decision there will be no repercussions.
| grumple wrote:
| The thought police will publicly shame you in every way
| possible if you don't score enough "woke points" with your
| latest post. We've seen conservative voices exiled from SV, and
| I suspect moderate or simply imperfect liberal voices would be
| treated similarly. As a pretty far-left liberal in an extended
| social group of extremist liberals, I've learned / am learning
| to just stay off social media and say nothing (easier to do
| this by deleting your fb/ig/whatever). Nothing you say or do
| can every please these people and they are very quick to
| destroy people when they feel slighted.
| stOneskull wrote:
| there is some truth in what you say. tim pool makes good
| money talking about that kinda stuff on youtube. but yeah,
| those communofascist thought police.. stay away from them!
| treat them like the kgb. give them nothing.
| sultanofswing wrote:
| I want to clarify that this is in NO way verifiable.
|
| There were 0 company polls taken about this on a grand scale.
|
| Most vocal position so far has been large scale dissatisfaction
| with this decision. But no way to actually know if that is just
| a 'vocal' minority.
|
| So unless this person they 'surveyed' did some sort of
| independent analysis where they sampled a significant portion
| of the company independently, they are full of shit.
|
| To be clear I am not advocating for either position in this
| post (though I do have an opinion), but this is just a bold
| faced lie.
| caiobegotti wrote:
| If Facebook and Zuckerberg personally did not profit from such
| acidic and destructive kind of free speech they would fix that
| pronto, it's as simple as that and it appears fruitless to me to
| spend a lot of words to counterargue them without considering
| this. Karl Popper would be going nuts by now were he alive today,
| I'm afraid.
| splitrocket wrote:
| They know it's destructive and harms people and they do it
| anyway: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-
| divisio...
|
| Barry Schnitt, former spokesperson for facebook:
|
| _Unfortunately, I do not think it is a coincidence that the
| choices Facebook makes are the ones that allow the most content
| -- the fuel for the Facebook engine -- to remain in the system.
| I do not think it is a coincidence that Facebook's choices
| align with the ones that require the least amount of resources,
| and the choices that outsource important aspects to third
| parties. I do not think it is a coincidence that Facebook's
| choices appease those in power who have made misinformation,
| blatant racism, and inciting violence part of their platform.
| Facebook says, and may even believe, that it is on the side of
| free speech. In fact, it has put itself on the side of profit
| and cowardice._
|
| https://onezero.medium.com/dear-facebook-employees-7d01761e5...
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Zuck will follow the ad dollars. If revenue drops due to the
| Trump hate speech then it'll be gone already.
| vkou wrote:
| Unless he's playing the long game where he is betting the farm
| on a Trump victory, and is trying his best to not antagonize
| him.
|
| Which seems more likely than him being ruled by a small impact
| on a few months of ad revenue.
| tech-historian wrote:
| Also, while we're on the topic, I'd like to understand why this
| post was flagged here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393676
| [deleted]
| cryptica wrote:
| I sense that Mark may be using his employees to play good cop bad
| cop in front of the media. But in reality, they all unanimously
| want censorship. Censorship would give Facebook a huge amount of
| power. Why would Mark not want that?
| chippy wrote:
| Maybe Mark understands his users (as in, the whole ugly world)
| more than his employees?
| cryptica wrote:
| If he was really cared about his users, he wouldn't be a
| billionaire.
| danielfoster wrote:
| So long as their speech remains legal, social media sites should
| not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the
| job of voters and Congress.
|
| It's too easy to walk down a slippery slope where suddenly these
| sites have to regulate in accordance with whatever is the popular
| opinion of the day.
| wwweston wrote:
| You're worried about "whatever is the popular opinion of the
| day" but want to leave that job to voters?
|
| You're talking about censorship as if it's something _civil_
| institutions have responsibility for, but private institutions
| shouldn 't be doing?
|
| Your comment is concerned about slippery slopes, but doesn't
| consider the one we're already skiing down where we
| _discourage_ institutions from taking responsibility for
| accuracy?
| tossAfterUsing wrote:
| "censoring elected officials" is exactly the job of voters,
| no?
| dodgyb wrote:
| But Facebook does regulate the feeds of their users by
| employing algorithms to surface content that they think the
| user will engage with, and so get bucks for the eyeball.
|
| This distinguishes them from libraries, the only other similar
| platform for unmediated content. Libraries treat all
| information as equal and curates it as such. Facebook does not
| treat information equally, this means it is already moderating
| content.
|
| Facebook already censors content that politicians deem
| unsavoury, so why should one political message get a free pass
| while another is removed?
| asiachick wrote:
| Libraries have a featured books section or many of them do.
| Someone decides what is featured. If they are pro X they'll
| feature pro X books. Similarly they have limited space.
| Someone decide which books to take in and which books to
| throw out. Libraries have also banned books.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Sorry to be a little pedantic, but libraries do not treat all
| information as equal. There are far, far fewer books written
| by nazis in the library and most of them are by former high
| ranking members of the 3rd Reich so students and historians
| can research the Second World War and The Holocaust.
|
| Even access is limited in some libraries for some information
| like technical libraries and books describing the
| manufacturing or design of dangerous materials.
| philjohn wrote:
| Maybe platforms shouldn't allow politicians on there full stop.
| csense wrote:
| We're getting onto our own slippery territory here.
|
| If I let someone into my living room, and that person makes
| political statements I don't like, I'm free to ask them to
| leave and not come back, or tell other people in my living room
| that I think the statements are factually incorrect.
|
| If Facebook lets someone onto their website, and that person
| makes political statements Facebook doesn't like, why can't
| Facebook ask them to leave and not come back, or tell other
| people on Facebook that Facebook thinks the statements are
| factually incorrect?
|
| Where do you draw the line between my living room, where I'm
| free to regulate who my visitors are and what those visitors
| can say, and Facebook?
| air7 wrote:
| It would be more like if another guest demand that you ask
| that person to leave because _they_ didn 't agree with the
| comment.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > I'm free to ask them to leave and not come back
|
| And you're free to _not_ ask them to leave, also... which is
| what we 're arguing Facebook should be.
| ramblerman wrote:
| > Where do you draw the line between my living room, where
| I'm free to regulate who my visitors are and what those
| visitors can say, and Facebook?
|
| Unless you have 22% of the worlds population passing through
| your living room this is a pretty poor analogy.
|
| Maybe the town square is more apt.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| The correct analogy would be if someone is standing in the
| Walmart parking lot. And last I checked U.S. law permits
| Walmart to tell them to leave.
| [deleted]
| banads wrote:
| Are there any other non-corporate "parking lots" with
| anywhere close to the same network effects?
| quicklime wrote:
| Not a parking lot, but a lot of suburban communities are
| built around large shopping malls, operated by companies
| like Westfield. It's not exactly conducive to protests,
| as the malls are private property and there's no
| significant pedestrian traffic anywhere else.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Such arrangements are not conducive to the political
| process, and that should worry everyone. If something can
| be used against someone it can also be used against you.
| banads wrote:
| by putting "parking lots" in quotations, I was meaning to
| ask for the alternative digital equivalent to major
| platforms like FB and Twitter.
| closetohome wrote:
| If we're continuing the parking lot analogy, it's like
| there's an almost unending grid of parking lot after
| parking lot, and you can travel to any of them
| instantaneously and for free. Some parking lots have a
| lot of people, so you'd rather go there if you want to be
| heard, but nothing is stopping you from setting up shop
| in an empty lot, and nothing is stopping people from
| visiting your lot.
|
| Now, given that major social network advertise pretty
| much everywhere, this might not be an entirely fair
| analogy. Some parking lots have ads for them posted in
| every other parking lot. But it's a point worth making
| that _access_ is relatively egalitarian on the internet.
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| The network effects are somewhat irrelevant and GP's
| comment is correct. If you do not use a retailer or
| service provider's business in a manner that they like,
| they are normally free to discontinue your service and
| ask you to leave. The same principle should apply to
| Facebook as they are a service provider like any other
| which has not (to my knowledge) explicitly been
| designated as having special status in legislation.
|
| You can't decide Facebook is subject to a different set
| of laws or has fewer rights simply because people have
| arbitrarily decided to communicate on its platform more
| than another platform. Every private entity should be
| afforded the same rights to regulate their private
| property or services unless there is legislation
| specifically saying otherwise.
|
| If you or any other person do not like the way Facebook
| is regulating usage of their platform, you are free to go
| start up your own social media platform with a different
| ToS (and many people do).
| Verdex wrote:
| I feel your point here is important. Facebook has a lot of
| power. To the point where I feel they owe the public more
| than they would if they were a small entity with a narrow
| reach.
|
| There are two principles here: 1) it's a problem if you
| have enough power to force the weak to cover the expenses
| of your failures and 2) if you have a lot of power you also
| have the ability to defend yourself from assholes and
| malicious actors.
|
| So, for point 1, if facebook decides that they want to dump
| trash into residential areas, they could silence everyone
| on facebook who complains. They could also call up their
| friends at twitter et al and convince them to do the same
| in exchange for whatever massive corporations like these
| days. Because of this possibility, I want facebook's
| freedom to curtail freedom of speech on their private
| platform to be extremely limited.
|
| For point 2, if facebook becomes inundated with assholes or
| (heaven forbid) malicious trolls who make relentless fun of
| the font that facebook uses for posts and every post that
| everyone sees is just complaints about fonts, then facebook
| has the capability to create a special asshole facebook
| website and marketing campaign to convince the assholes to
| go somewhere else. They have the ability to switch out the
| font. They can fund research into powerful AI techniques
| that can group all the font complaints together so that
| only people who want to see that crap will see that and
| everyone else can have a good experience. Because of
| facebook's ability to deal with malicious (or social
| incompetence that is indistinguishable from) behavior, I
| want facebook's freedom to curtail freedom of speech on
| their private platform to be extremely limited.
|
| On the other hand, if we're talking about an individual (or
| otherwise small and powerless organization) running a
| personal blog (or your living room), they have extremely
| limited ability to force other people to deal with their
| platform. And they also have extremely limited ability to
| deal with malicious behavior if they didn't otherwise have
| the right to curtail freedom of speech. In these cases, I
| want them to have greater rights because the likelihood of
| them being able to use these rights to oppress others is
| minimal AND their necessity of them needing them to defend
| themselves is greater.
| TallGuyShort wrote:
| Everyone has more of a right to a public space (like a town
| square) than a private living room or a private website
| (hadn't occurred to me that being publicly traded may have
| implications actually).
|
| As I've written in another recent comment, the problem is
| when Facebook or other networks become quasi-official
| sources for public communication. If the primary means that
| the government thinks I will find out about public health
| orders, mandatory business shutdowns, etc. becomes social
| media, I'm very concerned about the messy mix that "public
| space" and "private space" that Facebook will become.
| DougN7 wrote:
| I fear social media IS the primary place that a lot of
| people get their news. That is a huge problem because of
| all the propaganda, fake news, knee jerk reactions and
| everything else that is spread there.
| TallGuyShort wrote:
| Agreed - I think it's a distinct problem, though.
| Crowdsourcing news where the crowd is ignorant and
| uneducated is harder to fix than what I'm getting at,
| because the only ethical way to do it is to convince
| people en masse to be better about identifying credible
| sources and thinking critically.
|
| But I'm actually more concerned about a state where
| overnight the government can ban normal day-to-day
| activities, and if you're on a 30 day ban from Facebook
| you don't know about it until they're arresting people
| for surfing. Or, in my town's case, where they've stopped
| notifying residents of construction-related closures with
| written notice to each house days ahead of time, and have
| just started putting it on NextDoor.
| [deleted]
| jariel wrote:
| First, the rules are different in commerce than they are for
| private property.
|
| Second, some entities are so big they constitute a public
| good, even if they are not recognized as such. If Google
| Search started to openly promote one side of politics and not
| the other, the regulations would hit hare and fast.
|
| Third, this idea of 'populism' is a little warped. People
| agree or disagree with the nature of the protests to varying
| extent. Don't assume that the press and those writing letters
| to FB, or definitely FB employees themselves, are in any way
| representative of anything.
|
| Fourth, it's in the company's interest to try to remain
| 'neutral in whatever terms that might mean.
|
| Finally - it's in everyone's interest for said platforms to
| have consistent, objectively applied, and hopefully
| independently monitored criteria and operations for managing
| what they take down and not. Zuck should not be involved in
| any of the day to day operations, and should not be
| commenting on any specific situation or post.
| throwquestion24 wrote:
| So if an elected official posts a picture of themselves naked
| or with their nipples out it won't be censored?
| klahtnun wrote:
| Sure, why not? It is illegal for police to enforce laws on
| certain public officials in certain circumstances. IIRC
| members of congress can't be stopped for a traffic violation
| on the way to a vote, or something like that.
|
| The ancient Romans didn't allow prosecution of some public
| officials while in office for a similar reason. Their courts
| could too easily be abused as a political tool.
|
| It's not unreasonable to leave public officials unmoderated
| while they're in office.
|
| The real problem here is that we're letting private companies
| make the decision. We should pass a law that requires
| unrestricted free speech on any platform of a certain size.
| And then give users optional moderation tools. Users could
| toggle a button that says "Show me fact-checking along side
| controversial topics" but it would all have to be opt-in.
| throwquestion24 wrote:
| Because Facebook has already made some decisions on this
| topic and pretty much all nudity and female nipples are
| banned.
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/01/19/facebook-
| nudi...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/abigailesman/2012/08/06/facebo
| o...
| AgentME wrote:
| * If someone criticized newspapers for yellow journalism and
| inciting violence with sensationalism, would it seem so weird
| to push the newspapers to regulate the content posted on
| themselves?
|
| * Is the way that people view large public figures on social
| media all that different than how they did with newspapers?
|
| I'm not sure if these questions imply anything about how social
| media sites should deal with regular small-audience / low-
| influence users, but I think any platform sharing influential
| posts to a large audience has similar responsibilities to a
| newspaper.
| vmception wrote:
| Facebook is only in this tone-deaf quagmire because they got in
| the business of censoring at all.
|
| Now they created the expectation for them to choose and they
| said no.
|
| Whoops.
|
| Going to be funny when the Public Health Orders all start
| targeting social media.
| justin66 wrote:
| > Facebook is only in this tone-deaf quagmire because they
| got in the business of censoring at all.
|
| Being the antenna for Donald Trump to broadcast constantly to
| the internet was going to be a quagmire no matter what.
| trhway wrote:
| >social media sites should not be the business of censoring
| elected officials.
|
| It would help to make things clear if FB in their terms of
| service would specifically and explicitly excluded public
| officials from limitations on hate, violence inciting and other
| otherwise prohibited on the platform speech,and marked that
| speech accordingly.
|
| Or let an official to explicitly checkbox such exception in
| his/her profile or may be at individual post level, a la carte
| style with separate checkboxes for hate speech, racism, etc.,
| and mark such his/her post as made under that exception - "This
| post is published under the hate speech, [comma separated
| iterator over the checked checkboxes' values] exception
| requested by this public official"
| briffle wrote:
| Right, so the people that are registered with the US
| political Party ANP (American Nazi Party) Or many other
| parties you have never heard of could then check the box, and
| be free to say whatever they want. Or is Facebook going to
| police it only for a few popular political parties in the US,
| and not censor which political parties get speech?
| trhway wrote:
| I meant public officials. As there is at least some public
| interest in giving them platform, and there is at least
| some minimal check/scrutiny for them - their voters.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Would it help? I would expect that to just make things worse,
| as the right to freer speech on Facebook becomes an explicit
| asset with unequal allocation. An informal policy seems much
| less dangerous.
| trhway wrote:
| Well, that unequal allocation has been working fine with
| ads - one can say much more as long as it is clearly marked
| as political or commercial ad.
| kec wrote:
| The US president is the single most powerful person in the
| world. If he says "Hey $literally_any_media_outlet, I'd like to
| make a statement, want to swing by the rose garden in 20?" The
| media will fall over themselves to do so. I don't think you
| could come up with an example of someone who would be _less_
| harmed by being banned from social media than the potus.
|
| Even if for some reason you don't buy that, social media could
| easily justify a ban by differentiating between his personal
| and official government accounts.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| Both facebook and twitter give the president something more
| than traditional media: retweets, engagement, reaction,
| analysis etc.
|
| The whole 'the only good democrat is a dead democrat' and
| glorifying violence would have been much harder to do with
| traditional potus press statements.
|
| Twitter and Facebook allow him to use these new tools,
| despite his tendency to incite violence. They help to enable
| him. And it's their choice. And they thus make his words much
| more effective.
| supercanuck wrote:
| You know what would help. More alternatives. What if Instagram,
| WhatsApp, Youtube, etc were all still independent or there was
| interopability between Google Circles, Facebook and whatever
| else?
|
| Watch how fast Facebook would adapt and be monitoring news and
| trying to conform to the public opinion if they felt they
| needed to compete.
|
| The only reason we're in this position is because a reduction
| in real competition in the market and the only power they fear
| is that of democratically elected representatives.
|
| Elizabeth Warren had this right. Break up the platforms, and
| force social networks to allow a download of your data in a
| json format and move to a seperate service. Easily. That is the
| ONLY regulation we need.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Social Media are the real monopolies. For the first time we
| have a business that are provided for free and that are based
| on the concept of monetising its users. There is zero
| accountability and it is the closest we will get to a natural
| monopoly.
|
| It's interesting how they also collude with each other by
| defaming competitions and circularly maintaining this
| monopoly. Good example is Apple/Google process to accept new
| social media companies. It's nearly impossible and to a much
| higher standard they hold themselves.
| ISL wrote:
| Phone books existed long before the internet.
|
| I feel old writing this, but once a upon a time, phone-book
| companies (often the phone company, but not always) would
| deliver a phone book to every address with a phone. This
| was paid for almost-entirely by the advertising sold by the
| phone-book company.
|
| If a company or person wasn't in the phone book, they
| pretty much didn't exist.
|
| All of this has happened before, all of it will happen
| again.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > force social networks to allow a download of your data in a
| json format and move to a seperate service.
|
| In markets concerned with serving European users, GDPR
| already allows you to download your data. Facebook has
| allowed one to download all of one's own messages, pictures,
| etc. for many years now.
|
| The problem is that, in order to avoid infringing on _other
| people's_ privacy rights, downloaded data has to be
| anonymized: you can see your own messages as your own, but
| anything from another user will just be identified with a
| random identifier instead of their real name. This then makes
| it a challenge, when you want to import the data into a new
| service, to have all those messages associated with your
| friends' accounts on the new service.
| karatestomp wrote:
| This is the real answer. Removing the incentives that
| discourage interoperability and common standards would help.
| This probably means regulating spying-centric advertising and
| related mass-data-gathering out of existence.
|
| Twitter should be a protocol with many providers and many
| clients, not a restrictive service from a single provider.
| Ditto most of the rest.
| specialist wrote:
| Markets are winner takes all. No matter the size, there will
| be power law distribution. First place, runner up, distant
| third, everyone else.
|
| Market consolidation (regional, national, global) reduced the
| number of markets, reducing the number of players.
|
| One very illiberal idea is that we also need to break up
| markets, erect some barriers. Prevent winners in one market
| from usurping other markets.
| [deleted]
| specialist wrote:
| Facebook's defense is that they're just the pipes, like a
| telco, and can't be held liable for the content.
|
| What is the free speech argument for automatic algorithmic
| recommenders?
| babesh wrote:
| There is no reason to give elected officials a free pass. It
| biases elections by giving them an even bigger microphone than
| the other people running. Apply the same standards to all.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| A free pass on what exactly? This has gotten so crazy, I
| can't believe people are protesting Facebook for _not_
| censoring a politician.
|
| Here's an idea... if you don't like what somebody writes
| online, don't read it.
|
| Do people really think that censoring, or even annotating,
| the _President's_ words will change how people feel about
| them? Like someone is going to read Trump's message, think
| "oh right, mail-in ballots could lead to voter fraud," then
| read an annotation from CNN and conclude "oh never mind,
| Trump lied." On the contrary, it will lead to further
| entrenchment of division as they retreat to the comfort of
| their pre-existing views.
|
| Are people serious about this?? It seems obvious that the
| most likely outcome of censorship or editorializing is _more_
| entrenchment of views and pre-existing beliefs, not less.
| Nobody who is already listening to Trump is going to suddenly
| stop because Twitter or Facebook shows them a CNN article
| next to a "fact check" label.
|
| It's just so ridiculous, I can't believe we are actually
| having this conversation. What happened to teaching people
| critical thinking and not to believe everything they read on
| the internet? And what the heck is "violent speech?" Just
| close the page if you don't like it. My goodness.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Annotating is fine as long as the user can choose what
| annotations they see and how those influence filtering.
| This idea that the stupid little people need the protection
| of the inlighted ones doing the censoring is profoundly
| unamerican and must die.
| gilbetron wrote:
| I think the person you're responding to is talking about an
| asymmetry of rules - current politicians can say anything,
| everyone else has to follow rules. In that situation,
| current politicians can lie about their opponents, but
| opponents cannot lie back.
| s_y_n_t_a_x wrote:
| Actually it seems like social media companies are
| choosing who can't lie and who can. Normal users and even
| most politicians lie on social media everyday, who cares.
| The problem I see is social media companies targeting
| specific leaders and what they see as "lies" while
| ignoring others.
|
| And most importantly, who decides what is a lie?
|
| Either take 230 away from the company and no-one can lie
| on the platform, or stop censoring/altering users and
| allow everyone to say what's in their legal right to say.
|
| There's a meme about nothing being true on the internet,
| why do we need a Ministry of Truth now?
| pavlov wrote:
| If Section 230 is revoked, social media and content
| platforms become liable for all user-created content that
| they host.
|
| Surely that will lead to much more content deleted to
| avoid lawsuits? Why is that a desirable outcome?
| Avicebron wrote:
| Because it will allow for some form of competition
| because they will be forced to make decisions leaving
| space for other players to make different decisions.
| wldlyinaccurate wrote:
| > Here's an idea... if you don't like what somebody writes
| online, don't read it.
|
| The problem isn't that people "don't like" what elected
| officials say. It's that people often take what elected
| officials say as truth without even considering that it
| might be false (they must be Smart and Good if they're in
| office, right?)
|
| Fact checking and censoring prominent figures isn't going
| to affect people who already have strongly held beliefs.
| But it will make a difference to people who are
| impressionable or vulnerable or don't know any better.
| raarts wrote:
| > is that people often take what elected officials say as
| truth
|
| Well educate them on _that_ instead of trying to control
| the information flow. History taught us that will always
| backfire.
| herenorthere wrote:
| that is exactly what Twitter has done. they didn't block
| Trump's tweet, they added a box basically saying "be
| weary of this statement you should fact check it"
| dguaraglia wrote:
| There's a catch: the people doing most of the lying are
| the same that have worked for decades to destroy public
| education.
| matz1 wrote:
| >It's that people often take what elected officials say
| as truth without even considering that it might be false
|
| I'll defend their right to be stupid.
| Lutger wrote:
| Cambridge Analytica and meddling in the elections by
| Russian trolls is what happened.
|
| Also: a quite effective assault at climate action using
| misinformation, violent riots, a movement campaigning for
| civil war, ridiculous medical advise by the US president
| leading to deaths during a pandemic, etc.
|
| This all happened and permanently changed the debate. Free
| speech is poisoned these days and we can't simply ignore
| that.
| stellar678 wrote:
| Facebook/Twitter/et al created the systems which focus
| people's attention and incentivize the production of
| divisive poor quality information in the first place - why
| shouldn't they take responsibility for fixing their
| mistakes?
| bpyne wrote:
| I think it's a good thing to hold public figures
| accountable. Politicians, in particular, need to be held
| accountable due to the large amount of influence they have
| on our society. When Twitter, for example, places a warning
| on a Tweet to warn readers that it contains provably false
| statements, it holds the Tweeter accountable and that is
| enough reason to do it regardless of the changing minds
| argument.
|
| As far as changing minds goes, I think there's a swath of
| voters who sit in the political middle and they don't fact
| check. The swath is large enough that they can influence
| elections. It's critical to make sure they don't get
| influenced by politicians who make up facts on the spot.
|
| A friend of mine and I commiserated last week about the
| difficulty of debating with people on political issues. We
| noticed that people can make up "facts" quicker than we can
| fact check. You would think that the onus would be on the
| person making an argument to provide proof. But that
| standard of argument is long gone. The proof seems to
| always be on the person who says, "No, I don't think that's
| right."
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| > provably false statements
|
| Herein lies the rub. It's extremely rare that a
| politician is tweeting about something so black-and-white
| that the tweet can be provably true or false. There is
| almost always a gray area between fact and opinion. In
| fact, people tend to vote for politicians because they
| agree with their _interpretation_ and prioritization of a
| set of facts. So I think you'll find the vast majority of
| political tweets reside in this gray area, because
| otherwise they wouldn't be political in the first place.
|
| And if "provably false" is the standard for
| editorializing, then Twitter picked a terrible example to
| set as the precedent. The tweet they "fact checked" was
| Trump making a prediction about the future. Namely, he
| was suggesting that mail-in ballots could lead to
| increased voter fraud. Not only is this an opinion, but
| it's a projection about something that _has not happened
| yet._ By definition, it cannot be provably false.
| jdhendrickson wrote:
| Weird, I can think of at least one politician who
| constantly tweets, and most of it's easily proven false
| with the smallest modicum of research. It's almost like
| what you are saying has no basis in reality.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| Why don't you just plainly state what your goal is: Top down
| control of the political discourse by the left.
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| > the left
|
| What left?
|
| https://politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
| NE2z2T9qi wrote:
| > "Apply the same standards to all."
|
| Do you honestly not realize that this is the exact issue
| being debated? Whether the "standards" are being applied
| fairly and consistently irrespective of political
| affiliations? And whether the "standard" itself is loaded to
| censor certain relatively mainstream but not Silicon Valley
| viewpoints?
|
| What you're saying reminds me of an anti-gay marriage
| argument I heard: "Hey, I'm straight and I don't have the
| right to marry a man. A gay guy doesn't have the right to
| marry a man either. Look at that: the same standard applies
| to all. Everything is fair!"
|
| I'm not particularly aligned to either democrats or
| republicans, but I've looked at "fact-checks" by supposedly
| neutral parties and they're often absolute garbage. Not only
| is the "research" superficial, what is chosen to be fact-
| checked vs. what isn't fact-checked is transparently biased.
| The "same standard" does not appear to be applied to all.
|
| Given the debatable nature of these questions, I think common
| sense would say it's better to let voters and the marketplace
| of idea arbitrate rather than social media companies. And, as
| a general matter, I'm shocked people are still so into
| censoring in 2020. Isn't censoring books/ideas/speech
| something we laugh at given how consistently wrong it tends
| to be? I'd say censoring is silly at best and evil at worst.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > There is no reason to give elected officials a free pass.
|
| > Apply the same standards to all.
|
| I find these statements at odds. People can say what they
| want and it may or may not be inaccurate or misleading or
| accurate or truthful. Giving elected officials "a free pass"
| to do just that _is_ applying the same standard to all.
|
| Elected officials have a microphone because of the political
| system and the endemic elevation of these regular, flawed,
| people to a status above the common man (same with police and
| a number of other power hierarchies in the USA).
| tarkin2 wrote:
| > So long as their speech remains legal
|
| He incites violence.
|
| Facebook and Twitter's tools give him a fuller engagement with
| the population.
| mc32 wrote:
| People don't think forwards and we're hypocritical.
|
| They're all for censoring or not censoring if it aligns with
| their agenda. And they'll do a 180 when it benefits them.
|
| I believe the Gores' dream of the PMRC may yet come to fruition
| for different reasons...
| dagmx wrote:
| There are lots of options between full on censoring and not
| doing a thing. Displaying that certain prominent posts aren't
| accurate is a good start, much like what Twitter did.
| elwell wrote:
| "when the looting starts, the shooting starts"
|
| [Warning this message is inaccurate]
| dguaraglia wrote:
| Actually, that was marked as glorifying violence.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I'd agree with you but private entities are not bound to
| freedom of speech. Only government forums
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Sorry but you are incorrect. Platforms have protections while
| they act as a free and open forum. This protection ceases to
| exist the time you start fiddling with the content.
| Obviously, Terms of Service are there to filter the garbage
| out but any double standard can end up with your Platform
| credentials revoked and your business down the drain.
| Traster wrote:
| Your comment doesn't even slightly reflect the law. I don't
| know why people keep spreading this.
|
| Section 230(c):
|
| > No provider or user of an interactive computer service
| shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any
| information provided by another information content
| provider.
|
| Furthermore section 230 (c)(2) states:
|
| > any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict
| access to or availability of material that the provider or
| user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy,
| excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable,
| whether or not such material is constitutionally protected
|
| So to be clear, it's not that the law is unclear on this,
| it's very clear on this: The publisher has no responsibilty
| to consider whether speech is constitutionally protected at
| all. Not only is there no qualification that these
| platforms need to meet in terms of moderation, but the law
| actively states that the platform can moderate speech.
|
| Citation: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
| s_y_n_t_a_x wrote:
| Yes, and the debate is whether or not the companies are
| acting in bad faith and abusing this 1996 law by
| selectively altering their users posts and presenting
| their information thus acting like a publisher.
|
| Yes this is the current state, but the question is
| whether it's morally right and should we update it to
| reflect the current situation of the social media
| behemoths, this law was designed for small bulletin
| boards at the time.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| "Acting like a publisher" is completely irrelevant.
| Section 230(c) makes no exceptions or distinctions for
| publisher vs not.
|
| Twitter and Facebook are publishers. Publishers still get
| protections afforded to them under 230(c).
| Avicebron wrote:
| Yeah, at best it's an outdated law. At worst it's an
| excuse for companies with immense wealth and power to
| enforce their political will on millions if not billions
| of people. I would be fine if there was some remote form
| of competition at scale with these platforms, but no one
| can make an honest argument that these are not dominant
| players who are quickly pulling up the ladder behind
| them. We need to update our laws to reflect modern
| reality
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Those protections afford immunity to civil claims related
| to copyright and infringing content. It does not apply to
| matters of decency. Many online platforms have booted their
| bigots and hate speech without any consequences to their
| ability to continue hosting content.
|
| Please do not conflate civil torts with criminal hate
| speech
| 42lux wrote:
| Not only have they booted the bigots and hate speech it's
| only because they booted it that they florished. That's
| also the reason alternative "public spaces" exist without
| that kind of moderation... think 4chan,8chan etc. It
| doesn't matter where you draw the line or anyone of us it
| matters that the line is there for everyone. When twitter
| bans an experiment of an account that was just tweeting
| Trumps tweet s as onces from themself. They should also
| ban Trump if they are not banning him but other people
| for the same choice of words it leaves a bad taste.
| Facebook is on another level in myanmar facebook was used
| as a tool to organize an ethnic cleansing. Free Speech is
| the modern "we just followed orders" of tech companies.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Platforms have protections while they act as a free and
| open forum. This protection ceases to exist the time you
| start fiddling with the content
|
| This is a popular belief among people who feel some
| viewpoints are being "censored" but it has no basis in law
| or reality. My cynical perspective is that if enough people
| spread this lie, it will become true in the court of public
| opinion, which is what the people being "censored" are
| hoping for. (the scare quotes are because "censorship" is a
| scary word used in place of "moderation" or "community
| management" or "spam removal")
|
| Platforms are 100% allowed to take down material that they
| find objectionable for whatever reason.
|
| The other reply to your comment has posted a link to the
| actual law: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23408218.
| I'd encourage you to take a look.
| abc_lisper wrote:
| This is a false dichotomy. If a leader publicly prods his
| followers to attack some one on FB or Twitter, should they
| stand back?
| kube-system wrote:
| If we're using the word "attack" to refer to a legal action,
| I think that is something that is very important for voters
| to be aware of.
| abc_lisper wrote:
| Not legally, sticks and stones.
| the-dude wrote:
| Calling for violence is illegal in The Netherlands if I
| recall correctly.
| kube-system wrote:
| Then the speech is illegal and not an example of a reason
| the dichotomy would be false.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| You can make a coherent argument that they shouldn't, but
| that would require much heavier censorship on Facebook's part
| than is present today. How many Facebook posts glorifying the
| looting were left up uncontroversially?
| dvt wrote:
| There's legal recourse for this (see Chaplinsky v. New
| Hampshire, among the many other SCOTUS rulings curbing free
| speech in special cases). Social media companies are not the
| arbiter, the courts are.
| Natsu wrote:
| Fighting words only apply to face-to-face speech and even
| then it's somewhat doubtful. If you want further analysis,
| look at some of Ken White's writings on it on Popehat.
| Incitement as defined by the Brandenburg test is more
| likely to apply.
| abc_lisper wrote:
| I dont expect FB to be a arbiter, but in a more general
| sense, prevent harm done using the facility. Like a
| transport company to be held liable if someone is using
| them to mule drugs, or banks for money laundering.
| Natsu wrote:
| They should stop anyone who fails the Brandenburg test for
| incitement, but that's already illegal.
| kukx wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Sun is the best disinfectant. We should not allow
| speech to be banned, because then we do not know what people
| think anymore. If we suppress the free expression we may find
| that really bad ideas are silently spreading without being
| challenged. And it may end up really badly for all of us when
| people holding these ideas suddenly surface. You do not need
| majority to make quick and radical changes.
| pstuart wrote:
| Facebook is quite happy to censor speech.
|
| Facebook banned me for 3 days for commenting on a previous ban
| where I had said "white people suck" and "white people are
| savages", both for pictures contrasting white people protesting
| vs PoC and First Nation people protesting.
|
| Disclaimer: I am very white. I was not promoting hate.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It just seems hard to believe that calling people savages
| isn't intended to promote hatred of them.
| pstuart wrote:
| It's a play on the fact that native americans have
| traditionally been referred to as savages, and this was my
| commentary on "the pot calling the kettle black".
| pstuart wrote:
| You are ascribing intent when I've repeated that was not my
| intent.
|
| I believe that you intend to promote white nationalism by
| your disingenuous engagement.
|
| Do you find that agreeable? If not, why?
|
| edit: It looks like you don't find it agreeable but can't
| articulate why. Shall I ascribe intent there as well?
| nilkn wrote:
| That seems reasonable to censor. Regardless of intent, that
| language clearly does promote hate. I don't see why it
| matters if you're white yourself.
| pstuart wrote:
| Context is everything.
|
| The first case was a collection of half a dozen pictures of
| white people protesting that they want hair cuts, vs. half
| a dozen pictures of PoC asking not to be killed.
|
| > that language clearly does promote hate
|
| How does that promote hate?
|
| > I don't see why it matters if you're white yourself
|
| I'm _criticizing_ the group I belong to.
|
| Words get misconstrued all the time. You just demonstrated
| that.
|
| Edit: because I can't respond to your reply to this,
| @nilkn, I will say here that you appear to be one of the
| following:
|
| * Not able to comprehend what I'm trying to communicate * A
| troll * A white supremacist
|
| I'm not saying that to attack you, I'm honestly puzzled
| that you can't understand what I'm saying. I'd be happy to
| try and reach a mutual understanding with you but something
| tells me that would be a fool's errand.
|
| What is clear, is that you are projecting your assumptions
| as my intent. And your assumptions are wrong.
| nilkn wrote:
| I think the context backs up my position. There was no
| justification for calling an entire race of people
| savages. The image made its own point and didn't need to
| be coupled with hate speech. That definitely promotes
| hate and should've been removed, and you should've been
| (temporarily) banned, just as you were.
|
| Everyone who promotes hate speech thinks they're just
| being misunderstood. You're not the first.
| pstuart wrote:
| > There was no justification for calling an entire race
| of people savages.
|
| I don't hate white people. Saying they "suck" is not
| promoting hate.
|
| I think you suck at understanding what I'm saying, but I
| don't hate you.
| nilkn wrote:
| You called them savages. In addition to making wild
| accusations against me in your latest edit of your
| previous comment, you are now being disingenuous about
| what you wrote in order to make yourself seem more
| innocent.
| pstuart wrote:
| > You called them savages.
|
| Yeah, I did. Please connect the dots from that comment in
| that specific context to where actual _hate_ comes into
| play, and more importantly, where that supposed hate
| translates into a pathway to discrimination, violence, or
| other ramification of real hate speech.
|
| I'm not trying to be innocent. I make mistakes all the
| time. If I do an edit, I append and keep the original
| content intact (save for typos) because I try my damndest
| to own my words.
|
| My accusations against you are my guesses about you. You
| are very comfortable in judging me, so I'm not sure why
| you feel so hurt when I share my tentative assessment of
| you.
|
| One more datapoint: that _within the private group that
| the original comments were made_ , the feedback I got on
| this issue was aligned with my perspective. Something
| tells me that in your social circle it would never
| happen.
| pwned1 wrote:
| Your hate speech is ok. Theirs is bad. Got it.
| pstuart wrote:
| Yes, you got exactly what you wanted. Have a nice day!
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| You miss the point. How hard is to find hate speech which
| isn't censored?
|
| Out of interest I searched for "alt right" on Facebook, and
| it took about a minute to find a post that said "Social
| media has made too many of you comfortable with
| disrespecting people and not getting punched in the mouth
| for it."
|
| The post is dated Feb 9, so it's been there a while. It's
| not unusual for that group.
|
| And so on. It's one thing to have community standards, it's
| another to prove you're applying them fairly.
|
| I see no evidence that Facebook is interested in doing
| that.
| nilkn wrote:
| I think that's a separate discussion altogether. I'm sure
| there are instances of hateful speech that should've been
| removed but nevertheless weren't or haven't been. That
| doesn't mean that the instances that were removed
| shouldn't have been.
| pstuart wrote:
| Replying to myself because the edit window closed.
|
| I posted this scenario (the background of my original post,
| as well as the response here) to FB to ask for feedback. I
| specifically asked for criticism if they saw it (not just for
| echochamber validation).
|
| All 10 respondents thus far saw no issue with what I said,
| with the most telling comment to when I asked again:
|
| Q: Do you think I was promoting hate speech in the given
| contexts?
|
| A: possibly, In the eyes of someone threatened by your
| opinion.
|
| I stand by my words. I will correct them when the correction
| is valid, however, I've not seen that here in this dialog.
| satya71 wrote:
| Facebook is not only in the business of publishing people's
| speech, it is also in the business of curating people's
| information input. They are only defending their obligations
| for the first of the businesses, not the second.
| splitrocket wrote:
| Facebook thinks of itself as a state and fundamentally
| misunderstands it's relationship to the traditional "big L"
| liberal democracies.
|
| The first amendment[0] specifically defines congress, the law
| making body, as the arbiter of free speech. This is because
| without the force of government behind it, the concept of
| censorship is effectively meaningless.
|
| In a constitutional sense, it is impossible for any actor other
| than the government to violate a persons first amendment rights.
|
| Facebook, as a corporation, is not capable of violating first
| amendment rights. Even FCC section 230 [1] explicitly enables
| facebook to moderate as it sees fit. Facebook could decide that
| any post that contains the word "avocado" would be deleted on the
| spot. Or they could decide that only political posts that support
| Vermin Supreme [2] are allowed.
|
| This would be completely legal.
|
| The same way you are allowed to delete spam and comments by Nazis
| on your personal blog. You are also not liable if someone posts a
| libelous comment on your blog, just like facebook isn't liable.
|
| Similarly, if you decide that you are a-ok with rabid neo-nazis
| commenting on your personal blog, well, then, sure, that's legal,
| but it also says a hell of a lot about you and your personal
| beliefs. There's a word for people that sympathize with nazis...
|
| You could run the smallest blog or the largest, world spanning
| social network and delete Nazi content legally in the US.
|
| So, when Mark Zuckerberg says he is defending free speech, he is
| using misdirection. He is fully aware that the legal,
| constitutional term "free speech" doesn't apply to Facebook.
|
| He wants you to avoid thinking that the people that run Facebook
| are morally responsible for the legal, fcc section 230 moderation
| that they choose to engage in, the same way you would be morally
| responsible for actively allowing Nazis to comment on your blog.
|
| It's so simple, a six panel stick figure comic can explain it.
| [3]
|
| Zuck just doesn't want to show Trump the door. Why? Because he
| makes a lot of money from sowing division and hate. [4]
|
| As Barry Schnitt, former spokes person for facebook put it [5]:
|
| _" Unfortunately, I do not think it is a coincidence that the
| choices Facebook makes are the ones that allow the most content
| -- the fuel for the Facebook engine -- to remain in the system. I
| do not think it is a coincidence that Facebook's choices align
| with the ones that require the least amount of resources, and the
| choices that outsource important aspects to third parties. I do
| not think it is a coincidence that Facebook's choices appease
| those in power who have made misinformation, blatant racism, and
| inciting violence part of their platform. Facebook says, and may
| even believe, that it is on the side of free speech. In fact, it
| has put itself on the side of profit and cowardice."_
|
| [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/21273768/section-230-explained-
| inte...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermin_Supreme
|
| [3] https://xkcd.com/1357/
|
| [4] https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-
| divisio...
|
| [5] https://onezero.medium.com/dear-facebook-
| employees-7d01761e5...
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| golemiprague wrote:
| I am starting to appreciate Zuckerberg more than I thought I
| would be. I think his mild autism helps him to cut through all
| the politics and hysterics. I won't be surprised if deep down he
| believes in a much more classic liberal values like many of his
| peers who are too afraid to speak up because of the leftist mob
| in silicon valley.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Free For All of Social Media censors won't last very long. It
| became mainstream to hate the internet and push for the end of
| platforms, effectively turning Twitter/Facebook/Google into
| publishers. By doing that they automatically loose the ability to
| claim to be platforms and become publishers.
|
| As a publisher it is much harder to guaranteed that things said
| in the platform won't end up in the arrest of your employees.
| Zuckerberg is trying to find a middle ground where he does not
| push an agenda but at the same time can keep its advertisers by
| removing things based on a clear policy ( showing violence /
| pornography / etc ).
|
| Don't forget the media as a whole does NOT have that benefit, if
| a company publishes or defames people they will be severely
| punished. We should think really hard before asking for Social
| media companies to breach that vote of confidence, there is real
| chances Twitter will be the first giant to fall regardless if
| Biden wins the election.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It is becoming easier and easier to argue that these platforms
| _are_ actually publishers. They are all making more editorial
| decisions on what posts to show and hide, where to show what,
| and they all have rules about what content is allowed and what
| 's not. Those sound like the activities of a publisher to me.
| cousin_it wrote:
| Interesting point, but then is a search engine a publisher?
| Should it be liable for everything it shows, because it
| decides what to show or hide?
| kevinh wrote:
| You are explicitly permitted to do this by the law without
| being classified as a publisher.
| bzb3 wrote:
| >Here are my top takeaways from the roughly 85-minute recording
|
| Is that recording publicly available?
| throwgeorge wrote:
| i've been looking for it as well and haven't been able to find
| it. i wouldn't be surprised if journalists are keeping it close
| because fb puts a watermark in streams to catch leakers. so
| it's not available to keep the leaker anonymous.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I've seen videos of looting (as opposed to protesting) which say
| out loud that they are being coordinated on social media. In
| particular, one looter's sister was murdered by another looter.
| She was crying on camera, "This ain't some Facebook shit"
| indicating she had been coordinated to show up on FB.
|
| Once the general population of old people figures out that roving
| groups of young people are using "The Facebook" to coordinate
| their plans to set the cities on fire, social media is dead via
| regulation. So far that knowledge has escaped mainstream
| understanding. But it's only a matter of time.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The London 2010 riots were blamed on Blackberry messenger:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-riots-blackberry/...
|
| (Interestingly the MP quoted, David Lammy, is one of the few
| black MPs and from the left)
| listenallyall wrote:
| You're underestimating the intelligence and experience of "old
| people." They've been through eras like this before, they know
| what protest looks like. And they already know that the looting
| (and much of the protest too) is pre-coordinated and planned by
| outsiders, primarily via social media.
| btmiller wrote:
| Though I could also say that's an overestimation of people's
| ability to understand that looting is pre-coordinated and
| planned by outsiders.
|
| Local news broadcasts play a big part in this, because that's
| the only thing my parents will be doing during protests is
| watching what they provide. Guess what content they provide
| :/
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| There's a difference between being technically aware of
| something, and having the mental framework to take that
| awareness and turn it into a call to action. It's the news
| that tells people how to think about things and how to act
| about them. Corporate news is being slaughtered by social
| media. You've seen them attack social media already with
| stories of how pedophiles use it to get your kids and stuff.
| I don't think it will take long for the corporate news to
| figure out they can weaponize this to encourage regulating
| their enemy industry.
| tobltobs wrote:
| Once the population ... figures out that ... people are using
| phones/fax machines/drums/smoke/whatever to coordinate their
| plans to set the cities on fire, they are dead via regulation.
| kleton wrote:
| Does President Trump's threat to treat them as publishers rather
| than platforms have teeth?
| nova22033 wrote:
| It doesn't because the publisher v/s platform thing isn't a
| real thing.
|
| Helpful link: https://www.popehat.com/2019/08/29/make-no-law-
| deplatformed/
| [deleted]
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