[HN Gopher] FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues ami...
___________________________________________________________________
FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee
discord
Author : mful
Score : 123 points
Date : 2020-09-17 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| patorjk wrote:
| At 3 paragraphs (131 words), that was a really short article.
| However, I agree with the subheading: "Mark Zuckerberg says
| employees shouldn't have to confront social issues in their day-
| to-day work unless they want to"
|
| That sounds good to me. I've never had to talk about these kind
| of things at work. Are there work places where this is
| unavoidable?
| lacker wrote:
| I was working at Facebook during the 2016 election and it was
| pretty unavoidable.
|
| A big part of the problem was just that everyone was using
| Facebook for work all the time. So quite often, there would be
| some enormous thread arguing about whether X or Y was the right
| policy, was Trump violating the rules and should be kicked off
| Facebook, or was Facebook's anti-Trump policies violating
| freedom of speech, or was it racist for an employee to say they
| supported Trump during a meeting, etc etc.
|
| And you use the same interface for important things like,
| announcing hey this database service team is launching a new
| API next week, could you provide feedback on it. Type X of
| hardware is being deprecated next quarter. So you really have
| to be checking Facebook-for-work consistently for professional
| reasons. You have to scroll past the political debates all the
| time.
| mattm wrote:
| I was shocked when I learned that employees at Facebook use
| Facebook internally for work related discussions. Facebook is
| not built for that purpose.
| daok wrote:
| Yes. There are places where employees MUST go in these meetings
| that talk about social differences, inclusions, diversity, etc.
| dahart wrote:
| Everyone has to discuss diversity at work because there are
| laws prohibiting discrimination, that's a good thing. Not
| everyone has to discuss politics at work.
| stateofnounion wrote:
| > Everyone has to discuss diversity at work because there
| are laws prohibiting discrimination
|
| How are these two things causally connected in your mind?
| dahart wrote:
| Are you implying they're not connected, that
| discrimination and diversity are unrelated? Your wording
| makes it sound like some kind of political debate trap
| you're setting. FWIW, I'm uninterested in arguing here
| why and whether there should be such laws, or justifying
| efforts to prevent discrimination. The existence of these
| laws is a fact, and you're free to study the history and
| legal precedents for why they exist. Here's a generic but
| decent starting point:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination
| davidivadavid wrote:
| No. He's implying that the fact something is a law
| doesn't mean your employer should lecture you about it.
| dahart wrote:
| Why? Isn't making people aware of laws how you abide by
| them? The risk of not educating people and being caught
| ignoring abuses is fairly serious. Broadly speaking, some
| of the laws we're talking about are laws that
| specifically require making employees aware of their
| existence.
| ikiris wrote:
| I'd love it if there was a difference between the two
| again.
| dahart wrote:
| I think I know what you mean, and me too. But...
| mandatory diversity training at work is typically very
| bland, sticks to communicating what the rules are, and is
| very apolitical compared to forums, employee banter, or
| stuff you find on the news or Facebook or YouTube. Having
| been through a bunch of them at several companies, I
| wouldn't put them in the same camp as 'politics' at all.
| [deleted]
| jseliger wrote:
| It's interesting to watch companies rediscover the old rule
| about leaving politics and religion at the door.
| jjice wrote:
| It seems like it's slowly died over the past decade.
| Thankfully, my past two jobs were very work focused without
| much political involvement.
|
| However, I'm sure it's easier for my jobs since they were for
| a retail company and an engineering firm.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| When your company is the place the rest of the planet gather
| to discuss these very topics, it's not easy to not have to
| talk about them just in discussing what topics your platform
| is being used.
| munificent wrote:
| If a business wants its employees to leave politics at the
| door, _the business should too._ If Facebook is going to have
| departments for government affairs, public policy, and
| lobbying, then it is _entirely_ reasonable for employees to
| be politically active too.
|
| Otherwise, you're basically saying corporations should
| participate in the political process but individuals should
| not. And that's exactly how we got the Earth into the
| increasingly shitty state it is currently in.
| reader_mode wrote:
| That's a straw man argument, just because an employee isn't
| allowed to bring politics to work doesn't mean they can't
| be politically active on their own time.
| wmichelin wrote:
| Facebook is not your average workplace. If your platform is
| profiting off of active political misinformation, you have an
| obligation to not only discuss these issues, but solve them. If
| you determine that you can't solve them, it's time to stop
| accepting the money.
| jsabo wrote:
| That depends on if your existence is political I suppose. Ask
| some of your LGBT colleagues, especially trans colleagues, if
| they feel like can just leave politics at the door.
| chance_state wrote:
| If your very existence is so wrapped up in political and
| gender/sexuality issues that you can't stand not talking
| about them at work, maybe you're not emotionally prepared to
| join the workforce.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| I have worked with many LGBT colleagues who never bring up
| politics at work. This "existence is political" thing is just
| a bullshit phrase that the obnoxious people who can't go an
| hour without bringing that crap up use to justify it.
| samthecoy wrote:
| If you work for a large social network with huge social
| responsibilities, discussions about ethics _ought_ to be
| unavoidable, in my opinion.
|
| If you're writing accounting software for paper suppliers or
| something equally banal with few ethical implications, then
| sure, there's no need (and less reason) to have water cooler
| conversations about pro-genocide agitprop or whatever.
|
| EDIT to add that of course not all departments at Facebook make
| the sort of decisions that have a marked social impact. More
| referring to the content policy teams, and the news feed algo
| teams, and so on.
| toomim wrote:
| > If you work ... with huge social responsibilities,
| discussions about ethics ought to be unavoidable, in my
| opinion.
|
| The problem is distinguishing _ethics_ from _politics_. These
| are very hard to disentangle, because ethical values are
| usually based on some political orientation. And I don 't
| want Facebook to be making political decisions on my behalf,
| as a user. And I don't even want internal employee
| discussions to be derailed by political considerations.
|
| So how do you distinguish ethics from politics? I don't think
| it's possible, unless the company defines its own ethical
| values, a priori, and only considers those when making
| decisions.
|
| If you read the article, I think that this is precisely what
| Facebook's new policy is trying to do by putting a fence
| around "social issues."
| samthecoy wrote:
| Facebook must make political decisions, because it must
| have a stance on content moderation. Even if that stance is
| "we shouldn't moderate content", that is a political
| decision. All possible actions and inaction around content
| moderation require political decisions, and you can't be in
| the social media business without having a content
| moderation policy.
| t-writescode wrote:
| > because ethical values are usually based on some
| political orientation
|
| Are you sure that isn't exactly backwards? Because it
| definitely should be the other direction in my very strong
| opinion. One's morals or beliefs on ethics should inform
| their politics, not the other way around.
|
| One way is based around a person's inner being, the other
| is molding their being and stances based on a sports team.
| sigstoat wrote:
| one of you is describing the world as it is, and the
| other the world as you think it ought to be.
| t-writescode wrote:
| It's how I vote and how I encourage everyone to vote.
| accting_discrd wrote:
| I work for an accounting software mega-corp in silicon
| valley. Our CEO sends company wide emails regarding every
| notable social issue event. After the George Floyd murder
| we've been told we need to openly discuss racial issues at
| work. Managers have been told that they must have these
| conversations, since if they don't, employees may think that
| they don't care.
|
| The company's products are in no way social media platforms.
| wmf wrote:
| Maybe you can get some kind of settlement when it
| inevitably blows up.
| jgacook wrote:
| Generally I try and shy away from being too alarmist, but I am so
| disillusioned with the kind of tech worker HN's userbase seems to
| represent. I think it's a feckless attitude to think that working
| in one of the best-paid, global, most influential professions in
| the world right now means that your only obligation is to clock
| in on time, code whatever you're told to code, take no ownership
| of the effect your work may have on the general public and
| collect your fat paycheck at the end of the month.
|
| Why does it sound good to anyone that Facebook employees should
| be prevented from discussing the ethical implications of the
| product they sell their labor to create? Facebook complete lack
| of accountability - internal or governmental - has to date:
|
| - incited a genocide
| [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...]
|
| - provided a bias for right wing content in a American election
| year (and fired the employee who blew the whistle on it)
| [https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...]
|
| - exacerbated a global pandemic, indirectly causing 1000s of
| deaths, by not policing Covid misinformation
| [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/19/facebook-...]
|
| - is arguably a contributor to the global rise in
| authoritarianism
| [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/24/facebo...]
|
| and that's really just the tip of the iceberg. If you buy into
| the notion that Mark Zuckerberg is a nice man in a hoodie trying
| to run a business that his employees are tearing down with some
| radical agenda then I'm sorry, but how naive are you? Facebook
| has a track record of ignoring the consequences of what happens
| on their platform in order to continue profiting. It's not a
| mistake, it's the point.
|
| We should be cheering on tech workers challenging the ethics of
| the work they produce, not talking about how inconvenient it is
| for Facebook workers to start realizing how questionable the
| product they're building really is.
| wmf wrote:
| I'm convinced that discussing ethics or politics inside
| Facebook or Twitter will have literally zero effect. Employees
| should either quit or get back to work.
| jgacook wrote:
| Why are you convinced of that? Unionized protests frequently
| accomplish institutional change - why do you think Facebook
| or Twitter would be exempt? If anything a unionized tech
| force striking would have more bargaining power than other
| groups since they are educated, specialized, and
| difficult/expensive for either company to replace en masse.
| fivre wrote:
| We should indeed. I unfortunately don't know enough at Facebook
| well enough to have those conversations in person often, so
| internet will have to suffice.
|
| It's unfortunately very much in the interest of Facebook's
| leadership team to discourage it, however, as a clock in clock
| out, see and hear no evil labor culture is good for the
| leaders' personal wealth, so ethics be damned, number go up.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I think it's reasonable for someone working on, say, scaling
| the photo storage service to say that their work is apolitical
| and these debates aren't relevant to them. The performance
| characteristics of Facebook photos aren't going to incite a
| genocide or contribute to the global rise of authoritarianism.
| claudeganon wrote:
| I don't want to go all Godwin's law, but the "I was just
| scaling capacity for processing census punch cards" argument
| doesn't pan out very well, historically.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think this comparison works at all except through
| Godwin's law. Nobody argues that, say, Walmart store clerks
| bear personal moral responsibility for their company's
| decisions.
| jgacook wrote:
| Yes, and this is why nobody is going after, for example,
| Facebook HQ's janitorial staff for the moral
| responsibility of Facebook's actions. Their income
| remains static in spite of Facebook's quarterly profit so
| it would be unfair to accuse them of trading their ethics
| for an income.
|
| There is a fundamental difference when you're talking
| about a stock-owning, educated, in-demand software
| engineer, even if they are "just" working on scaling
| Facebook's image service. They have the institutional
| power at the company that they could leverage to change
| the product's outcomes, if they so desired.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There's a difference, but it still strikes me as
| unreasonable to say that all institutional power _must_
| be leveraged towards political ends. I do business with a
| lot of companies whose owners don 't agree with my
| politics, and I'd be unhappy to see them dedicate more of
| their institutional power towards fighting for things I
| don't want.
| jgacook wrote:
| Yes, but it's not a political end it's an ethical end.
| Facebook is being leveraged by political actors to cause
| harm in an unethical way - wanting to prevent this is not
| a political stance unless you believe that being
| apolitical is adopting some middle ground between
| America's Republican and Democrat parties, in which case
| considering ethics at all is a non-starter since both
| parties have shied away from imposing any kind of hard
| regulation on Facebook.
|
| Institutional power doesn't have to be leveraged towards
| political ends, but if you profit directly from an
| institution choosing unethical behavior in pursuit of
| profits then you are also behaving unethically. It's
| completely reasonable to apply that standard to the best-
| paid of Facebook's employees, just as it is completely
| reasonable for those employees to petition against
| committing more unethical behavior.
| itg wrote:
| Looks like tech companies are finding out there's a good reason
| so many older companies discouraged talk of politics, religion,
| etc.
| m0zg wrote:
| Good for them. I haven't worked at FB, but I can only assume
| they're similar to Google in this regard, maybe worse, since
| their workforce tends to be younger on average. Things were
| already getting pretty unbearable when I left Google years ago,
| and (according to people I know who still work there) have taken
| a turn for _much_ worse in 2016. When recruiters email, I
| politely decline, without specifying why, but this is largely
| why. I actually liked working there when it came to _work_, but
| the environment was extremely politicized and oppressive. No
| differences of opinion were tolerated at all. You'd immediately
| be ratted out to HR for a mere suggestion that someone is too
| aggressive/uncivil in enforcing the dogma on internal Google+.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/PdluY
| satya71 wrote:
| How about bringing the same rules to the wider FB? I just want to
| look at baby pictures and connect with friends. I don't want to
| be part of a machinery that spreads misinformation and conspiracy
| theories.
| kyleee wrote:
| Simple, just remove humans from the platform
| drchopchop wrote:
| I can't see how that is even possible at this point. You'd have
| to remove groups, pages, public profiles, and sharing, which
| would wreck the advertising and revenue ecosystem. Or, come up
| with magical AI which could detect
| politics/memes/disinformation and remove it instantly after
| it's been posted.
| quicklime wrote:
| I'm sure they could develop a classifier that would catch
| most (~90%) of political content, and make it opt-in - if
| people want to see it they can, but it could be hidden by
| default. This would be my preferred approach, so that I can
| use it for connecting with people but avoid listening to
| everyone's political outrage.
| londons_explore wrote:
| You could build this as a browser extension... Call it "de-
| politics", and have it scan the HTML of popular sites
| (facebook, twitter, etc) and simply collapse/hide all
| content matching some filter.
|
| I bet a simple keyword filter for names of politicians
| could catch 90%.
|
| I wonder if people would pay for it?
| lozaning wrote:
| If you take the time to set it up you can get close using
| https://www.fbpurity.com/ chrome plugin.
| davisr wrote:
| Ah, of course, censoring political discussion is the
| answer!
| gfodor wrote:
| Censoring is when an authority removes content without
| your consent. Installing something that lets you decide
| what content to see (or not see) on a site is not
| censorship.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > I'm sure they could develop a classifier that would catch
| most (~90%) of political content, and make it opt-in - if
| people want to see it they can, but it could be hidden by
| default. This would be my preferred approach, so that I can
| use it for connecting with people but avoid listening to
| everyone's political outrage.
|
| Eh, I don't really like that idea. For one, it only really
| addresses the problem of being exposed to content you find
| unenjoyable.
|
| Honestly, sometimes I do wonder if consumer-level broadcast
| technology is the psychic equivalent of doing something
| like letting everyone fly planes without any training. It
| might be better to adopt communication technologies with a
| little more friction.
| gfodor wrote:
| You could def make this not suck by just making it so
| facebook automatically 'tagged' content and users can
| filter out certain tags. Since it'd be public, users could
| decide for themselves if the tags are reasonable for their
| filtering needs. But they'll never do it, because ad
| conversion rates and engagement would likely drop
| significantly.
| saghm wrote:
| > You'd have to remove groups, pages, public profiles, and
| sharing
|
| Or they could just not show posts to groups you're not in and
| from pages and public profiles you don't follow! Allowing
| something to interject into your newsfeed should be opt-in,
| but right now it isn't even opt-out, except for not logging
| on at all. It would also be cool if there were a way to opt-
| out from seeing shared posts selectively for people on your
| friends list, e.g. I want to see things that Overly Political
| Relative posts themselves, but not things that they share
| from other places.
|
| That being said, I deactivated my Facebook account a couple
| years ago, so I'm no longer a user whose opinion they should
| theoretically care about anymore.
| lozaning wrote:
| I don't really use FB all that much these days, because the
| people I care to keep up with have largely moved on from
| it. But when i do log in, I get mostly the experience you
| want with the https://www.fbpurity.com/ chrome plugin I've
| spent the time to heavily customize.
|
| My timeline shows as strictly chronological, and only text
| and photos posted by my immediate friends. No groups, ads,
| publisher's bullshit, promoted things, no trending, no
| nothing. Just photos and plain text.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Agreed, except maybe with an option to filter out the baby
| pictures. I never want to see those. Becoming a parent made me
| want to see them even less (my child is the best and the
| prettiest and that's all I need). :).
| qppo wrote:
| I distinctly remember during the 2012 election, my friends
| began posting political materials extensively. Which makes
| sense because of the Obama campaign's unprecedented spend on
| social media.
|
| Pre-2012 Facebook was awesome. Now the feed is almost
| exclusively bullshit from people I don't know.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| And if someone even mentions the idea of creating exactly this
| service -- baby pictures and friends' contact information can
| be exported from Facebook and imported into such a service -- a
| torrent of HN commenters would decry "fail" before they even
| tried it. Tech bloggers and "journalists" would also inject
| doubt into the minds of their readers. To get to where you want
| to go, you would need to ignore the critics. To accomplish what
| you describe, there is no necessity that every user logs in to
| the same network. Each network would only need to contain
| family and friends. Connecting one network to another would be
| optional. You are not asking to be in a graph with the entire
| world, to be connected to total strangers. Yet that is
| precisely what FB is constantly trying to achieve. Every
| person's information collected in a single database controlled
| by a single entity. One "social" network for everyone. Hence
| you are connected to people and companies you do not know, who
| are not your friends or family. Your behaviour can be studied.
| The ads, marketing and misinformation can flow freely.
|
| (FB == Fish Bowl)
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Right, because all societal issues will just go away if we
| close our eyes and ignore them.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| In fairness, for alot of the people here it probably would
| vyhd wrote:
| It's more akin to "a virus is less likely to spread if fewer
| people are in contact with known carriers", a.k.a.
| deplatforming.
| ikiris wrote:
| We could call it Whitebook.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I'd give that about 10 minutes before someone started claiming
| that their baby was immune to covid, and then you're right back
| where you started.
| thrwn_frthr_awy wrote:
| But isn't that only happening because of FB allowing
| disinformation to spread so easily?
| dmpk2k wrote:
| How would you achieve that?
| dntrkv wrote:
| Curious how you think it's possible for FB to prevent the
| spread of disinformation? Everyone likes to pretend like
| Facebook has the ability to just stop disinformation, when
| in reality, even defining "disinformation" is basically
| impossible. Sure, you can bring up examples of blatant
| lies, but most of the effective disinformation is a lot
| more subtle and depends on what side of the issues you are
| on.
| thrwn_frthr_awy wrote:
| Facebook's algorithms exploit the brain's attractiveness
| to decisiveness. They've know this and have chosen not to
| take action, except for small amounts so Mark can tell
| congress they are improving things. Source
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-
| encourages-di...
|
| So besides straight up changing the algorithms to promote
| non-decisive content, these are a couple things I think
| could help:
|
| - Limit the spread of information in general in favor of
| content created by the people you follow
|
| - Un-personalize advertising
| dntrkv wrote:
| Facebook doesn't profit from divisiveness, they profit
| from engagement. The fact that divisive posts encourage
| more engagement tells me more about people in general,
| rather than Facebook's business model.
|
| > Limit the spread of information in general in favor of
| content created by the people you follow
|
| I don't think that's what people want from their social
| networks nowadays. FB, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok,
| Snapchat, etc all do not work this way anymore.
| Suggesting that Facebook revert their app to what it was
| 10 years ago is not a serious suggestion because there
| are many other apps that will fill that void. If it's not
| FB, another app will take its place and give people the
| outrage they're looking for.
|
| > Un-personalize advertising
|
| Advertising plays a very small part in this. Most of what
| you would call "disinformation" is spread through
| reposts, which are not affected by advertising.
|
| Sure, there might be some hostile actors out their
| spending money on pushing propaganda to the masses. But
| from my experience, people actively seek this nonsense
| out, the algorithms just make it easier for them to find
| it.
|
| In my eyes, the real problem is that most people aren't
| equipped with the right tools to identify bullshit.
| Simple things like an inability to gauge scale. e.g.
| "9,000,000 gallons of oil has been spilled from pipelines
| in the last 10 years" Is that a lot? I have no idea, but
| what I can do is compare that against other forms of oil
| transportation. Most people won't do that work though,
| they will go straight to outrage.
| thrwn_frthr_awy wrote:
| > I don't think that's what people want from their social
| networks nowadays. FB, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok,
| Snapchat, etc all do not work this way anymore.
|
| They don't work this way because it makes shareholder's
| the most money, not because it is the best experience for
| the user.
|
| > Advertising plays a very small part in this. Most of
| what you would call "disinformation" is spread through
| reposts, which are not affected by advertising.
|
| A completely false ad about a candidate of a different
| political party is much less likely to be called out or
| reported because it is only shown to a highly targeted
| group of people. This lack of accountability creates
| disinformation. These ads could not be ran as a billboard
| advertisement or in a non-personalized ad space.
|
| All of the counter arguments always come down to this:
| Facebook would make less money. And, yes, of course that
| is going to be the case because if any of these changes
| would make them more money they would have implemented
| them themselves. It requires a public corporation to
| accept that they are making the world a worse place, and
| to choose to make less money to stop doing that.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >All of the counter arguments always come down to this:
| Facebook would make less money. And, yes, of course that
| is going to be the case because if any of these changes
| would make them more money they would have implemented
| them themselves. It requires a public corporation to
| accept that they are making the world a worse place, and
| to choose to make less money to stop doing that.
|
| And it would also require them to make a product that
| people desire less, and risk losing to a competitor that
| gave people what they want. People want to cluster in
| silos, chase novelty, and spout off with 100% confidence
| about topics they know nothing about.
| zapita wrote:
| > _Facebook doesn 't profit from divisiveness, they
| profit from engagement. The fact that divisive posts
| encourage more engagement tells me more about people in
| general, rather than Facebook's business model._
|
| "Crack dealers don't profit from drug addiction, they
| profit from the pleasurable effects of consuming crack.
| The fact that very addictive drugs are pleasurable to
| consume tells me more about people in general, rather
| than crack dealer's business model."
| leetcrew wrote:
| there are a lot of pro-legalization folks on this forum
| that would likely be inclined to agree.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Yes, and I don't see crack dealers as the problem in your
| example. The bigger problem is how society views drugs,
| addiction, and the criminalization of both. We've all
| seen how well that's worked for us. Thinking we could
| apply similar bans on speech we don't agree with is just
| as stupid.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Doesn't HN have some sort of "flame war" prevention
| feature where people are automatically prevented from
| commenting/replying in rapid succession? Rate-limiting
| posts/sharing and comments on Facebook seems like a good
| place to start. Maybe it isn't necessary (and probably
| not possible) that we stop disinformation entirely so
| much as we slow it down.
| nindalf wrote:
| I have seen this question asked many times on such
| threads but have never seen a workable solution. Usually
| the response is something like "I'd shut the whole
| website down" or "I'd employ millions of moderators" or
| "I'd allow people to only post once a month" or "I would
| remove sharing links, only baby pictures allowed".
| Nothing practical. If you respond to any of these with
| examples of positive speech that would be harmed, there
| is no response. For example, if you curb political
| speech, people wouldn't be able to organise political
| protests. People wouldn't even agree on what should be
| considered 'political'. For example, is organising a BLM
| event political? Should it be allowed under the proposed
| rules?
|
| I'm happy to be proven wrong though. Maybe this is the
| thread where people will make practical suggestions.
| munificent wrote:
| What is "impractical" about "shut the whole website
| down"?
|
| When it was discovered that tetraethyl lead was
| widespread in the environment and caused neurological
| damage, it was banned. Yes, that materially harmed
| several chemical companies whose livelihood was based on
| producing tetraethyl lead.
|
| _So what?_
|
| If your business model harms people, I don't care if
| stopping harming people eliminates your business. People
| matter. Businesses do not.
|
| Are we supposed to just go, "Yeah, we know Facebook is
| harmful to millions, but won't someone think of the poor
| shareholders?" Then shrug and accept it?
| dntrkv wrote:
| Banning a harmful substance, and banning a platform for
| communication are not comparable.
|
| There is no shortage of sites that will take Facebook's
| place.
|
| What is the legislation you propose to prevent Facebook,
| or the millions of other existing or soon-to-be existing
| apps, from doing harm to people?
| munificent wrote:
| _> Banning a harmful substance, and banning a platform
| for communication are not comparable._
|
| OK, consider gambling. That is simply a kind of software
| that enables people to engage in behavior that turns out
| to be harmful for a large number of them. And, because of
| that fact, it is heavily regulated.
|
| _> What is the legislation you propose to prevent
| Facebook, or the millions of other existing or soon-to-be
| existing apps, from doing harm to people?_
|
| I don't know if we know what sort of regulations would
| help yet. But I do know that if we assume _a priori_ that
| corporations _cannot_ be forced to change their behavior
| because it might hurt the poor corporation, then we will
| never figure out the answer.
| nindalf wrote:
| Well that's all I'm asking for here. A practical
| proposal.
|
| Removing tetraethyl lead was certainly doable. Removing
| every car from the road was not. One was a targeted
| change that improved the industry, while the latter was
| so impractical that they never considered it.
|
| Here's a thought - you assume a priori that shutting down
| social media would be a net win. How did you come to that
| conclusion? Did you spare a thought for the people who's
| social lives revolve around spending time with friends
| online? You'd advocate for taking away these people's
| social networks because you're certain you know what's
| best for them?
| beamatronic wrote:
| Don't be friends with those people
| dylan604 wrote:
| To me, this is a valid response. If you can remember back
| when we as humans used to gather together in public places,
| we had lots of options on who we talked to at that
| gathering. If someone always talked about something you
| just didn't care about, you could walk away and talk to
| other people. People that you found yourself regularly
| talking to about things that everyone found pleasant were
| called friends. People you talked to occasionally were
| called acquaintances, and people you preferred not to talk
| to were called many things, but friend was not one of them.
| If some of your friends like the people you did not, they
| were called a friend of a friend but you would not refer to
| them as your friend.
|
| In Facebook, there are only "friends". So, if you don't
| like what they are always carrying on about, don't have
| them as a friend. Just like in real life.
| paganel wrote:
| > claiming that their baby was immune to covid
|
| Some people are indeed immune to covid, babies too, most
| probably. I've personally heard of numerous cases of persons
| not getting the virus at all while their spouse was in
| intensive therapy or worse.
| driverdan wrote:
| Not getting it is not the same thing as immune.
| paganel wrote:
| What is it, then?
|
| Later edit: To add to my comment, what do you call
| sleeping in the same bed, eating from the same plate and
| having direct physical contact with a person who gets the
| virus and ends up in IC or dead while the other person
| tests negative for the virus?
|
| Let's not forget that ever since February we've all known
| that this virus is particularly easy to transmit/get, so
| you cannot say "that person got really lucky, that's why
| he/she hasn't got it".
| ideals wrote:
| You have no scientific evidence to support your claims.
| Take your L and stop spreading misinformation.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| My wife had the cold once and I didn't get it. Must mean
| I'm immune to the common cold.
| paganel wrote:
| Yes, you were probably immune to that particular cold
| strain. Or you weren't in close contact with your wife
| during that timeframe, but that wasn't the case for the
| persons I've written about.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Totally this, I get having ads injected into the home
| timeline(gotta keep the lights on!), but inundating people's
| feeds with 'publisher's stories' showing them news that is
| blatantly false/overly negative/polarizing and just not wanted
| for a vast majority of people.
| Kattywumpus wrote:
| > I don't want to be part of a machinery that spreads
| misinformation and conspiracy theories.
|
| You're swearing off the internet entirely?
| Talanes wrote:
| Internet? I can get all of that from the dude sitting in a
| wheelchair outside my coffee shop. (Pre-Covid, at least. Hope
| he's doing okay.)
| Kiro wrote:
| People use Facebook for different reasons. I use it for Groups
| and to follow artists but definitely not to see baby pictures.
| sevilo wrote:
| I wonder what happened... the early days of FB you're still
| somewhat close to your friend circle and therefore most of the
| content were personal updates. At then at some point Facebook
| started suggested links, posts that you have not explicitly
| followed, news articles that may or may not have been verified.
| Now every time I check the comments under such posts, it's
| people arguing with each other, and then people share and
| spread whatever they see from these suggested posts looking to
| confirm their existing beliefs even more strongly. And then
| people for some reason started believing they "own" the right
| to write whatever they desire on their wall, and it's a
| platform for spreading their political opinions.
|
| Just less than 10 years ago, it would've been considered very
| rude to push your religious or political opinions on to others,
| especially when it's a professional setting it would've been
| considered highly unprofessional. But nowadays that line
| doesn't seem to exist anymore.
| beamatronic wrote:
| I want an option to pay a yearly or monthly fee, that lets them
| still make money, but also protect my privacy.
| taftster wrote:
| Ha ha ha, they make too much money on you to allow that.
| Protecting your privacy can't happen at the platform end,
| because of the nature of the network itself. And there would
| be too few people that would pay for this feature, it would
| limit their ability to grow. Which is ultimately what it's
| about; the stock price.
| throwaway423342 wrote:
| It would hurt engagement.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| This is a copy/pasta of a previous post of mine, but I feel
| it's very fitting here.
|
| Why would they give up control of the world by doing something
| silly like that? Think about how much political influence
| Twitter has based solely on which tweets they show the
| President and corporate press. Consider how much untraced in-
| kind donations these companies can make by tweaking which news
| stories you see. The crazy thing about it is these things can
| be tweaked by humans, but it's largely controlled by AI now,
| which no one person will completely understand what's happening
| in any of these systems. We're in the early stages of AI
| controlling the global political future and it will tend to
| create whatever kind of future generates the most clicks. It's
| kind of like the game Universal Paperclips, except with
| clicks/rage/ads.
| wmf wrote:
| Google's similar policy change leaked yesterday:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/google-content-moderation-in...
| teddyh wrote:
| From a cursory reading it does not really sound similar; it
| sounds like Google is picking a side and doubling down on it.
| The description of the Facebook policy, on the other hand,
| _suggests_ that Facebook are trying to suppress the drama, not
| picking a side in it.
| drewcoo wrote:
| How has it worked at tabloid newspapers for longer than I care to
| remember? Same problem. This is not about tech.
| fgrtr3terwy wrote:
| Facebook wants their employees to stop talking about politics,
| even though Facebook by its nature takes stances on deeply
| political topics. How exactly do you avoid political discussion
| when you're asking what constitutes hate speech, whether a US
| president should be allowed to violate Facebook's content
| guidelines, or to what extent governments can spread
| misinformation in other countries?
|
| If you work at Facebook, your work directly or indirectly
| supports Facebook's political decisions. Facebook just doesn't
| want you to talk about it. Because Mark and the executives make
| the decisions, and you're just supposed to follow orders. This is
| how it works at many other companies. But for a long time,
| Facebook was able to recruit people to work their by promising
| that they could 'change the world' and 'make a difference.'
|
| Side note: One of Facebook's board members apparently enjoys the
| company of white supremacists.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24444704 Will Facebook
| employees be allowed to talk about that? If you work at Facebook,
| how do you feel about that?
| pesenti wrote:
| Facebook employee here. You can definitely continue talking
| about any company business or decisions, even if they have
| political relevance, as you did before. This change only
| applies to discussions completely unrelated to work.
| gilrain wrote:
| Sure. You don't boil the frog all at once.
| cltby wrote:
| > How exactly do you avoid political discussion when you're
| asking what constitutes hate speech, whether a US president
| should be allowed to violate Facebook's content guidelines, or
| to what extent governments can spread misinformation in other
| countries?
|
| These issues are not part of your job description. You were
| hired to write Javascript, not to set corporate strategy. Sit
| in your seat, content yourself with the $500K/yr you're being
| paid by your betters, and refrain from sharing with everyone
| else your facile moralism.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| No one is forced to work for Facebook.
| skj wrote:
| Betters, haha
| jgacook wrote:
| Well put!
|
| My parents are very much of the "no politics at work"
| generation and I really question why that cultural strain has
| carried itself into 2020 since it only serves company board
| members/executives and categorizes rank and file employees as
| automaton code monkeys who should "shut up and type".
|
| Armchair thought: in this odd period of history where,
| ostensibly, capitalism "won" as the political system of choice
| and "the end of history" was declared we have entered an
| alarming stage of hyper-capitalism mixed with growing
| discontent/civil unrest. More than ever there seems to be a
| breathless determination by upper-middle class professionals to
| not rock the boat in any way in the hopes that these mega-
| corporations will continue to prop up the stock market, pay out
| outrageous salaries, and keep the gravy train running. It's a
| kind of cognitive dissonance where we can see how much damage
| the big players in tech are wreaking on global society -
| there's ample evidence - but to recognize and face it would
| sully the deeply held ideal that tech is some kind of great,
| benevolent force in our society (more cynically: confronting it
| would also mean confronting that fact that we as tech workers
| have ethical responsibilities to society at large that we have
| at best ignored, at worst defied).
|
| Practically, it's not. Yes, you can catch up on how your
| cousin's new baby is doing, but you can't disentangle that from
| the extremist propaganda, disinformation, and real harm that
| these platforms incur by leveraging human psychology against
| us. Taking the view that ethics and work are separate silos is
| hopelessly naive. Almost every profession requires constant
| awareness and ethics in order to be a benevolent force:
| doctors, lawyers, builders, scuba gear manufacturers, car
| designers all have a responsibility to their end user and I
| can't see how tech is any different. I doubt people would react
| the same way if this were GM instead of Facebook and their
| employees were up in arms after learning the car they had been
| designing and building had a track record of blowing up and
| killing people.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| "Curb" here doesn't seem to mean "ban". What Facebook wants is
| for employees to avoid the totalizing view of politics you're
| describing, where political discussion needs to occur in all
| places at all times and declaring a "no politics zone"
| constitutes taking a side.
| Talanes wrote:
| They can be a "no politics zone" when they agree to "no
| politics money."
| elliekelly wrote:
| And that's an entirely reasonable stance for management to
| take at most companies. But not facebook. They've
| deliberately tailored the platform to be a monetized
| political outrage machine. Its like ESPN announcing they plan
| to "curb" sports talk in the office.
| heartbeats wrote:
| Don't get high off your own supply.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| If Yankees and Red Sox fans regularly got into shouting
| matches on the ESPN software development mailing lists, I
| expect they'd be told to knock it off, and I wouldn't see
| that as a contradiction of the idea that sports is
| important.
| elliekelly wrote:
| You're right. Then again ESPN doesn't bend over backwards
| to constantly bombard viewers with content that will sow
| division and hate between franchises so I'd imagine it's
| less likely to be a recurring issue.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Even so, in the grand scheme of things sports is utterly
| inconsequential, politics isn't.
|
| If your team won the Super Bowl or your nation took home
| a lot of gold at the Olympics, how does that affect you
| materially?
| [deleted]
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The reason to avoid political discussions is that they're
| often as toxic as the worst sports arguments, not that
| the underlying topics don't matter. No matter how
| important the underlying issue is, having my coworkers
| call each other nasty names won't resolve it.
| hartator wrote:
| > Facebook by its nature takes stances on deeply political
| topics
|
| I use Facebook to say in touch with old friends. If they want
| to share last Tucker's video, not sure why FB should block them
| if I don't block them.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Imagine if it wasn't a Fox News talking head, but an
| incendiary video built on falsehoods being spread to incite
| violence - or what if it's 2011 again and ISIS beheading
| videos are being shared and supposing the evidence showed
| they were _causing_ ISIS recruitment to increase?
| hartator wrote:
| I would still have a proper judge made a decision than
| Facebook. I can easily block people that share BS on
| Facebook but I don't want Facebook to make that decision
| for me. That overrides my own choice to follow them in the
| first place.
| heartbeats wrote:
| That should be OK. If my friend wants to send it to me, why
| shouldn't he be allowed to?
| xamuel wrote:
| >Facebook by its nature takes stances on deeply political
| topics.
|
| Why is that "by its nature"? I don't think that's "by its
| nature" at all. Phone companies and ISPs facilitate
| communication between people, but that doesn't necessitate they
| take political stances on what communication to allow. Why
| should Facebook? If certain language should be restricted, then
| laws should be written restricting said language and Facebook
| should comply with those laws. Nothing about Facebook's nature
| forces them to go beyond that and act as de facto language
| legislators.
| nraynaud wrote:
| facebook decides how many feeds each post appear on. it's a
| not a broadcast system, they dampen the spread with an active
| decision.
| Talanes wrote:
| I cannot say something into one end of the telephone, and
| depending on the content of my message, not have it delivered
| on the other end. That's the difference.
| hartator wrote:
| Some govs cut off your phone if you say certain keywords.
| heartbeats wrote:
| Which?
| [deleted]
| alwayseasy wrote:
| They do take a stance on what can be amplified through ads or
| not. Hence its political nature.
| okintheory wrote:
| At various points in time, Facebook has made it possible to
| target political ads toward based on your known interest in
| pseudoscience or antisemitism [1]. Giving access to this
| degree of targeting (even if the categories are
| algorithmically generated) is inherently political.
|
| [1] https://www.getrevue.co/profile/themarkup/issues/probing-
| fac...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nbzx wrote:
| But Facebook does take a stance, no? As an example, they
| probably have used their platforms to show pro-LGTB
| propaganda (I haven't checked). That shows a clear political
| leaning in their staff.
| skj wrote:
| Being pro "treating people with basic human dignity" should
| not be a political stance, but here we are.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Perhaps this demonstrates why facebook is fundamentally
| different from an isp.
|
| Facebook doesn't "facilitate" communication in the same way a
| computer "facilitates" communication. It facilitates
| communication in the same way that a forum or book club or
| group of people facilitates communication. Groups require
| some moderation to remain popular. Facebook is driven to
| moderate by the market.
| t-writescode wrote:
| > Phone companies and ISPs facilitate communication between
| people, but that doesn't necessitate they take political
| stances on what communication to allow
|
| Taking a stance to _not_ control what communication is
| allowed is a very political stance. It just so happens that,
| I believe in those cases, it 's also a legally mandated
| stance; but, if it weren't a legally mandated stance, it
| would absolutely be a political stance, whatever they ended
| up saying.
|
| Where a _private company_ decides to limit free speech (or
| not limit free speech) is, 100%, a political stance when the
| laws have not been written that make that decision for them.
|
| Even if we maintain a law around protecting companies that
| just host other people's content vs curating and publishing
| content, it could be seen as a political decision whether a
| given website and company choose to be on the publisher vs
| public content stance.
|
| I'm forgetting the word for publisher vs ... whatever it is
| where they take no responsibility for what people post on the
| site; but I hope my point is clear.
| novok wrote:
| In these debates, people seem to pretend that if facebook
| or others don't stay politically neutral as possible
| premptively, that pissed off politicians will not do it for
| them, badly, in hundreds of countries. It's why social
| media companies have the kid gloves with politically
| powerful people.
|
| A segment of social media company staff also don't like
| that reality and want their social to censor the political
| parties / discussions they don't like and thus they toe the
| line and give unsatisfying non-answers at all hands and to
| the media.
| ponker wrote:
| This is why the cloud flare CEO has lobbied for regulation
| that takes these decisions off his hands.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| > Taking a stance to _not_ control what communication is
| allowed is a very political stance.
|
| Then in your model of the world, how would one _not_ take a
| political stance?
|
| If _everyone_ takes a political stance in your model by
| definition no matter what their intents or actions are then
| it 's a rather useless definition.
| r00fus wrote:
| Neither an ISP nor phone company has a feed algorithm or spam
| prevention* as a central part of its operations.
|
| These are key to the usability of any social network. And
| they are inherently biased. Any such organization also has to
| take money, so ads are also key to their operations, and they
| have taken political stands on ads too.
|
| The attempted comparison to utility companies is not
| compelling.
|
| * arguably they do now by limiting "scam calls"
| lacker wrote:
| _How exactly do you avoid political discussion when you 're
| asking what constitutes hate speech_
|
| Just like any corporate decision, you have a small number of
| people who are relevant to making the decision, and they
| discuss among themselves. It isn't productive to have 10,000
| people who are all angry if Facebook doesn't make the decision
| their way, and they each spend an hour complaining about it on
| Facebook, while claiming that they're doing work because
| they're discussing a corporate decision.
| cyrux004 wrote:
| Make that official them. Remove the BS "culture at FB" about
| being open and inclusive and your opinion matters stuff both
| internally and externally
| anonymousab wrote:
| >How exactly do you avoid political discussion when you're
| asking what constitutes hate speech, whether a US president
| should be allowed to violate Facebook's content guidelines, or
| to what extent governments can spread misinformation in other
| countries?
|
| Probably gotta just do what Mark thinks is right and, should
| that not be clear, guess what he would think is right. And
| suffer the consequences yourself should you guess wrong.
| iron0013 wrote:
| How is this different from silencing employee objections to
| unethical corporate practices? It's not merely "talking politics
| at work" to point out that, for example, your company's practices
| are helping a political party steal an election. That's an
| ethical concern, not a political one.
| paganel wrote:
| > your company's practices are helping a political party steal
| an election
|
| Nobody is stealing anything, as the rules are set right now
| influencing public opinion through media channels is not seen
| as "stealing". If the powers that be were to physically alter
| the votes and the voting process that would be another
| discussion, but almost everything presented in the media is
| fair game.
| ponker wrote:
| Very glad to work somewhere where people just don't talk politics
| or anything serious at work. I have kids and I don't want to risk
| my job over saying the wrong thing. I don't need you to be my
| partner in discovering myself, let's just discuss our work, the
| weather, and the local sportsball results.
| hirundo wrote:
| If we were to discuss politics at work at any length we would be
| at immediate risk of losing valuable people. We all pretty much
| know where we stand on politics, and it is not together. And many
| of us feel very strongly about our irreconcilable positions. But
| by carefully not talking about them (or engaging when someone
| less in tune starts) we get along just fine. That's not official
| policy but it is a good one.
| benjohnson wrote:
| Our small company has a "No drama" policy. We have an
| astounding diverse team and we've learned to appreciate each
| other.
| beefalo wrote:
| political views !== who you think deserves human rights
| gfodor wrote:
| And this is the reason things have changed so much:
|
| Step 1: first, identify truly evil people (like self-avowed
| white supremacists)
|
| Step 2: find a unfalsifable or weak method to associate non-
| evil people with the evil ones.
|
| Step 3: once this method becomes part of the zeitguist, infer
| the association implies agreement.
|
| Step 4: once agreement is assumed when stating the
| association, imply the person's agreement is in the realm of
| intolerance or hatred.
|
| Step 5: once a person is assumed to have hateful or
| intolerant beliefs due to the association, 'intolerance of
| intolerance' kicks in and it's no longer considered ethical
| to do anything other than push that person out of the public
| sphere, or, as this comment does, claim they are not free to
| hold their beliefs quietly. (despite the fact, of course,
| that these beliefs aren't the ones they have, but the ones
| projected onto them via the tactics of the previous steps.)
|
| Through this mechanism you can pull anyone you want into the
| realm of being cancellable or ostricized, once you find a
| suitable associative vector. The vectors being used today are
| quite weak, such as being seen in a photograph with someone,
| sharing news from a website of a particular political slant,
| or even using a specific phrase.
| christophilus wrote:
| Yup. This is worthy of a top comment. That's exactly how it
| works. Things will never get better if everyone keeps
| ostracizing people they disagree with. My family is
| Republican, Libertarian, and Democrat. No greens yet, but
| it wouldn't surprise me. We have great conversations and no
| one thinks anyone is Hitler or Pol Pot. I really hope the
| current zeitgeist dies a quick death.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| Some of my family is conservative and extremely racist
| towards Mexicans & Blacks, and are 100% fine alienating a
| lot of us out of allegiance to trump.
|
| I'm jealous of you and angry at the rise of unabashed
| white supremacy in my circles
| gbpz wrote:
| People fall for it. It's horrid, but smart from a tactical
| perspective.
|
| I wonder if there are resources on creating divisions. It's
| a very interesting social science topic.
| [deleted]
| peterlk wrote:
| This is exactly the argument for privacy. Privacy is about
| agreed lines because we know that there are some places where
| we just won't get along. The "if you have nothing to hide"
| argument assumes that you want to see the things that I'm
| hiding. In this case, people are hiding their political
| affiliation (or at least their explicitly expressed opinions)
| because we know that if it was shared, all of our lives would
| be harder.
| PunchTornado wrote:
| People shouldn't be forced to join in political debates in the
| workplace. If you're not interested, you should be able to avoid
| climate change, racism, hate speech debates.
| [deleted]
| pklausler wrote:
| I completely agree with your first sentence, but would not
| characterize any of your examples in your second as being
| inherently political as opposed to having been needlessly
| politicized.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Good. More companies should move this way rather than the other.
| throwitawayfb wrote:
| I've just been given an offer from Facebook and I have a few days
| to decide to take the job or not. The ethical implications of
| what I'm doing are intense. On one hand, a near 400k total comp
| package is very nice, but on the other hand I don't want to make
| the world worse off. I think if I could make that kind of money
| working from home for another company it'd be an easier decision.
| Unfortunately, I have to play the hand I'm dealt.
| trhway wrote:
| Don't sell yourself that cheap, ask for 600k. Once you get it,
| your doubts will magically go away.
| bendoernberg wrote:
| How much less would you make working at another, less evil
| company?
| [deleted]
| fivre wrote:
| I've made attempts to reach out to some of my old friends there
| on the T&S team in light of some evidence really blatant Russian
| agitprop thriving and finding an audience there. Between this and
| the Zhang memo, however, it looks quite doubtful that I'd be able
| to do much more than reconnect and share a rather depressing
| lunch as they explain that their hands are tied because of
| executive will.
|
| The IRA and/or its successors or friends appear to have taken the
| same approach as Russian security services have with the rash of
| targeted murders in Europe, with a "this totally isn't our doing,
| but anyone slightly educated on the subject will recognize our
| hand, because we want them to be aware that it's us and we don't
| actually mind people knowing" wink wink nudge nudge threadbare
| veneer of disclaiming responsibility.
|
| Normally, I wouldn't really care: the 2016 stuff everyone made a
| fuss about on social media was largely ineffective and at best
| served as a smokescreen to distract from their very successful
| actions outside social media--Buff Bernie is a lasting meme
| treasure and nothing more. This go 'round, however, they've
| apparently learned from their mistakes, and I'm seeing.evidence
| that personal friends _are_ receiving and and are influenced by
| their messaging.
|
| I thankfully haven't really had to watch any family or friends
| succumb to the Fox News media poison, and thought my social
| circles largely insulated from that sort of problem, but I was
| apparently quite wrong--right about _what_ wouldn't influence
| people, but blind to the idea that other actors would follow the
| same model and create content that _would_ suck in their target
| audience.
|
| https://twitter.com/evelyndouek is a good source of reporting
| about Facebook and other social media cos' continued lackluster
| attempts to stand up potemkin independent review bodies, if you
| want more info on the space and can stomach more disheartening
| news.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...they 've apparently learned from their mistakes..._
|
| So the dastardly Russkies _didn 't_ intend that Trump be
| elected? Someone tell Rachel Maddow! This changes everything!
| fivre wrote:
| They didn't, oddly enough! They were as surprised at the
| outcome as most everyone else was, and had more intended to
| put the expected Clinton presidency off on a bad foot. https:
| //www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-a... is
| fairly on the mark about their goals then and now.
|
| American coverage on their efforts was by and large terrible,
| at least from major outlets. Focused analyst coverage in the
| space has been a lot more nuanced, but nobody's reading that
| without an existing personal or professional interest.
|
| The other half of that analyst coverage is that they rapidly
| became quite tired of Maddow and friends hammering on a very
| simple narrative that missed the point, but was very
| effective at achieving its actual goal, keeping consumers of
| major media on the left-of-center end of the American
| political spectrum engaged in their content and bringing in
| continued advertiser money. That tiredness is relegated to
| water cooler discussion on Twitter, however, so it's not
| going to shape major outlet coverage much.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Thanks for the link; that seems like a nice summary. I
| appreciated the warnings about "loose talk" "despite a lack
| of evidence to justify such", but this lampshade is the
| size of a tent and swallows the whole article. Jack Cable
| described real things that could be verified and don't
| contradict facts we already know. That was good stuff, but
| everything else seems exactly like loose talk without
| justifying evidence. Basing the argument for "Russians
| hacked Hillary's campaign" on the Podesta emails, for one
| thing, is problematic. Although we're warned " _the
| Russians have grown adept at tailoring bespoke messages
| that could ensnare even the most vigilant target. Emails
| arrive from a phony address that looks as if it belongs to
| a friend or colleague, but has one letter omitted._ ", in
| reality the phish that got Podesta was totally generic. [0]
| There are probably a million people around the world who
| could have executed this phish. I think _I_ could have done
| it, if I 'd had the inclination.
|
| That's about the extent of the claims that can actually be
| checked by the reader. Of the rest, I certainly agree with
| the warnings about poor security for voting machines and
| other election infrastructure, but that's been a
| commonplace on HN for a decade, and the most salient if by
| no means the most egregious example this cycle, the Iowa
| Primary, is totally dismissed. Also in other parts of the
| article we're assured without any sort of proof that no one
| hacked a voting machine in 2016. Can we be so sure? The
| narrative walks a narrow path. The Russians did bad things
| but not catastrophically terrible things (i.e. they
| prepared to discredit the election on social media but
| didn't change the results). Voting machines should be more
| secure but let's not even mention requirements for open
| code and hardware audits (about which I've been writing my
| legislators for many years). Federal efforts on election
| security since Trump took office have been paltry but
| everything before that was great. Did Goldilocks write
| this? Was she the confidential source who provided most of
| the information without attribution?
|
| I'm glad that normal neoliberal Democrats will finally
| distance themselves from the Maddow noise, but I would have
| preferred actual progress by this date rather than just
| "yeah sorry we went loopy for 3.5 years". I'd also like
| some indication that the next president, whether he takes
| office in January or four years later, will do anything at
| all to make voting more secure and more accessible to
| citizens. As it is, I just expect more attacks on the First
| Amendment. News media firms won't complain; as you observe
| they're banking fat stacks with Trump to kick around.
|
| [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-phishing-email-that-
| hacked-...
| cltby wrote:
| How terrifying that sneaky Russians are able to effect
| arbitrary social change by just throwing $100k of FB ads at the
| problem! I thought I was a moderately intelligent and well-
| informed person, but after reading your comment, I now
| understand that no amount of reason or self-awareness can
| protect me from miniscule amounts of ad spend by foreign spies.
| fivre wrote:
| The point is that they're well-educated themselves,
| persistent, and capable of learning from their mistakes.
| Earlier attempts were childishly bad. The contemporary ones
| are better-crafted, and may not be reaching you--I don't know
| you and can't speak to that--but they are reaching people I
| know and care about.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Weird that an outspoken free speech advocate like Mark Zuckerberg
| would want to limit the speech of his employees.
| kurthr wrote:
| Especially since they presumably use FB for internal
| discussions... Why not use the same (weak) moderation
| mechanisms everyone else has? Not like you can avoid politics
| on your regular feed.
|
| I guess he realizes they don't work.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| It seems far easier to police the 50,000 people you write
| checks to, than a billion users.
| fatnoah wrote:
| AFAIK, Facebook is not used for internal discussions. Unlike
| the Facebook we all have, there are no controls to block
| users, flag posts as "see fewer like this", etc. I've used
| those to great effect and see zero political content on my FB
| feed.
| ugh123 wrote:
| I think the point is that employees that are taking advantage
| of free speech within the workplace are forcing others into the
| debate unwillingly, and this is causing strife and resentment.
|
| I applaud the move.
| sg47 wrote:
| Just like miscreants are taking advantage of free speech by
| spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories on FB the
| platform?
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Forcing others into debate and spreading conspiracy
| theories are two different matters. The former impinges on
| the basic freedom of speech and association for other
| people, while the latter affects no one's freedoms. The
| former is a matter of principle, the latter is a subjective
| judgement.
| sg47 wrote:
| Where's the proof that others are being forced into
| debate?
| pjc50 wrote:
| "Forcing"? Is there actual force involved, or is it just more
| speech?
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you are at work in an open floor plan just trying to do
| your job while some of your co-workers are carrying on
| about whatever, you are pretty much forced to have to
| listen to it. You are now no longer achieving 100% of what
| you could be doing because your brain is distracted. That's
| before you even attempt to participate.
| ianmobbs wrote:
| Facebook has been remote for most of the year and will
| continue to be remote until next summer, so this is
| clearly not the case here since this decision is coming
| now.
| derwiki wrote:
| Is that to say, it's less of a problem in companies where
| there are no open floor plans? Or where everyone is
| working remotely?
| mhoad wrote:
| I just got done reading this[1] and it's becoming harder and
| harder believe the idea that Facebook is just pro "free
| speech". Their actions aren't meeting their words at all.
|
| [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-09-17/facebook-
| ...
| compiler-guy wrote:
| All but the most strident and radical free-speechers support
| time, place, and manner restrictions.
| pjc50 wrote:
| If Facebook doesn't want to talk politics, it should stop making
| political donations to PACs.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Interesting to see young companies fall into line. There is a
| reason it is against norms to talk about these things in most
| companies, because it causes undo conflict usually far outside of
| the context of what is being worked on.
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