[HN Gopher] Facebook says it was wrong to ban Canadian MP's Chri...
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Facebook says it was wrong to ban Canadian MP's Christmas message
Author : smsm42
Score : 136 points
Date : 2021-12-23 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reclaimthenet.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (reclaimthenet.org)
| freitasm wrote:
| No one is going to comment on the website hosting this story?
|
| While not disupting the story itself, perhaps linking to a non-
| partisan source would've been best.
| munk-a wrote:
| The site is definitely quite sketchy looking - but this article
| is fine and perfectly reasonable so I don't know if we really
| need to comment on the website itself. If the website were
| adding unnecessary spin then maybe it'd be of note but it
| didn't.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| It is always correct to consider the source of any message.
|
| The mere truth of a _statement_ is often not even 50% of the
| _message_ since every statement is framed and the frame is
| highly manipulable.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Do you have an objective source that confirms that truth is
| actually a 50/50 ratio between message and framing? Where
| did you hear that from?
|
| The truth of a statement is somewhat subjective but it's
| not helpful to be pedantic.
|
| I understand that authoritative media sources often frame
| stories in abhorrent ways and I have tuned out the media in
| general as a result. However, if I hear a plausible,
| factual statement from even a source I abhor, I can filter
| through the framing to find the truth in the statement. In
| today's world, I think it's an essential skill.
|
| Did Facebook accidentally ban an innocuous message? Seems
| plausible. Is Facebook known to engage in arbitrary
| flagging of content? Yes. Does this speak to the
| problematic nature of algorithmic fact-checking and
| moderation, a general theme of our era? Yes. Then it's
| worth discussing and it doesn't matter what source brought
| it to our attention.
| gnabgib wrote:
| Perhaps this one is better? https://nationalpost.com/news/mp-
| mark-strahls-merry-christma...
|
| You can find a link from his main website[0] to his
| instagram[1] and twitter[2] posts mentioning the issue, but
| given the context they're perhaps bad choices
|
| [0]: https://www.markstrahl.com/new-page/ [1]:
| https://www.instagram.com/markstrahlmp/ [2]:
| https://twitter.com/markstrahl
| [deleted]
| john_moscow wrote:
| Here's a twit from the MP himself if you don't believe it:
| https://twitter.com/markstrahl/status/1473394902390222850
|
| That said, I don't think there are many non-partisan sources
| left. The shift from paid physical issues limited by the
| physical page count to limitless online space with free access
| killed it. Each source now tries to generate as much low-
| quality clickbait as possible, and predictably picks topics
| that would resonate well with their audience's confirmation
| bias, turning a blind eye on anything outside the picture.
|
| This applies to both sides of the political spectrum. "Left"
| sources won't publish anything criticizing censorship, "right"
| sources won't say anything against Trump. If you want an
| objective picture, you need to piece it yourself from both
| sides.
| smsm42 wrote:
| If you're not disputing the story itself - then what exactly is
| the problem? If you don't like the rest of the content on the
| site, nobody forces you to read it - and unlike many other
| sites, this one is pretty clean and doesn't bother the reader
| with a ton of irrelevant ads. I think refusing to read any site
| that is not part of your ideological bubble is a big mistake.
| Everybody has their opinions, if they're not deliberately lying
| to you, it's completely fine to listen to them and make your
| own conclusions, even if you end up disagreeing with their
| opinions.
| walrus01 wrote:
| The website hosting this appears to be basically the same idea
| as Newsmax or Breitbart. Not exactly actual journalism.
|
| Also, the MP in question is quite far right, and is well known
| for things like the following:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=mark+stra...
| jaywalk wrote:
| Do you have any issues with the article itself, or are you
| only interested in attacking the website and the subject of
| the article?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| What exactly is the problem with this site? Political flamewar
| is offtopic, and your comment reads as "this is a conservative
| news outlet, so watch out."
|
| I was curious and clicked around. The site recommends using DDG
| as a search engine. There was a time that this wasn't a fringe
| idea.
|
| Either the story is true and fairly represented, or it's false
| or misleading. If it's the latter, it's best to point it out.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > What exactly is the problem with this site?
|
| it appears to have a large number of articles on it about how
| terrible "vaccine passports" are and how they're an
| outragious infringement on civil rights, so it's verging into
| outright coronavirus conspiracy stuff that contradicts
| factual science and reality.
|
| as "alternative" social networks, linked from an index page
| off its home page, it also recommends well known far-
| right/alt-right/fascist hangouts gab, parler and mewe.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| So in your opinion, merely opposing vaccine passports is
| "conspiracy theory stuff that contradicts factual science
| and reality"?
| walrus01 wrote:
| yes, because the spread of coronavirus by unvaccinated
| persons in groups in indoor spaces is a scientific fact.
| additionally, the hospitalization rate and death rate for
| unvaccinated persons vs vaccinated persons. and further,
| the severity of case and death outcome rate per capita of
| infections for breakthrough-of-vaccinated persons with
| covid19 in hospital, vs same per capita of unvaccinated
| persons in hospital.
| smsm42 wrote:
| The spread of coronavirus by vaccinated persons in groups
| in indoor spaces is a scientific fact too. So what? The
| debate is not about that, it's about whether prescribing
| certain medical procedure by state coercion, and limiting
| the civil rights of persons who choose not to undergo
| this procedure is a proper policy and whether the laws of
| the land allow the government to do that.
|
| It's a legitimate debate which has nothing to do with
| "conspiracies" - you don't need any conspiracies to find
| reasonable argument on both sides of the debate. If you
| don't like the side that that particular site is on and
| disagree with their arguments - fine, but that doesn't
| mean they are lying about other factual things (they are
| not). There's a huge distance between disagreeing and
| refusing to even listen to other side's arguments, and
| even worse - refusing to listen to anything from somebody
| that once had an opinion you disagree with - this is no
| way for a society to function.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| None of which has got anything at all to do with vaccine
| passports.
| walrus01 wrote:
| the logical conclusion would be that effective existence,
| enforcement and peoples' cooperation with vaccine
| passports will prevent unvaccinated persons from
| gathering in groups indoors and further spreading
| covid19, so the relevance is quite clear.
| veeti wrote:
| The actual conclusion from European countries such as the
| Netherlands, Finland, etc. is that vaccine passports are
| not sufficient to cull the spread or reduce load on the
| healthcare system. Back to lockdowns it is.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Putting everybody in solitary confinement would also
| prevent persons from gathering in groups and further
| spreading covid19. Obviously, nobody (so far) is
| advocating this. So you can appreciate the difference
| between measuring a policy only on single metric of
| efficiency, and comprehensively weighting overall costs
| and benefits. Not every efficient policy is legal, moral
| or acceptable.
| qaq wrote:
| Why ? Something can be good for certain outcome e.g.
| reduce infection rate, hospitalization rate and yet
| infringe on civil rights. Those are orthogonal concerns.
| choward wrote:
| I find it ironic that you're trying to censor the site
| that's calling out censorship merely because they have a
| few things you disagree with.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I don't recall where I said they should be censored,
| they're sure free to run an http daemon and publish
| whatever the heck they want. Other persons such as myself
| are also free to disparage them and disregard what they
| publish.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| My local scientists said masks did nothing (then licked
| their lips to turn a page). I kept on wearing my N95 mask.
|
| Then I was told that the vent made the N95 ineffective.
| Obviously wrong, I was certainly protected, and as a source
| control compared to folks wearing thin mesh or surgical
| masks (usually with nose out) no doubt far more reliable.
| Scientists wrong again.
|
| Then I was told we couldn't go to to three mile beach with
| my children (deserted at 9AM when we went even during non-
| covid times). This had an ocean breeze onshore, huge
| quantities of fresh air (and sun). Supposedly it was safer
| to crowd into a grocery store with others. Count me
| skeptical again.
|
| Then we are told that only the CDC can test for COVID.
| Count me skeptical.
|
| Then we are told that antibody tests need to have full
| computer connected to an iphone and pay for a medical
| consult to use at home. Seriously? This great threat, and
| you can't do a test like a pregnancy strip at home?
| Thankfully they are backing off this now - scientists wrong
| again.
|
| We are told that inflation is transitory, it's just
| misinformation that it might stick around a bit.
|
| After the administration goes out of its way to block
| fossil fuel production in the US, they announce an
| investigation of oil companies for failing to keep prices
| low. Again, these are the "experts" in markets at the FTC.
|
| If these scientists demanding vaccine passports spent even
| a FRACTION of the trillions put into this COVID (now
| Omicron) stuff between lockdowns and interventions into
| something as simple as healthy diet, exercise and
| socialization - what would be the outcomes?
|
| I'm vaxed and boosted, but the blind obedience to these
| "scientists" and "experts" is totally ridiculous,
| especially the non-hard science epidemiologists - is
| absolutely silly.
|
| I would not count this as their shining moment. Half the
| time the politicians ordering us off the beaches are
| squeezed in rooms with their staff and lobbyists hatching
| another political effort of one sort or another.
|
| The words "misinformation" have become a near joke.
| e0a74c wrote:
| > The site recommends using DDG as a search engine. There was
| a time that this wasn't a fringe idea.
|
| Is that considered fringe now? Has it been appropriated by
| some radicalized group in the US?
| jaywalk wrote:
| Distrusting massive corporations is a far-right opinion
| now, apparently.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| The brainwash the powerful social media companies have
| done to the masses in the last 10 years it is a thing of
| beauty. Criminal and immoral beauty.
|
| Now supporting Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, behemoths
| which represent the excess of capitalism is considered
| hip, cool and progressive.
| e0a74c wrote:
| > Now supporting Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, behemoths
| which represent the excess of capitalism is considered
| hip, cool and progressive.
|
| Isn't that great though? If it's now hip and cool, even
| the dumb/vain people will do the right thing (albeit for
| the wrong reasons) which should ultimately strengthen the
| alternatives to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| If you are too big, you should be broken up
| khazhoux wrote:
| In what way was the incorrect algorithmic take-down of the MP's
| Christmas message due to the size of FB?
| josephcsible wrote:
| If Facebook were forcibly broken into several federated
| social networks, then ones that kept making "mistakes" like
| this one would lose all of their users to ones that didn't.
| khazhoux wrote:
| If DOJ broke up FB, it would be split along business units.
| There is no possible outcome in which the core FB product
| would be split into "several federated social networks,"
| which is a different technology and business altogether.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| The 'censorship' narrative is wrong and tired. FB/Meta has no
| obligation to carry your speech. Thank God, FB/Meta is not the
| government and can administer their privately owned systems any
| way they want and you do not have to like that. You do not have
| to use FB/Meta.
| dahfizz wrote:
| To be pedantic, Facebook definitely does have the capability of
| censorship:
|
| > Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that
| are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in
| imposing their personal political or moral values on others.
| Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as
| private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is
| unconstitutional.[1]
|
| Facebook has enough power over communication at large to
| effectively suppress speech should they choose. Censorship does
| not have to be perpetrated by governments. Hence the terms
| self-censorship and corporate-censorship[2].
|
| What people really mean when they talk about censorship is
| first amendment rights. Here, you are correct. The first
| amendment protects against government censorship only - nothing
| Facebook does could infringe your first amendment rights.
|
| [1] https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| And what of Facebooks own rights? Why would your rights come
| before Facebook's rights?
| josephcsible wrote:
| If you think Facebook is supposed to have rights, then are
| you also okay with the Citizens United decision? The answer
| to whether companies should have the same rights as people
| should just be "yes" or "no", not "well, yes when it
| benefits me but no when it doesn't".
| jaywalk wrote:
| Facebook enjoys vast legal protections that (arguably)
| preclude them from this type of censorship. They are
| constantly fighting to make sure that (arguably) doesn't
| start to turn into something more concrete.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I was making a very pedantic argument. It can
| simultaneously be true that Facebook is guilty of
| censorship, and they are in the legal / moral right by
| doing so. I have complex feelings on the topic, but that
| most accurately describes my position.
|
| I'm not saying Facebook is infringing my rights (I
| explicitly meant to say the opposite). But I do feel
| strongly that they are guilty of censorship, in the literal
| sense.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > It can simultaneously be true that Facebook is guilty
| of censorship, and they are in the legal / moral right by
| doing so.
|
| They might be in the legal right, sure. But you're
| _never_ in the moral right if you 're guilty of
| censorship.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > The first amendment protects against government censorship
| only - nothing Facebook does could infringe your first
| amendment rights.
|
| This is true, but remember that there's a lot of terrible
| things that the Constitution doesn't prohibit, e.g., murder.
| The fact that something isn't Constitutionally prohibited
| doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a law against it.
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| > _What people really mean when they talk about censorship is
| first amendment rights._
|
| I don't agree. The snarky and smug _" nuh uh, cuz it wasn't
| the government"_ responses [often maliciously] _assume_ that
| complaints about censorship are talking about the first
| amendment, but I think people are generally aware that
| censorship can come from corporations too and their concerns
| are not limited to apparent violations of the first amendment
| specifically but are concerned with the more general
| _principle_ of free speech (which predates the first
| amendment.)
| donny2018 wrote:
| I'm curious what happens when a number of public speech
| monopolies align their interests with certain political
| group and implicitly blend with the government. I guess
| this theoretical situation is totally legal, doesn't break
| any amendments, but it kind of smells strange.
| throwoutway wrote:
| And this is what is slowly happening
| tomohawk wrote:
| In the 1960s, certain restaurants and other establishments
| argued that they were private, and could choose who was allowed
| to enter and do business there.
|
| They were making the same mistake you are - arguing that they
| were not obligated to be even handed and non-discriminatory in
| the services they offered.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| And you don't have to read our comments where we share our
| anger at Facebook/Meta.
|
| Surely you don't think corporations can't be criticised?
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Criticize all you want. But be prepared for criticism of your
| own argument too.
|
| FB is completely within the law to manage their own platform.
| If you don't like the law then change it. Maybe your comments
| are misplaced.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Nobody is saying what Facebook did is illegal. We are
| simply saying that this is an obvious case of bad
| censorship, in a long line of facebook being a subpar
| censor, and that you should re-evaluate if you as a person
| want to do business with facebook because they will simply
| take down your posts wrongfully with no real appeals
| process unless you are famous.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I don't use Facebook, which is maybe why I don't care how
| they manage their service and also why it seems clear to
| me that there are other social media platforms, other web
| sites, I could make my own web site, hell I could send
| letters in the mail. Suffice to say a single message
| being deleted on Facebook is not censorship of the
| individual that had this issue.
| LocalH wrote:
| It is censorship, though. Not government censorship, but don't
| you think that one day in the future, once these non-government
| censorship systems are in place, that a corrupt or evil
| government could abuse those systems and make them defacto
| government censorship systems (we're already partway down the
| slope with things like CSAM and copyright monitoring, although
| the former is especially heinous and so censorship of that type
| of content is desired).
|
| Not every provider of user-generated content should have to
| abide by these rules, because the damage that can be done by a
| relatively small forum or website is usually minimal (although
| see sites like Kiwi Farms that may not technically _directly_
| encourage harassment but where it is nonetheless often
| perpetrated by sadistic individuals who participate in their
| forums), whereas the damage that can be done by a Facebook or a
| Google is much, _much_ greater.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| >Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication,
| or other information. This may be done on the basis that such
| material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or
| "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments,
| private institutions and other controlling bodies. Governments
| and private organizations may engage in censorship.
|
| There is nothing that presupposes that the entity has the
| obligation to carry your message. Just that the entity removes
| your message on the grounds that they do not like the material.
|
| This comes up every time someone mentions that X(a private
| party) censors something. Yes, X is not the government. Yes, it
| is still censorship. If undertaken by the entity on it's own,
| it may not be illegal. If the entity had government influence
| in it's decision, than it may be.
|
| There are some here that argue that the status quo is fine and
| others that argue that we need to change our laws and
| regulations to protect individuals from more privet enterprise
| censorship. That is where the debate is, not whether or not
| censorship exists.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Did you even read the article?
| gpm wrote:
| The comment you replied to seems like a direct reply to the
| article to me, which starts with the first quote below and
| goes on to quote the politician saying the second one ....
|
| > If you're tired of censorship, cancel culture, and the
| erosion of civil liberties subscribe to Reclaim The Net.
|
| > this is a glaring example of censorship and overreach by
| tech giant companies who control so much of the online
| space."
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >If you're tired of censorship, cancel culture, and the
| erosion of civil liberties subscribe to Reclaim The Net.
|
| That's the website slogan, not part of the article.
|
| If Facebook reversed the decision, it's not censorship.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > That's the website slogan, not part of the article.
|
| Yes.
|
| > If Facebook reversed the decision, it's not censorship.
|
| Maybe if they reversed it with a time machine.
| swlp21 wrote:
| I'm struggling to understand your reasoning :
|
| > If Facebook reversed the decision, it's not censorship.
|
| Using a different example, I wanted to eat in a local
| restaurant [a privately owned company providing a public
| service entirely on their own terms] but I was refused
| entry because I am black and their "policies" [which is
| the reason I am given] prohibit entry to black people. I
| call attention to the situation by standing outside with
| a placard saying this restaurant treated me in a
| discriminatory way because I am black. The restaurant
| manager then comes to me and says, sorry that was a
| mistake caused by the 'patron classifier' [i.e. some
| vague entity that implies no actual person is at fault
| anywhere], and I can come in now.
|
| So, do I understand correctly that you would say the
| restaurant is not operating any type of discriminatory
| policy because it reversed the decision when attention
| was publicly drawn to it?
|
| To me, that reasoning does not seem to make sense. Being
| embarrassed into changing a decision does not stop your
| original decision being wrong in the first place. It
| simply means you want to stop attention being drawn to it
| and hope I will stop making a fuss if you make an
| exception for me on this occasion. You can continue
| making that same [wrong] decision for everyone else that
| is unable to complain and draw attention to their plight.
| avhon1 wrote:
| What makes you think annoyingnoob didn't read the article?
| The MP in the article, Mark Strahl, is quoted referring to
| this as "a glaring example of censorship", and annoyingnoob
| appears to be saying that "censorship" is not the right
| framework in which to criticize Facebook's actions.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| If it's a mistake that Facebook reversed, it's not
| censorship.
| smsm42 wrote:
| One does not exclude the other. FB tried to censor him,
| but turned out it wasn't what they wanted to censor, so
| they removed the censorship. That happened because their
| censorship mechanisms are highly automated and very badly
| trained, so they have a huge amount of false positives.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Oddly enough, your comment appears word for word in the HN
| guidelines:
|
| > _Please don 't comment on whether someone read an article.
| "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be
| shortened to "The article mentions that."_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| fsflover wrote:
| > You do not have to use FB/Meta.
|
| Unfortunately there is a so-called "network effect", which
| prevents quitting for many users.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| There are laws that _do_ impose obligations on some privately
| owned systems regarding speech they must or must not carry.
| Being "privately owned" is not an exception to these laws in
| the US, let alone other jurisdictions.
|
| Regardless, rightful censorship is still accurately described
| as such.
|
| And, this doesn't seem to be a story about censorship, IMO,
| because it was clearly accidental. It's a story about bad ML.
| dnissley wrote:
| Yeah, but this narrative is just as wrong and tired as the
| 'censorship' one. Companies are not obligated to carry your
| speech on their platforms, but we can and should be able to
| have a conversation about whether or not their methods of
| moderation are sound / reasonable.
| gillytech wrote:
| No you're wrong. Section 230 determines a publisher from a
| platform based on what they host on their service. If they
| pick and choose what goes on their service they are a
| publisher and lose their section 230 immunity. So it's not
| true that they can "do whatever they want."
|
| And they do engage in censorship. See "Laptop from Hell" by
| Miranda Devine
| TheFreim wrote:
| It clearly is censorship, it just happens to be legal
| censorship.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| 1) It's still censorship, even if it's not government
| censorship. The word applies.
|
| 2) It's perfectly fair, and a good idea, to call out a thing as
| bad even if it's legal.
| dheera wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| Starting about a month ago FB changed all their algorithms
| and a lot of independent artists are seeing 50%+ reductions
| in engagement across Instagram and Facebook.
|
| I have artistic hobby pursuits and can confirm. Many times
| I'll post a piece of work and my friends won't even see it in
| their feeds because FB is gatekeeping content between artists
| and voluntary followers now, in favor of "influencer" content
| from cash-cow accounts that don't produce any art of their
| own.
|
| It's sickening to say the least. Yes it's legal _as of now_
| but we should really be having a discussion about whether it
| should be okay to have a non-transparent gatekeeping
| algorithm between people who mutually chose to follow each
| other.
|
| Personally I'd prefer that if if someone voluntarily follows
| someone, they should have a legal obligation to not hinder
| any communication. That person chose to subscribe, and they
| can choose to unsubscribe at any time. What they are doing is
| tantamount to the USPS paging through your magazine
| subscriptions and trashing some of them as the mailman feels
| that day.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| It's crappy clearly, but I guess I am skeptical that it'd
| be easy to fix with regulation, at least it'd certainly
| take some very careful legislating to reign in. I suspect
| it would founder on pretty much the same problem we started
| with, FB's lawyers would say "we need to make money off
| this circus Your Honor, so of course we stacked the deck;
| if these rubes don't like it, they can always switch to
| Ello, it's a free country."
| gillytech wrote:
| Might be easier if we repeal their section 230
| protections and then put the top FB/Meta brass in jail
| for fraud. It would never happen but imposing this kind
| of accountability will definitely make the power drunk
| tech elites think twice.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| If you can make Facebook say things you want them to say, can
| Facebook make you say things that Facebook wants to say?
|
| Why does your speech come before Facebook's speech on
| Facebook's private platform?
|
| Is auto-block a single post really censorship? Did they block
| everything from this person? Did they stop this person from
| similar speech elsewhere?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| The job of roman Censors was to supervise public morality. The
| term censorship is appropriate
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"FB/Meta has no obligation to carry your speech"
|
| Why not? I believe it should, given its size. The phone company
| has an obligation to carry my speech. Net Neutrality would
| require ISPs to carry speech. There are a whole host of things
| the government can compel "privately owned" systems/companies
| to do.
|
| In these kinds of discussions, scale matters. There is a big
| difference between compelling a company with a billion+ users
| to act as a platform and forcing a small business to do the
| same.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| "Mistakenly"
| gillytech wrote:
| There was a solution to all of this created back in the '90s.
| It's called Section 230. It says that platforms that host content
| aren't legally responsible for what people post on it. If the
| platform picks and chooses what goes on its platform then it's a
| publisher, not a platform. Thus it loses it's Section 230
| immunity.
|
| So Facebook either goes one way or the other but it can't have
| both.
|
| Also, it seems that they are 100% ok with anti-white racism and
| anti-Christian bigotry (as in banning a Christmas message) so
| their own policies are not equally distributed socially.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| > There was a solution to all of this created back in the '90s.
| It's called Section 230. It says that platforms that host
| content aren't legally responsible for what people post on it.
| If the platform picks and chooses what goes on its platform
| then it's a publisher, not a platform. Thus it loses it's
| Section 230 immunity.
|
| Wow that would be way to clean and beautiful of an solution to
| be an option nowadays
| pjc50 wrote:
| Campaigning that Facebook should not be allowed to remove porn
| or spam is a non-starter. And at most s230 is going to apply to
| the US, not to Canada.
|
| > platform picks and chooses what goes on its platform
|
| That means _everything_ , not just the corner cases.
| userbinator wrote:
| _And at most s230 is going to apply to the US, not to
| Canada._
|
| Facebook is an American company.
| waynecochran wrote:
| I wish everybody here a "Merry Christmas" celebrating the birth
| of Jesus Christ our God and Savior.
| eesmith wrote:
| On this day, Thor's Day, I wish everyone here a "Merry
| Christmas" celebrating the Yule season. How appropriate to have
| our saturnalia on Saturn's Day this year!
| masterof0 wrote:
| > our God and Savior *your God and Savior
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Funny thing about the plural first person pronouns
| (we/us/our): it can mean several different things:
|
| 1. Me and them
|
| 2. Me and you
|
| 3. Me and you and them
|
| Your comment makes sense if GP meant 2 or 3, but if GP meant
| 1 then you're each saying the same thing (well, if you'll let
| your version be a plural second person, anyhow).
| smsm42 wrote:
| Some languages do have different pronouns for that, but
| unfortunately Indo-European languages lack this capability.
| It is called "clusivity". Outside IE languages, it seems to
| be a pretty common thing.
| masterof0 wrote:
| Oh no, you are right, I was just pointing out that jeezuz
| is not my lord nor my savior.
| new_guy wrote:
| > "Sometimes our automated review systems get things wrong."
|
| And by 'automated review systems' they mean non-English speaking
| slave labourers in a third world sh*t hole getting paid pennies
| per day.
|
| It's time for people to just stop using them, it's literally just
| a website and not even a very good one.
|
| There's competitors out there with a hundred times the
| functionality and usability.
| josephcsible wrote:
| "Just don't use it" doesn't apply to things with a network
| effect.
| sebow wrote:
| This would have been a mistake if it was facebook's first rodeo,
| it's not.
|
| For the last couple of years anything that used to be "Merry
| Christmas" was actively suppresed on mainstream social
| networks.Replaced with Happy holidays, whatever.A company
| adjusting this is fine,obviously(you don't have to repeatedly
| wish happy X, you just do it one time), however in the case of
| individuals where it's more common that a person only says Merry
| Christmas/Happy hanukkah/etc, we've repeatedly seen that such
| messages get "lost".Again, it's not a mistake, but then again if
| you point out that facebook actively engages in this behavior
| through leaked documents, nobody bats an eye.
| walrus01 wrote:
| [deleted]
| john_moscow wrote:
| There's a fairly rational psychological explanation to it. When
| people cannot achieve a certain goal for a while, they convince
| themselves that the goal is not worth it, or tainted in some
| way.
|
| Christmas has been traditionally associated with family, kids,
| happiness, seeing retired grandparents, etc. All these things
| have been sliding out of reach for the middle class with no
| reversal in sight. So this creates tension against people that
| can still afford it, and a perception that these goals are
| unfair and should not be pursued.
|
| This is to be expected - it's not like the journalists writing
| the politically correct articles, HR people defining acceptable
| language, or moderators deciding on what gets approved are paid
| enough to afford what used to be a regular middle-class life 2
| decades ago. So they rebel against it by trying to stigmatize
| it in the way they can.
|
| And it's not like you can blame them either - the human brain
| is very adaptive at picking goals and means. If you take
| personal prosperity through hard work out of question, people
| will find other goals to pursue, it's just they will be much
| more divisive...
| CactusOnFire wrote:
| This seems like an awfully abstract theory.
|
| I think it's simpler to say that "Merry Christmas" vs "Happy
| Holidays" has become this point of contention because Merry
| Christmas only applies to Christians, whereas Happy Holidays
| does not.
|
| The divisive, bi-partisan nature of American politics has
| just turned this small distinction into a fight.
| driverdan wrote:
| [citation needed]
| smsm42 wrote:
| This year, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah are almost a
| month apart (Hanukkah started on Nov 28th). So you'd have to
| either have Merry Christmas in November, or do it twice anyway
| :)
| josephcsible wrote:
| Or you could say Happy Hanukkah at first and then switch to
| Merry Christmas once Hanukkah is over.
| walrus01 wrote:
| based on the dates that retailers put out all the christmas
| stuff immediately after halloween, it's apparent that
| christmas has already gone retrograde by date far into
| november already...
|
| there's stores around here with their whole aisle of
| valentines day candy, gifts, red heart balloons etc already
| stocked.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| A Jewish couple that I'm friends with takes a pragmatic
| approach to this: they celebrate Hanukkah _and_ Christmas!
| hunter2_ wrote:
| It's possible that content-based suppression happens, but it's
| also possible that the genericized phrase organically generates
| more engagement by virtue of it being likeable to way more
| people. If all your followers celebrate the same holiday then
| it should be a wash but if huge chunks don't then it's purely
| the numbers doing their thing. Even some who celebrate the
| mentioned holiday might find the message exclusionary enough to
| not engage (a woke feedback loop, you could say), further
| burying it.
| simplestats wrote:
| I don't think they're talking about just getting the most
| likes, or whatever but rather censorship via shadow-banning
| or outright deleting posts. I have seen it happen, and
| suspect there are those that work to "poison" the algorithms
| to get them to shadow ban the political side the hacker
| doesn't like.
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| I agree entirely with your point, but I'd take it one step
| further. Christmas for a lot of people (even those that do
| celebrate) can be a very depressing and lonely time of the
| year, even more so in these post covid times. I prefer a
| generic "happy holidays" as it applies to more people, though
| I've moved onto "happy solstice - the days are finally
| getting longer (or about to)". I think that's a little bit of
| positivity that it's actually worth reminding people of.
| userbinator wrote:
| Do you have some sources for further reading? That sounds
| disturbingly Orwellian.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I don't like how those tin foil hats I used to laugh at were
| just ahead of their time. Your TV spying on you or your phone
| apps waging war against Christmas ...
| iammru wrote:
| All AI algorightms are "biased" by definition but FB biases are
| too extreme. The best thing for FB is to be broken up.
| walrus01 wrote:
| "conservatives getting upset about the end results of a free
| market and actions taken by private enterprise"
| jfibron wrote:
| iammru wrote:
| Not only conversatives. Liberals are also upset about
| vaccines misinformation, election fraud, etc. My point is
| that you have to 'train' the AI models somehow. FB introduces
| its own 'biases' on those models. They admitted this
| 'mistake' only because it affected a Canadian MP, otherwise I
| don't think they would have this for you or I. Their
| 'discrimation' policies are too broad for an automated
| system. FB exhorts too much power over information.
| spunker540 wrote:
| OP's point was probably that liberals upset about free
| markets is expected, while conservatives upset about free
| markets is rather more ironic
| LadyCailin wrote:
| I think the point they're highlighting is that this is a
| "free market success story". The private company did what
| it wanted (automated moderation), and ultimately the
| removed post got reinstated anyways.
|
| Meaning it's hypocritical of conservatives to be offended
| by this. Liberals are less for unregulated free markets, so
| it isn't hypocritical of liberals to be for regulation or
| whatever to prevent private companies from doing this or
| that.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > FB biases are too extreme. The best thing for FB is to be
| broken up.
|
| That's a _non sequitur_. Breaking up FB will not de-bias "the
| algorithm". We'd have one company doing VR, one doing phone
| calls, one doing image sharing, and finally a company running
| the old social network with the exact same recommendation and
| content-moderation system.
| gillytech wrote:
| ... and one Zuckerberg controlling all of them.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Exactly. I don't understand how forcing a spin off of
| Instagram or however you want to organize the breakup
| resolves any of the problems HN has with FB.
|
| Instagram would still be run by the same people, owned by the
| same people, and run with largely the same goals (profit,
| expansion, etc...)
| iammru wrote:
| You'll have a Metaverse company controlling what you
| experience based on your social network and all your
| preferences.
| thathndude wrote:
| I share a similar sentiment/observation. I am OK with the world
| where the occasional mistake occurs with algorithms. But when
| things like this continually happen with Facebook algorithm, it
| feels as though they are trying to outsource too much but
| should involve humans to computers.
|
| In short, their tools tend to be overly restrictive, airing on
| the side of rejecting. I'm not sure thats right
| josephcsible wrote:
| If he weren't well-known enough for this to be news, there's a
| good chance this "mistake" would never have been corrected.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Strahl is well known in the metro Vancouver area / Fraser
| Valley as one of the furthest-right MPs in the Conservative
| party. His home riding is the same as the bible belt.
|
| It also happens to have the greatest number of "PPC" (far-
| right/fringe political party with no seats) supporters in the
| Vancouver/Lower Mainland area.
|
| If he were an American politician, he would be Sam Brownback,
| Rick Santorum or similar.
|
| I think this is a case of somebody looking to dramatize their
| plight as an "oppressed" conservative Christian minority.
| cure wrote:
| Maybe the FB algorithm takes past posts into account? His
| account has probably been a fountain of misinformation and
| hate, and now he sends one innocuous message and is surprised
| it gets blocked. Yawn.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I think what you're looking for is called "social score"
| and the place you're looking for where they do things this
| way is China.
| sorenn111 wrote:
| I mean, this is not a good look from Facebook for the
| "oppressed conservative Christian minority" to be a false
| narrative.
| walrus01 wrote:
| rightbyte wrote:
| I don't see the hypocrisy.
|
| If I watch a bad movie and tell my friends it was bad
| they wont say "it is their right to make bad movies why
| do you want to ban it".
|
| You can be anti-gov intervention and still complain about
| stuff to warn others.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I wouldn't cite this as an example of "oppression", but it's
| certainly a prominent egg on Facebook's collective face. With
| their resources, one would think they could make a model do
| better than label "Merry Christmas" as "discriminatory
| message". Unless they just don't care - and then conservative
| Christian minority has a valid basis for complaints.
| userbinator wrote:
| This is one instance of someone with a clear political
| affiliation; the question is whether it would happen to someone
| on the other side, or with little discernable political
| affiliation.
| warent wrote:
| Facebook sucks and I never use them. That being said, Facebook
| moderators who manually review reports are routinely
| traumatized and diagnosed with PTSD, and Facebook catches fire
| for that.
|
| So I don't see how this can go both ways. How can we ask
| Facebook to automate this system and flame them for it not
| being thorough enough, and then simultaneously flame them for
| implementing the thorough system of human review? As much as
| the company sucks, this seems like a no win scenario that isn't
| fair even to a reasonable company.
| rocqua wrote:
| Might there be an option of 'put money down, demand a review
| before arbitrage, get your money back if you win' solution?
|
| The money should filter out spammers. The price should cover
| the actual costs to defend against DOS. The biggest issue
| would be that bad actors could get insight into how Facebook
| detects. But maybe more openness here would be good!
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| I feel like scammers would just put in stolen credit cards,
| then FB would get hit with fraudulent charges.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| I don't think this should be automated, but I also think
| there aren't enough resources provided for moderation. It's a
| thankless job that requires supporting resources (like
| therapy). However, it's treated purely as a cost-center to
| optimize.
| mulmen wrote:
| Sounds like Facebook is more trouble than it's worth.
| rapind wrote:
| Sounds like an unsustainable business model. Why should we
| care? Set the rules / laws that are good for society at large
| and let them figure out how to make a profit or fail IMO.
|
| When it comes to big tech I keep seeing people try to solve
| their problems for them. We should just legislate. If they
| can't make it work someone else will fill the gaps.
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