4 ms·

I don't get why this is such an issue. I understand the sheer numbers of people that use fb and get their 'news' from it, but it amazes me that people are shock

I don't get why this is such an issue. I understand the sheer numbers of people that use fb and get their 'news' from it, but it amazes me that people are shocked that fb censors the content. Facebook never claimed to be a news organization nor part of the 5th estate (which, pretty much doesn't exist). So that being the case, I would never expect fb to be a partner for democracy. Just because some recent revolutions were helped by fb and twitter doesn't mean that these for profit corporations are for freedom of expression and 1st amendment rights. People need to remember this whenever they post something on these sites. Especially since they outright claim to own the content (last time I checked).

cloudjacker 10y ago
> Just because some recent revolutions were helped by fb and twitter doesn't mean that these for profit corporations are for freedom of expression and 1st amendment rights. They aren't illogically petitioning the government to force them to stop censoring, they are making the public service announcement at other private corporations and may actually be successful in getting the private corporation to stop censoring. It was successful a few days ago with Napalm girl, so why stop there.
sp332 10y ago
They were pretty loud about being a source of news. Don't forget the Paper app they cancelled. They even encourage news sources to host their articles on Facebook. https://media.fb.com/2015/05/12/instantarticles/ https://media.fb.com/2015/05/12/instantarticles/
dmix 10y ago
Free speech rights are limited to government intervention, for good reason. The only question from a free-market perspective is whether or not Facebook has provided the tools to self-censor the content you get in your social network, much like HN where you can downvote/flag content that is inappropriate or of questionable quality [1]. That would downplay the monopolistic side effects of not having a competitor to go to if you're not happy with Facebook's strict censoring rules. [1] I should note Facebook already does provide lots of ways to filter people from your feed without unfriending them if you don't like what they post.
axlee 10y ago
I think the issue raised here is that Facebook censors content according to rules based entirely on American values, while parading as some sort of global organization, "connecting the world" type-of-thing. What is morally acceptable to see on a feed for an American is not the same for a Norwegian, a Japanese or a Sudanese. The author mentions sexuality/nudity content here, which is a blatant cultural difference between Europe and the US, but there are so many more regional variations among the hundred of countries where Facebook operates. Facebook is definitely entitled to censor content as they see fit, but we are also entitled to criticize their policy. Here, it seems that the main criticism is the americano-centric view of what is inadequate content. Maybe Facebook should look into developing local content rules instead of relying on a guideline written in California by Californians for Californians?
- alistairSH 10y ago
  Maybe Facebook should look into developing local content rules instead of relying on a guideline written in California by Californians for Californians? How would such a thing work? Would a user register as a resident of a particular country? Or, IP-based checks of location? I'm a Scot living in America, with Dutch friends - do I see the US, UK, or Euro content? Does the content I see (on the same feed) change based on which country I happen to be in today?
  - axlee 10y ago
    I think a location-based policy at the time of posting is sensible. That's also how international law work: if I smoke a joint in Amsterdam, I am not liable for it back home. When in Rome... I also think that the policy should apply to the poster, not to the viewers. What makes our world great is its wide range of cultures, and we should not isolate ourselves in little silos. Conversely, we should not allow a single culture to dictate to everybody else what is acceptable or not. To be fair, I don't think any policy is necessary besides moderating and reporting illegal content. But since Facebook seems quite inclined to go the extra mile to make its platform less offensive, I think this would be a good compromise.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
Normally I'd agree with you, but Facebook have absolutely been positioning itself as a news source. They even publicly talk/gloat (as they should) about how Facebook was used to disseminate information during the Arab Spring. So they really can't have it both ways. If they want to be a source of news, they're going to get flack if they hide stories, even if it was done by an algorithm. And all of us here know that Facebook is a private company and they can do anything they want, but for the majority of people that use the Internet, Facebook and Google are the Internet to them. So for a lot of people, this feels like Facebook is "censoring the Internet."
anexprogrammer 10y ago
That seems, to me, to miss the point. No one is surprised a private company censors content, it's the cultural homogenisation on a global service that can grate, even though it's no surprise. A global service that tries very hard to be the global platform for everything, including news publication (that may have been unsuccessful). No surprise after many years of this most people's networks are on Facebook. No doubt to an American some of the things I, as a Brit, think and do will be plain weird yet Brits are quite close compared to some nations. For all us outsiders, FB (and other US sites) and US attitudes to nudity and violence are, well, interesting. Usually just amusing, sometimes it can be annoying like in the case of this globally famous photo. Don't forget none of us foreigners have a first amendment or rights under it - so that's not even relevant to us. It wouldn't be that hard to have regional appropriate guidelines for censorship, acceptable behaviour and what have you. Then Americans could have American mores, Norwegians theirs, and we can be confused, amused or fascinated when something goes viral enough to overlap. I'd like to preserve more of the global differences - it's what makes the world interesting. We might find others do some things better.
- RevHaze 10y ago
  You say it wouldn't be that hard to have regional guidelines, but that seems like an incredibly difficult thing to do. Even within a country you can have strongly divided opinions on what's appropriate or inappropriate to be hosted on social media, now not only do you need some way to document these (including refining them as norms change), but you also need to implement a system that can "know it when it sees it" so to speak and filter on the fly. That's either going to be a large number of humans filtering the content more-or-less by hand (already got FB into trouble when the humans filtered stories they didn't agree with) or build an automatic screening process that can make the appropriate decisions on the edge cases, which would be difficult to say the least. Additionally, you run into the problem that many social groups overlap. How many German users need to be friends with a French user before they're covered in the same filter? What about an American vs Iranian? Ultimately you need some way to decide how to break ties and at the moment they're all breaking on the side of the US because that's where FB is based. Unless that changes, I don't see a shift to fragment what's considered acceptable on the platform.
- 10y ago
laurent123456 10y ago
Exactly, when we use Facebook, we basically make a deal with them - we surrender a part of our freedom (of speech mostly) in exchange for the convenience and entertainment that FB provides. If people are no longer happy with this deal, they are free to look for alternatives, but instead prefer to complain about censorship. It's like going on vacation to England and complaining about the rain.
kstenerud 10y ago
Because Facebook has become so big that it's essentially a cultural hub, which means that it can have a serious effect on world cultures. Think about this for a moment: Facebook, governed by strict Muslim cultural code. Womens' faces are not allowed. Any picture of an uncovered woman is summarily deleted. Would that work for you? Would you feel that Facebook is perfectly within its rights, and that you should like it or lump it?
mason240 10y ago
It's strange because the people upset over this are the same people who are full steam ahead on censoring anything and anyone they don't like, waving that XKCD comic as battle flag.
- lunula 10y ago
  They also seem to be unable to imagine turning off FB. Which would be the first thing I would do and ask my friends and family to do if I were really concerned with their control of the media. They are seen as default, as if they are the entire universe, so inescapable that we have to beg mercy from the master rather than simply leaving.
rhino369 10y ago
Also, even news organizations censor themselves. Facebook is allowed to use editorial discretion, just like every news organization does. Does everyone think the Aftenposten posts whatever stories it's writers come up with? I think this was a particularly stupid use of their editorial discretion, but it's their right.

cloudjacker 10y ago

> Just because some recent revolutions were helped by fb and twitter doesn't mean that these for profit corporations are for freedom of expression and 1st amendment rights. They aren't illogically petitioning the government to force them to stop censoring, they are making the public service announcement at other private corporations and may actually be successful in getting the private corporation to stop censoring. It was successful a few days ago with Napalm girl, so why stop there.

sp332 10y ago

They were pretty loud about being a source of news. Don't forget the Paper app they cancelled. They even encourage news sources to host their articles on Facebook. https://media.fb.com/2015/05/12/instantarticles/ https://media.fb.com/2015/05/12/instantarticles/

dmix 10y ago

Free speech rights are limited to government intervention, for good reason. The only question from a free-market perspective is whether or not Facebook has provided the tools to self-censor the content you get in your social network, much like HN where you can downvote/flag content that is inappropriate or of questionable quality [1]. That would downplay the monopolistic side effects of not having a competitor to go to if you're not happy with Facebook's strict censoring rules. [1] I should note Facebook already does provide lots of ways to filter people from your feed without unfriending them if you don't like what they post.

axlee 10y ago

I think the issue raised here is that Facebook censors content according to rules based entirely on American values, while parading as some sort of global organization, "connecting the world" type-of-thing. What is morally acceptable to see on a feed for an American is not the same for a Norwegian, a Japanese or a Sudanese. The author mentions sexuality/nudity content here, which is a blatant cultural difference between Europe and the US, but there are so many more regional variations among the hundred of countries where Facebook operates. Facebook is definitely entitled to censor content as they see fit, but we are also entitled to criticize their policy. Here, it seems that the main criticism is the americano-centric view of what is inadequate content. Maybe Facebook should look into developing local content rules instead of relying on a guideline written in California by Californians for Californians?

alistairSH 10y ago
Maybe Facebook should look into developing local content rules instead of relying on a guideline written in California by Californians for Californians? How would such a thing work? Would a user register as a resident of a particular country? Or, IP-based checks of location? I'm a Scot living in America, with Dutch friends - do I see the US, UK, or Euro content? Does the content I see (on the same feed) change based on which country I happen to be in today?
- axlee 10y ago
  I think a location-based policy at the time of posting is sensible. That's also how international law work: if I smoke a joint in Amsterdam, I am not liable for it back home. When in Rome... I also think that the policy should apply to the poster, not to the viewers. What makes our world great is its wide range of cultures, and we should not isolate ourselves in little silos. Conversely, we should not allow a single culture to dictate to everybody else what is acceptable or not. To be fair, I don't think any policy is necessary besides moderating and reporting illegal content. But since Facebook seems quite inclined to go the extra mile to make its platform less offensive, I think this would be a good compromise.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago

Normally I'd agree with you, but Facebook have absolutely been positioning itself as a news source. They even publicly talk/gloat (as they should) about how Facebook was used to disseminate information during the Arab Spring. So they really can't have it both ways. If they want to be a source of news, they're going to get flack if they hide stories, even if it was done by an algorithm. And all of us here know that Facebook is a private company and they can do anything they want, but for the majority of people that use the Internet, Facebook and Google are the Internet to them. So for a lot of people, this feels like Facebook is "censoring the Internet."

anexprogrammer 10y ago

That seems, to me, to miss the point. No one is surprised a private company censors content, it's the cultural homogenisation on a global service that can grate, even though it's no surprise. A global service that tries very hard to be the global platform for everything, including news publication (that may have been unsuccessful). No surprise after many years of this most people's networks are on Facebook. No doubt to an American some of the things I, as a Brit, think and do will be plain weird yet Brits are quite close compared to some nations. For all us outsiders, FB (and other US sites) and US attitudes to nudity and violence are, well, interesting. Usually just amusing, sometimes it can be annoying like in the case of this globally famous photo. Don't forget none of us foreigners have a first amendment or rights under it - so that's not even relevant to us. It wouldn't be that hard to have regional appropriate guidelines for censorship, acceptable behaviour and what have you. Then Americans could have American mores, Norwegians theirs, and we can be confused, amused or fascinated when something goes viral enough to overlap. I'd like to preserve more of the global differences - it's what makes the world interesting. We might find others do some things better.

RevHaze 10y ago
You say it wouldn't be that hard to have regional guidelines, but that seems like an incredibly difficult thing to do. Even within a country you can have strongly divided opinions on what's appropriate or inappropriate to be hosted on social media, now not only do you need some way to document these (including refining them as norms change), but you also need to implement a system that can "know it when it sees it" so to speak and filter on the fly. That's either going to be a large number of humans filtering the content more-or-less by hand (already got FB into trouble when the humans filtered stories they didn't agree with) or build an automatic screening process that can make the appropriate decisions on the edge cases, which would be difficult to say the least. Additionally, you run into the problem that many social groups overlap. How many German users need to be friends with a French user before they're covered in the same filter? What about an American vs Iranian? Ultimately you need some way to decide how to break ties and at the moment they're all breaking on the side of the US because that's where FB is based. Unless that changes, I don't see a shift to fragment what's considered acceptable on the platform.
10y ago

laurent123456 10y ago

Exactly, when we use Facebook, we basically make a deal with them - we surrender a part of our freedom (of speech mostly) in exchange for the convenience and entertainment that FB provides. If people are no longer happy with this deal, they are free to look for alternatives, but instead prefer to complain about censorship. It's like going on vacation to England and complaining about the rain.

kstenerud 10y ago

Because Facebook has become so big that it's essentially a cultural hub, which means that it can have a serious effect on world cultures. Think about this for a moment: Facebook, governed by strict Muslim cultural code. Womens' faces are not allowed. Any picture of an uncovered woman is summarily deleted. Would that work for you? Would you feel that Facebook is perfectly within its rights, and that you should like it or lump it?

mason240 10y ago

It's strange because the people upset over this are the same people who are full steam ahead on censoring anything and anyone they don't like, waving that XKCD comic as battle flag.

lunula 10y ago
They also seem to be unable to imagine turning off FB. Which would be the first thing I would do and ask my friends and family to do if I were really concerned with their control of the media. They are seen as default, as if they are the entire universe, so inescapable that we have to beg mercy from the master rather than simply leaving.

rhino369 10y ago

Also, even news organizations censor themselves. Facebook is allowed to use editorial discretion, just like every news organization does. Does everyone think the Aftenposten posts whatever stories it's writers come up with? I think this was a particularly stupid use of their editorial discretion, but it's their right.