6 ms·

Zuckerberg’s Preposterous Defense of Facebook

64 points by elsewhen 9y ago

weneedprivacy 9y ago
This is poor content for NYT, even for an OpEd
robertwalsh0 9y ago
Zuck says that people are mad because people are sharing ideas that the other side doesn’t like but also defends FB’s actions in the German election: “We have been working to ensure the integrity of the German elections this weekend, from taking actions against thousands of fake accounts, to partnering with public authorities like the Federal Office for Information Security, to sharing security practices with the candidates and parties.”[1] I’m very disappointed in Zuck’s intellectual honesty. [1]https://gizmodo.com/facebook-deleted-tens-of-thousands-of-fake-accounts-dur-1818841579 https://gizmodo.com/facebook-deleted-tens-of-thousands-of-fa...
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what's the contradiction between those two things -- he says that people don't like certain kinds of sharing and a large corporation with a lot of cyber security experience assists a government with security while also monitoring its own platform for abuse during the election.
  - forthefuture 9y ago
    People are retroactively upset that they didn't do this during our election.
    - imron 9y ago
      All the while pretending it was only one side engaged in such tactics.
      - tessierashpool 9y ago
        The Russians took out ads to depress African-American voter turnout, in Trump's favor. The Clinton campaign did not do anything remotely similar.
        imron 9y ago
        Well, at least future candidates know that they no longer need to spend billions on their campaign and can just spend a few hundred thousand on targeted Facebook ads instead. > The Clinton campaign did not do anything remotely similar. We are in agreement then that Clinton campaign was on a whole 'nother level.
        phs318u 9y ago
        Apologies, but going off-topic to respond. It's highly likely that when all the Russia stuff plays out, Trump's campaign will be seen to have been so full of moles as to make the Cambridge Five look like amateurs. In terms of sheer audacity, the Russian campaign is unprecedented in ambition and success. The CIA will be unpicking this cluster-fuck for a decade at least.
        jessaustin 9y ago
        After Trump is reelected he will close down the CIA. (To be clear: without my vote! He is a cretin and a horrible man and I would never vote for him. Still, I can be happy about happy events...) That action will deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, but he won't get it.
        puppetmaster30 9y ago
        You have a lot of imagination.
        9y ago
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Zuck’s intellectual honesty Is this a thing? [0] Let's face it, Zuck is too busy making money to even pretend. Even this current hamhanded "sorry we suck" posture is more of an attempt to convince the right people that he's going along with their favored narrative, than a sincere statement about anything that might or might not have happened. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/01/27/two-weeks-after-zuckerberg-said-je-suis-charlie-facebook-begins-censoring-images-of-prophet-muhammad/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/01...
jacques_chester 9y ago
Per Upton Sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
lowry 9y ago
As someone who operated an online community website twice longer than Zuckeberg, I can confirm he is right.
paulddraper 9y ago
> “Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like.” > This doesn’t hold water at all. It does, almost by definition. > Are you bothered by fake news, systematic misinformation campaigns and Facebook “dark posts” — micro-targeted ads not visible to the public — aimed at African-Americans to discourage them from voting? You must be one of those people “upset about ideas” you disagree with. Users can control which ads they see. > Are you troubled when agents of a foreign power pose online as American Muslims and post incendiary content that right-wing commentators can cite as evidence that all American Muslims are sympathizers of terrorist groups like the Islamic State? Sounds like you can’t handle a healthy debate. I can debate that. > Does it bother you that Russian actors bought advertisements aimed at swing states to sow political discord during the 2016 presidential campaign, and that it took eight months after the election to uncover any of this? Well, the marketplace of ideas isn’t for everyone. I do remember pro-Clinton anti-Trump opinions from leaders in dozens of countries. The influence of the Russian boogeyman is vastly overstated. > And the unfortunate truth is that by design, business model and algorithm, Facebook has made it easy for it to be weaponized to spread misinformation and fraudulent content. The best defense against false speech is more speech. An elite centralized few deciding what can and can't be said to we the sheeple is not the future I want.
- squozzer 9y ago
  What remains unclear to me is how Facebook makes misinformation and fraudulent content so powerful, but not factual content. I have yet to hear one person admit they did any of the following: 1) Switch their vote from HRC to DJT; 2) Decide to stay home instead of vote for HRC; 3) Decide to vote for DJT instead of staying home. If we're going to consider whether FB was complicit in a dirty win by DJT, we should at least also consider some of the polls were fabricated in a attempt to make HRC's victory look inevitable and depress R turnout.
  - thesagan 9y ago
    I admit to number 2, as a lot of us in MI did. I just stayed home because I was so disappointed in HRC. Fun fact, in my state the number of ballots with a blank presidential section exceeded the margin of HRC's loss in the state. This was a Bernie state.
tapsboy 9y ago
Sorry, America (and NY Times), don't make this all about you. Facebook (and WhatsApp and Twitter and Google) have already significantly influenced the electorate of other nations with fake news and other such tactics. Look at the elections of more polarizing and more dangerous leaders before Trump in Turkey, Phillipines, India, et al. Good that you woke up now, but neutrality of the medium needs to be intact. In the long term, truth will win. More platforms, not more regulation is the answer.
- atomical 9y ago
  How is more platforms going to create neutrality? Wouldn't governments put their bots on the new networks?
  - tapsboy 9y ago
    More platforms cannot ensure neutrality by itself; but can open options to relay voices that need to be put out.
thesausageking 9y ago
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [friend]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks

64 points by elsewhen 9y ago

This is poor content for NYT, even for an OpEd

Zuck says that people are mad because people are sharing ideas that the other side doesn’t like but also defends FB’s actions in the German election: “We have been working to ensure the integrity of the German elections this weekend, from taking actions against thousands of fake accounts, to partnering with public authorities like the Federal Office for Information Security, to sharing security practices with the candidates and parties.”[1] I’m very disappointed in Zuck’s intellectual honesty. [1]https://gizmodo.com/facebook-deleted-tens-of-thousands-of-fake-accounts-dur-1818841579 https://gizmodo.com/facebook-deleted-tens-of-thousands-of-fa...

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
I'm not sure I understand what's the contradiction between those two things -- he says that people don't like certain kinds of sharing and a large corporation with a lot of cyber security experience assists a government with security while also monitoring its own platform for abuse during the election.
- forthefuture 9y ago
  People are retroactively upset that they didn't do this during our election.
  - imron 9y ago
    All the while pretending it was only one side engaged in such tactics.
    - tessierashpool 9y ago
      The Russians took out ads to depress African-American voter turnout, in Trump's favor. The Clinton campaign did not do anything remotely similar.
      - imron 9y ago
        Well, at least future candidates know that they no longer need to spend billions on their campaign and can just spend a few hundred thousand on targeted Facebook ads instead. > The Clinton campaign did not do anything remotely similar. We are in agreement then that Clinton campaign was on a whole 'nother level.
        phs318u 9y ago
        Apologies, but going off-topic to respond. It's highly likely that when all the Russia stuff plays out, Trump's campaign will be seen to have been so full of moles as to make the Cambridge Five look like amateurs. In terms of sheer audacity, the Russian campaign is unprecedented in ambition and success. The CIA will be unpicking this cluster-fuck for a decade at least.
        jessaustin 9y ago
        After Trump is reelected he will close down the CIA. (To be clear: without my vote! He is a cretin and a horrible man and I would never vote for him. Still, I can be happy about happy events...) That action will deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, but he won't get it.
      - puppetmaster30 9y ago
        You have a lot of imagination.
      - 9y ago
jessaustin 9y ago
Zuck’s intellectual honesty Is this a thing? [0] Let's face it, Zuck is too busy making money to even pretend. Even this current hamhanded "sorry we suck" posture is more of an attempt to convince the right people that he's going along with their favored narrative, than a sincere statement about anything that might or might not have happened. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/01/27/two-weeks-after-zuckerberg-said-je-suis-charlie-facebook-begins-censoring-images-of-prophet-muhammad/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/01...

jacques_chester 9y ago

Per Upton Sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

lowry 9y ago

As someone who operated an online community website twice longer than Zuckeberg, I can confirm he is right.

paulddraper 9y ago

> “Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like.” > This doesn’t hold water at all. It does, almost by definition. > Are you bothered by fake news, systematic misinformation campaigns and Facebook “dark posts” — micro-targeted ads not visible to the public — aimed at African-Americans to discourage them from voting? You must be one of those people “upset about ideas” you disagree with. Users can control which ads they see. > Are you troubled when agents of a foreign power pose online as American Muslims and post incendiary content that right-wing commentators can cite as evidence that all American Muslims are sympathizers of terrorist groups like the Islamic State? Sounds like you can’t handle a healthy debate. I can debate that. > Does it bother you that Russian actors bought advertisements aimed at swing states to sow political discord during the 2016 presidential campaign, and that it took eight months after the election to uncover any of this? Well, the marketplace of ideas isn’t for everyone. I do remember pro-Clinton anti-Trump opinions from leaders in dozens of countries. The influence of the Russian boogeyman is vastly overstated. > And the unfortunate truth is that by design, business model and algorithm, Facebook has made it easy for it to be weaponized to spread misinformation and fraudulent content. The best defense against false speech is more speech. An elite centralized few deciding what can and can't be said to we the sheeple is not the future I want.

squozzer 9y ago
What remains unclear to me is how Facebook makes misinformation and fraudulent content so powerful, but not factual content. I have yet to hear one person admit they did any of the following: 1) Switch their vote from HRC to DJT; 2) Decide to stay home instead of vote for HRC; 3) Decide to vote for DJT instead of staying home. If we're going to consider whether FB was complicit in a dirty win by DJT, we should at least also consider some of the polls were fabricated in a attempt to make HRC's victory look inevitable and depress R turnout.
- thesagan 9y ago
  I admit to number 2, as a lot of us in MI did. I just stayed home because I was so disappointed in HRC. Fun fact, in my state the number of ballots with a blank presidential section exceeded the margin of HRC's loss in the state. This was a Bernie state.

tapsboy 9y ago

Sorry, America (and NY Times), don't make this all about you. Facebook (and WhatsApp and Twitter and Google) have already significantly influenced the electorate of other nations with fake news and other such tactics. Look at the elections of more polarizing and more dangerous leaders before Trump in Turkey, Phillipines, India, et al. Good that you woke up now, but neutrality of the medium needs to be intact. In the long term, truth will win. More platforms, not more regulation is the answer.

atomical 9y ago
How is more platforms going to create neutrality? Wouldn't governments put their bots on the new networks?
- tapsboy 9y ago
  More platforms cannot ensure neutrality by itself; but can open options to relay voices that need to be put out.

thesausageking 9y ago

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [friend]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks