5 ms·

Hilarious, but I bet it's Hanlon's razor at work again: > Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

worldsayshi 8y ago
Yeah, if they actually wanted to censor something they would do it silently, by not showing it in people's news feeds. Proving such practice exists would probably be near impossible without having access to the source code or core usage statistics.
- dvtrn 8y ago
  Looking at some of the tweets it seems FB has a mechanism that autoflags article links as spam if "too many people are trying to share" it. This just makes me wonder exactly how automated that feature is, because surely a non-nominal number of people share current event links all the time about something political, sporting event, natural disaster. I wonder if it happens then, or is this a matter of recency....Streisand (there's got to be a better word for it than that) following the news of those 50million accounts being breached.
  - Splines 8y ago
    What I don't understand is why this is considered spam. Are lots of people not allowed to talk about the same thing?
    - lozenge 8y ago
      I can think of a couple of possible explanations: 1. Viral content like "share this or Facebook will delete your account" - may as well shut that down straight away. 2. A security flaw in a Facebook site that lets malicious websites post to your wall automatically from a webpage. In that case, the malicious website will probably post a link to itself, so that it can collect more victims. In this case, this limits the impact of the flaw. Look at the Samy worm as an example. 3. News feed algorithm "breaks" in some way when a lot of people are posting the same thing, so they just prevent that from happening.
- aphextron 8y ago
  >Yeah, if they actually wanted to censor something they would do it silently, by not showing it in people's news feeds. Not really. Reddit does exactly this. Posts to /r/news are only allowed from a whitelist of "real news" sources.
  - worldsayshi 8y ago
    Huh? Well I meant if they want to censor something silently they could get away with that.
- mortenjorck 8y ago
  Exactly. Even if an experiment could show something reliably not appearing in other timelines, it could easily enough be waved away with the standard throw-your-hands-up-and-say-‘algorithms’ explanation.
afandian 8y ago
How many times do they need to be caught out before the razor gets blunt?
- ucaetano 8y ago
  Oh, there are no bounds for human stupidity!
  - afandian 8y ago
    As we're talking in hypotheticals why not pivot the question. How 'stupid' can a company, with an arguable international monopoly on a major form of communication and dissemination, be before we acknowledge the serious danger it is putting society in?
    - ucaetano 8y ago
      > arguable international monopoly on a major form of communication and dissemination Monopoly in what, precisely? Facebook has a monopoly in online, blue-themed social networks owned by Harvard dropouts. It doesn't have a monopoly on social networks, on communication, on online networks, eve on blue-themed online social networks. Coca-Cola has a monopoly on cola-flavored soft drinks in many countries, but that isn't relevant, since cola-flavored soft drinks compete with a thousand other types of drinks.
      - afandian 8y ago
        I did hedge the word 'monopoly', as we are into unprecedented territory (SE suggests 'near-monopoly') [0]. I don't know if there are appropriate analogies, but soft drinks don't represent the gravity of the situation IMHO. For a massive number of people, FB is the only platform that they and the majority of their friends to share and comment. It is treated as de facto neutral infrastructure. I don't know how it represents itself these days. [0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/361600/need-a-word-for-a-near-monopoly https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/361600/need-a-wo...
stcredzero 8y ago
Hilarious, but I bet it's Hanlon's razor at work again My corollary: If you want to instigate against adherents of Hanlon's Razor, it's best to use weaponized stupidity.

worldsayshi 8y ago

Yeah, if they actually wanted to censor something they would do it silently, by not showing it in people's news feeds. Proving such practice exists would probably be near impossible without having access to the source code or core usage statistics.

dvtrn 8y ago
Looking at some of the tweets it seems FB has a mechanism that autoflags article links as spam if "too many people are trying to share" it. This just makes me wonder exactly how automated that feature is, because surely a non-nominal number of people share current event links all the time about something political, sporting event, natural disaster. I wonder if it happens then, or is this a matter of recency....Streisand (there's got to be a better word for it than that) following the news of those 50million accounts being breached.
- Splines 8y ago
  What I don't understand is why this is considered spam. Are lots of people not allowed to talk about the same thing?
  - lozenge 8y ago
    I can think of a couple of possible explanations: 1. Viral content like "share this or Facebook will delete your account" - may as well shut that down straight away. 2. A security flaw in a Facebook site that lets malicious websites post to your wall automatically from a webpage. In that case, the malicious website will probably post a link to itself, so that it can collect more victims. In this case, this limits the impact of the flaw. Look at the Samy worm as an example. 3. News feed algorithm "breaks" in some way when a lot of people are posting the same thing, so they just prevent that from happening.
aphextron 8y ago
>Yeah, if they actually wanted to censor something they would do it silently, by not showing it in people's news feeds. Not really. Reddit does exactly this. Posts to /r/news are only allowed from a whitelist of "real news" sources.
- worldsayshi 8y ago
  Huh? Well I meant if they want to censor something silently they could get away with that.
mortenjorck 8y ago
Exactly. Even if an experiment could show something reliably not appearing in other timelines, it could easily enough be waved away with the standard throw-your-hands-up-and-say-‘algorithms’ explanation.

afandian 8y ago

How many times do they need to be caught out before the razor gets blunt?

ucaetano 8y ago
Oh, there are no bounds for human stupidity!
- afandian 8y ago
  As we're talking in hypotheticals why not pivot the question. How 'stupid' can a company, with an arguable international monopoly on a major form of communication and dissemination, be before we acknowledge the serious danger it is putting society in?
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    > arguable international monopoly on a major form of communication and dissemination Monopoly in what, precisely? Facebook has a monopoly in online, blue-themed social networks owned by Harvard dropouts. It doesn't have a monopoly on social networks, on communication, on online networks, eve on blue-themed online social networks. Coca-Cola has a monopoly on cola-flavored soft drinks in many countries, but that isn't relevant, since cola-flavored soft drinks compete with a thousand other types of drinks.
    - afandian 8y ago
      I did hedge the word 'monopoly', as we are into unprecedented territory (SE suggests 'near-monopoly') [0]. I don't know if there are appropriate analogies, but soft drinks don't represent the gravity of the situation IMHO. For a massive number of people, FB is the only platform that they and the majority of their friends to share and comment. It is treated as de facto neutral infrastructure. I don't know how it represents itself these days. [0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/361600/need-a-word-for-a-near-monopoly https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/361600/need-a-wo...

stcredzero 8y ago

Hilarious, but I bet it's Hanlon's razor at work again My corollary: If you want to instigate against adherents of Hanlon's Razor, it's best to use weaponized stupidity.