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Facebook removes Indian page, says it spread Iranian propaganda
- warp_factor 7y agoWelcome to Facebook Co. Where a clique of Silicon Valley exec yuppies now decide what is right and what is wrong for us to see. It's a very slippery slope. Cannot wait for the next elections where any candidates with politically "wrong" ideas will see their pages silently being discarded or randomly hidden from timelines without warnings.
- TallGuyShort 7y agoArguably that's already happening. In the last round of Senate elections, Austin Peterson was repeatedly banned with vague explanations about the Terms & Conditions. It's of course just a coincidence that in most cases the post that triggered it were criticizing the incumbent whose reelection Facebook had contributed tens of thousands of dollars to.
- GuiA 7y agoNo need to wait for anything; see for instance the Nancy Pelosi video fiasco. https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/may/24/politics-watchdog/viral-video-nancy-pelosi-speech-was-manipulated/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/may...
- stevenjohns 7y agoHappened in Australia just weeks ago. Various pages belonging to the main Libertarian party ("Liberal Democratic Party") started getting shutdown[0] about a month before elections. [0] https://www.facebook.com/davidlimbrickldp/posts/2098174403813744 https://www.facebook.com/davidlimbrickldp/posts/209817440381...
- King-Aaron 7y agoPossibly because LibDem supporters tend to post obscenely racist/xenophobic/hateful things that often get flagged/reported.
- stevenjohns 7y agoNo, they don’t. And that doesn’t justify shutting down the pages of three(!) state(!) parties with sitting parliament members weeks before elections. If Facebook has issues with commenters, then those commenters should be punished.
- warp_factor 7y agoRacism is becoming the catch-it-all excuse that you can throw at pretty much anything to justify why you should take it down.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago" Where a clique of Silicon Valley exec yuppies now decide what is right and what is wrong for us to see." I'm not sympathetic at all to FB overall, but I am sympathetic here. Zuck would definitely prefer to not be in the business of moderating content. They've created a kind of 'internet platform' and by virtue of their situation, they're kind of forced to do this. And there is - no - solution. Every nation has different laws, different thresholds for various kinds of activity, and I suggest most of what FB 'takes down' is probably technically legal, but just beyond what they would like to do. They are also under considerable pressure from many countries to act explicitly in some cases. I'm not familiar with this Indian/Iranian situation, but it very well could be that Indian government officials leaned on them to do it. The less transparency there is, the more there is political interference in business, the more they have no choice: "We don't like Iran, so stop all this pro-Iran stuff in our country or we shut you down" type threats. And no doubt the US gov. has their interests as well, both on the 'local petty stuff' (i.e. law enforcement) to 'strategic stuff' (i.e. we don't like Iran either, stop their propaganda). I do however think that FB will actually try to do the right thing, I think it's just beyond their capability. I don't think Zuck is trying to promote his view of the world in the filtering. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this is 'an information architectural nightmare' - not really a political thing. This could be an existential crisis for FB, as this happens more and more, they'll be expected to moderate 'everything' and then the business becomes infeasible.
- opportune 7y agoServing content and not doing any moderation is a choice to decide what is right and wrong for us to see. They must make the choice and I don't feel sorry for them considering how much money they (facebook as a whole, execs, employees, investors) make
- djakjxnanjak 7y agoAnd congress only had to grill them for a few hours to make it happen!
- stjohnswarts 7y agoThey are free to exclude whatever they like, they're a private company and not beholden to what you think they should be doing. If they do the wrong thing they will go on the trash-heap of bad ideas in history, so far they're doing okay as far as being a business goes.
- yeahigotgoats 7y agothis is such a lazy, sheepish argument. we all know what is happening. when your private internet provider starts to shut you down for your stupid ideas, or your private bank denies you service lets see how you feel then. and to act like the government does not already regulate the hell out of private business is just a foolish position.
- root_axis 7y agoA single social media website is not at all comparable to an ISP or a bank though. Facebook is a wholly unimportant distraction.
- furgooswft13 7y agoThere's sooo many banks though. There's probably 3 right next to each other right now on Main St. North Bumble Fuck. Less ISPs sure, but if Comcast is throttling your Netflix, you could probably nab cellular internet, or satellite, or gasp dial up. Sure those options suck, but so does hosting your businesses social media presence on Myspace, or your neighbors kid's basement hosted phpBB forum.
- patrick5415 7y agoAnd yet, we have laws that require businesses to build ADA compliant bathrooms, and laws that forbid them from discriminating in both their employment practices and customer relations. If you want to make the “but they are a private business” argument, will you also argue that a private business should be able to say, serve only white people?
- warp_factor 7y ago
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y agoTheir opinion is that it spread propaganda. Everything written is propaganda depending on what side of the opinion you were on. Although I don’t like it, what is happening today is incredibly fascinating, watching it unfold since I have been using computers since 1990.
- Gibbon1 7y agoI'm darkly mirthful that people seem upset that Putin walked into the smoke filled room[1], sat down and lit up a cigar. Mirthful because except for the polonium and nerve gas[2] everyone else has been playing the same games forever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke-filled_room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke-filled_room [2] Boorish to use your own people to kill someone instead of hiring it out like civilized men.
- mwfunk 7y agoIt all comes down to what specific definitions people are using, but I draw a strong distinction between propaganda and opposing opinions about things. Propaganda is basically marketing copy for politics. It's unreliable in the same way TV ads for pharmaceuticals are unreliable compared to actual advice from actual doctors. People with opposing political opinions might accuse each other of parroting their side's propaganda, but that's just a way to try to discredit what the person is saying. Like advertising, the only constant with propaganda is that it's bullshit: it might be true, it might not be. The person telling it to you might believe it, or they might not. They may not even know whether or not it's true, and they may not care. The purpose of propaganda, like advertising, is not to convey facts to people, but to convey emotions disguised as facts, and they know ahead of time how they want you to feel about what they're saying. It's not an honest effort to communicate facts, it's often meant to discredit the very notion of facts, so they can conveniently dismiss opposing views as just someone else's opinion.
- newsgremlin 7y agoIf everything is propaganda then the question is why are we selectively choosing which propaganda to show? In that case, the real propaganda is the omission of certain propaganda, or for another choice of words the 'perspective' of another group. We are being lied to on a regular basis, this has been going on for decades and the rise of right-wing and extreme right-wing parties reflects this.
- jnaddef 7y agoWhat bothers me is that there are very few things that are not propaganda. All Fox News article are propaganda, all CNN articles are propaganda, but yet they are accepted? Clearly a distinction is made between 'acceptable propaganda' and 'unacceptable propaganda', and this distinction is made by Facebook, an American company. How acceptable is that?
- xupybd 7y agoI think this may be it. America has a ban on trade with Iran. I wouldn’t be surprised if American companies also are required to prevent them spreading information.
- fuzz4lyfe 7y agoThat would be unconstitutional wouldn't it?
- AaronFriel 7y agoNot a lawyer and would be interested to read a constitutional law journal on this. I think the answer hinges on where the speech is considered to be, and whether the speaker is an American. An Iranian national handing out leaflets in Washington, D.C. is protected speech by virtue of it occurring in the United States. An American national posting on the internet is protected from United States government orders to censor their speech, regardless of where they post it, by virtue of their nationality. Where it gets murky is: "Is an Iranian national posting on Facebook 'in America'? Does it depend on whether they make a comment in Iran or in the United States?" That's the sort of hypothetical that a court might be keen to sidestep entirely and instead ask, "Is it constitutional for the US to order a US company (Facebook) to engage in non-viewpoint neutral censorship?"
- bcb1276 7y agoNo. The constitution generally doesn’t restrict a private company like FB from imposing restrictions on speech
- dsl 7y agotl;dr: They were unwitting accomplices. The propaganda from well known Iranian government outlets was being shared frequently enough, with very little other content, that they were unwittingly part of the machine itself.
- opportune 7y agoThat still doesn't really explain why Iranian propaganda is unacceptable when the American, Russian, and Israeli propaganda go unpunished
- jnaddef 7y agoSeeing the number of downvotes I triggered, it would seem that the concept of all news being subjective it still not accepted, even on HN...
- mwfunk 7y agoAll news is not subjective. If it was, it'd be editorial content, not news reporting (obviously, don't trust any big media outlet that doesn't make a strong distinction between the two within their own organization). Now, because reporting is the product of humans, it's inevitably going to be subjective to some degree- people still decide what to report on, what words to use when describing things, etc. Objectivity in reporting is like something people can asymptotically approach but never attain. So, there's a huge difference between a news outlet that attempts to be objective, and one that takes off running in the other direction. All news outlets are somewhere on that spectrum, and some of the most popular ones are actively trying to mislead their audience. If all news was subjective, it wouldn't matter if someone got their news from Alex Jones or The Economist. It's all just someone's subjective opinion after all! But it does matter, it matters a lot. Some media outlets make an effort to be as truthful and transparent as they can be, and some just say whatever comes to mind in hopes that it'll keep people interested for long enough to hear their ad for vitamins for preppers or whatever.
- opportune 7y agoDue to the finite amount of journalist time available to any given news outlet, they always commit biased reporting by choosing what to publish and what not to publish (effectively, publication bias). I agree that the contents themselves are not necessarily fully subjective, but I 100% believe that what is in the contents is subjective. Coverage bias is essentially how consent gets manufactured. Give undue time and portray in a better light one side, spend time disproportionately covering one issue over another, etc.
- jnaddef 7y agoYou said it. Editorial choice makes an "objective news" subjective. Deciding what to publish or not is the key. I don't believe in "attempts at being objective". What is needed are newspapers clearly stating their bias so that you know where to stand when you read those.
- Aeolun 7y agoWhat is up with any of the big corporations making these kinds of decisions ‘without appeal or comment’. It borders on criminal to conduct business that way.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoCan any FB user produce a service contract?
- duxup 7y agoScience fiction generally seemed to assume some evil AI or robots would take over the world and make arbitrary / unappealable decisions ....but naw we humans are happy to do it to each other.
- temptemptemp111 7y agoSurprise! Faceberg doesn't like Iran... Hmmmm is every country not on the petro-dollar gonna get slammed? And I'm banned :P
- Udik 7y agoThis is an Israeli propaganda page with 500k likes: https://m.facebook.com/DailyCupOfJane/ https://m.facebook.com/DailyCupOfJane/ The "about" section presents it as: "Sugar, spice, and everything nice.Changing the world, one mug at a time. We're your daily girl power pick-me-up. Cup of Jane is a community launched by TIP’s Future Media Project in DC. We love our communities!" The discreet acronym TIP stands for "The Israel Project": https://www.theisraelproject.org/ https://www.theisraelproject.org/ The page mixes feminist and feel-good messages with subtle propaganda for Israel. When is Facebook going to take it down?
- Waterluvian 7y agoNot sure if this is too far off topic or if I'll get roasted for this. "Cup of Jane" is the kind of title that's so awfully on the nose that I'd mistake it for satire.
- duxup 7y agoI don't know if there is any way to really decide what is inauthentic outside of say only allowing individuals who are verified to post....and nothing else.
- saravana85 7y agoreading regular news like these. Guess FB is using Algorithms to ban than using human effort.. Facebook is a perfect example of how a monopoly will treat people
- zecg 7y ago“Coordinated inauthentic behaviour", what a refreshingly honestly dystopian syntagm.
- rchaud 7y agoThis is the risk you take when you are a sharecropper on someone else's land. Probably won't be long until FB takes an Adblock Plus/Yelp gatekeeper approach where they'll ban something, and then allow them back if they purchase a certain amount of advertising. They won't do it in the West as it would be picked up on the news, but bad actors in places like India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar (those are the ones I know of) would pay to have that "feature".