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We simultaneously fear the power of Facebook but then demand they become the final arbiter of the truth, censoring even the speech of our political leaders. Wh

We simultaneously fear the power of Facebook but then demand they become the final arbiter of the truth, censoring even the speech of our political leaders. Why did we think this was a good idea again? Ask China their opinion on the value of being the one to decide what is true.

petewailes 7y ago
It's censoring advertising (or it would be if they did it), not speech. That's not even remotely the same.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Technically, they are kindof the same. The Supreme Court has ruled that commercial speech (of which advertising is a part of) has Constitutional protection.[0][1] [0]: https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-speech-2/advertising-first-amendment-overview/ https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_speech
  - petewailes 7y ago
    With very hefty caveats. It's not a blanket protection
hos234 7y ago
Our leaders (and groups that prop them up) have never had the ability to scale their propaganda and target people as they do today. They need to stop braying about turning into China and admit that this a new ball game. That needs new rules.
jonbronson 7y ago
Demanding even the slightest level of accountability for blatantly misleading or false information does not make them the final arbiter. It's not a binary choice of absolute determination vs completely hands off.
- boreas 7y ago
  There are many choices in the policy space, but the decision about how to treat an individual advertisement is essentially binary. The line between truth and falsehood must lie somewhere, and I can guarantee you that different political factions will have very different ideas about what should lie on either side of that line.
- gandutraveler 7y ago
  The question is how do you define false information. Do we rely on consensus ? For e.g. let's say majority of the world population believe that earth is flat. In that case, will that still be false information? Even if we go with consensus, it's such a difficult problem to solve in this age of internet where new content is created at such a rapid pace.
diogenescynic 7y ago
I think most people just think Facebook ads should be held to same as older media like newspapers and tv that have to have an editor review the ad and approve it before it can be published. Facebook is being used as a disinformation platform and Zuckerberg thinks it’s more important to keep making money. I don’t think that trade off is worth what it’s doing to society. I think Facebook has a large share of the blame for making political discourse worse.
- sitkack 7y ago
  Its akin to having a nation-wide mini mart chain knowingly structure their inventory to help children buy cigarettes. They know it is happening and it is wrong, but they make money doing it so they will drag their heals (CVS pun) for as long as possible. This is the kinda thing corps get fined billions of dollars for.
samastur 7y ago
How is not selling something to anyone censoring them?
james-mcelwain 7y ago
You're acting as if we can't do anything about power of Facebook. It's absurd to to conflate making Facebook take editorial control of their platform with making it the state censor of an authoritarian country. Regulating and/or breaking up Facebook is hardly "demanding they become the final arbiter of truth." The goal here is reducing Mark Zuckerberg to the point where his personal judgement is irrelevant.
quarkral 7y ago
When we're talking about whether Facebook should be fact-checking the lies of public servants, we're missing the point. We shouldn't be having public servants that are lying to us in the first place. By the way this isn't just referring to one political party, the other party lies or blatantly dodges around truths as well. I think our government is in much deeper shit than the tech industry is, and even though I agree Facebook needs some regulation, I wouldn't trust the government to do it.
CharlesColeman 7y ago
> We simultaneously fear the power of Facebook but then demand they become the final arbiter of the truth, censoring even the speech of our political leaders. They won't be any kind of "arbiter of truth" if they just decide to refuse to carry all political ads, like Twitter has decided to do. I think that it's quite possible that a total laissez faire attitude towards quantity of paid speech may be incompatible with democracy, in the context of disinformation campaigns and massive wealth inequality, etc. Free speech without democracy is pointless. These issues may require some adjustment to our social contracts.
- readams 7y ago
  You believe that all political advertising of all kinds should be simply banned?
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    > You believe that all political advertising of all kinds should be simply banned? I clearly said no such thing. I merely pointed out that 1) Facebook can respond to these problems without doing any (private) viewpoint censorship and 2) we as a society may need to adjust the parameters around paid speech to protect democracy. Most things aren't black and white, and the choice isn't a binary one between extremes like laissez faire and total bans.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    I personally do, but I also recognize that that may be at odds with the First Amendment. However, political ads aren’t usually just any kind of ad; They are almost always using scare tactics, or sometimes, just flat out lying. Stuff that would be illegal for a regular ad to do can sometimes be done simply because it’s a political ad. Besides, who’s going to enforce the accuracy of the ads? We’ve seen many times that the government cannot hold itself accountable, so why would they do it for political ads.
hinkley 7y ago
Because the story arc goes like this: 1) people notice someone has gotten power 2) people notice the person is being shitty about it 3) people insist that responsibility and power go hand in hand 4) person does not rise to the challenge 5) people take the power away Making them accountable is the warning shot. Next step is divestiture.
- kevinsundar 7y ago
  How does requiring facebook to fact-check (fact according to who?) take their power away? It just gives them more power.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    Because that's been the social contract for hundreds or thousands of years, and we know they'll probably fuck it up anyway. The question is will they percolate to the top of the priority list? Small time offenders often get away with it. [edit:] if you ask me, which you kinda did, I think we're using a self-organizing system, where people self-select into active positions in society and then we cull the worst actors - if we can - before they get too powerful. We get enough pleasant surprises out of this arrangement that we tolerate the bad ones. Trying to plan this stuff out ahead of time? You get a boring dystopia or a scary dystopia.
    - kevinsundar 7y ago
      I really do want to hear what your opinion on this is but I'm having trouble following. I am of the opinion that letting facebook fact-check anything, let alone political speech, inherently lets them (or well a random low paid "fact-checker" reviewing ads somewhere) control what a huge mass of people see. Isn't that a ton of power?

petewailes 7y ago

It's censoring advertising (or it would be if they did it), not speech. That's not even remotely the same.

colejohnson66 7y ago
Technically, they are kindof the same. The Supreme Court has ruled that commercial speech (of which advertising is a part of) has Constitutional protection.[0][1] [0]: https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-speech-2/advertising-first-amendment-overview/ https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_speech
- petewailes 7y ago
  With very hefty caveats. It's not a blanket protection

hos234 7y ago

Our leaders (and groups that prop them up) have never had the ability to scale their propaganda and target people as they do today. They need to stop braying about turning into China and admit that this a new ball game. That needs new rules.

jonbronson 7y ago

Demanding even the slightest level of accountability for blatantly misleading or false information does not make them the final arbiter. It's not a binary choice of absolute determination vs completely hands off.

boreas 7y ago
There are many choices in the policy space, but the decision about how to treat an individual advertisement is essentially binary. The line between truth and falsehood must lie somewhere, and I can guarantee you that different political factions will have very different ideas about what should lie on either side of that line.
gandutraveler 7y ago
The question is how do you define false information. Do we rely on consensus ? For e.g. let's say majority of the world population believe that earth is flat. In that case, will that still be false information? Even if we go with consensus, it's such a difficult problem to solve in this age of internet where new content is created at such a rapid pace.

diogenescynic 7y ago

I think most people just think Facebook ads should be held to same as older media like newspapers and tv that have to have an editor review the ad and approve it before it can be published. Facebook is being used as a disinformation platform and Zuckerberg thinks it’s more important to keep making money. I don’t think that trade off is worth what it’s doing to society. I think Facebook has a large share of the blame for making political discourse worse.

sitkack 7y ago
Its akin to having a nation-wide mini mart chain knowingly structure their inventory to help children buy cigarettes. They know it is happening and it is wrong, but they make money doing it so they will drag their heals (CVS pun) for as long as possible. This is the kinda thing corps get fined billions of dollars for.

samastur 7y ago

How is not selling something to anyone censoring them?

james-mcelwain 7y ago

You're acting as if we can't do anything about power of Facebook. It's absurd to to conflate making Facebook take editorial control of their platform with making it the state censor of an authoritarian country. Regulating and/or breaking up Facebook is hardly "demanding they become the final arbiter of truth." The goal here is reducing Mark Zuckerberg to the point where his personal judgement is irrelevant.

quarkral 7y ago

When we're talking about whether Facebook should be fact-checking the lies of public servants, we're missing the point. We shouldn't be having public servants that are lying to us in the first place. By the way this isn't just referring to one political party, the other party lies or blatantly dodges around truths as well. I think our government is in much deeper shit than the tech industry is, and even though I agree Facebook needs some regulation, I wouldn't trust the government to do it.

CharlesColeman 7y ago

> We simultaneously fear the power of Facebook but then demand they become the final arbiter of the truth, censoring even the speech of our political leaders. They won't be any kind of "arbiter of truth" if they just decide to refuse to carry all political ads, like Twitter has decided to do. I think that it's quite possible that a total laissez faire attitude towards quantity of paid speech may be incompatible with democracy, in the context of disinformation campaigns and massive wealth inequality, etc. Free speech without democracy is pointless. These issues may require some adjustment to our social contracts.

readams 7y ago
You believe that all political advertising of all kinds should be simply banned?
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > You believe that all political advertising of all kinds should be simply banned? I clearly said no such thing. I merely pointed out that 1) Facebook can respond to these problems without doing any (private) viewpoint censorship and 2) we as a society may need to adjust the parameters around paid speech to protect democracy. Most things aren't black and white, and the choice isn't a binary one between extremes like laissez faire and total bans.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  I personally do, but I also recognize that that may be at odds with the First Amendment. However, political ads aren’t usually just any kind of ad; They are almost always using scare tactics, or sometimes, just flat out lying. Stuff that would be illegal for a regular ad to do can sometimes be done simply because it’s a political ad. Besides, who’s going to enforce the accuracy of the ads? We’ve seen many times that the government cannot hold itself accountable, so why would they do it for political ads.

hinkley 7y ago

Because the story arc goes like this: 1) people notice someone has gotten power 2) people notice the person is being shitty about it 3) people insist that responsibility and power go hand in hand 4) person does not rise to the challenge 5) people take the power away Making them accountable is the warning shot. Next step is divestiture.

kevinsundar 7y ago
How does requiring facebook to fact-check (fact according to who?) take their power away? It just gives them more power.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Because that's been the social contract for hundreds or thousands of years, and we know they'll probably fuck it up anyway. The question is will they percolate to the top of the priority list? Small time offenders often get away with it. [edit:] if you ask me, which you kinda did, I think we're using a self-organizing system, where people self-select into active positions in society and then we cull the worst actors - if we can - before they get too powerful. We get enough pleasant surprises out of this arrangement that we tolerate the bad ones. Trying to plan this stuff out ahead of time? You get a boring dystopia or a scary dystopia.
  - kevinsundar 7y ago
    I really do want to hear what your opinion on this is but I'm having trouble following. I am of the opinion that letting facebook fact-check anything, let alone political speech, inherently lets them (or well a random low paid "fact-checker" reviewing ads somewhere) control what a huge mass of people see. Isn't that a ton of power?