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Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not
- 50ckpuppet 6y agoMore mental gymnastics and gyrations to justify muzzling the opposing narrative.
- logicslave 6y agoPeople are clamoring for facebook to censor, mostly because they think that facebook will censor in their political favor
- javagram 6y agoThe real problem is that ~40% of America supports/votes for the POTUS, following him on social media, re-shares his memes, etc. People are looking to generally open communications platforms like Facebook and asking them to censor, but if they carried their logic to its conclusion, the President’s emails, texts, mobile Apps, and press releases should all be censored or blacklisted by communications providers. If the president sent out content similar to his tweets through a Trump 2020 campaign app on the apple store and android store, should Apple / google remove the app from the store? Should they build in a filter in chrome and Safari to block access to the trump 2020 campaign website? Where does this logically end?
- lol139189 6y agoThe real problem is that you refuse to take people you disagree with seriously. You keep fucking lying about them, you keep pushing people towards their side by being an absolute fucking cunt. Just stop. It's not helping.
- javagram 6y agoI am taking it seriously. The logic that demands Facebook censor trump from their open platform doesn’t have any clear limiting factor that means that Trump shouldn’t be censored off other communications service providers. Not a MAGA type by the way. I’ve voted against trump in 3 elections already and will be voting against him again in the fall.
- dang 6y agoCould you please stop creating accounts to do flamewar here? It's not in your interest to do that, first because you're contributing to destroying the community that you're participating in, and second because these sorts of attacks just reinforce the people you disagree with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- logicslave 6y agoYou want to censor 40% of the country? How can that be logical
- unishark 6y agoI don't think the above poster is claiming it is logical, but the opposite.
- javagram 6y agoMy point is that the people asking Zuck to censor are asking to censor 40% of the country. Personally since I disagree with the 40% I do see it as the “real problem” but I don’t think facebook censoring them is the solution. It might be possible to censor away InfoWars or whatever but I don’t think you can censor away the POTUS and 40% of the country...
- bastardoperator 6y agoIf the opposing narritive is propaganda or hatred, who’s doing the mental gymnastics here?
- remarkEon 6y agoThe one who views the opposing narrative as only propaganda or hatred, and nothing else.
- TravHatesMe 6y agoWhat is considered propaganda or hatred has become increasingly subjective
- josefresco 6y agoNo it hasn't. Propaganda and hatred has just become more sophisticated and super-charged by new tools (social media, Internet etc.) in order to maximize it's spread among the community. These new tools also allow bigots to self-organize, privately in ways never before possible.
- light_cone 6y agoAnd what does sophistication of means has to do with the subjectivity mentioned?
- josefresco 6y agoBigotry and it's resulting political/social forms have and will evolve, constantly adapting to retain and grow. Hatred is not "increasingly subjective", hatred has become more sophisticated making it harder to detect.
- Avicebron 6y agoNot sure how you are coming to this conclusion, yes it can become more sophisticated while also be on a sliding scale of what people consider "hatred" from one year to the next. I'm not sure what is not to grok about this conclusion.
- _u1dn 6y agoGo to reddit.com/r/insanepeoplefacebook to see how much fake stuff is being spread
- cameronbrown 6y agoThis viewpoint is well represented on HN as well, worryingly.
- dang 6y agoIt may be worrying but it's not surprising. Every common-enough point of view will be well represented in any large-enough population sample, assuming the sample wasn't specifically selected to exclude it.
- cameronbrown 6y agoThat's very true, and a point I've made in the past about other opinions (namely, internet trolls). My assumption though, was that HN had a very well educated population, who know the dangers of censorship.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mc32 6y agoPeople fail to understand that nothing is static. One minute you’re in, the other minute you’re out. What was PC today may not be PC tomorrow depending on dynamics. They don’t understand the same forces they want to use to muzzle someone today can become the force that muzzles them tomorrow. They like Jack censoring twitter only because he aligns with them. They don’t like Mark right now because he doesn’t 100% align with them. They don’t care one whit about data retention and third party selling, etc. all they care about is “are you aligned with my narrative today?”
- TravHatesMe 6y ago> People fail to understand that nothing is static. One minute you’re in, the other minute you’re out. This is why Free Speech is so important. Regardless of how inappropriate someone's speech is, or may seem in the present context, they should be allowed to express it as long as they are not directly inciting violence/hate. Not all countries have this Right so let's take a second to appreciate that.
- ecf 6y agoMore mental gymnastics trying to believe whatever Trump has up next on his plate to rant about isn’t propaganda aimed at inciting violence.
- twsted 6y agoI don't like it.
- hogFeast 6y ago2016: Facebook rigged an election. They are awful. 2020: Facebook won't rig an election. They are awful.
- javagram 6y agoYou forgot one. 2012: Facebook (via an open, neutral platform) helped Obama win the election. They are wonderful. E.g. “Obama, Facebook and the power of friendship: the 2012 data election” (The Guardian, February 2012)
- disposekinetics 6y agoMoving the public square to the corporate world's data gathering arm was a terrible idea.
- cameronbrown 6y agoFree speech of corporate-owned property is not new. In London, there's a huge amount of public spaces that are privately owned, but companies can't control their speech. Facebook may be similar.
- _u1dn 6y agoWhether or not you think that this is OK, let's at least agree that fake Facebook postings are a big deal. There's a reason why Russia worked hard to sway people's minds for the 2016 election.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoI wonder if people will change their views on Facebook censorship if Zuckerberg and Facebook drift to the right? People have changed their politics as they have gotten older, before. All of a sudden, if Zuckerberg comes out wearing a MAGA hat, will people be so excited about him being the “arbiter of truth” or will they suddenly be talking about “free speech”?
- manfredo 6y agoI bet that if Facebook and others start fact-checking comments about the dangers of nuclear power or GMOs then people will revise their perspective very quickly.
- corty 6y agoEven if I were to condone censorship, I do think that in any case announcements by the government are special. Trump's form may be off, it might not look official, but absent other more formal press releases etc., this is as official as it gets. And such announcements do need to reach the citizens of the affected nation/state/area, because they do directly influence people's lives, health, the society and the state. Any company censoring those better be damn sure that that censorship won't have any adverse effects on anyone... On the other hand, if the announcement were too provocative/evil/illegal, there are ways in a democracy to hold the wrongdoer responsible. This is not Facebook's or any company's task.
- s5300 6y ago" if the announcement were too provocative/evil/illegal, there are ways in a democracy to hold the wrongdoer responsible." Are there really though? Perhaps there are said to be, but can you give me an example of this supposed system working?
- javagram 6y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_e... An unbroken history of being held every 4 years even in the midst of a civil war and WW2.
- s5300 6y agoThis is... A terrible example. Do you know what gerrymandering and the electoral college is?
- javagram 6y agoDo you know what gerrymandering is? It has almost no effect at all on the presidential election. Only two small states, Nebraska and Maine, allocate their electoral votes based on congressional district winners. The electoral college doesn’t stop voters removing an unpopular POTUS. See Jimmy Carter, 1980, and George HW Bush in 1992.
- pinopinopino 6y ago"We must demand that he perform that role in the best possible way, minimizing the toxic speech posted by his customers." No, we don't. I disagree. An ueber capitalist is not better in judging what is good or bad then a random bum. Perhaps he is even worse in doing so. You don't become billionaire by being such a nice and good guy.
- shiado 6y agoThe only concession I want from the pro-censorship crowd is that they oppose democracy. If you want unaccountable private social media corporations to be the arbiters of what is allowed to be discussed so be it, but just admit that you hate democracy and that you are a die hard technocrat.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lisper 6y agoNo. Today's world is vastly more complex than it was in our ancestral environment, and that makes assessing truth very hard. It's not possible for anyone to directly access all primary sources, so we have no choice but to set up some kind of division of labor in the assessment of truth. Scientific peer review is one example of such a division of labor. We trust peer reviewed publications not because peer review is flawless, but because we have to do something to triage the myriad firehoses of information that exist in today's world, and peer review is the best we've been able to come up with so far. Handing over the arbitration of truth to unaccountable private corporations is, like peer review, far from optimal. But we have to do something or those who are out to deliberately deceive to advance their political agendas will win. It is always easier to destroy than to create, and it is easier to promulgate a well-crafted lie than the truth. Those are the facts on the ground that we as a society have to grapple with. It's a hard problem and none of the solutions that have been proposed are optimal. But that's no excuse not to try to do something. If we don't, society will descend into chaos and authoritarianism. Fact checking by social media platforms is far from optimal, but it's a hell of a lot more likely to advance democracy than survival of the fittest con man.
- the8472 6y agoYou did not really show that "doing something" is better than inaction (see politician's fallacy). For example for a long time reddit was very hands-off at the global level and left moderation to the indiviual subreddits and in my opinion that worked fine for most. Sure, there were some very disagreeable ones, but you still had to deliberately enter them to see their content. Division of labor does not necessarily mean total centralization.
- dilippkumar 6y ago> Zuckerberg should take note. Yes, it’s crazy for one person to have such massive control over what people say online. But like it or not, our system gives leaders of huge corporations massive power. In his total control of Facebook, he must be the arbiter—of harm. We must demand that he perform that role in the best possible way, minimizing the toxic speech posted by his customers, whether they are peons or presidents. His employees are speaking out. His billions of users should let him know as well. And the government should back off. And when Zuckerberg steps down as the CEO of facebook and his successor is someone leaning towards a different political ideology - what happens then? The next CEO of Facebook is not an elected official. Unless you count Wall Street appointed board of directors approving a successor as somehow being representative democracy. I still believe that tech companies should focus on building tech - Facebook engineers have incredible impact in connecting friends and families all over the world. Changing company policy to be aligned with the Bay Area’s political inclinations seems to me to be very short sighted.
- igammarays 6y ago> I still believe that tech companies should focus on building tech You missed the whole point of the article, which is that "building tech" at that scale is inseparable from widespread political implications.
- mrits 6y agoAlex Jones is the new CEO of Twitter. How would we think differently about the real problem here?
- espadrine 6y ago> Alex Jones is the new CEO of Twitter. How would we think differently about the real problem here? That is a useful question to showcase an important aspect that I don’t see discussed. There is a single government, while there must be multiple competing private corporations. Twitter vs. Gab, Youtube vs. Liveleak: each corporation is defined by what it refuses, NOT by what it accepts. So, if Alex Jones becomes CEO of Twitter and puts “Did you know? The Earth is flat.” on all tweets mentioning SpaceX, users will simply move to a greener pasture. Twitter will die when its business model loses viability. Twitter’s moves are not political, they are economical first and foremost! The same goes with Nike’s Kaepernick ad: greenlit because the corporation estimated that being on the right side of history would bring more value long-term. > [T]he company claimed $163 million in earned media, a $6 billion brand value increase, and a 31% boost in sales. – https://www.fastcompany.com/90399316/one-year-later-what-did-we-learn-from-nikes-blockbuster-colin-kaepernick-ad https://www.fastcompany.com/90399316/one-year-later-what-did...
- yalogin 6y agoThere are multiple reports that all over the country in rural areas people read fake facebook posts and mobilized arms in a bid to protect their area from "antifa". Zuckerberg did not want to get into the vetting business because incidents like this will then fall squarely on them. Now he doesn't have to care and can just count the dollars from all kinds of clicks.
- javagram 6y agohttps://news.yahoo.com/twitter-takes-down-washington-protest-230300318.html https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-takes-down-washington-protest... > Off Twitter, viral text messages of screenshots of doctored tweets have circulated throughout the country. Some of the false text messages claim that extremist groups are plotting to move into residential areas this week. > Bot researchers call this kind of disinformation distribution "hidden viral" text messages, which go undetected on mainstream platforms like Facebook and Twitter and can spread like wildfire without moderation. Should SMS/MMS messages also be censored by the phone companies?
- m3kw9 6y agoLet’s also ask if they will do it to other big authoritarian countries on the east side
- m3kw9 6y agoAlso fact checkers Are human and can have biases and can make errors. There is a lot of misinformation out there that seem like facts right now.
- manfredo 6y agoIn the realm of corporate censorship, I still believe that politics is much less important to companies than profits. My takeaway from censorship on YouTube and other social media is that it's levied at content that could reflect poorly on advertisers. Inconvenient and controversial content more so than any specific political views. Granted, controversial does overlap with politic and especially fringe politics. Personally I'm much more worried about infrastructure becoming closed off than any specific sites. I don't know whether companies' moderation is effective or not. I trust the market to sort that out. What would be really concerning, though, is if the underlying infrastructure starts conducting censorship of their own. We've already witnessed this to a degree with 8chan being effectively wiped off the face of the internet for the better part of a year. Square and other payment providers have started refusing to do business with certain people and groups. I'm less concerned of a world where Facebook censors its content, and much more concerned with a world where someone can't even run their own personal website because DNS providers, payment providers, and hosting services have blacklisted them.
- aklemm 6y agoRight, this is the hard part and I don't understand what the law says so far and what may need changed. Imo, if you won't publish my book, I still have free speech, but if no one will sell me paper, then I don't.
- manfredo 6y agoIt's definitely a hard problem. I definitely don't agree that companies need to host speech. Freedom of speech also means freedom from compelled speech. I think a good boundary is to define whether an entity is actually hosting speed or providing general communications services. Platforms like facebook are the latter. Comments and photos exist on their servers, and they have a right not to host speech they don't want. But things like DNS providers are more akin to paper produces in your analogy. And things like banking services are a whole different story. I see no reason why they shouldn't be regarded as utilities like telecoms, mail carriers, etc. I think banks have to honor checks. Maybe there's a startup idea in letting people send paper checks through the mail via an app?
- chenning 6y agoWe already have plenty of curated news outlets. It's entirely possible we will simply end up with another one.
- Avicebron 6y agoAnd that would be fine, new outlets will spring up and maybe Facebook will lose it's market dominance and strangle hold over many people's online interactions.
- Bhilai 6y agoSo commentators who are saying that Facebook should not be responsible for the veracity of posts made by powerful politicians or rich advertisers on Facebook, can you please explain how users of Facebook should differentiate between truth, falsehoods or purposeful twisting of facts? Genuine question.
- bargl 6y agoThat's the current law. Because Facebook doesn't post those peoples information. They are a host, not a publisher. If they start editing and fact checking then that's their content and they'd be legally responsible for that. Which you would want because if Zuck was far right you'd want to sue him for his fact check errors. They should also not prevent third party fact checkers from posting on their platform. I'd also love to see them allow for third party plugins of fact checkers which allow people to directly post snopes or something on a comment with the click of a button. This would serve to keep Facebook as close to pure content host as possible, and still offer fact checking solutions. The fact that there is even bias in fact checking tools shows how twisted this can be. Many fact checkers argue over semantics but still it's incredible that we think there is one view of the facts out there. It would be easier to have a falsehood finder than a fact checker. I digress. Anyway, I like the idea of third party plugs which directly push to these services. I'd even be ok with facebook/twitter creating a special area for this and ratings for fact checks etc. But they still need it to be user driven content or they're at risk of being liable.
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- ColinWielga 6y agoAs a user, factual content is a feature.