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This is the one sentence that is going to come back to haunt Mark: "To clarify one point: there is no newsworthiness exemption to content that incites violence

This is the one sentence that is going to come back to haunt Mark: "To clarify one point: there is no newsworthiness exemption to content that incites violence or suppresses voting." In the next 6 months, there will surely be a post or series of posts from one or many politicians where their choice of what is deemed "inciting violence or suppressing voting" will be, mildly put, controversial. These situations are not clear cut, and Facebook will be in the unenviable position of having to decide what is a political "truth" in a fraught political environment.

analyte123 6y ago
This already happened on Twitter, where Trump said "There will never be an 'Autonomous Zone' in Washington, D.C., as long as I'm your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!" and he was warned for "inciting violence". Presumably, this post about law enforcement using violence against unlawful behavior would just be deleted on Facebook under this new policy. To read Facebook's policy literally, police departments warning about unlawful behavior would be "inciting violence" because they of course have the monopoly of violence behind them. Even posting the law, and saying that someone is violating it, would be "inciting violence" under Twitter's definition. They don't draw any distinction between lawful and unlawful violence, and every law on the books, whether it's re-selling loose cigarettes or catching too many fish, carries the threat of an officer with a gun using force against the alleged violator. This is all an interesting thought experiment but in practice, I'm sure this policy will be used to punish people the moderation team doesn't like, and will be ignored for people that they do like.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Absolutely. I’ll note that nobody reposting Beto’s “we’re going to take your AR-15s!” line was blocked, even though I’m pretty sure Beto wasn’t planning on sending social workers to do the confiscation. I’m not one of those “taxation is theft” people, but the state’s monopoly on violence is a real thing, and violence is implicit in every government law. When Warren proposed to create a wealth tax, implicit in that assertion is that the government would collect it from people by force if necessary. Facebook’s policy on violence, applied to government speakers, is like people who eat meat being squeamish about hunting. Where do you think your food comes from? Likewise, what do you think is the basis for all these things you think the government should make people do?
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    The rationale for having a monopoly on violence is not "let's make people do stuff" because that would be, y'know, slavery. It's the obvious fact that the only alternative to a stable monopoly on violence is an all-out war, so a monopoly is very much the lesser evil. > When Warren proposed to create a wealth tax, implicit in that assertion is that the government would collect it from people by force if necessary. Strictly speaking, as a government, you won't need to collect a wealth tax by force. The government's monopoly on violence is inevitably bundled with provision of some privately-valuable services, such as managing and enforcing property rights. People selfishly want their rights to be enforced in a fair and predictable way, so they will find it in their interest to pay up.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      I’m no anarchist, so I don’t disagree with that. But we shouldn’t forget that violent coercion is ultimately what makes the rule of law possible. I’m also no vegetarian, but for the same reason we shouldn’t forget that mass slaughter of animals makes steaks possible.
      - smogcutter 6y ago
        This is an argument that I think too often goes unexamined. Yes, the state obviously depends on a monopoly on violence to sustain itself, but that monopoly alone is not sufficient. After all, in order for the state to exercise violence, individual people need to agree to exert violence on the state’s behalf. The authority to deploy violence in a culturally sanctioned manner can’t come from violence itself. For people to agree that the state has the sole right to deploy violence, there must be a more fundamental source of legitimacy. For example, you could argue that the murder of the Gracchi was the beginning of the end for the Roman republic: once it became clear that the government was no longer playing by the rules and might really did make right, the republic’s legitimacy was fatally weakened. Before long you get a generation of civil war and the end of the republic.
        zozbot234 6y ago
- xixixao 6y ago
  1) This part of the policy has not changed. 2) State actors warning about use of state force is likely not going to be taken as incitement of violence (incitement of violence is “someone should go and beat those people up”, not “the police, who are under my command, might go and do something” - the latter isn’t inciting anyone).
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    State actors warning about use of state force is likely not going to be taken as incitement of violence How do you know Facebook will not do that, when Twitter has already done exactly that?
  - philwelch 6y ago
    It’s not clear to me that the Trump precedents were incitements of violence by that standard.
    - stronglikedan 6y ago
      It's clear to me that they weren't, by any standard.
    - freehunter 6y ago
      He had already used violent force to stop a legal and peaceful protest for no legal reason and was threatening to do it again. That sounds exactly like “someone should go beat those people up”.
      - philwelch 6y ago
        No, it doesn't. "Someone should go beat those people up" is an incitement to violence because the intended message is to encourage the listener to go beat those people up. "If those people don't stop misbehaving, I will send the police to stop them" doesn't incite violence; it merely warns or threatens the use of one's legal power to directly order violence. Government officials make these kinds of statements all the time. For example, consider this tweet from NYC mayor Bill de Blasio (https://twitter.com/nycmayor/status/1255309615883063297 https://twitter.com/nycmayor/status/1255309615883063297): > My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period. Or, for another example, consider President George H.W. Bush's statement during the 1992 LA riots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD_3NOIEk-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD_3NOIEk-0). In the statement, he discusses the thousands of federal law enforcement and military personnel that have already been deployed to the LA area before saying: > And let me assure you: I will use whatever force is necessary to restore order. What is going on in L.A. must and will stop. As your President, I guarantee you this violence will end. An incitement to public violence can be censored in the interest of preventing violence, but censoring statements from government officials does nothing to stop them from issuing orders to government personnel. Furthermore, if a government official states that they intend to exercise their official powers in some specific way, there is always a legitimate public interest in receiving that statement. It's not the proper role of social media to provide commentary on whether an announced or threatened use of official government power is legal, moral, or practical. Facebook and Twitter are not in the business of deciding questions of constitutional law.
- smt88 6y ago
  You seem to miss something important: law enforcement does not require violence. When a govt official threatens violence for inherently nonviolent acts (even if they're illegal), that is a threat of violence that has nothing to do with law enforcement. It is assuming a crime and that the crime requires violence to be stopped. In fact, the core concept of the protests in the US right now is that violence is not legal solvely because law enforcers commit it in the pursuit of law enforcement.
- RangerScience 6y ago
  > Even posting the law, and saying that someone is violating it, would be "inciting violence" under Twitter's definition. Isn't this only the case if the response to a violation is violence? > carries the threat of an officer with a gun using force against the alleged violator. Yes. This appears to be the observed reality. > They don't draw any distinction between lawful and unlawful violence Sounds correct. It's still violence. Advocating for it is still advocating for violence. Maybe if those with this power of lawful violence showed themselves responsible in its application, we wouldn't be here, but they didn't, and we are.
refurb 6y ago
Yup. They are painting themselves into a corner and they're going to be the one blamed in the end. Not a good move. Mark should have either said "we will only take down illegal content" or "we're going to do what we want to maintain appropriate content". The first would be much easier because, with the 2nd, they will be the decision maker on everything and will get dragged into every decision that's political (all of them?).
- josh_carterPDX 6y ago
  Hard to do that when they've given millions the Republican party. I know they like to think they play the middle, but Facebook as a company has favored Republicans, historically. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    That is really, 100% not true. They got less involved with the Dems than Google did, which helped, but apart from Joel Kaplan, they really never had any inroads with the Republicans. And corporations are immoral fuckwits only concerned with survival, regardless of the ethics (or lack thereof) of the people involved.
baddox 6y ago
The fact that making certain decisions can be hard in some cases is not a good reason for simply refusing to make those decisions at all. It’s hard in some cases to determine whether someone murdered someone, or stole from someone, or committed fraud, etc. That doesn’t mean we just throw up our hands and say it’s foolish to ever try to determine whether any rules have been broken. Fraud is a particularly good example here, because it literally involves making reasonable interpretations of someone’s speech. And I’m pretty sure you can’t weasel your way out of a fraud conviction because of technicalities with the way you phrased something.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- concordDance 6y ago
  Making those decisions should require either extensive training (judges) or some random selection (juries). Not the same people from the same subculture making all the decisions.
  - pas 6y ago
    Elected judges? Juries that have the same biases as the general population? (See how many cops are/were acquitted of assault.) I'm not saying FB and it's completely opaque outsourced subcontracted byzantine soulless lowest-bidder sweatshop moderation system is better (or somehow will be better), but it's not like the US criminal/justice system is flawless.
robbrown451 6y ago
Sure they'll have to deal with defining that line regularly. This is far better for them than taking an extreme position in either direction. They also have the middle ground option of putting a warning on things and leaving them up.
- pas 6y ago
  > warning and leaving up That will work for some time, but eventually there will be posts that will be so egregious that they'll be pressured to delete/hide them.
  - robbrown451 6y ago
    That's why I said there is a middle ground. In theory they could go further, and have options to make it increasingly hard to read the posts (i.e. you have to click through multiple warnings). But I'm not saying that they should never outright delete things if they are bad enough. They probably should never completely delete Presidential posts/tweets. The nice thing is that then they aren't censoring. People are able to see what is being suppressed or hidden if they are interested. I think it is good to have nuance built into the tools.
sshumaker 6y ago
Facebook is used as the public square for a third of the entire world’s population. They have used this platform to extract value to the tune of billions of dollars, making Mark one of the wealthiest individuals in the world. They have more influence over society and more resources than many world governments. This degree of power doesn’t comes without strings attached. They have a responsibility to society at large. At this scale, you don’t get a pass because you are a structured as a corporation.* The very least is to prevent Facebook being used as a tool to amplify violence and genocide. Honestly, given the atrocities that have been effected through their platform [1], this seems like a very timid step. * If they don’t start to accept this accountability, it will ultimately be forced upon them by society and governments across the world. [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebook.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/tech...

analyte123 6y ago

This already happened on Twitter, where Trump said "There will never be an 'Autonomous Zone' in Washington, D.C., as long as I'm your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!" and he was warned for "inciting violence". Presumably, this post about law enforcement using violence against unlawful behavior would just be deleted on Facebook under this new policy. To read Facebook's policy literally, police departments warning about unlawful behavior would be "inciting violence" because they of course have the monopoly of violence behind them. Even posting the law, and saying that someone is violating it, would be "inciting violence" under Twitter's definition. They don't draw any distinction between lawful and unlawful violence, and every law on the books, whether it's re-selling loose cigarettes or catching too many fish, carries the threat of an officer with a gun using force against the alleged violator. This is all an interesting thought experiment but in practice, I'm sure this policy will be used to punish people the moderation team doesn't like, and will be ignored for people that they do like.

rayiner 6y ago
Absolutely. I’ll note that nobody reposting Beto’s “we’re going to take your AR-15s!” line was blocked, even though I’m pretty sure Beto wasn’t planning on sending social workers to do the confiscation. I’m not one of those “taxation is theft” people, but the state’s monopoly on violence is a real thing, and violence is implicit in every government law. When Warren proposed to create a wealth tax, implicit in that assertion is that the government would collect it from people by force if necessary. Facebook’s policy on violence, applied to government speakers, is like people who eat meat being squeamish about hunting. Where do you think your food comes from? Likewise, what do you think is the basis for all these things you think the government should make people do?
- zozbot234 6y ago
  The rationale for having a monopoly on violence is not "let's make people do stuff" because that would be, y'know, slavery. It's the obvious fact that the only alternative to a stable monopoly on violence is an all-out war, so a monopoly is very much the lesser evil. > When Warren proposed to create a wealth tax, implicit in that assertion is that the government would collect it from people by force if necessary. Strictly speaking, as a government, you won't need to collect a wealth tax by force. The government's monopoly on violence is inevitably bundled with provision of some privately-valuable services, such as managing and enforcing property rights. People selfishly want their rights to be enforced in a fair and predictable way, so they will find it in their interest to pay up.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    I’m no anarchist, so I don’t disagree with that. But we shouldn’t forget that violent coercion is ultimately what makes the rule of law possible. I’m also no vegetarian, but for the same reason we shouldn’t forget that mass slaughter of animals makes steaks possible.
    - smogcutter 6y ago
      This is an argument that I think too often goes unexamined. Yes, the state obviously depends on a monopoly on violence to sustain itself, but that monopoly alone is not sufficient. After all, in order for the state to exercise violence, individual people need to agree to exert violence on the state’s behalf. The authority to deploy violence in a culturally sanctioned manner can’t come from violence itself. For people to agree that the state has the sole right to deploy violence, there must be a more fundamental source of legitimacy. For example, you could argue that the murder of the Gracchi was the beginning of the end for the Roman republic: once it became clear that the government was no longer playing by the rules and might really did make right, the republic’s legitimacy was fatally weakened. Before long you get a generation of civil war and the end of the republic.
      - zozbot234 6y ago
xixixao 6y ago
1) This part of the policy has not changed. 2) State actors warning about use of state force is likely not going to be taken as incitement of violence (incitement of violence is “someone should go and beat those people up”, not “the police, who are under my command, might go and do something” - the latter isn’t inciting anyone).
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  State actors warning about use of state force is likely not going to be taken as incitement of violence How do you know Facebook will not do that, when Twitter has already done exactly that?
- philwelch 6y ago
  It’s not clear to me that the Trump precedents were incitements of violence by that standard.
  - stronglikedan 6y ago
    It's clear to me that they weren't, by any standard.
  - freehunter 6y ago
    He had already used violent force to stop a legal and peaceful protest for no legal reason and was threatening to do it again. That sounds exactly like “someone should go beat those people up”.
    - philwelch 6y ago
      No, it doesn't. "Someone should go beat those people up" is an incitement to violence because the intended message is to encourage the listener to go beat those people up. "If those people don't stop misbehaving, I will send the police to stop them" doesn't incite violence; it merely warns or threatens the use of one's legal power to directly order violence. Government officials make these kinds of statements all the time. For example, consider this tweet from NYC mayor Bill de Blasio (https://twitter.com/nycmayor/status/1255309615883063297 https://twitter.com/nycmayor/status/1255309615883063297): > My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period. Or, for another example, consider President George H.W. Bush's statement during the 1992 LA riots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD_3NOIEk-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD_3NOIEk-0). In the statement, he discusses the thousands of federal law enforcement and military personnel that have already been deployed to the LA area before saying: > And let me assure you: I will use whatever force is necessary to restore order. What is going on in L.A. must and will stop. As your President, I guarantee you this violence will end. An incitement to public violence can be censored in the interest of preventing violence, but censoring statements from government officials does nothing to stop them from issuing orders to government personnel. Furthermore, if a government official states that they intend to exercise their official powers in some specific way, there is always a legitimate public interest in receiving that statement. It's not the proper role of social media to provide commentary on whether an announced or threatened use of official government power is legal, moral, or practical. Facebook and Twitter are not in the business of deciding questions of constitutional law.
smt88 6y ago
You seem to miss something important: law enforcement does not require violence. When a govt official threatens violence for inherently nonviolent acts (even if they're illegal), that is a threat of violence that has nothing to do with law enforcement. It is assuming a crime and that the crime requires violence to be stopped. In fact, the core concept of the protests in the US right now is that violence is not legal solvely because law enforcers commit it in the pursuit of law enforcement.
RangerScience 6y ago
> Even posting the law, and saying that someone is violating it, would be "inciting violence" under Twitter's definition. Isn't this only the case if the response to a violation is violence? > carries the threat of an officer with a gun using force against the alleged violator. Yes. This appears to be the observed reality. > They don't draw any distinction between lawful and unlawful violence Sounds correct. It's still violence. Advocating for it is still advocating for violence. Maybe if those with this power of lawful violence showed themselves responsible in its application, we wouldn't be here, but they didn't, and we are.

refurb 6y ago

Yup. They are painting themselves into a corner and they're going to be the one blamed in the end. Not a good move. Mark should have either said "we will only take down illegal content" or "we're going to do what we want to maintain appropriate content". The first would be much easier because, with the 2nd, they will be the decision maker on everything and will get dragged into every decision that's political (all of them?).

josh_carterPDX 6y ago
Hard to do that when they've given millions the Republican party. I know they like to think they play the middle, but Facebook as a company has favored Republicans, historically. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  That is really, 100% not true. They got less involved with the Dems than Google did, which helped, but apart from Joel Kaplan, they really never had any inroads with the Republicans. And corporations are immoral fuckwits only concerned with survival, regardless of the ethics (or lack thereof) of the people involved.

baddox 6y ago

The fact that making certain decisions can be hard in some cases is not a good reason for simply refusing to make those decisions at all. It’s hard in some cases to determine whether someone murdered someone, or stole from someone, or committed fraud, etc. That doesn’t mean we just throw up our hands and say it’s foolish to ever try to determine whether any rules have been broken. Fraud is a particularly good example here, because it literally involves making reasonable interpretations of someone’s speech. And I’m pretty sure you can’t weasel your way out of a fraud conviction because of technicalities with the way you phrased something.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
concordDance 6y ago
Making those decisions should require either extensive training (judges) or some random selection (juries). Not the same people from the same subculture making all the decisions.
- pas 6y ago
  Elected judges? Juries that have the same biases as the general population? (See how many cops are/were acquitted of assault.) I'm not saying FB and it's completely opaque outsourced subcontracted byzantine soulless lowest-bidder sweatshop moderation system is better (or somehow will be better), but it's not like the US criminal/justice system is flawless.

robbrown451 6y ago

Sure they'll have to deal with defining that line regularly. This is far better for them than taking an extreme position in either direction. They also have the middle ground option of putting a warning on things and leaving them up.

pas 6y ago
> warning and leaving up That will work for some time, but eventually there will be posts that will be so egregious that they'll be pressured to delete/hide them.
- robbrown451 6y ago
  That's why I said there is a middle ground. In theory they could go further, and have options to make it increasingly hard to read the posts (i.e. you have to click through multiple warnings). But I'm not saying that they should never outright delete things if they are bad enough. They probably should never completely delete Presidential posts/tweets. The nice thing is that then they aren't censoring. People are able to see what is being suppressed or hidden if they are interested. I think it is good to have nuance built into the tools.

sshumaker 6y ago

Facebook is used as the public square for a third of the entire world’s population. They have used this platform to extract value to the tune of billions of dollars, making Mark one of the wealthiest individuals in the world. They have more influence over society and more resources than many world governments. This degree of power doesn’t comes without strings attached. They have a responsibility to society at large. At this scale, you don’t get a pass because you are a structured as a corporation.* The very least is to prevent Facebook being used as a tool to amplify violence and genocide. Honestly, given the atrocities that have been effected through their platform [1], this seems like a very timid step. * If they don’t start to accept this accountability, it will ultimately be forced upon them by society and governments across the world. [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebook.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/tech...