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Sigh, I guess I am one of those lonely voices that says let em say whatever they want. FB should be little less than a dumb platform for anyone to run their mou
by A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
Sigh, I guess I am one of those lonely voices that says let em say whatever they want. FB should be little less than a dumb platform for anyone to run their mouth.
- munchbunny 6y agoLikely because a lot of people disagree with your stance for substantive reasons. But you won't be the only voice saying it. HN and the tech industry in general has a consistent presence of people espousing the laissez faire view on free speech. It might not be the popular view, but it has plenty of mindshare.
- syshum 6y ago>>HN and the tech industry in general has a consistent presence of people espousing the laissez faire view on free speech. Pre-2016 I would have agreed. Today the tech industry DOES NOT in any way have a "laissez faire view on free speech" the Tech Industry in general has a one sided political bias that is very clear, and the goal to suppress any speech not aligned with that political bias for the purposes of influencing elections
- AnotherGoodName 6y agoIf i ask people if they think the tech industry has a very clear political bias i'd expect the majority would agree, if i asked which way the bias leans i suspect the majority would disagree. To put this to the point which way do you think the bias leans?
- syshum 6y agoIt is not a matter of thinking or belief, there is documented Evidence of this political bias from many sources and from many Tech companies. The debate comes into place because the Tech companies will still ban people for clear rules violations even though they are on the "correct" side, direct calls for violence as an example But the even the rules themselves on most of these platforms show a political worldview toward one side. This is also influenced by the massive shift in the overton window over the last 4 years, so much so that many people on one political side seem to have whiplash. So I do not doubt you will find people that will disagree with what way the bias leans, however when you have documented and video evidence of the bias in one direction then the debate is much less valid
- naeemtee 6y agoYou would have to live in a ridiculous echo chamber to disagree on the political leaning of the industry based almost entirely in San Francisco
- AnotherGoodName 6y agoReally? Because there's a lot of talk that the tech companies were (partly) the reason Trump was elected. How does that fit in?
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoThat means they messed up, not that they don't lean left.
- EdSharkey 6y agoOh, it fits simply: * greed: there's buckets of money to be made during election season selling voter info and ads to campaigns * hubris: they never thought she'd lose, she was a terrible candidate (just like Biden this time!)
- syshum 6y agoMy comment specifically states Post-2016. Trump was elected in 2016 and as a result of this the Tech Companies "woke" up to become political entities instead of platforms, many many tech executives were filmed/recorded publicly saying would would do anything in their power to avoid "another 2016"
- krapp 6y ago>many many tech executives were filmed/recorded publicly saying would would do anything in their power to avoid "another 2016" Wow, "many many?" Like not one, not even many, but many squared by even more many? That's a lot. And each of them of was filmed and recorded individually making the same statement too. That's shocking. I don't suppose you could point us to the mountain of video and audio evidence implied by this comment, could you?
- 6y ago
- EdSharkey 6y agoI don't think you need to ask around or play dumb. Just read what gets boosted in feeds. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/402495-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-i-fully-admit-our-bias-is-more-left-leaning https://thehill.com/policy/technology/402495-twitter-ceo-jac... @jack says one thing in interviews but does another. https://www.projectveritas.com/news/undercover-video-twitter-engineers-to-ban-a-way-of-talking-through-shadow-banning-algorithms-to-censor-opposing-political-opinions/ https://www.projectveritas.com/news/undercover-video-twitter... What types get a pass on speech and what types get deplatformed? https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/24/carpe-donktum-banned-twitter/ https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/24/carpe-donktum...
- ben_w 6y agoImagine what the world would actually look like if that were true. I mean really imagine that. If the tech industry wanted to suppress a particular presidential candidate, not only with that candidate have no account on any social platform, but links to their websites or to news articles that sentiment analysis decides are pro that candidate would be blocked by search engines, and videos of that candidate or pro that candidate would be flagged and removed.
- zo1 6y agoThat's like rebutting systemic racism by claiming "if there was racism in America, you wouldn't have had a black president!". Maybe there isn't a blatant set of acts that is "biased" on tech platforms that you could point to and say "look see, bias!". Perhaps it is just systemic bias and there is structural suppression of certain viewpoints on the aggregate level.
- syshum 6y agoNo, that would have extreme backlash. It would influence the election in a wrong way. They know this Infact one of the best things the opposition should be doing is promoting other platforms, if high profile political candidates would abandon mainstream platforms and signal boost alternatives (like the new comer Parler) then it would reduce the power of the platforms No the platforms want the HIGH PROFILE people, then they suppress the supporters of those high profile people, that is how the game is played That is how the population is influences, they get the High Profile people to speak on the platform, then only allow dissenters to respond that gives the observing public the idea that the majority disagrees triggering a band wagon effect
- EdSharkey 6y agoThere is only one substantive reason I am aware of: power. Suppression of speech, especially political speech, is a raw power play by the suppressors. That's a losing game though. I agree with GP, only dumb (aka honest) conduits last.
- randomfool 6y agoShould HN be completely un-moderated? There's a decent chance that the quality of the forum would drop and users could move elsewhere. I firmly believe that Facebook is responsible for shaping the tone of their platform (every social network does this in one way or another). A platform that allows anything may not attract the audience that Facebook desires. Arguing that Facebook cannot set the tone of their platform is a losing game.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoHN is probably as good as it gets in terms of striking the balance between comteting interests. You may be right in the current environment, but were the 4chans of the world not constantly shooed away maybe there would be no need for heavy handed approach. I didn't say it cannot. I said it should not. It should stay as neutral as it can possibly be.
- EdSharkey 6y agoModeration is great, I can SEE dead posts on hn if I opt into them. Taste is a good thing. I like the choices about what hits the main page on hn most days, that's why I come here. I cannot opt into a deplatformed political person's speech on Twitter because they're absent. So, no, I don't conflate taste and moderation with silencing political speech, in an election year no less, like you do.
- learc83 6y agoHN bans people too as well as just marking comments as dead.
- 6y ago
- asciimov 6y agoThe problem is that a great many people believe everything they read on FB. As these people see it, "they wouldn't let them say it if it wasn't true."
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- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoAnd so what? Seiously, if a person told you they have a permit from pope to mine black holes would you be inclined to believe them? If so, I maintain that the person provides a valuable service making people less gullible.
- steeve 6y agoRespectfully, Covid statistics and mask defiance in the US are rather good counters arguments to your point.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoI am willing to admit that there is strong current of anti-government tendencies in US society ( in the old country they gvmt prolly could tell you to glue your passport to your windshield and people would obey ). Minor anecdote, a person at my wife's place said he won't wear a mask, because gvmt, but he will ( after some talking to ) submit to company policy. Go figure. I don't want to make a glib statement as I know lives are at stake ( mine and my SO too; we are in high risk group ).. but the more I am watching the ensuing aftermath , the more I am leaning towards just letting retards roam free.
- driverdan 6y ago> And so what? We've already seen what happens. People fall deeper into their echo chambers and stop thinking rationally. Extremism increases, Trump gets elected, COVID-19 conspiracies run rampant, white nationalists are emboldened, fools believe Antifa is a terrorist org, etc.
- 6y ago
- randomfool 6y agoA community that tolerates abusive behavior can be exploited to become a community that fosters abusive behavior. Facebook is in control of what type of community they want their social network to be. At some point users may make a decision that they no longer want to be part of a community which tolerates certain behavior and Facebook will need to make a decision between a hands-off approach and a community that people want to be a part of. Facebook is reaching this point now.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoI don't like to default to 'andsowhat' approach, but this type of conversation tends to lead there. If we are go there, what is this abusive behavior?
- randomfool 6y agoAbusive behavior is behavior which Facebook decides turns away the users they want to keep.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoSo basically no standard. Can you see why it is a good idea not to try to keep pipes as dumb as possible?
- analyte123 6y agoFacebook has over 2.5 billion monthly active users, which is not a "community" under any definition of the word. In my view, the fairly intuitive human instincts for being in a community simply can't be applied to such a diverse range of groups, cultures, and languages.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago2.5 billion, in which each individual only sees its own echo chamber. Implying it isn't smaller groups makes it sound as if everyone see's everyone else's posts, which is not the case.
- tunesmith 6y agoUnfortunately, FB also notices the most controversial posts and rewards them by advertising them. Engagement, clicks, etc. That's the part that keeps me from subscribing to your view. If there were a regulation that prevented social media from automatically hyping "high-engagement" posts, I might agree with you. Just bring back the reverse-chronological every-post behavior and give people tools to do their own filtering and subscribing.
- tmpz22 6y agoI disagree, you can't have no moderation AND advertising optimizations at the same time. Because radical positions increases engagement metrics, advertisers will push users towards their most extreme content at all time. We need to put a ceiling on how extreme that content can be.
- pdonis 6y ago> you can't have no moderation AND advertising optimizations at the same time So the convenience of advertisers and the ad-supported business model should override free speech?
- driverdan 6y agoThere is no free speech on private platforms.
- pdonis 6y agoIf that is the case, then the post I was responding to is wrong when it says "We need to put a ceiling on how extreme that content can be." If Facebook is just a private platform, "we" have no right to dictate anything to them.
- tmpz22 6y agoThat's a pretty slanted interpretation of what I said, what I meant may be better spelled out as: "Because social media platforms demand extreme optimizations in favor of advertisements and general engagement, social media platforms cannot also be a conduit for free speech or un-moderated content as this combination will naturally favor extremist content and deliberately steer users towards extremist views that favor such optimizations".
- Impossible 6y agoOne question for the many people that believe Facebook should be a completely unmoderated communication channel is... Why are you active on Hackernews? Hackernews has a variety of community and moderator driven censorship tools, and does not encourage free speech in this manner. Would you call for a completely unmoderated Hackernews, maybe with local down votes and upvotes? Eventually the system could serve as a per user spam and filtering system, but arguably that's still censorship because an individually trained AI is still hiding and removing content. Or.. alternatively is Hackernews ok because if you have showdead on you can generally see the full set of content on HN?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoUhh, if we elected local officials by playing soccer, I would be playing soccer. For the same reason, if I want to have discussion ( albeit moderated ) HN is not a bad place to go.
- TigeriusKirk 6y agoMy personal opinion is that HN community voting and active moderators are a solid, definite net negative for me. I would indeed be happier if neither of those elements were present. Voting pulls conversation strongly to the mediocre center of the bell curve, and moderators only work if they're willing to strongly profess their own biases. But it's what's here, so it's what I read. Though I rarely read the comments any more, it's mostly a link site for me at this point.
- AgentME 6y agoIf you removed the voting and moderators, then the site culture would rapidly change. It wouldn't surprise me if it rapidly approached the culture of other tech sites with similar systems. If that's fine with you, then you could use those sites instead now.
- TigeriusKirk 6y agoI do.
- nateburke 6y agoProblem is, more and more of FB's advertising customers would prefer not to have their ads run on a dumb platform.
- pow_pp_-1_v 6y agoYes, it should be a dumb platform if anonymity is not possible in any way. So if you want to have a FB account, you need to provide everything that makes it possible to identify you in physical space. If anonymity is required then it should be a heavily moderated platform. I guess these two are the only feasible options.
- peruvian 6y agoEven if it results in groups like anti-vaxers and anti-masks wearers?
- campl3r 6y agoYes, These groups are totally fine. Everyone is entitled to their and opinion and to voicing it, even if I personally disagree.
- lamby 6y agoI guess "I personally disagree" with genocide. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-facebook/u-n-investigators-cite-facebook-role-in-myanmar-crisis-idUSKCN1GO2PN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-facebook...
- austincheney 6y agoThis position is unpopular because Facebook is a platform for manipulating many people at least effort. Highly insecure, naive, and gullible people vote. People that want to feel like they belong to anything completely superficial still vote. People that cannot form an original opinion still vote. In a strictly laissez-faire sense platforms like this become amplified beacons for a few manipulators. It’s not the fault of the platform but rather many people seeking emotional comfort in opposition to actual solutions and confusing one for the other at very low effort. I find that rather anti-libertarian, which is a democracy eating itself. I much more preferred the world where if people wanted to congregate into group thought they had to put real physical effort into it.
- randomsearch 6y agoFacebook is not a person.