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Did you read the story? The details seem pretty damning to me. > I’m sure Facebook isn’t perfect, but I know enough good people who work there to know they’re

Did you read the story? The details seem pretty damning to me. > I’m sure Facebook isn’t perfect, but I know enough good people who work there to know they’re not all out to “get” us. Yeah, I don't think you read the article. That's what's happening: a bunch of employees are blowing the whistle on what seems to be executive abuse of the fact check program.

wiredone 6y ago
As the FB employee in this thread commented - this person vilified others and was fired for that, not his attempts to "bring down the man". Large scale platforms like this are hard to manage. I can see many cases where people doing their best can be misconstrued as an evil conspiracy. Eg. - Users and companies with large fan bases are open to brigading. Previously companies have been taken off the platform suddenly because of militant FB groups. - A new rule is instituted "anyone with more than X followers get Tier-1 support in reviewing and reinstating their account following a take down." - Engineer on some team mildly close to the team who runs the takedown/reinstatement systems sees that a Right Wing commentator is getting Tier-1 support and fast turn around reinstatement. - Said engineer tries to vilify the people who wrote the policy and those who are carrying it out, tries to go public with a conspiracy that "FB is prioritizing reinstating Right Wing users". Instead they've really just lost the trust of their peers, failed to understand the space properly, and now brought their employer into disrepute - they should be fired. This stuff happens all the time, and is usually just chalked up to "its a hard problem to get right, and we're trying to get better every day". When people over react and make out like Zuck is pulling strings to rule the universe i have a hard time understanding when he sleeps.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
thu2111 6y ago
The fact check program is itself executive abuse and should be ended. Given how many "fact checkers" are simply leftist pro-establishment types, and how many "fact checks" they produce are simple re-statements of whatever someone was claiming without bothering to address any raised criticisms, it doesn't surprise me at all that it's a flashpoint internally. These sort of people simply define anything that's not left wing as "misinformation", so the claim by the FB employee is on its surface meaningless. Zuckerberg should never have given way on fact checking. I wonder if he understands it was a mistake. Facebook is meant to be a social network, it's inherently a graph oriented organisation in which graph nodes are all roughly equal. Fact checking is the exact opposite: a hierarchy with Facebook at the top and delegated "truth arbiters" a layer lower, that try to dominate the social graph. The cited example of the Breitbart video is a good example. The video is a video of doctors. There are tons of scientists, government advisors and indeed whole governments saying they don't see any need for masks, children can go back to school or never even left (as in Sweden), etc. You don't need to go far to find them. That children aren't infectious is by now widely accepted in the scientific community. For Facebook to censor the President for making such a statement makes them look absurd, and totalitarian. Given the long term accusations of fraud surrounding mail voting that were never addressed, it's not a big surprise Trump is worrying about the integrity of the election process.
- dekhn 6y ago
  There are not "tons of scientists, government advisors" saying they don't see the need for masks. That is very much a minority opinion which is not supported by mainstream science. I'm curious also by your claim that children aren't infectious. That is not widely accepted by the scientific community. It sounds like you're taking some minor positions and pretending like they're mainstream.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    > It sounds like you're taking some minor positions and pretending like they're mainstream. Indeed. And if the grandparent got all their "news" from paid feeds and shared content on Facebook (given the right seeding and demographics), they might genuinely believe these are mainstream positions. Which is exactly the problem people are worried about in the linked article.
    - kls 6y ago
      > Which is exactly the problem people are worried about in the linked article. The problem with that is no amount of flagging and removing is going to fix the problem and that is why I don't even see the point, the left and right are so divided that those on the extremes will fall for anything being blinded by their emotional hatred for the other. I mean we are at the point where the extreme left believes for a fact that via a thoroughly refuted dossier, that the sitting president paid Russian hookers to pee on him. The extreme right is just as bad, believing that their is a global cabal of elite leftist that are raping children with a presidential candidate being one of them. No amount of blocking content is going to repair the fact that people are no longer listening and that is the problem one side wants the other side filtered so that they can be the only voice shouting in the dark, thinking if the other side cannot talk then they are by default going to listen, but the reality is almost everybody has stopped listening, no amount of censorship is going to fix that.
      - verall 6y ago
        This is a strawman and false equivalence. The "extreme left" believes the President definitely sexually assaulted at least one woman and additionally probably raped someone. The first part having been admitted to several times. Noone believes that 100% of the Steele dossier is true. The QAnon crowd is a minority of the "extreme right", although it is concerning how fast conspiracies spread, including "left conspiracies" like anti-vax or anti-GMO. Fact checks might help slow crazy conspiracies a little bit. I think it is worth for this reason, although I believe in content warnings+disclaimers instead of takedowns because of Streisand effects. Finally, again, the Steele dossier is not even a "left conspiracy". It is a side-product of rumor spreading games that the intelligence community plays, that got leaked. I think it is a bad example for the point your seem to be making.

wiredone 6y ago

As the FB employee in this thread commented - this person vilified others and was fired for that, not his attempts to "bring down the man". Large scale platforms like this are hard to manage. I can see many cases where people doing their best can be misconstrued as an evil conspiracy. Eg. - Users and companies with large fan bases are open to brigading. Previously companies have been taken off the platform suddenly because of militant FB groups. - A new rule is instituted "anyone with more than X followers get Tier-1 support in reviewing and reinstating their account following a take down." - Engineer on some team mildly close to the team who runs the takedown/reinstatement systems sees that a Right Wing commentator is getting Tier-1 support and fast turn around reinstatement. - Said engineer tries to vilify the people who wrote the policy and those who are carrying it out, tries to go public with a conspiracy that "FB is prioritizing reinstating Right Wing users". Instead they've really just lost the trust of their peers, failed to understand the space properly, and now brought their employer into disrepute - they should be fired. This stuff happens all the time, and is usually just chalked up to "its a hard problem to get right, and we're trying to get better every day". When people over react and make out like Zuck is pulling strings to rule the universe i have a hard time understanding when he sleeps.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

thu2111 6y ago

The fact check program is itself executive abuse and should be ended. Given how many "fact checkers" are simply leftist pro-establishment types, and how many "fact checks" they produce are simple re-statements of whatever someone was claiming without bothering to address any raised criticisms, it doesn't surprise me at all that it's a flashpoint internally. These sort of people simply define anything that's not left wing as "misinformation", so the claim by the FB employee is on its surface meaningless. Zuckerberg should never have given way on fact checking. I wonder if he understands it was a mistake. Facebook is meant to be a social network, it's inherently a graph oriented organisation in which graph nodes are all roughly equal. Fact checking is the exact opposite: a hierarchy with Facebook at the top and delegated "truth arbiters" a layer lower, that try to dominate the social graph. The cited example of the Breitbart video is a good example. The video is a video of doctors. There are tons of scientists, government advisors and indeed whole governments saying they don't see any need for masks, children can go back to school or never even left (as in Sweden), etc. You don't need to go far to find them. That children aren't infectious is by now widely accepted in the scientific community. For Facebook to censor the President for making such a statement makes them look absurd, and totalitarian. Given the long term accusations of fraud surrounding mail voting that were never addressed, it's not a big surprise Trump is worrying about the integrity of the election process.

dekhn 6y ago
There are not "tons of scientists, government advisors" saying they don't see the need for masks. That is very much a minority opinion which is not supported by mainstream science. I'm curious also by your claim that children aren't infectious. That is not widely accepted by the scientific community. It sounds like you're taking some minor positions and pretending like they're mainstream.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > It sounds like you're taking some minor positions and pretending like they're mainstream. Indeed. And if the grandparent got all their "news" from paid feeds and shared content on Facebook (given the right seeding and demographics), they might genuinely believe these are mainstream positions. Which is exactly the problem people are worried about in the linked article.
  - kls 6y ago
    > Which is exactly the problem people are worried about in the linked article. The problem with that is no amount of flagging and removing is going to fix the problem and that is why I don't even see the point, the left and right are so divided that those on the extremes will fall for anything being blinded by their emotional hatred for the other. I mean we are at the point where the extreme left believes for a fact that via a thoroughly refuted dossier, that the sitting president paid Russian hookers to pee on him. The extreme right is just as bad, believing that their is a global cabal of elite leftist that are raping children with a presidential candidate being one of them. No amount of blocking content is going to repair the fact that people are no longer listening and that is the problem one side wants the other side filtered so that they can be the only voice shouting in the dark, thinking if the other side cannot talk then they are by default going to listen, but the reality is almost everybody has stopped listening, no amount of censorship is going to fix that.
    - verall 6y ago
      This is a strawman and false equivalence. The "extreme left" believes the President definitely sexually assaulted at least one woman and additionally probably raped someone. The first part having been admitted to several times. Noone believes that 100% of the Steele dossier is true. The QAnon crowd is a minority of the "extreme right", although it is concerning how fast conspiracies spread, including "left conspiracies" like anti-vax or anti-GMO. Fact checks might help slow crazy conspiracies a little bit. I think it is worth for this reason, although I believe in content warnings+disclaimers instead of takedowns because of Streisand effects. Finally, again, the Steele dossier is not even a "left conspiracy". It is a side-product of rumor spreading games that the intelligence community plays, that got leaked. I think it is a bad example for the point your seem to be making.