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>Facebook by its nature takes stances on deeply political topics. Why is that "by its nature"? I don't think that's "by its nature" at all. Phone companies and

• joshuamorton 6y ago
  Perhaps this demonstrates why facebook is fundamentally different from an isp. Facebook doesn't "facilitate" communication in the same way a computer "facilitates" communication. It facilitates communication in the same way that a forum or book club or group of people facilitates communication. Groups require some moderation to remain popular. Facebook is driven to moderate by the market.
• t-writescode 6y ago
  > Phone companies and ISPs facilitate communication between people, but that doesn't necessitate they take political stances on what communication to allow Taking a stance to not control what communication is allowed is a very political stance. It just so happens that, I believe in those cases, it's also a legally mandated stance; but, if it weren't a legally mandated stance, it would absolutely be a political stance, whatever they ended up saying. Where a private company decides to limit free speech (or not limit free speech) is, 100%, a political stance when the laws have not been written that make that decision for them. Even if we maintain a law around protecting companies that just host other people's content vs curating and publishing content, it could be seen as a political decision whether a given website and company choose to be on the publisher vs public content stance. I'm forgetting the word for publisher vs ... whatever it is where they take no responsibility for what people post on the site; but I hope my point is clear.
  • novok 6y ago
    In these debates, people seem to pretend that if facebook or others don't stay politically neutral as possible premptively, that pissed off politicians will not do it for them, badly, in hundreds of countries. It's why social media companies have the kid gloves with politically powerful people. A segment of social media company staff also don't like that reality and want their social to censor the political parties / discussions they don't like and thus they toe the line and give unsatisfying non-answers at all hands and to the media.
  • ponker 6y ago
    This is why the cloud flare CEO has lobbied for regulation that takes these decisions off his hands.
  • mehrdadn 6y ago
    > Taking a stance to not control what communication is allowed is a very political stance. Then in your model of the world, how would one not take a political stance? If everyone takes a political stance in your model by definition no matter what their intents or actions are then it's a rather useless definition.
    • eli 6y ago
      Indeed! We all take political stances every day and it is certainly not possible to run an apolitical social network. The word is probably not very useful. But being able to reflect on “sensitive” issues is extremely useful and, I would argue, necessary.
      • throwawaysea 6y ago
        And yet any random person on the street can easily flag something as being political or not political. I don’t accept that everything is automatically political. That is just an unrealistic argument that doesn’t match the reality of how the word is used.
        • 6y ago
• Talanes 6y ago
  I cannot say something into one end of the telephone, and depending on the content of my message, not have it delivered on the other end. That's the difference.
  • hartator 6y ago
    Some govs cut off your phone if you say certain keywords.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • heartbeats 6y ago
      Which?
    • Talanes 6y ago
      If the state is using your telecom to actively monitor you, would you call that telecom nonpolitical?
  • triceratops 6y ago
    If the phone company finds out you're running an illegal/scammy robocalling operation from their phone line, they absolutely will cut you off.
    • kelnos 6y ago
      Cutting you off entirely is not the same thing as chopping up what you're saying and selectively passing through parts of it and not others.
      • triceratops 6y ago
        It's not a 1:1 comparison. The point is the phone company can and does take steps to prevent misuse of their network. Would you prefer it if social networks went straight to bans for rule infractions?
• alwayseasy 6y ago
  They do take a stance on what can be amplified through ads or not. Hence its political nature.
• r00fus 6y ago
  Neither an ISP nor phone company has a feed algorithm or spam prevention* as a central part of its operations. These are key to the usability of any social network. And they are inherently biased. Any such organization also has to take money, so ads are also key to their operations, and they have taken political stands on ads too. The attempted comparison to utility companies is not compelling. * arguably they do now by limiting "scam calls"
• nraynaud 6y ago
  facebook decides how many feeds each post appear on. it's a not a broadcast system, they dampen the spread with an active decision.
• deleted 6y ago
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• deleted 6y ago
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• nbzx 6y ago
  But Facebook does take a stance, no? As an example, they probably have used their platforms to show pro-LGTB propaganda (I haven't checked). That shows a clear political leaning in their staff.
  • skj 6y ago
    Being pro "treating people with basic human dignity" should not be a political stance, but here we are.
• okintheory 6y ago
  At various points in time, Facebook has made it possible to target political ads toward based on your known interest in pseudoscience or antisemitism [1]. Giving access to this degree of targeting (even if the categories are algorithmically generated) is inherently political. [1] https://www.getrevue.co/profile/themarkup/issues/probing-facebook-s-misinformation-machine-241739 https://www.getrevue.co/profile/themarkup/issues/probing-fac...
• mikenew 6y ago
  Because Facebook, by it's nature, is designed to filter content. It turned everyone and everything into a content generator, even down to the level of "Jimmy liked a post by Burger King!". It gives everyone access to this unfathomable ocean of content, and then filters it down to something a person can consume. Some of filtering is based on what the user wants to see, some of it is based on some notion of how "good" a piece of content is (scored by likes and engagement numbers), some of it is from advertisers paying to have their content make it through the filter, and some of it is Facebook deciding what should be seen and what shouldn't (mostly driven by their desire to keep you on the platform). Every single thing you see on Facebook has made it through a huge filter that ultimately decides if it's something you should see or not. And the inevitable outcome of building a gigantic what-information-do-you-get-to-see machine is that there are many, many parties trying to influence the machine. Phone lines don't have that problem.
  • Thorentis 6y ago
    This is a fair point, but I think the political aspect is an "emergent property" if you will, rather than an inherent one. If Facebook limits the filtering to engagement, then it isn't the fault of Facebook that political content is engaging. That's just human nature. Disasters, outrage, politics, polarizing topics - these are all popular topics both online and off-line, and apread quickly as town gossip well before Facebook. It is only when Facebook steps in and says that particular topics need to be exceptions to the filtering rules that apply to everything else, that they make themselves into a political actor. For instance, let's say that the news feed showed you content based purely on number of likes. If political posts get lots of likes that isn't Facebook's problem. If the same ranking rules apply to all posts (# of likes) then they would remain neutral. As soon as Facebook says "content from x person will have their ranking artificially changed to reduce/increase engagement with it" thereby making an exception to the rule that applies to everything else, they have now become a political actor.
    • tkzed49 6y ago
      Whether or not a property of a system is emergent does not seem particularly relevant to discussing its effects. It would be nice if we could just look at the way a platform like Facebook works, or see that it does not intend to be a "political actor", but the reality is that its effects are destructive. It has a strong effect on politics. The effects of Facebook are not outside of its responsibility simply because it isn't programmed to be political.
• wonnage 6y ago
  You pick up the phone and call someone. You don't pick up the phone and have the phone company present you a list of people you might be interested in calling, ranked by how much they bid to be on that list.
• csa 6y ago
  > Nothing about Facebook's nature forces them to go beyond that and act as de facto language legislators The ethics of being a/the major institution of mass communication in large parts of the world may not force FB to act as language legislators, but these ethics certainly should compel them to do so. Relevant points: - If FB’s status as a mass comms source is threatened, then the company itself is threatened. This threat can be due to a lack in trust in the platform and/or legislation that effectively legislates them out of existence (see below re free speech). This existential issue should compel them to factor language legislation into their corporate policies. - Stockholders certainly care about FB’s status as a mass comms source even if no one else does. - Stakeholders obviously care about this, too. - Relying on governments to regulate mass communications is a Pandora’s box for FB since FB is an international platform. - In the US, in order to facilitate and encourage free speech, mass comms laws are not particularly restrictive, but they are built on an underlying assumption about social-based regulation that generally hold up but seem to be completely broken with platforms like FB. If FB doesn’t address this issue, then the laws that end up addressing this issue may end up legislating FB out of existence. To close, whether playing the language legislator is part of FB’s nature, an emergent property, or something else, there are very real reasons that FB has policies on regulating language. Whether they do this well or not is a completely different issue, but putting the onus on government legislators to address the problem with formal laws seems, at best, overly dismissive.
  • themacguffinman 6y ago
    Relying on governments to regulate mass communications is strictly better for Facebook than the alternative, where governments disagree with Facebook's chosen policies and punish them instead. This is why most companies prefer to comply with local law, only enforcing universal policy where it doesn't potentially conflict with local law. Companies don't just have no reason to regulate language, they also have no serious authority to do so. The onus has always been and can only be on government legislators to address these issues in the most fundamental sense. I'd like to see Facebook try to take on the Democrat/Republican eternal conflict in the US or the CCP in China on adopting a universal policy that they don't agree with, armed with powerful arguments like "the power of ethics compels me!" or "it's a Pandora's box because we're international!" or "stockholders care about our status!". Going above and beyond their most basic policy obligations has been a great way to attract the ire of political authorities who are now agitated over whether Facebook's policy is intentionally empowering or weakening their political enemies.
• vkou 6y ago
  > Why is that "by its nature"? Because Facebook explicitly chooses how to construct the timeline it presents to its users, and becomes some of that timeline contains political content. If Facebook were a dumb first-in-first-out aggregator, it wouldn't be political. But it's not.
• ashtonkem 6y ago
  By choosing to have a system by which algorithms would recommend social content, they’ve committed to a course that is going to eventually collide with politics. The only way to avoid it is to get out of the recommendation game, which would be tantamount to corporate suicide at this point.
• eli_gottlieb 6y ago
  >Phone companies and ISPs facilitate communication between people, but that doesn't necessitate they take political stances on what communication to allow. They were regulated as public utilities and common carriers. Facebook is not.