4 ms·

The president of the United States has been using these platforms to lie to the entire world unashamedly. For the most part not even the skillful half truths, s

The president of the United States has been using these platforms to lie to the entire world unashamedly. For the most part not even the skillful half truths, statistics and selective quoting that politicians are known for, just complete fabrications and nutjob conspiracies. The corporations had the choice to continue to be complicit, silence him completely or provide some balance from other sources. It seems to me that they choice a cautious and sensible approach.

the-dude 6y ago
You are talking about Bush the 2nd right?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  I don't know if you've been under a rock for more than a decade, but, no, Bush the Younger is not President of the United States. (Sure, some of the bad acts under his administration prefigured bad acts under this one.)
  - the-dude 6y ago
    Attic. It is a past tense sentence, just sayin'.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > It is a past tense sentence, just sayin'. "The president of the United States has been using [...]" is present perfect continuous tense (expressing an action continuing in the present that began in the past), not past tense.
      - shard 6y ago
        So it could be referring to the office of the president, not a specific president. Politicians lie, it's a commodity across the parties.
  - ccn0p 6y ago
    i think it was sarcasm.... maybe /s would help?
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  Alas, Facebook was founded 4 years too late for even the younger Bush.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  He is, perhaps, talking about what should have happened during Bush 2.
mistermann 6y ago
>> We're seeing the teaming up of governments and giant corporations to control the narrative and tell people what's true and what isn't. I think there may be some legitimate truth to this statement that you are not seeing. Donald Trump is far from the only bad actor we've had in our history, and things weren't running smooth as silk before he arrived on the scene, but you sure wouldn't know it from the way people talk.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  I do agree with that to some degree. In fact I do find some of the pan rattling about how social networks "must combat disinformation" about the potential Covid vaccines troubling. However, maybe I'm just unlucky, but I have a number of family members who are predisposed to believing anything they see on the internet. I can see the need for social distancing when it comes to viral content too.
  - tekknik 6y ago
    > However, maybe I'm just unlucky, but I have a number of family members who are predisposed to believing anything they see on the internet. I can see the need for social distancing when it comes to viral content too. So censor what they see to ensure they only receive the information you approve of correct?
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      I don't think platforms (or governments) should ban content they disagree with, but I think platforms should be structured to emphasize compact social groups over viral content. It's irresponsible to have a UI like Twitter, with a "What’s happening" tab deliberately looking for the most controversial topics it thinks you'll like.
    - VBprogrammer 6y ago
      No, but the 30 thousandth time a meme resurfaces proporting to show guns being delivered to terrorist refugees it would be nice if Facebook automatically tagged it with the information that actually it's a scene from some movie or where ever it really came from.
antris 6y ago
> The corporations had the choice to continue to be complicit, silence him completely or provide some balance from other sources I am not so sure. Did they really have a choice? I think the financial incentives are lined up so that inevitably such a click-baity behavior and culture is nearly impossible to ignore for the news media as a whole. How can everyone choose not to report together, when it makes such a good-selling piece of content? I am starting to think that algorithm-driven news sources and targeted advertising is something we should consider banning. Breaking up our collective culture into small bubbles of isolated realities is something that is driving many countries, not just the US, apart. Even in Finland I see people who are not only entertaining, but 100% believing all the Trump conspiracies based on stories, Twitter posts etc. picked up from social media, although we pretty much don't have any mainstream news here. Even if the educated and responsible journalists have been drowned by the flood of fake news, do-it-yourself journalism and information warfare. They cannot keep up and don't have the time to fact check everything. And when they do, the people who believe in this... shit, have already moved on to the next piece of content that supports their view. F this.
no_op 6y ago
Are companies that provide one-to-one communications services, like cell phone companies, complicit in drug dealing, insider trading, and all the other nefarious acts that are no doubt organized using their networks? I think most people would say they're not. Meanwhile, one-to-many communications services, like broadcast TV, by their nature require editorial decisions. If you're only broadcasting one stream someone has to decide what the content is, and thereby becomes responsible for that content. Social media is many-to-many. Quite a few people seem to have decided this imposes the same sort of centralized responsibility that exists with one-to-many communications, but this is not at all obvious to me. On social networks there is no single stream of information, thus there is no necessity for editorial decisions, thus the mechanism by which one-to-many broadcasters become responsible for the content they carry is not present. Recommendation systems complicate this somewhat, admittedly. If platform owners are putting their fingers on the scale (algorithmically or otherwise) to determine what gets exposure, some of the responsibility comes back. However, in the simple case of e.g. Twitter showing you content from people you've explicitly chosen to follow, I don't see how they've got any more responsibility than exists in the one-to-one scenario.
- tekknik 6y ago
  > Are companies that provide one-to-one communications services, like cell phone companies, complicit in drug dealing, insider trading, and all the others nefarious acts that are no doubt organized using their networks? I think most people would say they're not. Unfortunately this same logic isn’t used when discussing the PLCAA or gun manufacturers in general.
- pop3 6y ago
  Cells phones are not comparable to an online service. Property rights are a thing and those who own the servers can determine what they will store and present to other users. Conservative groups that don't spread misinformation and hatred are thriving on FB and Twitter. Change the law to make them store and publish anything not already illegal will turn them into cesspools like the various *chan sites inside of a month and advertisers will leave as will people with a conscience.

the-dude 6y ago

You are talking about Bush the 2nd right?

dragonwriter 6y ago
I don't know if you've been under a rock for more than a decade, but, no, Bush the Younger is not President of the United States. (Sure, some of the bad acts under his administration prefigured bad acts under this one.)
- the-dude 6y ago
  Attic. It is a past tense sentence, just sayin'.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > It is a past tense sentence, just sayin'. "The president of the United States has been using [...]" is present perfect continuous tense (expressing an action continuing in the present that began in the past), not past tense.
    - shard 6y ago
      So it could be referring to the office of the president, not a specific president. Politicians lie, it's a commodity across the parties.
- ccn0p 6y ago
  i think it was sarcasm.... maybe /s would help?
VBprogrammer 6y ago
Alas, Facebook was founded 4 years too late for even the younger Bush.
shadowgovt 6y ago
He is, perhaps, talking about what should have happened during Bush 2.

mistermann 6y ago

>> We're seeing the teaming up of governments and giant corporations to control the narrative and tell people what's true and what isn't. I think there may be some legitimate truth to this statement that you are not seeing. Donald Trump is far from the only bad actor we've had in our history, and things weren't running smooth as silk before he arrived on the scene, but you sure wouldn't know it from the way people talk.

VBprogrammer 6y ago
I do agree with that to some degree. In fact I do find some of the pan rattling about how social networks "must combat disinformation" about the potential Covid vaccines troubling. However, maybe I'm just unlucky, but I have a number of family members who are predisposed to believing anything they see on the internet. I can see the need for social distancing when it comes to viral content too.
- tekknik 6y ago
  > However, maybe I'm just unlucky, but I have a number of family members who are predisposed to believing anything they see on the internet. I can see the need for social distancing when it comes to viral content too. So censor what they see to ensure they only receive the information you approve of correct?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I don't think platforms (or governments) should ban content they disagree with, but I think platforms should be structured to emphasize compact social groups over viral content. It's irresponsible to have a UI like Twitter, with a "What’s happening" tab deliberately looking for the most controversial topics it thinks you'll like.
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    No, but the 30 thousandth time a meme resurfaces proporting to show guns being delivered to terrorist refugees it would be nice if Facebook automatically tagged it with the information that actually it's a scene from some movie or where ever it really came from.

antris 6y ago

> The corporations had the choice to continue to be complicit, silence him completely or provide some balance from other sources I am not so sure. Did they really have a choice? I think the financial incentives are lined up so that inevitably such a click-baity behavior and culture is nearly impossible to ignore for the news media as a whole. How can everyone choose not to report together, when it makes such a good-selling piece of content? I am starting to think that algorithm-driven news sources and targeted advertising is something we should consider banning. Breaking up our collective culture into small bubbles of isolated realities is something that is driving many countries, not just the US, apart. Even in Finland I see people who are not only entertaining, but 100% believing all the Trump conspiracies based on stories, Twitter posts etc. picked up from social media, although we pretty much don't have any mainstream news here. Even if the educated and responsible journalists have been drowned by the flood of fake news, do-it-yourself journalism and information warfare. They cannot keep up and don't have the time to fact check everything. And when they do, the people who believe in this... shit, have already moved on to the next piece of content that supports their view. F this.

no_op 6y ago

Are companies that provide one-to-one communications services, like cell phone companies, complicit in drug dealing, insider trading, and all the other nefarious acts that are no doubt organized using their networks? I think most people would say they're not. Meanwhile, one-to-many communications services, like broadcast TV, by their nature require editorial decisions. If you're only broadcasting one stream someone has to decide what the content is, and thereby becomes responsible for that content. Social media is many-to-many. Quite a few people seem to have decided this imposes the same sort of centralized responsibility that exists with one-to-many communications, but this is not at all obvious to me. On social networks there is no single stream of information, thus there is no necessity for editorial decisions, thus the mechanism by which one-to-many broadcasters become responsible for the content they carry is not present. Recommendation systems complicate this somewhat, admittedly. If platform owners are putting their fingers on the scale (algorithmically or otherwise) to determine what gets exposure, some of the responsibility comes back. However, in the simple case of e.g. Twitter showing you content from people you've explicitly chosen to follow, I don't see how they've got any more responsibility than exists in the one-to-one scenario.

tekknik 6y ago
> Are companies that provide one-to-one communications services, like cell phone companies, complicit in drug dealing, insider trading, and all the others nefarious acts that are no doubt organized using their networks? I think most people would say they're not. Unfortunately this same logic isn’t used when discussing the PLCAA or gun manufacturers in general.
pop3 6y ago
Cells phones are not comparable to an online service. Property rights are a thing and those who own the servers can determine what they will store and present to other users. Conservative groups that don't spread misinformation and hatred are thriving on FB and Twitter. Change the law to make them store and publish anything not already illegal will turn them into cesspools like the various *chan sites inside of a month and advertisers will leave as will people with a conscience.