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Facebook Lets Vietnam’s Cyberarmy Target Dissidents, Rejecting a Celebrity Plea
- pgrote 6y agoI am confused by this statement and don't understand: "But as Mai Khoi discovered, Vietnamese Facebook is also plagued by unofficial censorship, achieved not by declaring content illegal but by coordinating users to flag it for violating Facebook’s own content rules, known as the “Community Standards.” This dupes Facebook into removing ordinary political speech as though it were hate speech, violent incitement, or gory video." Is the reporting stating that Facebook in Vietnam forces users to flag things on a list from the government? Or does it mean Facebook in Vietnam removes items the community has flagged? If the government isn't forcing the censorship then how is what Facebook does in Vietnam different that anywhere else? Users flag things, Facebook removes them.
- tuankiet65 6y agoIt means there are Facebook pages/groups coordinating their followers to mass report posts or persons deemed "reactionary". These pages/groups mostly held pro-government viewpoints, although I can't comment on whether they have direct affiliation with the government or not. From what I've seen, many Facebook profiles gets locked after such campaigns. I assume a profile is automatically locked when the reports reach a certain threshold, and it can be very difficult to get it unlocked, since you need to contact Facebook directly. From the article itself: > Private groups filled with government partisans coordinate takedown campaigns — or worse — against any views deemed “reactionary” by the Vietnamese state, [...] > The Intercept was able to gain access to one such closed-door Vietnamese censorship brigade, named “E47,” where it’s obvious, through Facebook’s apparent indifference, that the company has failed its users terribly.
- pgrote 6y agoThank you for the explanation. Unsure how I wasn't putting 2+2 together. Facebook presumably does have rules against brigading.
- alisonkisk 6y agoFacebook only really cares about the big profitable countries/languages, and whatever gets them access to a small country. They don't invest in cultural engagement to be good stewards of small/poor language communities
- sparrish 6y agoCause celebrity pleas are supposed to mean something?
- reaperducer 6y agoCause celebrity pleas are supposed to mean something? Absolutely. Michelle Obama promised us that the whole social media uproar against Joseph Kony would fix everything in Uganda. There was even a hash tag for it: #kony2012. Now everything is all rainbows and unicorns there, and Kony has been brought to justice. Oh, wait...
- kordlessagain 6y agoSome people just want everyone else to see them arguing with themselves.
- hour_glass 6y agoShouldn't everyones pleas mean something?
- saint_fiasco 6y agoUnfortunately in this case they do. All pleas mean the same, and the Vietnamese government controls more pleas. The government basically has its supporters spam Facebook with requests to please take down problematic posts because they break Facebook's rules. Apparently if enough people complain about a Facebook post, Facebook removes it automatically without checking that it actually violates Facebook's rules.
- bigbubba 6y agoI guess it suggests Facebook is aware of the situation and can't claim ignorance.
- meekrohprocess 6y agoI am having trouble finding a way to describe Facebook's behavior here besides, "evil". They are running and maintaining the infrastructure for a modern-day Stasi, and they steadfastly refuse to do anything about it. The targeted dissidents are regularly detained and "interrogated". How is Facebook not complicit in that, especially after they have been alerted to the abusive behavior many times? Don't their own terms of service prohibit calling for violence against individuals? And what's to stop it from happening here?
- colechristensen 6y agoStasi as a Service. Locally, facebook isn’t much needed for this kind of tracking and targeting. We already have the NSA dragnet for phones and who knows what else. What is (or would help) stopping it from happening here? People understanding and caring about how they are tracked, leading to choosing how they use tools and making data collection and use a political issue.
- alisonkisk 6y agoThe article is about brigading public content, not tracking.
- imaadrashied 6y agoThe underlying question here is: Should Facebook be forced to obey the government of a country in which it operates or be an agent for US values and ignore the government of any specific country in which it operates. I don't think there's a simple answer here and the default should likely be 'listen to government, regardless of how terrible they are' because we want to respect other countries' sovereignty as we want our sovereignty respected.
- andrewnicolalde 6y agoI wholeheartedly disagree. No matter how terrible? Seriously? What if an oppressive government asks for a list of religious minorities? A list of people with with certain medical conditions?
- dmix 6y ago> E47 is just one example among a global constellation of state-affiliated internet censor squads This is why you shouldn’t allow easy censorship anywhere. It easy to justify with some ‘bad guys’ locally but it always ends up getting abused. It’s a shame free speech is at such risk even in a country like the US (and long gone in the UK where they conduct night swat raids over tweets).
- snarf21 6y agoBut what about the children...... (So tired of these pathetic straw men)
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI'm missing something fundamental about the worldview here. The Intercept and Ms. Khoi have some well-founded concerns about the Vietnamese government's Facebook activities, and their conclusion is... we need to regulate and break up Facebook? That might well be a good idea for other reasons, but how could it possibly decrease the Vietnamese government's power over Vietnamese Facebook users?
- reaperducer 6y agoFacebook is a hammer. Multiple small hammers are less effective than one big hammer.
- efwfwef 6y agoThat's what they thought with the cartel during the war on drug, and here we are.
- albatruss 6y agoCan you explain why a relevant equivalence holds between Facebook and drug cartels?
- efwfwef 6y agoIt's easier to regulate one entity, harder to regulate many. People like to pretend that small businesses that hold people's data don't regularly get breached, store passwords in clear, just sell your emails to spam agencies, etc.
- chinhodado 6y agoFacebook can't win. If they stand back and do nothing people scream about them being enablers of fake news, propagating misinformation and other things. But if they remove posts that are reported then they are accused of censorship, of "unaccountable tyranny" So what are they expected to do then?
- commandlinefan 6y ago> what are they expected to do Pick a side. Preferably the free-speech side.
- wesleywt 6y agoShould all speech be free? If the speech calls for the genocide of the Rohingya should it be allowed on a private platform. Remember, radio and TV has always been regulated and censored. Why shouldn't same standards be applied to Facebook?
- redisman 6y agoI'm sorry but you don't get to cry about consequences after opening Pandoras Box and making billions off of the chaos.
- yorwba 6y ago> The three-step process on “how to fight” with Facebook’s built-in tools is simple and intuitive: For a targeted Facebook page, E47 users are asked to rate it with one star out of five, falsely flag the page’s posts as containing either a credible threat of violence or suicide, and then report the page itself as spam. Other E47 targeted operations ask the group’s over 3,400 members to falsely report other Community Standards violations like pornography — then spam the target page with actual rule-breaking violent or pornographic comments, essentially planting evidence of a bannable offense. E47 can't be the the only group using those tactics, right? It's mind-boggling that Facebook's definition of "inauthentic behavior" is apparently limited to the use of fake accounts and doesn't consider false reports as equally "inauthentic".
- throw1231231344 6y agoThousands of groups, some had millions of members (recently banned by Facebook).
- Barrin92 6y agoI doubt Facebook even invests enough resources in skilled personnel, well versed in the language and culture to make those difficult judgements. When Facebook was used as a platform for racial violence in Myanmar IIRC Facebook had three(!) Burmese speakers in Dublin. In particular because these countries are so populous but represent only a tiny fraction of their market share it's probably even worse than it is in affluent countries.
- throw1231231344 6y agoThrowaway since I was indirectly intimidated in the past due to my "reactionary" views. I grew up in Vietnam and have worked at a public college in Vietnam for a couple of years. My cousin is a senior army officer and my father used to be a police officer. I am following these groups as well as most of the democratic activists such as the Mai Khôi. I would like to clarify that most of members of these groups are just ordinary people who support the Vietnamese government. They are not the vocal minority. Based on my personal experience, at least half of college students, who I talked to, support the Vietnam's government whole-heartedly. A quarter will always criticize for whatever the government do. The rest don't care. Decades and decades of propaganda work .. pretty well. They have been brainwashing since they started going to school at 6 y/o. Personally, I only began to recognize the lies of VN government in my early 20s. The lack of focus on critical thinking in national curriculum contributes a significant part to this. In addition, while highly corrupted and lacks of transparency, the government of Vietnam also has done many things right, e.g., rejoining the world after cold war, economic development, covid19, cheap public education, and public healthcare to some extends. The alternative views are no good. Except a handful of good eggs, most of democratic activists occasionally spread fake news, half-truth stories, and conspiracy theories. The majority of them are Trump's supporters and anti-vaxxers. I'm not saying that all Trump's supporters are bad, just stating the fact. They are often discredited by the government's supporters due to this and the current situation in the US. Last but not least, the government of Vietnam is pretty confident in suppressing free press because China can get away with it without any real pressure from the US and EU. At the end of the day, if there is an alternative to Facebook, the situation will like be the same due to the current political landscape of Vietnam. Twenty years ago, it was Yahoo's blogs. Even if FB withdraws from Vietnam tomorrow, there will be another platform and things will be the same. Sorry for English mistakes.
- efwfwef 6y agoNot sure why you're being downvoted, that's an interesting comment. I talk to Chinese people who moved to China a lot, and most of them support the Chinese government and think the western medias are just against China. It reminds me a bit of pro-Trumps who think that all medias are against them and evil. It's very similar IMO, and it's sad to see.
- brundolf 6y agoRemember when this was a dinky little website that let college students publish their relationship status?
- russh 6y agoZuckerberg: People just submitted it. Zuckerberg: I don't know why. Zuckerberg: They "trust me" Zuckerberg: Dumb f*cks. I member.
- Triv888 6y agoFacebook would have been really useful in the Nazi era...
- tehjoker 6y agoJust remember kids, when talking about communist countries, "pro-democracy" in the western press means "pro-market/pro-capitalism". Her beef may be real, but understand what the sides are. The question to ask is: "How would the government treat pro-communists in the US?" and compare. You may well conclude that both countries are doing shitty things or one of them but you'll have an informed opinion.
- variable11 6y agoIf you work for Facebook, you have blood on your hands, you are an amoral person, and you are a disgrace to humanity.
- seagullz 6y agoThe same playbook in a few other countries too: https://netra.news/2020/we-hack-facebook-state-sponsored-cybercrime-in-bangladesh-1137 https://netra.news/2020/we-hack-facebook-state-sponsored-cyb...