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Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'
- foogazi 6y agoA failure of critical thinking skills at the national level or willful ignorance?
- jsight 6y agoThere's always enough of the former to go around.
- Gabriel_Martin 6y agoIt's too bad that critical thinking and rationality aren't considered integral elements of preparing students to join the workforce.
- hahamrfunnyguy 6y agoBoth. People just believe what they want. When presented with new information they will adjust the new information or explain it away rather than change their belief system (and admit they were wrong). It takes courage to admit your were wrong, and most people don't have it. Politicians, especially.
- bagacrap 6y agoCourageous or not, politicians are never rewarded for admitting mistakes.
- tomglynch 6y agoAlong with this, it seems to me media should not be referring to the terrorists entering the Capitol as 'storming' as that is the terminology used by the fringe groups of which they are proud of. I've read articles mentioning what these fringe groups call 'the storm' and I think distancing media reports from that is important.
- silexia 6y agoI suggest we make individuals or organizations that spread lies without evidence liable on a civil or criminal basis. The root reason for the violent riot at the Capitol last week was that many people have been lied to, and the lies are things that would incite people to fight. If you believed that America's democracy is no longer in place and has been replaced by a deep state dictatorship, you would probably fight against it yourself. We must fight the beliefs at the source - stop the liars by making them liable for the damage they cause.
- gameswithgo 6y agoIt is tough when the liar is the president and somehow the learned justices of our nation have decided the president is above the law and can only be held to account via an impeachment process.
- jsight 6y agoWould you prefer a system where an unelected justice system has the right to remove the president?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- moron4hire 6y agoYou sound almost like you want to give these people a pass. People get lied to all the time. The vast majority of them don't respond by forming an unruly mob of slathering idiots.
- netsharc 6y agoNot grandparent poster, but what's the other option? If somehow we could give everyone god-esque knowledge and wisdom (e.g. make them able to be able to travel through time and space and check all those claims of voter frauds so they can deduce themselves, that, well, maybe there were fraudsters here and there, but not enough that it flipped the states from Trump to Biden; or to show them that no, there's no basement in some pizza parlor where the Democrat cabal are hiding Epstein and all the missing children), it would be great to be able to make the insurrectionists realize that they've been lied to. A lot of the mob on 1/6 probably really thought they were taking back the country from some corrupt Deep State and that Trump was this great guy who tried to fix the world, but has ben thwarted (although, saying all the non-Christian and non-Whites are not entitled to live here is not defensible). Like the lady who was shot, if you check her Twitter, she really bought into the whole QAnon brainwashing.
- travismark 6y agoa better idea - tell Trump he can have his Facebook back if he agrees to go on talk radio and cable news and tell his supporters that he was lying to them all along, there is no evidence of meaningful voter fraud, and it's time to move on. only when enough of the supporters are finally convinced of this can he have his account back (or 6 months, whichever is greater)
- admiralspoo 6y ago"All he has to do is say there are five lights"
- gameswithgo 6y agoit would be interesting to redo that episode, where there ARE actually 5 lights but picard keeps insisting their are 4 out of spite
- doubleunplussed 6y agoFwiw at the end of the episode Picard says to Riker: "You know, I really did see five lights".
- hawkice 6y agoAt the end, wasn't the comment that he believed he _could_ see five lights? It's possible this is a deliberate grammatical ambiguity, but I think it could also be read as "I was not just willing to say it, my reality was being destroyed".
- crooked-v 6y agoPICARD: I, er, I don't know where to begin. It was... TROI: I read your report. PICARD: What I didn't put in the report was that at the end he gave me a choice between a life of comfort or more torture. All I had to do was to say that I could see five lights, when in fact, there were only four. TROI: You didn't say it? PICARD: No, no, but I was going to. I would have told him anything. Anything at all. But more than that, I believed that I could see five lights.
- trhway 6y agodo they make it country specific - ie. would the posts questioning the integrity of elections in another country, say Russia (not that i personally question it, Vova, mind you, just a hypothetical), be allowed?
- ajkdhcb2 6y agoFacebook has happily oppressed Palestinian protestors while turning a blind eye to 'calls by Israelis for the killing of Palestinians'. http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/december/30/facebook-says-it-is-deleting-accounts-at-the-direction-of-the-us-and-israeli-governments/ http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2... It is obvious now that big tech companies are deep players in political games.
- dundercoder 6y agoDo you think they play on purpose? Or do they not think through the longer ramifications of their actions?
- l9k 6y ago"Stop The Steal" is nowadays very specifically referring to the conspiracy theories surrounding the US November 2020 presidential election that was started by Trump supporters. Maybe in a few years (months if you're optimist), it will be forgotten (because of these kinds of measure?) and the phrase will be allowed again.
- swiley 6y agoThis kind of behavior by facebook is only going to radicalize people and make them extremely suspicious of anyone that disagrees with them. Do you think someone prone to conspiracy theories is going to start listening to people who are actively campaigning for the destruction/deletion of information. We need consensus and half of consensus means listening.
- l9k 6y ago
- rammy1234 6y agoLike Naval says, if you stop the king, then you are THE KING.
- systemvoltage 6y agoThe king is stopped through a nationwide election, independently conducted by each state, contested in 64 accounts of court and dismissed by the supreme court. So that makes the democratic process - the KING. Right?
- rhegart 6y agoLmao, Russia election hoax for 4 years. Look through prominent Dem twitter accounts for stealing and hacked election. Example: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/864522009048494080 https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/864522009048494080 Trump is even worse than this but both parties are garbage, left way more hypocritical though
- oezi 6y ago"bad on both sides" is something you should remove from your line of thinking. There should be enough information out there for you to find differences that matter.
- epistasis 6y agoI'm glad to see this misinformation downvoted, but in these troubling times it's important to restate the facts. There is ample and well documented evidence that there was strong Russian influence on our election in ad buys, concentrated highly to spread falsehoods and change the entire election's results. Anybody saying otherwise is trying to snow us. Calling this a "hoax" is telling us that there are five lights when there are four. It's all right here in the executive summary of the report: https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
- imgabe 6y agoThere are two contentions: 1. Russia bought ads and manipulated social media to influence the 2016 election. 2. Trump was an active participant and collaborator with Russia in doing 1. I don't think anyone disputes 1. 2 was the basis of the failed impeachment and investigation and for which no convincing evidence can be produced. That is what people are generally referring to when they mention the "Russia hoax".
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoHm, I just posted "stop the steal" on my Facebook page (along with a disclaimer), and it's still there six minutes later. Maybe it takes 24 hours to get picked up? Or do they just cloak the posting?
- nostromo 6y agoIn most cases you'd be shadow-banned. (The post looks fine to you, but is invisible to everyone else.) Or, they just put their thumbs on the scale and make sure your post isn't shown to anyone (or very few people) rather than your typical audience.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoOkay. A non-friend was able to view it a few seconds ago, so it's definitely not totally invisible. But I only have about 600 friends (haha) so I guess they don't care about small fry. If they have 1.73 billion daily users, that's a lot of data to scan. I'm guessing they'll only go after the big fish.
- ceejayoz 6y agoEvery post gets scanned. They detect things like blacklisted links in real-time.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoAlgorithms. It will find you eventually.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoFacebook's shadowban mechanism is more elaborate than that. They will still show the post to people they think you are closest to, while hiding it from the general newsfeed where most things show. The Facebook newsfeed is quite similar to TV, because you can only change channels, but have very little control over what is displayed.
- 6y ago
- convery 6y agoWell, they already censor the CIA 'whistleblower's name, links to the Hunter leaks, the Podesta leaks, and the 'walk away' campaign (Dems who feel like the party changed in the wrong direction through identity-politics). So there's no surprise they'd start removing content of people questioning the "most secure election ever".
- the_cat_kittles 6y agoim saying this because it seems like such an obvious point but i havent seen it here- why are people who want the government to be replaced by the "free market" allowed to be upset that private companies are silencing them? what is the rationale for squaring this circle
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoEven (most) free market conservatives don't believe in the free market when there are too few competitors. This is why you have utility commissions setting electricity rates rather than allowing the free market to do it. We have too few competitors to Facebook for the market to work right.
- dec0dedab0de 6y agoPeople are allowed to be upset for any reason or no reason at all. Actually wait, being upset is not something you need permission for.
- anonymouse008 6y agoWhen the government created some protected classes that told private enterprise how to behave, people began implicitly believing that every person has a right to a protected status.
- imgabe 6y agoPeople are allowed to have any opinions they want, even ones that seem contradictory to you. It's not a free market when a handful of companies can collude to shut out a competitor as they've done to Parler.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago"Stop censoring the steal". Note well: I do not believe that there was in fact a steal. But if Facebook wants to do this, they're going to find out that there are several ways to modify or paraphrase this, and they're going to have to block significantly more than one phrase.
- c1ccccc1 6y agoThis almost makes me suspect that the Facebook executives behind this decision are secretly die hard pro-Trumpers. Sure, it's definitely a bit spooky that people are going around saying the election was stolen when, as far as I can tell, there's no hard evidence of widespread cheating. (I'm open to changing my mind given sufficient evidence, I'm just saying that I haven't seen it yet.) But this is the equivalent of Facebook saying "hmm, looks like there's a fire going on over there, better go and dump a barrel of oil on it to put it out". Of course people are going to notice that their posts are being deleted. And even if they didn't notice, Facebook is loudly and publicly announcing that they are removing those posts. This will naturally result in those people saying, "aha, this confirms that there is a liberal elite conspiracy against folks like me". It will only make them more certain that the election was stolen. Honestly, I can't say I blame them for suspecting a conspiracy, given we've had similar moves by other tech companies. As a generally left wing person, what am I supposed to say? "Yeah, we know that all these social networks are acting all biased and stuff against people with your opinions, but it's not actually a conspiracy, just a bunch of people without the ability to predict what others will make of their actions all being idiots at the same time due to simple memetic contagion." I think that's actually what's going on, but I can definitely see how from the other side it looks like a conspiracy.
- Cederfjard 6y agoIt might still have the desired effect if it stops this content from spreading. Sure, the people who post it get more pissed off, but a larger number who would’ve been exposed to it otherwise now won’t. I don’t have any data to support any conclusion, just brainstorming.
- eugenhotaj 6y agoI also don’t have any data, but I feel like these types of tactics don’t account for higher order effects of pushing people to more extreme platforms, and in general seem extremely short sighted.
- erik_seaberg 6y agoThe Soviet Union cracked down on typewriters but couldn’t stop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat. These people will undoubtedly find something similar. Actual suppression makes any conspiracy theory more credible.
- the_drunkard 6y agowrong thought will not be tolerated and is to be actively censored. boy, we've taken quite a turn from where we were just a few years ago with conspiracy theories spreading like wild fire regarding Trump and Russia. it would probably be better to actively engage believers of "Stop the Steal" with facts about the election vs. removing content that they are creating.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- elsonrodriguez 6y agoAs long as Facebook is attempting to care about the spread of misinformation, can they nuke the various Flat Earth groups? I swear those people provide breeding stock for almost every other conspiracy theory on the planet.
- curiousgal 6y agoThey are just appeasing the Democrats before they take control and break them up. Big Tech has had no issue offering services to third world dictatorships but when Americans drink the same koolaid, suddenly it's a pressing issue! Just to be clear, I am not blaming them, I am just pointing out the hypocrisy.
- nojito 6y agoOr it was because of a literal coup attempt last week.
- thatguy0900 6y agoFacebook facilitates coups all over the place. Successfull ones, even! They care now because the democrats can actually do something in retaliation.
- adolph 6y agoIt's weird that Americans became so ineffective when COVID came and they had to coup from home.
- n00bsaretheb3st 6y agoSo should facebook deny or give access to rioters in Hong Kong? What about Arab Spring? Or will daddy zucc decide which leader is "good enough".
- khawkins 6y agoWhile we're at it, let's remove internet access from everyone with mental disorders. Clearly they can't handle the responsibilities of internet access. /s
- codingslave 6y agoSad to see this with the Adam Swartz post both on the front page. We need more powerful people who will voice, not for the proliferation of conspiracies, but for the right to speak ones mind on the internet. Even here on HN any attempt at putting forth the wrong opinion on the election will result in a ban. This will embolden and validate the opinions of Trump supporters. This morning, Angela Merkel voiced her own fears that censorship is going too far
- khawkins 6y agoSupposedly there are a lot of "really smart people" who are behind this censorship push. Certainly they have researchers at these companies who have studied human behavior and know the outcome? Certainly they know that suppressing people has an equal and opposite effect, fomenting further extremism and resistance? So we're left with 3 potential realities: 1) the tech oligarchs are recklessly ignorant about what they're doing, 2) they're recklessly emotional about the situation and don't care about the fallout, or 3) their decisions are calculated and the push-back from the extremists is desired. All 3 are worrisome.
- MrMan 6y agoAfter the next wave of attacks, they probably don’t want to be blamed. Similar to the FBI making a press release today about upcoming “protests”.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago> Even here on HN any attempt at putting forth the wrong opinion on the election will result in a ban. I haven't seen this, all the bans I have seen are the result of ideological warfare and flamebait. However you will get downvoted to -4 for questioning the integrity of the election. So don't do that ;)
- MrMan 6y agoYou think you don’t have a voice, I cannot even downvote
- arsome 6y agoAre we really so stupid that we cannot see through this kind of thing and need to actively censor it to have civilized society continue to function? When do we just give up on democracy completely?
- Gabriel_Martin 6y agoMany seem to have been completely taken in to it, yes. And given it seems to have lead to deadly consequences already, I don't think it's unreasonable for these companies to consider it a huge liability.
- jtbayly 6y agoAre you aware of what other things have led to deadly consequences? Communism, socialism, green terrorism, and self driving cars come to mind.
- bun_at_work 6y agoThis is simply whataboutism.
- jtbayly 6y agoNo it’s not. The post I’m responding to made a case for why censorship is fine in this case. That reason applies very very broadly. If we are ok with that reason, then we are ok with that reason, and we must acknowledge what else is caught in that net.
- bun_at_work 6y ago> If we are ok with that reason, then we are ok with that reason, ... This is a slippery-slope fallacy. Facebook removing content containing speech directly associated with highly illegal activity doesn't mean the country is becoming socialist.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nikolay 6y agoThey should also remove all containing "Communism is bad".
- chopin24 6y agoShould the US government make its own social network? That would cut off all kinds of issues. Only content that is literally illegal would be removed. Everyone would be guaranteed access.
- daveevad 6y ago1st.gov would be a neat domain name.
- chopin24 6y agoI was thinking publicsquare.gov, but this is a good one too.
- MattGaiser 6y agoSpam alone would eliminate its utility.
- chopin24 6y agoSpam can be blocked, though, right? Edit: To address the commenter below, Congress has addressed spam before, in the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
- MattGaiser 6y agoOk, so the rule is now: Only content that is literally illegal or is spam would be removed. See where this is going? It is hard to craft rules that allow everything without leaving a site unusable.
- chopin24 6y ago>It is hard to craft rules that allow everything without leaving a site unusable Does government cheese have to be tasty? The point is to provide the public square, in all its public square glory. If you want something slick and curated, you're going to have to give up some rights.
- tannhaeuser 6y agoThat's not censorship. It's Fb's and other social media's desperate attempt to appease new government to prevent strong legislation, such as being held liable for their user's content, forced real names, regulation, and breakup.
- mirashii 6y ago> social media's desperate attempt to appease new government to prevent strong legislation, such as being held liable for their user's content That's an interesting hypothesis, but doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. It's the current administration that's been calling for the repeal of Section 230, which is what would make platforms liable for their user's content.
- tylerhou 6y agoDems have been calling for the repeal/replace/amendment of Section 230 because they believe that 230 shields social media platforms from too much liability. https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkeamz/elizabeth-warrens-plan-to-combat-misinformation-could-help-ruin-the-internet https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkeamz/elizabeth-warrens-pla...
- nicwolff 6y agoTrump and the GOP would never actually have repealed 230, it was just a stalking-horse. The social media companies started shutting Trump down literally hours after it became apparent that the Senate committees that can regulate them will soon be chaired by Democrats.
- bduerst 6y agoCoincidentally, it was also the same day insurrectionists invaded the nation's capitol, after using social media to coordinate the violent attack. "Stop the Steal" is one of their rallying cries.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- graycat 6y agoThere is more to Section 230 than commonly mentioned. There is IMHO a nice tutorial at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
- mc32 6y agoDoes this put them in the unenvious position to take down any up-to-then unproven allegations? Does it mean any group seeking remedy against BigCorp with slogans like “Stop the Stink” to oppose a new dump can be shut down through lawyers if the group cannot prove their allegations?
- bun_at_work 6y agoDo groups of protesters who boycott companies invade the US capitol with the intent of overthrowing the government or undermining a democratic election? This doesn't really seem comparable, does it?
- mc32 6y agoRegardless, it proves that if something is not proven, they CAN. Why wouldn’t a company argue for this? Your platform is carrying lies, Remove now!
- BurningFrog 6y agoTell me how this is wrong: The US is de facto converting to the Chinese model for the internet: All communication must be monitored, damaging content must be erased, and in serious cases, those responsible must be punished. If Parler gets a foreign data center, I expect a "Great Firewall of China" with American characteristics will soon follow.
- root_axis 6y agoFacebook is not a country, it's a website, trying to characterize Facebook's business decisions as U.S policy is a dishonest rhetorical tactic.
- dcolkitt 6y agoHonest question: Is Facebook doing this out of genuine business interest? Or because they're concerned about legal and/or regulatory backlash?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- grzm 6y agoWhat’s the difference? Business interests include mitigating legal and regulatory exposure.
- dcolkitt 6y agoBecause the latter would definitely be a form of government censorship. In fact it's essentially how most censorship in Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey work. If you tell a newspaper that they'll be regulated out of existence if they publish a certain opinion, it doesn't matter that the private platform is the one doing the censoring.
- grzm 6y agoThere's always a risk of bad laws and bad regulations. And certainly we need to be vigilant and correct and improve them when they occur (and they most certainly do). Laws and regulation are not necessarily censorship. It's important to have transparency into how laws and regulations are developed and applied, but that's a separate issue.
- eplanit 6y agoThese are surreal times, to put it mildly. These headlines of banning/deplatforming would be ordinary if you substitute "CCP" for "Facebook", "Twitter", and "Amazon". Facebook has even blocked Ron Paul?!? (https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1348704640486014982 https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1348704640486014982) FAANG is the bakery, and Trump and everything associated with him is the same-sex wedding cake.
- chillacy 6y ago1. That case ended with the conclusion that the bakery could deny service because it would otherwise be “compelled speech” 2. Political beliefs are not a protected class like sexual orientation (should they be?) Given that, this seems like even more of an open and shut case: businesses have a right to decide who they serve.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> That case ended with the conclusion that the bakery could deny service because it would otherwise be “compelled speech” No, it ended with the conclusion that the particular state panel that rules against the baker did so with impermissible religious animus against his beliefs, and therefore the ruling against him was unconstitutional. “Compelled speech" was what a broad political group wanted the Court to rule on, but it's not what it did rule on, instead issuing a much more limited decision that dodged the broad issue almost entirely.
- readflaggedcomm 6y agoRon Paul is racist. He should have lost his voice long ago. https://www.vice.com/en/article/5gw353/yeah-ron-paul-is-racist-after-all-sorry https://www.vice.com/en/article/5gw353/yeah-ron-paul-is-raci...
- eternalban 6y agoThe “Arab Street” comes to America. The term is apparently derogatory in nature, but imo it is an effective political metaphor for socio-political regimes that prominently feature bifurcated societies of ruling elite and voiceless governed masses: the palace and the street/market. The “word on the street” has currency with the masses and nearly every utterance of the ‘palace’ is mistrusted, scrutinized, and parsed to the n-th degree to glean “the actual truth”. Conversely, the palace considers the word on the street to be irrational, volatile, and destabilizing, and dismisses it in its entirety as misunderstandings of “the common and the ignorant”. It remains a minor puzzle as to why Soviet “misinformation” beamed via shortwave as Radio Moscow, Radio Peking, and other fellow red states were never, afaik, jammed in the West, yet in 21st century, western heads are deemed extra sensitive to bad information and need to be protected from exposure to content that poses some sort of social and moral hazard. It is helpful to remember that the only states doing the jamming (“to stop enemy propaganda and misinformation”) were authoritarian regimes, and imho instructive to reflect on why that is the case. Actions taken by the US info-tech cartel recently will only serve to deepen the national divide, and (per historic patterns) erode the legitimacy of establishment voices and institutions. [edited]
- Cyberthal 6y agoTo be fair, these Big Social companies wouldn't want their ad impressions audited either.
- spoonjim 6y agoI get why Facebook is doing this, but suppressing the discussion of this false claim of election fraud is going to make it more likely that when an election actually is stolen, that companies like Facebook are more likely to stamp out the discussion to match earlier precedent.