8 ms·

Facebook targets “stop the steal” content ahead of Inauguration Day

34 points by Beggers1960 6y ago

Beggers1960 6y ago
"Facebook is working "24/7" to tackle content including "stop the steal" from spreading across the network ahead of the US Inauguration Day." Nothing quite like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.
- loceng 6y ago
  It's interesting. These leaders certainly are responsible for allowing lies and propaganda to rally and enrage these people, priming them for a civil war, however is it better it happened all at once or if Trump deplatforming sooner giving them more time to better organize on a platform and all necessary layers that they'd control to allow the public inciting of violence? Perhaps if he was deplatformed earlier then more people may have turned out for voting and may have won the election? Who knows. What I do know though is they're still rallying and still being unreasonable and calling for violence, I'm sure they're learning to use private messages instead of posting statements of violence publicly, perhaps the largest platform they have now is thedonald.win - I go there daily to be shocked at the top headlines and comments.
  - callamdelaney 6y ago
    Seems to me like trump acknowledged his loss and was aiming towards a smooth and none violent transfer of power. De-platforming him was probably the worst thing to do in his supporters eyes.
    - mcphage 6y ago
      > was aiming towards a smooth and none violent transfer of power We've already crossed that bridge—this transition hasn't been smooth, and it hasn't been non-violent. It would be nice if he aimed for that, but maybe he should have done so before he shot and missed.
      - ttt0 6y ago
        So we should just throw up our hands in the air and start killing each other. I guess nothing else can be done. But hey, at least we can feel morally superior about ourselves, because they've started it, right?
        mcphage 6y ago
        > So we should just throw up our hands in the air and start killing each other. Or, we can ban him from twitter. But violence was your solution last time, so why am I not surprised you're reaching for it again?
        ttt0 6y ago
        He already is banned from twitter. How did it help with anything? I don't know who do you think you're talking to, but no, violence is not "my solution" and I didn't have any "last time".
        mcphage 6y ago
        Then what are you arguing for?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
inDigiNeous 6y ago
To a non-us citizen and somebody who believes in free speech, this whole debacle looks like the parties behind who own our social media trying to stop in anyway the possibility that, maybe, just maybe, there might have been something fishy going on in the voting process. Why would they otherwise go through so lengthy processes in order to stop the spreading of this information ? Claiming it is because of possible violence seems unbelievable, seeing as it is arms manufacturers and so on still have a voice on these platforms, like Raytheon and what have you, who are killing more people every day through their actions than what this political upheaving has done. To me, it seems that some parties are ready to stomp on freedom of speech as a basic right in order to make sure that this information does not get to spread. Why, I ask ? Why would they be so interested in this fact ? Is it a threat to them ? Why suddenly all platforms are stopping the spreading of this information. I just ask this, to me it seems like they have a lot to lose perhaps in this game personally, the owners of these platforms. Maybe we should just ban everything, I mean, look at Uganda for example what they are doing before the elections: https://techjaja.com/govt-blocks-google-playstore-apple-appstore-and-youtube/ https://techjaja.com/govt-blocks-google-playstore-apple-apps.... Banning all play store, app store and youtube :D Is this the next step then? Sounds like those who own these platforms are starting to show their true nature.
- loceng 6y ago
  You're leading into paranoia. There's been no evidence of mass voter fraud - there are systems in place, poll watchers that people from both main parties are party to overseeing the counting. All these actions from platforms is to prevent, limit, curb violence. That's it. There's no grand conspiracy. You're either for non-violence and a civil, reasoning-reasonable society - or you are living in ignorance is bliss and you don't care if there's chaos and the world burns. Also, no one's freedom of speech has been taken away. These are private platforms, they're not the public space - the internet itself is the neutral platform, likewise these people have other means to communicate. They don't get the automatic right to using the most convenient technology provided by private companies though. The military industrial complex is a whole different beast than this one currently playing out; yes, it's still a problem along with the duopoly, Andrew Yang's core policy proposals will break apart the duopoly and counter regulatory capture.
Akkzlp 6y ago
At this stage, why don't the "deplorable" people in "fly-over country" stop food delivery to the woke coastal regions. After all, we learned that private enterprises can choose who they do business with.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  That'd be fairly likely to backfire. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/states-that-voted-for-trump-depend-the-most-on-big-government-2019-06-19 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/states-that-voted-for-trum... > Conservative “red” states of the south and west make up eight of the 10 states with the highest dependency on government, and 19 of the top 25.
scotty79 6y ago
Removing offensive content is the laziest possible solution and it's funny how quickly Facebook and Twitter reverted to it once this solution was again on the table. Most interesting part of all of this was what they did before, when they couldn't just delete the content. They had to properly fact-check it and educate the viewers. I think this should be the default mode for stupid (counter-factual) opinions. I know it's hard but you are not the richest companies for nothing. Figure it out. I think letting platforms just delete whatever causes an outrage is delaying the moment when we will finally get these kinds of things presented with proper fact based context instead of surrounded by ads and links to similarly stupid speech.
- netsharc 6y ago
  The defeatist in me wonders if education is possible. It seems a lot of people just refuse to accept things that disgree with their world view and dismiss the source as part of the conspiracy. I wondered if it'd be possible to make a honeypot website that would pretend to be some internal Pfizer website, or the Gates foundation, or the DNC, but fill it with content that would actually educate the conspiracy theorists, for example about how mRNA vaccine works, or how a Biden administration won't be forcing "fascism" down their throats. At least they'd be hopefully diligently reading stuff and learning while looking for smoking guns.
  - scotty79 6y ago
    > It seems a lot of people just refuse to accept things that disgree with their world view and dismiss the source as part of the conspiracy. More educated people are less likely to do that. Also people who have no financial incentives to propagate such falsehoods are less likely to propagate it. Flat earther movement is a good example. Some members made a business out of it to advance their personal goals. Like the guy that launched himself in a rocket to "check if earth is flat", but actually just liked lunching himself in rockets and similar things (had history of that), and claimed to believe in flat earth so that gullible people pay his bill. We can't resign ourselves to defeatism and think that nothing can be done because people are stupid and ideas are toxic. Yes, some people are stupider and some ideas are more toxic then others but we shouldn't let that cloud the simple fact that we allow to exist the multitude of positive force feedbacks that promote more toxic ideas and more stupid people. We should work on those things first. > I wondered if it'd be possible to make a honeypot website ... Yes. We should forcibly mix those dumb ideas with solid education on the subject. Confront the two. Debunk one with the other in-place. At many different levels of complexity to reach as many people as possible. You want to post you antivaxxer theories on facebook? Sure but your readers will get solid science next to it by courtesy of Facebook algorithm instead of ads and crap similar to yours.
MisterTea 6y ago
From the looks of it here the conspiracy shills must be getting good pay these days. Anyone know the going rate? I could pretend to be a concerned foreigner or write bobble head replies for a few bucks.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  "They're paid trolls" is silly and tired when it's "Soroooooooooos!" from the right, and it's silly here. There are plenty of nuts who'll happily do this for free.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    > There are plenty of nuts who'll happily do this for free. I really doubt this. Not without somebody constantly shilling them into it. If anybody has numbers, they'd be very welcome. I don't know how to even start measuring this. But one thing seems to be always the same, those people that get large reactions on social networks do have some amount of paid shills.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      We had plenty of cranks like this on Usenet in the 80s, long before the Internet rose to significant attention from nation states and other deep-pocketed actors.
      - marcosdumay 6y ago
        Oh, yes, the cranks won't go anywhere. But do you think it's normal that they are all yelling the same things? Those cranks on social networks are highly conformal, that's not easy to explain.
        ceejayoz 6y ago
        > But do you think it's normal that they are all yelling the same things? Yes, for the same reason everyone on Twitter knew about "Bean Dad" or "left shark" or the latest popular meme of the day. Quite a few of them come from or are amplified by Fox News, Newsmax, etc. hosts, as well. Instant distribution of the latest talking point to millions.
MrMan 6y ago
I can't tell if these are troll accounts from the FSB or people whose brains have been colonized.
MrMan 6y ago
So I have always wondered, but now it seems particularly germane. Why does HackerNews not require some kind of verification or elaborate registration to join? I like the pseudonymity in some ways but everything I have posted I will stand by. I am already a pariah in my social circles for going against the east coast preppy conventional wisdom, I don't care if I am mocked here too. If HN really wants to be a quality refuge for high-brow discussion they should show a commitment to this by migrating from being a libertarian get rich quick forum to a place where actual debate can happen without spamming by bots, intelligence service officers, etc.

34 points by Beggers1960 6y ago

Beggers1960 6y ago

"Facebook is working "24/7" to tackle content including "stop the steal" from spreading across the network ahead of the US Inauguration Day." Nothing quite like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.

loceng 6y ago
It's interesting. These leaders certainly are responsible for allowing lies and propaganda to rally and enrage these people, priming them for a civil war, however is it better it happened all at once or if Trump deplatforming sooner giving them more time to better organize on a platform and all necessary layers that they'd control to allow the public inciting of violence? Perhaps if he was deplatformed earlier then more people may have turned out for voting and may have won the election? Who knows. What I do know though is they're still rallying and still being unreasonable and calling for violence, I'm sure they're learning to use private messages instead of posting statements of violence publicly, perhaps the largest platform they have now is thedonald.win - I go there daily to be shocked at the top headlines and comments.
- callamdelaney 6y ago
  Seems to me like trump acknowledged his loss and was aiming towards a smooth and none violent transfer of power. De-platforming him was probably the worst thing to do in his supporters eyes.
  - mcphage 6y ago
    > was aiming towards a smooth and none violent transfer of power We've already crossed that bridge—this transition hasn't been smooth, and it hasn't been non-violent. It would be nice if he aimed for that, but maybe he should have done so before he shot and missed.
    - ttt0 6y ago
      So we should just throw up our hands in the air and start killing each other. I guess nothing else can be done. But hey, at least we can feel morally superior about ourselves, because they've started it, right?
      - mcphage 6y ago
        > So we should just throw up our hands in the air and start killing each other. Or, we can ban him from twitter. But violence was your solution last time, so why am I not surprised you're reaching for it again?
        ttt0 6y ago
        He already is banned from twitter. How did it help with anything? I don't know who do you think you're talking to, but no, violence is not "my solution" and I didn't have any "last time".
        mcphage 6y ago
        Then what are you arguing for?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

inDigiNeous 6y ago

To a non-us citizen and somebody who believes in free speech, this whole debacle looks like the parties behind who own our social media trying to stop in anyway the possibility that, maybe, just maybe, there might have been something fishy going on in the voting process. Why would they otherwise go through so lengthy processes in order to stop the spreading of this information ? Claiming it is because of possible violence seems unbelievable, seeing as it is arms manufacturers and so on still have a voice on these platforms, like Raytheon and what have you, who are killing more people every day through their actions than what this political upheaving has done. To me, it seems that some parties are ready to stomp on freedom of speech as a basic right in order to make sure that this information does not get to spread. Why, I ask ? Why would they be so interested in this fact ? Is it a threat to them ? Why suddenly all platforms are stopping the spreading of this information. I just ask this, to me it seems like they have a lot to lose perhaps in this game personally, the owners of these platforms. Maybe we should just ban everything, I mean, look at Uganda for example what they are doing before the elections: https://techjaja.com/govt-blocks-google-playstore-apple-appstore-and-youtube/ https://techjaja.com/govt-blocks-google-playstore-apple-apps.... Banning all play store, app store and youtube :D Is this the next step then? Sounds like those who own these platforms are starting to show their true nature.

loceng 6y ago
You're leading into paranoia. There's been no evidence of mass voter fraud - there are systems in place, poll watchers that people from both main parties are party to overseeing the counting. All these actions from platforms is to prevent, limit, curb violence. That's it. There's no grand conspiracy. You're either for non-violence and a civil, reasoning-reasonable society - or you are living in ignorance is bliss and you don't care if there's chaos and the world burns. Also, no one's freedom of speech has been taken away. These are private platforms, they're not the public space - the internet itself is the neutral platform, likewise these people have other means to communicate. They don't get the automatic right to using the most convenient technology provided by private companies though. The military industrial complex is a whole different beast than this one currently playing out; yes, it's still a problem along with the duopoly, Andrew Yang's core policy proposals will break apart the duopoly and counter regulatory capture.

Akkzlp 6y ago

At this stage, why don't the "deplorable" people in "fly-over country" stop food delivery to the woke coastal regions. After all, we learned that private enterprises can choose who they do business with.

ceejayoz 6y ago
That'd be fairly likely to backfire. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/states-that-voted-for-trump-depend-the-most-on-big-government-2019-06-19 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/states-that-voted-for-trum... > Conservative “red” states of the south and west make up eight of the 10 states with the highest dependency on government, and 19 of the top 25.

scotty79 6y ago

Removing offensive content is the laziest possible solution and it's funny how quickly Facebook and Twitter reverted to it once this solution was again on the table. Most interesting part of all of this was what they did before, when they couldn't just delete the content. They had to properly fact-check it and educate the viewers. I think this should be the default mode for stupid (counter-factual) opinions. I know it's hard but you are not the richest companies for nothing. Figure it out. I think letting platforms just delete whatever causes an outrage is delaying the moment when we will finally get these kinds of things presented with proper fact based context instead of surrounded by ads and links to similarly stupid speech.

netsharc 6y ago
The defeatist in me wonders if education is possible. It seems a lot of people just refuse to accept things that disgree with their world view and dismiss the source as part of the conspiracy. I wondered if it'd be possible to make a honeypot website that would pretend to be some internal Pfizer website, or the Gates foundation, or the DNC, but fill it with content that would actually educate the conspiracy theorists, for example about how mRNA vaccine works, or how a Biden administration won't be forcing "fascism" down their throats. At least they'd be hopefully diligently reading stuff and learning while looking for smoking guns.
- scotty79 6y ago
  > It seems a lot of people just refuse to accept things that disgree with their world view and dismiss the source as part of the conspiracy. More educated people are less likely to do that. Also people who have no financial incentives to propagate such falsehoods are less likely to propagate it. Flat earther movement is a good example. Some members made a business out of it to advance their personal goals. Like the guy that launched himself in a rocket to "check if earth is flat", but actually just liked lunching himself in rockets and similar things (had history of that), and claimed to believe in flat earth so that gullible people pay his bill. We can't resign ourselves to defeatism and think that nothing can be done because people are stupid and ideas are toxic. Yes, some people are stupider and some ideas are more toxic then others but we shouldn't let that cloud the simple fact that we allow to exist the multitude of positive force feedbacks that promote more toxic ideas and more stupid people. We should work on those things first. > I wondered if it'd be possible to make a honeypot website ... Yes. We should forcibly mix those dumb ideas with solid education on the subject. Confront the two. Debunk one with the other in-place. At many different levels of complexity to reach as many people as possible. You want to post you antivaxxer theories on facebook? Sure but your readers will get solid science next to it by courtesy of Facebook algorithm instead of ads and crap similar to yours.

MisterTea 6y ago

From the looks of it here the conspiracy shills must be getting good pay these days. Anyone know the going rate? I could pretend to be a concerned foreigner or write bobble head replies for a few bucks.

ceejayoz 6y ago
"They're paid trolls" is silly and tired when it's "Soroooooooooos!" from the right, and it's silly here. There are plenty of nuts who'll happily do this for free.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  > There are plenty of nuts who'll happily do this for free. I really doubt this. Not without somebody constantly shilling them into it. If anybody has numbers, they'd be very welcome. I don't know how to even start measuring this. But one thing seems to be always the same, those people that get large reactions on social networks do have some amount of paid shills.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    We had plenty of cranks like this on Usenet in the 80s, long before the Internet rose to significant attention from nation states and other deep-pocketed actors.
    - marcosdumay 6y ago
      Oh, yes, the cranks won't go anywhere. But do you think it's normal that they are all yelling the same things? Those cranks on social networks are highly conformal, that's not easy to explain.
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        > But do you think it's normal that they are all yelling the same things? Yes, for the same reason everyone on Twitter knew about "Bean Dad" or "left shark" or the latest popular meme of the day. Quite a few of them come from or are amplified by Fox News, Newsmax, etc. hosts, as well. Instant distribution of the latest talking point to millions.

MrMan 6y ago

I can't tell if these are troll accounts from the FSB or people whose brains have been colonized.

MrMan 6y ago

So I have always wondered, but now it seems particularly germane. Why does HackerNews not require some kind of verification or elaborate registration to join? I like the pseudonymity in some ways but everything I have posted I will stand by. I am already a pariah in my social circles for going against the east coast preppy conventional wisdom, I don't care if I am mocked here too. If HN really wants to be a quality refuge for high-brow discussion they should show a commitment to this by migrating from being a libertarian get rich quick forum to a place where actual debate can happen without spamming by bots, intelligence service officers, etc.