4 ms·

Facebook did the right thing here by booting trump off the platform and Mark Zuckerberg’s statement was good. They didn’t change their policy, the context chan

• armagon 6y ago
  "FB, Twitter, etc. were bending over backwards to allow speech in violation of their policies because they thought that public access to the speech of elected politicians in rule of law democracies was important." I think that was their mistake. They should've banned the accounts at that point, showing that (as the law in a democracy says) no one is above the law. [They should likewise act on other accounts, of all political persuasions]. As it is, it looks like they all colluded to deplatform Trump at the same time -- as though his messages were a fun toy so long as it served their purposes, and worthy of derision as soon as it didn't.
  • fossuser 6y ago
    I think you’re being overly cynical and I don’t agree. I think they take their power seriously and there is a real distinction in the context prior to 1/6. I write about why this is hard in my blog post linked in the other comment. Things changed with trump’s incitement of the assault on the capitol. I think the decisions they made at each point made sense. This isn’t an obvious or easy problem to answer. In the absence of policy they’ve become de-facto regulators. We’ve had a non functioning legislative body for a while and America seems to specialize in bad workarounds for missing policy.
    • fpgaminer 6y ago
      Mark is the person who said that Facebook wasn't going to moderate political ads, and then immediately this happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIwDqcvo4Z8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIwDqcvo4Z8 It's not hard to see why people are skeptical, and don't buy that Facebook is taking their power seriously. I think your argument has merit, but I don't agree that Facebook is taking their power seriously or that they are applying the same rules to a different scenario. I _do_ agree that things are different post-1/6. But I think it has more to do with people finally waking up and smelling the coffee they've been brewing for the past four years. I also agree that there is a huge legal vacuum here that FAANG are having to fill. We definitely put too much responsibility and blame on these companies. It's way past due that the government set some rules here, one way or the other. We may not agree on whatever rules get set, but at least they'll be rules set by a democratic process rather than the whims of corporations.
      • fossuser 6y ago
        It sounds like we probably agree more than we disagree and could probably have an interesting discussion at the margins. That said, I address that AOC clip in my blog post, I think she oversimplifies the issue and doesn’t really address the core problem. From the post: “Watch this exchange between AOC and Zuckerberg, specifically the question about taking down lies in political ads. AOC also attempts to clarify that she doesn’t mean ‘spin,’ but lies. This really gets to the core of the issue: who is determining the difference and how? Do we really want private companies, or Mark Zuckerberg specifically, determining which political speech from an elected democratic leader is a lie and which is not? Zuckerberg gives a diplomatic answer here, but I think he could have pushed back harder. This responsibility should fall to AOC and the other elected leaders in Congress. If there’s to be policy around political speech and social media, it should not be the responsibility of private companies to determine when to censor or not censor the speech from democratically elected politicians, operating in countries with rule of law and a free press. There are a lot of conditions on that statement, but it’s because the conditions are relevant and important. The same standard cannot be automatically held for politicians in non-democratic countries, countries without rule of law, countries that suppress speech themselves, or countries without a free press. The moderation standard is also different for the comments of regular people not in office (though this is still not a trivial problem). For politically elected leaders that meet these conditions though, it’s dangerous to have private companies determine what speech from these elected politicians should and should not be seen by the public on their platforms.” — Today the USG no longer meets those constraints and rule of law is in question.
  • Qub3d 6y ago
    Ben Thompson wrote an interesting analysis of this issue, that boils down to this: Trump finally got booted from these platforms not really because of his TOS violations. Rather, he was removed because it became clear that the structures used to manage higher-order social issues have failed (read: The US Government), and so the players lower down the stack were compelled to step in. "Yes, respecting democracy is a reason to not act over policy disagreements, no matter how horrible those policies may be, but preserving democracy is, by definition, even higher on the priority stack. Turn off Trump’s account." https://stratechery.com/2021/trump-and-twitter/ https://stratechery.com/2021/trump-and-twitter/
    • ineedasername 6y ago
      I have a more cynical reading of the sudden actions: Legal liability. Among a history of ToS violations, we finally had ones that weren't muddy & deniable, but represented a bright line crossing in support of illegal action. An argument could be made (especially "securities fraud") that these platforms have their own legal liability in supporting these illegal actions because they allowed them despite violating their own ToS. I'm sure there was some belief along the line of "it's the right thing to do" as well. There was also probably some consideration that with Democrats having both Congress & the White House their actions, among those in power, were less likely to be interpreted as too heavy handed. Ultimately though I think legal liability may have been the largest factor.
• julienreszka 6y ago
  Frankly you're way too biased for your opinion regarding this specific issue to have much legitimacy.