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Facebook's role in Capitol protest larger than previously thought
- _-david-_ 6y agoWhen are Google and Apple going to remove Facebook from their app stores?
- geoduck14 6y agoNot soon enough
- meekmockmook 6y agoNo shit. It wasn't some broken, barely adopted start up that created this mess. It was the largest social platform in the world where this insanity spread for years. Break up GAFA with antitrust laws.
- creato 6y agoSocial media companies created a mess -> break up Apple and Amazon? What?
- meekmockmook 6y agoThat's right. There's now absolutely zero doubt GAFA works together to determine which content gets elevated and which gets deplatformed. Choices are made in coordination as the Trump/Parler shitshow demonstrated. Not acceptable for four companies to be more powerful than the US Government.
- cle 6y agoA confounding variable better explains the simultaneous action of tech companies in this situation--the confounding variable being a violent insurrection. This is just more conspiracy theory nonsense. People reacting simultaneously to an emergency doesn't mean there's a conspiracy, it's what people do when there's an emergency. If you want to make an argument of conspiracy, particularly in this case where simultaneous action is expected, then you should present actual evidence of conspiracy.
- ralph84 6y agoBig tech has a track record of conspiracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
- colejohnson66 6y agoThat’s about employment poaching. Not conspiring to deplatform conservatives. Mainly because they’re not conspiring; just jumping on the band wagon after Twitter did started. That also ignores that they’re not banning conservatives, but conservatives spouting things that violate the TOS (such as saying what happened at Congress was justified because it’s “our tax dollars”).
- meekmockmook 6y agoThey didn't ban the dictators and warlords who preach genocidal rhetoric every day. They didn't ban the constant death threats from teenagers against each other and random celebrities they felt like canceling that week. They didn't ban the people who coordinated to loot a drug store in my neighborhood even though I reported them. They didn't ban rioters in Chicago who live streamed torching businesses. They didn't ban people who were literally convicted of murder. But they sure got together fast to put up billboards in destroyed neighborhoods bragging about how they helped elevate protests. And they sure were proud of coordinating against right wing wackos in DC. TOS are never enforced consistently and GAFA is a neoliberal technocratic echo chamber that feigns social progressivism in order to coordinate anti-labor, anti-speech actions.
- dang 6y agoWe've banned this account for using HN primarily for political battle. That's not what this site is for and it destroys what it is for, so we have to be proactive about this. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- dylan604 6y agoWhy would you leave Twitter out?
- andyxor 6y agoThat’s not a good enough reason to deplatform facebook or parler, to that matter. The summer riots were freely advertised on all social media apps and WaPo. How is that not incitement of violence. What’s happening is an unprecedented attack on free speech in disguise of silencing “insurrection”.
- abandonliberty 6y agoBy "insurrection" you mean an actual deliberate years-long effort to replace everyone in positions of power with those loyal to you, repeatedly calling into doubt the outcome of a fair election, manipulating people into attacking your opposition, while preventing appropriate security measures then leaving them helpless for 4 hours when under assault. Do you really need the quotes?
- mhh__ 6y agoBecause WaPo weren't encouraging people to go and "riot". The police already have the power to deal with things like that, the vast majority of it was people protesting.
- andyxor 6y agoCalling all cops ‘racists’ indiscriminately and promoting an image of police as violent trigger-happy thugs who kill innocent black people is exactly what set the stage for violence. The aim of propaganda is to elicit an emotional reaction. WaPo and other media did a great job at inciting violent reaction, riots that lasted for months, fed primarily by the media and amplified by facebook and Twitter.
- _fq4v 6y agoYes! Thank you! And now the same politicians and reporters who said that are pretending to care for the police hurt in this riot and talking about how important law enforcement is. Forgive me for believing that law enforcement protecting family businesses is 1000x more important than law enforcement protecting politicians. EDIT: love the downvotes from people who believe torching family businesses, often immigrant ones, is cool! I'm telling you guys keep downvoting. You really look like the good guys.
- gameswithgo 6y agoFacebook should be receiving some of the same scrutiny parler did. Improve moderation or get out
- dcolkitt 6y agoUnlike Parler, Facebook hosts its own metal. Beyond that it even owns its own domain registrar, CDN, and CA authority. There's no feasible way to deplatform it. (A good thing IMO, I just wish that same rock solid resistance to censorship was available to everybody.)
- MR4D 6y agoApple and Google could effectively de-platform them in a day.
- dylan604 6y agocould they? their .com site would still work. their .onion site would still work. sure, people would bitch about not having native app any more, but unless Apple/Googs rolled an OS update to block specific .com traffic, then people could still access it via website.
- nradov 6y agoApple and Google are already facing antitrust action. Politically they can't afford to make an enemy of Facebook right now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- uniqueid 6y agoProbably doesn't feel like a good thing when you're hiding under your bed, hoping the angry mob will tire of searching, and move on with their machetes to the next village.
- zarkov99 6y ago
- bawolff 6y agoSeems at least a little unfair. I don't blame the paper company if someone writes a letter i find repungent.
- uniqueid 6y agoFacebook is more analogous to the publisher or distributor, though.
- bawolff 6y agoI don't particularly blame mail carriers either. I blame the people who sent the mail.
- shaoonb 6y agoOn the other hand, if the mail carrier looked at the content of the message and through some algorithm decided that everyone on your street might want to see it (or more accurately, that if everyone on your street saw it, it might boost their advertising revenue) and put it in every mailbox they could, I think they would shoulder some blame.
- uniqueid 6y agoI was thinking of 'distributor' in the sense of supplier. Even so, I think a postal service has some obligation. Let's say someone were to send me a poorly camouflaged mail-bomb. I wouldn't expect my postal worker to just toss it on my front porch with an 'eh, not my problem!'
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- m3kw9 6y agoParler got destroyed and fb gets what? A slap on the wrist
- waiseristy 6y agoFacebook self-hosts and answers only to themselves. Parler could have done the same if they wanted to host questionable content
- yostrovs 6y agoFacebook wasn't removed from apple and google play stores.
- segmondy 6y agoThe majority of Facebook users are not trying to use it to undermine an election result or throw over a government. That's the difference.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoMaybe not the majority, but what about total raw numbers of users? Parler was tiny compared to FB. If only 0.01% of FB users were trying to undermine/overthrow the election that's probably a lot more people than the total on Parler.
- FartyMcFarter 6y agoDoes Facebook moderate posts explicitly inciting violence?
- colejohnson66 6y agoNope. I’ve reported many of them and they say the posts don’t violate their “community standards”.
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- justinzollars 6y agoThe important fact that this community is lost on, is the fact that it doesn't really matter what Facebook, Google or Twitter are actually responsible for. The fact that Silicon Valley overwhelmingly supports the Democratic Party - at North Korean Levels of popular support (search twitter on the fec.gov [1]) - and the Democratic Party is now responsible for regulating Silicon Valley makes it chilling when the demands for censorship by the Democratic Party are followed. The Democrats have the power now and they will use it to suppress any opinion they disagree with. [1] https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/how-to-research-public-records/individual-contributions/ https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/how-to-res...
- birdyrooster 6y agoIt's too bad that Republicans can't change their platform at all to become more popular so that Democrats have competition. Republicans have a duty to their nation to provide a counter balance of power and they cannot use dogmatism as an excuse for staying put.
- justinzollars 6y agoI'm in the camp that the Republicans are toast. The people in power today will never give it up. Especially with such power.
- CamperBob2 6y agoAren't the Republicans in power today? Who else can they blame for losing it, but themselves? They knew who Trump was all along [1], but they stuck by him nevertheless. There are bound to be consequences for that kind of poor judgment. 1: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lindsey-graham-nominate-trump/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lindsey-graham-nominate-tr...
- majormajor 6y agoThere's less of a media monoculture today than there was in an 80s and 90s, when the Republican perception of media persecution and bias really started to accelerate. Basically all of the resulting right-wing media empires that were built still exist! I'm unsympathetic to the "we need a right-wing social network where our death threats don't have to get moderated" argument, so let's see if a few more attempts that are in more good faith get blocked by Apple before I care too much there... The problem with how far these big chunks of their voter base have gone into extremism is that it really undermines their complaints about being treated unfairly. If I'd predicted even a year ago that people would get shot storming the capital over unsubstantiated claims of fraud that Trump himself had stirred for the better part of a year I'd have been mocked even by "moderate" Republicans as having "trump derangment syndrome" and told I was being unfair to Trump by assuming he would act so badly... and yet here we are. At some point we have to start dealing with Trump, and his base, for who they actually are now, not just in idealistic terms of "Repubs and Dems are the same, just on opposite sides."
- x1y2z3 6y agoThis is stupid! Were there no riots before Facebook/Twitter/Instagram? Did the KKK use Twitter to organize? What was Hitler's Insta handle? The fact is that there are evil, violent people who will always find a way to organize. This is a sad fact of human nature. What gets to me is the "old media's" attempt to pin responsibility for all social maladies on "new media". Call me cynical, but this stinks of WaPo, NYT, Fox etc. fighting to get back ad dollars by getting advertisers to "rethink" their links with these companies by exaggerating claims of the platforms' complicity/inaction.
- middleclick 6y ago"created: 5 minutes ago" yeah right.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- LordHumungous 6y agoI feel like the real issue is that the President of the United States was giving them marching orders. The platform that they happened to use is secondary.
- brodouevencode 6y agoHow? (Not a trolling question) Edit for clarity: How did the president give marching orders?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- offby37years 6y agoIf he actually said anything directly calling for violence CNN and MSNBC would have had that clip on repeat for the last week.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- afavour 6y ago[deleted]
- brodouevencode 6y agoAnd from the same speech "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
- 7v3x3n3sem9vv 6y agoSpoken like a true mob boss. Imply violence, hostile takeovers, gaslight the entire nation about the election being stolen and no longer having a "real America" left if they lose and then sprinkle a dash of truth to fall back when the s** hits the fan. I'm exhausted of trumpers trying to defend an American traitor and downplay his actions.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoFrankly, its time the coastal populations to start moving in-land and working remotely....amazing a what a small population shift could do for our politics
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoThe most peaceful "insurrection" in history and Parler is the sacrificial lamb, because they're conservative and therefore an easy target. Twitter, Parler's direct competitor, gets away with de-platforming major figures like the President, though they keep the account of the head of Iran, a state that is at this moment on the verge of creating an atomic bomb with the stated purpose of annihilating one of our closest allies. Apple and Google, with control over 99% of the app industry, ganged up and eliminated the Parler app. When a tiny number of companies collude to destroy the competition, it is known as a "trust", children. And colluding to destroy a company is known as "racketeering". The Biden Administration is hiring several people from these companies: Jessica Hertz of Facebook and Emily Horne of Twitter. It is highly unlikely he will turn around now and push the Justice Dept. to go after these companies. He's glad they banned Trump; it benefited him. Now he has to pay them back, if he knows what's good for him.
- tayo42 6y agoI'm starting to think hacker news needs a temporary ban on these capital riot articles. They do nothing but devolve into flame wars filled with emotional responses. They seem to attract the most hostile commenters
- hn2017 6y agoExactly. People brigade from elsewhere too.
- bargl 6y agoI come to HN for fairly civil conversation on difficult topics. If we can't do it here, I honestly don't know where else I can do that. I agree that it's become a flame war, and IMO part of the issue is that at times people promote (up/down) vote based on agreement, and at other times people vote based on promoting a good conversation. I really want to see two voting mechanisms, an I agree woot, and another button that indicates is a well constructed argument that I think deserves conversation and views because it will promote healthy conversation. I'm not convinced people would use these appropriately, maybe they sit behind a "vote" count or you only get 5 votes a day or something, IDK. We've gamified agreement on these platforms, and I see things swing based on who shows up. I've seen my votes swing wildly based on what I'm interpreting as someone of a particular ideology come through. Either way we need to gamify conversation and not agreement, I don't know how to do that, but I think HN would be a great place to experiment with that idea.
- tayo42 6y agoYeah that might contribute (idk if it's the only thing contributing to the way these discussions go) , an idea I had was that you can downvote by spending your upvote generated points.
- bargl 6y agoI agree it's not the only thing contributing, but this would be a great place to experiment with those kinds of changes.
- 6y ago
- flying_sheep 6y agoThis Democrats vs Republicans story can go down to some low-level stuff. Some of the people "won" in recent decades. They typically live in city, having higher income, enjoying good life and the new technologies. And they have the view points that the others have never had. Let's say, people in cities are more willing to use EV car. People in small city / rural area are less motivated because of weaker infrastructure. This is unfair to ask the people in small city to make this change if they are not provided enough help :-/ I am afraid people in two sides are getting more divided and more extreme. Don't forget based on the vote count, it is still a 50:50 but not 90:10 fight.
- 55555 6y agoI'm 29 and have a question for those older than me. Until about 10 years ago, I dont remember ever hearing anyone arguing that we should limit free speech. I remember being told that the only limit was that you couldnt tell "fire" in a movie theater unless there really was a fire. This was a common refrain. I remember people talking about how free speech was what made America different. Everyone on both sides of the political aisle was proud of the first amendment. However, I was pretty young and my memory may be wrong. Has the discourse always been this way, or has it changed significantly in the past 10 years? If it changed, when did this start? After 9/11? After Trump? The current discourse is crazy to me. We have to remember that free speech is literally the FIRST amendment. Our founding fathers thought that basically nothing was more important than this. So we should err on the side of caution. It's east to restrict freedom and almost impossible to win it back. Although if you want to go a little bit further, they also would have had, as individuals, a higher tolerance for violence in the event that people wanted to "petition the government for a redress of grievances." Anyway, just curious to hear other people's opinions on when the importance of free speech started to diminish in our collective mind.
- hackinthebochs 6y agoIt changed with the rise of social media. The first thing to note is that moral policing is impotent without coordination between like-minded individuals. Pre-social media, the religious right was the single most coordinated effort at policing and shaping culture. Naturally, the kinds of things they were interested in ran counter to progressive movements. It followed that the standard response from those on the left was to defend an expanded notion of free speech. In the 2000's, the religious influence in this country waned and the rise of social media created new ways to organize like minded individuals. Progressives found that they had the loudest voice and now free speech is less valuable to them than being able to shape society as they see fit. It's the ebb and flow of social power.
- modriano 6y ago> The current discourse is crazy to me. We have to remember that free speech is literally the FIRST amendment. Here's the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." "Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech." It doesn't say "freedom of speech is a mechanism that leads to truth", it doesn't say "freedom of speech means you have to let someone come into your house and speak at you", it doesn't say "freedom of speech means, if you build a social media platform, you have to let fascists use it to spread disinformation with a rapidity and accuracy of targeting that founding fathers could never possibly have conceived of". It just says "Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech." In the age of social media, we have seen the truly perverse impacts that viral spread of lies can have, like in Myanmar where months of anti-Rohingya propaganda on Facebook lead to the genocide of the Rohingya [0]. Another perverse impact is the fostering of echo chambers where participants could freely share conspiracy theories and convince themselves of truly crazy things, like that Hillary Clinton ran a cabal of pedophiles that worked out of the basement of Comet Pizza, or that tens of thousands of election workers across many states executed a perfect rigging of the US election. In the past, people susceptible to fringe beliefs would struggle to find likeminded people and would have been too embarrassed to freely exercise speech, but per Facebook's own research: "64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms. [1][2]. Free speech was unleashed in a way never possible before. Last Wednesday, the elected Representatives and Senators of my country were in the process of certifying the results of my country's election, but they were violently interrupted by people who believe a set of lies that they've heard and read hundreds of times. Since this insurrection attempt, we've found a lot of footage indicating these people were looking to kill the Vice President and the Speaker of the House, the #2 and #3 people in the Presidential line of succession. I don't know why people think the 1st amendment means private companies, who aren't Congress at all, should have to make the fruits of their labor accessible to terrorists, or why that's a good thing. But a lot of people here seem to consider that to be an article of faith. I truly have no idea why. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-division-top-executives-nixed-solutions-11590507499 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-di... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-platforms-must-pay-for-their-role-in-the-insurrection/ https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-platforms-must-pay-for-t...
- atlgator 6y agoYou mean a site that enables event coordination and sharing as well as private conservative groups might be culpable alongside a site that has neither of those things? Color me shocked.