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I'm sure public support for removing Facebook from app stores wouldn't be too different than Parler. If we are principled people, and FB is failing to moderate,

I'm sure public support for removing Facebook from app stores wouldn't be too different than Parler. If we are principled people, and FB is failing to moderate, then any reasonable person who supported Parler's removal would support Facebook's. What would be different between the two decisions is the sheer magnitude of money on the line, in the case of Facebook's removal -- in capital markets, in employment, etc.

trident5000 6y ago
This is a political thing above all else. Its indirect bribery to the new party in power. In return, anti-trust cases (they have already been formed internally) will likely be overlooked/a call from the top or new appointments will change the calculus. This is how Washington works.
rtkwe 6y ago
A decent distinction to make is Facebook on the face of it tries to moderate they're just bad at it and make decisions a lot of people aren't happy with where Parler's moderation system was almost entirely pro forma relying largely on showing reports to a panel of random users.
- giantg2 6y ago
  So democracy or trial by your peers fails?
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    In site moderation it's basically a guarantee that you'll wind up with an extreme echo chamber, people self select in or out the site based on the content of that site. Unless your user group is extremely broad based and siloing is good enough that people aren't driven off the site by extremists then the group of moderators you select from is inherently pretty ok with the content of the site. It has a chance to work in the real world where the same self selection effect is moderated by other factors.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      How is it different than real life? Look at the county by county map of the past couple presidential elections. You'll see that there is very much a delineation between people with different ideals resulting in echo chambers. We see this in stereotypes of country folks or city folks by the other.
      - rtkwe 6y ago
        There's a whole trial to present the evidence and how the law is supposed to be interpreted in a court case you can't really replicate in Parler's attempted moderation system. Also the pomp and dressing of state and law do a lot to change how people act. One of the big questions any prosecutor will ask is will you judge solely on the law and they will very quickly strike you if you indicate no or that you know anything about jury nullification.
        giantg2 6y ago
        Everyone should know about jury nullification. I feel it's a violation of a right to a fair trial if the jury doesn't understand all the options, including that one. The questions don't really mean much. People could honestly answer that they will apply the law, but how can they if their understanding of it is flawed, especially since that question takes place before the judge educates the jury on the law?
        rtkwe 6y ago
        > Everyone should know about jury nullification. Prosecutors would really rather you not because it has the chance to completely screw their case and they already put a lot of effort in maintaining conviction records. Also it's one of those things where it's not officially an option there's just no punishment available to prevent it. It does mean something you can say yes or no to 'will you rule based on the law and the evidence presented in the case' you don't have to know the law to agree to do that. It's not phrased exactly like that either it's a series. [0] #15 for example is basically a question directly about nullification. 13 and 14 are also around the subject as well. [0] https://www.njcourts.gov/attorneys/assets/attyresources/jurorselectionquestions.pdf?c=gFx https://www.njcourts.gov/attorneys/assets/attyresources/juro...
- nautilus12 6y ago
  As a bean farmer, your ability to herd cats at the absolute highest level determines whether or not you stay in business.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  I'm not sure how hard FB actually tries to moderate extremist political content. They're pretty damn good at quickly taking down child porn and copyrighted movies/music, because those are areas where big money & potential criminal liability are on the line. In contrast, nobody's forcing them to censor political extremism, and the usual "engagement" metrics that they and their advertisers track would likely reward that content. In the last few days, they've shut down thousands of groups and hundreds of thousands of accounts for sharing QAnon conspiracies, which strongly suggests to me that they've had the technical ability to do that for quite a while. They're not "bad at" moderation, they just choose to moderate certain things and not others.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    Most people here could hack together some basic keyword searches for questionable content in a day at the outside. I think we can assume that Facebook already has the tools to run those searches at scale and act on the results. So I don't think there's any good reason to disagree with you. At best, Facebook has prioritised "engagement" - i.e. ad revenue - over unacceptable extremism. At worst Facebook is knowingly complicit in the politics and in the polarisation that is being generated. It would be impossible to know which of those is true without access to internal records. But there should at least be an investigation asking these questions. And not just of Facebook, but of all the social tech and media giants.
xanax 6y ago
Facebook is much bigger so the amount of upset users will be greater as well if it is removed. Plus all the big tech CEOs have their own little club so I doubt apple would mess with Facebook like that.
- philwelch 6y ago
  They have a history of messing with each other, though—Apple and Amazon have feuded pretty openly, as did Apple and Google.
CobrastanJorji 6y ago
Parler explicitly advertises itself as a place of little or no moderation. Facebook has something like 15,000 professional content moderators whose job is so terrible that they literally get PTSD, but Facebook still fails to catch a lot of it. Being not great at moderation and actively advertising yourself as an unmoderated forum are fairly different lines.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  If the negative externalities are the same in both cases, then this isn't an excuse. Just because Facebook has proportionally fewer posts that violate its policies doesn't mean it should get a free pass. The fact that up to 15,000 people have PTSD is the societal cost we pay, even if the vast majority of FB users are using the platform as expected. Facebook gets a free pass because Facebook is an influential organization. Parler had no network of elites protecting it, because as you say, it had no other purpose beyond being 'volunteer' moderated. If at a minimum, the attack gets us to think about the type of questions posed by The Social Dilemma, we're trending towards a better place.
  - standardUser 6y ago
    "Facebook gets a free pass..." No, Facebook devotes significant resources to moderation and makes good faith attempts to uphold their policies. Parler did not. That is the difference. "If the negative externalities are the same in both cases, then this isn't an excuse." No one is trying to rid the world of all negative externalities, only to make reasonable efforts to mitigate them. There may never be a perfectly moderated social media platform, just as there may never be a perfectly safe highway, and that is fine.
    - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
      You're right, Facebook won't get a free pass. Congress will drag Zuckerberg back into Congress, give him a scolding, and then largely things will remain the same. Whether or not they moderate enough is certainly a gray question. All sorts of industries have negative externalities (e.g., fossil fuels). But are Facebook's worth it if they destabilize the democracy in which allowed Facebook to grow and exist?
mc32 6y ago
It’s like when the feds go for the capos instead of the mob boss because it’s easier.
booleanbetrayal 6y ago
I think it is also fair to point out that FB does have a review process, policies, and despite not being able to keep up with the volume, has tried to keep the most incendiary behavior off its platform. Meanwhile, Parler has refused to do any of these things as a matter of principle. As much as I hate on FB, I think there is a clear distinction here.
standardUser 6y ago
"If we are principled people, and FB is failing to moderate, then any reasonable person who supported Parler's removal would support Facebook's." Is Facebook failing to moderate, or failing at moderation? If the standard is perfect moderation, there is no social media. If the standard is a good faith efforts at moderation, Facebook should be tolerated (if not compelled to do better) and Parler should be punished (unless they make good faith efforts to do better).
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Is Facebook actually moderating in good faith though? Consider that divisive, offensive and false content is guaranteed to generate engagement and thus contribute to their bottom-line, while content that doesn't have these traits is less likely to do so. So they're already starting off the wrong way here, when their profits directly correlate with their negative impact on society. Consider that there is plenty of bad content that violates their community standards on Facebook and such content doesn't even try to hide itself and is thus trivially detectable with automation: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/a-year-later-cybercrime-groups-still-rampant-on-facebook/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/a-year-later-cybercrime-... Consider that Instagram doesn't remove accounts with openly racist & anti-Semitic usernames even when reported: https://old.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/kz10nw/i_mean_if_you_say_so/ https://old.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/kz10nw/i_mean_if_... Is Facebook truly moderating in good faith, or are they only moderating when the potential PR backlash from the bad content getting media attention greater than the revenue from the engagement around said content? I strongly suspect the latter. Keep in mind that moderating a public forum is mostly a solved problem, people have done so (often benevolently) for decades. The social media companies' pleas about moderation being impossible at scale is bullshit - it's only impossible because they're trying to eat the cake and have it too. When the incentives are aligned, moderation is a solved problem.
- mikem170 6y ago
  My two cents: Facebook has an algorithm they use to decide what posts are presented to a user. They should therefore loose their section 230 common carrier status. They are the ones deciding to put toxic and divisive information in front of users to drive engagement, instead of simply sharing posts in chronological order and letting users control all the filtering.
betterunix2 6y ago
Facebook is not failing to moderate. Moderation is hard and everyone knows that, but Facebook has been improving their moderation techniques and policies for years. Unlike Parler and Gab, Facebook is actually putting in the effort to moderate and was not created to be a safe haven for terrorists who were banned from other platforms.
e40 6y ago
A coworker has a lot of conservative friends. All of them were banned from FB until the 23rd. Even her daughter, who has never written any posts supporting DJT, but liked a few posts, was banned for the same time frame. I've read absolutely nothing about this in the news. She even shared a screenshot one of her friends shared with her. It said: "Your account is restricted right now. You're temporarily restricted from doing things like posting or commenting on groups, Pages or events until January 23 at 3:19 AM. Dismiss" I take this to mean they are afraid of a 2nd around of problems.
- markdown 6y ago
  That's wonderful news. Better late then never.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  A news report on this would be interesting to see to get all the facts. I am not familiar with this.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    I don't have a news report, but my wife has an instagram she uses to share pictures of cakes and cookies that she has baked, and also likes and follows right wing politicos, had a similar message silencing her account around the election.
- cecja 6y ago
  Aww... die she like a kill pelosi meme and got suspended? Good for us.
- Vinnl 6y ago
  If anyone has links to such pages - I don't really use my Facebook, so I'd be happy to give them a "like" and see what happens.
  - listless 6y ago
    This is a good idea. I’ll help too. Can someone post a link to something we could like that’s an objectively harmless right-wing meme?

trident5000 6y ago

This is a political thing above all else. Its indirect bribery to the new party in power. In return, anti-trust cases (they have already been formed internally) will likely be overlooked/a call from the top or new appointments will change the calculus. This is how Washington works.

rtkwe 6y ago

A decent distinction to make is Facebook on the face of it tries to moderate they're just bad at it and make decisions a lot of people aren't happy with where Parler's moderation system was almost entirely pro forma relying largely on showing reports to a panel of random users.

giantg2 6y ago
So democracy or trial by your peers fails?
- rtkwe 6y ago
  In site moderation it's basically a guarantee that you'll wind up with an extreme echo chamber, people self select in or out the site based on the content of that site. Unless your user group is extremely broad based and siloing is good enough that people aren't driven off the site by extremists then the group of moderators you select from is inherently pretty ok with the content of the site. It has a chance to work in the real world where the same self selection effect is moderated by other factors.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    How is it different than real life? Look at the county by county map of the past couple presidential elections. You'll see that there is very much a delineation between people with different ideals resulting in echo chambers. We see this in stereotypes of country folks or city folks by the other.
    - rtkwe 6y ago
      There's a whole trial to present the evidence and how the law is supposed to be interpreted in a court case you can't really replicate in Parler's attempted moderation system. Also the pomp and dressing of state and law do a lot to change how people act. One of the big questions any prosecutor will ask is will you judge solely on the law and they will very quickly strike you if you indicate no or that you know anything about jury nullification.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        Everyone should know about jury nullification. I feel it's a violation of a right to a fair trial if the jury doesn't understand all the options, including that one. The questions don't really mean much. People could honestly answer that they will apply the law, but how can they if their understanding of it is flawed, especially since that question takes place before the judge educates the jury on the law?
        rtkwe 6y ago
        > Everyone should know about jury nullification. Prosecutors would really rather you not because it has the chance to completely screw their case and they already put a lot of effort in maintaining conviction records. Also it's one of those things where it's not officially an option there's just no punishment available to prevent it. It does mean something you can say yes or no to 'will you rule based on the law and the evidence presented in the case' you don't have to know the law to agree to do that. It's not phrased exactly like that either it's a series. [0] #15 for example is basically a question directly about nullification. 13 and 14 are also around the subject as well. [0] https://www.njcourts.gov/attorneys/assets/attyresources/jurorselectionquestions.pdf?c=gFx https://www.njcourts.gov/attorneys/assets/attyresources/juro...
nautilus12 6y ago
As a bean farmer, your ability to herd cats at the absolute highest level determines whether or not you stay in business.
ForHackernews 6y ago
I'm not sure how hard FB actually tries to moderate extremist political content. They're pretty damn good at quickly taking down child porn and copyrighted movies/music, because those are areas where big money & potential criminal liability are on the line. In contrast, nobody's forcing them to censor political extremism, and the usual "engagement" metrics that they and their advertisers track would likely reward that content. In the last few days, they've shut down thousands of groups and hundreds of thousands of accounts for sharing QAnon conspiracies, which strongly suggests to me that they've had the technical ability to do that for quite a while. They're not "bad at" moderation, they just choose to moderate certain things and not others.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Most people here could hack together some basic keyword searches for questionable content in a day at the outside. I think we can assume that Facebook already has the tools to run those searches at scale and act on the results. So I don't think there's any good reason to disagree with you. At best, Facebook has prioritised "engagement" - i.e. ad revenue - over unacceptable extremism. At worst Facebook is knowingly complicit in the politics and in the polarisation that is being generated. It would be impossible to know which of those is true without access to internal records. But there should at least be an investigation asking these questions. And not just of Facebook, but of all the social tech and media giants.

xanax 6y ago

Facebook is much bigger so the amount of upset users will be greater as well if it is removed. Plus all the big tech CEOs have their own little club so I doubt apple would mess with Facebook like that.

philwelch 6y ago
They have a history of messing with each other, though—Apple and Amazon have feuded pretty openly, as did Apple and Google.

CobrastanJorji 6y ago

Parler explicitly advertises itself as a place of little or no moderation. Facebook has something like 15,000 professional content moderators whose job is so terrible that they literally get PTSD, but Facebook still fails to catch a lot of it. Being not great at moderation and actively advertising yourself as an unmoderated forum are fairly different lines.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
If the negative externalities are the same in both cases, then this isn't an excuse. Just because Facebook has proportionally fewer posts that violate its policies doesn't mean it should get a free pass. The fact that up to 15,000 people have PTSD is the societal cost we pay, even if the vast majority of FB users are using the platform as expected. Facebook gets a free pass because Facebook is an influential organization. Parler had no network of elites protecting it, because as you say, it had no other purpose beyond being 'volunteer' moderated. If at a minimum, the attack gets us to think about the type of questions posed by The Social Dilemma, we're trending towards a better place.
- standardUser 6y ago
  "Facebook gets a free pass..." No, Facebook devotes significant resources to moderation and makes good faith attempts to uphold their policies. Parler did not. That is the difference. "If the negative externalities are the same in both cases, then this isn't an excuse." No one is trying to rid the world of all negative externalities, only to make reasonable efforts to mitigate them. There may never be a perfectly moderated social media platform, just as there may never be a perfectly safe highway, and that is fine.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    You're right, Facebook won't get a free pass. Congress will drag Zuckerberg back into Congress, give him a scolding, and then largely things will remain the same. Whether or not they moderate enough is certainly a gray question. All sorts of industries have negative externalities (e.g., fossil fuels). But are Facebook's worth it if they destabilize the democracy in which allowed Facebook to grow and exist?

mc32 6y ago

It’s like when the feds go for the capos instead of the mob boss because it’s easier.

booleanbetrayal 6y ago

I think it is also fair to point out that FB does have a review process, policies, and despite not being able to keep up with the volume, has tried to keep the most incendiary behavior off its platform. Meanwhile, Parler has refused to do any of these things as a matter of principle. As much as I hate on FB, I think there is a clear distinction here.

standardUser 6y ago

"If we are principled people, and FB is failing to moderate, then any reasonable person who supported Parler's removal would support Facebook's." Is Facebook failing to moderate, or failing at moderation? If the standard is perfect moderation, there is no social media. If the standard is a good faith efforts at moderation, Facebook should be tolerated (if not compelled to do better) and Parler should be punished (unless they make good faith efforts to do better).

Nextgrid 6y ago
Is Facebook actually moderating in good faith though? Consider that divisive, offensive and false content is guaranteed to generate engagement and thus contribute to their bottom-line, while content that doesn't have these traits is less likely to do so. So they're already starting off the wrong way here, when their profits directly correlate with their negative impact on society. Consider that there is plenty of bad content that violates their community standards on Facebook and such content doesn't even try to hide itself and is thus trivially detectable with automation: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/a-year-later-cybercrime-groups-still-rampant-on-facebook/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/a-year-later-cybercrime-... Consider that Instagram doesn't remove accounts with openly racist & anti-Semitic usernames even when reported: https://old.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/kz10nw/i_mean_if_you_say_so/ https://old.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/kz10nw/i_mean_if_... Is Facebook truly moderating in good faith, or are they only moderating when the potential PR backlash from the bad content getting media attention greater than the revenue from the engagement around said content? I strongly suspect the latter. Keep in mind that moderating a public forum is mostly a solved problem, people have done so (often benevolently) for decades. The social media companies' pleas about moderation being impossible at scale is bullshit - it's only impossible because they're trying to eat the cake and have it too. When the incentives are aligned, moderation is a solved problem.
mikem170 6y ago
My two cents: Facebook has an algorithm they use to decide what posts are presented to a user. They should therefore loose their section 230 common carrier status. They are the ones deciding to put toxic and divisive information in front of users to drive engagement, instead of simply sharing posts in chronological order and letting users control all the filtering.

betterunix2 6y ago

Facebook is not failing to moderate. Moderation is hard and everyone knows that, but Facebook has been improving their moderation techniques and policies for years. Unlike Parler and Gab, Facebook is actually putting in the effort to moderate and was not created to be a safe haven for terrorists who were banned from other platforms.

e40 6y ago

A coworker has a lot of conservative friends. All of them were banned from FB until the 23rd. Even her daughter, who has never written any posts supporting DJT, but liked a few posts, was banned for the same time frame. I've read absolutely nothing about this in the news. She even shared a screenshot one of her friends shared with her. It said: "Your account is restricted right now. You're temporarily restricted from doing things like posting or commenting on groups, Pages or events until January 23 at 3:19 AM. Dismiss" I take this to mean they are afraid of a 2nd around of problems.

markdown 6y ago
That's wonderful news. Better late then never.
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
A news report on this would be interesting to see to get all the facts. I am not familiar with this.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  I don't have a news report, but my wife has an instagram she uses to share pictures of cakes and cookies that she has baked, and also likes and follows right wing politicos, had a similar message silencing her account around the election.
cecja 6y ago
Aww... die she like a kill pelosi meme and got suspended? Good for us.
Vinnl 6y ago
If anyone has links to such pages - I don't really use my Facebook, so I'd be happy to give them a "like" and see what happens.
- listless 6y ago
  This is a good idea. I’ll help too. Can someone post a link to something we could like that’s an objectively harmless right-wing meme?