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Facebook restores service to socialist pages, claiming “automation error”
- swiley 6y agoWhy would you post something political to Facebook at this point? Best case you look like an ass to half your friends and just feed a machine. You can't hope to change anything, if Facebook doesn't like what you say you'll get censored and if they do then why bother because they'll tell everyone anyway.
- arkitaip 6y agoThis isn't about individuals but one of hundreds of thousands of political organizations that rely on Facebook for their political work.
- fred_is_fred 6y agoPeople post politics on Social Media for the same reason that always do - validation seeking. Also I think in the world we live in there are exactly 0 people who have half conservative and half liberal friends. The two groups work at different companies, live in different cities, watch different news, and now use different social networks.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago> People post politics on Social Media for the same reason that always do - validation seeking Speak for yourself - but I do it to discuss policy matters and exchange ideas about how to mitigate any negative consequences to the business. Things like Right-to-Repair (product design), KYC/GDPR, stiumulus payments (e.g. should we advertise more if people will be more likely to spend?), etc.
- fred_is_fred 6y agoRight, but you're a HN reader and not your average person on Facebook.
- devlopr 6y agoAs someone who lives in a big city I have a variety social contacts with various politics beliefs ranging from left to right and not caring about politics to caring too much. Many right leaning votes live in cities at least 20% in any region and many left leaning rural voters exist at least 20%.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago> Also I think in the world we live in there are exactly 0 people who have half conservative and half liberal friends. IDK about 1/2 and 1/2, but it sounds to me like some of your friends would rather be closet conservatives than talk to you about politics.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Best case you look like an ass to half your friends and just feed a machine. The assumption that any political issue splits the general population roughly in half, and that all disagreement is polar, is bad enough, but now you are making the assumption that that holds for each individual’s circle of Facebook friends?
- justapassenger 6y agoWhy would you talk politics to your relatives at family reunion? People are passionate about politics.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- baalimago 6y agoFacebooks days truly are getting numbered now. It must be basically unheard of in history for the far left and far right to experience the same issues in such a similar way, I wonder where it may lead. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all.
- guerrilla 6y ago> unheard of in history for the far left and far right to experience the same issues That doesn't seem true. They were both excluded entirely from broadcast media.
- Nasrudith 6y ago> unheard of in history for the far left and far right to experience the same issues in such a similar way, So you mean their response to liberal democracy and restraints on government power in the name of rights and due process because it gets in the way of their plan to kill masses of "bad people" and establish their perfect society? And their "bad people" happen to be largely or entirely Jewish while going along with every lie told to their ignorant peasant ancestors by their aristocracy taken as gospel? That isn't new at all. And it is why they all turn into hellholes when they are in charge. This whole "big Tech's days are numbered" is basically QAnon for slightly smarter people with slightly less bloodlust. Assign all of the evils of the world to "Big Tech" and assume everything is a sign that it is going down as an article of faith. They complain both about them moderating too much and not insist there should be some kind of legal punishment. A judge would call these complaints "a very novel legal theory" (read: no basis in the law and it doesn't mean what you think it does).
- AdrianB1 6y agoI read this 3 times and I cannot understand it: who wants to kill Jewish people and why? Since 1945 I did not heard of anyone with such ideas, definitely not in mainstream political views of any contemporaneous party.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't post flamewar comments to HN. We've asked you this more than once before and eventually ban accounts that keep doing it. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- oxymoran 6y agoSeems like an editorial decision to me.
- coldcode 6y agoWhile automation error certainly could be deliberate, given Facebook's often haphazard crappiness, its possible they did screw up.
- fennecfoxen 6y agoWe've automated our moderation errors so we can make them faster and more reliably!
- colllectorof 6y agoI don't buy the notion that this is accidental. This is a strategy that is often described as "ask forgiveness, not permission". Many content companies seem to use this to test what they can get away with in regards to censorship. It's blatantly obvious that we need transparency in decision making related to big platform moderation. This is far more important than any specific rules.
- Nasrudith 6y agoThey don't need to ask anyone for permission - it is their own servers they are pushing bits on. Entitlement in an emotional sense isn't entitlement in a legal sense. Even if the board decided "We want to make it more pleasant by booting every radical under pretexts." would not be a conspiracy and would even be an acceptable risk to take as a business strategy.
- waheoo 6y agoAll businesses are beholden to all stakeholders. Users are stakeholders. Just because they can do it doesn't mean they should. Nor does it mean their users have to be happy with it. It's perfectly legal for tinder to send all your dick picks to Cambridge analytics but I doubt you'd be very happy about it. And from the purely legal standpoint, pointing out something people don't like is legal when people are saying something should be made illegal is just gaslighting. Please just fucking stop with the "bUt mA PrIvaTe CoMpAnY" argument it's been said a million times already. We get it, its legal, what we are saying is that it shouldn't be and we would like to make it illegal.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thiagoharry 6y agoI don't agree with the premise. I don't think that property should give power to discriminate basing on political views, race, gender...
- chaganated 6y agoInstead of a single performance at Christmas dinner, now your crazy uncle and mine can reach the whole town 24x7x365. For some reason or another, our betters see this as an imminent threat to "democracy" -- one which cannot go unanswered. That the same people call their payoffs to a stable of geriatric looters, in exchange for order-of-magnitude ROIs, "democracy" says all that needs to be said about the situation.
- chaganated 6y ago@1hr mark: at least 3 downvotes, 0 refutations
- ruined 6y agonote facebook still hasn't engaged directly with banned orgs or users, they only responded to financial times. large anarchist pages were banned a while back and were not able to get a similar reversal, despite some media attention. twitter has taken action recently as well. interestingly, left and anarchist pages tend to be banned only when furor/sentiment rises high against right-wing pages, and the bans seem to be done symmetrically to reduce perceptions of bias. for example crimethinc was knocked down same time as proud boys groups.
- floren 6y ago> large anarchist pages were banned a while back and were not able to get a similar reversal maybe they should ask the government to step in
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ruined 6y agoanarchists are under no such illusions. it's always been illegal to be an anarchist. only people who believe they deserve power are confused when power is used against them. it's understood that centralized platforms will continue to experience controversy and censorship until most people give up and move to federated and resistant media.
- Gibbon1 6y agoWhen questioned by congress google offered up manually down ranking the Wobblies as an example of them combating 'populism'
- joshuakelly 6y agoThese groups should really just be using Secure Scuttlebutt. There's an already existing cultural affinity for them there, and they can have sovereignty over their digital existence.
- Simulacra 6y ago"sovereignty over their digital existence" is a very interesting statement. IMO the problem we have now is that the digital real estate is artificially restricted, by hosting companies, platforms, etc. that it's almost impossible to have sovereignty over your digital existence. If you make the wrong person/group/ideology mad, they will usurp any sovereignty you thought you had. Whereas in the real world, sovereignty is generally limited by land.
- ardy42 6y ago> These groups should really just be using Secure Scuttlebutt. There's an already existing cultural affinity for them there, and they can have sovereignty over their digital existence. That wouldn't obviate their need for a Facebook page, since it's far more useful for outreach. The problem with most technical solutions to problems with communication technologies like this is that they're marginalizing if adopted exclusively too early. Until the alternate technology reaches critical mass (at least), it's only appropriate to use it to augment existing technologies.
- crocodiletears 6y agoThey do, and other platforms besides. But alt-social media platforms really only exist for internal comms, and vigorous ideological masturbation. Facebook is the only realistic option to (competitively) scalably organize any event. Private company, etc. etc. But the reality is that facebook is such a powerful tool for organization and outreach that not having access to it is damn near a death sentence for any budding social movement. Personally, I get a chuckle out of seeing a few left-wing pages deplatformed every now and again, because as a Libertarian any time I find a coherent and principled group that's thinking about engaging in political advocacy or activism I start counting down the days until a left-aligned group/page declares them neonazis, brigades them until they've been deplatformed, and then hunts them down on every alternative platform they adopt until they move to signal. But I don't think Facebook should be picking winners and losers in the domain of political organization so casually, considering their market penetration. These pages should never have been banned in the first place.
- Simulacra 6y agoSo now are they going to restore the Trump pages, and others they don't like? Seems like if you're going to restore the socialists you should at least be inclined to restore other far left/right pages; no, not QAnon, you know what I mean.
- tweetle_beetle 6y agoI mean isn't this exactly what Oversight Board is supposedly for? > The purpose of the board is to promote free expression by making principled, independent decisions regarding content on Facebook and Instagram and by issuing recommendations on the relevant Facebook Company Content Policy. Wonder if we will ever actually see something appear on https://oversightboard.com/decision/ https://oversightboard.com/decision/. It took almost a year to put together and has apparently achieved very little in the few months it has been running apart from lots of bureaucracy. Interesting to note that it aims to have 40 people on the board - the cynic in me feels that this is to ensure that decisive action is unlikely.
- fakedang 6y agoI visit the UAE often, where they have all these funky organizations with funny names "Ministry of Tolerance", "Ministry of Happiness" and what not. Their only duty is to rubber stamp all royal decrees and clap and Singh praises to the media. Facebook is very similar to a Middle Eastern autocracy. Edit:- Google too, what with their AI ethics board.