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Facebook Downgrades WikiLeaks Article Page
- gred 6y agoThis is just Facebook exercising their right to free speech. Or so I've been told.
- AnHonestComment 6y agoAnyone who thought them censoring a sitting US president was the end of it is kidding themselves.
- edmundsauto 6y agoMight be worth mentioning that the sitting president was using the platform to create the atmosphere that led to an attempted insurrection against a democratically elected government. This is similar to what FB should have done in the Myanmar situation, where they did not act in time. (also, private companies shutting down access to their property is not censorship, etc etc.)
- AnHonestComment 6y agoThere was no attempted insurrection. It was a riot less violent than most we’d seen in the proceeding six months — and you’re quoting highly partisan propaganda. Since you want to bring up Myanmar — false accusations of sedition before soldiers occupy the capitol and crackdowns against political rivals begin is what Facebook is aiding in the US, not stopping. Private companies shutting down conversation is censorship — it’s just private rather than government censorship. Etc.
- MrPatan 6y agoThis is not censorship, it's free speech. Stop spreading misinformation or you will have to be freespeeched too.
- AnHonestComment 6y agoThese are the people who “fortified” the election. Expect more authoritarian behavior.
- bdibs 6y agoFreedom goes both ways, folks. You don't have to like it, most people usually don't.
- throwaway3699 6y agoGigantic global monopolies with billions of users are where I draw the line, ngl. There's a reason we also don't allow the government this freedom, too.
- bdibs 6y agoMonopoly of what though, social media? They don't have any bearing on my life, and I'm sure that's shared with many people here specifically. They aren't murdering people and they aren't stopping the water supply, food supply, or anything essential to anyone. It's Facebook, we all love to hate them, but them saying they don't want to platform a seller of something is hardly equivalent to the government imprisoning someone for speech.
- throwaway3699 6y agoFacebook censorship is partly why division in society is so bad right now. It's pushing slightly-controversial people off to extreme websites.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TheGrim-999 6y agoSeriously? It's monopoly over the ideas and culture of our society. It's monopoly over the speech that the citizens consume. The culture and ideas that people consume on daily basis obviously affect their actions and ideology. And yes it is a monopoly. You can tell me that I can go in a town square and spread my ideas if I don't like Facebook, but we all know that means my ideas are effectively unheard, when compared to facebook being able to instantly reach millions of people. You can tell me I can create my own Facebook if I don't like it, which is such an insincere comment, as it's prohibitively expensive to do so, and even if I did, we've decided as a society that it's also fine to then just censor, ban, shut down any system that promotes competing ideas. But honestly I don't know how you can say with a straight face that facebook/twitter/etc have no bearing on your life. They massively define and shape the society you live in, to a point that has never even remotely existed in all of past human civilziation.
- TameAntelope 6y agoThe word "censorship" is losing its meaning for me, as more and more things are falling under that label which weren't always considered "censorship". When I'm in a conversation with someone, am I "censoring" them when I interject? When a teacher requires hands to be raised in a classroom, is that "censorship"? If I have to log into a website in order to comment, is that "censorship"? When a business doesn't allow another business to use its resources to make money, is that "censorship"? If everything is censorship, seems to me like nothing is.
- oji0hub 6y agoIf we have a large forum and someone decides who gets to speak, that is censorship. That will allow whoever is in charge to shape peoples perception of reality.
- p1necone 6y agoThis is literally every online forum. Every single one has moderation. You just can't have a reasonable experience without it.
- TameAntelope 6y agoI propose we reserve the word "censorship" for situations where an idea is effectively stopped from propagation as the result of the decisions of the people who would be negatively impacted by that idea. Specific expressions getting removed shouldn't be considered "censorship", but an entire concept being purged systemically across a culture for the benefit of the group executing the purge would fall into my proposed definition. Continuing to label specific content removal as "censorship" is unhelpful, because I want to be extremely alarmed when I hear the word, but I'm unable to behave that way currently, because things like this submission try to co-opt the term for something that clearly isn't even approaching the same degree of oppression.
- bitcharmer 6y ago> If I have to log into a website in order to comment, is that "censorship"? There are plenty of news outlets where I'm unable to leave a comment under a news article, because the only supported option is have a FB account which I don't have. I don't feel censored but I'm definitely silenced.
- bitcharmer 6y agoI hate that company, I really do. It's terrifying how well they're executing their game plan. Let's not fool ourselves, HN is not a representative crowd. The overwhelming majority of population doesn't know, doesn't want to know, doesn't care.
- shash7 6y agoAnd that's the scary bit. Most people know they are evil, very few truly understand the depth of it.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoIts not just Censorship, it is a coordinated effort! According to the NY Times by a "A Secret", "Well Funded Cabal" https://youtu.be/Lx6OfAdl-UU https://youtu.be/Lx6OfAdl-UU
- barbacoa 6y agoThe article people are outraged about was a Time article not from NYT. https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/ https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/ >"That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it." Saved you the click.
- secondcoming 6y agoBy The Times. The NY Times would never publish an article like this; it engages in self-censorship.
- 0110101001 6y ago"Censored" for running spam bots to drive traffic their way. > They realized that the decision to unpublish the Facebook page followed what appears to be an attack by apparent bots (automated accounts). “Someone probably made it look like we were paying someone to share our posts with the bots,” the source explained. Of course, it wasn't the Wikileaks store trying to drive traffic their way, but some spooky unknown entity trying to make it look like the Wikileaks store was doing it themselves so that the Wikileaks store would get shut down.
- colechristensen 6y agoWhy would anyone give wikileaks the benefit of the doubt? Having actively engaged in what is difficult to argue was not espionage, is spam below them?
- 0110101001 6y agoMy "benefit of the doubt" was sarcastic, if it wasn't obvious. I think they 100% got caught spamming and are now trying to cast it as a Facebook/government conspiracy against them.
- serial_dev 6y agoI don't know what happened in this case, but it's entirely possible that someone who wanted to bring them down organized some bot traffic to them. It happens for much smaller mailing lists with far fewer enemies where attackers just sign up with trash email addresses in order to increase the chance of your mailing list to be flagged as a spammer account.
- xerxespoy 6y agoFacebook itself is effectively a spam bot that uses people and their invasively-assessed psychological proclivities to proliferate. To hold it up as somehow distinct from other unethical and invasive mechanisms used to "drive traffic" is hopelessly naive.
- iamleppert 6y agoIt’s not in Facebook’s business interest to continue to host this kind of politically charged and controversial content. As a publicly traded company, Facebook has a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. Every decision they make should be viewed through the lens of, “Is this beneficial to the profit of the company?” If the answer is no, the content should be blocked.
- cbradford 6y agoYou are correct, which is why facebook should be declared and utility and treated as such. Just like your power company cannot do whatever it wants for it's bottom line, neither should facebook
- edmundsauto 6y agoWould you support the government preventing other companies from entering the social media space? Generally utilities have a government sponsored monopoly.
- cbradford 6y agoYes I would
- bad_username 6y ago> Every decision they make should be viewed through the lens of, “Is this beneficial to the profit of the company?” Fair. However, we are not they, and should care about more than just Facebook's bottom line.
- Mattasher 6y agoThis may be true when viewed at the micro level, but it's highly debatable at a zoomed out level. Put it this way, is it in Facebooks best business interests to be viewed as endorsing every single thing it hosts? Note that the more they pick and choose who to deplatform, the more the ones left will get their implicit seal of approval.
- crb002 6y agoTake legal recourse on FB - they have a data center in Altoona, IA. 1) File an Iowa Civil Rights Commission Complaint for retaliation of fighting discrimination and on Julian's nationality. https://icrc.iowa.gov/file-complaint https://icrc.iowa.gov/file-complaint 2) File a criminal complaint with Altoona, IA police for unauthorized computer access. There is probable cause the person who blocked the account did so without legitimate authorization.
- colechristensen 6y agoDo you seriously believe 1) in doing this, facebook was discriminating against JA because he’s australian? 2) that you or anyone but facebook has any interest in filing a criminal complaint for a facebook employee committing “unauthorized computer access” against facebook? Don’t be absurd.
- crb002 6y agoIf forces them to explain. They have no legitimate explanation so it will be restored.
- colechristensen 6y agoNo it doesn't, it gets thrown out because it is absurd.
- Nginx487 6y agoI totally hate Facebook, never had an account and will never have. However, why the first media resource administrator of banned page reached, was Russian propagandist outlet Sputnik? Their style is disgusting Goebbels-style propaganda, coordinated attacks on social media using resources of St.Petersburg troll factory, and for sure they use Facebook for their propagandist purposes. I can assure, in Russian jurisdiction any resource like Wikileaks would be shut down, and founders will soon have tea with Novichok. I just want to say, siding with one evil against another could not be justified.
- Dma54rhs 6y agoIt bothers me as well but let's face it - western media has blacklist them anyway and wouldn't even care to write about it now. During the Bush era they were heroes and Assange a Saint.