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Facebook now warning users about exposure to “harmful extremist content”
- coffeefirst 5y agoI can’t imagine anyone who’s susceptible to radicalization seeing that message and and having any kind of lightbulb go off.
- pentae 5y agoDo you think they really want to help people or is it more likely they are trying to get ahead of being broken up or overtaken by a government appointed authority
- esyir 5y agoI'll probably weight that warning as "might be ml interesting". Seeing that what I like (the old Web) is dying a slow death under the weight of modern privatised censorship, what they're marking as bad might become signal, of sorts.
- tiagod 5y agoI'm thinking it might have the opposite effect for anyone that doesn't trust Facebook
- rndgermandude 5y agoI don't know anybody who trusts facebook (the company). But I do know a few people who are all to eager to trust everything that gets posted on facebook, and a sizable chunk of these people would indeed take such an "extremist warning" by facebook to mean that "they" are trying to hide things from the public.
- 0xy 5y agoAll of my right-wing friends and acquaintances who received this message mocked it and took it as more evidence of Facebook's bias, so I'd say it was inversely effective. It will reinforce views.
- lazyeye 5y agoI see it more as a way of nudging, herding the cattle so to speak, to get people thinking in the way that big tech wants and finds useful. This is not the same thing as discouraging extremism. By any measure, the invasion and monetisng of peoples privacy like Facebook do is extreme.
- overkill28 5y agoAnd the first, relatively mild warnings on cigarette packages probably didn't convince many to quit, nor did posting calorie counts on fast food menus make everyone switch to salads. But hopefully it's the start of a drumbeat where this type of content becomes less and less acceptable in society. It's not the perfect analogy of course, but I think the solution to divisive, negative, nasty online content is largely a social one not a technological one.
- m-p-3 5y agoIMO it will further antagonize them and the first reaction whoever sees this will be to go further down the rabbit hole.
- InvisibleCities 5y ago[Sober, well-researched article about the dangers of pervasive social media that calls for strong government regulation] “This link has been associated with harmful extremist content. Are you sure you wish to proceed?”
- Closi 5y ago100% agree - let’s not forget that at the start of the pandemic the social media platforms called the lab leak theory an extreme conspiracy and some social platforms blocked links, now it’s one of the leading theories, so clearly and unsurprisingly these policies have already resulted in legitimate discourse being blocked.
- redis_mlc 5y agoGen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military, is a CRT proponent, so social media is kind of late to warn our society. Can you believe our military has adopted Communist ideology? The US has been in a Cold War with Russia and China since 1945, yet here we are. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/general-milley-critical-race-theory-why-gop-s-woke-military-ncna1272558 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/general-milley-critica...
- peakaboo 5y agoThat's just one out of many more events the mainstream media has been disregarding or lying about. It may be extreme to call the mainstream media propaganda but then again, it may not.
- herbst 5y agoWhen people say mainstream media what do they mean? Our Swiss media houses never really excluded any Theorie that could get milked for clicks. I mean why would they? Facebook did censor a lot, but Facebook can't be considered media. Edit:// isn't it more the lack of willingness to explore outside your bubble before you form an opinion?
- brandonmenc 5y ago
- tu7001 5y agoShows me "the content is not available in yr region"..., Poland here.
- ttt0 5y agohttps://archive.is/g3Tox https://archive.is/g3Tox
- ArcturianDeath 5y agoNow that the facility of the digital tooling is more granular and refined, and theres no shortage of weak-minded grunts that are powertrippin to do what theyre told by the telepath aliens in human disguise or the government, as zealous intern lords over the online conversation or jannies of pre-crime trends, this is all now easier to implement when it will matter the most to our future: silencing anti-alien dissent after "arrival." The Roswell trojan horse and social infiltration to pressure the farce of 2020, is paying off. Abductees/contactees with negative experiences of the 40+ species will be flagged and limited as agents of “disinformation.”
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gentleman11 5y agoInstead, they could just stop aggressively pushing extreme and upsetting content with their algorithms to increase engagement. I know people getting really depressed thinking all their friends have become extremists. In actuality, that’s just the only content that is being pushed to them in their feeds (and likewise, the only content that their friends are getting pushed as well)
- nightski 5y agoReally miss the days when feeds were just chronological lists of posts from your friends/family. No re-shares, suggested content, etc... Ironically providing this and just charging like $1/mo would be far more effective than labeling content as extreme or not.
- gentleman11 5y agoI miss when there was no feed. You visit their page if you wanted to know what someone was up to
- apple4ever 5y agoThat's really the problem here. Instead of just the content that I specifically signed up for, I constantly get pushed for things I don't.
- jaybrendansmith 5y agoWhy should they. They are in business to make money, and cannot effectively self-police. Imagine a time, way back after WWII when fascism almost took over Europe and destroyed democracy, when the grown-ups in charge took responsibility for fighting against intolerance and propaganda by carefully regulating communication through a government agency. For better and sometimes worse, but mostly better, this agency created LAWS that prevented the distribution of propaganda and obviously false and unbalanced news through regulation of the broadcast media, specific rules about what could be considered 'news', and the fairness doctrine. These grownups cleverly called the agency the Federal Communications Commission, whose job was not restricted to just the airwaves: it was to protect the people from hate groups, harmful extremist content, yes communist propaganda, and many other unbalanced or biased sources of information.
- nivenkos 5y agoCue supporting taxing Tech companies and protectionism from US Big Tech becoming "extremist".
- swiley 5y agoThere should be PSAs warning users about exposure to Facebook and other ML curated feeds.
- AlexandrB 5y ago> Violent groups try to manipulate your anger and disappointment. Anyone else find it weird that Facebook is calling themselves a "violent group"? Joking aside, I "love" how the language in the warning pretends that Facebook is a perfectly neutral party here, in no way responsible for what content floats to the top of people's feeds. > You can take action now to protect yourself and others. Yes. That action is deleting your Facebook account.
- azangru 5y ago> I "love" how the language in the warning pretends that Facebook is a perfectly neutral party here I saw people's screenshots of the "Help" section where Facebook elaborates on the subject of "violent groups". I'd say the language there is noticeably skewed towards the liberal left (if there is still any meaning left in those labels).
- hairofadog 5y agoDo you mean that from your perspective the language there is skewed toward painting the left as a violent group, or that the language there is skewed in support of the left?
- azangru 5y agoIn support of the left, definitely. I saw a section on immigration, which I would think aligns closely with what Democrats are preaching.
- heresie-dabord 5y ago> Violent groups try to manipulate your anger and disappointment "Political parties, foreign states that oppose democracy, and mercenary corporations all give us money for a chance to manipulate your anger and disappointment. While we at F-Book just mine your personal data." Re-written for clarity.
- aaron-santos 5y agoActive vs passive voice in media is a way of avoiding responsibility. It shifts the subject from those who transgressed to the instrument of transgression, or to the person wronged. What it should read is "Natalie, Facebook may have exposed you to harmful extremist content". Instead the passive voice subverts Facebook's role in deciding which content is served. It's like the content just magically shows up. A lot like how bullets or rockets also magically show up on their own in other stories.
- vixen99 5y agoYet another example of a deeply patronizing stance on the part of those who deem 'ordinary people' too stupid to make their own judgments. They behave like some in the monarchy who spout questionable opinions but never engage in public debate. A similar mindset was evident in those senior EU officials in 2016 who privately told John Longworth, Chairman of the UK Independent Business Network that they were shocked British non-graduates were allowed to vote in the Brexit referendum.
- hirako2000 5y agoPaternalism, that's exactly that we have been suffering since before we were born, and it's increasing. I think the Internet has given ways for individuals to get information so easily that there are now aggressive restrictions put in place. Of course in the form of self gratifications, sense of duties;fb is here to protect us. I find these moves good, they show their cards, more and more people will hopefully start questioning the paternalism and finally questions all these taxes we are forced to pay as well. Our bank accounts or at least transactions that may be frozen any time due to merely suspect acticity. The need for a business specific license for each and everything one can do, even to basically cut bread in half for customers. Border controls not allowing us to import/export a gazillion products for x and y security reasons, and, i will say it, the near obligation to take some vaccine shots to be able to move around the globe.
- ConceptJunkie 5y agoThe people whose attitudes don't align with Facebook will recognize this paternalism for what it is. Those people whose attitude align with Facebook won't. That's been my experience with these kinds of things.
- sofixa 5y ago> A similar mindset was evident in those senior EU officials in 2016 who privately told John Longworth, Chairman of the UK Independent Business Network that they were shocked British non-graduates were allowed to vote in the Brexit referendum. Considering the results ( Brexit), and on what the campaign for that result was run on ( flaming shit and disinformation, like their wonderful slogans), can you blame him? It was an extremely complex topic, dangerously oversimplified by people with very questionable at best credentials and motives ( Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson), who lied and made empty impossible promises ( like a Norway style deal but with full judicial independence). Such a question, with such variable outcomes, should have never been asked to ordinary people. Ffs, many polls and trends showed many people didn't have a clue what it is that the EU does and what it means leaving it, even after the vote.
- paparush 5y agoEnrage and Engage yields too much profit for big social media to do anything real to curtail "harmful extremist content".
- tonfreed 5y agoI've seen Normie conservative and libertarian friends posting screenshots of this. I wouldn't be surprised if the anti establishment left are getting the same thing. Facebook is getting into activism, you should be very worried.
- ConceptJunkie 5y agoFacebook has been into activism for a long time. They are just being slightly more obvious about it now. But, yeah, "worried" is appropriate.
- m-p-3 5y agoMarjorie Taylor Greene got introduced to it, how ironic. https://i.redd.it/b04lfdm9su871.png https://i.redd.it/b04lfdm9su871.png