11 ms·

Facebook test asks users if they're worried a friend is 'becoming an extremist'

86 points by WaitWaitWha 5y ago

Black101 5y ago
Did the Government ask them to do that?
- rytcio 5y ago
  https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/03/politics/dhs-partner-private-firms-surveil-suspected-domestic-terrorists/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/03/politics/dhs-partner-private-...
wincy 5y ago
My wife got flagged as an extremist and started getting notices from Facebook yesterday every time she logged in. Which I mean, my wife believes that the government using the threat of violence to collect taxes is immoral, unethical, and that all transactions between all individuals should be voluntary and nonviolent. Which in terms of popular discourse, is very "extreme". She was thinking about running for local public office an a platform of "the government will not take away your propery for failure to pay taxes" which a surprising number of local people on Facebook supported. She's been going to Meetups and having people say "oh yeah I saw your meme, the government sucks, keep it up!" She bugs local politicans on Facebook, their ads keep popping up in her feed, so she'll ask them things like "do you think it's moral to seize someone's property when they can't pay their taxes?" which of course gets bullshit nonanswers from politicians. Nobody wants to say "I think it's moral to seize someone's house because they're behind on taxes". An authoritarian government wouldn't like someone like my wife, and they certainly wouldn't want her getting likes on Facebook. After all, what if she DOES run for office? What if she wins? What if other people like her win?
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > what if she DOES run for office? I'd vote for her.
  - WincysWife 5y ago
    Thank You!
- zucked 5y ago
  Total off-topic: out of curiosity, what levers does she think are moral to pull to encourage folks to pay taxes?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Fee for service like any other consumer transaction.
  - intricatedetail 5y ago
    I'd say why government focuses on the weak when enforcing taxes and doesn't go after the rich and their notoriously tax avoiding multinational organisations?
    - WincysWife 5y ago
      Yes, property and sales taxes are regressive taxes. But all taxes should be voluntary because the government doesn't own you or your property.
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > But all taxes should be voluntary because the government doesn't own you or your property. Yeah, it doesn't own it: the relationship is more fundamental than that. Government (and its primitive antecedents) is the system that enables you to own property in the first place, and taxes (or their equivalents) are the price of admission to that system. I wouldn't mind making taxes voluntary if it also meant surrendering property and other rights (though of course to be just that surrender could only happen after a formal renunciation of the obligation, not just a failure to pay). So you could choose to not pay taxes, but then all your property would become legally abandoned and you'd lose the protection of the law.
  - WincysWife 5y ago
    Same as what happens when you don't pay your utility bills, your services stop.
- carabiner 5y ago
  Is she a garden variety sovereign citizen, or something else?
  - WincysWife 5y ago
    The sovereign citizens trip up because they image there is some legal loophole to allow them to opt-out. There is not. But there should be.
    - vkou 5y ago
      That legal loophole exists. They can leave the country and renounce their citizenship.
      - ceilingcorner 5y ago
        Exit taxes are pretty rough. You also cannot renounce citizenship if your explicit reason is to avoid taxes. Hotel California indeed.
        vkou 5y ago
        If you have no intention of coming back, there is next to no recourse against you.
        ralph84 5y ago
        Good luck getting a bank account anywhere except in the most remote places of the world if you left the US with unpaid taxes. Everywhere else the banks will comply with FATCA and want nothing to do with you [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...
        vkou 5y ago
        Okay, so you're not entitled to skip out on owed obligations, but there will be no future ones.
- karmasimida 5y ago
  Depends on her expression though, it could classified extreme.
- adamredwoods 5y ago
  Interesting take. I do think it's unfair to take away property for unpaid taxes. I think it depends on different states, but there are deferral programs available for people who are struggling.
- FreeSpeech 5y ago
  All fiat money is backed by men with guns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJWi8VUHUzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJWi8VUHUzk The real crime is that the American elite have all too many avenues to offset and postpone their taxes, none of which are available to the masses.
- stemlord 5y ago
  Your wife is awesome
- eitland 5y ago
  I feel you. Me and her obviously disagree, but the villification I feel I know. (Here it is the national broadcaster who has decided my friends are evil and I am dumb.)
- bradlys 5y ago
  What drove her to this worldview? I happen to have a friend who has a husband (well, not legally for soon to be obvious reasons) who has a very similar worldview to this. He doesn't pay taxes. Says he'll pay if he gets pursued by the IRS because it'll be too difficult to fight - but also refuses to participate in fiat currency. (Big on crypto - has the wife do all the fiat handling) Doesn't believe in taxation for the most part. Similar arguments about violence. I didn't really get deep into it - the wife was already pretty out there for a while. (They're both really nice and good people btw - they just have this unusual commitment to their worldview) Interestingly, I think he went even deeper on the views and she decided to reel it back a bit for herself. Suddenly she's not as hyper-capitalist anymore... It's one of those views that makes ya wonder how you get there and how you decide to go that deep. Admittedly, he's fiendishly rich now thanks to crypto so he can live the fantasy a little bit but it is something that I cannot see someone doing if they weren't rich already.
  - WincysWife 5y ago
    I was not rich when I started believing this. My pipeline was Ron Paul then I read everything I could on Mises.org website, a lot of with were the writings of Murray Rothbard. But I listen to a lot of audiobooks from all kinds of authors about philosophy and politics. I do pay taxes, though, out of fear.
    - bradlys 5y ago
      Interesting. I got somewhat into Ron Paul in the lead up to the 2008 election - just ended up not really liking his social views and couldn't reconcile them with my views. I think I ended up liking Gravel more, really. I guess I'm more of a rock in a pond type person. Sometimes I see them and others and think, "coulda been me". Just didn't click on the right links, I guess. :)
jfhdkfhdkj 5y ago
> Facebook asks users to identify extremists Just like East Berlin and North Korea, parents will soon have to be extremely careful what they say in front of their children, because our technolords are making our children into informers.
- gentleman11 5y ago
  …the consequences aren’t very severe yet, but the only inaccuracy is that the surveillance is 1000x deeper and more widespread now due to automation. One leader who decides to turn all this against people and the democracy’s gone, some Caesar like character who could appear in 5 years or 50
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
akomtu 5y ago
That's a "super dislike" button, essentially: if you dislike someone so much you'd want to silence him or her forever, you press "report extremist" and SS takes cares of the problematic citizen. At the end, the only speech that survives is quotes from the party's ideology book (we don't have one yet).
aluminum96 5y ago
In contrast with most of the comments, I strongly support this change. Social media has been a tool for radicalization, and this is a potential solution worth trying. Will simply informing people that they're drifting beyond the Overton window could put a damper on the radicalization? I don't know, but I certainly hope so.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  "Wow, the overarching Orwellian corporation Facebook thinks my views are getting a little too far from what's accepted by the mainstream. Better get myself back in line like a good citizen!" Yeah, I'm thinking it can only produce further radicalization.
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  Your mistake is viewing "radicalization" as being driven purely by changes in communications media, as opposed to underlying socioeconomic and political developments which have been negative for the overwhelming majority of society. This isn't going to be handwaved away with Facebook dialog boxes.
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    The rampant censorship is doing a lot more to radicalize me than any meme I've ever seen shared.
- readflaggedcomm 5y ago
  Explicitly exposing ever-changing conceptions of acceptable ideas by the site seems like a good way to lose dissatisfied users who give up trying to improve discussion. Maybe that achieves the same thing in a simpler way than changing minds. But does shrinking the userbase please advertisers?
AndrewBissell 5y ago
If you click through some of the prompts to "get support," Facebook subjects you to some hilariously bad political theory: Violent groups can be very persuasive. They often use feelings of fear, anger, and disappointment to further their cause and get others to join them. They may use arguments based on these feelings to convince you that violence is the solution, even when facts prove it is not. ... - Extremist groups may say violence is a legitimate and effective way to achieve change, but there is no evidence it works. In fact, violence often makes things a lot worse and doesn't lead to the outcomes the group wants. - Did you know that researchers have shown that peaceful movements are more successful than violent ones at bringing about social change? https://twitter.com/thisisfoster/status/1410646585910902792 https://twitter.com/thisisfoster/status/1410646585910902792
bassman9000 5y ago
XXI century stool pigeons
vkou 5y ago
My friend isn't worried that his mother is 'becoming' an extremist. She has become one. Completely unhinged from reality, refuses to let him into her house because she thinks he got vaccinated against Covid (Which makes him project an aura that is harmful to the female body), is convinced that The Donald won 300 EC votes and will seize power on the 4th of July (Or whatever other nonsense Q tells her), etc, etc. He's, understandably, not very pleased with how Facebook and Twitter enabled and encouraged this form of brainwashing. Unfortunately for him, that ship has long sailed, and now he has to live on it.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  But a fully vaccinated person that won't let any unvaccinated people into their house: totally fine and normal. Shun the non-believers!
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    Is it currently a libertarian position that people should not be allowed to choose who comes into their home? I can see how it would be, actually. But I also feel like it was so recent that it would be the opposite.
- bena 5y ago
  I thought the new date was in August? I'll admit that I don't actually keep track because, you know, it's bullshit that's not going to happen. Is it now July 4th because of the Declaration and Trump will declare us free from Biden being the puppet President of the corporation of the United States or something?
- haswell 5y ago
  I am convinced that answers like this are directly contributing to the problem. The moment someone gets sucked in to what is a torrent of fear and conspiracy, the people around them turn on them, disown them, call them extremists. Let me be clear: the conspiracies they’re getting sucked into are dangerous and often bizarre. But if we jump immediately to extremism as the cause, I think we’re missing the bigger story here. People are scared. They don’t know how to navigate the Internet safely. They don’t know how to filter out bullshit. They start watching carefully crafted videos and well written blog posts that take the truth - twist it hard - and suck them right in to an alternate reality that is easier to understand. They freak out. They think there is an existential threat working against them. They think their friends have been sucked into the “evil” side of the conspiracy. It’s tragic, and I wish it was not like this. But often these people - especially family - need love and support, and a nudge in another direction. Will this work? Maybe not. But immediate labeling and then ostracizing these people entrenches their views, and feeds the “extremism”. And there are real extremists. People who have been looking for an opportunity to act, and the current climate provides it. Let’s not mix Mom’s tendency to believe in conspiracies with real extremism.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rStar 5y ago
that’s the american way. snitch on your friends and neighbors, live in a state of perpetual fear, give up your liberty in exchange for shareholder profits.
pseudo0 5y ago
Not sure how this is going to help anything. It's just going to turn into a sort of super-dislike button for those on the opposite end of the political spectrum. They're going to get flooded with reports on "extremists" who support UBI or post photos of their hunting trips.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  It gives Facebook an excuse to purge people they don't want on their platform. Without complete transparency, they can claim just about anyone was identified as an extremist by the "Facebook community" and automatically removed by an algorithm. Since it's a black box, it won't matter if it is true or not.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    That might not be a good outcome for Facebook, depending on how many people get identified and removed. Worse, it could be self-reinforcing. Let's suppose enough people make a claim that AOC is an extremist, and she gets removed. Then people who agree with her get claimed to be extremists. Unless the algorithm is very careful, it might remove them as extremists because they share ideas with a known extremist. Eventually all the Democrats get removed because they share both ideas and an organization with extremists. And then the neutrals and moderate Republicans get removed, because they share some ideas with known extremists. And Facebook winds up with only 10% of its users surviving the purge. And so they wind up with only 10% of their revenue surviving the purge.
trav4225 5y ago
Wow, I guess I'm an extremist too. I wonder if Facebook knew that when they interviewed me. ;-)
tomohawk 5y ago
it takes one to know one
jdauriemma 5y ago
Facebook is the most sophisticated private surveillance network in the world. The breadth and depth of data they have on billions of individual humans is staggering. So they have the means to moderate their platform and mitigate content/persons they consider to be extremist. Instead of acting upon data they "own" using workers that they pay, they roped everyday people into doing the work for them. The cynic in me is impressed: in one fell swoop they've wrung even more free labor from their users, turned them against each other so they don't unite, and have built something to point at when regulators start asking more pointed questions. It seems as effective as it is depraved.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Zuckerberg used to brag that he could predict ahead of time when two people would start dating based on data he had collected about them. Think that was over a decade ago. Imagine what they're up to now.
MarkLowenstein 5y ago
Picture the scenes from the Man in the High Castle, where rows of listeners are monitoring people's phone conversations to make sure they can identify people who oppose their rule. That is Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and YouTube, right now. Except they can now monitor a lot more than just phone calls. And they have the infinite memory of data storage so they can look you up later instead of wasting live listeners on you now. And they have real-time automated tools to pop up messages in your face to influence you, or let you report other people for wrongthink. Employees of these organizations should be raising Cain about it. If they saw it on TV they'd be aghast. But hmmm, in real life they don't seem to mind.
- rocqua 5y ago
  That is seeing a slippery slope and extrapolating to the bottom. I agree that it is worrying that facebook is trying to determine what is acceptable / true, and what is extremist. People with that kind of position should come by that power through choice of those who consume that truth. That means politicians, editorial boards, opinion makers. Either people who were elected, or people who you can decide to tune out. The social media companies do not have this mandate. So doing this kind of stuff is bad. But. But, on the other hand, extremist violence is actually a widely recognized problem, and these platforms are playing a significant role. It makes sense that we try to hold them accountable. The issue is that is leaves them between a rock and a hard place. It makes sense that they want to be more proactive about this stuff. But either it should not be their job, or there should be a choice in who censors / editorializes your facebook. It should not, by default, be facebook itself. Facebook does not like this though. Facebook does not wanna say "hey all you trump voters, please go somewhere else". It would either break their network effect, or it would force them to go to a federated system. But really, this is the only reasonable solution here. Otherwise facebook is slowly going to alienate and censor Trump voters. Turning more of them into extremist who believe themselves the victim of "the man". And in some sense, they'd be right.
- carabiner 5y ago
  How exactly does FB (or those other sites) have access to my phone calls?
loopz 5y ago
Collecting taxes is an amoral thing to do. Saying that is nothing new. Organizing through internet to abolish Police is. See how this cuts both ways?
grawprog 5y ago
At a Facebook board meeting some time ago: Alright everybody, did you all finish your copies of 1984 like we talked about at the last meeting? OK good, so we'll go around the room here and each of you give me one idea about how we can make facebook more like 1984. OK go Well, in 1984, Big Brother found it effective to have citizens report on eachother's transgressions. It meant effectively, citizens were paranoid of eachother and would control their behaviour for them. Great, I like it. Get the engineers on it pronto. I want it out by the end of the month.
ArcturianDeath 5y ago
Now 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."
ajkdhcb2 5y ago
If it's such a big problem, and everyone knows some of these "extremists", then doesn't that mean it's mainstream enough that they aren't extremists, by definition? Or it is now defined as diverging from the views of the government and big tech?

86 points by WaitWaitWha 5y ago

Black101 5y ago

Did the Government ask them to do that?

rytcio 5y ago
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/03/politics/dhs-partner-private-firms-surveil-suspected-domestic-terrorists/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/03/politics/dhs-partner-private-...

wincy 5y ago

My wife got flagged as an extremist and started getting notices from Facebook yesterday every time she logged in. Which I mean, my wife believes that the government using the threat of violence to collect taxes is immoral, unethical, and that all transactions between all individuals should be voluntary and nonviolent. Which in terms of popular discourse, is very "extreme". She was thinking about running for local public office an a platform of "the government will not take away your propery for failure to pay taxes" which a surprising number of local people on Facebook supported. She's been going to Meetups and having people say "oh yeah I saw your meme, the government sucks, keep it up!" She bugs local politicans on Facebook, their ads keep popping up in her feed, so she'll ask them things like "do you think it's moral to seize someone's property when they can't pay their taxes?" which of course gets bullshit nonanswers from politicians. Nobody wants to say "I think it's moral to seize someone's house because they're behind on taxes". An authoritarian government wouldn't like someone like my wife, and they certainly wouldn't want her getting likes on Facebook. After all, what if she DOES run for office? What if she wins? What if other people like her win?

commandlinefan 5y ago
> what if she DOES run for office? I'd vote for her.
- WincysWife 5y ago
  Thank You!
zucked 5y ago
Total off-topic: out of curiosity, what levers does she think are moral to pull to encourage folks to pay taxes?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Fee for service like any other consumer transaction.
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  I'd say why government focuses on the weak when enforcing taxes and doesn't go after the rich and their notoriously tax avoiding multinational organisations?
  - WincysWife 5y ago
    Yes, property and sales taxes are regressive taxes. But all taxes should be voluntary because the government doesn't own you or your property.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > But all taxes should be voluntary because the government doesn't own you or your property. Yeah, it doesn't own it: the relationship is more fundamental than that. Government (and its primitive antecedents) is the system that enables you to own property in the first place, and taxes (or their equivalents) are the price of admission to that system. I wouldn't mind making taxes voluntary if it also meant surrendering property and other rights (though of course to be just that surrender could only happen after a formal renunciation of the obligation, not just a failure to pay). So you could choose to not pay taxes, but then all your property would become legally abandoned and you'd lose the protection of the law.
- WincysWife 5y ago
  Same as what happens when you don't pay your utility bills, your services stop.
carabiner 5y ago
Is she a garden variety sovereign citizen, or something else?
- WincysWife 5y ago
  The sovereign citizens trip up because they image there is some legal loophole to allow them to opt-out. There is not. But there should be.
  - vkou 5y ago
    That legal loophole exists. They can leave the country and renounce their citizenship.
    - ceilingcorner 5y ago
      Exit taxes are pretty rough. You also cannot renounce citizenship if your explicit reason is to avoid taxes. Hotel California indeed.
      - vkou 5y ago
        If you have no intention of coming back, there is next to no recourse against you.
        ralph84 5y ago
        Good luck getting a bank account anywhere except in the most remote places of the world if you left the US with unpaid taxes. Everywhere else the banks will comply with FATCA and want nothing to do with you [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...
        vkou 5y ago
        Okay, so you're not entitled to skip out on owed obligations, but there will be no future ones.
karmasimida 5y ago
Depends on her expression though, it could classified extreme.
adamredwoods 5y ago
Interesting take. I do think it's unfair to take away property for unpaid taxes. I think it depends on different states, but there are deferral programs available for people who are struggling.
FreeSpeech 5y ago
All fiat money is backed by men with guns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJWi8VUHUzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJWi8VUHUzk The real crime is that the American elite have all too many avenues to offset and postpone their taxes, none of which are available to the masses.
stemlord 5y ago
Your wife is awesome
eitland 5y ago
I feel you. Me and her obviously disagree, but the villification I feel I know. (Here it is the national broadcaster who has decided my friends are evil and I am dumb.)
bradlys 5y ago
What drove her to this worldview? I happen to have a friend who has a husband (well, not legally for soon to be obvious reasons) who has a very similar worldview to this. He doesn't pay taxes. Says he'll pay if he gets pursued by the IRS because it'll be too difficult to fight - but also refuses to participate in fiat currency. (Big on crypto - has the wife do all the fiat handling) Doesn't believe in taxation for the most part. Similar arguments about violence. I didn't really get deep into it - the wife was already pretty out there for a while. (They're both really nice and good people btw - they just have this unusual commitment to their worldview) Interestingly, I think he went even deeper on the views and she decided to reel it back a bit for herself. Suddenly she's not as hyper-capitalist anymore... It's one of those views that makes ya wonder how you get there and how you decide to go that deep. Admittedly, he's fiendishly rich now thanks to crypto so he can live the fantasy a little bit but it is something that I cannot see someone doing if they weren't rich already.
- WincysWife 5y ago
  I was not rich when I started believing this. My pipeline was Ron Paul then I read everything I could on Mises.org website, a lot of with were the writings of Murray Rothbard. But I listen to a lot of audiobooks from all kinds of authors about philosophy and politics. I do pay taxes, though, out of fear.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    Interesting. I got somewhat into Ron Paul in the lead up to the 2008 election - just ended up not really liking his social views and couldn't reconcile them with my views. I think I ended up liking Gravel more, really. I guess I'm more of a rock in a pond type person. Sometimes I see them and others and think, "coulda been me". Just didn't click on the right links, I guess. :)

jfhdkfhdkj 5y ago

> Facebook asks users to identify extremists Just like East Berlin and North Korea, parents will soon have to be extremely careful what they say in front of their children, because our technolords are making our children into informers.

gentleman11 5y ago
…the consequences aren’t very severe yet, but the only inaccuracy is that the surveillance is 1000x deeper and more widespread now due to automation. One leader who decides to turn all this against people and the democracy’s gone, some Caesar like character who could appear in 5 years or 50
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

akomtu 5y ago

That's a "super dislike" button, essentially: if you dislike someone so much you'd want to silence him or her forever, you press "report extremist" and SS takes cares of the problematic citizen. At the end, the only speech that survives is quotes from the party's ideology book (we don't have one yet).

aluminum96 5y ago

In contrast with most of the comments, I strongly support this change. Social media has been a tool for radicalization, and this is a potential solution worth trying. Will simply informing people that they're drifting beyond the Overton window could put a damper on the radicalization? I don't know, but I certainly hope so.

jaywalk 5y ago
"Wow, the overarching Orwellian corporation Facebook thinks my views are getting a little too far from what's accepted by the mainstream. Better get myself back in line like a good citizen!" Yeah, I'm thinking it can only produce further radicalization.
AndrewBissell 5y ago
Your mistake is viewing "radicalization" as being driven purely by changes in communications media, as opposed to underlying socioeconomic and political developments which have been negative for the overwhelming majority of society. This isn't going to be handwaved away with Facebook dialog boxes.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  The rampant censorship is doing a lot more to radicalize me than any meme I've ever seen shared.
readflaggedcomm 5y ago
Explicitly exposing ever-changing conceptions of acceptable ideas by the site seems like a good way to lose dissatisfied users who give up trying to improve discussion. Maybe that achieves the same thing in a simpler way than changing minds. But does shrinking the userbase please advertisers?

AndrewBissell 5y ago

If you click through some of the prompts to "get support," Facebook subjects you to some hilariously bad political theory: Violent groups can be very persuasive. They often use feelings of fear, anger, and disappointment to further their cause and get others to join them. They may use arguments based on these feelings to convince you that violence is the solution, even when facts prove it is not. ... - Extremist groups may say violence is a legitimate and effective way to achieve change, but there is no evidence it works. In fact, violence often makes things a lot worse and doesn't lead to the outcomes the group wants. - Did you know that researchers have shown that peaceful movements are more successful than violent ones at bringing about social change? https://twitter.com/thisisfoster/status/1410646585910902792 https://twitter.com/thisisfoster/status/1410646585910902792

bassman9000 5y ago

XXI century stool pigeons

vkou 5y ago

My friend isn't worried that his mother is 'becoming' an extremist. She has become one. Completely unhinged from reality, refuses to let him into her house because she thinks he got vaccinated against Covid (Which makes him project an aura that is harmful to the female body), is convinced that The Donald won 300 EC votes and will seize power on the 4th of July (Or whatever other nonsense Q tells her), etc, etc. He's, understandably, not very pleased with how Facebook and Twitter enabled and encouraged this form of brainwashing. Unfortunately for him, that ship has long sailed, and now he has to live on it.

jaywalk 5y ago
But a fully vaccinated person that won't let any unvaccinated people into their house: totally fine and normal. Shun the non-believers!
- perl4ever 5y ago
  Is it currently a libertarian position that people should not be allowed to choose who comes into their home? I can see how it would be, actually. But I also feel like it was so recent that it would be the opposite.
bena 5y ago
I thought the new date was in August? I'll admit that I don't actually keep track because, you know, it's bullshit that's not going to happen. Is it now July 4th because of the Declaration and Trump will declare us free from Biden being the puppet President of the corporation of the United States or something?
haswell 5y ago
I am convinced that answers like this are directly contributing to the problem. The moment someone gets sucked in to what is a torrent of fear and conspiracy, the people around them turn on them, disown them, call them extremists. Let me be clear: the conspiracies they’re getting sucked into are dangerous and often bizarre. But if we jump immediately to extremism as the cause, I think we’re missing the bigger story here. People are scared. They don’t know how to navigate the Internet safely. They don’t know how to filter out bullshit. They start watching carefully crafted videos and well written blog posts that take the truth - twist it hard - and suck them right in to an alternate reality that is easier to understand. They freak out. They think there is an existential threat working against them. They think their friends have been sucked into the “evil” side of the conspiracy. It’s tragic, and I wish it was not like this. But often these people - especially family - need love and support, and a nudge in another direction. Will this work? Maybe not. But immediate labeling and then ostracizing these people entrenches their views, and feeds the “extremism”. And there are real extremists. People who have been looking for an opportunity to act, and the current climate provides it. Let’s not mix Mom’s tendency to believe in conspiracies with real extremism.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rStar 5y ago

that’s the american way. snitch on your friends and neighbors, live in a state of perpetual fear, give up your liberty in exchange for shareholder profits.

pseudo0 5y ago

Not sure how this is going to help anything. It's just going to turn into a sort of super-dislike button for those on the opposite end of the political spectrum. They're going to get flooded with reports on "extremists" who support UBI or post photos of their hunting trips.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
It gives Facebook an excuse to purge people they don't want on their platform. Without complete transparency, they can claim just about anyone was identified as an extremist by the "Facebook community" and automatically removed by an algorithm. Since it's a black box, it won't matter if it is true or not.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  That might not be a good outcome for Facebook, depending on how many people get identified and removed. Worse, it could be self-reinforcing. Let's suppose enough people make a claim that AOC is an extremist, and she gets removed. Then people who agree with her get claimed to be extremists. Unless the algorithm is very careful, it might remove them as extremists because they share ideas with a known extremist. Eventually all the Democrats get removed because they share both ideas and an organization with extremists. And then the neutrals and moderate Republicans get removed, because they share some ideas with known extremists. And Facebook winds up with only 10% of its users surviving the purge. And so they wind up with only 10% of their revenue surviving the purge.

trav4225 5y ago

Wow, I guess I'm an extremist too. I wonder if Facebook knew that when they interviewed me. ;-)

tomohawk 5y ago

it takes one to know one

jdauriemma 5y ago

Facebook is the most sophisticated private surveillance network in the world. The breadth and depth of data they have on billions of individual humans is staggering. So they have the means to moderate their platform and mitigate content/persons they consider to be extremist. Instead of acting upon data they "own" using workers that they pay, they roped everyday people into doing the work for them. The cynic in me is impressed: in one fell swoop they've wrung even more free labor from their users, turned them against each other so they don't unite, and have built something to point at when regulators start asking more pointed questions. It seems as effective as it is depraved.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Zuckerberg used to brag that he could predict ahead of time when two people would start dating based on data he had collected about them. Think that was over a decade ago. Imagine what they're up to now.

MarkLowenstein 5y ago

Picture the scenes from the Man in the High Castle, where rows of listeners are monitoring people's phone conversations to make sure they can identify people who oppose their rule. That is Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and YouTube, right now. Except they can now monitor a lot more than just phone calls. And they have the infinite memory of data storage so they can look you up later instead of wasting live listeners on you now. And they have real-time automated tools to pop up messages in your face to influence you, or let you report other people for wrongthink. Employees of these organizations should be raising Cain about it. If they saw it on TV they'd be aghast. But hmmm, in real life they don't seem to mind.

rocqua 5y ago
That is seeing a slippery slope and extrapolating to the bottom. I agree that it is worrying that facebook is trying to determine what is acceptable / true, and what is extremist. People with that kind of position should come by that power through choice of those who consume that truth. That means politicians, editorial boards, opinion makers. Either people who were elected, or people who you can decide to tune out. The social media companies do not have this mandate. So doing this kind of stuff is bad. But. But, on the other hand, extremist violence is actually a widely recognized problem, and these platforms are playing a significant role. It makes sense that we try to hold them accountable. The issue is that is leaves them between a rock and a hard place. It makes sense that they want to be more proactive about this stuff. But either it should not be their job, or there should be a choice in who censors / editorializes your facebook. It should not, by default, be facebook itself. Facebook does not like this though. Facebook does not wanna say "hey all you trump voters, please go somewhere else". It would either break their network effect, or it would force them to go to a federated system. But really, this is the only reasonable solution here. Otherwise facebook is slowly going to alienate and censor Trump voters. Turning more of them into extremist who believe themselves the victim of "the man". And in some sense, they'd be right.
carabiner 5y ago
How exactly does FB (or those other sites) have access to my phone calls?

loopz 5y ago

Collecting taxes is an amoral thing to do. Saying that is nothing new. Organizing through internet to abolish Police is. See how this cuts both ways?

grawprog 5y ago

At a Facebook board meeting some time ago: Alright everybody, did you all finish your copies of 1984 like we talked about at the last meeting? OK good, so we'll go around the room here and each of you give me one idea about how we can make facebook more like 1984. OK go Well, in 1984, Big Brother found it effective to have citizens report on eachother's transgressions. It meant effectively, citizens were paranoid of eachother and would control their behaviour for them. Great, I like it. Get the engineers on it pronto. I want it out by the end of the month.

ArcturianDeath 5y ago

Now 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."

ajkdhcb2 5y ago

If it's such a big problem, and everyone knows some of these "extremists", then doesn't that mean it's mainstream enough that they aren't extremists, by definition? Or it is now defined as diverging from the views of the government and big tech?