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I don't understand which of these accusations are actually breaking the law. They all imply that Facebook isn't being a Good Samaritan, but that isn't actually

I don't understand which of these accusations are actually breaking the law. They all imply that Facebook isn't being a Good Samaritan, but that isn't actually illegal.

bcrosby95 5y ago
You could have said the same thing about cigarette companies half a century ago.
- oarabbus_ 5y ago
  And Philip Morris/Altria Group has vastly grown in size since half a century ago. It seems you are proving their point?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kaesar14 5y ago
    Is that true for domestic sales?
  - munk-a 5y ago
    They have - though they've diversified domestically in a significant way and while cigarettes (and vaping!) is still a major societal problem it's not nearly as bad as it was in the 80's and earlier.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    While cigarettes are no longer a threat to societal health. We have monitoring programs in place, insurance costs (smokers pay higher premiums) factored, and ways to prevent our kids from being marketed to. The alternative is we go the banhammer route, and as we learned with prohibition era, that had unintended/undesirable consequences.
    - Alex3917 5y ago
      > The alternative is we go the banhammer route, and as we learned with prohibition era, that had unintended/undesirable consequences. Prohibition never banned a specific delivery mechanism but not the actual drug, so it's never been tried.
      - midasuni 5y ago
        Weed was banned for a significant time
    - oarabbus_ 5y ago
      >While cigarettes are no longer a threat to societal health. Cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable death in the USA (even moreso in countries where smoking is far more accepted widespread) so I don't believe this to be even remotely true.
- dcgudeman 5y ago
  You really think Facebook is the equivalent of Big Tobacco? This moral panic is really reaching a feverish crescendo.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    I think Big Tobacco is still worse but honestly? The extreme radicalism we're seeing in our modern society is pretty terrible - I just don't think it's fair to blame all of that radicalism on Facebook, even if it has played a role in nurturing it.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      It wasn't fair to blame all of cancer on Big Tobacco, either.
    - dntrkv 5y ago
      > The extreme radicalism What do you think FB's role is in that? Do you think the "algorithms" are to blame? Seems to me that unmoderated online discussion will always be toxic. Take a look at the chan forums for an extreme, anonymous version of social media where there are no algorithms to blame. When you bring the general public online and give them a platform to voice their insane ideas they never discussed before, you get the internet in 2021. Combine that with the fact that until recently, people on the opposite sides of the political spectrum rarely interacted. The division was there, but it was masked by the inability to directly attack each other. Now, I can go on Twitter and argue all day with the other side in a thread below a Senator's tweet. Unless you are suggesting Facebook begin heavily moderating what people say, there will be no other outcome until we as a society collectively learn to 1. Have empathy for others when conversing online, 2. Stop participating in discussions that make you feel terrible, and the classic, 3. Don't believe everything you read online.
    - marvin 5y ago
      I'm fairly confident that widespread internet-based multicast communication is almost solely responsible for many of the profoundly weird things that have happened in global politics for the last six years. It's a very powerful new tool for communication that has hit very fast and without enough time for society to adapt to the change. A textbook example of accelerating technological change throwing a monkey wrench into what seemed to be a well-oiled machine. It's fair enough to say that Facebook is only responsible for a significant part of this, as there's also Twitter, YouTube, Instagram (pre-acquisition), Snapchat, TikTok and so on, and there would be others if these did not exist. The root cause is smartphones, the Internet and cheap bandwidth & servers. But in the context of regulation, finding out how to deal with this new weapon of communication, starting with a case study of the biggest seems like an excellent beginning. I honestly think unregulated social media has the potential to do more damage than unregulated tobacco sales, if by regulation we mean "government-enforced rules". But I don't mean to frame it as a context; it seems obvious that both are a good idea.
sv123 5y ago
If everything that Facebook does to maximize profits is legal, but some of it is horrible, then we should write new laws to make the horrible stuff illegal. If Facebook does things that are bad for the world then policymakers should try to make it stop.
- tw600040 5y ago
  By all means. But you can't write laws targeting one company.. For example.- from what is being discussed - "Requiring Facebook to publicly disclose its internal research". -- either make all companies disclose internal research or none of them. You can't just pick and choose.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Why stop at social media? Imagine that 50 years ago, Big Tobacco had to disclose its research. Imagine the same for Big Oil. Wouldn't that have been a good thing? Now, you can go too far. You don't want to make every tech company disclose their research on, say, improved silicon layout algorithms. But if it involves harm to customers or the public, yes, they should have to disclose it.
    - ensignavenger 5y ago
      Do you think if all companies are required to disclose such research, that they are still going to conduct it to begin with? If they don't already know the answer, they will just not ask the questions- just like a trial lawyer.
    - Qi_ 5y ago
      A regulation like that has to be examined for the incentives it creates, not just the goal. If companies are forced to disclose research that involves customer or public harm, they will probably just stop doing the research, or fabricate false results. Thus, information is lost rather than disclosed. No companies want to say “our product is harmful to our customers.”
  - oarabbus_ 5y ago
vijaybritto 5y ago
Yeah that means that the law is inadequate and that a company can get away with killing people
invalidname 5y ago
As a public company they need to disclose information to investors which in some cases they didn't disclose. This is a SEC violation that might be hard to prove since it's hard to say what's OK and isn't. Also Facebook reps lied to congress which is criminal. The studies show they clearly knew a lot more than they were admitting to about the impact they had and lied under oath.
danny_taco 5y ago
The breaking the law bit comes in the form of an accusation to the SEC that Facebook misled investors by not disclosing that they are in fact not doing everything possible to combat the spread of extremism and radicalization through their platform as they claimed - that they decided to ignore this because it would impact their profits. Misleading investors is a crime from what I understand, so if found guilty on that account, they did break the law. Now, if they will be found guilty is another matter. Personally I don't think they will even be prosecuted for it.
- tw600040 5y ago
  One can pick and choose statements like this and put tailored spin on it and make any statement a lie. example, Apple says this is the best iPhone ever. False , I like the one with headphone jack better. Are we going to put all statements by all companies to this level of rigor?
  - munk-a 5y ago
    The statements Facebook is being judged on very well may also be too vague for anyone to find real fault - I can't tell if there's anything there to specifically prove that facebook were directly misleading investors while privately chatting about how awesome it is that radicalism drives engagement - if there's a memo to that effect they could be in real trouble.
  - ARandomerDude 5y ago
    "Best phone" is clearly subjective. "Doing everything we can" is at least somewhat objective. If a contractor says he's painting your house as well as he can, when he's actually on vacation in Hawaii, that statement is clearly false.
    - im3w1l 5y ago
      As long as facebook remains online there is a chance that someone, somewhere could post bad opinions. Doing everything they can would therefore mean shutting facebook down. The literal interpretation is ridiculous and no one could believe it. So we have no choice but to interpret it as "doing everything reasonable that they can". But what is reasonable? That is where subjectivity enters.
alfalfasprout 5y ago
Whether or not anything here is illegal is for the courts to decide. But the hearing is for policymakers. If there's grossly disagreeable and unethical conduct then it's up to policymakers to create new laws or modify existing laws to prevent these things in the future. This is why hearings like this are important.
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
My response is by no means a whole response, but I share my amused surprise given that 'shareholder value' argument gets trotted out the moment company does anything that upsets society a little. This suggests that it is not about the good of the society, but that of a specific power center. Normally, as you said, pursuit of profit is cool in US. Here, FB, if you listen to some of the commentary, is not doing 'enough' to combat 'hate' and 'disinformation'. In short, FB does not do enough about wrongthink to use 1984 terms. Now, there are arguments to use against FB for the impact on society, but the fact that everyone appears to be surprised that company, gasp, chooses profit over society, is beyond hilarious. No fucking shit.
somedude895 5y ago
She's accusing Facebook of withholding information on these issues from shareholders. Now whether the information was relevant or significant enough to announce to shareholders is another question. I guess the media awareness of the whistleblowing did lead to share prices dropping, so kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
- not2b 5y ago
  She's also handed over lots of material to the SEC, which has the responsibility of deciding whether there have been any violations. But that's a separate track from congressional hearings.
not2b 5y ago
Congress is not a court. Congressional hearings aren't about determining whether someone broke the law, but rather about whether laws need to be changed.
tablespoon 5y ago
> I don't understand which of these accusations are actually breaking the law. You misunderstand: this isn't so much about enforcing existing laws, rather it's about advocating for new ones.
LatteLazy 5y ago
They're really not breaking any laws. They might be doing some things which are questionable ethically. But stopping that would require new laws. And that's very hard because you can't really make a case to target FB in particular (and not also a bunch of other harmful media). But other harmful media (eg Fox "news") is protected by the 1st amendment. And likely so is Facebook for that matter. But pointing at unethical behaviour and pretending you're outraged is very in vogue. Doubly so in big tech.
dragontamer 5y ago
Congress is where new laws are enacted. If a law was broken, it's be a judicial branch / trial. The topic of discussion here is what future laws should be.
asabjorn 5y ago
Her testimony seem designed to provide cover for increased viewpoint censorship on the facebook platform. Her explicit examples are "hate speech" by conservative dissenters that cause people to disagree with narratives she agrees with. Facebook has applied some of the most heavy-handed and widespread politically motivated censorship that the west has ever seen. If anything, increasing this censorship is likely to increase cronyism and division more than anything. And their censorship has often not been correct in the past, when being wrong caused real damage. E.g. the now mainstream lab leak hypothesis was censored in a way that may have delayed a more effective response.
- shadilay 5y ago
  It doesn't matter which side the censorship falls on. No one entity should have the power over the speech of millions. Break up facebook.
  - asabjorn 5y ago
    The people involved also cause me pause, and indicate she is not a moderate seeking measured change good for all viewpoints. Her lawyer is Andrew P. Bakaj, an attorney and former intelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. He was the principal attorney representing the whistleblower who filed the initial complaint that led to the launch of multiple investigations by the United States Congress into the Trump–Ukraine scandal, the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, and, ultimately, the first Impeachment of Donald Trump. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_P._Bakaj https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_P._Bakaj
mike00632 5y ago
Facebook knowingly facilitated a genocide of the Rohingya people. That is a lot different from just not "being a good Samaritan".
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Without facebook or free internet platforms in general you might not even know they exist. It is difficult to assess your own knowledge.
  - mike00632 5y ago
    Oh great, so Facebook made that genocide happen but I should thank them because they helped me be informed about it after the fact. What a fantastic Facebook world we live in.
raxxorrax 5y ago
I think the "solution" she proposes is much worse than Facebook showing questionable advertising and general content to be honest. A ministry to institutionalize a line of communication between Washington and socal media? That is much worse.

I don't understand which of these accusations are actually breaking the law. They all imply that Facebook isn't being a Good Samaritan, but that isn't actually illegal.

bcrosby95 5y ago

You could have said the same thing about cigarette companies half a century ago.

oarabbus_ 5y ago
And Philip Morris/Altria Group has vastly grown in size since half a century ago. It seems you are proving their point?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kaesar14 5y ago
  Is that true for domestic sales?
- munk-a 5y ago
  They have - though they've diversified domestically in a significant way and while cigarettes (and vaping!) is still a major societal problem it's not nearly as bad as it was in the 80's and earlier.
- r00fus 5y ago
  While cigarettes are no longer a threat to societal health. We have monitoring programs in place, insurance costs (smokers pay higher premiums) factored, and ways to prevent our kids from being marketed to. The alternative is we go the banhammer route, and as we learned with prohibition era, that had unintended/undesirable consequences.
  - Alex3917 5y ago
    > The alternative is we go the banhammer route, and as we learned with prohibition era, that had unintended/undesirable consequences. Prohibition never banned a specific delivery mechanism but not the actual drug, so it's never been tried.
    - midasuni 5y ago
      Weed was banned for a significant time
  - oarabbus_ 5y ago
    >While cigarettes are no longer a threat to societal health. Cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable death in the USA (even moreso in countries where smoking is far more accepted widespread) so I don't believe this to be even remotely true.
dcgudeman 5y ago
You really think Facebook is the equivalent of Big Tobacco? This moral panic is really reaching a feverish crescendo.
- munk-a 5y ago
  I think Big Tobacco is still worse but honestly? The extreme radicalism we're seeing in our modern society is pretty terrible - I just don't think it's fair to blame all of that radicalism on Facebook, even if it has played a role in nurturing it.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    It wasn't fair to blame all of cancer on Big Tobacco, either.
  - dntrkv 5y ago
    > The extreme radicalism What do you think FB's role is in that? Do you think the "algorithms" are to blame? Seems to me that unmoderated online discussion will always be toxic. Take a look at the chan forums for an extreme, anonymous version of social media where there are no algorithms to blame. When you bring the general public online and give them a platform to voice their insane ideas they never discussed before, you get the internet in 2021. Combine that with the fact that until recently, people on the opposite sides of the political spectrum rarely interacted. The division was there, but it was masked by the inability to directly attack each other. Now, I can go on Twitter and argue all day with the other side in a thread below a Senator's tweet. Unless you are suggesting Facebook begin heavily moderating what people say, there will be no other outcome until we as a society collectively learn to 1. Have empathy for others when conversing online, 2. Stop participating in discussions that make you feel terrible, and the classic, 3. Don't believe everything you read online.
  - marvin 5y ago
    I'm fairly confident that widespread internet-based multicast communication is almost solely responsible for many of the profoundly weird things that have happened in global politics for the last six years. It's a very powerful new tool for communication that has hit very fast and without enough time for society to adapt to the change. A textbook example of accelerating technological change throwing a monkey wrench into what seemed to be a well-oiled machine. It's fair enough to say that Facebook is only responsible for a significant part of this, as there's also Twitter, YouTube, Instagram (pre-acquisition), Snapchat, TikTok and so on, and there would be others if these did not exist. The root cause is smartphones, the Internet and cheap bandwidth & servers. But in the context of regulation, finding out how to deal with this new weapon of communication, starting with a case study of the biggest seems like an excellent beginning. I honestly think unregulated social media has the potential to do more damage than unregulated tobacco sales, if by regulation we mean "government-enforced rules". But I don't mean to frame it as a context; it seems obvious that both are a good idea.

sv123 5y ago

If everything that Facebook does to maximize profits is legal, but some of it is horrible, then we should write new laws to make the horrible stuff illegal. If Facebook does things that are bad for the world then policymakers should try to make it stop.

tw600040 5y ago
By all means. But you can't write laws targeting one company.. For example.- from what is being discussed - "Requiring Facebook to publicly disclose its internal research". -- either make all companies disclose internal research or none of them. You can't just pick and choose.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Why stop at social media? Imagine that 50 years ago, Big Tobacco had to disclose its research. Imagine the same for Big Oil. Wouldn't that have been a good thing? Now, you can go too far. You don't want to make every tech company disclose their research on, say, improved silicon layout algorithms. But if it involves harm to customers or the public, yes, they should have to disclose it.
  - ensignavenger 5y ago
    Do you think if all companies are required to disclose such research, that they are still going to conduct it to begin with? If they don't already know the answer, they will just not ask the questions- just like a trial lawyer.
  - Qi_ 5y ago
    A regulation like that has to be examined for the incentives it creates, not just the goal. If companies are forced to disclose research that involves customer or public harm, they will probably just stop doing the research, or fabricate false results. Thus, information is lost rather than disclosed. No companies want to say “our product is harmful to our customers.”
- oarabbus_ 5y ago

vijaybritto 5y ago

Yeah that means that the law is inadequate and that a company can get away with killing people

invalidname 5y ago

As a public company they need to disclose information to investors which in some cases they didn't disclose. This is a SEC violation that might be hard to prove since it's hard to say what's OK and isn't. Also Facebook reps lied to congress which is criminal. The studies show they clearly knew a lot more than they were admitting to about the impact they had and lied under oath.

danny_taco 5y ago

The breaking the law bit comes in the form of an accusation to the SEC that Facebook misled investors by not disclosing that they are in fact not doing everything possible to combat the spread of extremism and radicalization through their platform as they claimed - that they decided to ignore this because it would impact their profits. Misleading investors is a crime from what I understand, so if found guilty on that account, they did break the law. Now, if they will be found guilty is another matter. Personally I don't think they will even be prosecuted for it.

tw600040 5y ago
One can pick and choose statements like this and put tailored spin on it and make any statement a lie. example, Apple says this is the best iPhone ever. False , I like the one with headphone jack better. Are we going to put all statements by all companies to this level of rigor?
- munk-a 5y ago
  The statements Facebook is being judged on very well may also be too vague for anyone to find real fault - I can't tell if there's anything there to specifically prove that facebook were directly misleading investors while privately chatting about how awesome it is that radicalism drives engagement - if there's a memo to that effect they could be in real trouble.
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
  "Best phone" is clearly subjective. "Doing everything we can" is at least somewhat objective. If a contractor says he's painting your house as well as he can, when he's actually on vacation in Hawaii, that statement is clearly false.
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    As long as facebook remains online there is a chance that someone, somewhere could post bad opinions. Doing everything they can would therefore mean shutting facebook down. The literal interpretation is ridiculous and no one could believe it. So we have no choice but to interpret it as "doing everything reasonable that they can". But what is reasonable? That is where subjectivity enters.

alfalfasprout 5y ago

Whether or not anything here is illegal is for the courts to decide. But the hearing is for policymakers. If there's grossly disagreeable and unethical conduct then it's up to policymakers to create new laws or modify existing laws to prevent these things in the future. This is why hearings like this are important.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

My response is by no means a whole response, but I share my amused surprise given that 'shareholder value' argument gets trotted out the moment company does anything that upsets society a little. This suggests that it is not about the good of the society, but that of a specific power center. Normally, as you said, pursuit of profit is cool in US. Here, FB, if you listen to some of the commentary, is not doing 'enough' to combat 'hate' and 'disinformation'. In short, FB does not do enough about wrongthink to use 1984 terms. Now, there are arguments to use against FB for the impact on society, but the fact that everyone appears to be surprised that company, gasp, chooses profit over society, is beyond hilarious. No fucking shit.

somedude895 5y ago

She's accusing Facebook of withholding information on these issues from shareholders. Now whether the information was relevant or significant enough to announce to shareholders is another question. I guess the media awareness of the whistleblowing did lead to share prices dropping, so kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

not2b 5y ago
She's also handed over lots of material to the SEC, which has the responsibility of deciding whether there have been any violations. But that's a separate track from congressional hearings.

not2b 5y ago

Congress is not a court. Congressional hearings aren't about determining whether someone broke the law, but rather about whether laws need to be changed.

tablespoon 5y ago

> I don't understand which of these accusations are actually breaking the law. You misunderstand: this isn't so much about enforcing existing laws, rather it's about advocating for new ones.

LatteLazy 5y ago

They're really not breaking any laws. They might be doing some things which are questionable ethically. But stopping that would require new laws. And that's very hard because you can't really make a case to target FB in particular (and not also a bunch of other harmful media). But other harmful media (eg Fox "news") is protected by the 1st amendment. And likely so is Facebook for that matter. But pointing at unethical behaviour and pretending you're outraged is very in vogue. Doubly so in big tech.

dragontamer 5y ago

Congress is where new laws are enacted. If a law was broken, it's be a judicial branch / trial. The topic of discussion here is what future laws should be.

asabjorn 5y ago

Her testimony seem designed to provide cover for increased viewpoint censorship on the facebook platform. Her explicit examples are "hate speech" by conservative dissenters that cause people to disagree with narratives she agrees with. Facebook has applied some of the most heavy-handed and widespread politically motivated censorship that the west has ever seen. If anything, increasing this censorship is likely to increase cronyism and division more than anything. And their censorship has often not been correct in the past, when being wrong caused real damage. E.g. the now mainstream lab leak hypothesis was censored in a way that may have delayed a more effective response.

shadilay 5y ago
It doesn't matter which side the censorship falls on. No one entity should have the power over the speech of millions. Break up facebook.
- asabjorn 5y ago
  The people involved also cause me pause, and indicate she is not a moderate seeking measured change good for all viewpoints. Her lawyer is Andrew P. Bakaj, an attorney and former intelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. He was the principal attorney representing the whistleblower who filed the initial complaint that led to the launch of multiple investigations by the United States Congress into the Trump–Ukraine scandal, the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, and, ultimately, the first Impeachment of Donald Trump. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_P._Bakaj https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_P._Bakaj

mike00632 5y ago

Facebook knowingly facilitated a genocide of the Rohingya people. That is a lot different from just not "being a good Samaritan".

raxxorrax 5y ago
Without facebook or free internet platforms in general you might not even know they exist. It is difficult to assess your own knowledge.
- mike00632 5y ago
  Oh great, so Facebook made that genocide happen but I should thank them because they helped me be informed about it after the fact. What a fantastic Facebook world we live in.

raxxorrax 5y ago

I think the "solution" she proposes is much worse than Facebook showing questionable advertising and general content to be honest. A ministry to institutionalize a line of communication between Washington and socal media? That is much worse.