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The ex-employee wants Facebook to engage in more censorship, spying and control. That's their definition of helping people and democracy. Like Glenn Greenwald

The ex-employee wants Facebook to engage in more censorship, spying and control. That's their definition of helping people and democracy. Like Glenn Greenwald said: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1434854149087182848 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1434854149087182848 >>The entire "anti-disinformation"/"anti-extremism" industry is a gigantic fraud, funded by the same tiny handful of billionaires, governments and NGOs: a scam to control discourse while feigning neutral, non-ideological goals to battle "disinformation"

gremloni 5y ago
Classifying reigning in massive disinformation campaigns and divisive propaganda as censorship is disingenuous at best.
- angelzen 5y ago
  The idea of viral news, where the masses somehow take the place of editorial control, is bananas. The average Jane simply has no mental energy to do it properly. No amount of algorithms and bureaucracy can paper over this fundamental reality. We need 5000 professional news outlets competing for the public's trust, not Facebook with a bureaucratic brain eating parasite.
  - quotemstr 5y ago
    You don't actually believe in democracy if you think that regular people shouldn't get to talk to each other to make political decisions and that some central committee gets to decide which ideas become popular.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      Regular people should talk to each other. But that is different than clicking 'like' button on a deluge of information nobody has the time to validate for accuracy or relevance. Worse, what actually gets propagated is not decided by regular people, rather by opaque algorithms controlled by a handful of mega-entities, Facebook / Twitter / Youtube; clicking the 'like' button is merely a loose signal. Democracy needs healthy competition in the news space.
      - quotemstr 5y ago
        > But that is different than clicking 'like' button on a deluge of information nobody has the time to validate for accuracy or relevance. This is exhausting. Over and over again in this thread, I see people use dramatic rhetoric to describe in sweeping terms what Facebook should or should not be allowed to do, but there's seldom any discussion of actual concrete and specific rules. You say people shouldn't have like buttons? Well, what about HN? Why should't I be able to upvote a comment? Why shouldn't I be able to like a tweet? Is it okay if I have to type out "I like this" instead of clicking a like button? I get that you're dissatisfied with the current social media environment, but expressions of vague dissatisfaction combined with angry rhetoric don't move us forward. We need to put specific proposals on the table, not just rail against "opaque algorithms" generally. (Also, the algorithms being "opaque" isn't the problem. I'm sure that people would still have a problem with FB feed ranking even if the code were open source.)
        angelzen 5y ago
        > We need 5000 professional news outlets competing for the public's trust. The target has been stated. Are you in or are you happy with the social-media era status quo? If you are in, at least in principle, then constructive comments help. If you are out, and happy with FB+Twt+YtB running the show, perhaps with a politically appointed bureaucratic hypercentralized 'oversight board' on top, then enjoy the brave new world. No amount of specific proposals are going to change your mind.
        quotemstr 5y ago
        Who gets to decide what's a professional news outlet? In our new world, everyone is a news outlet, and that's a good thing. If there's one thing that the last decade should have taught us, it's that a professional information gatekeeping class will withhold and distort information to drive its own agenda. Information access needs to be broadly distributed and permissionless, with no line drawn between a "news outlet" and a regular person. Deep down, what proponents of FB regulation are terrified of the this disintermediated model, and it's repulsive to me to imagine that there's some committee that decides who gets an audience and who doesn't.
  - gremloni 5y ago
    I agree with you. We need gatekeepers, not unsubstantiated nonsense from the lowest common denominator.
    - chroem- 5y ago
      If democracy is a system where the average citizen controls the government through voting, how will we "protect democracy" by intentionally trying to control the opinions and actions of voters, with the implication that their current opinions are wrong? That kind of electorate shaping seems akin to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, where everyone still votes, but it's always influenced to be in favor of the Kim regime.
      - gremloni 5y ago
        It’s a fine balance that doesn’t work well with hyperbolic extremes like you’re painting. We don’t let people buy materials to make bombs but we don’t prevent farmers from buying fertilizer either. The answer is somewhere in between.
        chroem- 5y ago
        Where are the checks and balances to prevent that from happening? The public discourse is the system of checks and balances in a democracy that prevents that kind of authoritarian subversion. If you prevent people from speaking out and shape their opinions, who is able to say something when it goes too far? This is not an effort to aid democracy, it's a direct attack against it.
        lsiebert 5y ago
        Facebook isn't a public discourse, more of an algorithmically curated news feed. How it curates it's news feed is a business practice, and unethical business practices should be curtailed by regulation.
      - _ink_ 5y ago
        We don't use democracy in the correct way. The true form of democracy does not use voting to determine the leaders, but a raffle. The voting was added some time around the french revolution, when people learned that having power is great and they wanted to increase their probability to not lose it.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  >>Classifying reigning in massive disinformation campaigns and divisive propaganda as censorship is disingenuous at best. This is the kind censorship I've personally been subjected to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28411734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28411734 Meanwhile on Twitter, the "fact-checkers" are now taking it upon themselves to try to discredit tweets that make the leading personalities of the political left look bad: https://i.ibb.co/N7XYpkH/Screenshot-20211005-081040-Facebook.jpg https://i.ibb.co/N7XYpkH/Screenshot-20211005-081040-Facebook... Like Greenwald said, it's a giant scam, with the "fact-checkers" amongst the most egregious purveyors of disinformation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
worrycue 5y ago
Frankly, Facebook doesn’t need to censor. They just need to rein in their algorithm that promote posts to people’s feeds. Watching the shorten 60 minute’s interview, I get the sense that’s the main problem. The algorithm promote stuff that maximizes “engagement” but the unfortunate side effect is that it sow division, reduces social trust, and creates civil unrest - among other side effects. Facebook’s own internal research has pointed out the effects of what they are doing. There aren’t laws against what they are doing but they should probably do a course correction - and laws can be created real quick.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  You ever wondered why this specific whistleblower is testifying in front of Congress, while James Damore is unable to openly say where he works and Assange is still in jail despite the fact that the original witness againt him recanted and admitted to false statements, a crime in itself? Not to mention Snowden. Strange.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    This "whistleblower" is now being represented by the extremely partisan PR firm, Bryson Gillette, that current White House press secretary Jen Psaki used to work for: https://www.brysongillette.com/leadership/ https://www.brysongillette.com/leadership/
paul7986 5y ago
It's ridiculous to think a platform that most of humanity uses can be controlled to the liking of the left, the right, the upside down and etc ... cause all those groups make up humanity and we all do not nor will ever think exactly the same and we all have different motives and biases. Facebook is doing the thing that makes the most sense ... letting humanity be itself and profiting from it! Also, disinformation / misinformation has been around since the dawn of time .. have you ever played the telephone game when in school... you tell one person your story .. they tell another and another tells another and etc. Sooner or later that story becomes closer to fiction then fact... throw in people's own personal motives and biases and it becomes just about fiction!
- lsiebert 5y ago
  If facebook merely showed the most recent posts in a timeline instead of letting an algorithm pick them, that might be a better argument.
  - paul7986 5y ago
    I guess but what I see on Facebook is all humanity within my circle doing what humanity does ..sharing their lives, varying opinions and etc
- HeyZuess 5y ago
  > Facebook is doing the thing that makes the most sense ... letting humanity be itself and profiting from it! It's my understanding that is not what is happening in regards to "humanity be itself" rather the narrative is controlled by Facebook themselves and that narrative is based on more profit engineering and social engineering rather that going with the natural flow. That seems to be the problem.
  - paul7986 5y ago
    Not what I'm seeing on Facebook myself.. I'm seeing all types of humanity's viewpoints. Whistleblower is on a crusade for fame, notoriety and champion for her opinions & biases which we all have. I'm glad Facebook is ignoring her.
CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
In the hearing she recommended against censorship (content moderation really), on the basis that it’s futile and ineffective (she claimed algorithms can only flag 10% av what they look for). Instead she recommends softer actions, such as requiring users to actually click a link before sharing, which apparently has shown to an be effective dampener on the spread of disinformation.

gremloni 5y ago

Classifying reigning in massive disinformation campaigns and divisive propaganda as censorship is disingenuous at best.

angelzen 5y ago
The idea of viral news, where the masses somehow take the place of editorial control, is bananas. The average Jane simply has no mental energy to do it properly. No amount of algorithms and bureaucracy can paper over this fundamental reality. We need 5000 professional news outlets competing for the public's trust, not Facebook with a bureaucratic brain eating parasite.
- quotemstr 5y ago
  You don't actually believe in democracy if you think that regular people shouldn't get to talk to each other to make political decisions and that some central committee gets to decide which ideas become popular.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    Regular people should talk to each other. But that is different than clicking 'like' button on a deluge of information nobody has the time to validate for accuracy or relevance. Worse, what actually gets propagated is not decided by regular people, rather by opaque algorithms controlled by a handful of mega-entities, Facebook / Twitter / Youtube; clicking the 'like' button is merely a loose signal. Democracy needs healthy competition in the news space.
    - quotemstr 5y ago
      > But that is different than clicking 'like' button on a deluge of information nobody has the time to validate for accuracy or relevance. This is exhausting. Over and over again in this thread, I see people use dramatic rhetoric to describe in sweeping terms what Facebook should or should not be allowed to do, but there's seldom any discussion of actual concrete and specific rules. You say people shouldn't have like buttons? Well, what about HN? Why should't I be able to upvote a comment? Why shouldn't I be able to like a tweet? Is it okay if I have to type out "I like this" instead of clicking a like button? I get that you're dissatisfied with the current social media environment, but expressions of vague dissatisfaction combined with angry rhetoric don't move us forward. We need to put specific proposals on the table, not just rail against "opaque algorithms" generally. (Also, the algorithms being "opaque" isn't the problem. I'm sure that people would still have a problem with FB feed ranking even if the code were open source.)
      - angelzen 5y ago
        > We need 5000 professional news outlets competing for the public's trust. The target has been stated. Are you in or are you happy with the social-media era status quo? If you are in, at least in principle, then constructive comments help. If you are out, and happy with FB+Twt+YtB running the show, perhaps with a politically appointed bureaucratic hypercentralized 'oversight board' on top, then enjoy the brave new world. No amount of specific proposals are going to change your mind.
        quotemstr 5y ago
        Who gets to decide what's a professional news outlet? In our new world, everyone is a news outlet, and that's a good thing. If there's one thing that the last decade should have taught us, it's that a professional information gatekeeping class will withhold and distort information to drive its own agenda. Information access needs to be broadly distributed and permissionless, with no line drawn between a "news outlet" and a regular person. Deep down, what proponents of FB regulation are terrified of the this disintermediated model, and it's repulsive to me to imagine that there's some committee that decides who gets an audience and who doesn't.
- gremloni 5y ago
  I agree with you. We need gatekeepers, not unsubstantiated nonsense from the lowest common denominator.
  - chroem- 5y ago
    If democracy is a system where the average citizen controls the government through voting, how will we "protect democracy" by intentionally trying to control the opinions and actions of voters, with the implication that their current opinions are wrong? That kind of electorate shaping seems akin to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, where everyone still votes, but it's always influenced to be in favor of the Kim regime.
    - gremloni 5y ago
      It’s a fine balance that doesn’t work well with hyperbolic extremes like you’re painting. We don’t let people buy materials to make bombs but we don’t prevent farmers from buying fertilizer either. The answer is somewhere in between.
      - chroem- 5y ago
        Where are the checks and balances to prevent that from happening? The public discourse is the system of checks and balances in a democracy that prevents that kind of authoritarian subversion. If you prevent people from speaking out and shape their opinions, who is able to say something when it goes too far? This is not an effort to aid democracy, it's a direct attack against it.
        lsiebert 5y ago
        Facebook isn't a public discourse, more of an algorithmically curated news feed. How it curates it's news feed is a business practice, and unethical business practices should be curtailed by regulation.
    - _ink_ 5y ago
      We don't use democracy in the correct way. The true form of democracy does not use voting to determine the leaders, but a raffle. The voting was added some time around the french revolution, when people learned that having power is great and they wanted to increase their probability to not lose it.
CryptoPunk 5y ago
>>Classifying reigning in massive disinformation campaigns and divisive propaganda as censorship is disingenuous at best. This is the kind censorship I've personally been subjected to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28411734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28411734 Meanwhile on Twitter, the "fact-checkers" are now taking it upon themselves to try to discredit tweets that make the leading personalities of the political left look bad: https://i.ibb.co/N7XYpkH/Screenshot-20211005-081040-Facebook.jpg https://i.ibb.co/N7XYpkH/Screenshot-20211005-081040-Facebook... Like Greenwald said, it's a giant scam, with the "fact-checkers" amongst the most egregious purveyors of disinformation.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

worrycue 5y ago

Frankly, Facebook doesn’t need to censor. They just need to rein in their algorithm that promote posts to people’s feeds. Watching the shorten 60 minute’s interview, I get the sense that’s the main problem. The algorithm promote stuff that maximizes “engagement” but the unfortunate side effect is that it sow division, reduces social trust, and creates civil unrest - among other side effects. Facebook’s own internal research has pointed out the effects of what they are doing. There aren’t laws against what they are doing but they should probably do a course correction - and laws can be created real quick.

inter_netuser 5y ago
You ever wondered why this specific whistleblower is testifying in front of Congress, while James Damore is unable to openly say where he works and Assange is still in jail despite the fact that the original witness againt him recanted and admitted to false statements, a crime in itself? Not to mention Snowden. Strange.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  This "whistleblower" is now being represented by the extremely partisan PR firm, Bryson Gillette, that current White House press secretary Jen Psaki used to work for: https://www.brysongillette.com/leadership/ https://www.brysongillette.com/leadership/

paul7986 5y ago

It's ridiculous to think a platform that most of humanity uses can be controlled to the liking of the left, the right, the upside down and etc ... cause all those groups make up humanity and we all do not nor will ever think exactly the same and we all have different motives and biases. Facebook is doing the thing that makes the most sense ... letting humanity be itself and profiting from it! Also, disinformation / misinformation has been around since the dawn of time .. have you ever played the telephone game when in school... you tell one person your story .. they tell another and another tells another and etc. Sooner or later that story becomes closer to fiction then fact... throw in people's own personal motives and biases and it becomes just about fiction!

lsiebert 5y ago
If facebook merely showed the most recent posts in a timeline instead of letting an algorithm pick them, that might be a better argument.
- paul7986 5y ago
  I guess but what I see on Facebook is all humanity within my circle doing what humanity does ..sharing their lives, varying opinions and etc
HeyZuess 5y ago
> Facebook is doing the thing that makes the most sense ... letting humanity be itself and profiting from it! It's my understanding that is not what is happening in regards to "humanity be itself" rather the narrative is controlled by Facebook themselves and that narrative is based on more profit engineering and social engineering rather that going with the natural flow. That seems to be the problem.
- paul7986 5y ago
  Not what I'm seeing on Facebook myself.. I'm seeing all types of humanity's viewpoints. Whistleblower is on a crusade for fame, notoriety and champion for her opinions & biases which we all have. I'm glad Facebook is ignoring her.

CuriousSkeptic 5y ago

In the hearing she recommended against censorship (content moderation really), on the basis that it’s futile and ineffective (she claimed algorithms can only flag 10% av what they look for). Instead she recommends softer actions, such as requiring users to actually click a link before sharing, which apparently has shown to an be effective dampener on the spread of disinformation.