6 ms·

All of that recent fight against FB is driven by them “not censoring enough” and it’s a call for decreasing privacy and increasing censorship. Facebook polariz

• barbazoo 5y ago
  > Facebook polarizes people? Sure thing. But which media doesn’t? Aren’t CNN, FoxNews etc. doing the same? Society could use some whistleblowers from those companies as well ;) No need, everything CNN puts out is the same for everyone and can be viewed by anyone.
• jquery 5y ago
  > All of that recent fight against FB is driven by them “not censoring enough” This is a gross distortion of the problem. Facebook has been caught actively promoting conspiracy theories and societal discord because it increases engagement (in my case it drove me from the site but the plural of anecdote is not data). Most recently it was reported that “angry” reactions were weighted five times more than “likes”. This is not just backseat driving concerns, Facebook’s also is a major driver of our culture and societal values whether we like it or not. Nor is it Monday-morning quarterbacking, these concerns were raised by Facebook’s own employees. To let them abuse our social harmony for ad revenue is short sighted.
  • ksdale 5y ago
    I don't think the parent would disagree with you, they were saying that basically all of the big media companies sow discord to get higher engagement, and that any solution that only deals with FB and not all media is likely to not be in the interest of everyone.
    • colinmhayes 5y ago
      Except posts that are easily proven to be false flourish on Facebook because they're not accountable for what is posted. Traditional news gets sued when they post false information. Fox news had to publicly apologize for all the voter fraud stuff they talked about while anonymous accounts continued furthering the laugable theory on Facebook.
      • jiscariot 5y ago
        NYT helped lead the country in to war with Iraq. They were never sued, but did issue a "my bad" apology.
        • colinmhayes 5y ago
          Quoting the president who lied isn't the same as lying.
          • ksdale 5y ago
            I think it's a stretch to call what the NYT did in the run up to the Iraq war merely "quoting the president."
  • benf76 5y ago
    The corporate media pushed the Russiagate conspiracy theory for 4 years, how is that different?
    • coffeefirst 5y ago
      People keep saying this as if there wasn't a Mueller Report. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
  • nme01 5y ago
    I don’t say they’re not spicing conversations by promoting provoking content. What I rather say is that all media companies do it and they don’t get a similar PR which they well deserve. As an exercise one can watch today’s news and count how many news made them angry vs. how many were neutral/positive.
    • jquery 5y ago
      It is to Facebook’s great delight that you are repeating its own talking points. > they don’t get a similar PR which they well deserve. Not sure where this came from. We just had a leader spend four years calling them fake news. Why don’t you name an organization instead of just referring to “the media” (which includes everything from Infowars to The Intercept).
      • SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
        For a concrete example, I just checked CNN's website, and the top article is about a pretrial ruling by the judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse case that the prosecutors should avoid using the word "victim". I don't see any plausible argument that this is the most important news story in the country this morning - if you had only 5 minutes to read the news, you'd be much better served by their articles about Facebook's ranking system or progress on Covid vaccine approval for kids. But it very well might be the most provocative!
        • b3morales 5y ago
          Checking now (about half an hour later), I see a half-dozen stories about the "Rust" movie shooting (a video statement by a sheriff as the top headline), with Rittenhouse just below that. Do you have a reason to believe these are being ranked by some kind of editorial interest and not simply by new-ness?
          • SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
            Like the Facebook timeline (and I don't think that's a coincidence!), newness is a big factor but not the only factor. They publish their "top stories" section as an RSS feed (http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss), and you can see it's both not strictly chronological and clearly has editorial topic selection, as opposed to their "most recent" feed (http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_latest.rss http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_latest.rss) which seems to be a true chronological order of everything they publish.
  • judge2020 5y ago
    At least regarding the actual whistleblower in question, it very much is about not censoring things when shared outside of posts on facebook.com, ie. Facebook wants to enable E2EE on Instagram and Facebook Messenger, which would allow them to say "well we don't know what they're sending now" in regards to misinformation, so it is a fight against secure communications on that regard[0]. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28999844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28999844
  • copenja 5y ago
    FYI, what was reported was that Facebook was previously weighting all emoji reactions at 5 times the like button, but not specifically the angry reaction. By the end of last year, they changed it so the angry reaction specifically gets a zero bonus, but love/sad still get boosted. Apparently this did not affect engagement. I got this all from the Washington Post article on the subject.
    • kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
      It’s funny that FB’s scoring algorithm probably got less design effort and less ‘play testing’ than the average LoL update.
  • ai_ja_nai 5y ago
    Did anybody actually read those researches?
• nonameiguess 5y ago
  Where is there a need for whistleblowers in cable news? Everyone is well aware that the 24 hour cable news cycle was a terrible development for journalistic integrity and that these stations exist to drive ratings by polarizing viewers and getting them addicted to outrage. No one really likes it, but what is a legal solution? Freedom of the press is pretty well enshrined in US constitutional law, so it's not like you can sanction or ban or censor them. It's a very different story for Facebook. Since their content is user-submitted and they aren't the government, they're actually able to legally censor content if they want to. Additionally, their users are largely not the press and not even Americans, so they don't have the same constitutional rights anyway. So there may or may not be some sort of moral equivalence here, but there are very obvious reasons they don't get the same treatment legally and from Congress. Finally, Facebook lied in Congressional hearings. As far as I know, neither Fox nor CNN has done that. This is the Al Capone tax evasion they always get people on. It's why Michael Flynn went to prison and why Bill Clinton got impeached. You can get away with all manner of outrageous and immoral but not necessarily illegal behavior if you just tell the truth about it under oath.
  • furgooswft13 5y ago
    > Additionally, their users are largely not the press and not even Americans, so they don't have the same constitutional rights anyway. The press has no special rights or privileges, as much as they'd like the plebs to think otherwise. > but there are very obvious reasons they don't get the same treatment legally and from Congress. Extremely obvious indeed. Why would the Democrats attack their own propaganda arm? > Finally, Facebook lied in Congressional hearings. As far as I know, neither Fox nor CNN has done that. Instead they just give permanent talking head platforms to the people who did lie during congressional hearings (Brennan, Fauci etc.)
  • yodsanklai 5y ago
    > Facebook lied in Congressional hearings who exactly lied? and why aren't they charged if it's the case?
    • nonameiguess 5y ago
• toss1 5y ago
  It is not about "censoring enough/not enough". It is about making FB responsible for the consequences of the content they promote. FB has long ago gone far past the point of being any kind of neutral carrier, yet they cling to the carrier exemption like stink on a dead rat. FB actively curates every shred of content by their criteria, and promotes or silences it accordingly; this is done on a scale orders of magnitude larger than any news organization. The fact that FB's editorial criteria is entirely focused on their perceived path to profits, and not on any kind of moral compass or value to the society from which they extract value is also relevant. FB's business model is to poison the common well for their own profit, and they literally DGAF if people get killed along they way, as they already have in Myanmar and other countries due to fanned hatred and ethnic cleansing, or in the US and EU from fomenting anti-vax conspiracy dezinformatsiya mania. It is long past time to hold FB accountable for the consequences of their editorial decisions, just as any other publisher is responsible for their content. Just because the editing/curating is done algorithmically is no reason to evade responsibility.
  • shuntress 5y ago
    >making FB responsible for the consequences of the content they promote This is the key point to recognize. It's not about making Facebook responsible for everything anyone posts to Facebook.
    • toss1 5y ago
      If 1) just one person posts it, and 2) it is displayed in a literal reverse-chronological timeline, and 3) displayed only to the people who directly follow them, then yes. But, as soon as FB starts analyzing it, curating it, and using their humans or algorithms to promote, amplify, or extend the spread of it, FB becomes responsible. That item has been selected, curated, approved, and amplified by FB, by their criteria, whoever first posted it (whether the post was from a truly organic FB member, a RUS dezinformatsiya shop, a FB employee, or some other source is irrelevant at that point). This is no less responsibility than a news editor choosing which of their reporters' stories, or newswire stories to publish on the front vs 17th page, or run at the head of the national news, or just send to the local stations to run as they please. The editors didn't write the content, but they DID curate, select, and selectively amplify (or de-amplify) it. FB has the freedom to curate and amplify what they choose for their own purposes. It is long past time for FB to live up to, and be held to, the responsibilities of their editorial actions (regardless of the level of automation - it's FB's algos, not the users'). [edit: formatting list]
• dragontamer 5y ago
  If CNN or FoxNews says something blatantly slanderous / libelous, you can sue them and probably win. If someone on Facebook says something blatantly slanderous / libelous, you can't sue anybody. Ditto with Youtube, etc. etc. So if you're going to say disinformation, its best to do it on Facebook. EDIT: Downvotes? I'm sure everyone has heard the story of "Liars on Facebook / Amazon reviews / Yelp are killing my business". You literally can't win vs the liars on these platforms. FoxNews / CNN are legally not allowed to make libelous / slanderous claims. But go to Facebook / Amazon Reviews / Yelp (etc. etc.), and suddenly you see slander / libel / lies all over the place. Because our laws are ineffective at policing that behavior on the internet.
  • idoh 5y ago
    You sue the person who made the post.
    • dragontamer 5y ago
      And if that person is a negative-review farm out in (insert 3rd world country here) who was paid $10 to write 100 fake negative reviews, how does that help? What, are you gonna ask the authorities to extradite him into the US to show up in his appropriate court date? Everyone knows that you pay offshore troll farms for your negative reviews / disinformation these days. EDIT: Heck, there's a huge market for fake offshore accounts. You can buy fake offshore accounts and do the negative trolling yourself these days. (3rd world citizen "farmed" thousands of accounts on Facebook, to bypass the moderators. 3rd world person sells those accounts to someone nasty, and then the nasty person uses the account to troll / harass / misinform) Its a well known fact that moderators mostly look at new accounts. 3rd world citizen actively using an account and look vaguely "humanish" for 30 days is enough to bypass the bulk of Facebook moderation. You ain't winning this battle. Not with the current set of laws, not with the current set of techniques being used. You have a better chance of suing Fox News / CNN. Seriously.
      • coding123 5y ago
        Well it's simpler than that. Even if it was a known and specific American that can be sued, there are literally 10000s of them. A Judge may look poorly on a lawsuit where 1 of them was chosen - he'll say, why are you not going after the other 9999? The legal case there is this person is obviously unfairly chosen, and is likely just rebroadcasting a popular sentiment. It would also go nowhere if it had to get to casting a jury.
• gorwell 5y ago
  Right. What the ruling class wants is `free speech` being restored to what it was before the days of the Internet. When you could say anything you liked but it never got amplified because the bourgeoisie controlled whose speech got to reach the masses. They had a monopoly over the flow of information. Now we have the facebook `whistleblower` in Britain this week with her scripted performance calling for more state control over online speech. The ruling class want the power of free speech contained and the dominance of the traditional bourgeois fully restored. The book `Revolt of the Public` goes into this in detail and it explains much of the upheaval we're seeing. I highly recommend it.
• pjc50 5y ago
  > Aren’t CNN, FoxNews etc. doing the same? Society could use some whistleblowers from those companies as well ;) Alex Jones whistleblower: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/magazine/alex-jones-infowars.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/magazine/alex-jones-infow... The worst of it is that there's a toxic cycle between the social media companies and the old media companies, especially talk radio. The old media companies produce outrage articles which circulate on social media to stir the culture war, producing fodder for more outrage articles. There's no solution to the hate speech and incitement to violence problem that doesn't involve banning some conservative pundits, so this goes round and round. (Have a look at which traditional media sources have been cited in mass shooter manifestoes, for example)