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Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

348 points by koolba 4y ago

aaaddaaaaa1112 4y ago
I wonder how often they block stories that aren't fabricated... Joe started asking the question but then moved on to something else and Zuck never answered. There's clearly more censorship then I thought.
- UberFly 4y ago
  I'd also be interested in the stories that Facebook did end up letting through that same week. It would probably not support Zucks explanation.
  - aaaddaaaaa1112 4y ago
    Also, Zuck said that a significant portion of them were deranked... it could be 99% of them for all I know.
- psyc 4y ago
  One answer is: more frequently each year.
mikece 4y ago
That was quite the revelation... though if I was in Zuck's shoes I would be throwing the FBI under the bus too as it deflects the Section 230 arguments.
- jeromegv 4y ago
  From the article: Zuckerberg told Rogan: "The background here is that the FBI came to us - some folks on our team - and was like 'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that'." He said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Biden story in particular - only that Facebook thought it "fit that pattern".
  - Consultant32452 4y ago
    - emmo 4y ago
      Time wrote an article openly gloating about it: https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/ https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
      - bengold14 4y ago
        Like.. did you read the article? Gloating about how all of America's labor and corporate leaders came together to save democracy? Such a conspiracy that citizens from opposing camps were so concerned about Trumps unfounded election lies that they opposed them uniformly.
        Consultant32452 4y ago
        tynpeddler 4y ago
        According to the article, the desired outcome of the election was a free and fair election. Not a particularly terrifying conspiracy.
        motoboi 4y ago
        > A large group of the country's richest and most powerful people colluded to change voting rules all across the country for the purpose of achieving a specific desired outcome in an election. I thought you were talking about gerrymandering.
        Consultant32452 4y ago
        Like redrawing electoral districts, no one changes election laws because they are a good person. Everyone who redraws electoral districts and changes election laws claims it's because they are a good person.
LinuxBender 4y ago
Here [1] is part of that related discussion on youtube. They start talking about the laptop around 5 mins into the video. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ [video]
gsatic 4y ago
Gives an interview to Rogan of all ppl randomly :)) Man this time line is hilarious.
- 93po 4y ago
  yes, very random, how quirky of mark holds spork
ohiovr 4y ago
Look up Mussolini's definition of a certain political culture.
tomohawk 4y ago
This is the same guy who bought off public election officials with $600M.
mc32 4y ago
Not censorship to suppress falsehoods (or actual national secrets) but to suppress a true story. How are actions like this not a violation of the first amendment to the US constitution? The Federal Government suppressing speech. Where is the Justice Department's investigation? It seems like egregious overstepping. Remember when Qwest refused the FBI requests to phone data and we all hailed them for sticking to principles when ATT and the rest just said "yessirs!"
- defterGoose 4y ago
  Feels a lot like an adult version of the old "stop hitting yourself" trope.
- timbo1642 4y ago
- magpi3 4y ago
  Well it sounds like Facebook chose to self-censor after talking with the FBI. But they still had the legal right to not do so. It is a stickier than that though - I imagine Facebook fears regulation, not criminal prosecution. And if so, perhaps that fear led to the act of self-censorship. Can the government unconstitutionally suppress free speech via the threat of regulation? I personally don't think so.
  - daenz 4y ago
    >Well it sounds like Facebook chose to self-censor after talking with the FBI. But they still had the legal right to not do so. The optics around this interaction are extremely unethical. Whether or not there was any actual legal pressure is only half of the issue. The other half is the appearance of unethical behavior.
  - refurb 4y ago
    This is the issue. Companies like Facebook fear regulation the most. Their goal is to just stay under the radar of the government and keep making money. Not surprised in the least that they’d “follow the FBI’s suggestion” in order to buy some good Will on other fronts.
cf141q5325 4y ago
Its based on a comment he made on his appearance on the Joe Rogan experience(JRE #1863) a few days ago. Only extracts are on youtube as he moved to spotify. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://open.spotify.com/episode/51gxrAActH18RGhKNza598 https://open.spotify.com/episode/51gxrAActH18RGhKNza598 Also, i have to say its quite amazing to see Mark Zuckerberg on the JRE. Wouldnt have thought that would ever happen.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  He sat in rural American homes for chicken dinner...he'll do just about anything to humanize himself.
  - cf141q5325 4y ago
    I meant it from the other side. How many platforms, let alone people, get 3 hour long interviews with Mark Zuckerbg? And do them the way Joe Rogan does? edit: Then again, he was on with Lex Fridman a few months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zOHSysMmH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zOHSysMmH0
    - KerrAvon 4y ago
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      - deleted 4y ago
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      - baskethead 4y ago
        [flagged]
      - d3fun 4y ago
        [dead]
    - j-bos 4y ago
      He was also on the Tim Ferriss podcast recently: https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/ https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/
spangry 4y ago
This is the great fear of many come to pass - censorship by algorithm. Facebook didn't outright ban sharing of the Hunter Biden laptop stories like Twitter did, they instead tweaked their algorithm to prevent the story from spreading. We found out about it this time because Zuckerberg owned up to it, but what about next time? For all we know, Facebook, Google and Twitter are doing this right now on a range of other subjects. It's scary to think that just 2 to 3 corporations have the power to construct a false reality around us, in a way that's virtually impossible for us to detect.
- seydor 4y ago
  not really censorship, just a regression to the old norms. mainstream media are biased to the politics of their owners. Same with facebook, it s a mainstream medium now Zuck claims that he was duped , but lets take everything with a grain of salt
  - colordrops 4y ago
    The old norms were censorship too.
    - papito 4y ago
      Oh please. It's called "content curation". You want zero of that? There is always 8chan. If you enjoy seeing things that make you want to pour Clorox into your eyes.
      - colordrops 4y ago
        The television stations and newspapers back in the day absolutely maintained the Overton window and constructed narratives that supported the the ruling class. To call this "content curation" is ignorant at best.
        arinlen 4y ago
        > The television stations and newspapers back in the day absolutely maintained the Overton window and constructed narratives that supported the the ruling class. To call this "content curation" is ignorant at best. It's also ignorant at best to pass off "maintaining the Overton window" as being censorship. Whether you like it or not, there's a finite amount of airtime and an infinite amount of content that can be presented. Picking what goes in is not the same as picking what stays out. See as an example what's aired by some peculiar media companies.
tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago
There's no right answer to: - what you should censor - whether you should censor when running a social media (more like an ad-platform but irrelevant to the point I'm making) service to this scale serving people from every demographic. Anything you do is wrong. If you don't censor, there's misinformation on a platform you control and you will be responsible for further conspiracies and actions/campaigns stemming from it in the worst case scenario. The cost outweighs the benefit. On the other hand, if you do censor, you piss people off anyway.
- absrd 4y ago
  It's a responsibility that no one wants
  - ohiovr 4y ago
    This. Forums live and die on moderation. I've seen a forum self destruct and it isn't pretty. We can't allow black boxes to tell us what is false when you can look out your window to know the thing is lying. And if something gets that big and ugly without enough human moderation or self censorship it will collapse into a firey whirlwind.
- 10000truths 4y ago
  My opinion is that a “social media platform” should stop trying to serve people from every demographic. I believe that: * Facebook was much better when it was an exclusive community of college students * Reddit was much better when it was a small, self-manageable community of nerds * Hacker News is much better than either of those two because it’s still a small community with a specific scope and good moderation
  - tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago
    I wasn't old enough for a small Reddit/college exclusive Facebook so I don't feel too strongly about it. However, I do agree that we don't have a true social platform (not a corp with other objectives). We can bemoan this all we want but if they weren't doing it, someone else would've been. Alternatives can be created over and over but as long as those are consumption-driven corporations, they will try extract every single second of our attention possible. That IS their business after-all.
darth_avocado 4y ago
That’s a very bad take. What he said was: 1. FBI said there may be Russian propaganda coming, be on the lookout 2. They decided to allow posting of Hunter Biden story, but reduce the distribution while independent fact checkers confirm it 3. Then eventually allow the story to be distributed Calling it “censorship at behest of FBI” is very disingenuous and misrepresents the story. I think what they did was very reasonable as a platform.
- ohiovr 4y ago
  I would not have voted in the election if I knew about the laptop. True story about something that is true.
  - baskethead 4y ago
    The laptop was all over the news at the time. But the news said it was Russian misinformation.
    - ohiovr 4y ago
      My skepticism of the media didn't quite reach the level it should have at the time.
      - desindol 4y ago
        At least there is telegram for real news am I Right?
        ohiovr 4y ago
        I've stopped using smart phones for the most part this year so I won't be using it I don't think. I've been scared enough by what I've already learned come to pass that I think I don't need to be scared further by rumor mongering. All I know is that it seems the quality of the media is viewed by my peers as about the same as I'd expect the soviets thought of theirs back in 1986.
    - 4y ago
didibus 4y ago
I don't know if tweaking the algorithms can be considered censorship. The current tweaking always censors something over another thing, they have inherent bias, in a sense, and technically it's still there to find if you're looking for it. The question of what gets pushed to the front page of some media platform is an interesting one, but I'm not sure censorship is the right mental frame. I'd like to think of it more as propaganda. It controls the narrative by choosing what to propagate and flood people with, not so much by censoring. Another interesting dimension here too is that the previous flood of misinformation seems to also have been part of why this was specifically targeted. If you let too much misinformation go through, you're bound to start to believe everything is misinformation, and so here even the FBI and Facebook and other social media platforms thought: what if this is more misinformation, what if it's more Russian interference? In fact, I think I read a while back this is a known tactic used by old USSR propaganda. You delegitimize real information by pushing a bunch of false info alongside it, and people can't discern truth from lie, and trust in information is lost. It begs the question, which is worse, let the lies fly, or risk some false positive flags on the truth? It's a tough problem all around.
moneytide1 4y ago
"Sometimes the brass allows a false rumor to go on so there won't be a leak." https://youtu.be/7bmMzc28GR8?t=932 https://youtu.be/7bmMzc28GR8?t=932
- ohiovr 4y ago
  It is known as a limited hangout.
tadfisher 4y ago
refurb 4y ago
I’m kind of shocked this isn’t a bigger story. - Right before a presidential election a major story breaks about a Presidential candidate - FBI jumps in to say “it’s Russian disinformation” - Story suppressed across the media including online as “disinformation” - After the election story turns out to be 100% true
- krapp 4y ago
  > After the election story turns out to be 100% true Not entirely. The laptop was real, yes, but at the time Trumpists were claiming it had everything from evidence of Biden's conspiracy to steal the election to his child porn stash. This wasn't a story about Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, it was a story about his son that the Trumpists hoped would destroy his candidacy somehow. Given how much deliberate disinformation and BS the Trump camp was putting out at the time (Sharpiegate? Dominion voting machines? Boxes full of fake ballots?) the reaction to the briefcase shouldn't surprise anyone. Of course, most of what was claimed about the briefcase was still false, because it was mostly an attempt at repeating the character assassination by proxy of the DNC email scandal. If you want to blame anyone, blame the messengers for crying wolf so often.
  - refurb 4y ago
    That might all be true but it distracts from the original point - the FBI helped suppress information about a candidate prior to a Presidential election under the claim it was “disinformation” but had no evidence it was. They just said "it looks like Russian disinformation". That should worry anyone no matter who you voted for. Sure, the Trump side may be guilty of twisting it into something it's not, but I'm pretty sure "let's have the FBI suppress true stories to stop them from being twisted for political gain" is a terrible way to address it.
    - krapp 4y ago
      As I read the article, it doesn't suggest the FBI knew the story about Hunter Biden's laptop was true at the time, so the claim that they were "suppressing true stories," while technically correct, is a disingenuous framing of events. It seems the FBI didn't order Facebook to suppress that story specifically, rather they warned Facebook generally about misinformation and propaganda, and Facebook (along with everyone else) decided of their own volition to suppress the story about the laptop. A story which, we both admit, was surrounded by a cloud of misinformation regardless of the kernel of truth in the middle. So they weren't even entirely wrong to do so on that account. You could say that Facebook and the media were caught up in something of a moral panic about disinformation at the time, and overreacted, and I might agree. And again - this wasn't information about a candidate. As far as I know, the only link to Joe Biden is that Hunter Biden introduced a Russian businessman to him when he was Vice President. That's hardly Watergate.
ohiovr 4y ago
You can flag it but this story will escape the 2 week limit on people's memory.
jemmyw 4y ago
So Facebook didn't censor anything? He didn't admit censoring and the story wasn't censored. Nobody had their posts about it taken down and nobody was prevented from discussing it. Facebook just didn't disseminate the story, they prevented their feeds from selecting it and showing it. Isn't that what everyone wants? Except that they do that with all stories and have no algorithms at all? It's not censorship though so I don't know what y'all talking about.
- mwint 4y ago
  If your ISP decided to only transmit the string “jemmyw” 10% of the time, and blackhole the other 90% of jemmyw-containing packets, we would call that censorship. Facebook altered an algorithm to transmit a story to fewer people than it otherwise would have. It’s censorship.
  - lokar 4y ago
    If you try to say something to a 3rd person standing next to us and I shout you down, that is censorship. If I refuse to tell a 3rd person (not present) something you tell me, that is not censorship. I have no obligation to repeat your nonsense.
    - BurningFrog 4y ago
      You don't, but FB is a communications channel.
      - klyrs 4y ago
        No, it's an advertising platform.
        cal85 4y ago
        Could it be both?
        4y ago
baskethead 4y ago
I think Zuckerberg did a great job. I thought he was so robotic from the video clips that I saw but he's in fact quite normal. I think this was a great PR move on his part because I felt like he was being honest and transparent and most of all human.
aschearer 4y ago
Very odd that we can discuss Hunter Biden's laptop today but not Trump's affidavit. Don't tell me this comment thread is apolitical.
- zenkat 4y ago
  100% this. The former President was caught red-handed hiding top secret documents at his freakin' vacation home, with probable intent to commit espionage against the United States, including disclosure of sensitive human intelligence assets ... And Hacker News has it's knickers in a knot because the FBI warned a social media company that the Hunter Biden story might be a Russian psyops campaign? Seriously people?
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > The former President was caught red-handed hiding top secret documents at his freakin' vacation home No, he did not "hide" the documents. As a letter quoted in a recent article in Politico [1] shows, the documents were removed from the White House when the administrations changed on Jan. 20, 2021. Which means whoever was responsible for checking documents that were removed from the White House by the outgoing President and his staff screwed up. And now they're in CYA mode. > with probable intent to commit espionage You have no evidence whatever to back up this claim. [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/26/trump-mar-a-lago-affidavit-release-00053944 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/26/trump-mar-a-lago-af...
    - albertopv 4y ago
      2 billions to Jared Kushner evidence /sarcasm. Btw, I don't recall any other US president having classified and top secrets docs at home after leaving WH. It's now a NATO security issue, allies should be informed.
      - lodovic 4y ago
        Every US president has done this. It's called "presidential archives" for the purpose of writing memoires.
acjohnson55 4y ago
Rogan kept putting words in his mouth. He kept insinuating that Facebook and the FBI talked specifically about the Hunter Biden laptop story, when Zuckerberg did not say that at all. Zuckerberg said the FBI warned them to be on high alert for propaganda. Facebook's judgment after that conversation was that the Hunter Biden laptop story fit that profile. As for the story itself, I don't know all of the ins or outs, but my understanding is that it doesn't amount to anything, and certainly nothing in comparison to the entanglements of the Trump family. I think Facebook did the right thing. It's not the obligation of social media sites to facilitate October surprises. They do not have to allow themselves to be a tool to gin up smoke. Ironically, the FBI itself was played in just such a way in 2016.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- baskethead 4y ago
  - meroes 4y ago
    Seems extremely boring to me.
  - tmaly 4y ago
    I heard they have a moving coming out about it. I saw the trailer and had to laugh.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    And the only evidence we have of that is from what a blind computer repairman saw on a laptop that he promptly lost. You can’t make this stuff up, no one would believe it.
    - CapricornNoble 4y ago
      There's also his iPhone leak from a few months ago as corroborating evidence: https://news.yahoo.com/secret-responds-graphic-hunter-biden-203752983.html https://news.yahoo.com/secret-responds-graphic-hunter-biden-... Many of the files posted by 4chan were already found on Biden’s abandoned laptop via an iPhone XS backup, according to the Washington Examiner. Former Secret Service agent and cyber forensics expert Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos previously told the outlet that the contents of the iPhone are authentic. “Based on my analysis of the iPhone, I conclude the same results as my analysis of the MacBook Pro Laptop hard drive and iCloud synced data. The person who owns and operates this iPhone XS is Robert Hunter Biden,” Dimitrelos said, according to the outlet.
ss108 4y ago
Did Rogan ask about the Uighur or Rohingya genocide? Facebook spread misinformation about both, maybe censored at behest of governments, IIRC
b0bb1z3r0 4y ago
mupuff1234 4y ago
But on the other hand trump is/was a danger to society and democracy. I'm happy the story was censored, given that it still seems like a non story (no real crime committed afaik) And I fully understand the issues with my statement, the hypocrisy of it and the slippery slope nature of the act, but I do think some extreme cases do require bending the rules.
- wesleywt 4y ago
  I totally agree. Seeing how damaged Russia is due to mass misinformation, it is amazing to see how HN commenters think that misinformation is not a big threat. Propaganda works if you give it an even footing as real news.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    You do realize that they used misinformation to bury a true story about the laptop right?
    - myko 4y ago
      No, this is not what happened. The only true part of the story is that a laptop exists. There is evidence that the hard drives were manipulated on it. There's no evidence Hunter put any of the data on the hard drive there. And beyond all that, nothing there shows Joe Biden did anything wrong. Even the guy who _found_ the laptop doesn't think the information on it is necessarily legitimate: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/12/now-warning-about-hunter-biden-laptop-disinfo-guy-who-leaked-it/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/12/now-warni...
      - colordrops 4y ago
        No, the NYT, FBI and analysts admit that the emails on the laptop were authentic. Please don't spread misinformation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controve... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/hunter-biden-laptop.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/hunter-biden-...
DubiousPusher 4y ago
The fact that they have this kind of credulous pull with the man who has his fingers on the controls of so much of our information plumbing is even more upsetting than what the right has been charging which is that Zuck is just a big ol lib, especially given some of the bigger screw ups of America's intelligence apparatus. Watching the Earth move beneath the feet of the gatekeepers in the 00s came with a lot of warranted but clearly unsubstantiated catharsis.
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  Didn’t Zuckerberg implicitly support trump at one point? (What he is doing here certainly supports trump.) In the hope trump would ban TikTok. I thought that was why the Biden admin put Facebook in the doghouse.
  - throwaway4good 4y ago
    I was referring to stories like this (there are others as well): https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo... Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok The firm, Targeted Victory, pushed local operatives across the country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American children. “Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger,’ ” one campaign director said.
    - DubiousPusher 4y ago
      I don't think this signals any implicit Republican alignment. While firms like these often end up working more on one side of the aisle than the other they're usually not all that obsessed with their own ideology. They end up working on the side they do, usually because they start out of a campaign operation and then their connections mostly stem from that work. Facebook pprobably used them because the firm has operations in the soecific media markets Facebook wanted to target. They probably leaned towards a political ad company because they wanted something that combined ads and opposition research (dirt digging) which political advertisers are especially known for.
woojoo666 4y ago
I found interesting how during the podcast, Zuckerberg compared the suppression of the story to due process in the justice system. A snippet from the podcast (with minor edits, starting from 7:25 of this video clip [1]): > Joe Rogan: is there regret for not having it evenly distributed and for throttling the distribution of that story? > [...] > Zuckerberg: yeah yeah I mean it sucks because I mean it turned out after the fact...I mean the fact directors looked into it no one was able to say it was false right. So basically it had this period where it was getting less distribution > it sucks though I think in the same way that probably having to go through like a criminal trial but being proven innocent in the end sucks. Like it still sucks that you had to go through a criminal trial but at the end you're free > I don't know if the answer would have been don't do anything or don't have any process. I think the process was pretty reasonable you know. We still let people share it. But obviously you don't want situations like that [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ
- oldgradstudent 4y ago
  > Zuckerberg compared the suppression of the story to due process in the justice system. In the justice system, you are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Here, uncorroborated claims were enough. Not even a probable cause was required.
  - stuaxo 4y ago
    Yep, a person who is known for distributing misinformation and Zuckerberg who's platform does that on a huge scale.
  - andy_ppp 4y ago
    Not really, in the justice system you are put on trial on social media first and everyone believes what they want to believe rather than the decision of a court. You’re stating that fact validation should have the same level of scrutiny as a criminal trial except instantly? How do you stop false claims from being amplified without being cautious immediately? Facts can’t be put on “criminal trial” or got to jail - the metaphor Zuckerberg used is terrible.
INTPenis 4y ago
Did no one else react to when Mark said they have "files" on people? It was in the context of someone trying to run a facebook page anonymously and he said Facebook will look at their file to determine if they're a bot or not. Meaning the file on the person running the page, that they already have. At least that's how I interpreted it but no one else seems to be talking about this. I mean it's not surprising, it would just kinda confirm everyone's fears already that Google and Meta can track any person regardless of if they give out their real name or not.
- wjnc 4y ago
  Are you responding to the connotation of, say, Cold War intelligence with the use of ‘file’? For me it’s pretty trivial that Facebook can pull up information per IP, correlated IP (via accounts, usage, magic pixel) and try to work from there. I doubt it’s legal under GDPR to store all that data, but it never sees light and they could argue that they need it for compliance with things like law enforcement and keeping their own platform usable regarding bots and misuse. (Not giving my opinion regarding this tracking by FB here.)
  - INTPenis 4y ago
    Yeah I think it's in their interest to identify internet users for targeted ads, so they have what would amount to Stasi-like files on people. Correlating all the info they have to try and determine an internet users true identity, and they sure have a lot of information.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- charcircuit 4y ago
  >Meaning the file on the person running the page, that they already have. Every site with accounts stores extra data that is tied to your account. The most common of which would be a password hash. From what I understood of what your talking about is that they store whether you have verified your identity as opposed to them trusting that you are who you say you are.
- 4y ago
fareesh 4y ago
Is it possible to be an unabashed openly conservative / Republican in a company like Facebook or Twitter or Google? One gets the impression that it's a club for one kind of animal only.
- benreesman 4y ago
  At FB I unabashedly made a bunch of obnoxious (to partisans at least, maybe to everyone) criticisms of the fucking stupid Red Team/Blue Team thing. I took grief from colleagues/peers directly (which is clearly in bounds) but if anyone retaliated in terms of my career I never saw a shred of evidence about it. FB had the stated mission of "Making the World More Open and Connected": I posted a bunch of pretty-fucking-non-mainstream shit on my personal account and FB's leadership was always scrupulous about leaving my "personal" Internet presence completely out of it in a way I found very consistent with that mission statement. In fairness I was a pretty equal-opportunity partisan politics attack dog, maybe it just canceled out. For a counter-point, Apple seems to have been willing to set their ads business back by years to whack someone over a critically-acclaimed book that had been published for years before the auto da fe was held: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-hiring-antonio-garcia-martinez-chaos-monkeys-facebook https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-h..., so maybe there's some dice involved.
  - fareesh 4y ago
    It's good to hear that they allow the team to have their own personal views publicly expressed without impacting their work. I did, however, notice that you said that you were an equal opportunity partisan politics attack dog and maybe it cancelled out. I guess I could just reframe my question to you and ask whether you ever saw someone who was equally vocal but partisan on the red team. If you saw only vocal people from the blue team, I'd call that a bit telling. If you saw partisan folks from the red team who were similarly vocal then that fully answers my question.
    - benreesman 4y ago
      I'd very much like to be able to give you a more definite answer, but the problem is that I saw a lot of people self-censor around a lot of topics, only some of them political. It's possible that people were afraid of peer-censure, it's possible that they were afraid of official retaliation (though I never saw such a thing), and it's possible that they just didn't want to create trouble for themselves in some vague sense. Few people want to pick a fight with all their colleagues after all. I worked for big tech in SFBA and NYC: the median of rank-and-file people like me were at a place on the political/social/cultural spectrum that would be called "extreme" in my region of origin (Southern California). And there clearly isn't a bright line between "contributor" and "leadership". And there clearly isn't a bright line between "find this person distasteful" and "pass them over for opportunity". I can absolutely picture that right-leaning folks would have felt outnumbered and/or disinclined to speak freely, I absolutely cannot picture leadership sanctioning career damage over it. I supported/managed a high-impact group in a critical niche of about 35 people at my maximum seniority. If anyone had gotten held back for a promotion or something because of supporting a liberal or conservative candidate politically I would have come down like the wrath of God on that, and I believe my superiors would have backed that all the way. I appreciate that's a lot of "believe" and "think" and "imagine", but it's just impossible for me to prove a negative, so I've tried to answer with some nuance and at some length to convey a useful intuition.
hotz 4y ago
It's depressing how dismissive people are of the story. Don't let hatred, bias and mainstream media take over your critical thinking abilities. When you open yourself up to news from all sides, you can form a better picture and opinion on what's going on. The biases from law enforcement and the media are clear to anyone with an open mind.
- desindol 4y ago
  Well it would help if news outlets that report about it wouldn’t use slurs about the subject they are reporting about or at least write their articles with proper sources instead of „commentaries“.
- myko 4y ago
  The story is nonsense. Rudy gets a laptop, sits on it, does whatever with it, and then claims it shows malfeasance on the part of Joe Biden (at best it shows Hunter Biden is what everyone already knows–a mild fuckup whose dad loves him). The rightwing smear campaign attempting to frame Biden and exonerate trump by pretending Hunter is worse than Kushner, Ivanka, and the rest of the trump criminal family is ridiculous.
  - tyleo 4y ago
    Frankly, I don’t think that is the ridiculous part. I’d bet Hunter _is_ worse. The ridiculous thing to me is that this didn’t matter in context. Hunter wasn’t running and Hunter isn’t actively working in the white house like the Trump family. Meanwhile Trump engaged in gross nepotism, had a scandal rich administration, and did not agree to a peaceful transfer of power. Ultimately he went on to oversee the most violent transfer of power in American history. IMO most folks didn’t care about the Hunter story and I still don’t. Not because it isn’t important but because it’s a candle to the sun. I don’t think our leaders _should_ be corrupt but when you put forth two terrible candidates all you can do is vote for the least corrupt of two bad options.
parkingrift 4y ago
So let me get this straight. Facebook has absolute control to limit the spread of a story or news on their platform. Facebook has absolute control to outright block specific content based on an algorithm they control. Facebook can and will editorialize content posted on their platform. Facebook has absolute control over the content that users see. Can someone, anyone, please explain to me why Facebook is not a publisher? Why should Facebook continue to receive Section 230 protections? They are gatekeeper, publisher, and editor.
- classified 4y ago
  More like judge, jury, and executioner.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Hyperbole gets us nowhere
- fredgrott 4y ago
  see section 230 of a very specific US law-act as that law provided some outs for internet firms as far as being legally not declared a publisher if they volunteered to do specific things.
- selfmodruntime 4y ago
  section 230 is a wildly misunderstood law with many misconceptions. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn‘t make a clear distinction between platform and publisher.
  - growse 4y ago
    Indeed. The word 'platform' doesn't appear in the entire section. The only time the word 'publisher' appears is: (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
fredgrott 4y ago
Did anyone read the story and compare it to Zuck narrative as they oppose one another.
somesortofsystm 4y ago
To me, the interesting aspect of this interview was how Zuckerberg kept referring to his 'independent council of governance' as the solution to the responsibility problem, absolving the dictator-in-charge of whatever decisions those members made. But it was not asked - and its disappointing Rogan didn't go there - to whom do these members of a presumably anonymous governance board, answer? Without being able to observe the governance boards activities, the general public cannot exercise agency over their own rights. This is not a solution to the problem of tyranny and censorship regimes coming from those with much criminality to hide (i.e. governments), but rather cynical acqiuescance to the true source of power: the ability to keep secrets.
- andrekandre 4y ago
  > Without being able to observe the governance boards activities, the general public cannot exercise agency over their own rights i'm not sure that really applies? facebook is private property of its owners, users don't have control over it unless they can also collectively claim ownership...
  - somesortofsystm 4y ago
    Facebook is a public communications system, akin to a utility. I'd like to know who is on the governance board responsible for oversight of my communication, wouldn't you?
dustinmoris 4y ago
In China people can’t access objective and free speech media and they know it that they are being manipulated. In America people can’t access objective and free speech media but their oppressors make them believe that they 100% can and everyone is falling for it. Personally I find the latter much more scary and a dangerously broken society.
mercy_dude 4y ago
Again it goes to show how the nation state apparatus controls the narrative. If FBI can control FB then what is to them NYT and WP which they served all along in the previous administration as a source of leak. Oh wait we are still under the impression FBI has accountability?
criley2 4y ago
- atestu 4y ago
  Except the story wasn’t “fake news”. It was real.
  - criley2 4y ago
    With all due respect, what conservative media claimed was on the laptop was falsified and fake news. The existence of a candidate for President's son having a laptop with some lewd photos on it was real. The lie that it contained evidence of corruption relevant to Joe Biden and the election was a salacious lie, done as a trick to try and win an election. In my opinion, it represents one of the most perfect examples of fake news and how it works in our entire lifetimes. This is how disinformation works, a little truth allows you to slide in a lot of lie.
- beeboop 4y ago
  Literally no one in this thread is acting with hyperbole like that but you.
  - criley2 4y ago
    Literally this entire thread is full of people bloviating about the destruction of freedom of speech (without understanding that freedom of speech is precisely what protects a private organizations right to not be compelled into speech) and accusing faecbook of mind control. All of the top posts are precisely as I have described them. You obviously know I'm being hyperbolic (you said it), and so your unwillingness to realize I am mocking the very real attitudes here is tiresome.
damontal 4y ago
Why did he go on Rogan? What was the motivation?
- Kye 4y ago
  His PR people have been unsuccessful in framing him as anything other than a dull automaton from another world. Maybe he thought being able to talk uninterrupted and unedited for 4 hours would humanize him.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  After the mar-a-lago raid the fbi has written itself off almost completely for republican voters. Zuck is positioning himself as victim of government and the fbi, and trying to win points with the right. He needs to do this because November will bring a red wave and the next president will almost certainly be red. Appearing like a democrat ally at this point is suicide for Facebook in 2 years. He needs to repair relations.
kurupt213 4y ago
I don’t understand why Facebook is getting the negative attention instead of the FBI. This is a classic example of an entity in a position of power abusing said power. How is this different from sexual extortion for a promotion. I don’t care how rich your company is, the FBI comes knocking, the obvious response is to acquiesce to avoid issues with the federal government
- elliekelly 4y ago
  Plenty of companies have refused or even actively opposed the FBI and have managed to “avoid issues” with the federal government. There absolutely is a point where a company’s wealth and influence affords then the ability to push back against the government with little fear of the possible repercussions. And whatever that level of wealth and influence is Facebook has absolutely far surpassed it.
- erikpukinskis 4y ago
  Did you read the article? All the FBI did was notify FB that there was likely to be Russian propaganda incoming. Facebook made the determination about the Hunter Biden story independently. I’ll turn the question around on you: how is this similar to sexual extortion for a promotion? I don’t see the connection.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    Its not clear if that's really what happened behind the scenes. It seems that there was a coordinated effort specifically around the Hunter story. Most media outlets blacklisted it around the same time. Even the news organization that Glenn Greenwald founded (the intercept) censored it, causing an internal battle resulting in Greenwald leaving the organization. There was clearly widespread pressure to subdue this story.
nonplus 4y ago
It's interesting to me that (apparently) we consider organic views to be what the algorithm disseminates, and not what humans share to each other.
unloco 4y ago
This headline is clickbait. Zuck said the FBI warned him of potential Russian propaganda during the election. Then, Zuck and his crew slowed down the spread until it was validated. This entire discussion here is based on a false narrative, it goes off into rants of political discourse that were not true in regards to this story. The only reason it was censored is because it fit a profile of what was expected to come. Almost all the conjecture from headline readers is covered in the podcast. The conclusion is, if you want raw data, you can find it. 4chan is right there is you seek it. But big social media sites are not the wild-west everyone THINKS they want.
- DoctorOW 4y ago
  and "censored" isn't wrong but potentially misleading imo. Both because verified factual information, including about this topic can be shared and also because nobody actually was prevented from hearing about the laptop story. It was everywhere.
- BaRRaKID 4y ago
  This needs to be higher. Zuck clearly said that Facebook got a general warning from the FBI regarding the elections, but didn't recall having a specific warning about the Hunter Biden story. Even with Joe Rogan trying to press on the issue (he has been known to be critical of shadow banning) Zuckeberg justified the decisions fairly well, and Joe seemed to agree with him that it was a hard issue and that Facebook handled it the best way possible, and at least better than Twitter.
RickJWagner 4y ago
I've long thought that all American media is biased, one way or the other. What's really disappointing is to see the FBI mixed up in this.
skyzyx 4y ago
I think I take issue with the word “censorship”. Is it really censorship if free speech was never guaranteed in the first place? I mean less the denotative definition and more the connotative definition.
- walkhour 4y ago
  Fine, use another word then. The FBI interfered in an election, call it censorship or not. That's the issue, not the specific semantics you're worried about.

348 points by koolba 4y ago

I wonder how often they block stories that aren't fabricated... Joe started asking the question but then moved on to something else and Zuck never answered. There's clearly more censorship then I thought.

UberFly 4y ago
I'd also be interested in the stories that Facebook did end up letting through that same week. It would probably not support Zucks explanation.
- aaaddaaaaa1112 4y ago
  Also, Zuck said that a significant portion of them were deranked... it could be 99% of them for all I know.
psyc 4y ago
One answer is: more frequently each year.

mikece 4y ago

That was quite the revelation... though if I was in Zuck's shoes I would be throwing the FBI under the bus too as it deflects the Section 230 arguments.

jeromegv 4y ago
From the article: Zuckerberg told Rogan: "The background here is that the FBI came to us - some folks on our team - and was like 'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that'." He said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Biden story in particular - only that Facebook thought it "fit that pattern".
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  - emmo 4y ago
    Time wrote an article openly gloating about it: https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/ https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
    - bengold14 4y ago
      Like.. did you read the article? Gloating about how all of America's labor and corporate leaders came together to save democracy? Such a conspiracy that citizens from opposing camps were so concerned about Trumps unfounded election lies that they opposed them uniformly.
      - Consultant32452 4y ago
        tynpeddler 4y ago
        According to the article, the desired outcome of the election was a free and fair election. Not a particularly terrifying conspiracy.
        motoboi 4y ago
        > A large group of the country's richest and most powerful people colluded to change voting rules all across the country for the purpose of achieving a specific desired outcome in an election. I thought you were talking about gerrymandering.
        Consultant32452 4y ago
        Like redrawing electoral districts, no one changes election laws because they are a good person. Everyone who redraws electoral districts and changes election laws claims it's because they are a good person.

LinuxBender 4y ago

Here [1] is part of that related discussion on youtube. They start talking about the laptop around 5 mins into the video. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ [video]

gsatic 4y ago

Gives an interview to Rogan of all ppl randomly :)) Man this time line is hilarious.

93po 4y ago
yes, very random, how quirky of mark holds spork

ohiovr 4y ago

Look up Mussolini's definition of a certain political culture.

tomohawk 4y ago

This is the same guy who bought off public election officials with $600M.

mc32 4y ago

Not censorship to suppress falsehoods (or actual national secrets) but to suppress a true story. How are actions like this not a violation of the first amendment to the US constitution? The Federal Government suppressing speech. Where is the Justice Department's investigation? It seems like egregious overstepping. Remember when Qwest refused the FBI requests to phone data and we all hailed them for sticking to principles when ATT and the rest just said "yessirs!"

defterGoose 4y ago
Feels a lot like an adult version of the old "stop hitting yourself" trope.
timbo1642 4y ago
magpi3 4y ago
Well it sounds like Facebook chose to self-censor after talking with the FBI. But they still had the legal right to not do so. It is a stickier than that though - I imagine Facebook fears regulation, not criminal prosecution. And if so, perhaps that fear led to the act of self-censorship. Can the government unconstitutionally suppress free speech via the threat of regulation? I personally don't think so.
- daenz 4y ago
  >Well it sounds like Facebook chose to self-censor after talking with the FBI. But they still had the legal right to not do so. The optics around this interaction are extremely unethical. Whether or not there was any actual legal pressure is only half of the issue. The other half is the appearance of unethical behavior.
- refurb 4y ago
  This is the issue. Companies like Facebook fear regulation the most. Their goal is to just stay under the radar of the government and keep making money. Not surprised in the least that they’d “follow the FBI’s suggestion” in order to buy some good Will on other fronts.

cf141q5325 4y ago

Its based on a comment he made on his appearance on the Joe Rogan experience(JRE #1863) a few days ago. Only extracts are on youtube as he moved to spotify. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://open.spotify.com/episode/51gxrAActH18RGhKNza598 https://open.spotify.com/episode/51gxrAActH18RGhKNza598 Also, i have to say its quite amazing to see Mark Zuckerberg on the JRE. Wouldnt have thought that would ever happen.

aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
He sat in rural American homes for chicken dinner...he'll do just about anything to humanize himself.
- cf141q5325 4y ago
  I meant it from the other side. How many platforms, let alone people, get 3 hour long interviews with Mark Zuckerbg? And do them the way Joe Rogan does? edit: Then again, he was on with Lex Fridman a few months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zOHSysMmH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zOHSysMmH0
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
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  - j-bos 4y ago
    He was also on the Tim Ferriss podcast recently: https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/ https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/

spangry 4y ago

This is the great fear of many come to pass - censorship by algorithm. Facebook didn't outright ban sharing of the Hunter Biden laptop stories like Twitter did, they instead tweaked their algorithm to prevent the story from spreading. We found out about it this time because Zuckerberg owned up to it, but what about next time? For all we know, Facebook, Google and Twitter are doing this right now on a range of other subjects. It's scary to think that just 2 to 3 corporations have the power to construct a false reality around us, in a way that's virtually impossible for us to detect.

seydor 4y ago
not really censorship, just a regression to the old norms. mainstream media are biased to the politics of their owners. Same with facebook, it s a mainstream medium now Zuck claims that he was duped , but lets take everything with a grain of salt
- colordrops 4y ago
  The old norms were censorship too.
  - papito 4y ago
    Oh please. It's called "content curation". You want zero of that? There is always 8chan. If you enjoy seeing things that make you want to pour Clorox into your eyes.
    - colordrops 4y ago
      The television stations and newspapers back in the day absolutely maintained the Overton window and constructed narratives that supported the the ruling class. To call this "content curation" is ignorant at best.
      - arinlen 4y ago
        > The television stations and newspapers back in the day absolutely maintained the Overton window and constructed narratives that supported the the ruling class. To call this "content curation" is ignorant at best. It's also ignorant at best to pass off "maintaining the Overton window" as being censorship. Whether you like it or not, there's a finite amount of airtime and an infinite amount of content that can be presented. Picking what goes in is not the same as picking what stays out. See as an example what's aired by some peculiar media companies.

tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago

There's no right answer to: - what you should censor - whether you should censor when running a social media (more like an ad-platform but irrelevant to the point I'm making) service to this scale serving people from every demographic. Anything you do is wrong. If you don't censor, there's misinformation on a platform you control and you will be responsible for further conspiracies and actions/campaigns stemming from it in the worst case scenario. The cost outweighs the benefit. On the other hand, if you do censor, you piss people off anyway.

absrd 4y ago
It's a responsibility that no one wants
- ohiovr 4y ago
  This. Forums live and die on moderation. I've seen a forum self destruct and it isn't pretty. We can't allow black boxes to tell us what is false when you can look out your window to know the thing is lying. And if something gets that big and ugly without enough human moderation or self censorship it will collapse into a firey whirlwind.
10000truths 4y ago
My opinion is that a “social media platform” should stop trying to serve people from every demographic. I believe that: * Facebook was much better when it was an exclusive community of college students * Reddit was much better when it was a small, self-manageable community of nerds * Hacker News is much better than either of those two because it’s still a small community with a specific scope and good moderation
- tr1ll10nb1ll 4y ago
  I wasn't old enough for a small Reddit/college exclusive Facebook so I don't feel too strongly about it. However, I do agree that we don't have a true social platform (not a corp with other objectives). We can bemoan this all we want but if they weren't doing it, someone else would've been. Alternatives can be created over and over but as long as those are consumption-driven corporations, they will try extract every single second of our attention possible. That IS their business after-all.

darth_avocado 4y ago

That’s a very bad take. What he said was: 1. FBI said there may be Russian propaganda coming, be on the lookout 2. They decided to allow posting of Hunter Biden story, but reduce the distribution while independent fact checkers confirm it 3. Then eventually allow the story to be distributed Calling it “censorship at behest of FBI” is very disingenuous and misrepresents the story. I think what they did was very reasonable as a platform.

ohiovr 4y ago
I would not have voted in the election if I knew about the laptop. True story about something that is true.
- baskethead 4y ago
  The laptop was all over the news at the time. But the news said it was Russian misinformation.
  - ohiovr 4y ago
    My skepticism of the media didn't quite reach the level it should have at the time.
    - desindol 4y ago
      At least there is telegram for real news am I Right?
      - ohiovr 4y ago
        I've stopped using smart phones for the most part this year so I won't be using it I don't think. I've been scared enough by what I've already learned come to pass that I think I don't need to be scared further by rumor mongering. All I know is that it seems the quality of the media is viewed by my peers as about the same as I'd expect the soviets thought of theirs back in 1986.
  - 4y ago

didibus 4y ago

I don't know if tweaking the algorithms can be considered censorship. The current tweaking always censors something over another thing, they have inherent bias, in a sense, and technically it's still there to find if you're looking for it. The question of what gets pushed to the front page of some media platform is an interesting one, but I'm not sure censorship is the right mental frame. I'd like to think of it more as propaganda. It controls the narrative by choosing what to propagate and flood people with, not so much by censoring. Another interesting dimension here too is that the previous flood of misinformation seems to also have been part of why this was specifically targeted. If you let too much misinformation go through, you're bound to start to believe everything is misinformation, and so here even the FBI and Facebook and other social media platforms thought: what if this is more misinformation, what if it's more Russian interference? In fact, I think I read a while back this is a known tactic used by old USSR propaganda. You delegitimize real information by pushing a bunch of false info alongside it, and people can't discern truth from lie, and trust in information is lost. It begs the question, which is worse, let the lies fly, or risk some false positive flags on the truth? It's a tough problem all around.

moneytide1 4y ago

"Sometimes the brass allows a false rumor to go on so there won't be a leak." https://youtu.be/7bmMzc28GR8?t=932 https://youtu.be/7bmMzc28GR8?t=932

ohiovr 4y ago
It is known as a limited hangout.

tadfisher 4y ago

refurb 4y ago

I’m kind of shocked this isn’t a bigger story. - Right before a presidential election a major story breaks about a Presidential candidate - FBI jumps in to say “it’s Russian disinformation” - Story suppressed across the media including online as “disinformation” - After the election story turns out to be 100% true

krapp 4y ago
> After the election story turns out to be 100% true Not entirely. The laptop was real, yes, but at the time Trumpists were claiming it had everything from evidence of Biden's conspiracy to steal the election to his child porn stash. This wasn't a story about Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, it was a story about his son that the Trumpists hoped would destroy his candidacy somehow. Given how much deliberate disinformation and BS the Trump camp was putting out at the time (Sharpiegate? Dominion voting machines? Boxes full of fake ballots?) the reaction to the briefcase shouldn't surprise anyone. Of course, most of what was claimed about the briefcase was still false, because it was mostly an attempt at repeating the character assassination by proxy of the DNC email scandal. If you want to blame anyone, blame the messengers for crying wolf so often.
- refurb 4y ago
  That might all be true but it distracts from the original point - the FBI helped suppress information about a candidate prior to a Presidential election under the claim it was “disinformation” but had no evidence it was. They just said "it looks like Russian disinformation". That should worry anyone no matter who you voted for. Sure, the Trump side may be guilty of twisting it into something it's not, but I'm pretty sure "let's have the FBI suppress true stories to stop them from being twisted for political gain" is a terrible way to address it.
  - krapp 4y ago
    As I read the article, it doesn't suggest the FBI knew the story about Hunter Biden's laptop was true at the time, so the claim that they were "suppressing true stories," while technically correct, is a disingenuous framing of events. It seems the FBI didn't order Facebook to suppress that story specifically, rather they warned Facebook generally about misinformation and propaganda, and Facebook (along with everyone else) decided of their own volition to suppress the story about the laptop. A story which, we both admit, was surrounded by a cloud of misinformation regardless of the kernel of truth in the middle. So they weren't even entirely wrong to do so on that account. You could say that Facebook and the media were caught up in something of a moral panic about disinformation at the time, and overreacted, and I might agree. And again - this wasn't information about a candidate. As far as I know, the only link to Joe Biden is that Hunter Biden introduced a Russian businessman to him when he was Vice President. That's hardly Watergate.

ohiovr 4y ago

You can flag it but this story will escape the 2 week limit on people's memory.

jemmyw 4y ago

So Facebook didn't censor anything? He didn't admit censoring and the story wasn't censored. Nobody had their posts about it taken down and nobody was prevented from discussing it. Facebook just didn't disseminate the story, they prevented their feeds from selecting it and showing it. Isn't that what everyone wants? Except that they do that with all stories and have no algorithms at all? It's not censorship though so I don't know what y'all talking about.

mwint 4y ago
If your ISP decided to only transmit the string “jemmyw” 10% of the time, and blackhole the other 90% of jemmyw-containing packets, we would call that censorship. Facebook altered an algorithm to transmit a story to fewer people than it otherwise would have. It’s censorship.
- lokar 4y ago
  If you try to say something to a 3rd person standing next to us and I shout you down, that is censorship. If I refuse to tell a 3rd person (not present) something you tell me, that is not censorship. I have no obligation to repeat your nonsense.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    You don't, but FB is a communications channel.
    - klyrs 4y ago
      No, it's an advertising platform.
      - cal85 4y ago
        Could it be both?
        4y ago

baskethead 4y ago

I think Zuckerberg did a great job. I thought he was so robotic from the video clips that I saw but he's in fact quite normal. I think this was a great PR move on his part because I felt like he was being honest and transparent and most of all human.

aschearer 4y ago

Very odd that we can discuss Hunter Biden's laptop today but not Trump's affidavit. Don't tell me this comment thread is apolitical.

zenkat 4y ago
100% this. The former President was caught red-handed hiding top secret documents at his freakin' vacation home, with probable intent to commit espionage against the United States, including disclosure of sensitive human intelligence assets ... And Hacker News has it's knickers in a knot because the FBI warned a social media company that the Hunter Biden story might be a Russian psyops campaign? Seriously people?
- pdonis 4y ago
  > The former President was caught red-handed hiding top secret documents at his freakin' vacation home No, he did not "hide" the documents. As a letter quoted in a recent article in Politico [1] shows, the documents were removed from the White House when the administrations changed on Jan. 20, 2021. Which means whoever was responsible for checking documents that were removed from the White House by the outgoing President and his staff screwed up. And now they're in CYA mode. > with probable intent to commit espionage You have no evidence whatever to back up this claim. [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/26/trump-mar-a-lago-affidavit-release-00053944 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/26/trump-mar-a-lago-af...
  - albertopv 4y ago
    2 billions to Jared Kushner evidence /sarcasm. Btw, I don't recall any other US president having classified and top secrets docs at home after leaving WH. It's now a NATO security issue, allies should be informed.
    - lodovic 4y ago
      Every US president has done this. It's called "presidential archives" for the purpose of writing memoires.

acjohnson55 4y ago

Rogan kept putting words in his mouth. He kept insinuating that Facebook and the FBI talked specifically about the Hunter Biden laptop story, when Zuckerberg did not say that at all. Zuckerberg said the FBI warned them to be on high alert for propaganda. Facebook's judgment after that conversation was that the Hunter Biden laptop story fit that profile. As for the story itself, I don't know all of the ins or outs, but my understanding is that it doesn't amount to anything, and certainly nothing in comparison to the entanglements of the Trump family. I think Facebook did the right thing. It's not the obligation of social media sites to facilitate October surprises. They do not have to allow themselves to be a tool to gin up smoke. Ironically, the FBI itself was played in just such a way in 2016.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
baskethead 4y ago
- meroes 4y ago
  Seems extremely boring to me.
- tmaly 4y ago
  I heard they have a moving coming out about it. I saw the trailer and had to laugh.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  And the only evidence we have of that is from what a blind computer repairman saw on a laptop that he promptly lost. You can’t make this stuff up, no one would believe it.
  - CapricornNoble 4y ago
    There's also his iPhone leak from a few months ago as corroborating evidence: https://news.yahoo.com/secret-responds-graphic-hunter-biden-203752983.html https://news.yahoo.com/secret-responds-graphic-hunter-biden-... Many of the files posted by 4chan were already found on Biden’s abandoned laptop via an iPhone XS backup, according to the Washington Examiner. Former Secret Service agent and cyber forensics expert Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos previously told the outlet that the contents of the iPhone are authentic. “Based on my analysis of the iPhone, I conclude the same results as my analysis of the MacBook Pro Laptop hard drive and iCloud synced data. The person who owns and operates this iPhone XS is Robert Hunter Biden,” Dimitrelos said, according to the outlet.

ss108 4y ago

Did Rogan ask about the Uighur or Rohingya genocide? Facebook spread misinformation about both, maybe censored at behest of governments, IIRC

b0bb1z3r0 4y ago

mupuff1234 4y ago

But on the other hand trump is/was a danger to society and democracy. I'm happy the story was censored, given that it still seems like a non story (no real crime committed afaik) And I fully understand the issues with my statement, the hypocrisy of it and the slippery slope nature of the act, but I do think some extreme cases do require bending the rules.

wesleywt 4y ago
I totally agree. Seeing how damaged Russia is due to mass misinformation, it is amazing to see how HN commenters think that misinformation is not a big threat. Propaganda works if you give it an even footing as real news.
- colordrops 4y ago
  You do realize that they used misinformation to bury a true story about the laptop right?
  - myko 4y ago
    No, this is not what happened. The only true part of the story is that a laptop exists. There is evidence that the hard drives were manipulated on it. There's no evidence Hunter put any of the data on the hard drive there. And beyond all that, nothing there shows Joe Biden did anything wrong. Even the guy who _found_ the laptop doesn't think the information on it is necessarily legitimate: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/12/now-warning-about-hunter-biden-laptop-disinfo-guy-who-leaked-it/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/12/now-warni...
    - colordrops 4y ago
      No, the NYT, FBI and analysts admit that the emails on the laptop were authentic. Please don't spread misinformation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controve... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/hunter-biden-laptop.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

DubiousPusher 4y ago

The fact that they have this kind of credulous pull with the man who has his fingers on the controls of so much of our information plumbing is even more upsetting than what the right has been charging which is that Zuck is just a big ol lib, especially given some of the bigger screw ups of America's intelligence apparatus. Watching the Earth move beneath the feet of the gatekeepers in the 00s came with a lot of warranted but clearly unsubstantiated catharsis.

throwaway4good 4y ago
Didn’t Zuckerberg implicitly support trump at one point? (What he is doing here certainly supports trump.) In the hope trump would ban TikTok. I thought that was why the Biden admin put Facebook in the doghouse.
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  I was referring to stories like this (there are others as well): https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo... Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok The firm, Targeted Victory, pushed local operatives across the country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American children. “Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger,’ ” one campaign director said.
  - DubiousPusher 4y ago
    I don't think this signals any implicit Republican alignment. While firms like these often end up working more on one side of the aisle than the other they're usually not all that obsessed with their own ideology. They end up working on the side they do, usually because they start out of a campaign operation and then their connections mostly stem from that work. Facebook pprobably used them because the firm has operations in the soecific media markets Facebook wanted to target. They probably leaned towards a political ad company because they wanted something that combined ads and opposition research (dirt digging) which political advertisers are especially known for.

woojoo666 4y ago

I found interesting how during the podcast, Zuckerberg compared the suppression of the story to due process in the justice system. A snippet from the podcast (with minor edits, starting from 7:25 of this video clip [1]): > Joe Rogan: is there regret for not having it evenly distributed and for throttling the distribution of that story? > [...] > Zuckerberg: yeah yeah I mean it sucks because I mean it turned out after the fact...I mean the fact directors looked into it no one was able to say it was false right. So basically it had this period where it was getting less distribution > it sucks though I think in the same way that probably having to go through like a criminal trial but being proven innocent in the end sucks. Like it still sucks that you had to go through a criminal trial but at the end you're free > I don't know if the answer would have been don't do anything or don't have any process. I think the process was pretty reasonable you know. We still let people share it. But obviously you don't want situations like that [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ

oldgradstudent 4y ago
> Zuckerberg compared the suppression of the story to due process in the justice system. In the justice system, you are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Here, uncorroborated claims were enough. Not even a probable cause was required.
- stuaxo 4y ago
  Yep, a person who is known for distributing misinformation and Zuckerberg who's platform does that on a huge scale.
- andy_ppp 4y ago
  Not really, in the justice system you are put on trial on social media first and everyone believes what they want to believe rather than the decision of a court. You’re stating that fact validation should have the same level of scrutiny as a criminal trial except instantly? How do you stop false claims from being amplified without being cautious immediately? Facts can’t be put on “criminal trial” or got to jail - the metaphor Zuckerberg used is terrible.

INTPenis 4y ago

Did no one else react to when Mark said they have "files" on people? It was in the context of someone trying to run a facebook page anonymously and he said Facebook will look at their file to determine if they're a bot or not. Meaning the file on the person running the page, that they already have. At least that's how I interpreted it but no one else seems to be talking about this. I mean it's not surprising, it would just kinda confirm everyone's fears already that Google and Meta can track any person regardless of if they give out their real name or not.

wjnc 4y ago
Are you responding to the connotation of, say, Cold War intelligence with the use of ‘file’? For me it’s pretty trivial that Facebook can pull up information per IP, correlated IP (via accounts, usage, magic pixel) and try to work from there. I doubt it’s legal under GDPR to store all that data, but it never sees light and they could argue that they need it for compliance with things like law enforcement and keeping their own platform usable regarding bots and misuse. (Not giving my opinion regarding this tracking by FB here.)
- INTPenis 4y ago
  Yeah I think it's in their interest to identify internet users for targeted ads, so they have what would amount to Stasi-like files on people. Correlating all the info they have to try and determine an internet users true identity, and they sure have a lot of information.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
charcircuit 4y ago
>Meaning the file on the person running the page, that they already have. Every site with accounts stores extra data that is tied to your account. The most common of which would be a password hash. From what I understood of what your talking about is that they store whether you have verified your identity as opposed to them trusting that you are who you say you are.
4y ago

fareesh 4y ago

Is it possible to be an unabashed openly conservative / Republican in a company like Facebook or Twitter or Google? One gets the impression that it's a club for one kind of animal only.

benreesman 4y ago
At FB I unabashedly made a bunch of obnoxious (to partisans at least, maybe to everyone) criticisms of the fucking stupid Red Team/Blue Team thing. I took grief from colleagues/peers directly (which is clearly in bounds) but if anyone retaliated in terms of my career I never saw a shred of evidence about it. FB had the stated mission of "Making the World More Open and Connected": I posted a bunch of pretty-fucking-non-mainstream shit on my personal account and FB's leadership was always scrupulous about leaving my "personal" Internet presence completely out of it in a way I found very consistent with that mission statement. In fairness I was a pretty equal-opportunity partisan politics attack dog, maybe it just canceled out. For a counter-point, Apple seems to have been willing to set their ads business back by years to whack someone over a critically-acclaimed book that had been published for years before the auto da fe was held: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-hiring-antonio-garcia-martinez-chaos-monkeys-facebook https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-h..., so maybe there's some dice involved.
- fareesh 4y ago
  It's good to hear that they allow the team to have their own personal views publicly expressed without impacting their work. I did, however, notice that you said that you were an equal opportunity partisan politics attack dog and maybe it cancelled out. I guess I could just reframe my question to you and ask whether you ever saw someone who was equally vocal but partisan on the red team. If you saw only vocal people from the blue team, I'd call that a bit telling. If you saw partisan folks from the red team who were similarly vocal then that fully answers my question.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    I'd very much like to be able to give you a more definite answer, but the problem is that I saw a lot of people self-censor around a lot of topics, only some of them political. It's possible that people were afraid of peer-censure, it's possible that they were afraid of official retaliation (though I never saw such a thing), and it's possible that they just didn't want to create trouble for themselves in some vague sense. Few people want to pick a fight with all their colleagues after all. I worked for big tech in SFBA and NYC: the median of rank-and-file people like me were at a place on the political/social/cultural spectrum that would be called "extreme" in my region of origin (Southern California). And there clearly isn't a bright line between "contributor" and "leadership". And there clearly isn't a bright line between "find this person distasteful" and "pass them over for opportunity". I can absolutely picture that right-leaning folks would have felt outnumbered and/or disinclined to speak freely, I absolutely cannot picture leadership sanctioning career damage over it. I supported/managed a high-impact group in a critical niche of about 35 people at my maximum seniority. If anyone had gotten held back for a promotion or something because of supporting a liberal or conservative candidate politically I would have come down like the wrath of God on that, and I believe my superiors would have backed that all the way. I appreciate that's a lot of "believe" and "think" and "imagine", but it's just impossible for me to prove a negative, so I've tried to answer with some nuance and at some length to convey a useful intuition.

hotz 4y ago

It's depressing how dismissive people are of the story. Don't let hatred, bias and mainstream media take over your critical thinking abilities. When you open yourself up to news from all sides, you can form a better picture and opinion on what's going on. The biases from law enforcement and the media are clear to anyone with an open mind.

desindol 4y ago
Well it would help if news outlets that report about it wouldn’t use slurs about the subject they are reporting about or at least write their articles with proper sources instead of „commentaries“.
myko 4y ago
The story is nonsense. Rudy gets a laptop, sits on it, does whatever with it, and then claims it shows malfeasance on the part of Joe Biden (at best it shows Hunter Biden is what everyone already knows–a mild fuckup whose dad loves him). The rightwing smear campaign attempting to frame Biden and exonerate trump by pretending Hunter is worse than Kushner, Ivanka, and the rest of the trump criminal family is ridiculous.
- tyleo 4y ago
  Frankly, I don’t think that is the ridiculous part. I’d bet Hunter _is_ worse. The ridiculous thing to me is that this didn’t matter in context. Hunter wasn’t running and Hunter isn’t actively working in the white house like the Trump family. Meanwhile Trump engaged in gross nepotism, had a scandal rich administration, and did not agree to a peaceful transfer of power. Ultimately he went on to oversee the most violent transfer of power in American history. IMO most folks didn’t care about the Hunter story and I still don’t. Not because it isn’t important but because it’s a candle to the sun. I don’t think our leaders _should_ be corrupt but when you put forth two terrible candidates all you can do is vote for the least corrupt of two bad options.

parkingrift 4y ago

So let me get this straight. Facebook has absolute control to limit the spread of a story or news on their platform. Facebook has absolute control to outright block specific content based on an algorithm they control. Facebook can and will editorialize content posted on their platform. Facebook has absolute control over the content that users see. Can someone, anyone, please explain to me why Facebook is not a publisher? Why should Facebook continue to receive Section 230 protections? They are gatekeeper, publisher, and editor.

classified 4y ago
More like judge, jury, and executioner.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Hyperbole gets us nowhere
fredgrott 4y ago
see section 230 of a very specific US law-act as that law provided some outs for internet firms as far as being legally not declared a publisher if they volunteered to do specific things.
selfmodruntime 4y ago
section 230 is a wildly misunderstood law with many misconceptions. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn‘t make a clear distinction between platform and publisher.
- growse 4y ago
  Indeed. The word 'platform' doesn't appear in the entire section. The only time the word 'publisher' appears is: (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

fredgrott 4y ago

Did anyone read the story and compare it to Zuck narrative as they oppose one another.

somesortofsystm 4y ago

To me, the interesting aspect of this interview was how Zuckerberg kept referring to his 'independent council of governance' as the solution to the responsibility problem, absolving the dictator-in-charge of whatever decisions those members made. But it was not asked - and its disappointing Rogan didn't go there - to whom do these members of a presumably anonymous governance board, answer? Without being able to observe the governance boards activities, the general public cannot exercise agency over their own rights. This is not a solution to the problem of tyranny and censorship regimes coming from those with much criminality to hide (i.e. governments), but rather cynical acqiuescance to the true source of power: the ability to keep secrets.

andrekandre 4y ago
> Without being able to observe the governance boards activities, the general public cannot exercise agency over their own rights i'm not sure that really applies? facebook is private property of its owners, users don't have control over it unless they can also collectively claim ownership...
- somesortofsystm 4y ago
  Facebook is a public communications system, akin to a utility. I'd like to know who is on the governance board responsible for oversight of my communication, wouldn't you?

dustinmoris 4y ago

In China people can’t access objective and free speech media and they know it that they are being manipulated. In America people can’t access objective and free speech media but their oppressors make them believe that they 100% can and everyone is falling for it. Personally I find the latter much more scary and a dangerously broken society.

mercy_dude 4y ago

Again it goes to show how the nation state apparatus controls the narrative. If FBI can control FB then what is to them NYT and WP which they served all along in the previous administration as a source of leak. Oh wait we are still under the impression FBI has accountability?

criley2 4y ago

atestu 4y ago
Except the story wasn’t “fake news”. It was real.
- criley2 4y ago
  With all due respect, what conservative media claimed was on the laptop was falsified and fake news. The existence of a candidate for President's son having a laptop with some lewd photos on it was real. The lie that it contained evidence of corruption relevant to Joe Biden and the election was a salacious lie, done as a trick to try and win an election. In my opinion, it represents one of the most perfect examples of fake news and how it works in our entire lifetimes. This is how disinformation works, a little truth allows you to slide in a lot of lie.
beeboop 4y ago
Literally no one in this thread is acting with hyperbole like that but you.
- criley2 4y ago
  Literally this entire thread is full of people bloviating about the destruction of freedom of speech (without understanding that freedom of speech is precisely what protects a private organizations right to not be compelled into speech) and accusing faecbook of mind control. All of the top posts are precisely as I have described them. You obviously know I'm being hyperbolic (you said it), and so your unwillingness to realize I am mocking the very real attitudes here is tiresome.

damontal 4y ago

Why did he go on Rogan? What was the motivation?

Kye 4y ago
His PR people have been unsuccessful in framing him as anything other than a dull automaton from another world. Maybe he thought being able to talk uninterrupted and unedited for 4 hours would humanize him.
cloutchaser 4y ago
After the mar-a-lago raid the fbi has written itself off almost completely for republican voters. Zuck is positioning himself as victim of government and the fbi, and trying to win points with the right. He needs to do this because November will bring a red wave and the next president will almost certainly be red. Appearing like a democrat ally at this point is suicide for Facebook in 2 years. He needs to repair relations.

kurupt213 4y ago

I don’t understand why Facebook is getting the negative attention instead of the FBI. This is a classic example of an entity in a position of power abusing said power. How is this different from sexual extortion for a promotion. I don’t care how rich your company is, the FBI comes knocking, the obvious response is to acquiesce to avoid issues with the federal government

elliekelly 4y ago
Plenty of companies have refused or even actively opposed the FBI and have managed to “avoid issues” with the federal government. There absolutely is a point where a company’s wealth and influence affords then the ability to push back against the government with little fear of the possible repercussions. And whatever that level of wealth and influence is Facebook has absolutely far surpassed it.
erikpukinskis 4y ago
Did you read the article? All the FBI did was notify FB that there was likely to be Russian propaganda incoming. Facebook made the determination about the Hunter Biden story independently. I’ll turn the question around on you: how is this similar to sexual extortion for a promotion? I don’t see the connection.
- colordrops 4y ago
  Its not clear if that's really what happened behind the scenes. It seems that there was a coordinated effort specifically around the Hunter story. Most media outlets blacklisted it around the same time. Even the news organization that Glenn Greenwald founded (the intercept) censored it, causing an internal battle resulting in Greenwald leaving the organization. There was clearly widespread pressure to subdue this story.

nonplus 4y ago

It's interesting to me that (apparently) we consider organic views to be what the algorithm disseminates, and not what humans share to each other.

unloco 4y ago

This headline is clickbait. Zuck said the FBI warned him of potential Russian propaganda during the election. Then, Zuck and his crew slowed down the spread until it was validated. This entire discussion here is based on a false narrative, it goes off into rants of political discourse that were not true in regards to this story. The only reason it was censored is because it fit a profile of what was expected to come. Almost all the conjecture from headline readers is covered in the podcast. The conclusion is, if you want raw data, you can find it. 4chan is right there is you seek it. But big social media sites are not the wild-west everyone THINKS they want.

DoctorOW 4y ago
and "censored" isn't wrong but potentially misleading imo. Both because verified factual information, including about this topic can be shared and also because nobody actually was prevented from hearing about the laptop story. It was everywhere.
BaRRaKID 4y ago
This needs to be higher. Zuck clearly said that Facebook got a general warning from the FBI regarding the elections, but didn't recall having a specific warning about the Hunter Biden story. Even with Joe Rogan trying to press on the issue (he has been known to be critical of shadow banning) Zuckeberg justified the decisions fairly well, and Joe seemed to agree with him that it was a hard issue and that Facebook handled it the best way possible, and at least better than Twitter.

RickJWagner 4y ago

I've long thought that all American media is biased, one way or the other. What's really disappointing is to see the FBI mixed up in this.

skyzyx 4y ago

I think I take issue with the word “censorship”. Is it really censorship if free speech was never guaranteed in the first place? I mean less the denotative definition and more the connotative definition.

walkhour 4y ago
Fine, use another word then. The FBI interfered in an election, call it censorship or not. That's the issue, not the specific semantics you're worried about.