5 ms·

A movie was made about the whole laptop scandal. Just before election. It Was quite shocking when I tried messaging links to news articles on Facebook and they

A movie was made about the whole laptop scandal. Just before election. It Was quite shocking when I tried messaging links to news articles on Facebook and they were being blocked. Then to find out that FBI asked Facebook to do this. Movie. https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/09/20/13-true-facts-from-the-film-my-son-hunter/amp/ https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/09/20/13-true-f... Facebook admitting. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532.amp

micromacrofoot 4y ago
"a movie was made" isn't exactly a gotcha or any sort of validation, anyone can make a movie. In this case the "anyone" is Breitbart. If you want an idea of Breitbart's motives... they specifically cast an actress due to her controversial statements, for example. Earlier this year she claimed the war in Ukraine was a fake plot because “they lost control of the COVID narrative.”
- colpabar 4y ago
- blast 4y ago
  What does that have to do with allegations of government censorship pressure?
  - themitigating 4y ago
    It goes to the character of Breitbart.
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    the movie? it has nothing to do with it - which is why I was responding to the comment about it with “anyone can make a movie” - it proves nothing one way or another and the fact that it was made by breitbart has a whole series of red flags anyway - it was engineered to be controversial
tarakat 4y ago
Ironically it's the kind of censorship the Biden laptop story got that scares me the least. Brazen, obvious, and now widely known about. What's really scary is the silent implicit algorithmic ranking that decides which stories, channels, websites get traffic. Invisible and much more effective, leaving no big "banned from Facebook" banner a victim can point to. Just a mysterious, gradual dwindling of traffic. It could be for legitimate reasons, or because someone has their thumb on the scale, for political or economic reasons.
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  It's generally because someone pushed a new model which changed the distribution of content. We're pretty bad (as a species) at understanding what heaps of matrix multiplications net out to on an individual source basis.
- _-david-_ 4y ago
  >Ironically it's the kind of censorship the Biden laptop story got that scares me the least. Brazen, obvious, and now widely known about. We know about it now. The problem is a large number of people when polled said they would not have voted for Biden if they had known about the laptop before the election. It may have been enough to swing the election.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  I get what you are saying... but let's consider for a fact that if the media had run the Biden Laptop story AS IF it was the Trump Laptop story - the election for leader of the free world would have gone the other way. You can be happy or sad about the ends - but should be terrified of the means. It wasn't an award show snub, or a gender bathroom debate, it was the entire direction of the USA with the largest military on Earth.
  - tarakat 4y ago
    But that's just it - the silent re-ranking of stories, algorithmic or editorial, can also flip elections. Not just elections, it can entirely change the direction a culture is headed. And it causes no backlash - you wouldn't even know it was happening, unless you laboriously compared statistics with how much exposure stories (not just news stories, films and books shape our perception of the world just as much) get, for the few sufficiently objective categories where a meaningful comparison can be made.
musicale 4y ago
> "Depending on what side of the political spectrum [you're on], you either think we didn't censor it enough or we censored it way too much." An interesting take, Mr. Zuckerberg.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Not really. It's pretty much just a fact.

micromacrofoot 4y ago

"a movie was made" isn't exactly a gotcha or any sort of validation, anyone can make a movie. In this case the "anyone" is Breitbart. If you want an idea of Breitbart's motives... they specifically cast an actress due to her controversial statements, for example. Earlier this year she claimed the war in Ukraine was a fake plot because “they lost control of the COVID narrative.”

colpabar 4y ago
blast 4y ago
What does that have to do with allegations of government censorship pressure?
- themitigating 4y ago
  It goes to the character of Breitbart.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  the movie? it has nothing to do with it - which is why I was responding to the comment about it with “anyone can make a movie” - it proves nothing one way or another and the fact that it was made by breitbart has a whole series of red flags anyway - it was engineered to be controversial

tarakat 4y ago

Ironically it's the kind of censorship the Biden laptop story got that scares me the least. Brazen, obvious, and now widely known about. What's really scary is the silent implicit algorithmic ranking that decides which stories, channels, websites get traffic. Invisible and much more effective, leaving no big "banned from Facebook" banner a victim can point to. Just a mysterious, gradual dwindling of traffic. It could be for legitimate reasons, or because someone has their thumb on the scale, for political or economic reasons.

disgruntledphd2 4y ago
It's generally because someone pushed a new model which changed the distribution of content. We're pretty bad (as a species) at understanding what heaps of matrix multiplications net out to on an individual source basis.
_-david-_ 4y ago
>Ironically it's the kind of censorship the Biden laptop story got that scares me the least. Brazen, obvious, and now widely known about. We know about it now. The problem is a large number of people when polled said they would not have voted for Biden if they had known about the laptop before the election. It may have been enough to swing the election.
SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
I get what you are saying... but let's consider for a fact that if the media had run the Biden Laptop story AS IF it was the Trump Laptop story - the election for leader of the free world would have gone the other way. You can be happy or sad about the ends - but should be terrified of the means. It wasn't an award show snub, or a gender bathroom debate, it was the entire direction of the USA with the largest military on Earth.
- tarakat 4y ago
  But that's just it - the silent re-ranking of stories, algorithmic or editorial, can also flip elections. Not just elections, it can entirely change the direction a culture is headed. And it causes no backlash - you wouldn't even know it was happening, unless you laboriously compared statistics with how much exposure stories (not just news stories, films and books shape our perception of the world just as much) get, for the few sufficiently objective categories where a meaningful comparison can be made.

musicale 4y ago

> "Depending on what side of the political spectrum [you're on], you either think we didn't censor it enough or we censored it way too much." An interesting take, Mr. Zuckerberg.

colinmhayes 4y ago
Not really. It's pretty much just a fact.