4 ms·

So Facebook is complicit in allowing its platform to be weaponized by the state against all speakers of Vietnamese (in and outside of the country). When questio

So Facebook is complicit in allowing its platform to be weaponized by the state against all speakers of Vietnamese (in and outside of the country). When questioned, they simply shrug their shoulders and say "if we did anything to stop this, our platform would be banned in Vietnam." I'm beyond the point of expecting anything more from Facebook, but I would think the US government should have some leverage here. Vietnam is not the powerhouse that China is (yet), so if a major US company were banned because it applied the same rules it applies to every other country, I'd expect that to be a violation of their WTO commitments.

NhanH 3y ago
The tool Facebook built has a worldwide effect, and we knew it because just 2 years ago the Vietnamese government banned a common hashtag (saltbae or something related), and it had a FB-wide effect on all countries. I find it hard to believe that Vietnam is the only one with access to it.
kornhole 3y ago
Does Facebook have rules that are consistently applied to every country? AFAIK, Facebook complies with the local governments' requirements everywhere it operates even though they will occasionally publicize some resistance.
- gmerc 3y ago
  lol they fired heavily overseas so no. After 2018 90% of integrity work was focused on english.
- system16 3y ago
  There is no local law in Vietnam that says "you must allow the state's army of troll bots to harass anyone in the world that speaks Vietnamese". Facebook isn't complying with any local law here, and the behaviour in question isn't isolated to users in Vietnam. They are turning a blind eye to avoid retaliation for applying the same rules they'd apply elsewhere.
  - bannedbybros 3y ago
    [dead]
  - kornhole 3y ago
    This is why I said local governments' requirements rather than laws. Those can be very different. As we have seen in US and elsewhere, intelligence agencies, institutions, and politicians exert influence in many ways. Most of this is opaque, but occasionally we get some leaks like the Twitter Files that reveal what is really going on.
  - itake 3y ago
    > The law requires Facebook to set up offices in Vietnam (where operations can be controlled), hand over personal information to the government and remove content within 24 hours of government requests. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/10/02/how-facebook-is-damaging-freedom-of-expression-in-vietnam/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/... The law doesn't explicitly state allowing troll bots, but it does have extremely strong opinions about how Facebook operates in Vietnam.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > Facebook complies with the local governments' requirements everywhere it operates That sounds like a rule that's applied consistently, to every country. And yes, I know it's weasel words that mean exactly the opposite of what they appear to mean.
medo-bear 3y ago
just scared to get their asses kicked by viets again
jasmer 3y ago
I believed that Zuck was a bit of a wannabe frat boy (definitely not an actual one), who was a bit of 'boys will be boys', but in the end, a 'good guy'. It's taken me years but I think he's a 'bad guy'. I think he'll err always on the side of money and really strongly look the other way. I think it might have a lot to do with isolation. Also, weirdly, I think Zuck, Musk get 'attacked' for their actions, and knowing that most of their actions are not really bad, they get defensive and reactionary. I think they lose their grounding and get deluded.
arp242 3y ago
To view Facebook as "complicit" is probably not the right way to view things. The fact of the matter is that at scale, it's almost impossible to prevent these kind of thing. Facebook is "complicit" in the same way that, say, the W3C is "complicit": by providing the tools. Could Facebook be doing better or more? Probably. But they are surrounded by malicious actors from all sides, ranging from people who issue coordinated takedown requests like in this story to people who use Facebook to maliciously push "fake news" stories to just banal and boring spammers to outright scams. Balancing this all out and keeping a grip on things at scale is very hard, perhaps even impossible. Even HN would be vulnerable to these kind of attacks; HN's scale is much smaller than Facebook's but still much too large for anyone to really get a "grip" on. A few years ago one of my stories got flagged[1], and while I'm probably biased I don't think it should be (I probably should have email dang about it, but I didn't post it myself and didn't really want to bother him with it). Was it "coordinated"? Probably not. The end result is the same though: people abuse the "flag" feature to hide stories they would prefer to not be seen. I also know for a fact that some companies will coordinate employees to upvote comments and stories because I worked for a company that did this. Is HN currently under attack from coordinated flagging? Maybe, maybe not. I would be surprised if it hasn't happened on at least some occasions, and the only reason it doesn't happen more often is that it's small enough to fly under the radar for most of these kind of government agencies. I think it's important to have a good understanding of the situation as only with a good understanding can you come up with a good solution. "Facebook bad" may or may not be true, but it is not a good understanding of things. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26579225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26579225

NhanH 3y ago

The tool Facebook built has a worldwide effect, and we knew it because just 2 years ago the Vietnamese government banned a common hashtag (saltbae or something related), and it had a FB-wide effect on all countries. I find it hard to believe that Vietnam is the only one with access to it.

kornhole 3y ago

Does Facebook have rules that are consistently applied to every country? AFAIK, Facebook complies with the local governments' requirements everywhere it operates even though they will occasionally publicize some resistance.

gmerc 3y ago
lol they fired heavily overseas so no. After 2018 90% of integrity work was focused on english.
system16 3y ago
There is no local law in Vietnam that says "you must allow the state's army of troll bots to harass anyone in the world that speaks Vietnamese". Facebook isn't complying with any local law here, and the behaviour in question isn't isolated to users in Vietnam. They are turning a blind eye to avoid retaliation for applying the same rules they'd apply elsewhere.
- bannedbybros 3y ago
  [dead]
- kornhole 3y ago
  This is why I said local governments' requirements rather than laws. Those can be very different. As we have seen in US and elsewhere, intelligence agencies, institutions, and politicians exert influence in many ways. Most of this is opaque, but occasionally we get some leaks like the Twitter Files that reveal what is really going on.
- itake 3y ago
  > The law requires Facebook to set up offices in Vietnam (where operations can be controlled), hand over personal information to the government and remove content within 24 hours of government requests. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/10/02/how-facebook-is-damaging-freedom-of-expression-in-vietnam/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/... The law doesn't explicitly state allowing troll bots, but it does have extremely strong opinions about how Facebook operates in Vietnam.
denton-scratch 3y ago
> Facebook complies with the local governments' requirements everywhere it operates That sounds like a rule that's applied consistently, to every country. And yes, I know it's weasel words that mean exactly the opposite of what they appear to mean.

medo-bear 3y ago

just scared to get their asses kicked by viets again

jasmer 3y ago

I believed that Zuck was a bit of a wannabe frat boy (definitely not an actual one), who was a bit of 'boys will be boys', but in the end, a 'good guy'. It's taken me years but I think he's a 'bad guy'. I think he'll err always on the side of money and really strongly look the other way. I think it might have a lot to do with isolation. Also, weirdly, I think Zuck, Musk get 'attacked' for their actions, and knowing that most of their actions are not really bad, they get defensive and reactionary. I think they lose their grounding and get deluded.

arp242 3y ago

To view Facebook as "complicit" is probably not the right way to view things. The fact of the matter is that at scale, it's almost impossible to prevent these kind of thing. Facebook is "complicit" in the same way that, say, the W3C is "complicit": by providing the tools. Could Facebook be doing better or more? Probably. But they are surrounded by malicious actors from all sides, ranging from people who issue coordinated takedown requests like in this story to people who use Facebook to maliciously push "fake news" stories to just banal and boring spammers to outright scams. Balancing this all out and keeping a grip on things at scale is very hard, perhaps even impossible. Even HN would be vulnerable to these kind of attacks; HN's scale is much smaller than Facebook's but still much too large for anyone to really get a "grip" on. A few years ago one of my stories got flagged[1], and while I'm probably biased I don't think it should be (I probably should have email dang about it, but I didn't post it myself and didn't really want to bother him with it). Was it "coordinated"? Probably not. The end result is the same though: people abuse the "flag" feature to hide stories they would prefer to not be seen. I also know for a fact that some companies will coordinate employees to upvote comments and stories because I worked for a company that did this. Is HN currently under attack from coordinated flagging? Maybe, maybe not. I would be surprised if it hasn't happened on at least some occasions, and the only reason it doesn't happen more often is that it's small enough to fly under the radar for most of these kind of government agencies. I think it's important to have a good understanding of the situation as only with a good understanding can you come up with a good solution. "Facebook bad" may or may not be true, but it is not a good understanding of things. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26579225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26579225