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This is artfully researched. A great read and a valuable take on events that we'll need as a society to learn from, as the algorithm-powered platforms are not g

This is artfully researched. A great read and a valuable take on events that we'll need as a society to learn from, as the algorithm-powered platforms are not going anywhere. Very strange to hear any "free speech" arguments in this thread. I can only assume those commenters haven't read the article, which enumerates multiple examples of speech that are equivalent to shouting fire in a crowded theater.

dannyobrien 3y ago
I not only read the article (which was great), but I was in the same space at this time: one of the civil society groups constantly trying to raise issues with Facebook. It all rings very true to me: I think one thing to note is that not only did Facebook lack Burmese speakers internally, but so did the human rights groups with the best access to Facebook. As Kissane notes, Myanmar came online very quickly after the reforms, and -- unlike many countries in the Middle East or even China, because the story there was not one of authoritarian oppression, but a /release/ from authoritarian pressure, it did not fit easily into the template that tech companies were slowly learning to respond to. A few years before this, Facebook and Twitter had been shaken into some kind of recognition of their responsibilities in the Arab Spring and Iranian protests, but the result of that had been a very, shall we say, US-centric view of how repression plays out globally. Bluntly, the violent genocide of muslims by buddhists, in a country led by Nobel Peace Prize winner and defender of democracy Aung Sang Suu Shi, was a story that had to cut across many political and cultural presumptions of the US and Europe before it would be listened to. I guess that brings me to your comment about "free speech". It seems a little petty to point you to the usual put-downs about how the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" has historically been deployed to /silence/ people trying to /stop/ mass violence (because they are seen to be trouble-makers). I'll note though that the failures of Facebook and others at this time came about because people claimed to be able to moderate and provide a forum where only civil discussion and "the truth" would be discussed -- and could be swayed to stop it, if you could just get through to the right people. Many of us, both in "free speech" organizations and on-the-ground humanitarian groups, argued that this was a role that Facebook was not, and could not play: and the more it claimed it could take on this responsibility, the more terrible the consequences would be.
- CrazyPyroLinux 3y ago
  I'll admit I don't know anything about the situation, but the phrase "violent genocide of muslims by buddhists" was NOT something I was expecting to hear anywhere.
  - dannyobrien 3y ago
    Indeed, that's part of the point here.
  - v3ss0n 3y ago
    The correct Phrase would be Genocide of Rohinja by a Terrorist Military Junta. Now they are killing whole country , regardless of age , sex, reglion and skin color.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  >I guess that brings me to your comment about "free speech". It seems a little petty to point you to the usual put-downs about how the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" has historically been deployed to /silence/ people trying to /stop/ mass violence (because they are seen to be trouble-makers). The speech regulation problem feels fairly different depending on whether the team doing the regulation lives in the society they're trying to regulate. If you live in the society you're trying to regulate the speech of: * People in your society will attack or praise your speech regulation actions, as moves in the local political chess game. * As a member of society, you are likely to have a "dog in the fight" for a heated discussion where someone calls for speech regulation. * As a member of society, your thinking (including your thinking about what to censor) is affected by what you read, which is itself affected by what speech gets censored. There can be a feedback loop. In the US, "freedom of speech" used to be a left-wing talking point, back when the right had more cultural power. Nowadays it is a right-wing talking point, at a time when the left has more cultural power. We generally can't expect censorship mechanisms to be used in a principled way. Censorship mechanisms are powerful political tools that powerful people will fight to obtain, and they will be disproportionately wielded by the powerful. See, for example, Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. Contrast all that with the Facebook/Myanmar situation, which I suspect is more a case of criminal apathy and/or greed.
IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
I read most of the article. I don't buy the premise of the author. Social media is simply amplifying what the social network things is interesting/valuable. If society thinks some nasty haetful writer is interesting, its boosting that person's content. Its not a surprise that if you had decades of junta, you also had decades of fighting , the groups wouldn't exactly be singing praises of their rivals on social media. The author never once discusses the obvious - this shouldn't be about restricting speech (which is exactly what is being advocated) , or blaming FB, it was always about the recommendation algorithm. Destroy the algorithm or disable it, and you literally have no basis for the article.
- KingMob 3y ago
  Why are you phrasing it like the algorithm is somehow separate from Facebook and its choices?
  - IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
    I don't like facebook, but the purpose of facebook is clear: Engage you in using facebook. Facebook was not (at least until the last decade or so) making choices on how that algorithm works. Popular content was sticky, otherwise not. In that context, i'd argue that it is enhancing whatever the social network around you pushed up. And for the social network that is part of the article, a lot of dark thoughts were part of that. There wasn't a deliberate choice on what to push up. The people chose what to push with their own clicks. In fact, I'd say the algorithm was (is?) a black box to most FB employees itself!
    - anon84873628 3y ago
      Facebook was faced with a trolly problem where they didn't pull the lever. As a result, tens of thousands of people were killed and many hundreds of thousands more were victimized and displaced. Would there still have been violence had Facebook acted? Yes, but it very clearly would have been much less. Surely anyone working at Facebook at the time who had heard these warnings now deeply regrets that they didn't act. (By the way, President Clinton said that failure to intervene in Rwanda was one of his biggest regrets. Imagine if you could simply flip a switch to disable radio broadcasts during that event-- that's the situation Facebook was in.) It doesn't matter whether they were actively promoting content or not. The idea that the tech company is innocent because technology merely amplifies what already exists in humanity... is completely ridiculous. We all understand human nature so it is easy to predict what will happen. And in this case there were many warnings ahead of time that were simply ignored.

dannyobrien 3y ago

I not only read the article (which was great), but I was in the same space at this time: one of the civil society groups constantly trying to raise issues with Facebook. It all rings very true to me: I think one thing to note is that not only did Facebook lack Burmese speakers internally, but so did the human rights groups with the best access to Facebook. As Kissane notes, Myanmar came online very quickly after the reforms, and -- unlike many countries in the Middle East or even China, because the story there was not one of authoritarian oppression, but a /release/ from authoritarian pressure, it did not fit easily into the template that tech companies were slowly learning to respond to. A few years before this, Facebook and Twitter had been shaken into some kind of recognition of their responsibilities in the Arab Spring and Iranian protests, but the result of that had been a very, shall we say, US-centric view of how repression plays out globally. Bluntly, the violent genocide of muslims by buddhists, in a country led by Nobel Peace Prize winner and defender of democracy Aung Sang Suu Shi, was a story that had to cut across many political and cultural presumptions of the US and Europe before it would be listened to. I guess that brings me to your comment about "free speech". It seems a little petty to point you to the usual put-downs about how the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" has historically been deployed to /silence/ people trying to /stop/ mass violence (because they are seen to be trouble-makers). I'll note though that the failures of Facebook and others at this time came about because people claimed to be able to moderate and provide a forum where only civil discussion and "the truth" would be discussed -- and could be swayed to stop it, if you could just get through to the right people. Many of us, both in "free speech" organizations and on-the-ground humanitarian groups, argued that this was a role that Facebook was not, and could not play: and the more it claimed it could take on this responsibility, the more terrible the consequences would be.

CrazyPyroLinux 3y ago
I'll admit I don't know anything about the situation, but the phrase "violent genocide of muslims by buddhists" was NOT something I was expecting to hear anywhere.
- dannyobrien 3y ago
  Indeed, that's part of the point here.
- v3ss0n 3y ago
  The correct Phrase would be Genocide of Rohinja by a Terrorist Military Junta. Now they are killing whole country , regardless of age , sex, reglion and skin color.
0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
>I guess that brings me to your comment about "free speech". It seems a little petty to point you to the usual put-downs about how the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" has historically been deployed to /silence/ people trying to /stop/ mass violence (because they are seen to be trouble-makers). The speech regulation problem feels fairly different depending on whether the team doing the regulation lives in the society they're trying to regulate. If you live in the society you're trying to regulate the speech of: * People in your society will attack or praise your speech regulation actions, as moves in the local political chess game. * As a member of society, you are likely to have a "dog in the fight" for a heated discussion where someone calls for speech regulation. * As a member of society, your thinking (including your thinking about what to censor) is affected by what you read, which is itself affected by what speech gets censored. There can be a feedback loop. In the US, "freedom of speech" used to be a left-wing talking point, back when the right had more cultural power. Nowadays it is a right-wing talking point, at a time when the left has more cultural power. We generally can't expect censorship mechanisms to be used in a principled way. Censorship mechanisms are powerful political tools that powerful people will fight to obtain, and they will be disproportionately wielded by the powerful. See, for example, Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. Contrast all that with the Facebook/Myanmar situation, which I suspect is more a case of criminal apathy and/or greed.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago

I read most of the article. I don't buy the premise of the author. Social media is simply amplifying what the social network things is interesting/valuable. If society thinks some nasty haetful writer is interesting, its boosting that person's content. Its not a surprise that if you had decades of junta, you also had decades of fighting , the groups wouldn't exactly be singing praises of their rivals on social media. The author never once discusses the obvious - this shouldn't be about restricting speech (which is exactly what is being advocated) , or blaming FB, it was always about the recommendation algorithm. Destroy the algorithm or disable it, and you literally have no basis for the article.

KingMob 3y ago
Why are you phrasing it like the algorithm is somehow separate from Facebook and its choices?
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  I don't like facebook, but the purpose of facebook is clear: Engage you in using facebook. Facebook was not (at least until the last decade or so) making choices on how that algorithm works. Popular content was sticky, otherwise not. In that context, i'd argue that it is enhancing whatever the social network around you pushed up. And for the social network that is part of the article, a lot of dark thoughts were part of that. There wasn't a deliberate choice on what to push up. The people chose what to push with their own clicks. In fact, I'd say the algorithm was (is?) a black box to most FB employees itself!
  - anon84873628 3y ago
    Facebook was faced with a trolly problem where they didn't pull the lever. As a result, tens of thousands of people were killed and many hundreds of thousands more were victimized and displaced. Would there still have been violence had Facebook acted? Yes, but it very clearly would have been much less. Surely anyone working at Facebook at the time who had heard these warnings now deeply regrets that they didn't act. (By the way, President Clinton said that failure to intervene in Rwanda was one of his biggest regrets. Imagine if you could simply flip a switch to disable radio broadcasts during that event-- that's the situation Facebook was in.) It doesn't matter whether they were actively promoting content or not. The idea that the tech company is innocent because technology merely amplifies what already exists in humanity... is completely ridiculous. We all understand human nature so it is easy to predict what will happen. And in this case there were many warnings ahead of time that were simply ignored.