8 ms·

Former Facebook Employees: "We Were Jawboned. Repeatedly. Routinely."

33 points by pr337h4m 3y ago

anigbrowl 3y ago
Facebook shifted its approach to free expression in response, vacillating between vigorously defending online speech and more aggressively policing content on the platform No sale. Long before the 2016 election FB would 'jail' users for posting pictures of statues in museums for violating its 'no nudity' policy. Zuck was fond of saying how if FB was a country it would have the largest population on earth. Guess what, that exposes them to diplomatic lobbying, which is how most things get done between polities.
- synctext 3y ago
  > vigorously defending online speech and more aggressively policing content on the platform It goes beyond content moderation. Please remember the root cause of failure: fraudulent bots to push lies. More fake humans exist on Facebook than real. 12.3 billion fake Facebook profiles have been removed in two years (2021-2022). See statistics from quaterly Facebook reports [1]. That puts the "largest population on earth" Zuck quotes in another light. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1013474/facebook-fake-account-removal-quarter/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1013474/facebook-fake-ac...
  - specproc 3y ago
    And my account is literally because login-walls on businesses and services. Does this make me an occasional tourist or business traveller? Not part of the population for sure.
jruohonen 3y ago
So they discuss some solutions. Among these is: "Governments and companies should have open lines of communication on difficult issues." Sure, but you're forgetting the public; they should also have access to this communication (or at least most of it).
- autoexec 3y ago
  I'd agree. Once government gets involved it should be a matter of public record.
kubanczyk 3y ago
> Jawboning: informal government efforts to persuade, cajole, or strong-arm private platforms to change their content-moderation policies.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- drewcoo 3y ago
  I had to look the definition up, too. I still can't understand "implicit jawboning," though. That seems oxymoronic.
- D13Fd 3y ago
  This article is kind of obnoxious in how it assumes reader knowledge about this term and that the term is well known.
  - gnabgib 3y ago
    It's defined twice in the article (the italic setup at the top, and footnote 1) - GP seems to by literally quoting (it's the same phrasing as the articles'). The article, however, does seem to be trying to redefine the meaning (Cambridge: "to talk to someone, especially to try to persuade them to do something", Merriam-Webster: "to speak forcefully and persuasively (to)")
harry8 3y ago
> In a meeting with a government official, he or she might push for an outcome on one particular issue. If we declined or demurred, the official might threaten to punish the company in another way. That seems like a claim of a very clear first amendment violation. Doesn't it? Those describing Taibbi's reporting on twitter documents involving govt. officials doing just this sort of thing as a "nothingburger" look increasingly craven.
- Ygg2 3y ago
  It's nothingburger because America doesn't have a democracy. It has an oligarchy with two sports teams for the masses.
  - wyunodisilusion 3y ago
    Thank you, Hasanabibi-Swan. Please understand, democracy is still in the making. In order for a democracy to work, enough people need to get on a basic level of education, which schools have been succesfully striving and working towards. The oligarchy stays wealthy and in power by certain means. People like Zuckerberg and Chan, the Google sisters, Eric Schmidt, Gates, Altman and his crew believe they and their likes should be the new oligarchy because they are younger, smarter, know PHP and HTML and can write scripts in Python. And they are perfectly aware of the fact that all their money on Wall Street will keep the prevailing Power Structures in place. There never was a New World Order. There never will be. Democracy and the sharade of jawboning and similar practices are nothing but talking points of people who like to feel superior. Communism and socialism didn't get to evolve. Capitalism got to rot away. They experiment on and study societies, communities, individuals for soon to be a century and the only thing that keeps whole nations below potential is oligarchies. But that's incredibly important because a) you need to keep as many psychopaths in check as you can and let them run wild from to time to time in a controlled manner and b) because most people, despite higher education, can not think. They believe in what they hear on the news, they believe journalists, they believe politicians, despite proof of the opposite, which is why schools and unis strive so damn succesfully to get as many people on their level as possible. Soviet schools did the same. So did the socialists in Germany. There's enough to do for everybody and enough resources and ways to get them. The only thing leadership (and the the top few %) CAN do better, is to finally pay out the working class the dividents they have earned, which they will use to improve everything. The reason they won't do that is that they reeducated the people using marketing and hollywood to the point where there is no credible evidence that the people will improve anything at all but instead just consume more, without increasing productivity and constructivity. And there is no need for that at all because the people are happy enough with their amounts of consumption as they are. Those who can and will improve any environmemt can find ways to get what they need and want to increase their productive and constructive contributions. Except for the exceptions, of course, those who need the right tools before they can get shit done properly, but expansion of surveillance in combo with AI is a talent scouting tool already in the making, isn't it?
vardump 3y ago
I don't hold any sympathies for Meta/Facebook, but seriously: former disgruntled employees are always going to exaggerate negative aspects about their former employer, no matter what company we're talking about. Maybe it's interesting and can tell us something, but it's not going to be objective and sometimes not even true. Edit: Consider this message deleted. I left the original content intact. The point still stands, even if it doesn't apply to this article.
- darkwater 3y ago
  > I don't hold any sympathies for Meta/Facebook, but seriously: former disgruntled employees are always going to exaggerate negative things about their former employee, no matter what company we're talking about. Ahem, the article is about Governments "harassing" FB employees to get changes in how FB worked wrt content moderation.
  - vardump 3y ago
    Sorry, you're right! I'd delete grandparent, but can no longer do so.
    - gala8y 3y ago
      Yeah, ALSTFA... At Least Skim the ... Article.
onewheeltom 3y ago
Didn’t stop the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar

33 points by pr337h4m 3y ago

Facebook shifted its approach to free expression in response, vacillating between vigorously defending online speech and more aggressively policing content on the platform No sale. Long before the 2016 election FB would 'jail' users for posting pictures of statues in museums for violating its 'no nudity' policy. Zuck was fond of saying how if FB was a country it would have the largest population on earth. Guess what, that exposes them to diplomatic lobbying, which is how most things get done between polities.

synctext 3y ago
> vigorously defending online speech and more aggressively policing content on the platform It goes beyond content moderation. Please remember the root cause of failure: fraudulent bots to push lies. More fake humans exist on Facebook than real. 12.3 billion fake Facebook profiles have been removed in two years (2021-2022). See statistics from quaterly Facebook reports [1]. That puts the "largest population on earth" Zuck quotes in another light. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1013474/facebook-fake-account-removal-quarter/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1013474/facebook-fake-ac...
- specproc 3y ago
  And my account is literally because login-walls on businesses and services. Does this make me an occasional tourist or business traveller? Not part of the population for sure.

jruohonen 3y ago

So they discuss some solutions. Among these is: "Governments and companies should have open lines of communication on difficult issues." Sure, but you're forgetting the public; they should also have access to this communication (or at least most of it).

autoexec 3y ago
I'd agree. Once government gets involved it should be a matter of public record.

kubanczyk 3y ago

> Jawboning: informal government efforts to persuade, cajole, or strong-arm private platforms to change their content-moderation policies.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
drewcoo 3y ago
I had to look the definition up, too. I still can't understand "implicit jawboning," though. That seems oxymoronic.
D13Fd 3y ago
This article is kind of obnoxious in how it assumes reader knowledge about this term and that the term is well known.
- gnabgib 3y ago
  It's defined twice in the article (the italic setup at the top, and footnote 1) - GP seems to by literally quoting (it's the same phrasing as the articles'). The article, however, does seem to be trying to redefine the meaning (Cambridge: "to talk to someone, especially to try to persuade them to do something", Merriam-Webster: "to speak forcefully and persuasively (to)")

harry8 3y ago

> In a meeting with a government official, he or she might push for an outcome on one particular issue. If we declined or demurred, the official might threaten to punish the company in another way. That seems like a claim of a very clear first amendment violation. Doesn't it? Those describing Taibbi's reporting on twitter documents involving govt. officials doing just this sort of thing as a "nothingburger" look increasingly craven.

Ygg2 3y ago
It's nothingburger because America doesn't have a democracy. It has an oligarchy with two sports teams for the masses.
- wyunodisilusion 3y ago
  Thank you, Hasanabibi-Swan. Please understand, democracy is still in the making. In order for a democracy to work, enough people need to get on a basic level of education, which schools have been succesfully striving and working towards. The oligarchy stays wealthy and in power by certain means. People like Zuckerberg and Chan, the Google sisters, Eric Schmidt, Gates, Altman and his crew believe they and their likes should be the new oligarchy because they are younger, smarter, know PHP and HTML and can write scripts in Python. And they are perfectly aware of the fact that all their money on Wall Street will keep the prevailing Power Structures in place. There never was a New World Order. There never will be. Democracy and the sharade of jawboning and similar practices are nothing but talking points of people who like to feel superior. Communism and socialism didn't get to evolve. Capitalism got to rot away. They experiment on and study societies, communities, individuals for soon to be a century and the only thing that keeps whole nations below potential is oligarchies. But that's incredibly important because a) you need to keep as many psychopaths in check as you can and let them run wild from to time to time in a controlled manner and b) because most people, despite higher education, can not think. They believe in what they hear on the news, they believe journalists, they believe politicians, despite proof of the opposite, which is why schools and unis strive so damn succesfully to get as many people on their level as possible. Soviet schools did the same. So did the socialists in Germany. There's enough to do for everybody and enough resources and ways to get them. The only thing leadership (and the the top few %) CAN do better, is to finally pay out the working class the dividents they have earned, which they will use to improve everything. The reason they won't do that is that they reeducated the people using marketing and hollywood to the point where there is no credible evidence that the people will improve anything at all but instead just consume more, without increasing productivity and constructivity. And there is no need for that at all because the people are happy enough with their amounts of consumption as they are. Those who can and will improve any environmemt can find ways to get what they need and want to increase their productive and constructive contributions. Except for the exceptions, of course, those who need the right tools before they can get shit done properly, but expansion of surveillance in combo with AI is a talent scouting tool already in the making, isn't it?

vardump 3y ago

I don't hold any sympathies for Meta/Facebook, but seriously: former disgruntled employees are always going to exaggerate negative aspects about their former employer, no matter what company we're talking about. Maybe it's interesting and can tell us something, but it's not going to be objective and sometimes not even true. Edit: Consider this message deleted. I left the original content intact. The point still stands, even if it doesn't apply to this article.

darkwater 3y ago
> I don't hold any sympathies for Meta/Facebook, but seriously: former disgruntled employees are always going to exaggerate negative things about their former employee, no matter what company we're talking about. Ahem, the article is about Governments "harassing" FB employees to get changes in how FB worked wrt content moderation.
- vardump 3y ago
  Sorry, you're right! I'd delete grandparent, but can no longer do so.
  - gala8y 3y ago
    Yeah, ALSTFA... At Least Skim the ... Article.

onewheeltom 3y ago

Didn’t stop the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar