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Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'

independent.co.uk

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Re: Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'

#21

Post by quuquuquu »

otakucode wrote: post #7

Who wants to advertise on top of such bummer news? Cheer up and post some family friendly content instead! Thanks, Facebook.

This is so, so true. What a surprise that this comment at the bottom of this thread.

FB's, Twitter's, and YT's new policy is "if it goes beyond E for Everyone, demonetize and or censor."

And these are supposed to be serious platforms for journalists and people who want to grapple with the realities of human life?

No, this is just Digital Disneyland, where nothing goes wrong.

Re: Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'

#22

Post by otakucode »

NTDF9 wrote: post #15
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #9

I'm kind of split on our current gray area about free speech on the web. It seems like the only way to do good moderation is if it's powered by actual people sitting behind computers and following a well-written policy. But tech companies have proven themselves totally unwilling to pay for that. I'd rather FB just said "we'll never pony up the wages necessary to moderate well so we're just going to make facebook a co…

Censorship is one of those really hard social problems. A completely open web will be inundated with spam, pornography and propaganda. A completely gated web will only serve the gatekeepers. What really solves the problem is a 3rd party gatekeeper composed of "Council of Wise People".(henceforth referred to as gatekeepers). Movie rating board is an example. This leads to the age old question, "Who will monitor the ga…

Why is it you are alive? I mean, it would be trivially easy for anyone to kill you. You have to work to keep yourself alive. Some random person walking up to you on the street and pushing a little blade into your neck is all it would take to end you. Or start your house on fire while you're asleep. Or a million other things.

But... you're alive. Laws don't stop crime, they can only punish it afterwards. Deterrence doesn't work, there are still plenty of crimes under even the most capricious regimes that hand out death penalties for the slightest infractions. So why are you alive?

Because no one is willing to kill you. They're able. They're ALL able. Every single person, young or old, you have ever met or walked past could have killed you. Every last one of them was able. But not one has been willing. Humans aren't as bad as you might be tempted to think.

Re: Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'

#23

Post by dogma1138 »

NTDF9 wrote: post #15
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #9

I'm kind of split on our current gray area about free speech on the web. It seems like the only way to do good moderation is if it's powered by actual people sitting behind computers and following a well-written policy. But tech companies have proven themselves totally unwilling to pay for that. I'd rather FB just said "we'll never pony up the wages necessary to moderate well so we're just going to make facebook a co…

Censorship is one of those really hard social problems. A completely open web will be inundated with spam, pornography and propaganda. A completely gated web will only serve the gatekeepers. What really solves the problem is a 3rd party gatekeeper composed of "Council of Wise People".(henceforth referred to as gatekeepers). Movie rating board is an example. This leads to the age old question, "Who will monitor the ga…

The web is now filled with spam, porn and propaganda...

The problem here is that Facebook seems to be choosing sides.

It worth noting that this might be propaganda to begin with and many of those so called "activists" posts could likely be violating TOS at the least if not actual laws.

What is going on in Burma is terrible but there has been a lot of violence from all factions the Buddhists didn't woke up one day and decided to commit genocide.

Like many current conflicts these aren't black and white and the only truth is that people are dying.

Re: Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'

#24

Post by wmf »

otakucode wrote: post #19
jackmott wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because so many people are horrible

That would be a problem if it wasn't trivially easy to block them. Otherwise, people being horrible really isn't your problem unless you train yourself to be very conscious of their opinions and to care deeply about them. That's the only way their opinion can get to you. Of course, that training doesn't have to be conscious and a great many people have inadvertently trained themselves to be sensitive to the opinions…

If you get hit by thousands of trolls at once it's not trivial to block them. Also, in some cases other people see the trolling about you even after you block it.

Re: Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'

#25

Post by tdb7893 »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #9

I'm kind of split on our current gray area about free speech on the web. It seems like the only way to do good moderation is if it's powered by actual people sitting behind computers and following a well-written policy. But tech companies have proven themselves totally unwilling to pay for that. I'd rather FB just said "we'll never pony up the wages necessary to moderate well so we're just going to make facebook a co…

This seems like a classic catch 22. If they go completely free speech people will complain about all the propaganda on Facebook and some countries will just block it. On the other hand if they do moderation people complain about censorship. There is no actual way for them to win here

Re: Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'

#26

Post by pjc50 »

otakucode wrote: post #19
jackmott wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because so many people are horrible

That would be a problem if it wasn't trivially easy to block them. Otherwise, people being horrible really isn't your problem unless you train yourself to be very conscious of their opinions and to care deeply about them. That's the only way their opinion can get to you. Of course, that training doesn't have to be conscious and a great many people have inadvertently trained themselves to be sensitive to the opinions…

No, if people are going to try to push goatse or other shock images into my field of vision then I'm going to assign blame to them.

Re: Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'

#27

Post by ch4s3 »

otakucode wrote: post #19
jackmott wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because so many people are horrible

That would be a problem if it wasn't trivially easy to block them. Otherwise, people being horrible really isn't your problem unless you train yourself to be very conscious of their opinions and to care deeply about them. That's the only way their opinion can get to you. Of course, that training doesn't have to be conscious and a great many people have inadvertently trained themselves to be sensitive to the opinions…

>Otherwise, people being horrible really isn't your problem unless you train yourself to be very conscious of their opinions and to care deeply about them.

I don't buy this. If an internet forum like FaceBook, Twitter, Reddit, or whatever allows increasingly toxic behavior it eventually spills into the real world. For example, unmoderated forums facilitate doxing and incitement. What happens when an online harasser posts someone's home address, work address, and childrens' schools online with a call to real world violence? Should the victim just not care? What if online trolls set about smearing your professional or personal reputation? What if they decide to out you as gay to your parents or in a country where being gay is illegal?

And don't tell me you can simply avoid going online, that isn't practical. Its precisely places like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc where marginalized people can find a supportive community. Also the internet should be for everyone, not just the most horrible, hard, and callous among us.

Re: Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'

#28

Post by pavlov »

nkoren wrote: post #14
sergiotapia wrote: post #3

Interesting, here's a first-hand account of what's happening: https://streamable.com/zota1

Watched for a few minutes. "Muslims are like African Carp. They breed rapidly [... yadda yadda yadda ...] Our entire race has been suffering under the burden of this minority..." That's grade-A genocidal rhetoric he's deploying. Good for observing that evil can wear any kind of face. Not good for much else.

That quote sounds like the average Breitbart comment, actually.

Re: Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'

#29

Post by NTDF9 »

otakucode wrote: post #22
NTDF9 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Censorship is one of those really hard social problems. A completely open web will be inundated with spam, pornography and propaganda. A completely gated web will only serve the gatekeepers. What really solves the problem is a 3rd party gatekeeper composed of "Council of Wise People".(henceforth referred to as gatekeepers). Movie rating board is an example. This leads to the age old question, "Who will monitor the ga…

Why is it you are alive? I mean, it would be trivially easy for anyone to kill you. You have to work to keep yourself alive. Some random person walking up to you on the street and pushing a little blade into your neck is all it would take to end you. Or start your house on fire while you're asleep. Or a million other things. But... you're alive. Laws don't stop crime, they can only punish it afterwards. Deterrence do…

Killing other humans. It's not necessary in an abundant society. In a mismanaged/unequal/resource crunched society, like Somalia, it happens routinely.

You give far too much credit to humans following the rule of law. There's a fine balance between humans using their abilities for their own desires.

Re: Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'

#30

Post by yorwba »

otakucode wrote: post #19
jackmott wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because so many people are horrible

That would be a problem if it wasn't trivially easy to block them. Otherwise, people being horrible really isn't your problem unless you train yourself to be very conscious of their opinions and to care deeply about them. That's the only way their opinion can get to you. Of course, that training doesn't have to be conscious and a great many people have inadvertently trained themselves to be sensitive to the opinions…

Each individual sock-puppet may be easy to block, but in aggregate they can overwhelm any attempts to constrain them individually. If you instead employ a whitelist, you miss out on conversations with people who tried to contact you but couldn't get through because you had no way to distinguish them from trolls.

Offloading contact curation on each individual user doesn't solve the fundamental problem of identifying malicious users, it shoves it where someone else has to deal with it.

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