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Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

foreignpolicy.com

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Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#121

Post by narrator »

beautifulfreak wrote: post #49

>Facebook can no longer deny its moral responsibility to try to understand how cyberspace, law, and politics collide in each of the countries where it operates, nor its responsibility to do something about it. That sentence doesn't make sense. Do something about what? How those things collide? It's very unclear what the author thinks Facebook is supposed to do, or what he thinks Facebook is actually responsible for.…

It makes more sense when it is acknowledged that "Foreign Policy" is the official magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations, a group of people who are used to running the world.

The CFR's main concern is that Facebook allows non-traditional actors, mainly not them or organizations which they do not have control over, to have some influence on the narrative that explains world events to the public at large in each particular country. They consider this an undesirable state of affairs. Thus, Facebook should, in their opinion, work to alter its policies to maintain and even amplify the dominance with regards to narrative setting that the traditional media has given to the traditional narrative authors, which are composed of CFR members and their proxies.

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#122

Post by walterstucco »

saas_co_de wrote: post #65
beautifulfreak wrote: post #49

>Facebook can no longer deny its moral responsibility to try to understand how cyberspace, law, and politics collide in each of the countries where it operates, nor its responsibility to do something about it. That sentence doesn't make sense. Do something about what? How those things collide? It's very unclear what the author thinks Facebook is supposed to do, or what he thinks Facebook is actually responsible for.…

Yes, it is interesting that the author sees no place in the modern world for the kind of free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. They are happy with a giant global monopolist controlling all speech, as long as they use that power to enforce their political agenda. That is an incredibly dangerous mindset and one that seems to be becoming more pervasive in respectable circles.

> no place in the modern world for the kind of free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution

- US is not the only free country in the world, what applies to US might not be desirable in other countries - have you ever considered it? -

- US free speech is not a novelty, you can find the same amount of freedom across many western countries and in many of them people are more free than in the US (think about the freedom to join a communist party, apparently freedom of speech in US means you can be a nazi but not a socialist)

- the very dangerous mindset is thinking that everybody should bow to the principles of the US constitution, written by the same people that thought it was a good idea to let anyone own hundreds of guns in their homes

That mindset brought us the last US rigged elections -and possibly in other countries now - just because nobody in the US told Facebook "you can't be that big, it's too dangerous"

You're so obsessed with freedom of speech that you have lost the ability to see that the freedom of a private actor, collecting an outrageous of private user's data, is less important than the right of the public to be protected by abusive behaviour.

Such has hate speech.

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#123

Post by jondubois »

matte_black wrote: post #91
jondubois wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government should take possession of all Facebook shares and use the profits to fund universal basic income. I don't think anyone would complain... Except a tiny percent of the population who owned Facebook shares but who cares, they're evil/morally bankrupt anyway.

You realize for them to make any profit off of “shares” they’d have to sell them back to someone willing to buy them... That’s aside from the fact that whole idea is ridiculous to begin with.

The government would own the shares and make money from the dividends. Why is it ridiculous?

The government of many countries have taken possession of many companies and land titles in the past for the benefit of society.

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#124

Post by davnicwil »

jorvi wrote: post #56
FreakyT wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvotes on HN/Reddit do essentially the same thing. I don't have the user statistics, but I'd imagine the typical HN reader only reads a sampling of the top-voted comments, which essentially allows them "to see how others feel about a post/article in an instant." If you want an example of the opposite approach, you can always look at 2009-era YouTube, when all comments shown were in a strict "newest" order. If you re…

What I've noticed a lot on sites like HN and Reddit is that there's always heavy 'tilting'. If any comment ever drops below +1 (or below that of a different viewpoint, so +10 vs +1), people just blindly start ramming the downvote button without any thought, as if they aren't capable of analyzing the comment on its own merit because 'the crowd' has already decided for them and they take the path of least resistance in…

For what it's worth, I always upvote downvoted comments when they are contributing something novel to the thread and/or taking a position which is explained and justified, and of course are civil. Even when I wouldn't have otherwise upvoted them, or when I don't agree with them.

That's just to help get them back to neutral, and avoid their point being grayed out and thus probably more likely skipped over by others. I think everyone should be allowed to put across their point, and we all end up better for seeing those different angles.

I quietly hope that others who agree with this also do the same, thus making the problem you describe a little less pronounced. We all need to play our role in creating the kinds of online communities we want to see.

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#125

Post by ComodoHacker »

BurritoAlPastor wrote: post #100
saas_co_de wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is interesting that the author sees no place in the modern world for the kind of free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. They are happy with a giant global monopolist controlling all speech, as long as they use that power to enforce their political agenda. That is an incredibly dangerous mindset and one that seems to be becoming more pervasive in respectable circles.

The Constitutional guarantee of free speech mandates the behavior of the government to not interfere with the rights of private actors . When a private actor (such as Facebook) chooses to publish or suppress content from a third party, that is a voluntary exercise of Constitutionally protected speech . Social media services have neither a moral nor legal obligation to publish hate speech.

When people's lives depend on your actions and policies, you have some moral obligations no matter who you are - a government, a corporation or just an abusive lone parent.

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#126

Post by ThomPete »

ethbro wrote: post #55
ThomPete wrote: post #50

I am still unconvinced Facebook played any role in the outcome of the 2016 election. It played a role in the the form of the discussion but the actual outcome it didn't. Most people vote based on some very personal and everyday issues. Things they experience in their lives not discussions on facebook no matter how many times they like it.

> Most people vote based on some very personal and everyday issues. Things they experience in their lives not discussions on facebook [...] I'd say exactly the opposite. The politically empassioned folks I meet lately (on both sides) are always quicker to talk about a meme than a concrete issue. E.g. Koch brothers, Shariah Law

So arent you saying the same as me?

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#127

Post by Zafira »

narrator wrote: post #121
beautifulfreak wrote: post #49

>Facebook can no longer deny its moral responsibility to try to understand how cyberspace, law, and politics collide in each of the countries where it operates, nor its responsibility to do something about it. That sentence doesn't make sense. Do something about what? How those things collide? It's very unclear what the author thinks Facebook is supposed to do, or what he thinks Facebook is actually responsible for.…

It makes more sense when it is acknowledged that "Foreign Policy" is the official magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations, a group of people who are used to running the world. The CFR's main concern is that Facebook allows non-traditional actors, mainly not them or organizations which they do not have control over, to have some influence on the narrative that explains world events to the public at large in each…

> It makes more sense when it is acknowledged that "Foreign Policy" is the official magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations, a group of people who are used to running the world.

You're thinking of "Foreign Affairs".

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#128

Post by grzm »

chroem- wrote: post #118
grzm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Populism stresses a distinction between "the common man" and "the elite", while democracy doesn't have this connotation.

But why would the difference between populism/democracy even be a useful distinction to make if both served the interests of "the commom man" equally?

One measure of a functioning democracy is how it approaches compromise between differing opinions and respecting the rights of those who don't agree with you. Actively pitting one group against another works against this. It can easily lead to what's known as the tyranny of the majority: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#129

Post by tim333 »

beautifulfreak wrote: post #49

>Facebook can no longer deny its moral responsibility to try to understand how cyberspace, law, and politics collide in each of the countries where it operates, nor its responsibility to do something about it. That sentence doesn't make sense. Do something about what? How those things collide? It's very unclear what the author thinks Facebook is supposed to do, or what he thinks Facebook is actually responsible for.…

Yeah the article is a bit vague. But the stuff happening in Myanmar eg ‘They Threw My Baby Into a Fire’ [1] helped along by facebook giving platform to people like Wirathu's "Muslims are dogs" type stuff [2] is horrible. Facebook could at least tune their algorithms for more sharing of let's be tolerant and less of let's kill all the outsiders type posts.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/world/asia/rohingya-myanm... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/world/asia/myanmar-govern...

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#130

Post by ethbro »

ThomPete wrote: post #126
ethbro wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people vote based on some very personal and everyday issues. Things they experience in their lives not discussions on facebook [...] I'd say exactly the opposite. The politically empassioned folks I meet lately (on both sides) are always quicker to talk about a meme than a concrete issue. E.g. Koch brothers, Shariah Law

So arent you saying the same as me?

I'd say that's the opposite.

The borderline conspiracy theories that seem popular are pretty different than "the garbage needs to be picked up on time" locally important issues that I thought you were talking about.

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