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Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

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Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#161

Post by mtarnovan »

JepZ wrote: post #108

I think what many people don't know or understand, is that facebook is not the internet. So when you write something at facebook you ask a company to host your story under their domain. And as the company is held responsible for what they host, they have to review everything before publishing it. When we wrote forum posts back in the day, it was no different. If the forum operator didn't like what you wrote, he just…

You seem to miss two important points: facebook provides a) convenience (most people can't be expected to find a web hoster to "share their opinion with the world", especially in the age of social networks) and b) enormous reach

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#162

Post by wildmusings »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #149
wavefunction wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the cost borne by propagandists from censorship is higher than those organizing protests like those Romania appears to be facing. Censoring modern propaganda greatly limits the damage it can cause, while protestors have more traditional ways of organizing their protests. I am not a fan of censorship but it appears some fraction of credulous humanity requires it to maintain at least a tenuous grasp of reality.

Who decides what constitutes a "tenuous grasp on reality"? Is it those who said that Saddam had WMD? The ones who said that the Democratic primary wasn't rigged? The ones who said that it was ridiculous that the US government was spying on its own citizens? If the censors had their way, all of the above may very well passed into history as undisputed facts.

The ruling class decides of course. That's what all the hand-wringing over populist 'fake news' is about. The politicians, media, think tanks, and other powerful special interests are used to being the arbiters of truth, only allowing effective public debate on the narrow disagreements between them. They are as dishonest as anyone else, but have the resources and sophistication to be less crude about it. Instead of outright lies, they usually misrepresent the truth with selective emphasis, rhetorical tricks, and omitted facts and arguments. Now the internet threatens their control of information and they are trying to use their remaining power to protect their dominance before it's too late.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#163

Post by joering2 »

bad_user wrote: post #64

I'm a Romanian and I can confirm that posts and accounts have been blocked, probably because of being reported by the other side. On the other hand, folks, this is a little reminder that censorship is a doubly edged knife ;-) So next time you call for censoring "fake news", think again, because it's not you who will benefit from it. A couple of years back I was enthusiastic about the rise of social media for informin…

bad_user please use VPN in your country!

And to everyone else, Facebook had tremendous oportunity to stand their/our ground and pissed the FTC off with some sort of minute/minutes/hour blackout in terms of net neutrality. Where was Zuckerberg then??? I know when you read it online its just a news; masses won't care. Instead of your profile, if Zuck would put a black page with number to your local representative and inform it will stay for 10 minutes, imagine the outbreak - FTC president would be out of door by then. Instead Zuck did nothing. Truly despicable that was a moment to create history in the name of freedom that Zuck praise his record on. As bad user said -- Facebook IS poison.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#164

Post by confounded »

flexie wrote: post #26

I chose to believe that this is a side-effect of facebook trying to combat fake news with some lame algorithms and an understaffed department of reviewers, not facebook actively trying to please the Romanian authorities. But even so, this shows how utterly unprepared facebook is for its role as a de facto news business. A bunch of engineers thinking they are smarter than they actually are unwillingly facilitate the e…

"unwillingly" should probably be "unwittingly".

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#165

Post by confounded »

wolco wrote: post #39
mschuster91 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's no justification for putting on masks and beating up random people. Nor is it an excuse for encouraging others to do the same. The problem is, until those in powers are not afraid that their bodies will literally be dragged through the streets, they have no incentive to not do anything they need to stay in power. And the more authoritarian the rule of those in power is, the greater the desire of those no…

Violence? Drag his body down the street? Attacking innocent people until everyone does what you say? Those groups get labelled terrorist. That is the difference between a first world country and a second or third. Some people may hate trump but they also know in a few years people will have the option of voting for someone else. When you change leaders by dragging them down a street you get the types of leaders who w…

> Violence? Drag his body down the street? Attacking innocent people until everyone does what you say? Those groups get labelled terrorist.

Or, an ICE agent, police officer, border agent, private security guard, etc. etc.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#166

Post by summner »

dexen wrote: post #127
timthelion wrote: post #62

I find this especially weird given Facebook's incredibly lax approach to extreme right virulently racist posters in Eastern Europe. Like if Facebook, was censoring things that they found controversial, I'd get it, but it seems that they just censor randomly.

User from Poland here. It's quite the opposite. Facebook here is very "trigger happy" about removing posts that have even slight nationalistic flavor or cast just a shed of bad light on any minority - and most of middle eastern countries seemingly fall under that umbrella. Have seen numerous screenshots of deleted posts and user accounts suspended for days or weeks, circulated on social media as examples of Facebook'…

Miriam Shaded is not a notable speaker at conferences or universities. However, she is known for spreading hate, and anti-muslim propaganda.

She apparently re-posted threats she got on FaceBook from unidentified Muslim signed as 'Osama J'. Then Facebook took that down because it was reported as not appropriate content. Then the whole thing was spun through Polish right-wing internet to provoke outrage in its readers by showing that even half-Syrian is silenced when she tries to show how bad the Muslim (immigrants) really are.

She never followed through with raising criminal charges against the person supposedly making threats, he also wasn't identified other than the initials "Osama J".

The whole thing looked like a fabricated ploy to provoke outrage in the right wing internet.

Polish internet is sadly rife with anti-muslim propaganda, that's been spun to position the society against the EU and broadly speaking western values. You can see that for yourself if you use Google Translate and go to the frontpage of Polish version of Digg/Reddit called Wykop.pl

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#167

Post by snowpanda »

Tade0 wrote: post #142
oblio wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the Romanian government I'd be careful... Romania has a well developed IT sector (especially for a developing country) and they recently pissed off most of the geeks in the country with the new tax code. I'm also willing to bet that these people as a vast majority weren't voters for the party currently in power. And the Romanian government is far from having NSA's IT prowess (yes, I know that they botched up quite…

> and they recently pissed off most of the geeks in the country with the new tax code. Interesting, would you like share some more information on that?

My guess is that something about this got changed (2016):

https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-expands-tax-incentiv...

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#168

Post by robryk »

AnkhMorporkian wrote: post #134
mtgx wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> algorithm to detect reporting rings How the hell is this not a thing already at Facebook? Are you freaking serious, Facebook? And you want to impress us with your lame "AI"?! Reddit has had ring voting protection for years , and it only has 1/10 of Facebook's userbase. I sure hope Facebook isn't planning on developing a self-driving car software platform.

Why don't you think they have one? Let's take a second and think about how awful Facebook would be right now if they didn't have the protections they have in place already. Taking an isolated incident of community reporting taking down some posts and accounts doesn't show in any way that they don't have protections against bot rings. What if it's legitimate users who have a vendetta against the protesters? Obviously,…

I doubt that this is an isolated incident. I've directly seen a few cases when content that was unpopular with a large group was removed for ridiculously false reasons and heard of various FB groups trolling each other by getting each other banned.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#169

Post by StanislavPetrov »

wildmusings wrote: post #162
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who decides what constitutes a "tenuous grasp on reality"? Is it those who said that Saddam had WMD? The ones who said that the Democratic primary wasn't rigged? The ones who said that it was ridiculous that the US government was spying on its own citizens? If the censors had their way, all of the above may very well passed into history as undisputed facts.

The ruling class decides of course. That's what all the hand-wringing over populist 'fake news' is about. The politicians, media, think tanks, and other powerful special interests are used to being the arbiters of truth, only allowing effective public debate on the narrow disagreements between them. They are as dishonest as anyone else, but have the resources and sophistication to be less crude about it. Instead of o…

That's exactly right. The powers-that-be are absolutely terrified that they have lost control of the narrative. They have had almost total control over the "public debate" since 1917 when Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information, the first official federal propaganda arm. Ever since they have used a variety of legal and illegal (from the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 to Cointelpro) means to keep an iron grip on public discourse. With the of the internet came the (mostly) free, unfettered, uncontrolled dissemination and spread of information. While this has been of utmost concern to the ruling class for several years now, their total failure with the collapse of the Hillary Clinton campaign, which had the complete support of every establishment propaganda arm, was a real shot over the bow (that their defeat came at the hands of a corrupt, carnival barker was salt in the wounds). These attempts at censorship and information control are a last gasp to control the narrative. Unfortunately, the outcome is still very uncertain, with the power of the propaganda of the ruling classes on full display among the multitudes who welcome their calls for censorship of "fake news".

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#170

Post by Raphmedia »

JepZ wrote: post #108

I think what many people don't know or understand, is that facebook is not the internet. So when you write something at facebook you ask a company to host your story under their domain. And as the company is held responsible for what they host, they have to review everything before publishing it. When we wrote forum posts back in the day, it was no different. If the forum operator didn't like what you wrote, he just…

> I think what many people don't know or understand, is that facebook is not the internet.

Once, I had a debate online with someone. I linked them an external (non-facebook) link. Their reply was "sorry, my data-plan only covers Facebook".

That to me is very scary. This means that a lot of people like that individual are getting their online content from Facebook's trending news and nothing else.

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