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Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

nytimes.com

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Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#221

Post by codyb »

raxxorrax wrote: post #180
qrbLPHiKpiux wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media takes anyone’s message right to the bottom - the end user - with no editorial gatekeeper. Today’s problems with tech aren’t tech. They’re all human problems. People forgot and don’t know how to sort through bullshit. If people really rely on Facebook to form opinions, then go vote, America, we have a problem.

An editor is certainly neither required nor wanted. If you like that, then please read established newspapers and let people have their fun.

I feel like “having their fun” is a bit of a disingenuous means of describing discourse touching billions of people which has resulted in several awful real world situations such as measles outbreaks, discrimination, negative self worth, and even murder around the globe.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#222

Post by codyb »

_cs2017_ wrote: post #211
MarkMc wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My preferred solution is for Facebook to assess whether a video is presented as accurate but has been altered with intent to deceive. If so, it is tagged "This video has been flagged as deceptive. Click here for details". Yes, from time to time I might disagree with Facebook about the accuracy or intent of a video, but it would be an improvement on the status quo.

Then what would prevent people whose videos were banned from suing Facebook because Facebook didn't get their intent correctly? And similarly, people appearing in videos that aren't banned could sue because Facebook didn't see the evil intent. Such lawsuits can be numerous and costly enough to kill the entire concept of hosting user uploaded videos. How to avoid this? Maybe it's better to drop the intent thing and ju…

I’m pretty certain Facebook’s terms of use would rule that out and probably already has a clause about how Facebook can use, share, or remove your content without your express consent at any time already.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#223

Post by codyb »

chillacy wrote: post #202
hirundo wrote: post #28

A partial distributed solution would be for trusted sites to vouch for a hash of the video file, and the browser to be configured to flag or filter untrusted content. E.g. NYT, the DNC, Pelosi's own site, etc., would flag a hash of a file as valid. Those sites would be aggregated into a web of trust. Users subscribe to nodes of that web, e.g. I trust reporter A, celebrity B, newspaper C, advocacy group D ... and thei…

I’ve thought of it but it doesn’t allow news sites to remix the content into edits. Maybe if you did some sort of content based hashing which is sensitive to playback speed and pitch but not added compression or cropping?

It’d be interesting if there was a feature which would let you generate hashes from time series. You could specify what second or millisecond and duration and the trust web could provide the hashes for those segments.

Memoization might help although if it’s to the millisecond maybe not.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#224

Post by codyb »

gopher2 wrote: post #64

So, what's the normative suggestion here? All content on user-generated websites should be moderated for truth and anything edited, editorialized, fictional, or not strictly representing reality should be removed? Or is the idea that only when there is enough public pressure to take down a particularly popular and deceptive video ... then it should be removed? It seems sort of ridiculous that we should engage in acro…

Maybe there should be a threshold such that things seen by a million or more people could could be flagged for a moderator to take note of and tag with certain contextual clues for the next however many viewers (“satire”, “unproven”, “doctored”, “verified”, “trustworthy source”).

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#225

Post by mindslight »

mises wrote: post #219
mindslight wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite amazing how the purported "free market" viewpoint has an unwavering faith in companies for getting things right, except for when imagining having to comply with any sort of mandate. A good faith interpretation of interoperability is that any service simply has to publish an equivalent API that allows interacting with "its" users in the service's own data model/paradigm. The market of competitors will then…

> "free market" Why the "scare quotes"? I know you weren't quoting me since I didn't use those words. I don't trust a free market to get everything perfectly right. I simply trust a government even less and believe they will screw it up even more.

Are any quotes considered "scare" quotes these days? I used quotes because the philosophy is often referred to as such, but it generally gains legs only when it can be used to undermine market competition.

I describe myself as libertarian, and if you want to make the argument that regulation will be transmuted by the incumbents to calcify their own positions, I'm right there with you. But it's wholly disingenuous to assert that services could only be obtusely constrained to the lowest common denominator, rather than considering a sensible system of interoperability that would align incentives properly. Putting it in libertarian terms - instituting a demarcation point such that users' electronic data and identities actually belong to the users.

Personally I think the real answer is that we need to self actualize and move away from these surveillance companies, period. And in that context yes it is a worry that regulations could be applied to harass down Free software. But given that we're staring down a much worse censorship regime, from both de jure and de facto governments (eg payment processors), I think we're likely to end up needing to avoid packet censorship anyway. A few additional business-consumer regulations aren't going to appreciably worsen that burden.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#226

Post by trickstra »

sgt101 wrote: post #112
amelius wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people clearly want to see what's popular in their own bubble. Facebook just gives people what they want.

Like heroin dealers? Because people want it doesn't mean that it can be part of a stable society.

At this point, deciding what is or isn't part of a stable society, is just anyone's opinion. We don't have that much science describing which types of information are making society stable or not, we can't even tell those types apart and we don't have any science showing that living under censorship is better for society. So comparing the popularity of fake news with heroin is a stretch.

Why are we focusing on the platform anyway? We know who doctored the video, we know who published it to facebook... why are we not punishing the real origin?

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#227

Post by plugger »

ng12 wrote: post #86
plugger wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because it's comedy. If people are getting what they consider "news" from late night comedy they don't understand the purpose of the show. I'd say the same thing about the Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, etc. They're not news, they're comedy shows that focus on current events. The larger elephant in the room are the news network opinion shows like Hannity and Carlson. These shows open with something to the effect…

Why do we expect people to make this distinction for TV but not for things they read on the internet?

I don't. I expect to make this distinction no matter where I consume media. If anything the Internet is even worse though as the lines are much less well defined.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#228

Post by raxxorrax »

codyb wrote: post #221
raxxorrax wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An editor is certainly neither required nor wanted. If you like that, then please read established newspapers and let people have their fun.

I feel like “having their fun” is a bit of a disingenuous means of describing discourse touching billions of people which has resulted in several awful real world situations such as measles outbreaks, discrimination, negative self worth, and even murder around the globe.

I don't really see any relation that would conclude lacking content control as the root cause of these randomly selected issues.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#229

Post by mises »

mindslight wrote: post #225
mises wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "free market" Why the "scare quotes"? I know you weren't quoting me since I didn't use those words. I don't trust a free market to get everything perfectly right. I simply trust a government even less and believe they will screw it up even more.

Are any quotes considered "scare" quotes these days? I used quotes because the philosophy is often referred to as such, but it generally gains legs only when it can be used to undermine market competition . I describe myself as libertarian, and if you want to make the argument that regulation will be transmuted by the incumbents to calcify their own positions, I'm right there with you. But it's wholly disingenuous to…

Having government step in to fix things runs contrary to libertarianism. Firstly, whether "your data" is yours I would dispute. At most, it's produced by interactions between you and a company's software or server, so you own no more than half. You exchange that for free services. You also brought up two entirely different points: making services interoperable and making data produced by users belong to users. I addressed the data one, so next is interoperability.

I would say that indeed, we will end up with the lowest common denominator of services, because the services are all different. Also, have you thought about how giving all these companies more access to data would impact the whole problem? Regardless, my argument is more that I see no clause in the Constitution that justifies such an action, and certainly see no justification in morality.

Lastly, why are you writing in such a manner? It's clear you're trying to sound smart, but it just comes across as pompous. Just make good points. There's enough jargon on this site without people deliberately adding more. Also, a "demarcation point" does not convey what I think you wanted to ("law"). Furthermore, you cannot "harrass down" anything; that's bad English. Based on a quoted search, it looks like a piece of jargon specific to League of Ledgends gamers. I wouldn't pick on such things but for the insufferable tone. You've got some nice phrases, they're just in the wrong sentences.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#230

Post by mindslight »

mises wrote: post #229
mindslight wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are any quotes considered "scare" quotes these days? I used quotes because the philosophy is often referred to as such, but it generally gains legs only when it can be used to undermine market competition . I describe myself as libertarian, and if you want to make the argument that regulation will be transmuted by the incumbents to calcify their own positions, I'm right there with you. But it's wholly disingenuous to…

Having government step in to fix things runs contrary to libertarianism. Firstly, whether "your data" is yours I would dispute. At most, it's produced by interactions between you and a company's software or server, so you own no more than half. You exchange that for free services. You also brought up two entirely different points: making services interoperable and making data produced by users belong to users. I addr…

Maybe I'm the output of machine learning, just mushing together popular online phrases. Or maybe I was just a tired human when I wrote that. "harass down" was merely a bad edit - it was "shut down", then I thought "harass" worked better. Sorry.

Responding substantively, the difference between a "government" and a corporation to which everybody has involuntarily contracted is in name only. In fact, much of the government overreach in the US isn't based on pure mandate, but rather justified by needing to "opt in" in some way - eg license plates are justified with the fiction that you're choosing to drive on government-administered roads.

We don't say that just because you have the choice to move out of state, individual states are libertarian-justified in making whatever laws they'd like. "Migrating" between online services today feels akin to the friction of moving between states - moving away from your social circle. And similar to how the states generally follow national leads, major online services have begin acting in concert like this current censorship push.

As I acknowledged, the productive libertarian answer is to seek to change the conditions that give rise to unnecessary power structures in the first place. But when addressing the situation as it stands, giving corporate power a pass is ultimately just deprecating individual freedom. This sector's companies are in the process of mingling with governments regardless (government gives regulatory capture, companies give enforcement legibility), whether or not the interests of the Individual are represented.

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