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Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

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41–50 of 158 posts

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#41
post #23

Hey I am a Facebook employee and I am really confused by all the comments here. Really feels like a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation. Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative? Not saying there isn't one, I am just not seeing one being proposed.

How about an independent third party (outside the company) that has a binding contract with Facebook? This third party could handle other social media sites as well that choose to opt in.

Personally, I'd rather just see Facebook stop being such a huge force in the market and instead move toward a decentralized model like Mastodon with ActivityPub, but there's no way Facebook is going to go that voluntarily, nor is there any reason that they should.

So, at the very least, they could make this organization completely outside of Facebook's oversight, kind of like how the ESRB works. Maybe this is their end goal, idk, but if they choose to retain control, people are always going to be skeptical.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#42
post #23

Hey I am a Facebook employee and I am really confused by all the comments here. Really feels like a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation. Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative? Not saying there isn't one, I am just not seeing one being proposed.

If this is to be serious, there needs to be absolute transparency about how it is independent.

As it stands, there is zero evidence of this. If Zuck is displeased with it, then he can just not contribute more once the initial money is used.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#43
post #23

Hey I am a Facebook employee and I am really confused by all the comments here. Really feels like a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation. Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative? Not saying there isn't one, I am just not seeing one being proposed.

How about facebook spends some money fighting for a better government. Right now the billionares and corporations are running stingy charities where they decide how the money is spent and how much money is spent and this mostly in their self interest. It would be more in the public interest if facebook and corporations just handed over their fair share of taxes and got out of the way of the government. They should also respect the laws and regulations in other countries where they do business. Quite frankly, in my country of Canada, we have regulations on news in order to keep them honest (no fox news bullshit here!). But facebook is increasingly become a news outlet and so it must start to be treated like one.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#44
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right-wing has been claiming anti-conservative bias in big tech for a while now. Banning political ads, even if done across the board, would be likely to ramp that up dramatically. https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/6/20756734/trump-google-anti... For example: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/republicans-criticize-goog... > President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and other Republican election groups criticized…

[flagged]

Said right-wing currently controls the Senate, the White House, is appointing large numbers of Federal judges, etc.

It's not shocking for Facebook to want to avoid worsening relations with people holding significant power to regulate them. No one really wants to be the subject of a Trump tweetstorm, either.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#46
post #23

Hey I am a Facebook employee and I am really confused by all the comments here. Really feels like a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation. Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative? Not saying there isn't one, I am just not seeing one being proposed.

If I have friends or groups on facebook, I want to see what they put up. If I don't like what they put up to the point that it really bothers me, they won't remain my friends or groups.

You're policing speech. It hasn't historically worked well.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#47
Hrm. I'm curious how this "Supreme Court" will interact with Facebook's cadre of paid content moderators and if that "Supreme Court" will be/will have the power to advocate for that group of workers--or if this is strictly going to be a single-serving organism in the company.

I'd certainly be less incredulous about this move were there answers to these inquiries.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#48

Far better* than the alternative, a transparent process to decide what is acceptable content on social media that is managed by the government, you know, democratically. At least this way Facebook owns the process from the get go, it’s the purest form of ‘regulatory capture’. Just imagine if technology companies had to adhere to publishing standard like broadcasters and journalists do, because of regulations. All tha…

In the United States of America we already have something like this, it’s called the 1st Amendment in the Constitution. Since Facebook enjoys the privilege of being classified as a “public square”, they do not have the legal right to censor content at all, unless the content is illegal (threats, etc.). This is not currently being enforced.

Imagine being so oppressed that your ego feels the need to down-vote this comment :(

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#49
I am not picking on FB here. I find it interesting humans created this network. It has some benefits and plenty of issues due to its business model. There is strength in the network but the network could succumb to a loss of participants and thus lose its power. Why are we not advocating for folks to simply leave the network? I know I am removing lots of the gray areas, but I am genuinely curious. Is there really no other group of builders that can provide the market with a FB alternative? I keep reminding myself that at one point in time AOL felt like the only access point to the internet that mattered...

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#50
post #23

Hey I am a Facebook employee and I am really confused by all the comments here. Really feels like a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation. Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative? Not saying there isn't one, I am just not seeing one being proposed.

Yes. Realize that FB is the defacto platform for social discussion and realize that discussion at this scale is the singular path towards cohesive integration of multi-culture societies. Stop policing speech/thoughts/ideas/communication. Nobody has asked facebook to be the arbiter of social-morality. You at facebook are creating an echo chamber and driving dissenting voices away because they dont adhere to the 'woke'…

You're denying the existence of a problem, not offering a solution. Implicitly, this says that you don't value the opinions of people who very strongly believe that there is a problem. It's not a great place to argue from.
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