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Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

reuters.com

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#361

Post by hkai »

koheripbal wrote: post #352
hkai wrote: post #264

It seems a lot of people are advocating two things: - Western social media companies are evil; and - Freedom of speech is bad. You may very well get rid of Facebook and freedom of speech, but I would like to just remind to all of you folks in the West that when you only have Chinese social media companies and no freedom of speech, there will be thousands of cases MUCH worse than George Floyd and you won't even be all…

It's almost unbelievable that people are suggesting we take the power away from elected officials and hand it over to corporations. It's like the sky isn't even blue anymore...

There is a fake Lincoln quote that, even though it's fake, aged surprisingly well in the last 140 years that it has been circulated:

> "Corporations have been enthroned.

> An era of corruption will follow and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed."

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#362

Post by yc_theorist »

I have a theory on this.

I think the next leg of the downturn will start once people actually figure out that the economy has been completed hollowed out all the money printing. At that point, of all the tech giants, Facebook is the most likely to collapse because their only moat is to collect even more of your data or acquire companies who do the same. Given that their "moonshot" cryptocurrency project was (thankfully) basically dead on arrival, they now don't have nearly as many tentacles into our lives as the other tech giants.

Now, imagine being the only social network where the President of the USA is allowed to write whatever he wants. That's a sure-shot bailout package isn't it?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#363

Post by dominotw »

chrisseaton wrote: post #348
dominotw wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they won't be able to get another job? this doesn't apply almost any engineer working at facebook. Everyone was hiring before corona hit.

Just because you managed to get a job at Facebook in the past doesn't necessarily mean you can get a job anywhere else now. Tech interviews are very fickle. If people studied for a Facebook interview but don't have the time to do that now due to something like caring for someone then they could be in trouble.

I am not saying its guaranteed that they will find a job but tech unemployment was at all time low and even a mediocre engineer could find a job before corona pretty easily.

If they are so unqualified to find a tech job in boom season then there were plenty of jobs outside tech too.

I don't agree that most of these engineers would never be able to find another job if they quit fb. Maybe a tiny % of protestor, sure.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#364

Post by drewrv »

scohesc wrote: post #319
ggggtez wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In 1967, Miami police Chief Walter Headley used the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" during hearings about crime in the Florida city, invoking angry reactions from civil rights leaders, according to a news report at the time. > Segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace also used the phrase during the 1968 campaign. While you might like to believe that the phrase could mean anything ,…

Yes, because never before have those words (or a variation of them) been spoken at all ever since they were uttered in 1967. Give me a break.

That "the president is too dumb to understand the context of his words" is not a strong defense.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#366

Post by koheripbal »

FireBeyond wrote: post #357
koheripbal wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we going to analyze every tweet for its historical usages? If AOC or Bernie Sanders tweets again about "Revolution", should we censor them if they quote Che Guevara? Something tells me they won't do that. ...but more fundamentally, the question is who gets to decide? Corporations or elected officials? ...can't vote out a corporation if you make them arbiters of truth and don't like the choices they make.

> If AOC or Bernie Sanders tweets again about "Revolution" If generic, or as a principle? No. If they say "pick up weapons and shoot those who dissent"? Then they're advocating or threatening, and that should be handled similarly.

Ok, so it needs to be explicit when liberals tweet, it but we can evaluate the historical context when conservatives tweet, right?

What about that time De Blasio quoted Che Guevara "Hasta la victoria siempre"? Any problem with that? It's like quoting Hitler about victory.

The point here is that people aren't going to agree on the rules - so asking to hand this judgement process over to Corporations is lunacy.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#367

Post by [deleted] »

dominotw wrote: post #363
chrisseaton wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you managed to get a job at Facebook in the past doesn't necessarily mean you can get a job anywhere else now. Tech interviews are very fickle. If people studied for a Facebook interview but don't have the time to do that now due to something like caring for someone then they could be in trouble.

I am not saying its guaranteed that they will find a job but tech unemployment was at all time low and even a mediocre engineer could find a job before corona pretty easily. If they are so unqualified to find a tech job in boom season then there were plenty of jobs outside tech too. I don't agree that most of these engineers would never be able to find another job if they quit fb. Maybe a tiny % of protestor, sure.

[deleted]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#368

Post by keiferski »

FireBeyond wrote: post #345
keiferski wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has nothing to do with the legal definition of free speech. I am not talking about the Constitution. I’m talking about a cultural value. Not the same thing.

These people, groups, organizations are not having their ability to speak stifled. They're having their choice of location stifled. There are plenty of people willing to host views that others might find unpleasant. From Gab, to Voat, to nearlyfreespeech.net, self-hosting and the like. Now if your argument is (as often, theirs is) that those platforms are fringe, not nearly-as-popular, I would theorize that that is b…

I don’t have a problem with people deciding they don’t want to hear certain speech. I have a problem with someone else making that decision for me, unbeknownst to me, and on nuanced issues like contemporary politics (not the fairly straightforward stuff that ends up on Gab.)

Even then, I’d still prefer a totally open system that lets me decide what I want to see/not see, because it avoids any potential censorship.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#369

Post by therealdrag0 »

binxbolling wrote: post #321
therealdrag0 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying and failing to be apolitical is different than being intentionally political. And I prefer platforms attempt the former.

"We will not curb violent speech if the speaker is a notable public figure" is already political. That's a political stance, not an apolitical one, and it's very naive to believe otherwise. Besides, Facebook has a PAC! In what way is this attempting to be apolitical? Although their donations are split, since 2012 they've given 14% more to Republicans.

> if the speaker is a notable public figure

I haven't seen this to be the case. My impression is they found that his speech didn't violate their normal policy. Do you have support to the contrary?

> Facebook has a PAC ... Lol good point. Though my assumption is this is for economic reasons. So technically you're right; that's political. Though I think it's a non-trivial distinction between trying to grease the economic engine to support corporate profits and being political in the sense of pushing for other left/right/progressive/conservative values.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#370

Post by pdimitar »

koheripbal wrote: post #339
edanm wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook is, in general, an unethical company. And this has been known for a long time. If you didn't leave yet you won't leave over this either. You might be right. But you might be wrong. And the way you're framing it, it's either a) someone agrees with you, and has already left FB (meaning you were right), or b) someone has stayed at FB, therefore ethics is unimportant to them. Your dichotomy leaves no space for…

Nuance is such a rare commodity online these days. One telling sign of that is that few, if any, media sources that criticized Facebook's decision even bothered to publish the rationale. Think about that. Imagine perceiving yourself as journalist and intentionally not reporting the rationale of a point of view you disagree with. Once I heard Facebook's logic... I actually found it compelling. I think it's good we hav…

> Once I heard Facebook's logic... I actually found it compelling. I think it's good we have social media companies that don't all agree with one another and act as a single entity. That would be scary.

I don't think any reasonable human being will argue with that.

The problem are a lot of other practices of Facebook, like the lack of privacy and all sleazy corporate lingo and lobbyist pressure they utilize to never actually have to be a privacy-first company.

And that's not even touching their experiment with free Facebook traffic in India, simply branded as "Internet" which, predictably, led many people to believe that Facebook is the internet. (And surprising no one, this was stopped only after a big wave of negative PR.)

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