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What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

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Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

#21

Post by e2021 »

carterklein13 wrote: post #19
jimmaswell wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the president? Maybe, but I'd still think the value of the public record is more important here. From regular users it would still be disallowed. Instead of this murky de-facto system of different rules for public officials and regular users, maybe we need to have it codified. Accounts owned by public officials have their activity publicly recorded (with edit/deletion attempt history, etc) and with something in…

I think this is a sensible and easily-enforceable solution. Facebook and Twitter are necessities today and oftentimes (for better or for much, much worse) are where history is being written. I think using these platforms as a highly important person geopolitically should dictate different rules than me, who has like 400 friends from the decade or so I've been on the platform, 90% of whom I haven't spoken to in years.

I wish twitter hadn't opened this whole can of worms. I thought their previous policy of basically saying 'yes, different rules do apply to the president, so we're just not going to delete his posts' was pretty good.

Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

#22

Post by bargl »

mongol wrote: post #13

I think Trump should use the White House homepage for his communications. And what he writes on Twitter and Facebook, those platforms should at least be as liable for as if Trump wrote the same thing in an opinion piece in a newspaper. I think AWS and Azure are true "platforms" but Facebook and Twitter are social media. They are more similiar to other media than to technical platforms. I think the buck should end wit…

Isn't this what section 230 prevents? It protects Facebook and Twitter from this specifically. It's also what Trump was pushing back on.

Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

#23

Post by wvenable »

Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote: post #4

This is one of the dumbest articles I’ve read about the issue, treating it as a binary good-vs-evil problem instead of critically thinking about the underlying issues and the effects of what they’re actually proposing. I mentioned this in a previous thread, but we absolutely do not want Mark Zuckerberg or his employees to make decisions on what is or isn’t newsworthy. They have far too much power, and not enough inte…

> They have far too much power, and not enough internal controls, to be involved in politics.

How does this compare with television? Newspapers? Any form of media? Facebook isn't special. Maybe you're right, but if you are, the problem is bigger than one tech firm. It's bigger than all tech firms.

Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

#24

Post by bargl »

I can't remember who suggested it but it would be awesome if we could have plug and play algorithms for our Facebook/twitter/youtube/etc content.

That way we could get the bring me top stories from all side. Or, I'm looking into this topic let's go with this other matching algorithm.

I suspect we'd be back to one algorithm that gets 5 stars and 90% of people use, but it'd be interesting to see and would remove the need for Facebook to curate content.

Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

#25

Post by e2021 »

saos wrote: post #8
jimmaswell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Zuckerberg: "I disagree strongly with how the President spoke about this, but I believe people should be able to see this for themselves, because ultimately accountability for those in positions of power can only happen when their speech is scrutinized out in the open." - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/facebook-staff-angry--zucker... It's a perfectly reasonable to keep up things that are a matter of public reco…

> "I disagree strongly with how the President spoke about this, but I believe people should be able to see this for themselves, because ultimately accountability for those in positions of power can only happen when their speech is scrutinized out in the open." That’s pretty fair. But, will that set a precedence of violent posts?

But where does the contrary position go, if you follow it through to the end? Say you delete the presidents post, so he goes and says the same thing at a press conference, do you now delete all the posts from news networks carrying his remarks? Deplatforming the president of the united states is just not a thing that is physically possible.

Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

#26

Post by borkt »

saos wrote: post #8
jimmaswell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Zuckerberg: "I disagree strongly with how the President spoke about this, but I believe people should be able to see this for themselves, because ultimately accountability for those in positions of power can only happen when their speech is scrutinized out in the open." - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/facebook-staff-angry--zucker... It's a perfectly reasonable to keep up things that are a matter of public reco…

> "I disagree strongly with how the President spoke about this, but I believe people should be able to see this for themselves, because ultimately accountability for those in positions of power can only happen when their speech is scrutinized out in the open." That’s pretty fair. But, will that set a precedence of violent posts?

I can say that I see violent posts on facebook every day, and often ones inciting violence. I still see absoloutely no reason to take this stuff down. There is a comment section that people can use to share their thoughts and views, and to me this is the place where posts should be getting called out for any issues a viewer has with them. Putting a sensitive content warning on something is acceptable, but in a way that provides no moral opinion on what is behind the content warning.

To remove these types of posts due to a moral opinon is a slippery slope to so much more censorship. If facebook starts actively taking posts down and writing their own reality they should not be protected under section 230.

Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

#27

Post by julianeon »

I have been thinking: there's a real opportunity to disrupt FaceBook, from the political side. It could gain traction in a way, and for a reason, among large groups of people who otherwise won't give a damn ('FaceBook competitor', yawn).

I think a billboard and an advertising blitz that really put in people's faces, especially in the large blue cities that red staters hate so much, something like: Did you know that, when you're on FaceBook, you're giving money to the ad platform that elected Donald Trump? (*asterisk to Atlantic article here with quote to that effect) Join SocialBook to learn more.

Then you could explain that there's a kind of default understanding that FaceBook is 'neutral,' but it's probably more accurate to think of FaceBook as an analogue, a cousin even, to Fox News. Its most popular site for engagement is Breitbart. As people have noted online, by various metrics, it favors Trump. And whether you agree or not, we are under no moral compulsion at all - none whatsoever - to support FaceBook. Not using it is, at worst, morally neutral.

So if you oppose FaceBook's general effect on our society, why not do something that costs you no money and requires no real lifestyle change, but can radically improve your society's politics? Join SocialBook and get your friends too also, and as a principled stand, delete FaceBook. If nothing else, you'll start exerting some powerful pressure on FaceBook to change its policies in a direction it usually ignores, or else. And at best, you could help launch a powerful, healthy competitor.

I should point out also: I don't see anything morally wrong in advocating for this. I do feel a duty to support people working towards building in general, and the economy in general. But do I have a specific moral duty to support FaceBook? Of course not. I think there are people here who object to people making commercial decisions for political reasons - but there's no moral imperative supporting this. For what it's worth, I don't see other companies taking this angle (say, Gab) as being in the wrong for that reason, either.

Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

#28

Post by iso1631 »

creaghpatr wrote: post #6
Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote: post #4

This is one of the dumbest articles I’ve read about the issue, treating it as a binary good-vs-evil problem instead of critically thinking about the underlying issues and the effects of what they’re actually proposing. I mentioned this in a previous thread, but we absolutely do not want Mark Zuckerberg or his employees to make decisions on what is or isn’t newsworthy. They have far too much power, and not enough inte…

Also, stripped of context, a video of someone getting murdered (by a cop or other) would probably get taken down I think? Not even for incitement, just for the violence in the video itself.

Journalists have balanced the need of the public to know something against the harm for decades. They sometimes get it right, they sometimes get it wrong.

Facebook and the like try to reproduce that as an algorithm

Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

#29

Post by kgin »

bargl wrote: post #22
mongol wrote: post #13

I think Trump should use the White House homepage for his communications. And what he writes on Twitter and Facebook, those platforms should at least be as liable for as if Trump wrote the same thing in an opinion piece in a newspaper. I think AWS and Azure are true "platforms" but Facebook and Twitter are social media. They are more similiar to other media than to technical platforms. I think the buck should end wit…

Isn't this what section 230 prevents? It protects Facebook and Twitter from this specifically. It's also what Trump was pushing back on.

What's confusing to me is that killing 230 would make social media liable for the content published by its users. It seems like it would require them to control and filter content more, not less.

Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout

#30

Post by gfodor »

thundergolfer wrote: post #9
Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote: post #4

This is one of the dumbest articles I’ve read about the issue, treating it as a binary good-vs-evil problem instead of critically thinking about the underlying issues and the effects of what they’re actually proposing. I mentioned this in a previous thread, but we absolutely do not want Mark Zuckerberg or his employees to make decisions on what is or isn’t newsworthy. They have far too much power, and not enough inte…

I assure you that Facebook is both very powerful and very involved in politics. Just the month it came out that their own research found their recommendation systems were engaging people with the far-right. The execs allowed it. It is impossible for Facebook to exist and act outside of politics. It’s a nonsensical idea that they could avoid involvement in political issues given the definition of politics.

From first principles, it is possible to have the medium of Facebook, without the infusion of politics. One only has to imagine an orchestration layer on top of email, contact lists, with a publicly visible open source algorithm driving ranking. I don't think that world can exist now, but it can be a useful mental model to disprove the assumption that the communication medium Facebook provides is inherently coupled with centralized editorial control.
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