I really dislike the legalistic versus moral distinction. Emphasis on legalistic rather than legal. Legal and moral are obviously not the same. Legalistic seems to just relate to making and enforcing rules, which is a super important way to deal with moral issues when you're a platform or arbiter. Yes, absolutely take the awful stuff off facebook, but make rules and tests to be as clear as you can about it.
What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout
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Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They aren't wanting to kill 230, they want to take it away from companies who choose to alter users' posts.
Their argument is if you start censoring and editing your users you are abusing the protections given to you by 230 and you are no longer eligible and you must vet EVERY post, not just the ones you selected.
Other companies who do not edit/censor their users selectively continue to have protections from 230.
Not picking a side btw, just trying to clarify.
Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout
#33It's disturbing how things are turned upside down.
The GAFA already are behaving like they are above the state. You can love or hate Trump, is is elected, not Facebook or Twitter. As the head of the state he represents what we call in french 'monopoly of legitimate violence'. I found dangerous how the GAFA companies think about themselves not concerned by that anymore.
Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout
#34I think if you feel strongly about X, you shouldn't mod discussions of X. It makes the discussion reflect your view instead of the views of participants. You should delegate modding to someone who doesn't feel strongly about X. It might be hard to find such a person in the US now, but with a global workforce that's less of a problem.
Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout
#35Can we please stop voting for, and start to flag, articles from theverge.com?
The Verge is a clickbait site that:
- constantly replaces original sources (earlier today there was a post which was essentially a wrapper around a Microsoft employees blog)
- mocked the tech industry for practicing social distancing during the Covid 19 outbreak.
- As another poster already noted, consistently treats complex issues as binary 'good vs evil' situations with no room for nuance.
Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "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.
There's a middle option, and it's the one Twitter has taken: Allow the post to remain, but put a disclaimer on it.
You could even take the extra step to allow the original posts on the determined-to-be-bad topic to exist, but not allow sharing, commenting on, or otherwise interacting with and spreading the post.
Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout
#37It's disturbing how things are turned upside down. The GAFA already are behaving like they are above the state. You can love or hate Trump, is is elected, not Facebook or Twitter. As the head of the state he represents what we call in french 'monopoly of legitimate violence'. I found dangerous how the GAFA companies think about themselves not concerned by that anymore.
Absolutely,
I personally hate Trump and Facebook but he is still the president.
The idea it is even a discussion to censor the president is lunacy.
Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout
#38I 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 ne…
That might fix things for you. But it doesn't fix things for the nation, or the world.
Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout
#39This 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.
" It’s a nonsensical idea that they could avoid involvement in political issues given the definition of politics."
It's sensical.
The issues are objectivity and established protocols, independent of executive tinkering or favour.
If some government agency, or industry body, 'very intelligently' and hopefully in collaboration with all the necessary parties (highly doubtful but possible), established a set of 'regulatory protocols for social media' - then FB, Twitter could wash their hands of this.
They set up internal controls, a segregated unit with maybe an 'independent oversight board' based on those policies. When there are special cases, they are flagged to the regulatory body who can maybe provide guidance and a ruling.
That way, instead of Zuck coming out and saying 'this is why it was allowed or not' - you have the head of some FB body making the statement, backed by the oversight board, and why it conforms with the specific, established regulatory guidance.
That said, it would also probably be within Twitter/FB rights to remove anything else they wanted to remove, after all, they are a private company. If we wanted to extend their status by virtue of their influence as 'partial public good' - then maybe they could only remove other content within certain parameters (i.e. advertisers don't want it or whatever).
FYI - the Trump 'Tweet' itself was terrible ("Once the looting starts, the shooting starts") and is easily within any policy grounds to take down - however - the actual FB post by Trump, is not that, rather, it's that sentence plus an indication that the statement is meant to infer that looting causes violence etc. which is actually very reasonably above bar. For example, if Trump made the FB post alone, without having made the previous Tweet, there'd be little said about it. It's not controversial to say "When rioting starts, violence starts because things get out of control etc. etc." i.e. a contextualize statement.
I'm really perplexed at why Mark and Jack Dorsey have any inclination to stand in the world and justify their willy nilly decisions to do this or that on a case by case basis. It makes them seem like they're making it up as they go along, an it's just inviting controversy. It's a no-win.
Get some really cold, boring, intelligent, articulate administrator with a legal background, someeone with the stature and credibility of a judge ... and let them do the talking - the world will appreaciate it.
During Covid - all over the world - we're seeing doctors and bureaucrats take the microphone. It's very refreshing to see people who know what they are talking about, speak in detail. They don't seem political. They are super boring to the point where it's dry, anti-populism, they speaking like real adults.
Then we can argue about regulations instead of personal politics.
Re: What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout
#40This 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.
The problem is exactly something Trump complained about.
Big tech companies are using a law made to protect ISPs to avoid getting sued for whatever people say on their platforms, including stuff their own employees say.
Other forms of media can be sued.
This is a huge difference.