Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 107 posts

Re: Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg

#51

Post by intended »

In Regrettable defense of FB:

In the book, Guardians of the Internet, two cases are mentioned:

Case 1:

Mexican gang violence was caught dramatically on video and went viral. This sparked a conversation and brought attention on a major issue since The government had been suppressing this information to project an image of security.

This video pierced that veil- until it was seen by (I believe) British citizens who woke up in the morning.

They called their friends at Facebook who realized it broke their rules and removed it.

Case 2:

Contrast this with how Facebook handled the boston Bombings.

Facebook mods removed gore images because that broke their rules.

And then a message came on high telling people “no, This is newsworthy and it goes through. The rules are in abeyance.”

If country like Mexico Can’t have that benefit, then Facebook is effectively using power in one place to decide what goes through and in other places is choosing not to exercise it.

Facebook is then trapped by its choice.

What should FB do in a country like Brazil? Hungary? Russia? India?

Heck, could any theoretically company find the right policy people and be able to pay them to tell their teams what the right call is?

Facebook's solution currently is this "we are not the arbiter of truth" comment, and working with governments to create govt agencies to set up rules which FB can then follow.

So What’s the right call in this situation?

Re: Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg

#52

Post by vorpalhex »

krastanov wrote: post #29
bluedevil2k wrote: post #3

I'm sure I'm in the minority on this website, but I think anything the President posts on social media should be kept in place. Yes, I think he posts bad things sometimes, promotes violence, posts racist comments. But...he's the President. He's not like all the other users of Facebook/Twitter, and different rules should apply to him. Essentially the people who want his posts removed are forcing their own opinion of r…

Tweets were not deleted, you are using a strawman. Tweets were marked up with warning messages. It is perfectly sensible to mark as "factually wrong" a message that says "the sky is green" and as "inciting violence, but has to be kept for historic reasons" when the message is quoting a known oppressor and making threats.

I think the issue that Twitter is running into now and is going to run into is that they're not applying this in any manner that could be deemed consistent. Do a quick search for "kill the" and you'll find endless tweets without the warning.

You could make the case that Twitter only has to enforce this for accounts of importance. Yet there are plenty of officals who have tweets calling for violent jihad, the killing of homosexuals, so on and so on that have been made since the first warning... and that label has still not been applied.

Twitter is editorializing, and I greatly fear they are going to ruin Section 230 for all of us.

Re: Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg

#53

Post by nsajko »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #3

I'm sure I'm in the minority on this website, but I think anything the President posts on social media should be kept in place. Yes, I think he posts bad things sometimes, promotes violence, posts racist comments. But...he's the President. He's not like all the other users of Facebook/Twitter, and different rules should apply to him. Essentially the people who want his posts removed are forcing their own opinion of r…

Counterpoint: the POTUS has plenty of opportunity to get his voice heard independently of Twitter and Twitter has a right as to what they will publish.

I agree that public officials' correspondence should be archived and publicly available, though, related funny story: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/10/trump-papers-filin...

Re: Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg

#54

Post by paxys »

gman83 wrote: post #6

I'm pretty sure that Facebook won't do anything until they finish integrating the Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp backends so that any future antitrust action won't be able to split up the company. They just need to postpone.

Yes, members of Congress are totally going over Facebook backend architecture when deciding whether to enforce antitrust action.

Re: Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg

#55

Post by saltedonion »

Let’s not first talk about what Facebook ought to do, but what Facebook can do.

There is no such thing as absolute freedom. This includes speech, which is already regulated in our society.

And as a society, we have spent ample effort to distinguish harmful speech - promotions of hate, abuse of minors etc...

This framework is clearly outlined in our laws and everything fb has done so far has been lawful.

One of the major proponents of this “let’s allow as much free speech as possible” framework is to establish an competitive marketplace of ideas, so that instead of legislating away bad ideas, as a society, we choose not to adopt them through reason.

This is why I think FB should be allowed to do what it’s doing.

As to if the recommendation and ranking algos are doing their job to help ideas be battled out in an transparent and efficient way, or simply creating an ideological echo chamber, that is another issue altogether.

We, as consumers, need to be vigilant, and choose a platform that we think is good for each one of us and our society.

In this case, have a discussion as a nation and choose between the Twitter and Facebook model.

I truly believe this is the American way.

Re: Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg

#56

Post by pavlov »

throwaway6274 wrote: post #17

Devil’s advocate thought experiment: suppose I was a CEO of a large social media company and my personal view is pro-life. Should I remove pro-choice posts (or censor them with violence labels), or should I allow discussion on the topic even though I personally disagree with it? I don’t think people can have their cake and eat it too. Either the CEOs of these companies start imposing their personal views on their use…

Conservative Americans are traditionally all-in on respect for private property. One doesn't expect to go just walk on someone's lawn and put up a sign without the owner's permission. I honestly don't understand why the same respect doesn't apply to the services provided by private companies like Twitter and Facebook.

These companies spend billions of dollars annually on infrastructure and engineering to host user content. How can Republicans be asking the government to step in and dictate over that multi-billion investment? Doesn't that fly in the face of everything they believe about government's role in the private sector?

In your example, of course the pro-life CEO can do whatever they want with content on their site, assuming it was uploaded by users within the site's terms of service. If someone were actually paying for hosting of the content, they would have a case to get upset about having it taken down. But that's not the kind of contract that users of social media sites have made with the companies.

Re: Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg

#57

Post by s1artibartfast »

king_magic wrote: post #21
bluedevil2k wrote: post #3

I'm sure I'm in the minority on this website, but I think anything the President posts on social media should be kept in place. Yes, I think he posts bad things sometimes, promotes violence, posts racist comments. But...he's the President. He's not like all the other users of Facebook/Twitter, and different rules should apply to him. Essentially the people who want his posts removed are forcing their own opinion of r…

So if a President yells “fire” in a crowded movie theater, we should all sit and sing kumbaya just because he’s the President? No. The President isn’t above the law, and he shouldn’t be above the rules of social networking sites as well. There are plenty of ways to archive and memorialize offensive/racist/vile posts from a President. The news media will do a fine job of that. No exceptions, no mercy: if a President o…

Censoring the president hurts the Ammerican people more than censoring a normal individual. Closing our eyes and ears to the presidents actions and statement doesn't make them go away, or meaningfully disincentivize him.

If the president were to announce a racist policy or glorifies a violent military action, we should know.

Re: Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg

#58

Post by stingrae »

amscanne wrote: post #43
stingrae wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't to push a personal cause or belief. The goal should be to keep a safe space where people aren't allowed to threaten others and incite violence.

The pro-life viewpoint considers pro-choice views to be advocating violence in the most direct way possible ("murdering babies"). That's the fundamental problem: there is a huge subjective grey area.

ok... you can chose to not take a stance on grey areas and act on clear cut cases.

Re: Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg

#59

Post by bluedevil2k »

king_magic wrote: post #21
bluedevil2k wrote: post #3

I'm sure I'm in the minority on this website, but I think anything the President posts on social media should be kept in place. Yes, I think he posts bad things sometimes, promotes violence, posts racist comments. But...he's the President. He's not like all the other users of Facebook/Twitter, and different rules should apply to him. Essentially the people who want his posts removed are forcing their own opinion of r…

So if a President yells “fire” in a crowded movie theater, we should all sit and sing kumbaya just because he’s the President? No. The President isn’t above the law, and he shouldn’t be above the rules of social networking sites as well. There are plenty of ways to archive and memorialize offensive/racist/vile posts from a President. The news media will do a fine job of that. No exceptions, no mercy: if a President o…

The President can announce he's going to bomb a country with cruise missles, should Twitter remove those posts? On the surface that's 1000x worse than yelling "fire" in a crowd or inciting violence like he has the past few days.

Re: Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg

#60

Post by avancemos »

adt2bt wrote: post #35
BobbyJo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh no. The problem today isn't free speech, it's that the limits on how you transmit and disseminate it, favors the tiny, loud, misleading, ignorant few who can generate the most 'engagement'. Like you for instance. You're hear calling free speech dangerous, and that is such an absurd and ridiculous point of view I feel the need to respond. Free speech has worked great for 100s of years. You don't give up wheels beca…

It was all sarcasm.

The last line is a direct quote from The Giver.
Post reply on HN