141–150 of 434 posts
So long as their speech remains legal, social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the job of voters and Congress. It’s too easy to walk down a slippery slope where suddenly these sites have to regulate in accordance with whatever is the popular opinion of the day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Trump as if it's a foregone conclusion that he's a racist sociopath You are totally correct. I do think this. I have ample evidence that backs up my case as well. I think the quote "when they start looting, we start shooting" which was hidden by Twitter for inciting violence, is enough for me. > This is a strawman, because I haven't seen Trump "inciting random citizens to commit violent acts." I don't think we can…
> "when they start looting, we start shooting" Umm... except that’s not what he said though. If it was, I would completely agree with you that it is an incitement (more accurately, a proclamation) of violence. But what he actually said was: "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" And, per Wikipedia: "He said that he was not aware of the phrase's 'racially-charged history'. He added that he didn't know where th…
At best we have a leader of our country too irresponsible to do due diligence on his own posts to the entire free world. He has literally infinite resources at his disposal to communicate effectively about this.
Being a hateful bigot and or an ignoramus should both be unacceptable positions for the leader of the US. Furthermore this isn't the first time he's said or done hateful / bigoted / ignorant things / lied so you'll excuse people if they don't give him the 'benefit of the doubt'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A free pass on what exactly? This has gotten so crazy, I can’t believe people are protesting Facebook for not censoring a politician. Here’s an idea... if you don’t like what somebody writes online, don’t read it. Do people really think that censoring, or even annotating, the President’s words will change how people feel about them? Like someone is going to read Trump’s message, think “oh right, mail-in ballots could…
> Here’s an idea... if you don’t like what somebody writes online, don’t read it. The problem isn't that people "don't like" what elected officials say. It's that people often take what elected officials say as truth without even considering that it might be false (they must be Smart and Good if they're in office, right?) Fact checking and censoring prominent figures isn't going to affect people who already have stro…
Well educate them on that instead of trying to control the information flow. History taught us that will always backfire.
So long as their speech remains legal, social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the job of voters and Congress. It’s too easy to walk down a slippery slope where suddenly these sites have to regulate in accordance with whatever is the popular opinion of the day.
There is no reason to give elected officials a free pass. It biases elections by giving them an even bigger microphone than the other people running. Apply the same standards to all.
> Zuckerberg’s decision was supported by the majority of the company, but that people who agreed with it were afraid to speak out for fear of appearing insensitive I find that interesting and dangerous.
It's unfortunate, but I've seen it happen a lot at companies like this, from what I've spoken about privately. The worst part is those I speak to have very modest views, good intentions, and have put thought into it. But they're terrified of ever speaking up at the workplace for fear of what those that are most radicalized might try in response.
It's not like a Facebook feed is the deterministic result of a given user's subscriptions to friends and businesses, as if Facebook were a kind of user-friendly clone of a FOSS mailing list. Facebook engineers the contents of the feed in a way that is typically inscrutable to the user, and often harmful-- driving division and filter bubbles in order to keep up engagement. It's democratic in exactly the same way that Las Vegas would be democratic if you removed every single regulation on the gambling industry there.
So I'm perfectly happy to concede that even in a system designed with dark patterns to eat as much users' attention as possible-- well past the scant value they receive from using that system-- it'd be even worse to censor the POTUS account. But I highly doubt that's the kind of reasoned defense you're talking about. Any Facebook employee uttering that knows the next question coming is why they work for a company that employs so many dark patterns to generate so much anger and misinformation among its userbase.
Edit: clarification
So long as their speech remains legal, social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the job of voters and Congress. It’s too easy to walk down a slippery slope where suddenly these sites have to regulate in accordance with whatever is the popular opinion of the day.
So if an elected official posts a picture of themselves naked or with their nipples out it won’t be censored?
The ancient Romans didn't allow prosecution of some public officials while in office for a similar reason. Their courts could too easily be abused as a political tool.
It's not unreasonable to leave public officials unmoderated while they're in office.
The real problem here is that we're letting private companies make the decision. We should pass a law that requires unrestricted free speech on any platform of a certain size. And then give users optional moderation tools. Users could toggle a button that says "Show me fact-checking along side controversial topics" but it would all have to be opt-in.
> Zuckerberg’s decision was supported by the majority of the company, but that people who agreed with it were afraid to speak out for fear of appearing insensitive I find that interesting and dangerous.
It's unfortunate, but I've seen it happen a lot at companies like this, from what I've spoken about privately. The worst part is those I speak to have very modest views, good intentions, and have put thought into it. But they're terrified of ever speaking up at the workplace for fear of what those that are most radicalized might try in response.
> Zuckerberg’s decision was supported by the majority of the company, but that people who agreed with it were afraid to speak out for fear of appearing insensitive I find that interesting and dangerous.
Any Facebook employees want to give us an inside view about this? Throwaway account if needed?
Facebook and to a lesser extent other big social media is in an impossible position.
In my opinion: “Over time, in general we tend to add more policies to restrict things more and more,” he said. “If every time there’s something that’s controversial your instinct is, okay let’s restrict a lot, then you do end up restricting a lot of things that I think will be eventually good for everyone.” is right on target.
I don't mean to understate or under-appreciate the damage and impact various posts can and do have. This one post by Trump will likely cause tangible harm.
There are absolutely no unambiguously good and correct decisions here. Facebook and the others are in completely uncharted waters.
So long as their speech remains legal, social media sites should not be the business of censoring elected officials. That is the job of voters and Congress. It’s too easy to walk down a slippery slope where suddenly these sites have to regulate in accordance with whatever is the popular opinion of the day.
There is no reason to give elected officials a free pass. It biases elections by giving them an even bigger microphone than the other people running. Apply the same standards to all.
Do you honestly not realize that this is the exact issue being debated? Whether the "standards" are being applied fairly and consistently irrespective of political affiliations? And whether the "standard" itself is loaded to censor certain relatively mainstream but not Silicon Valley viewpoints?
What you're saying reminds me of an anti-gay marriage argument I heard: "Hey, I'm straight and I don't have the right to marry a man. A gay guy doesn't have the right to marry a man either. Look at that: the same standard applies to all. Everything is fair!"
I'm not particularly aligned to either democrats or republicans, but I've looked at "fact-checks" by supposedly neutral parties and they're often absolute garbage. Not only is the "research" superficial, what is chosen to be fact-checked vs. what isn't fact-checked is transparently biased. The "same standard" does not appear to be applied to all.
Given the debatable nature of these questions, I think common sense would say it's better to let voters and the marketplace of idea arbitrate rather than social media companies. And, as a general matter, I'm shocked people are still so into censoring in 2020. Isn't censoring books/ideas/speech something we laugh at given how consistently wrong it tends to be? I'd say censoring is silly at best and evil at worst.