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Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#81

Post by josefresco »

light_cone wrote: post #71
josefresco wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bigotry and it's resulting political/social forms have and will evolve, constantly adapting to retain and grow. Hatred is not "increasingly subjective", hatred has become more sophisticated making it harder to detect.

Thank you for this clarification. But if it has not been increasingly subjective, but harder to detect, then what you are implying, if I do not distord your point of view, is that it is okay to be stricter in policing to catch stop these sophisticated bigots. But, doesn't being more strict mean that you'll also have more false negatives, that is people that always had "heretic" talk from the point of view of general…

> is that it is okay to be stricter in policing to catch stop these sophisticated bigots.

Yes, although of course that depends on your definition of "policing" and by whom (state vs private) Are we still talking about Facebook?

> But, doesn't being more strict mean that you'll also have more false negatives

Yes (in either case above). What you're asking about is the margins, and of course we need oversight to prevent abuse both in the private and public sector.

> And then, wouldn't you agree that this is a restriction of free speech, that people on the other side are arguing to be unacceptable?

Again, not sure if we're still talking FB.

I'm going to bow out now, thank you for the debate.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#82

Post by remarkEon »

espadrine wrote: post #63
mrits wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alex Jones is the new CEO of Twitter. How would we think differently about the real problem here?

> Alex Jones is the new CEO of Twitter. How would we think differently about the real problem here? That is a useful question to showcase an important aspect that I don’t see discussed. There is a single government, while there must be multiple competing private corporations. Twitter vs. Gab, Youtube vs. Liveleak: each corporation is defined by what it refuses, NOT by what it accepts. So, if Alex Jones becomes CEO of…

>The same goes with Nike’s Kaepernick ad: greenlit because the corporation estimated that being on the right side of history would bring more value long-term.

This is extremely charitable to Nike, assuming that they internally had some meeting about correcting racial injustices or something and not that they decided to capitalize on a moment in the political zeitgeist. Even if the ad was hated it would have generated enormous free marketing for the company. I tend to agree that these companies will make economic decisions first, most of the time, but over the last couple years we've seen many companies explicitly intertwine the two - where making political statements as marketing is now common. I'd be very very skeptical that they have anything but dollar signs in their eyes.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#83

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

drewrv wrote: post #58
shiado wrote: post #18

The only concession I want from the pro-censorship crowd is that they oppose democracy. If you want unaccountable private social media corporations to be the arbiters of what is allowed to be discussed so be it, but just admit that you hate democracy and that you are a die hard technocrat.

Nobody wants them "to be the arbiters of what is allowed to be discussed". People want platforms to take responsibility for how they are used to spread misinformation. They want leaders held to the same standards as everyday users. If pg came onto this site and started trolling people, throwing around insults, and spreading lies, what would it do to this community? And if dang responded by doing nothing? It's so biza…

> "People want platforms to take responsibility for how they are used to spread misinformation"

Define misinformation. One side thinks its opponents are spreading misinformation but they fail to see that their opponents just as fervently believe they are the ones spreading misinformation.

What will happen to your ideological group if the other side gets a majority and it's your beliefs that are declared misinformation?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#84

Post by javagram »

logicslave wrote: post #56
javagram wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is that ~40% of America supports/votes for the POTUS, following him on social media, re-shares his memes, etc. People are looking to generally open communications platforms like Facebook and asking them to censor, but if they carried their logic to its conclusion, the President’s emails, texts, mobile Apps, and press releases should all be censored or blacklisted by communications providers. If the p…

You want to censor 40% of the country? How can that be logical

My point is that the people asking Zuck to censor are asking to censor 40% of the country.

Personally since I disagree with the 40% I do see it as the “real problem” but I don’t think facebook censoring them is the solution. It might be possible to censor away InfoWars or whatever but I don’t think you can censor away the POTUS and 40% of the country...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#85

Post by javagram »

s5300 wrote: post #49
javagram wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_e... An unbroken history of being held every 4 years even in the midst of a civil war and WW2.

This is... A terrible example. Do you know what gerrymandering and the electoral college is?

Do you know what gerrymandering is? It has almost no effect at all on the presidential election. Only two small states, Nebraska and Maine, allocate their electoral votes based on congressional district winners.

The electoral college doesn’t stop voters removing an unpopular POTUS. See Jimmy Carter, 1980, and George HW Bush in 1992.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#86

Post by Avicebron »

remarkEon wrote: post #82
espadrine wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alex Jones is the new CEO of Twitter. How would we think differently about the real problem here? That is a useful question to showcase an important aspect that I don’t see discussed. There is a single government, while there must be multiple competing private corporations. Twitter vs. Gab, Youtube vs. Liveleak: each corporation is defined by what it refuses, NOT by what it accepts. So, if Alex Jones becomes CEO of…

>The same goes with Nike’s Kaepernick ad: greenlit because the corporation estimated that being on the right side of history would bring more value long-term. This is extremely charitable to Nike, assuming that they internally had some meeting about correcting racial injustices or something and not that they decided to capitalize on a moment in the political zeitgeist. Even if the ad was hated it would have generated…

I would second this, and mark it as maybe one of the strongest indicators of where the zeitgeist is at the moment. It makes the "there are evil fascists at every turn" argument pretty weak, when all the money is being bet on woke advertising.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#87

Post by [deleted] »

lisper wrote: post #37
shiado wrote: post #18

The only concession I want from the pro-censorship crowd is that they oppose democracy. If you want unaccountable private social media corporations to be the arbiters of what is allowed to be discussed so be it, but just admit that you hate democracy and that you are a die hard technocrat.

No. Today's world is vastly more complex than it was in our ancestral environment, and that makes assessing truth very hard. It's not possible for anyone to directly access all primary sources, so we have no choice but to set up some kind of division of labor in the assessment of truth. Scientific peer review is one example of such a division of labor. We trust peer reviewed publications not because peer review is fl…

[deleted]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#88

Post by the8472 »

bastardoperator wrote: post #78
the8472 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue being discussed is not any form of moderation though but centralized regulation of speech (i.e. censorship).

No one is censoring you or regulating speech. Do you call people the N word? Why not? Are you censoring yourself? Maybe you do. Should I have no recourse to express my distaste if you did? Should I build you a tent on my property and get you a bullhorn? It's a weak argument and ironic considering we are discussing this issue openly and freely on the medium you claim is being regulated.

For one HN allows you to see most "deleted" content and engage with it if you choose to, unlike many other platforms. Secondly, the mods don't claim to engage in fact-checking. And downvotes are not driven by single entity. Of course that still leaves the issue that minority views could be downvoted to oblivion, but that's not in direct conflict with democracy, even if outcomes still may be suboptimal.

As for self-censoring. Yes, that can be an issue. You picked racial slurs because that makes self-censoring seem morally acceptable, you're biasing the scenario in your favor. What about protesters calling for violence against an oppressive government? That would commonly be considered a violation of "community guidelines" on social networks.

My issue with social networks is that they amplify without providing contrast. Often there's viral, in-the-moment content which is technically truthful but doesn't provide context. Getting the "yes, but ..." replies that add nuance or rebut the framing would be helpful. Distinguishing and filtering by affirmative vs. conterarguments would be helpful in controversial topics. This doesn't require fact-checking by an arbiter of truth, just a way for people to select which responses they see.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#89

Post by banads »

bastardoperator wrote: post #4
50ckpuppet wrote: post #2

More mental gymnastics and gyrations to justify muzzling the opposing narrative.

If the opposing narritive is propaganda or hatred, who’s doing the mental gymnastics here?

Hatred is a perfectly natural human emotion. If we forcibly prevent people from expressing their emotions with words and abdicate our responsibility to defuse hatred with dialogue, it will eventually boil over and be expressed with violence.

It's ironic, because mass censorship proponents claim censoring hate prevents violence, when perhaps it actually makes it worse in the long run.

"Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."

-MLK

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth–Whether He Likes It or Not

#90

Post by manfredo »

aklemm wrote: post #60
manfredo wrote: post #33

In the realm of corporate censorship, I still believe that politics is much less important to companies than profits. My takeaway from censorship on YouTube and other social media is that it's levied at content that could reflect poorly on advertisers. Inconvenient and controversial content more so than any specific political views. Granted, controversial does overlap with politic and especially fringe politics. Pers…

Right, this is the hard part and I don't understand what the law says so far and what may need changed. Imo, if you won't publish my book, I still have free speech, but if no one will sell me paper, then I don't.

It's definitely a hard problem. I definitely don't agree that companies need to host speech. Freedom of speech also means freedom from compelled speech.

I think a good boundary is to define whether an entity is actually hosting speed or providing general communications services. Platforms like facebook are the latter. Comments and photos exist on their servers, and they have a right not to host speech they don't want. But things like DNS providers are more akin to paper produces in your analogy.

And things like banking services are a whole different story. I see no reason why they shouldn't be regarded as utilities like telecoms, mail carriers, etc. I think banks have to honor checks. Maybe there's a startup idea in letting people send paper checks through the mail via an app?

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