Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott • Hacker News Board

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#311

Post by im3w1l » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 12:31 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #290

MaximumYComb wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to say Karen has the same history as N. I see Karen as a word used to target white female and to shame them into acting exactly how the far left expects a white woman to act. You might have seen the recent video of a guy confronting a woman who cut him off in traffic [1]. Widely shared, she's clearly in emotional trauma because she knows the social consequences of being taped and shared online. Oh and…

I'll be the first to admit I don't have the answers to all your potential questions on hate speech. If only there were experts on the subject that Facebook could add their moderation team to help answer these difficult questions.

These so-called-experts are more similar to a cult than actual expertise. A self-perpetuating cabal kicking out dissenters and recruiting yes-men. Their beliefs are arbitrary and divorced from the real world.

Recently a woman was promoted to tenured professor for tweeting that "white lives don't matter". That's how your experts are selected.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#312

Post by pdkl95 » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

HunOL wrote: post #298

hedora wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump did more than you suggest. He used well understood language (“when the looting starts the shooting starts” is a famous quote from a white supremacist) to encourage his supporters to murder/lynch blacks. His campaign eventually started using Nazi imagery suggesting various opposition groups and protestors should be sent to concentration camps. Facebook pulled the ad. Around the same time, he used Twitter to (suc…

> Trump did more than you suggest. He used well understood language (“when the looting starts the shooting starts” is a famous quote from a white supremacist) to encourage his supporters to murder/lynch blacks. Yet somehow it's hard to find this quote in Google if you select range before the events.

Google returns lots of results from a variety of sources for that quote:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22when+the+looting+starts%2...

As expected, most of the results appear to be about the original use of the phrase in 1967 by the racist police chief of Miami Walter Headley.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#313

Post by throwaway_jobs » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 12:38 PM UTC

ogre_codes wrote: post #240

throwaway_jobs wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sounds like Verizon’s Facebook advertising spend is losing value because if COVId-19 “We’re pausing our advertising until Facebook can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable,” Doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with Covid-19 to me but rather advertisers don’t want to spend money advertising on a platform promoting hate speech. But let’s say this was a conspiracy by all these companies to save…

> Doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with Covid-19 to me Advertising is one of the first things companies cut during a downturn. Their revenues are down and they need to shave some costs. Where do they make that budget cut? It's a pretty easy call right now. They can shave some money and garner some easy positive press at the same time. They are getting advertising for cutting spending. When their revenue start…

> Advertising is one of the first things companies cut during a downturn. Their revenues are down and they need to shave some costs.

Ok but did they cut advertising across the board or just Facebook?

You can’t have you’re cake and eat it too, either Facebook advertising was effective and they are harming their own business by cutting Facebook advertising (Suggesting there is more than money involved in the decision), or Facebook advertising is a waste of money in which case they won’t just quietly turn it back on as you claim.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#314

Post by marcinzm » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 12:59 PM UTC

jaekash wrote: post #280

root_axis wrote: post #185

The outrage in this thread doesn't make sense to me. This is how advertising works, it's a business decision based on business interests, Verizon doesn't care about any of this one way or another, they are simply taking a stance based on pressure from their customers. What so many of you flippantly dismiss as an outrage mob is a coalition of concerned citizens who believe Facebook is wrong for allowing dishonest poli…

> What so many of you flippantly dismiss as an outrage mob is a coalition of concerned citizens who believe Facebook is wrong for allowing dishonest political content to disseminate unchecked. So "hate speech" is a synonym for "dishonest political content"? Or are we maybe talking about different things here. And just repeating "hate speech" is not convincing either, other values exist and compete with the "human rig…

>to not be offended

If you think this is about being offended then I feel sad for your limited world view.

This is a mix of people not wanting politics to be controlled by external state actors and people not wanting acts of violence to be pushed for. The later leads to people getting actually hurt and killed. Avoiding that tends to be a value that most place rather highly.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#315

Post by apostacy » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 12:59 PM UTC

xenadu02 wrote: post #243

Thorentis wrote: post #144

> Private company tells other private company which speech they should be censoring Welcome to the new era of information folks. You thought private companies were too powerful before, well, guess what? You've now given them the power to control almost all forms of communication. "But, but, private companies should be able to decide who they want on their platform! What about the free market?" Wake the hell up. Read…

What, exactly, is your alternative here? The government forces me to fund speech I hate? Facebook is not allowed to ban literal NAZIs? A mandated minimum ad spend for all TV programs? I can’t understand the supposed end-game for this idea that no one is allowed to moderate speech on private property.

> The government forces me to fund speech I hate?

Yup.

You already do it anyway with many other platforms. "Nazis" are still entitled to cellphones and mailing addresses. And you help subsidize them. And that is a good thing.

However progressive you think you are, I'm certain that there are people out there that would call you a Nazi and want you to be banned from everything.

> I can’t understand the supposed end-game for this idea that no one is allowed to moderate speech on private property.

A company like T-Mobile is not "private property". It is a good thing that T-Mobile is forbidden from terminating your account at a whim because they don't like your politics.

And Facebook is bigger and has a lot more power over the public than T-Mobile. But Facebook should play by the rules of some small Silicon Valley startup? Facebook is well into the domain of telecom giants.

Now, I don't think that Facebook should be forbidden from protecting some of their customers from other customers, or facilitating harassment. But I think they should be held to an even higher standard than the phone companies, because they provide so many features that people have come to rely on.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#316

Post by tlear » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 1:03 PM UTC

ianleeclark wrote: post #283

MaximumYComb wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are asking for "experts", who will likely come from the extremely left leaning Social Science departments. If they attempted to fill those slots with centrists then they'd be decryed for not using the "real experts" or something similar. On most platforms racism is only defined using the systematic defintion and not the traditional definition [1]. Calling a white person a Karen seems to have definite racist qual…

> They are asking for "experts", who will likely come from the extremely left leaning Social Science departments. It's peak anti-intellectualism to question someone's credentials and an entire grouping of fields of study just because their educated opinions don't coincide with your own. > On most platforms racism is only defined using the systematic defintion and not the traditional definition [1]. Why are these two…

Truth of the matter is if you hire from soc-sciences experts on racial whatever, you might as well just ban everything right of Mao from the platform.

You can like or not like or hate trump but a very large portion of the citizens of the republic voted for him.

Those requests will basically lead to FB loosing control to a bunch of sjw crusaders(more then they already have). It will all be weaponized, current climate in US allows for nothing else.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#317

Post by iamstupidsimple » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 1:07 PM UTC

ogre_codes wrote: post #244

Thorentis wrote: post #144

> Private company tells other private company which speech they should be censoring Welcome to the new era of information folks. You thought private companies were too powerful before, well, guess what? You've now given them the power to control almost all forms of communication. "But, but, private companies should be able to decide who they want on their platform! What about the free market?" Wake the hell up. Read…

Not quite as ironic as a President complaining about his right to free speech in a private forum (not a violation of the 1st amendment) even as he is threatening threatening to use the military to suppress peaceful protests (an actual violation of the 1st amendment).

> threatening threatening to use the military to suppress peaceful protests (an actual violation of the 1st amendment).

The 1st amendment only covers peaceful protesters who aren't burning buildings down and having gunfights in the street.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#318

Post by nickthegreek » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 1:08 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #261

ogre_codes wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite as ironic as a President complaining about his right to free speech in a private forum (not a violation of the 1st amendment) even as he is threatening threatening to use the military to suppress peaceful protests (an actual violation of the 1st amendment).

> even as he is threatening threatening to use the military to suppress peaceful protests Source? The “peaceful protests” in particular...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/tech/trump-twitter-violence-w...

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#319

Post by thu2111 » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #299

WatchDog wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely frustrating being someone left leaning that believes in the principals of free speech. It seems like all of the alternatives to the censored platforms, are naturally majority populated by the right. This polarizing effect squeezes out any productive centrist discussion or debate.

The people asking for more moderation are not leftist. Would you believe Verizon is a left leaning company?

"Verizon" isn't the one making the decision here. Probably their marketing people are, and I'm gonna take a wild guess that their marketing department is staffed by stereotypically latté drinking art graduate types - the sort of people who believe academics are always right, and who get conspicuously upset about racism and sexism whilst loudly hating white men. All corporations have ended up with people like that, and even when CEOs disagree with them they prefer not to pick that fight because letting them set up diversity committees or whatever seems cheap relative to cracking down.

Now this stuff is moving beyond hosting seminars on white fragility, I wonder when or if the decision making classes will rediscover their own moral backbones and push back on it. There's really no moral virtue to be found in actions like this.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#320

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

kypro wrote: post #291

scarface74 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations want their customers to buy their stuff. It helps when you don’t offend your customers. Are you proposing that the government force companies not to discriminate where they advertise?

Of course not. They can advertise where they want. Were they fairer in its implementation I'd say YouTube's "not advertisement" friendly model is a good way to handle these problems. My issue here is their intention is to boycott Facebook into censoring my speech. If they simply suspended advertising then fine, but they're claiming they're doing it as part of a wider protest to force companies to regulate what I can…

No the Internet is the communication technology. Not Facebook. You are free to create a blog and say whatever you like. If it’s something worthwhile, you should be able to get a following. There were people getting their messages out through grass roots campaigns way before the internet was a thing.