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Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

bbc.com

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Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#121

Post by AnthonyMouse »

heavyset_go wrote: post #87
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First of all, we know that deplatforming racists/fascists does actually help to stop the spread of racist/fascist ideas. People often claim this but there doesn't seem to be any real evidence of it. You get a short-term effect because the target has to regroup, but then they move to a platform with no moderating influences and become even more radicalized. See Voat. > Secondly, and I think this is the more salient…

> Your theory is directly contrary to various clinical treatments for anxiety (e.g. exposure therapy) which are altogether more healthy and sustainable Reading slurs online isn't exposure therapy. Exposure therapy consists of controlled situations and counseling led by licensed therapists. No therapist would suggest that their clients should expose themselves to abusive and toxic environments as "exposure therapy". P…

The purpose of exposure therapy is to desensitize the patient to the stimulus, rather than wishing against all evidence that the stimulus would never be encountered, so that when they do encounter it in the world, it doesn't trigger them. The argument isn't that hate speech is exposure therapy, it's that the likes of exposure therapy are a better solution than censorship to prevent people from being harmed by contemptible third party speech.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#122

Post by deanCommie »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #109
deanCommie wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has access to the biggest and most ubiquitous information delivery platform IN THE WORLD today. To let them off the hook for the role they had in helping letting the idea of ABSOLUTE TRUTH degrade, as well as the role they COULD have in helping fix it, is not thinking big enough. Facebook could choose to be an active participant in the quest to reinforce the value of reality-orientated information exchange.…

Would you support this even if Facebook suppressed some ideas you believe in, or are you working under the assumption that Facebook will always agree with you about what's true?

I...don't know how to respond to that. Truth is truth.

Yes, there is right wing fascist parties that are trying to nullify the meaning of the word, and introduce subjectivity where there should not be any, sowing doubt on the very idea of Reality.

But this is not the new normal for society or humanity. I refuse to believe that, or we're truly doomed. This is a temporary hurdle made by desperate people trying to hold on to a world they are being left behind in.

If Facebook doesn't take a stance on facts, lies, reality, and fiction. Then they are by definition agreeing with those that say all these things are subjective, and are therefore themselves unimpeachable and above repercussions.

Not taking a stand is taking a stand in this case.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#123

Post by chmod775 »

riffraff wrote: post #97
refurb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. You may not agree with Zuckerberg's position of not censoring content (beyond the obscene), but it's probably the smartest position for the business. As soon as you start saying "well, we'll censor stuff that isn't accurate", you've opened a Pandora's box of every single interest group hammering you on every single decision and in the end everyone thinks you're screwing them over.

> beyond the obscene I mean, that's pretty arbitrary too, e.g. FB censors female breasts, which is not considered obscene in many places. It's a difficult line to walk.

Where I live even full nudity would not be considered obscene at all, unless something sexual was going on.

However it is becoming more and more the case. With American platforms and media, their learned attitude of being overly prude also made their way here. Though I'm not sure whether "prude" is the right word to describe the crippling self-consciousness many experience when faced with nude humanity.

I suspect it has be actively instilled by your parents and society around you while you are still young, or you won't ever have it.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#124

Post by pjc50 »

smt88 wrote: post #67
iron0013 wrote: post #3

Sounds like they were engaging in straight-up slander—-even worse than if they had “cancelled” their victims, whatever that actually means.

Slander is a reason to have slander suits, not a ban on a class of people imposed on a social network. I'm all for the free market (i.e. users) pressuring social networks to ban certain groups, like pedophiles or neo-Nazis. I'm deeply against a government telling a social network that any broad class of people should be banned, especially if they're mainstream enough that their leader is in office.

This is the outcome of the slander lawsuits: Facebook has been ordered to stop publishing slander.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#125

Post by atoav »

danbolt wrote: post #91
momokoko wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are literally describing the breeding grounds of radicalizing young men on the internet. Microcommunities, if anything, have proven themselves incredibly dangerous to human life.

I think you're right that some microcommunities aren't exactly the greatest for your mental and social wellbeing. It's not hard to find websites today that showcase and bring out the worst in people. At the same time, I'd be tempted to suggest that the sort of thing isn't much different than someone starting to "run with the wrong crowd" in high school. Or, I think socializing on the internet reflects our humanity in…

I think the internet is more dangerous, because it makes it easier for those with really harmful intentions to radicalize a person. If your kid starts to hang out with Islamic state terrorists in their local hangout, that is far easier to notice than if they do it online.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#126

Post by bickeringyokel »

momokoko wrote: post #68
nyolfen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

microcommunities and web of trust. the things you mentioned are not eliminable but i trust my peers more than a multinational with conflicting values.

You are literally describing the breeding grounds of radicalizing young men on the internet. Microcommunities, if anything, have proven themselves incredibly dangerous to human life.

Decentralized microcommunities are just places to communicate with others, nothing about them is dangerous unless there is dangerous people in them. You can find all kinds of people in places like these, from left to right or even some pretty centrist folk. There are some pretty specific places on the internet where awful people live but I would say people are pretty capable of being radicalized on any platform including good old fashioned Facebook, Twitter or Reddit...

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#127

Post by ashishb »

foota wrote: post #46
ashishb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to think federation here. Some websites have more racist content. Some have more porn. We can choose to visit a website which sorry suits our sensibilities. That's not the case with a social network. They have to apply one set of policies to all. The problem though is that there is no business model that supports federated social networks.

That doesn't help much that the problem here is people objecting to the content hosted, regardless of whether they view it or not.

Some people hate CNN. Some hate Fox News. Neither website can be removed from the Internet. Of course, both set of individuals can petition Facebook to ban those links.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#128

Post by berkes »

kazagistar wrote: post #118
skosch wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radiolab has a wonderfully deep episode on this topic: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/post-... The main issue is the sheer volume of content. Four seconds – that's their estimate for how much time employees in Facebook's "censorship farm" centers have, on average, to make a decision about whether a reported post gets deleted or not. As a result, management decided to aim for the lowest bar: co…

Facebook seems to still have some profit, so it clearly has capacity. The insufficient number of people looking at reported violations is by design.

This assumes that there is a solution 'if you just throw enough money at it'.

I'm not familiar enough with how large scale moderation works, so is this solvable, with near unlimited funds?

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#129

Post by AnthonyMouse »

flamble wrote: post #95
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First of all, we know that deplatforming racists/fascists does actually help to stop the spread of racist/fascist ideas. People often claim this but there doesn't seem to be any real evidence of it. You get a short-term effect because the target has to regroup, but then they move to a platform with no moderating influences and become even more radicalized. See Voat. > Secondly, and I think this is the more salient…

> See Voat. The retreat to Voat was highly detrimental to the fascists because it massively hindered recruitment, the most effective form of which was to have moderator control of large subreddits not explicitly about politics, but saturated with far-right memes / "ironic" jokes, to slowly normalise and inculcate those ideas in people who are originally just there out of interest in some hobby. In contrast, very few…

> In contrast, very few people go to Voat who aren't already true believers.

That's exactly the problem. It creates a space where there is nothing but fascist propaganda so that anyone who ends up there gets trapped in an extremist bubble where nobody who could bring the back to reality ever goes to rescue them.

Meanwhile if you want to give them a recruitment tool, start censoring anything even slightly right of center so that moderates start looking for a platform that doesn't.

Which plays right into their stupid conspiracy theory narrative because now they have real instances of censorship they can point to in claiming the "truth" they're telling you is being suppressed.

> If there are people who believe in a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the white race through miscegenation, and they advocate for violent resistance in response, then "learning to accept" that is not in any way a solution.

Violence isn't speech. Violence is illegal.

If somebody wants to argue that you shouldn't marry outside of your "race" because of some ridiculous Jewish conspiracy, make the argument why they're wrong. If they commit an act of violence, put them in jail.

> the overwhelming majority of political content consists of arguments presented without rebuttal

It's a discussion forum. The rebuttal is you posting a rebuttal. There are more of you than there are of the fascists, right? Because otherwise we've already got a bit of a problem, democracy-wise.

> Have you ever watched a debate between a fascist and a non-fascist? Even in response to comprehensive dismantling of their ideas, fascists remain completely insensible to facts (they can always fall back on "fake Jewish science") or reason. Some small fraction of viewers may be convinced by the debates, but the mere fact of something having been cogently debunked does very little overall.

You're not expected to convince the zealot. You're expected to convince the audience why the zealot is a zealot. Appeals to "Jewish science" and the like are how they lose the audience, because the only people who are going to buy that are the other zealots.

Having the debate does very much overall, because it's how we got to the point where most people aren't fascists. The fascists are the ones whose ideas aren't strong enough to stand without censoring the opposition. When your position can stand up to scrutiny you don't need to censor the opposition.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#130

Post by berkes »

momokoko wrote: post #68
nyolfen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

microcommunities and web of trust. the things you mentioned are not eliminable but i trust my peers more than a multinational with conflicting values.

You are literally describing the breeding grounds of radicalizing young men on the internet. Microcommunities, if anything, have proven themselves incredibly dangerous to human life.

Decentralized microcommunities is how people interacted for the vast majority of existing.

Only recent, after settling down, feudalism, growing cities, and the last blip —globalization—, moved us towards centralization.

If anything, humans are great at managing small communities, and very bad at operating in a large, centralized, globalized world. Radicalism is often a product of that globalization, and would be unable to exist in a hunter-gatherer tribal system of small moving groups.

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