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Mark in the Middle

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Re: Mark in the Middle

#511

Post by chrisjarvis »

shadowgovt wrote: post #354
sequoia wrote: post #278

To be honest I wish Zuckerberg would say "We're not censoring political posts, and if you don't like it, --> there's the door. Who's leaving first?" Facebook engineers may love to beat their chests about social justice, but when push comes to shove, they are not about to walk away from those gold plated salaries & stock grants. Most of them could leave FB and get another job paying somewhere in the ballpark of $200k…

Some might. Google had an exodus of some dozen to two-dozen high-performing engineers in the past 2 years resulting from multiple controversial management decisions. I don't expect FB to see an exodus more than sub-1% over topics like this, but the company can feel outsized impact if the sub-1% are 10x engineers... Or decide you can air any dirty internal laundry you want once they're no longer buying your silence an…

I doubt the people who take time out of their workdays for political activism are, by and large, the "10x engineers".

Re: Mark in the Middle

#512

Post by axaxs »

schuyler2d wrote: post #491
grawprog wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For example, misinformation that might persuade voters into voting based on a false premise undermines a democratic system. So, what's different now vs when there was paid political campaigns and advertising on TV, radio, magazines etc.? Partisan political ads have never been a source of reliable information as long as i've been alive. I'm curious as to what elections you've participated in within your lifetime that…

Paid ads (including political ones) on TV are not allowed to make false statements. Networks have had that policy for a long time. It's Facebook that is undermining that norm -- even though they have the same standard for ads from non-politicians. There's a GOP pac head that is running for something just to dodge Facebook's policy about lying.

Are you being serious? I don't have and can't stand live tv anymore, but as little as 10 years back TV was rife with lying political ads.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#513

Post by thissitecensors »

shadowgovt wrote: post #466
thissitecensors wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me a break. Guidelines that are selectively enforced is just power tripping censorship. This is a website that allows people to post advertisements for cigarettes while stamping down on anything that shakes the boat when it comes to China or labor rights in the USA. I don't see anyone using your logic to defend FB although it would be just as applicable. And to preempt people https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…

No, I agree; this site regulates what topics are valid for conversation. It's the rest of your comment I take issue with. Wake me when dang rolls tanks into a public square. (... and I'll use my own logic to defend Facebook any day of the week. It's their site and their rules. If anything, I think the employees who believe they should be responsible and forthright about their policies there instead of pretending to n…

I'm sorry but saying it's not censorship unless a goon is putting gun to your head is sinply retarded.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#514

Post by samatman »

Aperocky wrote: post #502
samatman wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're doing a poor job of explaining the first worldview. Which is okay, you've acknowledged that you have trouble understanding it. This worldview has been called the "liberal consensus". What it holds is that the power to determine a discourse is inherently against freedom is corrupting , and by allowing an authority to determine that, it will inevitably be used as a weapon. Goalposts will shift. We will, hmm, go…

> they are false in a different way. In what different way? Has not both been scientifically refuted by reputable scientists? Just because one sounded more plausible doesn't mean it's not false. To me, both needn't be banned, because I believe and agree with your premise, but I don't agree there's a difference.

A bit off topic but interesting nonetheless, I'll take a crack at it.

I see an important distinction between pseudoscientific crankery and just bad/refuted science. I've read some of the 5g corona stuff; it's batshit insane, like I'm fairly sure the primary sources on it have serious mental illnesses.

Any physicist with a mailing address can tell you all about cranks. Refuting cranks is not a part of their job, if they do that, they won't have time for anything else.

I don't think the gain-of-function paper has been comprehensively refuted, yet. It's certainly been dismissed, dissed, and evidence is strongly pointing in the direction of it being refuted.

But it was written by a credentialed virologist, and more importantly, it is in the process of being submitted through channels.

Will it survive peer review and be published? Probably not, and that's what peer review is for. As far as I'm able to determine, it's just a bad paper, but it's real science, not a parody of science.

Banning such people sends the wrong message. We rationally should update our priors in the direction of a conspiracy to suppress the truth.

I'm no virologist, but I've spend enough time in genetics labs to be able to follow along with their conversations. What I can't do, is tell the difference between a shadowy ChiCom conspiracy to suppress the truth, and overzealous enforcement of a vague mandate to ban disinformation about the novel coronavirus.

I mean. I know some people who work for Twitter; it's the latter, you'll never go broke presuming institutional dysfunction as the cause of any malaise on the birdsite.

And yeah, I don't think the 5g whackjobs should be banned either, but for a different reason: they'll just go find another forum where people like me won't be around to tell them how full of shit they are. The only think worse than a weird cult of people who believe schizo stuff is a weird isolated cult of people who believe schizo stuff.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#515

Post by retox »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #194
notional wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last 24hrs top-performing pages in the US, for anyone who can't click the link. 1. Dan Bongino 2. Dan Bongino 3. Breitbart 4. Fox News 5. Robert Reich 6. NPR 7. Ben Shapiro 8. Dan Bongino 9. Mark Levin 10. Bernie Sanders This is curated by https://twitter.com/kevinroose I had to look up most of those names but if you're wondering, looking back a couple weeks it's usually 9/10 or 10/10 right-wing talk hosts/sources. I…

Could it be that left-wing pageviews are divided among more sources so none of them individually get this much traffic?

I think the answer is that the US population is much less "lefty" that people in that milieu would like to believe.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#516

Post by samatman »

jarpadat wrote: post #510
samatman wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're doing a poor job of explaining the first worldview. Which is okay, you've acknowledged that you have trouble understanding it. This worldview has been called the "liberal consensus". What it holds is that the power to determine a discourse is inherently against freedom is corrupting , and by allowing an authority to determine that, it will inevitably be used as a weapon. Goalposts will shift. We will, hmm, go…

I freely concede that I'm doing a poor job of defending it, because it isn't my view to defend. The part of it that I don't understand is limited to how it is self-consistent, which is not something I see addressed in your reply, although I could be mistaken. But I think we are still saying talking points instead of getting to the core. I understand and I share the concern about an important voice being silenced. But…

A good reply.

> Whereas you perceive a threat about the slide into censorship, I perceive a threat about the slide into unrest and violence.

I certainly only addressed the former, but I'm also concerned about the latter.

It seems to me that cooler heads are more likely to prevail, if hotheads remain on the same platform as those cooler heads. Not going to go full horseshoe theory here, but part of what makes the far left and far right "far" is their willingness to engage in violent rhetoric and follow it up with action.

Garden-variety guns and beef conservatives are more likely to speak the language of actual white supremacists, but they aren't going to go onto Stormfront to do it.

Extremists are angry people, with a story about oppression: either the shadow globalist cabal is trying to replace them, or the evil capitalists are trying to grind them under their boot. So it's a bad idea to actually go in and oppress them. They will absolutely find a forum to air their grievances and plot revenge, and moderates will no longer be a part of the conversation.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#517

Post by Proziam »

majormajor wrote: post #410
NewOrderNow wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point of view is intrinsically liberal, and the latter point of view plays the victim and assumes people can't evolve to gain the intelligence needed to not fall for misinformation. You intrinsically think there are people who can't make decisions for themselves. Sounds like control

The absolute "freedom is simple, and restrictions are all bad" position is nonsense. Ignoring that there are people who would use their freedom to infringe on others is naive and childish. If everyone has a gun, we aren't all safer, we're just all each at the mercy of whoever decides to pull the trigger first.

> If everyone has a gun, we aren't all safer, we're just all each at the mercy of whoever decides to pull the trigger first.

I wonder how the math breaks down on whether you're safer having fun at the gun range, or on the road driving to it.

> The absolute "freedom is simple, and restrictions are all bad" position is nonsense.

I think this statement is needlessly antagonistic. Restricting the freedom of individuals who are acting in good faith and with sufficient personal responsibility seems wrong to me. This harms everyone who ever had to get a license just to serve drinks and wipe tables, as a common case.

> Ignoring that there are people who would use their freedom to infringe on others is naive and childish.

I don't believe anyone here has said that we should ignore bad actors. If someone has bad ideas, people should be free to refute them. If someone engages in behavior that harms others the legal system can intervene.

Censorship is a stupid mechanism for improving society. If you can use it against those you disagree with, what happens if they end up in power and use it against you? Rigging the rules is short-term thinking.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#518

Post by ghiculescu »

paulgb wrote: post #386
dsbleia wrote: post #223

I think this actually made Zuck's leadership look solid. Of course it's a little naive to say "we aren't political", but he's probably just doing that because it's the calculated thing to say. Almost every other company says things like that, except for a few ideological ones in Silicon Valley. I don't know how anyone takes these employees at FB seriously. They are complaining about the lack of free snacks? Anyone co…

Facebook (at HQ and some if not all satellite offices) provide multiple meals per day. When evaluating offers, I've priced similar perks at equivalent to an additional ~$10k of pre-tax income. If I had priced a $10k perk into my salary and no longer got it, I'd be disappointed in Zuckerberg's dismissiveness here.

If you were still making an easy six figures during a global pandemic and the only cut was (temporarily) 10k in perks, complaining would not be the right move.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#519

Post by ghiculescu »

themacguffinman wrote: post #391
_vertigo wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never mind the fact that Facebook probably pays better than 80% of tech companies Never mind the fact that tech salaries are already insane Never mind the fact that there is a global pandemic and corresponding economic uncertainty Never mind the fact that millions of people are out of work, can't afford to feed their families, and facing one of the biggest eviction crises of all time while being completely abandoned…

What are you saying, exactly? People can't complain if others have it worse? It's hard for me to think of a more charitable interpretation of your comment, which seems to plainly chastise Facebook employees for voicing complaints during the existence of other big problems in the world.

People who can’t have a sense of perspective about temporarily not getting a free lunch shouldn’t be making decisions about what content is censored on Facebook.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#520

Post by samatman »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #489
samatman wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that you're still ignoring the tail risk of authoritarian control of the concept of truth, namely, gulags. It's a justified fear, since it's happened repeatedly in living memory, and is happening still: you're welcome to go hand out pamphlets about the June Fourth Incident on Tiananmen Square if you don't believe me. If you want to discount that risk, ignoring it or glossing it as some sort of slippery…

I think I'm generally on your side of the debate, but are we really talking about authoritarian control of public discourse here? I thought we were talking about Facebook, a private corporation, deciding whether they want to allow their platform to be used to spread false and potentially harmful information. Facebook is powerful, but it's not an authoritarian state. I'm not sure I see much danger in Facebook weighing…

I see so much space between a journal and the CCP that Facebook is more like neither than like either.

The main historical analogy to Facebook which seems relevant is the phone company. Either Facebook is so large and influential that misinformation on Facebook can threaten our political process, or it isn't, and clearly it's the former.

When Ma Bell was the only game in town, they weren't allowed to deny use of the network to the Communist Party, because that was clearly a violation of the concept of free speech.

I don't think the difference between a natural monopoly and a state monopoly has much relevance here, what does matter is that if you ban, say, a political party, from Facebook, it absolutely cripples their ability to participate in the democratic process. That's too much power for me to simply shrug and say "their house, their rules".

It's a bad situation, and we should get out of it. And yes, Facebook itself isn't the Ministry of Truth, and doesn't have jackbooted security waiting in the wings.

But I firmly believe that the parties who are pushing for control over social media discourse absolutely want that end state, they are driven by power, and the only way to fight that outcome is to resist it early and often. Denying a victory here will spare expensive battles down the line.

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