Let me give a preview for anybody who can’t tune in: Democrats all say that disinformation is a threat to democracy. Republicans say that freedom of speech is essential to our democracy. Jack and Mark preface every answer with “senator thank you for this question” and don’t answer anything. They both insist that the humans making editorial decisions are somehow impartial. Republicans yell a lot. Somethings they say d…
Watch live: Zuckerberg, Dorsey testify before Senate [video]
41–50 of 248 posts
Re: Watch live: Zuckerberg, Dorsey testify before Senate [video]
#42I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. It seems like it is either posturing and grandstanding, or reasonable questions to which evasive or non-answers are given. Edit: Oh no it's Lindsey Graham, so probably more grandstanding. Edit 2: Editorializing here, they're threatening to take away section 230 safe harbor protections as a punishment for "censoring" right wing content…
I want to hear from conservatives why they think most of (if not all) of big tech is "in the pockets of the Democrats". Why do all of these software engineers/IT field workers typically end up as left-leaning? Is it a matter of education/intelligence? Empathy? I feel like the split has to be at least 85% Democrat / 15% Republican in IT.
Re: Watch live: Zuckerberg, Dorsey testify before Senate [video]
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They need to get the cameras out of congress. Everyone involved in these hearings is mining them for clips for their campaign ads and it's sickening. It is the cameras you have to thank for finding out that they are posturing and grandstanding.
But it also prevents them from saying things that may be politically unpopular. eg, a moderate senator standing up to the fringes in their wings.
Really I would expect standing up to the fringes in their wings would be a popularity boosting move but party poltical machine alienating one as .
Re: Watch live: Zuckerberg, Dorsey testify before Senate [video]
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd be nice to see more cooperative questioning. If no answer is given, have the next questioner ask the same question again. At some point, that's going to get under even Zuckerberg's skin.
If you want cooperative questioning you need a true cooperative goal - otherwise the process is inherently adversarial no matter how much passive aggressive cloaking is applied.
Re: Watch live: Zuckerberg, Dorsey testify before Senate [video]
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. Considering that they are not even under oath, precisely zero. They can lie to the lawmakers' faces with no recourse. I very distinctly remember Jack telling congress the time before last that they "do not shadowban", and then screenshots of their admin dashboard were leaked[1] that show they explicitly did have multiple kinds of sha…
The witnesses are under oath. Everyone that testifies before Congress is under oath and lying would constitute a federal crime. Interestingly the questioners, in this case the Senators, are not under oath and they can say whatever they’d like. Regardless of how false or nonsensical.
At the last hearing, for instance, Jack Dorsey said that they do not shadow ban, but later pictures appeared of their administrative interface and certainly that capacity was there. An outright lie and yet he isn't even interrogated on this. Wouldn't there be arrests and trials if it truly was a federal crime?
Re: Watch live: Zuckerberg, Dorsey testify before Senate [video]
#46Let me give a preview for anybody who can’t tune in: Democrats all say that disinformation is a threat to democracy. Republicans say that freedom of speech is essential to our democracy. Jack and Mark preface every answer with “senator thank you for this question” and don’t answer anything. They both insist that the humans making editorial decisions are somehow impartial. Republicans yell a lot. Somethings they say d…
Re: Watch live: Zuckerberg, Dorsey testify before Senate [video]
#47I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. It seems like it is either posturing and grandstanding, or reasonable questions to which evasive or non-answers are given. Edit: Oh no it's Lindsey Graham, so probably more grandstanding. Edit 2: Editorializing here, they're threatening to take away section 230 safe harbor protections as a punishment for "censoring" right wing content…
The goal is to get statements into public record and pin down the answers to be used later. Ideally congress would delegate this job to top lawyers who would go list of questions very methodologically.
Making these hearings public and televised has made them into a show. Congressmen make questions that are more like statements in order to please their voters and lots of value is lost.
Re: Watch live: Zuckerberg, Dorsey testify before Senate [video]
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm curious what other people think the informational value of these hearings are. It seems like it is either posturing and grandstanding, or reasonable questions to which evasive or non-answers are given. I agree with you. They need to get the cameras out of congress. Everyone involved in these hearings is mining them for clips for their campaign ads and it's sickening.
> They need to get the cameras out of congress. Everyone involved in these hearings is mining them for clips for their campaign ads and it's sickening. It is the cameras you have to thank for finding out that they are posturing and grandstanding.
In the presence of cameras, politicians become instagram celebrities.
Re: Watch live: Zuckerberg, Dorsey testify before Senate [video]
#49Let me give a preview for anybody who can’t tune in: Democrats all say that disinformation is a threat to democracy. Republicans say that freedom of speech is essential to our democracy. Jack and Mark preface every answer with “senator thank you for this question” and don’t answer anything. They both insist that the humans making editorial decisions are somehow impartial. Republicans yell a lot. Somethings they say d…
If you were to write three questions for someone on that panel, what would they be and why?
As a society we need to first understand the problem, then decide on what, if anything, we want to do to fix it. Fixes would most likely take the form of some sort of regulation.
E.g. something like where in Canada, some percentage of media has to be from a Canadian source. That law is very contentious in Canada, but you could imagine a similar law for any system that does content recommendation. E.g. some percentage of the content has to be sampled from the total body of content, and not come from the recommender. Something like this might address polarization, but disinformation is a thornier problem.
In any case, it needs to start first with understanding what is going wrong. Things like Mozilla's media bubble study is a good start. From that we need to form policy. There is no role for CEO opinions in all of this.
Re: Watch live: Zuckerberg, Dorsey testify before Senate [video]
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if it is something to do with this information: https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1328461277971288067?s=20 Josh Hawley is a US Senator for Missouri.
Josh Hawley often promotes the meme that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube censor conservatives and conservative politicians. I have an extremely difficult time taking people like him seriously in a world where Facebook refuses to ban Steve Bannon when he calls for Dr. Fauci to be beheaded, yet twitter does so without issue. But then again, Twitter refuses to address covid-19 misinformation, and allows politicia…