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Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

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Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#841

Post by oooooooooooow »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #718
hi5eyes wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Twitter's audience is narrow: Most of the people I know (across countries, religions, genders, professions) do not have a Twitter account. most of the people in media are on twitter 247, talking heads take from twitter discourse and export that to other media

Twitter has a really high membership ratio in journalism and politics - pretty much every professional journalist and politician is very active. Whether this is a good thing for society is a different question. (I'd argue that it's not and that Twitter should be closed down. But I know that's an unpopular opinion)

I reckon it's not as unpopular as you might think.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#842

Post by nomel »

strategyanalyst wrote: post #690
wrsh07 wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to think that the business model of a cable news room is pretty fundamentally broken. Insofar as you value investigative journalism or pieces with some depth, you will be disappointed by organizations that host ESPN style shout fests, but they're produced for exactly the same reasons. It's cheap to make garbage filler content. When you see that all of the channels are deeply flawed, it's because they're incent…

John Oliver is also focused on a sub-segment and is also at least misleading at times. There are no sources of information that are credible with more than 45-55% of US Gen pop. We really need a source that can at least be relied upon as accurate source by 70-80% to avoid total collapse of democratic order in US.

> upon as accurate source by 70-80% to avoid total collapse of democratic order in US.

The current news stations are reporting from the same, truthful, reality. It's the spin, slant, and selective omission when they're presented that is different. Having some true source, that dryly presents this reality, will be devoid of these biases, but they'll still picked up and presented in an almost certainly more entertaining, vastly more popular, biased way as they are now.

I think the problem is, and always has been, that people fundamentally prefer similar viewpoint rather than raw presentation of facts. I also assume this is why there are exactly 0, for profit, widely watched, media outlets that present information in this relatively boring way.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#843

Post by DubiousPusher »

The conflation of privately owned social media platforms with democracy is an incredible Jedi mind trick these companies have executed. It's extremely discomforting that they have become so entangled with intellectual activity that something like this could have an impact on the future of democracy.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#844

Post by owl57 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #718
hi5eyes wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Twitter's audience is narrow: Most of the people I know (across countries, religions, genders, professions) do not have a Twitter account. most of the people in media are on twitter 247, talking heads take from twitter discourse and export that to other media

Twitter has a really high membership ratio in journalism and politics - pretty much every professional journalist and politician is very active. Whether this is a good thing for society is a different question. (I'd argue that it's not and that Twitter should be closed down. But I know that's an unpopular opinion)

Twitter should be closed down

It probably can't be closed down in a way that's not even worse than current situation. Even if there's no coercion and management just has the revelation and decides to close shop, some (probably Chinese-owned) clone will probably reach the same position soon, what's the win?

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#845

Post by DubiousPusher »

runarberg wrote: post #825
awb wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the election results became apparent cable outlets have begun cutting away from the President’s speeches and tech companies have begun censoring the President’s speech. Absolutely nothing has changed in the President’s speech or behavior since his 1st speech announcing his candidacy 5 years ago. We needed a John Hancock 5 years ago that was willing to draw a line on violent speech and disinformation regardless…

Things escalated really gradually over the course of 4 years

I don't think that's true at all. It's been an up and down maelstrom of anti-democracy and mob bating since the man walked down that escalator.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#846

Post by munk-a »

myko wrote: post #725
dionian wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox (however detestable you may find it) was created as an alternative to the corporate media hegemony on thought, I fear you have it backwards.

No, it was created to make a fantasy land bubble for insane conspiracy theorists and extremist right wingers. It did its job and normalized those things for the entire GOP. edit: downvotes with no response is really weak, especially given what we see going on in the world today which completely backs up my point.

It has certainly morphed into this - but it wasn't precisely created for this reason. It was created as a place where GOP party lines could be broadcast clearly when other news outlets were focusing on negative facets of GOP actions. This does align pretty closely with your description of a fantasy land bubble, that's pretty apt - but the conspiracy theory stuff is a more recent development.

I do think it's fair to describe fox as openly embracing conspiracy theories - the first really big example for me was how they popularized "the caravan" for months.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#847

Post by wrsh07 »

strategyanalyst wrote: post #690
wrsh07 wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to think that the business model of a cable news room is pretty fundamentally broken. Insofar as you value investigative journalism or pieces with some depth, you will be disappointed by organizations that host ESPN style shout fests, but they're produced for exactly the same reasons. It's cheap to make garbage filler content. When you see that all of the channels are deeply flawed, it's because they're incent…

John Oliver is also focused on a sub-segment and is also at least misleading at times. There are no sources of information that are credible with more than 45-55% of US Gen pop. We really need a source that can at least be relied upon as accurate source by 70-80% to avoid total collapse of democratic order in US.

> There are no sources of information that are credible with more than 45-55% of US Gen pop

I completely agree

I also agree that John Oliver has a liberal bias! What I don't think, however, is that his bias is required by his business model.

(Curiously, as we discuss the daily show hosts, my very conservative parents both really like Trevor Noah. However, I don't think comedy central is to be our information salvation)

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#848

Post by gonehome »

What’s interesting to me about this is that it’s not so much a Facebook policy change as it is a USG change. FB policy is to allow comments (including lies) from democratically elected politicians in a western government with rule of law.

The latter is at risk so trump is going under the policy of other dictator type leaders where FB is stricter and more willing to remove access.

https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f...

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#849

Post by munk-a »

matthewrobertso wrote: post #699
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the other mass media outlets All? C'mon. You can make the argument that MSNBC is a mirror of Fox News in terms of coddling its viewers, but if you're calling NPR or the New York Times "fact-free," you're only betraying your own ignorance of journalism standards. Investigating facts and reporting them clearly is a solved problem. There are people who go to universities to study how to do this well, then go to wo…

Was the new york times factful in its reporting on iraq in 2003? And if they later investigated themselves and found that they published information that was not true, would that cancel the war pushed on us by the military industrial complex across all of our media and bring 500,000 dead Iraqis back to life?

You are absolutely correct, and no news organization is correct all the time - you should strive to consume a diversity of sources.

NYT remains one of the more reliably correct news sources in the US but they all make mistakes - sometimes accidentally sometimes maliciously. Since there are humans involved you need to understand the biases the news sources have and compensate for that yourself.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#850

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

sagichmal wrote: post #812
molbioguy wrote: post #467

The statements by Facebook and others pushing moral justifications around Facebook's censorship fail to entertain the possibility that even morality is subjective and relative. Facebook makes its decisions based on its own goals and preferences and morals. Facebook has established itself unfairly as a moral arbiter on a platform that is so widely used that is treated like a public utility. The people who currently ag…

It's fine that morality is subjective. Objectivity isn't a requirement for ethical action -- I don't need to write a formal proof to ban a white ethnostate nationalist from my web forum.

That's because there have been hundreds of years of efforts within the legal sphere to solidify your private property rights. Much of that effort involved individuals parsing, understanding, and improving the objective realities in which they lived, and resulted in your ability to not give web banning much thought.
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