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Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#161

Post by enumjorge »

ctrlp wrote: post #131
shlant wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't deny there is probably some favoritism going on, but is Facebooks willingness to moderate their content not at least part of the reason? Parler was completely hands off when it came to any sort of moderation of the content its users were posting (by design) which allowed for threats of violence to go unchecked and flourish within the platform. That seems like a pretty significant determinant when considering…

That's false. Please don't spread false information, whatever your politics. Parler had very similar terms of service to other content companies prohibiting illegal, violent, or copyrighted content. They also paid a team of content moderators to adjudicate flagged posts. They worked happily with their reps at Apple, Google, and AWS right up until the Friday Night Massacre. They were a small company experiencing massi…

> There was not a peep about their content until from their reps until 1/6. Was it the riot or the senate flipping?

Sounds like you answered your own question. Tech companies were lenient on hosting a questionable community, until members of that community tried to overthrow the government. For all the moderation the Parler admins allegedly did, it was an open secret that it was the hang out spot for right-wing extremists. Yet Parler was allowed to stay afloat until it became clear that doing so became an issue of national security. The riots happened. The cause and effect here are pretty clear. The Parler community did this to itself.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#162

Post by sigmaprimus »

leetcrew wrote: post #113
andrewzah wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intent does matter. Why don't you try moderating posts at the scale facebook receives them, and we can compare the results. edit: I am not advocating for or against facebook being so large. What I am saying is there is a clear distinction between facebook and e.g. parler in terms of moderation.

why are we starting with the assumption that anyone needs to receive and moderate posts at the scale facebook does?

Good point, my response would be that everyone seems to agree that a certain portion of social media is toxic.

I think the main reason these big social media and tech companies devote so many resources to moderation is their leaders are tired of being called into televised political hearings that sole purpose seem to be political grandstanding of self righteous politicians.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#164

Post by pjkundert »

dastbe wrote: post #149
pjkundert wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to provide facts to counter your generalizations, but... I was on Parler for several months, trawling it and other sources quite heavily for the last month or so, trying to keep abreast of ... events. At no time did I see even a single post advocating violent overthrow of the government, white supremacy, etc. Apparently, neither did any of those planning the Capital attack, since they were not Parler members. So,…

> At no time did I see even a single post advocating violent overthrow of the government, white supremacy, etc. Apparently, neither did any of those planning the Capital attack, since they were not Parler members. how do you reconcile this opinion with the reporting that uses gps data from the parler data dump to place parler users at the protest and in the capitol building? https://gizmodo.com/parler-users-breached-…

Parler users wandering around the Capital sucking on their soda pops are different than those wanted by the FBI for breaching the building...

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#165

Post by earthscienceman »

ransom1538 wrote: post #147
mrweasel wrote: post #14

So is Google going to throw them out of the Play store? What's the argument for banning one social media and not another. Where do you draw the line that manages to keep Facebooks app available, while still being able to defend the removal of Parler. I know many will think I'm defending Parler, I'm not. I just don't see why Facebook is continuously given a free pass for all the horrible stuff on their platform. Is it…

"I know many will think I'm defending Parler, I'm not. I just don't see why Facebook is continuously given a free pass" This is how it always turns out: Orwellian 'At the end of Animal Farm, the pigs start to walk on their hind legs. This is significant because the animals have gone from saying "Four legs good, two legs bad" to the chant "Four legs good, two legs BETTER." Napoleon begins carrying a whip, and soon all…

[flagged]

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#166

Post by ctrlp »

jf22 wrote: post #145
ctrlp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's false. Please don't spread false information, whatever your politics. Parler had very similar terms of service to other content companies prohibiting illegal, violent, or copyrighted content. They also paid a team of content moderators to adjudicate flagged posts. They worked happily with their reps at Apple, Google, and AWS right up until the Friday Night Massacre. They were a small company experiencing massi…

Your first sentence says "please don't spread false information." Later you say: "My intel may be false"

It is false that parler doesn't moderate its content. The details of their deplatforming are coming to light and subject to change. My intel may be false about those details so as a courtesy to you I called that out. What's the confusion?

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#167

Post by kingaillas »

ctrlp wrote: post #131
shlant wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't deny there is probably some favoritism going on, but is Facebooks willingness to moderate their content not at least part of the reason? Parler was completely hands off when it came to any sort of moderation of the content its users were posting (by design) which allowed for threats of violence to go unchecked and flourish within the platform. That seems like a pretty significant determinant when considering…

That's false. Please don't spread false information, whatever your politics. Parler had very similar terms of service to other content companies prohibiting illegal, violent, or copyrighted content. They also paid a team of content moderators to adjudicate flagged posts. They worked happily with their reps at Apple, Google, and AWS right up until the Friday Night Massacre. They were a small company experiencing massi…

>There was not a peep about their content until from their reps until 1/6

According to Amazon's response to Parler's lawsuit, they were warned for months about their content.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...

There is a handy summary of this on Ars Technica as well. That article also says Parler was relying on volunteer moderation to clear their backlog of over 26000 posts.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#168

Post by dylan604 »

cal5k wrote: post #122
IgorPartola wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knives can be used to kill people. But a lot more knives are used in cooking. So we see knives as tools that are relatively rarely used to do bad things and mostly used for good things. Guns are mostly used to kill people. So we see them as tools only useful for that purpose. That’s why you can buy a set of knives on Amazon but not a 10 pack of Glocks. Facebook is seen closer to knives. Parler was mostly guns.

> That’s why you can buy a set of knives on Amazon but not a 10 pack of Glocks. No, it's because Amazon doesn't sell guns. There's also no reason to own 10 of the same firearm - it's not like you're setting your dinner table with handguns. As for guns being "mostly used to kill people", that's just not true. My gun collection has only been used to kill paper targets and, occasionally, deer. Properly used they are no…

> it's not like you're setting your dinner table with handguns.

This would make for an interesting dinner party. Does any of Agatha Christie's stories start out like this? Or one of those murder/whodunnit dinner theater type of events where the dinner guests are part of the play.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#169

Post by isbadawi »

megaman821 wrote: post #32

Emotional content elicits a larger response, says the article with the provocative headline. There is nothing new here. Why does the responsibility never lie with the people who say these things, only where they say it? It reminds of of the Columbine shootings, where many articles where written about the violent video games that must of inspired the shooters to do it. Those arguments sucked then and they still suck n…

Here is a question posed by the article:

IT’S HARD TO DETERMINE the extent to which Facebook caused this hyperpartisanship or simply stumbled into it. Did Facebook cultivate more extreme beliefs or simply take what was already simmering and thrust it into the open?

Mr. McGee argued that he always thought this way. Before Facebook, he said, he watched conspiracy-laden videos on YouTube. Facebook merely helped him find his people.

“People are engaging me, encouraging me to share what I think, but these are the inner workings of my mind,” he said. “I’ve been feeling this way for years. That’s why it’s so easy for me to make posts, because I’ve been suppressing this stuff forever.”

And yet when he talks about Facebook, he focuses on algorithms and optimization, not community or ideology. It’s worth considering: Would he be attempting to influence others so forcefully without Facebook’s incentives?

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#170

Post by mordymoop »

btbuildem wrote: post #159

So.. suppose you're Superman, and you can just burn every last Facebook data centre to the ground. Would removing FB from the internet help, or is it too late at this point?

Only if we could remove and permanently prohibit what we currently think of as "social media", which in my opinion would include things like Discord and Reddit as well as Facebook and Twitter. A full-on Butlerian Jihad aimed at reverting the species back to traditional modes of human interaction. We clearly can't handle this drug.

But that won't happen, obviously, so we need to figure something else out.

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