Facebook Incubated the Insurrection • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#291

Post by astura » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #265

fsociety wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Links for reference? When the CEO spoke with Kara he said that they have groups of five random individuals on platform moderating each decision. That’s a filter bubble style of moderation and poor compared to Facebook/Twitter’s efforts for moderation. The CEO also made it sound like they ignore context and instead only respond to direct threats of violence, allowing vague remarks on platform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parler#Moderation > In January 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that Parler had increased its moderation team to 600 people, and began paying them. They also had begun hiring full-time employees to moderate the service. It may be that Parler did too little too late, but I find it concerning that most mainstream news outlets are failing to report this.

What did they moderate though? I mean, was their standing orders to delete posts that advocate violence? Or were they just to ban people who criticize Donald Trump? My overall question is was there an actual effort to come into lines with Google/Apple/AWS TOS? Just because they had moderators doesn't mean they were making an effort to remove the sorts of posts that got them banned.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#292

Post by sojournerc » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #286

sojournerc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok - those were likely Facebook users also, maybe on Twitter, maybe they used Gmail. Guilt by association is something we should avoid. It looks an awful lot like a witch hunt.

Once again, none of those other services listed exist for the rhetoric leading to the 6th.

From my perspective, it's pretty disingenuous to argue that was the sole purpose of Parler.

Anecdata from HNers in this thread suggests otherwise, and unless you can show evidence that all 4 million users conspired to storm the Capitol building, there's not much of a leg to stand on there.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#293

Post by spaced-out » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #217

spaced-out wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parler only has 30 employees, has some very well-publicized security and design flaws suggesting a lack of engineering talent, and is backed by just one private investor. The only way they were even able to release an app of that scale is because of all the services they bought from companies like Amazon. The lesson the business world should take from this is: invest in your engineers.

I’m not sure I follow the “only giant, mature, and billions/trillion dollar companies should be allowed to have public services” argument. Twitter had 30 engineers at one point, they weren’t deplatformed before becoming a better product.

First, Parler would still be up if they followed AWS's terms of service.

Second, they've already found a new host (https://www.npr.org/2021/01/13/956315632/after-booted-by-big...), yet they announced they'll still likely go offline because that host can't provide all the engineering talent Parler relied on. They just need built up their teams and do the work to develop their internal infrastructure. They don't need to become a billion dollar company to do that.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#294

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

pjkundert wrote: post #164

dastbe wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

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

No, assuming that they exist at all (which seems unlikely given the nature of the incident: peaceful people interested in just “wandering around…sucking on their soda pops” don’t tend to casually hang around riots involving violent clashes with the police, use of chemical irritants on both sides, gunfire, etc.) they aren’t, except to the extent that some of the former may not have been identified yet and moved into the latter category.

Anyone who illegally entered the building and is identified is being charged.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#295

Post by Aunche » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #291

Aunche wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parler#Moderation > In January 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that Parler had increased its moderation team to 600 people, and began paying them. They also had begun hiring full-time employees to moderate the service. It may be that Parler did too little too late, but I find it concerning that most mainstream news outlets are failing to report this.

What did they moderate though? I mean, was their standing orders to delete posts that advocate violence? Or were they just to ban people who criticize Donald Trump? My overall question is was there an actual effort to come into lines with Google/Apple/AWS TOS? Just because they had moderators doesn't mean they were making an effort to remove the sorts of posts that got them banned.

I don't have WSJ, so I'm not sure: https://www.wsj.com/articles/parler-struggles-survival-amazo...

Chance's are, they're probably not paying people to ban political content, since they can get their users to do that for free.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#296

Post by 52-6F-62 » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

3princip wrote: post #94

yrimaxi wrote: post #12

NYT engineered consent for the Iraq War?

Absolutely correct. The actions of mainstream media have resulted in countless deaths, destruction and other barbarous acts committed as a result of fake news and propaganda. Yet they call for the censorship of others for deeds that pale in comparison.

Sorry, but this comment betrays a lack of understanding about the very functioning of North American media.

There is no real world scenario in which they can be lumped as one group. Even individual outlets carry such a variety of voices that you cannot pin one on any given outlet.

The organizations that are lumped into the "MSM" branding opponents to a free press like to throw around are just large organizations.

Remember, "the medium is the message": you cannot extricate one article from the entirety of content published by a given outlet any more than you can exalt one article as being the sum of any outlet on its own. For example, a muffin recipe[0] is as much the New York Times as an opinion commentary on the potential problematic nature of social media, yet you cannot say that the NYT is only one or the other.

Because an outlet published an article that one might contend is responsible for a situation (rather than commentary on a situation), and that content has commonalities with content from other outlets does not mean there is any other practical association—only thematic.

Secondly, calling it all "fake news and propaganda" really belies any rational discussion of the subject... it's like saying all computers are killing machines because they've been used in war.

[0] https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/2868-jordan-marshs-blueb...

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#297

Post by mc32 » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #280

mc32 wrote: post #51

I think Facebook should not have the power they have: to grant or deny speech as _they_ see fit, which may or may not align with the locales they operate in. They are a supranational entity without any local governance. So their policies are left up to them. That’s not good for democracies. They should not force their world view across the world. That said, this is sour grapes from the NYT. They want to pile on becau…

> I think Facebook should not have the power they have: to grant or deny speech as _they_ see fit, which may or may not align with the locales they operate in. They don't. You can still speak and publish outside of Facebook.

Yeah that’s as good as saying that since you can use Tor in China, it’s really not censorship because you DO have alternatives.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#298

Post by ctrlp » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

brewdad wrote: post #226

ctrlp wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parler has allegedly had hundreds of paid moderators for months. They also allegedly cleared their backlog over the weekend in a foolish belief they could be on the right side of AWS politics.

If Parler was so intent on staying on the right side of the law, maybe they should have cleared that backlog well before Jan 6th.

You said it yourself, Apple, Google, AWS are "the law" now.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#299

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

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…

> What’s the argument for banning one social media and not another.

The argument for Parler from at least some platforms seems to have been that they were unable or unwilling to police content after they had actual notice. Whether it is as sufficient or not may be debatable, but Facebook has at least visibly made steps to address the problem as attention has been focussed on it.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#300

Post by jelliclesfarm » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #217

spaced-out wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parler only has 30 employees, has some very well-publicized security and design flaws suggesting a lack of engineering talent, and is backed by just one private investor. The only way they were even able to release an app of that scale is because of all the services they bought from companies like Amazon. The lesson the business world should take from this is: invest in your engineers.

I’m not sure I follow the “only giant, mature, and billions/trillion dollar companies should be allowed to have public services” argument. Twitter had 30 engineers at one point, they weren’t deplatformed before becoming a better product.

This is an illuminating example of Silicon Valley(CA)vs Silicon Alley(NY) of startups.

I guess in this particular case, Gab vs Parler. Access to capital isn’t enough. Companies also need good legal advice, scale strategy and testing. Etc.

A teachable moment.