Live data from Hacker News

Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

techtransparencyproject.org

121–130 of 969 posts

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#121

>The Capitol Attack Where was this rhetoric when Antifa and BLM burned and looted for months with the blessings of all corporations and the mainstream media? Surely the Capitol Hill has an insurance policy? Or does that moronic point only apply to the common folk? Susan Rosenberg literally bombed the Capitol in 1983 and now serves as vice chair of the board of directors of Thousand Currents, a " non-profit foundation…

idk how to tell you this in a way you'll listen to but doing things for good reasons is good and doing them for bad reasons is bad.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#123
post #58

Or, in reality speak: "Some Trump supporters/goofs discussed this protest for months on Facebook". Makes it sound like it describes some huge conspiracy with dire results instead of the equivalent of partisan people dissatisfied with the results (and driven by polarization from both sides) to discuss and do the equivalent of "Let's go into the Capitol to protest, that'll show them".

Thems good boahs dem din du nuffin wrong.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#124
post #121

>The Capitol Attack Where was this rhetoric when Antifa and BLM burned and looted for months with the blessings of all corporations and the mainstream media? Surely the Capitol Hill has an insurance policy? Or does that moronic point only apply to the common folk? Susan Rosenberg literally bombed the Capitol in 1983 and now serves as vice chair of the board of directors of Thousand Currents, a " non-profit foundation…

idk how to tell you this in a way you'll listen to but doing things for good reasons is good and doing them for bad reasons is bad.

You can't use "good intentions" to justify horrific actions.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and pretty much all the advertising-supported platforms made billions while directly contributing to this incident by pitting people against each other and showing them divisive, offensive and often false/misleading content. Parler in comparison doesn't seem to be making any money off this yet.

Parler did have plans for generating revenue. I'm not sure what your point is. Facebook and Google were operating at a loss initially as well. It seems like you are arguing that deplatforming Parler is more ok, because they never got to the point of being entrenched tech hegemonies? Or are you arguing that Parler is somehow more quilty because they weren't making money yet, so their intentions are bad?

My point is that Facebook, Google and plenty of tech companies created this insurrection (damaging countless lives and relationships in the process), earned billions off it and are now claiming the moral high ground? Screw them.

In this case, Parler doesn't sound that bad. At least Parler doesn't have billions of literal blood money and doesn't attempt to get into my life like Facebook does.

If Parler should be held accountable for hosting and encouraging this type of content, then should all the other ones. And if the other ones are allowed to stay, then so should Parler.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#126
post #45

It's chilling how quickly the tech industry has coalesced around oppressive and biased social media censorship policies. A scant few years ago, the tech industry was a beacon of free expression.

I think it's simultaneously funny and I feel a bit of empathy for them. They imagined puppies and rainbows on their free speech platform, but what they got was Donald Trump tweeting his way into the White House. They facilitated that and it's gotta be a big punch in the gut to people who consider him literally hitler, an existential threat, etc. When they looked around their very liberal cities they felt like they were the 99%, but a shocking reality check came for them.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#127
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still in the app stores I see. That's because this stuff was a tiny fraction of the activity on Facebook (it's HUGE, and still mostly for baby pictures), but a substantial fraction of the content on Parler and Gab (they're tiny , and mostly for the stuff that Facebook and Twitter ban). A lot of people who object to Parler's treatment want this conceived as a simple binary, but it's more of a matter of degree an pro…

>That's because this stuff was a tiny fraction of the activity on Facebook (it's HUGE, and still mostly for baby pictures), but a substantial fraction of the content on Parler and Gab (they're tiny, and mostly for the stuff that Facebook and Twitter ban). I would love to see a source for this claim.

> I would love to see a source for this claim.

There's no source, but it stands to reason: Facebook has something like 2 billion daily active users and it its roots are in nonpolitical social networking (meaning baby pictures, etc.). Parler had something like 2-3 million daily active users at its peak [1], and most of them joined after the Twitter started putting warning labels on false claims of election fraud. Parler also billed itself as a "free speech" social network, which in practice means allowing things other social networks prohibit, which means its mainly gets users who want to post and read such stuff [2].

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/10/tech/parler-downloads/index.h...

[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/right-wing-users-flock-t...

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really doesn't, but ok. Facebook has a huge moderation team. Just because some things get through that cause damage doesn't put it in the same category as a platform specifically built to enable terrorism.

Let me paint a hypothetical. I create a new social network startup. Early on, most of the people it attracts are those banned from Twitter and Facebook - since they don't have a lot of other options. In addition to normal social network things, they post some questionable and inciting content. Since I'm a startup, I have a small moderation team and no fancy AI moderation so most of it slips through the cracks. Is my…

I'd say yes, in fact.

The notion that you'd need moderation should not come as a surprise to you. It's not 1997, so it's not like you don't know that this kind of thing happens. If you want to build a social network, handling the moderation load is part of your job, not an afterthought.

We absolutely allowed large social media platforms to get away with it for far too long. It's not the only thing making them a monopoly -- the network effect of having all of your friends in one place is also a significant barrier to entry for any new social media site.

Fixing that after the fact isn't easy. But it doesn't mean that you can act as though you're not very, very, very late to the party in trying to establish a new social media site. In 2021 it's part of any new site to make sure you're not being used for crime -- or at least making enough of an attempt that authorities don't see you as being implicated.

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#129
post #84
post #21

If people had called one another to prepare this, would we say that the phone was responsible for the attack? And would we try to ban phones?

> If people had called one another to prepare this, would we say that the phone was responsible for the attack? And would we try to ban phones? That's a moot point, because an attack like this can't realistically be organized via one-to-one communication. It needs a broadcast medium, which the phone network isn't.

Really? How did past revolutions and terrorist attacks get organized? You realize most of world history existed before the Internet, right?

Re: Capitol Attack Was Months in the Making on Facebook

#130
post #121

>The Capitol Attack Where was this rhetoric when Antifa and BLM burned and looted for months with the blessings of all corporations and the mainstream media? Surely the Capitol Hill has an insurance policy? Or does that moronic point only apply to the common folk? Susan Rosenberg literally bombed the Capitol in 1983 and now serves as vice chair of the board of directors of Thousand Currents, a " non-profit foundation…

idk how to tell you this in a way you'll listen to but doing things for good reasons is good and doing them for bad reasons is bad.

Violence is categorically bad, regardless of what the intentions are. Referring to violence as "doing things" purposely avoids recognizing this.
Post reply on HN