Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#161

Post by colpabar » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

taylodl wrote: post #113

isk517 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the rules and laws. The system tends to be very good at punishing rich people that swindle money from other rich people.

In other words, when the elite are impacted the full force of law will be brought to bear on the perpetrator of the injustice. This used to be called aristocracy. We've spent the past 250 years pretending it doesn't exist here in the States.

I find it funny how we use phrases like "Russian oligarchs" all the time without batting an eye, but we never use them when referring to the Bushes or the Clintons in the US.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#162

Post by runako » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

owl_troupe wrote: post #135

runako wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but Section 230 reads pretty clearly to me. Which part of 230 do you think might apply here? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

The distinction lies in whether the service provider has rendered themselves a "publisher" under 230. The protection has historically been broadly interpreted but, in theory, Facebook could lose the protection if it chose, selectively, what content to promote or remove in violation of its own public TOS. Generally: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10306

From a discussion of case history provided by your helpful link:

"Generally, courts have said that a service’s ability to control the content that others post on its website is not enough, in and of itself, to make the service provider a content developer."

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#163

Post by ilikejam » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

pueblito wrote: post #152

> At least some of the documents have been turned over to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to Congress by a person seeking federal whistleblower protection, according to people familiar with the matter. Why the SEC?

Because everything everywhere is securities fraud.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#164

Post by nindalf » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

gkop wrote: post #154

nindalf wrote: post #110

Huh, never thought I’d see XCheck in a news article. I used to work at Facebook and spotted abuse of this system by bad actors and partly fixed it. It’s still not perfect but it’s better than it used to be. I think I might have agreed with the author of this article before working in Integrity for a few years. But with time I learned that any system that’s meant to work for millions of users will have some edge cases…

Your analogy relating to Zuckerberg is absurdly tone deaf.

I think it’s valid because it’s an example of a system not working for a small minority while still working well for others. And more pertinently, there’s no plans to fix it for him specifically just because he’s the CEO. It’s better to spend time making the account compromise system better for the vast majority of users instead.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#165

Post by BurningFrog » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

mandmandam wrote: post #87

dogleash wrote: post #21

>“We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly,” said the confidential review. Why do we even have the collective fiction where corporate messaging around a sore topic is treated as trustworthy? Especially with companies that we know lie all the fucking time?

In short, I'd guess that's because the companies reporting on them are owned by billionaires, and shareholders with bags of fossil fuel, war, banking, etc, stocks. For example, the company reporting this is the WSJ, owned by Murdoch. Why are the WSJ seen as respectable? Why are any of the MSM seen as respectable? They're all objectively untrustworthy on basically everything except sport. They're all in it together, a…

WSJ is respected because of its reporting track record, compared to other sources.

That's really all you can go on.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#166

Post by pmyteh » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #143

pmyteh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. All that s.230 does is declare that platforms are not the 'publisher or speaker' of content provided by another 'information content provider'. It isn't a common carrier provision, so platforms are allowed to make whatever decisions they like about which people they're willing to host, or what TOS/AUP they want to enforce. For such a simple provision, it's astonishing how many people are writing bad (and sometime…

In what sense is Facebook not a publisher? Their algorithm acts as an editor, choosing what to show me. If they had a simple chronological feed, then the platform argument would make sense. If the NYT created a service where the articles I see were selected algorithmically, would they suddenly not be a publisher?

Because s.230 expressly provides for them not to be treated as one. The worry at the time was that information services making editorial decisions (taking down harmful content, in particular) would be treated as publishers, and so liable for what was left up. That creates an obvious moral hazard problem, encouraging bulletin boards and web hosts to refuse to even look at what's being posted, to avoid liability. So s.230 was added to the Communications Decency Act to make clear that the legal responsibility would fall only on those originally providing the information.

This situation isn't mirrored outside the US, FWIW. IIRC England & Wales will impose liability for libels etc., but only if the host had actual or constructive knowledge of the content of the post and chose to let it stay up. That introduces quite a lot of legal uncertainty and a bias towards deleting controversial material but may be better overall. I don't really know.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#167

Post by edoceo » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #146

dogleash wrote: post #21

>“We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly,” said the confidential review. Why do we even have the collective fiction where corporate messaging around a sore topic is treated as trustworthy? Especially with companies that we know lie all the fucking time?

Clearly we need to setup the Social Media Agency and regulate them. We'll staff the agency with high level political appointments comprised entirely of Twitter and Facebook executives. Works for the FDA, anyway.

We can call the the Ministry of Truth.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#168

Post by josefresco » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #159

josefresco wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife (an American) also got flagged for saying "Americans are selfish". She then made a post about our RV (camper) asking about sewer "hook ups" at a campground and was flagged for posting what looked like a sex ad. We (the kids and I) now lovingly call her "hate speech Mom".

Especially after Jan 6, there are a couple of things you can say in an ordinary spirited political debate that will cop you a ban on FB. One is several flavors of "Americans are X," another is variants on "Kill the filibuster" (which I assume is pattern-matching to '[violence-word] the [congress-word], which they probably up-sampled in the threat modeling for, uh, obvious reasons).

The worse part is that in her eagerness to close the "prompt" on her phone she "agreed" she had posted this content (instead of appeal), which probably put some sort of permanent mark on her record. One can only hope she gets kicked off for good one of these days!

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#169

Post by cbsmith » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #156

whatshisface wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not overestimate the critical thinking skill advantage separating journalists from other people. I can check the citations as well as any editor, sometimes better because I know some things about math and have no reason to be biased. When there's no scene to be at with a camera and nobody is getting interviewed, I just don't see what the media has to add. Spending years pouring over account records? Interviewin…

Most journalists nowadays seem pretty gullible and hard set on their preconceived world views. I fail to see any advantage in critical thinking skills on the media class.

Is that based on empirical analysis of the data?

I'm thinking not.

Journalists fail all the time, for sure, but there's a lot of journalists in the world churning out content every day. We tend to focus on the failures, but I don't see any evidence that the failures represent even a majority of the content.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#170

Post by hapless » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

Facebook are infamous liars, but journalists keep covering Facebook as if their various PR statements are true

This is like, the 100th time Facebook's public relations has been caught lying about pretty much every god damn topic they have ever addressed in public, but the coverage never, ever changes

Every time it turns out Facebook was deceiving the public, or investing a less-than-reasonable effort into protecting the public, journalists are shocked, shocked that FB would do something like this.