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

#281

Post by kaesar14 » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #111

cratermoon wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further, why do we continue to accept the fiction that rules and laws apply to the elite as for the masses? Even the not-so-elite, the Stanford swimmer who brutally raped and assaulted Chanel Miller, though convicted, was given light sentence because of his "bright future", according to the judge.

Brock Turner wasn't elite in any sense besides his acceptance into Stanford, which had been revoked. His father was an electrical engineer and his mom was a nurse. Also, the judge who made the ruling was fired.

A white male All-American athlete attending arguably America's most prestigious university isn't elite?

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

#282

Post by mannanj » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

I got banned yesterday for quoting a nazi official on propaganda:

“Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.” - Joseph Goebbels

Yeah. Facebook fucking sucks.

Oh, the reason? Encourages danger and violence (which in their broad definition now includes quoting individuals who were associated to dangerous regimes). Welcome to the day and age in which another organization now decides you are dangerous and censors your presence from the internet independent of what you say.

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

#283

Post by bvhg3 » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #245

pjc50 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of the problem: the "legacy" media are unreliable, but people seem to take that as license to transfer total trust to some completely random media organisation that has god-knows-what agenda. Because it's very difficult to operate in an environment of total paranoia about every statement.

"Total paranoia" might be overselling it a bit. "Total skepticism", that is, "presumed bullshit until otherwise substantiated" is much more reasonable, and it can be applied to all media sources, legacy and otherwise.

Unfortunately it seems like skepticism is increasingly being branded as lunacy.

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

#284

Post by danudey » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

q1w2 wrote: post #237

smsm42 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people that work on this feature mean well - or at least they think that they mean well. But as a result, we have a two-tier system where the peasants have one set of rules and the nobility has an entirely different one. It may have started as a hack to correct the obvious inadequacies of the moderation system, but it grew into something much more sinister and alien to the spirit of free speech, and is ripe f…

You have to remember that high profile accounts get 10000x the number of abuse-reports than a normal account - nearly all bogus. The normal automated moderation functions simply do not work. Many users will simply mash the "report abuse" button if they see a politician they don't like, or a sports player for an opposing team. If the normal rules applied identically to everyone, all high profile accounts would simply…

This is exactly the solution. IF tons of people are reporting Steve Newscaster because he posted a status about how his team won, then he shouldn't become immune to criticism, those people should lose the privilege of having their voice heard.

Just send them a little message saying "Hey, you've falsely reported a bunch of posts/accounts lately, so we're restricting your ability to report content for 30 days." and if they keep doing it, make it permanent.

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

#285

Post by riofoxx » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

T.o a.s.s.i.s.t y.o.u i.n t.r.a.d.e.s f.o.r b.e.t.t.e.r i.m.p.r.o.v.e.m.e.n.t on c.r.y.p.t.o.c.u.r.r.e.n.c.y W.h.a.t.s.A.p.p (+13052395906)

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

#286

Post by irq-1 » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #200

otterley wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven’t really touched on the main problem discussed in the article, which is that to Facebook, there are special users - mainly celebrities and politicians - who get to play by different rules than the rest of us. Social media was supposed to help level the playing field of society, not exacerbate its inequalities.

I did touch on that problem. Like I pointed out Zuckerberg can’t log in on new devices anymore. That’s because of the thousands of attempts per second to log into his account. Those attempts happen because he’s a celebrity. His experience is objectively different because of who he is. It’s the same with Neymar. How many times do you think his profile is reported for any number of violations by people who don’t like h…

> Those attempts happen because he’s a celebrity. His experience is objectively different because of who he is.

Then the rules should be different, like Twitter giving a blue check mark. If there are accounts that need to be treated differently then it should be clear why and how the rules are different. Fixing problems with tech (like not allowing Zuckerberg to login) should be the exception.

Twitter caught hell for letting Trump break their rules because they pretended the rules were the same for everyone.

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

#287

Post by bvhg3 » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

mannanj wrote: post #282

I got banned yesterday for quoting a nazi official on propaganda: “Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.” - Joseph Goebbels Yeah. Facebook fucking sucks. Oh, the reason? Encourages danger and violence (which in their broad definition now includes quoting individuals who were associated to dangerous regimes). Welcome to the day and age in which another organiza…

I don't use facebook but HN has censored many of my comments over the years and shadow-banned multiple accounts. Information is dangerous.

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

#288

Post by shadowgovt » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

The thing about what Facebook is doing is that it may be impossible. And if it's not impossible, it may be a profoundly bad idea.

Facebook is trying to build a social network with 100% reach and a userbase beholden to a globally uniform set of rules (where possible; the laws of individual nations will forever intervene). This is not something that has ever succeeded. We don't actually know, apriori, whether you can govern the whole of humanity under one set of norms. It's never been done.

It's possible it fundamentally can't be done... That the end result of this experiment is that Facebook fractures and ends up either having to vend multiple views of its userbase with different rules (like Reddit) or has a large chunk of the human populace it can never get on-board. But we should keep in mind what the goal is.

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

#289

Post by vokep » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

nullstyle wrote: post #64

GDC7 wrote: post #46

Facebook is used by 3B people. When a company (or even more generally a social phenomenon) is so big, the only logical consequence is that it becomes embedded in the layer that it services. In society not everybody is equal, a social movement with the massive scope that Facebook has cannot deviate from such rule. Power law is a thing, you can't escape it, not even the Universe can. It's not right and it's not wrong.…

It is, but it's wrong.

Then the fact anything is would be wrong, which if believed truly leads the only reasonable behavior to be the most destructive behavior (what is, existence, is bad, so destroying it is good).

Luckily, its good.

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

#290

Post by shadowgovt » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

docmars wrote: post #277

Jasper_ wrote: post #264

"Turns out managing communication for nearly the entire human race is hard! And requires a lot of people" Yeah, no shit! You say that like Facebook didn't completely strong-arm their way into wanting to become the sole communication provider for the entire world. They struck deals and started entire projects making sure telcos in emerging markets would only get priority to Facebook, and Wikipedia, and basically no ot…

Not to mention, imagine the hubris necessary to want this as a company, and consider oneself the sole (or few of) moderator of human communication to police and curate absolutely everything that gets shared, according to a single prescribed narrative by their political partners, and their team of fact checkers complete with their implicit biases, who are funded by extreme partisan players who won the Elite Olympics™…

It's honestly pretty easy to imagine. Given any company with a clarified goal, the default answer to "How much of the market do we want?" is "All of it." Rare is the company that sets as a goal "10% of the potential customers."