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Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook

reuters.com

161–170 of 373 posts

Re: Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook

#161
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could relax their rules to allow for calls to military self-defense in the context of a "military operation" that has been condemned by the UN, while still banning "calls for violence" against Russians. The two are nothing like each other! Self-defense, or "standing one's ground" is not the same as initiating violence.

Pardon me, but isn't that exactly what they're doing? > "As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as 'death to the Russian invaders.' We still won't allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

"Death to the Russian invaders" is nationalistic propaganda of the sort that Putin likes to point to when he calls Ukrainians "nazis". It's not a sensible call to engage in self-defense. For one thing, it does not properly distinguish between ordinary Russians, of whom there are plenty in Ukraine (Russian even used to be an official language before the Ukraine government removed it as retaliation against the Crimea referendum) and the Russian military involved in the "operation".

Re: Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook

#162
post #92
post #40

If you need to change your platform's rules for literally every major event (elections, Covid, this war) there is something profoundly wrong both with your rules and your platform. There is tremendous value in having actual principles. So many people either forgotten it or never understood that to begin with.

It doesn't surprise me that a novel medium would change its rules as unexpected events arise. I've got plenty of qualms about the way Facebook has handled it, but of course there was something wrong with the rules -- they had never tried them out under these circumstances. All three of the things you cite are using/abusing social media in ways that have never been done before. Principles are great, but if you can't c…

There have been many wars around the world since Facebook was founded in 2004. What about these circumstances is different than with other armed conflicts? Why should the principles change?

Re: Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they didn't. That's my point. One of the most famous scenes in US TV News history was when Walter Kronkite, America's news daddy, finally had enough regarding the bullshit peddled by national television networks regarding the Vietnam war. It was NEVER unbiased. People love to believe that the news USED to be unbiased because the news produced at the time reconciles with their memory of the events they want to bel…

Biased and manipulated news is a spectrum like security. You can find instances of anything in the past of you look hard enough. We are currently in a time of more bias and manipulation than the 60s/70s. Additionally, pointing out that Facebook lacks any fundamental principles and is just a reed in the wind is a great observation.

Not even close - look up COINTELPRO and how many of the letters that were sent by the discoverers of that information ACTUALLY made it, let alone how few that did make it actually got published. Hint : very few.

The media has always had to kowtow to some degree to local authority, and there is always the element of ‘the truth we choose to believe’ (or are being told to believe) being published over harder reality. The west tends to be more transparent than most, and more honest than most, but everyone is very far from, and has always been very far from, any sort of unbiased view.

Re: Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook

#164

So, Russian authorities are going to label Meta an “extremist organization” and if one participates in such organization, f.e. has an account on Facebook, then it's a crime. Fcking brilliant.

this is false https://www.kp.ru/daily/27375.5/4557218/

It is more complicated. It is not exactly rule of law in Russia. If you are accused of overthrowing the government, having a page on Facebook, which is extremist organization, might be considered aggravating factor.

Re: Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook

#166

So, Russian authorities are going to label Meta an “extremist organization” and if one participates in such organization, f.e. has an account on Facebook, then it's a crime. Fcking brilliant.

this is false https://www.kp.ru/daily/27375.5/4557218/

That moment when one refers to fcking KP to prove that something is false. LMAO

I hope that you are kidding. Otherwise, you are a joke.

Re: Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to try. Surely you can conceptualize a spectrum whereby on one the one side, people try very hard to be objective and be good at it, then where maybe they try a little less hard, or lack knowledge, or whatnot, and then continuing on the spectrum, where people throw up their hands and proclaim that no one can be objective, so who cares anyway. I cannot accept the framing as only the last one: that we've magi…

Individual journalists indeed tried (and still do), however editors and upper management have always tried to steer their staff in the direction which mostly benefits their shareholders or their biggest advertisers. If journalists still persist and write stories exposing the wrong people, those journalists do loose their jobs and their stories do get canned or watered down (e.g. with equal presentation of “the other…

Eh, journalists are human and many have very strong political and ideological views that are quite apparent in their writing. Editors try to tie together the paper into a coherent voice and brand, which also needs to be able to ‘feed itself’ somehow.

I wouldn’t put anyone on a high horse here.

Re: Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if an article is written that only contains hard facts there are many ways it can be biased. It could exclude inconvenient facts (this is the most common), it can have inconvenient information at the end of the article where most people don't read. Some news can also just be ignored. Some parts of a story are never surfaced simply because no one cares about it or knows about it. Journalists are flawed humans lik…

Simply choosing what gets reporter time or page space or air time or whatever introduces huge bias, even if the coverage itself is meaningfully "objective". Listen to NPR (let alone anything else) and you'd think there's rarely labor action happening. Listen to Democracy Now and you'd think there's constantly labor action happening.

More importantly, because neither system gives you meaningful context, both of those things you mention can be true at the same time and you could never know which to trust.

When you want to validate a piece of information in your view of the world (to use your example, "how common is labor action?"), the most important question to ask (and often the question with the most obscure answer) is "what is the base rate?".

Re: Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there was a release of docs about using humanized migratory birds to carry disease to specific places. Possibly as a blurred line between studying such mechanisms for defense as opposed to offense. I can’t speak to accuracy of such claims but it does appear that info is being released.

The repetition of unsourced claims without any links really isn't the most useful for online discussion. Especially for claims as wild as this.

I got it from Russian sources on Telegram, but you did ask what their claim was. You’ll have to go looking for the claims as they’re unlikely to get much airtime in the west. I think it’s to early to tell and if the Russians want me to believe their claims he’ll need to drop a whole lot more docs. AFAIK that hasn’t happened yet, I just was a PowerPoint and some docs that someone had translated, but I have no idea if the translation presented was correct.

Depending on which way the Chinese go with this we could end up with covid was created by the USA in a Ukrainian lab and then sent to China via migratory birds.... which would tie things up in a neat little bow. (Edit: should mention I'm not saying that's what happened - but I'm interested to see if it'll be claimed to have happened)

Re: Russia opens criminal investigation of Meta over death calls on Facebook

#170
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, I think this says less about FB, but more so reflects a hypocrisy in "western principles" that many are probably not self-aware of. Let's assume for a second, that FB do not relax their rules for this conflict. Then they would have to ban a whole sleuth of Ukrainian accounts, including many government accounts such as Ministry of Defense, and probably even Zelensky. You don't have to stretch your ima…

Private companies should not get in the business of policing content. Follow the laws of the land and that’s it. It’s not really a foreign concept. We don’t deny somebody sunlight or air because they do something we don’t like (we as in non government entities - governments do deny people “air”). The world would be a better place if businesses operated as close to a natural resource as possible and left politics to p…

All things about how society organizes and regulates itself are politics. There exists no pure, apolitical thing to prize for being beyond politics. Asserting that there will be no moderation of speech beyond the minimum required by law is a political perspective on how things should be conducted, and a pretty strong one.
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