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Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

bbc.com

181–190 of 732 posts

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#181
post #32

I’m kind of shocked this isn’t a bigger story. - Right before a presidential election a major story breaks about a Presidential candidate - FBI jumps in to say “it’s Russian disinformation” - Story suppressed across the media including online as “disinformation” - After the election story turns out to be 100% true

It is a major story, but not in US. Why do you think states lost respect and credibility worldwide?

Huh? If anything it's a story only in the US.

Pretty sure the "lose of respect" mostly occured during Trump's presidency.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what was up with Hunter Biden's laptop anyway? Was it full of state secrets or something?

Among other things, it shows that his father did know about his shady deals (ukraine, china). Also had videos of various illegal activities that you and I would probably be thrown in jail for if the FBI found them on a laptop of ours

No post body was provided.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#183
post #12

This is the great fear of many come to pass - censorship by algorithm. Facebook didn't outright ban sharing of the Hunter Biden laptop stories like Twitter did, they instead tweaked their algorithm to prevent the story from spreading. We found out about it this time because Zuckerberg owned up to it, but what about next time? For all we know, Facebook, Google and Twitter are doing this right now on a range of other s…

This isn't "censorship by algorithm" though. This was a human being intentionally banning a specific thing. There was no algorithm in the loop. They didn't "tweak their algorithm" anymore than an antivirus tweaks its algorithm to detect a new virus, they specifically censored a specific piece of content.

What’s particularly scary about it is because it’s censorship that’s less obvious. Banned books are obviously banned, which only lends credibility to what they contain. In the current age, you can still have your book on the shelf and Barnes and Nobel, but only a handful customers will be able to see it. No banning, no outcry, no one even trying to traffic bootleg copies.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#184
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“How are actions like this not a violation of the first amendment to the US constitution?” There’s still no right to publish statements on Facebook enshrined in the Constitution.

Yet a government official can't block you on Facebook. Was that made explicit in the constitution? I think the better reason is that they never actually told Meta to suppress the story, and I'm not sure if there was a stick to ensure that they'd do it.

A government official can block you. The office of government official cannot block you. As a general rule, objects in the Constitution (such as a press, personal things and affects etc) are understood to be defined by their function not by their form. Eg, 4th Amendment protection extends to your private correspondences via phone call despite no paper correspondence being present. Yes your hypothetical Facebook blocking situation is explicitly in the Constitution so long as you accept Facebook is a printing-press-by-way-of-function. If you refuse this minimal fair rule of interpretation, the Constitution is hopelessly stuck in the late 1700s.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#186
But on the other hand trump is/was a danger to society and democracy. I'm happy the story was censored, given that it still seems like a non story (no real crime committed afaik)

And I fully understand the issues with my statement, the hypocrisy of it and the slippery slope nature of the act, but I do think some extreme cases do require bending the rules.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#187
post #44

So Facebook didn't censor anything? He didn't admit censoring and the story wasn't censored. Nobody had their posts about it taken down and nobody was prevented from discussing it. Facebook just didn't disseminate the story, they prevented their feeds from selecting it and showing it. Isn't that what everyone wants? Except that they do that with all stories and have no algorithms at all? It's not censorship though so…

If one of my friends share something that I have not muted, I want to see that in my feed. Thats the point of the feed.

Of course things like youtube searches and related videos is less well defined.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what was up with Hunter Biden's laptop anyway? Was it full of state secrets or something?

Among other things, it shows that his father did know about his shady deals (ukraine, china). Also had videos of various illegal activities that you and I would probably be thrown in jail for if the FBI found them on a laptop of ours

I believe the most problematic part isn't that his father knew, but that his father delivered on the son selling access to his father when he was VP, and the son suggesting he is the front man for the family, collecting the money and covering the costs.

And with a lot of this money coming from Ukraine, and then the father writing $40 billion checks to ukraine, independently of what you think of the war (I am in favour of this aid myself), this is the mother of all conflicts of interest.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#189
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Families around the world and across continents have been able to keep in touch due to social networks. For all the deserved hate, some good has come.

You don’t need a social network for that, just a messaging app. The idea that families would not be able to keep in touch without social media is absurd and obviously wrong.

Families mostly like to share photos. Facebook works far better than any messaging app for that use case.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among other things, it shows that his father did know about his shady deals (ukraine, china). Also had videos of various illegal activities that you and I would probably be thrown in jail for if the FBI found them on a laptop of ours

While its easy to talk from outside the US, I am honestly a lot less worried about the content and a lot more about the fact that it is a non trivial question whether or not the son of the leader of the free world is a crack user. Reality and all this fake news stuff got weird fast. Which wasnt really surprising if you look at the upcoming clusterfuck of cheap realistic video simulations. After getting there already…

Do you have a link to the paper and or ML algorithms used in the channel you posted? Some of them have an impressive quality level.
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