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Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

bbc.com

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Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#411

Post by itronitron »

chjj wrote: post #336
lokar wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone, or the state, orders or pressures me to stop publishing against my will that is censorship. If someone or a group convince me to change my mind and no longer publish, that is me exercising my free speech right.

That's not the definition of censorship. Censorship is the suppression of information by any authority who has the ability to suppress said information. The definition doesn't require a government or any aspect of coercion. If I run an online forum and I start removing posts I don't like, that is censorship. I'm allowed to remove those posts because it's my website, but it's still censorship.

Facebook did not remove any posts on the topic therefore Facebook did not censor the topic.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#412

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

philipov wrote: post #396
projektfu wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law protects small sites, too. It also makes users responsible for their own words, which is legitimate. Without 230, Facebook would become liable for defamation lawsuits unless it basically censored everything but the most bland content. You could "hack" the law by saying it only applies to companies with market cap less than 100bn. This is how some laws have been written in the past to specifically jeopardize p…

How about if instead, we nationalize Facebook. The public square should not be owned by a private corporation. If that's not possible, yes: Facebook should be destroyed.

The same problems with moderation would still exist, and as the previous commenter I think correctly pointed out, the various tribes will all still want the 'other' side's 'misinformation' censored and allow their own 'truths' put out for all to see. Zero moderation is a not workable solution because things would quickly escalate on the site (see what happens to AI chat bots when exposed to an unfiltered internet). They have to do some moderation and the more the do, the madder people get, the less they do the worse the site becomes. They therefore reach this balanced state which has BOTH angry users who feel their side is being censored AND widespread posts with dis/misinformation. It's the shittiest equilibrium.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#414

Post by tarakat »

hoffs wrote: post #369
ekianjo wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> scary to think that just 2 to 3 corporations have the power to construct a false reality around us whats truly scary is not just the limited number but the fact that these corps are always aligned in the same political direction.

You know what is also scary, that most of higher education is also aligned in the same political direction. It's almost as if there is some correlation that comes with education

Are the higher educated from Brazil, Russia, China, Egypt, Japan, Poland, and Algeria also aligned in this same direction? And do you know what happens to the higher educated that don't toe the line? Here's a hint:

James Watson's DNA Nobel Prize sells for $4.8m - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30346903

And here's more than a hint: unless you're publicly committed to this same political direction, 20% of all academic jobs in the US are officially closed to you [1]. The un-official denial rate is surely even higher.

[1] https://freebeacon.com/campus/study-diversity-statements-req...

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#415

Post by jasec57322 »

parkingrift wrote: post #314

So let me get this straight. Facebook has absolute control to limit the spread of a story or news on their platform. Facebook has absolute control to outright block specific content based on an algorithm they control. Facebook can and will editorialize content posted on their platform. Facebook has absolute control over the content that users see. Can someone, anyone, please explain to me why Facebook is not a publis…

As an offline-platform can make all sorts of bureacratic rules designed to censor those they don't like, this problem is far-far worse on a software-driven platform.

Imagine facebook wants to censor anti-Biden, or anti-Trump, posts. They needn't design an algorithm that does explicitly that - that could be scrutinised under review.

Instead: design an 'anti-spam' algorithm.

Within this anti-spam algorithm, characteristic Y is flagged. Characteristic Y just happens to be heavily-correlated to anti-biden/anti-trump posts. A bit of filtering later (for 'anti-spam measures' of-course), and you have achieved your censorship without being too overt.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#416

Post by Kye »

damontal wrote: post #413

Why did he go on Rogan? What was the motivation?

His PR people have been unsuccessful in framing him as anything other than a dull automaton from another world. Maybe he thought being able to talk uninterrupted and unedited for 4 hours would humanize him.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#417

Post by typeofhuman »

dmix wrote: post #257
peter422 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joe Biden had been in the public eye for 50 years, releasing tax returns, etc. Hunter Biden was not running for office. Perhaps it is possible that this laptop, at the time completely unverified, had some magic smoking gun to bring down a 50 year career, magically showing up in a random place 10 days before the election. But obviously the much, much more likely situation is that it was either fake or insignificant. I…

Hunter turned out to be mostly a non-story [1] in practice but the FBI silencing his laptop story makes every partisan person in the country immediately think there's something they are trying to hide. Especially when it comes out they already had access to the laptop data before the suppression of the information, so they knew it was real. I don't blame them for thinking it's a big deal. They Streisand'd it into the…

> but he wasn't politically involved like other politicians children and there wasn't much tangible beyond that

He was a board member of a Ukrainian oil company receiving tons of money having 0-energy related business experience. Then there's the firing of the prosecutor looking into the corruption of Burisma at the behest of Joe Biden ("son of bitch, he got fired"). Now we're sending billions of dollars over there with reports saying few of those dollars are going to the front lines.

Conservatively, there's enough there to warrant the appearance of impropriety and the American public deserve to have answers. When a story came out exposing this behavior the democratic party, the major news networks, social networks, and now the FBI actively peddled misinformation wrongly calling it Russian-propoganda and/or censoring/suppressing it.

Seems sketch.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#418

Post by AzzieElbab »

spydum wrote: post #403
philipov wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about if instead, we nationalize Facebook. The public square should not be owned by a private corporation. If that's not possible, yes: Facebook should be destroyed.

Government controlled media and censorship, what could possibly go wrong?

US Government is bound by first amendment, at least in theory

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#419

Post by arinlen »

danbruc wrote: post #243
glogla wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[...] support current Russian and its invasion to Ukraine. I picked a random video with Chomsky [1] about the topic and he calls the invasion a criminal act against international law in his first sentence. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=68Rh1tKx98k

> I picked a random video with Chomsky [1] about the topic and he calls the invasion a criminal act against international law in his first sentence.

Noam Chomsky described Russia's invasion of Ukraine as "criminal", by after the face-saving copout there's always a "but".

In some interviews, Chomsky states in no uncertain terms that he believes that everyone should just hand over Russia what the regime wants as a form of appeasement, without spending any time or effort criticizing or attacking the invasion and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Russia, or any awareness that Russia has been constantly "appeased" in Ukraine for around a decade.

The cinicism reaches a point where Chomsky said Ukraine should roll over to save the lives of the people of Ukraine, because in his world view Russia's invasion of the Ukraine and ethnic cleansing campaign can only end up in the destruction of the Ukraine or the destruction of Russia, and he asserts that he rejects the idea that Russia can be destroyed.

https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/28/04/2022/chomsky-...

Quite a different tone than Chomsky's rants regarding the Iraq invasion.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#420

Post by whiddershins »

spangry wrote: 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…

> For all we know, Facebook, Google and Twitter are doing this right now on a range of other subjects.

I thought that was a given.

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