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Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

politico.com

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Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#21

Post by scott_w »

cheeseomlit wrote: post #17
scott_w wrote: post #15

This whole article is really confusing. It sounds like there were two things: - Covid disinformation - Some nonsense about Hunter Biden and they're being conflated. What does Hunter Biden's laptop have to do with preventing Covid disinformation? A disease that was estimated to kill up to 30m people worldwide.

The US gov pressured social media companies to censor posts about both those topics for political reasons, even though a lot of what was said turned out to be true

> censor posts about both those topics for political reasons

In the context of Covid disinformation, "political reasons" is simply not correct. We're only 2 years out but it was clear even at the time that there was a concerted effort to pretend there wasn't an active pandemic and governments were right to crack down on it.

The only thread connecting them is "disinformation" which is tenuous at best. It's not clear to me what Zuckerberg's letter refers to because the article seems to move between the topics as though they're basically the same thing.

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#22

Post by immibis »

firesteelrain wrote: post #11
Etheryte wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if I see what you mean with the Stack Overflow idea. SO is purely a technical site, it's very easy to identify what's ontopic and everything else is offtopic. That doesn't apply to general discussion, never mind stuff like news or politics. How do you imagine that would work?

I was thinking like crowdsourced flagging and a reputation based system where users via reputation could be granted increasingly higher responsibilities as they use the site. People who post negative content would be subjected to negative feedback loops where their content would be progressively demoted, reduced visibility or encounter contribution limits. Moderation logs would become public for transparency purposes…

[flagged]

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#23

Post by ecuaflo »

scott_w wrote: post #15

This whole article is really confusing. It sounds like there were two things: - Covid disinformation - Some nonsense about Hunter Biden and they're being conflated. What does Hunter Biden's laptop have to do with preventing Covid disinformation? A disease that was estimated to kill up to 30m people worldwide.

The issue is the science wasn’t in yet to accurately determine what was COVID disinformation, and they went off of politically motivated directives in both cases.

One example is Facebook suppressing the lab-leak theory until May 2021 [0]. Another is it deemed posts claiming the vaccine may not prevent transmission misinformation, despite it not being known otherwise [1].

[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/26/facebook-ban-covid-...

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-scientists-...

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#24

Post by smt88 »

ericjmorey wrote: post #18
TMWNN wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonetheless, better late than never for Zuckerberg to admit that he and Facebook erred.

I think the original point was that this wasn't late. It was timed to be influential to the outcome of the election.

Which also casts doubt on its sincerity.

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#25

Post by defrost »

ecuaflo wrote: post #23
scott_w wrote: post #15

This whole article is really confusing. It sounds like there were two things: - Covid disinformation - Some nonsense about Hunter Biden and they're being conflated. What does Hunter Biden's laptop have to do with preventing Covid disinformation? A disease that was estimated to kill up to 30m people worldwide.

The issue is the science wasn’t in yet to accurately determine what was COVID disinformation, and they went off of politically motivated directives in both cases. One example is Facebook suppressing the lab-leak theory until May 2021 [0]. Another is it deemed posts claiming the vaccine may not prevent transmission misinformation, despite it not being known otherwise [1]. [0] https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/26/f…

> Below are a couple examples from ChatGPT:

Please don't do this.

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#26

Post by GeekyBear »

firesteelrain wrote: post #4

It is sometimes easy to say in retrospect we shouldn’t have demoted the story. But they did and they trusted the US Administration. Facebook is international. Do they allow all speech even that which could be viewed as propaganda in the US? Who makes the ultimate call on whether it be Russian disinformation or COVID-19? We have tried many different moderation models and not all of them work. If we try the Reddit rout…

The problem with Covid censorship (a problem not limited to Facebook) was that Covid was an airborne virus, and the arbiters of allowable speech decided that the truth about Covid was "misinformation" that needed to be suppressed.

How many additional people died because the mitigations we put into place were targeted at a virus with a droplet based spread (like the flu) but not effective against a virus with an airborne spread (like the measles)?

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#27

Post by mandmandam »

greenthrow wrote: post #13

Facebook, Instagram, etc. moderating content isn't a free speech issue. They are just glorified bulletin boards. They try to raise everyone's sense of their importance by claiming it to be a free speech issue, but they are awful garbage and the sooner everyone realizes the better for society.

We're talking about nearly 200 million posts, at least, having been wiped and suppressed [0]. Many of these were both 100% true and highly important. The effects of their suppression are still felt to this day; in broken minds, broken relationships, destroyed careers, a stunted generation, and unnecessary excess deaths. Serious and brave academics were threatened and had their voices stilled.

Describing Zuck's censorship of nearly 200 million posts on Facebook alone as "moderating content" is like calling a tsunami "a bit of rain". It's irresponsible.

Calling a platform with 3 billion monthly users a "glorified bulletin board" doesn't sound very credible to me either.

0 - https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1170

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#29

Post by ecuaflo »

defrost wrote: post #25
ecuaflo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is the science wasn’t in yet to accurately determine what was COVID disinformation, and they went off of politically motivated directives in both cases. One example is Facebook suppressing the lab-leak theory until May 2021 [0]. Another is it deemed posts claiming the vaccine may not prevent transmission misinformation, despite it not being known otherwise [1]. [0] https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/26/f…

> Below are a couple examples from ChatGPT: Please don't do this.

What’s the preferred way of citing my source? Or are you saying ChatGPT isn’t a valid source?

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#30

Post by smt88 »

lupusreal wrote: post #5

Bet he'll do it again. "This time it's different." Assuming the man has any principles at all, he already demonstrated his willingness to violate them. He'll do it again.

There is zero doubt at this point about Zuckerberg's principles. He has none. He hasn't even stayed consistent on anti-Semitism, which you'd think would be close to his heart.

I will also say, to be fair, that none of the other influential billionaires in the tech world (PayPal Mafia, Jack Dorsey, Andreesen, Horowitz, etc.) seem to have consistent principles either.

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