Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

politico.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 1001 posts

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

#81

Post by cempaka »

chasd00 wrote: post #50
mandmandam wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just that. Knowledgeable academics who argued that the costs of lockdowns in schools would far outweigh any possible benefit were suppressed by non-scientists. All talk of vaccine side effects was labelled misinformation and suppressed, even when accompanied with legitimate and accepted studies. Etc. The only common thread between all the possible examples of censorship - from side effects to lockdown effectivene…

It was even here in HN a community of pretty normal people. Remember the discussions of Sweden’s approach to lockdowns? Any mention of it and you were shouted down and blood was surely going to run in the streets of Sweden by dawn the next day. I lost a lot of faith in the HN community then. The pandemic and the compliance and the us vs. them mentality really opened by eyes. It’s how terrible things happen, people wi…

One particular big name commenter here was still defending mass firings under the OSHA mandate in late 2022 / early 2023.

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

#82

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #59
chasd00 wrote: post #46

When the platforms starting censoring during the pandemic and last election cycle I remember saying they better get it right 100% of the time because the moment they get it wrong their credibility is shot. Hear we are. Censorship, beyond what’s required by law, is doomed to fail.

They were already doing censorship, just for different things - there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan which is not advertiser-friendly. So you can lose credibility two ways, one by not doing any censorship because people on the internet will be the worst if you let them. Doing too much censorship is also bad because people don't like that either. Of the big causes of censorship cur…

> there was never a free for all because that eventually ends up like 4chan

The moment you start fighting spam, you’re obliged to make censorship decisions.

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

#83

Post by elzbardico »

chgs wrote: post #34
Timber-6539 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shocking answer to this moderation question is not what most people want i.e free speech.

Most people don’t want free speech, and no country has free speech anyway. The question is what limits are made.

Lots of countries, including the US had plenty of free speech. There was a kind of freedom golden age from the 70s until the late 90s, and then, 9/11, Patriot Act. It has been all downhill since then.

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

#84

Post by lupusreal »

chasd00 wrote: post #50
mandmandam wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just that. Knowledgeable academics who argued that the costs of lockdowns in schools would far outweigh any possible benefit were suppressed by non-scientists. All talk of vaccine side effects was labelled misinformation and suppressed, even when accompanied with legitimate and accepted studies. Etc. The only common thread between all the possible examples of censorship - from side effects to lockdown effectivene…

It was even here in HN a community of pretty normal people. Remember the discussions of Sweden’s approach to lockdowns? Any mention of it and you were shouted down and blood was surely going to run in the streets of Sweden by dawn the next day. I lost a lot of faith in the HN community then. The pandemic and the compliance and the us vs. them mentality really opened by eyes. It’s how terrible things happen, people wi…

HN, to it's credit, at least permitted dissent without systematic bans for going against whatever was the officially blessed narrative of the day.

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

#85

Post by firesteelrain »

ecuaflo wrote: post #16
firesteelrain wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I want something like you described up until you mentioned moderation. There wouldn’t be a need for it. That’s the whole issue with a single decider getting to suppress content that the rest of your solution solved.

I was using Moderation logs as an abstract concept of the actions taken to promote or demote content. It would be decentralized

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

#87

Post by throw_m239339 »

"He regrets", no he doesn't. He got something we don't know in return for his allegiance to the democrats, he is a businessman after all, but now he sees that the rats are fleeing the sinking ship and he wants in with the Trump campaign...

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

#88

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jncfhnb wrote: post #33
Timber-6539 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shocking answer to this moderation question is not what most people want i.e free speech.

People absolutely don’t of want maximal free speech. Moderation is a blessing

Yeah. There's a reason I'm on HN, and not on 4chan. (But 4chan is there, if that's what you want...)

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

#89

Post by EasyMark »

chasd00 wrote: post #46

When the platforms starting censoring during the pandemic and last election cycle I remember saying they better get it right 100% of the time because the moment they get it wrong their credibility is shot. Hear we are. Censorship, beyond what’s required by law, is doomed to fail.

I think better of them for trying to get the fake shit off of their platforms. This backstepping is what bugs me. Facebook got a lot of garbage off there. There’s still plenty left, but I think did a decent job of flushing a bunch of misinformation bots into waste disposal where they belong. Take a look at x.com where for $9 a month you can launch a bot that posts / retweets garbage 24/7 and no matter how many times it’s reported for racism/terrorism/etc it will stay up for a while, when it gets killed they just make a new bot. Go look at the blue “verified” badges on any political news story and look at the drivel spouted by these $9 hucksters. A lot of people think free speech only applies to them, free speech means a platform can also exercise their free speech and shutdown the messages they don’t like. Those accounts are free to spread their lies and fake news on other platforms.

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

#90

Post by throw_m239339 »

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.

> Facebook, Instagram, etc. moderating content isn't a free speech issue.

When it's at the demand from the white house, it becomes a free speech issue because it's the executive branch that essentially controls what these big bulletin boards are allowed to publish. Furthermore, nothing is for free, so what perks did these big bulletin boards got in return? maybe that administration decided not to proceed with an antitrust lawsuit as long as they complied, we don't know...

Post reply on HN