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Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content
161–170 of 1001 posts
Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content
#162Interesting they use the example of covid - to me that's a far less offensive application of censorship than what my research on social media platforms during the last year seems to be indicating - it became very apparent that Meta has/was taking various censorship methods against pro-palestine content - whereas tiktok largely was not (at least from what I could tell, I don't research tiktok as much as I do meta platforms). I suspect (conspiracy theory a bit but not entirely farfetched) that the sudden, completely bi-partisan effort to force tiktok to divest was influenced in no small part by the government's lack of ability to censor that platform compared to ones like meta's.
Was the palestinian stuff directed by the government? I don't know, but it sure seemed to me like the israel/palestine war posts that were allowed through sounded awfully similar to what the white house/IDF was saying about it. When stuff like this comes out, regardless of whether my theory is true or not, it adds fuel to that fire in a way I don't feel is very good for democracy or social media in general, particularly when zuck/meta will gaslight their users and claim state censorship isn't happening when it very, very obviously is. What was stopping them from coming out and saying "hey we're censoring this type of content?" Their entire approach to moderation is like this, it's a completely automated black box that leaves a user with very little clue as to how they're even supposed to interact with the platform without being punished in strange and obtuse ways.
Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putting it even more simply, people don't need tax breaks. If our current system has loop holes it needs to be simplified such that loop holes can't reasonably exist.
It would be nice, but I don’t see why perfect need be the enemy of good
Because complexity isn't good. We already have an insanely complex tax system.
Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content
#164I wonder if this is coming up just before the election because of the Harris campaign’s suggested policy of capital gains tax on unrealised gains for people who have over $100m in assets? I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax including taking out loans against their own share portfolios. Worth thinking about what people are willing to do to not pay billions of d…
I'd much prefer seeing us close up the tax loop holes than create an even more complex system. Taxing unrealized gains will be extremely complex, and given that they aren't allowing us to deduct unrealized losses its a pretty shitty setup for the taxpayer. We need to drastically simplify our tax code rather than further increase its complexity.
Seems like DNC party policies always move in the direction of what improves the job market for lawyers and bureaucrats. More complex legal code, more complex maneuvers to get around it. Tax and finance lawyers for the wealthy are going to see a salary bump if this law passes.
Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content
#165Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content
#166[flagged]
The idea that a private social/sharing/communications platform should be required to carry the messages of the head of government is strongly authoritarian and quite unconstitutional.
It’s incredible to me that people will argue the government’s lack of control over mass media platforms is censorship.
IMO, nobody should be required to carry government propaganda.
Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 This is false, because Facebook is bound to your real identity. A completely unmoderated Facebook will never be like every /b/ or /pol/ thread. People aren't quiet as outspoken with derogatory terms and pornography if it their family sees what they've written. Random copy pasted examples: - There are 9 billion people on the planet why don't y…
Real genocides have been coordinated through Facebook in the third world. People are proud to put their real identities and their real names behind all kinds of evil ideas.
Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 airbo…
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…
I'm going to need to see some evidence for this. How is it that I was reading science papers and media reports on them daily at the time, covering all these things you claim were censored?
Droplet vs airborne was a frequent debate, as were the costs/benefit of lockdowns and especially the potential side effects of the vaccines. Information at the time moved lightening quick, things were barely even published before being all over the media.
The lab-leak theory was not taken seriously, but it wasn't censored. I remember several high profile articles on it.
Your narrative sounds like some fantasy.
Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. If you look at every attempt to create "The Uncensored Free Speech Version Of [ANY_SERVICE]," they all, inevitably turned into a 4chan-like trashfire. You've got to have some kind of moderation.
This is where I really feel my age. Every message board and chatroom (bbs, forums, irc, icq, aol, et all) on the young internet was virtually uncensored and a 100% free for all, yet we all mostly got by. You went to the places you knew to go to. The communities mostly self moderated by kicks/bans. It worked really well.
So whats changed?
Well, I have my thoughts, but one thing is for sure, as soon as the platform itself tried to start moderating, that's when things really started changing.
Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content
#170This 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.
It sounds like in both cases the US government asked facebook to spread lies, and they complied