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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

#191

Post by rendang »

norir wrote: post #153
woooooo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fighting spam and porn are a different category from censoring political viewpoonts with 25%+ adoption.

25% is a completely arbitrary number and context dependent. I can guarantee you can find many communities that have majority views that you find abhorrent and would not want to be a part of your community discourse. The problem is that social media gives the illusion of a broad town square where all opinions are heard, but that is not what happened. Everyone on social media is filtered into silos based on what the al…

There aren't any views I want to exclude from public discourse. Moderating so that they are expressed w/o all-caps profanity is one thing, but the views themselves ought to be protected. As far as false facts go, it can become treacherous to draw an exact distinction between the false and the disputed for many subject areas. X's "Community Notes" are not perfect but in practice have been surprisingly helpful and accurate in my experience.

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

#192

Post by stevenAthompson »

norir wrote: post #153
woooooo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fighting spam and porn are a different category from censoring political viewpoonts with 25%+ adoption.

25% is a completely arbitrary number and context dependent. I can guarantee you can find many communities that have majority views that you find abhorrent and would not want to be a part of your community discourse. The problem is that social media gives the illusion of a broad town square where all opinions are heard, but that is not what happened. Everyone on social media is filtered into silos based on what the al…

The thing is, these services are exactly that. Services.

What the consumer wants from those services is "free speech", but with restrictions. They want "uncensored" content with the objectionable bits removed. For some people "objectionable" means spam and pornography, for others it includes certain types of political discourse or content from certain classes of person. If people really wanted uncensored content, the dark web would be far more popular.

The only way these companies can give people both uncensored "free speech" and content moderation is to build these bubbles where freedom of speech is only freedom of one type of speech.

They're stuck in a catch-22, and I can't help but feel like they actually ARE providing the service that we demand from them to the best of their abilities.

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

#193

Post by corndoge »

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #149

[flagged]

If the government does not wish to be subject to corporate content moderation perhaps they should publish their social posts on their own platform.

I still think it is ridiculous that public safety notices are frequently distributed exclusively on Twitter now. During the pandemic my city was publishing curfew announcements solely on Twitter - not being a Twitter user, I only heard of them through word of mouth.

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

#194

Post by jhp123 »

Terretta wrote: post #119
andy_ppp wrote: post #109

I 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…

Do "these people" include entrepreneurs with equity in startups with rapidly increasing value but no way to take money off the table? It doesn't take much to cross "$100m in assets" as a startup, say, $2.5M in revenue at 40x valuation (or $5M at 20x, etc.), even while loss-making. How should the founders and equity investors in a bootstrapped high growth unicorn that is neither public nor profit-making handle this pr…

This all seems very easy to deal with. Pay employees cash not equity. Founders can negotiate with investors to take enough cash compensation at each round to cover their tax bill. Investors can use financial instruments to hedge their risk.

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

#195

Post by JumpCrisscross »

cempaka wrote: post #115
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it’s in the news because it’s being made newsworthy, not because it’s new. “A U.S. federal judge,” in 2023 “restricted some agencies and officials of the administration of President Joe Biden from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content” [1]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/judge-blocks-us-officials-comm...

[flagged]

> funny to see MAGA people all of a sudden embracing Chad Zuckerberg, as though this represents some sort of organic character development on his part

Honestly, it's refreshingly pragmatic to see American politics ditching the ideological purity tests that defined our recent history. I disagree completely with MAGA politics. But allies don't have to be friends--if someone's on your side, that's really what counts.

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

#196

Post by thegrim33 »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #169
ryandrake wrote: post #100

Earlier 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. 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 its…

The internet used to be primarily used by geekier, smarter, tech people, and it used to not be a good propaganda/manipulation target since only a subset of the population used it. Media/newspapers were still the primary propaganda channel.

Now that the entire population uses it, the average IQ involved has plummeted, and the political and social payoff for manipulating it with inauthentic content is huge.

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

#197

Post by dingnuts »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #169
ryandrake wrote: post #100

Earlier 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. 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 its…

>on the young internet was virtually uncensored and a 100% free for all, yet we all mostly got by

boys did. the girls left those spaces (and the internet more generally, until social media became mainstream) because all the public spaces were disgusting, and all the boys sat around posting vulgarity, laughing, and wondering why there were no girls in our online spaces.

Those spaces were/are absolutely appalling sausage fests and while I don't think they should be shut down, saying "we all mostly got by" is some kind of selection or survivorship bias. YOU didn't mind. YOU got by. Polite company DID mind, and there wasn't a space online for them. You just didn't notice.

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

#198

Post by celdon25 »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #80
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #59

Earlier 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…

Theres no push back because only the uploader knows it even happened. The millions of other people who did not get to see that video never knew there was anything that was taken from them. Even after you start to hear about an example here & there, it still feels like an isolated and insignificant example. You as a viewer don't have any way to perceive the scale, the mass of what is being blocked and diverted and mod…

> but you have no way to see what that really means in it's totality. I think people would push back a lot if they could see that somehow.

I’ve watched enough Mark Dice videos to know how bad it is, and I regret not taking the blue pill sometimes. He’s shown just about every notable case of it happening (with proof). Though he knows how to game the system to resist being taken offline and you could say it’s part of his brand.

You could say that it wouldn’t be worth the risk for others to call it out like he does because it wouldn’t add to the content, and they could slip up.

You can disagree with his politics or personality but you probably wont find a leftist channel that covers that kind of censorship. I wish the videos were more categorized, though he doesn’t do it and uses generic video titles because apparently that makes it less likely to get censored.

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

#199

Post by lithos »

mypastself wrote: post #69
toofy wrote: post #60

here we go again. another election cycle where some of the loudest voices with some of the largest platforms ever in history will be declaring they’re not being allowed to speak. the reality is, they’re loud, they have easier and larger access to more people than anyone ever in history. the reality is also that they’re just mad people speak back to them. people talking back to them is what they’re really upset about.…

Did Zuckerberg himself support conspiracy theories? Or does he regret succumbing to government requests for censoring that type of content? Sounds to me like he wants to allow certain kinds of speech on his platform, regardless of whether or not he personally agrees with them.

He probably hates how expensive it was/is to now support government requests, and how many governments are big enough to bully "his" platform into giving the same support other governments have gotten.

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

#200

Post by lasc4r »

bitcharmer wrote: post #113
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.

[flagged]

Hacker News is far worse in terms of disallowed content. Must be full of the most vile and twisted minds on the internet!
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