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

Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 182 posts

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#41

Post by m-i-l »

I clicked on the link wondering if the twist might be that it was from state-backed troll farm, but not the country we normally associate with state-backed troll farms...

However, from the article: "This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it's much more banal. It's in some ways more depressing, ... People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrage is a profitable niche. I think they may not actually care about Canadian politics at all."

I wonder how "free speech absolutists" defend the idea of people in low-income countries using these platforms to spread outrage simply to make themselves a little money (and the platform owners a lot of money), rather than to "exercise their right to free speech" or whatever, given these people aren't saying anything they believe in (let alone have any interest in or even knowledge of). Not that you can really call it free speech if you are being paid to do it.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#43

Post by sunaookami »

m-i-l wrote: post #41

I clicked on the link wondering if the twist might be that it was from state-backed troll farm, but not the country we normally associate with state-backed troll farms... However, from the article: "This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it's much more banal. It's in some ways more depressing, ... People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrag…

This has nothing to do with free speech but giving an incentive (money) for posting which ruined every social media platform in existence (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#44

Post by p-e-w »

m-i-l wrote: post #41

I clicked on the link wondering if the twist might be that it was from state-backed troll farm, but not the country we normally associate with state-backed troll farms... However, from the article: "This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it's much more banal. It's in some ways more depressing, ... People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrag…

> I wonder how "free speech absolutists" defend the idea of people in low-income countries using these platforms to spread outrage simply to make themselves a little money

By recognizing that undesirable uses of free speech are the price society pays for having free speech, and by strongly believing that it is a price worth paying.

Just like 1.3 million global road traffic deaths per year are the price society pays for having cars, and believing that people should still be able to freely own and drive cars doesn’t make someone a “car absolutist”.

The idea that free speech should probably be restricted if it turns out that free speech can lead to unpleasant consequences misses the whole point of free speech – in many cases deliberately, I think.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#45

Post by inglor_cz »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #18
a2128 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a uniform centralized group that operated for a decade under the name of Internet Research Agency, and almost certainly something like it continues to operate to this day. These had paid employees who got directions on what to promote with the goal of manipulating the public debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

I imagine Israel's various hasbara operation dwarfs its relevance and funding by multiple orders of magnitude. I don't see much evidence it plays a role outside of being useful to blame for inconvenient discourse.

For a country of 8 million to "dwarf by multiple orders of magnitude" a country of 140 million in almost anything requires very lively imagination indeed.

Soft power operations are hard to measure. You cannot measure the impact of Israeli activities either.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#46

Post by dtj1123 »

m-i-l wrote: post #41

I clicked on the link wondering if the twist might be that it was from state-backed troll farm, but not the country we normally associate with state-backed troll farms... However, from the article: "This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it's much more banal. It's in some ways more depressing, ... People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrag…

Cash incentivised speech is arguably not free.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#47

Post by sharperguy »

m-i-l wrote: post #41

I clicked on the link wondering if the twist might be that it was from state-backed troll farm, but not the country we normally associate with state-backed troll farms... However, from the article: "This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it's much more banal. It's in some ways more depressing, ... People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrag…

Free speech doesn't mean that we don't desire filters. Go check your gmail spam folder. Twitter would look identical to this with filters at all. What we really want is:

* transparency about the filters we have on our feeds

* the ability to tweak them if they're not working

* the ability to change providers without losing your entire social graph / reach

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#48

Post by rafaelcosta »

”Facebook is paying out to creators of monetized content because that content is popular”

Would also work as a headline. But wouldn’t attract as many clicks I guess. The implication that Facebook is actively promoting a certain view point is disgusting, and old media loves to do that (even though they were historically the ones doing so). I’m all for local filtering (on some level) and preventing foreign interference on local political matters, and social media companies ought to do better. But I twist my nose at old media shamelessly trying to manipulate the views of people on tech. And this is Facebook we’re talking about here…

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#50

Post by cucumber3732842 »

Ironically comment section is essentially a more meta version of why peddling this content is so lucrative. For every Canadian who might click there's 10x that number of people in the US and Europe who'd either be rage baited or confirmation bias'd into clicking because of how what's going on in Alberta squares with their own ideology politics.
Post reply on HN