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Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#171

Post by malvosenior »

pjc50 wrote: post #156
scarejunba wrote: post #144

How does everyone have so much trouble with Facebook and Twitter? I have both and have used both for years and I know that both require you to pick what you want to look at. I exhaust my Twitter feed in seconds and then have nothing to look at. Both my FB feed and my Twitter feed are more heartwarming, adorable, funny, or touching than angry or whatever. Maybe all of this is just a reflection of who you guys are. And…

You're not popular enough. > unfollow In the nastier situations, it's not people who you follow that's the problem. It's the people who @ you from a constant stream of new accounts.

Famous people always get some harassment. We used to call it "hate mail", now it's "hate replies". It comes along with being well known. Also, you can turn off notifications for @ replies from people you don't follow if it's an issue.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#172

Post by pjc50 »

losvedir wrote: post #168
scarejunba wrote: post #144

How does everyone have so much trouble with Facebook and Twitter? I have both and have used both for years and I know that both require you to pick what you want to look at. I exhaust my Twitter feed in seconds and then have nothing to look at. Both my FB feed and my Twitter feed are more heartwarming, adorable, funny, or touching than angry or whatever. Maybe all of this is just a reflection of who you guys are. And…

Yeah, I tend to agree. At some level, I keep coming back to the fact that these are just websites . Like, you can turn off your computer and go for a walk or something. I don't use facebook or twitter, so I guess that colors my perception as to how trivial they are in the broader picture of life, but it also means I don't totally understand the issues that people who use the sites face.

They're where various sorts of "public life" happens. While you can be a journalist without being on twitter, it's cutting yourself off from that feeling of being informed. Much harder to get by if you're not on Facebook (one of my friends in the trade reports having over 3000 "friends" on Facebook; effectively that represents an externally managed contacts book).

Then there's the problem that you don't have to be on either website for people to use it to campaign against you. From trivial tactics like getting you fired or SWATted to more egregious things like the Rohingya genocide.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#173

Post by rockerbalboa »

wnmurphy wrote: post #117
monochromatic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So-called hate speech doesn’t cause harm other than to feelings. It’s constitutionally protected in the US, and Facebook is going down the wrong path trying to eliminate it.

You've clearly never heard of "stochastic terrorism". Words have consequences, and hate speech can have serious consequences. Just because something is included under blanket protections doesn't mean it's harmless to society.

Yep, I have.

https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/huffpost-editor-says-new-y...

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#174

Post by PavlovsCat »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #143
PavlovsCat wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Check out what happened in Rwanda. This one random guy was going on the radio and spewing hate and lies, encouraging people to pick up machetes and kill their neighbors and family members based on this nuanced, arbitrary colonial racial construct. > It went viral. What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide > The genocide was planned by members of the core Hutu political elite, many of whom occupied positi…

Thank you for pushing back, I appreciate that. I see now that I presented an overly simplistic narrative, which I took from a documentary long ago when I was young. > Who was this random guy? Who told you this story, or where do you have it from? How did this claim go viral, that one random guy on Rwanda ranted on the radio, and it ended in genocide? I picked this up from a documentary I saw years ago.. It was probab…

Oh, another thing, something I wanted to note but forgot because I got carried away: I absolutely don't want to mention my experience with being kicked from Facebook, or any mobbing attempts I may have found myself a target of, in the same breath as the trauma of not knowing whether some people you know and love may have got killed. And I also didn't mean the video of 100 people being jerks in Portland as some kind of response to the protest your friends went to. I hope it doesn't read that way in the first place, but it can't hurt to state it, which I planned to and then forgot.

I remember when a woman I was interwebs friends with casually mentioned about a bombing in Israel "oh hey, that's a bus stop I drive past on my way to work every day". It's silly, because I'm an adult and I have an imagination, but just that tiny bit of personal connection made the situation feel vastly more real for me, and kinde sent me reeling for a bit (I may have had a little crush on her tbh). And that was after I already knew she was okay. And I knew she lived in Israel, and that bad things happen there too often, so why would it make a difference that the bus stop was on her way to work? It makes no sense, but it made all the difference to me, like seeing it for the first time. So I can not even imagine how that must have been for you, not to mention your friends. I have the utmost respect and sympathy for that, and my response wasn't intended as some kind of "yes yes, sure, BUT!"

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#175

Post by dllthomas »

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #146
dragonwriter wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Immediate serious violence". That's the US standard for prior restraint. No, it's the US standard for applying the coercive power of government to prior restraint. The US standard for private actors applying prior restraint to their own platforms is “do what you will, so long as you apply any prior restraint the government has dictated based on immediate serious violence.” > That's what Facebook, as a US company,…

This reaction is so stereotypical, so ubiquitous that I wonder people bother to type it out: why not link https://xkcd.com/1357/ and save keystrokes? This reaction is also false. Facebook is part of the state! Why? Organisations like FB organise large-scale information flow, in particular regarding controversial political issues. The majority of citizens receive the information regarding political decisions (e.g. who…

Downvoted for the first half, which seems more likely to lead to problems than useful discourse. I'd have otherwise upvoted for the ideas in the second half; I'm not sure whether I agree with them but seeing this site dig into them sounds interesting.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#176

Post by nradov »

sunsetMurk wrote: post #115
nradov wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classical liberal arts educations are tremendously valuable in teaching people how to think critically. However when we're dealing with complex emergent systems no one is capable of reliably predicting problems regardless of how much education in sociology and anthropology they have. Active monitoring and fast responses are the only viable approach.

but what about seriously brainstorming some hypothetical scenarios as part of the process? For example, documenting some sort of 'ideal' or 'pro/con' type lists of potential fallout. When architecting a system.. or in design/feature proposals. Surely folks less in the weeds of technical requirements and actual implementation could help decide earlier on if something is 'good'.

Brainstorming hypothetical scenarios usually results in endless discussions about imaginary problems that never come to pass, and completely missing the real problems. This tends to happen regardless of who participates.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#177

Post by nradov »

quanticle wrote: post #134
nradov wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that a problem that needs to be solved?

Not everyone wants Facebook to be imposing its notion of community standards on their online discourse. Right now, Facebook is the only social network, so if you want to reach people, you have to play by Facebook's rules, no matter how arbitrary and culturally-imperialistic they are. If there were a plethora of social network, you could reach people while maintaining the norms of your community, even if those norms w…

There's no such thing as cultural imperialism. It's an imaginary concept.

The people who don't want Facebook to impose its community standards outside the US usually just want to be able to impose their own community standards on others. They're no better than Facebook. Why should anyone care what they want?

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#178

Post by b_tterc_p »

michaelt wrote: post #159
dropit_sphere wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is the thing now? We don't believe freedom of speech is a good thing anymore? Who decided this? I don't recall being consulted on this. Not that I'd think of arguing , mind you! I'm loyal, I swear!

Back before internet access was widespread I saw a lot of people online who foresaw a future where an internet connection provided access to the sum of all human knowledge, and forums to participate in the marketplace of ideas. Between human curiosity, good will and people's natural desire to not be wrong, everyone will learn and reason their way to the truth (incidentally ending up agreeing with me). Surely once eve…

Well, we’re making progress on casual dress.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#179

Post by PavlovsCat »

chrisseaton wrote: post #157
PavlovsCat wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life experience isn't just a result of accumulated years, as one dictionary summarizes it: "experience and knowledge gained through living". If it rains a lot, but I don't catch any of it, I still have no water, yet if it rains just a tiny bit, and I hold out a cup, I do have some water. Of course, if I hold out a cup and it doesn't rain, I have no water either. You have to live to be able to gather life experience,…

I was replying to the idea that a millennial is a young person. They aren't. If you've got other comments about life experience direct them at the original commenter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials

> demographers and researchers typically use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years.

It mentions various ranges, roughly 1980 at the earliest, 1996 at the latest. So a millenial according to that today would range from age 22 to age 38. That leaves us with "people under 40 with limited life experience".

They probably meant young people, sure, but the sentence makes sense either way, since under 40 is still kinda young to formulate rules for how to moderate political discussions anywhere on the globe. A person would have to study and travel and learn a lot, just about that, to have anything valuable to say about it at age 30. If you spend that time working at Facebook instead, to speak of "limited life experience" in this context is very kind either way.

The real kicker is that it's not even just about Facebook and their own limited life experiences though. From the article:

> Then the company outsources much of the actual post-by-post moderation to companies that enlist largely unskilled workers, many hired out of call centers.

The cool thing here is, since it's in the tree of their comment, the orginal commenter sees that, too.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#180

Post by YorkshireSeason »

dllthomas wrote: post #175
YorkshireSeason wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reaction is so stereotypical, so ubiquitous that I wonder people bother to type it out: why not link https://xkcd.com/1357/ and save keystrokes? This reaction is also false. Facebook is part of the state! Why? Organisations like FB organise large-scale information flow, in particular regarding controversial political issues. The majority of citizens receive the information regarding political decisions (e.g. who…

Downvoted for the first half, which seems more likely to lead to problems than useful discourse. I'd have otherwise upvoted for the ideas in the second half; I'm not sure whether I agree with them but seeing this site dig into them sounds interesting.

Fair enough!

Do you think I'm wrong, or do you agree with the veracity of my observation, but not with the style of its presentation?

If the former, I invite you to study past discussions of the subject (e.g. googling: site:ycombinator.com freedom of speech xkcd). If the latter, how do you recommend presenting such as subject?)

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