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Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

nytimes.com

191–200 of 236 posts

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#191

I'm very uncomfortable with the current trend of trying to get big tech to self police. They'll never get it right because of moving goal posts and moreover I don't want a private company to have that power in shaping social discourse. If we as a society deem that type of content to be improper and that it should not be allowed on such platforms, then let's make that explicit from a legal perspective and regulate the…

I just want more control over what appears in my feed. If all I saw were posts from my friends I never would have come across this video, but instead my feed is a combination of celebrities, pages, promoted content etc. I could unfollow everything outside of my friend group but then Facebook still shows random posts friends (or sometimes barely even aquaintances) have liked or replied to.

I rarely use Facebook anymore anyway, most of my chat happens in private groups or on scuttlebutt because at least there I have some control over what I see.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#192
post #27

I think several things can be true at the same time: * It's pretty worrying that our fascist-adjacent president is spreading doctored videos with essentially no repercussions. * Asking FB/Twitter/etc to police videos could be quite a mess in its own right. * This is a pressing problem for democracies around the world. (Note: I don't use the 'f word' lightly. Too many on the left use it freely with "people on the righ…

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It destroys intellectual curiosity, which the site exists for.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#194
post #28

A partial distributed solution would be for trusted sites to vouch for a hash of the video file, and the browser to be configured to flag or filter untrusted content. E.g. NYT, the DNC, Pelosi's own site, etc., would flag a hash of a file as valid. Those sites would be aggregated into a web of trust. Users subscribe to nodes of that web, e.g. I trust reporter A, celebrity B, newspaper C, advocacy group D ... and thei…

I'm working on a design of a system that does almost exactly this. I'd also be interested if anyone else is working on it. Where you can not only trust sites but individual people too.

The core issue I've come across is that it would make cults happen more easily.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#195
post #87
post #28

A partial distributed solution would be for trusted sites to vouch for a hash of the video file, and the browser to be configured to flag or filter untrusted content. E.g. NYT, the DNC, Pelosi's own site, etc., would flag a hash of a file as valid. Those sites would be aggregated into a web of trust. Users subscribe to nodes of that web, e.g. I trust reporter A, celebrity B, newspaper C, advocacy group D ... and thei…

Corporate censorship built in to my browser? I'll pass.

You'd decide who you trust.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#196
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't message my friends on Snapchat from Instagram, but I can call my friends on T-Mobile and ATT from Verizon. Phone companies shenanigans go back a long way, so there are more than a few lawsuits involved, in order to get to our current state for calling.

That's a nonsensical comparison. Phones all have one purpose and mechanism: voice calling. Instagram is based around a public photo-blog. Snapchat is ephemeral photo-mesaging. You would be requiring social media sites to replicate each other's functionality. If I want to send a message to a twitter user, can it be longer than 140 characters? What if I am john.doe one one platform but you have the same name on another…

I’ll add that laws like that are usually well intentioned but make no sense 30 years later, where the law still exists and everyone is wasting time implementing something from the past. Like IE6 browser requirements in South Korea.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but a personal Wordpress website also is 1-to-many. Where will this end?

But you’re criminally responsible if you use your personal Wordpress site to host illegal content, or use it to facilitate a crime. Facebook would say they aren’t criminally responsible for how their users use their site, because they’re just a common carrier. However they also want to exert a huge amount of editorial control over the content, which could be described as having your cake and eating it too.

By “you are criminally responsible” you mean “Wordpress is criminally responsible”? I don’t think the analogy makes sense the other way.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#198
post #128
post #29

I don't fully understand why people think Facebook should be policing content, yet no-one thinks the phone company should delete SMS messages that are spreading misinformation, or the postal service should destroy false mail etc. It it because Facebook makes it much easier to share something with a wide audience? Is it because "the algorithm" means Facebook has more responsibility than if it were a simple chronologic…

I for one think it's outrageous that the USPS delivers so much unwanted and dangerous spam mail.

A huge waste of resources too. If the price of recycling, cost of growing and cutting down trees, carbon emissions from driving spam, etc aren’t factored into the cost then we’re all paying for it.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#199
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, it’s entirely possible to have different legislation for different sized organizations. The tax bracket for individuals is an example. Still illegal as per the First Amendment. The government cannot compel speech, regardless of company size. > I’m more of the opinion that Facebook should be punished as an example. Don’t grow so big that your unilateral action could have devastating effects on society. Don…

Facebook has a huge audience. They make it easy to for one entity to target a huge number of people with customized content per person. And yet people have some weird affinity to believe anything they see on it. If you instead had to work with several hundred facebooks across the world to target everybody it becomes more federated. The local facebooks would have more knowledge and incentive and resources to police th…

I can’t think of any internet companies that naturally federate well. The nature of the internet being one place lends itself to winner take all mechanics, and this makes the world a smaller place geographically and a bigger place ideologically. Now we can chat on HN because we share interests (ideologically close) even if we live in different countries, but we may not chat at all with people outside our circles in our own towns.

Re: Nancy Pelosi and Fakebook Dirty Tricks

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At a minimum they should have clearly defined rules and transparent processes for censoring content and banning users. They do their best to document this: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/ The simple reality I see is that Facebook has to please the majority of people, but people are reluctant to confront the fact that some of their views are significantly out of line with the majority. So people react n…

It should not matter if your views are far from the majority, that is the whole issue.

If you can have a plan to solve aspects of human nature that are no longer useful in the modern world let us know. Otherwise I assume we just have to accept that people are tribal by default, and only a small percentage of people have the time and desire to cultivate otherwise.
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