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Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

dispatch.techoversight.org

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#221

Post by pbhjpbhj »

nickdothutton wrote: post #141

>79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. This sounded very high, and I was interested to know how they understood what the total (100%) figure was, given the presumed underground nature of the activity. Clicked on the link for the source. The statement is false. By all means hold these companies to account but sensationalism isn't going to help. Full disclosure: I have never had a Faceb…

I don't necessarily doubt it's false, but if you have something of your source material, or your reasoning then it would make it possible to agree.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#222

Post by pinkmuffinere »

kstrauser wrote: post #209
lubujackson wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

79% of ALL child sex trafficking. 4 out of 5 child sex slaves exist thanks to Facebook's policies. But sure, go on and talk about "leeway" and "limited capabilities" for a company worth nearly a trillion dollars. Do you honestly believe this is acceptable? What are your vested interests here?

Do you have a citation for that? You may be right for all I know. I don't know much about it. But that seems unlikely to me, and if it's true, I'd like a reference I can show others when I'm trying to get them to finally close their account.

The claim is made in the main article, supported by this link [1]. But I agree, I suspect it’s sensationalized, just because that number is _so high_.

[1] https://techoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/08-2023...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#223

Post by Kenji »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #13

Remember when lying could get you in trouble? Lying has become normalized to such an extent that reality is unknowable. Just listen to any regime press conference on any day. Just pick any random day and listen. The hyperreal is here.

[dead]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#225

Post by aetherson »

ceejayoz wrote: post #202
aetherson wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? Like, I'd think that was a bad policy for murder in particular, but "we don't allow things but we give you a lot of chances to correct your behavior" is ordinary.

Three strikes is a "get your shit together" policy. Seventeen is a "yeah sure it's not allowed wink wink" policy. Especially when they'll just go make another account afterwards.

Nonsense. There are lots of things that you need more than three strikes for, especially on a platform that you expect to use for decades.

I'm not here to say that Facebook's enforcement behavior is optimal, and I don't know that a "17 strike policy" is a full description of their enforcement behavior. But there are plenty of behaviors that you want to discourage but not go nuclear about.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#226

Post by munk-a »

mgaunard wrote: post #180
ceejayoz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I said "we don't allow murder", but gave everyone 17 free murders, would you find that contradictory?

No, I would call that being confused about the distinction between law making and law enforcement, which are traditionally very distinct things. It makes sense for there to be leeway due to the scale, automations and high rate of false positives with limited capabilities to correct them.

For what reason should we allow such leeway? No hosted platform in the 80s was responsible for a similar amount. Maybe if Meta can't properly police such a large platform it shouldn't be allowed to operate one. Facebook doesn't have to exist and we don't have to accept weak cries of "it's our best effort!"

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#227

Post by rappatic »

Half of these examples aren't even lies. The right column of this table is full of whataboutisms and fabricated statistics. For example,

> Zuckerberg: "We don't allow people under the age of 13 on our service. So if we find anyone who's under the age of 13, we remove them from our service."

> What the evidence says: Internal document stating the goal for Meta to be the most relevant social products for kids worldwide. To do so, Meta will focus on "each youth life stage, ‘Kid’ (6-10), ‘Tween’ (10-13), and ‘Teen’ 13+."

The fact that Meta eventually wants to appeal to kids doesn't mean they currently allow kids on their platform.

And here's an example of a fabricated statistic:

> 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. (Link)

That link leads to a PDF which says "The 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report found that 65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram." This is a completely different statistic: the percentage of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media vs. the percentage "of all child sex trafficking" (the vast majority of which does not occur through social media).

Doing stuff like this destroys the website's credibility when it comes to the actual lies.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#228

Post by dizhn »

hamdingers wrote: post #120
bronco21016 wrote: post #39

I haven't paid a lot of attention to this issue but after reading some of the statements in the article I can't help but agree with Tech Oversight's conclusions. It's just anecdotal but recently, when mindlessly scrolling reels, (yes, bad enough already) I came across a reel that was unquestionably sexually explicit (in USA, I think policy varies on locale). I reported the account and reel because after clicking on t…

It's been years since I was regularly active on Facebook but I had many reports closed that way and then days~weeks later the account would be gone anyway. I suspect they batch up account closures to obfuscate their systems, like online games do with cheaters.

More likely to be more people reporting the users for the same thing.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#229

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

Does anybody believe congressional hearings are an honest effort at dealing with issues? It’s just show business to satisfy the voters. And the role of the CEO is to take a beating for show while knowing that nothing will happen to them or their business.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#230

Post by [deleted] »

amluto wrote: post #220
lubujackson wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

79% of ALL child sex trafficking. 4 out of 5 child sex slaves exist thanks to Facebook's policies. But sure, go on and talk about "leeway" and "limited capabilities" for a company worth nearly a trillion dollars. Do you honestly believe this is acceptable? What are your vested interests here?

> 4 out of 5 child sex slaves exist thanks to Facebook's policies. Even if your 79% number is correct, this does not follow. It like if someone said, 30 years ago, that 95% of total advertisements were in the classified section that 9 out of 10 retail sales happened thanks to the classifieds. (I’m not trying to excuse Facebook’s behavior. But maybe criticisms of Facebook would be more effective if they stayed on trac…

[deleted]
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