It's one thing to censor, but it's another to intentionally deceive your users into believing that they sent something.
They do it because it is effective. Otherwise people would be more likely to try to circumvent it.
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FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent
261–270 of 488 posts
Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's one thing to censor !!! Are we nonchalantly accepting its OK to censor and moving on to the argument about deceiving users? Edit: should add more context to this. I don't think we should be casually OK with censorship. Next thing you know, FB will silently(or not) start censoring political opponents, activists they don't like, etc. I am quite unsettled by how the west is doing the same as China. Censorship is…
Our legal system (fortunately) hasn’t accepted the theory that the penalty for being popular is that you get to be nationalized. How would you feel if you threw a lot of parties in your house, and then one day the government came to you and said you now have to allow everyone to party at your house?
You're making an interesting point which I resonate with - but I want to elaborate and crystalize my thoughts a bit more. I am a staunch supporter of civil rights and we should examine the extremes.
Extrema 1: Social network with everyone on the planet addicted to it, it becomes impossible to avoid. Even if one doesn't want to use it, it will become a necessity to communicate to others. Twitter is an example where it is official source of information from Government agencies to local fire department, embassies, and many politicians, etc. Recently they're requiring an account (and phone number) to access what seems to be the official channels of information for many nations. With milions if not billions of users, it is a significant chunk of the entire world's population. Just like any other industry (big oil, big tobacco), big social media and big tech need to be regulated. There is a spectrum between a private forum of 10k users and a megacorp able to control election outcomes even. What's even more eggregious is that the algorithms that govern the engagement of 1B+ users is developed by people of Silicon Valley (probably 0.000001% of US population or around ~300 people give or take). In private. Closed doors. We oughta see how this is terrifying (even if I agree with their stance and moral principles).
Extrema 2: Big tech merges with Gov in the business of law enforcement. A small party where government has absolutely no business gets interrupted by cops who were alerted by the "thought algorithms". These thought algorithms were developed by Gov + Big Tech by fusing various channels of information and it was deemed that this party is too pick-your-fav-niche-topic and cannot be tolerated. It is my business, my party, my friends and my agenda. No one should have the right to interrupt unless I am violating laws and I am granted due process.
Obviously both extremes are encroaching civil rights of people to have privacy and access to information.
Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think more precisely, the nature of the deceit is this: Shadowbans lie to a specific individual about their participation in the community. This is because the user is not considered part of the community. A shadowban is something you deploy against a user that is presumed to be a malicious actor in the system. It's deceit, but in a similar category of deceit to telling a user the resource is 404 not found instead…
> It's deceit, but in a similar category of deceit to telling a user the resource is 404 not found instead of 403 or 401 because you don't even trust them enough Is it the same? Showing a 404 is a security measure that applies equally to anyone lacking sufficient privileges. Ideally an app should prevent you from getting these, or show a message like "Not found, or no access". > It's deceit with the purpose of stymii…
Normally you don't get any of that process because you don't have any right to use someone else's service. They can ban you for having red hair or blue eyes if they please and they would be foolish but not in the wrong.
Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent
#264Serious question guys, please help me understand. Why are we still using Facebook services at all? How many more bad practices should all of us, and even me tolerate…
Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does anyone use fb? I never have had an account. I do help my mother-in-law with hers a bit. My company asked me to create a Twitter account. I deleted it a month later. The soln to bad speech is better speech.
>Why does anyone use fb? If you want to communicate or reach out to people, you go where the people are. Currently that's FB. On a separate note, the problem with saying that the solution to bad speech is better speech is that it doesn't take crapflooding by bad actors into account. Your good speech is kinda worthless if it's drowned out by disinformation, lies or just plain non-sense.
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Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent
#266Isn’t messenger supposedly using “end-to-end encryption”? I honestly don’t know if I’m mixing this up with what’s app since I refuse to use either one. FB is a blight upon the world. Only a fool believes anything they say.
Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is private conversation because it is not meant to be made public by its users. Not because Facebook isn't "common carrier". Piece of paper isn't common carrier. If I write a note to my wife and give it myself it is private because I wanted and expected it private. If I taped it to a billboard it means I no longer expect it private and it is public.
You’re mixing up two legal concepts: expectation of privacy and common carriers. Despite phone companies being common carriers (and thus being required to carry communications without censoring them), the Supreme Court has made it clear that people should have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they relay communications through a pay phone. The reasoning was that you give up your right to privacy when you invo…
Katz v. United States held the opposite: “The Government’s activities in electronically listening to and recording the petitioner’s words violated the privacy upon which he justifiably relied while using the telephone booth and thus constituted a ‘search and seizure’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”
More recent decisions suggest that the third party doctrine, according to which there is no legitimate expectation of privacy in information voluntarily turned over to third parties, is unlikely to apply to private messages on Facebook:
Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think HN would be a better place if it didn't have moderation (or, as you put it, "censorship")?
That's beside the point I was making, as I said; >You can argue whether or not moderation is necessary or not but it most definitely is censorship. Moderation is censorship, and censorship is evil. It may be a necessary evil (because liability if nothing else) but it needs to be seen and treated as evil. Meaning to be used as sparingly as possible.
Censorship is contextually a good not an evil. No matter how divergent our positions there is almost certainly content that both us if asked to rate it would rate negatively. That is to say that the net value of the forum increases as we delete more of it.
Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our legal system (fortunately) hasn’t accepted the theory that the penalty for being popular is that you get to be nationalized. How would you feel if you threw a lot of parties in your house, and then one day the government came to you and said you now have to allow everyone to party at your house?
You're making an interesting point which I resonate with - but I want to elaborate and crystalize my thoughts a bit more. I am a staunch supporter of civil rights and we should examine the extremes. Extrema 1: Social network with everyone on the planet addicted to it, it becomes impossible to avoid. Even if one doesn't want to use it, it will become a necessity to communicate to others. Twitter is an example where it…
Sorry, I don’t understand. Why should we engage in intellectual masturbation over hypotheticals instead of analyzing the immediate problem we have in front of our very noses?
Both of these situations are largely fictional and over simplified characterizations of what’s going on.
Are engagement algorithms worrisome and a problem? Sure, I’ll stipulate to that. They’re largely responsible for the tightening of social and thought circles and then amplification of racism and scientific illiteracy. Are they preventing the circulation of information outside their boundaries? No. They don’t have that kind of power. And the channels that they don’t control remain numerous and varied.
There is a difference between being the default or the easiest mechanism by which information is disseminated, and being the only mechanism by which it is disseminated. This distinction matters.
Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent
#270What do the engineers who code stuff like this think? Do they not feel bad or is it masked by the salary they get paid?
“Maybe this feature will save a few needless deaths from a dangerous yet highly preventable disease”
I mean, I don’t work there, but that’s what I’d think.