Live data from Hacker News

Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

bbc.com

271–280 of 732 posts

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is assuming there are no other ways for important things to be reported, such as media outlets, forums, 4chan, independent bloggers and pod casters IRC etc If some major conspiracy was under way, I'm not sure Facbook, Google, Twitter censorhip alone would be enough to stop it?

Forums, 4chan and random blogs are the last-ditch avenue for information sharing among a small, extremely attentive, more-paranoid-than-average segment of the population. They are not an effective means for journalism or mass political speech, even when the facts of that speech are clearly established.

I'm not arguing 4chan is good for that, I'm just saying social media is not the only way we find out about things either.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While its easy to talk from outside the US, I am honestly a lot less worried about the content and a lot more about the fact that it is a non trivial question whether or not the son of the leader of the free world is a crack user. Reality and all this fake news stuff got weird fast. Which wasnt really surprising if you look at the upcoming clusterfuck of cheap realistic video simulations. After getting there already…

>> I am honestly a lot less worried about the content and a lot more about the fact that it is a non trivial question whether or not the son of the leader of the free world is a crack user. Joe Biden is not the leader of the free world. And it is not an open question whether Joe Biden's son is a crack user.

USA is the leading country of the free world (by having the heaviest cultural, economic and technological impact), so by transitive property Joe Biden, being the leader of that country, is also the leader of the free world.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#273
post #6
post #3

That was quite the revelation... though if I was in Zuck's shoes I would be throwing the FBI under the bus too as it deflects the Section 230 arguments.

From the article: Zuckerberg told Rogan: "The background here is that the FBI came to us - some folks on our team - and was like 'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that'." He said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Biden story in part…

Whenever someone or something is labelled as being under the influence of Russia, I zone out.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were real, but there is not a dispute that Hunter is a recovering drug addict. That doesn't mean that a laptop exists with incriminating evidence of illegal activity or the President's knowledge of it.

The NY Times and even the FBI concluded that the laptop wasn’t faked.

I hope he has a laptop in 20XX the question is what was really on it.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jared Kushner negotiated selling tens of billions of high tech weaponry to the Saudis, and then ended up with a bunch of Saudis renting empty apartments in his failed real estate project, at the same time he got a $2 billion check from the Middle East. Ivanka negotiated trademarks with China at the same time she was literally in China with her father’s government negotiating Chinese trade deals. They made over $100 m…

I'm sorry, where was the Trump clan mentioned in the parent or GP post? Whataboutism does not contribute to the discussion, and it is presumptuous to assume the original poster does not find those things concerning, as well. To me personally, both are very concerning, and it's exhausting to me that the political class gets a pass on this behavior

Whataboutism is relevant when the story is a carefully orchestrated dump of a mixture of real and false information by one political faction intended to swing an election with a "Vote Sideshow Bob for President" message.

There's not much doubt that Hunter Biden got board seats because he could brag about his deep understanding of and connections with the top level of US politics, and that he used illegal drugs extensively, but we knew that without the laptop.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#276
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: Zuckerberg told Rogan: "The background here is that the FBI came to us - some folks on our team - and was like 'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that'." He said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Biden story in part…

Whenever someone or something is labelled as being under the influence of Russia, I zone out.

Because there aren’t enough examples of it in recent history or just to be edgy?

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#277
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't "censorship by algorithm" though. This was a human being intentionally banning a specific thing. There was no algorithm in the loop. They didn't "tweak their algorithm" anymore than an antivirus tweaks its algorithm to detect a new virus, they specifically censored a specific piece of content.

I suggest reading the articles before writing in the comments: > Facebook did not completely ban sharing of the article, but instead limited how much its algorithm automatically shared it to other people for a week, while third-party fact-checkers tried to verify the reporting. So while people could post the article and discuss it, it was less likely to spread organically to new users.

Bs.. i remember sending the link for the nypost article to a friend via facebook measenger and the link would simply be deleted as soon as I sent it.

That isn’t tweaking algos.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#278

I found interesting how during the podcast, Zuckerberg compared the suppression of the story to due process in the justice system. A snippet from the podcast (with minor edits, starting from 7:25 of this video clip [1]): > Joe Rogan: is there regret for not having it evenly distributed and for throttling the distribution of that story? > [...] > Zuckerberg: yeah yeah I mean it sucks because I mean it turned out after…

> Zuckerberg compared the suppression of the story to due process in the justice system.

In the justice system, you are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Here, uncorroborated claims were enough. Not even a probable cause was required.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forums, 4chan and random blogs are the last-ditch avenue for information sharing among a small, extremely attentive, more-paranoid-than-average segment of the population. They are not an effective means for journalism or mass political speech, even when the facts of that speech are clearly established.

I'm not arguing 4chan is good for that, I'm just saying social media is not the only way we find out about things either.

Social media may not be the only way to access news, but most of the other ways are too obscure to spread information quickly.

Re: Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

#280

I found interesting how during the podcast, Zuckerberg compared the suppression of the story to due process in the justice system. A snippet from the podcast (with minor edits, starting from 7:25 of this video clip [1]): > Joe Rogan: is there regret for not having it evenly distributed and for throttling the distribution of that story? > [...] > Zuckerberg: yeah yeah I mean it sucks because I mean it turned out after…

> Zuckerberg compared the suppression of the story to due process in the justice system. In the justice system, you are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Here, uncorroborated claims were enough. Not even a probable cause was required.

Yep, a person who is known for distributing misinformation and Zuckerberg who's platform does that on a huge scale.
Post reply on HN