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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

#31

Post by brightball »

bilekas wrote: post #6

> The only way to outlaw Meta’s dangerous and egregious behavior is to pass legislation, like the Kids Online Safety Act, which will hold their feet to the fire and force them to protect children and teens. This is no surprise he lied, that's just what businesses do, their bottom line for the shareholders is all that matters. But the answer is NOT the "Kids Online Safety Act" Legislation will definitely help things,…

After 25 years heavily paying attention to political news, the "bad thing happened" followed by "we have to pass this bill that won't fix it but I want to capitalize on the news cycle to gain support anyway" cycle should just be assumed now.

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

#32

Post by mrsssnake »

rkangel wrote: post #21
Aurornis wrote: post #15

> The only way to outlaw Meta’s dangerous and egregious behavior is to pass legislation, like the Kids Online Safety Act Just last week there was uproar because Discord was going to require age verification to join adult themed servers and bypass content filters. This is how people are getting baited into inviting these restrictions and regulations into their services: By believing it’s necessary to hurt their enemie…

Which step in this logic do you not accept? When profit for a company is in conflict with human good, regulation is needed (e.g. health and safety rules) Facebook causes harm, disproportionately so for younger people Meta is aware of this, but due to a profit motive does not take serious steps to do anything about it (only token efforts) Meta (and other social media) needs regulation

Some regulation yes, throwing information agnostic universal global packet switching network in the trash bin is not the way.

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

#33

Post by thunfischtoast »

raincole wrote: post #23

> > The only way to outlaw Meta’s dangerous and egregious behavior is to pass legislation, like the Kids Online Safety Act Really? Even if we ignore all the implication of censorship and surveillance state, lying to the congress is already a crime. It's already regulated. If he can get away with it why another act would be different?

When was the last time a rich and/or famous person faced actual repercussions for their bad actions? Actions that, would they be comitted by the lower 99,9% of the world, would yield at least a fine that actually hurts, or jail. Serious jail, not "house arrest" in a big mansion. Jail time that actually lasted to the end and was not prematurely lifted after 6 months? When the current systems are failing the solution is not to replace them with another system.

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

#34

Post by jacobsimon »

rkangel wrote: post #21
Aurornis wrote: post #15

> The only way to outlaw Meta’s dangerous and egregious behavior is to pass legislation, like the Kids Online Safety Act Just last week there was uproar because Discord was going to require age verification to join adult themed servers and bypass content filters. This is how people are getting baited into inviting these restrictions and regulations into their services: By believing it’s necessary to hurt their enemie…

Which step in this logic do you not accept? When profit for a company is in conflict with human good, regulation is needed (e.g. health and safety rules) Facebook causes harm, disproportionately so for younger people Meta is aware of this, but due to a profit motive does not take serious steps to do anything about it (only token efforts) Meta (and other social media) needs regulation

> Facebook causes harm, disproportionately so for younger people

I think I disagree with this step. Facebook causes a kind of indirect harm here, and is used willingly by teens and parents, who could simply choose not to use it. That's different from, say, a factory polluting a river with toxic chemicals, which needs government regulation. Basically "negative externalities".

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

#36

Post by bryanlarsen »

thunfischtoast wrote: post #33
raincole wrote: post #23

> > The only way to outlaw Meta’s dangerous and egregious behavior is to pass legislation, like the Kids Online Safety Act Really? Even if we ignore all the implication of censorship and surveillance state, lying to the congress is already a crime. It's already regulated. If he can get away with it why another act would be different?

When was the last time a rich and/or famous person faced actual repercussions for their bad actions? Actions that, would they be comitted by the lower 99,9% of the world, would yield at least a fine that actually hurts, or jail. Serious jail, not "house arrest" in a big mansion. Jail time that actually lasted to the end and was not prematurely lifted after 6 months? When the current systems are failing the solution i…

SBF? Epstein? Weinstein?

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

#38

Post by thaumasiotes »

raincole wrote: post #23

> > The only way to outlaw Meta’s dangerous and egregious behavior is to pass legislation, like the Kids Online Safety Act Really? Even if we ignore all the implication of censorship and surveillance state, lying to the congress is already a crime. It's already regulated. If he can get away with it why another act would be different?

Well, in this case, lying to Congress is a crime, but techoversight is happy to call statements "lies" when there's no chance of upholding a "lying to Congress" charge. So their position that addressing the problem they see requires additional regulation is correct.

This is the first example of a "lie" they give:

“No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer,” Zuckerberg said

And it's a lie because...

> Despite Zuckerberg’s claims during the 2024 US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Meta’s post-hearing investment in teen safety measures (i.e. Teen Accounts) are a PR stunt.

So the complaint is just that Mark Zuckerberg said his company was doing great, industry-leading work, when in techoversight's opinion it was doing bad, shoddy work. There is no lie involved. You would have to really strain even to call Zuckerberg's statement a statement of fact, and the factual elements are just "we invest [an amount]" and "we do [efforts]".

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

#39

Post by bronco21016 »

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 the account there was even more material. This wasn't just a "creator" promoting their adult site with suggestive content. The account had several reels where the preview image was just black but after 2-3 seconds an adult image would appear.

Facebook closed my report with "no further action required" saying the content does not violate their policy. I'm sure they have an absolute tsunami of reports to go through and I do not envy the humans tasked with this work. However, it seems pretty clear to me they are not effectively achieving their publicly stated goals of moderating the content on their platform.

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