FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent • Hacker News Board

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#461

Post by tekknik » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 1:27 PM UTC

otterley wrote: post #446

tekknik wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Constitution constrains what the Government can do. Yes, thanks for the reminder. That’s why this isn’t the gov doing and instead is the left via their means of control. That’s why there’s pending FOIA requests for this very thing. > Also your analogy is flawed. Facebook doesn’t do what you suggest today (“only allow in those who talk like me”). Only if you take it quite literally. Otherwise are you saying they…

> are you saying they don’t censor anybody that doesn’t reiterate the same thing the left is saying? Yes, and there are plenty of examples of it, too. Republican governors and politicians, and right-leaning people of all levels of fame, with very few exceptions, continue to have a presence on Facebook and communicate there with their followers. Pick any Republican governor or Senator: they will be there.

So if I go on and post “misinformation”, which is defined by the left as anything antinarative (see all the “you ain’t black” claims) then what?

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#462

Post by tekknik » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #450

tekknik wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You notice how all of your examples are about HN and not FB? Where’s the option on FB to turn on banned posts? Where’s the default option turned on on HN?

That would be because A) this thread diverged from that when the assertion that all shadowbanning ain any forum is harmful to the community, and B) as noted elsewhere in this discussion, FB isn't shadowbanning, they're denying sends and a UI bug later is removing the information that the send failed. > Where’s the default option turned on on HN? I'm not sure what you're asking. If you're asking if showdead is on by d…

> the assertion that all shadowbanning

How can you know this? The community is what it is as a result of the discourse that happens here. If you remove one person that discourse, and therefor the community, has changed. So shadowbanning being harmful is more of an opinion of whether all voices should be heard or not.

> I'm not sure what you're asking. If you're asking if showdead is on by default on HN, no, it's not, and I don't think it should be.

I know it’s not, and I think it should be. It’s quite easy these days to have a pop up say “want to see all of the conversation? turn off this setting” and guide the user to turn it off with an easy way to turn it on. In fact, ideally, this censoring would happen on the client configured by rules created by the owner.

> as long as they try to align their behavior with the community

You do realize that everybody aligning means everybody is the same right? What happened to diversity? (cue “some opinions don’t matter” statement)

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#463

Post by tekknik » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #445

tekknik wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People’s desire to fit in will make them give up all sorts of rights. Pay attention to history and this is pretty apparent.

It's a bit of a catch-22 though, isn't it? If people can make sound independent judgment, we don't need a law constraining what private companies must allow on their services because private users will find the censorship reprehensible and will voluntarily leave. We need the First Amendment to constrain what government can do because people cannot voluntarily leave a government; the same is not true for their Faceboo…

> How can we trust them with the freedom to say and hear unfiltered information?

Why does this always come up? Like this exact example. Where there no others? Do you know how I read this? “I think I’m smarter than everyone, and everyone should look to me for the truth”.

> In such a context, it is perhaps necessary to allow the media its freedom of the press to transmit what is true and refrain from transmitting what is false.

This is mostly what we have now. Go compare the divide between the parties vs the Grand Canyon. This is the result. Why? Because opinions. And what does the left do when they can’t disprove an opinion ? Cancel/censor.

We also need the first amendment to apply to corporations. The left found the loophole and is giddily exercising it.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#464

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

tekknik wrote: post #463

shadowgovt wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of a catch-22 though, isn't it? If people can make sound independent judgment, we don't need a law constraining what private companies must allow on their services because private users will find the censorship reprehensible and will voluntarily leave. We need the First Amendment to constrain what government can do because people cannot voluntarily leave a government; the same is not true for their Faceboo…

> How can we trust them with the freedom to say and hear unfiltered information? Why does this always come up? Like this exact example. Where there no others? Do you know how I read this? “I think I’m smarter than everyone, and everyone should look to me for the truth”. > In such a context, it is perhaps necessary to allow the media its freedom of the press to transmit what is true and refrain from transmitting what…

I'm not sure what you mean by "the left found the loophole," can you clarify?

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#465

Post by tekknik » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #454

tekknik wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it’s time we change these laws, and anybody creating a place to talk with others can’t have any rules banning anybody. Perhaps it’s time we pass laws that force companies to abide by the first amendment.

You foster and shape a community by first telling people what you will accept and then by banning people whose behavior doesn't comport with standards. Here we sit on a functional community with such standards discussing this matter politely with one another wherein your argument would be to remove the standards that make this community worth chatting on. Just because you and are I reasonable doesn't mean the overarc…

> It's extremely likely that a large part of the signal that makes this community valuable would depart if it was entirely filled with 10x as much noise.

What does this say about those participants who do leave? The entire point of different opinions is different points of view on the same subject. Those leaving simply because they don’t like the general narrative do no abide by this principle and probably shouldn’t have been in the community in the first place. Those leaving because they experienced daily abuse, that’s reasonable. I still don’t think they should leave, but instead grow thicker skin.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#466

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

tekknik wrote: post #465

michaelmrose wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You foster and shape a community by first telling people what you will accept and then by banning people whose behavior doesn't comport with standards. Here we sit on a functional community with such standards discussing this matter politely with one another wherein your argument would be to remove the standards that make this community worth chatting on. Just because you and are I reasonable doesn't mean the overarc…

> It's extremely likely that a large part of the signal that makes this community valuable would depart if it was entirely filled with 10x as much noise. What does this say about those participants who do leave? The entire point of different opinions is different points of view on the same subject. Those leaving simply because they don’t like the general narrative do no abide by this principle and probably shouldn’t…

Nobody's obligated to grow thicker skin to use Facebook. In fact, Facebook would prefer to not put that obligation on their users; it decreases adoption and retention numbers.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#467

Post by michaelmrose » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:13 PM UTC

tekknik wrote: post #465

michaelmrose wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You foster and shape a community by first telling people what you will accept and then by banning people whose behavior doesn't comport with standards. Here we sit on a functional community with such standards discussing this matter politely with one another wherein your argument would be to remove the standards that make this community worth chatting on. Just because you and are I reasonable doesn't mean the overarc…

> It's extremely likely that a large part of the signal that makes this community valuable would depart if it was entirely filled with 10x as much noise. What does this say about those participants who do leave? The entire point of different opinions is different points of view on the same subject. Those leaving simply because they don’t like the general narrative do no abide by this principle and probably shouldn’t…

I don't want to read through 10x as much stupid, offensive, or otherwise bad content in order to read the same number of insightful content. Life is finite. Overwhelmingly the sort to get themselves banned are sharing crazy. I don't think I'm missing much or indeed anything. Why shouldn't I embrace less crazy in my life.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#468

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

tekknik wrote: post #461

otterley wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are you saying they don’t censor anybody that doesn’t reiterate the same thing the left is saying? Yes, and there are plenty of examples of it, too. Republican governors and politicians, and right-leaning people of all levels of fame, with very few exceptions, continue to have a presence on Facebook and communicate there with their followers. Pick any Republican governor or Senator: they will be there.

So if I go on and post “misinformation”, which is defined by the left as anything antinarative (see all the “you ain’t black” claims) then what?

Usually? Nothing.

Occasionally, if it's a common piece of misinformation that's been widely-shared enough to justify manual intervention, a fact-check box may appear underneath. This happens to "facts" with a conservative political slant, as well as "facts" with a liberal political slant. If you run a page, your page can get "strikes" for this sort of thing that will cause you to down-rank in people's pages, but if anything, Facebook has been caught out for tipping towards the conservative side of that scale, suppressing that penalty on some popular conservative pages (https://www.engadget.com/facebook-overruled-fact-checkers-to...).

Rarely, you'll share "misinformation" that is also in violation of community standards (I'll leave that to the reader's imagination) and get a time-out proportional to how often that happens.

To understand Facebook's behavior, it's useful to remember that their goal is growth and retention. They want everybody using the service. I suspect, based on observation of their behavior, that they've discovered for themselves that without those measures, growth and retention are being harmed more than they'e harmed via time-outs and fact-checking (i.e. organized boycotts over Facebook being a place where falsehoods spread wildly, people encouraging their more vulnerable friends and relatives to stay off FB so the misinformation parade doesn't convince them to take horse-dewormer, etc.).

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#469

Post by stouset » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 7:54 PM UTC

ionwake wrote: post #409

stouset wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that I can “go to my corner” but I can’t stop people with no intention of playing by any set of rules from coming with me. We’ve gone to our own corner here on Hacker News. And yet there’s moderation to keep discussion on-topic and respectful. In my estimation you likely choose to participate in this corner of the Internet because of the moderation of both link submissions and comments. Without it, HN…

I disagree, I come here because the articles I see and comments are read are reached by consensus. Bad comments are normally at the bottom of the page and easy to ignore. There is shadow banning on HN and I disagree with it, but I should be able to make the above generalisation of why HN seems to work with less moderation than expected. On sites like 4chan, there is some moderation, but again, the few interesting com…

> There is shadow banning on HN and I disagree with it, but I should be able to make the above generalisation of why HN seems to work with less moderation than expected.

I respectfully suggest that HN has significantly more moderation than you believe it does.

Re: FB messenger silently censoring links, claims they were sent

#470

Post by stouset » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

foxfluff wrote: post #154

stouset wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversation at dinner with a group of your friends and their friends is going to function a lot more smoothly than one at a table of atheists, christian fundamentalists, Jews, Sunni and Shia Muslims, Americans, Russians, Chinese, Tibetans, Israelis, Pakistanis, Indians, liberals, conservatives, socialists, capitalists, libertarians, fascists, anarchists, environmentalists, trans people, cis people, homophobes, racis…

Being on the internet and unmoderated doesn't mean you have to engage with everybody. The idea is that you get to choose what sort of conversation to engage in, and who to /ignore. Hardly different from "real life", except that the internet gives you a larger pool to engage with and better tools to deal with it.

The problem isn't you choosing to engage with everybody. It's everybody else choosing to engage with you and those you want to engage with.

If every discussion on HN was derailed by bad actors, you'd go somewhere else. If there was nowhere else moderated to go to, you'd probably just stop engaging altogether.