If Facebook doesn't want to talk politics, it should stop making political donations to PACs.
FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord
51–60 of 527 posts
Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord
#52How about bringing the same rules to the wider FB? I just want to look at baby pictures and connect with friends. I don't want to be part of a machinery that spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Simple, just remove humans from the platform
Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord
#53If we were to discuss politics at work at any length we would be at immediate risk of losing valuable people. We all pretty much know where we stand on politics, and it is not together. And many of us feel very strongly about our irreconcilable positions. But by carefully not talking about them (or engaging when someone less in tune starts) we get along just fine. That's not official policy but it is a good one.
political views !== who you think deserves human rights
And this is the reason things have changed so much:
Step 1: first, identify truly evil people (like self-avowed white supremacists)
Step 2: find a unfalsifable or weak method to associate non-evil people with the evil ones.
Step 3: once this method becomes part of the zeitguist, infer the association implies agreement.
Step 4: once agreement is assumed when stating the association, imply the person's agreement is in the realm of intolerance or hatred.
Step 5: once a person is assumed to have hateful or intolerant beliefs due to the association, 'intolerance of intolerance' kicks in and it's no longer considered ethical to do anything other than push that person out of the public sphere, or, as this comment does, claim they are not free to hold their beliefs quietly. (despite the fact, of course, that these beliefs aren't the ones they have, but the ones projected onto them via the tactics of the previous steps.)
Through this mechanism you can pull anyone you want into the realm of being cancellable or ostricized, once you find a suitable associative vector. The vectors being used today are quite weak, such as being seen in a photograph with someone, sharing news from a website of a particular political slant, or even using a specific phrase.
Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord
#54I've made attempts to reach out to some of my old friends there on the T&S team in light of some evidence really blatant Russian agitprop thriving and finding an audience there. Between this and the Zhang memo, however, it looks quite doubtful that I'd be able to do much more than reconnect and share a rather depressing lunch as they explain that their hands are tied because of executive will. The IRA and/or its succ…
...they've apparently learned from their mistakes... So the dastardly Russkies didn't intend that Trump be elected? Someone tell Rachel Maddow! This changes everything!
They didn't, oddly enough! They were as surprised at the outcome as most everyone else was, and had more intended to put the expected Clinton presidency off on a bad foot. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-a... is fairly on the mark about their goals then and now.
American coverage on their efforts was by and large terrible, at least from major outlets. Focused analyst coverage in the space has been a lot more nuanced, but nobody's reading that without an existing personal or professional interest.
The other half of that analyst coverage is that they rapidly became quite tired of Maddow and friends hammering on a very simple narrative that missed the point, but was very effective at achieving its actual goal, keeping consumers of major media on the left-of-center end of the American political spectrum engaged in their content and bringing in continued advertiser money. That tiredness is relegated to water cooler discussion on Twitter, however, so it's not going to shape major outlet coverage much.
Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord
#55Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord
#56How has it worked at tabloid newspapers for longer than I care to remember? Same problem. This is not about tech.
Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just like miscreants are taking advantage of free speech by spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories on FB the platform?
Forcing others into debate and spreading conspiracy theories are two different matters. The former impinges on the basic freedom of speech and association for other people, while the latter affects no one's freedoms. The former is a matter of principle, the latter is a subjective judgement.
Where's the proof that others are being forced into debate?
Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord
#58How about bringing the same rules to the wider FB? I just want to look at baby pictures and connect with friends. I don't want to be part of a machinery that spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Totally this, I get having ads injected into the home timeline(gotta keep the lights on!), but inundating people's feeds with 'publisher's stories' showing them news that is blatantly false/overly negative/polarizing and just not wanted for a vast majority of people.
Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord
#59How about bringing the same rules to the wider FB? I just want to look at baby pictures and connect with friends. I don't want to be part of a machinery that spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories.
I'd give that about 10 minutes before someone started claiming that their baby was immune to covid, and then you're right back where you started.
But isn't that only happening because of FB allowing disinformation to spread so easily?
Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord
#60At 3 paragraphs (131 words), that was a really short article. However, I agree with the subheading: "Mark Zuckerberg says employees shouldn’t have to confront social issues in their day-to-day work unless they want to" That sounds good to me. I've never had to talk about these kind of things at work. Are there work places where this is unavoidable?
It's interesting to watch companies rediscover the old rule about leaving politics and religion at the door.
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