Stuff like this is a natural consequence of Facebook cracking down on questionable content and acting as an arbiter of truth.
Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
61–70 of 550 posts
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#62Honestly, I'd be happy to see all political groups - left or right - expunged from Facebook. Politics and social media clearly do not mix, as this year has demonstrated all too brutally well.
This seems like a political stance that shouldn’t be shared on a social media site like hacker news. /s
Reminds me of the debates as to whether NULL values are values which is an interesting topic.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#63Honestly, I'd be happy to see all political groups - left or right - expunged from Facebook. Politics and social media clearly do not mix, as this year has demonstrated all too brutally well.
“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues….” ― George Orwell
Yet I simultaneously agree with both you and George.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it seems unlikely this is deliberate. The SWP is about as likely to forment a revolution or incite violence as Judi Dench. They're a bunch of harmless eccentrics.
Quite literally. The only vaguely-'revolutionary' thing the SWP have done in the last 10 years is provide protest signs for movements that other, more influencial groups of people started.
If I see any pictures of UK footage I can usually identify the signs the SWP have given out by the font.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#65There was also a historical re-enactment page removed in December because they had militia in their title [1] Looks to just be an over-eager moderation engine. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-55215949
It’s always some external thing: “the algorithm”, as if that doesn’t just mean “the way we programmed it”. Computing systems are do not act on their own. That the system did this was because it was allowed to, or more accurately, told to.
Often these are machine learning models which are not explicitly programmed and do act on their own.
It could easily be a model that takes in features such as "has an admin banned this page" or "has an overwhelming number of users reported this page" and then based on that it identifies problematic keywords that it uses to ban pages.
And then it relies on humans to manually interject when the model fails as it sometimes will.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#66Honestly, I'd be happy to see all political groups - left or right - expunged from Facebook. Politics and social media clearly do not mix, as this year has demonstrated all too brutally well.
I deleted my Facebook on January 1st as a New Years resolution and honestly have never felt mentally better. I just text friends directly and share pictures with people I know would like them. I spend less time checking my phone which adds up to more time to do other things or just staying more on task in general. Try it! If you don’t want to delete all social media, start by deleting all your accounts except the one…
true, all I see on social media is hate (in the comments at least) even if the post itself is genuine or nice. Even in the tech groups.
going to leave soon too
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#67Honestly, I'd be happy to see all political groups - left or right - expunged from Facebook. Politics and social media clearly do not mix, as this year has demonstrated all too brutally well.
I deleted my Facebook on January 1st as a New Years resolution and honestly have never felt mentally better. I just text friends directly and share pictures with people I know would like them. I spend less time checking my phone which adds up to more time to do other things or just staying more on task in general. Try it! If you don’t want to delete all social media, start by deleting all your accounts except the one…
As a less dramatic version of this, just go through and purge your friends list. Also aggressively block / hide / unfollow any "shared" things you come across.
For example, on Facebook you can hide something dumb someone shares, and then as part of that process, there is an option to "Hide everything shared from this page".
If you spend a half hour going through and doing that, suddenly your feed is much less spammy.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook is a private platform: they're free to block any content they want, malicious or not.
One problem with moderating content in this way is that it makes it clearer and clearer that they no longer need the protections provided by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It's not injurious to them to moderate content, clearly, since they are doing it. By pulling this crap and especially by doing it algorithmically they are pushing the internet in a difficult direction.
I don't understand the argument here. It's not injurious to them to moderate content because they have §230. §230 isn't there to protect online publishers from the court of public opinion; that's impossible. It's there to protect them from libel lawsuits.
If §230 went away, and Facebook continued moderating, they would be liable if anyone posted defamatory content to Facebook -- something which surely happens on a constant basis.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please, don't draw a false equivalency between a major political party that does not play host to violent rhetoric, on the one hand, and groups that where plans (very real, actionable, and actioned-on plans!) to subvert the government are incubated, on the other. Put another way--let's not turn sedition into another us-vs-them political game. That's how democracy ends.
Yep when those rioters broke into the capital building and rummaged through nancy pelosi's office we were very close to that guy in the bearskin becoming our king.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. The rioters should stick to non-seditious activities like burning down police stations and declaring autonomous zones in the middle of major cities.
Re: Facebook shuts down the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
#70This shut down story is another tale in the impending international regulation, and maybe breaking up, of what is comically called 'big tech' ('big' does not begin to describe the sizes involved, the naivety is staggering).
As newspaper barons before them, the internet has not policed itself adequately enough, according to the governments of the world, and now they will act in unity to take back some control.
And then what? Decentralized systems, and The Dark Web, will grow.
Citizens will require a personal licence to access the internet, and anonymous use will be illegal.