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Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

cbc.ca

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Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#71

Post by bryanlarsen »

paganel wrote: post #54

NATO (of which Canada is a founding member or) actively supports Kosovar separatism, it has even started an unprovoked and illegal war on account of it, at the end of of it all what would be wrong with one of Canada's federal states deciding to split off? If anything, the international community could send some Blue Helmets force there in order to support the local Albertans in the face of Ottawa-led occupation.

The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that provinces essentially have the right to separate. There are a bunch of conditions, but they have the right to separate, the Federal government is required to negotiate separation in good faith.

Canada is not being hypocritical.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#72

Post by throw9404048 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #45
throwaway27448 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine Israel's various hasbara operation dwarfs its relevance and funding by multiple orders of magnitude. I don't see much evidence it plays a role outside of being useful to blame for inconvenient discourse.

For a country of 8 million to "dwarf by multiple orders of magnitude" a country of 140 million in almost anything requires very lively imagination indeed. Soft power operations are hard to measure. You cannot measure the impact of Israeli activities either.

Why would you even need to measure? There are precedents.

VKomtakte social network was blocked because owners were russian, and there could interfere in internal affairs.

Why not block facebook? Its ownership has clear ties to Israel and it DOES interfere in elections and democratic process!

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#73

Post by trumpdong »

m-i-l wrote: post #41

I clicked on the link wondering if the twist might be that it was from state-backed troll farm, but not the country we normally associate with state-backed troll farms... However, from the article: "This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it's much more banal. It's in some ways more depressing, ... People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrag…

I've talked to enough free speech absolutists to know they would defend this behavior because they believe all speech should be allowed. It's written in the name of their ideology!

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#74

Post by jhedwards »

m-i-l wrote: post #41

I clicked on the link wondering if the twist might be that it was from state-backed troll farm, but not the country we normally associate with state-backed troll farms... However, from the article: "This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it's much more banal. It's in some ways more depressing, ... People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrag…

Historically, all speech was considered "intentional". And by speech here I am including two distinct things: the expression of opinion, and the publication of opinion by a magazine/newspaper owner.

I separate those two things because they are very different with respect to the scale of the dissemination of speech. Nevertheless, magazines and newspapers are free to publish opinion, though it is significant in my opinion that in those cases there is an accountable individual (the editor/publisher).

It strikes me as different when we have social media platforms that amplify speech to a massive scale without any accountability. Clearly, monetization fuels the large-scale amplification of some undesirable speech so that 1. it is not an opinion expressed in good faith and 2. there is no directly accountable individual, unless the poster can be considered accountable for FBs large-scale publication of their speech, which feels perverse to me. It's effectively "robo-published".

There are some conclusions which could be drawn here, and I'm not sure which should be drawn if any. But I think it's important to point out that the details do matter (libel laws and "malice" for example) and that the details change in significant ways as society and technology change.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#75

Post by trumpdong »

sharperguy wrote: post #47
m-i-l wrote: post #41

I clicked on the link wondering if the twist might be that it was from state-backed troll farm, but not the country we normally associate with state-backed troll farms... However, from the article: "This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it's much more banal. It's in some ways more depressing, ... People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrag…

Free speech doesn't mean that we don't desire filters. Go check your gmail spam folder. Twitter would look identical to this with filters at all. What we really want is: * transparency about the filters we have on our feeds * the ability to tweak them if they're not working * the ability to change providers without losing your entire social graph / reach

You're not a free speech absolutist then.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#76

Post by api »

roncesvalles wrote: post #60
detectivestory wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it so interesting how little the topic of Californian independence comes up online. You would think there would at least be a decent amount of organic content around that, never mind external interference.

Separatism is born of a sense of ethnoracial exceptionalism: 1) we're a genealogically different ethnic group from the rest of the country 2) we're better than the major ethnic group of the rest of the country Both bits are absolutely essential. I can't recall a single instance of a separatist movement based on purely political differences gaining serious ground, Alberta included.

Why just ethnic? It can also be religious, ideological, or based on some economic interest. The US revolution was a mix of tax revolt and ideology. The British were the same ethnic group as most of the leaders of the revolution.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#77

Post by mcdonje »

vintermann wrote: post #2

I've said for a while that I think this sort of thing is a much better explanation for trends we see than moustache-twirling foreign dictators "spreading dissent" for the heck of it. Yes, they exist and yes, they have troll factories, but they usually promote narratives with some immediate benefit to themselves. When they do promote irrelevant stuff, I think it's just to build social media clout for their actual mess…

They definitely play both sides to spread chaos. That's been extremely effective for them in reducing American power and influence. Getting their messaging out there is also a goal.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#78

Post by wsng »

p-e-w wrote: post #44
m-i-l wrote: post #41

I clicked on the link wondering if the twist might be that it was from state-backed troll farm, but not the country we normally associate with state-backed troll farms... However, from the article: "This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it's much more banal. It's in some ways more depressing, ... People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrag…

> I wonder how "free speech absolutists" defend the idea of people in low-income countries using these platforms to spread outrage simply to make themselves a little money By recognizing that undesirable uses of free speech are the price society pays for having free speech, and by strongly believing that it is a price worth paying. Just like 1.3 million global road traffic deaths per year are the price society pays f…

> Just like 1.3 million global road traffic deaths per year are the price society pays for having cars, and believing that people should still be able to freely own and drive cars doesn’t make someone a “car absolutist”.

Car traffic is heavily regulated to reduce the harm being done by cars/drivers.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#79

Post by vrganj »

traxler wrote: post #51

The headline is rather misleading, it indicates a specific intent. But all the article reports is that there are overseas accounts that post about Alberta separatism because it creates clicks and hence money. Nothing to do specifically with albertan separatism, it has (and will) happened with plenty of other topics as well.

It doesn't indicate intent. It indicates incentives and outcomes.

A system is what a system does, not what a system is claimed to stand for.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#80

Post by dtj1123 »

paganel wrote: post #56
dtj1123 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash incentivised speech is arguably not free.

That would make most (if not all) of today's mainstream media speech (and not only) as "not free". To add, in essence I agree with you, that's why I regard Jean-Jacques Rousseau as one of the really few free thinkers out there, i.e. because he was aware that as soon as he was accepting to be paid for what he was writing then his speech would become "imprisoned".

I'm not entirely sure that I believe this, although I do believe a strong argument can be made here.

I think the idea that various mechanisms in modern society are subtly corroding free speech en masse with various nasty knock-on effects is an interesting one though.

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