Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

931–940 of 1001 posts

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#931

Post by EdwardDiego »

rayiner wrote: post #891
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the other mass media outlets All? C'mon. You can make the argument that MSNBC is a mirror of Fox News in terms of coddling its viewers, but if you're calling NPR or the New York Times "fact-free," you're only betraying your own ignorance of journalism standards. Investigating facts and reporting them clearly is a solved problem. There are people who go to universities to study how to do this well, then go to wo…

> There are people who go to universities to study how to do this well, then go to work for institutions committed to doing this well. And a lot of these people have lost their minds. I’m trying to explain to my college educated friends right now why using “whiteness” as a pejorative is a bad thing. As an engineer I’ve always been skeptical of liberal arts education. But I didn’t think it would destroy America.

...is it really destroying America?

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#932

Post by coldtea »

tempodox wrote: post #584
coldtea wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies that want to make money need to keep on the good side of people in power. But isn't that how democracy works? No, that's how a republic might work. In democracy companies are not allowed to yield such power, and people elected can be revoked at any time....

What's your definition of “republic” here? You seem to see it as an opposite to democracy. I'd posit that democracy and republic (in the true sense of res publica , “public affair”) cannot be separated.

>What's your definition of “republic” here? You seem to see it as an opposite to democracy.

Yes. Democracy (government by the people) was the ancient Athenian ideal of direct government.

Republic (res publica, administration of public "things"/affairs) is the roman inspired version - but it just means that the country is considered to be governed as a whole "public thing" by some body, as opposed to being a thing belonging to the emperor or king, etc. to do as they wish and for private gate).

A republic doesn't have to be democratic - a cadre of "wise people" could e.g. govern one to the exclusion of the public at large. Or the public might be given some token participation (like voting for one of several bodies of government, or merely voting for electors to elect the actual government, etc., and/or, common too, voting for people with fixed 4-5 year terms on abstract platforms for the whole term taken wholesale).

The discussion is blurred because modern republics (almost everyone) often label themselves democracies because "vote".

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#933

Post by siruncledrew »

youeseh wrote: post #528
technofiend wrote: post #241

I know Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and all the rest don't count as broadcast media but I feel like we got here in part because the 1987 elimination of FCC's fairness doctrine slowly allowed a shift in how we communicate with each other. We went from specious claims and conspiracy theories being the subject matter of newsletters to their public broadcast to millions via talk radio ~and Fox News~, thus allowin…

Traditional TV and Print News Media gets the most eyeballs when they are controversial. Fox, CNN, MSNBC all do everything they can to coddle their specific segment. They phrase and comment on the news in a way that'll either excite their segment when they think it'll benefit and soften the blow whenever they think it'll hurt. And no, none of them appeal to a general audience. The ads that each network displays will t…

This is a culmination of many things, and overall it shows we’ve really fucked ourselves as a country over the years.

Capitalism dictates how our communication and news operates, and this is a side effect of changing circumstances where TV and print media are dying, people aren’t paying for news, and companies are relying on ad revenue for their business models - which means having to attract and hold on to consumers.

I’m not trying to paint capitalism as the devil. Just saying it’s not like this was a total surprise given we could see the road we went down.

It’s pretty fucking unfortunate the most prevalent sources of current events and information equate to the ‘McDonalds of news and Walmarts of TV’.

I know people get spooked about propaganda at the thought of government funded news... though clearly having a bunch of rich assholes ‘run news’ hasn’t been so good either. Idk, I guess this is an eye-opener of the importance of publicly funded places like PBS?

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#934

Post by eznzt »

estebarb wrote: post #200

I find interesting that at least in spanish facebook does NOTHING to prevent fake news, calls to assassinate local leaders, fake elections fraud and other content to spread. Even those comments are always promoted as "the most relevant". FB is an amplifier of all this mess and is ruining democracies everywhere.

By Spanish you mean the language or the country?

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#935

Post by mancerayder »

Trump is a genius in one area: using the media to go viral. Fame or infamy, it goes both ways as far as he's concerned. I know we knee-jerkedly want to jump and blame Fox News (mentioned here in the toppest of the top comment), but the culprits are not just Fox News. Fox is terrible. But so is the rest of the 24/7 coverage: Did You See What Trump Said This Time was a refrain that began BEFORE 2016, as a candidate. I remember, anecdotally, pleading with someone, please stop talking about him, you're just making it worse. It doesn't matter how "horrified" you are, you're giving him free coverage.

The numbers show that suffering news organizations like the NYT were resuscitated with massive subscriptions since 2016. MSNBC and the Washington Post might as well be "The Trump Post" and "MS Trump NBC" because it's all they talked about. Why wouldn't they, if it poured eyeballs into their bottom lines.

The media dumbed us down LONG before Silicon Valley, Trump and the rest of the nightmare of the past years. Yes, algorithms made it worse.

No, the popular (as in, seemingly upvoted) analyses here read like the world began four (or was it twelve) years ago and takes place in the Bay Area and Seattle.

Some recommended reading material: Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky, which covers these issues back in the 90's, Matt Taibbi, a media critic, on YouTube "Rising" from The Hill, Useful Idiots podcast, and if you don't mind salivation and rants, Glenn Greenwald.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#936

Post by scarby2 »

shishy wrote: post #928
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #881

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless - giving every single person, no matter what their accomplishments or talents, the same voice online, without anything out there filtering the garbage, was a really, REALLY bad move. Unfiltered social media is an amplifier for bullshit. Truth, reason, a good analysis - they're all hard. Spewing out nonsensical mythology is easy. Something needs to change.

Not necessarily, I think what we have today is far better than a world where a few people got to control what was said. That only works if they are well intentioned and trustworthy, but it’s corruptible. And they certainly aren’t necessarily arbiters of truth. What we have today is orders of magnitude better. The main challenge moving forward will be designing information systems so as to promote challenging opinions…

I'm not sure the flow of information is even necessarily the problem. People just aren't trained to think critically - and doing so for everything is exhausting however increasing the focus of education on how to think, not what to think would help immensely.

In the interim i would like to see some level of moderation, maybe citizens or states able to exact some kind of consequences against people who via any sort of media spread information which either they know to be or should know to be false (or alternative facts as some people call them). i.e. some kind of process where i as a person or an independent body have standing to sue breitbart for knowingly/negligently distributing false information.

I know we have to be careful with this but at the moment there is simply no way of holding organisations to account if i am not being directly libeled despite the fact that the misinformation harms me directly.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#938

Post by 6sup6 »

cassalian wrote: post #923

Facebook is not a public space at this time. As such, they have the right to kick anyone off their platform without reason - just as you may choose who to invite inside your home. To those who are arguing on free speech: your argument has no merit. And until facebook is considered a public space, your argument will continue to have no merit. If you would like to give your argument a leg to stand on, then I would sugg…

Until section 230 is reformed, Facebook can't keep banning whoever they want by making certain concepts more broad.

Re: Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump

#939

Post by whateveracct »

bra-ket wrote: post #515
pentae wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually watched Fox News lately? Right wingers are leaving it in droves because except for a few pundits (Tucker Carlson etc) They are too moderate. Most of the craziness is on social media these days and right wing news sites on the web

it's not that Fox News became "moderate" , they became just another left-wing propaganda hub like CNN and WaPo , except for very few commentators like Tucker and Ingraham. Their elections coverage was a disaster as well. I think they are in identity crisis of sorts.

why was their election coverage a disaster? because they called AZ first?
Post reply on HN