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Facebook are 'morally bankrupt, pathological liars' – NZ Privacy Commissioner

nzherald.co.nz

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Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt, pathological liars' – NZ Privacy Commissioner

#5

Post by etiam »

If one were to judge by the title, the commissioner and I are in excellent agreement over the gist of Facebook's character. The reasons may be different though. As much as I enjoy seeing people actually reacting to the atrocity rather than buying the vacuous spin about mistakes for what seems like the thousandth time, not censoring the communications they're parasitizing harshly enough is actually not a thing I'm willing to hold against FB.

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt, pathological liars' – NZ Privacy Commissioner

#6

Post by dbg31415 »

So I agree... but the thing is, my grandmother is going to be mad if I don't like her posts. I don't think we can fix anything about how skeezy Facebook is, but I don't think we can get anyone to mass unplug them either. Where's that leave us?

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt, pathological liars' – NZ Privacy Commissioner

#7

Post by Camillo »

Let's see if I can guess what the article is about. This guy is the privacy commissioner, so one might guess that he's angry about data leaks or other privacy violations. OTOH, NZ is basically Australia Lite, and we know that OZ has been pushing strong surveillance measures (for which they were criticized on HN recently). Also, NZ recently had a terrorist attack.

So I'm going to guess that this has little to do with privacy, and is instead about Facebook being insufficiently compliant with state requests for content control and/or surveillance.

How did I do?

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt, pathological liars' – NZ Privacy Commissioner

#9

Post by NedIsakoff »

I’m amused this is coming from NZ. In some parts they are over reacting to the recent shooting and the social media aspects of it.

I mean this is a country that made distributing the NZ shooter manifesto a harsher crime (up to 14 years in jail) then distributing child porn (up to 10 years).

Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/5087363/new-zealand-manifesto-ban... https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&object...

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt, pathological liars' – NZ Privacy Commissioner

#10

Post by rgoulter »

Gotta sympathise with Facebook on this one.

> "Facebook cannot be trusted. They are morally bankrupt pathological liars..."

Sure.

> "...who enable genocide (Myanmar), facilitate foreign undermining of democratic institutions, .... [They] allow the live streaming of suicides, rapes, and murders, continue to host and publish the mosque attack video, allow advertisers to target 'Jew haters' and other hateful market segments, and refuse to accept any responsibility for any content or harm."

I feel this is making making moral statements with great symbolic value, rather than suggesting anything with any serious practical understanding.

The article features paragraphs complaining that the obscene video is still up, but doesn't seem to understand the internet allows anti-censorship behaviour. I'd guess that FB already disallows uploading the video, but the ones which get through what the NZ Privacy Commissioner calls "the AI" must have been modified in some way.

I don't necessarily mind mainstream media (who are so influenced by FB's control over distribution) having a go at Facebook. But, a politician complaining that FB isn't doing a good enough job at censoring what's already illegal for people in NZ to consume raises flags for me.

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