Could someone ELI5 why FB is in the business of policing any non-illegal speech at all? Political, partisan, foreign-made, domestic-made, poor taste humor, memes, etc. -- why not just keep all of it? It seems like a slippery slope if they turn to active moderation, and they have everything to lose by selectively choosing one or other side of some debate.
Spam isn't (generally) illegal, and yet virtually everyone would argue all platforms should moderate spam because to not do so massively degrades the service quality for everyone.
I mention this because I think content moderation, as a debate, should not be framed as whether or not to do it at all -- but rather as a recognition that deciding to moderate a particular class of content carries a cost-benefit tradeoff.
It may ultimately be the case that we decide that a certain class of content is not worth moderating, because when doing so the costs outstrip the benefits, but let's keep that as a pragmatic discussion rather than a principled one about "all" speech.
Your instinct might be to respond with "of course, spam should be moderated, but besides that..." but I think the knowledge that there could be some series of enumerated exceptions suggests we should stop pretending they're exceptions at all.
> Political, partisan, foreign-made, domestic-made, poor taste humor, memes, etc. -- why not just keep all of it?
Because people don't like to participate in a platform that has gone to crap. It's happened on many sites/forums in the past. If you don't weed, you won't have much of a garden.
Give people the tools to opt in and out of whatever filters they please. Even turn it on by default if you want. This is one of the few things Twitter has done right - you can simply turn off their "quality filter" if you don't believe that they have your best interests at heart when deciding what shows and what doesn't. (Where Twitter does wrong is a number of other opaque filters that cannot be disabled)
Reddit has a simplistic version of this. By default, you will not see anything that has a score of -1 or below.
It's not a slippery slope at all. It's Facebook. The slope is made of rough grit sandpaper.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube et al. should go on outright banfests. There is no free speech argument to be made. None. Zero. These aren't government enterprises and getting banned from these sites for any reason really shouldn't matter. Facebook already enforces some weird moral code where a nipple gets you instantly banned, but when it comes to politics somehow it's a "free speech" argument and they don't want to take sides. It's 100% bullshit.
These companies need to grow up. If people don't like that they have been banned then they can start an alternative site or, you know, use the decentralized Internet the way it was designed. If we were talking about ICANN policing domains that would be a legitimate "slippery slope", but we aren't.
The only thing they really stand to lose by banning blatant conspiracy theory whack jobs and divisive hate speech is some ad revenue associated with that stuff, most of which is predatory anyway. Nipples? Not acceptable, banned. Fair use of media owned by a large company? Copyright strike, banned. Divisive conspiracy theories that promote hate? Free Speech! Selling literally snake oil? Free speech!
Americans LOVE to pretend like they are morally superior, but the moral code and values built into todays companies are completely bonkers. Free speech is constantly invoked when it doesn't even apply, and it's applied so inconsistently it doesn't even make sense.
Mark Zuckerberg should travel to Nidavellir and have the Dwarf King Eitri forge him a ban hammer the likes of which the Facebook has never seen.
I think this is a more nuanced topic than you're giving it credit for. While free speech does not classically apply to corporate enterprises like Facebook, as society shifts into the digital world the nature of communication itself shifts as well.
The 1700s and 1800s version of Twitter was standing in the street square, handing out pamphlets, and screaming your message. You were protected to say what you wanted to say via free speech. The 2018 version of that is online through tools like Twitter. By refusing to acknowledge this, we're actually experiencing a dramatic practical reduction in free speech rights without ever technically violating the Constitution.
It's really the ultimate loophole to the ultimate problem. Want to limit free speech? Simply remold society so that communication patterns across the entire nation change and become controlled by private corporations. Done.
A particularly dystopian and extreme imagining of this would involve the CEO of a company like Facebook running for President and controlling speech and news to an unprecedented extent in favor of his/her candidacy.
Somewhere between "handing out pamphlets in Hyde Park" and Twitter there were plenty of other shifts in communication patterns as well. There was a good 100 years or so where if you wanted to be heard you had to get your message into a newspaper, and then another 50 years where you also had the alternatives of TV and radio. All of these were controlled by corporate interests, and it's not like there was ever a right to have your Letter To The Editor published.
Pretty interesting point. One thing that pops out to me is scale, not just of output from these systems but also input into them.
For instance, newspaper, radio, and TV all reached unprecedented numbers of people, but they didn't bring the same scale to the number of folks contributing content. To use your Letter to the Editor example, a newspaper only has so much space, of which only a certain portion is allocated to displaying such letters. This means the vast majority of the country could never have their letter published just due to space limitations alone.
Modern social media like Twitter is notably different because it has scaled the input just as much as the output. Every consumer can now be a producer as well. The idea that anyone can be a producer is very powerful and is what makes it feel more like a public space than, say, a newspaper.
And this wasn’t a good thing. Presidents could literally intimidate journalists with exhibitionistic displays, confident that the matter would not be made public. (Lyndon famously flashed his Johnson at journalists demanding to know the rationale for the Vietnam War, saying, “this is why!”)
I don't think Twitter is analogous to yelling in a town square.
It's more like talking at a bar, where others can overhear you. Twitter can of course start throwing people out, but then it turns into a clique and will probably be eventually subsumed by the larger society that it ignores.
It's really not. You aren't entitled to an audience. Such bullshit. Put whatever you want up on your own website.
I can't walk into SirusXMs office and demand that they give me a channel so my voice can be heard. I'm not entitled to my own TV station.
I really wish one of these companies would just do something like ban Trump from Twitter so we can let the courts just put an end to this discussion. Getting banned from Twitter has nothing—nothing—to do with free speech. Nothing. Zero.
So what happens when a domain registrar seizes your domain because they don't like your speech? (This has already happened.)
What happens when your host and cdn shut you down? (This has already happened.)
What happens when your isp shuts you down? (Only a matter of time.)
Private companies control the Internet. If we decide social media doesn't constitute a commons, the same argument applies to the rest of the Internet.
And so, like the gp said, your practical right are greatly curtailed.
Moreover, you're giving Mark Zuckerberg immense, uncontrolled power over American discourse. Sure, he has to use his power carefully, but as long as he and other tech ceos do so, they've essentially become the gatekeepers of allowable thoughts.
Why is it different? How is it different? The behavior and impact isn't, is it? Can you give us something more than "it's not the same" because this response isn't wholly convincing.
How is it similar? I mean, we aren't even talking apples and oranges here. We are talking apples and toilet paper. One is public infrastructure run by a pseudo independent non-profit, the other a page on a private website. It's like the difference being banned from a city vs being banned from shitposting on the bulletin board in a Starbucks. Which, when we talk about free speech on FB and Twitter is really what we are talking about. Is there a constitutional right to shitposting and trolling on someone else's website? Like, really? Smh.
> It's like the difference being banned from a city vs being banned from shitposting on the bulletin board in a Starbucks.
The problem is that Facebook isn't the size of a Starbucks. It isn't even the size of a city. It's the size of a hundred cities. There are more users of Facebook than citizens of the United States.
It's like saying the US Congress can't impose censorship because you can just go to the EU and speak there instead. And if the EU censors the same things then you can just start your own country on a ship in international waters.
And who is going to come to your ship, or even find out about it, if linking to it is prohibited in the places where people actually congregate?
There is no town square equivalent where people have to walk past and can see you on their way to Facebook.
> We are talking apples and toilet paper. One is public infrastructure run by a pseudo independent non-profit, the other a page on a private website.
ICANN may be the top-level administrator, but the actual domain registrars are normal private corporations like GoDaddy and Google. What makes Google's domain registration service public infrastructure but not their video sharing service?
The scale point the sibling commenter made also drives to the heart of the issue - we can agree that I should be free to ban whoever I want on my private forum, but Facebook exists at a completely different scale that makes a qualitative difference in their impact on speech and society. The practical effect of banning someone or some type of speech on my forum is negligible. The practical effect of banning someone or some type of speech on Facebook is enormous. By giving Facebook that power (which they technically have, even if they aren't using it much now), you are handing them incredible power, maybe more power than any organization has ever had in history.
as I understand it, the Domain Name Registrars operate under government licences for all the various country-specific TLD's, and under a US government licence for the rest (for historical reasons). Some governments do operate very strict laws about what can be said on websites that operate under their country TLD, and use their ability to grant/deny a domain as a method of controlling speech on the internet.
That makes it protected under US free speech laws, because the authority to grant/deny a domain ultimately derives from a government mandate.
The ability to post random shit on Facebook does not derive from a government mandate, so therefore isn't covered by free speech laws.
That isn't true. Domain registrars in the US are free to terminate service or even seize your domain for any reason they like. Domain registrars are not bound by US free speech protections.
This is, for example, what happened to the contemptible Daily Stormer. There is no practical difference between a major domain registrar like GoDaddy or Google and a social media website like Facebook in terms of speech, except that at least if Google Domains shuts you down you can hypothetically (unless they seize/freeze the domain, which they have done) move to another registrar and the process is "transparent" for your viewers relative to being banned from Facebook...at least until they all run you off, with the most notorious example being The Daily Stormer again.
Thanks for the clarification. I was mistaken. I'm not sure why free speech laws don't apply, though. The registrars are operating under a government licence, so would seem to be covered by this? Anyone know why they're not?
It is, because your talking about Twitter as if it's somehow analogous to a town square, and that's bullshit. It's not a public space and you have no rights to it or on it.
I am advancing the notion that there may be a threshold beyond which sites like Twitter are in practice precisely digital public townsquares. I am aware of what the laws are right now -- we are discussing here a hypothetical change of precedent or law in the future to better reflect how Americans communicate in 2018 and beyond.
Using your own malformed analogy: The town square is the internet. Twitter is a private shop above subway station with a bunch of garbage that people like to buy. It's super busy. You can scream whatever you want in there, some people outside can hear you. You'll also probably get kicked out if you become obnoxious.
The “privatising public spaces” issue isn’t just limited to the internet. To understand the point better the above poster is making you might be interested in reading about how private malls became our de facto “public” spaces.
Legalese and dodgy analogies aside the above poster is focussing on the practical effects of these sites being so big and ‘default’.
On the other hand posting a dodgy opinion on facebook et al largely removes you from the social and physical consequences of saying things that are way outside of societal norms. When you're able to hide behind a screen the range of things you're willing to say increases as does your potential reach. I would argue it completely changes the context to which the ideas of free speech have been classically prescribed. Its worthy of discussion to question do the underlying ideals of free speech apply in this brave new world, or do we need to look at tweaking our ideals to fit the contexts in which we live. I don't have answers, nor would I ever suggest restricting free speech more, I'm just questioning does it make sense to apply it in this domain.
> On the other hand posting a dodgy opinion on facebook et al largely removes you from the social and physical consequences of saying things that are way outside of societal norms.
I get what you're saying here, but the sheer number of idiots "fired for saying X on facebook" makes me think it's not true. It lowers the barrier for saying something and increases your audience reach... but also lowers the mental barrier for saying the wrong thing or someone hypersensitive hearing it.
Have you ever investigated how speech is regulated in other countries? I'm Australian and we have a number of restrictions that make speech 'unfree' in the American sense. But I think they're appropriate and on the whole balanced well.
I think you'll find I never advocated for anything, but I am interested in discussing the topic in good faith and finding the real limits and practical implementations - not some fantasy absolutist purism. There doesn't need to be a conclusion from that conversation like you think there does.
Free speech in America isn't just valued as a legal right before the government, but as a general principle. Most people think that free speech in most situations (not just before the government, and with a few restrictions) benefit everyone.
Freedom of association is also an important general principle. For instance, I don't think many place any value whatsoever on the freedom of other people to speak in their own home. I certainly wouldn't let someone stay in my house while saying the kinds of things I regularly see on Facebook, and that's my right. I think this is quite an important property of our system, and I think most agree.
As a private commercial enterprise, Facebook itself is, for the people who own it, much like my home; they are free to set whatever policy they like regarding what goes on there, as long as they aren't discriminating against certain specifically protected classes of people. It's shortly tricky, it's not unreasonable to argue that a platform the size of Facebook should be treated more like a public space than a private one. But I personally think the bar for overriding freedom of association should be extremely high, and I don't think Facebook is over it. Those who have been disallowed to associate with Facebook remain free to associate with other very similar platforms.
> In 2015, researchers evaluating how Facebook Zero shapes information and communication technology use in the developing world found that 11% of Indonesians who said they used Facebook also said they did not use the Internet. 65% of Nigerians, 61% of Indonesians, and 58% of Indians agree with the statement that "Facebook is the Internet".
Yeah I think that's awful that they do that. I was specifically talking about in the US, where it is easy to use a competitor. (The comment I replied to was also talking specifically about the US: "Free speech in America...")
The best subreddits (askhistorians, etc.) will instantly delete low quality posts.
Reddit as a whole banning bad subreddits (fatpeoplehate, coontown) made reddit a better place for everyone, and the trash moved to voat which is barely active now.
Most big sites will now ban you for for threatening or very hateful speech.
Free speech is not the issue. No one is taking away free speech by banning you on Twitter.
Your free speech is taken away when something you say lands you in prison. Getting banned from a shitty private website doesn't violate your free speech rights in any way, full stop.
It's a principle most people don't understand. You have the right to say what you want, in public, and not be put in prison. You don't have the right to an audience or to accessing private infrastructure. There's a whole public Internet that you can do whatever you want on. Say whatever you want. Build your own Twitter, spout whatever nonsense you want. No one will censor you!
All of the people who are so vocally anti-free speech always fall back to "hate speech", but there is literally no such thing. There is no robust definition of what "hate speech" is, and whenever it is invoked, it invariably turns into "whatever I disagree with". The truth is that "hate speech" is entirely in the eye of the beholder, it is exactly the same as "offensive speech". The listener/reader is the person who decides whether or not they perceive something to be hateful in exactly the same way as they perceive something to be offensive. You can come up with entirely contrived examples that most people will agree is hateful, but that's not what you're trying to stop. Saying that a country should have borders is considered hateful by many, saying that there are only two genders is considered very hateful by many, promoting national sovereignty or pride is considered hateful by many, and this is what you're talking about when you refer to "hate speech".
The other premise that all free speech detractors completely fail to understand, is that free speech is not just a law, it is a foundational value of the nation. You can't dismiss free speech in any situation where the 1A doesn't provide protection, because people are often talking about values, not laws.
>The only thing they really stand to lose by banning blatant conspiracy theory whack jobs and divisive hate speech is some ad revenue associated with that stuff
Facebook is at or near monopoly status and as such the largest risk to their business is regulation. That's why this is such a sensitive issue for them.
No they aren't. Monopoly status for what? It's just a shitty website. Take a step back and think about what Facebook is. It's no different than the forums of old. It's the same recycled technology with a new interface.
For a while you might have said that they were approaching some kind of weird monopoly status because you had to use FB to login to third party sites/services, but that didn't last long.
There are developing countries where FB is so much a monopoly that huge percentages of people don't even know that anything else exists on the Internet. To them, FB is the Internet.
But anyway, that's an argument for encouraging competition and computer literacy, not for or against free speech.
It's actually reversed. People in developing countries are actually more savvy in many ways, as they entered into the Internet during an era where there was no Facebook or Facebook wasn't the dominate player. It's really only in the US where people are so illiterate that FB is a primary destination. But that doesn't make it a monopoly.
Not from what I've read. There are literally places in the developing world where FB fake news has caused the death of people. This example was from Asia. I don't remember the country, but it was news a few months ago.
OK, so, a monopoly on social media. But so what? You don't HAVE to use social media. It's not like having a monopoly on energy, banking or telecommunications, for example, where you can really put people over a barrel.
You don't HAVE to use energy, banking or telecommunications either. It's not like having a monopoly on food or water. The line you drew here is completely arbitary.
What makes you think the social media landscape of almost any country in the world isn't dominated by US-based services? They only need to provide a localized version to get into a market, which they then end up dominating through international network effects.
The only country I'm aware of where domestic services are dominant is China, and the statcounter data does reflect that. They are conspicuously missing WeChat and QQ, though (which are messaging applications and probably hard to track for a third party), so maybe there's some local service in Myanmar that similarly falls through the cracks.
If they are an actual monopoly, their biggest risk is not being involved in writing those regulations. Eventually the public will force legislators to act and they're not know for taking measured responses once the public outrage reaches a certain threshold. That's why telecom companies like Comcast are so successful at forming local/regional monopolies - they have relationships with people from the city planners up to mayors and governors so whenever new regulations are written, they're very involved.
Just because there isn't a free speech argument doesn't mean a communication company would benefit by going on a politically driven "banfest".
>Americans LOVE to pretend like they are morally superior, but the moral code and values built into todays companies are completely bonkers. Free speech is constantly invoked when it doesn't even apply, and it's applied so inconsistently it doesn't even make sense.
The US constitutional right to Free Speech only applies to government actions, not to private individuals or companies. To use someone else's analogy: if you come into my house and talk shit, I have every right to ask you to leave, and you don't have constitutional protection for that. Yet, "Free Speech" is constantly invoked when people are banned from privately-owned sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It doesn't even apply to these sites.
Free Speech is also applied inconsistently. Pornography is protected Free Speech under the US Constitution. Yet Facebook's Nipple Ban is usually not even mentioned when people talk about Free Speech on Facebook. Their right to remove pornographic content from their site is not questioned, but their right to remove someone's hate-filled rant is. This is clearly inconsistent.
If you advertise your house as a wau for people to meet and communicate with their friends, then kick out all your conservative guests, then yes, you've done something morally wrong. Free speech laws don't stop this, it's your property , but they also don't make it right.
> started insulting people based on the colour of their skin
That's not only what social media companies censor, and not what anyone in this thread is advocating for, and you know it. You're spouting insults, trying to claim free speech advocates are racists, as a way to avoid actual discussion. My morals are indeed very different from yours.
> But I expect you to support my right to throw them out of my place too...
Sure, but stop advertising your house as a discussion platform when clearly you don't want that.
That said: please don't contact me again. I'm not interested in your reply, I don't think anyone else on HN would be, and I think you've indicated which direction you want to take this dicussion.
Question about that, if it's something that takes us too far into the weeds I'll stuff it and save it for later in the interest of keeping us on topic:
When people make the argument of-wrt suppression or censorship of speech "Legally no but socially/in the court of public opinion yes", I often want to fire back "But...are not our laws a distilled and concentrated output of what we value in social publics? If we start allowing exemptions and exceptions to that value system to get an outcome that takes away liberties in social publics, are we unwittingly creating the 'case' to erode those values in (the grander) legal establishment-given enough time?"
(This might be a long winded argument of 'slipper slope', unsure. Someone call me out on this if so)
Maybe it's a question of ethics versus law, or perhaps ethics in the context of buffers between person/individual and state/government?
I think you're right. My suspicion is that if FB/TWTR go totally ban-happy, the social discussion will evolve into a legal one and move towards overt regulation a la utilities.
EDIT: IANAL, but if these platforms start favoring one political group over others, it seems potentially illegal, as it could be considered in-kind political donations.
I mean, that actually IS a good question. ISPs are pseudo government enterprises—that is, they become government enterprises when they need to be.
It's really on a whole different level though. ISPs are access to infrastructure. Should ISPs be able to ban people? I'm not sure. It's a valid question though. I tend to think that they shouldn't, but I'm not sure it would be a violation of free speech if they did. Good question though mate.
It's also worth nothing that they DO ban people. If you don't pay an ISP can ban you, outright, permanently.
> Facebook already enforces some weird moral code where a nipple gets you instantly banned, but when it comes to politics somehow it's a "free speech" argument and they don't want to take sides. It's 100% bullshit.
That just comes down to the bottom line. People are on Facebook at work, in the grocery checkout line, in the park while their kids play on the jungle gym. People tap Facebook on their phones when they have 30 seconds to kill.
If there were the possibility of nudity popping up on their devices, they wouldn't feel comfortable using it in those settings and would see fewer FB ads.
The implication in that is that the OP would be engaging in behaviour that warrants a ban, so at a guess their answer would be "my opinion wouldn't matter", which can probably be distilled down to "yes".
> Could someone ELI5 why FB is in the business of policing any non-illegal speech at all?
If Facebook's brand is associated with garbage, and it has already gone quite far in that direction, Facebook won't exist for very long. The only reason to use Facebook is that others use Facebook. It's a matter of survival for them.
They should police, because they are already in the business of censorship and amplification via the newsfeed product.
This entire problem would be minimized if newsfeed didn't rank posts due to engagement. Its easier for trolls to get engagement on polarizing and harmful posts, because they generate stronger user emotions.
IMO, this criticism of "policing" is a bullshit straw man argument, which neglects how the product actually works, and why we even have this problem in the first place.
I imagine that soon any co-ordinated effort at political organisation is going to require you to openly identify as a legally registered entity, e.g. a PAC or association. But what really set Facebook off in this case was the organisation of an event that could lead to physical violence. I think they're going to start clamping down hard on these, not just suspicious ones but likely in general.
Not necessarily. Zuckerberg is basically accountable to no one as CEO. He can’t be fired even by the board. So Facebook’s motivations are whatever his own personal motivations are.
FB is not in fact banning any speech here. You can say what you want as long as you are speaking on your own behalf, using your true identity. What is problematic here is that people have created false identities and use them to influence public opinion. That is a clear ToS violation.
Quote: "It’s clear that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past. "
Because Americans are scared. They had one election with traces of foreign interference (something the US does a lot of, by the way [1]) and a candidate most people didn't vote for won-- because for some reason that's something that can happen in their democracy.
Media outlets noticed there is a lot of spam and misinformation happening on social media, and saw not only great headlines to garner clicks, but also an opportunity to make people distrust smaller sources of information in favor or big, established brands and companies. They drove subscriptions up by creating an aura of mistrust and impending doom [2][3] after historical decline due to the internet.
Did the inflammatory posts actually affect the election? It's unclear, and if so it was likely less so than the coverage of traditional media outlets [4]. That being said, there are inflammatory parties on the internet, and since Americans now seem to think the future of their country depends on removing them, Facebook needs to abide for the sake of PR. Note: this actually costs Facebook time and money (they are hiring a lot of people for this effect [5]) but they've been bashed so much on the media they need all the PR stunts they can get.
It is a slippery slope, I agree. But it's the one people in the US want to follow, again, because they are scared. Fearful people take slippery slopes and focus on apparent short-term solutions instead of long-term objectives (fixing the American political system so the population actually votes for who is president would be a good place to start). There's that quote from the Star Wars trilogy (the best line in the prequels, IMO): "So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause." This comes to mind here. People will willfully act against their interests out of fear.
Bang on, and you've picked some reputable sources. America has a rich history in interfering with the elections of other countries. It (possibly) happens to them, and suddenly it's like "how dare they!".
Having recently lived in Russia, people still have not forgotten Yeltsin, and they won't. Luckily at the end of the day however, they mostly separate their frustrations with the American government and the citizens of America.
> America has a rich history in interfering with the elections of other countries. It (possibly) happens to them, and suddenly it's like "how dare they!".
I don't understand this line of argument. Isn't it clear that the people condemning election interference in the US are also against election interference perpetrated by the US? It's like saying that it's silly for Americans to be upset that they are being bombed by a country, since America bombs other countries.
Personal attacks and nationalistic flamewar, both of which you took a big step into here, will get your account banned on Hacker News. Please do not post like this, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
What a bizarre reply. This kind of evasion is reminiscent of the neoconservative responses to people dubious about the Iraq war back in 2003.
Not only did the poster point to source material for his claims, he constructed a sound argument based upon the age-old wisdom of asking the question, "Who benefits?"
I didn't even see one value judgment about the US in the comment.
I don't think it's a bad thing (: I'm sorry you felt my comment was of hatred towards Americans, it was not. It's mostly to provide the perspective of someone who is not from the US and who as such isn't as scared of the Trump election, and thus thinks this whole situation is about more than good and democracy vs evil and Russian tyrants.
Let me address some points:
1. Never did I mention Facebook shouldn't rid its platform of bad users-- I'm glad they are (and if this hadn't happened they probably wouldn't have, again, cause it takes time and money).
2. Never did I say Americans were dumb or insult them in any other way that should make someone believe I hate them. Saying a people is scared shouldn't be taken as an insult, many peoples and individuals are scared of different things.
3. I didn't expect this to be read as a research paper haha. I'll add more references next time. In regards to the one you pointed out (wether the Russian meddling had high impact), I'd suggest these other articles by The Verge [1] and the New York Times [2] to form an opinion. I'd also suggest watching Jon Stewart's appearance on CNN Crossfire [3]: he was talking about the loss of civilized discourse and transformation of American Politics into a divisive "me vs. you" game back in 2004, before social media was widespread.
> Never did I mention Facebook shouldn't rid its platform of bad users
Sure you did:
> That being said, there are inflammatory parties on the internet, and since Americans now seem to think the future of their country depends on removing them, Facebook needs to abide for the sake of PR
You're implying that the only reason Facebook would need to get rid of bad actors is "for the sake of PR", and that Americans only want to be rid of bad actors "because they're scared."
> Never did I say Americans were dumb or insult them in any other way
Sure you did, you implied through your tone throughout the comment that the desire to be rid of bad actors on facebook is a knee-jerk reaction that Americans are only making due to fear.
It's the tone of your post that is being critiqued, not explicit words you're using per se.
As far as I'm concerned, Facebook is not a content aggregator, it's a content publisher.
It directly profits off of the users, and by extension the comments and pictures and whatever else the users post. As such, they are responsible for this product.
I don't see it as censoring or policing so much as quality control.
Because controlling the narrative is how powerful interests have maintained control of our society for a century. For the first time (due to the internet) there is no centralized control of information. The failure of the ruling class to anoint their chosen candidate Hillary Clinton, despite the backing of every institution and media outlets (to an ignorant, boorish carnival barker, no less) was a wake up call for the ruling elite. They are desperate to regain control of the information flow, which is resulted in coordinated campaign to silence and/or marginalize voices that threaten their information monopoly. The Russiagate nonsense, the "hate speech" nonsense, the nonsense about "weaponizing the First Amendment" all comes from the same crowd of authoritarians whose goal is to stifle free speech and end the free and open exchange of information.
Because any public forum needs some form of moderation, or you end up with 4chan, where it’s just bad actors trying to fuck with everyone else. The best places for discussion in the BBS and web forum days were the ones that were heavily moderated.
Even if Facebook decided not to police, they cannot be neutral. They have to decide what to show to users. Now, they use algorithms to do this, but that doesn't relieve them of their responsibility.
Instead of banning accounts, I would rather that they put more tools into the hands of the users. Let their users flag accounts in different ways, and give them tools to use that will let them filter out accounts from their feed based on those flags.
This idea is quite popular among this crowd and is based on the erroneous assumption that 1) people are sufficiently educated on the subject to make anything more than a casual pass at filtering, 2) care enough to spend the mental energy needed to use these filtering tools rather than just checking out of the platform, and 3) such tools will not soon become the problem.
There is a long and unpleasant history to show that this idea is never going to work. If Facebook wants to survive as a platform they will need to undertake the unpleasant task of setting a baseline, enforcing it, and telling people who disagree to go find another platform. To be honest, I don't think Facebook as a company or its employees as individuals have the courage to save it -- it is too easy to keep cashing the checks while Rome burns...
There is a extremely successful version of this model, actually.
It's called Reddit. On Reddit, you give 1 person dictatorial power over a given community, and allow anyone to make their OWN community if they don't like the rules.
There are a multitude of examples of people not liking the rules, and forking off to form their own community.
It is the best way IMO, to give people freedom of choice to live with the rules that they prefer.
Except I consider Reddit to be yet another example of a failed online community. You can always create smaller sub-communities with dedicated dictators (Facebook calls them 'groups') but Reddit as a whole fails at this task as the history of the front page has clearly shown. I still remember back when there was just one Reddit and not sub-Reddits, and the events that led to the change. Fracturing into sub-communities is an answer only if you decide to avoid the question of community in the first place, or in the case of Reddit to re-define it into something much smaller.
The fact that these smaller communities with a narrow focus work while the larger ones fail is proof positive that tools are not the solution.
Aren't there already filters to block the user from seeing any more posts from a certain source, see less posts from that friend, unfollow friend completely, etc? I guess they could refine it into categories like politics, but that'd hit a lot of gray areas. Their strategy recently has been to de-emphasize links altogether, but that does nothing about the crappy shared posts from spam pages.
That would be even more vulnerable to abuse than the current state of affairs. State-sponsored attackers have access to essentially unlimited numbers of fake Facebook accounts -- why would you give them the ability to silence other accounts by flagging their posts?
I'd argue it is also one of the primary social battlefields. The silence and inaction from admins and mods has been stunningly absent despite the blatant bot and troll activity there.
Any agency, whether it's a nation state/government, business or political party, would be laughably bad at their job to ignore a website that size, one with the perfect format to spew their propaganda. It even has little score counters so you can keep track of what works, and what doesn't! How handy!
Reddit has been a target for manipulation for years now. I've been a moderator of some of their largest subreddits and the evidence was so overwhelming you can't help but become angry, then apathetic when told by the admins that they wouldn't do anything. "As long as they don't break the global rules, they're free to be here" I saw a moderator get told that by an admin ~3 years ago (few months before the Ellen Pao debacle). Spewing propaganda is fine on reddit, so long as you don't manipulate the votes.
I take issue with the fact that BOTH are inorganic manipulation of reddit. Both should be dealt with swiftly, without prejudiced and without mercy.
> Why would mark zuckerberg find himself talking to captains and colonels at the naval warfare school?
Why wouldn't he? I would love to talk to these people given opportunity - not because I'm involved in anything connected to military, but out of simple curiosity and interest in strategy and tactics...
Because they've always been in the business of policing non-illegal speech. They want an advertiser-friendly image, because its advertisers who pay the bills.
Facebook should definitely remove stuff from foreign actors trying to impact some political outcome (like Russia messing with Brexit or American elections) and any promotion by groups to incite violence (like gangs, ISIS propaganda, hate groups, etc.).
But political and partisan stuff is a slippery slope. For example, I wouldn't touch Alex Jones stuff. Maybe derank his content and posts promoting his content, but banning him all together is a step too far. Like it or not, were in a weird place in American politics where conspiracy theorists not only have influence in political parties, but also get elected President. Facebook banning figures, and to be more specific, conservative figures when conservatives already believe Facebook is biased against them is just a bad idea.
If Congress wants Facebook and Twitter to silence speech, they need to pass a law. That law needs to be clear about what is inbounds and what is out. If not, Facebook is opening itself up to legal challenges from the Right and is only going to erode trust from half the population.
We are in a weird place in American politics and Facebook should tread lightly. Also, Congress should do it's damn job and not rely on companies to use discretion. If Facebook bans something that the left deems is biased against them then Facebook, once again, will be in big trouble with half the country.
There was a tipping point out of nowhere that caused everyone to be deathly afraid of comments in the internet once they realized that evil Foreigners were ALSO making comments on the internet.
