
Warren Escalates War with Zuckerberg and Facebook - smacktoward
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/12/warren-facebook-2020-045110
======
zaroth
Spend a few hours on Facebook or Reddit and it’s glaring how _tremendously
unconcerned_ everyone is with the facts. Whatever your political viewpoints
may be.

A politician trying to suppress the reach of political ads run by their
opponent is very concerning to me. In the political arena most especially.

The platforms should absolutely not be in the business of filtering and
approving political messages directly from political candidates. It’s
absolutely up to the voters to decide for themselves.

It’s a different matter entirely if the platform is being abused by bots, fake
accounts, trolls, etc. versus a political message approved by the campaign.

> _A Facebook spokesperson said that the company believes political speech
> should be protected. “If Senator Warren wants to say things she knows to be
> untrue, we believe Facebook should not be in the position of censoring that
> speech,” the spokesperson said._

I agree 100%. And her opponents can call her out. And the voters will decide.
It’s absolutely not for Facebook to censor a political campaigns speaking for
themselves.

Platforms should follow the laws on political campaign messages as they exist
on the books. Mainly, as I understand them, this involves properly labeling
the ad and who paid for it.

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newnewpdro
I don't understand the logic behind politicians being exempted.

Facebook's overtly being a propaganda delivery system, and is now explicitly
marketing the privilege directly to politicians.

It's absurd, we have laws about false advertising. In a system where elected
officials are marketed to voters no differently than commercial goods and
services, why wouldn't they be subject to similar (or more strict) regulation?

The consequences for "buying" our politicians based on false advertising are
much greater than purchasing commercial goods or services.

~~~
vinceguidry
I have a nasty suspicion that there's already a thriving clandestine grey
market in political services that politicians have been taking advantage of
for awhile now.

------
Simulacra
Facebook has enormous power to influence people. I wonder if Mark et al. has
done the calculus to decide which President they would prefer to have as a
company.

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Aperocky
There's no doubt that facebook done a lot of harm by leaking private
information, but it's disingenous to call facebook 'disinformation machine'
when people actively chase and consume disinformation to satisfy their own
bias.

If they won't be able to find disinformation on facebook, they'll move to
other echo chambers like reddit and continue to consume the same crap. To
expect a substantial portion of population to suddenly gain the ability to
think critically against their own bias is not realistic. Facebook is just a
scapegoat in this regard.

~~~
perl4ever
Someone who is getting biased information can't logically be responsible for
stepping outside of that context. It's a perfect example of pulling yourself
up by your bootstraps.

~~~
Aperocky
It's easy to not get biased information, comparing sources and actually
_reading_ the source is not a very hard thing to do. But most people don't,
and in this environment the titles are driven to be as click-baity as
possible. We can't blame facebook for what content producer and content
consumers are doing, or are you suggesting thorough censorship? It's easy to
point finger and blame others for their failures without coming up with a
solution.

~~~
perl4ever
"It's easy to not get biased information"

"Not getting biased information" sums up the entire history of human
development, but particularly these fields come to mind:

\- Science and academic research

\- Business management

\- Military intelligence

\- Government administration

\- Artificial intelligence

\- Jurisprudence

\- Philosophy

\- Journalism

\- Statistics

\- Psychology

I think the entirety of these fields is nontrivial.

"are you suggesting thorough censorship?"

Facebook is doing the censoring!! If they just showed you what your friends
were posting in chronological order, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

