
What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout - rbanffy
https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/6/1/21276969/facebook-walkout-mark-zuckerberg-audio-trump-disgust-twitter
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Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0
This is one of the dumbest articles I’ve read about the issue, treating it as
a binary good-vs-evil problem instead of critically thinking about the
underlying issues and the effects of what they’re actually proposing.

I mentioned this in a previous thread, but we absolutely do not want Mark
Zuckerberg or his employees to make decisions on what is or isn’t newsworthy.
They have far too much power, and not enough internal controls, to be involved
in politics. (And yes, you can have an independent moderator system - but
they’ll end up in the same position as Facebook as well, with no
accountability to the public.)

Just to take a simple example, what would have happened if a facebook
moderator had decided to remove the initial video of Floyd's murder because,
hey, the official reports said he was doing something wrong and the video had
the potential to incite violence? (which, in hindsight, it absolutely did.)
I'm fairly sure we would not be having the discussion we're having today, and
we would have lost a vital opportunity to improve our democracy.

~~~
thundergolfer
I assure you that Facebook is both very powerful and very involved in
politics. Just the month it came out that their own research found their
recommendation systems were engaging people with the far-right. The execs
allowed it.

It is impossible for Facebook to exist and act outside of politics. It’s a
nonsensical idea that they could avoid involvement in political issues given
the definition of politics.

~~~
klingonopera
I find it ok for Facebook to do something like their "Top stories" based on
what their algorithm determines for me.

But I'm somewhat annoyed that "Most recent" doesn't actually sort the news
feed chronologically, and also show everything. The algorithm is still doing
something there.

~~~
xhkkffbf
Yes! I want to see everything my friends are posting, not what FB thinks I
should see.

~~~
pizzicato
Perhaps less applicable to the Facebook issue, but I have found Mastodon to be
a potentially viable replacement for Twitter, though it definitely skews
heavily towards the tech crowd.

Chronological timelines, and user-driven moderation. Plus there are way more
users now than there were when I joined a few years ago.

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bargl
I can't remember who suggested it but it would be awesome if we could have
plug and play algorithms for our Facebook/twitter/youtube/etc content.

That way we could get the bring me top stories from all side. Or, I'm looking
into this topic let's go with this other matching algorithm.

I suspect we'd be back to one algorithm that gets 5 stars and 90% of people
use, but it'd be interesting to see and would remove the need for Facebook to
curate content.

~~~
nonfamous
That might fix things for you. But it doesn't fix things for the nation, or
the world.

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carterklein13
What I don't understand about all of this because I'm simply not in the know,
so hopefully somebody can explain it in more detail, is this: Facebook
regularly monitors posts for inappropriate content such as this. This seems
more of an active "we want to leave this up" than a "we want to take this
down" type of post, correct?

I have trouble forming an opinion on whether or not I agree with Facebook or
with Twitter on the whole matter because I'm not well-versed with their
previous T&C, and what would typically happen for a tweet like this from
someone who isn't POTUS. If someone could provide some resources, that would
be great and useful to myself and hopefully others who want to get a fuller
understanding of this issue.

~~~
jimmaswell
From Zuckerberg: "I disagree strongly with how the President spoke about this,
but I believe people should be able to see this for themselves, because
ultimately accountability for those in positions of power can only happen when
their speech is scrutinized out in the open." \-
[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/facebook-staff-angry--
zucker...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/facebook-staff-angry--
zuckerberg.html)

It's a perfectly reasonable to keep up things that are a matter of public
record like this. I find people walking out over their employer not censoring
enough childish and indicative of a generation that hasn't learned the dangers
of censorship, caring more about moral grandstanding than freedom of the press
or information otherwise being accessible. It comes off as especially
pretentious doing it in the middle of all the protests over the very serious
and real issues with the police, contrasted with Facebook employees with cushy
jobs being mad their boss didn't do enough to curate the platform to their
liking.

~~~
saos
> "I disagree strongly with how the President spoke about this, but I believe
> people should be able to see this for themselves, because ultimately
> accountability for those in positions of power can only happen when their
> speech is scrutinized out in the open."

That’s pretty fair. But, will that set a precedence of violent posts?

~~~
jimmaswell
From the president? Maybe, but I'd still think the value of the public record
is more important here. From regular users it would still be disallowed.

Instead of this murky de-facto system of different rules for public officials
and regular users, maybe we need to have it codified. Accounts owned by public
officials have their activity publicly recorded (with edit/deletion attempt
history, etc) and with something in the UI indicating it's such a type of
account, and a link to a disclaimer visible near all the posts explaining that
the post might have TOS violations and doesn't necessarily serve as an example
of acceptable behavior for other users. Such protection would go away when
their term is over and they'd be able to be banned for past posts (but
everything remaining visible), maybe reopened if they're in a position again
later on.

~~~
carterklein13
I think this is a sensible and easily-enforceable solution. Facebook and
Twitter are necessities today and oftentimes (for better or for much, much
worse) are where history is being written. I think using these platforms as a
highly important person geopolitically should dictate different rules than me,
who has like 400 friends from the decade or so I've been on the platform, 90%
of whom I haven't spoken to in years.

~~~
e2021
I wish twitter hadn't opened this whole can of worms. I thought their previous
policy of basically saying 'yes, different rules _do_ apply to the president,
so we're just not going to delete his posts' was pretty good.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
I really dislike the legalistic versus moral distinction. Emphasis on legal
_istic_ rather than legal. Legal and moral are obviously not the same.
Legalistic seems to just relate to making and enforcing rules, which is a
super important way to deal with moral issues when you're a platform or
arbiter. Yes, absolutely take the awful stuff off facebook, but make rules and
tests to be as clear as you can about it.

------
mongol
I think Trump should use the White House homepage for his communications. And
what he writes on Twitter and Facebook, those platforms should at least be as
liable for as if Trump wrote the same thing in an opinion piece in a
newspaper. I think AWS and Azure are true "platforms" but Facebook and Twitter
are social media. They are more similiar to other media than to technical
platforms. I think the buck should end with Zuckerberg for everything
expressed on his site.

If this was the case, it might very well be that social media as we know it
today would no longer be viable. It might very well be better however. I long
for the time the blogosphere was were people expressed themselves online. It
was more mature, slower, and more thoughtful.

~~~
bargl
Isn't this what section 230 prevents? It protects Facebook and Twitter from
this specifically. It's also what Trump was pushing back on.

~~~
kgin
What's confusing to me is that killing 230 would make social media liable for
the content published by its users. It seems like it would require them to
control and filter content more, not less.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
They aren't wanting to kill 230, they want to take it away from companies who
choose to alter users' posts.

Their argument is if you start censoring and editing your users you are
abusing the protections given to you by 230 and you are no longer eligible and
you must vet EVERY post, not just the ones you selected.

Other companies who do not edit/censor their users selectively continue to
have protections from 230.

Not picking a side btw, just trying to clarify.

------
julianeon
I have been thinking: there's a real opportunity to disrupt FaceBook, from the
political side. It could gain traction in a way, and for a reason, among large
groups of people who otherwise won't give a damn ('FaceBook competitor',
yawn).

I think a billboard and an advertising blitz that really put in people's
faces, especially in the large blue cities that red staters hate so much,
something like: Did you know that, when you're on FaceBook, you're giving
money to the ad platform that elected Donald Trump? (*asterisk to Atlantic
article here with quote to that effect) Join SocialBook to learn more.

Then you could explain that there's a kind of default understanding that
FaceBook is 'neutral,' but it's probably more accurate to think of FaceBook as
an analogue, a cousin even, to Fox News. Its most popular site for engagement
is Breitbart. As people have noted online, by various metrics, it favors
Trump. And whether you agree or not, we are under no moral compulsion at all -
none whatsoever - to support FaceBook. Not using it is, at worst, morally
neutral.

So if you oppose FaceBook's general effect on our society, why not do
something that costs you no money and requires no real lifestyle change, but
can radically improve your society's politics? Join SocialBook and get your
friends too also, and as a principled stand, delete FaceBook. If nothing else,
you'll start exerting some powerful pressure on FaceBook to change its
policies in a direction it usually ignores, or else. And at best, you could
help launch a powerful, healthy competitor.

I should point out also: I don't see anything morally wrong in advocating for
this. I do feel a duty to support people working towards building in general,
and the economy in general. But do I have a specific moral duty to support
FaceBook? Of course not. I think there are people here who object to people
making commercial decisions for political reasons - but there's no moral
imperative supporting this. For what it's worth, I don't see other companies
taking this angle (say, Gab) as being in the wrong for that reason, either.

------
cousin_it
I think if you feel strongly about X, you shouldn't mod discussions of X. It
makes the discussion reflect your view instead of the views of participants.
You should delegate modding to someone who doesn't feel strongly about X. It
might be hard to find such a person in the US now, but with a global workforce
that's less of a problem.

------
somecommit
It's disturbing how things are turned upside down. The GAFA already are
behaving like they are above the state. You can love or hate Trump, is is
elected, not Facebook or Twitter. As the head of the state he represents what
we call in french 'monopoly of legitimate violence'. I found dangerous how the
GAFA companies think about themselves not concerned by that anymore.

~~~
machinehermit
Absolutely, I personally hate Trump and Facebook but he is still the
president.

The idea it is even a discussion to censor the president is lunacy.

------
nailer
Can we please stop voting for, and start to flag, articles from theverge.com?

The Verge is a clickbait site that:

\- constantly replaces original sources (earlier today there was a post which
was essentially a wrapper around a Microsoft employees blog)

\- mocked the tech industry for practicing social distancing during the Covid
19 outbreak.

\- As another poster already noted, consistently treats complex issues as
binary 'good vs evil' situations with no room for nuance.

------
gadders
Twitter, Facebook etc have never gotten over Trump winning the election over
their preferred candidate. All the censoring (and cancelling) of exclusively
right wing voices since then is purely designed to get a Democrat into the
Whitehouse.

