
Facebook's Zuckerberg accused of setting dangerous precedent over Trump - evo_9
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52877801
======
Fellshard
If it is truly believed that Twitter's response to the tweet is going to
forestall its influence, you're kidding yourself. It's a signal that Twitter
is giving regarding itself more than it is an effective strategy for any
purpose.

If it is desired that every social media company holds the exact same
standards for its content, we may as well consolidate them all; who needs more
than one social media site? Much easier to police or push around, too.

~~~
sigmar
I don't think companies should all conform to one policy. But the issue here
is that facebook had a policy, then refused to enforce it.[1]

[1] "If anyone, including a politician, is saying things that can cause, that
is calling for violence or could risk imminent physical harm.... we will take
that content down."
[https://twitter.com/donie/status/1266416129448255489](https://twitter.com/donie/status/1266416129448255489)

~~~
Fellshard
And I expect different companies will hold different standards as to when
content meets that line.

That's not to say I think Facebook or Twitter are consistent - they are far,
far from consistent, and you are right to desire to hold them accountable to
their own policies.

------
hirundo
"I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly
attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941 a state of war has existed between
the United States and the Japanese Empire." \-- Franklin D. Roosevelt,
December 8, 1941

If FDR posted that, should Twitter and Facebook filter it out? It is a clear
call for violence. Or does it matter why violence is being called for?

It's hard to construct a curation rule so clear that it can't, easily, turn on
political calculus.

~~~
danaris
If you don't think it's easy to construct rules that differentiate between
clearly official pronouncements regarding major diplomatic shifts, and
bloviating support for obviously racist state-sanctioned violence against
individual citizens, then I would humbly submit this to be a failure of
imagination.

------
atonse
I hate FB but They’re a private company, not the Supreme Court.

They can flip flop all they want.

~~~
HenryBemis
I don't get why you get downvoted.

It IS a private company. And for that reason I do not prefer products of XYZ
company, because I believe they are assholes. On the other hand I prefer
products of ZYX company because of whatever reasons.

It would be fascistic of my to oblige XYZ company owners to change their
opinions, because "I" think so (and trust me I do dislike that scum
Zuckerberg).

For that I have taken the decision to ignore/sinkhole everything-FB (as I have
stated many times in this forum)(hosts, firewall rules, blockers, etc) and I
consider FB to be one of Humanity's cancers. Top-down, bottom-up assholery (my
opinion - just like Clint Eastwood)(I don't value mine over anyone else's).

FB is not doing something alien to them. They know that tensions increase
"engagement" and "engagement" increases ad-revenue.

Remember how Cambridge Analytica was (essentially) used to focus on certain
people, divide and conquer?

I am surprised that people are surprised.

------
lambdasquirrel
Just a friendly reminder that inciting violence is not protected speech. Thank
you.

~~~
gruez
Depends. The current standard in the US is "imminent lawless action", which
bans "kill that guy now", but allows for "he should be killed"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action)

>Advocacy of force or criminal activity does not receive First Amendment
protections if (1) the advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent
lawless action, and (2) is likely to incite or produce such action

------
machinehermit
A dangerous president to not censor the President?

Yea ok.

~~~
galfarragem
A dangerous precedent is to censor a democratically elected President.

Edit: It's sad when we get afraid of commenting anything that can be
understood as politically biased.

~~~
ivan_gammel
There’s no reason why some selected politicians should be immune to the rules
of the platform they have chosen to publish their speeches. Otherwise it would
create a form of political censorship for their opponents which aren’t allowed
to post something similar. If you want to know what kind of regime the
impunity will create, just look at modern Chechnya.

------
Kiro
After reading jwz's post calling everyone working at Facebook white
supremacists and the tweet from TalkSpace it feels like I'm missing something.
What is Facebook's role in this other than not censoring Trump's post?

By the way, I thought hackers were against censorship so I'm very puzzled by
all of this. What would the right action for Facebook be in this case?

Not taking any stance here, just genuinely curious.

~~~
henryfjordan
Facebook is not merely "not censoring" Trump's message, they are actively
spreading it.

In a world with no social media, how do you spread your message? You can yell
from the rooftops, pass out fliers, publish a book, go on TV, etc. In every
case there's a human or organization involved helping spread your message.
When that message is vile, the TV station or book publisher is rightly held
accountable for helping to promote it.

Facebook gives people a platform to spread their messages. If those messages
are vile, then Facebook is just as complicit as if it were a book publisher or
person handing our fliers. The difference is that Facebook says "we operate at
a scale which does not allow moderation", which is true, and it's the same
reason that you can reach so many people so quickly with your messages.

Facebook is actively spreading hate by giving Trump a platform. They need to
be accountable. Without Facebook, Twitter, etc, Trump would just be shouting
hate to himself. With FB, trump shouts hate at everyone.

~~~
Kiro
Thank you. What about decentralized platforms such as Mastodon? Don't they
have the same problem?

~~~
henryfjordan
I think any platform that lets people post things without sufficient
moderation runs the risk of spreading hate. I'm not familiar with how Mastodon
works though.

------
KorematsuFred
I would like to see the real face of my elected representatives as much as
possible. If I do not want him, I will just block him.

------
sprusemoose
I think when you read headlines you can work out if it has positive energy or
negative energy. It would be pretty sweet if you could filter content based on
if it has something positive to say or something negative.

------
systemvoltage
I don't agree with what Trump says. Nor do I condone violence...

Would you be ok with WeChat censoring "anti-China slogans" coming from HK?
Think about it. Deeply. People in China think of HK citizens as against their
country and what they stand for. And, just because we fall into one side of
the barricade, we think that WeChat censoring stuff is NOT OK.

Are we asking Facebook to do the same as WeChat?

Here is another hypothetical situation. Imagine if all tech companies were
pro-republican and there was no voice for democrats on social media. Just
saying to make a point. Now reverse the situation, aren't Republicans in this
nation feeling threatened by excessive control of information governed by a
handful few? Think deeply and try putting yourself in their shoes.

When you fall into the abyss, the abyss falls into you. This is a dangerous
situation to be taking sides and also a dangerous situation to stay neutral as
our nation falls apart.

~~~
alpha_squared
Sounds like the slippery slope fallacy. The argument isn't being made to
remove all posts from all members of a certain political party or ideological
background. It's not even to remove all posts by a single person. It's to
address and, hopefully prevent, posts that incite violence and unrest.

Literally every platform, including HN, has guidelines around what should and
should not be allowed when users contribute. Having those rules defined is
great, but enforcement is what makes sure the rules are followed. For a long
time, and perhaps still, Twitter was selectively enforcing those rules to
users. Facebook seems to be doing the same. Twitter finally applied those
rules, rather loosely, to Trump via a couple of minor footnotes to his posts
(not censoring at all). Then Twitter put a soft censor, meaning it was still
viewable though not through normal user behavior, on a post that very clearly
incited violence. I think the fact that these platforms have gone so long
without enforcing their policies to this particular person has given the
impression that there are no policies and no enforcement and, by extension,
that they're open platforms accepting all speech. They aren't, never were, and
as private entities are not beholden to be.

~~~
systemvoltage
I agree with your assessment of the situation. I also agree with getting rid
of posts that incite violence.

I am just concerned about whether it grows over time into eroding away the
ability to speak on the internet.

This is just one thing. We don't even have any visibility in the true special
sauce - the algorithms that determine what to show to people. Do you see the
problem with this or you think that people who are responsible for these algos
are good samaritans and they don't need any public oversight?

~~~
alpha_squared
> I am just concerned about whether it grows over time into eroding away the
> ability to speak on the internet.

By this reasoning, we'd be crippled to make any decision for fear of what that
may lead to. This leads back into the slippery slope fallacy. When something
larger is at hand, then we can re-visit, but this is not large enough to merit
that amount of mental and emotional effort to justify and discuss. Granted,
that's entirely subjective, but I fail to see this as a very large issue. It's
only making the news because these social media companies have gone _so long_
without enforcing these policies.

> This is just one thing. We don't even have any visibility in the true
> special sauce - the algorithms that determine what to show to people. Do you
> see the problem with this or you think that people who are responsible for
> these algos are good samaritans and they don't need any public oversight?

This is extremely problematic and I agree. This isn't _really_ the topic of
_this_ discussion, but it's definitely a problem. Social media companies are
already censoring and filtering posts via their algorithms. That wouldn't be
the case if feeds were purely based on a time-series (as they used to be).

~~~
systemvoltage
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I guess it is a bit excessive to think
about future repercussions, my conscience is only guided by past examples of
slow erosion. I hope that silicon valley folks remain vigilant and self-
critical.

Regarding the algos, I agree, it is an entirely separate problem.

------
glofish
the eagerness of some to demand that a private company of dubious ethics be
the censor of others is mindboggling

------
hpoe
Does anyone else feel like this motion to censor political figures on social
media as a result of what they said seems to have suddenly become a big issue
real quickly. Until last week President Trump would say whatever things he
would say and the defense was basically as the President what he says should
be a matter of national record and although it might
<dumb,profound,ignorant,genius,etc> the idea was people should know what their
President is saying.

Now suddenly twitter hides one tweet and Civil rights leaders are applying
pressure to CEOs and employee's are staging "virtual walkouts"? (Personally I
find a virtual walkout to be kind of ridiculous but whatever)

Ultimately my concern is that it seems that people keep wanting to expand the
limits and boundaries on discussion and discourse, and not necessarily what
someone says but rather their interpretation of what someone says. By that I
mean, it doesn't matter what you say, what someone else thinks you said is
what dictates whether it is okay to say it or not.

I mean does anyone else remember the whole cofeve fiasco where several news
outlets spent day(s) focusing on what it could mean and how it was a secret
racist dog whistle?

Don't get me wrong I don't like Trump I don't like how a lot of this situation
is being handled, especially as it bodes for our rights as citizens, but it
seems to me that rather than focusing on the problem many are instead trying
to use this as a means to exert influence and control over what thoughts are
acceptable to express and not.

------
aasasd
Ah, so I guess big US social media might be gradually segregating into broadly
‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’. First in regard to the degree of curation, then
to everything else as the users flock to their choice platform. Can everyone
really have an account on FB when it's ‘supporting’ Trump's bullying? Or on
Twitter when it ‘censors’ the president? Easy choice!

Only foreigners who don't give a damn will be free to use both FB and Twitter
and any other platform as they see fit.

(Perhaps Google is somewhat happy right now that G+ flopped.)

------
optxa
Why are people get so worked up over words rather than actions? Yes, Trump
makes many stupid statements.

What has he _done_ however? Has he droned people like Clinton? Has he started
wars? Has violence against black people increased compared to the previous
presidencies?

If the answers to those are "no", then please look at actions and not at
words.

~~~
mikeyouse
> _Has he droned people like Clinton?_

Yes - he dramatically increased the use of drones:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/tr...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/trump-
war-terror-drones/567218/)

And he eliminated the restrictions designed to prevent civilian casualties:

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/obama-drones-trump-
kill...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/obama-drones-trump-killings-
count/)

> _Has violence against black people increased compared to the previous
> presidencies?_

One of his first actions was to disband the Federal oversight of police
departments set up explicitly to address this issue:

[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/jeff-
sessions-c...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/jeff-sessions-
consent-decree-review/)

His DOJ rescinded orders from the Obama era that prosecutors shouldn't charge
low-level drug offenses that had mandatory minimums with the exact opposite
tact:

[https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/11/7/18073074/j...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/11/7/18073074/jeff-sessions-resigns-war-on-drugs-crime)

He's famously said that protesters should be roughed up and he explicitly said
that police should seek to hurt the people that they arrest:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-
nation/wp/2017/07/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-
nation/wp/2017/07/28/trump-tells-police-not-to-worry-about-injuring-suspects-
during-arrests/)

His Attorney General said that he was okay with the KKK until he found out
they smoked pot:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/politicaljunkie/2009/05/specter...](https://www.npr.org/sections/politicaljunkie/2009/05/specter_helped_defeat_sessions.html)

If you don't think his actions directly lead to this, you're not paying
attention.

~~~
HenryBemis
OP has the typical troll/seagull approach. And people like him/her are the
bane of fora/democracy. They come in, write something stupid, and then it's up
to others (thank you mikeyouse) to spend the time to educate them. The problem
is that he/she will not learn, he just managed to waste 10 of your minutes
with his/her stupid poison.

He/she will go around, writing the same crap, until people will be to tired to
rebuke it, and then he/she wins. We don't need trolls here. +1 to mike, -100
to the troll.

~~~
mikeyouse
Ironically giving a very concrete example of the benefits of deplatforming
people..

