
Civil rights leaders blast Facebook after meeting with Zuckerberg - tech-historian
https://www.axios.com/civil-rights-leaders-blast-facebook-after-meeting-with-zuckerberg-63daa9dd-0209-4420-85d3-805385825718.html
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bluedevil2k
I'm sure I'm in the minority on this website, but I think anything the
President posts on social media should be kept in place. Yes, I think he posts
bad things sometimes, promotes violence, posts racist comments. But...he's the
President. He's _not_ like all the other users of Facebook/Twitter, and
different rules should apply to him.

Essentially the people who want his posts removed are forcing their own
opinion of right and wrong on the President of the United States. His opinion,
right or wrong, is of national importance. What he says is a matter of
historical value, showing the culture of America and its leadership at the
time. It provides a check on power, letting the citizens know what their
President thinks on certain issues and allows them to form their own opinions
on whether the President is a leader they can get behind or try and vote out.

~~~
king_magic
So if a President yells “fire” in a crowded movie theater, we should all sit
and sing kumbaya just because he’s the President?

No. The President isn’t above the law, and he shouldn’t be above the rules of
social networking sites as well.

There are plenty of ways to archive and memorialize offensive/racist/vile
posts from a President. The news media will do a fine job of that.

No exceptions, no mercy: if a President oversteps, they should be forcibly
muzzled just like the rest of us.

~~~
s1artibartfast
Censoring the president hurts the Ammerican people more than censoring a
normal individual. Closing our eyes and ears to the presidents actions and
statement doesn't make them go away, or meaningfully disincentivize him.

If the president were to announce a racist policy or glorifies a violent
military action, we should know.

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king_magic
> Censoring the president hurts the Ammerican people more than censoring a
> normal individual.

I don't buy that a single bit. Any sort of "censorship" on social media of a
sitting US President (heck, even a former President) is going to be a _major
international news event_.

~~~
s1artibartfast
I agree that banning trump would be a major news event. How does that relate
to my statement that you quoted?

The president can announce war, policies, and executive orders. Normal
individuals can not. Preventing individuals from seeing these announcements is
obviously more impactful than whatever the typical citizen is saying.

Even if the speech is violent, hateful, or racist, it valuable to see it.
Perhaps even moreso because of the content,

~~~
king_magic
Except there's _a ton of other channels_ those announcements also go through,
and legitimate announcements are not what people are worried about. Legitimate
speech _will_ be seen one way or another.

But violent/hateful/racist speech has no place in social networks, and should
be struck down immediately.

~~~
s1artibartfast
If the president wants to express violent/hateful/racist speech, it is even
more important the public see it, so that they can judge it and vote
accordingly.

I would rather know if the president is a bigot, and their latest misguided
thoughts, than not know. I want others to be able to see and judge the
behavior as well. Therefore I think the public interest is to provide a free
and unmoderated platform.

The solution to a president you dont like is voting them out of office, not
gagging them so they appear less offensive. If you dont personally want to see
the content > unfollow

~~~
king_magic
So Twitter is now the only way to know that Trump is a bigot, racist and
proto-dictator?

~~~
ta17711771
This is not what the comment you are responding to is saying, please address
those points.

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throwaway6274
Devil’s advocate thought experiment: suppose I was a CEO of a large social
media company and my personal view is pro-life. Should I remove pro-choice
posts (or censor them with violence labels), or should I allow discussion on
the topic even though I personally disagree with it?

I don’t think people can have their cake and eat it too. Either the CEOs of
these companies start imposing their personal views on their users or they try
to make the platform as neutral as possible. In-between solutions are going to
make everyone angry.

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stingrae
The point isn't to push a personal cause or belief. The goal should be to keep
a safe space where people aren't allowed to threaten others and incite
violence.

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amscanne
The pro-life viewpoint considers pro-choice views to be advocating violence in
the most direct way possible ("murdering babies"). That's the fundamental
problem: there is a huge subjective grey area.

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stingrae
ok... you can chose to not take a stance on grey areas and act on clear cut
cases.

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amscanne
I am pretty sure that's the _intended_ Facebook stance, and the disagreement
comes over what's a "grey area" and what's clear cut -- which is what makes it
a grey area to begin with.

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stingrae
I don't see how the tweets twitter added an annotation to could be seen as
grey area.

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intended
In Regrettable defense of FB:

In the book, Guardians of the Internet, two cases are mentioned:

Case 1:

Mexican gang violence was caught dramatically on video and went viral. This
sparked a conversation and brought attention on a major issue since The
government had been suppressing this information to project an image of
security.

This video pierced that veil- until it was seen by (I believe) British
citizens who woke up in the morning.

They called their friends at Facebook who realized it broke their rules and
removed it.

Case 2:

Contrast this with how Facebook handled the boston Bombings.

Facebook mods removed gore images because that broke their rules.

And then a message came on high telling people “no, This is newsworthy and it
goes through. The rules are in abeyance.”

If country like Mexico Can’t have that benefit, then Facebook is effectively
using power in one place to decide what goes through and in other places is
choosing not to exercise it.

Facebook is then trapped by its choice.

What should FB do in a country like Brazil? Hungary? Russia? India?

Heck, could any theoretically company find the right policy people and be able
to pay them to tell their teams what the right call is?

Facebook's solution currently is this "we are not the arbiter of truth"
comment, and working with governments to create govt agencies to set up rules
which FB can then follow.

So What’s the right call in this situation?

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ve55
Zuckerberg realizes that large corporations should not be arbiters of truth,
because it cannot be fair, and it cannot work long-term, in my opinion.

Even if one decides certain types of incorrect content should be removed, he
realizes there's no chance for this to be applied evenly to all individuals
and organizations, especially when the only example given by these activists
is a single person.

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aceman22
You know what's hillaroius about all of this; the tweet was literally correct.
Whether you interpretted as a threat or a warning or whatever, looters have
been shot and killed by store owners protecting their shops.

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paxys
Strange times when _Twitter_ can claim to be the morally better social
network.

~~~
tick_tock_tick
I don't want a moral social network I want one that I can share by beliefs and
views no matter what they maybe.

~~~
paxys
No social network (including offline ones) would be able to operate if they
let everyone say whatever they wanted. There is an intense amount of
moderation required, even here on HN, to remove low quality posts, abuse,
threats, spam, porn, illegal content and lots more. So no, you don't really
want one where anyone can share their beliefs no matter what. You just have
your own opinion of what should/shouldn't be allowed, same as everyone else.

~~~
tick_tock_tick
I, and I believe most other people that share a similar view to mine, are not
arguing for true zero moderation. I feel like you're trying act like me
admitting that any moderation would make me a hypocrite.

I'm ok with them filtering "illegal content" or rather I don't think that's a
choice that they have and is something to address within the legal system
rather then at a social network level.

Abuse of the system? Like they are sending too much
traffic/spamming/malware/etc is fine to limit. Threats, allow users to block
each-other; I'm fine with restricting people who attempt to circumvent other
peoples blocks.

Porn meh; I don't think it's a real issue I think it's great to allow users to
filter pornographic content if they don't want to see it.

My issue is when they start getting into filtering out "incorrect" statements,
"dangerous" ideas, even "hate speech" (an every expanding category), etc. It's
very distressing that Jack Dorsey thinks twitter has a moral responsibility to
remove certain viewpoints from discussions and believes that these discussion
will shape the future of our society.

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avancemos
Free speech is overrated. Speech can be dangerous and therefore we need to
regulate it on every level. Not just Facebook either; we need to ban speech
and public commentary whenever it’s problematic. Books need to be screened
too. Hopefully we’ll be able to monitor and correct people’s thoughts as well
when the technology becomes available. When people have the freedom to choose,
they choose wrong.

~~~
BobbyJo
Uh no. The problem today isn't free speech, it's that the limits on how you
transmit and disseminate it, favors the tiny, loud, misleading, ignorant few
who can generate the most 'engagement'. Like you for instance. You're hear
calling free speech dangerous, and that is such an absurd and ridiculous point
of view I feel the need to respond.

Free speech has worked great for 100s of years. You don't give up wheels
because people have started driving cars into buildings.

I sincerely hope that was all sarcasm.

~~~
adt2bt
It was all sarcasm.

~~~
avancemos
The last line is a direct quote from The Giver.

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saltedonion
Let’s not first talk about what Facebook ought to do, but what Facebook can
do.

There is no such thing as absolute freedom. This includes speech, which is
already regulated in our society.

And as a society, we have spent ample effort to distinguish harmful speech -
promotions of hate, abuse of minors etc...

This framework is clearly outlined in our laws and everything fb has done so
far has been lawful.

One of the major proponents of this “let’s allow as much free speech as
possible” framework is to establish an competitive marketplace of ideas, so
that instead of legislating away bad ideas, as a society, we choose not to
adopt them through reason.

This is why I think FB should be allowed to do what it’s doing.

As to if the recommendation and ranking algos are doing their job to help
ideas be battled out in an transparent and efficient way, or simply creating
an ideological echo chamber, that is another issue altogether.

We, as consumers, need to be vigilant, and choose a platform that we think is
good for each one of us and our society.

In this case, have a discussion as a nation and choose between the Twitter and
Facebook model.

I truly believe this is the American way.

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tqi
What is the reasoning behind taking down or flagging the comments (looking for
responses, not rhetorical)?

If it is to reduce distribution because it could incite violence, it seems to
me that 1) the vast majority of distribution/awareness is happening via
traditional news outlets and 2) distribution and awareness is actually what
you want to happen, since it is important that people be aware of the
President's extreme rhetoric. If the reason is that the statement is immoral
and platforms have a duty to take a stand / pick a side, then I would say that
sounds reasonable to me but leaves me feeling a little uncomfortable. It feels
like we are applying a Total War mentality to our political discourse, and
that doesn't seem like something that could possibly end well.

Disclaimer: Former FB employee.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> " _It feels like we are applying a Total War mentality to our political
> discourse_ "

That's a pretty good way of describing it save that I would add that one side
is failing to realize that they might lose and get hoist by their own petard
of suppressing speech someday.

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gman83
I'm pretty sure that Facebook won't do anything until they finish integrating
the Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp backends so that any future antitrust action
won't be able to split up the company. They just need to postpone.

~~~
OldManAndTheCpp
Do unified backends mean that the government can't enforce antitrust action?
That would be quite the loophole.

~~~
awinder
No lmao, the US has enforced monopoly breakups of companies with much larger
physical barriers, and honestly much more real-world dependency/impact

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seunosewa
Mark Zuckerberg knows that Trump will probably be re-elected in spite of
everything; it would be quite unwise for the CEO of any large public
corporation to make an enemy of the most vindictive American president in
recent history. His shareholders won’t appreciate the results of that.

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chance_state
>Facebook, for its part, said it was "grateful that leaders in the civil
rights community took the time to share candid, honest feedback" and said "it
is an important moment to listen, and we look forward to continuing these
conversations."

PR blabber. They need to start printing these responses as "Facebook's Public
Relations department responded to Axios with a general response." or
something.

