
Facebook and Google pressured EU experts to soften fake news regulations - okket
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/facebook-and-google-pressured-eu-experts-soften-fake-news-regulations-say-insiders/
======
ilaksh
The thing that makes me very concerned is the lack of context in these
discussions of fake news of the history and continuing use of government
propaganda.

I hope young people who are familiar with "fake news" but not necessarily as
familiar with the history of propaganda and censorship will study that
history.

The big issue is there is enthusiasm for censorship, and the problem with
censorship is who gets to decide what is real information and what is fake.
The interests with the most power will have more control over information as
censorship increases.

Because the same power that is supposedly only used to suppress propaganda
from some other country is used to suppress internal dissent or criticism.

This is actually very dangerous for multiple reasons. One big reason is that
propaganda (internal to the country, i.e. by the same people who will be
deciding what is fake news) is usually critical in terms of jump-starting and
maintaining enthusiasm for wars.

~~~
wazoox
Case in point, the "fake news" law in France: it basically asks Facebook and
friends to

1° detect abuse, propaganda and "fake news" 2° remove it automatically.

So they're handed altogether the power of police, jury and executioner.
They're already much too powerful, and they were just given much more power
for free. What will become of free speech under these conditions? Do you think
Twitter will flag Macron's tweets when he spouts out blatant lies, which is
actually quite often?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Isn't that just the power every Editor wields? Perhaps its inappropriate to
consider Facebook the 'publisher' of everything on the site. But its not more
power than any other publisher possesses (choosing their own editorial staff).

~~~
golemotron
It's fully appropriate to consider Facebook the publisher of everything on
their site. They exercise editorial control.

~~~
cameronbrown
Point is that many disagree they should. If we take that Facebook is a
critical network owned by a company, just like the internet is a critical
network owned by many companies, is it not reasonable to assume it is
infrastructure and not a publisher?

Not saying I agree or disagree, just playing devil's advocate.

~~~
root_axis
Facebook is definitely not a "critical network". It is a privately owned
network operated by a corporation, it is not "critical" or even necessary, in
fact, studies suggest increased use of Facebook correlates with poor mental
health. Certainly, nobody _needs_ access to Facebook.

~~~
raxxorrax
I agree in principle, but as a news publisher, you practically have to use
Facebook to stay relevant. Same goes for Google to a lesser degree. All the
laws like the EUs article 13 were tools in the fight between publishers and
the internet giants.

They just have the masses of users.

~~~
EpicEng
And if FB went away tomorrow the companies would find another way. It's not
like they weren't successful before FB came around. FB is only "critical" for
as long as it exists in it's current form... which makes it not at all
critical to begin with.

~~~
bduerst
Right. This entire argument is semantics on the word 'critical'. FB is a
"should probably be using" for publishers or ecommerce companies, but FB is
not a critical component.

Reading this thread makes me think that some want FB to be a critical
component simply because it makes a good premise for the argument of shutting
FB down.

~~~
anoncake
Odd. Reading this thread makes me think that some want FB not to be a critical
component because it makes a good premise for the argument of letting them do
whatever they want.

~~~
EpicEng
...I think Facebook has won

------
akavel
Oh wow, that's really rough:

 _" Monique Goyens – director-general of BEUC, which is also known as The
European Consumer Association – is blunter. 'We were blackmailed,' she says.
[...]_

 _Facebook’s chief lobbyist, Richard Allan – another member of the expert
group – said [...] to another group member: 'He threatened that if we did not
stop talking about competition tools, Facebook would stop its support for
journalistic and academic projects.'"_

~~~
chrisseaton
> Monique Goyens ... 'We were blackmailed'

Blackmailing is telling people that you're been doing something illegal or
immoral if you don't meet demands. Is the BEUC admitting here that they were
doing something illegal or immoral?

~~~
b_tterc_p
Technically it’s extortion, of which blackmail is a type but not the right
type. Cherry picking the wording feels pedantic here.

I’m not sure if this is legal and I think it varies by jurisdiction. For
example, in the US I don’t think it’s actually legal to give donations to
political offices contingent on them passing certain policies. You can,
however, donate freely, imply you favor certain policies, show them more
stacks of cash in your future lobbying fund, and wink.

~~~
libria
No, I think the EU was inflammatory with wording: "heavy-arm wrestling in the
corridors", "blackmail". At least in the US, you can't throw "blackmail"
around casually as it carries a heavy criminal implication. We're talking
about gifts and donations they have no rights to and that Facebook has no
obligation to give.

Now the gifts themselves are a conflict of interest so they should never be
allowed. Show of EU hands, who wants to outlaw all FB/GOOG gifts?

This is a case of wanting to bite the hand that feeds you and then whine when
the hand yanks back the handouts too. Sure FB/GOOG plays a little dirty, but
all corps/political states play this game.

~~~
b_tterc_p
> We're talking about gifts and donations they have no rights to and that
> Facebook has no obligation to give.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not sure this is true (everywhere or anywhere in
particular). A donation has to be a donation, free of stipulations. If you say
you intend to give a donation and you say that if you don't get certain
policies then you won't give the donation; then its clear that you intend to
receive a service for your donation, making it a business transaction (and
potentially an illegal one).

As I said before, there are easy ways to accomplish the same thing. You're
just not supposed to explicitly say "if you don't give me what I want, the
money stops".

------
jfindley
From the article: "In particular, [they] opposed proposals that would have
forced them to be more transparent about their business models"

Hm. It's not immediately clear to me why fake news regulation would require
Google and FB to share more information about their business models with the
EU.

I also feel that in the wake of a large number of EU fines, laws, decisions
etc that specifically attack FB and Google, it's perhaps not unreasonable that
there might be some scepticism that the EU would not abuse this information to
levy yet further fines.

Some reasonable people might argue that a number of the EU fines have been
justified - possibly in isolation I might agree with one or two - but there
are also less defensible examples, such as defining "free mobile operating
systems" as a market sector separate from all other operating systems and
platforms, to allow them to find Google guilty of a monopoly.

I feel like the EU is trying to have it both ways here - it seems unreasonable
for the EU to spend so much time attacking big tech firms and then to expect
them to welcome further regulation.

~~~
tantalor
> why fake news regulation would require Google and FB to share more
> information about their business models

The answer is buried in paragraph 28 of the article: advertisement

 _European Commission... acknowledged the need to improve the scrutiny of
advertisement placements_

------
moby_click
One paragraph struck me as a pretty wild claim in an article about fake news:

> _Last year, for example, the British music industry association UK Music
> calculated that Google had spent almost €31 million to lobby against a
> stricter copyright law._

Here is what I found:

[https://corporateeurope.org/en/2018/12/copyright-
directive-h...](https://corporateeurope.org/en/2018/12/copyright-directive-
how-competing-big-business-lobbies-drowned-out-critical-voices)

> _UK Music simply took the entire lobby budget declared by Google in 2017, €6
> million, and added to that the budgets of all the organisations and think
> tanks it is a member of, declaring that the “The combined value of Google’s
> indirect lobbying of the EU amounts to €25.5m”._

~~~
human20190310
I can't tell if that's honest or dishonest accounting.

~~~
moby_click
I don't know if there is a definition of honest accounting that I should be
aware of. I assume the numbers are reasonably correct, but ascribing 31m to
google's lobbying effort against the copyright directive is more than
dishonest. It is incorrectly quoting UK Music, which did the dishonest
accounting.

For example, 1.75m from Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung, which is a think tank
closely related to the party of the rapporteur responsible for the copyright
directive. If they were engaged in lobbying related to the copyright
directive, they most certainly would not align with google's interests. If you
take a look at the transparency register
([http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/consultation...](http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/consultation/displaylobbyist.do?id=510151427278-94)),
you'll find that almost their entire budget for the declared activities comes
from two german federal agencies.

------
tumetab1
The article goes to length about backroom dealings but has a lot of unnamed
accounts, rumors and speculation. For me this is just an authority argument
(trust us but not them) which doesn't work for me since I don't know this
organization.

That being said, this kind of sponsored opinions is kind what of the EU does.
NGOs get grants, EU asks NGOs opinions on legislation. It can all be fare and
right but it sure looks like the same.

------
Grue3
Good to know Facebook and Google are fighting against censorship. I don't know
why anyone would be outraged by this.

~~~
Faaak
I am outraged by people making and spreading fake news though. These fake news
kill people daily (the one that don't want to vaccinate).

They are destroying us as a civilization by spreading bullshit and making us
believe that the current world is shit.

~~~
scalio
What civilization are you talking about? The US, western Europe, capitalism,
formally educated people? Who is 'they'? There's enough people who just want
to watch the world burn, and they're very much part of society, paying taxes
and going to clubs and shopping malls. For instance, all those highly capable
developers and mathematicians on adtech payrolls. How is one supposed to
concentrate on separating the wheat from the chaff when things engineered to
distract and capture attention do exactly that?

------
jakelazaroff
But I thought Facebook said that "Accountability of tech companies can only be
achieved through the painstaking introduction of new rules for the internet"?
[1]

They pay lip service to regulations when they're faced with public scrutiny or
calls to be broken up. But when we actually try to regulate, they reveal how
they truly feel.

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-says-break-up-
not-t...](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-says-break-up-not-the-
answer-2019-5)

------
3xblah
Facebook and Google will beg and plead for content. They must have it to
survive. Yet they do not want to hire journalists and create news content.
They take all the ad revenue that news media would take, they spread the
"news", but they do not produce it. They are middlemen. Rent collectors.
Middlemen who want to "self-regulate".

~~~
CryptoPunk
Yes they are platform providers for user generated content, which competes
against traditional news media, and they take their cut by placing
advertisements.

I don't see why they shouldn't have a right to earn money or should be
obligated to hire journalists. That's like saying social media shouldn't be
allowed to compete with traditional news media.

Technological change is about disruption and this is just disruption. To
oppose it is to oppose technological progress in order to protect incumbents'
market shares.

~~~
privateprofile
>> That's like saying social media shouldn't be allowed to compete with
traditional news media.

Social media companies could be allowed to compete with traditional news
media, if they were obliged to abide by the same standards, principles and
legal regulations that apply to traditional news media companies.

In most EU countries, any newspaper spreading the kind of garbage you see on
Facebook could (and probably would) be called to a public hearing in
parliament and risk being shut down, and further legal action, if it was
proven that it was publishing stories without doing proper due diligence.

~~~
Mirioron
> _In most EU countries, any newspaper spreading the kind of garbage you see
> on Facebook could (and probably would) be called to a public hearing in
> parliament and risk being shut down, and further legal action_

Can you give some evidence for this? Because I see media in the EU lying
through their teeth sometimes. We all know about the daily mail and its ilk,
yet they've existed for many years as news organizations. I've not heard of
these kinds of limitations you're talking about.

------
Nasrudith
I wonder who is behind that article - the mention of lobbying against music
group copyright extension seems a telling non-sequitior. It is irrelevant to
the topic at hand yet they are upset enough to bring it up as they see it as
something worthy of bashing.

That isn't complaining about corporate influence but about who is winning
essentially and sounds a lot like the agenda of angry old media that the world
changed on them.

~~~
sprash
This news source is funded by George Soros.

------
atonse
Who is this news source? Is there a more reliable, possibly more neutral
source of the same story?

------
gerbilly
Fake news gives an advantage to parties who are unconcerned about the truth.

This will only remain an advantage as long as we expect messages to contain
verifiable facts.

We are in a transition period right now, and seem to be headed towards a post
truth era, one where we will no longer agree upon a set of basic facts about
the world, and where everything is merely opinion.

Once this transition is complete, then there will be no such thing as fake
news, because all news will have become spin.

~~~
darkpuma
> _" This will only remain an advantage as long as we expect messages to
> contain verifiable facts."_

In a way, many traditional reputable news organizations are guilty of
perpetuating this lack of expectations among readers. It's still common, in
this age of hypertext, to see major news organizations publishing stories
online that don't have hyperlinks to the source documents. Presumably this is
motivated by money; they don't want to send people away from their site, or an
old newspaper mentality where hyperlinks didn't exist at all, but it's
inexcusable in the modern digital era.

When reputable news organizations neglect to link to source documents, it
provides cover for fake news organizations who also don't link to source
documents by normalizing the appearance of articles that do not link to
sources.

Here is a counterexample, of the NYTs actually doing the right thing:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/supreme-
court...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/supreme-court-
precedent-vote.html) In the first sentence you have a hyperlink to the pdf on
supremecourt.gov. This should be the _standard_ for modern reporting, but it
seems to still be the exception rather than the rule.

On the other hand here you've got a New Yorker article talking about the same
SCOTUS decision that contains no hyperlink to supremecourt.gov:
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/the-
abortion-f...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/the-abortion-
fight-and-the-pretense-of-precedent) Arguably in this case it's because
they're stuck in a print mindset, but frankly I don't think that's a good
excuse.

~~~
52-6F-62
The New Yorker is a magazine, and not a news outlet. By definition they are an
analysis publication—that means their articles are essentially opinion pieces.
They have no journalistic obligation to post sources.

Your positing that its about money might be correct, but for different reasons
than you suggest. News and magazine publications often _do_ link to a number
of different documents. Many articles published are written pretty quickly and
cheaply these days due to the demands of "no paywalls" and advertising that
doesn't pay enough.

The situation isn't so black and white.

~~~
darkpuma
That's just the "print mentality" excuse. There is no good reason for a
'magazine' to not hyperlink the documents they're talking about.

~~~
gerbilly
In the end you have to decide to trust someone. Who says the link might not be
to some sock puppet websites?

See:
[https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html](https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html)

~~~
darkpuma
Trust in The New Yorker is not in question. The matter of concern is reputable
news sources, of which The New Yorker is only one example of many, behaving in
ways that makes it _easier_ for fake news sites to emulate their appearance.
Whether you trust the compiler your browser was built with is also not a
serious consideration; pull your head out of the clouds.

~~~
gerbilly
> pull your head out of the clouds.

Wow, that's uncalled for, but moving on.

I actually know a lot of journalists, so I'm familiar with the way they work.

Even though they don't include hyperlinks, most of them go to great lengths to
ensure the accuracy of what they write about.

Also it's a bit naive of you to assume every piece of source data has (or even
could have) a URI.

While this is not a bad idea, it's not possible for a variety of reasons from
the purely technical to the practical.

------
MaysonL
I wonder: does the "fake news" regulation also apply to fake (i.e. false,
misleading, fraudulent, conspiratorial) advertisements?

------
RickJWagner
I think Facebook is in a tough spot.

Unlike news providers (who write the stories, and pay the writers) Facebook is
giving it's customers a platform to speak from. If they muzzle the story
providers, they are muzzling their own customers.

I agree Facebook is part of the puzzle, but it probably has to be approached
from a different angle.

~~~
village-idiot
The problem is that at pretty much every turn, Facebook does the wrong thing
and fritters away it’s reputation and public trust. So at this point nobody
trusts Facebook to do the right thing, and all the proposals I’ve seen involve
Facebook being coerced to do something.

------
KorematsuFred
This is a good thing. Letting government regulate fake news lets them regulate
all news leading to a top down fake news. I would rather prefer a world with
bottoms up fake news. This is not a bad thing.

------
scalio
The solution to a problem is never to ignore it, lock it away, out of sight
where it will just fester. The people who produce bullshit (maybe for a
living, maybe as a hobby) don't just disappear.

Aggressive filtering of what people see in their feeds is not a solution. What
do all those able to discern bullshit from factual content have in common?
Exercise for the reader as I don't have a definitive answer. A proper
education can be thrown away or ignored when convenient; some people just seem
to have a good nose for bs. I dunno.

------
sprash
This is a George Soros organization calling for more internet censorship to
"protect democracy" of course under the guise of "taking on the big evil
corporations".

Don't fall for it.

