
Instructions from Facebook not to touch the posts of the cabinet minister - loriverkutya
https://444.hu/2018/08/14/we-received-instructions-from-facebook-not-to-touch-the-posts-of-the-cabinet-minister
======
Eochei5h
The whole concept of "community standards" for a worldwide communication
channel strikes me as newspeak for centralized moral policing.

Imagine the leading social network weren't facebook but vkontakte or weibo and
they imposed their own standards on billions of people communicating with each
other.

Filtering should be a tool available to individuals and delegatable to groups
that are aligned with their own standards. As long as we don't get that there
should be zero surprise about strain between differing standards.

~~~
jancsika
> The whole concept of "community standards" for a worldwide communication
> channel strikes me as newspeak for centralized moral policing.

Moral policing? This article is about the _opposite_ \-- Facebook telling its
"moral police" _not_ to moderate posts from pro-government posters.

The article also features a claim that someone at Facebook guided pro-
government posters in the government to use dog whistles to _get around_ their
filters. Hence changing "muslims" to "migrants."

Not much evidence is given for the claim, but it's there.

~~~
Eochei5h
Selective choice of inaction and complaints about that all play into the same
tune, that facebook is the one doing the policing (sometimes). That's the root
problem. If facebook were not the ultimate arbiter this article wouldn't have
to exist in the first place.

~~~
18pfsmt
>If facebook were not the ultimate arbiter

If people would stop using FB, rather than complaining about it, perhaps this
would not be an issue?

~~~
Eochei5h
If you know how to solve the network effect that would be great. Otherwise we
might just end up trading one master for another.

~~~
wallace_f
Plenty of things have been popular and then gone out of style.

Perhaps the answer is to make the concept of social networks no longer cool;
or even make them undesirable. I think it's pretty clear they are not,
anyways.

I use whatsapp, line, email and photo sharing services that allow me to easily
share and communicate thoughts and media with exactly who I want. It's more
personal, not addictive, creates better relationships, and helps me focus more
on who I am rather than how others perceive me. And of course I don't have to
use facebook and be a part of all its oft-criticized problems.

------
ashelmire
The trouble lies in two places:

"When there is false information but the the poster is not trying to mislead
anyone, that's just someone on the internet being wrong, and there is no
Facebook policy against it."

In and of itself, being wrong is not a problem. You can be thwarted by debate
and evidence. However, it's much easier to spread a lie than to effectively
repute one, so this gets out of hand _very_ quickly.

"This is why Facebook concentrates most of its efforts on the last category,
when someone spreads lies with the explicit intention to mislead."

The trouble is that most of the second category is actually the third
category. Just because the lies are coming from random people, your uncle Joe,
or some innocent organization sowing dissent in the US and secretly run by a
Russian, and just because they don't say, "This is what you should believe so
that the world can be run by neofascist forces", doesn't mean that the intent
isn't to mislead. Any attempt to spread lies and falsehoods via the common
viral video or meme styles IS an attempt to willfully spread lies. To assume
that much of this isn't willful is naive.

Leaving it to Facebook to decide what's intended to mislead has not been
working. The solution is not to trust anything you see on Facebook or to leave
the platform entirely.

~~~
macintux
> The solution is not to trust anything you see on Facebook or to leave the
> platform entirely.

Unfortunately neither does much good individually, because the real harm comes
from the widespread acceptance of the lies.

~~~
Someguywhatever
Who gets to decide what are lies?

Makes me think of this saying: "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is
king."

~~~
JacobJans
> "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

And yet, there are so many instances where their is no ambiguity about the
lies. They are simply bald-faced lies, and there is no doubt that they are
indeed lies. _And_ Facebook is quite aware that they are lies. _And_ those
lies get very widespread distribution on their platform. _And_ those lies have
real political consequences.

In the land of the deceived, Facebook is king. (And those who are good at
spreading lies on their platform.)

~~~
roenxi
> And yet, there are so many instances where their is no ambiguity about the
> lies.

I suspect everyone can agree there are instances where there is no ambiguity
about what is a lie and what is truth. But it seems unlikely that there is any
consensus on which instances these are, or what the truth is. If there is
consensus, then almost by definition censorship is not needed, because all the
though leaders can identify the lie easily.

The argument in favour of moderation is to build a specific type of community,
not to establish truth. The hope is that people will vote with their feet and
move to communities that favour the truth.

~~~
macintux
> The hope is that people will vote with their feet and move to communities
> that favour the truth.

People will move to communities that favor their truth, I suspect. Same reason
they typically watch the news stations that reflect their biases.

------
megous
"When asked, Facebook officials told us only immutable characteristics and
traits that people are born with warrant special protection. Being a migrant
is not such a trait, therefore freedom of speech takes priority."

What about forced displacement? There are 10s of milions of forcibly displaced
people around the world. It's not a small group compared to some other
mentioned protected groups.

If the basic idea is that you can't attack people for things they didn't
choose, this would match too.

Anyway why it's ok to attack someone for something he chose and not ok for
something he didn't choose? Choice is often based on intellect and education,
and many people don't really choose that either, even if you accept the basic
premise of choice being the main differentiator.

~~~
ryandrake
> “When asked, Facebook officials told us only immutable characteristics and
> traits that people are born with warrant special protection. Being a migrant
> is not such a trait, therefore freedom of speech takes priority."

Oddly, to illustrate this, the article compared the words “Muslim” with
“Migrant” noting one word is protected and one not. How is someone’s religious
choice considered an immutable and “born with” trait?

EDIT

This is the trouble when you start to try to “moderate” content according to
some moral, as opposed to legal, standard: you inevitably end up creating this
huge, complicated tree of rules that are often inconsistent and conflict with
themselves, need to be interpreted and argued about, and frequently require
escalation to more senior people when there is disagreement.

I’d love to see the financial justification for all this expensive moderation.

~~~
Viliam1234
> How is someone’s religious choice considered an immutable and “born with”
> trait?

If the penalty for changing your religion is death, then it is almost
immutable. And children usually don't have much choice about the religion, so
it is almost as if they were born with it.

Just playing a Devil's advocate.

~~~
megous
Yes, the world is complicated. :) But it would still not be a born with trait.
Perhaps some propensity to accept religious beliefs might be a born with
trait.

People can also say something and think a differnt thing. Also while someone
may identify with Islam, it could mean very differnt things in real terms, as
you can see from various sects and interpretations, and real world behavior of
believers. So what is really being protected?

Also, clearly if you are a ISIS member, your religion is not a protected trait
despite many of the memebers being quite Islamist, idealistic and devoted to
the ideas much more than many of the regular muslims. Your attitudes toward
religion are suddenly also not viewed as unchangeable, if you look at various
deradicalisation programs. Not by anyone, mind you, there are people who think
that all ISIS memebers should just be killed, and that that's the only way.

------
r3bl
The Facebook video in question is linked in the very first sentence, but the
yellow highlighting doesn't distinguish the link from the rest of the text. So
here's the link for the curious (in Hungarian of course):
[https://www.facebook.com/lazarjanosfidesz/videos/19566176783...](https://www.facebook.com/lazarjanosfidesz/videos/195661767832624/)

~~~
asimpletune
I don’t speak Hungarians and so I have no idea why this video would be
offensive. Can you try to explain?

~~~
bonoboTP
Here it is with subtitles (you may need to turn them on):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wEiXUanPfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wEiXUanPfg)

------
Larrikin
>Imagine the leading social network weren't facebook but vkontakte or weibo
and they imposed their own standards on billions of people communicating with
each other.

I would argue that their standards vs Facebook (which isn't that great) are
exactly why they aren't the leading global social networks with billions of
users.

------
gonmf
And rightly so. I'm surprised more countries haven't enforced rules on
Facebook, like China does. Saying like "only things that are illegal are to be
prohibited". It's insane to leave it arbitrarily to the opinion of a foreign
company.

~~~
danijelb
Why would Facebook have any content moderation obligations towards any
government? It is their private platform, their rules. A community they built
= their community standards. They can decide what content they allow on the
platform. Governments imposing content rules upon private companies is a form
of censorship. China is not a democracy. If a country doesn't like their
citizens having free and unlimited access to the internet, they can come up
with their own versions of "Great Firewall"

~~~
dexen
>Why would Facebook have any content moderation obligations towards any
government?

This argument, if applied strictly, would allow any government to meddle in
the affairs (say, influencing elections) of any other government simply by
establishing ostensibly private companies that'd perform to their wishes,
whether overtly or secretly. That being anti-democratic, there's clear need
for limiting actions of private companies.

While I am against compelling speech, I do not consider Facebook a newspaper
publishing its own editorial content, but rather a platform for publishing
third-party content. In fact, posts on Facebook are clearly attributed to the
author, which, with minor exceptions, is not Facebook itself. On the other
hand, official communications of Facebook are marked as such and clearly
delineated from users' posts. Thus preventing Facebook from deleting posts
(i.e., forcing them to let posts remain) would amount to preventing them from
performing (the seemingly arbitrary and capricious) censorship, rater than
compelling them to speak.

For me the line is clear - illegal content must be removed, legal content must
be left undisturbed, and if Facebook considers law of some country to run
counter to their conscience, do not operate in that market.

~~~
danijelb
>For me the line is clear - illegal content must be removed, legal content
must be left undisturbed, and if Facebook considers law of some country to run
counter to their conscience, do not operate in that market.

The only problem is, since the internet is free and open, whether Facebook
operates as a legal entity in a particular country or not, doesn't prevent
internet users from that country to access the services. And Facebook doesn't
have any obligations to ban IP ranges from that country. So, it's the
country's responsibility to ban traffic to Facebook.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
But the banking system isn't free and open, and facebook is in it to make
money, not to have users.

------
hunthrowaway
The comments here are mostly focused on the Vienna video so it seems the
article failed to properly explain to foreigners the other (imho more serious)
part: the whitelisting of origo.hu

It's difficult to explain in a few lines just how awful that site is. Used to
be the biggest, well respected hungarian news site until it was bought by
Orban's friends a few years ago. Since then the political columns are literal
fake news and smear campaigns against political opponents. The kind of thing
that would be (rightfully) censored by Facebook if it was posted by anybody
else. Letting the government (and only the government!) peddle this kind of
rhetoric with oversight explicitly lifted is a very dangerous and morally
questionable practice.

------
paulsutter
Is it really that hard to unfollow? Worked for me. I’ve unfollowed people for
sportsball and I’ve unfollowed people for racism. Worked for both.

~~~
maym86
In some case there is direct harm caused by the posts. Pizzagate was an
example which led to a man turning up to a pizza shop with a gun based on the
fake story and the business owners received death threats. Not everything is
as easy as just unfollowing.

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

When it comes to hate speech, incitment to do harm or lies about elections a
subset of people unfollowing doesn't mean there still won't be harmful
consequences.

~~~
paulsutter
Pizzagate was unfortunate and pathetic, but is controlling every post on the
Internet the right response?

Once censorship is in place, how do you prevent the wrong people from taking
control of it? How would you even know?

~~~
maym86
> trying to control every post on the Internet

Did I suggest this? The point is just unfollowing people as you suggested
doesn't solve the problem.

~~~
darkerside
Let me try to draw the line you're not following here. The solution parent is
outlining is assigning responsibility for actions to the users of the
platform, not is creators or maintainers.

------
chaosite
What's the difference between this and a verified account?

------
nhanq
What does the video say and why do they want it removed so bad?

~~~
stockerta
Lazar, who was a minister back then went out to Vienna and made a video that
said the city is flooded with migrants, it isn't safe and Budapest is much
better, safer and such. Oh, also he didn't feel safe in it too.

~~~
nhanq
I see. I have a female friend in Vienna, she's said similar stuff to me.
Things are getting bad there.

~~~
TimMurnaghan
Funny how it's just become the first european city to top the economist
liveability index.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45174600](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45174600)

~~~
the-dude
The migrants are very satisfied, thank you.

~~~
TimMurnaghan
nhanq is a one day old account posting fake news. Let's hope that the trolls
don't take hold here on HN too.

There are many valid criticisms of these kind of surveys, but crime, which is
the hook that the anti-migrant posters like to use, is one of the criteria -
so the idea that "It's getting bad there" is the one that needs rapid
rebuttal.

~~~
darpa_escapee
> Let's hope that the trolls don't take hold here on HN too.

They're already here. If you step back you can see how they've shifted
discussion in a lot of threads with young or barely active accounts.

