
NAACP returns Facebook donation, calls for boycott on Tuesday - tareqak
https://www.axios.com/naacp-returns-facebook-donation-calls-for-boycott-c60ef129-457d-4847-80e3-1d7fdb5764dc.html
======
tres
"...following revelations of how its platform was used to manipulate black
voters in the 2016 presidential election."

This seems somewhat misguided... I know Facebook is the whipping-boy de jour,
but it seems evident that Facebook is the biggest victim in all of this.

All of the bad press FB is getting lately... literally _years_ after events
occurred and after they've been working to rectify the issues is curious.

After all the bad press that was hammering Tesla for an extended period of
time quickly dried up (after Elon Musk showed just how far he was willing to
go to shake the short-sellers), Facebook suddenly took its place.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but it really feels like someone with a
lot of power has organized and weaponized information for the sake of
manipulating stock prices.

That doesn't have much to do with the NAACP itself, but these information
campaigns have a side-effect of modifying public opinion and sentiment.

I really kind of feel ashamed of posting this -- it seems like such a low-
value conspiracy theory, but it just seems strange to me how all this is
playing out.

~~~
npunt
FB is getting bad press because:

a) historically it's done a lot of shady stuff and gotten a pass on that,

b) it really screwed up around election time, with major / unprecedented
geopolitical and economic consequence,

c) it doesn't seem to have fully understood let alone fixed the problems,

d) it's business model is interfering with fixing these problems, and

e) it's managed this situation from a PR perspective very poorly.

All of those are facts on the ground that would suggest FB is operationally
not as solid as people previously assumed, and that it has many (possibly
inherent) vulnerabilities that are not easily fixed that add risk to the
business - risk of people abandoning it, risk of regulation, risk of being
manipulated for political purposes.

Certainly FB was _used_ by those looking to manipulate public perceptions
during the election (and since), and that makes it in a certain light a
'victim'. But they were also the creators and popularizers of this new way of
being manipulated, and thus an excuse of being ignorant of the implications is
a bit weak, especially because of how they've handled things since.

Just practically, it's extremely unlikely that independent news & research
orgs are all conspiring to manipulate FB's stock price. At some point people
stop giving companies or individuals benefit of the doubt, which is what's now
happened to FB.

This pattern of bad press you're seeing with FB is going to happen a lot in
the future with our 24/7 news cycle and rumor mill. Something will come out
about a company or individual about them doing something bad that will get a
lot of visibility. In that process a lot of their past transgressions will
come out, or be re-evaluated in a new light, and it will happen through a slow
drip of new discoveries that will keep them in the press for a while. This
will break into mainstream discourse, and it may permanently damage their
reputation. This is a pattern inherent in the mix of people/companies royally
screwing up, the existence of deep digital info trails, social media giving a
voice to every person to share juicy info, and the instantaneous social media
news cycle.

~~~
ayyyyylmao2000
Let us not forget that Facebook has enabled in a way a form of direct
democracy. Subversive globalist players without any moral compass (such as
George Soros and Hillary Clinton, whose foundation connections are being
interrogated as we type) are just angry that they lost in a long time.

George Soros frequently propagates propaganda via his Open Society Foundations
about the dangers of Facebook. Because he lost.

No wonder it is being attacked.

~~~
austincheney
> George Soros frequently propagates propaganda via his Open Society
> Foundations

I am not agreeing or disagreeing with that, but so what if he does? He is a
private person and you don't have to consume his politics just as I don't
consume his political opinions or consume any trash on Facebook. It is the
nature of liberty that people are allowed to express opinions you find
offensive.

~~~
cf141q5325
It becomes problematic if it is used to lobby for political change with
private funding as a magnifier. Once you start to pump so much money into
political movements, you can co-opt and change them. You get to drown some
currents and magnify others by simply providing infrastructure and funding. It
can be as simple as providing a speaker system to a protest and deciding who
gets to use it.

Its a question common to campaign contribution and whether super PACs are to
be considered free speech.

~~~
austincheney
> It can be as simple as providing a speaker system to a protest and deciding
> who gets to use it.

That isn't a problem. Private individuals are not required to abide by a
fairness standard when it comes to speech. Taken a step further talk radio
stations are often extremely right wing are not required to fairly convey an
alternate position. I am fine with that because as a consume I am not forced
to consume it.

~~~
cf141q5325
Multiple radio stations exist in parallel and you dont have to listen to any
of them. Once you put up one speaker system at a location, like a central park
that is the focus of a protest, you drown out everyone else. You are in
control of the communication infrastructure and bought yourself an authority
position.

The question of who is providing and controlling infrastructure is a real
threat to protest movements, as it is easily possible to co-opt a political
movement through funds this way.

We have clear limits on what lobbying is allowed to do and what kind of
interference in a democratic system through funds is prohibited. Take vote
buying as an extreme example or simply the ordinary regulations over campaign
financing. We dont have that clear cut rules for what is acceptable in the
case of non parliamentary political movements. Calling the targeted funding
and co-opting of political movements problematic is appropriate in my opinion.

------
jmarinez
Fuck Axios. If you're behind a VPN they won't let you visit their site.

To Axios: No, I won't let you follow me all around the web and I won't give
you any of my info. And yes, I will call you out for trying to exchange my
privacy over your content. Fuck you.

~~~
dawnerd
Also screw news sites that update your history as you go down. No, me
scrolling isn't me wanting to read another article.

------
Nasrudith
The article itself missed some of the meat within the senate report. Just over
being used to influence black voters is confusing for why they would boycott
them over it when essentially any black focused media could be targeted - even
lacking any lies, including of omission could be effective.

Doing nothing about voter suppression efforts however - yeah I can see why
they would be mad about that given the history of stuff like 'going to vote
when you have an unpaid parking ticket can result in being arrested and having
your children taken away from you' manipulations.

~~~
tareqak
Here is an article containing the two reports commissioned by the Senate:
[https://www.axios.com/senate-reports-russian-
interference-20...](https://www.axios.com/senate-reports-russian-
interference-2016-election-9d0daca6-1e2d-4617-9295-f8eec61c1719.html) .

------
mikece
The press and influence groups have turned hard on Facebook because the
realization has sunk in that Facebook is in a competition to the death with
them. Who needs the NAACP when social media campaigns like #BlackLivesMatter
catch on far faster and spread far further than any media campaign devised and
executed by NAACP? And the media is a willing accomplice in going after
Facebook, a company who is clearly looking to become a "trusted news source"
and media outlet in their own right.

~~~
b_tterc_p
That doesn’t make any sense. Facebook is just one social media platform.
Nobody thinks social media or viral content will disappear if Facebook dies,
so they’re not going to purposefully waste resources trying to kill it. The
media is happy to target Facebook because targeting Facebook is a profitable
move to grab attention.

~~~
mikece
The current meme is that $100K in ads on Facebook swung a Presidential
election. If that's true, why spend a billion on traditional media nationwide?
No, social media won't go away if Facebook goes away but the media have
collectively begun waging war on Facebook because they've woken up to the
reality that Facebook wants to completely take over, not just infringe upon,
their turf. Do a quick search for alternative media outlets who publish --
including regularly scheduled live streams -- on Facebook. This is an
existential threat to traditional media.

------
kop316
Those allegations are pretty serious. I am curious why the NAACP isn't calling
for an all out boycott, rather than just a one day boycott.

~~~
ars
They forgot to boycott WhatsApp.

Anyway, do you know what Facebook did here? The article only mentions Russia
doing something.

~~~
kop316
It links to another article that articulates it more.

~~~
ars
I read the linked article and it articulates nothing. It has info about
Russia, but nothing about what Facebook did wrong.

~~~
isoskeles
Facebook created itself, allowing Russia to use it to do bad stuff.

------
burtonator
I don't get this concept of returning money.

If you disagree with someone KEEP their money!

IF Satan himself gives you $1M just keep it and use it for something good.

If you give it back he's just going to use it for something evil. At least
you're using it for something good.

I mean there's the argument that now satan can now claim that he supports your
non-profit but I think you can do more good than the bad...

~~~
linuxdude314
Clearly you don't understand the concept of social signalling.

If they keep the money (even if they donate to a good cause), it allows
adversarial PACs and organizations to make claims like "NAACP is a
hypocritical organization for taking this money from Facebook". These will be
more costly in PR to counter than the $1mm donation, and ultimately harm their
cause.

In this situation, the only appropriate action is to give the money back, or
not accept it in the first place.

~~~
woodruffw
I think this is an excessively cynical interpretation: sometimes people and
organizations just return money because they think it's ill-begotten, not
because they've calculated that keeping the money will either harm their
reputation or cost them more than it's actually worth.

~~~
news_hacker
In a sense, making a public Twitter post, blog post, and hash-tag movement is
leveraging that donation, even more than it's monetary worth, to advance the
NAACP's own incentives.

So in that sense, they did indeed take advantage of the donation, not in the
first-order monetary sense, but with the resulting publicity and press that
probably surpasses the donation's intrinsic value.

Pretty good move on there part to be honest. I wonder what would've been the
public outcome of them re-donating that amount instead to one of them "Soros-
funded" anti-Facebook organizations as a "screw you".

------
baud147258
This is disingenuous. The Obama campaign had massive data access from Facebook
in 2012, but the outcry doesn't happen until the “other guy” wins?

[https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-
data-...](https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-scandal-
trump-election-obama-2012/)

If Hillary Clinton would have won, would this even be a story? It seems that
outrage is directly proportional to how much the “correct” side benefits as
opposed to the principles being espoused.

Also regarding NAACP, I remember a discussion on the efficiency of orgs whose
mandate is to fix a particular issue, and whose existence is linked to the
continued existence of the issue, leading to continually redefining the
issue/moving the goalposts/changing the scope to stay relevant.

~~~
Retra
The "correct" side is defined by the principles espoused. It's impossible to
honestly not conflate the two. This is not about political fairness as though
every political party is entitled to rule equally independent of what their
platform is.

Deceit is the Republican Party's brand. Of course there will be an outcry if
they win under that banner. Nobody would care if they lost under it.

~~~
chillacy
Why is deceit the republican brand? Seems like a fairly partisan statement.

~~~
Retra
Any statement other than "all parties are identical" is partisan. It's not a
problem to say that they stand for different things. That's the whole point of
them.

Deceit is the Republican Brand for the same reason the color red and elephants
are the Republican Brand: they regularly use it to identify themselves.

~~~
chillacy
I’m not even republican but that seems like an insane statement, for
reasonable interpretations of “deceit” and “represents”. Like, is this on
their website or are you labeling it? To be charitable let’s say you’re
reading between the lines.

Is this like people claiming the democrats stand for “welfare queens and
social decay”?

~~~
Retra
Insane is an overstatement, don't you think?

Let's not nitpick vocabulary and miss the point. If Clinton won the election
using Facebook's data, Republicans (who see democrats as deceitful) would be
outraged at that deception leading to an election win. So the idea that this
is a Democrat-driven manufactured partisan outrage is misleading -- it is
outrage based on the _perceived_ unfairness of using deceit to win elections.

You don't need to read between the lines to see Republicans as deceitful.
Trump (and pretty much his whole campaign team apparently) have been lying
nearly constantly for the last two years. That's why it's their brand: the
deceitful in a very public way. You don't have to read between the lines. It's
written right on the lines. If you're instead looking for the truth to be
dictated by their website or something, I don't know what to tell you.

------
yunzo
Is the NAACP relevant in 2018?

Also why is Facebook donating to an openly-biased organisation? Seems weird
from my (European) point of view :/

~~~
tareqak
Yes, the NAACP is still relevant in 2018 because the US still has problems
with racism in 2018.

~~~
thatoneuser
We do, but it’s a broader problem than simply “minorities incur racism”.
Racism manifests in all directions and while it’s valid to have support for
minorities, it is nonetheless divisive that our society only takes racism
seriously in one direction. All humans face turmoil and struggle because of
societal implications, racism simply being one of many. It’s not that the
NAACP is wrong or pointless to exist, the problem is that as a society we
should try to alleviate the suffering and injustice for all humans rather than
grouping people by the millions and thinking that that macroscopic approach is
going to solve our problems.

~~~
arthur_pryor
> We do, but it’s a broader problem than simply “minorities incur racism”.
> Racism manifests in all directions and while it’s valid to have support for
> minorities, it is nonetheless divisive that our society only takes racism
> seriously in one direction.

this implies to me that you believe racism against white people is as much of
a problem as racism against minorities. i think this is an absurd claim to
make, and i think there is ample concrete evidence in the form of both
statistics and anecdotes that shows that racism is much worse for people of
color (and yes, in particular, black people).

racism against white people is not a serious problem. at this point in our
history, we need no organized effort to combat it.

> All humans face turmoil and struggle because of societal implications,
> racism simply being one of many.

i don't see how this implies that we should not specifically fight racism.
should all problem solving be labeled at only the most general level? should
we not have organizations dedicated to fighting racism against minorities
because it's only one of the many problems a human might face in the world?

~~~
thatoneuser
As a white person who has been the direct target of racism - physical and
emotional abuse, systemic oppression, social isolation, etc, I hope you can
understand that what you are saying is very painful to me. You say that
because the suffering of people like me is a minority case (the irony), that
my desires for _all_ humans who have been wronged to receive support are
negligible. I can tell you that writing this comes at no small expense to my
mental state. I have lived with the pain that you would likely attribute to a
minority. In fact for much of my life I was a minority.

I won’t compare my severity to others, only acknowledge it exists and that it
has devastated my life to this point in various ways. I cannot trust society.
I cannot trust my partners. I cannot trust my bosses and coworkers (who knows,
maybe that’s a perk). I lose many relationships with people I deeply care
about because I grew up having to protect myself, and that meant never
allowing myself to grow attached to someone less they turn on me too.

I’m not writing this to you to convince you to change your mind. I’ve learned
long ago that people who can’t conceive of white people being victims of
racism, and who refuse to acknowledge their needs, are not going to change
their minds. They will only dig and dig until the white victim is broken
enough to not voice their concerns. At least, that has been my overwhelming
experience. From strangers to friends to romantic partners. Everyone who can’t
entertain these thoughts and who immediately jump to “where’s your evidence?
White people aren’t victims!” - they don’t want a conversation. They want to
validate their long held beliefs about how racism “really works”.

I don’t write this for you, I write this as a form of catharsis to myself and
to hope that I can be strong enough to improve my situation and help others
who are marginalized but rejected. I have cried the entirety of writing this.
Having this relentless pressure for defending the idea that whites are the
victims of racism too is agony.

You claim “Racism against white people is not a serious problem”. Every time I
have to fight this I relive those experiences. Every time I have to go back to
those memories to articulate myself, it awakens that pain. But I won’t stop
talking about this pain because stopping means that racism against white
victims, the disregard and disbelief of their struggle, will continue
unchecked and likely grow.

That is not acceptable. Racism in any form is not acceptable. All humans
deserve a fair and healthy life. And there’s no fucking reason that in the age
of big data and globalized computational efforts that we can’t do better than
lumping people into groups of tens of millions and saying “well that’s all the
better resolution we can get”. It’s irresponsible. It’s evil. And it’s so
terrible that that is the world we have decided is acceptable. Care about all
humans. Not just the ones that make you feel good to care about.

~~~
hermitdev
Yes, discrimination against whites exists.

I got pulled over by Chicago Housing Authority close to 20 years ago.
Austensibly for not using my turn signal while changing lanes, after I watched
the same CHA vehicle run a red light without signals.

White kid, out of state plates on his way to cram & take a final his senior
year at a Southside university. Only time I've been written a ticket by one
officer while the 2 other in the CHA van apologized. I was threatened with
arrest on campus! Why? For refusing to answer where I work, which they have
business knowing, anyway, and certainly not pertittent to a minor traffic
violation.

Also, when they pulled me over...yeah, my signal was still on.

~~~
thatoneuser
I’m sorry that happened. It’s horrible to be a target of the system. It’s
doubly painful when no one will believe or appreciate what happened, or even
flat out deny it happened. Dissonance is a hell of a drug.

