I think it's time that as a society we agreed: if your "private" service replaces the public square, then you must run it like a public square. That means tolerating communists, fascists, black power, anti-black, anti-white, etc.
So if you start a private (in the sense of "privately run," not "secret") discussion forum and it gets to some level of size, suddenly your discussion forum can't moderate itself? Doesn't that seem a bit strange?
You might want to brush up on the rhetoric espoused by some of the black power groups. The SPLC has long considered the Nation Of Islam a hate group who preach the subjugation of whites, Jews and gays
The NoI has a lot of stupid and racist opinions. Their demands, however, have either been equality under the law, or secessionism of their people and culture from white America.
The shitbags carrying tiki torches and nazi flags, on the other hand, are trying to take America back.
Seperating yourself from another group of people is one thing. Demanding that another group of people separate from society is another. The first is an Amish movement, the second is ethnic cleansing.
If the Nation of Islam got what they wanted today, almost nothing would change for the rest of us. If the alt-right did, we'd, at best, be living under Jim Crow again.
Except you're choosing to view black-power groups through your own lens while filtering out reality. If your claims were true the SPLC wouldn't have bothered to state the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party are hate groups, both of which are preaching Black Superiority and calls for violence against whites, jews and others not like them.
Members of the New Black Panther Party believe Blacks to be "God's" chosen people who are naturally superior to all other races
>"Kill every goddamn Zionist in Israel! Goddamn little babies, goddamn old ladies! Blow up Zionist supermarkets!"
—Malik Zulu Shabazz, the party's national chairman, protesting at B'nai B'rith International headquarters in Washington, D.C., April 20, 2002
So, you've found the most batshit crazy black nationalist group, and are painting the entire black power movement, with its 60 years of history with their brush.
Compare the NBPP with the BPP. Consider which party the Black Power movement is better known for.
Whereas with white power movements, we don't need to find tiny splinter groups for examples of repressive racism. The entire bloody movement embraces it. That's its raison d'etre.
Black power is fighting for equal rights. Some of it wants its supremacy imposed upon others.
White power is fighting for white supremacy. No part of it is fighting for equal rights, because white people in America already have them, in spades.
> Black power groups are not the black equivalents of white power groups.
It's true that “power” almost exclusively means “supremacy” in the latter case and more often (but not as consistently) means “empowerment” in the latter, but there is overlap. Black supremacist groups are a thing, though not the dominant thing, in the world of “black power”.
Facebook is a gigantic company trying to earn their share price. Their moderation is a liability limiting endeavor and in that capacity it's exclusively a cost center.
Doesn't facebook's moderation rely upon someone flagging the content? (And stuff which is flagged gets heavily moderated.) It looks like she annoyed/offended a specific person who flagged her content - hence it was viewed by the heavy handed moderators. Her friends did not have the same reach as her - so their posts did not annoy anyone enough to flag them - so the moderators never saw their posts.
That was my first thought as well, but later in the article they mention a different case where the person in question had friends post the flagged content and other friends flag it.
My personal guess is that Facebook moderators are not biased as a whole, but individually. So when someone flags a post, the decision depends on the biases of the specific moderator. If that's the case, the effect could be damped by having multiple moderators review everything, but that also multiplies Facebook's cost, which they probably want to avoid.
That's a fairly deceptive title and set of claims. They're making it sound like facebook is targeting activists. (How dare they not be able to promote their message)
> At a time when Facebook is under the microscope for failing to stop harassment and the spread of fake news, it
> Doing nothing to stop hateful messages
That's how moderation works. It resolves the problem after it happens. You have to be responsible for addressing the problem as it happens.
Automated moderation does nothing to stop the second quote. You can't just ban particular words because there are places where they will legitimately be used. You'll get a claim from the otherside saying that it's blatent censorship. (As is the case with the confederate dream catcher in the article).
> “And finally, facebook decided to take action,” she wrote in a blog post. “What did they do? Did they suspend any of the people who threatened me? No. … They suspended me for three days for posting screenshots of the abuse they have refused to do anything about.”
How does she know this? If I'm not mistaken she won't get informed if they get suspended.
> If I'm not mistaken she won't get informed if they get suspended.
Well if their profile was still available and they were updating it one could reasonably ascertain that their account wasn't suspended. I'm not sure what you're getting at.
I'm making the assumption that she's not checking up on all of the accounts after a decision has been made. (Also, I'm not sure that you're updated when the decision is made)
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What I'm getting at: I don't believe she has access to the facebook equivalence of the mod logs. She/and we can only speculate what happened.
This is just the battle of freedom of speech vs the natural behaviour of humans to troll when in an "anonymous" internet environment.
The difference now is that everyone can state their opinion all the time very easily in the internet, whereas this was very hard in the physical space.
Freedom of speech in its ideal form (say whatever you like) never existed in the first place as we had many exceptions (hate speech, child porn, insider trading etc). We need to redefine what a modern internet day freedom of speech is. And in reality that isn't likely going to be very free. The grey area is very large, and should not be.
I find the article very hard to believe. It sets off warning bells earlier, but then the description of the Black Love Matters page seems to be way too crazy to believe. You mean they literally banned a page that simply posted pictures of families?
"Last year, a page called Black Love Matters, which highlighted black families, posted a picture of a couple cradling their child. The image was removed from Facebook and the page’s administrators received a message saying the picture violated Facebook’s “community standards.” Facebook also unpublished the entire Black Love Matters page."
I guess it could happen, and I have no evidence to the contrary. I know there are some really obnoxious, hateful people out there, but that seems a little too unbelievable that it brings me to doubt much of the rest of the article too. The entire article lack any substantiation of the claims, and with all the different moderators, there is going to be inconsistency, but many of the stories, if they were reversed, we immediately see the difference:
White Person: I posted something with "She's just being a nigger." in a comment and it was removed. Can you all post the same thing and see what happens?
Black Friends: Yeah. We didn't have ours removed.
The context of why says what and when is also important and I feel the article doesn't do a good job of providing that context. Some of the stories are just a little too far fetched.
This doesn't help her case either: "Pellegren has received multiple suspensions." Contrary to what the article says, it sounds like the mods are taking context into account, name the person posting has a history of making poor taste comments so they are getting a little tired of her.
UPDATE: Her post to FB that was removed has this lovely line in it: "At some point, you much come to terms with your ancestral role in creating the very concept of racism." Whites created racism? Any sympathy I might have had just evaporated.
> Whites created racism? Any sympathy I might have had just evaporated.
Yes, our ancestors created racism as it is currently practiced in the West. Chaining up an entire generation of people, bringing them over an ocean, and telling them and their grand-children (And our grand-children, so that we don't forget to remind them) that they aren't human kind of covers that.
my ancestors? no, I'm sorry, I'm quite sure my ancestors were living in shtetls in Eastern Europe and had nothing whatever to do with the Atlantic Slave Trade.
"white" as a category is just as non-sensical as "black" as a category. these are very course labels for phenotypes and say very little about a person's ancestry or heritage. When I meet a black person today, in New York City where I live, I don't know if they are the descendant of American slaves or if they are a 1st gen immigrant from Nigeria. The only sensible thing to do is treat people as individuals and judge them by their own actions.
"Not being able to use Facebook for a few days is merely an annoyance for most people, but it can have real consequences for anyone whose personal account is entangled with their professional career.
"Pellegren’s husband is a disabled veteran, and her digital marketing business is the primary source of income for the couple and their six kids. Her Facebook profile is one of the main ways she attracts new clients."
Have an actual business website if you rely on it so much. WTF people?
If you read the article carefully, what you find is that Facebook moderators appear to be focusing on instances where one race targets another.
For example, when the African American woman in the article makes a blanket post about white people being the problem and they take it down. When a white person posts it they leave it up, because they are criticizing their own race. The Kendal Jenner story in the article is the same situation.
It sounds like the moderators are human and trying to apply some human logic to it rather than enforce restrictive rules.
Again it is always tricky to figure out what mods are trying to achieve, but it seems they are only accepting criticisms of a race if a member of that race makes the criticism.
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What is inexcusable is when the woman posted a screen capture of the abuse she received via private messages, Facebook banned her and did nothing to her harassers.
> For example, when the African American woman in the article makes a blanket post about white people being the problem and they take it down. When a white person posts it they leave it up, because they are criticizing their own race. The Kendal Jenner story in the article is the same situation.
What about Sherronda Brown? The posts of the white racists attacking her were not removed. Her posts, containing screenshots of that racism (Targeted against her) were removed.
The likely explanation is that they were very widely reported (By the same people who were attacking her), and that the number of reports plays into Facebook's moderation algorithm.
Unfortunately, this will result in people of colour being silenced more frequently then white people, for far less egregious statements.
Did you not read my entire post? I said specifically that it was inexcusable that her screenshots were removed and the racists were not punished.
Also, do you know how the reporting system works? I believe most of the reviewers of reported content are actually overseas in India. Something gets reported, it gets reviewed by a contractor overseas who quickly decides whether to take it down.
If it is all algorithmic, they need to make sure it can account for harassers.
40 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 87.8 ms ] threadSize has a quality all its own.
Their history is consistently about protecting their right to exist, not the right to subjugate people of another skin color.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou...
The shitbags carrying tiki torches and nazi flags, on the other hand, are trying to take America back.
Seperating yourself from another group of people is one thing. Demanding that another group of people separate from society is another. The first is an Amish movement, the second is ethnic cleansing.
If the Nation of Islam got what they wanted today, almost nothing would change for the rest of us. If the alt-right did, we'd, at best, be living under Jim Crow again.
Members of the New Black Panther Party believe Blacks to be "God's" chosen people who are naturally superior to all other races
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou...
>"Kill every goddamn Zionist in Israel! Goddamn little babies, goddamn old ladies! Blow up Zionist supermarkets!" —Malik Zulu Shabazz, the party's national chairman, protesting at B'nai B'rith International headquarters in Washington, D.C., April 20, 2002
Compare the NBPP with the BPP. Consider which party the Black Power movement is better known for.
Whereas with white power movements, we don't need to find tiny splinter groups for examples of repressive racism. The entire bloody movement embraces it. That's its raison d'etre.
Black power is fighting for equal rights. Some of it wants its supremacy imposed upon others.
White power is fighting for white supremacy. No part of it is fighting for equal rights, because white people in America already have them, in spades.
Pretending things are as you claim they are is either disingenuous or born out of your self imposed ignorance
It's true that “power” almost exclusively means “supremacy” in the latter case and more often (but not as consistently) means “empowerment” in the latter, but there is overlap. Black supremacist groups are a thing, though not the dominant thing, in the world of “black power”.
Be careful what you wish for.
My personal guess is that Facebook moderators are not biased as a whole, but individually. So when someone flags a post, the decision depends on the biases of the specific moderator. If that's the case, the effect could be damped by having multiple moderators review everything, but that also multiplies Facebook's cost, which they probably want to avoid.
> At a time when Facebook is under the microscope for failing to stop harassment and the spread of fake news, it
> Doing nothing to stop hateful messages
That's how moderation works. It resolves the problem after it happens. You have to be responsible for addressing the problem as it happens.
Automated moderation does nothing to stop the second quote. You can't just ban particular words because there are places where they will legitimately be used. You'll get a claim from the otherside saying that it's blatent censorship. (As is the case with the confederate dream catcher in the article).
> “And finally, facebook decided to take action,” she wrote in a blog post. “What did they do? Did they suspend any of the people who threatened me? No. … They suspended me for three days for posting screenshots of the abuse they have refused to do anything about.”
How does she know this? If I'm not mistaken she won't get informed if they get suspended.
Well if their profile was still available and they were updating it one could reasonably ascertain that their account wasn't suspended. I'm not sure what you're getting at.
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What I'm getting at: I don't believe she has access to the facebook equivalence of the mod logs. She/and we can only speculate what happened.
The difference now is that everyone can state their opinion all the time very easily in the internet, whereas this was very hard in the physical space.
Freedom of speech in its ideal form (say whatever you like) never existed in the first place as we had many exceptions (hate speech, child porn, insider trading etc). We need to redefine what a modern internet day freedom of speech is. And in reality that isn't likely going to be very free. The grey area is very large, and should not be.
"Last year, a page called Black Love Matters, which highlighted black families, posted a picture of a couple cradling their child. The image was removed from Facebook and the page’s administrators received a message saying the picture violated Facebook’s “community standards.” Facebook also unpublished the entire Black Love Matters page."
I guess it could happen, and I have no evidence to the contrary. I know there are some really obnoxious, hateful people out there, but that seems a little too unbelievable that it brings me to doubt much of the rest of the article too. The entire article lack any substantiation of the claims, and with all the different moderators, there is going to be inconsistency, but many of the stories, if they were reversed, we immediately see the difference:
White Person: I posted something with "She's just being a nigger." in a comment and it was removed. Can you all post the same thing and see what happens?
Black Friends: Yeah. We didn't have ours removed.
The context of why says what and when is also important and I feel the article doesn't do a good job of providing that context. Some of the stories are just a little too far fetched.
This doesn't help her case either: "Pellegren has received multiple suspensions." Contrary to what the article says, it sounds like the mods are taking context into account, name the person posting has a history of making poor taste comments so they are getting a little tired of her.
UPDATE: Her post to FB that was removed has this lovely line in it: "At some point, you much come to terms with your ancestral role in creating the very concept of racism." Whites created racism? Any sympathy I might have had just evaporated.
Yes, our ancestors created racism as it is currently practiced in the West. Chaining up an entire generation of people, bringing them over an ocean, and telling them and their grand-children (And our grand-children, so that we don't forget to remind them) that they aren't human kind of covers that.
In short: racism and slavery existed since time immemorial. Only recently western culture started doing something about it.
"white" as a category is just as non-sensical as "black" as a category. these are very course labels for phenotypes and say very little about a person's ancestry or heritage. When I meet a black person today, in New York City where I live, I don't know if they are the descendant of American slaves or if they are a 1st gen immigrant from Nigeria. The only sensible thing to do is treat people as individuals and judge them by their own actions.
"Not being able to use Facebook for a few days is merely an annoyance for most people, but it can have real consequences for anyone whose personal account is entangled with their professional career.
"Pellegren’s husband is a disabled veteran, and her digital marketing business is the primary source of income for the couple and their six kids. Her Facebook profile is one of the main ways she attracts new clients."
Have an actual business website if you rely on it so much. WTF people?
For example, when the African American woman in the article makes a blanket post about white people being the problem and they take it down. When a white person posts it they leave it up, because they are criticizing their own race. The Kendal Jenner story in the article is the same situation.
It sounds like the moderators are human and trying to apply some human logic to it rather than enforce restrictive rules.
Again it is always tricky to figure out what mods are trying to achieve, but it seems they are only accepting criticisms of a race if a member of that race makes the criticism.
*
What is inexcusable is when the woman posted a screen capture of the abuse she received via private messages, Facebook banned her and did nothing to her harassers.
What about Sherronda Brown? The posts of the white racists attacking her were not removed. Her posts, containing screenshots of that racism (Targeted against her) were removed.
The likely explanation is that they were very widely reported (By the same people who were attacking her), and that the number of reports plays into Facebook's moderation algorithm.
Unfortunately, this will result in people of colour being silenced more frequently then white people, for far less egregious statements.
Also, do you know how the reporting system works? I believe most of the reviewers of reported content are actually overseas in India. Something gets reported, it gets reviewed by a contractor overseas who quickly decides whether to take it down.
If it is all algorithmic, they need to make sure it can account for harassers.
WHICH is why you really owe it to yourself to read this.
This isn't self-reinforcing and targeted "popularity". This is biased moderating with significant repercussions -- whether or not it's intentional.
Dear white people...
Author does not know meaning of Racism.