"Under the new rules, Facebook has said it will create partnerships with local civil society groups to identify misinformation for removal." - how do these "civil society groups" determine what is information vs misinformation?
I assume they will not operate in a vacuum and weigh sources according to their track record of human rights abuses. Despite attempts in recent years by abusers to convince everyone that all sources are equally bad, human history is recorded and not all organizations and governments are egregiously as bad as others
"FB has said it will create partnerships with local civil society groups to identify misinformation"
Thank goodness FB is not the real Internet. Imagine winding up on the wrong side of a secret rule-making group who marks your free speech as unacceptable.
Imagine winding up on the wrong side of a lynch mob that Facebook abets.
Actually, you don't need to imagine, this happens every once in a while in India.
If Facebook wants to be responsible for curating content on their platforms (Which they absolutely do, wrt, say, pornography, stalking, harassment, etc), then they can't shirk that responsibility, either.
My understanding of the lynchings is that they work by someone sharing a 'Billy is a pedophile' on FB/WA, the 'news' going viral, and a few hours later, concerned citizens show up at Billy's house, with axes and tire irons.
Not that different from the pizzagate bullshit back in 2016. [1]
The assumption you are making that seems so obviously wrong I am shocked anyone on Earth would make it: that concerned citizens with axes and tire irons will stay home as long as certain things aren't said. They're showing up anyway, buddy. You can walk on eggshells all you want, force everyone on the Internet to walk along with you, and they will still be out there. If your goal in life is to live as long as possible with as little violence as possible, I suggest you buy a nice farm somewhere safe and live out your years in quiet solitude. If, on the other hand, you want a rich life that is worth living, I suggest you learn to tolerate people publishing lies on the Internet and install a good deadbolt.
Are angry mobs waiting to violently attack someone because their neighbor doesn't like the color their house is painted? Is this indistinguishable from when an angry mob violently attacks someone because their neighbor libeled them?
The problem, as history has repeatedly shown, is that speech has consequences. Even simple jokes have lead to violence.
Can you seriously imagine a world where behavior and speech are restricted to that which does not cause people to get angry and potentially violent? Can you both imagine that world and also want to live in that world?
Sure, if you call for violence on FB, they can arrest you after the violence has already been triggered. That's good, if it keeps you from being able to do it again. It's better to keep it from happening the first time, though.
I think you miss my point. I make a post on FB calling for all right-thinking citizens to beat up spork12. I get arrested after the post has been made on FB, and after it has been read by too many people. Sure, I've been arrested. But you can't make people un-read it. How many people read it and think I was right, and will try to put my suggestion into action?
Note well: This is post is not an actual threat, nor is it a call to violence.
What you described is a good theoretical example of an explicit call to violence, and nobody would have any problem with illegal speech such as that being removed.
In fact, such illegal speech was ALREADY being taken down by Facebook, for it's entire history of existing.
There is no need to change any policies to cover your example.
Sure, but you're arguing a [edit: different] aspect of this than spork12 was.
To try to satisfy both of you: "Hey, everybody, stale2002 bought a Kawasaki tractor instead of a John Deere!" - in a context where people in that community have been recently beaten up for buying the "wrong" kind of tractor. It's not an explicit call to violence, but it is an implicit one.
Note well: This is also not a call to violence. I have no actual information about stale2002's purchasing habits, whether tractors or anything else, nor would I consider it grounds for violence even if I did have such information.
The problem still remains that you're ceding authority to a private body to determine a threshold of "potential for violence".
To assume that even most cases would be as objectively apparent as your example (which I will argue is not demonstrably an implicit call to violence) I think is over zealous.
> The problem still remains that you're ceding authority to a private body to determine a threshold of "potential for violence".
No, it's not ceding authority, because no one else had that authority over Facebook's private property to start with, and Facebook isn't exercising authority over anything but what it chooses to relay using its private property.
They don't say they are blocking calls to violence. They say they are going to block anything could that lead to violence, which could be anything. Anything that could potentially get anyone angry about anything could theoretically "lead to" violence as a result - that's what makes this policy so absurd.
Not in another universe within the multiverse which may or may not exist. If there are an infinite number of universes a universe must exist where 1+1 is anything you would like it to be. "The Idiocracy Universe"
The only thing that can and ought to be realistically removed is illegal speech and SCOTUS has already defined what that is... Any other attempts, while well intentioned, will probably backfire. FB seems to take one step forward and two steps back each time they try to take some moral high ground when it comes to free speech... I like the fact they recently increased transparency behind who is paying for ads - whether they are advertising fake or true info, the reader gets to decide what's veritable vs what isn't ultimately, as it should be. Now, they will "identify misinformation".. in other words, they will appoint themselves as adjudicators of what is truth (e.g. "mis-information") vs what is not... they are a medium for free speech - not a scientific, peer-review type of website where consensus kills off or approves publishing of content.
This continuous grasping at straws by FB, Twitter, google, whomever really - of determining what is acceptable in the realm of opinion/1st Amendment speech is really exhausting and will mean the death of their platforms.
There are always loud fringe groups who, unable to persuade the majority to their line of thinking, instead focus their efforts on coercing leaders of institutions to force their line of thinking onto the majority. Tattle-tales in school turn into busy-bodies on HOA boards and professional protestors outside of Twitter HQ. There is no "victory" for these people, only goal posts that can be pushed ever further until they are 6ft under.
Yeah the people complaining about how tall your grass is outside your house are not the same as the people holding twitter to account for enabling fascism.
I think "protesting in front of twitter HQ for enabling a political view I don't like" is a silly thing to do. If you don't like X (in this case fascism) I am sure there are better things you can do to stop it, like creating an alternative that those who like X would adhere to.
Correct. But how has not going by the wisdom of SCOTUS' rulings by private entities played out? Even Y Combinator agreed it hasn't gone well, or they wouldn't have bootstrapped GAB.ai at some point in the past.
Once you start looking at those effects... makes you wonder, right? Speaking of dick pics, I don't think you can post one on HN. You could do a link to one, but it'll get greyed out/downvoted..not removed, unless I'm mistaken.
You're absolutely correct. I am merely saying, for maximum coverage/attention spans, it would be prudent to go by the SCOTUS rulings, even for private entities. While that may initially turn -some- people away because of their... views, shall we say, eventually I think it will pay off in the long run and attract even more visitors than had they remained constrained by abridging the 1st Amendment on their platforms.
While I agree with your sentiment. The 1st amendment starts with "Congress shall make no law". Facebook is free to police whatever content they don't like without any repercussions in law. It is up to society "us" to police a company like facebook that is doing things we don't agree with.
exactly and I do not disagree. There is wisdom however in allowing the maximum latitude to everyone in their expression. It is my belief that the 1st amendment through its numerous evolutions, refinements and interpretations in the 200+ year history of American jurisprudence allows for more freedom of expression than what Mark Zuckerberg and his investors or Jack Dorsey and his investors can come up with....
I am certain they all disagree with me ;).
edit: the hardest thing when faced with offensive (personally to me, or someone else) content is to ignore it and let it die without a response in the case where it is legal. What was that saying? Do not feed the troll....?
Right, it us up to us to enjoy the content we want. The internet provides everything from porn to gambling to politics to hacker news and that is a beautiful thing.
There are always cases where it is hard to understand what is true and what is not. But then there are also explicit lies.
It's not hard to adjudicate that Trumps ambassador to the Netherlands is lying when he talks about politicians being burned to death in the Netherlands due to immigration. But having the claim repeated over and over still creates the impression that there is some truth to it.
And that in turn hurts immigrants and makes it harder for people to come to rational decisions.
Your reasoning basically presumes that all humans are infinitely rational and have infinite time to investigate facts (the reader gets to decide). Neither of these assumptions is true, or a useful approximation. Otherwise user interface design for programs would look extremely different.
As people have all sorts of cognitive fallacies built in, and have extremely limited time to investigate facts, we need to build (and maintain) a society that makes it easy to come to rational, reasonable decisions. The Internet has disrupted the social structures that performed this function in the past, and new ones are only slowly emerging.
well put. I am for both options existing on the internet - for people who want an AOL/Compuserve/tailored kind of internet as well as for people who like to live on the UNIX command line and peruse gopher for news :).
The 1st Amendment, which I admit I treat as the 'gospel' of free speech in these cases, allows for both. It just seems private enterprise in certain geographic areas of the world tends to skew more toward one view of the internet while leaving out the other in the cold... I'm trying to put this is mildly as I can :).
Right, so keeping the ability to host and make your own website around is vital. And there are many regions in the world where you can go to jail for your blog.
For the scope of the 1st amendment, I sometimes feel there is some nuance missing when this is invoked, as if this was the only thing written in the constitution. The SCOTUS recognizes that the right to free speech competes with other rights, and thus there are limits. You can't lie in advertisement. You can't provoke someone with "fighting words", you can't say things that are the IP of others, NDAs are honored, you can get fired for what you say on facebook outside working hours, really the list is endless.
In fact, as I just discovered, and as is very pertinent to this discussion:
In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974), the Supreme Court decided that there is "no constitutional value in false statements of fact".
> The only thing that can and ought to be realistically removed is illegal speech
No, Facebook obviously realistically can remove anything it wants. The idea that a private (and international) information distribution segment only ought to remove content that is specifically illegal under US law, and has no right or legitimate interest in removing any other content from it's platform, is somewhat bizarre.
Anyone can claim anything leads to anything. This is nothing but a blanket censorship policy for Facebook to stifle any speech it wants and claim that it could possibly have led to violence, which is entirely impossible to prove or disprove. Not at all surprising give the track record of Facebook.
Facebook is not a government entity (I can hear the jokes about that coming in 3... 2...) and therefore is completely capable of deciding what speech is and isn't allowed on its network. The actual right to free speech is not eroded in any way just because Facebook decides it doesn't want something on its platform.
Edit: This is no different than, say, a shopping mall saying that they will kick out anybody who tries to spread information that incites violence.
While I agree with you, this is a private platform and has nothing to do with the 1st amendment, which restricts govt. from policing speech, not private corps.
In PR terms we call this a classic “non concession.” It’s a diversionary, empty news announcement a company like Facebook puts out to mask bad news.
It is a higher order advanced PR technique. Only the best do things like this.
In this case they are masking the documentary about far right groups being allowed to exist on Facebook.
So the counter is to make a low value, obvious announcement to bury the documentary news or counteract it with other news.
I actually am mostly on Facebook’s side here. I think the media are generally out to get them and they deserve to ensure free speech of all kinds happens.
Let’s be clear though: This is a classic non concession to mask other news.
This is the most American comment section. Somehow the fact that Facebook might remove lies that lead to violence is objectionable on free speech grounds. That they remove pictures of nipples is somehow not a matter of great concern...
You're saying that you hold these two circumstances to be of equal importance in regards to freedom of speech?
If I have to choose one of your suggestions to put time and effort behind having properly defined by governance, I'm going to go with Facebook's authority in determining a "potential for violence" threshold.
I am saying you chose what you regard as a legitimate ground to restrict speech on private platforms.
It's not ok to try to create a platform where people don't incite violence by lying. It is ok to create a platform where people can't express anything of a sexual nature.
It's cultural of course. After all in the US it is ok to have games where you shoot prostitutes but not where you sleep with one.
Working with local communities to come up with culture-fit solutions is exactly the right thing to do. Most of the problems people seem to have with Facebook is their past attempts to apply a single concept of decorum to a global population.
It's usually fine to let police handle threats, but they can quickly spiral in places on the brink of erupting, or in populations the police aren't always good about protecting.
I hope none of you have to deal with the pain of a loved one going deep down the right-wing conspiracy rabbit hole. This isn't just people getting convinced Obama wasn't born in America. This is people going behind their spouses back to convert retirement savings into gold coins and survivalist paraphernalia. These are people who will cut off friends and family because they don't "understand what's really going on".
70 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 64.8 ms ] threadSo, subjectively. In your opinion.
I have no strong opinions on this.
Welcome to your new Hate Speech Overlords
Thank goodness FB is not the real Internet. Imagine winding up on the wrong side of a secret rule-making group who marks your free speech as unacceptable.
Actually, you don't need to imagine, this happens every once in a while in India.
If Facebook wants to be responsible for curating content on their platforms (Which they absolutely do, wrt, say, pornography, stalking, harassment, etc), then they can't shirk that responsibility, either.
Not that different from the pizzagate bullshit back in 2016. [1]
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533941689...
The problem, as history has repeatedly shown, is that speech has consequences. Even simple jokes have lead to violence.
We have good laws that cover these situations already.
no... there are laws on the books targeting threats. If you make a bomb threat you can be prosecuted.
Note well: This is post is not an actual threat, nor is it a call to violence.
In fact, such illegal speech was ALREADY being taken down by Facebook, for it's entire history of existing.
There is no need to change any policies to cover your example.
To try to satisfy both of you: "Hey, everybody, stale2002 bought a Kawasaki tractor instead of a John Deere!" - in a context where people in that community have been recently beaten up for buying the "wrong" kind of tractor. It's not an explicit call to violence, but it is an implicit one.
Note well: This is also not a call to violence. I have no actual information about stale2002's purchasing habits, whether tractors or anything else, nor would I consider it grounds for violence even if I did have such information.
To assume that even most cases would be as objectively apparent as your example (which I will argue is not demonstrably an implicit call to violence) I think is over zealous.
No, it's not ceding authority, because no one else had that authority over Facebook's private property to start with, and Facebook isn't exercising authority over anything but what it chooses to relay using its private property.
No, FB is (to continue the use of book-centered metaphors) choosing not to distribute certain books through its book distribution network.
Censorship of one's own platform is a central element of free speech.
> it's impossible for anyone to have an unbiased opinion.
That's true, but doesn't support the preceding claim.
ISPs can make the same argument against Net Neutrality.
This continuous grasping at straws by FB, Twitter, google, whomever really - of determining what is acceptable in the realm of opinion/1st Amendment speech is really exhausting and will mean the death of their platforms.
SCOTUS rulings shape lower courts abilities
Like here for example, HN can remove dick picks no problem
People are free to avoid those platforms if they don’t like the rules
Once you start looking at those effects... makes you wonder, right? Speaking of dick pics, I don't think you can post one on HN. You could do a link to one, but it'll get greyed out/downvoted..not removed, unless I'm mistaken.
We instead are saying that it would be a bad idea for them not to do so.
Facebook is free to make whatever mistakes it wants. That doesn't change the fact that it is a mistake.
Wot
I am certain they all disagree with me ;).
edit: the hardest thing when faced with offensive (personally to me, or someone else) content is to ignore it and let it die without a response in the case where it is legal. What was that saying? Do not feed the troll....?
It's not hard to adjudicate that Trumps ambassador to the Netherlands is lying when he talks about politicians being burned to death in the Netherlands due to immigration. But having the claim repeated over and over still creates the impression that there is some truth to it.
And that in turn hurts immigrants and makes it harder for people to come to rational decisions.
Your reasoning basically presumes that all humans are infinitely rational and have infinite time to investigate facts (the reader gets to decide). Neither of these assumptions is true, or a useful approximation. Otherwise user interface design for programs would look extremely different.
As people have all sorts of cognitive fallacies built in, and have extremely limited time to investigate facts, we need to build (and maintain) a society that makes it easy to come to rational, reasonable decisions. The Internet has disrupted the social structures that performed this function in the past, and new ones are only slowly emerging.
The 1st Amendment, which I admit I treat as the 'gospel' of free speech in these cases, allows for both. It just seems private enterprise in certain geographic areas of the world tends to skew more toward one view of the internet while leaving out the other in the cold... I'm trying to put this is mildly as I can :).
For the scope of the 1st amendment, I sometimes feel there is some nuance missing when this is invoked, as if this was the only thing written in the constitution. The SCOTUS recognizes that the right to free speech competes with other rights, and thus there are limits. You can't lie in advertisement. You can't provoke someone with "fighting words", you can't say things that are the IP of others, NDAs are honored, you can get fired for what you say on facebook outside working hours, really the list is endless.
In fact, as I just discovered, and as is very pertinent to this discussion:
In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974), the Supreme Court decided that there is "no constitutional value in false statements of fact".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
No, Facebook obviously realistically can remove anything it wants. The idea that a private (and international) information distribution segment only ought to remove content that is specifically illegal under US law, and has no right or legitimate interest in removing any other content from it's platform, is somewhat bizarre.
If someone makes an explicit call to violence, that is already illegal and should be covered under our existing laws.
No need to change any policies when the existing policies work well enough for stopping the obviously dangerous content.
Anyone can claim anything leads to anything. This is nothing but a blanket censorship policy for Facebook to stifle any speech it wants and claim that it could possibly have led to violence, which is entirely impossible to prove or disprove. Not at all surprising give the track record of Facebook.
Edit: This is no different than, say, a shopping mall saying that they will kick out anybody who tries to spread information that incites violence.
It is a higher order advanced PR technique. Only the best do things like this.
In this case they are masking the documentary about far right groups being allowed to exist on Facebook.
So the counter is to make a low value, obvious announcement to bury the documentary news or counteract it with other news.
I actually am mostly on Facebook’s side here. I think the media are generally out to get them and they deserve to ensure free speech of all kinds happens.
Let’s be clear though: This is a classic non concession to mask other news.
If I have to choose one of your suggestions to put time and effort behind having properly defined by governance, I'm going to go with Facebook's authority in determining a "potential for violence" threshold.
It's not ok to try to create a platform where people don't incite violence by lying. It is ok to create a platform where people can't express anything of a sexual nature.
It's cultural of course. After all in the US it is ok to have games where you shoot prostitutes but not where you sleep with one.
It's usually fine to let police handle threats, but they can quickly spiral in places on the brink of erupting, or in populations the police aren't always good about protecting.