But we already know that Facebook excludes free speech: simply attempt to post a photograph containing bare female breasts on Facebook or a Facebook-owned property like Instagram, and it will swiftly be removed for violating “community guidelines”.
So Facebook themselves have clearly excluded themselves from the former.
Are you suggesting that the laws should be changed to limit the political freedom of some companies? If so, what would be your criteria for determining which companies this would apply to?
In all honesty, the only way a company like Facebook gets this big is through the support of the larger society that sustains them. The Internet itself is a product of that society. Everyone with a stake in that society is at least entitled to an opinion, if not an outright vote, regarding how the company operates.
This is a reflection of a larger point, which is that any sufficiently-dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a government. Especially with the introduction of Libra, that's starting to sound less like a cliche and more like an axiom. This also (should) give the rest of us more input in how the company does business.
I don't disagree with much of anything you've written there, but corporate dominance has been an issue for a long time and the impact of social media companies is trivial compared to the impact of companies that e.g. kill citizens with addictive drugs for profit, withhold life saving drugs and medical treatment for profit, hoard and reserve huge swaths of residential property for rent seeking, contaminate the water table and arable land for natural gas etc and the political proclivities of these companies is never scrutinized outside of partisan politics. I'm not saying that Facebook isn't also a problem, but it seems very much like bikeshedding to tie ourselves into knots writing new laws so that people have the right to share low-effort memes on Facebook's servers when there are so many real problems that could be solved with new laws.
When they're so big that no competition can challenge them.
My personal opinion is that Facebook should be broken up, but social media remain unregulated, since a ban on lies only rewards the most skilled liars, whose statements can fool the evaluators.
> When they're so big that no competition can challenge them.
This is pretty vague though. It also raises questions about why we don't limit the political proclivities of other types of companies that also deal in political speech (cable news, broadcast news, talk radio, public radio).
I also disagree with the idea that access to Facebook and similar platforms is fundamentally important; it's well known by now that these systems are engineered to be addictive and that heavy use of social media is associated with poor mental health, if anything we should make ad based social media platforms illegal altogether.
> My personal opinion is that Facebook should be broken up
Why? I am not opposed to the idea but I just don't see how it would improve the situation at all.
> When they're so big that no competition can challenge them.
That's what people said about MySpace before Facebook. It's also what people said about IBM, Microsoft, AOL, Nokia, and Kodak.
Big companies have a hard time changing direction. They also tend to be more risk averse, causing them to coast on their brand and network effects. Eventually they're usurped by smaller companies that take more risks and innovate better.
> Though that has more to do with potentially being illegal.
Death threats, and many other forms of hate speech, are illegal in many jurisdictions, and yet that is not used to justify a blanket ban on angry text.
> The more serious (violation of free speech) thing is political censorship
It is not obvious to me that these things are even separable; to pick but one obvious example, a topless photograph posted by advocates for an equal right for both men and women to be topless in public is clearly political speech.
More broadly, look at someone like Larry Flint. The pornagraphic is the political. The current hand-wringing over “censorship of political speech” seems terribly narrowly focused on but one fairly conservative form of speech, to the point that it’s a bit hard to take at face value.
because the people advocating for tits equality are a tiny group, while mainstream politics have wide implications. I m all for tit freedom, but facebook's lawyers have to weigh in the costs of litigation
free speech is only for popular, mainstream speech?
I don’t really care what’s cost effective for Facebook’s lawyers; we don’t have to care about that, so we should stop enabling the lie that their main concern is enabling free speech.
Costs, playing nice with established powers, not scaring away advertisers by putting their ads too near a nipple — these are their concerns, and we should stop participating in the destruction of the meaning of “free speech” by calling “a narrow spectrum of speech compatible with our current corporate goals” “free speech”.
> People judge the truth of that statement by their actions.
Which is what I’m doing?
I’m not clear what your issue is with me pointing out the inconsistency between their their new fluffy marketing and their actions, given what you just wrote.
I don’t believe there is any country in the world today for which “free speech” means that anything that can be said is legal and protected, but many people seem to think otherwise based on the name.
I was always under the impression free speech advocacy is the spirit of unlimited speech and not the literal word of law in speech. For example, I recall lots of controversy that is the deplatforming of various alt-right advocates and speakers (Sargon of Akkad for example, or 8chan, or the banning of various subreddits). And while it is literally legal for a private entity to no longer want to service parties it doesn’t find tasteful, the actual act of doing it I’ve seen violates the ‘spirit’ of free speech. I believe that phenomenon is the one being referenced.
Free speech is a value as much as it is a legal concept (and a rather foundational value in the US at least). People who don’t want to engage in discussion about the importance of free speech as a cultural value will often try to reframe the debate to be an entirely legal one, as that’s open to much less discussion.
That’s a good point that there are two separate kinds of free speech. One is the legal protections, and one is the idea of speaking to power. But when people complain that their free speech is being infringed, that necessarily means they’re complaining about the legal Freedom of Speech protections.
The latter one, being irreverent and speaking to power, is never guaranteed to be legal nor come without negative consequences or having your platform removed, so if that is the one being referred to, the feigned incredulity about Facebook taking it down is misplaced. It was always going to be taken down or fought against, if you’re going to say something they don’t like. In fact, the act is a provocation who’s goal is to stir the pot. The goal may be to shame or embarrass someone, or it might be to change policy and making things more fair, but a reaction is expected and desired.
For the other kind, legal Freedom of Speech protections, not all speech is protected. So, being incredulous about Facebook removing obscenity is misplaced here too, because removal of some kinds of things is completely within the bounds of Free Speech Protections.
Either way, in both cases, the speech is subject to community guidelines, and some kinds of speech will result in consequences you might not like. In particular, things that might be considered pornographic or obscene.
Note this is different from what Facebook might allow, and as far as I’m concerned they can make whatever rules they like and it doesn’t infringe on “free speech”. I’m making the separate point that Free Speech itself always comes with the same kind of limitations the GP comment was referring to.
I dunno seems like a very different scale involved when the other side of the world can spoon feed me and my neighbors our opinions with complete anonymity
Oh sure the syntax may be similar
The semantics embedded within our current context of FB & 1700s paranoia over invention itself? One seems ridiculously easy to game and gain global advantage. The other influenced some neighbors.
We’re at a point where the general public is being enraged by goobers who want carnage, and moderates who want to chew all the resources up, while putting on a happy face, ignore the consequences. Not much of a third option allowed when that majority controls the wealth and can easily distribute the most visible argument.
In a free market of ideas one, where we weigh all the options equally, one might think socialism would then get as much airtime. But you know fuck that cause iPhones and self driving cars are so cool, whatever if it destroys the species.
The mainstream right and left are just arguing how hard we push on the gas pedal.
I don't see it, can you elaborate? If this was a critique of blogging I could see a connection, or if the monk was criticizing people who owned printers for only producing the most inflammatory pieces at the expense of all other content, but it is neither as far as I can see.
well the concern about the monks was misplaced but the printing press actually kickstarted an entire century of schisms and religious wars and unless you're willing to just write that degree of disruption off as a minor detail the critics might have had a point.
Obviously throwing the press away would have been both impossible and inadvisable, but clearly there's a lesson here about the potential dangers of uncontrolled mass amplification of voice in a society that wasn't ready for it.
If printing press in the 15th century is the analogy, we will have Thirty Years' War ahead of us.
Martin Luther was one of the first political troublemakers in the printing press era. He used printed pamphlets to spread his message. His use of language was extremely hateful and vulgar. Martin Luther would have been perfect for Twitter or FB.
...
Martin Luther @MartinLuther
>“A natural donkey, which carries sacks to the mill and eats thistles, can judge you – indeed, all creatures can! For a donkey knows it is a donkey and not a cow. A stone knows it is a stone; water is water, and so on through all the creatures. But you mad asses do not know you are asses.”
Martin Luther @MartinLuther
>“May God punish you, I say, you shameless, barefaced liar, devil’s mouthpiece, who dares to spit out, before God, before all the angels, before the dear sun, before all the world, your devil’s filth.”
Martin Luther @MartinLuther
>For you are an excellent person, as skillful, clever, and versed in Holy Scripture as a cow in a walnut tree or a sow on a harp.”
Martin Luther @MartinLuther
>“You are a crude ass, and an ass you will remain!”
Martin Luther @MartinLuther
>You are desperate, thorough arch-rascals, murderers, traitors, liars, the very scum of all the most evil people on earth. You are full of all the worst devils in hell – full, full, and so full that you can do nothing but vomit, throw, and blow out devils!”
> So, what happens when a medium suddenly puts a lot of new ideas into circulation? Now, this isn't just a contemporaneous question. This is something we've faced several times over the last few centuries. When the telegraph came along, it was clear that it was going to globalize the news industry. What would this lead to? Well, obviously, it would lead to world peace. The television, a medium that allowed us not just to hear but see, literally see, what was going on elsewhere in the world, what would this lead to? World peace. (Laughter) The telephone? You guessed it: world peace. Sorry for the spoiler alert, but no world peace. Not yet. Even the printing press, even the printing press was assumed to be a tool that was going to enforce Catholic intellectual hegemony across Europe. Instead, what we got was Martin Luther's 95 Theses, the Protestant Reformation, and, you know, the Thirty Years' War.
> All right, so what all of these predictions of world peace got right is that when a lot of new ideas suddenly come into circulation, it changes society. What they got exactly wrong was what happens next. The more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with. More media always means more arguing. That's what happens when the media's space expands. And yet, when we look back on the printing press in the early years, we like what happened. We are a pro-printing press society.
We'll adapt to the new medium of the internet. Hopefully without a 30 years war though.
Facebook has nothing to do with free speech. Free speech is "you don't go to jail for saying something." You're not entitled to a platform for shouting out loud.
I think, when companies say they support ‘free speech’ they are adopting the stance that they will not punish their users for actions that the US government protects under the first amendment.
I see this often (including an accompanying XKCD cartoon[1]) and don't agree with it. It may be a good summary of the first amendment in the US constitution but "judicial imprisonment" doesn't define the boundaries of free speech issues. Otherwise there wouldn't be things like whistleblower laws protecting some speakers.
Does China putting pressure on the NBA to stop players from saying pro-Hong-Kong-protests things not fall under the gambit of censorship/free speech issues as far as you're concerned?
(Heck, even in terms of the US constitution, public institutions banning some symbols or items have been overruled based on first amendment grounds. So just banning a student from wearing a certain type of t-shirt is also a free speech issue.)
Seems like you and the article agree with me here (the consequences are financial, not imprisonment for the average NBA player.) And if financial consequences count as a free speech issue to you, then you agree with me that free speech isn't just about judicial arrest.
Yes, I agree with you that what is effectively financial blackmail or coercion matters. It's among the most accessible and effective tools historically.
Point remains that as a government China has considerable means and impunity at its disposal.
The fact that numerous non-state actors also do is a key extension of free-speech concerns I find poorly addressed. The NBA as a media platform (among its chief roles) is an example. FAANG similarly. There are numerous others.
This is just a slogan people keep saying, and whilst it's useful fodder for one side of the debate, I'd encourage you to question it. I'm sure you're smart enough to understand the concept of free speech outside of what is protected by the US constitution. That is what people are often talking about, and even though their legal recourse (in the US) is often limited to only preventing government censorship, we are free to have debates about what is right and wrong about allowing or censoring other kinds of speech.
Saying "you're not entitled to X" with reference to current laws is disregarding that people are actually arguing against those laws, or about situations where they don't apply. Even when people are talking about the law, some laws are unjust: quoting present law is not an argument about anything except what the law is.
I'd also encourage you to consider that the writers of the US constitution were in favour of free speech generally, and almost certainly would have tried to constitutionally entrench a broader concept of it than they did, if it were practical to do so. The decision to only prevent government censorship is a practical one - government stopping others from censoring was (is) considered outside of the role of the government, or too impractical to actually enforce. That doesn't mean the writers of the constitution thought that other kinds of censorship were ok. They just didn't think rules about them belonged in a document about the US federal government.
Finally, most countries do not have freedom of speech entrenched in their constitutions, but "free speech" is still a phrase in these places, and they are not talking about the US constitution. Free speech has historically been considered an important right in post-enlightenment societies, regardless of legal protections, and regardless of trendy people on the 'right side of history' saying otherwise. The fact that oppressed people are presently somewhat anti-free-speech is due to the unusual situation of them having friends in high places. This is not usually the case, and throwing out the ideal of free speech to the greatest extent permitted by the US constitution does a great disservice to future oppressed people who are unlikely to have the media and tech companies on their side, as well as present oppressed people who have fallen through the cracks because their flavour of oppression isn't currently in vogue.
There are natural limits to free speech. Specifically, free speech ends when it prevents free speech in others. Even then, you may have free speech but cannot force people to listen.
Not all opinions are equal and they shouldn’t be treated as such. It doesn’t quite work with free will and all.
No need for the patronizing, almost obnoxious tone. I mostly disagree with what you just said, and not for lack of questioning. Current laws or not, you’re not entitled to the attention of others, and I don’t think you should be. If you want attention, you need to earn it.
I don't disagree with you, but since the censorship and deplatforming people have been arguing about lately is the kind that prevents people from talking to willing audiences they have 'earned' already, that seems besides the point.
Censorship and deplatforming exist because companies have nothing to do with what was originally defined as free speech, and lots of us believe this is fine (including myself). If you want to take the phrase "free speech" and make it mean what you want it to mean, that's on you.
That's a provincial US-Constitutional-centric idea of "free speech".
There's more to free speech that "you don't go to jail".
In fact historically it wasn't necessarily the state that mostly got you for saying things they don't like. It was the church (a separate thing), "concerned citizen" mobs, and so on...
Losing your job, being deplatformed from platforms where the majority tunes in (and thus being relegated to fringe, not from being unpopular but for what you said), having (privately owned) shops decline to carry your work, being made a pariah, are all parts of free speech.
Some common examples of post-Spanish Inquisition cases:
Novelists like Henry Miller and Burroughs didn't have trouble just with government censorship, but also by private publishing houses that wouldn't carry their books, because "concerned citizens" would bully them if they did.
Punks in 1977 were attached, not by the state, but by right wingers and conservative citizens who didn't like their style.
Parental organizations fought whenever some album they deemed "controversial" was released, from the Sex Pistols, to Jello Biafra to Marilyn Manson (and earlier), and tried (and often managed) to have those albums deplatformed, with major chains refusing to carry their stuff because of threats...
People considered of this or that affiliation would often not be persecuted by the state (at least not directly) but be branded and lose their jobs (even though this had nothing to do with their job performance). This, back in the day, include anything from suspected communist sympathizers to black rights activists, and still does all around the world...
Also, not to mention their amplification is heavily biased in favor of content uploaded to FB. Anything that contains external links is automatically demoted, which means that among other things, photographers and video creators have an edge over bloggers, for example. This also means that a friend posting a link to their blog article about an assault encounter is much less likely to appear in my FB feed than someone's picture hating on pineapple pizza. Which is sad.
Of course it is. It is the logical conclusion of adtech colliding with our collective immaturity when it comes to deciding what constitutes being a decent human being.
Or, in other words, it is the current belief that everyone is entitled to voice and spread their opinions, weaponized by greed slash laissez-faire capitalism
There was a period where feeds were just wall to wall outrage. Literally, at trump, at obama, at random other friends on facebook. It was crazy.
Reality - life's much better getting off social media and hanging out with friends in real life - and instagram has a bit less outrage machine stuff - easier / quieter place to share pix of the kids playing and catchup with what folks are up to.
Maybe a descent in to darkness is inevitable. We’ll see.
In the mean time, let’s also take a look at the dynamics of group chats.
Their whitelist and closed off nature seems to work very well indeed.
A new set of customs and etiquette is being developed regarding who is invited, how does one exit such a group with grace, how do you remove someone? Maybe just make a new one without the annoying party?
My own view - the lack of reposts. I think reposts based on outrage probably do better then other reposts, so on facebook you can get lots of these - they are not even your friends words or research. What's really funny is when you have friends on facebook in different sides of things. I live in a very liberal area, I used to work in a very conservative area - literally BOTH sides are constantly outraged at the other.
Most recently - left friends are saying XXX. On the right it just as heated and bitter the other way YYY. Everyone in their little bubble. (To reduce the noise I'm leaving out the topics of the day).
About a third of friends on Facebook appear in my feed. It was the only way to get rid of the outrage. Now it's mostly friends and family members posting about their kids, concerts, and some travel. It's sad that so many people whose lives I'd like to keep up with have to be excluded but many people actually think reposting outrage all day actually changes the world in the way they wish it to be changed.
I’m not sure these platforms provide voice or community vs providing an avenue for those with large pockets to shape and influence opinions, on a far more personal level than before, thanks to big data and things like targeted ads.
Not an accusation but do you work for FB? I spoke to someone recently who does and they said something very similar to what you wrote. Not saying you two are the same person, but is this one of FBs talking points?
Isn't the algorithm a form of censorship in and of itself?
It decides what to show and what to hide. Yes, you can drill down to find what you want, but that will either never happen at scale or might be entirely impractical.
They can't show everything so a filter must be used. They try to show you things similar to what you have liked so you are happy, along with ads related to what you like so you will buy. I can hide/unlike/unfollow things I don't like to tune the filter. How is this complicated? Do people who hate Facebook not understand how to use it? Edit:sp
This debate centers around whether Facebook is a publisher or a carrier (like a phone service). There are some ways that Facebook inserts itself much more directly than a carrier would:
1) They control the feed algorithms.
2) They set policies around what activity is allowed by users.
3) They run ads at their discretion.
4) They control all of the application tooling, which in turn establishes what users can and can't do.
You can look at the situation as users asking for more control over those 4 points. We can do it either by breaking up the tooling and devolving more authority to users, or we can do it via government-regulated policies.
1) I can tweak what is shown on the feed to good effect
2) I don't want porn, terrorism, hate or scams on my newsfeed
3) It cost a lot of money to run and maintain Facebook
4) Apple controls apps on it's store, Google too. Control has to be put in place to prevent scams, hacks and bitcoin miners from being installed. Facebook isn't the internet. It's a safe social space for my 81 yr old mother.
> Facebook, twitter, and other social networks give people a voice and a community.
No, it doesn't. That the point. It gives people a some of curated information subset from what people they know is saying, probably out of context, and heavily biased. That's not a community, because it's not made of whole people.
They also give voice to some of your thoughts that they decide they want to. That's not voice, or at least, that's not voice to you, that's voice for them, while impersonating you.
It's not you talking on those communities. It's an impersonation of you by Facebook, with as much fidelity to the real you as Facebook deems necessary. The same applies to all the "people" you interact with there.
The problem is that people lack critical thinking and prefer echo chambers to real debate. I'm a bit guilty of it myself but I do not filter my closer friends just because I don't agree with them on social platforms, but I refuse to argue with them online either. I always invite them to a beer if they want to do that.
I have deleted all friends and everything from Facebook and I still get almost non-stop recommendations from Facebook with clickbait videos and friend suggestions for social media personalities that I have no interests in. They should not be trying to push crap on me like this and I find it disgusting.
When a company touches more than a billion kinds of the world, I think criticism—actionable or not—is perfectly warranted.
If people suspect Facebook isn’t simply an equal propagator of information, but rather has a (potentially uncontrollable) AI that is optimizing for hate and outrage, it seems both reasonable and meaningful to have a discussion around it.
“Well what are they supposed to do with all the opposing criticism?” It’s not about making people happy, it’s about responsible use of their power, and part of that is at least informed by what critics say.
Isn’t this just a natural consequence of Facebook being huge and having a huge amount of influence in the world? So naturally people are going to blame Facebook for things they don’t like that Facebook has a lot of influence on, and that will probably include people from different political backgrounds. You seem to mock that or find it ridiculous, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me. Both of those examples you give could very easily be true.
As for it being impossible for Facebook to win, well yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe we shouldn’t have any individual media companies with so much power.
You believe Facebook to be the victim, or otherwise unfairly maligned, despite it being one of the world’s most powerful and influential companies in existence?
Someone a few days ago linked to this snippet of an interview with Naval Ravikant on Joe Rogan's podcast. Their lack of differentiating themselves from publishers has put them on a slippery slope
What this snippet misses is the fact that FB, YT, G+, and Twitter determine what is presented and offered to users. Algorithm or no, their fingers, hands, feet and bodies are all over the scale.
The fact that people associate facebook and similar corporations with free speech and take the side of them it's pretty disgusting.
This article tells just one side of the story, the ad-engagement part which was told yesterday.
And no, for what is worth, techcrunch is not "the press".You don't see CNN,MSNBC or similar outlets talk against FB because it is obviously not in their interest.
Truly sad how people get blinded by Zuckerberg's charade.
Why would Facebook have anything to do with free speech?
This title sounds as "strange" as: requiring a driver license is not in contradiction with the right to travel. Well, yes, ok, but that's kind of trivial because everybody (except a bunch of truly insane people) agree with that.
In many ways, algorithms, IQ, and the internet have ruined humanity. Had Facebook recognized itself as a funny website for college students to talk to each other and not begun all these complex strategies, they’d not likely have caused such damage, and we’d all have been better off. I believe that most people, and organizations, should just set their sights lower.
Don't people know how to use Facebook? There's no outrage on my newsfeed because I've eliminated/unfollowed/hidden it. My cool friends and family are left, I'm reading some pretty interesting groups I like, and I try not to argue/provoke anyone when I make comments. This doesn't inhibit my speech, it only makes me pay attention to tone. I wish the people who hate Facebook would get off it and then talk about something else that interests them.
The problem is that this only works for people diligent enough to change their defaults or extensively filter their preferences.
And telling a platform that you’re not interested in a certain kind of ad or piece of content doesn’t guarantee you’ll never see it again. Your feedback is a suggestion, not a command.
Other problems include when you literally stop being able to contact certain entities or get up-to-date information from them without using/signing in to a social platform.
I spent 2 years trying to “fix” my feed before leaving Facebook altogether. There was no way at the time - the alg would always surface the absolute worst things that anyone I knew would post because the algorithm knew it would get the most responses.
Maybe the section of the AI devoted to you has tagged you as someone who likes outrage. Maybe you have posted some outrage stuff. My experience is opposite from yours.
You’re right it’s probably my fault for constantly clicking “dislike, don’t show more”, not the financial incentives of Facebook. That’s nice for you that it’s the opposite.
No! No, No, no! This is the myth that won't die. Just actually read Sec 230! It says, explicitly and understandably, that moderating an online community does not create a liability for user-created content. You do not have to take a "hands off" attitude to avoid liability. That's the whole purpose of Sec 230. For people to continue getting this exactly wrong is absurd.
I made no mention that Facebook cannot moderate its platform. You're right that categorizing it as user created content is more precise than saying free speech.
It might just be plain old marketing, as many people do sense a tightening of censorship (always, always with good intentions, never otherwise), combined with a declining usage.
It's PR for one reason or another, as individual rights have never been the company's top priority.
Any form of media that earns its profit from viewership and selling advertising, including broadcast and cable news and news radio, is optimized for outrage. That's what attracts the eyeballs.
That actually makes a surprisingly interesting read.
"Your firm's "Kraft Velveeta Pasteurized Process Cheese Spread" product is misbranded within the meaning of Section 403(g)( 1) of the Act in that it purports to be or is represented as a food, namely pasteurized process cheese spread..."
I agree with you, but the “algorithmic” just takes it to another level: instead of having a few channels targeted toward a bunch of groups, the targeting is at the individual level.
But the answer you get isn't necessarily the truth, because humans don't make decisions based on reason. 90% of the time, decision-making is based on emotion, and the reasoning comes afterwards to try and justify why the decision was made. Thus, when you ask the person for justification, you're getting post-hoc reasons.
There's a great book written on this - "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion"
The algorithmic part has no shame. If you're a newspaper editor and you put you put a false or misleading or unseemly story on the front page, you're responsible for it.
When the algorithm does it, it's just maximizing revenue, and there is no one to blame except the programmer that made the algorithm, who after all, just told the computer to do what the stockholders would want.
Ultimately optimizing anything solely to maximize profit is inhuman. We all have standards and values that we carry with us to work that go beyond just maximizing profit. Those are more difficult to encode in an algorithm. Without them though, the relationship of the user to the platform is exploitative. The platform does not care about the user except in a purely instrumental way. You are doing business with a psychopath.
The algorithmic part enhances the amplification. It further optimizes the outrage in a calculated way that was previously more heuristically applied. In my opinion in adds a degree of psychological manipulation that goes beyond persuasive advertising but uses personal information to tailor messages that evoke what is often detrimental to the viewer.
Facebook’s free speech is akin to aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange.
Seeing a story that outrages me probably rubs you up the wrong way as you think it is a silly, manipulative and idiotic story and this lowers your estimation of the mass media source - eg tv news or New York Times. On facebrick they hide it from you. On the tv news we allsee the samething. There's blowback for lies. There's blowback for naked manipulation.
That pressure release valve of pissing everybody else of when the media manipuates you, or a particular section of society found with clustering analysis and other statistical techniques is absent when we don't all see the same thing. Facebook wouldn't even bother showing you the lies that others find convincing because they don't know something you do. TV news can't segragate us like that. The new york times can't segregate us. Both have to stand by what they publish and broadcast. Facebook? "Not us, we didn't say it, we just monetised the lies - no we're not even telling you what lies they were, you don't even get to know what vile propaganda is out there!" That's the facebook position.
They can troll you that X is going to happen, me that X is not going to happen and Jill that everybody is talking about an irrelevant X all at the same time without blowback claiming they have nothing to do with it while getting paid for it in full.
Facebook is a vile company.
Facebook as a service also sucks. Hard.
Delete your account, it's amazing how much better you'll feel about it. You won't miss out on anything worthwhile either. Send an email to 2 or 3 of your contacts a month just chatting. Ring someone among your friends occasionally to ask how they're going - you'll get all the gossip that matters to you. Just do it.
The algorithm is optimized for emotional potency that leads to increased engagement. Outrage is just one of the more monetizable emotions the algorithm is good at.
Consider also schadenfreude, in-group signaling, etc. All of these loom large on Facebook.
Compared to traditional consolidated media companies, Facebook does have the potential to be a better medium for “speech”.
But censorship is inevitable when advertising looms so large on the platform, so inevitably many forms of speech will be suppressed, leaving only the stuff that is the most establishment friendly.
Note that Hillary Clinton just made a statement accusing Tulsi Gabbard of being funded by Russia. A logical next step would be for Facebook to pull ads that are in favor of Gabbard. In essence, major party views are intrinsically conservative and uncontroversial.
What are Gabbard’s fringe views? She opposes some of the military/warmaking that Hillary made her career supporting.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 216 ms ] threadBut we already know that Facebook excludes free speech: simply attempt to post a photograph containing bare female breasts on Facebook or a Facebook-owned property like Instagram, and it will swiftly be removed for violating “community guidelines”.
So Facebook themselves have clearly excluded themselves from the former.
This is a reflection of a larger point, which is that any sufficiently-dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a government. Especially with the introduction of Libra, that's starting to sound less like a cliche and more like an axiom. This also (should) give the rest of us more input in how the company does business.
My personal opinion is that Facebook should be broken up, but social media remain unregulated, since a ban on lies only rewards the most skilled liars, whose statements can fool the evaluators.
This is pretty vague though. It also raises questions about why we don't limit the political proclivities of other types of companies that also deal in political speech (cable news, broadcast news, talk radio, public radio).
I also disagree with the idea that access to Facebook and similar platforms is fundamentally important; it's well known by now that these systems are engineered to be addictive and that heavy use of social media is associated with poor mental health, if anything we should make ad based social media platforms illegal altogether.
> My personal opinion is that Facebook should be broken up
Why? I am not opposed to the idea but I just don't see how it would improve the situation at all.
That's what people said about MySpace before Facebook. It's also what people said about IBM, Microsoft, AOL, Nokia, and Kodak.
Big companies have a hard time changing direction. They also tend to be more risk averse, causing them to coast on their brand and network effects. Eventually they're usurped by smaller companies that take more risks and innovate better.
Death threats, and many other forms of hate speech, are illegal in many jurisdictions, and yet that is not used to justify a blanket ban on angry text.
> The more serious (violation of free speech) thing is political censorship
It is not obvious to me that these things are even separable; to pick but one obvious example, a topless photograph posted by advocates for an equal right for both men and women to be topless in public is clearly political speech.
More broadly, look at someone like Larry Flint. The pornagraphic is the political. The current hand-wringing over “censorship of political speech” seems terribly narrowly focused on but one fairly conservative form of speech, to the point that it’s a bit hard to take at face value.
I don’t really care what’s cost effective for Facebook’s lawyers; we don’t have to care about that, so we should stop enabling the lie that their main concern is enabling free speech.
Costs, playing nice with established powers, not scaring away advertisers by putting their ads too near a nipple — these are their concerns, and we should stop participating in the destruction of the meaning of “free speech” by calling “a narrow spectrum of speech compatible with our current corporate goals” “free speech”.
Which is what I’m doing?
I’m not clear what your issue is with me pointing out the inconsistency between their their new fluffy marketing and their actions, given what you just wrote.
Sure, but you can state the same opinion with words, and not get censored.
If certain opinions are forbidden from being expressed, it's a very different thing.
Sure, but that is in no sense what “free speech” means, so we should stop pretending that “free speech” is what Facebook is offering.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitation...
I don’t believe there is any country in the world today for which “free speech” means that anything that can be said is legal and protected, but many people seem to think otherwise based on the name.
The latter one, being irreverent and speaking to power, is never guaranteed to be legal nor come without negative consequences or having your platform removed, so if that is the one being referred to, the feigned incredulity about Facebook taking it down is misplaced. It was always going to be taken down or fought against, if you’re going to say something they don’t like. In fact, the act is a provocation who’s goal is to stir the pot. The goal may be to shame or embarrass someone, or it might be to change policy and making things more fair, but a reaction is expected and desired.
For the other kind, legal Freedom of Speech protections, not all speech is protected. So, being incredulous about Facebook removing obscenity is misplaced here too, because removal of some kinds of things is completely within the bounds of Free Speech Protections.
Either way, in both cases, the speech is subject to community guidelines, and some kinds of speech will result in consequences you might not like. In particular, things that might be considered pornographic or obscene.
Note this is different from what Facebook might allow, and as far as I’m concerned they can make whatever rules they like and it doesn’t infringe on “free speech”. I’m making the separate point that Free Speech itself always comes with the same kind of limitations the GP comment was referring to.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110119/05022912725/fifte...
Oh sure the syntax may be similar
The semantics embedded within our current context of FB & 1700s paranoia over invention itself? One seems ridiculously easy to game and gain global advantage. The other influenced some neighbors.
We’re at a point where the general public is being enraged by goobers who want carnage, and moderates who want to chew all the resources up, while putting on a happy face, ignore the consequences. Not much of a third option allowed when that majority controls the wealth and can easily distribute the most visible argument.
In a free market of ideas one, where we weigh all the options equally, one might think socialism would then get as much airtime. But you know fuck that cause iPhones and self driving cars are so cool, whatever if it destroys the species.
The mainstream right and left are just arguing how hard we push on the gas pedal.
Obviously throwing the press away would have been both impossible and inadvisable, but clearly there's a lesson here about the potential dangers of uncontrolled mass amplification of voice in a society that wasn't ready for it.
Martin Luther was one of the first political troublemakers in the printing press era. He used printed pamphlets to spread his message. His use of language was extremely hateful and vulgar. Martin Luther would have been perfect for Twitter or FB.
...
Martin Luther @MartinLuther
>“A natural donkey, which carries sacks to the mill and eats thistles, can judge you – indeed, all creatures can! For a donkey knows it is a donkey and not a cow. A stone knows it is a stone; water is water, and so on through all the creatures. But you mad asses do not know you are asses.”
Martin Luther @MartinLuther
>“May God punish you, I say, you shameless, barefaced liar, devil’s mouthpiece, who dares to spit out, before God, before all the angels, before the dear sun, before all the world, your devil’s filth.”
Martin Luther @MartinLuther
>For you are an excellent person, as skillful, clever, and versed in Holy Scripture as a cow in a walnut tree or a sow on a harp.”
Martin Luther @MartinLuther
>“You are a crude ass, and an ass you will remain!”
Martin Luther @MartinLuther
>You are desperate, thorough arch-rascals, murderers, traitors, liars, the very scum of all the most evil people on earth. You are full of all the worst devils in hell – full, full, and so full that you can do nothing but vomit, throw, and blow out devils!”
More: http://ergofabulous.org/luther/
> So, what happens when a medium suddenly puts a lot of new ideas into circulation? Now, this isn't just a contemporaneous question. This is something we've faced several times over the last few centuries. When the telegraph came along, it was clear that it was going to globalize the news industry. What would this lead to? Well, obviously, it would lead to world peace. The television, a medium that allowed us not just to hear but see, literally see, what was going on elsewhere in the world, what would this lead to? World peace. (Laughter) The telephone? You guessed it: world peace. Sorry for the spoiler alert, but no world peace. Not yet. Even the printing press, even the printing press was assumed to be a tool that was going to enforce Catholic intellectual hegemony across Europe. Instead, what we got was Martin Luther's 95 Theses, the Protestant Reformation, and, you know, the Thirty Years' War.
> All right, so what all of these predictions of world peace got right is that when a lot of new ideas suddenly come into circulation, it changes society. What they got exactly wrong was what happens next. The more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with. More media always means more arguing. That's what happens when the media's space expands. And yet, when we look back on the printing press in the early years, we like what happened. We are a pro-printing press society.
We'll adapt to the new medium of the internet. Hopefully without a 30 years war though.
[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...
You voluntarily subscribe on social media though. Nobody is forcing you to hear their noise
Does China putting pressure on the NBA to stop players from saying pro-Hong-Kong-protests things not fall under the gambit of censorship/free speech issues as far as you're concerned?
(Heck, even in terms of the US constitution, public institutions banning some symbols or items have been overruled based on first amendment grounds. So just banning a student from wearing a certain type of t-shirt is also a free speech issue.)
1) https://xkcd.com/1357/
That said, I find weaknesses across the board with conventional arguments and talking points concerning speech.
It really is complicated. And there is considerable previous thought, precedent, and philosophy that's been forgotten or ignored.
NBA's interest in China is at least $500 million and may clear $1 billion. That's consequence-inducing.
https://www.si.com/nba/2019/10/07/daryl-morey-rockets-china-...
Point remains that as a government China has considerable means and impunity at its disposal.
The fact that numerous non-state actors also do is a key extension of free-speech concerns I find poorly addressed. The NBA as a media platform (among its chief roles) is an example. FAANG similarly. There are numerous others.
There's lot's of soft political pressure they can apply, well short of arresting anyone but not to be taken lightly.
That's what people mean.
Saying "you're not entitled to X" with reference to current laws is disregarding that people are actually arguing against those laws, or about situations where they don't apply. Even when people are talking about the law, some laws are unjust: quoting present law is not an argument about anything except what the law is.
I'd also encourage you to consider that the writers of the US constitution were in favour of free speech generally, and almost certainly would have tried to constitutionally entrench a broader concept of it than they did, if it were practical to do so. The decision to only prevent government censorship is a practical one - government stopping others from censoring was (is) considered outside of the role of the government, or too impractical to actually enforce. That doesn't mean the writers of the constitution thought that other kinds of censorship were ok. They just didn't think rules about them belonged in a document about the US federal government.
Finally, most countries do not have freedom of speech entrenched in their constitutions, but "free speech" is still a phrase in these places, and they are not talking about the US constitution. Free speech has historically been considered an important right in post-enlightenment societies, regardless of legal protections, and regardless of trendy people on the 'right side of history' saying otherwise. The fact that oppressed people are presently somewhat anti-free-speech is due to the unusual situation of them having friends in high places. This is not usually the case, and throwing out the ideal of free speech to the greatest extent permitted by the US constitution does a great disservice to future oppressed people who are unlikely to have the media and tech companies on their side, as well as present oppressed people who have fallen through the cracks because their flavour of oppression isn't currently in vogue.
Not all opinions are equal and they shouldn’t be treated as such. It doesn’t quite work with free will and all.
There's more to free speech that "you don't go to jail".
In fact historically it wasn't necessarily the state that mostly got you for saying things they don't like. It was the church (a separate thing), "concerned citizen" mobs, and so on...
Losing your job, being deplatformed from platforms where the majority tunes in (and thus being relegated to fringe, not from being unpopular but for what you said), having (privately owned) shops decline to carry your work, being made a pariah, are all parts of free speech.
Some common examples of post-Spanish Inquisition cases:
Novelists like Henry Miller and Burroughs didn't have trouble just with government censorship, but also by private publishing houses that wouldn't carry their books, because "concerned citizens" would bully them if they did.
Punks in 1977 were attached, not by the state, but by right wingers and conservative citizens who didn't like their style.
Parental organizations fought whenever some album they deemed "controversial" was released, from the Sex Pistols, to Jello Biafra to Marilyn Manson (and earlier), and tried (and often managed) to have those albums deplatformed, with major chains refusing to carry their stuff because of threats...
People considered of this or that affiliation would often not be persecuted by the state (at least not directly) but be branded and lose their jobs (even though this had nothing to do with their job performance). This, back in the day, include anything from suspected communist sympathizers to black rights activists, and still does all around the world...
Not even that -- make a group for your business or product or band or political group, get people to sign up, and see how far free amplification goes.
Paid amplification is FB's business model for the rest.
Or, in other words, it is the current belief that everyone is entitled to voice and spread their opinions, weaponized by greed slash laissez-faire capitalism
Reality - life's much better getting off social media and hanging out with friends in real life - and instagram has a bit less outrage machine stuff - easier / quieter place to share pix of the kids playing and catchup with what folks are up to.
The lack of links? Tiny, almost irrelevant image descriptions? Barely a commenting system to speak of? Just vanity and pretty people.
It’s quite nice. And makes for a good case study.
It’s what you make of it and harder to go to shit.
In the mean time, let’s also take a look at the dynamics of group chats.
Their whitelist and closed off nature seems to work very well indeed.
A new set of customs and etiquette is being developed regarding who is invited, how does one exit such a group with grace, how do you remove someone? Maybe just make a new one without the annoying party?
Most recently - left friends are saying XXX. On the right it just as heated and bitter the other way YYY. Everyone in their little bubble. (To reduce the noise I'm leaving out the topics of the day).
There are two parts that I don't think are contradicted by this article:
1) Facebook, twitter, and other social networks give people a voice and a community.
2) If these platforms are censored in a country, it has a great effect on free speech in the country.
Now, there are some good questions related to the article to ask here:
a) Are these platforms actually a problem because of the amplification of outraging?
b) If they are, how does that impact our society?
c) Is there a way to empower people (and keep the benefits of current platforms) without increasing the negative effects as well?
Not an accusation but do you work for FB? I spoke to someone recently who does and they said something very similar to what you wrote. Not saying you two are the same person, but is this one of FBs talking points?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It decides what to show and what to hide. Yes, you can drill down to find what you want, but that will either never happen at scale or might be entirely impractical.
1) They control the feed algorithms.
2) They set policies around what activity is allowed by users.
3) They run ads at their discretion.
4) They control all of the application tooling, which in turn establishes what users can and can't do.
You can look at the situation as users asking for more control over those 4 points. We can do it either by breaking up the tooling and devolving more authority to users, or we can do it via government-regulated policies.
2) I don't want porn, terrorism, hate or scams on my newsfeed
3) It cost a lot of money to run and maintain Facebook
4) Apple controls apps on it's store, Google too. Control has to be put in place to prevent scams, hacks and bitcoin miners from being installed. Facebook isn't the internet. It's a safe social space for my 81 yr old mother.
No, it doesn't. That the point. It gives people a some of curated information subset from what people they know is saying, probably out of context, and heavily biased. That's not a community, because it's not made of whole people.
They also give voice to some of your thoughts that they decide they want to. That's not voice, or at least, that's not voice to you, that's voice for them, while impersonating you.
I'm part of several communities in both Facebook and Twitter, so I fail to see your point.
This is actually why most people use Facebook/Twitter nowadays.
If people suspect Facebook isn’t simply an equal propagator of information, but rather has a (potentially uncontrollable) AI that is optimizing for hate and outrage, it seems both reasonable and meaningful to have a discussion around it.
“Well what are they supposed to do with all the opposing criticism?” It’s not about making people happy, it’s about responsible use of their power, and part of that is at least informed by what critics say.
As for it being impossible for Facebook to win, well yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe we shouldn’t have any individual media companies with so much power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=3661&v=3qHkcs3kG44
They’re clearly acting in an abetting manner for the unethical and sometimes criminal activity that happens on their site.
If this means they are forced to change drastically as a result of this then so be it.
At this point it’s them or our democracy.
This article tells just one side of the story, the ad-engagement part which was told yesterday.
And no, for what is worth, techcrunch is not "the press".You don't see CNN,MSNBC or similar outlets talk against FB because it is obviously not in their interest.
Truly sad how people get blinded by Zuckerberg's charade.
This title sounds as "strange" as: requiring a driver license is not in contradiction with the right to travel. Well, yes, ok, but that's kind of trivial because everybody (except a bunch of truly insane people) agree with that.
It's probably a reaction to Zuckerberg's recent speech about how Facebook is about free speech (AIUI, haven't seen/read it)
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/10/mark-zuckerberg-stands-...
And telling a platform that you’re not interested in a certain kind of ad or piece of content doesn’t guarantee you’ll never see it again. Your feedback is a suggestion, not a command.
Other problems include when you literally stop being able to contact certain entities or get up-to-date information from them without using/signing in to a social platform.
Is it a defensive move against potential regulation?
- e.g. “if you regulate us, you’re taking away peoples right to free Speech”
Background: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700605/section-230-inte...
It's PR for one reason or another, as individual rights have never been the company's top priority.
The "algorithmic" part is irrelevant.
> https://web.archive.org/web/20110110185442/http://www.fda.go...
"Your firm's "Kraft Velveeta Pasteurized Process Cheese Spread" product is misbranded within the meaning of Section 403(g)( 1) of the Act in that it purports to be or is represented as a food, namely pasteurized process cheese spread..."
So it's official: Velveeta is not food!
There's a great book written on this - "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion"
When the algorithm does it, it's just maximizing revenue, and there is no one to blame except the programmer that made the algorithm, who after all, just told the computer to do what the stockholders would want.
Ultimately optimizing anything solely to maximize profit is inhuman. We all have standards and values that we carry with us to work that go beyond just maximizing profit. Those are more difficult to encode in an algorithm. Without them though, the relationship of the user to the platform is exploitative. The platform does not care about the user except in a purely instrumental way. You are doing business with a psychopath.
Facebook’s free speech is akin to aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange.
Seeing a story that outrages me probably rubs you up the wrong way as you think it is a silly, manipulative and idiotic story and this lowers your estimation of the mass media source - eg tv news or New York Times. On facebrick they hide it from you. On the tv news we all see the same thing. There's blowback for lies. There's blowback for naked manipulation.
That pressure release valve of pissing everybody else of when the media manipuates you, or a particular section of society found with clustering analysis and other statistical techniques is absent when we don't all see the same thing. Facebook wouldn't even bother showing you the lies that others find convincing because they don't know something you do. TV news can't segragate us like that. The new york times can't segregate us. Both have to stand by what they publish and broadcast. Facebook? "Not us, we didn't say it, we just monetised the lies - no we're not even telling you what lies they were, you don't even get to know what vile propaganda is out there!" That's the facebook position.
They can troll you that X is going to happen, me that X is not going to happen and Jill that everybody is talking about an irrelevant X all at the same time without blowback claiming they have nothing to do with it while getting paid for it in full.
Facebook is a vile company.
Facebook as a service also sucks. Hard.
Delete your account, it's amazing how much better you'll feel about it. You won't miss out on anything worthwhile either. Send an email to 2 or 3 of your contacts a month just chatting. Ring someone among your friends occasionally to ask how they're going - you'll get all the gossip that matters to you. Just do it.
Consider also schadenfreude, in-group signaling, etc. All of these loom large on Facebook.
Compared to traditional consolidated media companies, Facebook does have the potential to be a better medium for “speech”.
But censorship is inevitable when advertising looms so large on the platform, so inevitably many forms of speech will be suppressed, leaving only the stuff that is the most establishment friendly.
Note that Hillary Clinton just made a statement accusing Tulsi Gabbard of being funded by Russia. A logical next step would be for Facebook to pull ads that are in favor of Gabbard. In essence, major party views are intrinsically conservative and uncontroversial.
What are Gabbard’s fringe views? She opposes some of the military/warmaking that Hillary made her career supporting.