That's just totally false, the Oversight Board was created, funded and structured by Facebook and therefore does not meet the definition of independent. It's about as "independent" as DoubleClick is of Google.
From what I understand, the foundation is funded by Facebook directly, but it's unclear what kind of obligations are legally/contractually required by that funding. Of course FB can always pull funding completely, but that would be a bit blatant.
Pretty stacked deck of certain types. Having experts independent of facebook only works if you provide a fair diversity. If everyone drinks the same cool-aid the process for selecting these experts becomes the overriding issue.
How were these people selected? Do we have a matrix on their ideology? Is that an acceptable balance?
The board is full of law professors, human rights activists, and even one former PM, and their funding is irrevocable. I would give them time to see if their reputations generalize.
Ok but they've got the former Prime Minister of Denmark next to the Vice President of the CATO Institute.
Get a handle on the knee-jerk skepticism and cynicism and look into it yourself and make a principled argument for whether it's satisfactory or not. Just spitting out your first reaction isn't helpful.
Why on earth should Facebook get the benefit of the doubt here? They’ve assembled some gaudy resumes, ok. Is there any historical track record for a board like this providing a meaningful check on a monopoly? On a company majority controlled by one person? Give me a break. This is Zuckerberg making a show at self regulation to try and forestall real regulators coming after him. Happy to be proven wrong, but Facebook has not earned trust here.
The whole point is that you can't just stick with a knee-jerk reaction like "OoH, a PoLiTiCiAn!" Use your actual brain.
This particular politician was the prime minister of Denmark until 2015, and in 2015, Denmark was ranked third out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index. Another politician is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who ordered the assassination of reporter Jamal Khashoggi.
I do think Helle Thorning-Schmidt lends them some credibility, and not because she's "a politician."
Yes Facebook has done good work in reputation purchasing for their board.
I’m sure they all mean well. But I’m going to assume the board is for show until they do determine something Zuckerberg doesn’t like, and it gets upheld.
What checks and balances exist on the board? What mechanism does the board have to ensure a sufficient diversity of ideologies?
I've seen news outlets describe the Oversight Board as a "Supreme Court" of sorts. With the US Federal Judiciary, there's a mechanism by which judges are appointed by democratically elected bodies (setting aside the debate around how different elected bodies are composed). As a result, we have some modicum of ideological diversity in the Courts; you have originalists, "living Constitutionalists", and everything in between. The balance experiences shifts every few decades, but by and large it's remained a balanced body.
If the Oversight Board really is a "Supreme Court", how can we trust that its composition will be made up of the right balance of perspectives? If the board members elect new board members, what happens if the board members become increasingly homogenous and create an endless negative feedback loop of self-selection[1]?
I'd encourage you to read my comment in full: over the long run, the balance has swayed, but it's never remained ideologically homogenous in perpetuity. Until 2017, the majority of the Supreme Court was "living Constitutionalist". Now the majority happens to be "Originalist". The only reason we see this ebb and flow over a 200+ time horizon is because there's a system in place to elect judges by the other 2 branches of government.
In contrast, the Oversight Board appears to function like a hypothetical Supreme Court in which the sitting members appoint new members. Imagine, if the 2021 US Supreme Court did that, do you think that its ideological balance would ever shift? Imagine if the 1999 US Supreme Court (majority of the opposite ideology to today's) appointed new members. Do you think its ideological balance would look like the one it has today?
If anything is "pure fantasy", it's the idea that the members of the Supreme Court are partisan ideologues as opposed to jurists that have truly fundamentally different ideas of how the judiciary ought to function, in good faith. It's exactly that kind of diversity of opinions that has resulted in the Supreme Court enjoying the highest approval rating of any institution in the Federal government: https://news.gallup.com/poll/316817/approval-supreme-court-h...
> I assume rest of the people on that committee are ideologically biased.
but you haven't actually checked have you? There is _actually_ a reasonable diversity of thought on that panel.
For there to be a range of thought, there needs to exist people who's world outlook is different and or abhorrent to yours. thats how we represent diversity of thought.
Sounds like you've done the research, and I'd genuinely love to learn more about the board. Do you have some specific examples of board members whose ideologies could be reasonably construed to be sympathetic to Trump (or at the very least, sympathetic to free speech absolutism)?
In what way do you mean this? The classically conservative/libertarian/1a absolutist "people should be able to say whatever they want and the government cannot meddle", or the current republican "the government should regulate companies do to prevent them from criticizing the president" free speech absolutism?
That's an odd dichotomy, because the overlap between those two groups is much larger than you might think.
There's a common trope thrown around that "the first amendment only applies to the government"...which is obviously true and nobody credible actually believes otherwise. The debate at hand is about the principle of free speech. That is to say, the so called "current republican" argues that the same ideals that justify guaranteeing the freedom to express oneself in public, free from government persecution, ought to be applied with private companies that host the "public square". The First Amendment isn't relevant here, because obviously there's no law that prohibits a private company from censoring. The issue at hand is an ought question; i.e. should a purportedly open platform provided by a private company censor political speech? In theory, the same arguments one would make in defense of maintaining the First Amendment (in its current form) in our Constitution also applies in defense of advocating that a private company hosting a "public square" platform ought not to censor political speech.
So circling back to the original question: we now have this Oversight Board which ostensibly has a diverse array of "experts" who we expect to weigh in on complex cases (a "Supreme Court" of sorts). The question is, how diverse is this board? Does it include anyone that might advocate what I laid out above? A couple other commenters provided examples (thanks!), but it's an important question that bears repeating. I'm also not sure how the system ensures that the pool of experts remains sufficiently diverse over time as members retire.
You're making a mistake. The boards charter isn't to set facebooks policies, but to ensure that Facebook is enforcing them consistently. Facebooks policies aren't free speech absolutist in the second sense, so it doesn't much matter. Advocating for what you did above isn't on the charter because the board accepts that Facebook has moderation policies as a premise of ensuring that it follows those policies.
To use a legal metaphor, fb policies are a constitution and the board is a supreme court. Facebook can amend it's constitution however it likes, and so there is no such thing as am unconstitutional law.
> The boards charter isn't to set facebooks policies, but to ensure that Facebook is enforcing them consistently.
Sure, and in theory the Supreme Court's function isn't to set new laws, it's to ensure that the government is enforcing them consistently and accurately. In practice, however, it's become the epicenter of a debate around whether it should actually be responsible for setting new standards and laws via interpretation, especially when the Legislature doesn't do what some people might want.
That's the issue at hand: what's to prevent the Oversight Board from making ideologically influenced rulings which contend that more heavy-handed suspensions are actually consistent enforcements of the existing policy, thereby adding new de jure restrictions on speech via precedent? That's the fundamental question.
So while you're correct that Facebook's moderation policies aren't by default "absolutist", you still want sufficient representation of gadflies on the Oversight Board to ensure that more restrictions aren't added via precedent. Perhaps that gadfly is an "absolutist", or perhaps they're something else. My question is: how do we make sure that contingent continues to exist as new members are appointed? There exists a complex system of checks and balances that go into appointing SCOTUS justices, which is how we've gotten to the point that the SCOTUS continues to be seen as a referee rather than a rule-making body (and as a result, enjoys its high approval rating). What's the equivalent analog for the Oversight Board?
> In practice, however, it's become the epicenter of a debate around whether it should actually be responsible for setting new standards and laws via interpretation, especially when the Legislature doesn't do what some people might want.
Yes, and this is the mistake you're making in reasoning: we do this because it is exceedingly difficult to modify the US constitution. Facebook has no such limitation. If the oversight board, for example, tried to interpret the existing policies in a speech absolutist way to force Facebook's hand, Facebook could simply change the text of the policies, equivalent to a constitutional amendment.
The value of judicial activism is far lower when the constitution is effortlessly fungible. When facebook modifies its policies, that is equivalent to an amendment to the constitution. If a gadfly tries to interpret that change in a way that Facebook dislikes, they can just clarify the constitution the next day.
You can see how this impacts the Board's rulings, they're almost always formed as requirements that Facebook clarify its policies further.
> Perhaps that gadfly is an "absolutist", or perhaps they're something else. My question is: how do we make sure that contingent continues to exist as new members are appointed?
But this has nothing to do with whether someone believes that Facebook should be able to moderate people's speech. An unflinching free speech absolutist who believes that no entity should be capable of moderating speech would be wholly incompatible with the oversight board, as they'd need to concede things about moderation to even accept the oversight board's validity as an arbiter of moderation decisions.
Also I do want to take a moment to mention that
> There's a common trope thrown around that "the first amendment only applies to the government"...which is obviously true and nobody credible actually believes otherwise.
Is easily found to be untrue, there are a number of sitting senators and house members, as well as tons of state representatives who are pushing for (trivially) unconstitutional laws that regulate tech companies in violation of the first amendment. The most recent example I saw was the Florida law that exempts companies that operate amusement parks.
> You can see how this impacts the Board's rulings, they're almost always formed as requirements that Facebook clarify its policies further.
If that's the case, then the Oversight Board doesn't actually serve the purpose that the Supreme Court does, and your analogy there is inaccurate. In fact, if Facebook can simply unilaterally "change its constitution" when the Board issues an undesirable ruling, then it is much closer to the GGP's characterization of "One department of the megacorp confirms a decision made by the other department". In fact, if one might attempt to find an accurate analog in real world governance, another commenter pointed out that it's more akin to Iran: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27050948
"In theory, the Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts. However, all candidates for membership at the Assembly of Experts (including the President and the Majlis (parliament)) must have their candidacy approved by the Guardian Council, whose members in turn, are half appointed unilaterally by the Supreme Leader and half subject to confirmation by the Majlis after being appointed by the head of the Iranian judiciary, who is himself appointed by the Supreme Leader."
> An unflinching free speech absolutist who believes that no entity should be capable of moderating speech would be wholly incompatible with the oversight board, as they'd need to concede things about moderation to even accept the oversight board's validity as an arbiter of moderation decisions.
I respectfully disagree. As long as the unflinching absolutist doesn't have the final say as a single individual, the unflinching absolutist serves the purpose of pulling the board in the direction of permissiveness (i.e. the principle of free speech). This is not all that different from the purpose that activists serve in society writ large, as you pointed out when you mentioned judicial activism.
> If that's the case, then the Oversight Board doesn't actually serve the purpose that the Supreme Court does
Yes and no. Ensuring that Facebook is transparent with their policies is valuable. The OB prevents Facebook from lying to users about what its policies are in practice, so there is oversight that ensures that the de facto and de jure policies don't veer apart. That's still very much what the supreme court does, and very much not what the Iranian Assembly of Experts does.
It is the case that the OB is relatively less powerful than the Supreme court because the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of Facebook are one and the same, and so relatively far more powerful. But it still provides a semblance of an independent judiciary.
A lot of its power comes in keeping facebook honest and accountable to users. A facebook that cannot lie about its policies is easier to hold accountable.
> As long as the unflinching absolutist doesn't have the final say as a single individual
I think this is akin to saying that a Supreme Court justice who believes that the law should be that the first amendment should apply to Facebook would be an asset to the court. That's true only if that's the outcome you prefer. Its terrible for the legitimacy of the court if someone's values are antithetical to the policies they're purportedly interpreting.
As long as the OB functions in the way that you just described, it is not that. It is quite literally "One department of the megacorp confirms a decision made by the other department", and the fact that it's comprised of academics and experts (per the GP commenter) is just lipstick on a pig.
> I think we're aggressively in agreement about one thing: the OB is actually not the US Supreme Court, it's the Iranian Assembly of Experts.
I think if you've concluded that from my prior comment, you're not reading what I've said with any open mind. Because I explicitly stated the opposite.
I think its also very clear that in practice "one part of the megacorp confirms the others" isn't how the OB has operated so far. There are cases where the OB has suggested FB adopt more aggressive polices, and cases where it has suggested it adopt more lax ones, and cases where it has told facebook that it wasn't acting in accordance with its policies. For example this one where, to continue the judicial metaphor, the OB remanded the case back to a lower court, noting that a "permanent suspension" was unconstitutional. Facebook can now have the lower court issue a different ruling (and then perhaps have that ruling appealed to the SC), or it could open itself to criticism by changing its policies to allowing a "permanent suspension", whatever that means.
> I think if you've concluded that from my prior comment, you're not reading what I've said with any open mind. Because I explicitly stated the opposite.
You more or less admitted it in the following statement: "It is the case that the OB is relatively less powerful than the Supreme court because the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of Facebook are one and the same, and so relatively far more powerful". That's essentially how Iran works today, and its judiciary is the opposite of independent.
Nobody ever sets out to create a dysfunctional judiciary, it's just extraordinarily easy to create a system that trends toward rot in the long run. Likewise, in most countries where independence of the judiciary is a foreign concept, it's not because they didn't attempt to set up an independent judiciary, it's because the structure doesn't ensure an independent judiciary in the long run. At the end of the day, that's what a "Constitution" is. It means "structure".
> I think its also very clear that in practice "one part of the megacorp confirms the others" isn't how the OB has operated so far.
Correct, and I'm making no comments here about how the OB has operated so far, I'm trying to understand the structure of the system to try and predict how it might operate in the future. Throughout my line of commenting here, you'll notice that I'm asking about the checks and balances underlying the OB and how its members are appointed. I think the composition of the board, as it exists today, appears (mostly) reasonable. However, the mechanism by which new members are appointed (at least as I understand it) leaves much to be desired. When such a body is comprised almost entirely of people that ideologically align with the corporation it aims to check it becomes a sign of how the OB might operate in the future, and from what I can tell, there's no check preventing this from happening in this system that FB has created. In the long run, as judicial systems go, the OB appears to lean much more toward the Iran side of the spectrum rather than the US side of the spectrum.
> You more or less admitted it in the following statement: "It is the case that the OB is relatively less powerful than the Supreme court because the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of Facebook are one and the same, and so relatively far more powerful". That's essentially how Iran works today, and its judiciary is the opposite of independent.
But I didn't admit this. The OB is an independent court that Facebook has the power to (effectively) ignore. That's not the same as the Judiciary being not independent.
Most of the rest of the world thinks Trump is actually insane. It's probably getting quite difficult to find someone who doesn't, and isn't a white supremacist.
Fwiw, the "insane" tweet is something quoted by the tweeter, which is usually not an endorsement; people quote tweets of things they disagree with all the time. The actual text of the tweet reads "And while Trump uses Venezuela to distract attention from the "Russian plot," Maduro uses Trump to increase repression." That's a far cry from thinking him insane.
>In theory, the Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts. However, all candidates for membership at the Assembly of Experts (including the President and the Majlis (parliament)) must have their candidacy approved by the Guardian Council, whose members in turn, are half appointed unilaterally by the Supreme Leader and half subject to confirmation by the Majlis after being appointed by the head of the Iranian judiciary, who is himself appointed by the Supreme Leader.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Leader_of_Iran
I'm completely surprised actually. The bigger news is that they didn't let him back on because he's worth so much money to the social media companies.
The oversight board is supposed to be independent, and we know how that goes. It was assumed it would do what's best for FB financially, which is let Trump back on.
" I'm completely surprised actually. The bigger news is that they didn't let him back on because he's worth so much money to the social media companies."
Facebook doesn't need Trump. They're going to be making billions regardless.
They also have to deal with the current US government, where Trump and his supporters' fortunes are on the wane, and a lot of powerful people (of whom Trump has made enemies) are questioning Facebook and other social media platforms for giving Trump a megaphone.
Of course, there are also Trump supporters who want the opposite, but politically they just don't matter as much right now.
In the current political climate, the surprise would have been their letting him back on.
> "It is not permissible for Facebook to keep a user off the platform for an undefined period, with no criteria for when or whether the account will be restored," it said in a statement.
I'm glad to see this. Twitter and Facebook both use terms like "permanent suspension" in a silly attempt to avoid the term "ban". They should be honest about the penalty.
If you think the Oversight Board is a sham, it's interesting to examine the individuals who choose to accept an invitation to serve on it.
What drives these individuals? Would they agree it's a sham - a "plausible deniability shield", or might they believe it is something more virtuously independent and efficacious?
What does each individual gain or stand to achieve from their participation?
What do the answers to these questions tell us about Facebook's power?
What do the answers tell us about how society works?
"consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform"
Does this make sense though? We don't much care about some drunk fool in a bar spouting racist hate. otoh a cult leader with millions of followers, we do care about that.
It would be far better if Facebook just said: “he tried to undermine democracy in the home country of our employees, so we banned him because we don’t want that”. This charade just leaves them open to people calling them hypocrites in the future.
Hate to break it to you, but most people call them that now. Zuck funded democratic positions for the election, removed relevant content to the election (hunter Biden laptop, senate intelligence report, etc), then banned the then sitting president.
wonder how this is going to play out if Trump decides to run again and more states adopt Florida style regulations against banning political candidates
I'll bite, I down voted because you seem excited about the inevitable clash between laws that are almost certainly unconstitutional/ill conceived/partisan, and social media companies.
It seems like a gigantic waste of time, at best, to try and enact and enforce those laws. Also, it's going to open a gnarly can of worms when someone weaponizes them by running for office to get themselves unbanned from a platform.
One could argue that the spirit of the first amendment is being violated given a) digital speech is the most(only) form of speech that matters today, and b) digital speech is monopolized. However, to me personally, the most interesting aspect of this whole thing is what will happen next
IMHO, the first five words make no sense without rest of the sentence. It is like Knuth quote about "root of all evil".
"The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Note that "abridging the freedom of speech" is preceded by "or", so consequently, "Congress shall make no law" also must apply to "abridging the freedom of speech" or else the sentence makes no grammatical sense. To interpret it as you do would be to violate one of the canons of construction.
I pasted it from the US Congress site. Anyway, no matter how you cut it, it does not say Congress shall outsource all freedom of speech decisions to a private monopoly and its highly partisan oversight board.
I agree that they are unconstitutional, but public accommodation laws are theoretically unconstitutional in the same way, by the same amendment, and provide precedent. So their flagrancy is no guarantee that they will be overruled.
Here's a current Supreme Court justice making that argument:
“Even if digital platforms are not close enough to common carriers, legislatures might still be able to treat digital platforms like places of public accommodation. Although definitions between jurisdictions vary, a company ordinarily is a place of public accommodation if it provides ‘lodging, food, entertainment, or other services to the public … in general ... Twitter and other digital platforms bear resemblance to that definition.” -- Clarence Thomas
And Clarence Thomas also believes that the doctrine of incorporation is incorrect, so the Bill of Rights doesn't actually encumber state or local governments in any way. The other 8 justices on the Supreme Court and pretty much the rest of the legal profession disagrees. Note that no other justice signed onto Thomas's opinion here.
Even if you were to agree with his opinion in full, you'd still find these state laws to be in violation, since they would be preempted by §230 in federal law, and the Constitution affirms that federal law supersedes state law wherever the two conflict.
Depends if you see organizations as persons with rights or not. I'd hardly say that anyone's rights were trampled on if an "association" with almost 3 billion people sharing content like Facebook is regulated a bit.
The white elephant in the room here is section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If that was to be repealed things like the possibility of being liable for defamation on the site would level the playing field.
The way it currently is, there is not a check and balance in the system and it has allowed one side to gain a lot more power which is a bad thing. While those on that side feel they are on the "right" side, that power imbalance has corrupted that side like any form of absolute power tends to do.
> "operates as an independent entity, although its wages and other costs are covered by Facebook. It is made up of journalists, human rights activists, lawyers and academics"
Not sure how one can be independent and yet get a salary. They're basically no different from regular employees.
Depending on how it is set up, I could see them being considered independent. If Facebook set aside the money and legally sheltered it from their own influence via a trust or something, then that could be considered fairly independent.
Given that the board is made up of people that much better jobs than being on the FB oversight board, I don't think that losing this side gig is a particular incentive for them to deciate from theor standard ethics.
While I get what you're saying, it's also a pretty cynical view of things especially if they're quasi-independent. People can make ethical judgements independent of (especially) a non-full-time paycheck.
Within six months of this decision, Facebook must reexamine the arbitrary penalty it imposed on January 7 and decide the appropriate penalty. This penalty must be based on the gravity of the violation and the prospect of future harm. It must also be consistent with Facebook’s rules for severe violations, which must, in turn, be clear, necessary and proportionate.
Maybe they were referring to the other politicians that have actually made calls to violence, like Maxine Waters, and have not experienced any consequences for their actions.
Twitter has been doing well since its Trump ban. Facebook probably benefits as well.
Theory: it is more profitable to increase engagement of average users, who want nothing to do with the decline of the working class and the Republican party, than it is to amplify a bunch of extremists (still profitable) who turn others off from the platform.
I really admire the way people in leadership positions in the West came together to dash Trump’s chances of re-election. From the much needed tighter controls on social media, and the steadfast refusal to hand his campaign any cynical wins by reporting on Biden scandals, to the constant trickle of damaging leaks from executive branch offices and the selective prosecution of his allies, even the careful timing of the vaccine announcements, or the ability to get 700 CEOs and activists on a Zoom call to game out (‘fortify’) the election, it was a truly awesome display of civic cohesion. Biden didn’t even need to campaign, in fact he didn’t even have a platform - his major policies were wisely left to be unveiled after the election. This is the playbook that needs to be adopted going forward if democracy is to have any chance of survival.
He made every point about the manipulation of the system in order to achieve an outcome that was not based on the a rational review of the facts at hand.
Are we able to see public video (or transcripts) of the discussion that lead to this decision, or are we only given the decision? Not that I would expect any actual transparency from Facebook...
Why would Facebook, as a private entity, be required to provide such? Airlines aren’t required to provide similar when they ban a customer from flying, nor corporations when they ban a patron from their stores (for whatever reason).
Do companies make their discussions or adjudications public without the law requiring them to? I have never heard of this, even with Bridgewater (who records everything internally). Trying to understand where someone’s expectation comes from.
This decision wasn't made by a company, it was made by an "independent" oversight board. You could expect such an organization to be more transparent to show that they truly are independent.
I think the argument that corporate rights are unassailable when it comes to censoring people from monopoly or near-monopoly platforms is a little disingenuous.
I don’t mean that you can’t make the argument, I’m just not sure it’s a thing that anyone but the staunchest free-marketeers actually believes.
I’m actually very left leaning and pro regulation and making this argument. Without any law or regulatory requirement, platforms will not do this willingly.
It sounds like you are arguing that we shouldn't pass a law requiring transparency (and providing some legal recourse) in decisions to deny access to public products/services by dominant companies
I suspect you meant to just point out that until such a law is passed, we are unlikely to see transparency.
Counterpoint: the board is supposedly “independent” from Facebook so Facebook’s feelings on transparency are, theoretically, irrelevant and the board is, theoretically, free to disclose minutes, discussion, etc.
Of course, over here in reality, the word “independent” is quite a bit of a stretch. I give it about as much weight as Facebook’s claims they “value user privacy”.
For anyone more curious about the oversight board, zuck did a series of podcasts a while ago where he talks about different things concerning Facebook direction. One of them was about his ideas and goals for the oversight board, specifically. It seems like a good idea but I don't trust him to do anything at all in good faith. I got the impression it's Facebook version of shoveling money to Mozilla so you have something to distract regulators with. https://about.fb.com/news/2019/06/mark-challenge-jenny-marti...
It's not really a customer service thing. It's staffed by law professors, activists and human rights people, all, I assume, very well paid. It's more a check on high level things like the idea of filter bubbles.
One of them was about his ideas and goals for the oversight board, specifically.
Isn't the board supposed to be independent of Zuckerberg? Now that the board is created, his ideas and goals for the board should have no bearing on it, right?
Couldn't say. As far as im aware they choose what cases to take up independently. I doubt they have a blank check to just start doing whatever they feel like, though. They still have a mission statement designed by him.
It's one thing to get something wrong in a story, it's another to actively make things up and present them as news. NY Post is not worth wiping your shoes on, let alone reading.
But they were suspended for what seems to be accurate reporting on the existence of a laptop that used to be owned by Hunter Biden, and which contains a lot of information that could have been interesting to voters in the 2020 election cycle.
Was I downvoted because (a) the laptop doesn't exist, (b) the laptop wasn't Hunter Biden's, or (c) it didn't contain any information that might be interesting to a voter in 2020?
Seems like (b). I can't really find any evidence with proof a laptop owned by Hunter Biden actually existed and was somehow found in a pawn shop, given to Rudy Giuliani, then to the FBI, found to be filled with "evidence", then totally suppressed. It's all such a ludicrous story with no real proof that people (like you) who talk about it tend to get dismissed. I'm generally for dismissal of the conversation like this (downvoting and hiding it) because generally it tends to turn towards more stories with little or no evidence and doesn't really bring anything new to the table.
That being said, I find it funny that people want an exciting story about a forgotten laptop when it's generally well accepted that Hunter Biden accepted a job he wasn't qualified for in a foreign country. For me that's pretty clearly nepotism at best and harming the interests of your own country at worst, and displays a clear lack of judgement. But Americans like a conspiracy theory...
Network vs nation-state update: the network is a charade, as the messages passing over it are filtered and 'boosted', distorting information beyond any humanly recognizable form.
It turns out that the people who moderate the network wield unimaginable power.
If you can memory-hole a president of the United States, is there anyone on earth that you cannot completely dominate, in whatever channel or manner you chose to manipulate?
"If you can memory-hole a president of the United States, is there anyone on earth that you cannot completely dominate, in whatever channel or manner you chose to manipulate?"
With the possible exception of 9/11, the Trump administration is probably the most significant political event of the 21st Century so-far. Nobody and nothing can memory-hole that, no matter how much power they have.
I worry about the power companies like FB wield, but I find this a tad exaggerated. FB and Twitter =\= the network. I don’t see how kicking someone off FB and Twitter means they’re effectively “memory-holed”. Almost all past presidents had no access to them and did ok.
Facebook is the defacto public square of the US, at least during a pandemic where social media is the only socializing many are going to do. This is an extremely pernicious situation for American freedoms, if it's this easy to prevent a politician from speaking, especially someone so prominent then what hope do western freedoms have against rising oppressive forces like China?
> A Twitter spokesperson told POLITICO in a statement Tuesday that sharing content from Trump's new site — "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" — generally "is permitted as long as the material does not otherwise violate the Twitter Rules."
> But, the spokesperson said, sharing posts from the site will break Twitter's rules against ban evasions if users try to imitate Trump's account and their "sole intent is to replace a suspended account."
So they're effectively saying you can only link to it if you disagree with it.
I think they are only moderating against bots that solely retweet everything posted to the site. A real user can post the statements and pundit in whatever direction they want.
> If you can memory-hole a president of the United States
So whilst I understand your point of view, I think there is wider context that needs to be factored in here.
That aside, A network provider needs to enforce its own terms of services equally. In practice nobody does this, but Twitter and facebooks inaction for clear violations of their terms of service undermines their points operating fairly.
Facebook failed to act when Trump and others (of all political styles) decided to lie about voting, the mechanics of voting, and validity of voting. That is a clear violation of its community guidelines. It turns out that there are secret rules for politicians (basically they can do what they like.) This is wrong
Twitter failed to uphold it's ToS when allowing trump to issue threats to use nuclear weapons on north korea.
Had the ToS been applied equally, lots of politicians and pundits would have been kicked off years ago.
The issue is fairness. We accept the law, because on the face of it, its applied equally. As soon as that facade drops, people begin to reject it.
> It turns out that the people who moderate the network wield unimaginable power.
Yes, and this is nothing new. Just look at the power that news barons had. before that pamphleteers. In reality freedom of speech in the broadcast sense only applies to the rich, or the friends of the rich.
> Facebook failed to act when Trump and others (of all political styles) decided to lie about voting, the mechanics of voting, and validity of voting.
Just like members of another political party did 4 years earlier, but they weren't given any warnings or badges or anything. I wonder if it has something to do with that company management is more closely aligned with that party. /s
I don't have a horse in this race, but the lack of objectivity in Trump haters is striking even from the other side of the ocean. Hatred can cloud reasoning, I guess.
You're adopting a very dismissive tone for what seems like a reasonable position. If you believe Trump is uniquely dangerous (disclosure: I do), why couldn't you have a reasoned, objective belief that social media companies need the tools to keep him off their platform? If someone comes to me with an undisputable argument that suchandsuch principle means he has to be allowed on Facebook again, I consider that to be an argument against the principle, in much the same way as I'd reject a principle that proves we can't enforce laws or can't block spam.
Social media companies have every right to ban Trump just because they can. But they should be honest about it: he is their political enemy and they don't want him to spread his message.
Instead, they engage in an elaborate hypocrisy, inventing rules and procedures that are only applied to him and are only used to silence him. It is clear as a day that they don't apply the same standards to other politicians, especially their allies. And to me, few things are as disgusting as such hypocrisy. Shameless bias in reporting (to either side, while pretending to be 'objective') comes close, but not quite.
But I don't think that actually is an honest statement of their motives. Many of Facebook's political enemies have active Facebook accounts, and use them to spread messages Facebook doesn't agree with.
But those other political enemies aren't in the same position of power as Trump. It could be argued that Facebook's motivations are to ensure the presidency and congress are under their political tribe's control while giving the maximal voice to the other side so that they do not lose all those customers who disagree with their political views. It gives them all the benefits of aggregating power for their political tribe while minimizing loss in income and corporate value.
I don't really know how to engage with a claim like this. You could argue a lot of things - but are they true? It seems extraordinarily unlikely to me that Facebook would have banned a President Marco Rubio or President Ted Cruz.
Why do you believe Trump is dangerous? CNN did nothing but lie about him and give endless coverage to rampant speculation. Literally everywhere there was any doubt, they brought on "experts" to exploit doubt and never gave Trump the benefit of any of it.
The "emporer has no clothes" moment for me was when after a dozen or so appearances by Adam Schiff on CNN, MSNBC etc that he had seen proof that Trump was a russian asset, he presented zero evidence during the early 2020 impeachment trial. There are a lot of liars in politics and I wish more people would admit their side has their fair share of them.
The reason I believe Trump is dangerous is that, after he lost an election, he started making constant public demands for the results to be nullified, interspersed with occasional declarations that he had definitively won the election and intended to remain in power. I agree that many prior criticisms of him were speculative or untrue, but it seems clear that he was prepared to install himself for a second term by any means available.
thats my point. Facebook allows politicians to opt out of the "community guidelines" which I dislike intensely. Even if I agree with a particular politician.
> Just like members of another political party did 4 years earlier
What were those lies? There was a foreign influence campaign. There was a bipartisan confirmation of that fact in the Senate. There were suggestions of vote manipulation (based on foreign actors accessing voter roles), but I don't recall any accusations being leveled. Many people thought Trump was an illegitimate president. There was a peaceful change of power. Obama showed up and handed over the reins.
The recent elections went much further. "Stop the steal" is pretty strong language. Trump called out particular state elections as having short-counted votes for him. There was wild speculation about counting efforts and voting machine manipulation. People stormed a congressional meeting confirming the outcome. Trump continued to attack our election processes and refused to participate in the inauguration.
Rofl. A few thousands dollars bought ads that influenced the election, oh wow! If it was the US citizens who voted, they are free to listen anyone they want. Or you think that US citizens are too stupid to be allowed to judge for themselves, and should be guarded from 'wrong' information? (Of course, we can trust Facebook to decide which info is right, and which not)
People are not so immune to propaganda campaigns. Yes, I believe many are stupid. I also believe they should be allowed to judge for themselves. Not everything is worth considering or even being exposed to though. Part of knowing is being aware of who the messenger is.
In any case I'll ask again. What were these lies from Democrats? I'm aware of very few lies about voting, voting mechanics, and the validity of the 2016 vote.
Looking back in fact I see Trump at that time too claiming voter fraud before the election. He claimed to have won the popular vote after due to illegal voters. Yet he did very little in power to affect these issues then claimed so again.
> In any case I'll ask again. What were these lies from Democrats? I'm aware of very few lies about voting, voting mechanics, and the validity of the 2016 vote.
Start with a basic search and visit first few links:
OK, I see the similarity in the word "steal". It mostly ends there though. Hillary points out a number of events that affected how the public perceived her with a belief that those perceptions were based on untrue things. This doesn't have much to do with our voting, voting mechanics, or the validity of the vote itself. She still conceded.
> Facebook failed to act when Trump and others (of all political styles) decided to lie about voting, the mechanics of voting, and validity of voting.
To address each of your incorrect points:
The FEC considers voting from one state to another state after moving to be election fraud. That happened thousands of times.
It appears that Dominion Voting Systems, used in 29 states, is owned by the CCP. (They were banned in Texas because they didn't clarify ownership, which they consider to be a FEC violation.)
Poll station staff have admitted to using voting machine admin screens to "correct" voting selections, with no oversight.
> Twitter failed to uphold it's ToS when allowing trump to issue threats to use nuclear weapons on north korea.
It's the President's decision as CIC when to use nukes. N. Korea flies ballistic missiles over Japan, one of our closest allies. Xi has threatened the US twice with nukes in 2020, and N. Korea is their vassal state. Not sure what your point is, or where you get your nonsense from.
My point being that I don't think it is invalid to discuss election results or not believe in them. We have a legal process to hear these complaints for a reason.
> If you can memory-hole a president of the United States, is there anyone on earth that you cannot completely dominate, in whatever channel or manner you chose to manipulate?
Exactly. The power to make someone invisible to others feels like something out of Black Mirror. Everyone claiming that Presidents (or others) did just fine before the Internet and social media is missing the point. Relevance, visibility, and existence are all concepts that are only meaningful in a relative sense. In a world where the vast majority of information seen by humans comes from large digital platforms, being banned in cyberspace but visible in meatspace effectively means you are blocked from society, since attention is largely given only to information on these giant tech platforms.
Glenn Greenwald also had a great write-up on the incredible power these platforms wield, which is far greater than most governments even (https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congressional-testimony-the...). In this article, under subsection #2, Glenn reviews the various world leaders who responded publicly to American social media banning Trump as an unacceptable and ominous event.
Good. Leaders of terrorist, fascist insurrections should not be allowed this kind of public platform, nor should businesses be required to carry speech from the worst among us. I hope Facebook is successful in justifying the ban in the 6 month timeline they've been given by their oversight board.
Will they ban reposting anything a former president has to say? Will ISPs block his website. Is Trump going to prison like Navalny so he can't run in the next election? They went after Rudy recently.
Trumps already repurposed "The Big Lie" as his own catch phrase for the last election. Half the country believes the election was rigged with the help of big tech and lying media. If the Arizona audit confirms wide spread fraud. Then basically the USA is no longer a democracy.
The current regime in the US capital is surrounded by the military for their own protection. Which Tells me they still don't feel secure in their power. Usually that translate to violent suppression of their political opposition.
We should all be terrified and our government should do something. If it’s not too late already.
Zuck funded democratic positions for the election, removed relevant content to the election (hunter Biden laptop, senate intelligence report, etc), then banned the then sitting president.
You can call his statements “incitement” but the context of the statements matter. It’s actually protected 1st amendment speech and he didn’t call for outright violence (to me it appeared to be trying to diffuse the crowd - because he said “remember this day, but go home in peace” - but again not relevant).
we also need to call the riots the summer before burning part of the White House propriety an “insurrection”. Or when the cavanaugh hearing was broken into, etc.
I’m not condoning any of it, the root concern and the point I’m trying to make, is that the government should be defining it, not some committee hand selected by a clearly bias person monitoring and controlling all our thoughts and communication channels.
>We should all be terrified and our government should do something. If it’s not too late already.
Before the hivemind greys you out of existence...
I'd agree that it's a real issue, the more pernicious problem being not censorship but the deep understanding of voters and the ability to (for instance) nudge an election in a desired way, but there's really not much new about this.
Imagine the power that newspaper barons used to have 100 years ago. Practically the only information available to the public, hugely influential in their reach, filled with political bias, the Hearsts of the world could start or stop a war.
People build such incredibly strong internal models, often tribal, atop a mere candyfloss of direct knowledge of a matter that someone will always take advantage of that attack vector. It's as if humans were designed to either be flagellants or part of a conquering army.
Huh. I didn't even know that Trump was on Facebook, I should get out more.
Looking at this, I don't know what the justification for banning is but like most political decisions I guess you don't want to watch the sausage getting made.
Future historians will look back at the brilliance of building near-monopoly platforms by inviting one and all for free, ignoring copyright, doing a build-out at a loss, selling personal information, winner-take-all network effects, and then applying a POV to the whole works. Personally, I'm attracted to this view of the Facebooks of the world:
> I downvoted and flagged you because I don't have time to figure out what you're talking about. If you have something to say, say it.
Thank you very much. I'll bite.
But you have the time to unroll this so called 'conversation' and not bother reading the grandparent's comment. Your 'explanation' is completely irrelevant to the point.
If I have to partially self-censor certain words because this whole 'conversation' (If you can call it that) cannot remain civil or erupt into a flamewar due to extremely politically charged folks like yourself immediately reacting to certain keywords then I'll continue to do just that.
> I mean, '(D..O....S)'? We're not children here
Good. Maybe you're smart enough to fill in the blanks yourself? I'm not bothering to help those politically sensitive users flagging everything they disagree with as some sort of thought crime.
>Maybe you're smart enough to fill in the blanks yourself?
I'm not, and I have the same problem with the GP comment, which I also downvoted (but didn't flag). Perhaps the problem is that many people on this site are not versed in the minutiae of US politics?
And, I must add that, despite posting at some length, you still haven't explained what you're talking about
So as is so predictable the moment this "oversight board" gets a controversial case they decide to wash their hands of it and throw it to FB in a game of hot-potato. I guess if anyone fears for their personal safety the safest option is the path of least resistance.
> The Board argued that Facebook had essentially issued "a vague, standardless penalty and then [referred] this case to the Board to resolve".
Yes, that's the idea of your existence. FB wants YOU to DECIDE on cases it may not be able to itself, you know, your entire job?
"Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities" - Not at all, they want to know what you think to make an informed decision, the entire purpose you exist.
> Having clear rules that apply to all users and Facebook
No, no and NO again! There needs to be rules much stricter for those in high places in society - the president is not an "ordinary" user and should have much stricter rules to adhere to, as should be expected of elected officials.
What BS and a waste of time this "board" is when they refuse to do their job.
>> Having clear rules that apply to all users and Facebook
> No, no and NO again! There needs to be rules much stricter for those in extreme places in society - the president is not an "ordinary" user and should have much stricter rules to adhere to, as should be expected of elected officials.
I'd argue for the reverse. The statements of a political figure must be evaluated in as positive a light as possible. Otherwise you end up with every single statement they make being grounds for removal (e.g., "We need to fight against the special interests!, oh no, he's suggesting we fight!).
There's a reason the statement "acting presidential" exists. We generally hold people in power to a higher standard in this country, and rightly so. "We need to fight against special interests" has no context. If the preceding 10 minutes was talking about the civil war - then yes I would be extremely concerned that the President went from talking about war to starting a "fight" with someone.
If the previous 10 minutes was talking about financial reforms, then IN CONTEXT, the president is talking about a very different kind of fight.
I have no time for people who try to dodge responsibility by claiming the context of a statement doesn't matter, on the flip side I have no time for someone who takes a one-sentence snippet out of context to try to hang someone out to dry either.
IMO that's the problem with what I can only describe as the 'twitter generation' we're currently experiencing. Everything is a 140 character snippet and context is completely lost or discarded.
Presidents have always acted unpresidential but the difference is that Twitter and TV didn't exist then. Lincoln was notorious for using profanity, more than a few (Including Jackson) killed someone in a duel. While some presidents have been more controversial, and outspoken than others, the idea that there is a "well mannered" presidential archetype is a myth.
also, the issue with the access hollywood tapes wasn't that it was "locker room talk" that got public, it was that what he said was morally pretty disgusting. people were mad about what he said, not the manner or forum in which he said it
"while on the record" The problem is that he wasn't "on the record"... he was secretly recorded.
Meanwhile, the other side backs actual calls for violence from people like Maxine while clutching pearls over 6 hours of mostly peaceful protests in the capital.
Trump says mean things? bad things? OH NO! he's so much worse than democrats and "peaceful activists" who have caused billions in damage and killed many people.
The last few decades saw the Global oligarchs lie to get the US into wars for the middle east which resulted in genocides. I’m looking specifically at Libya, Iraq and Syria. This was done with lies but with the president acting “presidential”.
Between a president that wears a smile while systemically destroying countries for the sake of the petro dollar, and a peacetime president saying mean things on twitter, I’ll take the latter.
profanity isn't a real conduct issue, though, unless the president is using it in speeches or in diplomacy in such a way that it makes the country look bad.
and I doubt many people who dislike trump would accept jackson as an archetype of acceptable presidential behavior.
I tend to agree but there are exceptions such as the Philippine foreign minister, Teddy Locsin, who told the Chinese Navy to "get the fuck out" of their waters via Twitter.
Acting presidential went out with the Clinton administration- it was widely commented on at the time (see the commentary around him appearing on Arsenio Hall), but the media loved the cachet/ attention too much to let it get beyond the Sunday morning talking head shows.
I spend too much time on r/politics.. It's mostly people getting outraged together about contextless headlines, quotes, soundbites, articles, and etc. Mostly.
Isn't that just proving the point? Powerful figures should absolutely be more careful when using words like "fight" out of context because a certain percentage of people may very well misinterpret that as a call to violence. The platform evaluating it in a certain way doesn't change what the rest of the audience is going to evaluate it as.
> Isn't that just proving the point? Powerful figures should absolutely be more careful when using words like "fight" out of context because a certain percentage of people may very well misinterpret that as a call to violence. The platform evaluating it in a certain way doesn't change what the rest of the audience is going to evaluate it as.
No, no, no! The answer to idiots misinterpreting words literally isn't to dumb down our speech. That would be double plus ungood.
It's too bad politicians don't have a way to express their policy views to everyone in as much detail as they need, spanning as many hours as it takes. Oh yeah, they do LOL.
I wonder how long it'll be until we have the first "big brother" politician that has web cams in their office and is transparent about every decision they've made?
>The answer to [less knowledgeable people] misinterpreting words literally isn't to [simplify] our speech.
Yes, it is? For the biggest example, Have you ever done child care? Kids may not understand whatever complex metaphor you're trying to use, they're not "idiots" for being that way, that's your responsibility as the adult to explain what you mean to them or use a simpler phrasing. Some kids may not even be ready for the explanation and you'll have to wait until they're older to use the complex phrasing. Yes it's unfortunate that for some this pattern continues into adulthood but they're also not "idiots" for being that way, not everyone can be an English major.
I don't think the use of a word like 'fight' should be treated differently for powerful figures/politicians - it feels a bit arbitrary. Why not treat Facebook or Twitter as a platform that in aggregate has that degree of influence and power, and ban all uses of the word 'fight' across the entire platform? Think of it like what Apple did when banning the 'pistol' emoji across all their operating systems. Why does it matter whether one politician does it or if ten thousand activists do it - after all, in 2020 the latter group incited a lot more violence than Trump is alleged to have incited.
My perspective is that these efforts to ban speech or speech that includes "human emotion" (like 'fight') would be a step too far for everyone. Right now those rules are being applied to only one side (the right), and so others (on the left) are deeming this censorship acceptable. This is quite evident if you look for all the instances when Democrats used the word 'fight' (https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/trump-team-plays-videos-of-dem...).
> a certain percentage of people may very well misinterpret that as a call to violence
But this is why our society is built around individual, personal responsibility. Those that follow a call to violence are still, solely, responsible for their actions. Our justice system charges those individuals that engaged in criminality on Jan 6th, not Trump. Why should these massive tech platforms be any different in determining who they censor or ban?
Yet the people who are most angry about calling for a "fight" are the same ones that defend much worse from the likes of Maxine Waters...
The platform evaluating rules for Trump while allowing worse from others - in power or out - is the problem. Examples exist everywhere of much MUCH worse than Trumps non-calls for violence... yet he's the only one to get banned and have a Crusade/Jihad held against him? Says more about the hypocrites that hold double standards than it does about Trump - who's the same bombastic blowhard he's always been.
There are just so many instances of left-leaning politicians inciting, encouraging, or supporting criminality, that there's no defense for the one-sided enforcement of moderation by Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, and the rest of them. I have a list below of articles I dug up from just two minutes of web searches. There are substantially more instances than just these as well, but none of these people are banned, nor is their content censored. We see the same one-sided enforcement with fact-checking, which has been slowly degrading into partisanship as well. These days I often see fact checks with the label "missing context", that aren't really a "fact check" but cast doubt on a claim typically from a moderate or right-leaning voice.
Gee, considering how many times you've tried to play your "Actually, the real villain is Maxine Waters!" card in this discussion, maybe you should enlighten us as to what contextual calls for actual violence she made. I, for one, would just love to see your sources.
It's a double standard though. Maxine Waters recently told George Floyd demonstrators to "get more confrontational". Pelosi defended her and said it wasn't a call to violence, and Twitter didn't ban her, despite George Floyd protests having a history of devolving into looting/violence. Trump said "And we fight, we fight like hell. If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." and Pelosi said that was incitement of violence and he got banned from the internet.
So... who gets to decide what counts as incitement or not? Apparently whichever party has the largest influence over the mainstream media/social media companies.
We generally punish culpable people in more senior positions more severely. Mafia bosses get bigger sentences than low-level street thugs. In the aftermath of WW2, high level Nazis received death sentences.
I don't think "treat everyone on Facebook exactly equally" is a reasonable standard.
> Otherwise you end up with every single statement they make being grounds for removal (e.g., "We need to fight against the special interests!, oh no, he's suggesting we fight!).
That seems to be the case in this situation. The President called on people to show up, not to riot. If the same standard was applied universally this would have a chilling effect on all protest.
This should be unnecessary to say but just in case HN thinks this is political advocacy: I personally dislike Donald Trump.
Government positions are on the frontline of the policy making debate and the execution of it, paired with how humans communicate imperfectly, it's doomed to be controversial. If anything we should give more leeway to politicians to express themselves in areas of contention.
We in fact already do that, just not uniformly. The media run defense for one side while distorting and assuming* the worse of the other. We have plenty of examples of the media covering the exact same thing but coming to different conclusions based on the political leaning.
It's so tiresome to point this out and get immediately gaslighting replies.
Totally agreed. Look at Teddy Locsin, top diplomat from the Philippines. He's sick and tired of naval incursions by his ambitious neighbor so he went on quite a vulgar rant against them.
How about we don't allow politicians on social media at all? Let them use their own official websites to communicate with the public. No commenting or replying allowed. They should not be allowed to edit old posts, televised and recorded political speeches should be archived and kept on the website... and all of their media should be kept up on that site forever.
There's literally zero need for politicians to go on Twitter or Facebook at all. They should only be allowed to have written communications via official channels with official statements. Everybody knows where to go to read the official statements. Then they can't accuse anyone of censoring them. There's nothing stopping people from posting links onto Twitter or whatever other SM you want to use.
Whether or not that would be better for society, it would very much violate constitutional freedom of speech. There is no "how about we don't allow" in this case. Or rather, the way people would have to do that is through a constitutional amendment.
It would also set a bad or ambiguous precedent. Are TV, radio, newspapers off limits too? If so, what about the annual State of the Union address to the nation? What about the (yes, small) group of people who don't/won't/can't use the internet?
It also wouldn't really help all that much: As you said, nothing stops normal citizens from posting links: similarly, nothing would stop them from posting to SM everything their favored politician writes on their official site. It might stop the specific politician from posting stuff, but that just means it would take a few extra minutes to be posted by someone else.
Completely agree. Their whole statement is completely bizarre IMO. As you state, the ENTIRE PURPOSE of this board was (or at least should be) to act as arbiter in these cases where there is really no right answer - Facebook is guaranteed to get pilloried (as they already have) no matter which side they come down on, so at least having a semi-independent board to make these decisions should keep them as neutral as possible.
On the other hand, I think it also highlights the reality that the US has deep, unbridgeable divides now that really nobody wants to touch, even if it's their job to do so.
I agree it's time for the "board" to do their job... and wish they'd do the same job for those calling for violence - and doing so - for years before and after the "capital riots"...
IE: Why isn't Maxine Waters banned everywhere? She's ACTUALLY called for more destruction and had it happen... compared to Trumps "call" which specifically said "protest peacefully".
This is all a waste of time and the hypocrisy is astounding... rules for thee but not for me. Wokeness at its deepest levels of hypocrisy.
I have no idea why you put the riots in quotes when that's what they were _at best_. Trump was talking to an audience immediately before the same individuals surrounded and stormed the capitol. His speech was at best divisive and contained many euphemisms, if not straight calls to violence by using words like "fight."
Why are you playing this "what about x" game? The comparison is apples to oranges, and yet here we are.
* And Rudy, you did a great job. He’s got guts. You know what? He’s got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican Party. He’s got guts. He fights, he fights.
* For years, Democrats have gotten away with election fraud and weak Republicans. And that’s what they are. There’s so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they’re out there fighting. The House guys are fighting. But it’s, it’s incredible.
* And you have to get your people to fight. And if they don’t fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight. You primary them. We’re going to. We’re going to let you know who they are. I can already tell you, frankly.
* Republicans are, Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It’s like a boxer. And we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder.
* But we’ve done it quickly and we were going to sit home and watch a big victory and everybody had us down for a victory. It was going to be great and now we’re out here fighting. I said to somebody, I was going to take a few days and relax after our big electoral victory. 10 o’clock it was over. But I was going to take a few days.
* The American people do not believe the corrupt, fake news anymore. They have ruined their reputation. But you know, it used to be that they’d argue with me. I’d fight. So I’d fight, they’d fight, I’d fight, they’d fight. Pop pop. You’d believe me, you’d believe them. Somebody comes out. You know, they had their point of view, I had my point of view, but you’d have an argument.
* Now what they do is they go silent. It’s called suppression and that’s what happens in a communist country. That’s what they do, they suppress. You don’t fight with them anymore. Unless it’s a bad story. They have a little bad story about me, they make it 10 times worse and it’s a major headline.
* But our fight against the big donors, big media, big tech, and others is just getting started. This is the greatest in history. There’s never been a movement like that.
* And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.
So which of those is a "straight call to violence"?
And just so it's not forgotten, he also said this during the same speech:
* I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
The president did say that the crowd was going to march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol. After the attack, Trump said he does not condone violence.
The same people saying he incited violence are the people who back Maxine Waters who's comments led to violence against police.
So it's hard to look seriously at those "he incited violence" given his YEARS of similar public gatherings and never having incited violence previously.
Key is that he never called for violence, he called for peaceful protests and he condemned the violence.
Stop straw manning what I said. That speech was written and was trying to accomplish a goal. Ignoring that public speaking is intended to influence people is like pretending that his words didn't matter at all.
He mentioned being peaceful once, but then suggested that the nation was being stolen from them and that they should be patriots and fight back.
It's not a straw man. You explicit said "... if not straight calls to violence by using words like "fight."". I listed out every instance of him using that word as well as it's conjugations.
I'll ask again, which of those instances do you claim is so egregious?
> That speech was written and was trying to accomplish a goal. Ignoring that public speaking is intended to influence people is like pretending that his words didn't matter at all.
Every speech is intended to influence people. That's literally the point of public speaking.
He also repeatedly mentions that the audience should see if their elected officials are "fighting for them" and, if not, choose different ones the next chance they get.
> He mentioned being peaceful once, but then suggested that the nation was being stolen from them and that they should be patriots and fight back.
Again, where does he say that "fighting back" involves anything that resembles violence?
The phrase, "fight back" is one of the most clichéd expressions in politics. Every politician says it during every election cycle.*
Using the words "if not" in English in this manner indicates that it is a further extreme than the preceding portion of the sentence (and not strictly a matter of fact). There is a spectrum there, obviously, and I could argue for specific instance of him using "fight" as being sketchy, but really that he used the term over a dozen times is striking to me. Connecting patriotism and fighting alongside the election being stolen from them had a message that more action than usual was necessary. That was the underlying message.
He used a lot of euphemisms, and I think there is some evidence there that he knew the message he was sending to the crowd.
Patriot: a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors.
Fight: take part in a violent struggle involving the exchange of physical blows or the use of weapons.
Steal: take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.
> There is a spectrum there, obviously, and I could argue for specific instance of him using "fight" as being sketchy, but really that he used the term over a dozen times is striking to me.
You called out using that term as the strongest indicator of his intent to incite yet you continue to refuse to pick out a specific example of it.
> Connecting patriotism and fighting alongside the election being stolen from them had a message that more action than usual was necessary. That was the underlying message.
None of that is inciting violence. There are millions of Americans that believe there were actions during the recent election that were fraudulent. There’s nothing violent about voicing such concerns.
It’s been done in just about every election since the dawn of Democracy. Nancy Pelosi herself is on the record, on video, rejecting the outcome of a Presidential election. And she has just as much right to voice her concerns as Trump or anyone else.
> He used a lot of euphemisms, and I think there is some evidence there that he knew the message he was sending to the crowd.
That’s totally subjective and totally conjecture. If that’s going to be the standard for banishing someone from the internet then the kangaroo court of the Facebook Oversight Board is perfectly fitting.
I actually just called "fight" (and words like it) out as one of the things (using the term "like" to imply this) not the strongest indicator. He also made assertions that the country was being stolen from those people, that this was their last chance to do anything about it before the downfall of the country, that the crowd couldn't be weak, that the whole thing was illegal, that conceding isn't an option, and that the enemy (Democrats) were to blame. You're picking my selection of the word "fight" as a straw man that you keep attacking as if he wasn't whipping them up with tribalism and violent symbolism immediately before they marched on the Capitol building.
He scheduled the speech nearby so that they would march on the Capitol building (it's literally in his speech). Others have spent time detailing this out[0]. Again, he picked many words and phrases that he used to convey to the crowd that this was a time for _action_. If he wasn't aware that crowd was going to react to his words with action, then that'd make him pretty dense.
I think I've exhaustively gotten the point across that using the term "fight" in a speech isn't the problem. If you want to whack it again, go for it.
An example of what exactly? That his speech contained a bunch of euphemisms and some of them may have been taken as calls to violence? Do you expect me to provide a clear example of him telling folks go harm congress members? We can all agree he didn't say any direct quotes like that. I did link to a full article that contained highlights for things that I'd consider euphemisms.
Here are a few (not even all of them):
- "... these people are not going to take it any longer, they’re not going to take it any longer."
- "... to see our election victory stolen by bold and radical left Democrats. ... We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. ... We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. .. We’re just not going to let that happen."
- "We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder."
- "... Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness."
- "Well, I would say yes, it does, because the Constitution says you have to protect our country, and you have to protect our Constitution, and you can’t vote on fraud, and fraud breaks up everything, doesn’t it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules."
- "Looking out at all of the amazing patriots here today, I have never been more confident in our nation’s future."
- "But I said something is wrong here, something is really wrong, can’t have happened, and we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore."
The crowd was literally chanting "fight for Trump" during the speech before they went and...surprise... fought for Trump.
Then after, he tweeted a video and some text:
- "... Stay peaceful!"
- "No violence!"
- "We had an election that was stolen from us. ... We have to have peace. ... I know how you feel."
- "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"
So yeah, he called for peace after rallying the crowd to fight for him. At the same time, he was saying that it was justified and that he feels the same way as the folks rioting.
None of those citations was a call for violence. What you call an euphemism looks a lot more like a conspiracy theory. Sounds very unbelievable, that Trump could made his whole speech in cyphers and only his followers understood its meaning, until...
There were probably 1000s of protests/riots last year in the USA alone. I don't think all the others were spontaneous and this one was orchestrated by a mastermind using cryptic language to wake up his sleeping warriors.
I was there Jan 6th near the capital buildings. It was a bunch of spooks that created the violence and broke in.
This has been documented thoroughly. See the mini doc
“psyop the steal” which goes in depth on the spooks that were part of that action.
The most well known of these individuals was John Sullivan who’s video were used in the impeachment trial. He was there when Ashlie Babbit was shot. He was arrested twice, the second time turned in by his own brother for helping instigate the Jan6th action. Both times he’s been released without bail. His videos of the capital “riot” was sold to CNN and used in the impeachment trial. He’s open about being a Black Lives Matter / Antifa member. Which makes it not surprising that this individual is being protected.
Additional, there’s video (that’s been mostly scrubbed from the internet) showing video inside the capital building of individuals handing out the weapons through the windows of the capital building which were used to then break the windows from outside and attack the few cops that were guarding the front entrance.
Then the cops open up the doors across the capital building and people were let in.
This is all on video.
The January 6th insurrection was planned by insiders which resulted in a “Reichtag Fire” moment that torpedoed the planned challenge to the election results on a number of states with city centers that had disputed election results.
And now this “January 6th Insurrection” is being used to justify labeling entire swaths of the country as potential domestic terrorists.
I put it in quotes because it was 6 hours... compared to years of violence by those who are clutching pearls about 6 hours?
"Stormed" likewise, those who are most offended are happy about stuff that has lead to millions in damage elsewhere... but for some reason the capital is Holy?
"words like fight" He said to protest peacefully...
"why are you playing" because Trump, for all his faults, had hundreds of gatherings that didn't lead to violence and he never called for violence - and, as mentioned, he said to gather peacefully.
Meanwhile, those clutching pearls, are silent or supportive over YEARS of violence. IE: Pilosi, the biggest critic of "Trumps capital riots" is supportive of Maxine Waters.
The comparison IS apples to oranges... Trump didn't call for violence - and has a history of gatherings without violence. Compared to the other side that has repeatedly called for violence with years of gatherings with MUCH violence.
(and other facts like the violent groups included members of Antifa/BLM and that the violent groups were gathering BEFORE Trumps speech)
We are here... and facts don't care about feelings.
Why is the comparison apples to oranges? You’re comparing euphemisms and a very specific definition of ‘fight’ to a direct call to escalate confrontation at protests.
I'm not sure what answer would have satisfied your question if it wasn't asked with poor intent. There are many differences, including Trump organizing the group together that then turned into rioters after his speech.
> What BS and a waste of time this "board" is when they refuse to do their job.
Arguing over what the job's board should and shouldn't be means it's too late and FB snuck this travesty past us. Private companies shouldn't be instating boards to oversee themselves to begin with.
They did their job, which is basically to determine if FB has correctly applied its policies particularly in the context of freedom of expression. It's a ruling that took 2 parts: 1) The initial decision to ban was okay but 2) The "indefinite" part was too ambiguous without reference to specific FB policies and so they must reinstate Trump's account or to provide concrete policies to justify its actions within 6 months (which I would agree is too long)
This is no different than any other appeals court, at least in the US: An appeals court can rule for/against something but it can also push the case back to those who made the initial ruling and force them to reconsider.
This doesn't even mean that FB is going to be the final decision maker here: After FB makes their case (if they decide to do so) for a perma-ban, the board can then review that and make a final decision on whether FB's application of policy in this case. All they're saying is FB did not provide that justification initially and must now do so.
This is the way systems of justice typically work. It is not a one-time binary decision. It is an iterative process refining the legal (or rules-based) question to hone in the core of the issue.
Did the board have the authority to make the ban permanent? Sure. Should they have done so? Absolutely not. It would set a bad precedent for them to allow FB to get away with decisions on the basis of vague justifications. It's forcing FB to support its decisions with specific references to its policies. In the short term that probably feels unsatisfying to anyone looking to end this saga one way or another, but in the long term it is telling FB it can't make arbitrary decisions unsupported by its own policies.
The only thing I disagree with is that 6 months is really much longer than required for this. FB has had plenty of time on this issue, they shouldn't need more than a few weeks to get this done.
Trump started his own website yesterday. Its basically a blog where you can share the post onto other platforms like facebook and twitter.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk
> Its basically a blog where you can share the post onto other platforms like facebook and twitter.
They'll start blocking it straight away since he's part of the lost and banned. Even worse, the career activists will probably contact and pressurise GoDaddy to suspend the domain because Trump, and that's that.
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are essentially the problem in the first place. Giving oxygen to mutants on the platform, amplifying their message to enrage, radicalise and manipulate others in these echo chambers to become somewhat emotionally unstable and believe anything they see on the internet.
With them here, it's become even easier to do this and an endless game of whack-a-mole moderation that no one wants to deal with.
Trump isn't the last to be thrown into the lost and banned, but I won't be surprised to see a higher profile official to have the same treatment.
So is aws going to be pressured to ban him now? I think aws banned parlor before. So this is not really going to be much of barrier to deplatform Trump again. Assuming he will be running for office again.
Yes and they will. Big tech and the DNC are tightly coupled. If he doesn't like it he can build his own data centers, but they can still refuse to serve him at the DDOS protection tools, the DNS servers and even the browser. Edge, Chrome and Firefox are all run by DNC cohorts. If they really wanted to unperson him nothing would stop it.
> So this is not really going to be much of barrier to deplatform Trump again. Assuming he will be running for office again.
The millisecond that he officially announces that he will be running again, GoDaddy will strip the domain, AWS will terminate his account and the banks will find and block any accounts used to fund his campaign.
At that point, they will appreciate using free software, cryptocurrencies, decentralised finance (DeFi) and self-hosting your own services.
332 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 387 ms ] threadA $130M irrevocable trust to ensure their operations seems like a decent stab at ensuring they're not beholden to Facebook.
Would you trust the BP Oversight Board, staffed 100% by people selected by BP, to police BP's emissions?
Independent means independent.
Wut? Read up on the “Traitorous Eight”.
They can't, though. It's an irrevocable trust; the Oversight Board would have to agree to terminate it.
I read:
> Facebook established an irrevocable trust with $130 million in initial funding, expected to cover operational costs for over half a decade
Half a decade is 5 years, not 50.
How were these people selected? Do we have a matrix on their ideology? Is that an acceptable balance?
https://oversightboard.com/meet-the-board/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversight_Board_(Facebook)#Mem...
Get a handle on the knee-jerk skepticism and cynicism and look into it yourself and make a principled argument for whether it's satisfactory or not. Just spitting out your first reaction isn't helpful.
This particular politician was the prime minister of Denmark until 2015, and in 2015, Denmark was ranked third out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index. Another politician is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who ordered the assassination of reporter Jamal Khashoggi.
I do think Helle Thorning-Schmidt lends them some credibility, and not because she's "a politician."
I’m sure they all mean well. But I’m going to assume the board is for show until they do determine something Zuckerberg doesn’t like, and it gets upheld.
I've seen news outlets describe the Oversight Board as a "Supreme Court" of sorts. With the US Federal Judiciary, there's a mechanism by which judges are appointed by democratically elected bodies (setting aside the debate around how different elected bodies are composed). As a result, we have some modicum of ideological diversity in the Courts; you have originalists, "living Constitutionalists", and everything in between. The balance experiences shifts every few decades, but by and large it's remained a balanced body.
If the Oversight Board really is a "Supreme Court", how can we trust that its composition will be made up of the right balance of perspectives? If the board members elect new board members, what happens if the board members become increasingly homogenous and create an endless negative feedback loop of self-selection[1]?
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain...
In contrast, the Oversight Board appears to function like a hypothetical Supreme Court in which the sitting members appoint new members. Imagine, if the 2021 US Supreme Court did that, do you think that its ideological balance would ever shift? Imagine if the 1999 US Supreme Court (majority of the opposite ideology to today's) appointed new members. Do you think its ideological balance would look like the one it has today?
If anything is "pure fantasy", it's the idea that the members of the Supreme Court are partisan ideologues as opposed to jurists that have truly fundamentally different ideas of how the judiciary ought to function, in good faith. It's exactly that kind of diversity of opinions that has resulted in the Supreme Court enjoying the highest approval rating of any institution in the Federal government: https://news.gallup.com/poll/316817/approval-supreme-court-h...
https://twitter.com/jamalgreene/status/1055797078868324353
first person on that list seem to think trump is actually insane
https://twitter.com/cboteromarino/status/896156640986054656
Yeah this ppl thought really hard and objectively about his decision to uphold the ban /s
I assume rest of the people on that committee are ideologically biased.
Silly dog and pony show by facebook.
but you haven't actually checked have you? There is _actually_ a reasonable diversity of thought on that panel.
For there to be a range of thought, there needs to exist people who's world outlook is different and or abhorrent to yours. thats how we represent diversity of thought.
Sounds like you have. Curious, Do you have an example?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A1s_Saj%C3%B3 is a human rights judge.
there is of course the ex editor of the guardian as well, who wouldn't be my first choice to have on board.
for example
In what way do you mean this? The classically conservative/libertarian/1a absolutist "people should be able to say whatever they want and the government cannot meddle", or the current republican "the government should regulate companies do to prevent them from criticizing the president" free speech absolutism?
There's a common trope thrown around that "the first amendment only applies to the government"...which is obviously true and nobody credible actually believes otherwise. The debate at hand is about the principle of free speech. That is to say, the so called "current republican" argues that the same ideals that justify guaranteeing the freedom to express oneself in public, free from government persecution, ought to be applied with private companies that host the "public square". The First Amendment isn't relevant here, because obviously there's no law that prohibits a private company from censoring. The issue at hand is an ought question; i.e. should a purportedly open platform provided by a private company censor political speech? In theory, the same arguments one would make in defense of maintaining the First Amendment (in its current form) in our Constitution also applies in defense of advocating that a private company hosting a "public square" platform ought not to censor political speech.
So circling back to the original question: we now have this Oversight Board which ostensibly has a diverse array of "experts" who we expect to weigh in on complex cases (a "Supreme Court" of sorts). The question is, how diverse is this board? Does it include anyone that might advocate what I laid out above? A couple other commenters provided examples (thanks!), but it's an important question that bears repeating. I'm also not sure how the system ensures that the pool of experts remains sufficiently diverse over time as members retire.
To use a legal metaphor, fb policies are a constitution and the board is a supreme court. Facebook can amend it's constitution however it likes, and so there is no such thing as am unconstitutional law.
Sure, and in theory the Supreme Court's function isn't to set new laws, it's to ensure that the government is enforcing them consistently and accurately. In practice, however, it's become the epicenter of a debate around whether it should actually be responsible for setting new standards and laws via interpretation, especially when the Legislature doesn't do what some people might want.
That's the issue at hand: what's to prevent the Oversight Board from making ideologically influenced rulings which contend that more heavy-handed suspensions are actually consistent enforcements of the existing policy, thereby adding new de jure restrictions on speech via precedent? That's the fundamental question.
So while you're correct that Facebook's moderation policies aren't by default "absolutist", you still want sufficient representation of gadflies on the Oversight Board to ensure that more restrictions aren't added via precedent. Perhaps that gadfly is an "absolutist", or perhaps they're something else. My question is: how do we make sure that contingent continues to exist as new members are appointed? There exists a complex system of checks and balances that go into appointing SCOTUS justices, which is how we've gotten to the point that the SCOTUS continues to be seen as a referee rather than a rule-making body (and as a result, enjoys its high approval rating). What's the equivalent analog for the Oversight Board?
Yes, and this is the mistake you're making in reasoning: we do this because it is exceedingly difficult to modify the US constitution. Facebook has no such limitation. If the oversight board, for example, tried to interpret the existing policies in a speech absolutist way to force Facebook's hand, Facebook could simply change the text of the policies, equivalent to a constitutional amendment.
The value of judicial activism is far lower when the constitution is effortlessly fungible. When facebook modifies its policies, that is equivalent to an amendment to the constitution. If a gadfly tries to interpret that change in a way that Facebook dislikes, they can just clarify the constitution the next day.
You can see how this impacts the Board's rulings, they're almost always formed as requirements that Facebook clarify its policies further.
> Perhaps that gadfly is an "absolutist", or perhaps they're something else. My question is: how do we make sure that contingent continues to exist as new members are appointed?
But this has nothing to do with whether someone believes that Facebook should be able to moderate people's speech. An unflinching free speech absolutist who believes that no entity should be capable of moderating speech would be wholly incompatible with the oversight board, as they'd need to concede things about moderation to even accept the oversight board's validity as an arbiter of moderation decisions.
Also I do want to take a moment to mention that
> There's a common trope thrown around that "the first amendment only applies to the government"...which is obviously true and nobody credible actually believes otherwise.
Is easily found to be untrue, there are a number of sitting senators and house members, as well as tons of state representatives who are pushing for (trivially) unconstitutional laws that regulate tech companies in violation of the first amendment. The most recent example I saw was the Florida law that exempts companies that operate amusement parks.
If that's the case, then the Oversight Board doesn't actually serve the purpose that the Supreme Court does, and your analogy there is inaccurate. In fact, if Facebook can simply unilaterally "change its constitution" when the Board issues an undesirable ruling, then it is much closer to the GGP's characterization of "One department of the megacorp confirms a decision made by the other department". In fact, if one might attempt to find an accurate analog in real world governance, another commenter pointed out that it's more akin to Iran: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27050948
"In theory, the Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts. However, all candidates for membership at the Assembly of Experts (including the President and the Majlis (parliament)) must have their candidacy approved by the Guardian Council, whose members in turn, are half appointed unilaterally by the Supreme Leader and half subject to confirmation by the Majlis after being appointed by the head of the Iranian judiciary, who is himself appointed by the Supreme Leader."
> An unflinching free speech absolutist who believes that no entity should be capable of moderating speech would be wholly incompatible with the oversight board, as they'd need to concede things about moderation to even accept the oversight board's validity as an arbiter of moderation decisions.
I respectfully disagree. As long as the unflinching absolutist doesn't have the final say as a single individual, the unflinching absolutist serves the purpose of pulling the board in the direction of permissiveness (i.e. the principle of free speech). This is not all that different from the purpose that activists serve in society writ large, as you pointed out when you mentioned judicial activism.
Yes and no. Ensuring that Facebook is transparent with their policies is valuable. The OB prevents Facebook from lying to users about what its policies are in practice, so there is oversight that ensures that the de facto and de jure policies don't veer apart. That's still very much what the supreme court does, and very much not what the Iranian Assembly of Experts does.
It is the case that the OB is relatively less powerful than the Supreme court because the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of Facebook are one and the same, and so relatively far more powerful. But it still provides a semblance of an independent judiciary.
A lot of its power comes in keeping facebook honest and accountable to users. A facebook that cannot lie about its policies is easier to hold accountable.
> As long as the unflinching absolutist doesn't have the final say as a single individual
I think this is akin to saying that a Supreme Court justice who believes that the law should be that the first amendment should apply to Facebook would be an asset to the court. That's true only if that's the outcome you prefer. Its terrible for the legitimacy of the court if someone's values are antithetical to the policies they're purportedly interpreting.
I think where we are in disagreement is whether this remotely can be considered an independent judiciary (Iran is below average: http://reports.weforum.org/pdf/gci-2017-2018-scorecard/WEF_G...).
As long as the OB functions in the way that you just described, it is not that. It is quite literally "One department of the megacorp confirms a decision made by the other department", and the fact that it's comprised of academics and experts (per the GP commenter) is just lipstick on a pig.
I think if you've concluded that from my prior comment, you're not reading what I've said with any open mind. Because I explicitly stated the opposite.
I think its also very clear that in practice "one part of the megacorp confirms the others" isn't how the OB has operated so far. There are cases where the OB has suggested FB adopt more aggressive polices, and cases where it has suggested it adopt more lax ones, and cases where it has told facebook that it wasn't acting in accordance with its policies. For example this one where, to continue the judicial metaphor, the OB remanded the case back to a lower court, noting that a "permanent suspension" was unconstitutional. Facebook can now have the lower court issue a different ruling (and then perhaps have that ruling appealed to the SC), or it could open itself to criticism by changing its policies to allowing a "permanent suspension", whatever that means.
You more or less admitted it in the following statement: "It is the case that the OB is relatively less powerful than the Supreme court because the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of Facebook are one and the same, and so relatively far more powerful". That's essentially how Iran works today, and its judiciary is the opposite of independent.
Nobody ever sets out to create a dysfunctional judiciary, it's just extraordinarily easy to create a system that trends toward rot in the long run. Likewise, in most countries where independence of the judiciary is a foreign concept, it's not because they didn't attempt to set up an independent judiciary, it's because the structure doesn't ensure an independent judiciary in the long run. At the end of the day, that's what a "Constitution" is. It means "structure".
> I think its also very clear that in practice "one part of the megacorp confirms the others" isn't how the OB has operated so far.
Correct, and I'm making no comments here about how the OB has operated so far, I'm trying to understand the structure of the system to try and predict how it might operate in the future. Throughout my line of commenting here, you'll notice that I'm asking about the checks and balances underlying the OB and how its members are appointed. I think the composition of the board, as it exists today, appears (mostly) reasonable. However, the mechanism by which new members are appointed (at least as I understand it) leaves much to be desired. When such a body is comprised almost entirely of people that ideologically align with the corporation it aims to check it becomes a sign of how the OB might operate in the future, and from what I can tell, there's no check preventing this from happening in this system that FB has created. In the long run, as judicial systems go, the OB appears to lean much more toward the Iran side of the spectrum rather than the US side of the spectrum.
But I didn't admit this. The OB is an independent court that Facebook has the power to (effectively) ignore. That's not the same as the Judiciary being not independent.
>In theory, the Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts. However, all candidates for membership at the Assembly of Experts (including the President and the Majlis (parliament)) must have their candidacy approved by the Guardian Council, whose members in turn, are half appointed unilaterally by the Supreme Leader and half subject to confirmation by the Majlis after being appointed by the head of the Iranian judiciary, who is himself appointed by the Supreme Leader. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Leader_of_Iran
The oversight board is supposed to be independent, and we know how that goes. It was assumed it would do what's best for FB financially, which is let Trump back on.
Facebook doesn't need Trump. They're going to be making billions regardless.
They also have to deal with the current US government, where Trump and his supporters' fortunes are on the wane, and a lot of powerful people (of whom Trump has made enemies) are questioning Facebook and other social media platforms for giving Trump a megaphone.
Of course, there are also Trump supporters who want the opposite, but politically they just don't matter as much right now.
In the current political climate, the surprise would have been their letting him back on.
I'm glad to see this. Twitter and Facebook both use terms like "permanent suspension" in a silly attempt to avoid the term "ban". They should be honest about the penalty.
How is it constituted?
Who is on it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversight_Board_(Facebook)
What drives these individuals? Would they agree it's a sham - a "plausible deniability shield", or might they believe it is something more virtuously independent and efficacious?
What does each individual gain or stand to achieve from their participation?
What do the answers to these questions tell us about Facebook's power?
What do the answers tell us about how society works?
Does this make sense though? We don't much care about some drunk fool in a bar spouting racist hate. otoh a cult leader with millions of followers, we do care about that.
Hate to break it to you, but most people call them that now. Zuck funded democratic positions for the election, removed relevant content to the election (hunter Biden laptop, senate intelligence report, etc), then banned the then sitting president.
Who was the cult leader spouting racist hate?
It seems like a gigantic waste of time, at best, to try and enact and enforce those laws. Also, it's going to open a gnarly can of worms when someone weaponizes them by running for office to get themselves unbanned from a platform.
"The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Note that "abridging the freedom of speech" is preceded by "or", so consequently, "Congress shall make no law" also must apply to "abridging the freedom of speech" or else the sentence makes no grammatical sense. To interpret it as you do would be to violate one of the canons of construction.
Here's a current Supreme Court justice making that argument:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/040521zor_32...
“Even if digital platforms are not close enough to common carriers, legislatures might still be able to treat digital platforms like places of public accommodation. Although definitions between jurisdictions vary, a company ordinarily is a place of public accommodation if it provides ‘lodging, food, entertainment, or other services to the public … in general ... Twitter and other digital platforms bear resemblance to that definition.” -- Clarence Thomas
Even if you were to agree with his opinion in full, you'd still find these state laws to be in violation, since they would be preempted by §230 in federal law, and the Constitution affirms that federal law supersedes state law wherever the two conflict.
The way it currently is, there is not a check and balance in the system and it has allowed one side to gain a lot more power which is a bad thing. While those on that side feel they are on the "right" side, that power imbalance has corrupted that side like any form of absolute power tends to do.
Giving the platforms still more reasons to ban people they deem liabilities? Not sure what your argument is.
There are laws that the phone company can't discriminate who can use their service. Is that unconstitutional too?
People have had very broad interpretations for what constitutes corporate first amendment protections recently.
Not sure how one can be independent and yet get a salary. They're basically no different from regular employees.
"This Facebook Oversight Board decision is sponsored by Parler."
But I have become very cynical of any sort of corporate gymnastics done in order to justify their actions.
A future where corporations are self governing is not something we should support IMO.
https://oversightboard.com/news/226612455899839-oversight-bo...
This part is interesting:
Within six months of this decision, Facebook must reexamine the arbitrary penalty it imposed on January 7 and decide the appropriate penalty. This penalty must be based on the gravity of the violation and the prospect of future harm. It must also be consistent with Facebook’s rules for severe violations, which must, in turn, be clear, necessary and proportionate.
Theory: it is more profitable to increase engagement of average users, who want nothing to do with the decline of the working class and the Republican party, than it is to amplify a bunch of extremists (still profitable) who turn others off from the platform.
Really? Not everyone agrees... (might not have anything to do with Trump though)
Twitter stock plunges on user miss and low guidance PUBLISHED THU, APR 29 2021 4:05 PM EDT
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/29/twitter-twtr-earnings-q1-202...
He made every point about the manipulation of the system in order to achieve an outcome that was not based on the a rational review of the facts at hand.
OP didn't say that Facebook is required to do that. Note that Facebook is also not required to have an oversight board or anything similar.
I don’t mean that you can’t make the argument, I’m just not sure it’s a thing that anyone but the staunchest free-marketeers actually believes.
I suspect you meant to just point out that until such a law is passed, we are unlikely to see transparency.
Of course, over here in reality, the word “independent” is quite a bit of a stretch. I give it about as much weight as Facebook’s claims they “value user privacy”.
Isn't the board supposed to be independent of Zuckerberg? Now that the board is created, his ideas and goals for the board should have no bearing on it, right?
It's one thing to get something wrong in a story, it's another to actively make things up and present them as news. NY Post is not worth wiping your shoes on, let alone reading.
That being said, I find it funny that people want an exciting story about a forgotten laptop when it's generally well accepted that Hunter Biden accepted a job he wasn't qualified for in a foreign country. For me that's pretty clearly nepotism at best and harming the interests of your own country at worst, and displays a clear lack of judgement. But Americans like a conspiracy theory...
Same with Russiagate.
https://www.facebook.com/NYPost/posts/10167094101195206
To Twitter a minute ago:
https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1389947126059356166
I can't find any indication either account was suspended.
They suspended the story, not the account I guess.
It turns out that the people who moderate the network wield unimaginable power.
If you can memory-hole a president of the United States, is there anyone on earth that you cannot completely dominate, in whatever channel or manner you chose to manipulate?
With the possible exception of 9/11, the Trump administration is probably the most significant political event of the 21st Century so-far. Nobody and nothing can memory-hole that, no matter how much power they have.
Trump is at no risk of being forgotten.
> A Twitter spokesperson told POLITICO in a statement Tuesday that sharing content from Trump's new site — "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" — generally "is permitted as long as the material does not otherwise violate the Twitter Rules."
> But, the spokesperson said, sharing posts from the site will break Twitter's rules against ban evasions if users try to imitate Trump's account and their "sole intent is to replace a suspended account."
So they're effectively saying you can only link to it if you disagree with it.
So whilst I understand your point of view, I think there is wider context that needs to be factored in here.
That aside, A network provider needs to enforce its own terms of services equally. In practice nobody does this, but Twitter and facebooks inaction for clear violations of their terms of service undermines their points operating fairly.
Facebook failed to act when Trump and others (of all political styles) decided to lie about voting, the mechanics of voting, and validity of voting. That is a clear violation of its community guidelines. It turns out that there are secret rules for politicians (basically they can do what they like.) This is wrong
Twitter failed to uphold it's ToS when allowing trump to issue threats to use nuclear weapons on north korea.
Had the ToS been applied equally, lots of politicians and pundits would have been kicked off years ago.
The issue is fairness. We accept the law, because on the face of it, its applied equally. As soon as that facade drops, people begin to reject it.
> It turns out that the people who moderate the network wield unimaginable power.
Yes, and this is nothing new. Just look at the power that news barons had. before that pamphleteers. In reality freedom of speech in the broadcast sense only applies to the rich, or the friends of the rich.
Just like members of another political party did 4 years earlier, but they weren't given any warnings or badges or anything. I wonder if it has something to do with that company management is more closely aligned with that party. /s
I don't have a horse in this race, but the lack of objectivity in Trump haters is striking even from the other side of the ocean. Hatred can cloud reasoning, I guess.
Instead, they engage in an elaborate hypocrisy, inventing rules and procedures that are only applied to him and are only used to silence him. It is clear as a day that they don't apply the same standards to other politicians, especially their allies. And to me, few things are as disgusting as such hypocrisy. Shameless bias in reporting (to either side, while pretending to be 'objective') comes close, but not quite.
The "emporer has no clothes" moment for me was when after a dozen or so appearances by Adam Schiff on CNN, MSNBC etc that he had seen proof that Trump was a russian asset, he presented zero evidence during the early 2020 impeachment trial. There are a lot of liars in politics and I wish more people would admit their side has their fair share of them.
What were those lies? There was a foreign influence campaign. There was a bipartisan confirmation of that fact in the Senate. There were suggestions of vote manipulation (based on foreign actors accessing voter roles), but I don't recall any accusations being leveled. Many people thought Trump was an illegitimate president. There was a peaceful change of power. Obama showed up and handed over the reins.
The recent elections went much further. "Stop the steal" is pretty strong language. Trump called out particular state elections as having short-counted votes for him. There was wild speculation about counting efforts and voting machine manipulation. People stormed a congressional meeting confirming the outcome. Trump continued to attack our election processes and refused to participate in the inauguration.
Rofl. A few thousands dollars bought ads that influenced the election, oh wow! If it was the US citizens who voted, they are free to listen anyone they want. Or you think that US citizens are too stupid to be allowed to judge for themselves, and should be guarded from 'wrong' information? (Of course, we can trust Facebook to decide which info is right, and which not)
In any case I'll ask again. What were these lies from Democrats? I'm aware of very few lies about voting, voting mechanics, and the validity of the 2016 vote.
Looking back in fact I see Trump at that time too claiming voter fraud before the election. He claimed to have won the popular vote after due to illegal voters. Yet he did very little in power to affect these issues then claimed so again.
Start with a basic search and visit first few links:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2016+stolen+elections
To address each of your incorrect points:
The FEC considers voting from one state to another state after moving to be election fraud. That happened thousands of times.
It appears that Dominion Voting Systems, used in 29 states, is owned by the CCP. (They were banned in Texas because they didn't clarify ownership, which they consider to be a FEC violation.)
Poll station staff have admitted to using voting machine admin screens to "correct" voting selections, with no oversight.
> Twitter failed to uphold it's ToS when allowing trump to issue threats to use nuclear weapons on north korea.
It's the President's decision as CIC when to use nukes. N. Korea flies ballistic missiles over Japan, one of our closest allies. Xi has threatened the US twice with nukes in 2020, and N. Korea is their vassal state. Not sure what your point is, or where you get your nonsense from.
They also challenged a House seat in this 2020 cycle: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrat-rita-hart-ends-elec...
Trump has also won two-thirds of the election cases that were actually heard, rather than dismissed on some technicality: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/exclusive-breakdown...
My point being that I don't think it is invalid to discuss election results or not believe in them. We have a legal process to hear these complaints for a reason.
Newspapers have chosen to report, or not report on issues since time immemorial.
There is no shortage of reasons to criticize FB and to consider network effects such as you raise.
But I am specifically disagreeing with the “memory hole” point, and in particular of a public figure.
Exactly. The power to make someone invisible to others feels like something out of Black Mirror. Everyone claiming that Presidents (or others) did just fine before the Internet and social media is missing the point. Relevance, visibility, and existence are all concepts that are only meaningful in a relative sense. In a world where the vast majority of information seen by humans comes from large digital platforms, being banned in cyberspace but visible in meatspace effectively means you are blocked from society, since attention is largely given only to information on these giant tech platforms.
This is why large tech platforms are public accommodations, as SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas eloquently described in his recent opinion (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-197_5ie6.pdf). For those short on time, summaries of his arguments can be found at various news sites (Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/06/technolog... or Daily Wire: https://www.dailywire.com/news/clarence-thomas-hints-that-co...).
Glenn Greenwald also had a great write-up on the incredible power these platforms wield, which is far greater than most governments even (https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congressional-testimony-the...). In this article, under subsection #2, Glenn reviews the various world leaders who responded publicly to American social media banning Trump as an unacceptable and ominous event.
Are they serious? "Ordinary users" cannot mobilize thousands to storm the capital or spread mask propaganda at a massive scale.
The sheer amount of people that can be afected by Trump, the scale of it- warrants extraordinary measures to prevent him.
But he didn't do that. His speech on January 6th explicitly instructs attendees to peacefully march, which you can see in the transcript (https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-sav...). Twitter's original blog post announcing their ban did not point at any strong evidence that Trump incited anything either, and instead pointed at vague justifications like his decision not to attend Biden's inauguration (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...).
The Renaissance itself was rooted in ideas spread by intellectual freedom and the public exchange of argument.
”Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk
Will they ban reposting anything a former president has to say? Will ISPs block his website. Is Trump going to prison like Navalny so he can't run in the next election? They went after Rudy recently.
Trumps already repurposed "The Big Lie" as his own catch phrase for the last election. Half the country believes the election was rigged with the help of big tech and lying media. If the Arizona audit confirms wide spread fraud. Then basically the USA is no longer a democracy.
The current regime in the US capital is surrounded by the military for their own protection. Which Tells me they still don't feel secure in their power. Usually that translate to violent suppression of their political opposition.
Zuck funded democratic positions for the election, removed relevant content to the election (hunter Biden laptop, senate intelligence report, etc), then banned the then sitting president.
You can call his statements “incitement” but the context of the statements matter. It’s actually protected 1st amendment speech and he didn’t call for outright violence (to me it appeared to be trying to diffuse the crowd - because he said “remember this day, but go home in peace” - but again not relevant).
we also need to call the riots the summer before burning part of the White House propriety an “insurrection”. Or when the cavanaugh hearing was broken into, etc.
I’m not condoning any of it, the root concern and the point I’m trying to make, is that the government should be defining it, not some committee hand selected by a clearly bias person monitoring and controlling all our thoughts and communication channels.
Before the hivemind greys you out of existence...
I'd agree that it's a real issue, the more pernicious problem being not censorship but the deep understanding of voters and the ability to (for instance) nudge an election in a desired way, but there's really not much new about this.
Imagine the power that newspaper barons used to have 100 years ago. Practically the only information available to the public, hugely influential in their reach, filled with political bias, the Hearsts of the world could start or stop a war.
People build such incredibly strong internal models, often tribal, atop a mere candyfloss of direct knowledge of a matter that someone will always take advantage of that attack vector. It's as if humans were designed to either be flagellants or part of a conquering army.
Definitely in the global trend.
Looking at this, I don't know what the justification for banning is but like most political decisions I guess you don't want to watch the sausage getting made.
https://m.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/posts/?ref=page_internal&...
Future historians will look back at the brilliance of building near-monopoly platforms by inviting one and all for free, ignoring copyright, doing a build-out at a loss, selling personal information, winner-take-all network effects, and then applying a POV to the whole works. Personally, I'm attracted to this view of the Facebooks of the world:
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/big-tech-has-no-power-at-a...
Also why are you asking too many good questions?
Downvoters: So we both got downvoted for 'wrong-think' and 'questioning' the obvious facts with the parent making a good point. Care to explain why?
Or maybe they hate us because we are right.
EDIT: Great I'm now flagged for wrong-think. Absolutely magnificent.
I mean, '(D..O....S)'? We're not children here
Thank you very much. I'll bite.
But you have the time to unroll this so called 'conversation' and not bother reading the grandparent's comment. Your 'explanation' is completely irrelevant to the point.
If I have to partially self-censor certain words because this whole 'conversation' (If you can call it that) cannot remain civil or erupt into a flamewar due to extremely politically charged folks like yourself immediately reacting to certain keywords then I'll continue to do just that.
> I mean, '(D..O....S)'? We're not children here
Good. Maybe you're smart enough to fill in the blanks yourself? I'm not bothering to help those politically sensitive users flagging everything they disagree with as some sort of thought crime.
I'm not, and I have the same problem with the GP comment, which I also downvoted (but didn't flag). Perhaps the problem is that many people on this site are not versed in the minutiae of US politics?
And, I must add that, despite posting at some length, you still haven't explained what you're talking about
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27049863.
> The Board argued that Facebook had essentially issued "a vague, standardless penalty and then [referred] this case to the Board to resolve".
Yes, that's the idea of your existence. FB wants YOU to DECIDE on cases it may not be able to itself, you know, your entire job?
"Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities" - Not at all, they want to know what you think to make an informed decision, the entire purpose you exist.
> Having clear rules that apply to all users and Facebook
No, no and NO again! There needs to be rules much stricter for those in high places in society - the president is not an "ordinary" user and should have much stricter rules to adhere to, as should be expected of elected officials.
What BS and a waste of time this "board" is when they refuse to do their job.
> No, no and NO again! There needs to be rules much stricter for those in extreme places in society - the president is not an "ordinary" user and should have much stricter rules to adhere to, as should be expected of elected officials.
I'd argue for the reverse. The statements of a political figure must be evaluated in as positive a light as possible. Otherwise you end up with every single statement they make being grounds for removal (e.g., "We need to fight against the special interests!, oh no, he's suggesting we fight!).
If the previous 10 minutes was talking about financial reforms, then IN CONTEXT, the president is talking about a very different kind of fight.
I have no time for people who try to dodge responsibility by claiming the context of a statement doesn't matter, on the flip side I have no time for someone who takes a one-sentence snippet out of context to try to hang someone out to dry either.
IMO that's the problem with what I can only describe as the 'twitter generation' we're currently experiencing. Everything is a 140 character snippet and context is completely lost or discarded.
When did "we" turn into the current governing structure of Facebook?
It's different.
What you say to the crowd has distinctly different impact than what you say "in the locker room" to an acquaintance.
Meanwhile, the other side backs actual calls for violence from people like Maxine while clutching pearls over 6 hours of mostly peaceful protests in the capital.
Trump says mean things? bad things? OH NO! he's so much worse than democrats and "peaceful activists" who have caused billions in damage and killed many people.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/kansas/articles/2021...
Between a president that wears a smile while systemically destroying countries for the sake of the petro dollar, and a peacetime president saying mean things on twitter, I’ll take the latter.
and I doubt many people who dislike trump would accept jackson as an archetype of acceptable presidential behavior.
It happens here too. cough basecamp cough.
No, no, no! The answer to idiots misinterpreting words literally isn't to dumb down our speech. That would be double plus ungood.
If anything, it's the opposite.
I wonder how long it'll be until we have the first "big brother" politician that has web cams in their office and is transparent about every decision they've made?
Yes, it is? For the biggest example, Have you ever done child care? Kids may not understand whatever complex metaphor you're trying to use, they're not "idiots" for being that way, that's your responsibility as the adult to explain what you mean to them or use a simpler phrasing. Some kids may not even be ready for the explanation and you'll have to wait until they're older to use the complex phrasing. Yes it's unfortunate that for some this pattern continues into adulthood but they're also not "idiots" for being that way, not everyone can be an English major.
My perspective is that these efforts to ban speech or speech that includes "human emotion" (like 'fight') would be a step too far for everyone. Right now those rules are being applied to only one side (the right), and so others (on the left) are deeming this censorship acceptable. This is quite evident if you look for all the instances when Democrats used the word 'fight' (https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/trump-team-plays-videos-of-dem...).
> a certain percentage of people may very well misinterpret that as a call to violence
But this is why our society is built around individual, personal responsibility. Those that follow a call to violence are still, solely, responsible for their actions. Our justice system charges those individuals that engaged in criminality on Jan 6th, not Trump. Why should these massive tech platforms be any different in determining who they censor or ban?
Yet the people who are most angry about calling for a "fight" are the same ones that defend much worse from the likes of Maxine Waters...
The platform evaluating rules for Trump while allowing worse from others - in power or out - is the problem. Examples exist everywhere of much MUCH worse than Trumps non-calls for violence... yet he's the only one to get banned and have a Crusade/Jihad held against him? Says more about the hypocrites that hold double standards than it does about Trump - who's the same bombastic blowhard he's always been.
-----
All the times Democrats used the word "fight": https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/trump-team-plays-videos-of-dem...
Chuck Schumer (and others) inciting/supporting rioting at the Capitol during Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings: https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/03/chuck-schumer-used-viol...
Democrats claiming the 2016 election was stolen and inciting violence against Trump: https://defconnews.com/2021/01/11/all-the-times-democrats-in...
AOC justifying rioting: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1334184644707758080
So... who gets to decide what counts as incitement or not? Apparently whichever party has the largest influence over the mainstream media/social media companies.
I don't think "treat everyone on Facebook exactly equally" is a reasonable standard.
More followers means more potential for misuse.
That seems to be the case in this situation. The President called on people to show up, not to riot. If the same standard was applied universally this would have a chilling effect on all protest.
This should be unnecessary to say but just in case HN thinks this is political advocacy: I personally dislike Donald Trump.
We in fact already do that, just not uniformly. The media run defense for one side while distorting and assuming* the worse of the other. We have plenty of examples of the media covering the exact same thing but coming to different conclusions based on the political leaning.
It's so tiresome to point this out and get immediately gaslighting replies.
There's literally zero need for politicians to go on Twitter or Facebook at all. They should only be allowed to have written communications via official channels with official statements. Everybody knows where to go to read the official statements. Then they can't accuse anyone of censoring them. There's nothing stopping people from posting links onto Twitter or whatever other SM you want to use.
It would also set a bad or ambiguous precedent. Are TV, radio, newspapers off limits too? If so, what about the annual State of the Union address to the nation? What about the (yes, small) group of people who don't/won't/can't use the internet?
It also wouldn't really help all that much: As you said, nothing stops normal citizens from posting links: similarly, nothing would stop them from posting to SM everything their favored politician writes on their official site. It might stop the specific politician from posting stuff, but that just means it would take a few extra minutes to be posted by someone else.
On the other hand, I think it also highlights the reality that the US has deep, unbridgeable divides now that really nobody wants to touch, even if it's their job to do so.
IE: Why isn't Maxine Waters banned everywhere? She's ACTUALLY called for more destruction and had it happen... compared to Trumps "call" which specifically said "protest peacefully".
This is all a waste of time and the hypocrisy is astounding... rules for thee but not for me. Wokeness at its deepest levels of hypocrisy.
Why are you playing this "what about x" game? The comparison is apples to oranges, and yet here we are.
Here are all references to the word "fight" in that speech (Full transcript is here: https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-01-13/tra...):
* And Rudy, you did a great job. He’s got guts. You know what? He’s got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican Party. He’s got guts. He fights, he fights.
* For years, Democrats have gotten away with election fraud and weak Republicans. And that’s what they are. There’s so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they’re out there fighting. The House guys are fighting. But it’s, it’s incredible.
* And you have to get your people to fight. And if they don’t fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight. You primary them. We’re going to. We’re going to let you know who they are. I can already tell you, frankly.
* Republicans are, Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It’s like a boxer. And we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder.
* But we’ve done it quickly and we were going to sit home and watch a big victory and everybody had us down for a victory. It was going to be great and now we’re out here fighting. I said to somebody, I was going to take a few days and relax after our big electoral victory. 10 o’clock it was over. But I was going to take a few days.
* The American people do not believe the corrupt, fake news anymore. They have ruined their reputation. But you know, it used to be that they’d argue with me. I’d fight. So I’d fight, they’d fight, I’d fight, they’d fight. Pop pop. You’d believe me, you’d believe them. Somebody comes out. You know, they had their point of view, I had my point of view, but you’d have an argument.
* Now what they do is they go silent. It’s called suppression and that’s what happens in a communist country. That’s what they do, they suppress. You don’t fight with them anymore. Unless it’s a bad story. They have a little bad story about me, they make it 10 times worse and it’s a major headline.
* But our fight against the big donors, big media, big tech, and others is just getting started. This is the greatest in history. There’s never been a movement like that.
* And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.
So which of those is a "straight call to violence"?
And just so it's not forgotten, he also said this during the same speech:
* I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
What would it mean to get newspaper ads in another nation which asserted that their presidency was being stolen?
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-trump-say-peacefully...
The Ruling Mostly true.
The president did say that the crowd was going to march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol. After the attack, Trump said he does not condone violence.
> However, it does not necessarily mean the president did not incite violence with the rest of his speech or in his rhetoric prior to January 6.
So it's hard to look seriously at those "he incited violence" given his YEARS of similar public gatherings and never having incited violence previously.
Key is that he never called for violence, he called for peaceful protests and he condemned the violence.
I mean... it doesn't get any simpler than that.
He mentioned being peaceful once, but then suggested that the nation was being stolen from them and that they should be patriots and fight back.
It's not a straw man. You explicit said "... if not straight calls to violence by using words like "fight."". I listed out every instance of him using that word as well as it's conjugations.
I'll ask again, which of those instances do you claim is so egregious?
> That speech was written and was trying to accomplish a goal. Ignoring that public speaking is intended to influence people is like pretending that his words didn't matter at all.
Every speech is intended to influence people. That's literally the point of public speaking.
He also repeatedly mentions that the audience should see if their elected officials are "fighting for them" and, if not, choose different ones the next chance they get.
> He mentioned being peaceful once, but then suggested that the nation was being stolen from them and that they should be patriots and fight back.
Again, where does he say that "fighting back" involves anything that resembles violence?
The phrase, "fight back" is one of the most clichéd expressions in politics. Every politician says it during every election cycle.*
He used a lot of euphemisms, and I think there is some evidence there that he knew the message he was sending to the crowd.
Patriot: a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors.
Fight: take part in a violent struggle involving the exchange of physical blows or the use of weapons.
Steal: take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.
You called out using that term as the strongest indicator of his intent to incite yet you continue to refuse to pick out a specific example of it.
> Connecting patriotism and fighting alongside the election being stolen from them had a message that more action than usual was necessary. That was the underlying message.
None of that is inciting violence. There are millions of Americans that believe there were actions during the recent election that were fraudulent. There’s nothing violent about voicing such concerns.
It’s been done in just about every election since the dawn of Democracy. Nancy Pelosi herself is on the record, on video, rejecting the outcome of a Presidential election. And she has just as much right to voice her concerns as Trump or anyone else.
> He used a lot of euphemisms, and I think there is some evidence there that he knew the message he was sending to the crowd.
That’s totally subjective and totally conjecture. If that’s going to be the standard for banishing someone from the internet then the kangaroo court of the Facebook Oversight Board is perfectly fitting.
He scheduled the speech nearby so that they would march on the Capitol building (it's literally in his speech). Others have spent time detailing this out[0]. Again, he picked many words and phrases that he used to convey to the crowd that this was a time for _action_. If he wasn't aware that crowd was going to react to his words with action, then that'd make him pretty dense.
I think I've exhaustively gotten the point across that using the term "fight" in a speech isn't the problem. If you want to whack it again, go for it.
0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2021/ann...
Here are a few (not even all of them):
- "... these people are not going to take it any longer, they’re not going to take it any longer."
- "... to see our election victory stolen by bold and radical left Democrats. ... We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. ... We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. .. We’re just not going to let that happen."
- "We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder."
- "... Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness."
- "Well, I would say yes, it does, because the Constitution says you have to protect our country, and you have to protect our Constitution, and you can’t vote on fraud, and fraud breaks up everything, doesn’t it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules."
- "Looking out at all of the amazing patriots here today, I have never been more confident in our nation’s future."
- "But I said something is wrong here, something is really wrong, can’t have happened, and we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore."
The crowd was literally chanting "fight for Trump" during the speech before they went and...surprise... fought for Trump.
Then after, he tweeted a video and some text:
- "... Stay peaceful!"
- "No violence!"
- "We had an election that was stolen from us. ... We have to have peace. ... I know how you feel."
- "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"
So yeah, he called for peace after rallying the crowd to fight for him. At the same time, he was saying that it was justified and that he feels the same way as the folks rioting.
Let me put it one other way: if he didn’t organize people and then make that speech, do you think there would have been a riot at all?
This has been documented thoroughly. See the mini doc “psyop the steal” which goes in depth on the spooks that were part of that action.
The most well known of these individuals was John Sullivan who’s video were used in the impeachment trial. He was there when Ashlie Babbit was shot. He was arrested twice, the second time turned in by his own brother for helping instigate the Jan6th action. Both times he’s been released without bail. His videos of the capital “riot” was sold to CNN and used in the impeachment trial. He’s open about being a Black Lives Matter / Antifa member. Which makes it not surprising that this individual is being protected.
Additional, there’s video (that’s been mostly scrubbed from the internet) showing video inside the capital building of individuals handing out the weapons through the windows of the capital building which were used to then break the windows from outside and attack the few cops that were guarding the front entrance.
Then the cops open up the doors across the capital building and people were let in.
This is all on video.
The January 6th insurrection was planned by insiders which resulted in a “Reichtag Fire” moment that torpedoed the planned challenge to the election results on a number of states with city centers that had disputed election results.
And now this “January 6th Insurrection” is being used to justify labeling entire swaths of the country as potential domestic terrorists.
"Stormed" likewise, those who are most offended are happy about stuff that has lead to millions in damage elsewhere... but for some reason the capital is Holy?
"words like fight" He said to protest peacefully...
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-trump-say-peacefully...
Ruling: Mostly True (hint: that means it's true)
"why are you playing" because Trump, for all his faults, had hundreds of gatherings that didn't lead to violence and he never called for violence - and, as mentioned, he said to gather peacefully.
Meanwhile, those clutching pearls, are silent or supportive over YEARS of violence. IE: Pilosi, the biggest critic of "Trumps capital riots" is supportive of Maxine Waters.
The comparison IS apples to oranges... Trump didn't call for violence - and has a history of gatherings without violence. Compared to the other side that has repeatedly called for violence with years of gatherings with MUCH violence.
(and other facts like the violent groups included members of Antifa/BLM and that the violent groups were gathering BEFORE Trumps speech)
We are here... and facts don't care about feelings.
Arguing over what the job's board should and shouldn't be means it's too late and FB snuck this travesty past us. Private companies shouldn't be instating boards to oversee themselves to begin with.
This is no different than any other appeals court, at least in the US: An appeals court can rule for/against something but it can also push the case back to those who made the initial ruling and force them to reconsider.
This doesn't even mean that FB is going to be the final decision maker here: After FB makes their case (if they decide to do so) for a perma-ban, the board can then review that and make a final decision on whether FB's application of policy in this case. All they're saying is FB did not provide that justification initially and must now do so.
This is the way systems of justice typically work. It is not a one-time binary decision. It is an iterative process refining the legal (or rules-based) question to hone in the core of the issue.
Did the board have the authority to make the ban permanent? Sure. Should they have done so? Absolutely not. It would set a bad precedent for them to allow FB to get away with decisions on the basis of vague justifications. It's forcing FB to support its decisions with specific references to its policies. In the short term that probably feels unsatisfying to anyone looking to end this saga one way or another, but in the long term it is telling FB it can't make arbitrary decisions unsupported by its own policies.
The only thing I disagree with is that 6 months is really much longer than required for this. FB has had plenty of time on this issue, they shouldn't need more than a few weeks to get this done.
Why do elected positions need to be held to a different standard?
They'll start blocking it straight away since he's part of the lost and banned. Even worse, the career activists will probably contact and pressurise GoDaddy to suspend the domain because Trump, and that's that.
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are essentially the problem in the first place. Giving oxygen to mutants on the platform, amplifying their message to enrage, radicalise and manipulate others in these echo chambers to become somewhat emotionally unstable and believe anything they see on the internet.
With them here, it's become even easier to do this and an endless game of whack-a-mole moderation that no one wants to deal with.
Trump isn't the last to be thrown into the lost and banned, but I won't be surprised to see a higher profile official to have the same treatment.
Then I'll see how everyone reacts to it.
The millisecond that he officially announces that he will be running again, GoDaddy will strip the domain, AWS will terminate his account and the banks will find and block any accounts used to fund his campaign.
At that point, they will appreciate using free software, cryptocurrencies, decentralised finance (DeFi) and self-hosting your own services.