they are talking about a single right-wing riot on Jan 6 and FB role in it, but nothing about entire year of violent riots by BLM in 2020 where all the mainstream media and not just Facebook played a major role in inciting violence.
Did you actually watch the George Floyd video? It's horrific in a way that echoes through a generation. How is that not newsworthy? You think it's engineered outrage? I say it's objectively outrageous.
I watched the entire trial, video is only one piece of information which was taken out of context and repeated to no end.
It's very easy to make superficial judgements and be outraged before knowing all the evidence. Media outlets such as NYT are exploiting this to gain clicks and ad revenue.
The injustice was largely engineered. It was deliberately misrepresented.
The MSM would have you believe this was an angel of a man murdered by police as he begged for his life. He was a career criminal with a lethal combination of drugs in his system, with Covid-19, trying to discard baggies of drugs during the arrest, who had been testing police with claims of "I can't breathe" long before anyone went anywhere near his neck as a deceitful ploy to avoid arrest. But the MSM will only show you the "right" part of the video.
It's been going on for a long time now. The Michael Brown one was extraordinary - the police officer was lucky to escape with his life and yet the MSM presented Brown as a gentle giant slain in cold blood.
The consensus that this was an unjust "murder" was absolutely engineered. If it wasn't so deliberate, why aren't the facts in my previous comment widely known by the typical naive young activist radicalised into marching in the streets for BLM?
Injustice is bronze statues erected to glorify feral black criminals in a country where White children brutally murdered by radicalised blacks barely make the local news.
yes, there was plenty of evidence for reasonable doubt, including lethal dose of fentanyl combined with meth in Floyd's system, his chronic BP and sick heart, it's in official coroner report.
Unfortunately the jury gave in to the raging mobs and politicians calling for violence in case of a "wrong" verdict, not to mention one of the jurors turned out to be BLM activist.
Let's just hope Chauvin's verdict gets thrown out on appeal as it was a travesty of justice.
That's a really powerful stream of downvotes. I wonder if it represents the average opinion of HN or it's just people who support the comment's point don't bother to upvote?
People will frequently downvote anyone who brings up politics for no reason, on either side of the spectrum, especially if it's bad faith arguments like this.
My takeaway from this is that whoever wrote it believes if people mail each other information about meeting up and they end up participating in an event that took place like what happened on Jan 6 that it is the fault of USPS for not reading people's mail and making sure that they refuse to deliver mail for anyone that could ever possibly be connected to any sort of protest that ends up turning violent or getting out of hand. Seriously, this is just another attempt at promoting censorship. I wonder how many of the protests for BLM that Facebook helps organize where people vandalize property and attack other peaceful counter-protesters, attack police officers, and deface government buildings.
So the argument is that, because Thomas Caldwell posted the word “Inside” on his Facebook during the riots, Facebook is somehow responsible for the riots themselves?
It’s trendy to hate FB, but this is utterly ridiculous. Guess what else was used to organize these riots? Telephones. Are telephones evil? No. Do evil people use communication tools to further their goals? Yes. Does that mean those tools are bad or should be shut down or monitored? No.
There isn't an automated telephone network that calls you to get you involved in controversial conversations purely because the system has calculated that these conversations will drive you to use the telephone more, all in order to expose you to more telephone-based advertising.
Ah yes, controversial conversations, we surely should not be letting people have those. Online conversations should be of the government approved variety only. And sending notifications about non government approved conversations? Atrocious, and dangerous!
Maybe you’re right. We should ban online conversation tools and use telephones exclusively, because their inherent lack of scalability and features means people can’t organize as effectively. That will definitely fix our problems.
> Ah yes, controversial conversations, we surely should not be letting people have those.
I never said that those shouldn't exist, what I am saying is that Facebook preferentially displays these flamebait posts because they drive engagement.
Do you have any evidence for this, or are you guessing?
Going back to your original analogy about a telephone that calls you, Facebook doesn't preferentially show notifications. They show notifications whenever something happens according to how you have your notifications set.
Anyways, you have the causality completely incorrect here. It is the person that has the preference, and Facebook caters to that preference, regardless of what it is. If your point is just that people cared most about their conversations related to the capital riot on Jan 6, of course you are correct. It was the most important event of that day, month, and maybe even year.
But maybe, just maybe, if you keep blaming FB hard enough, you'll fix society's problems.
> Do you have any evidence for this, or are you guessing?
How do I know that facebook uses divisiveness to maximize engagement? Because that's what they said:
> “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” read a slide from a 2018 presentation. “If left unchecked,” it warned, Facebook would feed users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.”
> “I think these events were largely organized on platforms that don’t have our abilities to stop hate, don’t have our standards, and don’t have our transparency,” she said.
On the other hand, the other platforms don't have a best-in-class, finely tuned engagment-maximizing algorithm that exercises no human judgment about whether the engagement that's being driven is net harmful to users and society at large.
Well, actually Youtube has a similar situation[1] and is arguably culpable in the same vein.
these days "hate speech" usually means "speech I hate".
facebook was somewhat neutral allowing both sides, left and right, to push their agendas in 2020. Censorship would be much worse, and this NYT article seem to advocate for shutting down free speech.
I feel like it's unfair to smear right-leaning political philosophy (limited government, low taxes, business-friendly environment) with the actions of the republican party base in 2020, which included but was not limited to: wild conspiracy theories about Covid-19 being both a complete hoax and a Chinese bioweapon, wild conspiracy theories about election rigging, and public health disinformation. There is reasonable right-leaning political thought that's worthy of debate and discussion, and that's not at all what 'the right' was spreading on facebook.
Oh, roger, the guy with limited real world life experience, who diagnoses random people from a BSD terminal and says if they kill themselves they'd be cleaning the gene pool is talking again.
Can't believe you were let out of your cage, you malicious creep. Wise up before someone wises you up without your consent.
You mention the "base", but the party as a whole overwhelmingly voted for candidates (including the one at the top) who espouse those conspiracy theories. They may prefer to believe that they're doing so out of abstract political values, but the elected candidates interpret it as endorsing those conspiracy theories, and act on that.
Nor is it just voting. The former President had in-party approval ratings nearing 90%. That suggests that it's not just tolerating the misbehavior out of ideological disagreement with the opposition, but support for all aspects of it.
I can't engage with "right-leaning political thought that's worthy of debate and discussion" because I'm dealing with the effects of conspiracy theorists in top offices. I don't really get to vote for right vs left any more; I have to vote with crazy vs at-least-not-crazy. And it's a coin toss whether I will win that.
So I simply don't pay any attention to calls for calm discussion of abstract political ideals. They're simply not on the table come election time, and the elections have very serious consequences. I can't smear right-leaning political philosophy because it's simply not something that comes up.
You're totally correct, I was admittedly doing some sarcastic concern trolling (but with some sincerity! I do genuinely want the right to be mentally healthy) in response to the 'both sides'-ism in the grandparent's post.
Is there joy in running Facebook? What once looked to be societally beneficial - connecting everyone - now looks to be societally damaging - connecting everyone to propaganda. Truth matters in democracy, but apparently not so much on Facebook. On the balance, is Facebook causing more harm to society than good? I don't know how one maintains the business and mitigates the adverse impact. I don't get the impression here that Zuckerberg or Sandberg know, and I get the impression that Zuckerberg, at least, is determined not to own the consequences. The roster of modern capitalism's villans includes cigarette companies, Purdue Pharma, oil companies - and one day Facebook?
> what it would take to build a business to keep up with that kind of growth
Two decades of free money and self-enrichment which wilts the surrounding world.
Offloading all your problems. Moving far far away.
Standing by and watching as other people get blown up, burnt alive, shot, OD'ed, beaten to death and plagued by a bioweapon.
Somehow turning it all around, and blaming everyone else, when your arbitrary reckless activism and unbridled ambition are the source of a lack of opportunity and toxic tribalism.
I would rather be poor. At least I have some dignity. The world doesn't turn into some awful carnival.
At this time I will like to point out that Carlos Slim, owner of the New York Times, bought Tel Cel infrastructure from the Salinas family who have money laundering convictions. Before anyone says well it's the demand, you addicted everyone. We gave the world the Bill of Rights and free markets and authority through self-evidence and your turn around and addicted everyone to your poison. 2.8 billion amoral talking animals, gifted paradise, and sold it out on the cheap. No thanks.
31 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 57.5 ms ] threadAnother one-sided political piece by NYT.
I'd like to see a good example of the MSM inciting violence. Do you have some?
It's very easy to make superficial judgements and be outraged before knowing all the evidence. Media outlets such as NYT are exploiting this to gain clicks and ad revenue.
The MSM would have you believe this was an angel of a man murdered by police as he begged for his life. He was a career criminal with a lethal combination of drugs in his system, with Covid-19, trying to discard baggies of drugs during the arrest, who had been testing police with claims of "I can't breathe" long before anyone went anywhere near his neck as a deceitful ploy to avoid arrest. But the MSM will only show you the "right" part of the video.
It's been going on for a long time now. The Michael Brown one was extraordinary - the police officer was lucky to escape with his life and yet the MSM presented Brown as a gentle giant slain in cold blood.
It's all very fatiguing.
Injustice is bronze statues erected to glorify feral black criminals in a country where White children brutally murdered by radicalised blacks barely make the local news.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26926389
Unfortunately the jury gave in to the raging mobs and politicians calling for violence in case of a "wrong" verdict, not to mention one of the jurors turned out to be BLM activist.
Let's just hope Chauvin's verdict gets thrown out on appeal as it was a travesty of justice.
It’s trendy to hate FB, but this is utterly ridiculous. Guess what else was used to organize these riots? Telephones. Are telephones evil? No. Do evil people use communication tools to further their goals? Yes. Does that mean those tools are bad or should be shut down or monitored? No.
Maybe you’re right. We should ban online conversation tools and use telephones exclusively, because their inherent lack of scalability and features means people can’t organize as effectively. That will definitely fix our problems.
I never said that those shouldn't exist, what I am saying is that Facebook preferentially displays these flamebait posts because they drive engagement.
Going back to your original analogy about a telephone that calls you, Facebook doesn't preferentially show notifications. They show notifications whenever something happens according to how you have your notifications set.
Anyways, you have the causality completely incorrect here. It is the person that has the preference, and Facebook caters to that preference, regardless of what it is. If your point is just that people cared most about their conversations related to the capital riot on Jan 6, of course you are correct. It was the most important event of that day, month, and maybe even year.
But maybe, just maybe, if you keep blaming FB hard enough, you'll fix society's problems.
How do I know that facebook uses divisiveness to maximize engagement? Because that's what they said:
> “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” read a slide from a 2018 presentation. “If left unchecked,” it warned, Facebook would feed users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.”
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-di...
On the other hand, the other platforms don't have a best-in-class, finely tuned engagment-maximizing algorithm that exercises no human judgment about whether the engagement that's being driven is net harmful to users and society at large.
Well, actually Youtube has a similar situation[1] and is arguably culpable in the same vein.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/technology/youtube-online...
facebook was somewhat neutral allowing both sides, left and right, to push their agendas in 2020. Censorship would be much worse, and this NYT article seem to advocate for shutting down free speech.
Can't believe you were let out of your cage, you malicious creep. Wise up before someone wises you up without your consent.
Nor is it just voting. The former President had in-party approval ratings nearing 90%. That suggests that it's not just tolerating the misbehavior out of ideological disagreement with the opposition, but support for all aspects of it.
I can't engage with "right-leaning political thought that's worthy of debate and discussion" because I'm dealing with the effects of conspiracy theorists in top offices. I don't really get to vote for right vs left any more; I have to vote with crazy vs at-least-not-crazy. And it's a coin toss whether I will win that.
So I simply don't pay any attention to calls for calm discussion of abstract political ideals. They're simply not on the table come election time, and the elections have very serious consequences. I can't smear right-leaning political philosophy because it's simply not something that comes up.
Two decades of free money and self-enrichment which wilts the surrounding world.
Offloading all your problems. Moving far far away.
Standing by and watching as other people get blown up, burnt alive, shot, OD'ed, beaten to death and plagued by a bioweapon.
Somehow turning it all around, and blaming everyone else, when your arbitrary reckless activism and unbridled ambition are the source of a lack of opportunity and toxic tribalism.
I would rather be poor. At least I have some dignity. The world doesn't turn into some awful carnival.
At this time I will like to point out that Carlos Slim, owner of the New York Times, bought Tel Cel infrastructure from the Salinas family who have money laundering convictions. Before anyone says well it's the demand, you addicted everyone. We gave the world the Bill of Rights and free markets and authority through self-evidence and your turn around and addicted everyone to your poison. 2.8 billion amoral talking animals, gifted paradise, and sold it out on the cheap. No thanks.