and long as laws, rules, regulation supports it many people/corporation will always choose profits over ethics and its not a broad generalization but a natural instinct in my opinion. And you can also buy prestige just by throwing cents in name of philanthropy right?
I hate it but this is how natures works and its too cruel.
> and long as laws, rules, regulation supports it many people/corporation will always choose profits over ethics
Many is a key word here. Many will, but many will not. And how many do is definitely a function of culture. As shown by the big difference in attitude to this question between the US and Europe.
That’s what a business is. Greed is good, it drives people to do great things and create amazing products. If company A cared less about profits and more about society, it would lose out to company B who cares only about profit and market share, before eventually company A withers and dies and all we are left with is company B.
It’s the role of government to curtail greed and industry actions. The current climate is caused by a a failure of government to step in and intervene, not by the industry caring about profit above all else.
I don't think you can argue with Gordon Gekko " that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit..."
And btw this forum is hosted by one of the most prominent venture capitalist firms in Silicon Valley which funds thousands of (promising) capitalists.
That's what America is about, greed,
the pursuit of happiness, whatever you call it, everything else is noise.
>That's what America is about, greed, the pursuit of happiness, whatever you call it, everything else is noise.
The pursuit of happiness is not greed. What qualifies as 'happiness' is entirely up to each individual, and for many people that doesn't include being greedy.
well as the success of the US economy shows, those greedy capitalists create millions of jobs and goods and increase overall "happiness" of millions (of perhaps less greedy) people.
Greed and free markets make for a healthy society.
As a counter-example see what happened with the Soviet Union, I can tell you first hand that didn’t work very well. Demonizing "bourjois" values of private property and prosperity, while fetishizing the “common good” and all-controlling government made the entire society very unhappy (except for a few fat bureaucrats) and led to its eventual collapse.
I absolutely can argue with Gordon Gekko. His "philosophy" is intended to be a caricature of what's wrong, not a serious position.
> "Greed... captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit..."
But see, we don't want the evolutionary spirit. We want our kids to be able to play in the park without worrying about the survival of the fittest. We want cures for diseases. We want social safety nets. We want to live in a civilization, not in a "state of nature"; we want to be humans, not animals.
Of course there are downsides to greed, but as a driving force of human action it's good because it's relatable, identifiable, and can be regulated. Society gets to dictate how much greed is okay, not private industries. We decided long ago that killing out of greed is bad for society, so that's why we punish murder. The same thing with stealing, fraud, etc. In a complete vacuum you would no doubt have companies killing competing CEOs or destroying a competitor's property or lying constantly, but we don't live in vacuum. We live in a society curtailed by laws and regulations. So far we have had very little pushback against addictive apps, that will soon change.
No - just because you're a predicatable asshole doesn't make you not an asshole. I don't disagree that whenever possible we should create laws that prevent selfish behavior from being a winning move but the economy moves quickly and exploiting new economic ideas for greed is still a dick move.
>>The current climate is caused by a failure of government to step in and intervene, not by the industry caring about profit above all else.
>No, it's both. Full stop.
disagree. it's the job of government to add legislation. not having rules, then acting surprised when things don't go the way you want is asinine. if you want people to act in a particular way, spell it out. Don't act like it's implied and be outraged when people don't abide by your imaginary rules.
This presumes there's an universal definition of asshole/unethical that everyone agrees on. You might think paying workers minimum wage is asshole/unethical, so you pay above it even though it's above market rate. Other business owners disagree and undercut you, causing you to be driven out of business. You think they're assholes and fume in your head about how evil they are, but they think nothing's wrong and you're just a bad businessman. Is it fair to denounce them for the way their acted, because their morals don't match up with yours?
People doing things worse is rarely a valid justification for not doing things better. What a weird approach to ethics in this thread.
Are our moral goals no longer about improving and setting a higher bar for how we conduct ourselves? Have we succumbed to material wants and ego at the cost of decency? Goodness gracious.
I don't think you'll find much objections to doing good, but but where do you stop? Say the minimum wage is $10 and you decide to pay your workers $15. You still get flak from people who want you to pay even higher (see: amazon getting flak despite paying above market/minimum wage). Do you just turn your business into a non-profit? After all, any profit means there's money that could be spent doing good.
There will always be people who are willing to be assholes for money. Yea they're an asshole, but they're not actually making things worse since there are plenty of people ready to replace them.
You must be joking, because people who believe that greed is good are exactly the same ones who believe the government should not be imposing rules and everything should be left for the markets to decide.
I bought more after a stop loss sale. I was a strong bull for a while basing on where I spend my advertising dollars.
I spent like at least 60% of my clients money on FB (before CTV scaled). Now CTV is eating more budget AND I'm really feeling the iOS changes.
I think the ad market will sort it self and value out but this month has been bad and all over the place. For instance targeting small non-profit donor lists isn't as effective but for some reason I'm having some success just targeting everyone over 45 (a non-profit ask, prob won't work as well for a Democratic ask).
I also see a ton of tik tok videos reposted with logo and everything on IG.
Still a bull but I am concerned and unless they get a new platform or immersive reality/ar takes off I don't think there is room for huge exponential growth anymore. Significant incremental 100% though IMHO.
But who am I opinion doesn't matter, my ad buying experience is only one tiny anecdote. I'm small in both spend and my investments - only recently became better at saving vs spending. Though my dad put in more than I could a bit after IPO and has bumped his retirement considerable
Agreed. Psaki is already citing this "whistleblower" to argue for more government oversight in censorship.
> Psaki was asked about Haugen’s interview and whether the revelations “change the way the White House thinks about regulating Facebook and other social media giants.”
“This is just the latest in a series of revelations about social media platforms,” Psaki said, “that make clear that self-regulation is not working. That’s long been the president’s view and been the view of the administration.”
In this case, I agree. She's represented by the same PR firm that Psaki used to work for and is represented by the same law firm that Eric Ciaramella used.
This feels hollow. These are things that have been obvious to everyone for a very long time. We all already talk about it openly and have been forever. What does it mean to be a "whistleblower" about it?
Of what? We've had evidence forever, it's public and understood. It's in our addictions, unhappiness, and politicization of everything. We all know where it comes from and we all know that companies are profit-driven. There are literally no secrets being revealed.
The fundamentaly new aspect of her revelation is the extent of FB awareness of the situation, that they have evidence that some previously tested minor modifications to their algorithm could reduce public harm and disinformation, but choose not to do so as it would hurt their profit. As the company has obligations to its shareholders to increase profit whenever possible, it has a conflict of interest making it impossible for them to choose the best option for the public good.
So it's really like auto makers not providing more than the minimal set of safety feature required by regulators.
We know that the only way to reduce said harm is by realigning incentives which requires involving the legislator.
I think this all just a continuation of how society wants everything safe and made of foam. We cannot have danger at the park because someone might scrape a knee. We cannot have contact sports because someone might break a tooth. And we cannot have uncensored internet because someone might reqd something that wasn't Snopes-approved.
Most infuriating to me is that now it's about coddling teens. I didn't want to be coddled as a teen. I wanted to be respected. I wanted to be free of patronizing zealots. Oddly, Zuckerberg was a teenager himself when he started the damn thing.
Teens have rights too, as much as we adults want to deny them.
People are being fed deliberate poisonous stupidity because Facebook figured they were vulnerable to it or rather implemented an algorithm that maximized engagement and therefore revenue at the expense of the health of society and people's lives.
You are trivializing this harm. I have family that aren't vaccinating and may harm themselves or others because of poisonous shit they learned on Facebook.
Teens navigate social media even better than many 30-somethings who were also digital natives. I agree with the sentiment though. Missinformation is a narrative from legacy media to fortify their positions against social media giants. To be fair, the latter are a problem, but mostly the censorship by them is.
Sadly, best thing these regulations could achieve is making Facebook work "worse", that is, not as invasive/addictive and thus not as harmful, and enable some competition.
I can't expect that in a democratic society the very root of the problem with social media - that free speech worked well only in times when printing a pamphlet required some money, connections and education and set a high social and intellectual threshold for doing so, and simply does NOT make any benefit to the society when ANYONE can post on Facebook. Just as democracy itself stops working when everyone can vote, becoming a snake that eats it's own tail.
Sadly, this will eventually result in end of the Western world as we know it and there is nothing we can do.
> Just as democracy itself stops working when everyone can vote
Um, what now? Are you saying universal suffrage is a bad thing? Who are the people you think should be denied voting rights to keep "democracy itself...working"?
Immovable property owners who are able to extract rents sufficient for independence from government. That is, back to pre-Jacksonian era. Of course, there is no way to get it done because it's a catch-22: people won't vote to resign their voting rights, this is why i believe collapse is imminent.
Just like "communism" (Soviet "socialism") stopped working when variety of goods in demand became so large, and life cycles of products became so short, that centralised planning no longer had any chance not to mismanage it - that is, simply due to technological change, or in communist terms, "progress of means of production", democracy seems to stop working when free speech becomes really, really free.
I'd go on to say that, as a broad generalisation, rights and liberties of the Western world that we value so much are valuable and positively contribute to society only as long as they can in reality be only used by elites.
Sadly, concept of human rights (late XVIII century) largely preceded industrialisation, and thus the prospect of exponential economic growth that will some day make "universal" rights REALLY "universal" - evaded imagination of their inventors. They saw those rights, as a matter of course, as "universal for people like themselves", just as they didn't think of them as pertaining to women - not because they were especially sexist, but because it just didn't cross their minds...
>> Who are the people you think should be denied voting rights to keep "democracy itself...working"?
> Immovable property owners who are able to extract rents sufficient for independence from government. That is, back to pre-Jacksonian era. Of course, there is no way to get it done because it's a catch-22: people won't vote to resign their voting rights, this is why i believe collapse is imminent.
Did you answer the inverse of my question? It sounds like you think only wealthy property owners should have the right to vote (e.g. something like the pre-Jacksonian era franchise), is that correct?
Yes, or something like that. People who can be expected to be responsible (they have a lot to lose) and who will never come to depend on the government, but rather, government will always depend on them.
Expanding suffrage to people who depend on the government rather than other way around is easy to explain (populism: "let me create millions of new voters, they will be super happy and all vote for me"), but destructive and impossible to undo. And we are at the tail end of it now when all these people not just vote, but can also make use of free speech...
Of course, there could be in theory a multitude of ways to fix it, not just by limiting suffrage (like poll tax for example), but all of them unrealistic.
Free speech rights themselves is OK, but when they also vote - it becomes a problem.
When free speech could only be made use of by relatively wealthy and well-educated classes - simply due to technology - universal suffrage wasn't that bad - because political thinking of common people was still guided by those wealthy and well-educated classes, and because they weren't (and aren't) very capable of critical thinking, they were "captive audience" of a sort and mostly taken along for a ride.
But now when social media really gives usable "free speech" rights to everyone, these people live in the world where Deep State injects them with mind control chips, and White House is run by a sect of pedophiles and Trump is the only person who could save us from them...
And this free speech made universal suffrage a real, and i believe unsolvable, problem. Maybe only solvable through a social collapse (like in 1991 Soviet Union) with a new state taking the territory of the previous one, voiding it, and creating a new regime with very limited suffrage.
Free speech on the internet worked fine before companies developed algorithms to feed you content that made them the most $$. I would also say there's a problem in traditional media - something shared with social media.
Outrage sells. We have a bunch of people walking around being angry about shit that is never gonna change, politicians don't give two fucks about (except it gets you to vote for them), and all media are laughing to the bank because of the engagement it drives.
> Free speech on the internet worked fine before companies developed algorithms to feed you content that made them the most $$.
Free speech on the internet worked fine back before everyone was on the internet - I don't think it's easy to tell if the shift was solely due to companies coming along with echo chamber algorithms or if it's an issue with most people not being able to handle being anonymous by default. I'm not trying to say it's definitely one way or the other (or some other way I can't recognize) - but I think we've got a very murky study with a lot of confounding variables.
It's not their fault that they have developed algorithms - after all, this is just survival of the fittest in the open market.
Problem is exactly that with social media, masses, for the first time in history, actually got the free speech rights. Rights themselves are the problem. Founding Fathers who invented free speech could not foresee social media just as they couldn't foresee AR-15.
We literally just ended our last war just over a month ago - I think it's a bit too early to celebrate how much of a peace loving society we have become. The war contractors were milking Afganistan for decades and haven't needed a new target - let's see if we can go for a year at peace before we declare pacifism achieved.
> Polarization was lower when TV political coverage was regulated.
No, it wasn't.
Partisan polarization may have been, but only because the divide between the major parties didn't capture the major salient ideological divisions in the country, so that the polarization that existed didn't align with partisan identity.
This had nothing to do with TV regulation (and, indeed, predates TV), and everything to do with the long period of partisan realignment between the New Deal and the mid-1990s.
I don't understand which of these accusations are actually breaking the law. They all imply that Facebook isn't being a Good Samaritan, but that isn't actually illegal.
They have - though they've diversified domestically in a significant way and while cigarettes (and vaping!) is still a major societal problem it's not nearly as bad as it was in the 80's and earlier.
While cigarettes are no longer a threat to societal health. We have monitoring programs in place, insurance costs (smokers pay higher premiums) factored, and ways to prevent our kids from being marketed to.
The alternative is we go the banhammer route, and as we learned with prohibition era, that had unintended/undesirable consequences.
>While cigarettes are no longer a threat to societal health.
Cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable death in the USA (even moreso in countries where smoking is far more accepted widespread) so I don't believe this to be even remotely true.
I think Big Tobacco is still worse but honestly? The extreme radicalism we're seeing in our modern society is pretty terrible - I just don't think it's fair to blame all of that radicalism on Facebook, even if it has played a role in nurturing it.
What do you think FB's role is in that? Do you think the "algorithms" are to blame?
Seems to me that unmoderated online discussion will always be toxic. Take a look at the chan forums for an extreme, anonymous version of social media where there are no algorithms to blame.
When you bring the general public online and give them a platform to voice their insane ideas they never discussed before, you get the internet in 2021.
Combine that with the fact that until recently, people on the opposite sides of the political spectrum rarely interacted. The division was there, but it was masked by the inability to directly attack each other. Now, I can go on Twitter and argue all day with the other side in a thread below a Senator's tweet.
Unless you are suggesting Facebook begin heavily moderating what people say, there will be no other outcome until we as a society collectively learn to 1. Have empathy for others when conversing online, 2. Stop participating in discussions that make you feel terrible, and the classic, 3. Don't believe everything you read online.
I'm fairly confident that widespread internet-based multicast communication is almost solely responsible for many of the profoundly weird things that have happened in global politics for the last six years. It's a very powerful new tool for communication that has hit very fast and without enough time for society to adapt to the change. A textbook example of accelerating technological change throwing a monkey wrench into what seemed to be a well-oiled machine.
It's fair enough to say that Facebook is only responsible for a significant part of this, as there's also Twitter, YouTube, Instagram (pre-acquisition), Snapchat, TikTok and so on, and there would be others if these did not exist. The root cause is smartphones, the Internet and cheap bandwidth & servers.
But in the context of regulation, finding out how to deal with this new weapon of communication, starting with a case study of the biggest seems like an excellent beginning.
I honestly think unregulated social media has the potential to do more damage than unregulated tobacco sales, if by regulation we mean "government-enforced rules". But I don't mean to frame it as a context; it seems obvious that both are a good idea.
Years of social media and misinformation resulted in an attempted coup and insurrection earlier this year, the major contributing factors of which are still ongoing. I don't think phillip-morris ever got that far.
While FB no doubt contributed to the Jan 6 riot, it's too simple and tidy to blame it on social media. There is a complex web of factors, including interpretation of the Constitution, view of history, fear of tomorrow if the other side takes over, frustration with a sense of powerlessness, etc.
Frankly, the Jan 6 episode is not all that different from the BLM riots last year, in that their causes are analogous and the sense of powerlessness led to rioting.
Except that one of them occurred at the time & place of the major transition of power and actively stormed a congressional session resulting in deaths in a core federal government building. But sure... other than that "not all that different".
No disagreement there, and for the record I am glad the Jan 6 rioters are being prosecuted.
The point I was raising is that "Facebook = riot" is too simplistic an explanation. Moreover the contributing factors are not isolated to one event or political persuasion.
I remember a church being set on fire across the street from the White House. I guess arson, especially if directed at Christian churches, is just the way we exercise our 1st Amendment rights in this country.
I don't mean to defend those who stormed the capitol, who to be clear I don't agree with, but the important thing to note here is sense of powerlessness. These people felt powerless, regardless of whether or not they were in any kind of objective sense, and that feeling motivated their actions.
This is relevant to the current discussion inasmuch as FB (and social media generally) may have contributed to, stoked and fomented said feelings of powerlessness for the sake of engagement / eyeballs / ad clicks.
I don’t think I believe that they actually feel powerless, though. The right-wing and centrist press spin that narrative, because it’s the only way to justify their actions, but it doesn’t square with reality: people who feel powerless do not violently threaten the workings of government, believing that they will succeed and avoid any negative consequences if they fail. Those are the actions of people who are used to getting their way all day every day, who cannot believe that they won’t get their way again.
I will never forget the exhausted desperation in the voice of a young woman talking to her parents in an undisclosed middle America location: 'there are no jobs'. The words are cliche, I know. Nonetheless I'd recommend taking a few days and visit such a place as opposed to yet another scuba trip in French Polynesia. Won't get as many likes on Instagram, but may give a bit of a perspective. There are vast swaths of this country that are not thriving.
(a) I live in rural America.
(b) That has almost nothing to do with Trump support, despite what the media says.
(c) Those are not the people who broke into the capitol. They can’t afford a trip to DC.
Assuming general equivalency in manipulation of public opinion to hide their malfeasance,
the impact of that malfeasance is orders of magnitude worse for our society, democracy, and world culture.
If you have any doubt about this, you haven't looked at any of the reporting, not just from this latest data dump, but from any of the other whistle-blowing, leaks, third party investigations, etc.
It's not just that they bury and spin any internal findings which may compromise their ability to pursue "engagement," it's so so much worse.
Look at the documents. This whistleblower brought the receipts.
Their continued operations as a monolith represents an acute and active threat. They should be broken up and subjected to transparency requirements.
That's what you get when you pursue profit and power at the expense of social cohesion, functioning government, and in the case of many in harsh realities outside the US, assistance in brutal political suppression and worse.
LOL downvotes are the surest possible sign of unsettling and upsetting those who are complicit.
Work for them? Quit.
Do business with them? Don't.
Think access to clients and relationships with them depend on participating in this ecosystem? It doesn't.
Facebook has a much wider reach than Bic Tobacco could dream of.
As far as actual impact on thousands of lives, it's probably a tossup since Facebook has many means of ruining lives (psychological manipulation, distrust in government, pandemic misinformation, political misinformation). But I'd wager that Facebook has probably already caused way more harm than tobacco. It's hard to measure though.
Distrust in government is a democratic necessity. There were more insidious source for misinformation on vaccines than Facebook, although some of the worst cases were favored by government (lab leak suppression).
Tendency is that the parent comment is correct and the proposed solutions are practically bretty bad.
Tobacco kills 8 million people per year, and that's with over half a century of regulation and cessation problems taxation. It's also a disgusting habit that destroys any area smokers step in.
HN is at its worse when fuming over Facebook, and comparing the tragedy caused by smoking companies with social media is a good example of how uninformed the site can get.
With only 10 years of existence and already to its palmares a genocide in Myanmar and making the worst pandemic since the plague much worse, I think the comparison is not so far fetched.
So the Burmese government and military junta had nothing to do with the genocide. The local media, endemic discrimination, local warlords, international support, nor the people actually guiding and doing the genocide had any responsability.
Was social media the cause for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda too?
As with cigarette seller, it was never in their best interest that their product cause cancer. But it does. In top of that they had evidence of it earlier than the public and chose to hide it.
Facebook had many internal whisteblowers that the platform was used to shape the public opinion and facilitate the genocide and choose to do nothing.
If everything that Facebook does to maximize profits is legal, but some of it is horrible, then we should write new laws to make the horrible stuff illegal. If Facebook does things that are bad for the world then policymakers should try to make it stop.
By all means. But you can't write laws targeting one company..
For example.- from what is being discussed - "Requiring Facebook to publicly disclose its internal research". -- either make all companies disclose internal research or none of them. You can't just pick and choose.
Precisely. Passing legislation regulating all social media companies is valid. Targeting a specific company in legislation, in addition to not making sense, will quickly be struck down by courts.
Why should we not also apply these laws to companies worth 100M that are doing the same crap? We gain nothing by finely targetting these laws especially if it allows some facebook-like clone to enter the market and change one minor thing to dodge having the same oversight.
I mean, sure, then it isn't targeting a specific company. But it baffles me why you'd want to put a Market Cap threshold instead of regulating all social media companies evenly regardless of size. Your "rule" wouldn't have applied to Parler, for example.
We need to be careful with regulations. It's good to regulate giants, but creating barriers to entry that prevent new players from competing with the giants is a bad outcome we need to remain cognizant of.
Maybe $1B is too high. Maybe $1M is too low. Somewhere in the middle is a sweet spot.
You can, however, closely examine a company[1] and the horrible things they're doing to create sane laws to restrict the whole market. Any anti-facebook law will probably strongly impact twitter and reddit among others - but it still can reasonably affect facebook in the largest manner. If it affects facebook in the largest manner because we all hate facebook then that's a load of horsedung - but it can affect facebook in the largest manner because they're doing all the stuff we don't want anyone to do.
1. (formally "a near monopoly" instead of "a company" - edited for clarity)
Well yes, alleging a monopoly implies they are running afoul of anti-trust laws but the whistleblower is alleging FB made false statements to investors. The hearing does not have to do with monopolies/antitrust.
Why stop at social media? Imagine that 50 years ago, Big Tobacco had to disclose its research. Imagine the same for Big Oil. Wouldn't that have been a good thing?
Now, you can go too far. You don't want to make every tech company disclose their research on, say, improved silicon layout algorithms. But if it involves harm to customers or the public, yes, they should have to disclose it.
Do you think if all companies are required to disclose such research, that they are still going to conduct it to begin with? If they don't already know the answer, they will just not ask the questions- just like a trial lawyer.
A regulation like that has to be examined for the incentives it creates, not just the goal. If companies are forced to disclose research that involves customer or public harm, they will probably just stop doing the research, or fabricate false results. Thus, information is lost rather than disclosed. No companies want to say “our product is harmful to our customers.”
As a public company they need to disclose information to investors which in some cases they didn't disclose. This is a SEC violation that might be hard to prove since it's hard to say what's OK and isn't.
Also Facebook reps lied to congress which is criminal. The studies show they clearly knew a lot more than they were admitting to about the impact they had and lied under oath.
The breaking the law bit comes in the form of an accusation to the SEC that Facebook misled investors by not disclosing that they are in fact not doing everything possible to combat the spread of extremism and radicalization through their platform as they claimed - that they decided to ignore this because it would impact their profits.
Misleading investors is a crime from what I understand, so if found guilty on that account, they did break the law. Now, if they will be found guilty is another matter. Personally I don't think they will even be prosecuted for it.
One can pick and choose statements like this and put tailored spin on it and make any statement a lie. example, Apple says this is the best iPhone ever. False , I like the one with headphone jack better. Are we going to put all statements by all companies to this level of rigor?
The statements Facebook is being judged on very well may also be too vague for anyone to find real fault - I can't tell if there's anything there to specifically prove that facebook were directly misleading investors while privately chatting about how awesome it is that radicalism drives engagement - if there's a memo to that effect they could be in real trouble.
"Doing everything we can" is at least somewhat objective. If a contractor says he's painting your house as well as he can, when he's actually on vacation in Hawaii, that statement is clearly false.
As long as facebook remains online there is a chance that someone, somewhere could post bad opinions. Doing everything they can would therefore mean shutting facebook down. The literal interpretation is ridiculous and no one could believe it. So we have no choice but to interpret it as "doing everything reasonable that they can". But what is reasonable? That is where subjectivity enters.
>they are in fact not doing everything possible to combat the spread of extremism and radicalization through their platform as they claimed
The only way they could claim they are doing everything possible would be by not having a platform or by reviewing every post prior to people seeing it.
Bingo. So what's wrong with that? Take what happened in Myanmar for example. The government was using Facebook to commit genocide against the Rohingya people. Facebook could have just turned it off in that country. At some point Facebook should just turn itself off. The leaks allege that insiders at Facebook have more or less argued the exact same thing: turn off or greatly tone down profitable features like groups that are routinely misused.
Whether or not anything here is illegal is for the courts to decide. But the hearing is for policymakers. If there's grossly disagreeable and unethical conduct then it's up to policymakers to create new laws or modify existing laws to prevent these things in the future.
My response is by no means a whole response, but I share my amused surprise given that 'shareholder value' argument gets trotted out the moment company does anything that upsets society a little. This suggests that it is not about the good of the society, but that of a specific power center. Normally, as you said, pursuit of profit is cool in US.
Here, FB, if you listen to some of the commentary, is not doing 'enough' to combat 'hate' and 'disinformation'. In short, FB does not do enough about wrongthink to use 1984 terms.
Now, there are arguments to use against FB for the impact on society, but the fact that everyone appears to be surprised that company, gasp, chooses profit over society, is beyond hilarious. No fucking shit.
She's accusing Facebook of withholding information on these issues from shareholders. Now whether the information was relevant or significant enough to announce to shareholders is another question. I guess the media awareness of the whistleblowing did lead to share prices dropping, so kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
She's also handed over lots of material to the SEC, which has the responsibility of deciding whether there have been any violations. But that's a separate track from congressional hearings.
Congress is not a court. Congressional hearings aren't about determining whether someone broke the law, but rather about whether laws need to be changed.
They might be doing some things which are questionable ethically. But stopping that would require new laws. And that's very hard because you can't really make a case to target FB in particular (and not also a bunch of other harmful media). But other harmful media (eg Fox "news") is protected by the 1st amendment. And likely so is Facebook for that matter.
But pointing at unethical behaviour and pretending you're outraged is very in vogue. Doubly so in big tech.
Her testimony seem designed to provide cover for increased viewpoint censorship on the facebook platform. Her explicit examples are "hate speech" by conservative dissenters that cause people to disagree with narratives she agrees with.
Facebook has applied some of the most heavy-handed and widespread politically motivated censorship that the west has ever seen. If anything, increasing this censorship is likely to increase cronyism and division more than anything.
And their censorship has often not been correct in the past, when being wrong caused real damage. E.g. the now mainstream lab leak hypothesis was censored in a way that may have delayed a more effective response.
The people involved also cause me pause, and indicate she is not a moderate seeking measured change good for all viewpoints. Her lawyer is Andrew P. Bakaj, an attorney and former intelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. He was the principal attorney representing the whistleblower who filed the initial complaint that led to the launch of multiple investigations by the United States Congress into the Trump–Ukraine scandal, the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, and, ultimately, the first Impeachment of Donald Trump.
Oh great, so Facebook made that genocide happen but I should thank them because they helped me be informed about it after the fact. What a fantastic Facebook world we live in.
I think the "solution" she proposes is much worse than Facebook showing questionable advertising and general content to be honest. A ministry to institutionalize a line of communication between Washington and socal media? That is much worse.
There is a direct contradiction to this in recent history. The Iraq War started before Facebook was a thing. The false story about WMDs as pretense to the war was widely circulated by traditional media. 15,000 US soliders and 500,000 Iraqis were killed. The most comparable thing attributed to Facebook is the Myanmar coup where around 800 people were killed.
I strongly recommend you give this your time and attention. Two things I find striking and admirable about her testimony, that absolutely make it worth watching even if you are already familiar with the controversy:
1. She is consistent and focused at explaining the issue as a systemic problem with incentives, not a question of good people versus evil people.
2. She is skillfully demonstrating how to deliver strong criticism without scorn but rather with empathy, compassion, and a spirit of collaboration toward all involved.
These qualities are what really set this apart from other criticism of social media, and both are incredibly important and healthy in a world where Facebook and Twitter have normalized the opposite.
And as a result, to my astonishment, both Republicans and Democrats are engaging with this more intelligently, patiently, and constructively than I have ever seen. It really has to be seen to be believed.
It is an impressive performance on her part. She successfully navigated several primitive attempts by senators to frame the intent of people at Facebook as malevolent. A typical politician move to try to create a fictionalized supervillain to attack - a vapid rhetoric path. She dodged that multiple times and directed the conversation back to the substantive issues of privacy, algorithms, content.
These folks are ooold. They don’t understand anything other than black and white because they’re just told it’s an issue. Average age of a senator is 63 years old.
It is significant that she is advocating for censorship of "hate speech". Considering that she donated to "critical social justice" activists [1], the increased centralized censorship she asks for is most likely another step to censor dissenters to critical social justice. This is neither measured nor moderate.
Facebook already apply heavy censorship in a way that is arguably driving a lot of suspicion and division. Their content "supreme court" is currently largely staffed with establishment democrats [3].
"Hate speech" [2] as defined by critical social justice adherents could refer to anything that doesn’t proceed from a critical consciousness, i.e., that which accords with critical theories, especially those for “Social Justice,” possibly including microaggressions.
That the GOP and DNC establishment are in alignment to censor dissenter in both ranks is not surprising. That being "Bernie bros", "Yang gang", "Trumpians", or any other flank.
Why do you think it is important where the facts are published when links to the source evidence used in my claim is linked to in the articles? How do you differentiate "far-right" from just conservative?
Let me explain. Far-right is simply anything to the right of the far-left. Facts are not facts unless and until they are approved facts, and fact-checked by the establishment press fact-checkers. Facts that are non-facts can turn into facts in time if they become useful to the establishment or, in rare cases, cannot be asserted while also asserting other, more important facts, without excessive contradiction. Also, to be facts, they must originate in mainstream institutions, preferably the DNC or any of the capture institutions of government. Technically, these facts are factitious, but they are not, in fact, lies. Lies are truths that contradict facts, so defined. It is important where facts are published because anything that doesn't originate in fact-based institutions can be dismissed without consideration of the merits. It is analogous to not having standing in a court case. In some cases, facts published in far-right outlets can also be published in centrist (i.e., far-left) outlets, if those facts can be spun to serve the controlling interests.
The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument:
Person 1 asserts proposition X.
Person 2 argues against a superficially similar proposition Y, falsely, as if an argument against Y were an argument against X.
This reasoning is a fallacy of relevance: it fails to address the proposition in question by misrepresenting the opposing position.
Additionally, Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.
I will note you replied to a comment accusing the whistleblower of being trans. That comment (that you replied to) was, of course, ad hominem.
For the comment in question, person 1 is the zestyping or the whistleblower, depending. Person 2 is you. Your proposition Y (flagged and hidden now) is not invalid, exactly, but "explaining" it to you is pointless given it is a fallacy diverging from the relevance of the content.
The proposition X, which is, in part, "These qualities are what really set this apart from other criticism of social media, and both are incredibly important and healthy in a world where Facebook and Twitter have normalized the opposite."
Your proposition Y, is an attack on the whistleblower and her credibility, not the the content of her own propositions, which may be viewed here:
No mention of "banning" "hate speech" at all. Just a plea for someone to do something to remove the blocks in place by way of Facebook (as a corporation) needing to continue making profit, perhaps at the expense of collective sanity, by not addressing the dissonance their platform creates in the population.
If you had addressed those claims by her in your comment, you would avoid making strawman arguments.
In closing, I get that you and others are frustrated that certain types of posted content are targeted for removal. However, that in and of itself does not mean meaningful and opposed discourse can't occur or that anyone has a "right" to post wherever they like, saying whatever they want. It is that it (your comments) may not occur without significant work involved that we all care about. Cheap and easy discourse isn't good for anyone, harms society, and will continue to be exploited until we come up with a technical solution to solve it.
In the meantime, explanations and education are in order. Thanks for the question! Hope this helps without too much blame.
P.S. Entirely speculative at this point, but I suspect if we built an inverted index of a fallacious argument, we'd find the weights/distances between words significantly divergent from the original proposition.
She proposes a ministry for regulating tech which means there will be a permanent line between Washington and large social media companies. This is a horrible approach by any objective meassure and it would obviously also institutionalize Facebook (see "An array of possible next steps"[1]). This indicate that I am right this is not an attempt at weakening Facebook and social media in general, but an attempt to commandeer its power to censor.
Since she is proposing a political body with the power to censor all social media, why is evidence of her political motivations and potential political connections to the whistleblowing a strawman?
> In closing, I get that you and others are frustrated that certain types of posted content are targeted for removal. However, that in and of itself does not mean meaningful and opposed discourse can't occur or that anyone has a "right" to post wherever they like, saying whatever they want.
New discoveries are in the margins, and is indistinguishable from nonsense. A lack of certainty and a certain amount of curiosity is needed to go through the process of distinguishing the two, which is why tyrannical regimes do not innovate well.
Why are you so certain that you are right and is capable of knowing when dissenters are wrong? Whom do you think is capable of distinguish truth from falsity in the margins, and censor with absolute power without falling for the temptation to misuse it?
> It is that it (your comments) may not occur without significant work involved that we all care about. Cheap and easy discourse isn't good for anyone, harms society, and will continue to be exploited until we come up with a technical solution to solve it.
This accusation of dissenters not doing the work, while those in tech that censor do, is not supported by evidence.
Censorship by tech has in the last year been wrong on major important points, e.g:
- Not long ago the lab leak hypothesis was censored, delaying potential life saving measures
- Not long ago Hunters laptop was called fake and censored, affecting democratic primary outcome and election outcomes
- Not long ago early treatment solutions to covid was censored, delaying deployment of early treatment solutions similar to the one Merck just released [2]
This is the problem replying to people who make strawman arguments.
Also, dissent is being amplified with software, which itself is not conscious. Being more conscious of your points will help matters. Not being more conscious of your points will help accelerate the madness.
You've failed to acknowledge anyone's argument here, which is really the hard part to learn.
My point was exactly relevant because it sought to contextualize your claim specifically to the argument I made that you claimed to explain.
If your points explanatory power is too poor to contextualize to what it criticize its honestly just a smear. You are to my estimation going into ad hominem in lieu of a good argument in both your replies.
Whom do you think you can convince that I am wrong without contextualizing your claim?
> Also, dissent is being amplified with software, which itself is not conscious.
I find it hilarious that you accuse me of using a strawman by arguing that because I don't have a critical consciousness [1] I am not conscious of what I think and how it relates to the reality we live in. You are literally arguing that because I don't agree with (in your term "have") the gnostic knowledge of critical social justice activists I am essentially an unthinking program.
I am sorry to break your bubble, but you can both be thinking and principally disagree with critical social justice (CSJ). Arguably the inherently group-based CSJ doctrine suppress individual thought in favor of group based identity.
> Also, dissent is being amplified with software, which itself is not conscious. Being more conscious of your points will help matters. Not being more conscious of your points will help accelerate the madness.
The parent is clearly accusing me of not being conscious of my opinions, and this person doesn't know me so this is an assertion (s)he can not principally make. So how do you interpret what he/she refers to with conscious if it is not ideologically driven by critical social justice (CSJ)?
My impression is that this person is an adherent of CSJ. In general adherents to CSJ tend to drop essential qualifiers, so that they can use the Motte-and-Bailey [1] rhetorical trick of arguing a more radical position (Bailey) and then when challenged defend a more moderate position(Motte).
The CSJ adherents liberal individual Motte is not compatible with their group-based Bailey, it is purely a lie to provide cover until resistance has abated, and in general accusing someone of not being conscious simply because they agree with you is completely 100% unacceptable behavior. Especially if your viewpoints could have been spewed by a bot programmed to believe in CSJ. ;)
I am not going to explain your error to you if you have a track record of not admitting problems in your argumentation when they are pointed out to you.
Seriously, you wrote the above justafter I wrote the following:
> To be clear, the problem kordlessagain is referring to is that if you make the effort to make explicit what the X and Y are, the response will rarely include the slightest explicit acknowledgement of any incoherence.
> Generally, if a fallacy is found in one's arguments and one values intellectual honesty, the best response is to apologise for the error first and only then attempt to restart the argument. If you don't do this, but try to act as if there was no error, you do avoid loss of face in the eyes of the unthinking that comes from admitting error, but you lose the respect of readers who understood the error and saw the evasion.
> It is a sad fact that today most people have little awareness of this risk of losing respect in heated arguments, let alone place high importance to it.
The way to show I am in error with you (or the parent) agreeing with the radical Bailey of critical social justice, such as the DEI initiatives true position in its Bailey, would be to say "I do not believe that people are defined by group identity" and "I think redistributing resources and position based upon group identity is wrong". Neither of you have done that.
Do you (or the parent) believe that "people are not defined by group identity" and that "redistributing resources and position based upon group identity is wrong"?
A way to show that I am in error about the whistleblower proposing Critical Social Justice activism would be to show that the links I provided showing the whistleblower calling for censoring "hate speech", her call for a ministry of truth, her association with CSJ, and the suspicious political ties of her whistleblowing being wrong. These are not moderate positions.
Are you aware that your posts in the last few days strike other people as hypocritical?
You draw attention to what you regard as logical errors in the arguments of others, but you do not observe the formalities that norms of logical argument require when problems are pointed out with your arguments.
If you do not accept the requirement that your own arguments be coherent, then the more that you learn about logic, the less rational you will become.
I asked you a simple question about your position, since you claimed I was in error about it. This is not a complex logical argument:
Do you believe or not believe that "people are not defined by group identity" and that "redistributing resources and position based upon group identity is wrong"?
If you do not want to answer that is fine, but treating people differently based upon unchosen identities is not “making sure everyone is treated equally”.
I'm inclined to think that people do not have a consistent group identity, and I strongly believe there is more to what we are than our social relations. Nonetheless, social motivations are very powerful, and I respect some people who have attempted to understand selfhood from a sociological point of view. So with respect to your first question, I don't believe it, but I don't insist that my way of looking at the matter is right.
With respect to the second, I think far too little effort is made to resolve the lasting wounds of historical injustices, but I don't think that the attempt to tackle these wounds primarily through redistribution is politically wise. In fact, the attempt to tacle something like the aftermath of slavery in this way is certain to create massive political counterreation and is quite likely to result in new injustices.
Do you understand what the problem is with your approach to argument that I have criticised you for repeatedly?
So considering that "people are not defined by group identity", how do you justify "redistributing resources and position based upon group identity" as right?
Sounds a bit unfair and unequal to redistribute someone’s assets and resources due to an equity group identity marker that makes no sense.
> Do you understand what the problem is with your approach to argument that I have criticised you for repeatedly?
I can definitely be less complex in my explanations and less verbose. The line of thought here seem more effective, I’ll probably repeat that in the future to get past the critical social justice habit of using a Motte and Bailey tactic deceptively.
I don’t know if you did it consciously or in error, but the Motte is supposed to be compatible with the Bailey and not something entirely different.
I think you fell into the trap of CSJ apologists to rely on redefined common terms that sound more moderate to non-believers, but isn’t. If I redefine “apple” to mean “lemon” that doesn’t make it any less bitter.
Do you see this problem in the argument you have been making?
You have entirely misread what I wrote. I have answered two questions of yours and made no argument, so the problem lies entirely with the fantasy argument you claim I made but is based on massive extrapolation from what I wrote. The problem in the argument is yours.
> So considering that "people are not defined by group identity", how do you justify "redistributing resources and position based upon group identity" as right?
I doubt it is possible, but I don't discourage people who understand the problems facing a democratic redistribution-intense solution that goes along ethnic lines. However, a requirement for success in a healthy democracy is the acquiescence of the group who lose out. The attempt to end slavery resulted in a war, and Reconstruction gave many blacks a system that was actually worse than what they had before. (Another injustice caused by a political elite too keen to achieve peace).
Generally, as I understood Bernie Sanders pointed out, the attempt to rectify racial injustices by redistribution risks creating racial hatred and new injustices. I am, as I said before, against attempts to impose this kind of solution top-down.
However, something like a wealth tax is far simpler and as it happens, quite a bit of old wealth does derive from slavery and, for instance, if the US were to improve and expand its social programs for the poor to, say, the level here in Germany, that would make a massive difference for the poor communities that have least been able to recover from the effects of slavery.
Such a form of redistribution could be formulated in colour-blind, wealth-based terms. It's still difficult to impose top-down, it's not enough to heal the wounds of slavery, but this measure is much less socially divisive than what you, ignoring things I have previously told you, wrongly guessed I had in mind.
> I think you fell into the trap of CSJ apologists to rely on redefined common terms that sound more moderate to non-believers, but isn’t.
I didn't manage to come up with a plausible guess as to what you might have meant by the motte and bailey in the paragraph before the sentence I highlighted, but I wonder if you still believe that sentence after reading what I wrote above.
My general impression is that you are a devoted foot soldier in the culture wars and have no intention of looking inside yourself and becoming more honest. A shame, since you seem to be not dumb and have a certain persistence. You've learned a few argumentative techniques that have a good chance of improving your effectiveness in the fights you choose to pick, which will do it's bit to make the culture wars even less rational. I think this state of affairs is actually a threat to democracy. However, while I did not enjoy our exchange and have low expectations of what you will go on to do, I do have a certain hope in the redemptive power of logic, and I do not regret the effort I have put into this conversation.
> Generally, as I understood Bernie Sanders pointed out, the attempt to rectify racial injustices by redistribution risks creating racial hatred and new injustices. I am, as I said before, against attempts to impose this kind of solution top-down.
You did express support in another comment for the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and inclusion) identity-based redistribution initiatives that are currently deployed.
Why did you do this when you think "distribution risks creating racial hatred and new injustices"? Why do you support having corporations enforce top-down DEI initiatives when you are "against attempts to impose this kind of solution top-down"?
>I doubt it is possible, but I don't discourage people who understand the problems facing a democratic redistribution-intense solution that goes along ethnic lines. However, a requirement for success in a healthy democracy is the acquiescence of the group who lose out. The attempt to end slavery resulted in a war, and Reconstruction gave many blacks a system that was actually worse than what they had before. (Another injustice caused by a political elite too keen to achieve peace).
> However, something like a wealth tax is far simpler and as it happens, quite a bit of old wealth does derive from slavery and, for instance, if the US were to improve and expand its social programs for the poor to, say, the level here in Germany, that would make a massive difference for the poor communities that have least been able to recover from the effects of slavery.
We already established that you do not agree with critical social justice that identity groups such as race has salience, so that means it is not just to punish an individual for identity group sins, but if I get you correctly you support using slavery as a justification to redistribute wealth.
Is it correct that you believe in that an individual having wealth in the US is a good signifier for an individual acquiring it through the family history of slavery? If not, how can redistribution of wealth because of slavery be right?
I agree that huge landowning wealth in labor intensive unpleasant farming, such as cotton and tobacco primarily, often relied on slaves and indentured servants (numerous Irish and English came to the US like this). However, as far as I know the more numerous industrial fortunes were not build upon slaves.
Most landowning Americans, those were the voting citizens, owned small dirt farm and struggled to make ends meet using their own family's labor. After Europe decimated itself in WWII a larger amount of Americans from all backgrounds gained a modicum of assets through factory work. Critical social justice and Bernie Sanders activism also seek to redistribute both of these groups wealth.
> My general impression is that you are a devoted foot soldier in the culture wars and have no intention of looking inside yourself and becoming more honest.
Most of the time I've tried to get clarity on your opinion, because you said that you did not believe critical social justice was determinative while still being apologetic about its major doctrines and supporting it's equity initiatives.
I am pretty honest about my position. Although I believe we need more group aspects in our life to have a good human life, I don't believe the solutions pushed are good solutions. I think critical social justice is pushing something equivalent to the Chinese model, a merge of communist and fascist principles, and I am not interested in living through that. I've studied up on most of it's major literature, and understand the rhetorical tactics used for apologetics for its doctrines.
> You did express support in another comment for the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and inclusion) identity-based redistribution initiatives that are currently deployed.
I think you will find that if you check what I wrote before, you have got me wrong, again. I think there are successful DEI exercises, but my general impression of them is equivocal. Some do good, some do evil.
> We already established that you do not agree with critical social justice that identity groups such as race has salience...
This is rather stronger than what I wrote. I don't think that race is coherent in the sense that there is the relationship between observable hereditable traits and the psychology and morality of the individual that racist intellectuals require. However, if you drop the dodgy biology, clearly ethnicity matters a great deal to how people find their way into or find themselves excluded from groups, what ethnicities we take there to be and what we make of them has been profoundly influenced by the debunked race theories of yesteryear.
> Is it correct that you believe in that an individual having wealth in the US is a good signifier for an individual acquiring it through the family history of slavery? If not, how can redistribution of wealth because of slavery be right?
I think redistribution of wealth from the rentier class to those whose communities face upheaval, exploitation and decimation because of the creative destruction of capitalism that benefits rentiers at the expense of commodity labour, is and of itself just. If it happens to hurt those who today have profited from slavery, well, that's a class of misfortune that I might regard as just deserts. I think trying to actually target these beneficiaries in a precise manner is, for the kind of reason you gave.
This is normal honesty: you say what you think, and your feelings are in harmony with your thoughts. It is good enough for normal life, but it is not what I mean by intellectual honesty, and it has led you astray in arguing here on HN with people who demand that special kind of honesty.
> Most of the time I've tried to get clarity on your opinion
Which must have been frustrating for you, seeing as I was resisting being pinned down on what I regarded as overspecific details not related to the reasons for my original intervention in these HN subthreads.
To be clear, my original concern was to avoid a lowering in the standard of discourse here on HN, and I did not intervene to criticise you directly, only to criticise what I took to be a complaint of criticisms of you that I took to be entirely without merit. I don't like what I have seen of the New Discourses content (one of the links you provided I particularly disliked), but I actually value the fact that HN is a place that people who agree with Lindsay and Pluckrose can argue. For this to work well, though, standards of argument need to be maintained.
To be clear, the problem kordlessagain is referring to is that if you make the effort to make explicit what the X and Y are, the response will rarely include the slightest explicit acknowledgement of any incoherence.
Generally, if a fallacy is found in one's arguments and one values intellectual honesty, the best response is to apologise for the error first and only then attempt to restart the argument. If you don't do this, but try to act as if there was no error, you do avoid loss of face in the eyes of the unthinking that comes from admitting error, but you lose the respect of readers who understood the error and saw the evasion.
It is a sad fact that today most people have little awareness of this risk of losing respect in heated arguments, let alone place high importance to it.
I didn't downvote asabjorn's comment, although I found it weak (e.g., "critical social justice" is a rhetorical portmanteau that does not have a determinate meaning [1]: it's a term to be avoided if you want curious conversation), but I did downvote yours. If you want to support a viewpoint, actually argue for its legitimacy. Downvoting comments that you think are not good for the site is perfectly legitimate, but contentless whining is a waste of time.
A lot of people trafficking this site work in the bay area tech scene and is subject to critical social justice DEI initiatives in the workplace. The DEI doctrine is quite consistently applied across tech.
How would you classify DEI initiatives? Do you find them determinative?
I have the impression that it would take a long exchange before we could discuss this matter in a manner that doesn't annoy me, and I am not interested in a lengthy exchange. A few suggestions on 'HN-iquette' that might mean you get fewer downvotes and more constructive engagement:
1. You tend to couch your opinions using IDW political jargon. I've done that right now: IDW is itself political/cultural jargon; jargon is useful in making your points briefly and accessibly when the reader shares your terms of reference. But these terms are very imprecise and ask a lot of the reader if they don't share them and set up the following discussion for motte-and-bailey arguments (more jargon [1])
2. Instead you should throw away your jargon and share why you reach your conclusions in an accessible manner. This is bad for winning arguments, but it is good for the curious conversation that dang is trying to encourage with his moderation [2].
3. Links are good for two purposes: first, pointers to more information for the interested, but very many sites have a much worse browsing experience than HN; and second, checking claims but most readers want to know enough about the quality of evidence for your claims without actually clicking on them. If you are going to link to any sources that are notorious for clickbait and/or culture war, I advise you to summarise the content so that readers don't simply assume the worst about all of your sources.
With regards to your question, you lump a whole lot of things together. DEI initiatives might be put together by people who are very concerned about the risks that online outrage mobs pose to a healthy culture. I don't know what you mean by "determinative"; DEI initiatives might involve a wise attempt to balance freedom of speech with solving problems of underrepresentation that are sensitive to an organisation's culture, or they might be a poorly constructed exercise in risk-aversion that put people in intolerable situations.
[1]: Cf. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey although I don't regard it as being a determinate fallacy, rather a bad pattern that happens in argument when there is not a shared understanding of the imprecision of the terminology.
That you agree with critical social justice (CSJ) doctrines such as DEI should have been declared upfront instead of using the Motte-and-Bailey[1] tactic of defending her using a more moderate position than what she actually proposed.
> With regards to your question, you lump a whole lot of things together. DEI initiatives might be put together by people who are very concerned about the risks that online outrage mobs pose to a healthy culture.
Awareness of CSJ is now so high that most people don't believe in this kind of defensive Motte argument to the radical Bailey of censoring "hate speech" that the whistleblower proposed. She asked for censorship of "hate speech" using a ministry of truth, literally.
Let me take your point and explain the link[1] fully. Since you claimed CSJ is not determinative I sought your thoughts on the radical DEI agenda from CSJ. The Bailey of DEI activists is to seek Diversity (hiring activists of all identities - a black conservative is not diverse), inclusion (censorship of people resisting CSJ DEI initiatives), and Equity (redistribution of outcomes based upon identities and adherence to CSJ).
Instead of addressing the Bailey of DEI you withdrew to the more moderate Motte of DEI activists, arguing that we should make sure everyone gets along and are treated equally. This is not what DEI does, because DEI argues for asymmetrically enforcing rules based upon identity (group based equity) which is in conflict with symmetrically making sure every individual is treated equally (liberal individuality).
It is the Bailey argument of both the whistleblowers and DEI activists arguments I have an issue with, not the Motte. The Bailey argument in both cases exclude the Mottes individualistic model.
> I don't know what you mean by "determinative"; DEI initiatives might involve a wise attempt to balance freedom of speech with solving problems of underrepresentation that are sensitive to an organisation's culture, or they might be a poorly constructed exercise in risk-aversion that put people in intolerable situations.
The claim that CSJ was not determinative was your claim, which is why I contextualized your claim to the DEI doctrine that most people are familiar with.
I'm not enthusiastic about continuing this argument, but since you have clearly thought about this before responding, I'll go on.
You seem to think there is some sort of incoherence in what I've been saying, but none of your attempts at diagnosis are clear.
First, I don't think it's necessary to declare beliefs in an argument. On the contrary, doing so generally means the argument is more stilted, since people generally don't like to concede that they were wrong. If you want to know lots and lots about the kind of arguments I've made outside of HN, you can read https://twitter.com/txtpf/with_replies
Second, you are attributing claims to me that I did not make:
1. Commitment to "CSJ" (your bailey). First, some clarifications:
- (a) I understand DEI to be a class of activities taken to achieve policy ends, not a doctrine. I believe that DEI exists, because it is a fact that organisations engage in it.
- (b) I believe that underrepresentation, the phenomenon that some people lack the ability to get their opinions heard and interests valued for no good reason, is commonplace in most hierarchies, and I've seen DEI initiatives that I thinked helped reduce problems in their organisations. I also think that worsening economic inequality is a major problem in many countries. However, I'm suspicious of the politically convenient top-down silver bullets that periodically appear to tackle these problems, and many DEI initiatives have caused more harm than good, especially around freedom of speech. I'm not a manager or a social scientist; I don't pretend to know how to balance the good against the bad in practice, but I am interested in the ethical problems raised and thinking more deeply how to solve these problems.
- (c) I don't recall that I've defended anything Haugen has said. I'm aware that there's a big story going on, I'm pleased by the idea that Facebook might lose its game of plausible deniability, but I've not made the effort to follow the details. My involvement here was more along the lines of getting a feel for what general opinions are held than getting to grips with the story.
- (d) I'm quite willing to "attack my own side" in arguments, when people who I broadly agree with make bad points. While I think there are urgent political issues, I'm generally more interested in the long term, and on my view this means raising consciousness is important and neglected.
Now, I do have beliefs about the relationship between, say, racial identity and underrepresentation that no doubt many self-styled opponents of CSJ would call CSJ, but they are quite complex, I revise them quite often, and they are the kind of thing I am often willing to set aside for the sake of argument if I find the argument interesting. I've attempted to cross swords with Lindsay on Twitter before, but not on anything I think he would call CSJ. I do not understand your position well enough to be confident that you would have considered my views to be CSJ if you if you had encountered them in a context other than the one you did.
2. Agreeing with the "more moderate Motte of DEI activists": I do not think "we" should make sure everyone gets along, nor do I think everybody should treat everyone else equally. It's an incoherent notion of liberalism that large organisations or the wider world should be made uniform in a way that even the happiest of families aren't. Calls for ends to conflicts whose causes are unresolved and the doctrine of equality are not successful in politics because they are a road to paradise, but because they're dead simple and that matters in democratic decision-making where there is little agreement about facts and justice.
Third, I don't consider the presence of shifts in an argument to be evidence of that something has gone wrong. It absolutely ca...
For an example of when efforts to get people to get along are actively bad:
> It's hard to beat the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for the engineering of the profoundly undemocratic Oslo peace accords, that led one of the recipients to start the Second Intifada (i.e. a revolution against the deal that he himself had negotiated) and the assassination of the other and the rise of the deeply unsavoury Netanyahu. It's set back meaningful peace in the region by at least a generation.
I am in full agreement with you on the problems with the Nobel Peace Prize.
They awarded the price many times for purely political purposes to warmongerers that went on to commit war-atrocities at scale, like Carter with his track record or Obama that had no track record.
If the argument is that this is a way to try to encourage good behavior then the committee also need to withdraw the prize when the recipient don't.
We seem to have an inherent disagreement on how critical social justice (CSJ) activists use the Motte-and-Bailey tactic. I think we need to resolve that first, so that we are standing on solid ground.
I'll restate what I believe is your position: The moderate Motte of DEI, let's make sure everyone gets along and are treated equally, is compatible with the equity-based Bailey of the more radical DEI activists. It is just a matter of level of moderation.
How do you reconcile the liberal individualistic Motte with the CSJ radical group-based equity-model Bailey?
This is the problem I see with your position:
My opinion is that the CSJ adherents withdraw to the symmetric enforcement mechanism of a liberal individual Motte to defend the asymmetric radically group equity-based model of the Bailey. Because the asymmetric model is incompatible with the symmetric model this makes it effectively a lie covering up for their true radical position, a lie that provide cover until high resistance has abated.
Once the Motte lie has served its purpose to weather the high resistance, the true position of the Bailey is used to affect change.
--- examples in context --
Here are this claim put into context, annotated with the enforcement mechanism.
DEI:
- (group asymmetric enforcement) Radical Bailey of DEI is to seek Diversity (hiring activists of all identities - a black conservative is not diverse), inclusion (censorship of people resisting CSJ DEI initiatives), and Equity (redistribution of outcomes based upon identities and adherence to CSJ).
- (individual symmetric enforcement) The Motte lie is to claim it is just trying to "make sure everyone gets along and are treated equally".
Whistleblower claim:
- (group asymmetric enforcement) radical Bailey of whistleblower censoring "hate speech" not compliant with CSJ using a ministry of truth
- (individual symmetric enforcement) Motte lie is to claim it is just trying to "make sure we all get along and behave well" .
For all I know Haugen is not trans. But even if she was that doesn't preclude her from not being a critical social justice (CRT) activist, so that is not the most significant fact.
What she is aiming for by censorship of "hate speech" is CRT defined "inclusion" [1]. This means to not tolerate any speech (including symbolic displays or representation) that offends, might offend, or could be construed as being potentially offensive to any member of any marginalized group.
Members of putatively marginalized groups [2] who do not claim to experience or suffer from the oppression critical social justice activists assign to them are dismissed as inauthentic.
So in the end inclusion by censoring "hate speech" is a tool to ensure censorship of any opposing viewpoint.
Many dissenters including investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald agree with my assessment [1] that this is not an attempt to weaken facebook, but to commandeer its power to censor.
In addition to how I've shown her call to censor "hate speech" is likely a call to censor viewpoint opponents to critical social justice, whom she associate herself with corroborate this interpretation.
For instance her laywer, Andrew P. Bakaj[2], is an attorney and former intelligence officer with the CIA. He was the principal attorney representing the whistleblower who filed the initial complaint that led to the launch of multiple investigations by the United States Congress into the Trump–Ukraine scandal, the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, and, ultimately, the first Impeachment of Donald Trump.
Neither of these facts are the hallmarks of a moderate person that seek measured actions for the best of viewpoint diversity and civilized dialogue.
Glenn’s argument is a slippery slope fallacy, and you’ve thrown in some guilt by partisan association in there too. Simply stopping amplifying content for purely engagement purposes would be a great step in the right direction, for any side. IMO a reasonable goal for what ails Facebook is not to increase moderation, but to reduce polarization by stopping incentivizing people from being polarizing.
No, the primary argument I made was around the ideology with which she to my estimation seek to apply censorship. If she and whom she ally with succeed there will be further asymmetry in what viewpoints are censored. That is also Glenn's concern. Her associations and donations are just corroborative facts.
If people find a friend to be polarizing and rude they can just unfollow them, that is their business and choice.
> IMO a reasonable goal for what ails Facebook is not to increase moderation, but to reduce polarization by stopping incentivizing people
This is an interesting discussion. How do you see facebook doing this without moderation?
So far Facebook and Twitter algorithmic approaches, e.g. shadowbanning and flagging, are often applied through moderation with an ideological tilt. The people programming and running the systems are after all people as well.
She proposes a ministry for regulating tech which means there will be a permanent line between Washington and large social media companies. That is the factual result of what is proposed and this has been a problem in the past. Political manipulation of content institutionalized. This is a horrible approach by any objective meassure and it would obviously also institutionalize Facebook.
Greenwalds argument isn't a slippery slope fallacy but that is off topic and of no relevance.
At work, we're trained to examine the _whole_ trade space with no forgone conclusions. To make trade studies rationally, not emotionally. To consider the needs of all relevant stake holders, not just your favorite cohort.
Imagine if political discourse could be like that.
In a way political discourse is like that, but the problem is everyone pretends that the parties who are stake holders and their relative positions of importance are vastly skewed. Like the need for politicians to be re-elected, the need to keep their donors happy, the need to do something media worthy to get more donors, and also all the business interests threatening to pull donations if the politicians don’t do what they want.
Ultimately that’s why I’m so for both term limits and monetary election reform. We can’t have yearlong elections for house terms that only last 2 years.
Discussion is generally favorable over war, as long as the truth isn’t being sacrificed for the sake of avoiding accusations. To say that Facebook hasn’t been engaged in bad behavior is, I think, a bit of a stretch though. “Systemic” can be used in the same way that bureaucracies do to avoid responsibility: no one is responsible for the actual state of affairs personally, at least that’s the claim. But ol’ Zuck has been aware of many problems, grilled over them, etc, etc, so we’re not dealing with innocent people here if there is any guilt here. I am not making accusations, but if I were feeling the heat, I might go into damage control and maybe “allow” a sympathetic whistleblower to steer change in a way that softens the outcome.
I don't think the content was impressive at all to be honest. The solution she proposes that former tech employees form a government body creates a very obvious conflict of interest and I dread that it doesn't get more criticism.
This praise is neither objective nor factual, there aren't any leaked documents yet. She proposes solutions in favor of government. This should raise a lot of red flags.
>"Polarization was lower when TV political coverage was regulated."
Cynically speaking, if you are able to control the narrative it stands to reason that there would be less polarization simply because you are manipulating what the public is being told.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum...."
― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good
Why can't we just force all social media to advasarially integrate.
I want to be able to message my parents on Facebook from a different social media. Let the market compete on UI and how they store your data.
Imagine only being able to call other Sprint customers with your Sprint cell phone. We didn't put up with this for telephones, why should we tolerate this?
I think it still works quite well. On the contrary, polarization was boosted when platforms started to appoint favorites and actively promoted and disincentivised certain content. Made people angrier of course because they were treated unfairly.
So if we see regulation, especially content regulation, polarization is likely to increase as long as not every dissident gets banned.
215 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 269 ms ] threadwhen a company leaves the headlines it's time to sell.
and long as laws, rules, regulation supports it many people/corporation will always choose profits over ethics and its not a broad generalization but a natural instinct in my opinion. And you can also buy prestige just by throwing cents in name of philanthropy right?
I hate it but this is how natures works and its too cruel.
Many is a key word here. Many will, but many will not. And how many do is definitely a function of culture. As shown by the big difference in attitude to this question between the US and Europe.
It’s the role of government to curtail greed and industry actions. The current climate is caused by a a failure of government to step in and intervene, not by the industry caring about profit above all else.
You say this as though there aren't any downsides to greed.
>The current climate is caused by a failure of government to step in and intervene, not by the industry caring about profit above all else.
No, it's both. Full stop.
And btw this forum is hosted by one of the most prominent venture capitalist firms in Silicon Valley which funds thousands of (promising) capitalists.
That's what America is about, greed, the pursuit of happiness, whatever you call it, everything else is noise.
The pursuit of happiness is not greed. What qualifies as 'happiness' is entirely up to each individual, and for many people that doesn't include being greedy.
Greed and free markets make for a healthy society.
As a counter-example see what happened with the Soviet Union, I can tell you first hand that didn’t work very well. Demonizing "bourjois" values of private property and prosperity, while fetishizing the “common good” and all-controlling government made the entire society very unhappy (except for a few fat bureaucrats) and led to its eventual collapse.
> "Greed... captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit..."
But see, we don't want the evolutionary spirit. We want our kids to be able to play in the park without worrying about the survival of the fittest. We want cures for diseases. We want social safety nets. We want to live in a civilization, not in a "state of nature"; we want to be humans, not animals.
>No, it's both. Full stop.
disagree. it's the job of government to add legislation. not having rules, then acting surprised when things don't go the way you want is asinine. if you want people to act in a particular way, spell it out. Don't act like it's implied and be outraged when people don't abide by your imaginary rules.
We absolutely are in the "current climate" because the industry cared about profit above all else, because they could.
Are our moral goals no longer about improving and setting a higher bar for how we conduct ourselves? Have we succumbed to material wants and ego at the cost of decency? Goodness gracious.
It's the role of the government to curtail murder, but that doesn't resolve me of personal responsibility.
I spent like at least 60% of my clients money on FB (before CTV scaled). Now CTV is eating more budget AND I'm really feeling the iOS changes.
I think the ad market will sort it self and value out but this month has been bad and all over the place. For instance targeting small non-profit donor lists isn't as effective but for some reason I'm having some success just targeting everyone over 45 (a non-profit ask, prob won't work as well for a Democratic ask).
I also see a ton of tik tok videos reposted with logo and everything on IG.
Still a bull but I am concerned and unless they get a new platform or immersive reality/ar takes off I don't think there is room for huge exponential growth anymore. Significant incremental 100% though IMHO.
But who am I opinion doesn't matter, my ad buying experience is only one tiny anecdote. I'm small in both spend and my investments - only recently became better at saving vs spending. Though my dad put in more than I could a bit after IPO and has bumped his retirement considerable
Yes, that's what reels is for, reposting content you made in the tiktok editor.
(So few people understand that that's an important part of the success of tiktok, as is its radically different suggestion algorithms)
> Psaki was asked about Haugen’s interview and whether the revelations “change the way the White House thinks about regulating Facebook and other social media giants.”
“This is just the latest in a series of revelations about social media platforms,” Psaki said, “that make clear that self-regulation is not working. That’s long been the president’s view and been the view of the administration.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/jen-psaki-says-facebook-wh...
Here comes the regulatory capture that Facebook has been begging for.
So it's really like auto makers not providing more than the minimal set of safety feature required by regulators.
We know that the only way to reduce said harm is by realigning incentives which requires involving the legislator.
Most infuriating to me is that now it's about coddling teens. I didn't want to be coddled as a teen. I wanted to be respected. I wanted to be free of patronizing zealots. Oddly, Zuckerberg was a teenager himself when he started the damn thing.
Teens have rights too, as much as we adults want to deny them.
You are trivializing this harm. I have family that aren't vaccinating and may harm themselves or others because of poisonous shit they learned on Facebook.
I can't expect that in a democratic society the very root of the problem with social media - that free speech worked well only in times when printing a pamphlet required some money, connections and education and set a high social and intellectual threshold for doing so, and simply does NOT make any benefit to the society when ANYONE can post on Facebook. Just as democracy itself stops working when everyone can vote, becoming a snake that eats it's own tail.
Sadly, this will eventually result in end of the Western world as we know it and there is nothing we can do.
Um, what now? Are you saying universal suffrage is a bad thing? Who are the people you think should be denied voting rights to keep "democracy itself...working"?
The real answer was people who aren't "wealthy property owners."
That is the central debate around forced voting.
Just like "communism" (Soviet "socialism") stopped working when variety of goods in demand became so large, and life cycles of products became so short, that centralised planning no longer had any chance not to mismanage it - that is, simply due to technological change, or in communist terms, "progress of means of production", democracy seems to stop working when free speech becomes really, really free.
I'd go on to say that, as a broad generalisation, rights and liberties of the Western world that we value so much are valuable and positively contribute to society only as long as they can in reality be only used by elites.
Sadly, concept of human rights (late XVIII century) largely preceded industrialisation, and thus the prospect of exponential economic growth that will some day make "universal" rights REALLY "universal" - evaded imagination of their inventors. They saw those rights, as a matter of course, as "universal for people like themselves", just as they didn't think of them as pertaining to women - not because they were especially sexist, but because it just didn't cross their minds...
> Immovable property owners who are able to extract rents sufficient for independence from government. That is, back to pre-Jacksonian era. Of course, there is no way to get it done because it's a catch-22: people won't vote to resign their voting rights, this is why i believe collapse is imminent.
Did you answer the inverse of my question? It sounds like you think only wealthy property owners should have the right to vote (e.g. something like the pre-Jacksonian era franchise), is that correct?
Expanding suffrage to people who depend on the government rather than other way around is easy to explain (populism: "let me create millions of new voters, they will be super happy and all vote for me"), but destructive and impossible to undo. And we are at the tail end of it now when all these people not just vote, but can also make use of free speech...
Of course, there could be in theory a multitude of ways to fix it, not just by limiting suffrage (like poll tax for example), but all of them unrealistic.
> Yes, or something like that....
> And we are at the tail end of it now when all these people not just vote, but can also make use of free speech...
Do you also think it's a bad thing for people who aren't wealthy property owners to have free speech rights as well?
When free speech could only be made use of by relatively wealthy and well-educated classes - simply due to technology - universal suffrage wasn't that bad - because political thinking of common people was still guided by those wealthy and well-educated classes, and because they weren't (and aren't) very capable of critical thinking, they were "captive audience" of a sort and mostly taken along for a ride.
But now when social media really gives usable "free speech" rights to everyone, these people live in the world where Deep State injects them with mind control chips, and White House is run by a sect of pedophiles and Trump is the only person who could save us from them...
And this free speech made universal suffrage a real, and i believe unsolvable, problem. Maybe only solvable through a social collapse (like in 1991 Soviet Union) with a new state taking the territory of the previous one, voiding it, and creating a new regime with very limited suffrage.
Outrage sells. We have a bunch of people walking around being angry about shit that is never gonna change, politicians don't give two fucks about (except it gets you to vote for them), and all media are laughing to the bank because of the engagement it drives.
Free speech on the internet worked fine back before everyone was on the internet - I don't think it's easy to tell if the shift was solely due to companies coming along with echo chamber algorithms or if it's an issue with most people not being able to handle being anonymous by default. I'm not trying to say it's definitely one way or the other (or some other way I can't recognize) - but I think we've got a very murky study with a lot of confounding variables.
Problem is exactly that with social media, masses, for the first time in history, actually got the free speech rights. Rights themselves are the problem. Founding Fathers who invented free speech could not foresee social media just as they couldn't foresee AR-15.
These wars stopped with social media. They can't possibly happen if everybody has a voice and can call BS when they see it.
If you start to regulate media this way, you will destroy this and we will tumble head-in to yet another war.
Administrations used to hiding bad failures can no longer do so.
You can't have another Nayirah testimony if everybody is gonna point out what a lie it all is online.
No, it wasn't.
Partisan polarization may have been, but only because the divide between the major parties didn't capture the major salient ideological divisions in the country, so that the polarization that existed didn't align with partisan identity.
This had nothing to do with TV regulation (and, indeed, predates TV), and everything to do with the long period of partisan realignment between the New Deal and the mid-1990s.
The alternative is we go the banhammer route, and as we learned with prohibition era, that had unintended/undesirable consequences.
Prohibition never banned a specific delivery mechanism but not the actual drug, so it's never been tried.
Cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable death in the USA (even moreso in countries where smoking is far more accepted widespread) so I don't believe this to be even remotely true.
What do you think FB's role is in that? Do you think the "algorithms" are to blame?
Seems to me that unmoderated online discussion will always be toxic. Take a look at the chan forums for an extreme, anonymous version of social media where there are no algorithms to blame.
When you bring the general public online and give them a platform to voice their insane ideas they never discussed before, you get the internet in 2021.
Combine that with the fact that until recently, people on the opposite sides of the political spectrum rarely interacted. The division was there, but it was masked by the inability to directly attack each other. Now, I can go on Twitter and argue all day with the other side in a thread below a Senator's tweet.
Unless you are suggesting Facebook begin heavily moderating what people say, there will be no other outcome until we as a society collectively learn to 1. Have empathy for others when conversing online, 2. Stop participating in discussions that make you feel terrible, and the classic, 3. Don't believe everything you read online.
It's fair enough to say that Facebook is only responsible for a significant part of this, as there's also Twitter, YouTube, Instagram (pre-acquisition), Snapchat, TikTok and so on, and there would be others if these did not exist. The root cause is smartphones, the Internet and cheap bandwidth & servers.
But in the context of regulation, finding out how to deal with this new weapon of communication, starting with a case study of the biggest seems like an excellent beginning.
I honestly think unregulated social media has the potential to do more damage than unregulated tobacco sales, if by regulation we mean "government-enforced rules". But I don't mean to frame it as a context; it seems obvious that both are a good idea.
Years of social media and misinformation resulted in an attempted coup and insurrection earlier this year, the major contributing factors of which are still ongoing. I don't think phillip-morris ever got that far.
Frankly, the Jan 6 episode is not all that different from the BLM riots last year, in that their causes are analogous and the sense of powerlessness led to rioting.
The point I was raising is that "Facebook = riot" is too simplistic an explanation. Moreover the contributing factors are not isolated to one event or political persuasion.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/historic-church-nea...
Middle-class and rich white people from politically-advantaged parts of the country, that famously powerless group.
This is relevant to the current discussion inasmuch as FB (and social media generally) may have contributed to, stoked and fomented said feelings of powerlessness for the sake of engagement / eyeballs / ad clicks.
Assuming general equivalency in manipulation of public opinion to hide their malfeasance,
the impact of that malfeasance is orders of magnitude worse for our society, democracy, and world culture.
If you have any doubt about this, you haven't looked at any of the reporting, not just from this latest data dump, but from any of the other whistle-blowing, leaks, third party investigations, etc.
It's not just that they bury and spin any internal findings which may compromise their ability to pursue "engagement," it's so so much worse.
Look at the documents. This whistleblower brought the receipts.
Their continued operations as a monolith represents an acute and active threat. They should be broken up and subjected to transparency requirements.
That's what you get when you pursue profit and power at the expense of social cohesion, functioning government, and in the case of many in harsh realities outside the US, assistance in brutal political suppression and worse.
Work for them? Quit. Do business with them? Don't. Think access to clients and relationships with them depend on participating in this ecosystem? It doesn't.
Break the monopoly.
As far as actual impact on thousands of lives, it's probably a tossup since Facebook has many means of ruining lives (psychological manipulation, distrust in government, pandemic misinformation, political misinformation). But I'd wager that Facebook has probably already caused way more harm than tobacco. It's hard to measure though.
Tendency is that the parent comment is correct and the proposed solutions are practically bretty bad.
HN is at its worse when fuming over Facebook, and comparing the tragedy caused by smoking companies with social media is a good example of how uninformed the site can get.
Was social media the cause for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda too?
Facebook had many internal whisteblowers that the platform was used to shape the public opinion and facilitate the genocide and choose to do nothing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55929654
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...
For example.- from what is being discussed - "Requiring Facebook to publicly disclose its internal research". -- either make all companies disclose internal research or none of them. You can't just pick and choose.
Now you aren't targeting Facebook, you're targeting all wealthy corporations.
Maybe $1B is too high. Maybe $1M is too low. Somewhere in the middle is a sweet spot.
1. (formally "a near monopoly" instead of "a company" - edited for clarity)
Facebook is a near monopoly? In what? Ads? They're not even the biggest advertising company, Google is bigger.
"Social media"? There's Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat, Tiktok, Tumblr, Youtube and dozens of others.
Can you clarify what you mean by "near-monopoly" in this context?
I'll remove the mention of it being a near monopoly since that's really unnecessary for the main statement.
Thoroughly agree all social media should show more transparency on the kinds of things FB is alleged to be doing.
Now, you can go too far. You don't want to make every tech company disclose their research on, say, improved silicon layout algorithms. But if it involves harm to customers or the public, yes, they should have to disclose it.
Why not?
And it's certainly been done in the past, see the history of Standard Oil.
Actually we can just pick and choose. Targeting the largest actor has the most effect.
Our court system uses subpoenas all the time to get access to important information.
And right now, it seems that facebook has some important information that our lawmakers should know.
Also Facebook reps lied to congress which is criminal. The studies show they clearly knew a lot more than they were admitting to about the impact they had and lied under oath.
Misleading investors is a crime from what I understand, so if found guilty on that account, they did break the law. Now, if they will be found guilty is another matter. Personally I don't think they will even be prosecuted for it.
"Doing everything we can" is at least somewhat objective. If a contractor says he's painting your house as well as he can, when he's actually on vacation in Hawaii, that statement is clearly false.
The only way they could claim they are doing everything possible would be by not having a platform or by reviewing every post prior to people seeing it.
This is why hearings like this are important.
Here, FB, if you listen to some of the commentary, is not doing 'enough' to combat 'hate' and 'disinformation'. In short, FB does not do enough about wrongthink to use 1984 terms.
Now, there are arguments to use against FB for the impact on society, but the fact that everyone appears to be surprised that company, gasp, chooses profit over society, is beyond hilarious. No fucking shit.
You misunderstand: this isn't so much about enforcing existing laws, rather it's about advocating for new ones.
They might be doing some things which are questionable ethically. But stopping that would require new laws. And that's very hard because you can't really make a case to target FB in particular (and not also a bunch of other harmful media). But other harmful media (eg Fox "news") is protected by the 1st amendment. And likely so is Facebook for that matter.
But pointing at unethical behaviour and pretending you're outraged is very in vogue. Doubly so in big tech.
If a law was broken, it's be a judicial branch / trial. The topic of discussion here is what future laws should be.
Facebook has applied some of the most heavy-handed and widespread politically motivated censorship that the west has ever seen. If anything, increasing this censorship is likely to increase cronyism and division more than anything.
And their censorship has often not been correct in the past, when being wrong caused real damage. E.g. the now mainstream lab leak hypothesis was censored in a way that may have delayed a more effective response.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_P._Bakaj
1. She is consistent and focused at explaining the issue as a systemic problem with incentives, not a question of good people versus evil people.
2. She is skillfully demonstrating how to deliver strong criticism without scorn but rather with empathy, compassion, and a spirit of collaboration toward all involved.
These qualities are what really set this apart from other criticism of social media, and both are incredibly important and healthy in a world where Facebook and Twitter have normalized the opposite.
And as a result, to my astonishment, both Republicans and Democrats are engaging with this more intelligently, patiently, and constructively than I have ever seen. It really has to be seen to be believed.
Facebook already apply heavy censorship in a way that is arguably driving a lot of suspicion and division. Their content "supreme court" is currently largely staffed with establishment democrats [3].
"Hate speech" [2] as defined by critical social justice adherents could refer to anything that doesn’t proceed from a critical consciousness, i.e., that which accords with critical theories, especially those for “Social Justice,” possibly including microaggressions.
That the GOP and DNC establishment are in alignment to censor dissenter in both ranks is not surprising. That being "Bernie bros", "Yang gang", "Trumpians", or any other flank.
[1] https://thenationalpulse.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-don...
[2] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-hate-speech/
[3] https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/05/06/facebook-supreme-c...
Person 1 asserts proposition X.
Person 2 argues against a superficially similar proposition Y, falsely, as if an argument against Y were an argument against X.
This reasoning is a fallacy of relevance: it fails to address the proposition in question by misrepresenting the opposing position.
Additionally, Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.
I will note you replied to a comment accusing the whistleblower of being trans. That comment (that you replied to) was, of course, ad hominem.
For the comment in question, person 1 is the zestyping or the whistleblower, depending. Person 2 is you. Your proposition Y (flagged and hidden now) is not invalid, exactly, but "explaining" it to you is pointless given it is a fallacy diverging from the relevance of the content.
The proposition X, which is, in part, "These qualities are what really set this apart from other criticism of social media, and both are incredibly important and healthy in a world where Facebook and Twitter have normalized the opposite."
Your proposition Y, is an attack on the whistleblower and her credibility, not the the content of her own propositions, which may be viewed here:
https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2021/10/protecting%20kids%20...
No mention of "banning" "hate speech" at all. Just a plea for someone to do something to remove the blocks in place by way of Facebook (as a corporation) needing to continue making profit, perhaps at the expense of collective sanity, by not addressing the dissonance their platform creates in the population.
If you had addressed those claims by her in your comment, you would avoid making strawman arguments.
In closing, I get that you and others are frustrated that certain types of posted content are targeted for removal. However, that in and of itself does not mean meaningful and opposed discourse can't occur or that anyone has a "right" to post wherever they like, saying whatever they want. It is that it (your comments) may not occur without significant work involved that we all care about. Cheap and easy discourse isn't good for anyone, harms society, and will continue to be exploited until we come up with a technical solution to solve it.
In the meantime, explanations and education are in order. Thanks for the question! Hope this helps without too much blame.
P.S. Entirely speculative at this point, but I suspect if we built an inverted index of a fallacious argument, we'd find the weights/distances between words significantly divergent from the original proposition.
She proposes a ministry for regulating tech which means there will be a permanent line between Washington and large social media companies. This is a horrible approach by any objective meassure and it would obviously also institutionalize Facebook (see "An array of possible next steps"[1]). This indicate that I am right this is not an attempt at weakening Facebook and social media in general, but an attempt to commandeer its power to censor.
Since she is proposing a political body with the power to censor all social media, why is evidence of her political motivations and potential political connections to the whistleblowing a strawman?
> In closing, I get that you and others are frustrated that certain types of posted content are targeted for removal. However, that in and of itself does not mean meaningful and opposed discourse can't occur or that anyone has a "right" to post wherever they like, saying whatever they want.
New discoveries are in the margins, and is indistinguishable from nonsense. A lack of certainty and a certain amount of curiosity is needed to go through the process of distinguishing the two, which is why tyrannical regimes do not innovate well.
Why are you so certain that you are right and is capable of knowing when dissenters are wrong? Whom do you think is capable of distinguish truth from falsity in the margins, and censor with absolute power without falling for the temptation to misuse it?
> It is that it (your comments) may not occur without significant work involved that we all care about. Cheap and easy discourse isn't good for anyone, harms society, and will continue to be exploited until we come up with a technical solution to solve it.
This accusation of dissenters not doing the work, while those in tech that censor do, is not supported by evidence.
Censorship by tech has in the last year been wrong on major important points, e.g:
- Not long ago the lab leak hypothesis was censored, delaying potential life saving measures
- Not long ago Hunters laptop was called fake and censored, affecting democratic primary outcome and election outcomes
- Not long ago early treatment solutions to covid was censored, delaying deployment of early treatment solutions similar to the one Merck just released [2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2021/oct/05/face... [2] https://fortune.com/2021/10/05/everything-to-know-about-merc...
Also, dissent is being amplified with software, which itself is not conscious. Being more conscious of your points will help matters. Not being more conscious of your points will help accelerate the madness.
You've failed to acknowledge anyone's argument here, which is really the hard part to learn.
If your points explanatory power is too poor to contextualize to what it criticize its honestly just a smear. You are to my estimation going into ad hominem in lieu of a good argument in both your replies.
Whom do you think you can convince that I am wrong without contextualizing your claim?
I find it hilarious that you accuse me of using a strawman by arguing that because I don't have a critical consciousness [1] I am not conscious of what I think and how it relates to the reality we live in. You are literally arguing that because I don't agree with (in your term "have") the gnostic knowledge of critical social justice activists I am essentially an unthinking program.
I am sorry to break your bubble, but you can both be thinking and principally disagree with critical social justice (CSJ). Arguably the inherently group-based CSJ doctrine suppress individual thought in favor of group based identity.
[1] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-consciousness/
> Also, dissent is being amplified with software, which itself is not conscious. Being more conscious of your points will help matters. Not being more conscious of your points will help accelerate the madness.
The parent is clearly accusing me of not being conscious of my opinions, and this person doesn't know me so this is an assertion (s)he can not principally make. So how do you interpret what he/she refers to with conscious if it is not ideologically driven by critical social justice (CSJ)?
My impression is that this person is an adherent of CSJ. In general adherents to CSJ tend to drop essential qualifiers, so that they can use the Motte-and-Bailey [1] rhetorical trick of arguing a more radical position (Bailey) and then when challenged defend a more moderate position(Motte).
The CSJ adherents liberal individual Motte is not compatible with their group-based Bailey, it is purely a lie to provide cover until resistance has abated, and in general accusing someone of not being conscious simply because they agree with you is completely 100% unacceptable behavior. Especially if your viewpoints could have been spewed by a bot programmed to believe in CSJ. ;)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy#:~:te...
Seriously, you wrote the above just after I wrote the following:
> To be clear, the problem kordlessagain is referring to is that if you make the effort to make explicit what the X and Y are, the response will rarely include the slightest explicit acknowledgement of any incoherence.
> Generally, if a fallacy is found in one's arguments and one values intellectual honesty, the best response is to apologise for the error first and only then attempt to restart the argument. If you don't do this, but try to act as if there was no error, you do avoid loss of face in the eyes of the unthinking that comes from admitting error, but you lose the respect of readers who understood the error and saw the evasion.
> It is a sad fact that today most people have little awareness of this risk of losing respect in heated arguments, let alone place high importance to it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28785685
Do you (or the parent) believe that "people are not defined by group identity" and that "redistributing resources and position based upon group identity is wrong"?
A way to show that I am in error about the whistleblower proposing Critical Social Justice activism would be to show that the links I provided showing the whistleblower calling for censoring "hate speech", her call for a ministry of truth, her association with CSJ, and the suspicious political ties of her whistleblowing being wrong. These are not moderate positions.
You draw attention to what you regard as logical errors in the arguments of others, but you do not observe the formalities that norms of logical argument require when problems are pointed out with your arguments.
If you do not accept the requirement that your own arguments be coherent, then the more that you learn about logic, the less rational you will become.
Do you believe or not believe that "people are not defined by group identity" and that "redistributing resources and position based upon group identity is wrong"?
If you do not want to answer that is fine, but treating people differently based upon unchosen identities is not “making sure everyone is treated equally”.
With respect to the second, I think far too little effort is made to resolve the lasting wounds of historical injustices, but I don't think that the attempt to tackle these wounds primarily through redistribution is politically wise. In fact, the attempt to tacle something like the aftermath of slavery in this way is certain to create massive political counterreation and is quite likely to result in new injustices.
Do you understand what the problem is with your approach to argument that I have criticised you for repeatedly?
Sounds a bit unfair and unequal to redistribute someone’s assets and resources due to an equity group identity marker that makes no sense.
> Do you understand what the problem is with your approach to argument that I have criticised you for repeatedly?
I can definitely be less complex in my explanations and less verbose. The line of thought here seem more effective, I’ll probably repeat that in the future to get past the critical social justice habit of using a Motte and Bailey tactic deceptively.
I don’t know if you did it consciously or in error, but the Motte is supposed to be compatible with the Bailey and not something entirely different.
I think you fell into the trap of CSJ apologists to rely on redefined common terms that sound more moderate to non-believers, but isn’t. If I redefine “apple” to mean “lemon” that doesn’t make it any less bitter.
Do you see this problem in the argument you have been making?
You have not answered my question.
I doubt it is possible, but I don't discourage people who understand the problems facing a democratic redistribution-intense solution that goes along ethnic lines. However, a requirement for success in a healthy democracy is the acquiescence of the group who lose out. The attempt to end slavery resulted in a war, and Reconstruction gave many blacks a system that was actually worse than what they had before. (Another injustice caused by a political elite too keen to achieve peace).
Generally, as I understood Bernie Sanders pointed out, the attempt to rectify racial injustices by redistribution risks creating racial hatred and new injustices. I am, as I said before, against attempts to impose this kind of solution top-down.
However, something like a wealth tax is far simpler and as it happens, quite a bit of old wealth does derive from slavery and, for instance, if the US were to improve and expand its social programs for the poor to, say, the level here in Germany, that would make a massive difference for the poor communities that have least been able to recover from the effects of slavery.
Such a form of redistribution could be formulated in colour-blind, wealth-based terms. It's still difficult to impose top-down, it's not enough to heal the wounds of slavery, but this measure is much less socially divisive than what you, ignoring things I have previously told you, wrongly guessed I had in mind.
> I think you fell into the trap of CSJ apologists to rely on redefined common terms that sound more moderate to non-believers, but isn’t.
I didn't manage to come up with a plausible guess as to what you might have meant by the motte and bailey in the paragraph before the sentence I highlighted, but I wonder if you still believe that sentence after reading what I wrote above.
My general impression is that you are a devoted foot soldier in the culture wars and have no intention of looking inside yourself and becoming more honest. A shame, since you seem to be not dumb and have a certain persistence. You've learned a few argumentative techniques that have a good chance of improving your effectiveness in the fights you choose to pick, which will do it's bit to make the culture wars even less rational. I think this state of affairs is actually a threat to democracy. However, while I did not enjoy our exchange and have low expectations of what you will go on to do, I do have a certain hope in the redemptive power of logic, and I do not regret the effort I have put into this conversation.
You did express support in another comment for the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and inclusion) identity-based redistribution initiatives that are currently deployed.
Why did you do this when you think "distribution risks creating racial hatred and new injustices"? Why do you support having corporations enforce top-down DEI initiatives when you are "against attempts to impose this kind of solution top-down"?
>I doubt it is possible, but I don't discourage people who understand the problems facing a democratic redistribution-intense solution that goes along ethnic lines. However, a requirement for success in a healthy democracy is the acquiescence of the group who lose out. The attempt to end slavery resulted in a war, and Reconstruction gave many blacks a system that was actually worse than what they had before. (Another injustice caused by a political elite too keen to achieve peace). > However, something like a wealth tax is far simpler and as it happens, quite a bit of old wealth does derive from slavery and, for instance, if the US were to improve and expand its social programs for the poor to, say, the level here in Germany, that would make a massive difference for the poor communities that have least been able to recover from the effects of slavery.
We already established that you do not agree with critical social justice that identity groups such as race has salience, so that means it is not just to punish an individual for identity group sins, but if I get you correctly you support using slavery as a justification to redistribute wealth.
Is it correct that you believe in that an individual having wealth in the US is a good signifier for an individual acquiring it through the family history of slavery? If not, how can redistribution of wealth because of slavery be right?
I agree that huge landowning wealth in labor intensive unpleasant farming, such as cotton and tobacco primarily, often relied on slaves and indentured servants (numerous Irish and English came to the US like this). However, as far as I know the more numerous industrial fortunes were not build upon slaves.
Most landowning Americans, those were the voting citizens, owned small dirt farm and struggled to make ends meet using their own family's labor. After Europe decimated itself in WWII a larger amount of Americans from all backgrounds gained a modicum of assets through factory work. Critical social justice and Bernie Sanders activism also seek to redistribute both of these groups wealth.
> My general impression is that you are a devoted foot soldier in the culture wars and have no intention of looking inside yourself and becoming more honest.
Most of the time I've tried to get clarity on your opinion, because you said that you did not believe critical social justice was determinative while still being apologetic about its major doctrines and supporting it's equity initiatives.
I am pretty honest about my position. Although I believe we need more group aspects in our life to have a good human life, I don't believe the solutions pushed are good solutions. I think critical social justice is pushing something equivalent to the Chinese model, a merge of communist and fascist principles, and I am not interested in living through that. I've studied up on most of it's major literature, and understand the rhetorical tactics used for apologetics for its doctrines.
I think you will find that if you check what I wrote before, you have got me wrong, again. I think there are successful DEI exercises, but my general impression of them is equivocal. Some do good, some do evil.
This is rather stronger than what I wrote. I don't think that race is coherent in the sense that there is the relationship between observable hereditable traits and the psychology and morality of the individual that racist intellectuals require. However, if you drop the dodgy biology, clearly ethnicity matters a great deal to how people find their way into or find themselves excluded from groups, what ethnicities we take there to be and what we make of them has been profoundly influenced by the debunked race theories of yesteryear.
In short, race does matter, unfortunately.
I think redistribution of wealth from the rentier class to those whose communities face upheaval, exploitation and decimation because of the creative destruction of capitalism that benefits rentiers at the expense of commodity labour, is and of itself just. If it happens to hurt those who today have profited from slavery, well, that's a class of misfortune that I might regard as just deserts. I think trying to actually target these beneficiaries in a precise manner is, for the kind of reason you gave.
This is normal honesty: you say what you think, and your feelings are in harmony with your thoughts. It is good enough for normal life, but it is not what I mean by intellectual honesty, and it has led you astray in arguing here on HN with people who demand that special kind of honesty.
Which must have been frustrating for you, seeing as I was resisting being pinned down on what I regarded as overspecific details not related to the reasons for my original intervention in these HN subthreads.
To be clear, my original concern was to avoid a lowering in the standard of discourse here on HN, and I did not intervene to criticise you directly, only to criticise what I took to be a complaint of criticisms of you that I took to be entirely without merit. I don't like what I have seen of the New Discourses content (one of the links you provided I particularly disliked), but I actually value the fact that HN is a place that people who agree with Lindsay and Pluckrose can argue. For this to work well, though, standards of argument need to be maintained.
Generally, if a fallacy is found in one's arguments and one values intellectual honesty, the best response is to apologise for the error first and only then attempt to restart the argument. If you don't do this, but try to act as if there was no error, you do avoid loss of face in the eyes of the unthinking that comes from admitting error, but you lose the respect of readers who understood the error and saw the evasion.
It is a sad fact that today most people have little awareness of this risk of losing respect in heated arguments, let alone place high importance to it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
How would you classify DEI initiatives? Do you find them determinative?
1. You tend to couch your opinions using IDW political jargon. I've done that right now: IDW is itself political/cultural jargon; jargon is useful in making your points briefly and accessibly when the reader shares your terms of reference. But these terms are very imprecise and ask a lot of the reader if they don't share them and set up the following discussion for motte-and-bailey arguments (more jargon [1])
2. Instead you should throw away your jargon and share why you reach your conclusions in an accessible manner. This is bad for winning arguments, but it is good for the curious conversation that dang is trying to encourage with his moderation [2].
3. Links are good for two purposes: first, pointers to more information for the interested, but very many sites have a much worse browsing experience than HN; and second, checking claims but most readers want to know enough about the quality of evidence for your claims without actually clicking on them. If you are going to link to any sources that are notorious for clickbait and/or culture war, I advise you to summarise the content so that readers don't simply assume the worst about all of your sources.
With regards to your question, you lump a whole lot of things together. DEI initiatives might be put together by people who are very concerned about the risks that online outrage mobs pose to a healthy culture. I don't know what you mean by "determinative"; DEI initiatives might involve a wise attempt to balance freedom of speech with solving problems of underrepresentation that are sensitive to an organisation's culture, or they might be a poorly constructed exercise in risk-aversion that put people in intolerable situations.
[1]: Cf. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey although I don't regard it as being a determinate fallacy, rather a bad pattern that happens in argument when there is not a shared understanding of the imprecision of the terminology.
[2]: Your reputation is high enough that I guess you are generally aware of dang's approach, but you might not be familiar with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048415
> With regards to your question, you lump a whole lot of things together. DEI initiatives might be put together by people who are very concerned about the risks that online outrage mobs pose to a healthy culture.
Awareness of CSJ is now so high that most people don't believe in this kind of defensive Motte argument to the radical Bailey of censoring "hate speech" that the whistleblower proposed. She asked for censorship of "hate speech" using a ministry of truth, literally.
Let me take your point and explain the link[1] fully. Since you claimed CSJ is not determinative I sought your thoughts on the radical DEI agenda from CSJ. The Bailey of DEI activists is to seek Diversity (hiring activists of all identities - a black conservative is not diverse), inclusion (censorship of people resisting CSJ DEI initiatives), and Equity (redistribution of outcomes based upon identities and adherence to CSJ).
Instead of addressing the Bailey of DEI you withdrew to the more moderate Motte of DEI activists, arguing that we should make sure everyone gets along and are treated equally. This is not what DEI does, because DEI argues for asymmetrically enforcing rules based upon identity (group based equity) which is in conflict with symmetrically making sure every individual is treated equally (liberal individuality).
It is the Bailey argument of both the whistleblowers and DEI activists arguments I have an issue with, not the Motte. The Bailey argument in both cases exclude the Mottes individualistic model.
> I don't know what you mean by "determinative"; DEI initiatives might involve a wise attempt to balance freedom of speech with solving problems of underrepresentation that are sensitive to an organisation's culture, or they might be a poorly constructed exercise in risk-aversion that put people in intolerable situations.
The claim that CSJ was not determinative was your claim, which is why I contextualized your claim to the DEI doctrine that most people are familiar with.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy#:~:te....
You seem to think there is some sort of incoherence in what I've been saying, but none of your attempts at diagnosis are clear.
First, I don't think it's necessary to declare beliefs in an argument. On the contrary, doing so generally means the argument is more stilted, since people generally don't like to concede that they were wrong. If you want to know lots and lots about the kind of arguments I've made outside of HN, you can read https://twitter.com/txtpf/with_replies
Second, you are attributing claims to me that I did not make:
1. Commitment to "CSJ" (your bailey). First, some clarifications:
- (a) I understand DEI to be a class of activities taken to achieve policy ends, not a doctrine. I believe that DEI exists, because it is a fact that organisations engage in it.
- (b) I believe that underrepresentation, the phenomenon that some people lack the ability to get their opinions heard and interests valued for no good reason, is commonplace in most hierarchies, and I've seen DEI initiatives that I thinked helped reduce problems in their organisations. I also think that worsening economic inequality is a major problem in many countries. However, I'm suspicious of the politically convenient top-down silver bullets that periodically appear to tackle these problems, and many DEI initiatives have caused more harm than good, especially around freedom of speech. I'm not a manager or a social scientist; I don't pretend to know how to balance the good against the bad in practice, but I am interested in the ethical problems raised and thinking more deeply how to solve these problems.
- (c) I don't recall that I've defended anything Haugen has said. I'm aware that there's a big story going on, I'm pleased by the idea that Facebook might lose its game of plausible deniability, but I've not made the effort to follow the details. My involvement here was more along the lines of getting a feel for what general opinions are held than getting to grips with the story.
- (d) I'm quite willing to "attack my own side" in arguments, when people who I broadly agree with make bad points. While I think there are urgent political issues, I'm generally more interested in the long term, and on my view this means raising consciousness is important and neglected.
Now, I do have beliefs about the relationship between, say, racial identity and underrepresentation that no doubt many self-styled opponents of CSJ would call CSJ, but they are quite complex, I revise them quite often, and they are the kind of thing I am often willing to set aside for the sake of argument if I find the argument interesting. I've attempted to cross swords with Lindsay on Twitter before, but not on anything I think he would call CSJ. I do not understand your position well enough to be confident that you would have considered my views to be CSJ if you if you had encountered them in a context other than the one you did.
2. Agreeing with the "more moderate Motte of DEI activists": I do not think "we" should make sure everyone gets along, nor do I think everybody should treat everyone else equally. It's an incoherent notion of liberalism that large organisations or the wider world should be made uniform in a way that even the happiest of families aren't. Calls for ends to conflicts whose causes are unresolved and the doctrine of equality are not successful in politics because they are a road to paradise, but because they're dead simple and that matters in democratic decision-making where there is little agreement about facts and justice.
Third, I don't consider the presence of shifts in an argument to be evidence of that something has gone wrong. It absolutely ca...
> It's hard to beat the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for the engineering of the profoundly undemocratic Oslo peace accords, that led one of the recipients to start the Second Intifada (i.e. a revolution against the deal that he himself had negotiated) and the assassination of the other and the rise of the deeply unsavoury Netanyahu. It's set back meaningful peace in the region by at least a generation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28797736
They awarded the price many times for purely political purposes to warmongerers that went on to commit war-atrocities at scale, like Carter with his track record or Obama that had no track record.
If the argument is that this is a way to try to encourage good behavior then the committee also need to withdraw the prize when the recipient don't.
I'll restate what I believe is your position: The moderate Motte of DEI, let's make sure everyone gets along and are treated equally, is compatible with the equity-based Bailey of the more radical DEI activists. It is just a matter of level of moderation.
How do you reconcile the liberal individualistic Motte with the CSJ radical group-based equity-model Bailey?
This is the problem I see with your position:
My opinion is that the CSJ adherents withdraw to the symmetric enforcement mechanism of a liberal individual Motte to defend the asymmetric radically group equity-based model of the Bailey. Because the asymmetric model is incompatible with the symmetric model this makes it effectively a lie covering up for their true radical position, a lie that provide cover until high resistance has abated.
Once the Motte lie has served its purpose to weather the high resistance, the true position of the Bailey is used to affect change.
--- examples in context --
Here are this claim put into context, annotated with the enforcement mechanism.
DEI:
- (group asymmetric enforcement) Radical Bailey of DEI is to seek Diversity (hiring activists of all identities - a black conservative is not diverse), inclusion (censorship of people resisting CSJ DEI initiatives), and Equity (redistribution of outcomes based upon identities and adherence to CSJ).
- (individual symmetric enforcement) The Motte lie is to claim it is just trying to "make sure everyone gets along and are treated equally".
Whistleblower claim:
- (group asymmetric enforcement) radical Bailey of whistleblower censoring "hate speech" not compliant with CSJ using a ministry of truth
- (individual symmetric enforcement) Motte lie is to claim it is just trying to "make sure we all get along and behave well" .
What she is aiming for by censorship of "hate speech" is CRT defined "inclusion" [1]. This means to not tolerate any speech (including symbolic displays or representation) that offends, might offend, or could be construed as being potentially offensive to any member of any marginalized group.
Members of putatively marginalized groups [2] who do not claim to experience or suffer from the oppression critical social justice activists assign to them are dismissed as inauthentic.
So in the end inclusion by censoring "hate speech" is a tool to ensure censorship of any opposing viewpoint.
[1] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-inclusion/ [2] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-marginalization/
I'm also against child pornography (who isn't?), yet I am against those that use fear of child pornography as a smoke screen for mass surveillance.
No need to paint Haugen as an extremist by loose associations.
In addition to how I've shown her call to censor "hate speech" is likely a call to censor viewpoint opponents to critical social justice, whom she associate herself with corroborate this interpretation.
For instance her laywer, Andrew P. Bakaj[2], is an attorney and former intelligence officer with the CIA. He was the principal attorney representing the whistleblower who filed the initial complaint that led to the launch of multiple investigations by the United States Congress into the Trump–Ukraine scandal, the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, and, ultimately, the first Impeachment of Donald Trump.
Neither of these facts are the hallmarks of a moderate person that seek measured actions for the best of viewpoint diversity and civilized dialogue.
[1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_P._Bakaj
If people find a friend to be polarizing and rude they can just unfollow them, that is their business and choice.
> IMO a reasonable goal for what ails Facebook is not to increase moderation, but to reduce polarization by stopping incentivizing people
This is an interesting discussion. How do you see facebook doing this without moderation?
So far Facebook and Twitter algorithmic approaches, e.g. shadowbanning and flagging, are often applied through moderation with an ideological tilt. The people programming and running the systems are after all people as well.
Greenwalds argument isn't a slippery slope fallacy but that is off topic and of no relevance.
edit: Under "An array of possible next steps"
Imagine if political discourse could be like that.
Ultimately that’s why I’m so for both term limits and monetary election reform. We can’t have yearlong elections for house terms that only last 2 years.
This praise is neither objective nor factual, there aren't any leaked documents yet. She proposes solutions in favor of government. This should raise a lot of red flags.
Cynically speaking, if you are able to control the narrative it stands to reason that there would be less polarization simply because you are manipulating what the public is being told.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum...." ― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good
I want to be able to message my parents on Facebook from a different social media. Let the market compete on UI and how they store your data.
Imagine only being able to call other Sprint customers with your Sprint cell phone. We didn't put up with this for telephones, why should we tolerate this?
So if we see regulation, especially content regulation, polarization is likely to increase as long as not every dissident gets banned.