People are complaining a lot about how FB are enforcing things, and why they are explicit about their decision to remove these things was not based on the content, but the patterns of inauthentic activity and fake accounts.
Look what happened with Matthew Prince of Cloudflare. Relentless harassment from people who believe he should be more active in censoring his customers, especially after that last shooting. Even when he has reluctantly stepped in on some extreme cases, they still gave him no credit. Defining wrongthink is a slippery slope, and you’ll never make ideologues happy. If you even try, then next thing you know, you’re somehow culpable for everything you didn’t remove, or didn’t remove quickly enough. Then you get accusations of endorsing it, because you removed X but not Y, so you must approve of Y, right?
And where does it end? “Sprint are ‘literally Nazis’ for allowing David Duke to have a cell phone?”
It’s no wonder everyone is deathly afraid of policing based on content. The PR consequences are bad enough, but it’s also likely to lead into legal problems as well.
You're making a category error. Sprint is a Common Carrier and protected by law as long as they don't meddle with what traverses their equipment nor deny David Duke his phone number.
If FB did retreat to common carrier, they would not be allowed to run ads nor ban accounts. If they became content providers they would incur civil and criminal liability for content posted on their sites, but also have complete control over who is allowed to have an account and who isn't.
It used to be one or the other, but FB et al wanted to have their cake and have it too, and Section 230 of the CDA was created to allow them to straddle this fence. Well, here we are and it turns out that content is a bigger problem than Section 230 was built to deal with.
That's a pretty backwards slippery slope argument. "They wanted all sites in this category removed, cloudflare removed two sites, why aren't they getting any credit?" The answer is obvious and does not require a slope at all, much less a slippery one.
> If you even try, then next thing you know, you’re somehow culpable for everything you didn’t remove, or didn’t remove quickly enough. Then you get accusations of endorsing it, because you removed X but not Y, so you must approve of Y, right?
I've seen a lot of accusations of cloudflare endorsing this kind of content. I haven't seen a single person or place where those accusations got stronger after they went from 0 or 1 sites removed to 2 sites removed.
People as it is have a Negativity Bias.
Facebook/Twitter/Youtube's biggest content producers use it and depend on it, to hit their engagement metrics. Elevating threat perception or a fight response doesn't require censored content. Once you build such a machine that operates at population scale, what does it matter which content is censored?
All the content is fucking everyone in someway everyday. And the effects of that accumulate over time. Just ask your friendly neighborhood shrink whether business is booming.
"Where does it end" arguments are the kind of "winning" internet argument I hate seeing [0].
There's a lot to be said to building up your business in an environment that is a liberal democracy with free movement of ideas, commerce, and people. And then protecting those principles from those that hijack such liberties to promote illiberal ideas.
An existing (but old and outdated, badly needing reform) legal construct exists: Title 2 protections (being pipes). Only, no one wants to be Title 2 (not even Verizon, Sprint, Comcast) because all the money is in non-Title 2 (content).
Sounds like you may be interested in Title 1 and 2 overhaul.
Is your argument that because Matthew Prince of Cloudflare didn't get more positive reinforcement for dropping 8ch from their service, that means that Facebook shouldn't try and reduce bot traffic?
Because it sure seems like this is the actual crux of your argument, but it makes little sense.
Interesting seeing this response from both Facebook and Twitter on the exact same day.
Guessing from this:
> Based on a tip shared by Twitter about activity they found on their platform, we conducted an internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region and identified this activity. We will continue monitoring and will take action if we find additional violations. We’ve shared our analysis with law enforcement and industry partners.
that the simultaneous response was coordinated by both platforms... I'd go so far as to say that it was coordinated in order to demonstrate the capability to self-moderate ahead of the 2020 US elections.
It's likely due to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Yi_Bar. Which organized a widely popular anti-protest campaign about 2 days ago, the online community had about 30 million members. Members proceeded to use VPN to spam anti-HK protest posts/comments on FB/instagram/twitter. This is consistent with the behavior of this community in the past (mass trolling, mostly apolitical but sometimes political, this community is pretty nationalist to begin with).
> I'd go so far as to say that it was coordinated in order to demonstrate the capability to self-moderate ahead of the 2020 US elections.
I don't understand how you go from "Guessing from Twitter tipping off Facebook" to "Probably flexing their self-moderating muscles ahead of US elections".
For the US they have a unique challenge: they can freely attempt to mitigate propaganda and manipulation by the Chinese ruling party and it's backers because they are not physically in China.
"We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people." What do they think advertising is?
Shouldn't they replace all the content with, at least, a short note saying what was formerly here was part of a "coordinated inauthentic behavior" and that the individuals representing themselves here were not real?
Hard to say if they would want those remnants on their platform, but it would be really great if these things were funneled to the FBI who published reports of state-sponsored misinformation activities so we could cite them as examples later on.
Slightly related--it was amusing the first time I went to /r/China to find it completely full of anti-China posts. I mean, it makes sense since Reddit is an American website, but it would be like going to /r/potato and finding dozens of posts on how people hate potatoes.
Algorithms to detect algorithms. The latter have to become more and more genuine and authentic in order to fool the former which are forced to become better and better ... Soon the genuineness, authenticity and complexity of the latter will exceed Shakespeare writing his plays (some say even that was a fake - in this case i subscribe to Marlowe theory) and we, regular humans, will be left in the dust... Too stupid a post - yea, that is a real human, let it through :)
The point of propaganda isn't actually to promulgate a lie that obscures the truth. It's to promulgate a lie that people will repeat. It may eventually reach a scale where it can eclipse the truth, but by then it's generally done its job.
You may not be a weak minded fool, there surely are SOME people who are who will be genuinely moved by the now-banned content. Those people will then repeat credulously an idea, making it easier for folks who know better to repeat an idea. That's generally how propaganda starts. Eventually it becomes unquestionable.
To understand the bigger picture of this propaganda campaign on Hong Kong’s protest, check out an allegedly leaked instruction on how China controls the media (picture in Chinese and translation to English [1], transcribed in Chinese [2]).
Edit: it is interesting to see that a sibling comment of mine [3] on another thread on Twitter’s reaction got overwhelming upvotes, while this comment on FB’s reaction got a downvote.
> Edit: it is interesting to see that a sibling comment of mine [3] on another thread on Twitter’s reaction got overwhelming upvotes, while this comment on FB’s reaction got a downvote.
Yes, it's almost as if different people -- with different opinions -- read and reacted to two comments posted 5 hours apart on separate threads.
I wonder when the US and other Western countries finally start cracking down on China and Russia with harsh sanctions for all the manipulation they're doing.
Oh wait, they can't, as all manufacturing was outsourced to China and that would be the first thing China cuts off...
Sarcasm aside: how can the West possibly react on the events of the last years?! There's not many options available any more.
Great question. I've been dealing with APTs from Russia (and to a lesser extent China) for two years now, and there is nobody out there to help independent sites.
GDPR recently drove us to build our own application level firewall from scratch, which turned up behavior that is never reported by CloudFront or Google Analytics - those services are only hiding the severity of the problem.
Like every other Conservative party in the world doesnt do the same? This is my problem with these actions. They are selective based on political affiliation.
I dont care if they are communists, socialists, or the run of the mill capitalists. The only reason twitter and facebook still exist in their current form, is because the poltical establishments all over the world have worked out to leverage them for their advantage.
Politics has not escaped the disruption that other industries have suffered. Its like any other targetting advertising campaign. How are mining companies who put out poltical properganda too undermine environmental movements any different?
While this is not going to be a popular opinion, you have to give credit where credit is due to Trump. Without his campaign to crack down on Chinese practices (including Huawei) and bringing massive attention to China via the active trade war and tariffs I doubt social media such as FB and Twitter would in-acting these policies. He brought political pressure onto China where there was little to none by previous administrations.
Trump made it worse because whatever evidence against CCP he is presenting is often being dismissed by foreign leaders who don't trust him because of his unnecessarily hostile attitude towards US allies. If Obama or somebody alike was presenting Huawei case (which has been in the works long before Trump) more countries would be willing to coordinate a response necessary to maintain China's authoritarian / colonial ambitions. But now alienated Germany and other allies are increasingly skeptical, which helps China & Russia.
Maybe it’s the conspiracy theorist in me, but I see the exact opposite: there are a lot of people who believe that “coordinated, inauthentic behavior” on social media platforms allowed Trump to win the 2016 election, and that a crackdown on anything perceived to be “coordinated and inauthentic” will prevent him from doing so again in 2020. To me, this just feels like a cynically convenient excuse to get ready to remove content arbitrarily in advance of next year’s election cycle.
FB doesn't want to be a content police, behind the principal of freedom of speech. They're instead looking at metadata that reveals that it's fake and attempting to pursue an agenda. I am certainly no FB apologist, but I think the language of 'coordinated inauthentic behavior' is a really smart one that well defines the problem.
> We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people. We’re taking down these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted. As with all of these takedowns, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action.
To suggest that the practices of facebook in general - likes, the activity feed, and various experiments that facebook has in its history - is not itself an attempt by a coordinated group to manipulate people, is itself disingenuous at best. In order to correct this to honesty, they would have to clarify that they don't care for external groups - other than those who pay for advertising services - to be permitted to manipulate people.
This take down of a few pages being followed by 15k people and its subsequent information release is itself a manipulation, to make it appear as if facebook is doing something about the glaring problems that I personally think it represents. It seems to me that in the halls of power today, there are few good actors, and this tiny morsel doesn't make facebook one of them, and does nothing about the manipulators on their platforms that are beyond their ability to take down, despite self-serving dishonesty from so many groups.
In other words, what a skillfully crafted news release from facebook, give that marketer a raise.
[+] [-] lawnchair_larry|6 years ago|reply
Look what happened with Matthew Prince of Cloudflare. Relentless harassment from people who believe he should be more active in censoring his customers, especially after that last shooting. Even when he has reluctantly stepped in on some extreme cases, they still gave him no credit. Defining wrongthink is a slippery slope, and you’ll never make ideologues happy. If you even try, then next thing you know, you’re somehow culpable for everything you didn’t remove, or didn’t remove quickly enough. Then you get accusations of endorsing it, because you removed X but not Y, so you must approve of Y, right?
And where does it end? “Sprint are ‘literally Nazis’ for allowing David Duke to have a cell phone?”
It’s no wonder everyone is deathly afraid of policing based on content. The PR consequences are bad enough, but it’s also likely to lead into legal problems as well.
[+] [-] rhizome|6 years ago|reply
If FB did retreat to common carrier, they would not be allowed to run ads nor ban accounts. If they became content providers they would incur civil and criminal liability for content posted on their sites, but also have complete control over who is allowed to have an account and who isn't.
It used to be one or the other, but FB et al wanted to have their cake and have it too, and Section 230 of the CDA was created to allow them to straddle this fence. Well, here we are and it turns out that content is a bigger problem than Section 230 was built to deal with.
[+] [-] Dylan16807|6 years ago|reply
> If you even try, then next thing you know, you’re somehow culpable for everything you didn’t remove, or didn’t remove quickly enough. Then you get accusations of endorsing it, because you removed X but not Y, so you must approve of Y, right?
I've seen a lot of accusations of cloudflare endorsing this kind of content. I haven't seen a single person or place where those accusations got stronger after they went from 0 or 1 sites removed to 2 sites removed.
[+] [-] 0xB31B1B|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hos234|6 years ago|reply
People as it is have a Negativity Bias. Facebook/Twitter/Youtube's biggest content producers use it and depend on it, to hit their engagement metrics. Elevating threat perception or a fight response doesn't require censored content. Once you build such a machine that operates at population scale, what does it matter which content is censored?
All the content is fucking everyone in someway everyday. And the effects of that accumulate over time. Just ask your friendly neighborhood shrink whether business is booming.
[+] [-] cjslep|6 years ago|reply
There's a lot to be said to building up your business in an environment that is a liberal democracy with free movement of ideas, commerce, and people. And then protecting those principles from those that hijack such liberties to promote illiberal ideas.
An existing (but old and outdated, badly needing reform) legal construct exists: Title 2 protections (being pipes). Only, no one wants to be Title 2 (not even Verizon, Sprint, Comcast) because all the money is in non-Title 2 (content).
Sounds like you may be interested in Title 1 and 2 overhaul.
[0] (satire) https://cjslep.com/c/blog/winning-internet-arguments
[+] [-] NovaS1X|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KirinDave|6 years ago|reply
Because it sure seems like this is the actual crux of your argument, but it makes little sense.
[+] [-] eganist|6 years ago|reply
Guessing from this:
> Based on a tip shared by Twitter about activity they found on their platform, we conducted an internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region and identified this activity. We will continue monitoring and will take action if we find additional violations. We’ve shared our analysis with law enforcement and industry partners.
that the simultaneous response was coordinated by both platforms... I'd go so far as to say that it was coordinated in order to demonstrate the capability to self-moderate ahead of the 2020 US elections.
[+] [-] Aperocky|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spectramax|6 years ago|reply
I don't understand how you go from "Guessing from Twitter tipping off Facebook" to "Probably flexing their self-moderating muscles ahead of US elections".
[+] [-] TomMckenny|6 years ago|reply
For the US they have a unique challenge: they can freely attempt to mitigate propaganda and manipulation by the Chinese ruling party and it's backers because they are not physically in China.
[+] [-] gaze|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spunker540|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Schnitz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qtplatypus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jachee|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metalliqaz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexCoventry|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thepangolino|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agdpf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trhway|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeGale|6 years ago|reply
It exercises the immune system against the ever flowing rubbish that is so much of the Internet, Press, Politician bit dribble...
In this case it was so very obvious that it wasn't that useful. I'd be happy to see it still there to give me a laugh.
Also a bit insulting, these guys seem to assume that I'm a weak minded fool who will get taken in by this obvious nonsense.
[+] [-] KirinDave|6 years ago|reply
You may not be a weak minded fool, there surely are SOME people who are who will be genuinely moved by the now-banned content. Those people will then repeat credulously an idea, making it easier for folks who know better to repeat an idea. That's generally how propaganda starts. Eventually it becomes unquestionable.
[+] [-] hker|6 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/csj4ca/chinas_pro...
[2]: https://pastebin.com/anMtU0Lz
Edit: it is interesting to see that a sibling comment of mine [3] on another thread on Twitter’s reaction got overwhelming upvotes, while this comment on FB’s reaction got a downvote.
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20742525
[+] [-] jlgaddis|6 years ago|reply
Yes, it's almost as if different people -- with different opinions -- read and reacted to two comments posted 5 hours apart on separate threads.
[+] [-] tehjoker|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschuster91|6 years ago|reply
Oh wait, they can't, as all manufacturing was outsourced to China and that would be the first thing China cuts off...
Sarcasm aside: how can the West possibly react on the events of the last years?! There's not many options available any more.
[+] [-] vallismortis|6 years ago|reply
GDPR recently drove us to build our own application level firewall from scratch, which turned up behavior that is never reported by CloudFront or Google Analytics - those services are only hiding the severity of the problem.
[+] [-] cameronbrown|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thefounder|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buttholesurfer|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] weq|6 years ago|reply
I dont care if they are communists, socialists, or the run of the mill capitalists. The only reason twitter and facebook still exist in their current form, is because the poltical establishments all over the world have worked out to leverage them for their advantage.
Politics has not escaped the disruption that other industries have suffered. Its like any other targetting advertising campaign. How are mining companies who put out poltical properganda too undermine environmental movements any different?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/08/natio...
[+] [-] nodesocket|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avocado4|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commandlinefan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wzy|6 years ago|reply
Hmm...
[+] [-] azinman2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moosey|6 years ago|reply
To suggest that the practices of facebook in general - likes, the activity feed, and various experiments that facebook has in its history - is not itself an attempt by a coordinated group to manipulate people, is itself disingenuous at best. In order to correct this to honesty, they would have to clarify that they don't care for external groups - other than those who pay for advertising services - to be permitted to manipulate people.
This take down of a few pages being followed by 15k people and its subsequent information release is itself a manipulation, to make it appear as if facebook is doing something about the glaring problems that I personally think it represents. It seems to me that in the halls of power today, there are few good actors, and this tiny morsel doesn't make facebook one of them, and does nothing about the manipulators on their platforms that are beyond their ability to take down, despite self-serving dishonesty from so many groups.
In other words, what a skillfully crafted news release from facebook, give that marketer a raise.