This comment breaks the HN guidelines. Read it closely: it's completely generic other than a shallow response to a single word in the title ("facing"). It offers nothing but the exact same indignation that has been expressed thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of times already. It is, in fact, a perfect specimen of a generic comment, the kind we don't want here because it makes discussion repetitive and ragey: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
1. No, I'm not siding with Facebook or whatever; just with the intended spirit of HN. A comment like this breaks that spirit while seeming to be on topic.
2. I don't mean to pick on you personally. It sucks to be singled out and there is zero intention of shaming here. I'm just picking on this particular comment, about something that we basically all do at times.
> Facebook is, in general, an unethical company. And this has been known for a long time. If you didn't leave yet you won't leave over this either.
You might be right. But you might be wrong. And the way you're framing it, it's either a) someone agrees with you, and has already left FB (meaning you were right), or b) someone has stayed at FB, therefore ethics is unimportant to them.
Your dichotomy leaves no space for the idea that you might be wrong, or that the people who work at FB might not agree with you that it is unethical.
> If you didn't leave yet you won't leave over this either.
You have no idea why people have stayed and/or how their minds have changed over time. Everyone has their breaking point and this could very possibly be it for some people.
Also, your quote should be attributed to Upton Sinclair.
Facebook is reality, but it's also just a game. It goes like this: how deep can we go exploiting people by using information technology. How much "person" can we extract? How far can we go controlling this person (e.g. make sure user is happy, etc.).
The second game is: How can we PR our way out of the nightmares we knowingly create month after month?
It amazes me every day how the corporation and all its employees are able to maintain the BS level required to believe in the "mission" of the company.
If you can imagine it, I never had an active account in my life and I am happy about it. And believe it or not, I still do exists have friends and family and a "social" life.
Remember when "I disagree with what you say, but will defend your right to say it" was a thing? I certainly do. How far we've fallen as a culture since then.
People misunderstand that quote as much as people misunderstand the concept of freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech means that the police can't raid your house for what you think or say or a judge cannot rule against you for what you think or say.
But freedom of speech doesn't mean that other people are forced to either listen to you or provide with their own private means (like content hosting or bandwidth) for you to express your ideas.
Are you saying that the president of the United States doesn't have the ability to speak his mind and be heard by those who want to hear what he has to say?
The same guy who's every tweet is reported in every online publication within minutes? Are you sure you understand what freedom of speech means?
Giving a platform to fascists makes them seem normal and just a quirky alternative to the mainstream. It effectively allows them to easily spread their propaganda.
In his book Mark Bray writes: "It’s important to note, however, that the vast majority of people who oppose limiting speech on political grounds are not free speech absolutists. They all have their exceptions to the rule, whether obscenity, incitement to violence, copyright infringement, press censorship during wartime, or restrictions for the incarcerated. If we rephrase the terms of the debate by taking these exceptions into account, we can see that many liberals support limiting the speech of working-class teens busted for drugs, but not limiting the speech of Nazis. Many are fine when the police quash the free speech of the undocumented by hunting them down, while they amplify the speech of the Klan by protecting them. They advocate curtailing ads for cigarettes but not ads for white supremacy."
In my opinion de-platforming fascists is indeed infringing on their right of free speech, but this infringement is justified as it protects the the safety and well-being of marginalized populations.
there is a difference between saying "I think this war (insert a war: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc) is wrong and unjust" and your quote is absolutely true. Some people believe in the wars, some dont but ultimately its up to us to understand a statement like above can be said openly and honestly and without fear of retribution.
However, and where Facebook crosses a line, is that when you allow someone to post unabashedly false things to drive emotions. Saying "Trump is a weak leader" isn't wrong or false, just an opinion. Saying that Nancy Pelosi murdered a baby deer with her bare hands on the floor of the House and pushing it as absolutely true is where we currently are.
You don't have a right to push verifiably false information with no recourse. You have a right to say your opinion. Just like you can't yell fire in a movie theater, or bomb on an airplane.
Except that the "glorification of violence" depends on the interpretation. It can also be a warning that people will start to defend themselves with violence or that the military will intervene. If that's the case those warning are here to AVOID violence by discouraging people to engage in looting...
Facebook shouldn't make such decision based on the interpretation of some emotionally biased employees.
"When the looting starts, the shooting starts" - quote from a segregationist who did some pretty despicable things.
"We have vicious dogs" - Who is this, Mr. Burns? "Release the hounds!"
"I'm wondering if we can't have some kind of MAGA-counterprotest here. MAGA-people like the black folk. They like African Americans. Maybe they can show up to counterprotest." - seriously? This is about as close to Cartman-esque chanting for a "race war".
>In 1967, Miami police Chief Walter Headley used the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" during hearings about crime in the Florida city, invoking angry reactions from civil rights leaders, according to a news report at the time.
> Segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace also used the phrase during the 1968 campaign.
While you might like to believe that the phrase could mean anything, it certainly doesn't. And in the context of Trumps tweet, which specifically mentions the military, it certainly means that he was threatening to have the US military fire on US civilians.
Now consider that in the context of the US threatening action against China using "tough" tactics to subdue protests in Hong Kong and you'll see the tweet for what it is. The same kind of rhetoric and threat of violence against protesters that the US condemns elsewhere in the world.
It's hard to mislabel "glorification of violence" given the militar culture in the US: just look of all the military propaganda more or less hidden into mainstream media (movies, tv series etc)
I can imagine a consistent "promoting violence is bad" policy - I think we can all agree that the general standards of e.g. a corporate office wouldn't permit Trump's statement. But there's no universe where "when the looting starts the shooting starts" glorifies violence more than "riots are the voice of the unheard", and 100% of the people complaining to Zuckerberg would oppose banning that second message.
Amazing to me that so many people in these comments believe Facebook is or can be apolitical. This is a very childish stance, and Zuck is not standing up for their right to remain out of politics: they're deeply political, and Facebook is just asserting which political viewpoints they subscribe to as an organization.
Interesting times. Many people are now demanding unelected, nearly unaccountable corporations to actively censor elected officials, and in fact consider not doing this evil - a step beyond fascism into a new brand of totalitarianism. I would have considered this absurd even 5 years ago.
The only thing missing to make this reality a full cyberpunk dystopia are corporate superhuman ais, but not for the lack of trying.
> a step beyond fascism into a new brand of totalitarianism.
Social pressure is being exerted on businesses to enact change. How does this have anything to do with fascism or totalitarianism when the government isn't even involved?
It seems a lot of people are advocating two things:
- Western social media companies are evil; and
- Freedom of speech is bad.
You may very well get rid of Facebook and freedom of speech, but I would like to just remind to all of you folks in the West that when you only have Chinese social media companies and no freedom of speech, there will be thousands of cases MUCH worse than George Floyd and you won't even be allowed to talk about them.
this is all a big distraction to the fact that facebook is already playing the “arbiter of truth” - algorithms aren’t magic, they’re just automated biases.
If Zuckerberg truly wanted to be neutral they’d show unweighted posts... he doesn’t actually want that though, he’s just protecting profits (which is his primary responsibility as ceo anyway).
People really want Zuckerberg to decide whether posts of the president should be deleted or not? Is this for real?
We really need mainstream decentralized applications more than ever. Thoughts of people should not be censored. Who the hell should be the truth police? You? People that have the same beliefs as you?
This is just ridiculous. I don't like Facebook but great decision by Mark. Same as they decided to not remove political ads.
Reminder: it is incumbent on every single person who doesn't approve of what facebook does to stop using its platform - no fb, instagram, WhatsApp, or messenger.
every time they record an ad impression because of you or send a message that reinforces their network effect, you enable these people. It's not worth it.
Facebook is too big, has too much reach, and is largely unaccountable to elected representatives - especially outside the United States. Whether Facebook decides to censor an elected official is largely a red herring. They need to be broken up[1] so that individual countries have a chance at holding them to account if they do something shitty and users have more choice of what social network to use if they disagree with Facebook's policies.
[1] At a minimum, the WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions need to be rolled back.
As if anything is going to change. He has the voting rights to do whatever.
There are few FB employees that did speak out on Twitter with not agreeing but to what end. They will still continue to work in support of all this.
I don't think it's such a big problem though, if you dislike hate and violence just mute these people from your feeds/life. The bigger issue as I see it is FB working directly in support of Trump by supporting his ads and dropping Biden's ads.
The point of social networks then is the same as it is now, to host content that does not break the terms of service of the site. Anything further than that is extra. Just leave it as things were and people are fine.
We've been saying that what's on the internet is not bond since before the inception of Facebook and Twitter, so there's no reason to try and change it now. When did people forget that there was no use in doing this?
Twitter just declared war with the federal government. The employee are effectively asking Zuckerberg to divebomb his own company. Zuckerberg has been in those congressional hearings.
He knows exactly why he doesn't want to get in this splashzone. Cause what twitter did is so far over so many lines I can see them being the same after the FCC starts making rules for them like ISPs in 60 days.
I think the next leg of the downturn will start once people actually figure out that the economy has been completed hollowed out all the money printing. At that point, of all the tech giants, Facebook is the most likely to collapse because their only moat is to collect even more of your data or acquire companies who do the same. Given that their "moonshot" cryptocurrency project was (thankfully) basically dead on arrival, they now don't have nearly as many tentacles into our lives as the other tech giants.
Now, imagine being the only social network where the President of the USA is allowed to write whatever he wants. That's a sure-shot bailout package isn't it?
[+] [-] pdimitar|5 years ago|reply
Virtue signalling is cheap, endangering your family's livelihood is hard.
"It's very difficult to make somebody understand something, especially if their salary depends on them not understanding it."
Facebook is, in general, an unethical company. And this has been known for a long time. If you didn't leave yet you won't leave over this either.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
Therefore, please don't post like this to HN. Repetitive indignation is the opposite of curious conversation, and we seek the latter. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Disclaimey bits:
1. No, I'm not siding with Facebook or whatever; just with the intended spirit of HN. A comment like this breaks that spirit while seeming to be on topic.
2. I don't mean to pick on you personally. It sucks to be singled out and there is zero intention of shaming here. I'm just picking on this particular comment, about something that we basically all do at times.
[+] [-] edanm|5 years ago|reply
You might be right. But you might be wrong. And the way you're framing it, it's either a) someone agrees with you, and has already left FB (meaning you were right), or b) someone has stayed at FB, therefore ethics is unimportant to them.
Your dichotomy leaves no space for the idea that you might be wrong, or that the people who work at FB might not agree with you that it is unethical.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ethagnawl|5 years ago|reply
You have no idea why people have stayed and/or how their minds have changed over time. Everyone has their breaking point and this could very possibly be it for some people.
Also, your quote should be attributed to Upton Sinclair.
[+] [-] bamboozled|5 years ago|reply
1) Have little concern about the ethics. 2) Care about money. 3) Feel smart and important for working there (I'm smart, I made it).
This won't change their view on those things.
[+] [-] badrabbit|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway7281|5 years ago|reply
The second game is: How can we PR our way out of the nightmares we knowingly create month after month?
It amazes me every day how the corporation and all its employees are able to maintain the BS level required to believe in the "mission" of the company.
If you can imagine it, I never had an active account in my life and I am happy about it. And believe it or not, I still do exists have friends and family and a "social" life.
[+] [-] keiferski|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] znpy|5 years ago|reply
Freedom of speech means that the police can't raid your house for what you think or say or a judge cannot rule against you for what you think or say.
But freedom of speech doesn't mean that other people are forced to either listen to you or provide with their own private means (like content hosting or bandwidth) for you to express your ideas.
[+] [-] ggggtez|5 years ago|reply
The same guy who's every tweet is reported in every online publication within minutes? Are you sure you understand what freedom of speech means?
[+] [-] sp0rk|5 years ago|reply
I'm not sure somebody's "right to say [something]" is directly equivalent to being able to tweet something on a privately owned platform.
[+] [-] bedhesd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6510|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lariscus|5 years ago|reply
In his book Mark Bray writes: "It’s important to note, however, that the vast majority of people who oppose limiting speech on political grounds are not free speech absolutists. They all have their exceptions to the rule, whether obscenity, incitement to violence, copyright infringement, press censorship during wartime, or restrictions for the incarcerated. If we rephrase the terms of the debate by taking these exceptions into account, we can see that many liberals support limiting the speech of working-class teens busted for drugs, but not limiting the speech of Nazis. Many are fine when the police quash the free speech of the undocumented by hunting them down, while they amplify the speech of the Klan by protecting them. They advocate curtailing ads for cigarettes but not ads for white supremacy."
In my opinion de-platforming fascists is indeed infringing on their right of free speech, but this infringement is justified as it protects the the safety and well-being of marginalized populations.
[+] [-] rocketpastsix|5 years ago|reply
However, and where Facebook crosses a line, is that when you allow someone to post unabashedly false things to drive emotions. Saying "Trump is a weak leader" isn't wrong or false, just an opinion. Saying that Nancy Pelosi murdered a baby deer with her bare hands on the floor of the House and pushing it as absolutely true is where we currently are.
You don't have a right to push verifiably false information with no recourse. You have a right to say your opinion. Just like you can't yell fire in a movie theater, or bomb on an airplane.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] caenorst|5 years ago|reply
Facebook shouldn't make such decision based on the interpretation of some emotionally biased employees.
[+] [-] FireBeyond|5 years ago|reply
"We have vicious dogs" - Who is this, Mr. Burns? "Release the hounds!"
"I'm wondering if we can't have some kind of MAGA-counterprotest here. MAGA-people like the black folk. They like African Americans. Maybe they can show up to counterprotest." - seriously? This is about as close to Cartman-esque chanting for a "race war".
[+] [-] ggggtez|5 years ago|reply
> Segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace also used the phrase during the 1968 campaign.
While you might like to believe that the phrase could mean anything, it certainly doesn't. And in the context of Trumps tweet, which specifically mentions the military, it certainly means that he was threatening to have the US military fire on US civilians.
Now consider that in the context of the US threatening action against China using "tough" tactics to subdue protests in Hong Kong and you'll see the tweet for what it is. The same kind of rhetoric and threat of violence against protesters that the US condemns elsewhere in the world.
[+] [-] znpy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SpicyLemonZest|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] binxbolling|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] therealdrag0|5 years ago|reply
And I prefer platforms attempt the former.
[+] [-] koheripbal|5 years ago|reply
That seems like a very black-vs-white / with-us-or-against-us mentality.
[+] [-] nootropicat|5 years ago|reply
The only thing missing to make this reality a full cyberpunk dystopia are corporate superhuman ais, but not for the lack of trying.
[+] [-] sp0rk|5 years ago|reply
Social pressure is being exerted on businesses to enact change. How does this have anything to do with fascism or totalitarianism when the government isn't even involved?
[+] [-] hkai|5 years ago|reply
- Western social media companies are evil; and
- Freedom of speech is bad.
You may very well get rid of Facebook and freedom of speech, but I would like to just remind to all of you folks in the West that when you only have Chinese social media companies and no freedom of speech, there will be thousands of cases MUCH worse than George Floyd and you won't even be allowed to talk about them.
[+] [-] koheripbal|5 years ago|reply
It's like the sky isn't even blue anymore...
[+] [-] noscrewstoyous|5 years ago|reply
If Zuckerberg truly wanted to be neutral they’d show unweighted posts... he doesn’t actually want that though, he’s just protecting profits (which is his primary responsibility as ceo anyway).
[+] [-] narrator|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reedwolf|5 years ago|reply
Are we arguing that some users are just too important to adhere to the site's terms and conditions?
[+] [-] arusahni|5 years ago|reply
10 Facebook does something to draw ire
20 Employee drama
30 The company leadership offers some platitudes to buy time
40 GOTO 10
[+] [-] blueterminal|5 years ago|reply
We really need mainstream decentralized applications more than ever. Thoughts of people should not be censored. Who the hell should be the truth police? You? People that have the same beliefs as you?
This is just ridiculous. I don't like Facebook but great decision by Mark. Same as they decided to not remove political ads.
[+] [-] malloreon|5 years ago|reply
every time they record an ad impression because of you or send a message that reinforces their network effect, you enable these people. It's not worth it.
[+] [-] AlexandrB|5 years ago|reply
[1] At a minimum, the WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions need to be rolled back.
[+] [-] nikivi|5 years ago|reply
There are few FB employees that did speak out on Twitter with not agreeing but to what end. They will still continue to work in support of all this.
I don't think it's such a big problem though, if you dislike hate and violence just mute these people from your feeds/life. The bigger issue as I see it is FB working directly in support of Trump by supporting his ads and dropping Biden's ads.
[+] [-] easterncalculus|5 years ago|reply
We've been saying that what's on the internet is not bond since before the inception of Facebook and Twitter, so there's no reason to try and change it now. When did people forget that there was no use in doing this?
[+] [-] Lammy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DeonPenny|5 years ago|reply
He knows exactly why he doesn't want to get in this splashzone. Cause what twitter did is so far over so many lines I can see them being the same after the FCC starts making rules for them like ISPs in 60 days.
[+] [-] yc_theorist|5 years ago|reply
I think the next leg of the downturn will start once people actually figure out that the economy has been completed hollowed out all the money printing. At that point, of all the tech giants, Facebook is the most likely to collapse because their only moat is to collect even more of your data or acquire companies who do the same. Given that their "moonshot" cryptocurrency project was (thankfully) basically dead on arrival, they now don't have nearly as many tentacles into our lives as the other tech giants.
Now, imagine being the only social network where the President of the USA is allowed to write whatever he wants. That's a sure-shot bailout package isn't it?
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sebastianconcpt|5 years ago|reply