The worst part is those I speak to have very modest views, good intentions, and have put thought into it. But they're terrified of ever speaking up at the workplace for fear of what those that are most radicalized might try in response.
It's not like a Facebook feed is the deterministic result of a given user's subscriptions to friends and businesses, as if Facebook were a kind of user-friendly clone of a FOSS mailing list. Facebook engineers the contents of the feed in a way that is typically inscrutable to the user, and often harmful-- driving division and filter bubbles in order to keep up engagement. It's democratic in exactly the same way that Las Vegas would be democratic if you removed every single regulation on the gambling industry there.
So I'm perfectly happy to concede that even in a system designed with dark patterns to eat as much users' attention as possible-- well past the scant value they receive from using that system-- it'd be even worse to censor the POTUS account. But I highly doubt that's the kind of reasoned defense you're talking about. Any Facebook employee uttering that knows the next question coming is why they work for a company that employs so many dark patterns to generate so much anger and misinformation among its userbase.
Edit: clarification
That being said, in many ways companies/organizations are simply biased samples of the cultural milieu, so I'm not sure there is an easy company-level policy for changing this. Given the Banjo/Clearview.ai KKK/alt-right stuff, the fear of radicalized tech employees is definitely a matter of real concern, but it's definitely a hard problem.
Or that they fear people from those orgs?
If 1, that seems unlikely that would be the majority of people. If 2, well, that's the opposite of the case here.
I am curious by what you mean by "well, that's the opposite of the case here." What is in your opinion the opposite of White Nationalism on the radical spectrum?
Not him but I'm giggling over here thinking about insurrectionary anarchism with compulsory interracial characteristics.
There were 0 company polls taken about this on a grand scale.
Most vocal position so far has been large scale dissatisfaction with this decision. But no way to actually know if that is just a ‘vocal’ minority.
So unless this person they ‘surveyed’ did some sort of independent analysis where they sampled a significant portion of the company independently, they are full of shit.
To be clear I am not advocating for either position in this post (though I do have an opinion), but this is just a bold faced lie.
Or perhaps Facebook employees generally lean right maybe? Any FB employees here care to comment?
It’s impossible to tell, especially working remotely. It’s not like you can ask these kinds of questions over Workplace chat unless you’re close with other team members.
But the perspective that there are people who agree with Zuck’s decision and aren’t speaking up is valid. I’m one of them despite generally agreeing with BLM _and_ being a person of color.
You have people changing their profile pics to BLM icons which makes it ever so apparent that a non-negligible percent (20%-30% maybe) of co-workers in each group chat support the cause.
During Q&As, 95% of the comments are from BLM supporters making quite blunt remarks about Zuck’s decision making.
Director+ levels are also vocally against Zuck’s decision (although they accept that they can’t change his mind). I’m not willing to torpedo my career progression here, and imagine others feel the same.
So yeah, I’ll be keeping my mouth shut and silently nodding along with the rest while Zuck gets rocks thrown at him.
Have you actually experienced firings / ostracism from people at the company? While I do feel like your points would be contrarian (and may get shouted at), I'm wondering what the actual repercussions would be.
Most of what I've seen (in regards to dissenters) have been relatively spirited debates and strong digital dissension but no strong tangible effects.
I'm asking this in good faith as someone who sits on the other side of the fence on this issue (though like with most things am not 100% assured of my decision).
https://epidemiological.net/2017/11/16/a-quick-geographical-...
https://www.copinthehood.com/2017/09/the-freddie-gray-effect...
A particularly good visualization of Baltimore's murder rate is here:
http://mistybeach.com/mark/BaltimoreHomicides.html
Baltimore's homocide clearance rate also dropped from 40% to some percentage in the 20's because the breakdown in police/community relations made people stopped snitching.
There's a similar spike in St. Louis, timed to the Michael Brown killing.
The national murder rate spiked 25% in the last two years of Obama's presidency, after decades of decline. There isn't any alternative explanation.
Anyway, I think the idea was someone needed statistics on how many people were stealing things after some sort of event, but obviously they couldn't just ask people because who would admit to breaking the law.
So what you do is you ask the question: "Are you stealing" then you have the person flip a coin out of your view. If the coin is heads then they answer honestly, but if the coin is tails, then they always answer yes. This way the person in question has plausible deniability (I didn't steal, I said that I did because the coin came up tails). Then once you have the data you just need to divide by half and maybe tweak some other parameters, but you end up with realistic data (or so the statisticians say).
What if all of Trump's worst posts were removed, such that every potential voter reading them then has a less-aligned view of what he supports, and decides to vote for him, when they would not have had his posts not been selectively filtered? Just one of many possibilities
This situation is different in that the people who are agreeing with what their company does are feeling afraid to voice their agreement.
The problem here might be the monopoly, so it doesn't matter how bad the decision there will be no repercussions.
Of my own team:
30% definitely support
20% probably support
50% unknown/neutral
0% definitely against
I wrote more thoughts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23411899
In that case, I wouldn't be so sure about your numbers because people will lie about positions if they think they'll be negatively impacted by a "wrong" answer.
This is one of the reasons why the 2016 election polls were so wrong. When polled, a certain number of Trump supporters would lie and say they supported Clinton.
Facebook and to a lesser extent other big social media is in an impossible position.
In my opinion: “Over time, in general we tend to add more policies to restrict things more and more,” he said. “If every time there’s something that’s controversial your instinct is, okay let’s restrict a lot, then you do end up restricting a lot of things that I think will be eventually good for everyone.” is right on target.
I don't mean to understate or under-appreciate the damage and impact various posts can and do have. This one post by Trump will likely cause tangible harm.
There are absolutely no unambiguously good and correct decisions here. Facebook and the others are in completely uncharted waters.
Facebook cares about its bottom line only. By restricting things, it decreases its income. They don't want to verify ads (my dad was just scammed the other day. I have since gotten my mom off of Facebook). They don't want to lose users, that includes nazis, white supremacists, Trump supports, far left radicals, etc. They don't care about hackers, and foreign agents influencing elections.
If Facebook wishes to be a public forum then it needs to either become a utility or it needs to lose its profit incentive. Otherwise it is a private platform and should bear the consequence of the misinformation and hate it spreads.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Also, there is no way to abate and come clean of the sin once you've been accused of it loudly enough. The accusation will stick and can ruin your entire remaining life. It's often not worth the risk if your views are moderate, and it's not a life-or-death question.
Welcome to the life of a conservative in tech. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of us, but I have no way of knowing for sure, because it's clear that speaking about our political beliefs can lead to negative repercussions in our career. Good luck getting a job or investment after you've publicly posted anything in line with Trump's agenda (which, btw, about 60 million people seem to at least partly agree with).
The result is that the only conservatives remaining in public view are the loony ones who can afford to speak out without risking their job, don't care about their corporate reputation, or have to post from pseudonyms. People on the left see this and conclude that everyone on the right is an extremist, further assuring them that their leftist views are "on the right side of history."
There should be a term for "liberal privilege" when you're able to post your political views under your real name.
There is a distinct difference between expressing a political view, such as that we should have the government spend less money, and inciting random citizens to commit violent acts against a perceived enemy.
I was referring to the quote from the article "that people who agreed with [Zuckerberg's decision] were afraid to speak out for fear of appearing insensitive," so I don't think it's a misreading of the situation. On the contrary, I'm expressing my lack of surprise, given my personal experience as a conservative in tech with a 98% liberal peer group. I am unable to talk freely about my political beliefs in the same way that, say, Biden or Bernie supporters are. I would be labeled a racist simply for agreeing with any republican point of view. Whereas I routinely see friends on Facebook getting hundreds of likes on statuses that call republican politicians "vile" or "scum."
As an aside, what's particularly frustrating is how many people assume or expect that I hold the same views as them when in casual conversation. Someone will bring up Trump as if it's a foregone conclusion that he's a racist sociopath and anyone who supports him is one too, and I just have to nod along and laugh with them, or find a way to change the subject, lest I be "outed" as some sort of violent extremist for supporting the president.
> The president is unequivocally spreading hate and inciting violence
Unequivocally? I think you could find a lot of people who disagree with this assessment of his words. Who's to decide what is "unequivocally" an incitement of violence?
> There is a distinct difference between expressing a political view, such as that we should have the government spend less money, and inciting random citizens to commit violent acts against a perceived enemy.
This is a strawman, because I haven't seen Trump "inciting random citizens to commit violent acts." Regardless, of course there is a difference between political speech and inciting violence. But who is to be the arbiter of it? Because from what I've seen, certain people on the left can twist almost anything outside of their agenda to fit their definition of "violence." As a contrived example, some on the left would be "offended" by the suggestion that "a country is not a country without a strong border," equating it to "locking kids in cages." Is it violence to advocate for strong borders and criminal consequences for illegal immigration? Or is it political speech? What about when the president says it?
You are totally correct. I do think this. I have ample evidence that backs up my case as well. I think the quote "when they start looting, we start shooting" which was hidden by Twitter for inciting violence, is enough for me.
> This is a strawman, because I haven't seen Trump "inciting random citizens to commit violent acts."
I don't think we can have a real conversation because we disagree about the basic facts on the ground.
Trump, from my position, is clearly, repeatedly and blatantly pushing people to violence using Twitter. In fact, even Twitter thinks so.
Umm... except that’s not what he said though. If it was, I would completely agree with you that it is an incitement (more accurately, a proclamation) of violence. But what he actually said was:
"when the looting starts, the shooting starts"
And, per Wikipedia:
"He said that he was not aware of the phrase's 'racially-charged history'. He added that he didn't know where the phrase had originated, and that his intent in using it was to say 'when there's looting, people get shot and they die.'"
So his statement is not an incitement, but a prediction. You may believe that Trump is lying about his intention, but that's a different debate.
At best we have a leader of our country too irresponsible to do due diligence on his own posts to the entire free world. He has literally infinite resources at his disposal to communicate effectively about this.
Being a hateful bigot and or an ignoramus should both be unacceptable positions for the leader of the US. Furthermore this isn't the first time he's said or done hateful / bigoted / ignorant things / lied so you'll excuse people if they don't give him the 'benefit of the doubt'.
That's something you take up at the ballot box or with your Congressperson/governer, not Facebook.
I don't exactly understand what is objectionable about protesting the decision making of corporate entities given the immense power they hold?
This is like saying you shouldn't boycott BP for their oil spill, you should just complain to your congressperson. I don't understand why you can't complain on both fronts?
Just created a new account just to tell you we're at least 2 conservatives in tech. Pretty sure I'll get angry and abandon this account very soon again because of the liberal bias here, and their adoration for the downvote button, but whatever, anything for a conservative colleague :)
> There should be a term for "liberal privilege" when you're able to post your political views under your real name.
They can post under their real name, doesn't mean it's not gonna cost them someday for a future job or who knows what, karma works in complex ways.
I almost think Trump keeps winning elections out of a sense of schadenfreude. No one likes the guy, but when you constantly get downvoted and people attempt to silence any minor disagreement from the party line, it sure makes you want to vote for him out of spite (I won’t though).
I definitely think a lot of his appeal has to do with his ability to rile up the left then demonstrate their ineptitude at stopping him. He's also doesn't seem to have much in the way of strong principles on subjects, instead, he does pretty much exactly what he thinks his supporters will like.
His corruption is the trade-off one makes for electing a politician like him. He'll do whatever it takes to make his constituents happy, and in return they give him a blank check.
for all the lofty scientific & neutral ideals that rational/atheistic/left/liberal people chest-thump, they should be able to judge an idea for its content and not for the person.
but since we know that no one is that scientific, just post views under a pseudonym, unless you plan to run for political office.
if the idea is acceptable, it will be accepted.
It reminds me of a joke by the late singer-comedian-punk activist, “Freak” Antoni: “Let’s eat shit: millions of flies just cannot be wrong!”
This said, I honestly have no answer to the current predicament. We have populist parties collecting substantial victories simply by claiming they are not allowed to say what they are saying, and then use those victories to actually restrict the speech they don’t like. It’s a bit like rappers complaining that radios won’t play them and they are discriminated against, while breaking all sorts of airtime records and flaunting their bling.
Even you - you have a government you agree with, doing stuff you agree with, but somehow... you’re an oppressed victim. How much of this is due to the vagaries of your electoral system (you are effectively in a minority, but still you rule over the majority), how much is rehashing the good old practices of ancient Christianity (persecuted for 2000 years, while ruling the world for most of those same 2000 years), how much is modern weaponization of the democratic conundrum, Weimar-style? And how much is just an excess of visibility of relatively small and intolerant fringes on all sides?
I don’t know, and I honestly cannot see a way to make you happy and progress society at the same time.
I find that interesting and dangerous.