Facebook Does Not Benefit from Hate

Re:Facebook Does Not Benefit from Hate by paulgb on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @12:35PM (#23703390)

There's been a number of stories of companies putting FB ad buys on hold on the front page recently[1], and a recurring HN response has invariably been "this will accomplish nothing". I'd like to point out that this is a 180 from Zuckerberg's "arbiter of truth" position from before the advertiser boycotts:

> they don’t want to see hateful content, our advertisers don’t want to see it, and we don’t want to see it. There is no incentive for us to do anything but remove it.

[1] e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23646852

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Re:Facebook Does Not Benefit from Hate by multiplegeorges on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @12:53PM (#23703648)

Not really, a few sentences later he reiterates their commitment to leave hateful (but not hateful enough!) stuff up.

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Re:Facebook Does Not Benefit from Hate by mic47 on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @12:47PM (#23703568)

> I'd like to point out that this is a 180 from Zuckerberg's "arbiter of truth" position from before the advertiser boycotts

Not necessarily. You can hold both views and be consistent. Lot of people accuse Facebook that it's keeping Trump's content for money (i.e. it increases engagement). In that context, sentence "There is no incentive for us to do anything but remove it." is trying to refute. And that would be consistent with FB not wanting to be "arbiter of truth", and keeping "newsworthy" content.

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