Let's assume for a second, that FB do not relax their rules for this conflict. Then they would have to ban a whole sleuth of Ukrainian accounts, including many government accounts such as Ministry of Defense, and probably even Zelensky. You don't have to stretch your imagination to see what the headlines would look like in that case -- "Facebook bans Ukrainian resistance against Russian aggression" etc. In a sense, FB was a facing a catch-22 situation, where it's just lose-lose for them, and they had to make a call to swallow the "less poisonous" pill.
Contrast this situation with American war efforts in the middle east and Afghanistan over the past 20 years, where they faced no such conundrum.
> ...the US criminal justice system is overwhelmingly preoccupied with procedure and process, often at the expense of justice. This myopia is the product of a technocratic bureaucracy.
> The contemporary incarnation of the peculiar mindset of Anglo-American jurisprudence leads to the question, “Were the rights of all parties, as enumerated by the law, protected?”, eclipsing the much larger issue: “Is this outcome compatible with justice?”
While these comments are in reference to the legal system, I think they are equally applicable to the mindset pervading the oversight of today's tech world.
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20210308014253/https://likewise.a...
Note - the author is an intermittent HN user, abalashov.
> "As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as 'death to the Russian invaders.' We still won't allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.
> "Death to the Russian invaders"
"Invaders" is the properly distinguishing keyword here. So, that makes your comment conflicted.
That doesn't negate the fact a non-corporal entity is making big decisions for groups of people, while also holding their shareholder's value (another group of people) in mind.
One way to break conflicted or dissonant views is to ask direct questions about the conflicted statements. Where others have done that, you appear to have evaded answering the question.
> Do we really need to ask that question?
Yes, we really do!
Of course one could argue selling drugs is causing harm, but choice of ingestion of the drug is a distinct and challenging topic in and of its own. Also, the two can't be conflated (well) and the origin of the story was Facebook doing X, where X isn't equal to drugs.
I'm also thinking that enforcement against selling drugs is a governmental view, not a societal view. So, a group representing the larger group thinks "drugs are bad", whereas the larger group doesn't hold that consensus based view. It's the group speaking for the larger group holding that view.
In the case of Facebook's action, Facebook is deciding whether or not the larger group can use certain terminology, or not. Facebook is not deciding whether to address the "occupying forces" themselves, through direct action, like a government would do for the larger group.
Maybe Facebook is like a bunch of Mexican gangsters, though!
I don't see how that definition is incompatible with what many of the gangs are doing to southern Texas and California.
Just because some people (a subset of a given group and their consensus on topics) think Mexican gangster are occupying forces, doesn't actually make them occupying forces. It just means those people are incorrect in their assumptions about what is true, or not, as viewed by the governing group, in a given area.
You’re welcome to try it, but please forgive the Ukrainians if they take the common sense route.
By the way, there’s a reason we admire Tank Man, but we don’t know his identity.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/3/un-general-assembly-...
To be clear, I support the right of Ukrainians to defend themselves against foreign aggression. I just think these constantly shifting Facebook censorship policies are ridiculous.
It’s not really a foreign concept. We don’t deny somebody sunlight or air because they do something we don’t like (we as in non government entities - governments do deny people “air”). The world would be a better place if businesses operated as close to a natural resource as possible and left politics to politicians.
It’s dumb luck that sunlight isn’t provided by some corporation. Systems like that are what we should strive for.
Which laws?
If Russia says that all posts that call the "Special Military Operation" a war are illegal and Ukraine says they are legal, which is correct?
A post breaks a law in 100 countries, but does not break the law in 20 countries. Should all 100 countries file their own removal process? Should there be an army of reviewers who are knowledgeable about all laws reviewing all posts? What about that confusion that different people from different regions are seeing different timelines for the same user.
The US has Federal Laws, State Laws, and City Laws. All of these are laws of the land. No company can keep up with all local laws.
"Breaking the law" is highly subjective by itself. Take the US for example, we have "Freedom of Speech," but that does not protect all speech. Many of these cases go to court taking years to determine if something was or was not protected. Should meta defer all moderation to the legal court system?
What you are suggesting makes sense in a vacuum, but cannot exist in reality.
I would love to see the allied governments talk more about trade pacts, and economic issues.
As for getting your service blocked, look at the GDPR for example. People will self censor themselves entirely if you are important enough. Out of mere fear of being sued over cookies, US regional media sites stopped displaying in Europe voluntarily. That’s something tin pot dictators couldn’t do even when they were clear the content of US news sites was illegal to the point of being punishable by death.
The idea that a company could do something blatantly illegal in my country because it’s legal someplace else is just crazy. Teslas are made in the US, should they follow US road rules when in left hand driving countries?
Such a stance would negate any claim of bettering humanity and represent moral injury to engineers you ask to possess such a hateful species of neutrality.
Giving companies 1st amendment rights was ridiculous, but then giving them protections beyond the 1st amendment that no normal person gets was giving them too much power to control speech in society.
I don't see any easy answer here. I'm as uncomfortable with the amount of influence companies like Facebook yield as anyone but most of the "easy" solutions would, in my opinion, make the situation far worse.
The "they can't do it at scale" argument applies to ICS, but why shouldn't users be subject to liability when they echo something?
We live in an approximation of the infinite monkeys with typewriters. It's relatively easy to find someone judgement-proof who has written pretty much anything that you'd like. Folks with huge audiences can use that to be as defamatory as they'd like without risking liability.
The internet is the de-facto public square, there has to be a public forum that's under the control of the public.
That's not what's happening now by Russia, since Russia has no interest in promoting democracy and considers it a threat. Russia has more casualties in a couple of weeks than the combined military interventions over 20 years by the west.
There's a very BIG difference.
There's really no hypocrisy. Western principles are: freedom, liberty, democracy, individual rights and equal opportunity for all above all.
This explains much everything pretty well. War against any country that goes against these principles is okay. War in order to try and bring those principles to others or protect them is okay.
Similarly, social media used in ways that could put those principles at risk, is not okay. Social media that is used in ways that supports and promotes these principles is okay.
There are a few cases where it is hard to tell if social media is used for or against those principles, and these get tricky, but there's still no hypocrisy. The challenge is understanding if it is for or against the principles.
For example, it is hard to know if implying that the US elections were corrupted and that's why Trump lost is for or against those principles. If the elections were not corrupted, then that idea is against those principles, it is itself the corrupted idea trying to geopardize democracy. But if it is true that the elections were corrupted, then that idea is in fact fighting to protect those principles.
The same thing applies here. Whatever message Facebook in the end feels is helping the principles will be allowed, if right now it's helping Ukraine motivate its troops, rally support and defend itself, then that's going to be the policies. It's all logical from the principles. Ukraine is seen as fighting for its right to democracy, liberty and freedom, and Russia is seen as fighting against that.
"You can't stay still on a moving train." I.e., everything is biased, no one is objective, and no platform can be objective because everything has an implicit position (even no position is a position). In other words, a very postmodern "no objective truth can be obtained" take.
So yes, the rational, logical next step is loosey goosey terms and conditions that change, cynical decisions based on who's talking, couched loosely in some sort of vague idea or principle. It does remind me a lot of the corporate world.
I cannot accept the framing as only the last one: that we've magically discovered being unbiased is no longer a worthwhile goal, so throw up our hands and take a stand on every controversial topic, pick a side every time. No.
Go look at this link, which is a collection at Kent State University of articles written about the massacre at the school from the time of the shootings:
https://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archive...
Tell me how all of these articles are simultaneously unbiased from the headlines.
Additionally, pointing out that Facebook lacks any fundamental principles and is just a reed in the wind is a great observation.
The media has always had to kowtow to some degree to local authority, and there is always the element of ‘the truth we choose to believe’ (or are being told to believe) being published over harder reality. The west tends to be more transparent than most, and more honest than most, but everyone is very far from, and has always been very far from, any sort of unbiased view.
>The media has always had to kowtow to some degree to local authority,
Yes, that's what I mean, to what degree? That degree is much greater now than it was in the past, except the one doing the manipulation isn't necessarily the government.
Do you have any links to facts that might support those assertions?
If not, I rest my case?
No, we are not.
Today's "biased" news is just regression to the American mean. When people got their news from newspapers, almost a century ago, you had similar levels of editorialization, bias, closed-mindedness, clickbait, misinformation, and so on. The "unbiased" era was largely a product of technical limitations that went away with cable, and later the Internet.
[0] Or, more specifically, what Noam Chomsky called the "five filters". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
The journalist asked her what evidence they had, she said she had some, but when pushed she said "Russians just don't [bomb cities]", and couldn't produce any evidence. other than kept repeating that "Russian Troops do not bomb Ukrainian cities". It's an astounding claim given that we see Ukrainian cities being bombed and we see Russian troops in Ukraine.
There is objective truth, and there is objective lying. Maria Butina was the latter.
Editors aren’t always evil and do this on purpose, however as humans we all have implicit biases. And our biases increase if we feel like we owe somebody a favor (this is why doctors are not allowed to accept gifts from pharmaceutical companies in many countries). If upper management tells a senior editor that company A is their biggest advertiser, and a journalist tells a story unfavorable to company A, then the senior editor might feel like company A doesn’t deserve this treatment and orders a counter story which exonerates the company to be presented on the same page.
I wouldn’t put anyone on a high horse here.
1. I believe that I am a rational human being
2. My rational way of thinking has lead me to certain set of beliefs about the world and how it operates
3. I don't think about these beliefs all the time, because they make sense to me, but I reserve the right to change them should my perception change
4. It may take a while for my beliefs to change since these are conclusions I have made after thinking about topics rationally for a period of time. A sunk cost of sorts, if you will.
I think that most people would see that list and say hey, there's a person who is probably rational and introspective.
Now add the following:
0. I am a journalist
5. I report facts objectively but my decision making process on what is important to the reader may be affected by my human brain and my idea of the situation garnered from my experience with the subject matter and my human beliefs
This still isn't the dreaded "media bias," although it's clearly a bias. We have more accurate journalism right now than in any other part of human history. We just have more editorialising too.
What I'm specifically arguing against is that there was ever a time when there WASN'T bias in journalism. That's nonsense.
Now this is not to say that good journalists employ this skill effortlessly and infallibly. No of course not, however a good journalist will do this better then a person who is not skilled in the craft of journalism. You might claim that I’m putting journalists on a high horse here, however I’m only doing so by recognizing that they practice a craft with increasing skill levels. If this puts journalists on a high horse, then same can be said about physicists or doctors, in that they get better at their craft with practice.
Simply not true. Read about the news industry from the founders to yellow journalism to the world wars to present day. There was never a time when news was objective. It wasn't created to be.
> I cannot accept the framing as only the last one: that we've magically discovered being unbiased is no longer a worthwhile goal
It was never an achievable goal. So what we should strive for is a diversity of opinions via a genuine set of diverse news organizations. Sadly, most of the media is owned by a few multinationals who themselves are owned by the same controlling interests.
No, they didn't, much more than they do now.
But the ideological bias among the major media was more consistent, and when you get the same bias everywhere you look, it seems a lot like objectivity.
I think there is a reasonable argument the the general state of journalism and and availability of news to the general public is worse now than it was, say, 30 years ago. Or that 200 years ago was worse than now. I'm not sure I'm convinced, but the arguments aren't prima facie wrong.
It was a mess, widespread censorship, corruption, and yellow news was common, and it was a period of extreme social turmoil.
The 90’s have tons of examples of manipulation (Gulf War 1?), as do the 80’s, 70’s, etc etc.
It’s hard to contextualize any of that without being embedded in it though. What age were you then?
Perhaps you meant something upstream or a sibling comment?
This is shocking to me and others because the watered down objectivity of the past was still better than nothing.
If anything—at least where I’m from—the news is still biases (always has been) but this bias which used to favor the rich and the powerful, has radically shifted to favor ordinary people. The news of the past that I remembered were actively—and probably knowingly—biased in favor of their stakeholders. Today they don’t, or at least not nearly to the same degree.
Editorials are not journalism, but when the journalism disagrees with people who are accustomed to the nature of the editorials they enjoy, they then see bias on the part of the journalists instead of the commentators.
Journalists are flawed humans like everyone else and expecting them to produce complete and objective reporting is not only unfair it is literally impossible.
So no, I do not believe there is such a thing as objective reporting generated by a single human or a single organization. The only true, unbiased journalism would be some sort of technology that could let everyone view the full entirety of any event from any perspective without a human brain and sensory system in between. That's not practical.
Practically speaking, it is up to the reader to consume as many varying sources as possible and then come to their own conclusion. But who has time for that?
When you want to validate a piece of information in your view of the world (to use your example, "how common is labor action?"), the most important question to ask (and often the question with the most obscure answer) is "what is the base rate?".
Edit: I cannot remember the name, I just remember being in JB HiFi in Australia looking at DVDs and there was an old black and white movie from the 20s or 30s about a guy who has a new empire but they make up stories to sell the paper and none of it was real. I just remember not buying it because the time was something like 6-8 hours long.
Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding.
'Vaccines contain Mercury' and 'this meal contains Chlorine' is correct information - there is an atom of mercury in the molecule of RNA and an atom of chlorine in table salt.
But your examples are not correct information. "We're all made of star stuff" does not mean we're stars. A molecule of RNA is not mercury and table salt is not chlorine.
I've got plenty of qualms about the way Facebook has handled it, but of course there was something wrong with the rules -- they had never tried them out under these circumstances. All three of the things you cite are using/abusing social media in ways that have never been done before.
Principles are great, but if you can't change your principles when the world changes around you, then they're not so much "principles" as "dogma". The world is a complex and difficult place, and I don't expect any simple set of principles to be adequate to all of the things I don't anticipate. I try to anticipate everything I can, but it's no surprise that I'm sometimes surprised.
Also, Facebook has become increasingly conscious over the past half-decade or so of the role that it plays in events. It has already changed its policies to be more activist in preventing the use of its platform for advocating violence. That decision forces more downstream decisions, which will be different than in the past.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/us/politics/pentagon-nucl...
How is this even relevant? And do you think fueling hatred is a right call to reduce the probability of nuclear war?
Is important to mention that Anti-War feeling is accumulative, not independent events. Everybody is much more upset about this war precisely for having suffered, paid for, and experienced the past wars fiascos.
The free dinner pass card to start wars after 9/11 using fake pretenses has expired. To use twice the "but they have WMD" card would be much more difficult now
Seeing Putin to use exactly the same lies an excuses to blame on other for his own acts is sickening.
Principles, treaties, and ideals tend to go out the window when parties are backed in a corner with no alternative options.
In reality what you might find is that even some obvious rules like “no naked pictures of obvious minors (<10 years) should be allowed” have exceptions to it. And if you can’t reason why this is true (I’m thinking of a specific picture), then at least admit the task you’re implying is trivial is harder than it looks.
Facebook's big recent decisions have been:
* posting news articles about Hunter Biden's laptop: banned
* posting about possible Covid lab leak: banned
* calling for death of Russians: thumbs up
* praising Azov neo-Nazis: thumbs up
Their consistent and comprehensive principle is just serving TPTB. Let's not dress it up beyond that.
As always, disinformation. It's specifically for "Russian invaders".
- Fury over Facebook 'Napalm girl' censorship (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37318031.amp).
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/14/is-sili...
"Never" doesn't feel right to me.
I remember being in Sixth Form and then an undergrad while Facebook was in their "web-scale" days: there wasn't (yet) anything untoward being reported (besides the "dumb fucks" quote) - so I like to think that Facebook's principles, then, were more "let's see where this goes" - which isn't much of a principle, I agree - but we were all re-projecting Google's and Apple's story onto Facebook: something along the lines of "they'll make billions of dollars from giving people what they want, how can that possibly be a bad thing?".
So I'd summarize Facebook's then-"principles" as believing in their own naïve optimism about the power of connecting people, but we were all naïve with them - so while it's easy to criticize Facebook now, almost a decade after the corruption started, which of us can point to our own Slashdot or Digg.com comments made prior to ~2012 that predicted this?
For instance the famous "Minitel 2.0" conference by Benjamin Bayart in... 2007 !
https://tube.fdn.fr/w/41d17717-3535-4d2c-8eda-58723fead995 (fr)
It's not a matter of rules lasting forever. It's applying the rules evenly and fairly. All the ukraine war has done is expose the hypocrisy of the west and especially the virtue signaling tech/social media platforms.
He's never demonstrated this in any way shape or form.
In a parallel and far more impactful setting, laws are changed far more often and for far lesser reasons.
It's following the Iraqi example. Big countries can do what they want to small countries without pushback. The Iraq war is century defining
We change our rules for catastrophic events, always.
There is tremendous value in having actual principles. So many people either forgotten it or never understood that to begin with.