Facebook Said to Create Censorship Tool to Get Back into China
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This looks like a shadowban at scale. So you share something - potentially putting yourself at risk to do so - but with the hope that others will see it. The "local partner" decides that it doesn't show up in anyone's feeds but still knows you posted it, so now you're a target.
Damn, that's evil.
"fake news" for who? For the Chinese government?
For the company that denies that their new phone explodes?
This is getting very ugly
> “It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, according to employees.
It's not a conversation anymore if you are left blindfolded, speaking to a room you don't know is empty or not. Either incredibly dishonest or incredibly naive.
Unless...
That applies your entire facebook activity, you've no idea who if anyone actually sees anything you post?
And it stems from the sick fact that our society still glorifies money/power as our most central cultural value.
"Your post about your cat is not as revenue-relevant as a fake story about Clinton/Trump. Bam, you are banned!"
Facebook's collaboration with a regime where none of that is true is a disgusting low point, even for that company.
I would point to the word "still". If something can be used against you, it will sooner or later be used against you. I hope we won't live long enough to see this coming true.
This has been reported in literally every major newspaper in the world. The Chinese regime doesn't dispute it.
That is quite a different set of vocabulary compared to "jail"
It's a simple and widely-known fact that China kidnaps and cages its dissidents.
Better?
> kidnaps and cages
Nope. Assuming what you asserted later are indeed facts, they only covers 50% of what you claimed in the original sentence. Still half of what you claimed is not grounded on facts.
@jrcii:
There is something to it. When I saw your comment it was 4 min old and already [dead]. Just like most of your other comments, no matter what topic they touch.
To, well fuck with people in this manner is evil -- I do not care what your reasons are, how many people are on your site, the incidence of mental illness in the general population, and so on. There are other remedies aside from using technology to lie to and manipulate people.
If it hasn't become clear by now, it should be: the major internet players are interested in only one thing: to keep being the major internet players. That doesn't make them bad or evil -- sometimes good people do evil things. It makes the rest of us realize we have a rather immediate obligation: fix this or be conquered by it.
It's there to allow the priority traffic to be interrupted only if necessary.
I believe I heard something like "press a button for a faster signal", but that doesn't make any sense at all.
Municipalities want to control the traffic in the most efficient way. Not to give any troll a button to break things.
However there are several places where there are e.g. sensors to allow for a favourable signal for drivers. But then again that is mostly in places where they would wait for a green light for a long time.
The theory and practice in the transportation field is quite interesting.
I'm sure China would love to hide posts that mention 'Fatty Kim the Third' [0]. If you control the discourse then you can control what people think. We've seen this in both the UK and US recently. Russia have an agency dedicated to false information with sockpuppet accounts on social media [1] and the US has done related activities [2]. I'm sure other countries and interest groups have similar institutions. If you have an official integrated tool to do this work then it becomes so much easier. Worrying times.
[0]: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-northkorea-internet-...
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-...
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...
It's literally the worst way of moderating (short of serving the banned user destructive/malicious code). HN is wrong when they do it, too.
Fortunately we got some new mods a while back, they're very good, and nowhere near as trigger-happy with the hell-bans as before. And still, it's wrong, vindictive and dishonest, and if you're clever just as easily circumvented as regular bans, which would be the right option (otherwise I'd like to hear the argument why non-clever people should be punished more harshly).
From what I've seen on HN, those that have been banned have been warned, and it's been for either incivility or posting mostly unsubstantive/inflammatory posts. Which seems reasonable to me. Have you seen something different? Or have a different take?
This site implies that comments should be analyzed rationally, but comments from shadowbanned accounts do not get this treatment. It's the equivalent of claiming someone will be allowed to take place in a televised event but then secretly cutting all of their responses out of the broadcast.
Shadow banning is anti-intellectual behavior because it's essentially a systematic ad hominem.
Regarding shadowbanned accounts not getting the same treatment: are you saying they weren't warned beforehand? Or not treated fairly before the banning? How long should those who have contributed negatively (wrt community standards) tolerated? Those who keep showdead and have enough karma can and do vouch for substantive and civil comments from shadowbanned accounts. Btw, are there particular instances you have in mind that you can point to? I've been following sctb and dang for the past month or so to see how they interact with the site and don't recall seeing anything grievious about their banning decisions.
I completely agree that there's some tension between an policing a community forum and perceptions of anti- intellectual behavior, which motivated the additional questions in my previous comment. Would you mind weighing in on those? (And I'm not saying shadowbanning is the only tool they can use. Perhaps only voting and flagging should be used? I'm not sure if that's enough.)
Thanks! (Please pardon any lack of proper editing or phrasing. I'm on my phone and having issues with commenting.)
Their comments are not allowed to be judged based on the merit of their content. They are pre-filtered by a moderator's decision that anything generated by that person is not fit for human conversation. Every other account, including brand new ones, can create a comment and have it seen by everyone.
They may have been warned, etc, but I'm saying the shadowban itself is garbage, not the conditions under which it is administered.
>How long should those who have contributed negatively (wrt community standards) tolerated?
Downvote/flag individual negative comments, that's what we have the system for. If someone truly wants to contribute negatively, a shadowban is a joke because they can create new accounts.
I leave showdead on and have vouched for comments of banned users. I've also seen users continue to spew vitriol after they know they are banned. Is the type of user that would pointlessly continue to contribute negatively in this fashion have on balance a positive impact on the community? Arguing that they're behaving this way because they've been banned shows that they don't have the maturity to recognize that their behavior continues to reflect badly on them. It's not going to change the fact that they're banned.
You're right that if you're a determined troll, you can get around a shadowbox. From what I've seen, banning has been on balance effective to deal with uncivil behavior. Creating a new account does add some cost to the ban. Relying only on down votes puts the cost entirely on the community at large at no cost to the user behaving badly. Do you think it's fair to the community to bear the cost of the user's behavior?
Do you have any other ideas on how to effectively shape community behavior, preferably ones that move the cost from the community to the user behaving badly? I'm honestly interested, because I've seen enough complaints about banning that I'd like to hear about alternatives that would considered fair and still be effective.
It would be great if everyone would contribute in a positive, or at least civil, way. In larger online communities it's much easier for users who contribute negatively to destroy a community where positive users no longer want to participate. Each community has its own standards and cultures (and what's considered good and bad behavior), which is great! So far, I think it's pretty remarkable that HN has been able to maintain the community it has in comparison to other online communities of similar users.
Based on what evidence? Are you able to see the IP addresses of new accounts to correlate them with shadowbanned accounts? All we can see as outsiders is that shadowbanned accounts mostly stop posting, but we can't tell how many immediately signed up for a new account and started trolling again.
You're right. And this itself is evidence that banning is effective. It's not effective because they can't create new accounts (which they can); it's effective because they generally stop posting.
In addition,
- I haven't seen users obviously thumbing their noses at the mods with respect to the ineffectiveness of banning;
- I haven't seen the mods using or discussing any other methods stronger than banning to combat trolls, which I think they would if banning wasn't effective.
On the flip side, what evidence is there that banning isn't effective?
I've been a little frustrated by your lack of answers to some pertinent questions I've asked:
- Do you have particular examples where the mods haven't been fair?
- Do you have any other ideas as to how to fairly and effectively shape community behavior?
Yes it is evil, but it is Chinese government that is responsible for that, not Facebook.
Realistically only some of the most popular messages would be affected.
It would not suppress political discussions at small scale (among several friends).
It would not suppress popular messages that are not political.
I support Mark on that: it's better to have limited Facebook in China than not to have Facebook in China at all.
Said every collaborator, active or passive, in every large-scale injustice or abuse since the beginning of time.
What's to say basic journalism isn't political? What about highlighting a massacre (inadvertently)? What about random abuses of power where the perpetrator happens to be related to powerful elite?
Hint: you don't know. I'm not sure I'd use it for my distant relatives who live in China.
Better for whom?
For humanity in general, don't you fear giving people the illusion of a free platform for speaking is worst than not faking anything at all and thus encourage truly free platforms to emerge out of people's frustration?
And for Facebook's own interests, don't you fear Facebook applying even more censoring in some parts of the world is going to affect its image world-wide?
It's kind of depressing to see where the world is going,, where the world bends to the will of state actors eventually. Given a long enough timeframe any draconian law can be made the new normal and I think that is what is happening.
It's also sad to see the internet become a tool to control entire populations and have them see and experience the world in a way that is convenient for state actors. And every effort to circumvent state control gets regulated before going mainstream. Eg- Look at Bitcoin, the calls for KYC norms, asking customer data. Another example is Tor, numerous attempts to unmask users.
> And every effort to circumvent state control gets regulated before going mainstream.
So efforts to break laws are circumvented by the state who's laws are being broken, hardly surprising or unusual. This is what's expected to happen.
Without any details, I'd say the best social media option is going out with friends for a walk or a chat or alternatively traveling on your own in a foreign country for an extended period of time.
This is nothing new, it's been going on for a very long time in China and not part of some new global trend. Also, I do think that in China, a "censored [favorite service] with state surveillance is better than no [favorite service]" and so do nearly all the Chinese. Otherwise, by reductio ad absurdum, you'd be forced to conclude that China would be better off without the Internet. This has nothing to do with endorsing censorship/surveillance by the way.
Chinese revolutionaries already know how to circumvent these things on Chinese messaging platforms. They'll just come up with a new set of codewords.
>It's also sad to see the internet become a tool to control entire populations and have them see and experience the world in a way that is convenient for state actors. And every effort to circumvent state control gets regulated before going mainstream. Eg- Look at Bitcoin, the calls for KYC norms, asking customer data. Another example is Tor, numerous attempts to unmask users.
I agree, and I have a question. What do you tell people when you don't use Facebook? I don't feel like supporting this, but is there a good way to sum this up for people that are non-informed (shit does that sound pretentious? Trying to think of a better way to put it. I think most people would not approve of Facebook and this associated trend you discuss, if they knew more about it)?
There are so many options.
* It's not 2006 anymore.
* That whole privacy thing, never can tell what they're doing with your data.
* I was creeped out when I saw a friend's face endorsing a product on a third party website thanks to FB. I couldn't be sure what my face was selling, so I dropped out.
* It's just gated internet, like AOL all over again. (Hat tip, Cringely.)
* People get addicted to FB, it's good to cut loose and experience the offline world every now and again, force real interactions.
* I think X social network is better.
* I'm a hipster / It's too popular.
* All my best friends use X instead.
* My whole family is on it.
* My whole family is not on it.
* Kept having fights with relatives.
* Spent too much time on it.
* Someone stole/hacked/forged my account once, it was a big hassle, so I've just stayed away.
* I stand with Native Americans / LGBT users / victims of abuse in protest of FB's true name policy.
* Facebook banned me after I [insert amusing story here].
* I don't want to upset Cameron Winklevoss.
She said it was "creepy" that I didn't have one and that I must be hiding something.
SMH. I was hiding something, my privacy.
Now I use facebook and I'm a dopamine junkie looping hamster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_real-name_policy_cont...
For the more general phenomenon, I recommend "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names":
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
* Makes people depressed * Got caught performing unethical experiments on users a few years ago, monitoring how different news feed items changed their mood and emotional state
Never needed to say more than "I just don't". People in my circle seem to understand.
Note: My account is only deactivated, because I have commitment issues, but other than checking in once in the last 18 months, I haven't really been able to convince myself to get back on FB.
"I did not agree with the terms and conditions".
Not that I need to be giving an explanation very often.
If you pick out any (one/many)-to-(one/many) broadcasting technology, and I'll point you to a historical atrocity that used it.
Larry Page (or, Eric Schmidt?) made a similar comment, before Google closed China office after Chinese officials were found to be monitoring dissidents through their internal tools, that censored Google is better than no Google.
For the record, I agreed with Google that a censored Google was better than no Google, and one of my biggest frustrations at the time was that sanctimonious Americans seemed to think they knew better than me, someone who would actually lose access to Google if they pulled out of China.
Google would tell me if search results were censored, and wouldn't shut down my internet for a few hours if I accidentally typed the wrong thing, which was much much better than anything else I had access to.
Then Google did pull out of China and it did suck and meanwhile Americans celebrated it because it didn't affect them at all. Ugh.
> after Chinese officials were found to be monitoring dissidents through their internal tools
Google pulled out of China because Gmail got hacked and Google assumed the hackers were affiliated with the Chinese government. I think the evidence pointed in that direction but wasn't conclusive, but either way, I haven't heard anything about monitoring dissidents through internal tools.
Anyway, I feel the same way about Facebook. It'd be nice to be able to access Facebook and talk to my friends while in China, and having censored communication is better than nothing.
that is actually happening?
I haven't had that experience more recently, but I think that's partially because HTTPS is everywhere these days and partially because I use VPNs a lot more because I do need that Google/Facebook access.
It doesn't really happen very much anymore, but mainly because most sites moved to https and can only be blocked completely ATM.
What other highly skilled state sponsored attackers would break into Google China to steal information about people the Chinese government deemed dissidents?
Then it seems pulling out was the right move. If Chinese citizens trusted that Google could secure their communications, and Google was then unable to, that put certain citizens at risk of persecution. Better to have them using a Chinese email provider where the default assumption is that everything is monitored, and then use the proper tools for actual private communication.
I don't think American companies have morally good reason to be complicit in Chinese censorship, but I understand why they play along, even if I personally don't agree.
Ignoring the whole hacking incident, does Google pulling out of China actually improve the world in some way?
I think "giving customers as much of what they want as possible" is a morally good reason. On the other hand, I don't see any morally good reason for them to pull out of China, other than holier-than-thou moralizing?
It's like how Google shuts down every other product - it's not making profit.
I'd guess that withdrawing from China was a net loser for Google overall, but in my case it strengthened my brand loyalty to Google.
It wasn't really a net loss given what we know today about China's protective policies.
They made a reasonable call. It was said that Sergey Brin's first hand experience with oppressive authoritarian governments played a major role in their decision.
Devil's advocate: how is that a material improvement besides making some people feel good? China wins (homegrown brands like Baidu), Google loses a market, Chinese Google users lose a search engine.
China can block all the websites they want, the damage they do to their local internet industry is probably irreversible: they are unable to compete in even next door markets like Myanmar and Cambodia! On the one hand, they block the big western internet companies out of china, on the other hand, they give up the rest of the world. From the west's perspective, it is a reasonable tradeoff.
Google IS mobile, even in China, Android is a big thing. I heard they want back in mobile; e.g. Android Play Store, they don't care about search in China, it isn't where the future is for that market anyways.
I'll need you to explain that to me slowly, because I can't wrap my head around your reasoning. Blocking foreign websites is the best thing China did for its internet industry: Blocking Twitter helps Weibo, Google exiting helped Baidu, and so on. Not having to compete with western companies on home turf can hardly be called "damage".
> From the west's perspective, it is a reasonable tradeoff.
A lot of western companies have effectively saturated the market in the west, the only room left to grow is in China, and so they pander.
> A lot of western companies have effectively saturated the market in the west, the only room left to grow is in China, and so they pander.
That isn't true! They are eating the rest of Asia as we speak. Myanmar just opened up, and already Google/Facebook dominate its market. Not a WeChat to be seen. They are completely winning the east that isn't China. The same will happen in Africa when it gets to that point. Chinese Internet companies simply cannot compete outside of their home market without competitive pressure.
China is only 1.3 billion people out of a world of 7 billion. That China currently says our 1.3 billion are off limits is fine as they basically forgo 5.7.
Thanks very much for sharing your perspective.
My concern is that -- if we don't draw the line somewhere -- the U.S. will (continue to) become more like China in this regard, over time. A state of affairs which I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg will be perfectly willing to accomodate, and work with.
But even that went against Google's ethics, so rather than comply with the censorship regime, they withdrew from the market.
Will Facebook prominently disclose when posts are censored?
> Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation on its platform
That is exactly what censorship is.
I personally think that there is legitimate censorship (child porn, detailed instructions for constructing weapons of mass destruction, etc), but that the vast majority of 'fake news' and even outright false information doesn't fall into that scope. Even there I have to hedge though, since some false information can cause very harmful panic.
I agree with your examples, of course. I'm not against common sense restrictions. But, I think these should be decided upon up front with a transparent review process for adding new categories. To leave that open ended would inevitably lead to abuse.
It shouldn't be our concern if conspiracy theorists decide to share misinformation among themselves. It becomes our concern when they take advantage of human emotions and insufficient algorithmic filtering to manipulate their way to the top of the newsfeeds of major social sites.
I would much prefer that such things weren't in demand; it'd be great to live in a world where every adult person had reliable bullshit detectors, so we wouldn't be swamped in logical fallacies and ancillary nonsense, but in the meantime the speed and connectedness of our social technologies has vastly outpaced the general population's ability to digest the available information, and so the disease of populism has broken out again as the new media go through their adolescent stage.
There's no quick fix for this. It's going to take a generation or two of concerted education from an early age in critical thinking, and somehow I doubt making people question what they're told is going to be a priority for the next four years.
This quote has been attributed to many people over the years but I've always been fond of the saying: News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising.
"This article is mostly false according to Snopes. Are you sure you want to share it?"
Then if you think Snopes got it wrong, you can post it anyway.
Or how about: "This article is satire. Are you sure you want to share it?"
There's nothing wrong with posting satire if that's what you meant to do. If that's not what you meant, it saves you some embarrassment for posting it as fact.
Seems like that's what a (semi-)intelligent assistant should do, right?
Websites like Weibo/QQ/Wechat will display a banner text saying some tweets (or microblogging cards as you call it) contains a mis-information.
Any mis-information with more than five hundred retweets will face criminal prosecution.
The result? Authorities fight mis-information with half-baked and premature refutes. In practice refutes can be 100% arbitrary even fake. You can't refute a refute because they are final, non-debatable and in-reversible. Remember the refute mechanism is to stop the spread of "mis-information" so debate refutes are dangerous and would cause Streisand effect.
The best part, the process is 100% manual, so PR firms totally lobbied website admins, officials in power, this corrupted industry is multi-million dollar business today.
So who watches the watchmen? It's a twisted long path ahead.
I think the key point here is making sure your intelligent assistant works for you. Unfortunately, currently available assistants all come from powerful companies.
Seems like a BIG difference.
You can dress it up, but Facebook is a private website. They do fancy stuff with information they collect about you and use it to sell you ads. They have terms of service that define acceptable behavior, and they have no SLA / guarantee about what you share reaching others or what others share reaching you. That is the deal.
If you don't like the deal, Facebook is not a right, and you can choose to not use Facebook or not, depending on your morals.
Now, what the article described, "Facebook does not intend to suppress the posts itself. Instead, it would offer the software to enable a third party — in this case, most likely a partner Chinese company — to monitor popular stories and topics that bubble up as users share them across the social network, the people said. Facebook’s partner would then have full control to decide whether those posts should show up in users’ feeds." <- This is completely censorship. Governments censor.
Facebook saying it doesn't want a bunch of Macedonian fake news click bait stories crapping up it's platform is a business decision by a private company.
And therefore, you could decide as a society that you want to forbid Facebook to do that.
It assumes you are in a democracy. China obviously is not. But if you're lucky to live in one, then you don't have to accept what Facebook does, at least in your country, because they are a private company.
No one in their right mind thinks Facebook policy's are their rights. Facebook can openly start censoring news if it wants to. I view Breitbart as a publication that actively censors leftist news and NYT as publication that censors libertarian news. They are both good businesses but albeit far tinier than Facebook.
The moment facebook starts "dealing with fake news" I am going sell off my FB shares. Just like I sold my twitter shares long back once they banned account of my favourite blogger for criticizing Islam.
Yes that is my point. It is indeed and absurd way to look at it yet the underlying principle is the same i.e. a business selecting only specific type of things to show because it makes profits for them. Facebook can use the exact same principle to deny their platform to some group of news just because it reduces their profits.
I take a very dim view of saying that a creator of original content is censor by simply choosing not to create something. Censorship inherently is a veto over someone else's work. Facebook, because it is the middle man between the creator and the audience, is in a position to censor.
What is the definition of censorship?
>Censorship is the suppression of free speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.
How does this not fit under said definition? Whether or not the act is done by a "public" or a "private" entity is irrelevant to the definition.
Government can use force (the very real threat of jail, fines, etc) against you to suppress your speech. All Facebook can really do is prevent you from using their site, in the end. Naturally, if they work with a government, Facebook becomes a kind of arm of the government, but that's a separate context (but it is also what this article is about).
Is free speech a thing worth keeping or not? If it is, than anything that realistically threatens it on a global scale needs to be kept in check.
Now, let's not pretend that the only way to suppress speech is to use violence. Governments have a long history of using much subtler and sometimes more efficient tactics like blacklisting. For example, in Soviet Union many "inconvenient" people were free to live as they chose, except they had no chance in hell of getting decent housing or a good job, and were ostracized by many out of fear of "political contagion".
So it's not about violence. It's about power. And companies like Google and Facebook have "soft" power rivaling many nation-states.
There are concerns that I have about the level with which some of these companies cooperate with state actors, especially when we're unaware of it. When these companies become partners of government in secret, the state security apparatus is accordingly expanded in ways that do threaten us.
Censorship is something the government does. The First Amendment doesn't apply to private entities. Private entities are not obliged to provide a platform for whatever opinion you feel like spewing.
This topic has devolved into ridiculous flamewars.
The first amendment is not the definition of censorship.
The Chinese case is obviously censorship. I don't think anyone disputes that.
How do you draw the line? What would you do if a politician ask you nicely?
Your definition (accepting for a moment the opening paragraph from the Wikipedia article on censorship as a "definition") can be logically reduced to, "Suppression of information which may be objectionable by a group". That, for instance, describes HN comment and article moderation. It is so overly broad as to be able to describe practically anything.
We're well past "shirt and shoes required" sophistry spin.
Communication platforms are an oligopoly. When they each have censorship baked in the cake, the free-market-user-choice argument doesn't hold up very well.
If Facebook prevents me from communicating something because they don't like it, the ramification is that I simply post it elsewhere and distribute it there.
If the government prevents me from communicating something because they don't like it, the ramification is that I have no outlet for it that does not come with the threat of violence, in the form of jail.
Very different outcomes.
At the point in which Facebook = Government in terms of state monopolized communications channel with government enforcement mechanisms then this definition would fit. It is however, despite it's popularity, nowhere near that nor reasonably possible.
Banning a fake news post is moderation. And if someone would pay Facebook to block or promote some content it would be neither of those.
Rather than have crippled foreign options that are better than what they have now, they get no foreign options at all. The lack of participation from foreign companies encourages the development of domestic companies that are far better at cooperating with censors than foreign companies ever could be. It also decreases the strain on the censors, making censorship even more effective. After all, there is no need to pay people to review foreign language content on YouTube when it is blocked entirely.
Downvote me if you want, but the reality is that refusing to cooperate with censors on things for Chinese IP addresses actually increases censorship. Cooperation does not mean that those cooperating support the censors. However, failure to cooperate does far more to support the censors than cooperation ever could.
I could say more, but I probably have said too much already. Concern for my family in China means that I can never truly speak freely on this topic in public.
However, it makes for a fantastic analogy. The MPAA would be thrilled if YouTube and every other video sharing site on the internet would just shut down. That is effectively what the Chinese censors experienced when foreign companies refused to cooperate. That is not just true for videos either, but that is where the MPAA analogy breaks down.
By the way, I had edited my post for clarity before I saw your reply. Your question might have already been answered by my clarifications.
Before someone explains me what the recent switch is. That shit is basically broken since years and should be called "different order"
Apparently, it's only censorship when the others do it. When we do it, it's to promote love, freedom, democracy, and "safety".
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Tianasquare.j...
But there are of course many subtleties between this and objective news.
One has to know the specific bias of the reporter, editor and the owner.
I legitimately hate most western values (I am French of German & Portuguese descent to give some context) for those reasons, hypocrisy central.
When I hear the French PM talk about our values, I want to go and ask him about ravaging countries who have not asked for anything, about lying to the general population, about helping entities getting away with ravaging our planet, about helping regimes that are an open disgrace to these so called value.
And also, where are our values when we support regimes such as the UK or US who are stomping on them on a daily basis. The only freedom western society tolerates is the freedom to agree with their views.
There is an illusion of freedom and democracy, we are only allowed to operate and debate on a small spectrum, any deviation is squashed violently and incorporated in the next generation teachings to make sure we format proper citizen who support "our values" and don't go on a thinking spree.
While some of what you say I absolutely agree with, particularly "freedom western society tolerates is the freedom to agree with their views.", the actions of my current government (Australian) and the actions of the government in my home nation (the UK) are absolutely abhorrent and I certainly don't endorse their behaviour.
But to be honest, are there values in any part of the world that are any better? There's certainly worse. Given a free choice of where I would choose to live, I'd pick western nations every single time, as while the behaviour of our governments is utterly disgusting, they do at the very least give its citizens freedom to behave mostly how we see fit and, to a degree, the freedom to affect change in government.
- A democratic government making a transparent decision to censor something is different from a non-democratic one making the same decision internally in the case of fake news;
- Censoring the presentation of something is completely different from censoring the information present on that speech in the case of hate speech.
- Censorship done by a democratic government, using a transparent and fair judicial system, respecting other human rights is, again, very different from the same done by a secret court leading to capital punishment.
It's just that this is a form of censorship that most Americans find acceptable.
For example in Austria, where I live, most people have other standards, and Facebooks policies seem arbitrary. Recently, a story made the news where Facebook repeatedly refused to remove a harassing video of a girl being beaten by peers; we Austrians don't understand how Americans consider violent videos "free speech" while being super strict about policing anything related to sex.
Some things like Nazi symbolism that are considered free speech in the US are forbidden in most of Europe --- for a good reason! It took us a long time to get rid of the old ideologies, we don't want them coming back!
Sorry, that's not a good reason.
Talking about Google, as one living here, I really want Google to stay in China, for me I know Google from its early days when there was no censorship and the whole internet is freely (in terms of freedom) available, but looking at the kids these days, within 10 years, they live in a kinda dark age that it seems Google never existed. For me and people at my age, we can use whatever tools/costs to be able to access the whole internet, but for most of the young kids, their internet is much smaller than the real one, and I really feel sorry when they have to rely on the EVIL baidu to search for things, and baidu is infamous for all kinds of scams it relies on for its huge cash flow, which it pursues without any ethical bottom line.
The existence of Bing makes things a little better, but far from what Google can (or used to) bring if it's available in China, that probably will also relief the monopoly issue of WeChat, which is much worse than the similar issue with FB in US and other counties due to the absence of Google and related medias.
You can do it. I believe in you."
-- jwz
I can understanding wanting to quit and wanting others to quit when a company is doing something morally questionable but this simply means the people who object are leaving while the ones fine with it gain a larger mind share within the company. It's my opinion that an inside dissenter has more power than a quit-in-protest when it ultimately comes down to changing things.
Going to have to disagree with you there. I think you'd be surprised how far you can take your ideas and concerns if you're willing to be assertive enough. I've worked in start-ups and companies with over 100,000 employees and if I've found something I felt needed to be changed I was able to find someone in the right place to talk about it with.
This isn't a retail employee trying to talk to corporate scenario (which, let's face it, good luck enacting change company wide when you're in retail). This is a technology company. Almost everyone I know at the major tech companies have at least chatted with the CEOs and other executives from time to time.
> Quitting is the right thing to do. If no one quits everyone, both leadership and employees, thinks "It must be me as no one else has a problem with it". It applies to customers as well.
I've been in a scenario where 7 out of 10 people on a team quit within weeks due to ethical concerns. I can assure you management had zero thoughts about anything being wrong, etc. They all thought it was simply a coincidence.
Now this is anecdotal but I was part of a large group who also quit in a similar fashion (approx 70 of 130 quit within 3 months IIRC). As far as everyone who was left could find out, their management felt almost exactly the same way.
Maybe Facebook and others would "get it" if people quit I'm just not convinced.
For bad examples for such process Snowden for one told he did go through such internal channels. Also Manning. Whistleblowers seems to be retaliated against with so much prejudice.
Also quitting a company that displays many such questionable ethical choices would feel good for my morale. Most people don't have such financial independence (runway) to quit and so they keep their jobs and keeps their opinions to themselves.
Sure. But a company that won't take feedback seriously I don't see why they would do anything when a large amount of people quit either.
At least in my experience if they're not receptive nothing but massive failure will actually change anything.
> For bad examples for such process Snowden for one told he did go through such internal channels.
To be fair we still don't know the extent of his attempts. He claims he sent emails to district heads but many in the DoD space know those typically are figure heads with little ability to change anything and there are better channels to go through. Granted I have no idea if it would have made any difference but I'm hesitant to use his example as one where a feedback channel failed.
> Also quitting a company that displays many such questionable ethical choices would feel good for my morale. Most people don't have such financial independence (runway) to quit and so they keep their jobs and keeps their opinions to themselves.
Fair enough! :)
But you can leak things. Leak like a sieve! Get all the embarassing details, company memos, internal private statistics out there. Tell the world what's really going on.
Sounds like it's just censoring in China then. As long as they don't start censoring US content, I'm happy.
Facebook is probably doing censorship anyways without this China tool. I talk to a friend in Germany and he was telling me how the German government is mad at Facebook. There's some law that makes Facebook censorship Holocaust denial and hate speech posts. Which I guess if they have an office in Germany or even the maybe EU I guess they have to follow it but there's news story of there justice minster saying they have to do it. http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Germany-warns-Facebook-Clamp-d...
But from my understanding, all censoring is geo-located as is. So they could block those posts in Germany only, but in the US they'd still show up. I don't really support a government censoring speech even if I agree or didn't agree with the speech but I guess it doesn't really effect me so I don't really care. Germany or China isn't my government. Plus I grew up with American ideologies. America is one of the few nations left with free speech it seems.
The laws regarding hate speech are so blurry that it practically gives them permission to remove anything they want and that's exactly what they do. They don't only delete content that is strictly against the law, but also content that is government critical, because it "incites public unrest".
They also remove content that promotes other political parties.
Also interesting they have a private company working directly for the government. I figured in those cases someone from the German gov would have to mail or fax a letter to Facebook for every individual request, sorta like how DMCA works. Super spooky sounding they'd just outsource it to another company. Does sound it like's ripe for abuse then since you mention censoring content promoting other political parties. Seems like once the tool is setup, Facebook is then no longer directly involved beyond that point.
On another note, I am super surprised how many political parties Germany has compared to here in America. Seems like more choices, the better.
As far as I'm aware that team actively monitors content and doesn't need to have an explicit request to remove something.
I also have never seen an example that is just critical of the governing parties which was supposedly removed (every single example I saw was of the type "hang chancellor Merkel"). My Facebook feed is full of people promoting opposition parties from the complete political spectrum.
If you take a look at the company behind it, you will find that they have their legs knee-deep in the government's ass.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertelsmann_Stiftung
One example is the German Anonymous channel. It was obviously fake, anti immigration and promoted the AFD (right wing party), but none of that is against the law. It had a ton of followers (I think in the six digits) and was removed just like that.
In most cases that's true, but we have the same problem as the US: It's the same two parties that keep winning elections (CDU and SPD) and nowadays they're more like one party, because they got used to running things together.
Their methods of fighting upcoming parties are borderline illegal and sometimes clearly illegal (rigged votes), but nobody cares. They twist some words, give stupid excuses and the issues are not being looked into any further.
Please add citations for the following statements, preferably with example posts (just so that everyone can decide for themselves whether that still falls under "just being critical of policy")
> content that is government critical > content that promotes other political parties
If you take a look at the company behind it, you will find that they have their legs knee-deep in the government's ass.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertelsmann_Stiftung
One example is the German Anonymous channel. It was obviously fake, anti immigration and promoted the AFD (right wing party), but none of that is against the law. It had a ton of followers (I think in the six digits) and was removed just like that.
I like the quote but the irony is just too big for me.
I'll take doubling the life expectancy of people China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, other Asian counties, as well as most of Africa as a "concession". Thank you very much!
As it stands it's kinda tough to maintain past friendships that I've made traveling in China. As soon as I stopped using WeChat, all those friendships died.
In fact, I have an anecdotal story about where censorship might make sense. In Jordan, we had Islamists subtly inciting jihad using online news outlets on benign things like Halloween parties. Calling them "satanist rituals" and in at least one case that incited violence against a group of people at a Halloween party.
In the West free speech is better understood, however, it's not the case in many parts of the world. The concept might not even exist.
The truth is that Western nations are still quite sophisticated in how their propaganda is spread. You can see this with the type of colonial mentality that some Asian nations have, where they inherently believe that anything from the West is "better."
It's quite insidious when you have a group of self-loathing people because they grew up feeling inferior.
So I can definitely see why China wants to fight against this.
I have 3 main points on why censorship can be justified in the context of China: preventing spread of rumours, unique culture background which values stability more than anything else, and different stage of development as other countries hence different priorities.
Here you can see my comments:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12934732
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11405320
I wouldn't go into the realm of conspiracies where you have the Western propaganda deliberately destabilizing China for their strategic interests, since they are not backed up with facts.
http://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/censored.pdf?m=14...
Also, you can use Google Scholar to find those that you are interested:
https://scholar.google.com.sg/scholar?hl=en&q=china+censorsh...
Being good at tech doesn't necessarily correlate with trend setting and being an influencer.
Us crypto cyber libertarian geeks have been warning about the problem of closed silos and Internet centralization for over a decade.
I kind of hate being right, given that the reality is turning out to actually be a lot worse than what I feared. I mostly was concerned in the past with loss of ability to innovate and surveillance, but the collision of deep learning, big data, and closed communication platforms is making those concerns seem petty.
The potential for massive scale propaganda and discourse shaping bordering on outright mind control is unbelievable. Imagine an invisible automated agent participating in every human conversation and quietly steering it toward desired topics and outcomes and away from undesirable ones. It's intimate influence at scale.
For me however, the strongest argument is that nearly everyone in China would prefer a censored Facebook to no Facebook at all and I'm humble enough to accept that they know, better than me, what's best for them.
Even those enthusiastically calling for censorship of 'fake news' may be given pause for thought when considering how those tools might be used by political opponents.
And more countries (e.g. Kazakhstan) will likely follow the suit.
"Western culture" is a large part of what that censorship would be aimed at suppressing.
So either you admit that what China has been doing is essentially not anything different from what you're demanding all over the place now (actually, the majority of the "censorship" in China is against smearing campaigns which entail totally false accusations against the Communist Party, which could be potentially very socially unsettling in their eyes), or you admit that what you've been demanding is some absolutely stupid and dangerous nonsense. Otherwise it's just another example of western hypocrisy, bias and double standards against China at its finest.
Apparently nobody cares because they are still using Facebook.
But why even use a tool that can misguide you, can manipulate you, you cannot trust? I can't understand this.
Dropping Facebook years ago didn't make me a loner or a stranger. Dropping LinkedIn didn't make me jobless. Dropping Google didn't make me miserable.
Chinese government made it so that they win anyway: either Facebook cooperates or it is blocked and people use some local censored social network.
Like Weibo to Twitter, etc.
'He also rejected the idea that people’s news feeds are becoming increasingly personalized to the point that opposing views are no longer visible – a phenomenon known as the filter bubble.'
“We’ve studied it a lot. I really care about this,” he said, adding that in order to have a good impact on the world he wants people to have a “diversity of information”.
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-...
It's also nice to be surrounded by people, even if you're hitting them on the head one by one as they drop into a mass grave.
...makes totally sense for them to go full bore & embrace philosophies of more central control over who gets access to what information. After all, isn't that what everyone is clamoring for?
Censorship, suppression tools, fake news, Fb is moving into dystopian Sterling, Stephenson and Gibson territory.
“It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation,”
Is the mission statement changing here? In 2010 I remember ploughing through "The Facebook Effect" on a plane to Singapore, reading about ^glowing reports^ of dissidents using Fb to organise themselves. The winds have changed. I'm more inclined to agree with Eben Moglens description of Fb as "PHP do-dads where you get spying for free".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Facebook_Effect
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/17/eben_moglen_freedom_...
I could imagine a tumblog of cat pics packed with all things you aren't supposed to know.
2. They kill the real person on the streets.
That being said, I agree that this is still an evil move for Facebook.
Is it a matter of convenience?
With the high likelihood of getting massively down voted given the predominant sentiments here, I am still going to to play the devil's advocate. So here it is: I am applauding Facebook's plan to enter China to connect 721+ million people(netizen count is not 1 billion as some of you claimed, see [1]. Population is 1.4 billion and a little over half of that have access to Internet.) and their pragmatic approach to get to that goal.
So you may ask why I am applauding FB bending over backwards to the censorship (which btw I don't agree to). Considering these:
1. Majority of the rules people here disputes in Chinese media censorship laws are political related[2]. But Facebook is NOT a political platform per se. So to me, by entering the Chinese market, it makes sense to put aside some ideology disagreements as a trade off to serve and connect the 721 million people who otherwise wouldn't have for a slew of FB services. And it's probably making a lot of economic sense for FB as well.
2. The tech-savvy few who will always be able to access the uncensored Internet anyway, so by agreeing to the local laws of censoring on one social platform does not significantly impact the freedom of speech. In fact, VPNs are popular and becoming the norm for younger generation who access information, which was dubbed as "climbing over the wall"[3]
3. Any company or mission claiming "organize the world's information" or "connecting the world" but fail to service half of the world is a joke. And yes, Chinese Internet users are accounted for that half[1] of the Internet world. By retreating or not entering(or getting involuntarily banned for that matter), they are doing a dis-service to the Chinese Internet users due to lack of absence[4].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
[2] http://www.hrichina.org/sites/default/files/PDFs/State-Secre...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_circumvent...
[4] https://books.google.com/books?id=V1u1f8sv3k8C&pg=PA313#v=on...
About how developers should stand up and rail against their managers/CEOs when the company has asked them to build something unethical.
Where are all the developers now? That's right, underneath their desks coding away. The great ZUCK has spoken and as true CUCKs they bowed down and did his bidding.
No one on the development team is going to speak out. They need their lifestyle maintained.
The hipocrasy is not unexpected. To the world, developers will scream ethics. In private, they will cave, back to their safe spaces no doubt!
The Chinese government has been at it for many years, on WeChat, Weibo, Renren, Qzone, QQ, etc. Having lived in China for ~5 years, it sucks but it is absolutely better than nothing. It also is not remotely like being "blindfolded, speaking to a room you don't know is empty or not". I don't feel that way on HN either though I know getting shadow banned is a possibility.
The fact is, there is some censorship and surveillance in China, and Facebook can't do anything about it nor is it exerting any sort of pressure by staying out.
I understand that it is scary for us, westerners, to watch this unfold, but for the Chinese people, gaining access to a censored Facebook would be a step forward overall (right now, Facebook it is essentially 100% censored).
It’s a step down a slippery slope toward worldwide total surveillance and censorship.
These tools can and will be used against activists, members of minority political parties, dissidents, business rivals, etc.
When some African dictatorship jails some journalist’s whole family without charges, the engineers at Facebook who built the surveillance software will be complicit.
I might sound like I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but I find it deeply scary that Facebook is applying its considerable engineering talent towards building censorship and monitoring at scale. Facebook has some of the smartest engineers in the industry as well computing power that only the richest governments can match, and they have a good shot at cracking the problem of doing efficient censorship at scale. China manages to scale its censorship by employing more and more people to censor. If Facebook builds a plug-in system that allows governments to censor automatically, then every country could censor like China, at a fraction of the cost.
By implementing censorship FB will make such option even less likely to happen in future.
That's exactly the justification the Chinese government uses.
[1]
“Today we have fake sites, bots, trolls — things that regenerate themselves, reinforcing opinions with certain algorithms and we have to learn to deal with them.”
Merkel, 62, said the challenge for democrats was to “reach and inspire people — we must confront this phenomenon and if necessary, regulate it.”
She said she supported initiatives by her right-left coalition government to crack down on “hate speech” on social media in the face of what she said were “concerns about the stability of our familiar order”.
http://guardian.ng/news/merkel-warns-against-fake-news-drivi...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/17/barack-obama-f...
I don't think it's a step forward at all, because users won't ever know how much censorship their Facebook has. So they'll get the sensation of no censorship while being censored.
This is worse than not having access at all, which is at least an explicit censorship and makes citizens wonder, as opposed to something subtle and dishonest.
Why? Because it's Facebook? Because it's american? Wechat is a better system, but censored. There is nothing to gain with yet another censored system.
There's a big difference between creating a morally neutral tool (like Facebook itself, which may be used for evil, such as in cases like cyberbullying) and creating a tool for an explicitly immoral purpose to be given to an entity which will obviously use it for immoral purposes.
What Facebook is doing is deeply unethical.
Do you think Chinese people are thinking "I sure hope Facebook doesn't comply with the government so that I can keep not having access to it and therefore keep not being silenced by it. Ah also, I really just wish Baidu/Weibo/Wechat/etc. would close shop already because they are censorship enablers.". My bet is that very few people are and while they're probably unhappy with the censorship in general, they are happy to have access to some form of social media.
Yes. The principle of free speech is a fundamental American value and it should be upheld by American companies.
For them to sacrifice core values for access to a foreign market is unethical. I have no expectations that Facebook will be ethical, but the point of having values is that you stick to them. Otherwise they are just preferences.
If they don't take a stand in China then they won't take a stand in America either.
The Chinese people couldn't possibly care less whether they have access to Facebook or not, and the ones who do already have VPNs.
Didn't someone get beat up on youtube for voting for the one who shall not be named recently in US?
If I post on HN I have an understanding that the post is going to be on HN's system, and subject to the moderation of the site owner.
I have the same assumption of Facebook or any other online social service.
What's happening in this circumstance is that another actor is going to be in the middle, with Facebook's cooperation and consent, and not mine.
That Facebook has found a way to wash their hands of what they're doing here doesn't make it OK. That they're finding a way to remove themselves from censoring the posts directly shows that they know it's wrong.
1 - The complaints here on HN stopped. Are you sure it's still used?
You might be just talking to yourself on HN, but aren't likely to go to jail for it. (Not impossible, but not likely).
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13020206 and marked it off-topic.
Oh wait, that's not their core value is it. Their core value is... MONEY!
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13020206 and marked it off-topic.
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
Just so everybody here knows why the Austrian government wanted it banned: It showed how Muslim immigrants beat up a 16 year old girl and broke her jaw, reportedly as punishment because she dared to pull the veil off a Muslim girl.
That doesn't sit well with our government that wants to invite all of the Middle East here!
And probably the same is true for jakobegger, who enjoys freedom of speech only when it is an opinion that he isn't offended by, otherwise censorship is very much appreciated.
Using HN primarily for political or ideological battle is poison here. Regardless of what your politics or ideology are, this site exists to gratify intellectual curiosity, not weaponized conversation. This is particularly critical, because we can't have both: the one simply tramples the other, and that's not ok.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13020908 and marked it off-topic.
We're standing on the cusp of fascism taking hold in both the US and the UK, and I for one am not going to just roll over and build the tools to facilitate that. I just hope we've not gone to far down the road of centralising everything to pull back from the brink.
Forget China and forget doing things they want them done. There are more people in the world not in China than in China. Would you rather the world be more like the USA or more like China? For better or worse I say USA.
This is how manufacturing left the US. We allowed it to happen. Why is there no regulation that says if you build stuff anywhere it has to be to US labor standards? I think that's what Bernie and Trump were getting at. Fair trade. I would put this Facebook debacle in that bucket.
Downvote away!
Edit: I stand corrected. They don't own the content. They can just do whatever they want with it.
Muddied thinking when it comes to these things doesn't help anyone. Facebook is not a champion of democracy or human rights. They're a business. No one should expect their core value system to be aligned with anything more than making more money and we should use the proper words. When they virtually own the content by asking you to allow them to do what they want with it we shouldn't call it censorship when it is suppressed. It's not like facebook went to the library and burned all the books that said bad things about China. It's more like the book was never put on a shelf to be accessible to begin with.
No they don't. They have extensive usage rights to it, but they don't own it.