Zuckerberg Tries to Clarify Remarks About Holocaust Deniers
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Instead, much like Twitter, they seem to go out of their way to find ways to not use their own policies in the extremely clear cut cases.
Hate speech would be to say 'jews deserved it', or 'x group deserved it', or 'I wish the holocaust really did happen'.. I've heard that kind of rhettoric on and off FB, and that should def. be removed. There's a difference between someone commenting, 'well, I don't believe that happened'...while everyone else is like, 'well you're a dumb fuck, w/e' and moves on.
I think Zuck did the right thing, made the right call. By taking away the platform he only makes them angrier, loses power of the platform, by making them think they still have a voice (even if it's buried so deep on the newsfeed that you'd need Elon Musk to bore a hole to find it), you acquiesce and de-escalate their emotions about 'not being heard' .. rather than ban the content outright.
Again threats, and real hate speech should be removed and policed, but some crazy shit should be just marginalized to the point it doesn't really matter.
I disagree about the holocaust.
There's levels. I'm sure denying the moon landing hurts those who were there... There are people who deny that Columbus killed millions, and enslaved millions more in the short time he was here. -- It's offensive, but not something you can convince them they're wrong on.
I think if nobody SEES the post, does it really exist? I as user can see it so yay, FB didn't block me. While, I as another user, friend of first user cannot see it, so never happened...
That's honestly the best policy probably, I mean it's also got to be something AI can train for, because they're not going to pay people to read and approve EVER comment or post on fb, that'd be insane.
I don't understand how saying the holocaust didn't happen is considered threatening/hate speech per se, and not just mis-information. Again, I say this as a progressive, definitely against fascism here and Trump, but I also have Aspergers so have trouble sometimes 'feeling' the way others think I should feel about a subject, and logically it doesn't really elicit the same feeling as that Vice video, w/ the woman who didn't believe it happened, but wished it had - her wanting millions of jews dead is disgusting - more so, than just not believing it happened...
I guess, I don't feel that someone else's belief in historical events is as bad as other speech. I think there needs to be a fine line, and I agree where Mark drew that.
Perhaps innocently ignorant is "I've never heard of the holocaust, tell me more." Or even, "I've heard of the holocaust, but I have no concrete reasons to believe it happened, it seems incredible."
Malevolent, willfully destructive to civil discourse, bordering on fighting words, is "The holocaust did not happen. People who claim it did are liars."
But all of that is orthogonal to what Facebook's policy should be. No matter what they're going to run into trouble. The U.S. and E.U. have rather different ideas about the limits of free speech. And even greater differences exist around the world. And in that sense I think it doesn't matter what policy they go with as long as it's consistent, and the CEO doesn't say absurd things like holocaust deniers aren't intentionally getting it wrong, let alone try to give deniers a psychological evaluation. He needs to stick to policy decisions, not evaluate people's intent and end up sugar coating it.
Tangent: who are some of the people you perceive walked away from a similar level of power?
Perfect example of doing good vs doing well. “Superman does good.”
Also good to see a mention of Sri Lanka in there. It took a network block to finally start seeing some level of response to hate speech reports in this country. I've reported text and video posts where extremist parties are stating that there's a higher race and other races should give way or get out of the country. I've also reported far more threatening foul languaged posts. In almost every case, I've received a batch of "nopes it's ok but thanks for trying. Have you considered blocking this person" type replies. After a while it's exhausting.
The attitude displayed in this post about premature worrying of slippery slopes is a good hint at why this happens.
Denial of certain events is actively harmful in reconciliation activities. Just because people aren't physically harmed, doesn't mean that they aren't harmed at all. Today when considering properties to rent I have to consider communities living around to ensure long term safety. There are businesses which are actively targeted to be boycotted based on the race of the owner.
From a tech company perspective, it's hard that you might alienate or give the impression of being unbiased. For anyone who might be starting a community, please consider the distance to a slippery slope before worrying about it.
Lying is not the same as making a mistake. Suggesting racial dominance is just as bad as advocating for racial harm. Facebook is running a thought experiment that's based on false equivalence. And I imagine the behind the scene discussions are full of "what if" type bike shedding.
As a tech community building products that allow amplifying voices we can and should do better.
I'm pretty sure that all the behind the scene discussions are focused solely on how they can monetize specific segments of the platform with zero regard for the nature of the content
Not that I think it's deserved. Just sadly ironic.
If you’re going to let anything on your platform, people are going to post horrible hateful things. And when they do, other people will get justifiably mad about it.
When you’re dumb enough to say that you think that’s a good thing, you’re going to get skewered in the press. Honestly, what could possibly come of saying you think it’s OK to deny the holocaust?
Of course when you later so you miss spoke about that, no one’s really going to believe you. Either you meant it and thus you’re horrible person, or you didn’t mean it and you’re insanely naïve. Facebook‘s been around long enough and in enough scandals that you can’t claim naïveté anymore.
If Facebook had a 100% anything goes policy then as much as people hated this the anti-holocaust stuff would be somewhat understandable. But when there are rules and limits on the platform but they don’t seem to limit anything incredibly horrible, only articles rebutting that stuff... you’ve certainly marked yourself for criticism.
At times it’s hard to imagine a way Facebook could act that would get them in more trouble.
That said, yeah, they've been digging themselves that hole for a while now. I don't think he deserves it _for this particular statement_ in the context of how they've seemed to shift away from the 'curated content' perspective for now.
I think they would just deserve strong criticism for this incident, but the reaction is certainly worse given everything that’s been happening for the last few years.
I personally prefer having my twitter for example set to Germany. They have a sane approach there and it doesn't stifle debate; unless you're a neo nazi, in which case, I couldn't care less.
> The principles that we have on what we remove from the service are: If it’s going to result in real harm, real physical harm, or if you’re attacking individuals, then that content shouldn’t be on the platform.
> There’s a lot of categories of that that we can get into, but then there’s broad debate.
The outraged respondents are correct that there is no debate with holocaust deniers or Sandy Hook deniers. Zuck agrees.
But where there is debate is over what content should or should not be removed. Facebook can't be the authority entrusted with banning all uncertain, incorrect, or unkind speech from their platform, but they also can't be enablers of lynch mobs. There are many categories of speech between those extremes.
The debate is on where you've drawn the line, and he is saying that weak conspiracy theories are not something Facebook wants to take responsibility for quashing.
Instead of removing blatantly false posts, their plan is to exercise control over their news-feed distribution -- choosing how often these posts are being seen. The assumption is they'll do the right thing, and not distribute posts they know are blatantly false, such as denials of the Sandy Hook shooting.
However, that is a choice they can make. They could, in fact, choose to optimize distribution of false information based on their political needs. Who's to say they haven't done this already?
Verses being a Fascist and saying 'I'm glad hitler did x to x group of people' or 'I know it didn't happen, but I wish it had, cause they deserve it.' ..
There was a vice video where some crazy fascist redneck mom was saying she wished the Holocaust had happened and I'm like WTF who would say something so callous... and claim to follow Christ of all people.
Hypocrisy knows no bounds here in America.
He needs to walk a fine line, or alienate anyone over on the right side of the line. I'm a progressive, but still believe in democracy of the platform, and that it can be used for good. If they're on FB, maybe - eventually, some will stop being so hypocritical or dumb and wise up.
However, the real issue is that a company controlled by a single CEO is allowed to make broad social value judgments about what is and is not free speech. Facebook is as close to a public forum as any, and it’s dangerous to assume they will always keep an open semi-libertarian approach to speech.
And what’s the alternative to Zuck? Should Facebook be controlled by the U.S. government? A panel of elders? When is it okay to dismantle a company in these such cases? Who makes _that_ judgment?
This is not the crux of the debate, regarding what Facebook gets wrong about the internet.
The problem isn't the decision criteria, for what's fair or foul within the confines of the company's policies, as reconciled with the general realities civilization confronts.
The truth is that, on some level, Facebook, as a simple matter of being a communication system, as ordinary as any telephone call, provides enough rope for you to hang yourself with. We all know this, and so do they. The idea for those operating the platform, is to build an anticipatory prediction of who might being tying nooses, either for themselves or others, and perhaps do something about the key player's actions.
In order for that principle to work, in some cases, it means letting bad things happen, or perhaps staging the appearance of bad incidents without real consequence.
Meanwhile, The Problem with Facebook, is that it is a hyper-reality, airbrushed according to individual preferences. As such a hosting platform for arbitrary input, of nearly unbounded scope. Without reliable turing tests, based on real externalities, there's no way to discern bot garbage and provocateurs from the expressions of true believers. If Facebook were to reveal its secrets for discerning and differentiating between intentionally deceptive content and de novo factual information, it would effectively default on the very same cat-and-mouse game of discovering the noose tyers.
So this congressional hot seat and court of public opinion is simply a dog and pony show. Facebook will continue as usual, until a generation ages out, rendering it the new AOL, and fizzling into irrelevance.
At some point new technologies will grab the limelight, distract us all, and we'll pretty much forget about all the fuss of Trump and Facebook, just like we've mostly forgotten about Reagan and MTV.
Edit: for those who struggle with sarcasm, this is what it looks like.