NAACP returns Facebook donation, calls for boycott on Tuesday | Hacker News Reader

NAACP returns Facebook donation, calls for boycott on Tuesday

axios.com

188 pointstareqak145 comments

"...following revelations of how its platform was used to manipulate black voters in the 2016 presidential election."

This seems somewhat misguided... I know Facebook is the whipping-boy de jour, but it seems evident that Facebook is the biggest victim in all of this.

All of the bad press FB is getting lately... literally years after events occurred and after they've been working to rectify the issues is curious.

After all the bad press that was hammering Tesla for an extended period of time quickly dried up (after Elon Musk showed just how far he was willing to go to shake the short-sellers), Facebook suddenly took its place.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but it really feels like someone with a lot of power has organized and weaponized information for the sake of manipulating stock prices.

That doesn't have much to do with the NAACP itself, but these information campaigns have a side-effect of modifying public opinion and sentiment.

I really kind of feel ashamed of posting this -- it seems like such a low-value conspiracy theory, but it just seems strange to me how all this is playing out.

FB is getting bad press because:

a) historically it's done a lot of shady stuff and gotten a pass on that,

b) it really screwed up around election time, with major / unprecedented geopolitical and economic consequence,

c) it doesn't seem to have fully understood let alone fixed the problems,

d) it's business model is interfering with fixing these problems, and

e) it's managed this situation from a PR perspective very poorly.

All of those are facts on the ground that would suggest FB is operationally not as solid as people previously assumed, and that it has many (possibly inherent) vulnerabilities that are not easily fixed that add risk to the business - risk of people abandoning it, risk of regulation, risk of being manipulated for political purposes.

Certainly FB was used by those looking to manipulate public perceptions during the election (and since), and that makes it in a certain light a 'victim'. But they were also the creators and popularizers of this new way of being manipulated, and thus an excuse of being ignorant of the implications is a bit weak, especially because of how they've handled things since.

Just practically, it's extremely unlikely that independent news & research orgs are all conspiring to manipulate FB's stock price. At some point people stop giving companies or individuals benefit of the doubt, which is what's now happened to FB.

This pattern of bad press you're seeing with FB is going to happen a lot in the future with our 24/7 news cycle and rumor mill. Something will come out about a company or individual about them doing something bad that will get a lot of visibility. In that process a lot of their past transgressions will come out, or be re-evaluated in a new light, and it will happen through a slow drip of new discoveries that will keep them in the press for a while. This will break into mainstream discourse, and it may permanently damage their reputation. This is a pattern inherent in the mix of people/companies royally screwing up, the existence of deep digital info trails, social media giving a voice to every person to share juicy info, and the instantaneous social media news cycle.

Let us not forget that Facebook has enabled in a way a form of direct democracy. Subversive globalist players without any moral compass (such as George Soros and Hillary Clinton, whose foundation connections are being interrogated as we type) are just angry that they lost in a long time.

George Soros frequently propagates propaganda via his Open Society Foundations about the dangers of Facebook. Because he lost.

No wonder it is being attacked.

> George Soros frequently propagates propaganda via his Open Society Foundations

I am not agreeing or disagreeing with that, but so what if he does? He is a private person and you don't have to consume his politics just as I don't consume his political opinions or consume any trash on Facebook. It is the nature of liberty that people are allowed to express opinions you find offensive.

It becomes problematic if it is used to lobby for political change with private funding as a magnifier. Once you start to pump so much money into political movements, you can co-opt and change them. You get to drown some currents and magnify others by simply providing infrastructure and funding. It can be as simple as providing a speaker system to a protest and deciding who gets to use it.

Its a question common to campaign contribution and whether super PACs are to be considered free speech.

> It can be as simple as providing a speaker system to a protest and deciding who gets to use it.

That isn't a problem. Private individuals are not required to abide by a fairness standard when it comes to speech. Taken a step further talk radio stations are often extremely right wing are not required to fairly convey an alternate position. I am fine with that because as a consume I am not forced to consume it.

Multiple radio stations exist in parallel and you dont have to listen to any of them. Once you put up one speaker system at a location, like a central park that is the focus of a protest, you drown out everyone else. You are in control of the communication infrastructure and bought yourself an authority position.

The question of who is providing and controlling infrastructure is a real threat to protest movements, as it is easily possible to co-opt a political movement through funds this way.

We have clear limits on what lobbying is allowed to do and what kind of interference in a democratic system through funds is prohibited. Take vote buying as an extreme example or simply the ordinary regulations over campaign financing. We dont have that clear cut rules for what is acceptable in the case of non parliamentary political movements. Calling the targeted funding and co-opting of political movements problematic is appropriate in my opinion.

And to be fair, the same can be said about the Koch brothers.

Reneé Girard has some interesting things to say about scapegoating.

> "Everywhere and always, when human beings either cannot or dare not take their anger out on the thing that has caused it, they unconsciously search for substitutes, and more often than not they find them."

Seeing the overwhelming vitriol towards Facebook (justified to a certain extent, but certainly over-indexed), I can't help but join you in this low-value conspiracy indulgence...

If Girard's prescription is true here, what really is the media so rampantly enraged about that they are seeking to continually beat the downed (arguably) dead horse that is Facebook's PR image?

* Is it an old-money / new-money thing? https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-thre...

* Is it related to an increasing coastal elite / tech / income-inequality distrust with the rest of America?

* Is it a trendy common-enemy for young intellectuals to frame as the next trope for "misused, oppressive power"?

* Is it anger and bargaining from the 2016 election fallout where the unhappy masses are working through the Stages of Grief and are searching for an object where to fixate the blame to move on?

FB is a direct competitor to media brands -- eyeball time that would have gone to CNN or WashPo or MTV now go to FB. FB then resells those eyeballs to said media brands, and it's big enough to command market power--it can control prices and terms and it's so huge you can't easily take your budget to a competing service. (It has in fact done this, before the wave of "FB is evil" stories, there was a wave of "FB is raising the price of impressions" stories. So many media brands perceive it as an existential threat.

FB did some fairly dirty things to obtain its huge market share and it's too powerful. So I don't really see a problem with all its competitors piling up on it, but that's definitely what's going on.

If you commit a crime, and only get caught years later after reforming yourself (off the profits of your crime?), can you truly be a victim? Now, I understand that the analogy does not map precisely, but at what point in this equation did fb face consequences for its initial misdeeds?

It's extremely important to note that facebook has not reformed itself.

I am not agreeing or disagreeing with you, but this is a low value comment in furthering healthy discussion. Consider tacking on some further qualifiers to support your claim.

* In what actionable ways do you think they are missing the mark on reformation?

* What in your opinion is the bar for reformation for a social media corporation?

Otherwise, Twitter-esque call-to-panic statements like these diminish the signal to noise quality of discussion here.

Just a friendly suggestion.

I don't have time (or the thumbs) to make a comprehensive list but Facebook has been repeatedly caught doing the absolute bare minimum for PR reasons with little real effect (which theyd be aware of).

For example, earlier this year Facebook announced after public pressure that it would require labeling of all political ads [1]. Right before the midterms, Vice publishes the result of their investigation: they posed as all 100 senators and every single ad got through, labeled as an ad by a sitting senator [2]. You'd imagine a system for identity verification is the first thing they'd have set up before announcing new rules for identifying the source of political advertising.

This is a pattern with facebook and the other social media companies. When they're put under a microscope, they pay lip service to legislators and the public, then continue business as usual.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/business/news/requiring-authorizati...

[2] https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/xw9n3q/we-posed-as-100-s...

That Vice headline is simply not true. They note at the very bottom of their article that no ads "got through" because they never bought any in the first place.

The only thing I see that didn't get through was "There was one “Paid for” disclosure that Facebook didn’t approve in our latest test. They denied, just a couple minutes after we submitted it: Mark Zuckerberg."

Where do you see that?

Oh, I guess it was the last paragraph of the snippet and not the full article.

> What’s more, all of these approvals were granted to be shared from pages for fake political groups such as “Cookies for Political Transparency” and “Ninja Turtles PAC.” VICE News did not buy any Facebook ads as part of the test; rather, we received approval to include "Paid for by" disclosures for potential ads.

>I am not agreeing or disagreeing with you, but this is a low value comment in furthering healthy discussion.

I disagree. When someone poses an analogy, it's a valid and contributing comment to point out a key flaw in the analogy, even if you didn't bring citations.

There are contexts where a comment like that is low value, for example if it's just contradicting another comment. The standards for making a statement are higher in that case.

But in context this comment is fine. I have no idea what you're even on about calling it a call to panic. Your comment is far more problematic than what you reply to.

Maybe you know - what were Facebook's misdeeds? The article only mentions Russia doing stuff, but nothing about what Facebook did wrong.

Are you trying to use this question as a rhetorical device, or are you genuinely asking what Facebook has done wrong?

If you're being genuine, the answer is:

* They allowed for advertising campaigns using their tools which were flat out illegal (e.g.: Real-estate advertising targeted based on race.)

* They have failed to meaningfully control over illegal uses of their platform in any way. (See: The current Rohingya issue)

* They were far too liberal with access to user data, in a way that is currently driving a debate around the legality of doing so. (Cambridge Analytica, etc.)

* They have built tools that are ideal for doing things like illegally swaying elections. ("Russia doing stuff".)

I can only assume there are many other things that Facebook have made possible which are illegal and completely unnoticed. It's hard to try to build any sort of exhausted list of unknown unknowns, though, so I'll leave it at a prominent four.

If you're using rhetoric, the thing you'll probably say next is "but that's not Facebook being bad, that's people using Facebook! You can't blame a tool for how it's used!", but the problem with that is that Facebook exerted editorial control over the platform in numerous ways over the time period in which these things happened, both in advertising and in news-feed sorts of ways.

Any person doing any of these things would be punished.

Any person aiding and abetting any person doing any of these things would be punished.

Why not Facebook?

It was established long ago that the phone company isn’t guilty, legally or morally, if two people use telephones to organize a crime. Stopping crimes was the police’s job, who could wiretap phones with a court order if necessary.

Current public opinion is divided on whether internet communication services should take it upon themselves to detect and prevent crime. It may be the best solution, but there are pitfalls and we really have to decide as a society how to change the system.

So your point of view may be the best, but the way you present it as self-evident is misplaced.

> It was established long ago that the phone company isn’t guilty, legally or morally, if two people use telephones to organize a crime.

In this case, Facebook is not a neutral communications provider. They are selling and displaying the ad. They are a party to the transaction.

> Current public opinion is divided on whether internet communication services should take it upon themselves to detect and prevent crime.

Yes, there is debate as to how involved Facebook should be if two independent parties are, say, coordinating crime on Facebook messenger. That's a totally different case than what we're discussing.

And they are also curating who’s phone calls get through. The phone call never edits or bans content on their lines (generally.) Facebook as a utility is a false idea: they are a publisher whether they say so or not. A neutral platform doesn’t have nebulous “community standards” nor algorithms to determine the visibility of content.

It's the same word games as the "sharing economy".

Yeah, Uber drivers are "independent contractors" rather than employees because they have to buy their own cars and are totally free to do what they want (as long as they strictly follow the terms and conditions while being under close supervision of their performance).

Yeah, Facebook is "just a platform" because users provide the content and Facebook just decides what content to show, whom to show it to and charges users to show it more prominently or to show it to very specific groups of people.

I can't see how any of that is remotely related to what facebook has been accused of.

More in line, is a newspaper responsible for ads they print? Do they have a responsibility as to what information they sell about their users?

Yes, they are on both counts.

We can discuss what the law should be all week long. By that time the barn door has been open and the horse is miles away. This isn’t just solved by regulation.

What we need is OPEN SOURCE ALTERNATIVES like https://youtu.be/pZ1O_gmPneI

And the "phone company" is now a highly regulated utility that was broken up by the government, to include those surveillance capabilities. FB doesn't get to be Ma Bell and I doubt they would welcome the comparison.

The question here isn't even if FB should be regulated or broken up like the phone company. People are simply realizing the consequences of something like FB even existing. The market seems to be taking corrective actions on its own.

Are phone companies and facebook equally regulated?

There is a moral difference between doing and not doing that you seem to be glossing over. Facebook didn't do enough to stop all sorts of things. But the question is what moral responsibility do they have for not recognizing issues soon enough, or not committing enough resources to responding, etc. It's not obvious that they have the backwards-looking responsibility that your argument requires.

The role of Facebook and other social media in swaying politics is almost presented as if it began in 2016.

In reality what the U.S. saw was more like version 3 of a society manipulation tool.

Looking at the events in France recently, the 2016 election, Brexit, the Arab Spring and to some degree the 2008 election. We can see traces of targeted information inflaming a populace for political goals if we look back a decade.

This is not about Facebook specifically, it's more an observation on the kinds of social media manipulation that can happen with these tools. The question becomes, how much of this was an intended consequence of building these tools? A cynical view could make a strong case that it was intentional.

The role of social media in the Arab Spring was spun as a positive thing at the time though, as was the way it was used by Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections.

Back when Obama’s campaign used social it was hailed as innovative, now its manipulative. So the times change..

Sure, but that proves Facebook was aware of its influence as early as that and had enough time to consider the implications. If you find that politicians are using your product to sway public opinions, it's your moral responsibility to think about what that means and how it can be abused. You can't just shrug your shoulders ten years later and pretend you're surprised.

> There is a moral difference between doing and not doing that you seem to be glossing over.

Sure, I'm glossing over it, because it's not really a useful distinction for me to make in this case.

The difference between doing and not doing is that one is a deliberate criminal action, the other is negligence. Both of these things are, in various ways and in various situations, considered immoral and illegal.

The harshness of the punishment may vary, but the fact of punishment does not.

By way of analogy, if a company operates a nature preserve and invites people to walk through it and then sells licenses for other people to come and shoot at people on the preserve, and gives them lessons on how to shoot people, then that company will probably not be in business much longer.

But negligence implies an obligation to act. Did facebook have an obligation to recognize the breadth and depth of the Russian operation against the U.S.? I don't see how.

These are the questions that folks who want to see facebook suffer consequences of some kind need to address. Your argument is not made simply by pointing out that bad things happened on facebook.

You're implying the problem is Russia or that the "attack" was somehow particularly sophisticated.

It was entirely possible, using the tools Facebook provides, the way those tools are intended to be used, to do extremely unethical and illegal things without Facebook intervening.

If I run an unprotected server and allow people to execute arbitrary code on it it should be pretty clear that I was being reckless if it turns out after ten years that all this time script kiddies have been running elaborate botnets with it. Especially if the code examples I provide take users 90% of the way to doing that.

The situation regarding Joseph Chancellor suggests they have plenty of backwards looking responsibility.

https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/07/technology/facebook-cambrid...

Well, let's state for the record, that Facebook was informed since 2013 that their platform was used for genocide in Myanmar.

They did exactly nothing until it turned into a PR problem this year.

The same pattern - maybe with slightly less genocidal consequences - could be observed in Sri Lanka, Hungary, The Philippines and Cambodia.

The argument that it's just a tool really doesn't cut it. They knew and they only started to care when the bad press rolls in.

Blowing the most vile, antisemtic dog whistle against their oponents also really doesn't help their case.

So no, I disagree with your position.

I was genuinely asking, and none of your answers really put that much blame on Facebook, I mean come-on "They have built tools that are ideal for doing things like illegally swaying elections. ("Russia doing stuff".)"

They built tools that can be used this way? Are you serious? This is the big crime? (And the very concept of "illegally swaying elections by telling people things" bothers me - how can it be illegal to say something like that? But that's a different discussion.)

Or: "They have failed to meaningfully control over illegal uses of their platform in any way. (See: The current Rohingya issue)"

This is the job of Facebook? Isn't that a police/government job?

> They allowed for advertising campaigns using their tools which were flat out illegal

Knowingly allowed after being informed, or didn't realize they could be used this way?

> the thing you'll probably say next

I wasn't using rhetoric, but now that you answered me, we can fast forward the discussion.

And yes, that's exactly what I'll say next.

> is that Facebook exerted editorial control over the platform in numerous ways over the time period in which these things happened, both in advertising and in news-feed sorts of ways.

Are you saying that when you bought an ad someone at Facebook reviewed it? Is so than yah, I agree, bad on Facebook.

But why do I have a feeling they did not actually review ads?

Edit:

"a group of Russian agents utilized not only Facebook and Twitter, but also sites including Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube"

i.e. they used everything, yet somehow it's Facebook's fault.

So let's say I build a nuclear plant. I make a lot of money from this nuclear plant, and I'm providing a useful and arguably essential service to my community.

Now, it turns out my nuclear plant is emitting toxic radiation and poisoning the community. Not only that, but the problem was blatantly apparent for years, everyone with the slightest bit of foresight tried to bring it to my attention, and to the attention of the community leaders.

The problem was identified, but I did absolutely nothing to resolve it even after being warned. When the problem shifted from a hypothetical to a forensically provable reality, I tried to cover it up and minimize it, while my gross negligence exerted immeasurable harm to the community.

That is the story of Facebook. When you build things - especially giant pieces of infrastructure which communities rely on - you have a RESPONSIBILITY to do your very best to ensure it does not cause harm. Facebook is not responsible for everything which occurs on their platform, but they sure as hell have a responsibility to at least apply due diligence in reducing the harm it causes.

Facebook did not apply that due diligence. They were negligent at the very least, if not openly malicious in their intent.

Stop making excuses for them.

"Now, it turns out my nuclear plant is emitting toxic radiation and poisoning the community."

wrong analogy.

the plant isn't emitting anything. it is external people, outside of the plant, that the plant is providing power to, power that is then used by these outside forces in order to poison people. the plant is just providing the energy. the people outside the plant are using it to poison others.

Facebook's not providing some fungible supply of something. They are taking in text and using their own methods to choose which to feed back, often being paid for it.

If the nuclear plant lets people send in fuel, it needs to inspect it before use.

> They built tools that can be used this way? Are you serious? This is the big crime?

Yes. It is. Selling hacking tools is illegal. Running a darknet marketplace is illegal. Selling cell-phone jammers is illegal.

All of these are tools that may have various legitimate uses, but it's still illegal to sell them. (And in some cases just to produce them).

> But why do I have a feeling they did not actually review ads?

Because your perceptions are misaligned with reality. Here's a handy link to Facebook explaining that they review ads: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/204798856225114

"Move fast and break stuff" can be reworded to "do whatever and deal with the consequences later".

All the dirt now isn't people grouping up and coordinating. It's literally just people doing their jobs, and having an easy time of it. Because Facebook has decided to never deal with the consequences of their actions, so every time a reporter/regulator needs to look at them and verify facts they of course find something new

>it seems evident that Facebook is the biggest victim in all of this.

Looking at all the fallout from this, I'd love to know how you reached that conclusion. Even if Facebook was an entirely innocent victim of this (seemingly highly successful) attempt to sabotage and seed mistrust in US elections, then any effect on Facebook would be minor collateral damage at most.

A side note, but the media itself has sabatoged and seeded mistrust in US elections as well. But we give the media a pass apparently.

Seriously the psychology behind that is so human, doing a thing you think is bad, being ashamed, then calling it out in others. Like the stories of gay senators being the most hardline anti-gay people, or coloreds being the most viciously racist ethnic group in South Africa (being a bit black themselves).

Ahh yes, that homogeneous block known only as 'Themedia'.

> I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but it really feels like someone with a lot of power has organized and weaponized information for the sake of manipulating stock prices.

Be able to recognize the narratives is a very valuable level of awareness. Doesn't mean all news/opinion gets dismissed, but it's important to remain grounded in reality about real harms vs perceived harms.

Depending on who you ask these days, FB is inarguably a bad thing and terribly harmful to everyone. It's easy for most to think so single-sidedly when the narrative is as well. I'm searching for how it helps people connect, makes people happy, gives them an outlet, etc at [0]. Of course I won't find it, 100% bad, 0% good.

0 - https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=facebook

Various studies have actually shown that FB usage makes people unhappy.

All people at all times?

I think it's actually just a simpler thing - people like to hate popular things and doing so sets them apart or makes them feel special (and can signal this specialness to others).

Since everyone knows what Facebook is, it's a good candidate.

I don't think there's much depth to the thought behind it.

I think you are wrong. Often popular things become popular due to deceit. Take tobacco for an example. It's (past?) popularity does not make hating on it a fad. People were told it was good. You can make friends over a smoke. It does have some beneficial effects, physical and social. Then it is likely to kill you after ten, twenty, or thirty years. It will destroy your family bonds and make your children ill. It is bad for society and people on so many levels. Facebook is different only in form. People who have been hating on it forever aren't doing this to be special, despite how convenient an explanation that might be. They get it. Facebook is social cancer.

I don’t even think you need a wild conspiracy theory. It seems like this is an east vs. west coast power struggle. Old money vs. new.

> This seems somewhat misguided... I know Facebook is the whipping-boy de jour, but it seems evident that Facebook is the biggest victim in all of this. All of the bad press FB is getting lately... literally years after events occurred and after they've been working to rectify the issues is curious.

They helped throw an election. This is not the sort of thing you forgive and forget after a couple of years and some apologies.

“Throw an election” implies illegitimacy, that’s a dangerous idea in a democracy where legitimacy is derived from the people. It is just as wrong as if trump were to not accept the results because of “election fraud” or what have you. Can we accept that people that’s what people wanted? And if we want to change that, then talk to voters instead of blaming the news: people share articles they are inclined to agree with anyways, and confirmation bias means nobody will fact check their own opinions.

This always rubbed me the wrong way. To say that the election was hacked implies that people were manipulated to do the "wrong thing" instead of the "right thing". To debate on that level seems extremely anti democratic, as it inadvertently leads to either the assertion, that people are to stupid and irresponsible to have a say in their future or to have the access to information restricted, to make sure people dont respond to the information by doing the "wrong thing". In both cases you have a higher authority decide what is best for people as they are to irresponsible to decide for themselves.

Facebook is an "attractive nuisance" that they have failed to sufficiently secure and monitor, the same as if they left their hot tub uncovered and unlocked, and a neighbor kid climbed the fence and drowned.

Victim? No, neighborhood menace.

You think that because it’s taken the senate several years to publish a report that this is in some way unusual? Really?

I watched Apple stock for years and it definitely went through periods where it couldn’t get a lucky break to save it’s life despite being the most profitable company.

Theranos was founded 15 years ago

Fuck Axios. If you're behind a VPN they won't let you visit their site.

To Axios: No, I won't let you follow me all around the web and I won't give you any of my info. And yes, I will call you out for trying to exchange my privacy over your content. Fuck you.

Also screw news sites that update your history as you go down. No, me scrolling isn't me wanting to read another article.

I'm behind a VPN and can access it with no problems. If we're at it, fuck Amazon as everything AWS/Amazon related filters my VPN.

I can access this story using PIA.

I recently discovered Axios, and they are an absolute breath of fresh air. They get to the point, they don't editorialize headlines, they don't fill their article with a bunch of useless opinion and pontification from a subject-matter-non-expert.

If they need to serve me targeted ads to fund their operation, by all means.

The article itself missed some of the meat within the senate report. Just over being used to influence black voters is confusing for why they would boycott them over it when essentially any black focused media could be targeted - even lacking any lies, including of omission could be effective.

Doing nothing about voter suppression efforts however - yeah I can see why they would be mad about that given the history of stuff like 'going to vote when you have an unpaid parking ticket can result in being arrested and having your children taken away from you' manipulations.

Here is an article containing the two reports commissioned by the Senate: https://www.axios.com/senate-reports-russian-interference-20... .

The press and influence groups have turned hard on Facebook because the realization has sunk in that Facebook is in a competition to the death with them. Who needs the NAACP when social media campaigns like #BlackLivesMatter catch on far faster and spread far further than any media campaign devised and executed by NAACP? And the media is a willing accomplice in going after Facebook, a company who is clearly looking to become a "trusted news source" and media outlet in their own right.

That doesn’t make any sense. Facebook is just one social media platform. Nobody thinks social media or viral content will disappear if Facebook dies, so they’re not going to purposefully waste resources trying to kill it. The media is happy to target Facebook because targeting Facebook is a profitable move to grab attention.

The current meme is that $100K in ads on Facebook swung a Presidential election. If that's true, why spend a billion on traditional media nationwide? No, social media won't go away if Facebook goes away but the media have collectively begun waging war on Facebook because they've woken up to the reality that Facebook wants to completely take over, not just infringe upon, their turf. Do a quick search for alternative media outlets who publish -- including regularly scheduled live streams -- on Facebook. This is an existential threat to traditional media.

Those allegations are pretty serious. I am curious why the NAACP isn't calling for an all out boycott, rather than just a one day boycott.

Because all of the activists out there use FB, so they wouldn't know how to organize people without it.

It's hard to find an alternative that's discoverable. Planning happens through Facebook groups and demonstrations are events. The friction is low - it's easy to invite people and everyone already has accounts - and events are discoverable and even suggested.

What's my alternative? Convincing all my friends to switch to Mastodon and check it regularly? and getting them to convince their friends? Does Mastodon even have events? Some of them only have have phones; is it simple to get them registered and using the app? Facebook is simply too entrenched.

They could launch a minority-owned social media company.

The NAACP is an advocacy group, not a tech company. Don't you think it's ethical for Facebook to change here?

that does not sound like a realistic course of action for a resource constrained group whose primary mission is not technology development.

a minority group should not have to deal primarily with people in that group just to be treated fairly while making their way in society.

You could even say it's separate but equal.

Apologies for not taking Poe's law into account, but it takes a serious lack of self-awareness to suggest that the organization responsible for the integration of the American public sphere should self-segregate.

The comment you replied to didn't say anything about segregation. And don't say it was implied. Plenty of people of all races would be happier using a social network where the founders care significantly about discrimination.

Or, we could have all social networks legally mandated to care about discrimination using the power of law and punitive fines. There's no reason to let the existing ones carry on as is.

Historically black colleges were an alternative to colleges that discriminated, but that didn't make them a solution for discrimination in education.

Yes, but minority businesses are a solution for a lack of minority leaders in business.

There are articles mind you about how a lack of diversity in product testing meant that some recognition apps work better with some ethnicities than others, this may seem silly, but a minority owned company would be better able to serve minorities precisely because they understand the minority experience.

The phrase "separate but equal" is a literal reference to segregation.

You're misreading. There are two comments in a row by bobthepanda. The accusation is that ryacko's comment was suggesting segregation. That's what I disagreed with.

my guess is that they're trying to appeal to a broader audience by making the call-to-action less "costly" to users.

The fact is that the general public won't care about any of this because the utility of these platforms is worth far more to them than the scandals. I really hate that this is the truth, but almost every time I talk about this with someone who still uses Facebook, they hesitate to even think about deleting their account because of the FOMO.

They forgot to boycott WhatsApp.

Anyway, do you know what Facebook did here? The article only mentions Russia doing something.

It links to another article that articulates it more.

Here is the other article: https://www.axios.com/senate-reports-russian-interference-20... .

I read the linked article and it articulates nothing. It has info about Russia, but nothing about what Facebook did wrong.

Facebook created itself, allowing Russia to use it to do bad stuff.

I don't get this concept of returning money.

If you disagree with someone KEEP their money!

IF Satan himself gives you $1M just keep it and use it for something good.

If you give it back he's just going to use it for something evil. At least you're using it for something good.

I mean there's the argument that now satan can now claim that he supports your non-profit but I think you can do more good than the bad...

Clearly you don't understand the concept of social signalling.

If they keep the money (even if they donate to a good cause), it allows adversarial PACs and organizations to make claims like "NAACP is a hypocritical organization for taking this money from Facebook". These will be more costly in PR to counter than the $1mm donation, and ultimately harm their cause.

In this situation, the only appropriate action is to give the money back, or not accept it in the first place.

I think this is an excessively cynical interpretation: sometimes people and organizations just return money because they think it's ill-begotten, not because they've calculated that keeping the money will either harm their reputation or cost them more than it's actually worth.

In a sense, making a public Twitter post, blog post, and hash-tag movement is leveraging that donation, even more than it's monetary worth, to advance the NAACP's own incentives.

So in that sense, they did indeed take advantage of the donation, not in the first-order monetary sense, but with the resulting publicity and press that probably surpasses the donation's intrinsic value.

Pretty good move on there part to be honest. I wonder what would've been the public outcome of them re-donating that amount instead to one of them "Soros-funded" anti-Facebook organizations as a "screw you".

> I don't get this concept of returning money.

Some people think differently about this than you do. Some see accepting Satan's money as endorsing Satan.

Becuase they aren't actually giving away money, they are buying influence / brand stature.

This is disingenuous. The Obama campaign had massive data access from Facebook in 2012, but the outcry doesn't happen until the “other guy” wins?

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-...

If Hillary Clinton would have won, would this even be a story? It seems that outrage is directly proportional to how much the “correct” side benefits as opposed to the principles being espoused.

Also regarding NAACP, I remember a discussion on the efficiency of orgs whose mandate is to fix a particular issue, and whose existence is linked to the continued existence of the issue, leading to continually redefining the issue/moving the goalposts/changing the scope to stay relevant.

The "correct" side is defined by the principles espoused. It's impossible to honestly not conflate the two. This is not about political fairness as though every political party is entitled to rule equally independent of what their platform is.

Deceit is the Republican Party's brand. Of course there will be an outcry if they win under that banner. Nobody would care if they lost under it.

Why is deceit the republican brand? Seems like a fairly partisan statement.

Any statement other than "all parties are identical" is partisan. It's not a problem to say that they stand for different things. That's the whole point of them.

Deceit is the Republican Brand for the same reason the color red and elephants are the Republican Brand: they regularly use it to identify themselves.

I’m not even republican but that seems like an insane statement, for reasonable interpretations of “deceit” and “represents”. Like, is this on their website or are you labeling it? To be charitable let’s say you’re reading between the lines.

Is this like people claiming the democrats stand for “welfare queens and social decay”?

Insane is an overstatement, don't you think?

Let's not nitpick vocabulary and miss the point. If Clinton won the election using Facebook's data, Republicans (who see democrats as deceitful) would be outraged at that deception leading to an election win. So the idea that this is a Democrat-driven manufactured partisan outrage is misleading -- it is outrage based on the perceived unfairness of using deceit to win elections.

You don't need to read between the lines to see Republicans as deceitful. Trump (and pretty much his whole campaign team apparently) have been lying nearly constantly for the last two years. That's why it's their brand: the deceitful in a very public way. You don't have to read between the lines. It's written right on the lines. If you're instead looking for the truth to be dictated by their website or something, I don't know what to tell you.

It’s such an insane position too because underneath is a paternalistic assumption that people don’t know what’s best for them. This is not the way to win hearts and minds! It seems to me almost as insane as the birther movement when Obama was president: primarily motivated by political angst, and not really effective at convincing the other voters.

Is the NAACP relevant in 2018?

Also why is Facebook donating to an openly-biased organisation? Seems weird from my (European) point of view :/

Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yes, the NAACP is still relevant in 2018 because the US still has problems with racism in 2018.

We do, but it’s a broader problem than simply “minorities incur racism”. Racism manifests in all directions and while it’s valid to have support for minorities, it is nonetheless divisive that our society only takes racism seriously in one direction. All humans face turmoil and struggle because of societal implications, racism simply being one of many. It’s not that the NAACP is wrong or pointless to exist, the problem is that as a society we should try to alleviate the suffering and injustice for all humans rather than grouping people by the millions and thinking that that macroscopic approach is going to solve our problems.

> We do, but it’s a broader problem than simply “minorities incur racism”. Racism manifests in all directions and while it’s valid to have support for minorities, it is nonetheless divisive that our society only takes racism seriously in one direction.

this implies to me that you believe racism against white people is as much of a problem as racism against minorities. i think this is an absurd claim to make, and i think there is ample concrete evidence in the form of both statistics and anecdotes that shows that racism is much worse for people of color (and yes, in particular, black people).

racism against white people is not a serious problem. at this point in our history, we need no organized effort to combat it.

> All humans face turmoil and struggle because of societal implications, racism simply being one of many.

i don't see how this implies that we should not specifically fight racism. should all problem solving be labeled at only the most general level? should we not have organizations dedicated to fighting racism against minorities because it's only one of the many problems a human might face in the world?

As a white person who has been the direct target of racism - physical and emotional abuse, systemic oppression, social isolation, etc, I hope you can understand that what you are saying is very painful to me. You say that because the suffering of people like me is a minority case (the irony), that my desires for all humans who have been wronged to receive support are negligible. I can tell you that writing this comes at no small expense to my mental state. I have lived with the pain that you would likely attribute to a minority. In fact for much of my life I was a minority.

I won’t compare my severity to others, only acknowledge it exists and that it has devastated my life to this point in various ways. I cannot trust society. I cannot trust my partners. I cannot trust my bosses and coworkers (who knows, maybe that’s a perk). I lose many relationships with people I deeply care about because I grew up having to protect myself, and that meant never allowing myself to grow attached to someone less they turn on me too.

I’m not writing this to you to convince you to change your mind. I’ve learned long ago that people who can’t conceive of white people being victims of racism, and who refuse to acknowledge their needs, are not going to change their minds. They will only dig and dig until the white victim is broken enough to not voice their concerns. At least, that has been my overwhelming experience. From strangers to friends to romantic partners. Everyone who can’t entertain these thoughts and who immediately jump to “where’s your evidence? White people aren’t victims!” - they don’t want a conversation. They want to validate their long held beliefs about how racism “really works”.

I don’t write this for you, I write this as a form of catharsis to myself and to hope that I can be strong enough to improve my situation and help others who are marginalized but rejected. I have cried the entirety of writing this. Having this relentless pressure for defending the idea that whites are the victims of racism too is agony.

You claim “Racism against white people is not a serious problem”. Every time I have to fight this I relive those experiences. Every time I have to go back to those memories to articulate myself, it awakens that pain. But I won’t stop talking about this pain because stopping means that racism against white victims, the disregard and disbelief of their struggle, will continue unchecked and likely grow.

That is not acceptable. Racism in any form is not acceptable. All humans deserve a fair and healthy life. And there’s no fucking reason that in the age of big data and globalized computational efforts that we can’t do better than lumping people into groups of tens of millions and saying “well that’s all the better resolution we can get”. It’s irresponsible. It’s evil. And it’s so terrible that that is the world we have decided is acceptable. Care about all humans. Not just the ones that make you feel good to care about.

Yes, discrimination against whites exists.

I got pulled over by Chicago Housing Authority close to 20 years ago. Austensibly for not using my turn signal while changing lanes, after I watched the same CHA vehicle run a red light without signals.

White kid, out of state plates on his way to cram & take a final his senior year at a Southside university. Only time I've been written a ticket by one officer while the 2 other in the CHA van apologized. I was threatened with arrest on campus! Why? For refusing to answer where I work, which they have business knowing, anyway, and certainly not pertittent to a minor traffic violation.

Also, when they pulled me over...yeah, my signal was still on.

I’m sorry that happened. It’s horrible to be a target of the system. It’s doubly painful when no one will believe or appreciate what happened, or even flat out deny it happened. Dissonance is a hell of a drug.

Sorry to hear about your situation, but know that you aren't alone. A good friend of mine grew up as a white kid in a predominantly black neighborhood, and he was the victim of unbelievable racism. He was bullied mercilessly in school, and was called racial slurs all the time. He tried to fit in and so tried to dress and talk like his black associates, but he was mocked and ridiculed for that too, and told to stop dressing/acting black. They called him a name that is a portmanteau of "white" and the "n-word." He got beat up quite often as well.

So yes, racism against whites is certainly possible, and I agree it takes a very closed-minded person to think that it doesn't happen, just because they haven't seen it.

Thank you for your words. That sounds so familiar. You can’t be white because that’s the “problem”. You try to fit in and that’s another problem. On and on. And now of course as an adult you fit into nothing, because so few people get your perspective. And to make the salt in the wound even more painful, society at large seems to rather enjoy mocking whites/refusing to accept their struggle. It feels like the nation at large has joined in with the bullies of the past to keep the pain going.

But thank you. I hope your friend is finding their way in life. I hope you are having a decent time yourself.

I'm sorry about what you had to go through, and it should be taken seriously.

But that doesn't mean it's more productive to frame racism as an 'everyone' problem. It's primarily a directional problem, and attacking the imbalance helps many cases like yours too. Taking away discrimination lets people focus less on us-vs-them.

A generic "don't be shitty to people" is a correct message but not a compelling one. It doesn't help people very much.

How exactly does helping one group while ignoring another help the other? Please, I’d like to understand logistically how that works. I don’t see it. I think you are defending a flawed idea.

I never said “don’t be shitty to people” is the solution, any more than the NAACP used “don’t be shitty to colored people” as their solution. You’re being reductionist to ignore the reality and refuse an approach that helps everyone instead of just some.

It's harder to solve a problem if you ignore the typical case while shaping your plan. And that's what it means to be completely unbiased in how you say racism is bad.

> How exactly does helping one group while ignoring another help the other? Please, I’d like to understand logistically how that works. I don’t see it. I think you are defending a flawed idea.

If racism stopped being a daily fact of life for the people that hurt you, I really think they would have hurt you a lot less.

So you have nothing to validate your claims. You can’t help but to reject any vision that you don’t understand because you know how racism “really works”, and you aren’t willing to have a discussion of real problems. Enjoy living in your bubble, ignoring the suffering of so many just because they aren’t the ones that you believe to be the victims. If there were only people like you in the world, we’d still have slavery and women still wouldn’t vote. Maybe some day you’ll be able to understand that.

You don’t know the “typical case.” No one does. We can’t. We don’t have the data. You’re making assumptions about what racism “really is”. Racism occurs on a personal basis. Anyone can be a victim to it. And no ones victimhood can nor should be waved off from an outsider who doesn’t understand, or equally who’s willing to say “nah doesn’t count.”

And your last paragraph you dare to insinuate that my suffering, or more to the point I’m making - other people who’s suffering is similar to mine - is just solved by helping those who inflicted this upon me. Well if that’s the case, and under your view minorities suffer at the hands of whites, it only makes sense that since whites are at the top of this hierarchy that we ought to just help whites out because then everything else in the chain follows! We help whites with whatever causes them to inflict pain on the minorities, and then the minorities will be saved as well as the victims of the minorities.

But I bet you don’t see it that way. I bet this logic of “disregard whites” is going to be defended no matter what mental gymnastics it requires. No matter how I apply your own logic against itself, I bet you’ll come to the same conclusion and you’ll still try to convince me that helping all humans who suffer is impossible or untenable or even just down right immoral.

I’ve lived with people telling me this all my life. From my oppressors to privileged folks who have never experienced an ounce of racism in their life - they all tell me my struggles don’t matter and only the people that they consider to be victims matter. It’s sad. It’s sad that the same propaganda that led us to chaining up blacks and suppressing the rights of women and minorities is still alive and well. It’s sad that we can’t seem to learn this lesson. But this is what humans are. Our dissonance masks reality from us. We allow suffering for our own convenience. And that probably won’t ever change.

"Anyone can be a victim" is completely true. But not anyone is equally likely to be a victim. In the US, the percentage of white racism victims is quite small.

> If there were only people like you in the world, we’d still have slavery and women still wouldn’t vote.

That's the opposite of focusing on the group where the largest percent is affected. I can't fathom what you think my argument is if you reach that conclusion.

> We help whites with whatever causes them to inflict pain on the minorities, and then the minorities will be saved as well as the victims of the minorities.

So we remove the imbalance of power and correct the idea that there are inherent differences between the groups? Sure!

Note that this is the same as my original plan.

> to convince me that helping all humans who suffer is impossible or untenable or even just down right immoral

It's worth trying, but you need a focused message, and you need to acknowledge that different groups have different concentrations of suffering. Lest you become an "all lives matter" proponent who is saying something technically true but with a subtext that black shootings by police aren't an issue worth fighting over.

> racism against white people is not a serious problem. at this point in our history, we need no organized effort to combat it.

That's an incredibly racist thing to say. Just because white society created modern civilisation you can't be racist against whites?

Just the idea that somehow a homeless white crack addict can be kicked around by a black businessman is only racist when the homeless man hits back its literal race supremacy.

You’re right. And the fact that you’re being downvoted for making this astute observation really shows is how pervasive racism against whites has become. The left laughs when you try to say the internet has a liberal bias, but if the statement “racism against whites isn’t a serious problem” gets upvotes and an argument against that gets downvoted - nothing more needs to be said.

And frankly what more should we say? People have picked their beliefs. And the overwhelming majority seems to be racism means whites harm blacks. They can’t or won’t accept racism in any other form. I don’t think we can do much to convince them at this point.

Fairness for all humans, regardless of race, gender, etc. That’s all we’re asking. And somehow. Somehow. That’s a problem for the majority of people.

From the second paragraph of the Wikipedia page on the NAACP [0]:

Its mission in the 21st century is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination."

It looks like all directions are covered. That the NAACP continues to work with the community of people it originally started to assist and advocate only speaks to the amount of inequality that remains in areas such as interactions involving law enforcement, voter suppression, and lack of economic opportunities.

Can you please give examples? The controversial one that comes to mind is affirmative action in college admissions. Another one might be diversity and inclusion groups / unconscious bias training in some companies, but I never heard any specific reasons behind the disapproval beyond inexplicable dislike.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP

Well for one we can both hopefully agree that a mission statement doesn’t have to reflect the actions and intentions of an organization. So to cite that as evidence that “all directions are covered” is not valid. Can you show me examples in which the NAACP has benefited racial oppression of whites to support their mission statement?

College admissions as you point out are something that can harm marginalized white people, in the sense that there are finite resources in our society. Taking opportunities from one marginalized group to give to another doesn’t move us forward as a whole, it simply shifts where the injustice is. You can abstract this a bit and find other examples with the same pattern.

However, this isn’t the intention of my comment per se. The broader point is that focusing on one group and ignoring the others is the problem. Shifting around our agony while we have massive wealth/power inequality is sidestepping the real issue at hand - we have a society in which suffering for the unequal benefit of others is inevitable. Maybe today it’s more on minorities. Maybe tomorrow we switch gears and whites are the greatest to suffer. Choose your linchpin, it doesn’t matter - the point is we need to support all humans. I’d say not even just our own country, but literally create a realistic opportunity for all humans in the world to be able to live within the comfort and privilege that our collective accomplishments have to offer.

As long as we keep to our tribal ways of deciding that this group or that group deserves more, we are doomed to swing on this never ending pendulum.

A good portion of modern day activism does take this "macro" approach by extending the scope of activities further and further for those disadvantaged. There will always be a focus on those more disadvantaged groups, firstly because of the immediacy of their problems, and secondly because of the fact that it's hard to get people to share the same set of aims about society as a whole.

In the second half of the 20th century, many (most?) of the movements for anti-racism were also linked with feminist (gender) and socialist (class, or from another angle, your macroscopic vision) movements, and nowadays most such movements are intersectional anyway. I think that's a good thing, while there are good critiques of intersectionalism, even the critiques favour approaches that leverage immediacy and universality.

It's an advocacy group for a disadvantaged minority. Which is still disadvantaged and still discriminated against, so yes, it's still relevant.

And yeah it's biased, it's an advocacy group. Might as well complain about donations to women's rights groups (which companies in Europe make ALL THE TIME).

What organisation or person is not biased?

Sometimes bias is good. If you have two people - one is suffering (from forces outside their control ie society) and one is doing well, it makes sense to bias aid towards the one suffering. Our society creates winners and losers, and often the terms which determine that outcome really aren’t fair or possibly are just straight up counterproductive (we tend to reward sociopathic behavior for example).

That said, I think there can be a more wholistic approach to solving these problems. Instead of saying “x group has problems so we need to focus support for them” it’s maybe better to say “people in x situation have problems so we need to focus support for them”. I think to evaluate each human as the sum of their situations, rather than a lazier approach of what group they belong to, would be a more effective approach to truly solving societal inequality.

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