Facebook and Google pressured EU experts to soften fake news regulations
opendemocracy.net
opendemocracy.net
I hope young people who are familiar with "fake news" but not necessarily as familiar with the history of propaganda and censorship will study that history.
The big issue is there is enthusiasm for censorship, and the problem with censorship is who gets to decide what is real information and what is fake. The interests with the most power will have more control over information as censorship increases.
Because the same power that is supposedly only used to suppress propaganda from some other country is used to suppress internal dissent or criticism.
This is actually very dangerous for multiple reasons. One big reason is that propaganda (internal to the country, i.e. by the same people who will be deciding what is fake news) is usually critical in terms of jump-starting and maintaining enthusiasm for wars.
1° detect abuse, propaganda and "fake news" 2° remove it automatically.
So they're handed altogether the power of police, jury and executioner. They're already much too powerful, and they were just given much more power for free. What will become of free speech under these conditions? Do you think Twitter will flag Macron's tweets when he spouts out blatant lies, which is actually quite often?
Not saying I agree or disagree, just playing devil's advocate.
They just have the masses of users.
If both Facebook and Google were to disappear business would just use whatever replaces them. The companies aren't essential. The service they provide is. The good news is that service can be provided by basically any business. It's just a problem concentration/monopoly that they're the current focus.
But today, people need Facebook because businesses (and other people) use Facebook and businesses need Facebook because people use Facebook. Facebook is completely replaceable for society, but that doesn't make it less critical for many individuals.
Reading this thread makes me think that some want FB to be a critical component simply because it makes a good premise for the argument of shutting FB down.
Nobody needs electricity either. The Amish get by without and I wouldn't be surprised if they had better mental health than us.
Claiming nobody needs Facebook is just delusional.
Claiming that Facebook is comparable to ELECTRICITY is delusional. Facebook is a website, it is not critical national infrastructure that underpins literally every economic activity in the country lol.
Also, claiming that electricity is "critical" is delusional because agriculture is even more important.
Brilliant retort. Next you'll compare Twitter to health insurance I bet.
> If you're incapable of understanding the comparison, please don't embarrass yourself and stop shouting.
I understand the comparison just fine, what's embarrassing is the absurdity of the comparison. The burden of proof is on you to explain why a fundamental lynchpin of our economy for 150 years is comparable in necessity to a single social media website.
The reason I think it is important is that FB and a few other websites are the new public square and are a major driver of social trends. Curation of this platform could be what kills them, if some people realise they can only speak corporate-friendly speech.
"Some kind of comparison" can be made between literally any two things; that is not in dispute. When I say "they cannot be compared" I don't mean that they are literally incomparable, I mean that the comparison is wildly inapt because the two things are so fundamentally different in terms of value, scale and necessity.
> FB and a few other websites are the new public square and are a major driver of social trends.
FB is not a public square, it's a publishing platform exclusively owned and funded by a corporation. Just because Facebook is popular doesn't mean it's a public square. Don't misunderstand, I definitely believe that Facebook needs to be regulated (primarily around privacy, tracking, and user-data rights), but not on the basis that people need to use or are entitled to use Facebook; this is demonstrably false. If you were to shut down the electrical grid tomorrow, hundreds of thousands would be dead within 24 hours, if you were to shut off Facebook tomorrow, it would be a moderate inconvenience to a lot of people but everyone would survive and most would move on within a month.
> a major driver of social trend
So is HBO; just because a company wields powerful social influence doesn't mean we need to regulate their platform.
> Curation of this platform could be what kills them, if some people realise they can only speak corporate-friendly speech.
So let them die? Facebook is a business and if they make bad business decisions they should feel the consequences. What's the problem?
1. Facebook is not necessary because it's owned by a private corporation. This argument just doesn't make sense.
2. Facebook is not necessary because it's correlated with worse mental health. Even if we assume that there is indeed a correlation and it's Facebook that tends to cause bad mental health, it does not mean that Facebook is bad for the mental health of everyone in every situation.
3. Or do you have higher standards for "need"? If by "need" you mean that it's impossible to live without Facebook: Same for electricity. If you just mean that it doesn't cross your personal threshold of what constitutes "need", then you're of course right, but why should anyone care?
4. Another way to understand your post is that Facebook is not necessary (in general, not for every single human) because it tends to worsen mental health. That would mean that if (strict) Amish have better mental health than us, electricity is not critical. But it is.
I didn't say it's not necessary because it's owned by a private corporation, I described its private ownership status to emphasize the fact that Facebook is private property that users don't pay for, not something that anyone is entitled to use. I'll accept that my wording did not communicate that idea clearly.
> Even if we assume that there is indeed a correlation and it's Facebook that tends to cause bad mental health, it does not mean that Facebook is bad for the mental health of everyone in every situation.
You are correct. My point is to illustrate the commonly accepted understanding within our society that time spent on social media is generally considered unproductive and correlates (not necessarily causes) mental health problems; your reasoning is akin to suggesting that Fortnite is a necessity because its the most popular online game in the world. It's not.
> Or do you have higher standards for "need"? If by "need" you mean that it's impossible to live without Facebook: Same for electricity. If you just mean that it doesn't cross your personal threshold of what constitutes "need", then you're of course right, but why should anyone care?
Sigh. So you really are going to make me explain why "electricity" is a need but "Facebook" isn't. I'll use the same example I used down thread. If you were to shut down the electrical grid tomorrow, hundreds of thousands would be dead within 24 hours, if you were to shut off Facebook tomorrow, it would be a moderate inconvenience to a lot of people but everyone would survive and most would move on within a month. That's why one is a "need" (electricity) and the other isn't (social media website).
Okay. But being necessary and being private property are two independent properties. Which is a problem because it means that some people must use something they aren't allowed to use.
> If you were to shut down the electrical grid tomorrow, hundreds of thousands would be dead within 24 hours, if you were to shut off Facebook tomorrow, it would be a moderate inconvenience to a lot of people but everyone would survive and most would move on within a month.
I basically agree. Society needs the services Facebook provides. But it does not need Facebook because it could trivially shut it down and use a replacement instead.
But individuals can't. When they need a communications platform, they need the communications platform other people use. Which is Facebook.
I'd love to shut down Facebook, but unfortunately, I can't.
Well the crux of my argument is that they don't need Facebook, thus it is not a problem. Not having access to Facebook might be very inconvenient, but nobody has a right to convenience. At the end of the day you can't prevent Facebook from regulating the use of its own private property. Facebook users don't pay fees to keep the network running so I can't fathom any sane regulation that could prevent Facebook from arbitrarily limiting user access to their network except where it relates to the user's control of their own personal data.
> individuals can't. When they need a communications platform, they need the communications platform other people use. Which is Facebook.
Or GSM, or SMS, or Email, or iMessage, or Snapchat, or WhatsApp, or Skype, or Telegram, or KiK, or Hangouts, or Slack, or Discord, or IRC or... you get the point. The idea that Facebook is the only option for communication is very clearly not true.
2.3 billion people use Facebook. Many of them say they need Facebook. Many of them use Facebook even though they don't like it -- why would someone do that unless they must? Your claim that no one needs Facebook is not just wrong, it's absurd.
> Not having access to Facebook might be very inconvenient, but nobody has a right to convenience. At the end of the day you can't prevent Facebook from regulating the use of its own private property.
Something doesn't have to be a right to be desirable. And nobody has a right to private property.
> Facebook users don't pay fees to keep the network running so I can't fathom any sane regulation that could prevent Facebook from arbitrarily limiting user access to their network except where it relates to the user's control of their own personal data.
I can't fathom any regulation more insane than letting His Autocratic Majesty Mark "Dumb Fucks" I. of Zuckerberg do whatever he wants with his kingdom.
> The idea that Facebook is the only option for communication is very clearly not true.
Sometimes it is and you don't have a choice. Thus whether Facebook is a monopoly is merely a semantic question: The issue with monopolies is that individuals cannot chose. The issue with Facebook is the same, so it should be treated the same.
A big scary number, but you haven't demonstrated the logical connection between "very popular" and "necessity".
> Many of them say they need Facebook
So what?
> Many of them use Facebook even though they don't like it -- why would someone do that unless they must
This argument doesn't make sense. There are many things in life that one does not need to do, and one does not want to do, but one does anyway because it serves some other purpose. I don't need to wash the dishes, I don't want to wash the dishes, but I still do it because I prefer not to generate a trash-pile of disposable plates and utensil with every meal.
> Something doesn't have to be a right to be desirable
What's your point? Convenience is obviously desirable but it's not something society owes you.
> And nobody has a right to private property.
We can agree to disagree on the value of property rights but it's a legally recognized right even if you don't personally recognize it.
> letting His Autocratic Majesty Mark "Dumb Fucks" I. of Zuckerberg do whatever he wants.
I am just going to ignore this obvious strawman argument.
> The issue with monopolies is that individuals cannot chose.
But they can choose. There are hundreds of choices. The argument that not all social networks contain all people does not demonstrate that Facebook is a monopoly. If you have a hypothetical acquaintance who doesn't have a phone or an email and only uses Facebook to communicate that is their prerogative and has absolutely nothing to do with Facebook. That scenario would be identical on literally any platform regardless of how many total users are on the platform.
> A big scary number, but you haven't demonstrated the logical connection between "very popular" and "necessity".
Which is why I didn't stop writing after those 5 words.
> So what?
Have you ever considered that other people may know more about their own lives than you do?
> What's your point? Convenience is obviously desirable but it's not something society owes you.
It's a factor when considering what to do with Facebook.
> I don't want to wash the dishes, but I still do it because I prefer not to generate a trash-pile of disposable plates and utensil with every meal.
That means you need to wash the dishes. If we restrict "need" to things where you have no choice, all you need to do is breathe. I don't want to eat, but I still do it because I prefer not to starve.
> it's a legally recognized right
True, but not an argument.
> The argument that not all social networks contain all people does not demonstrate that Facebook is a monopoly.
Which is, as I wrote, irrelevant.
I don't see that explanation anywhere. Something being popular does not mean you need it; that should be pretty obvious. If you need something then it is necessary regardless of how popular it is.
> Have you ever considered that other people may know more about their own lives than you do?
That's a nice platitude but not an explanation for why someone saying they need something means that they actually need it. A pothead might claim to need weed but that doesn't mean society should have an obligation to accommodate him based on the justification that "people may know more about their own lives than you do"
> It's a factor when considering what to do with Facebook.
It's not a factor because convenience is not something you are owed.
> That means you need to wash the dishes. If we restrict "need" to things where you have no choice, all you need to do is breathe. I don't want to eat, but I still do it because I prefer not to starve.
Damn that is some disingenuous semantic foolishness. I don't need to do the dishes because I could buy a box of paper plates instead which is a decision that will not at all impact my health or livelihood. I need to eat because the needs that underpin survival are the default assumptions made by an intellectually honest individual when the term "need" is used. When I say need I mean a physiological or psychological requirement for the well-being of an organism.
> True, but not an argument.
So what are you saying? An individual's right to access Facebook is more fundamental than Facebook's right to operate their computers in a manner that is consistent with their prerogatives?
If you don't see an explanation anywhere, it's because you don't want to see it. I have written like half a dozen.
> That's a nice platitude but not an explanation for why someone saying they need something means that they actually need it.
Ditto
> It's not a factor because convenience is not something you are owed.
Non sequitur
> I need to eat because the needs that underpin survival are the default assumptions made by an intellectually honest individual when the term "need" is used. When I say need I mean a physiological or psychological requirement for the well-being of an organism.
That's two contradictory definitions, survival and well-being is not the same. Even under this definition, you still haven't provided the extraordinary proof necessary for the extraordinary claim that nobody needs Facebook. You've merely asserted it – somehow believing that your assertions about the lifes of people you don't know are more accurate than what these people believe.
> An individual's right to access Facebook is more fundamental than Facebook's right to operate their computers in a manner that is consistent with their prerogatives?
Facebook does not have any rights to begin with. Like all companies, its only legitimate purpose is to serve the public – which is why the convenience of the many trumps the desire of one Mr. Zuckerberg to control Facebook.
A. Facebook is a necessity comparable to electricity.
B. A "need" is anything that an individual claims they need.
C. Facebook has no property rights or any other rights.
Am I misunderstanding anything?
It also doesn't tell us where the need in question ranks on the Maslow Hierarchy, but those at top are still needs.
Within seconds of Facebook shutting down millions of people will have already migrated to something else that serves the same purpose. Then ten years later people will be saying things like, "Remember Facebook?" "Facebook?! Pfft! I remember MySpace!"
No. If you cannot use another method of communication you cannot use another method of communication. Even if you dislike the obvious consequences: Facebook, like all other monopolies, cannot remain private property, much less unregulated.
To different groups of people. That makes them less substitutable than wood and oil. It's possible to create oil from wood, it's possible to build a car that runs on wood, you cannot substitute on human for another.
> If everyone I know uses Discord to communicate then Facebook is as good as "wood" to Discord's "oil".
That applies to essentially no one. And if you mean that everyone you know is on Discord but not on Facebook: That's an argument for regulating Discord, not against regulating Facebook.
So does the scenario where the only viable way to communicate is to use Facebook. Send an e-mail or make a phone call. Facebook is a trivial and unimportant distraction at best and is not the primary form of communication for the vast majority of people.
Legally, that is true. I don't think anyone in this conversation or elsewhere is claiming that Facebook is illegally silencing people.
Of course, while you are not entitled to use Facebook, Facebook is, like all businesses regulated by various existing laws in the US, prohibited from denying you service based upon certain protected characteristics. I do not point that out to claim that Facebook is currently denying anyone service based upon those protected characteristics, only to point out that "it's privately owned" is an argument that lost most of its punch many decades ago.
Furthermore, the people being silenced by Facebook are well aware that the people calling for them to be silenced by Facebook and others are heavily in favor of those laws, so when they hear "Facebook is a private company so it can kick you off if it wants" from those people, it comes off to them as being very dishonest, partisan, and malicious.
>The unstated suggestion that lacking access to Facebook is a fundamental barrier to effective communication in our society is untrue.
Lacking access to Facebook is a fundamental barrier to participating in the (large) portion of the public political debate which takes place on Facebook. That is a problem we should be concerned about. We want to ensure people can meaningfully participate in the public political debate, because if they cannot, the alternative is violence.
You're missing my point. I'm saying that it makes no sense to say that Facebook cannot determine who is allowed to access their private property. The users do not pay Facebook for access and thus it is purely a business decision to determine who can and cannot access the site.
> Facebook is, like all businesses regulated by various existing laws in the US, prohibited from denying you service based upon certain protected characteristics
I am not disagreeing with the idea of regulations. If Facebook is running afoul of the law then they should face the consequences, but assuming they are not breaking the law, it should be Facebook's prerogative to ban users because Facebook bears the burden of developing the software and the ongoing costs of running the servers. Why should anyone be allowed to demand access to something that is wholly owned, operated, and funded by Facebook?
> Facebook is a private company so it can kick you off if it wants" from those people, it comes off to them as being very dishonest, partisan, and malicious.
What about it is dishonest or malicious? And how is this a partisan issue in any way? You already pointed out that legally Facebook can kick off any user they want, so are you arguing that the laws should be changed to prevent Facebook from doing so?
> Lacking access to Facebook is a fundamental barrier to participating in the (large) portion of the public political debate which takes place on Facebook
Facebook is a cesspool of memes and fake news, it is not at all relevant in the annals of "public political debate" any more than 4chan. I'm sure you'd say the same thing if 4chan was as popular as Facebook, but my point is that such reasoning is silly. The fundamental nature of Facebook is triviality and the idea that lacking access to Facebook is a precursor to violence is completely unsubstantiated.
What?? That is exactly what anti-discrimination laws do.
>Why should anyone be allowed to demand access to something that is wholly owned, operated, and funded by Facebook?
Because we have decided for cases that other concerns are more important than their private property rights, which are far from being absolute.
>What about it is dishonest or malicious?
The people being deplatformed are, generally speaking, on the right wing. The people calling for right wingers to be deplatformed are, generally speaking, on the left wing. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that the left wing generally supports prohibiting private businesses from discriminating against people on the basis of e.g. sexual orientation, so when left wingers happily use "it's a private business" as an argument to support deplatforming right wingers, that comes off to right wingers as being partisan and phony. Given that speech is one important way in which people advocate for their interests, a partisan attack on the ability of people on the right wing to participate in the public conversation comes across as malicious.
>You already pointed out that legally Facebook can kick off any user they want, so are you arguing that the laws should be changed to prevent Facebook from doing so?
Yes, or regulations rewritten.
>Facebook is a cesspool of memes and fake news, it is not at all relevant in the annals of "public political debate" any more than 4chan.
Its userbase swamps that of 4chan. I'm not sure why memes wouldn't count as participation in the political conversation. They are modern day political slogans, propaganda posters, and political satire. Regardless, as you are probably aware, political campaigns have hugely invested in their social media presence. Are you saying that was all a waste?
>The fundamental nature of Facebook is triviality
I'm not sure why you think that the public political debate has ever been a deep and substantive one for the vast majority of participants. The depth of the conversations does not matter. Most people do not have to attention span for anything other than triviality.
>the idea that lacking access to Facebook is a precursor to violence is completely unsubstantiated.
The idea that lacking access to the public political conversation is a precursor to violence is a very old one, and has been substantiated many, many times.
So what? Does the existence of discrimination laws mean you can never deny service to anybody ever? Obviously not, so if Facebook is not in violation of anti-discrimination laws then why can't they ban people? The purpose of anti-discrimination laws are to prevent discrimination of protected classes, they are not meant to prohibit Facebook from moderating its platform.
> Because we have decided for cases that other concerns are more important than their private property rights, which are far from being absolute.
Once again, so what? There are no absolute legal rights including property rights, that doesn't mean that the logical mechanics of property rights are completely obliterated, I don't see any reasonable justification for why Facebook shouldn't be permitted to exercise their property rights to ban whoever they want, (again, provided the ban does not violate the law), especially because Facebook is a free and non-vital service the use of which is completely optional.
> The people being deplatformed are, generally speaking, on the right wing. The people calling for right wingers to be deplatformed are, generally speaking, on the left wing.
I see. This is a political debate I am uninterested in so I won't bother with it except to say that it is irrelevant to my point. I don't care about who is calling for who to be banned or other trivial dramatics occurring in the Facebook community, my argument is only addressing the nature of Facebook's prerogatives to operate their business.
> I'm not sure why memes wouldn't count as participation in the political conversation.
lol what? They obviously count as conversations, they're just utterly unimportant and not something society should care to ensure is available to the masses. Just because there are a lot of people on the Facebook network doesn't mean that society should guarantee access to a gallery of vapid image macros. There is nothing important about political discussion on Facebook and no user is materially harmed by having their access to Facebook revoked any more than having their HN account banned.
> Regardless, as you are probably aware, political campaigns have hugely invested in their social media presence. Are you saying that was all a waste?
I'm not saying that. Obviously politicians will advertise wherever there are eyeballs. What does that prove except that people use Facebook? Are you suggesting that the law should entitle people free access any medium where political ads are present?
> I'm not sure why you think that the public political debate has ever been a deep and substantive one for the vast majority of participants
I don't. That's exactly my point. It's substantively unimportant, nobody is harmed by not being able to participate in triviality; it's not like you need Facebook to vote, or to contact your senator, or to sit in on city council meetings, or to file a petition and gather signatures or literally anything relevant in the political process (and I'd argue it should be illegal to transition any of those political processes into a platform that doesn't end in .gov)
> The idea that lacking access to the public political conversation is a precursor to violence is a very old one, and has been substantiated many, many times.
You replaced "access to Facebook" with "access to the public political conversation" but lacking access to Facebook is absolutely not even close to the same as lacking access to "the public political conversation"; to suggest otherwise is either dishonest or an admission of ignorance regarding the nature of the political process and how politics work in the U.S and around the world. Yes, political discussion happens on Facebook like it does anywhere people have discussions, but the political discussions on Facebook are wholly unimportant and not something that society needs to ensure is available to the masses.
You should be able to guess what my answer will be here. They should not be allowed to ban people on the basis of their political speech because a large portion of the public political debate currently occurs on Facebook, and people lacking the ability to meaningfully participate in the public political debate is a precursor to real world violence, the avoidance of which is more important than Facebook's private property rights.
>that doesn't mean that the logical mechanics of property rights are completely obliterated
Telling Facebook they can't ban people on the basis of their political speech is not an obliteration of Facebook's property rights.
>they're just utterly unimportant and not something society should care to ensure is available to the masses.
I'm not sure what you mean by unimportant. Do you mean to claim that peoples' opinions cannot be influenced by them? If Facebook allows memes from one side of the political debate, but bans memes from the other side, do you believe that would have no influence on e.g. the outcome of elections?
>There is nothing important about political discussion on Facebook
Are you suggesting that what takes place on Facebook has no ability to influence e.g. the outcome of elections? Why then do politicians invest resources there?
>What does that prove except that people use Facebook?
It proves that Facebook is currently a place where people are influenced by political content.
>nobody is harmed by not being able to participate in triviality
That's absurd on its face. Losing access to Facebook results in losing access to a massive audience, which results in harm to people whose livelihood depends on access to the audience there, such as political commentators that rely on individual donations, e.g. Alex Jones. More broadly, given the obvious fact that political speech is one way in which people advocate for their interests, taking away their ability to meaningfully participate in the political debate reduces their ability to advocate for their interests.
>or to file a petition and gather signatures
If Facebook banned all links to your petition, would that not have a substantial effect on your ability to gather signatures?
>lacking access to Facebook is absolutely not even close to the same as lacking access to "the public political conversation"
Lacking access to Facebook quite obviously reduces a person's ability to meaningfully participate in the public political conversation.
>but the political discussions on Facebook are wholly unimportant
What exactly do you mean by "unimportant"? Tens and tens of millions of people are exposed to political ideas on Facebook, compared to the virtually none that sit in on city council meetings or contact their representatives, and the low numbers of millions soaking up the output of any given corporate media outlet. Do you think that is "unimportant"?
I don't think that, and I don't suggest it is the case in my comment. I do not think Facebook is critical in the sense that if it went down, people would be unable to communicate and assemble. Please read my comment more closely.
"The commons" are not controlled by Facebook; people choose to use Facebook willingly, and wherever people are having conversations so will politics inevitably emerge. If people decided to have conversations on hacker news and reddit instead of Facebook that is where the political discussion would be and there is literally nothing Facebook could do about it. The fact that Facebook does not control the commons is precisely why they work so hard to engineer addictive engagement patterns: if they don't keep people hooked they will go elsewhere because there are hundreds of options and none of them cost the users any money.
> the ability of people to meaningfully participate in the political debate could very easily result in real world violence,
I think most people would agree that the existence of Facebook has done more to increase the potential for violence between opposing groups than reduce it, but even if that wasn't the case, people can still meaningfully participate in political debate without Facebook.
The commons used to be where people gathered. Now people gather on places like Facebook. That's why I put commons in quotes. Facebook controls a significant chunk of the new "commons", and therefore has the ability to shut people out of a significant portion of the public political debate.
>If people decided to have conversations on hacker news and reddit instead of Facebook that is where the political discussion would be and there is literally nothing Facebook could do about it.
Irrelevant to the point I'm making. The fact of the matter is that Facebook is where much of the public political debate takes place.
>people can still meaningfully participate in political debate without Facebook.
They can't participate in the large portion of the political debate that takes place on Facebook if Facebook bans them, so their participation becomes less meaningful. When Twitter also deplatforms them, and Youtube follows suit, they are left with virtually no ability to meaningfully participate.
I've never used Facebook nor heroin however. Both are addictions.
The Signal IM program is also run by a company. Unlike Facebook you could argue that what they're running is infrastructure. They aren't trying to say censor Alex Jones to be more appealing to advertisers.
Facebook is fully within their rights to run their company like that, but they can't expect to also have governments view them a common carrier when they're anything but.
This isn't at all like a newspaper which only has to do that on a few hundred people.
Scale matters!
If they cannot publish Facebook responsibly, they cannot publish it period.
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Exercising editorial control does not make them liable for all content [1]:
Courts have consistently held that exercising traditional editorial functions over user-submitted content, such as deciding whether to publish, remove, or edit material, is immunized under Section 230.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants interactive online services of all types, including blogs, forums, and listservs, broad immunity from tort liability so long as the information at issue is provided by a third party.
See [2] for some examples of online activities that are covered.
[0] https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
[1] http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/immunity-online-publishers-u...
[2] http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/online-activities-covered-se...
The duty to be responsible has nothing to do with legislation.
I have that on any given site I make by default.
Later this week, in European elections, prepare to see a landslide of far-right parties of various racist, xenophobic flavours in all countries. A slippery slope? Looks like an oily slide into chaos indeed.
Facebook has clearly failed to take responsibility to combat fake news, as some of the most serious solutions to the problem pose existential threats to their entire business.
On top of that, we're also seeing high-profile figures and politicians pushing propaganda successfully without the need for censorship (the Obama birtherism conspiracy, the Jade Helm conspiracy, etc.) Whether or not they're willingly doing so is up for debate, but some of the conspiracies being pushed are inflammatory, ridiculous, and damaging to our civil discourse.
The heads of major political parties get to decide what is real information and what is fake now; they don't need censorship to do this.
Look at how many plainly absurd lies this administration has pushed about the most inane things (the inauguration attendance) to the most serious things (Trump dictating the false statement on the June 2016 meeting, etc.)
There's just no longer an incentive to have a good-faith debate on anything.
I don't need a car to get to work. I've got a bicycle and five miles on a bike is nothing. But the car sure as hell makes it easier.
In either case, our discourse continues to suffer. So what choice do we have? Maintain the current system and watch our process devolve slowly, or permit regulation which runs the risk of creating a power vacuum?
Our system suffers in either case. We're talking about damage control at this point; not actually fixing the problem.
What inspired me to learn about it was none other than a youtube video title "Rule From the Shadows: The Psychology of Control". Sure, it sounds like it'd be a conspiracy theory video, but it's far from it, listed all sources, and recommended books which were discussed.
Those books being: The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon, Crystallizing Public Opinion, and Propaganda by Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew.
That video on youtube really changed the way I view the world, especially media and "groups" of people, like antifa, the alt-right, or what have you. When you see the words of Le Bon or Bernays in action, it sends a shiver down your back. The downside being that most people will assume you're crazy or paranoid if you start talking about Bernays or Le Bon.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society." - Edward Bernays
"Monique Goyens – director-general of BEUC, which is also known as The European Consumer Association – is blunter. 'We were blackmailed,' she says. [...]
Facebook’s chief lobbyist, Richard Allan – another member of the expert group – said [...] to another group member: 'He threatened that if we did not stop talking about competition tools, Facebook would stop its support for journalistic and academic projects.'"
> According to Frau-Meigs, independent funding for academics as well as journalists is extremely important. “Google and Facebook are paying these partnerships from their direct marketing arm, not through more neutral foundations,” she says.
This seems to be implying that Facebook and Google are paying these partnerships partly or mainly to coopt the researchers in order to avoid public relations or regulatory issues.
Blackmail implies they were doing something illegal or immoral - extortion implies they were innocent and threatened.
Blackmailing is telling people that you're been doing something illegal or immoral if you don't meet demands. Is the BEUC admitting here that they were doing something illegal or immoral?
99,9% of people understand what she means, even if it isn't the legally correct word. The other 0,01% are pedantics like yourself.
Furthermore there is no evidence that she used this word, the interview might've been in Dutch or French and translated by the authors.
The noun is 'pedants'.
Compromising information could be information of various kinds, not all of that evidence of illegal or immoral deeds.
I’m not sure if this is legal and I think it varies by jurisdiction. For example, in the US I don’t think it’s actually legal to give donations to political offices contingent on them passing certain policies. You can, however, donate freely, imply you favor certain policies, show them more stacks of cash in your future lobbying fund, and wink.
Now the gifts themselves are a conflict of interest so they should never be allowed. Show of EU hands, who wants to outlaw all FB/GOOG gifts?
This is a case of wanting to bite the hand that feeds you and then whine when the hand yanks back the handouts too. Sure FB/GOOG plays a little dirty, but all corps/political states play this game.
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not sure this is true (everywhere or anywhere in particular). A donation has to be a donation, free of stipulations. If you say you intend to give a donation and you say that if you don't get certain policies then you won't give the donation; then its clear that you intend to receive a service for your donation, making it a business transaction (and potentially an illegal one).
As I said before, there are easy ways to accomplish the same thing. You're just not supposed to explicitly say "if you don't give me what I want, the money stops".
Pointless nitpicking and wasting our time.
I don't see a downside.
Hm. It's not immediately clear to me why fake news regulation would require Google and FB to share more information about their business models with the EU.
I also feel that in the wake of a large number of EU fines, laws, decisions etc that specifically attack FB and Google, it's perhaps not unreasonable that there might be some scepticism that the EU would not abuse this information to levy yet further fines.
Some reasonable people might argue that a number of the EU fines have been justified - possibly in isolation I might agree with one or two - but there are also less defensible examples, such as defining "free mobile operating systems" as a market sector separate from all other operating systems and platforms, to allow them to find Google guilty of a monopoly.
I feel like the EU is trying to have it both ways here - it seems unreasonable for the EU to spend so much time attacking big tech firms and then to expect them to welcome further regulation.
The answer is buried in paragraph 28 of the article: advertisement
European Commission... acknowledged the need to improve the scrutiny of advertisement placements
> Last year, for example, the British music industry association UK Music calculated that Google had spent almost €31 million to lobby against a stricter copyright law.
Here is what I found:
https://corporateeurope.org/en/2018/12/copyright-directive-h...
> UK Music simply took the entire lobby budget declared by Google in 2017, €6 million, and added to that the budgets of all the organisations and think tanks it is a member of, declaring that the “The combined value of Google’s indirect lobbying of the EU amounts to €25.5m”.
For example, 1.75m from Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung, which is a think tank closely related to the party of the rapporteur responsible for the copyright directive. If they were engaged in lobbying related to the copyright directive, they most certainly would not align with google's interests. If you take a look at the transparency register (http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/consultation...), you'll find that almost their entire budget for the declared activities comes from two german federal agencies.
That being said, this kind of sponsored opinions is kind what of the EU does. NGOs get grants, EU asks NGOs opinions on legislation. It can all be fare and right but it sure looks like the same.
They are destroying us as a civilization by spreading bullshit and making us believe that the current world is shit.
They pay lip service to regulations when they're faced with public scrutiny or calls to be broken up. But when we actually try to regulate, they reveal how they truly feel.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-says-break-up-not-t...
I don't see why they shouldn't have a right to earn money or should be obligated to hire journalists. That's like saying social media shouldn't be allowed to compete with traditional news media.
Technological change is about disruption and this is just disruption. To oppose it is to oppose technological progress in order to protect incumbents' market shares.
Sorry, that is not correct. That is one of many reasons to oppose technological change. Some technological change introduces undesirable side-effects, like pollution. Can we not oppose that change on the basis of its pollution?
People are trying to disrupt the automobile and trucking industries with autonomous vehicles. If they are in the habit of killing their drivers or pedestrians, can we not raise our hand and say, "Whoa, not so fast, let's make sure they're safe?"
There are many reasons why people might oppose a particular disruptor, it may be that as a side-effect of their opposition that the incumbent is favoured, but that isn't necessarily why they oppose the disruptor, and the disruptor doesn't get a pass on their concerns just because we bow to the almighty God Of Technological Progress.
Addressing people's needs is progress, too.
Social media companies could be allowed to compete with traditional news media, if they were obliged to abide by the same standards, principles and legal regulations that apply to traditional news media companies.
In most EU countries, any newspaper spreading the kind of garbage you see on Facebook could (and probably would) be called to a public hearing in parliament and risk being shut down, and further legal action, if it was proven that it was publishing stories without doing proper due diligence.
Can you give some evidence for this? Because I see media in the EU lying through their teeth sometimes. We all know about the daily mail and its ilk, yet they've existed for many years as news organizations. I've not heard of these kinds of limitations you're talking about.
Do I take it you are in favor of Sci-hub and against Elsevier's efforts to protect its market share?
After all, what could be a greater disruption than using zero-marginal cost data to do an end run around a publisher restricting access to journal articles?
That isn't complaining about corporate influence but about who is winning essentially and sounds a lot like the agenda of angry old media that the world changed on them.
This will only remain an advantage as long as we expect messages to contain verifiable facts.
We are in a transition period right now, and seem to be headed towards a post truth era, one where we will no longer agree upon a set of basic facts about the world, and where everything is merely opinion.
Once this transition is complete, then there will be no such thing as fake news, because all news will have become spin.
In a way, many traditional reputable news organizations are guilty of perpetuating this lack of expectations among readers. It's still common, in this age of hypertext, to see major news organizations publishing stories online that don't have hyperlinks to the source documents. Presumably this is motivated by money; they don't want to send people away from their site, or an old newspaper mentality where hyperlinks didn't exist at all, but it's inexcusable in the modern digital era.
When reputable news organizations neglect to link to source documents, it provides cover for fake news organizations who also don't link to source documents by normalizing the appearance of articles that do not link to sources.
Here is a counterexample, of the NYTs actually doing the right thing: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/supreme-court... In the first sentence you have a hyperlink to the pdf on supremecourt.gov. This should be the standard for modern reporting, but it seems to still be the exception rather than the rule.
On the other hand here you've got a New Yorker article talking about the same SCOTUS decision that contains no hyperlink to supremecourt.gov: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/the-abortion-f... Arguably in this case it's because they're stuck in a print mindset, but frankly I don't think that's a good excuse.
Your positing that its about money might be correct, but for different reasons than you suggest. News and magazine publications often do link to a number of different documents. Many articles published are written pretty quickly and cheaply these days due to the demands of "no paywalls" and advertising that doesn't pay enough.
The situation isn't so black and white.
See: https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html
Wow, that's uncalled for, but moving on.
I actually know a lot of journalists, so I'm familiar with the way they work.
Even though they don't include hyperlinks, most of them go to great lengths to ensure the accuracy of what they write about.
Also it's a bit naive of you to assume every piece of source data has (or even could have) a URI.
While this is not a bad idea, it's not possible for a variety of reasons from the purely technical to the practical.
The reason modern actors are suddenly so upset about it is that the state-media complex in Western countries had, briefly, an unusual amount of control and wherewithal to spread their preferred propaganda thanks to the consolidation of media networks and television.
Go back to the Constitutional Convention and a major concern was rumors spread by ‘designing men’ who were subverting the government, and they had real-world examples there were referring to. Go back to Rome, where fake news sometimes got a lot of people killed, and changed the whole course of history. Go back to the 1940s when the British government spent a lot of time in money on a massive, secret campaign to crush US isolationism in our elections and spread propaganda that would ensure US intervention in WWII.
This is not a new justification for censorship. It’s a very, very old one.
Unlike news providers (who write the stories, and pay the writers) Facebook is giving it's customers a platform to speak from. If they muzzle the story providers, they are muzzling their own customers.
I agree Facebook is part of the puzzle, but it probably has to be approached from a different angle.
Aggressive filtering of what people see in their feeds is not a solution. What do all those able to discern bullshit from factual content have in common? Exercise for the reader as I don't have a definitive answer. A proper education can be thrown away or ignored when convenient; some people just seem to have a good nose for bs. I dunno.
Don't fall for it.