Zuckerberg Leaves Racial Justice Leader Frustrated After Call
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
That's the problem with getting only one side of the story. Maybe he just has a different opinions - he understands them, but he disagrees that it's a problem (or the biggest problem).
Given the unique ability of his technology to magnify and control the distribution of information should we impose greater liabilities if their actions are demonstrably negative?
Well "a problem" is not the same as "a problem for Mark Zuckerberg" and until it is, he's not going to give two shits about it.
That's describing a cartoonishly self-centered attitude.
He's and entitled white kid whose success has only fueled is self importance and disconnect from reality.
People are idiots. Removing the post does nothing to prevent the President from ordering "the shooting" he has indicated he will order. Taking the post down amounts to denying people valuable information they may need to try to protect their lives in this mess.
There is a reason that democracy values a free press. There is a reason that humans have historically developed policies like "Don't shoot the messenger."
It's worse when you can't get the word out that someone with real and serious power to order this to happen is told "Shut up. We don't want to hear from you." It does nothing whatsoever to stop him from ordering in the troops. In fact, it makes it more likely he will do just that in part because it makes it less likely people will get the memo that "If you do x, the consequence is Y, so maybe don't do x."
This is a bullshit complaint. Silencing the President on Facebook isn't remotely the same as silencing some random asshole whose words might foment violence but who otherwise lacks the ability to literally command armies to come into your town and shoot people. Because one of the hats the President wears is Commander in Chief and his picture is on the wall of many a military barracks as the top guy in the chain of command, along with all the officers in that unit locally and all the officers between the local Captain (or whatever) and the Commander in Chief.
It is getting annoying and I am slowly starting to think that FB is on the right side of this issue.
Twitter can do what they want in terms of their platform. So can FB. Why do people find it so offensive?
You're, for some reason, confusing the messenger with the message. The fact was that Zuckerberg met with civil rights leaders and, when faced with questions regarding the current racial justice problem, Zuckerberg's reaction was to do absolutely zero with regards to any possible solution or mitigation.
I am trying to think of an anology and it is hard to find something comparable. Imagine vegans going to a slaughter house asking the plant manager to turn off their most efficient lane and Bloomberg reporting the plant not doing enough to satisfy vegan lobby.
Just because people give you a floor, does automatically not mean your petition will be acted upon.
The whole point of the newspiece is that Zuckerberg is adamant in doing absolutely nothing, even when repeatedly and directly promoted by civil rights leaders.
> Bloomberg reporting the plant not doing enough to satisfy vegan lobby.
There is no "lobby" that requests, say, that racism is bad and that citizens of a specific ratial background should be repeatedly subjected to violence, or that racism should grow rampant in mass media. This is no special favour that a niche interest group seeks special privileges. Once we recognize that all men are created equally, racial violence ceases to be a debatable subject where it's reasonable to support it in any way or form.
US absolutely has had overt lobbying efforts to ensure that slaves remain slaves. There are interest groups in US today that directly benefit from fanning the flames of racism.
I will stop here.
Except this assumes that's what both sides of the argument are actually about. Just checking but do you realise this is an artificial construct that exists entirely in your own head? Zuckerberg in this particular instance, and the free speech absolutist argument in general does not imply acceptance that it's reasonable to support racial violence. Equating the two shows either an intent to deceive or quite intense confusion on the subject.
Would you publicly stand behind your opinions and reveal your identity? Do you feel your opinion is widely shared?
<< Is it your opinion that the people who met with Zuckerberg were props
In a sense that he used them less subtly than Trump used the bible? Yes.
<< his intention was to positively influence the public's opinion of his actions with respect to the protests and civil unrest happening in the country today
No. The entire company is built on a more virulent version of old 'if it bleeds, it leads'. It is silly to think otherwise.
Would you publicly stand behind your opinions and reveal your identity?
Hell no. I shared an unpopular opinion on LinkedIn once. The mob immediately descended.
<<Do you feel your opinion is widely shared?
I have no data one way or another, but why would that matter?
I am glad your convictions are not strongly held. As you charge forward with this perspective, you may find more disagreements with those behind you than those in front. Bringing feelings to the surface is part of the healing and self discovery process.
> I have no data one way or another, but why would that matter?
I was curious about how you see your opinion reflected in the world. You seem to understand that it is not popular and are asking people to convince you otherwise. If not, I imagine you'd be in another forum right not having a much different conversation than can be had here.
"There are no strangers. There are only versions of ourselves, many of which we have not embraced, most of which we wish to protect ourselves from." - Toni Morrison
Define strongly. Am I willing to lose my job to be right on the internet? No. But I think it is a mistake to think that those voices lose strength when hidden. Quite the opposite.
<<You seem to understand that it is not popular and are asking people to convince you otherwise
I am looking for a reasonable rationale. Frankly, I do not understand some of the decisions people make.
That said, I am hesitating to play amateur psychologist online, but you may be projecting a little.
This means you'll rant on message boards and complain to friends but to no action, because you have something to lose which is good. Make bad decisions, say/do dumb stuff, pay the consequences - we are being more equally protected. This has not always been the case.
> I am looking for a reasonable rationale. Frankly, I do not understand some of the decisions people make.
In trying to understand the decisions others make, you should first listen. Otherwise, I think what some give themselves credit for as "understanding" is really just judgement.
Worst case scenario, you continue posting, your identify is discovered and your opinions become public and have real world consequences which you'll blame on the subjects of your opinion.
This, as the country continues to diversify in both public and private life (more women in government and business, minorities becoming the majority, etc.) is a dying perspective and new ones are being formed. You should try one on to see if you like it.
With respect to amateur psychologist it is not my intention. It is difficult for me to understand how you think and feel during the conversation without asking questions. The fact that you see this as me playing amateur psychologist could be projection on your part.
Interesting. You say it as if it was the most normal thing in the world. You don't think I would be justified in blaming 3rd party for pressuring others into firing me?
No and I think that this is the significant portion of the problem. Do better.
It is significant to me.
You preach understanding and whatnot, but the moment I question your approach you deem it insignificant without attempting to understand. No rationalization, no reasoning. Just do better.
Seems a little smug.
You have to at least show how your approach is not the status quo; that is simply no longer acceptable.
Honor, transparency and accountability are the tools of reconciliation and justice.
From Socrates to MLK, Moses to Mandela, the moral duty has always been to reject that which is unjust to others even if it benefits yourself.
You're asking us to "understand" an immoral position - the privilege to hold unpopular opinions and benefit from laws and systems that support those opinions.
It cannot abide.
My position may be immoral from your perspective, but your imposition on my right to be an asshole is immoral to me.
So you have a choice. Either work with me.. a person, who is somewhat sympathetic to your claims, or go the zealot route of 'it cannot abide'.
"The disaster ruins everything, all the while leaving everything intact." - Maurice Blanchot
Is this not the point of the unrest?
You're right, it's "their platform", but, a significant fraction of all human beings are "in" this platform. That's a staggering amount of power in the hands of very few people with virtually no accountability. This is without precedent.
It becomes offensive when the same machinery used for advertising and marketing can just as easily be used by third parties (FB's actual customers) who want to spread disinformation, propaganda or exercise control in some way.
Or are you more concerned about wrong propaganda and misinformation ( I apologize in advance about sounding like this, but it is actually relevant to the point here )?
If we want to move past this, we need some sort of working guidance we can all agree on. In its absence, I might as well default to full free speech defense.
There is not going to be any silver-bullet solution here. If we ever resolve it, it's going to involve a lot of different approaches. I don't think anyone has a complete answer.
For one thing, putting more power in the hands of users to control how their information get used is a step in the right direction. For example, it should be possible to easily identify and search-for any entity who's paying money to put something in front of our eyeballs or who is buying our data. Even better, it should be possible to strictly limit who or what gets our information.
No matter if it's issues with AI, privacy, advertisement or now political or racially charged content, you can be sure you get the "we're trying to connect the world" stump speech
and the most principled.
Liberal: "Stop trying to push your views on us, let people decide for themselves whether they want to be gay."
Conservative: "You are also pushing your views, and the fact that gay marriage is allowed is a result of that. By allowing gay marriage, you are forcing your views on everyone."
So, that's clearly wrong, because as smart as it sounds to say things like "the null policy is a policy," being permissive is actually possible to distinguish from any of the particular ways one could be restrictive.
> By allowing gay marriage, you are forcing your views on everyone
This is a straw man. People don't choose to be gay, and conservatives are depriving people of their rights for something they can't choose. Allowing individuals the right of self determination is nowhere near allowing a sitting president to incite violence against American citizens.
In any case, it doesn't even matter whether that example has happened in a debate before. It's simply meant to illustrate the error in failing to distinguish between liberality and restrictivism.
The difference between same–sex marriage and what Trump is doing is that same–sex marriage affects no one except for those getting married. No one is being forced to have a same–sex marriage or go to a same–sex wedding. "Forcing your views on us" means "we don't want to live in a society where this is permitted, even if I am never personally affected by it."
Trump, on the other hand, has posted propaganda about voter suppression and incited violence. This absolutely affects other people. It's not neutral to unaffiliated parties at all — how many protesters will be hurt because Trump has openly called for violence against them?
On the other hand, with no transparency, it's hard to know what kind of censorship and filtering already goes on. If Facebook removes content offensive to advertisers, why not remove content offensive to real people?
--Upton Sinclair.
What's hard to understand?
This is the Cambridge Analytica problem playing in repeat: if it affects business as usual then his go-to defense is to play dumb and pretend that there is no elephant in the room.
The answer is clear...unless you think racism is a hoax and civil rights leaders are mainly in their line of work for the money.
A "Racial Justice Leader" which is an amazing title, is confounded about how the CEO of one of the largest media organizations in the world does not want to partake in spreading his message and thinks its because "he doesn't understand".
Please.
I, for one, don't want any third party telling me what I am or am not allowed to read. If someone wants to put something on the internet, it's not the hosting platform's job to say that they shouldn't, provided that material is legal. If it's bad content, I won't read it. Maybe other people will; not my business, nor yours.
When did we go from "I don't want to read that" to "nobody should be able to read that"?
Would you tolerate arbitrary censorship of your own webpage by your web host?
Why are so many people demanding that Facebook play cop? Being wrong on the internet isn't illegal, nor should it be, and Facebook is correct for staying out of that, no matter how repugnant the stupid shit posted to Facebook becomes.
Ultimately, any platform used by billions is going to be filled with stupid, repugnant, wrong shit, or filled with censorship. I'd prefer the former, because the latter is unacceptable.
Circa November 8th 2016
That said, FB is a private company that can show and hide whatever it pleases. It is the bad infrastructure of these walled content megalodons that results in this being a problem.
Truly distributed networks and darknets may be the only future for the internet we know.
It's not a stretch to point out that the post made by POTUS falls within that description. He was literally threatening protestors/looters with summary execution by the military.
Bad journalism.
they want Trump's post to come down, simple as that. The story I linked has more substance but it all comes down to they don't like Trump or anything he says and so they want Facebook along with Twitter to both label or block it.
1. Facebook's job as a corporation is to make money
2. Making money for FB is largely based on MAU
3. Playing politics and censoring the chosen world leaders of large portions of their user base is a probable way to lose those users, and thus, money
The assumption that people leave assumes that there is a different place to go to, which for most people, there isn't because social networks are exactly that: networks. Unless you have a small isolated network that can move all at the same time, it is not likely that people will single themselves out.
Censor itself of course can mean any kind of redaction, not just limiting freedom of public expression. Facebook has rules which they use to filter (and thus, censor) content on their platform. I'm not sure it has an exemption for a government person in there.
Let's say we decide to go to war with China. Should Facebook censor anti-Chinese content? Should it censor anti-war content?
I think there are some things that are objectively censor worth (child pornography) and then there is a lot of gray area. My question to Facebook employees who oppose Mark's viewpoint is: "What is your solution and how do you prevent Facebook from censoring anything you don't agree with?"
How about advocating violence or harm to others?
What if I say "You should defend your property from criminals." That's advocating violence.
What about advocating for late-term abortions? A huge portion of the US feel like that is harming an unborn human being.
What about advocating for the death penalty in states where it is legal?
I don't see how you could objectively make censorship judgements on this kind of speech.
There's now a massive line outside my local Home Depot with people standing in 90 degree heat trying to return plywood and OSB for looting and imaginary "ANTIFA caravan riots" that never came. Absolutely corrosive stuff to social order in its own right.
Welcome to Stupidlandia.
It's entirely possible he's simply that lacking in self-awareness.
And I still blame her for the current state of the world. Her gross incompetence in regards to her campaign and underestimating her opponent has directly lead to human rights violations, the erosure of trust in America from its allies and countless unnecessary deaths in the handling of the pandemic.
She lost to who is likely the dumbest and most incompetent president in history, so what does that make her?
There is no room for doubt that the extensive campaign of voter manipulation and propaganda mounted by Russia was key to Trump's election.
They should be happy Zuckerberg spoke to them and they got to share their different perspectives with him.
He runs one of the largest companies in the world, and they are just a single NGO with their own view point on racial ideas.
Why don't any companies ever work with non liberal NGO's?
I'd love to see more of Thomas Sowell type thinking.