Facebook's Zuckerberg accused of setting dangerous precedent over Trump | Hacker News Reader

Facebook's Zuckerberg accused of setting dangerous precedent over Trump

bbc.com

45 pointsevo_955 comments

If it is truly believed that Twitter's response to the tweet is going to forestall its influence, you're kidding yourself. It's a signal that Twitter is giving regarding itself more than it is an effective strategy for any purpose.

If it is desired that every social media company holds the exact same standards for its content, we may as well consolidate them all; who needs more than one social media site? Much easier to police or push around, too.

I don't think companies should all conform to one policy. But the issue here is that facebook had a policy, then refused to enforce it.[1]

[1] "If anyone, including a politician, is saying things that can cause, that is calling for violence or could risk imminent physical harm.... we will take that content down." https://twitter.com/donie/status/1266416129448255489

And I expect different companies will hold different standards as to when content meets that line.

That's not to say I think Facebook or Twitter are consistent - they are far, far from consistent, and you are right to desire to hold them accountable to their own policies.

I made a comment the other day that I thought Twitter was selectively enforcing this policy (I lost Karma pointing it out). I didn't want to assume so I tested. I reported 10 people who called for Trump to be killed or had other calls for violence. Here are some examples, they are all still up 5+ days later. https://twitter.com/Zangetsu8ensa/status/1266385289360089088 https://twitter.com/KllrDave/status/1266390506222891011

I don't think there is any ambiguity in those tweets about calling violence.

Can I just point out that I don't follow anything Trump says on Twitter, but because of the Striesand effect I now know everything about the tweet, what it said, what people think it said, and what it's effects were.

Call me a cynic, but I think that might be the desired intent; the main difference now being that there is the initial framing, which may the only true effect Twitter's policy may have, I think: you will approach the tweet differently if you only see it through that framing.

It will certainly be abused for much more ambiguous things if they continue to hold the policy. If they don't, then they've shown themselves to be political in motivation, which is not good for anyone. So it's a loss all 'round.

"I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941 a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 8, 1941

If FDR posted that, should Twitter and Facebook filter it out? It is a clear call for violence. Or does it matter why violence is being called for?

It's hard to construct a curation rule so clear that it can't, easily, turn on political calculus.

If you don't think it's easy to construct rules that differentiate between clearly official pronouncements regarding major diplomatic shifts, and bloviating support for obviously racist state-sanctioned violence against individual citizens, then I would humbly submit this to be a failure of imagination.

I hate FB but They’re a private company, not the Supreme Court.

They can flip flop all they want.

I don't get why you get downvoted.

It IS a private company. And for that reason I do not prefer products of XYZ company, because I believe they are assholes. On the other hand I prefer products of ZYX company because of whatever reasons.

It would be fascistic of my to oblige XYZ company owners to change their opinions, because "I" think so (and trust me I do dislike that scum Zuckerberg).

For that I have taken the decision to ignore/sinkhole everything-FB (as I have stated many times in this forum)(hosts, firewall rules, blockers, etc) and I consider FB to be one of Humanity's cancers. Top-down, bottom-up assholery (my opinion - just like Clint Eastwood)(I don't value mine over anyone else's).

FB is not doing something alien to them. They know that tensions increase "engagement" and "engagement" increases ad-revenue.

Remember how Cambridge Analytica was (essentially) used to focus on certain people, divide and conquer?

I am surprised that people are surprised.

Just a friendly reminder that inciting violence is not protected speech. Thank you.

Depends. The current standard in the US is "imminent lawless action", which bans "kill that guy now", but allows for "he should be killed"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action

>Advocacy of force or criminal activity does not receive First Amendment protections if (1) the advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and (2) is likely to incite or produce such action

A dangerous president to not censor the President?

Yea ok.

A dangerous precedent is to censor a democratically elected President.

Edit: It's sad when we get afraid of commenting anything that can be understood as politically biased.

There’s no reason why some selected politicians should be immune to the rules of the platform they have chosen to publish their speeches. Otherwise it would create a form of political censorship for their opponents which aren’t allowed to post something similar. If you want to know what kind of regime the impunity will create, just look at modern Chechnya.

It's not censorship. Just de-platforming.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/censorship

>The use of state or group power to control freedom of expression or press, such as passing laws to prevent media from being published or propagated.

I get the whole "private companies deleting racist content isn't violating the 1st amendment" meme that frequently gets brought up, but this is one step too far.

After reading jwz's post calling everyone working at Facebook white supremacists and the tweet from TalkSpace it feels like I'm missing something. What is Facebook's role in this other than not censoring Trump's post?

By the way, I thought hackers were against censorship so I'm very puzzled by all of this. What would the right action for Facebook be in this case?

Not taking any stance here, just genuinely curious.

Facebook is not merely "not censoring" Trump's message, they are actively spreading it.

In a world with no social media, how do you spread your message? You can yell from the rooftops, pass out fliers, publish a book, go on TV, etc. In every case there's a human or organization involved helping spread your message. When that message is vile, the TV station or book publisher is rightly held accountable for helping to promote it.

Facebook gives people a platform to spread their messages. If those messages are vile, then Facebook is just as complicit as if it were a book publisher or person handing our fliers. The difference is that Facebook says "we operate at a scale which does not allow moderation", which is true, and it's the same reason that you can reach so many people so quickly with your messages.

Facebook is actively spreading hate by giving Trump a platform. They need to be accountable. Without Facebook, Twitter, etc, Trump would just be shouting hate to himself. With FB, trump shouts hate at everyone.

Thank you. What about decentralized platforms such as Mastodon? Don't they have the same problem?

I think any platform that lets people post things without sufficient moderation runs the risk of spreading hate. I'm not familiar with how Mastodon works though.

>Without Facebook, Twitter, etc, Trump would just be shouting hate to himself. With FB, trump shouts hate at everyone.

Is that actually true though? Sure he has an unfiltered platform via FB and Twitter but somehow I doubt that if he didn't have those and merely screamed his rhetoric from the whitehouse front lawn or at press conferences that the various media organizations wouldn't gleefully reprint it word for word.

Of course we can argue that the media is also responsible for giving him a platform (and in some ways we'd be right), at the same time it seems like a bad idea to champion the idea of not allowing the truth of who or what the president is to be revealed, however ugly it might be. And it likewise seems a bad idea to encourage a situation where people's only access to their elected officials bloviating is by way of pre-ordained gatekeepers.

Granted that's how it was in the past, but this seems like a genie we can't put back in the bottle. Best case scenario trump just takes over the whitehouse web page to publish whatever he wants on the front page. And we definitely don't want to get into the can of worms that would be white house staff preventing the president (or any politician) from speaking to their constituents by denying him that access.

> the various media organizations wouldn't gleefully reprint it word for word.

Ah, but they’d contextualise it, the nasty hobbitses. Which is what he’s upset about twitter doing in the first place. So that probably wouldn’t work for him.

I think he is angry because the demonstration by employees at Facebook was made up.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/06/everyone-at-facebook-is-qwh...

Dunno if I'm a hacker but the only censorship I have issue with is censorship backed by government force.

As private companies, Facebook and Twitter can do what they like. Likewise people are free to

- use their services (or not) - complain about their policy choices and/or advocate for different choices - make personal judgements about the people who choose to work there

Good point about the difference between censorship and censorship. It's a lot different if it's orchestrated by the government. But still, feels very non-hackerish to call for censorship when the argument has always been that big tech is doing too much curation and that information should flow free.

I would like to see the real face of my elected representatives as much as possible. If I do not want him, I will just block him.

I think when you read headlines you can work out if it has positive energy or negative energy. It would be pretty sweet if you could filter content based on if it has something positive to say or something negative.

I don't agree with what Trump says. Nor do I condone violence...

Would you be ok with WeChat censoring "anti-China slogans" coming from HK? Think about it. Deeply. People in China think of HK citizens as against their country and what they stand for. And, just because we fall into one side of the barricade, we think that WeChat censoring stuff is NOT OK.

Are we asking Facebook to do the same as WeChat?

Here is another hypothetical situation. Imagine if all tech companies were pro-republican and there was no voice for democrats on social media. Just saying to make a point. Now reverse the situation, aren't Republicans in this nation feeling threatened by excessive control of information governed by a handful few? Think deeply and try putting yourself in their shoes.

When you fall into the abyss, the abyss falls into you. This is a dangerous situation to be taking sides and also a dangerous situation to stay neutral as our nation falls apart.

The Facebook TOC has rules against violence. Zuckerberg has previously said that inciting violence is where he would draw the line for a political figure. Trump's post incited violence -- if you don't believe me, look at the way police officers felt empowered to treat protesters and reporters over the weekend.

Now that Trump has crossed that line, Facebook has contorted it. In the process, Zuckerberg and Trump talked on the phone.

To those of us who oppose this, it's because the neutrality argument has gone out the window. Would anti-China protesters in HK be able to get away with breaking the TOS? Can they call Zuckerberg on the phone?

I think breaking the TOC should be applied universally across the board. But you can't write the TOC that picks sides (I don't think violent statements are acceptable by either side).

My fear is that there are people on Twitter asking to ban President Trump's account. Slowly, eroding constitutional rights (I know Twitter is a private platform, but come on, it is really a public place of discourse). Right now its violence, then it's hate, then it's policy and the environment, then it's anything against democrats. We become blind to what's acceptable and what's not.

This is a slippery slope. Be careful, tread slowly.

If we're being honest, and I sure hope we are, several accounts have been banned for more minor infractions. Trump has shown his narcissism time and again; this isn't opinion. The mere fact that he refused to use the official White House social media handles and insisted on using his own personal ones, allows him to carry his influence/reach well beyond his term as president. That is not an accident.

He's flouted federal rules and guidelines and now we're debating whether private companies are allowed to operate as they always have?

Sounds like the slippery slope fallacy. The argument isn't being made to remove all posts from all members of a certain political party or ideological background. It's not even to remove all posts by a single person. It's to address and, hopefully prevent, posts that incite violence and unrest.

Literally every platform, including HN, has guidelines around what should and should not be allowed when users contribute. Having those rules defined is great, but enforcement is what makes sure the rules are followed. For a long time, and perhaps still, Twitter was selectively enforcing those rules to users. Facebook seems to be doing the same. Twitter finally applied those rules, rather loosely, to Trump via a couple of minor footnotes to his posts (not censoring at all). Then Twitter put a soft censor, meaning it was still viewable though not through normal user behavior, on a post that very clearly incited violence. I think the fact that these platforms have gone so long without enforcing their policies to this particular person has given the impression that there are no policies and no enforcement and, by extension, that they're open platforms accepting all speech. They aren't, never were, and as private entities are not beholden to be.

I agree with your assessment of the situation. I also agree with getting rid of posts that incite violence.

I am just concerned about whether it grows over time into eroding away the ability to speak on the internet.

This is just one thing. We don't even have any visibility in the true special sauce - the algorithms that determine what to show to people. Do you see the problem with this or you think that people who are responsible for these algos are good samaritans and they don't need any public oversight?

> I am just concerned about whether it grows over time into eroding away the ability to speak on the internet.

By this reasoning, we'd be crippled to make any decision for fear of what that may lead to. This leads back into the slippery slope fallacy. When something larger is at hand, then we can re-visit, but this is not large enough to merit that amount of mental and emotional effort to justify and discuss. Granted, that's entirely subjective, but I fail to see this as a very large issue. It's only making the news because these social media companies have gone so long without enforcing these policies.

> This is just one thing. We don't even have any visibility in the true special sauce - the algorithms that determine what to show to people. Do you see the problem with this or you think that people who are responsible for these algos are good samaritans and they don't need any public oversight?

This is extremely problematic and I agree. This isn't really the topic of this discussion, but it's definitely a problem. Social media companies are already censoring and filtering posts via their algorithms. That wouldn't be the case if feeds were purely based on a time-series (as they used to be).

Thanks for sharing your perspective. I guess it is a bit excessive to think about future repercussions, my conscience is only guided by past examples of slow erosion. I hope that silicon valley folks remain vigilant and self-critical.

Regarding the algos, I agree, it is an entirely separate problem.

If this is about posts that incite violence and unrest, then Facebook and Twitter should definitely be removing anything that tries to justify rioting, and certainly anything that argues that it's necessary. As far as I can tell they're not - and not only that, the activists and many of the journalists who're pushing for this ban would almost certainly object if they did.

the eagerness of some to demand that a private company of dubious ethics be the censor of others is mindboggling

Does anyone else feel like this motion to censor political figures on social media as a result of what they said seems to have suddenly become a big issue real quickly. Until last week President Trump would say whatever things he would say and the defense was basically as the President what he says should be a matter of national record and although it might <dumb,profound,ignorant,genius,etc> the idea was people should know what their President is saying.

Now suddenly twitter hides one tweet and Civil rights leaders are applying pressure to CEOs and employee's are staging "virtual walkouts"? (Personally I find a virtual walkout to be kind of ridiculous but whatever)

Ultimately my concern is that it seems that people keep wanting to expand the limits and boundaries on discussion and discourse, and not necessarily what someone says but rather their interpretation of what someone says. By that I mean, it doesn't matter what you say, what someone else thinks you said is what dictates whether it is okay to say it or not.

I mean does anyone else remember the whole cofeve fiasco where several news outlets spent day(s) focusing on what it could mean and how it was a secret racist dog whistle?

Don't get me wrong I don't like Trump I don't like how a lot of this situation is being handled, especially as it bodes for our rights as citizens, but it seems to me that rather than focusing on the problem many are instead trying to use this as a means to exert influence and control over what thoughts are acceptable to express and not.

Ah, so I guess big US social media might be gradually segregating into broadly ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’. First in regard to the degree of curation, then to everything else as the users flock to their choice platform. Can everyone really have an account on FB when it's ‘supporting’ Trump's bullying? Or on Twitter when it ‘censors’ the president? Easy choice!

Only foreigners who don't give a damn will be free to use both FB and Twitter and any other platform as they see fit.

(Perhaps Google is somewhat happy right now that G+ flopped.)

Why are people get so worked up over words rather than actions? Yes, Trump makes many stupid statements.

What has he done however? Has he droned people like Clinton? Has he started wars? Has violence against black people increased compared to the previous presidencies?

If the answers to those are "no", then please look at actions and not at words.

Err, hasn't he just sent the National Guard in against protesters? He's also done everything he can to cripple the US response to the coronavirus, which has lead to tens of thousands of deaths.

It's a troll account created 10 min ago, don't bother replying, just down vote and move on.

Trump can’t send National Guard, state governors deploy National Guard.

Since Washington DC isn't a state and doesn't have a governor, the National Guard there reports to the President - so yes, Trump did send in the National Guard.

https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-president-trump-moves-mil...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_National_...

From BBC [1]:George Floyd: Can President Trump deploy the military?

"In short, yes under certain circumstances.

....

The Insurrection Act says the approval of governors isn't required when the president determines the situation in a state makes it impossible to enforce US laws, or when citizens' rights are threatened.

Another law passed in 1878 requires congressional authorisation for domestic military use, but a legal expert told the BBC that the Insurrection Act was sufficient legal authority on its own for the president to deploy the army...."

With that said, let's hope that there won't be any more blood.

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52893540

Just for a clarification - the National Guard is typically under the state authority and can be deployed by governors for law enforcement without butting up against the Posse Comitatus act that is invoked with the Insurrection Act. Since DC isn't a state, but still has a national guard, it's a bit of a loophole for the President to be able to deploy national troops inside the District of Columbia like he has done over the last week.

Trump calling to deploy "thousands and thousands" of "heavily armed troops" in US cities is much less obviously legal but hasn't really happened yet.

>hasn't really happened yet

23 states deployed national guard in response to protests.

Again - the national guard is state directed. The governors of states deployed the national guard in their own states which is perfectly normal. Trump directed the DC national guard to deploy in DC which is mostly normal as well.

The obscene threat from trump was that he was going to deploy active duty military to states as well - which he hasn’t done and which would be unprecedented and extremely dangerous. He and Barr did take a half step by deploying other federal law enforcement in the capitol (DEA/BOP/DHS) which they likely did illegally as those organizations have no statutory authority in crowd control but the military would be an entirely new escalation and one that the joint chiefs / Esper seem to have talked him out of.

> Has he droned people like Clinton?

Yes - he dramatically increased the use of drones:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/tr...

And he eliminated the restrictions designed to prevent civilian casualties:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/obama-drones-trump-kill...

> Has violence against black people increased compared to the previous presidencies?

One of his first actions was to disband the Federal oversight of police departments set up explicitly to address this issue:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/jeff-sessions-c...

His DOJ rescinded orders from the Obama era that prosecutors shouldn't charge low-level drug offenses that had mandatory minimums with the exact opposite tact:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/7/18073074/j...

He's famously said that protesters should be roughed up and he explicitly said that police should seek to hurt the people that they arrest:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/07/2...

His Attorney General said that he was okay with the KKK until he found out they smoked pot:

https://www.npr.org/sections/politicaljunkie/2009/05/specter...

If you don't think his actions directly lead to this, you're not paying attention.

Then that is what the media should be focusing on. It is not a matter of paying attention, whenever I hear something Trump in Europe (like now from the BBC) it is about one of his Twitter gaffes and not about the issues you mention.

Why do Facebook people walk out over a tweet and not over these issues? That is what is mind-boggling.

> Then that is what the media should be focusing on.

All of those examples are from "the media" - what you choose to consume is up to you..

> Whenever I hear something Trump in Europe (like now from the BBC) it is about one of his Twitter gaffes

It's not a twitter gaffe to threaten to extrajudicially murder protestors / looters.

> Why do Facebook people walk out over a tweet and not over these issues? That is what is mind-boggling.

Straws + camel's backs.. In any case, this isn't the first time their employees were fed up -- similar sentiment was raised when he called for a complete and total shutdown of muslims entering the US:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-employees-pushed-to-re...

OP has the typical troll/seagull approach. And people like him/her are the bane of fora/democracy. They come in, write something stupid, and then it's up to others (thank you mikeyouse) to spend the time to educate them. The problem is that he/she will not learn, he just managed to waste 10 of your minutes with his/her stupid poison.

He/she will go around, writing the same crap, until people will be to tired to rebuke it, and then he/she wins. We don't need trolls here. +1 to mike, -100 to the troll.

Ironically giving a very concrete example of the benefits of deplatforming people..

Don't forget creating the coronavirus crisis by ignoring the previous administrations pandemic playbook and dismantling the pandemic department.

Also the argument what has he done can be answered with saying his actions of doing almost nothing in February helped kill many more people than had he acted faster on intelligence he received in January

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