Employees are leaving Facebook and torching the company in departure notes
buzzfeednews.com
buzzfeednews.com
This is true of both sides, they each truly believe the other side is a real danger. And both sides will say the other side is the real problem and I’m both siding something that is obviously one sided.
I cross the divide and have emphatically, honestly, without any irony been called an evil socialist by one and nazi authoritarian by the other.
Walk through towns & small cities in Indiana, Kansas, Florida, Alabama. In a lot of these places the sky is falling, there are few jobs & high rates of opiate abuse. There isn’t much of a social safety net. Unfortunately many of these people vote against their own financial interests, and honestly the democrats also aren’t addressing the roots of inequality sufficiently. The United States is basically divided between those of us who are doing well and those of us for whom the sky is at least looking brittle. That’s the issue putting pressure on society today.
The second half is probably true, the first half is less clearly so. On the actual cusp of the actual civil war, the overwhelming majority of Americans weren’t itching to kill each other and most just wanted things to return to normal. Of course, there were broad camps with radically different views as to the barriers to normalcy and considerable propaganda effort expended to nurture some of those views by people who had already come to the conclusion that a fight was, if not desirable, a necessary risk to secure their political goals.
(Also broadly true of the Revolutionary War, for that matter, and, really, most other internal and international armed conflicts in history.)
I get so tired of this poorly reasoned idea that continues to be spouted from the left as if it is gospel, and that the "rubes" are just not as enlightened as some journalist in New York or a javascript dev in Mountain View.
How exactly would voting for someone like Biden help the average working class voter in middle America?
* Tons more quota / diversity based help that will re-distribute the already small amount of aid to people who are NOT them.
* Medicare for all and similar schemas: Ask them how Obamacare has worked out. It's likely they now can't even use any health services since they're still paying premiums, but now have a $7K deductible for their family of four.
* Shoveling money from the right's corporate masters to the left's friends in the public unions, legal industry, big tech, etc. is not a net gain for these voters.
* Increased immigration and globalization that may very well increase the economy as a whole, but certainly won't be trickling the wealth down to them.
* changes in the tax code that may raise or lower rates by a few points here and there, but have absolutely no effect on average working class voters who don't pay much in federal taxes anyway.
* Green energy initiatives that will allow rich people who can afford it to virtue signal, but will raise the prices of gas, heating, electricity, etc. for everyone else.
Please let me know which actual policy changes that Biden and Co. can and will implement that would help these voters, but who are just too dumb to realize?
A few months ago I had a few friends of either political persuasion telling me there would be a revolution or coup the day after the election. That didn't happen, and I think most are starting to realize it won't happen. By this time next year, when Biden's presidency is well underway, I think many of the people feeling very concerned today will feel foolish in retrospect.
Just 126 congressmen and what is it now, 17 Republican Attorney Generals demanding the Supreme court vacate the election and hand it to the lame duck president?
https://www.thoughtco.com/hitlers-rise-to-power-timeline-122...
And the more boring path:
https://theconversation.com/why-hard-core-trump-supporters-i...
If he's such a great leader and not just an opportunist populist, why do he need to instill a fear-culture where everybody who doesn't lick his boots get fired. People appointed by the same leader dare not speak up their own opinions. This isn't democracy. What type of leader do this? Hint: Communist leaders like Stalin, and fascist leaders like Mussolini.
If you're unable to spot a liar yourself, it is not too hard to form your own opinion on this:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trump...
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-so-...
https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+lies+list
Fortunately, a majority of the population see right through the lack of leadership and lies for what they truly are. The means are as important as the ends, and the ends are often obscured and full of misdirection, more like PR campaigns than anything of real and lasting value.
What seems to be true of "both sides" is that both see their enemies as people who are set on their destruction and thereby justify "by whatever means necessary" thinking.
I too am one of those people thought a pinko socialist by some and a revanchist caveman by others.
a) Any irregularities are too small to effect the outcome
b) Most serious biases in the process are pro republican
Neither side is wrong to be afraid of the other doing these things.
I’m a big fan of conservative thinkers like Milton Friedman and George Will. I’m against the left’s attack on free speech and find their obsession with identity, at best, perplexing. I prefer isolationist foreign policy and less military involvement from the US. I’m originally from a conservative area and have many conservative relatives I know to be good people.
And yet I cannot conceive of how anyone could support Trump or the boot licking republicans who enable him. He is incapable of telling the truth. He does not seem to believe in reality, science, or expertise of any kind. He does not believe in rule of law. He is an authoritarian and egomaniac. Even before the election he challenged the idea of a peaceful transition of power. How is this supportable?
Edit: And to be clear I get that we live in a two-party country and that a vote for a candidate is not a wholesale endorsement. You look at the options you have and choose the "lesser of the evils," as it were. Hell, I would vote for Trump if the other candidate was Stalin.
Edit Edit: I know it’s bad form to make political rants like this on HN. I had a moment of weakness :/
Trump also tried very hard to make good on his campaign promises. Can you imagine opening an embassy in Jerusalem under Hillary? I can't, and my conservative relatives love that he did that and that he stands up to China and acknowledged Taiwan's president. They also love that he fights back against identity politics (removing requirement for forced diversity trainings, etc). In short, from their perspective he goes to bat on a lot of their grievances.
So yeah, his Twitter is a dumpster fire, but half his voter base doesn't even see it because they don't use twitter.
It’s perplexing to me that if what you say you believe is what you believe why a politician being a liar is a problem for you.
All politicians lie, none as brazenly as Trump sure; but every single one of them has been caught lying in the last 9 months, many have been pretty brazen in their hypocrisy.
My many conservative friends will point to 1000s of small white lies and 100s of big ones that Biden told, as proof that the other side is just as complicit.
Our political institutions like elections, the courts, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Reserve are built mostly on norms that took decades and sometime centuries to build up. He seems ready to throw them all out.
It's not.
People telling you that this time it's going to be a war or coup are trying to scare you. In retrospect, you will probably laugh at trump for being such a pathetically poor loser, and laugh at yourself for worrying about it.
Keep up the charitable liberalism I say.
I personally don't attribute myself to either side, nor did I vote for either. However...
I've seen rioting (been caught up in one and feared for my safety), noticed stuff being blocked by the left (1st amendment), going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment), and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives.
What exactly are the conservatives doing? I don't see anything necessarily being blocked / attacked? Am I missing something?
I also recommend searching for "proud boys arrested". You'll get plenty of news articles about many of their members being arrested for assault, violent threats, and attempted murder.
My concern is more at the government level - are there any threats from conservative republicans in office?
From the rights perspective, it appears they are concerned about a lot of amendment issues; which seem far larger than the isolated incidents of domestic terrorists.
> the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
Literally armed people swarming government buildings to protest masks, bomb threats and plans, kidnapping.
https://www.reddit.com/r/InsaneParler/
gives more insights.
Washington?
You have Matt Shea, an elected Republican:
"In late October 2018, Shea acknowledged that he had distributed a document described as a "four-page manifesto" titled Biblical Basis for War that listed strategies that a "Holy Army" could employ. The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", which within stated that the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"."
"In April 2019, The Guardian published records from a right-wing chat group of four people that Shea participated in, where Shea used an alias of ‘True Warrior’ in Latin. Other members in the chat group discussed carrying out surveillance, intimidation and violent attacks on political enemies, including Antifa activists and "communists." Shea himself volunteered to conduct background checks on residents of Spokane, resulting in Shea naming three individuals. One of the chat group's members forwarded the information to The Guardian, while another confirmed the existence of the chats and acknowledged the discussion on conducting surveillance on "Antifa" people."
"An investigation commissioned by Washington House of Representatives reported, on December 1, 2019, that Shea had planned and participated in domestic terrorism on at least three occasions. This included his participation, organizing, planning, and promotion of the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada, the 2015 armed standoff in Priest River, Idaho, and the 2016 armed seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. Shea led a delegation of right-wing legislators from Oregon, Washington and Idaho that met with law enforcement on January 9, 2016, in Burns, Oregon and were appraised of confidential intended law enforcement strategies for dealing with the refuge occupiers. Shea then disclosed those details to Bundy, according to the report."
That feels less scary to me than watching hundreds of people descend on my neighborhood or a nearby neighborhood and set it alight or otherwise destroy it followed by the media and cultural elites (never mind colleagues, bosses, etc) tacitly approving of the violence (if not outright celebrating it--memorably a former ESPN reporter tweeted "Burn it all down!" and then when the violence approached his own neighborhood, "Get these animals TF out of my neighborhood"). This isn't to invalidate anyone's fear of right-wing violence; we all have different experiences and perspectives; I'm only sharing mine.
Note that we don't have to choose between left and right wing violence. We can and should condemn all kinds of political violence--indeed, it seems like every spike in the popularity of right-wing identity politics lags some much larger spike in left-wing identity politics, and every spike in right wing violence follows some spike in left wing violence and so on (e.g., you don't have proud boys without antifa). If I'm right, then it's kind of good news, because it means we can curb right wing violence and extremism simply by holding the left to the same standard.
That being said, the right appears to be concerned about all their constitutional rights taken away. To me, that seems far more of a direct and far larger attack on millions of people than these random domestic terrorists.
You can be concerned about something without it being a legitimate threat. The right was concerned about Obama "coming for the guns", and before that, with Clinton "coming for your guns". Yet Obama got an "F" rating for his efforts in "controlling guns" from the gun control/reform lobby.
Theorizing that Operation Jade Helm was an effort to repeal the Second Amendment by force doesn't make it so, and elements of the right can be concerned by it all they like, it just doesn't make it something the left is responsible for.
> None of those are the government, sure there are radical citizens (domestic terrorists), admittedly. Everyone universally thinks this is bad. ...
Is someone who is part of a state legislature not part of some level of government?
> [Matt Shea], A Republican, he represents the 4th Legislative District in the Washington House of Representatives.
“Radical citizens (domestic terrorists)” and “the government” are overlapping groups. For instance, most people would agree that armed public law enforcement agencies are very much “the government”, but:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-suprem...
Like? (And before you answer, remember that the 1st amendment applies to businesses, too.)
> going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment)
When has either political party "gone after firearm ownership" in any way?
> and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives
That's because their ideals include: - Take away other people's basic rights - Enforce their version of Christianity on everyone - Encourage murder and vigilantism - Overthrow the government
They ARE trying to remove abortion, in many states including no exemption for rape/incest/threat to mother's life.
You have militia groups patrolling the southern border.
Much of the rioting has been conducted/instigated by right-wing provocateurs (several specific ones have been identified), and much of the most severe lawless violence independent of origin of violence-in-general has been conducted by organized right-wing groups with the tacit, and sometimes active, collaboration of law enforcement (the police giving praise, thanks, and supplies to right-wing armed vigilantes, including Rittenhouse, just prior to the shooting he did — and doing so when they were out after curfew — while then turning around and publicly blaming Rittenhouse’s victims for being out after curfew is a fairly graphic illustration of this trend; as is the Trump Administration directive to DHS personnel on talking points supporting Rittenhouse after the incident.)
As for Rittenhouse's "victims", by all appearances Rittenhouse was acting in self defense--maybe he was instigating the conflicts before the cameras started filming, but there's no evidence to support that; on the other hand, the footage does show Rittenhouse being chased and physically attacked before firing. I'm inclined toward the presumption of innocence, but I also understand that this is very controversial.
My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment?
I've heard this argument often.
What I'm about to say is not directed at you personally but your argument.
Maybe you, general you, are the one who needs to grow. It's possible that your knowledge of the subject is dated, judgement clouded by any number of things, that you underestimate the severity of the problem, that you're conflating a dislike of a person, movement, idea with groups of people, or other things.
I say this because most of the time when people make this comment they follow it up or precede it with some very questionable statements. Generally these inappropriate statements are rooted in ignorance of the topic though sometimes your argument is used in bad faith to justify hateful or discriminatory ideals, speech, and action.
Again, I'm not suggesting anything against you idrios, merely adding my experience with this argument.
You are right, the "at least hear me out" argument is often used as defense to say something very questionable. The reason I phrased it that way though is because I am very close to one person who is as far right leaning as you could expect any reasonable person to be, and very close to another who is as far left as possible. I'm kind of forced to be in the middle if I want to maintain both of these relationships.
So to myself, I was using those 2 people as stand-ins for everyone else who might share their views. Both are very smart, both have very strong opinions that have been reached through a longstanding evolution of very small differences core values, and both are so deeply vested in their views that they wouldn't even be able to talk to each other.
So my comment was an appeal to anyone who feels that way about the other side, because I see no other way to fix the extreme polarization of ideals in the US.
It seems to me that many lack the nuance and human experience to understand different people. It's the mindset of the raging homophobes that get caught with same sex partner(s). If you want to look to see how to deal with that issue in particular then look to media created by the people who've lived these experiences.
What's helped me the most is putting myself in uncomfortable situations and finding ways to cope. Don't like LGBTQIA+? Go to a gay bar, talk to the people there. Maybe find a way to get Fox to air humanizing stories about MPoCs, LGBTQIA+, abortion, addicts, and poor people.
It's harder to be close minded in typically blue urban areas where you'll regularly be confronted with norm defying people from all classes, colors, religions, and orientations. So the best way would be to find ways to bring these groups to the same haunts without them even knowing they're being funneled.
But I'm not 100% left. I'm not for socialized healthcare -- I worry about doctor visits becoming like the DMV (though even that would be an improvement to what we have now) and I worry about hospitals charging whatever they can because it's on the government's paycheck (even if that is an improvement to them doing it because it's on the insurer's paycheck) -- because I think there are better fixes to healthcare that don't require it being provided by the government.
On a more meta-level, I think there are far more political ideologies than just left and right, that progressive democrats have forced themselves to align with establishment democrats, as how Christian conservatives have forced themselves to align with anti-establishment conservatives (there might be a better label for it). So in that light it's ridiculous to me how, say, a progressive democrat can denounce a Christian conservative while supporting an establishment democrat when they have nearly as little in common with both.
Also, thank you for asking me this outright. Nobody on the internet ever has. What do you believe?
We probably agree on a lot of politics. I do believe in a national healthcare system (socialized medicine?), because our current approach is so unjust, and because I fundamentally believe that a democratic government is the tool that people use to collectively better themselves. I also believe in free higher education for the same reason. I think both would pay for themselves.
That said, I know actually doing those things (especially healthcare) in the U.S. would be quite tricky and that the practical implementation of something matters as much as what should ideally be.
In general I believe in intellectual honesty, integrity in public services, treating everyone with the same level of respect, and that people generally do better when they work together. Which is why I think the Trump Administration and the current crop of Republicans enabling him (note that I'm not saying all!) are such pieces of shit. I didn’t used to be so crude but at some point you have to make clear what’s not acceptable in the kind of society I believe in.
I'm also a huge fan of the arts, the liberal arts, and so a big believer in freedom of expression.
So I can be a bit of a political idealist. At the same time I've read a lot of history and think I understand that the world is a rough place and that people in power often have to make shitty choices between bad and worse.
TBH I think one of the biggest positive changes, both in this country and in the world, could be in the field of mental health. Consider how revolutionary modern medicine has been in terms of the physical health of the individual and all the positive good and realization of human potential that has come from that.
Mental health is (at least in Western science) still a very young field and only beginning to be socially accepted. Also consider just how much damage a troubled individual - especially someone in a position of power - can do. Even just a shitty manager can really fuck up other people's lives.
We also have to acknowledge that no one can have good mental health when they have constant economic insecurity, or lack a way to meaningfully contribute to their community/to society.
I believe that if we keep fucking over our planet, it's gonna be real shitty for the human race. Pollution plays a big role in mental health as well (nature is actually critical for good mental health, plus pollution causes myriad physical and mental health issues in the population).
So I tend to be a pretty strong critic of capitalism as it is today, and how it just makes things like polluting the environment "externalities". I see markets as a financial tool and not inherently good or bad (and definitely not magical!), and, I think regulated capitalism can have it's role, but, the system we see today sucks. The national and global wealth disparity as it exists today is unjust, unethical, and, even if it's legal, criminal. It's shameful that the richest country in the world is so poor (poor civic infrastructure, poor citizens, poor quality of life, etc).
That said , while there are so many positive reforms we can make, I don't know what's out there to replace capitalism as a whole. We've yet to see some other sort of economic system really be tried (I don't count the USSR and most 'socialist' countries; tbh most of those governments were fucked up or, undermined by the US). So who knows what a better system is.
I do like the United States; what I like about it is that criticizing it is part of our civic duty.
Lastly I believe people really don't like to be uncomfortable, or change, or question themselves, which is why we see so much resistance to acknwoledging things like the patriarchy or white supremacy; no one likes to think that maybe their own friends, family, or themselves, have behaved in ways which have been harmful to other people. No one likes to question the unspoken assumptions of their world. Which goes back to my point about mental health.
And I think this discomfort with change has been a big part of the terrible response to the pandemic; people would rather stay comfortable with what they know and die, or play a role in the deaths of others, than deal with the discomfort of change.
This in part comes from my own perspective from having done a lot of therapy and dealing with mental health issues.
That's the problem. This is why inclusive laws are so important. We don't have many now, and they're under constant threat.
People in the democratic party are beginning to come to terms with the fact they've had a cancerous brand issue since Bill Clinton, which Hillary further damaged. I don't know what to say of the Republican party who've fallen into lockstep with trumps criminal behavior.
Either we live in a country with laws and punishments for the criminals or we don't. Trump's made it unequivocally clear, on the world stage, that our law enforcement is prohibited from doing much besides abuse the human rights of immigrants (to his bases celebrations no less), round up junkies or put the occasional symbolic head on a spike. In a situation like this I don't believe it's going to be rational discourse that solves these problems. While I'd love to sit down and have rational conversations about politics with people from the other side, I'm afraid that many people are incapable of admitting that they're wrong, at least not before they've tried everything else. It's a movie trope and a saying for a reason.
Invite debate, look for commonality and move forward.
The truth is very much in the middle.
That is the divide.
Why was election integrity highly questionable in 2016 (Russia, etc.), but not in 2020 after 4 years of Trump? Did something change in those 4 years to make election integrity unquestionable? In fact, election integrity is so unquestionable in 2020 that all the big tech companies are banding together to censor anything that questions election integrity.
If you identify with the right:
If there is a massive conspiracy to change the outcome of the election, why are not more whistleblowers coming forward? How was it coordinated across states?
The truth is that questionable things probably did happen in the 2020 election. The left needs to acknowledge this. The truth is that there isn't enough evidence that these questionable things probably didn't change the outcome of the election. The right needs to acknowledge this. Both sides need to agree on how to improve the 2024 election.
The mainstream claim by the right in 2020 is that there was widespread voter or election fraud (e.g. people voting multiple times, or people's votes being changed or vote counters not counting votes for a candidate).
There's a reasonable amount of evidence to support the assertions in 2016, including official government sources. There's reasonable amounts of evidence to conclude that many of the same tactics in 2016 were tried in 2020, including official government statements, but may have been less effective (due to awareness by the government, and policy changes by companies like Facebook and Google), and a lack of things like the DNC hack to make a big splash.
There's was no evidence of widespread voter or election fraud in 2016 or in 2020.
NO ONE claimed that the vote was illegitimate. NO ONE claimed that the ballot boxes had been stuffed. The 2016 vote was much closer than 2020 and still the party that lost accepted the result and even if they mumbled about 'not my President' there was no one claiming that the election was stolen.
Please stop with the bullshit both-sides claims, it is pathetic.
more like shouted it at the top of their lungs for 4 years straight
> I would love for you to provide citations and references for your claims that people questioned the validity of the 2016 election
> there was no one claiming that the election was stolen.
I mean, I lived the 2016 election I remember the response of my left leaning friends, and some of them absolutely believed the election was rigged. Some quick googling can dig up lots of articles from 2016:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/hillary-clinton-sugg...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2016/12/16/t...
https://www.lwv.org/newsroom/press-releases/2016-presidentia...
They do contain claims of voter suppression, which I'll note continue to be made by those on the left this year (and in 2018 and in pretty much every election, disenfranchisement is an ongoing concern on the left).
A 2018 YouGov poll said that 66% of democrats polled believe the claim that Russia tampered with vote tallies on Election Day to help the President.
> https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
Someone that questions immigration laws isn't necessarily a white supremacist for example, but that narrative isn't as interesting (doesn't sell as much advertising) as the white supremacist one.
One faction actively did everything they could to undermine an election through fraud and impropriety, everyone else didn’t.
That is the divide.
This is what gp is talking about, both sides believing they are righteously just while they consume media in their bubbles.
You removed the words "system of" which changes the phrase from a democratic to a nationalistic one. Blind support for the government isn't healthy for a democracy.
I don’t know though, this was in a WhatsApp group, I remember seeing the conversation about something she said but idk if this was it
Neither side really instances the other side and many buy into the headline narrative that the other half aee basically all extremist nutjobs.
On partisanship: "The extremist-related murders of 2019 [in the US] were overwhelmingly (90%) linked to right-wing extremists. All but one of the incidents had ties to right-wing extremism...Almost all of the 2019 extremist-related murders were committed by white supremacists"
On weapons: "In the past 10 years, 315 of the 435 people (72%) killed in the U.S. by domestic extremists were shot to death."
Source: ADL Report on Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2019 (https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2019)
I don't see an equivalancy with "find problem people and lock them up", which inherently implies judicial process, and the other side, with Trump saying:
"After repeatedly being interrupted by protesters at a campaign rally in Miami, Trump warned he’ll “be a little more violent” next time when addressing protesters. “See the first group, I was nice. ‘Oh, take your time.’ The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I’ll be a little more violent. And the fourth group, I’ll say get the hell out of here!”"
"Trump told Fox News the next day, “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing. I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble.”"
"“If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. There won’t be so much of them because the courts agree with us,” he said."
> We have a very good idea which actors in the US drive the largest volumes of this kind of content. In the last 14 days, the 10 pages responsible for the largest concentrated volume of likely violating Hate Speech comments have been:
Breitbart
Fox News
The Daily Caller
USA Patriots for Donald Trump
Donald Trump for President
Donald J. Trump
Ben Shapiro
Conservative Tribune by WJ
US Chronicle
The Western Journal
These pages, and a few perennial others that didn’t happen to make the top 10 in the last two weeks, but that you can find by browsing the dashboard, are filling our platform with violent and hateful content at a rate and concentration that is simply overwhelming…
I'm happier. I have more time. I have less adversarial interactions and stress in my thoughts.
At first I wondered how I could do this, since it would mean losing contact with friends. But a surprising number of friends contacted me via messenger to ask how I'm doing, and now we just interact one to one, like in the old days.
I find the interaction I get on HN far more satisfying and challenging than FB. The HN guidelines make it so.
It's not rocket science.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
With guidelines like these, and a community mod system that works, there is no need for sisyphean AI or data scientists.
What concerns me for the future is that HN is dependent for its discussions on the existence of independent journalism to provide the articles on which the HN community comments. If the economic and political trends that gave FB its power continue, what will HN readers have left to discuss? Tech news? That might not be enough.
I understand why HN excludes political discussion, and that makes sense in isolation. But outside of HN, this article about FB highlights that quality civics requires informed, civil discourse. How is that going to happen?
As you mentioned the rules and moderation is key to civil discussion. HN has it, FB does not.
I hear what you're saying, but you stopped using Facebook's feed feature and now you only use the Messenger feature. I know this seems a bit pedantic, but you didn't stop using Facebook.
I stopped all exposure to FB content except dm via the messenger app.
The last useful thing I can recall seeing was a day-after-thanksgiving virtual friends meetup invitation. Events are the only reason I haven't bailed completely, and it seems the reason that this feature remains sticky is that lots of people don't want to bother to maintain email address books anymore.
WhatsApp is still ad free, let's hope it stays that way (and if not, that people migrate away).
In the mean time, media reigns free into radicalizing the population into different-opinion camps, psychopath televangelists can zombify millions and get good profit from the ads. But no, Facebook alone is a threat to democracy.
Shut down Facebook if they can't stop violent organizations from flourishing on their platform.
Tax church's and find a way to make these psychotic televangelists illegal, maybe the irs can get them for tax evasion?
All these problems boil down to money. If Facebook acts against these radical groups without a court order their Republican investors and shareholders will flee en masse. A federal order is unlikely due to Trump's appointments and lack of precedent or law. A new law is unlikely because Mitch McConnell would sooner die of covid19 then let the democrats score a win, or make Republican social media wetwork harder in the future. McConnell is a founding father of the modern problems with money in Congress and he's been boosting about it for decades.
So, to sum it up. Mark is choosing to not do anything and keep profiting off of this shit because he has the legal cover to do so from Trump down. Trump just wants to kill platforms that aren't for him, just like he wants all democrat votes shredded..
Everything facebook has been asked to do is utterly futile. Sure, they can remove a post or two but the person making those posts still runs free.
Fabeook is a victim of their popularity. Because of their size they're easy to blame for pre-existing problems government neglected for too long. Government just doesn't want to deal with any of that for real and so will just throw an angry finger at FB and shift blame.
What a time be alive.
First, people constantly disagree on what this balance should be. And even in countries where free speech is legislated, it can be hard to assess whether laws were broken or not. I just don't see how they can find a solution that will please everyone.
This issue seems inherent to any social platform operating at the scale of FB.
Facebook the near-trillion-dollar company doesn't get to keep raking in massive profits and pass off the social costs as someone else's problem. They should view solving it as integral to the viability of their business model. Society should hold them accountable for the lies that are spread on their platform, and for the hate crimes that wouldn't have been committed in a world without Facebook (e.g. the murder of Samuel Paty).
Now I'm not denying that they're out there. They must be. But 1/1000 seems like a pretty high estimate. There are sooo many pictures of cats and grandkids and that cake someone just made.
It just seems like a pretty puffed up stat compared to my experience. I'm not saying it's zero. I'm just saying that there is plenty of inoffensive stuff too and it tends to drown out the ratio.
Yeah, yeah, I know Facebook is a "private entity, and they can do what they want with their platform", spare me. Facebook is a social media monopoly. We need to protect free speech on these "private" monolith social media platforms before it's too late.
I feel like its people trying to deal with the discord of this new breed of politicians that brazenly lie so often that its impossible to know what's real anymore.
Politicians used to be masters of selective information and leaving key information out while still not technically lying. Now they say whatever the fuck they want with scant attention to reality and facts. That's what's causing this IMO because the amount of attention they receive means that they strongly impact the narrative.
As a non-US example; Boris Johnson yesterday stated that it was "very likely" that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, despite coming to power on an election campaign where he stated he had "an oven ready deal with the EU". If you were taking the British government's word at faith then yesterday's statement would have been a massive shock to you because for four years no government minister has stated that this outcome will happen.
Is it as popular? No. Maybe that's because their perspective is less popular. You don't have the right to an audience to your speech and it's not suppression to choose not to use my [or Facebook] resources to amplify your words, nor is it my problem that your platform doesn't have the same audience and reach.
Uhhh... no, banning lies and hate speech is not "political censorship". That implies that lies and hate speech are legitimate political views.
You have no free speech on private platforms. All platforms have content moderation or else they'd have a 100 to 1 ratio of spam to real posts.
Too late for what exactly?
I'm expecting at some point for global warming argumentation to be banned on social media.
Claiming that Facebook or Twitter deleting someone's content is censorship because you have a right for your speech to have a huge reach would mean that there was no free speech anytime in history, except for a brief period of time when social media appeared before they started "censoring"
The solution is not taking away legitimate rights from someone else, it's taking control back from them.
We need to protect free speech.
Protecting private power is anti-democratic. Where it suits Facebook they control speech on their platform.
Believing Zuckerberg to be beyond the reach of mortal emotions such as avarice and being willfully ignorant is dangerous.
Technical people can conjure a replacement anytime. Facebook is ultimately just a legal ownership construct.
There are number of solutions available. I use k8s + kilo hosted privately on Rpi sent to friend and family. Look, free software and speech!
SV is has been mesmerizing the world with big data tricks. To be certain, there are very important uses for that in science and engineering.
Most of social media though is nothing special.
I learn more emailing academics than I do ogling Instagram models, and zoning out to COD soldiers on Twitch.
Maybe they need to double down on "real names". To post to more than your personal friends, you need a Real ID or your national equivalent.
Facebook's anything goes type behavior and litany of various bad choices has been there for a long long time. I'm kinda wondering what exactly pushed these folks to quit?
At the risk of sounding sarcastic, but with some anecdotal insider information for some of this cases, what crossed the line is they became independently wealthy or got a competing offer from a rival company. It's easier to "wake up" if you are waking up in a cozy bed to a nice breakfast.
A nice cozy breakfast is table stakes. I want to make a difference in a good way; I'm sure these folks leaving are no different.
Google and Facebook on the other hand... Completely different relationship where services are exchanged for the sale of my personal details.
Now as is brought up every time there is a complaint that tech companies are violating the first amendment, these are private companies and can control what is posted and what it shows. So, if Facebook decides they want to allow these posts in the name of free speech, it is their right as a private company.
Frankly, I am glad that people who believe that we should have more censorship are leaving their positions of influence at Facebook.
A small number of data scientists discovering a sense of morality (after cashing a few very large paychecks) doesn't feel like the tidal wave of employee dissent that many people are waiting for.