Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I think a big issue is how facebooks algo (and others) are built for maximum profit which at the same time also radicalizes people in their filter bubble.
Beyond hate speech, I dont see any reason to limit what people can say. Somehow limiting how the network connects people, or how content propagates, seems like the key. Only FB has done the social experiments at scale to know how to engineer this, which is faintly ironic.
Clearly, there is flipside. Private Facebook groups to share hate speech or otherwise echo awful thoughts. Legions of bots controlled by political organizations or nation-states trying to divide and conquer a population. It is a losing battle to moderate these platforms.
Facebook has no inherent right to exist as it does, or rather, make a profit as it does - and I wonder if extreme measures, such as a partial repeal of section 230, should be considered. Like all laws, small-p-progressive measures should be taken. Small and medium websites should not necessarily be held liable for content posted by others. But as a network grows to have hundreds of millions of users, perhaps they should?
I'm not sure either.
I feel that if we collectively understood social graph theory better we could propose tweaks to make these networks more "fair" and by fair I dont mean with a respect towards a point of view, but rather less likely to create emergent, undesirable social phenomena like ISIS, genocide, white nationalist rebellion.
But I have never seen any papers that explore these topics, on the other hand my interests have been elsewhere.
I like Indian curry.
Yes, Indian curry is the best curry.
Yes, Indian curry in Japan is not the same. They don’t know how to make it.
Yes, Indians are better at making curry. After all it was invented in India and we have the local spices.
Definitely, I would not buy curry inJapan unless it’s made by an Indian who knows how to make it.
I mean you can see this potentially going in an unwanted direction. But is it hate?
To me hate is when you have immediate violent outcomes in mind.
(Indian curry is good too but most people have access to try it)
My point was that people can have discussions about who or what is better and it can diverge into other areas that could be considered hate by very sensitive people. Japan notoriously claimed for example that their snow is unique[1] and thus made it difficult to import European skis some time ago. Today this would be viewed and xenophobic or something when all it was was protectionism.
[1] kinda true. It’s ‘wetter’ than snow in some other places, but doesn’t mean Rosignol should not be sold in Japan.
As I understand it Facebook, if it did anything at all, did id months/years after the fact, essentially doing CYA not anything meaningful.
Reasonable people can disagree
> Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity. It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".
One post is not it.
Also, if you read that Wikipedia article to the end you'll realize that I pointed you to the original use of the term.
This is why I think it’s impossible to “monitor” and purge or ban violent tweets or what have you.
One, what is the intention of the speaker, two who is responsible for the audiences reaction? Do you take the most extremely negative interpretation? It cannot work.
And that’s not even taking slang into account where violent words don’t mean violence and normal words can take on other meanings.
"Let’s go and burn that police station down now"
If anyone I knew said that I would treat it as a dry joke.
Lots of people kid around about horrible things but don’t mean it. One day you find out that one of the kids was not joking and actually meant it. Even people who are friends of the perp have problems sussing this out and can only do it in retrospect.
Progressive politics will say we have to consider the background of the singer and the audience as mitigating circumstance so they might let it slide.
Objectively it would have to be banned if we use Twitter’s new rubric.
That violates freedom of speech
I'm sure this experiment of ripping up the constitution in our de facto new online lives that usurp what the government is capable of doing will go just fine...
So many HN replies amount to "we all agree this is a problem, but we can't fix the entire problem perfectly, and it has some hypothetical drawbacks, so we shouldn't even try."
(Never mind that as a result of inaction in the face of disinformation and hate speech our societies are rotting from the inside, and many, many real-world atrocities are being carried out as a direct result.)
This is, by the way, a fundamentally conservative viewpoint. Cf. gun violence, homelessness, living wage, etc. Just because something is a complex issue with imperfect solutions doesn't mean we have permission to do nothing.
That’s the “slippery slope” argument. If you define what’s allowed, people will ask for more, and others will push past it saying it’s not much different than previous.
And besides that, the line has been drawn many times by the Supreme Court. Hate speech is allowed by the First Amendment, but inciting violence may not be. There’s “tests” for these sorts of issues that lower courts are supposed to apply.
Facebook is influential yes, but they are still one private organization of many. Why do we need a consistent definition of hate speech between facebook, twitter, reddit etc?
The definition will be less than ideal, open to abuse, and problematic, but having it is better than not, just as having a definition of "adult", "self defense", and "libel" are better than not having them.
And why would we engage in a "complex negotiation" (that sounds to me like a euphemism for right/left extremists and massive unprecedented violence) to reach a "less than ideal" outcome over an issue that 250 years of history prove is not only unnecessary but in all likelihood extraordinarily dangerous??? Again, why was free speech the first one???? It f-ing works, that's why. It's the foundation for the best governance human beings have ever achieved. To have people now in 2021 just kinda shrug about its importance is mind-blowing to me.
In any event, the Internet changed things. Before, it was very difficult to light the entire country on fire.
With the Internet, and social networks in particular, that has changed. The reach is unprecedented; it is a difference of kind, not just magnitude. Anyone can reach very specific groups of people and incite hatred and violence through targeted propaganda campaigns. There's more than one reason rhetoric and mass violence has increased since the late '90s (on a national scale), but I believe this is one of the biggest contributors.
Myanmar's language and culture are completely alien to people drafting Facebook policies, driving forces behind intercommunity violence include things like [likely at least partially true] news reports of other intercommunity violence and official government statements, and then there's nuances like Burmese people seemingly accepting the false claim the ethnically-cleansed Rohingya actually were Bangladeshi regardless of where they stand on other things, and the outpouring of support for Aung Sung Suu Kyi after Western criticism that might have been signals that they believed the conflict was the generals' doing rather than hers or might have been mass endorsement of the government's violence. I suspect my Myanmar-based Facebook friends' one or two allusions to burning villages and politicians are probably calls for peace and meditation, but honestly, I don't know.
That was largely a result of campaigning against giving rights to the Rohingya.
> the outpouring of support for Aung Sung Suu Kyi after Western criticism that might have been signals that they believed the conflict was the generals' doing rather than hers or might have been mass endorsement of the government's violence
Yeah, because Aung Sung Suu Kyi keeps denying, on live TV, that any problem exist other than the insurrectionists are responsible for everything thats happened thus far. The insurrectionists/terrorist according to her are composed of muslim Rohingya that are financed by foreign "Muslim" powers.
The matter of the fact is that most power is held by the military, NOT Aung Sung Suu Kyi. Thus, Aung Sung Suu Kyi stance on this issue is probably a result of the military's position. At any moment, the army can choose to remove her from power. Her position is that fragile.
I really dislike this argument. A lot of democratic countries have defined hate speech. In the US, individual companies define it and moderate it as they see fit. In other countries, their legislators and courts define it. The US has defined lots of difficult terms to define already.
>And why ban speech that is actually legal (even if highly offensive) anyway?
I mean if we're talking about why companies should ban it, I'm sure they have a variety of reasons that range from bad PR and loss of revenue, to the founders/owners/employees don't want to build a product that's used for violence.
If we're talking about at the society level, because it threatens democracy, peace, individuals safety
>And if it's worthy of banning on a major platform, why not just make it explicitly illegal?
A lot of democratic countries already have. UK, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland (and yes, they managed to define it somehow): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country
Because we've generally dealt with that by deplatforming that sort of speech socially and/or in the private sector.
The history of the civil rights movement is filled with boycotts and other sorts of social pressure campaigns.
Because of the first amendment, and how the courts have very consistently interpreted to allow hate speech.
>and how has the US managed to do so well for centuries with it being perfectly legal?
If by "do so well for centuries" you mean the US's economic output and world status over the centuries, I would argue that profiting off of Europe rebuilding itself after two world wars probably outweighed the detrimental effects of hate speech (among probably several dozen other reasons).
If you mean "how has the US done so well handling the negative effects of hate speech for centuries without making it illegal", I would argue that hate speech has contributed to some of the most shameful and barbaric social dynamics over the centuries, and the US is historically well behind other modern countries on this front.
Maliciously categorizing someone based on skin color, race, income, social status and religion in an attempt to denounce hate speech.
Poetic
If you were a minority, it really has not done well at all.
They have very poor subjective definitions that boil down to anything any group considers offensive which is a moving needle, and that make make things like satire and certain forms of comedy illegal and have a chilling effect on valid criticism. It's also compelled speech, and in some cases leaves violence as the only resort, as opposed to a conversation and de-conversion from extremist beliefs. We've seen abuse of it in several cases, if no one is offended, they'll create a group or pay someone to be offended. There's no burden of proof beyond someone's emotional state upon hearing the words. You can say something to two people of a group, one might think its funny and laugh, another might report you and call the cops.
Also, turns out you can yell fire in a theater, especially if you at least believe it to be true, and that's something courts can't determine, lots of people say things that they believe to be true, that turn out to be false. Likewise, if speech is dangerous but true, its still should be protected.
In either case, best this be settled in courts and legislation, not corporate meeting rooms that are echo chambers of opinion.
>If we're talking about at the society level, because it threatens democracy, peace, individuals safety
We already have laws against that, its why hate speech laws are usually redundant and likely to be abused and scope creep into silencing valid criticism of an individual or group of individuals who can then be offended and have you arrested, at the very least putting you through months and years of legal trouble before you're acquitted, and that's only if you can afford proper defense.
You people need to look at history. It boggles me how uneducated people are today on the context of this issue.
Even the person that did the Parlor leak is a Meiklejohnian absolutist.
I'm really confused by what your points is. You spend most of your post talking about how laws against hate speech are ineffectual because courts can't determine a persons emotions and beliefs, and then say it's best handled by laws and courts.
Some of the BLM counter-protests in the UK also became rather heated: https://www.politico.eu/article/johnson-condemns-racist-thug...
Of course the Belgium bombing was a political attack: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/world/europe/iran-disside...
Are you suggesting only the US has political violence?
Yeah, Weimar Germany could teach you some lessons, apparently.
* Break them up, and keep them small enough so that no one site can do that much damage.
* Remove safe harbor provisions on algorithmic content feeds.
* Pass a transaction tax on ad auctions to discourage free-for-attention business models.
But with real-time auctions, though, there are whole swaths of people whom the quality ads have decided are a waste of time, and now the hyenas can circle in to prey on everything that is left.
There are some ad networks out there that try to avoid the real time auction and cross-site tracking aspects of these conventional ad networks. I don't know how successful they're being, but maybe they're on to something. Something that should be encourage by public policy.
2. Sounds like a great way to encourage site moderators to bring down the ban hammer hard and fast.
> * Break them up... How do you ensure that all companies in a vertical will remain small? What would the legislation look like? The internet certainly enables more 'winner takes all' type markets, so not sure how you consistently keep social networks small when everyone will naturally gravitate to those that have the best UX + network effects (there are surely other variables, just listing 2 as an example)
> * Remove safe harbor provisions... What does this mean? How are algorithmic content feeds currently treated relative to non-algorithmic content feeds? How would you target the legislation to not have externalities?
> * Pass a transaction tax Never heard of this, what does this mean? Who is getting taxed? Advertisers? Publishers? Website visitors? How will your proposal change incentives? What's your take on how smaller news sites are dependent on the ad model and that ad models promote websites that are open to more people (as opposed to subscription businesses which incentivize optimizing for your paying customers and giving them exactly what they want)
2. I'm not going to explain the Safe Harbor provision to you. Look it up. We already have externalities - removing algorithmic feeds would take (e.g. Facebook) back to where it was in the late 2000s, where users were in control of the content they saw. The only negative externality is that Facebook and other companies would make less money of targeted ads.
3. You've never heard of a transaction tax? I find that hard to believe. Why don't you think about other times you've paid tax on a transaction, and then maybe you can come up with answers to the rest of your questions.
2. I'm familiar with safe harbor provisions, but am asking you for more specifics. Many sites/app personalize content (aka algorithmic content feeds) for the user, based off of what will drive engagement. I understand you dislike Facebook, but if you attack Facebook for personalization, how do you not hurt everybody else that is trying to cater experiences to what their users are likely to want?
3. What's the transaction in your proposal? Who is getting taxed? There are multiple actors in the advertising system, from advertisers to ad networks to publishers to website visitors. Your glib response is a signal to me that perhaps you haven't had much in the weeds exposure to how advertising functions, and may be operating from more of a mainstream mood affiliation perspective. Which is fine, but you answered a question to someone's query for 'good ideas' for regulation.
Limit M&A by denying acquisitions that would consolidate markets, like we did for a long time in this country. You don’t have to hurt startups if you have a little bit of creativity. Create different tiers of review, etc.
You cut down on hot money by reinstating the firewall between commercial banking/insurance and investment banking. It’s not getting rid of venture capital, but it does restrict the amount of money that can be levered by them.
2. Im not worried about hurting businesses that focus on algorithmic content. If their algorithms are feeding right wing propaganda to impressionable people I want them to go out of business.
3. An ad auction is no different than any other financial contract that gets sold on an exchange. The buyer sells a contract for placement, which an advertiser buys in exchange for a promise to pay. You levy a tax on this transaction to make the overall cost of doing it more expensive and to offset the cost of externalities created. I’ve thought through it plenty, but since it doesn’t feel like you aren’t asking questions in good faith or doing the least bit of research, I’m not going to bother taking you particularly serious.
3. Thanks for answering the question this time. So advertisers are getting taxed, which will increase the cost of advertising for companies seeking to drive awareness for their products. Some potential effects of this:
* It raises the cost of advertising. This means that you'll need higher margins for the increased cost of advertising to make sense as an advertiser. Given the higher cost/margin requirement, you may see smaller advertisers drop-off, having the potential to reducing competition in different markets. This would be a good thing for big companies/incumbents.
* Depending on the size of the tax, it could put upward pressure on prices elsewhere, as businesses attempt to maintain their margins and account for the increased marketing costs.
* Tax collection will add a new operational cost for ad networks. Google and Facebook, given their size and profitability will be able to deal with this cost easier than most.
* If it reduces total ad revenue for publishers, you'll likely see a bunch of smaller companies go out of business that depend on ad revenue. Smaller and local news/content sites will be hurt, leaving fewer sources, and further entrenching the major news companies. Ad revenue models by their nature promote strategies to appeal to the widest audience possible, in order to maximize impressions/engagement. The alternative model in news (just to use as an example) is subscription, which doesn't have that same incentive. The incentive is to maximize paying customers. In some niche areas you may likely see higher quality (which we already see today). But some of the downsides are: less privileged people won't have access to the same information that they may have previously, increased polarization & bubbles as publishers cater to exactly what their paying customers want to hear (and thus continue paying for).
They're already entrenched. What exactly are you worried about? You are just playing the devils advocate without actually having a point.
> It raises the cost of advertising.
Huge assumption that nothing better takes the place of algorithmic CPC-based advertising, or that a marketplace based entirely on ad-driven consumption is even desirable. It's not even worth discussing the rest of the speculation, because I reject the premise. The well-being of these ad-networks is no where near the top of my priorities list.
https://polandin.com/51388314/justice-minister-announces-onl...
Under its provisions, social media services will not be allowed to remove content or block accounts if the content on them does not break Polish law. In the event of removal or blockage, a complaint can be sent to the platform, which will have 24 hours to consider it. Within 48 hours of the decision, the user will be able to file a petition to the court for the return of access. The court will consider complaints within seven days of receipt and the entire process is to be electronic.https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia...
I think a better idea is to force them to provide an API for interoperability, alternative clients and exporting the user data. Together with the federated social networks, it will change everything: https://the-federation.info.
Consider email as an example of a federated network: My name, email address, and text of my emails exist today on hundreds (thousands?) of different servers. If I decided I want to "delete" my name from the global email network, that's close to impossible.
The same would be true of a federated social network, but with a more intrusive and personal set of data. Users will not understand that they cannot delete their own mastodon toots (or whatever it calls them).
This is not how federation works. You can talk to any other node without having an account there.
Sure, your private messages may be delivered to your friends' nodes, but is this a big problem?
Toots are public by design. Everyone understands that and it has nothing to do with privacy.
It kinda depends on the content of those messages, doesn't it? In the context of this OP, if my messages are organising a genocide then yes it might be a pretty fricking big problem.
> Toots are public by design. Everyone understands that and it has nothing to do with privacy.
Says you. Most users will have been accustomed to centralized services where it is possible to delete a tweet and have it gone, unless somebody else has gone to special effort to archive it or screenshot or what-have-you.
It's a stupid majority.
They are free to run algos to auto reject, sort whatever order.
This would likely be too burdensome, and the socials would almost certainly have to start charging for access, which in of itself would probably remove much of the problem.
It's one thing to be a neutral platform and allow people to say what they want (even if it sometimes means things that shouldn't be said), but at least the platform here is neutral and doesn't directly profit off the bad content (or at least doesn't profit off it any more than it profits off "good" content).
It's a totally different thing where the platform starts acting as a publisher and starts promoting the bad content (since divisive/outrageous content generates the most "engagement"). Here, the platform directly profits off bad content and should be held liable for it; you shouldn't be able to have your cake and eat it too.
But from what we’ve seen in the past their behaviour would have to be especially egregious for this to be even contemplated.
Amazon pulled the plug specifically because they were not doing so.
https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/read-amazons-letter-to-...
Sure you can. That letter almost certainly was vetted by Amazon's legal department.
Not everything is a grand conspiracy.
Section 230 does not "literally [tell] platforms to not moderate". It removes some degree of liability for content not produced by the host itself.
If I, on Twitter, make a false statement (libel) against someone, Twitter is not liable for it (I am). Now, Twitter could remove that false statement (on its own or directed by a court as part of or after a suit against me by the injured party). Whether they need to remove it in order to avoid liability would depend on various other circumstances. For instance, if my content is actually illegal (by some measure) then Twitter could actually be legally obligated under other rules. But they remain free of liability for the post itself so long as they (eventually) comply with the law and remove it. But if they permit the illegal content to remain, then they could eventually become liable for it (per other statutes).
Moderation is, as a consequence of the laws in place, both permitted and occasionally mandated.
It's not too far off to say "Parlor was created as a space for hate". Only used for hate is obviously wrong, but that doesn't change much.
e.g. there are prolife groups that say nothing negative against any people, but get banned for explaining the facts behind abortion and who does it
Actually most people there seem to perceive it as an alternative to the biased nature of Twitter. They didn't want to get banned on Twitter for something that's being tolerated when done by left-leaning groups.
Again, not true.
Parler was created in response to biased moderation of other platforms and was intended to be bipartisan.
The technology isn’t the problem - the people feeling violent is. How very American is it that we want to immediately stamp out dissenting voices rather than actually solving the problem that these people disagree with (whatever it may be).
Hardline stances seem nice until people get hurt and progress isn’t made.
So the first step in deescalation would be to understand their grievances. What are the big issues they care about? Why do they care about them? Is there a common ground?
The more you call regular Americans who’s parents and grandparents fought and died fighting Germany, Nazi’s, the more you show that you not only don’t understand them and their views, you show you have no interest in learning about their views.
Remember what happened last time there was taxation without representation?
The more you sum up large swaths of people with simple labels, the more you show your own bigotry and lack of empathy.
First try to understand, then find common ground. These people are here to stay, we can either cooperate with them or fight them. Is the best armed population group on the planet the one you want to corner into armed conflict?
/s
You take no efforts to understand their grievances, hear them out, so their problems never get solved.
By reducing people to simple labels, it might be able to deal with them in your own mind with a reduced cognitive load, but this leads to further alienation and eventually full breakdown of coexistence.
These people are here. They have problems with how things are run. Deny them the soap box and you push them to the ammo box. I hope I never see this in my beloved country.
I encourage everyone to keep an eye out for these casual little calumnies, presented without evidence.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states that "any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence shall be prohibited by law".
You are saying that this group cannot broadcast a message if that message tells transsexual people that they cannot be transsexual and be approved of by this groups god. Yet broadcasting such messages is a core part of their religion. So are you now discriminating against that religion in an effort to avoid discriminating against transsexual people?
If that is so then your comment could be classed as hate speech. I don't think it should be but I do think this highlights the risks and the need to limit what we consider hate speech. That to err on the side of free speech is the safer option.
What's that common Christian refrain? Love the sinner, hate the sin? By your same logic, "love the sinner, hate the sin" is hate speech despite not attacking the person, but their harmful views and actions.
>Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+6%3A37-42
Edited to add: I don't think there should be a religious exemption to hate speech.
> Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.
Surely if we could handle situations like the above that were leveled against mixed-race couples half of a century ago, we can handle the same being leveled at trans people today.
When it comes to free speech and freedom of religion, the ACLU[1] has this to say:
> Instances of institutions and individuals claiming a right to discriminate in the name of religion are not new. In the 1960s, we saw objections to laws requiring integration in restaurants because of sincerely held beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate. We saw religiously affiliated universities refuse to admit students who engaged in interracial dating. In those cases, we recognized that requiring integration was not about violating religious liberty; it was about ensuring fairness. It is no different today.
[1] https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=55...
[2] https://www.aclu.org/issues/religious-liberty/using-religion...
That sounds like a really great world you have planned for us. I am so glad my parents fled a third world country where our ethnic group made us be treated like trash to escape to this! This is exactly what they had in mind when they left :)
I guess I just don't really get it. I've accepted that my ideology has lost; all I ask is to be left alone to work, garden, own my home, have my children, raise my children, and let them do the same. I have already unregistered to vote, and have no more interest in politics, other than to complain about it online. Am I allowed to do this? What more must I do to not be considered an evil monster? Honestly, my treatment on Hacker News over the past year has been worse than the combined effect of racism growing up brown in a mostly white neighborhood during 9/11. This is insanity at every level.
> Right. I used parler to do such things as <hate>. I stopped using Twitter for <hate> because I figured that ... it was only a matter of time before they were banned (for <hate>)
I know you don't think it's hate. I know you think trans rights are a subjective ethical issue.
But what if you're wrong? What if it's an objectively human rights issue? Like sexuality, and race?
I know there is still an ongoing "cultural war" about these subjects in the more conservative western nations like the US and the UK. But on every socially progressive position, for the last few decades, countries like The Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada, lead the way, and the US/UK eventually follows.
So my question is genuine - do you genuinely believe that you will come out ahead on this issue on a historical timeline? That the trans discussion will be nothing but a passing fad?
For that matter, the notion of human rights as we conceive of them is a relatively modern invention. Liberalism isn't even 400 years old yet (and the notion of universal rule of law as codified in the Magna Carta is itself only just past 800). By comparison, Ancient Egypt lasted for around 3,000 years, and Rome for 1,200. We've got a while yet before we can declare our way is any more successful than theirs.
Particularly if someone believes that it's a religious issue dictated by a deity who takes an active interest in the world, then they'll definitely believe they're on the right side of history.
Is the trend of human history on the scale of thousands of years old relevant? Is that no different than saying "It's pointless to worry about climate change because the sun will explode and then there will be the heat death of the universe?"
Surely there is some evidence that society and humanity is "stabilizing" to a certain plateau of morality and ethics not driven by religion but driven by humanism?
Lastly, "Particularly if someone believes that it's a religious issue dictated by a deity who takes an active interest in the world, then they'll definitely believe they're on the right side of history." is exactly why I ask!
Because the perspective of what is acceptable from these religious institutions is rapidly changing!
50 years ago a Christian church that is "gay-friendly" would be inconceivable. Today there are many. Of course there are those that would dismiss those out of hand, but by default the ethical positions of groups that supposedly represent eternal immortal deities is shifting - from evolution, to birth control, to homosexuality.
I'm genuinely wondering if people believe that transgender acceptance is somehow unique.
Yeah, because...
> Surely there is some evidence that society and humanity is "stabilizing" to a certain plateau of morality and ethics not driven by religion but driven by humanism?
My point in my previous post is that I don't think we can make that claim yet because we don't have enough data. Surely the ancient Romans and Egyptians would have believed the same, yet here we are.
It's hard to make an argument that one world view is better than another. Because to do so you have to agree how to measure the outcomes of world views. Often this is impossible as the world views conflict.
The makes most assessments of societies progress subjective.
It should be clear as day to anyone with even a passing interest in biology. Once we've identified exactly what genes influence transgenderism, and genetic editing of our embryos is commonplace for the populace, no one is going to allow their children to be born with a predilection for being transgender. You'd be literally putting your child at an enormous disadvantage for no discernable reason.
Look how long its taken for gay people to be accepted by society. Not decades, but centuries. Transgender people don't have that long. In a century, we'll be editing genetically superior superbabies. No parents in their right mind would give their children such a tremendous disadvantage in life when they could make them "normal". I suspect gay people will probably go extinct too, but one never knows with 100% certainty how these things play out.
I suspect a great many classes of people / traits will go extinct. Down's Syndrome babies will certainly be screened out of the population, because again... in a society of beautiful 200 IQ super athletes, why would you deliberately hinder your child?
Yes, and how far behind will they be left?? This is one of my primary concerns.
GATTACA tells the story of a single individual with Herculean willpower. That's simply not most of society. For every one Vincent Freemans, there's 999,999 Carls from The Breakfast Club.
Sex is bimodal, by definition parents can't define a "right body" in this regard.
And anyway, at that point of understanding and manipulating human biology, "people" will likely moved beyond limiting categories such as 'sex'.
Sounds pretty bigoted, bro
We mapped it out 20+ years ago. We learn more about it each year, but what's more, the extent of our knowledge increases exponentially, not linearly.
> Ontogenesis, epigenetics, environmental factors, ... there is a lot more on sex variant hardware front than genetics.
You act like these are factors that can't be controlled, if not entirely, at least to some degree.
> at that point of understanding and manipulating human biology
We are very nearly at that point. Within anywhere from 20-30 years, maybe even less. If you think "people" will have moved beyond limiting categories in that time, you're not thinking clearly about the past, but what's worse, you're not thinking clearly about humanity.
If you think we'll end up in a Star Trek-like world before we have the ability to successfully manipulate the genome, you can just look to the fictional history of Trek for that... we were supposed to be in the middle of the Eugenics Wars right about now. Turns out they'll come later, I guess.
We identified a few single genes in _association with certain risks, but literally nothing is understood in complex interactions and how environment and genetics make for the concrete phenotype.
Transsexuality is related to brain anatomy, which... is about the most obvious complex system in the body...
Have you had any introduction to bioinformatics at all? Your enthusiastic futurism is uncalled for.
We also thought to be at the edge of AI in the 50s, thought the mystery of the brain was about to be illuminated with the introduction of fMRI and weather prediction is only marginally better at what farmers were capable of for thousands of years. Nobody can extensively model even a single cell today. Do you know how prostate cancer cells ultimately always evade androgen deprivation therapy? Me neither. Nobody does. All we are celebrating is "this transporter may play a role" types of "breakthrough", achieved by extensive experimentation.
Humans tend underestimate chaotic complexity...
And again, what are you even getting at? To understand and manipulate transsexuality completely, you need to understand and manipulate sex expression completely. It's pretty telling that you assume "parents" will chose to eliminate transsexuality exclusively. Why wouldn't you rather have intersex humans? There is no inherent value to sexual dimorphism and the sexual evolution likely isn't related to survival, but rather costly (see birds).
Snails do fine.
Clown fish do fine.
Sex is overrated.
You just want to construct a reason to be edgy on transsexuality... don't you?
> Look how long its taken for gay people to be accepted by society. Not decades, but centuries. Transgender people don't have that long.
You might wanna read up on actual history before winging it. We've been around since time immemorial. Nothing new here, we've been variously celebrated, tolerated, and eradicated by societies throughout history. The last big purge was during the holocaust. Is that the side of history you wanna be on? Oh right, the eugenics thing. I shouldn't presume.
You're also assuming because I think a thing will happen, that I want it to happen. There are lots of things that I don't want to happen, that I'm almost certain will happen.
I still do not believe that racism or incidents of racism, including the ones I described above, are 'objectively' human rights issues. They are clearly quite subjective, since they only really exist in my experience. My religion (which most would also describe as subjective) tells me that these experiences have absolute moral character, but barring my reference to that, I cannot say for sure whether or not such discourse is objectively wrong.
I especially have trouble labeling the discourse as 'objectively' a human rights violation when none of the behavior I described above has come from anyone in any position to have power over my life or my rights.
Honestly, to continue to harp on those individuals that have mistreated me would be incredibly childish.
I'm probably misunderstanding but your post reads as "I don't call personal racist discrimination I faced hatred or racism, therefore my own personal discrimination of transgender people is not hatred or <ism>"...
>I encourage everyone to keep an eye out for these casual little calumnies, presented without evidence.
Yea. I had a parlor account. It's news to me it was used for hate!
I posted to Parler and Twitter at the same time manually. I was DM'ed by a Pakistani man on Parler that I eventually hired for contract work and he's been great, I had no idea he was a hateful person either.
There's your difference. Facebook is a network for a couple of billion people to communicate over which incidentally serves to amplify some of their hate. Parler is a niche network to provide a safe space for stuff too extreme for the likes of Facebook.
(and no, Parler shouldn't be forcibly 'shut down' either, but it's unsurprising businesses don't want to transact with it)
And in case you haven't noticed governments across the world are stopping Facebook. Zuckerberg has been questioned in Washington and Brussels.
What does this mean exactly? All the content on Parler was hateful? Or something else?
It's not like they were going to start checking their sources or having any introspection. That's for wimps and losers.
Selective enforcement of rules is being used to against political positions and, let's face it, competing platforms.
>Although parlor was only used for hate,
I don't think that is in evidence.
I'm curious to see what happens when Biden refuses to meet with any of the BLM radicals and the more senior Democratic members of congress reign in the young ones like AOC, these people have outlived their usefulness now that Trump's out 3and I don't think they're going to like what comes next.
Site B is just like Site A, but with less reach. However, their TOS allows hate speech as long as it's not tortious
So on Site A a comment spamming nig**r will get you banned, and on Site B it is a-ok as long as it doesn't mention anyone's name.
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Site B should be expected to have more hate speech.
Additionally even if Site A gets hate speech, it's providers are more likely to give it leeway since it's not by design that hate speech appeared.
Meanwhile Site B, by the very virtue of it's design becomes a lightning rod for hate speech not allowed on Site A, and it is understandable providers are not on board with it.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200625/16303844790/just-...
Parler bans "tortious" speech, meaning speech that would open someone up to a civil tort, think defamation.
In fact, Parler later switched to just using the simplified wording of "we won't be used as a tool in a civil tort"
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My example is not tortious, it is not targeting a person in a direct and personal manner.
There is _a lot_ of hate speech that is not tortious, and does not fall under "direct and very personal"
Spamming nig**r in a public forum is upsetting to some readers, but not covered under the fighting words doctrine they tried to invoke nor their guidelines.
Saying "I hate these damn <insert race or religion> they should all go back home" is the same.
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And like I mentioned above, your article is out of date, their latest guidelines before going down no longer even bothered with breaking this out and all of what was quoted no longer existed.
Instead it was all replaced with
> Parler will not knowingly allow itself to be used as a tool for crime, civil torts, or other unlawful acts.
You can confirm this by googling this URL (which us obviously down if you try to visit it directly) "https://legal.parler.com/documents/guidelines.pdf"
The latest revision was on 12/04
I would love to see proof of that completely unsupportable statement. Obviously all social media sites are used for hate. Maybe they were used a higher percentage of the time, I don’t know. But your statement does nothing to add to the discourse and does a considerable amount to harm it.
This reminds me of "BitTorrent is only used by illegal downloaders", "bitcoin is only used by criminals" etc.
>> This reminds me of "BitTorrent is only used by illegal downloaders", "bitcoin is only used by criminals" etc.
> Where's the lie.
Right here: https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_full_armhf/images/...
There are all sorts of legitimate use cases for torrents, including downloading large linux distro install images.
I’d wager that the vast majority is illegal content but wouldn’t be surprised if software updaters were a dark horse.
None of this is news to folks who have been grappling with the responsibilities of social media companies, the tension between the value of grass-roots organising (often positive, as we've seen in the likes of the Arab Spring, or Hong Kongers agitating for their rights) as it pivots into these kind of actions.
The sudden interest in this mostly ends up looking like concern trolling from people who have been comfortable enjoying the dominance of "their side" in the political process for decades; "their side" in the overwhelming media presence directly controlled by, or underwritten by, the Mercers, Murdochs; the think tanks underwritten by the Kochs, and so on.
I find it hard to grant much credibility when folks who have, for example, seemed comfortable with the idea that bakers should be able to turn away wedding cakes because of the sexual orientation of the purchaser, or that employers ought to be able to refuse contraceptives to employees because of the religious opinions of the owners now suddenly affecting concern for a slow-motion genocide in a country they likely couldn't locate on a map yesterday.
Facebook at its core is a tool that helps people spread information and opinions - not too different from the telephone or email. The blame for Myanmar violence should be placed squarely on the people that are spreading misinformation that incites violence. Even if Facebook does a better job policing content, don't you think these perpetrators will find an equally effective technology to spread their propaganda? If not now, then in the future surely they will?
Don't get me wrong, I do think Facebook should police clear misinformation that can lead to human suffering, but it seems like the media want to convince me to hate Facebook. I hate the people behind this misinformation. And, I would love Facebook to get involved, but I don't hate them.
Facebook recommend users to join groups, follow pages, and even shows content that is not from people you follow. So it isn't just a telephone company that allows you to make phone calls, it's a service that makes an editorial choice about what they show you.
If they show you posts that incite violence in Myanmar and show you fake news that make you outraged about a certain ethnic group, it's possible that among a population of many millions, some people will decide to act on it. Remember, those people might never have been exposed to it, it's Facebook that recommended this content based on the engagement the posts were getting!
From the article, no, Facebook did not "fail to prevent its platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence;" they published content which foments division and incites offline violence. The distinction is important.
Also, there is no meaningful difference between "publisher" and "platform" here[0]. So the entire conversation is built on a faulty premise.
What specific regulations does the NYT have for showing you news? What specific regulations does Google have for promoting different sites? The NYT gets to decide what they report on, they have no obligation to show you "the other side". How is that any different than the FB algo?
Now, their lack of moderation is a different discussion worth having. We can argue that it's harder to moderate at scale and be forgiving, or we can say that doesn't matter and that they still have the obligation all the same.
[0] eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/publisher-or-platform-it-doesnt-matter
Besides, I'm talking mostly on a social aspect rather than a legal one. I'm not a lawyer. But too often do we give Facebook a pass since it doesn't make the content, it only curates it. The curation is automated at a massive scale by AIs, and is done for each user, every day, but it is still undeniably curation.
An example of a platform is if the user does their own curation. E.g. old Instagram. You got everything posted by everyone you follow, in chronological order. Now Instagram will change the feed order and time-delay/shadowban posts, making it, in my view, a publisher. Your SMS example is a platform since you chose to have your SMS's sorted by time.
And what is the social difference between a publisher and a platform in terms of expected social responsibility? This distinction only now exists because people attempted to use a legal definition that isn't real. So, again, I think this entire line of thinking falls flat upon inception.
> But too often do we give Facebook a pass since it doesn't make the content, it only curates it.
But that is true, no? Do we honestly believe that between ML and a real person Facebook is validating and approving every comment on Facebook? I sure don't. Do we believe that Google is publisher because mailing lists can exist or because they allow an email to be sent while blocking perceived malicious emails? Is that not some form of validation that happens that we could imply makes Google a publisher of every email sent from GSuite?
I just don't agree that an algorithm is undeniably curation in the same sense as a newspaper. The process isn't the same, the intended outcome isn't the same, and the inherent approval of the content isn't the same. So while they may be like conceptually, they aren't the same functionally whether you measure it by the spirit or letter of the systems.
The idea of user moderation vs service based moderation is purely a feature set. If we don't like that feature set or it doesn't meet the needs of the way we use the service, the service sucks at it's job. The correct solution isn't to try and have all these convoluted/philosophical discussion around where to draw the line. The solution is to have a service that does it better get the userbase. Today people like Facebook because it already achieved a wide enough userbase, which lead to default integration into other services. It seems we are willing to trade convenience for expectations, which is an issue for the user, not the service.
Now, if we want to say that they practice anti-competitive market strategies and are monopolies, I can entertain that argument. It still does not require this discussion at all.
They do it to save their own ass. Since they publish it, they are responsible. Facebook should either review the all content they publish, or they should stop being a publisher.
> Do we honestly believe that between ML and a real person Facebook is validating and approving every comment on Facebook?
I never said that; here's my point: if, say, the New Yorker replaced their human editors with AI ones, then the outcome is the same and they are still publishers. Alternatively, say they made human-run personal curations---each subscriber gets an individually-tailored set of articles which are suggested---then they are obviously still publishers. So if they replace these human curators with AI, are they still publishers? Because that would be what Facebook is today.
And on your Gmail point, Google is not a publisher, it acts like a phone service. You send your email, the recipient receives it, unconditionally, without modification. Facebook actively shadow-bans, time-delays and puts fact-check warnings on posts. Since that show they disapprove of some posts, it kind of implies that they approve of all the others.
Okay, but being a publisher doesn't MEAN anything. Not socially, not legally. And MY point was that the New Yorker makes it explicit that what they post is approved and endorsed by them. It's IMPLIED.
On Facebook, where is the IMPLIED ownership of your comments on Facebook? Where is the delay between your status and some form of review to endorse or support the status? That never happens, and I don't think anyone on Facebook believes that personal status updates are reflective of Facebooks ethos.
Thats the chasm between a news outlet and a service built around user generated content.
The New Yorker gets submissions or requests the use of different stories or whatever. They are EXPLICITLY seeking this information out to display on their site. Facebook does not.
> And on your Gmail point, Google is not a publisher, it acts like a phone service. You send your email, the recipient receives it, unconditionally, without modification.
Not always true. Headers can be modified, you might not have the proper records in place for people to get your emails, or if they don't like or trust your attachment. Google creates a barrier that must be overcome and can limit your direct person to person communication.
> Facebook actively shadow-bans, time-delays and puts fact-check warnings on posts. Since that show they disapprove of some posts, it kind of implies that they approve of all the others.
Okay, so your point is ANYONE that moderates content is now a publisher? So every BBS or forum is a publisher? Is Weebly a publisher? Is Github a publisher? I mean, I just want to understand where this line is drawn.
Understood. Perhaps there's a more apt analogy. Let's say there exists a gun manufacturer who's developed a new type of gun that's particularly effective. The problem is the guns are in limited supply. The manufacturer ultimately cares about profit, so it decides to sell the guns to the highest bidder.
Most of the guns sold end up providing value to society in the form of protection. But, in a handful of cases, the highest bidder happens to be a violent regime that uses the guns for ethnic cleansing.
Do we blame the gun manufacturer or the violent regime?
From this perspective, I agree that a small part of the blame falls on the gun manufacturer for not vetting buyers.
I am not saying that FB execs make such a presentation, nor that TN is directly funded by the NRA, but the relationships are all there - interested parties are aware that Facebook can create results.
> Facebook recommend users to join groups, follow pages, and even shows content that is not from people you follow
See comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25732255
But these all are algorithmic isn't it ? Its not like facebook decided to manually show certain content to some people, unlike the the silencing done to trump.
I doubt so, the algorithms may be : spread content that increase engagement, without making explicit judgement whether the content is 'good' or 'bad'.
Facebook employee decides what posts to show you → Facebook Inc is responsible for picking and choosing content (exercising editorial control) → Facebook is a publisher.
vs
Facebook employees write post engagement algorithm → Facebook computer program decides what posts to show you -> Facebook Inc is responsible for picking and choosing content (exercising editorial control) → Facebook is a publisher.
Here FB manually decide what constitute 'good' or 'bad' content. For example: fb employee decide trump content is 'bad' thus not allowing it.
>Facebook employees write post engagement algorithm
Here depending on how the algorithm works, it may not make a judgment whether the content is 'good' or 'bad' as long as it drive engagement. So here 'good' and 'bad' content can spread equally.
Here if its algorithmic then trump content doesn't depend on whether someone decide its 'good' or 'bad' but merely the engagement metric.
I would support the later, even if the content that finally show up is something 'bad' because here fb is merely act as tools.
The alternative is to allow these companies to hide behind "but we didn't do it, the algorithm did". The algorithm is an agent of the company and they are responsible for its behavior like any other employee.
Sure it may not matter to you but it matter to other people including me.
How they publish it mater (at least to me). I would support one but not the other
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...
Facebook is a broadcast medium, so very different than the telephone. Email is somewhere in between—it works fine 1-to-many, but not so well many-to-many.
> don't you think these perpetrators will find an equally effective technology to spread their propaganda?
Maybe they will, but that's hardly a reason to ignore these atrocities. Maybe they won't. Maybe future technologies will be more careful about encouraging people to join extreme groups because it increases engagement.
> it seems like the media want to convince me to hate Facebook
Nobody's asking you to hate Facebook, but you should be aware of the power they posses, and how irresponsible they are being with that power. You don't need to bring your personal feelings into this at all.
Parler built thier infrastructure in one place, with critical dependency on that provider. So when the provider booted them, they ended up having to shut the service down.
It is very easy to be concerned about an issue when it is right out your back door.
This article was published (Nov. 6, 2018) after the UN official declared it a genocide. Yet, genocide doesn't appear in the article.
UN official convinced of Myanmar Rohingya ‘genocide’ - March 12, 2018 https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/asia/myanmar-rohingya-un-viol...
Another NY Times article from August 2018 also is reluctant to call it a genocide.
>United Nations officials have raised the prospect that the violence could be considered genocide, and officials at the United States State Department have debated using the term, according to American diplomats.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/world/asia/rohingya-myanm...
It's one thing to ban a politician inciting violence. Do you all want FB to monitor all your private messages for keywords, then block those messages?
Monitoring private messages likely wasn't even possible as Facebook staff had just four employees capable of understanding the language.
Social media is the genie that's been let out of its cage. It's not going to go back in. I suspect the fix is to treat social media in the same way radio and TV are managed. They can't and should not be completely stopped but they can be managed by federal law.
People will complain that it's against freedom of speech but free speech does not mean reckless speech. Words have consequences and social media lets every one have a virtual loud speaker that amplifies ideas that are said without much thought behind them. You can't even know whether the person is serious of just trying to be funny. It's a problem.
I would change that to: Irresponsible use of mass communication.
The tool is no more to blame than the duffel bag in a burglary.
Mass communication is a powerful tool with many uses, both beneficial and harmful.
Funny (not funny) how it's spun and minimized though.
Also, paywall.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934
from the BBC:
"The network said it had made progress in tackling its problems in Myanmar but that there was "more to do".
Last year, the Myanmar military launched a violent crackdown in Rakhine state after Rohingya militants carried out deadly attacks on police posts.
Thousands of people died and more than 700,000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. There are also widespread allegations of human rights abuses, including arbitrary killing, rape and burning of land"
The implication is because this is impossible, then we shouldn't even bother, because it's a slippery slope, and leads to all sorts of repressive behaviour.
If you believe this position, I have some follow-up questions for my own curiosity:
1) Is it not true that we already have defined lines that we universally agree cannot be breached? Child pornography. Explicitly soliciting accomplices for murder. Explicitly organizing plans for murder.
2) If lines in the sand have already been defined, why not redefine them if there is new information available in our society? Please answer me without a "slippery slope" argument. That is abstract and hypothetical. Let's deal with concrete scenarios.
Excerpts:
Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers.
Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims.
Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.
Would love to hear his perspective on this now that FB admits this. I guess it's 'technically' not 'genocide' so its all a-ok according to @Zackees, it's all the MSM's fault.
Their stories are horrific and to this day I have bad dreams about what I saw / heard in those camps.
One of my coworkers escaped through the jungle to Thailand where I now live. He lost his brother and father to a group with machetes.
His story is incredibly depressing and makes me extremely grateful every day for what I have. We have spoken several times about the role of Facebook in what happened, and he has said repeatedly that nothing has changed and that it will happen again.
A key thing to look for is whether or not the charity is focused on relocation. The conditions they were in while I was there were horrendous. The largest camp I visited was over 600k people.
I was working with a few organizations, but from what I saw islamic relief was the most effective at getting people out. I believe most of the relocated refugees through that org wound up in aceh, indonesia.
It's a humanitarian disaster that has been largely forgotten, I shudder to think what covid has done to their efforts.
To my knowledge they never received any money. If anyone can fact check that I would love to be corrected.
this is good for Microsoft who has most to gain from their loss.
Facebook has the power to sway elections, especially in smaller countries.