Facebook restores service to socialist pages, claiming “automation error”
wsws.org
wsws.org
> The purpose of the board is to promote free expression by making principled, independent decisions regarding content on Facebook and Instagram and by issuing recommendations on the relevant Facebook Company Content Policy.
Wonder if we will ever actually see something appear on https://oversightboard.com/decision/. It took almost a year to put together and has apparently achieved very little in the few months it has been running apart from lots of bureaucracy.
Interesting to note that it aims to have 40 people on the board - the cynic in me feels that this is to ensure that decisive action is unlikely.
Facebook is very similar to a Middle Eastern autocracy.
Edit:- Google too, what with their AI ethics board.
It must be basically unheard of in history for the far left and far right to experience the same issues in such a similar way, I wonder where it may lead. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all.
That doesn't seem true. They were both excluded entirely from broadcast media.
That's not actually true: they're not experiencing the same issues. The socialist pages are restored, but I don't think Facebook will do the same for QAnon or Three Percenter groups.
It's blatantly obvious that we need transparency in decision making related to big platform moderation. This is far more important than any specific rules.
Users are stakeholders.
Just because they can do it doesn't mean they should. Nor does it mean their users have to be happy with it.
It's perfectly legal for tinder to send all your dick picks to Cambridge analytics but I doubt you'd be very happy about it.
And from the purely legal standpoint, pointing out something people don't like is legal when people are saying something should be made illegal is just gaslighting. Please just fucking stop with the "bUt mA PrIvaTe CoMpAnY" argument it's been said a million times already. We get it, its legal, what we are saying is that it shouldn't be and we would like to make it illegal.
I'm also going to argue that individual choice is redundant here due to network effects.
Why should it? Can you explain to me why the number of visitors to a website should determine how the website can operate?
> I'm also going to argue that individual choice is redundant here due to network effects.
What do you mean by redundant?
Those movements shouldn't expect cooperation from corporate platforms that are hostile to their cause. It's also never been more false to say that the people's voice is in the hands of big conglomerates, there are far more options available today than at any other time in the history of humanity.
Cool, so no Visa,MasterCard,Paypal,Comecast,AWS,Github,Uber,AA,Shell or Exxon gas,Youtube,Facebook,Twitter and basically every other corporate-owned service
(What does a democracy with only one permitted political viewpoint look like? Not a democracy.)
If the equal protection clause can justify protected classes applying to private business, then inherently, political view must be protected.
If we were talking about a diner, it wouldn't mean I could stand up and lecture other patrons on politics. It would mean the diner couldn't refuse service based on my politics.
The difference with social media is: the entire purpose of it is to share and distribute the speech of users. Therefore, being denied service, or receiving different treatment, based on the content of that speech becomes discriminatory.
This is before you even begin to consider "public square" aspects of the platforms. Similar to how Company Towns were not allowed to infringe on the speech of employees, even though the company owned the streets and town square. (Marsh v. Alabama)
Are you saying the constitution actually says something about it or rather it's the only way you can see democracy working so therefore the constitution must imply?
Without the implied freedom of political views, the protected classes gain little to nothing from the equal protection clause. The post war amendments were intended not just to ensure equal treatment under the law, but also allow equal political participation.
What good is allowing a black man to participate in the political process if, for example, desegregation is a disallowed political view?
Long version:
I'm saying the combination of the following elements of the constitution:
A guaranteed republican form of government clause, (democratically elected officials represent the political views of their citizens)
The 1st amendment, (government may not restrict/compel/suppress speech, freedom of association)
the 14th amendment (as interpreted), including:
1- equal protection clause,
2- federal constitutional restrictions applied to states, and
3- protections extended to privately held, public facing entities, (as is required to interpret the civil rights act as constitutional)
...Leaves no room to interpret political affiliation/views as being less protected than any protected class.
Freedom of political view and affiliation is required as a cornerstone for the rest of the system to be built upon. Equal protection, as a means of allowing minorities or protected classes equal participation in the political process itself, as well as civil life, requires an underlying political process in which to participate. If that process is fundamentally restricted (via taboo political beliefs) then the protected classes aren't really protected, if they are allowed in the process, but their political views are not.
1st amendment first because it's the most clear cut - this very specifically applies to the government. Twitter/Facebook/Bob's Ice Cream are not government bodies so the 1st amendment does not apply to them. It also does not say the government must actively promote speech in public forums. It simply limits the ability of the government itself to restrict free speech.
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> the 14th amendment (as interpreted), including:
> 1- equal protection clause,
> 2- federal constitutional restrictions applied to states, and
> 3- protections extended to privately held, public facing entities, (as is required to interpret the civil rights act as constitutional)
1 - The equal protection clause guarantees equal protection of citizens under the law and doesn't allow a law to deprive life, liberty, or property without due process. It doesn't define any new rights it simply disallows laws which abridge existing privileges or are applied unequally to different people. And again none of this directly relevant to why public political speech is protected, this is about the government not what Twitter/Facebook/Bob's Ice Cream must do/can't do. I.e. we're looking for something that protects public political speech not a reason it would have to be enforced if it were protected.
2 - Again not defining anything for Twitter/Facebook but regardless the 14th amendment doesn't cover this piece other parts do. Perhaps you meant the other way around, that the 14th's restrictions for states have been ruled to be relevant to federal? Either way.
3 - Extension of the protections is not part of 14th amendment. Section 5 allows Congress to enforce the provisions of the article, one of which is equal application of the law, but it was in "Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States" where the Supreme Court ruled since Congress has the power to regulate commerce between states Congress can constitutionally apply the Civil Rights Act to businesses. The 14th amendment is important, government must apply these protections equally, but it's not what gave them the power to regulate commerce, that was the Commerce Clause from the Articles.
Since the Civil Rights Act didn't make political speech a protected class this path doesn't apply. Since the 14th amendment doesn't define it either we're still in search of a law that protects political speech outside of government suppression.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the censoring on social media and I think democracy works better if we don't, but it's simply not protected by law and certainly not by the constitution itself. Protections under the constitution very closely align with what the government may or may not do and how the government may or may not do it. Once things get outside of a person <-> government relationship the constitution tends to provide guidance on who in government has power to make law about something. There are laws like the Civil Rights Act which extend certain protections for certain groups to certain places like a public business but they do not cover political speech or affiliation. That's not to say there should or shouldn't be protections for that, just that there aren't any in the current laws.
Right now what is protected is your ability to go and vote for whoever you like equally as much as anyone else would be. You can even vote for people that would like to change the constitution itself to add or remove protections. What is not protected is your right for the public to listen to or transmit your speech. If Facebook decides people who talk about privacy shouldn't be allowed on their platform there is no protection about it. The government however is not allowed to suppress this speech on the basis of disliking it alone. That's about where the train stops today though.
Website moderation is not a violation of constitutional rights: full stop. In fact, the opposite is true; the freedom to moderate content on one's website is constitutionally protected because the government forcing speech on citizens that disagree with it is a clear violation of the 1st amendment.
The citizenry are fully within their rights to say whatever they want within the law, but some people will ban you from their website if they don't like what you post on it... like the site we're having this conversation on, for example. This is just the way the internet works, it's a decentralized network of individual websites where each node has the freedom to determine how their site operates, it does not follow logically that because some nodes are arbitrarily popular they should have their property and 1st amendment rights rescinded.
> It would mean the diner couldn't refuse service based on my politics.
A diner is fully within their rights to refuse service based on politics and they should have the freedom to do so. If I'm the owner of a Jewish deli and a customer with a Nazi t-shirt walks in I should have the right to refuse service. He has the freedom to wear whatever shirt he wants and I have the freedom to snub people who wear shirts I don't like.
> The difference with social media is: the entire purpose of it is to share and distribute the speech of users
The purpose of any website is completely arbitrary and determined by the creators. We created labels like "social media" post-hoc out of pragmatism, but nothing requires a "social media" site to behave a certain way. The primary purpose of almost every popular website is to make money and moderation of toxic content that cannot be monetized is just part of doing business. Moderation is also a feature because the majority of users don't want to see obscene/violent/spammy content and will complain to have it removed. These website operators are within their rights to tailor the content to desires of a specific audience, someone else can make a different site to service the people who feel that their needs are not being met.
> This is before you even begin to consider "public square" aspects of the platforms. Similar to how Company Towns were not allowed to infringe on the speech of employees, even though the company owned the streets and town square. (Marsh v. Alabama)
This case is often brought up in these discussions but most people who do so misunderstand it. Marsh v Alabama is about the constitutionality of using trespassing laws to arrest Marsh for distribution of religious pamphlets. Nobody is being arrested for violating twitter's ToS so nobody's constitutional rights are being violated. If twitter sent the cops after you for creating alt accounts after getting banned, then you'd have a case.
And I'm not saying they can't moderate, just that it can't be based on political affiliation or views, any more than it could be based on the users race.
>The purpose of any website is completely arbitrary and determined by the creators.
They can call it what they want, but if they operate it as the town square, it's the town square. The same way that a trail over private land becomes an irrevocable public right-of-way, if the land owner doesn't prevent it from being used. Private rights are forfeited by not treating them as private.
Regardless, twitter openly admits it's purpose is public discourse, and designs it such that it encourages confrontational engagement.
>trespassing laws to arrest Marsh for distribution of religious pamphlets
You say tomato, I say being removed from privately held, but publicly accessable property based only on the content of speech.
Getting kicked off the platform today is functionally equivalent to last centuries trespassing arrest/removal.
Forced removal from a defacto public forum for speech.
It's illegal for your wireless carrier to cancel your service for having legal conversations on your phone that they don't like, despite it running over their own private towers. It's totally legal for Facebook to shut off your account for posting things Facebook doesn't like, which is the only contact info most people have for most people they talk to.
https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/
Facebook is already engaging in censorship, both on the timeline and in private DMs. Why do people permit this to continue?
What will it take, FB banning posting or linking to any page critical of FB, even in DM?
It blows my mind people continue to donate time and content and attention to platforms that tell them what they can and can't say in a private conversation with their friends.
Federal law on phone communications differs from public online forums owned by private companies.
Which is not to say other laws may not better apply meant for public forums physical or virtual.
I remember this idea gained traction when there was the refugee crisis in Europe (I think 2014 or so) and European politicians (led by Merkel) were pushing for more Facebook censorship. The idea of more censorship was also popular among the citizens. However, it was mostly a European thing, although Facebook did comply to an extent. Then Donald fucking Trump happened. Now Americans were the ones who started pushing for censorship, even more strongly.
This is way beyond Facebook banning someone in bad faith, if Facebook has to censor a wide range of things, this can only be through automated systems due to the massive scale, and these systems will inevitably fuck up more and more as we add more things which they are supposed to censor. It is literally an unavoidable outcome even without bad faith. The kind of censorship people expect today just cannot work on a Facebook scale unless we accept that people will get banned unfairly all the time.
Because that's where the other people happen to be. Sure, you can use the Fediverse exclusively, but you'll then solely be able to interact with the sort of person likely to use the Fediverse if you catch my drift.
I’d expect this to be incompetence, not malice.
A few of my FB friends have recently posted about being temp suspended from being report spammed by people who don't like them, so I wouldn't be surprised if a socialist page got targeted.
But it doesn't function well in these cases, and again and again it's clear these companies can't employ enough people and tools to prevent blantly illegal content (to the point many of those hired to review potential illegal material come away from that job with PTSD) much less identify and moderate hate speech or even speech that is more nuanced.
Reddit did some stuff right with sub moderators, but even then its a whole charlie-foxtrot when the moderators encourage it or aren't active (and thats excluding ones with their own specific agendas).
At this scale, these companies cannot moderate their platforms properly, and automation could help, but isn't the solution until ot greatly improves.
If that doesn't work for you because you really really need access to the userbase of Facebook, well, that just shows that they've done a really good job building what people want because that's where the people are. It isn't like people can't be on multiple social networks, there's no natural monopoly here.
Network effects make it extremely difficult to just move somewhere else.
You have a right to say what you want, but nobody is forced to help you spread that speech. Parler still found a way didn't it? Huh, it's almost like there are a whole lot of competitors for any given internet service that people could turn to.
> It should be a perfect example of the outsized political influence that these massive multinational corporations have.
They hardly need to censor their platforms for that, they have billions of dollars at their disposal.
> Network effects make it extremely difficult to just move somewhere else.
Facebook built that network, why do you have a right to tell them who can and cannot use it?
If you don't like it, don't use it, and recommend that others don't use it either. If that's too big a sacrifice to you, then you've made your priorities clear. You talk a big game, but when push comes to shove if you aren't willing to inconvenience yourself even a little bit then I don't know why you expect anyone in a position to change things to care.
These are non-productive, confrontational choices of language that make me choose not to respond to you. Please rethink how you discuss contentious issues.
Facebook is not the end-all-be-all of communication. I can't even think of the last time I used it - yet I'm still able to talk to people just fine.
That wouldn't obviate their need for a Facebook page, since it's far more useful for outreach.
The problem with most technical solutions to problems with communication technologies like this is that they're marginalizing if adopted exclusively too early. Until the alternate technology reaches critical mass (at least), it's only appropriate to use it to augment existing technologies.
You can't hope to change anything, if Facebook doesn't like what you say you'll get censored and if they do then why bother because they'll tell everyone anyway.
Also I think in the world we live in there are exactly 0 people who have half conservative and half liberal friends. The two groups work at different companies, live in different cities, watch different news, and now use different social networks.
Speak for yourself - but I do it to discuss policy matters and exchange ideas about how to mitigate any negative consequences to the business.
Things like Right-to-Repair (product design), KYC/GDPR, stiumulus payments (e.g. should we advertise more if people will be more likely to spend?), etc.
IDK about 1/2 and 1/2, but it sounds to me like some of your friends would rather be closet conservatives than talk to you about politics.
The assumption that any political issue splits the general population roughly in half, and that all disagreement is polar, is bad enough, but now you are making the assumption that that holds for each individual’s circle of Facebook friends?
People are passionate about politics.
large anarchist pages were banned a while back and were not able to get a similar reversal, despite some media attention. twitter has taken action recently as well.
interestingly, left and anarchist pages tend to be banned only when furor/sentiment rises high against right-wing pages, and the bans seem to be done symmetrically to reduce perceptions of bias. for example crimethinc was knocked down same time as proud boys groups.
maybe they should ask the government to step in
only people who believe they deserve power are confused when power is used against them.
it's understood that centralized platforms will continue to experience controversy and censorship until most people give up and move to federated and resistant media.
That the same people call their payoffs to a stable of geriatric looters, in exchange for order-of-magnitude ROIs, "democracy" says all that needs to be said about the situation.