Facebook prevents sharing New York Post story on BLM co-founder's real estate
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
FB will also prevent you from posting the Newsweek article which describes how the platform is blocking the New York Post article. Same link as in the title: https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-prevents-sharing-new-york-...
Is it possible that Facebook is a big enough share of the internet that they can block the Streisand Effect? My money is on "no".
Well... contentious stories get removed from here, too. This is a topic that gets contentious.
Note that the link is to an article on HN, not flagged, and the comments pretty clearly debunk the article's claims. TLDR, author wrote some clickbait headlines and used gpt3 to fill in the articles, with an unspecified amount of editing, then some of them got onto the front page of HN and he wrote an article about that.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-learning-they-s...
I assumed it was worthy of discussion given the whole censorship debate and concepts of censorship like AI moderation or misinformation or disinformation.
I assume you don't mean flagging, since those are not removed, just frozen.
The co-ordinated efforts of a small number of corporate actors probably is. We live in a gov-valley-sov-corp media ecology with fairly sophisticated mechanisms of message control. Maybe the old netheads were wrong about streisand effect - maybe that was a temporary material condition.
And amazingly, there are Facebook employees on HN all the time who can't understand why people hate Facebook.
I recently spent time with a couple of relatives who only get news from Facebook. I suspect there are millions of other people who do the same. (Because it's free and if it's on the internet, it must be true!)
This illustrates that they only know about the things that Facebook wants them to know.
That seems like a pretty flimsy excuse given that I see stories about individuals of public interest buying expensive property on Facebook all the time. Just one example, Thiel buying property in Miami.
> The information about your home purchase and the terms and conditions of your mortgage loan are recorded among the land records in the jurisdiction where the property is located. These documents are public. In most states, you do not even have to go down to the local recorder of deeds office. You can search online from your living room and get all of the information that is published in your newspaper.
The public record will say that the owner is “Trust #541341324132 with XYZ Bank/Title Co/Law Office”
If you want to know the real owner (“beneficiary”), you go to court and present the reasoning for wanting to know. If it’s a valid reason, the court will issue an order that you take over to XYZ Bank/Title Co/Law Office and they’ll give you that information.
Also, doxxing isn’t illegal, although harassment is.
It is against Facebook's rules.
Posting a pseudonymous person’s name and address divulges private information: the real person behind the pseudonym. Posting a public official’s name and address isn’t doxxing.
Regardless of your definition of public, the word doxxing has never covered it. We have plenty of other language to refer to the sharing of publicly available information. The word doxxing was coined to give a name to a type of invasion of privacy that came to prominence with the rise of the Internet. If you want doxxing to just mean gossip, then your word no longer has a useful and distinct meaning.
You can make the case that this data should be private, and I might agree, but that doesn't change the fact that it is currently public, hence there is nothing to be "revealed" or "doxxed". The information is already out there, in public, easy to find.
‘While doxers sometimes use hacking or deception to uncover personal details about their targets, contrary to popular belief “most of the info is public,” according to one researcher who has spent years studying and participating in the practice of doxing.’ — https://www.dailydot.com/debug/dox-doxing-protection-how-to/
The vast majority of doxxing does not require unauthorized access, social engineering or betrayal by an affiliated person. Instead, it’s almost always connecting dots between openly available bits of information and then packaging that information so as to direct and simplify harassment.
Here's Reddit's definition:
"Doxxing is where a user publishes private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the Internet, typically with malicious intent." [1]
Twitter's:
"Sharing someone’s private information online without their permission, sometimes called doxxing, is a breach of their privacy and of the Twitter Rules." [2]
And Wikipedia's:
"Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly revealing previously private personal information about an individual or organization, usually through the Internet" [3]
1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/modguide/comments/e6nl5o/doxxing/
2 - https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-info...
> publishes private or identifying information
"Identifying information" refers to revealing the true identity of a pseudonymous user on the site (e.g., violentacrez), or a person who has no previous association with the site (e.g., Sunil Tripathi). In these cases the perpetrators used information that was known only to them, or that the "public" had no easy access to, or that the "public" didn't even know existed until the perpetrators brought it to their attention.
That…has no bearing on whether sharing it violates Facebook policy on “privacy and personal information”. What would have a bearing would be citing the language of the policy and showing how the action was inconsistent with it, and I suspect that is not happening because the action is, in fact, consistent with the policy.
Whether it's a policy of Facebook's or not is completely irrelevant. If they do not enforce this policy consistently, it opens them to accusations of political bias... which is what we have here.
I have seen no presentation of acts similarly situated with respect to the policy which have been treated differently. What is the basis for the claim of selectivity?
What's glaring is that there's not even a veneer of consistency in this decision. Will they now be going back and censoring all articles that could lead to someone's residence? All future articles?
Of course they won't. They're content to be self-evidently biased on this point. As a liberal this troubles me.
Meanwhile selling access to Facebook users whose personal information matches certain financial, geolocation and other personal criteria, is how Facebook makes money.
Facebook is allowed to identify a person's residential and financial information, and it is allowed to use this information to sell access to users to other organisations, but it's a violation of Facebook policy for users to share this information.
Uh, so? “You can’t use our platform to compete with the means by which we monetize the platform” isn’t an uncommon, or hard to understand, policy for private, for-profit platforms. It’s not the overt basis for the policy in question, but even if it was the covert interest, it wouldn’t be unusual.
The article itself is pretty even-keeled (although has that typical New York Post editorialized spin). The article mentions other, unaffiliated BLM groups have already demanded transparency to where Cullors' income came from, and the amount spent isn't completely absurd for a best-selling writer, culture advisor, and public figure.
Blocking the article and spreading buzz about the abbreviated version of the article is definitely bad news. Someone needs to tell the product owners at Facebook that if they want to auto-moderate media across the United States, they should read the wikipedia article about the Streisand effect.
First, Facebook has been under massive scrutiny recently for not exerting more control over combating fake news, fake accounts, posts that depict or could incite violence, etc...
Second, because she's leader of the BLM movement, I think everyone would agree that she is at a greater than average risk for being targeted with violence. If your position at a company requires you to identify such conditions and attempt to reduce this risk if possible, you'd likely feel a sense of responsibility to block the article.
Finally, given their recent string of negative media attention, finding themselves in the spotlight with accusations that they contributed to her harm were she to be attacked, is something they're likely keen on avoiding.
In my country such censorship is illegal, per Norwegian Constitution §100, fourth sentence: “Pre-censorship and other preventive measures cannot be used unless it is needed to protect children and young people from the harmful effects of live images (we're both grown ups). Censorship of letters (messages on Facebook?) cannot be implemented, unless performed by a caretaking institution (jails, mental hospitals, etc).”
Who would think that an American company would resort to such invasive, blatant and not least illegal censorship!
- Even if you posted it “privately” through Facebook messenger, yep, that’s too a first: 30-day ban.
- Veteran FB bans.
This is so crazy I have to ask, you’re serious here? You’ll actually get BANNED for sharing privately over FB messenger?
All news that is critical of USDP, its policies or its supporting movements will be banned. All actors that present such news will be blocked.
You WILL be Re-Educated for Your Safety.
A pile of colorful, air-filled items (mostly ads) that lures certain people into coming back because they have nothing better to do than dive into some filth. Adults aren't allowed (no conversations, content, or political views that management doesn't agree with - "it's safe because look, everything around you is squishy and we don't allow things with sharp edges"), and if you spend time there, you're probably going to leave smelling like excrement.
Maybe it got flagged because of factor such as who was sharing it and how it was being commented on? I have no idea how or what any of their moderation tools work, but if one of the flags is "popular with extremist disinformation sites," perhaps that was the trigger?
The post links to a neutral news story by Newsweek, which is a very reputable source. So what could be problematic about that article?
I fear that Hacker News might have a bias which makes them censor posts, exactly like Facebook does in this specific case. I don't want this to be true, but I can't think of any other reasons.
"Great, this will lead to half the comments discussing BLM in a questionable and highly politicized manner on hacker(!) news ; this will surely be productive ... /s"
Political and sociological stuff is sometimes here on HN (and technology often overlaps, so they might be relevant of course), but especially those topics that have little chance of inviting meaningful discussion are questionable and might get flagged.
I consider "flagging" part of how this site works, and a meaningful feature. Right to free speech is not the "right to be listened to or read by others." HN also isn't Facebook, or Instagram (size, societal influence, scope in topics which are discussed) and you can still read it, upvote it, and comment on it even though it's been flagged. So I don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be. Posts about the banning practices of Social Media (be it Facebook, Youtube, Twitter or other platforms) are regularly featured on HN.
> Our article features some pictures of the properties she bought, but includes no addresses, in fact doesn’t even say the city in some cases. Our reporter compiled the information from public records.
It's incredible that they don't allow this information but were completely fine with people discussing Trump's private tax returns, which were illegally obtained. The reality is that big tech companies and social media are not helping ideas live or die by their merit, but rather hiding good ideas from reaching recipients who can decide what they want to do with that information themselves.
I think the most offensive part of this censorship, however, is that Facebook is also censoring this link from private messenger conversations. Abigail Shrier put it well (https://twitter.com/AbigailShrier/status/1382774842986954753):
> So Facebook is now effectively opening your mail and reading the contents for ideologically objectionable material.
> Anyone worried?
Tabloids publish potentially harmful information with reasonable frequency and FB refusing to republish a tabloid piece is not a meaningful impediment to the dissemination of ideas.
> they smashed up mine and my husbands car windows
Hopefully this caused you to do more research on the message.
Well, they tried, but FB kept removing relevant links…
Well, they've gone underground with many of their goals due to public outcry. You'll have to use archive.org to see their true goals for our society. They've pulled most of them off their website.
This is a bad faith response, and I’m going to assume you’re a troll and not engage any further. Good luck!
Whoever seek to loot, destroy and coerce people into stupid acts needs to be condemned. BLM leaders didn't condemn the violence, which make the BLM movement just a bunch of terrorists, same as Antifa.
It doesn't matter how cute or righteous the name of your organisation, actions speak louder.
You may be surprised, but quite a few people do disagree with what you've just said: https://www.vox.com/2016/7/11/12136140/black-all-lives-matte...
I think that philosophically most people agree that all lives matter and behave accordingly. Who doesn't is definitely a problem, albeit they're a minority.
People do, in fact, disagree with the message, both on the level of the slogan, and on the level of the substance (which is not merely “Black lives matter at all”, but “Black lives matter much more than thet are treated as mattering by status-quo systems, necessitating urgent and immediate reform.”) Both the “All Lives Matter” as a dismissive generic, and the “Blue Lives Matter” inversion of the argument on who is undervalued, at least in the police vs. Black context which is the most common focal event of BLM protests, reflect.
I mean, some Republicans in Congress just founded a fairly overtly White nationalist caucus, which they wouldn’t do if they weren’t secure in the idea that White nationalism was a winning position with their base and donors. White racism is deeply ingrained in American society and institutions, and plenty of peple see that as a feature not a bug, and plenty more see it as a non-urgent concern that doesn’t touch their interest even though it is abstractly suboptimal.
Who are "they"? I'm serious in this question.
Do you have the idea that these demonstrations are somehow carefully organized and that BLM upper management gave the instructions to break your windows specifically?
It is not the case.
The police kill some Black American in some particularly awful or gratuitous way.
It enrages a lot of people, as you would expect.
Many angry people take to the streets. They are not organized, for the most part. The vast majority are completely peaceful. Some of them aren't as is always the case.
Some of them hold signs saying, "Black Lives Matter".
Someone broke your window during these demonstrations. If I had to bet, it would be some young, angry person. Black Lives Matter did not make this happen, and if they didn't exist, people would still take to the streets when one of their own is murdered publicly by the authorities.
---
There is no "they" there. I recommend a broader and more nuanced view of the situation.
Please go troll somewhere else.
Occupy Wall Street tried to do that, but they were so disorganized to accomplish much directly. They did, though, firmly establish "the 1%" meme.
But the real reason there is outrage about this story is because BLM organizations received hundreds of millions of Dollars in donations in 2020, and it seems highly improbable that a long-time activist has somehow saved up enough to afford multiple millions in real estate purchases. Several BLM chapters rejected the foundation's offers last year and instead issued a public call for increased transparency, claiming they had received almost no funding over the years from the parent organization (https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-02-23/ap-exc...). All this suggests there is corruption or grifting happening.
In such cases it is reasonable to have a proper calm discussion, not to ban those asking the question.