Facebook's Trump ban upheld by Oversight Board, for now
bbc.com
bbc.com
The group's recommendation that Facebook add even more rules than it already has to its moderation flowchart is a waste of time because — again — there is no such thing as objectively fair moderation.
FB should hire people who share its values and goals and entrust them to moderate as they see fit.
As I see it, there are only three good explanations for banning users or removing content: (1) "we think this is illegal" (2) "we just don't like seeing this kind of thing on our servers", or (3) "we just think the kind of users we want to attract don't like seeing this on our servers."
You can't argue with those explanations because they're honest. If an online forum wants to remove a photo of a turd, they shouldn't have to do philosophical soul-searching to explain what they don't like about turd photos, or spell out an exact heuristic they will use to identify a turd.
Whether they're being objective judges is a question, but they've not trying to determine if facebooks policies are objective, but if facebooks non objective policies are enforced fairly and consistently.
if facebooks non objective policies are enforced fairly and consistently.
What is more honest is to say 'our policy for moderating this area of FB is our employee Alice here. If Alice thinks your post doesn't belong here, it's gone!' That's close to the way message boards used to work.
I don't think FB is in a situation where they can claim "it's not possible to be fair so we aren't going to try".
I believe an imperfect solution in good faith is much better legally than not complying (aka why amazon is in the hot seat).
They reap fabulous rewards for their scale and dominance. They should also pay the prices for that scale.
I would prefer we alter the design of the internet/web in ways that provide more accountability (ie: built-in disincentives to shill or troll) and more control (eg: privacy, and the ability for users and groups to filter out kinds of content they dislike — ads or gore or malware or propaganda or etc...) to its users. I realize accountability and control oppose each other, but we could strengthen one in some contexts and weaken it in others. I've actually, in the past, speculated on HN about specific ways to achieve that.
That said, in the short term, I agree FB should pay a price for its scale.
Isn't the board supposed to be independent of Zuckerberg? Now that the board is created, his ideas and goals for the board should have no bearing on it, right?
https://oversightboard.com/news/226612455899839-oversight-bo...
This part is interesting:
Within six months of this decision, Facebook must reexamine the arbitrary penalty it imposed on January 7 and decide the appropriate penalty. This penalty must be based on the gravity of the violation and the prospect of future harm. It must also be consistent with Facebook’s rules for severe violations, which must, in turn, be clear, necessary and proportionate.
> The Board argued that Facebook had essentially issued "a vague, standardless penalty and then [referred] this case to the Board to resolve".
Yes, that's the idea of your existence. FB wants YOU to DECIDE on cases it may not be able to itself, you know, your entire job?
"Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities" - Not at all, they want to know what you think to make an informed decision, the entire purpose you exist.
> Having clear rules that apply to all users and Facebook
No, no and NO again! There needs to be rules much stricter for those in high places in society - the president is not an "ordinary" user and should have much stricter rules to adhere to, as should be expected of elected officials.
What BS and a waste of time this "board" is when they refuse to do their job.
We in fact already do that, just not uniformly. The media run defense for one side while distorting and assuming* the worse of the other. We have plenty of examples of the media covering the exact same thing but coming to different conclusions based on the political leaning.
It's so tiresome to point this out and get immediately gaslighting replies.
There's literally zero need for politicians to go on Twitter or Facebook at all. They should only be allowed to have written communications via official channels with official statements. Everybody knows where to go to read the official statements. Then they can't accuse anyone of censoring them. There's nothing stopping people from posting links onto Twitter or whatever other SM you want to use.
It would also set a bad or ambiguous precedent. Are TV, radio, newspapers off limits too? If so, what about the annual State of the Union address to the nation? What about the (yes, small) group of people who don't/won't/can't use the internet?
It also wouldn't really help all that much: As you said, nothing stops normal citizens from posting links: similarly, nothing would stop them from posting to SM everything their favored politician writes on their official site. It might stop the specific politician from posting stuff, but that just means it would take a few extra minutes to be posted by someone else.
> No, no and NO again! There needs to be rules much stricter for those in extreme places in society - the president is not an "ordinary" user and should have much stricter rules to adhere to, as should be expected of elected officials.
I'd argue for the reverse. The statements of a political figure must be evaluated in as positive a light as possible. Otherwise you end up with every single statement they make being grounds for removal (e.g., "We need to fight against the special interests!, oh no, he's suggesting we fight!).
If the previous 10 minutes was talking about financial reforms, then IN CONTEXT, the president is talking about a very different kind of fight.
I have no time for people who try to dodge responsibility by claiming the context of a statement doesn't matter, on the flip side I have no time for someone who takes a one-sentence snippet out of context to try to hang someone out to dry either.
IMO that's the problem with what I can only describe as the 'twitter generation' we're currently experiencing. Everything is a 140 character snippet and context is completely lost or discarded.
and I doubt many people who dislike trump would accept jackson as an archetype of acceptable presidential behavior.
It's different.
What you say to the crowd has distinctly different impact than what you say "in the locker room" to an acquaintance.
When did "we" turn into the current governing structure of Facebook?
It happens here too. cough basecamp cough.
No, no, no! The answer to idiots misinterpreting words literally isn't to dumb down our speech. That would be double plus ungood.
If anything, it's the opposite.
I wonder how long it'll be until we have the first "big brother" politician that has web cams in their office and is transparent about every decision they've made?
Yes, it is? For the biggest example, Have you ever done child care? Kids may not understand whatever complex metaphor you're trying to use, they're not "idiots" for being that way, that's your responsibility as the adult to explain what you mean to them or use a simpler phrasing. Some kids may not even be ready for the explanation and you'll have to wait until they're older to use the complex phrasing. Yes it's unfortunate that for some this pattern continues into adulthood but they're also not "idiots" for being that way, not everyone can be an English major.
So... who gets to decide what counts as incitement or not? Apparently whichever party has the largest influence over the mainstream media/social media companies.
Yet the people who are most angry about calling for a "fight" are the same ones that defend much worse from the likes of Maxine Waters...
The platform evaluating rules for Trump while allowing worse from others - in power or out - is the problem. Examples exist everywhere of much MUCH worse than Trumps non-calls for violence... yet he's the only one to get banned and have a Crusade/Jihad held against him? Says more about the hypocrites that hold double standards than it does about Trump - who's the same bombastic blowhard he's always been.
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All the times Democrats used the word "fight": https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/trump-team-plays-videos-of-dem...
Chuck Schumer (and others) inciting/supporting rioting at the Capitol during Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings: https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/03/chuck-schumer-used-viol...
Democrats claiming the 2016 election was stolen and inciting violence against Trump: https://defconnews.com/2021/01/11/all-the-times-democrats-in...
AOC justifying rioting: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1334184644707758080
My perspective is that these efforts to ban speech or speech that includes "human emotion" (like 'fight') would be a step too far for everyone. Right now those rules are being applied to only one side (the right), and so others (on the left) are deeming this censorship acceptable. This is quite evident if you look for all the instances when Democrats used the word 'fight' (https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/trump-team-plays-videos-of-dem...).
> a certain percentage of people may very well misinterpret that as a call to violence
But this is why our society is built around individual, personal responsibility. Those that follow a call to violence are still, solely, responsible for their actions. Our justice system charges those individuals that engaged in criminality on Jan 6th, not Trump. Why should these massive tech platforms be any different in determining who they censor or ban?
More followers means more potential for misuse.
That seems to be the case in this situation. The President called on people to show up, not to riot. If the same standard was applied universally this would have a chilling effect on all protest.
This should be unnecessary to say but just in case HN thinks this is political advocacy: I personally dislike Donald Trump.
I don't think "treat everyone on Facebook exactly equally" is a reasonable standard.
On the other hand, I think it also highlights the reality that the US has deep, unbridgeable divides now that really nobody wants to touch, even if it's their job to do so.
Arguing over what the job's board should and shouldn't be means it's too late and FB snuck this travesty past us. Private companies shouldn't be instating boards to oversee themselves to begin with.
This is no different than any other appeals court, at least in the US: An appeals court can rule for/against something but it can also push the case back to those who made the initial ruling and force them to reconsider.
This doesn't even mean that FB is going to be the final decision maker here: After FB makes their case (if they decide to do so) for a perma-ban, the board can then review that and make a final decision on whether FB's application of policy in this case. All they're saying is FB did not provide that justification initially and must now do so.
This is the way systems of justice typically work. It is not a one-time binary decision. It is an iterative process refining the legal (or rules-based) question to hone in the core of the issue.
Did the board have the authority to make the ban permanent? Sure. Should they have done so? Absolutely not. It would set a bad precedent for them to allow FB to get away with decisions on the basis of vague justifications. It's forcing FB to support its decisions with specific references to its policies. In the short term that probably feels unsatisfying to anyone looking to end this saga one way or another, but in the long term it is telling FB it can't make arbitrary decisions unsupported by its own policies.
The only thing I disagree with is that 6 months is really much longer than required for this. FB has had plenty of time on this issue, they shouldn't need more than a few weeks to get this done.
Why do elected positions need to be held to a different standard?
IE: Why isn't Maxine Waters banned everywhere? She's ACTUALLY called for more destruction and had it happen... compared to Trumps "call" which specifically said "protest peacefully".
This is all a waste of time and the hypocrisy is astounding... rules for thee but not for me. Wokeness at its deepest levels of hypocrisy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversight_Board_(Facebook)#Mem...
>In theory, the Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts. However, all candidates for membership at the Assembly of Experts (including the President and the Majlis (parliament)) must have their candidacy approved by the Guardian Council, whose members in turn, are half appointed unilaterally by the Supreme Leader and half subject to confirmation by the Majlis after being appointed by the head of the Iranian judiciary, who is himself appointed by the Supreme Leader. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Leader_of_Iran
I've seen news outlets describe the Oversight Board as a "Supreme Court" of sorts. With the US Federal Judiciary, there's a mechanism by which judges are appointed by democratically elected bodies (setting aside the debate around how different elected bodies are composed). As a result, we have some modicum of ideological diversity in the Courts; you have originalists, "living Constitutionalists", and everything in between. The balance experiences shifts every few decades, but by and large it's remained a balanced body.
If the Oversight Board really is a "Supreme Court", how can we trust that its composition will be made up of the right balance of perspectives? If the board members elect new board members, what happens if the board members become increasingly homogenous and create an endless negative feedback loop of self-selection[1]?
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain...
In contrast, the Oversight Board appears to function like a hypothetical Supreme Court in which the sitting members appoint new members. Imagine, if the 2021 US Supreme Court did that, do you think that its ideological balance would ever shift? Imagine if the 1999 US Supreme Court (majority of the opposite ideology to today's) appointed new members. Do you think its ideological balance would look like the one it has today?
If anything is "pure fantasy", it's the idea that the members of the Supreme Court are partisan ideologues as opposed to jurists that have truly fundamentally different ideas of how the judiciary ought to function, in good faith. It's exactly that kind of diversity of opinions that has resulted in the Supreme Court enjoying the highest approval rating of any institution in the Federal government: https://news.gallup.com/poll/316817/approval-supreme-court-h...
Get a handle on the knee-jerk skepticism and cynicism and look into it yourself and make a principled argument for whether it's satisfactory or not. Just spitting out your first reaction isn't helpful.
This particular politician was the prime minister of Denmark until 2015, and in 2015, Denmark was ranked third out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index. Another politician is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who ordered the assassination of reporter Jamal Khashoggi.
I do think Helle Thorning-Schmidt lends them some credibility, and not because she's "a politician."
I’m sure they all mean well. But I’m going to assume the board is for show until they do determine something Zuckerberg doesn’t like, and it gets upheld.
https://twitter.com/jamalgreene/status/1055797078868324353
first person on that list seem to think trump is actually insane
https://twitter.com/cboteromarino/status/896156640986054656
Yeah this ppl thought really hard and objectively about his decision to uphold the ban /s
I assume rest of the people on that committee are ideologically biased.
Silly dog and pony show by facebook.
but you haven't actually checked have you? There is _actually_ a reasonable diversity of thought on that panel.
For there to be a range of thought, there needs to exist people who's world outlook is different and or abhorrent to yours. thats how we represent diversity of thought.
Sounds like you have. Curious, Do you have an example?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A1s_Saj%C3%B3 is a human rights judge.
there is of course the ex editor of the guardian as well, who wouldn't be my first choice to have on board.
In what way do you mean this? The classically conservative/libertarian/1a absolutist "people should be able to say whatever they want and the government cannot meddle", or the current republican "the government should regulate companies do to prevent them from criticizing the president" free speech absolutism?
There's a common trope thrown around that "the first amendment only applies to the government"...which is obviously true and nobody credible actually believes otherwise. The debate at hand is about the principle of free speech. That is to say, the so called "current republican" argues that the same ideals that justify guaranteeing the freedom to express oneself in public, free from government persecution, ought to be applied with private companies that host the "public square". The First Amendment isn't relevant here, because obviously there's no law that prohibits a private company from censoring. The issue at hand is an ought question; i.e. should a purportedly open platform provided by a private company censor political speech? In theory, the same arguments one would make in defense of maintaining the First Amendment (in its current form) in our Constitution also applies in defense of advocating that a private company hosting a "public square" platform ought not to censor political speech.
So circling back to the original question: we now have this Oversight Board which ostensibly has a diverse array of "experts" who we expect to weigh in on complex cases (a "Supreme Court" of sorts). The question is, how diverse is this board? Does it include anyone that might advocate what I laid out above? A couple other commenters provided examples (thanks!), but it's an important question that bears repeating. I'm also not sure how the system ensures that the pool of experts remains sufficiently diverse over time as members retire.
To use a legal metaphor, fb policies are a constitution and the board is a supreme court. Facebook can amend it's constitution however it likes, and so there is no such thing as am unconstitutional law.
Sure, and in theory the Supreme Court's function isn't to set new laws, it's to ensure that the government is enforcing them consistently and accurately. In practice, however, it's become the epicenter of a debate around whether it should actually be responsible for setting new standards and laws via interpretation, especially when the Legislature doesn't do what some people might want.
That's the issue at hand: what's to prevent the Oversight Board from making ideologically influenced rulings which contend that more heavy-handed suspensions are actually consistent enforcements of the existing policy, thereby adding new de jure restrictions on speech via precedent? That's the fundamental question.
So while you're correct that Facebook's moderation policies aren't by default "absolutist", you still want sufficient representation of gadflies on the Oversight Board to ensure that more restrictions aren't added via precedent. Perhaps that gadfly is an "absolutist", or perhaps they're something else. My question is: how do we make sure that contingent continues to exist as new members are appointed? There exists a complex system of checks and balances that go into appointing SCOTUS justices, which is how we've gotten to the point that the SCOTUS continues to be seen as a referee rather than a rule-making body (and as a result, enjoys its high approval rating). What's the equivalent analog for the Oversight Board?
Yes, and this is the mistake you're making in reasoning: we do this because it is exceedingly difficult to modify the US constitution. Facebook has no such limitation. If the oversight board, for example, tried to interpret the existing policies in a speech absolutist way to force Facebook's hand, Facebook could simply change the text of the policies, equivalent to a constitutional amendment.
The value of judicial activism is far lower when the constitution is effortlessly fungible. When facebook modifies its policies, that is equivalent to an amendment to the constitution. If a gadfly tries to interpret that change in a way that Facebook dislikes, they can just clarify the constitution the next day.
You can see how this impacts the Board's rulings, they're almost always formed as requirements that Facebook clarify its policies further.
> Perhaps that gadfly is an "absolutist", or perhaps they're something else. My question is: how do we make sure that contingent continues to exist as new members are appointed?
But this has nothing to do with whether someone believes that Facebook should be able to moderate people's speech. An unflinching free speech absolutist who believes that no entity should be capable of moderating speech would be wholly incompatible with the oversight board, as they'd need to concede things about moderation to even accept the oversight board's validity as an arbiter of moderation decisions.
Also I do want to take a moment to mention that
> There's a common trope thrown around that "the first amendment only applies to the government"...which is obviously true and nobody credible actually believes otherwise.
Is easily found to be untrue, there are a number of sitting senators and house members, as well as tons of state representatives who are pushing for (trivially) unconstitutional laws that regulate tech companies in violation of the first amendment. The most recent example I saw was the Florida law that exempts companies that operate amusement parks.
If that's the case, then the Oversight Board doesn't actually serve the purpose that the Supreme Court does, and your analogy there is inaccurate. In fact, if Facebook can simply unilaterally "change its constitution" when the Board issues an undesirable ruling, then it is much closer to the GGP's characterization of "One department of the megacorp confirms a decision made by the other department". In fact, if one might attempt to find an accurate analog in real world governance, another commenter pointed out that it's more akin to Iran: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27050948
"In theory, the Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts. However, all candidates for membership at the Assembly of Experts (including the President and the Majlis (parliament)) must have their candidacy approved by the Guardian Council, whose members in turn, are half appointed unilaterally by the Supreme Leader and half subject to confirmation by the Majlis after being appointed by the head of the Iranian judiciary, who is himself appointed by the Supreme Leader."
> An unflinching free speech absolutist who believes that no entity should be capable of moderating speech would be wholly incompatible with the oversight board, as they'd need to concede things about moderation to even accept the oversight board's validity as an arbiter of moderation decisions.
I respectfully disagree. As long as the unflinching absolutist doesn't have the final say as a single individual, the unflinching absolutist serves the purpose of pulling the board in the direction of permissiveness (i.e. the principle of free speech). This is not all that different from the purpose that activists serve in society writ large, as you pointed out when you mentioned judicial activism.
Yes and no. Ensuring that Facebook is transparent with their policies is valuable. The OB prevents Facebook from lying to users about what its policies are in practice, so there is oversight that ensures that the de facto and de jure policies don't veer apart. That's still very much what the supreme court does, and very much not what the Iranian Assembly of Experts does.
It is the case that the OB is relatively less powerful than the Supreme court because the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of Facebook are one and the same, and so relatively far more powerful. But it still provides a semblance of an independent judiciary.
A lot of its power comes in keeping facebook honest and accountable to users. A facebook that cannot lie about its policies is easier to hold accountable.
> As long as the unflinching absolutist doesn't have the final say as a single individual
I think this is akin to saying that a Supreme Court justice who believes that the law should be that the first amendment should apply to Facebook would be an asset to the court. That's true only if that's the outcome you prefer. Its terrible for the legitimacy of the court if someone's values are antithetical to the policies they're purportedly interpreting.
I think where we are in disagreement is whether this remotely can be considered an independent judiciary (Iran is below average: http://reports.weforum.org/pdf/gci-2017-2018-scorecard/WEF_G...).
As long as the OB functions in the way that you just described, it is not that. It is quite literally "One department of the megacorp confirms a decision made by the other department", and the fact that it's comprised of academics and experts (per the GP commenter) is just lipstick on a pig.
I think if you've concluded that from my prior comment, you're not reading what I've said with any open mind. Because I explicitly stated the opposite.
I think its also very clear that in practice "one part of the megacorp confirms the others" isn't how the OB has operated so far. There are cases where the OB has suggested FB adopt more aggressive polices, and cases where it has suggested it adopt more lax ones, and cases where it has told facebook that it wasn't acting in accordance with its policies. For example this one where, to continue the judicial metaphor, the OB remanded the case back to a lower court, noting that a "permanent suspension" was unconstitutional. Facebook can now have the lower court issue a different ruling (and then perhaps have that ruling appealed to the SC), or it could open itself to criticism by changing its policies to allowing a "permanent suspension", whatever that means.
You more or less admitted it in the following statement: "It is the case that the OB is relatively less powerful than the Supreme court because the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of Facebook are one and the same, and so relatively far more powerful". That's essentially how Iran works today, and its judiciary is the opposite of independent.
Nobody ever sets out to create a dysfunctional judiciary, it's just extraordinarily easy to create a system that trends toward rot in the long run. Likewise, in most countries where independence of the judiciary is a foreign concept, it's not because they didn't attempt to set up an independent judiciary, it's because the structure doesn't ensure an independent judiciary in the long run. At the end of the day, that's what a "Constitution" is. It means "structure".
> I think its also very clear that in practice "one part of the megacorp confirms the others" isn't how the OB has operated so far.
Correct, and I'm making no comments here about how the OB has operated so far, I'm trying to understand the structure of the system to try and predict how it might operate in the future. Throughout my line of commenting here, you'll notice that I'm asking about the checks and balances underlying the OB and how its members are appointed. I think the composition of the board, as it exists today, appears (mostly) reasonable. However, the mechanism by which new members are appointed (at least as I understand it) leaves much to be desired. When such a body is comprised almost entirely of people that ideologically align with the corporation it aims to check it becomes a sign of how the OB might operate in the future, and from what I can tell, there's no check preventing this from happening in this system that FB has created. In the long run, as judicial systems go, the OB appears to lean much more toward the Iran side of the spectrum rather than the US side of the spectrum.
But I didn't admit this. The OB is an independent court that Facebook has the power to (effectively) ignore. That's not the same as the Judiciary being not independent.
The oversight board is supposed to be independent, and we know how that goes. It was assumed it would do what's best for FB financially, which is let Trump back on.
Facebook doesn't need Trump. They're going to be making billions regardless.
They also have to deal with the current US government, where Trump and his supporters' fortunes are on the wane, and a lot of powerful people (of whom Trump has made enemies) are questioning Facebook and other social media platforms for giving Trump a megaphone.
Of course, there are also Trump supporters who want the opposite, but politically they just don't matter as much right now.
In the current political climate, the surprise would have been their letting him back on.
How were these people selected? Do we have a matrix on their ideology? Is that an acceptable balance?
They can't, though. It's an irrevocable trust; the Oversight Board would have to agree to terminate it.
I read:
> Facebook established an irrevocable trust with $130 million in initial funding, expected to cover operational costs for over half a decade
Half a decade is 5 years, not 50.
A $130M irrevocable trust to ensure their operations seems like a decent stab at ensuring they're not beholden to Facebook.
Wut? Read up on the “Traitorous Eight”.
Would you trust the BP Oversight Board, staffed 100% by people selected by BP, to police BP's emissions?
Independent means independent.
I'm glad to see this. Twitter and Facebook both use terms like "permanent suspension" in a silly attempt to avoid the term "ban". They should be honest about the penalty.
It turns out that the people who moderate the network wield unimaginable power.
If you can memory-hole a president of the United States, is there anyone on earth that you cannot completely dominate, in whatever channel or manner you chose to manipulate?
Newspapers have chosen to report, or not report on issues since time immemorial.
There is no shortage of reasons to criticize FB and to consider network effects such as you raise.
But I am specifically disagreeing with the “memory hole” point, and in particular of a public figure.
With the possible exception of 9/11, the Trump administration is probably the most significant political event of the 21st Century so-far. Nobody and nothing can memory-hole that, no matter how much power they have.
Trump is at no risk of being forgotten.
Exactly. The power to make someone invisible to others feels like something out of Black Mirror. Everyone claiming that Presidents (or others) did just fine before the Internet and social media is missing the point. Relevance, visibility, and existence are all concepts that are only meaningful in a relative sense. In a world where the vast majority of information seen by humans comes from large digital platforms, being banned in cyberspace but visible in meatspace effectively means you are blocked from society, since attention is largely given only to information on these giant tech platforms.
This is why large tech platforms are public accommodations, as SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas eloquently described in his recent opinion (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-197_5ie6.pdf). For those short on time, summaries of his arguments can be found at various news sites (Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/06/technolog... or Daily Wire: https://www.dailywire.com/news/clarence-thomas-hints-that-co...).
Glenn Greenwald also had a great write-up on the incredible power these platforms wield, which is far greater than most governments even (https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congressional-testimony-the...). In this article, under subsection #2, Glenn reviews the various world leaders who responded publicly to American social media banning Trump as an unacceptable and ominous event.
> A Twitter spokesperson told POLITICO in a statement Tuesday that sharing content from Trump's new site — "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" — generally "is permitted as long as the material does not otherwise violate the Twitter Rules."
> But, the spokesperson said, sharing posts from the site will break Twitter's rules against ban evasions if users try to imitate Trump's account and their "sole intent is to replace a suspended account."
So they're effectively saying you can only link to it if you disagree with it.
So whilst I understand your point of view, I think there is wider context that needs to be factored in here.
That aside, A network provider needs to enforce its own terms of services equally. In practice nobody does this, but Twitter and facebooks inaction for clear violations of their terms of service undermines their points operating fairly.
Facebook failed to act when Trump and others (of all political styles) decided to lie about voting, the mechanics of voting, and validity of voting. That is a clear violation of its community guidelines. It turns out that there are secret rules for politicians (basically they can do what they like.) This is wrong
Twitter failed to uphold it's ToS when allowing trump to issue threats to use nuclear weapons on north korea.
Had the ToS been applied equally, lots of politicians and pundits would have been kicked off years ago.
The issue is fairness. We accept the law, because on the face of it, its applied equally. As soon as that facade drops, people begin to reject it.
> It turns out that the people who moderate the network wield unimaginable power.
Yes, and this is nothing new. Just look at the power that news barons had. before that pamphleteers. In reality freedom of speech in the broadcast sense only applies to the rich, or the friends of the rich.
They also challenged a House seat in this 2020 cycle: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrat-rita-hart-ends-elec...
Trump has also won two-thirds of the election cases that were actually heard, rather than dismissed on some technicality: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/exclusive-breakdown...
My point being that I don't think it is invalid to discuss election results or not believe in them. We have a legal process to hear these complaints for a reason.
Just like members of another political party did 4 years earlier, but they weren't given any warnings or badges or anything. I wonder if it has something to do with that company management is more closely aligned with that party. /s
I don't have a horse in this race, but the lack of objectivity in Trump haters is striking even from the other side of the ocean. Hatred can cloud reasoning, I guess.
What were those lies? There was a foreign influence campaign. There was a bipartisan confirmation of that fact in the Senate. There were suggestions of vote manipulation (based on foreign actors accessing voter roles), but I don't recall any accusations being leveled. Many people thought Trump was an illegitimate president. There was a peaceful change of power. Obama showed up and handed over the reins.
The recent elections went much further. "Stop the steal" is pretty strong language. Trump called out particular state elections as having short-counted votes for him. There was wild speculation about counting efforts and voting machine manipulation. People stormed a congressional meeting confirming the outcome. Trump continued to attack our election processes and refused to participate in the inauguration.
Rofl. A few thousands dollars bought ads that influenced the election, oh wow! If it was the US citizens who voted, they are free to listen anyone they want. Or you think that US citizens are too stupid to be allowed to judge for themselves, and should be guarded from 'wrong' information? (Of course, we can trust Facebook to decide which info is right, and which not)
In any case I'll ask again. What were these lies from Democrats? I'm aware of very few lies about voting, voting mechanics, and the validity of the 2016 vote.
Looking back in fact I see Trump at that time too claiming voter fraud before the election. He claimed to have won the popular vote after due to illegal voters. Yet he did very little in power to affect these issues then claimed so again.
Start with a basic search and visit first few links:
Instead, they engage in an elaborate hypocrisy, inventing rules and procedures that are only applied to him and are only used to silence him. It is clear as a day that they don't apply the same standards to other politicians, especially their allies. And to me, few things are as disgusting as such hypocrisy. Shameless bias in reporting (to either side, while pretending to be 'objective') comes close, but not quite.
The "emporer has no clothes" moment for me was when after a dozen or so appearances by Adam Schiff on CNN, MSNBC etc that he had seen proof that Trump was a russian asset, he presented zero evidence during the early 2020 impeachment trial. There are a lot of liars in politics and I wish more people would admit their side has their fair share of them.
Weaponized speech (which is actually an unholy marriage of data driven sentiment management, which would not unreasonably be described as still incompletely successful stochastic mind control) represents a threat to our society culture and government not unlike asymmetrical nuclear or biological warfare. Against amoral bad actors, there is no plausible defense.
In such an environment we have no better tool currently than a zero-tolerance shut down of actors who have demonstrated bad faith and ill intent, with respect to the system itself.
We do have worse tools, but they are mostly much much worse.
> But it is the "indefinite" part of the ban that it took issue with because that is not within its own rules.
I think the wording is careful here - they have a problem with indefinite banning, not because of moral concerns but simply because of an inconsistency with their current rules. Expect a TOS update soon to amend that... Bare in mind also that technically 99 years wouldn't be indefinite, but can clearly be considered a lifetime ban.
Personally I think it's crazy that indefinite bans are allowed. Even murderers and pedophiles eventually are allowed to re-enter society, and yet, apparently a message on Facebook can carry a life sentence.
Firearms are so contentious that I'm not even going to describe the argument to avoid this being derailed into a flame war.
Schools are in substantially every residential neighborhood, because that's where they keep the students. So people prohibited from living "near a school" are prohibited from living pretty much everywhere.
But the most important distinction between this and those things is that they only come after a criminal conviction proved beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law by a government subject to the constitutional constraints in the Bill of Rights.
There is nothing normal about it.
Private companies are free to run their business any way they want. If they choose to ban a person based on the 45th president promoting an overthrow of the government, so be it.
Just as hacker news has rules so does Facebook, if you don't like it, go somewhere else.
In the case of our previous president (45th that is) that tends to exaggerate his wealth, why doesn't he just buy enough stock in Facebook to control it and change it's rules?
The court case was about the Espionage Act of 1917, and was extremely unconstitutional. It was about speaking about against the draft.
Holmes justified his ruling with the fire statement at the end of the case, but it has nothing to do with constitutional law, it was an emotional statement.
The court case itself was unconstitutional, and that statement everyone repeats has no legal binding whatsoever as it had no bearing on anything. I doubt you agree with the outcome of that case (socialists being imprisoned for speaking out against the draft) so why would you use an emotional statement used to justify it?
Private companies are not free to do whatever they want, there are regulations. When companies get too large they should be regulated. You can argue these companies have possibly outgrown their Section 230 immunities as they are no longer acting as a neutral platform. They are editorializing their content, acting as a publisher. The social media giants are entrenched with government and businesses solely using them for support and communications, you cannot simply move off.
I guess you are very pro corporate and you feel like corporations should be able to do whatever they want whenever they want.
It being legally okay, does not make it morally okay and laws can change to meet the morals. Maybe we should apply the 1A to these platforms.
They held that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action".
But yes overall I say their first decision of imprisoning people for speaking out against the draft was unconstitutional, socialist or not.
> Private companies are free to run their business any way they want.
On that aspect, is there a point where they're no longer acting as themselves but as an extension of the government?
- If the government has requested particular action?
- If they're under contract by the government?
- If they've been ordered by the government via a judicial preceding?
- If they've been ordered by the government via law or even just Executive action?
We're well into a time where governments are hiring corporations to do what they themselves are legally barred from doing.
If there are no boundaries, there are few (no?) rules.
Look at the controversy over platforms like parler and gab as well.
This is why I think the ultimate solution is to have platforms that are fully encrypted, anonymized (TOR) and decentralized. This is the only way to ensure people can exercise their freedom of speech without harassment. Basic implementations have already been built, bitmessage, for example but that technology needs to be expanded into more of a reddit-like website. Make posters/comments/upvotes burn CPU cycles to participate and pay rewards to the people hosting/mining.
What do you do when Facebook is the monopolist and you can't go anywhere else?
This is a popular meme, but I'm not certain it's true. Given how many people use Twitter, Reddit, Tiktok, Twitch, Instagram, Discord, etc, it doesn't seem as if they're somehow also unaware that the rest of the web or alternative means of communication exist.
I mean, Donald Trump literally just started his own "social media platform," and his followers have been bouncing around right-wing "alternative" platforms for years. Not even the people primarily responsible for pushing the fear narrative around social media and it's "Orwellian" control of free speech really seem to be suffering under its hypothetical jackboot.
There's exactly one, maybe two of each for each type of media. Twitter for soundbits, Tiktok for video, Instagram for photo - in the past you had your choice of publishers. If one didn't like you you could go to another and at least get the message out. I'm seeing the concentration in the media market with great concern, it gives excessive power to shape opinion to a few magnates. The Trump ban is just a symptom.
We seem to be living in different realities. Where you're seeing media concentrating, I'm seeing it fragmenting and diverge. The big social media silos are popular, but that popularity doesn't translate to control of the medium.
Sometimes those rules are illegal. For both Facebook and HN.
But sure, let's just pretend money means you don't live under any state jurisdiction.
Big pharma can charge whatever they want right? They are private companies. If you don't want that insulin injection or epi-pen then just don't buy one.
It's one thing to get something wrong in a story, it's another to actively make things up and present them as news. NY Post is not worth wiping your shoes on, let alone reading.
Same with Russiagate.
That being said, I find it funny that people want an exciting story about a forgotten laptop when it's generally well accepted that Hunter Biden accepted a job he wasn't qualified for in a foreign country. For me that's pretty clearly nepotism at best and harming the interests of your own country at worst, and displays a clear lack of judgement. But Americans like a conspiracy theory...
https://www.facebook.com/NYPost/posts/10167094101195206
To Twitter a minute ago:
https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1389947126059356166
I can't find any indication either account was suspended.
They suspended the story, not the account I guess.
Does this make sense though? We don't much care about some drunk fool in a bar spouting racist hate. otoh a cult leader with millions of followers, we do care about that.
Hate to break it to you, but most people call them that now. Zuck funded democratic positions for the election, removed relevant content to the election (hunter Biden laptop, senate intelligence report, etc), then banned the then sitting president.
Who was the cult leader spouting racist hate?
How is it constituted?
Who is on it?
What drives these individuals? Would they agree it's a sham - a "plausible deniability shield", or might they believe it is something more virtuously independent and efficacious?
What does each individual gain or stand to achieve from their participation?
What do the answers to these questions tell us about Facebook's power?
What do the answers tell us about how society works?
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/03/31/facebook-donal...
It's hard to know what the limits of this action would be. Presumably the mainstream media can still post clips of Trump and this isn't being applied fairly, but does that make it any better?
IMO this censorship of content is more worrying than banning Trump himself. Limiting what people can even post and say about a past US president on the largest online communications platform on Earth is obviously a problem regardless of how you feel about Trump. No company should have power like this.
Of course, over here in reality, the word “independent” is quite a bit of a stretch. I give it about as much weight as Facebook’s claims they “value user privacy”.
I don’t mean that you can’t make the argument, I’m just not sure it’s a thing that anyone but the staunchest free-marketeers actually believes.
I suspect you meant to just point out that until such a law is passed, we are unlikely to see transparency.
OP didn't say that Facebook is required to do that. Note that Facebook is also not required to have an oversight board or anything similar.
Definitely in the global trend.
So professions that are (literally) 90%+ Democrat? Not even just Democrat—the kind of Democrats that thought Biden was old news and covered him as an afterthought until rank and file Democrat voters shattered their illusions. These are people that make up a vastly disproportionate share of Very Online Progressive Twitter that even regular Democrats often have to distance themselves from.
I’m sure this will go over swimmingly in Peoria.
I would argue that neither Zuckerberg nor Dorsey will come out and say GFY to Trump or anyone else because they are too meek and are not personally equipped to be leaders in the things they've created anymore. Appeals to higher principles like safety or whatever are only meaningful from people who actually demonstrate actuation by principle.
They have become mere prime-bureaucrats operating an infrastructure on behalf of their political regulators. "It's complicated," they will say, and worry about the optics of making a judgment call, or their responsibilities to investors and "stakeholders," but really, when their companies ceased to be based on a person doing a thing for someone else at scale, it was not a product anymore, it's just an extractive casino with a governance framework.
The success of HN I think comes down to some simple rules, with a very clear acknowledgement that it is moderator discretion that makes the decisions.
The problem is that Trump and other fascists, don't give a shit about being fair or moderate or playing by the rules. Trump and his supporters care about power and control. They will use and abuse the rules in their favor to get as much power as possible.
This is page ONE of the fascist playbook, manipulate the rules to gain an advantage. Trump does not deserve to be treated like an honest part of the political landscape, he deserves to be banished from public office and thrown in jail for his many crimes.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean you let people outright lie about things that are clearly the opposite. There is almost zero evidence of election fraud, yet Trump continues to lie about it every chance he gets. Trump wanted to steal the election and then tried to stage a coup when it didn't happen.
His citizenship should be revoked.
The millisecond that he officially announces that he will be running again, GoDaddy will strip the domain, AWS will terminate his account and the banks will find and block any accounts used to fund his campaign.
At that point, they will appreciate using free software, cryptocurrencies, decentralised finance (DeFi) and self-hosting your own services.
They'll start blocking it straight away since he's part of the lost and banned. Even worse, the career activists will probably contact and pressurise GoDaddy to suspend the domain because Trump, and that's that.
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are essentially the problem in the first place. Giving oxygen to mutants on the platform, amplifying their message to enrage, radicalise and manipulate others in these echo chambers to become somewhat emotionally unstable and believe anything they see on the internet.
With them here, it's become even easier to do this and an endless game of whack-a-mole moderation that no one wants to deal with.
Trump isn't the last to be thrown into the lost and banned, but I won't be surprised to see a higher profile official to have the same treatment.
Then I'll see how everyone reacts to it.
The way it currently is, there is not a check and balance in the system and it has allowed one side to gain a lot more power which is a bad thing. While those on that side feel they are on the "right" side, that power imbalance has corrupted that side like any form of absolute power tends to do.
Giving the platforms still more reasons to ban people they deem liabilities? Not sure what your argument is.
There are laws that the phone company can't discriminate who can use their service. Is that unconstitutional too?
People have had very broad interpretations for what constitutes corporate first amendment protections recently.
Here's a current Supreme Court justice making that argument:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/040521zor_32...
“Even if digital platforms are not close enough to common carriers, legislatures might still be able to treat digital platforms like places of public accommodation. Although definitions between jurisdictions vary, a company ordinarily is a place of public accommodation if it provides ‘lodging, food, entertainment, or other services to the public … in general ... Twitter and other digital platforms bear resemblance to that definition.” -- Clarence Thomas
Even if you were to agree with his opinion in full, you'd still find these state laws to be in violation, since they would be preempted by §230 in federal law, and the Constitution affirms that federal law supersedes state law wherever the two conflict.
It seems like a gigantic waste of time, at best, to try and enact and enforce those laws. Also, it's going to open a gnarly can of worms when someone weaponizes them by running for office to get themselves unbanned from a platform.
"The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Note that "abridging the freedom of speech" is preceded by "or", so consequently, "Congress shall make no law" also must apply to "abridging the freedom of speech" or else the sentence makes no grammatical sense. To interpret it as you do would be to violate one of the canons of construction.
Theory: it is more profitable to increase engagement of average users, who want nothing to do with the decline of the working class and the Republican party, than it is to amplify a bunch of extremists (still profitable) who turn others off from the platform.
Really? Not everyone agrees... (might not have anything to do with Trump though)
Twitter stock plunges on user miss and low guidance PUBLISHED THU, APR 29 2021 4:05 PM EDT
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/29/twitter-twtr-earnings-q1-202...
Are they serious? "Ordinary users" cannot mobilize thousands to storm the capital or spread mask propaganda at a massive scale.
The sheer amount of people that can be afected by Trump, the scale of it- warrants extraordinary measures to prevent him.
But he didn't do that. His speech on January 6th explicitly instructs attendees to peacefully march, which you can see in the transcript (https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-sav...). Twitter's original blog post announcing their ban did not point at any strong evidence that Trump incited anything either, and instead pointed at vague justifications like his decision not to attend Biden's inauguration (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...).
I feel it's easy to draw arbitrary lines but Trump was the first such individual to really challenge platforms with his messages (and the consequences thereof).
I feel in our lifetimes we'll see these lines blurred more and more depending on who it is and what the consequences of their words are (such as those that lead to a war/mass deaths).
Looking at this, I don't know what the justification for banning is but like most political decisions I guess you don't want to watch the sausage getting made.
https://m.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/posts/?ref=page_internal&...
Future historians will look back at the brilliance of building near-monopoly platforms by inviting one and all for free, ignoring copyright, doing a build-out at a loss, selling personal information, winner-take-all network effects, and then applying a POV to the whole works. Personally, I'm attracted to this view of the Facebooks of the world:
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/big-tech-has-no-power-at-a...
Zuck funded democratic positions for the election, removed relevant content to the election (hunter Biden laptop, senate intelligence report, etc), then banned the then sitting president.
You can call his statements “incitement” but the context of the statements matter. It’s actually protected 1st amendment speech and he didn’t call for outright violence (to me it appeared to be trying to diffuse the crowd - because he said “remember this day, but go home in peace” - but again not relevant).
we also need to call the riots the summer before burning part of the White House propriety an “insurrection”. Or when the cavanaugh hearing was broken into, etc.
I’m not condoning any of it, the root concern and the point I’m trying to make, is that the government should be defining it, not some committee hand selected by a clearly bias person monitoring and controlling all our thoughts and communication channels.
Before the hivemind greys you out of existence...
I'd agree that it's a real issue, the more pernicious problem being not censorship but the deep understanding of voters and the ability to (for instance) nudge an election in a desired way, but there's really not much new about this.
Imagine the power that newspaper barons used to have 100 years ago. Practically the only information available to the public, hugely influential in their reach, filled with political bias, the Hearsts of the world could start or stop a war.
People build such incredibly strong internal models, often tribal, atop a mere candyfloss of direct knowledge of a matter that someone will always take advantage of that attack vector. It's as if humans were designed to either be flagellants or part of a conquering army.
Not sure how one can be independent and yet get a salary. They're basically no different from regular employees.
"This Facebook Oversight Board decision is sponsored by Parler."
But I have become very cynical of any sort of corporate gymnastics done in order to justify their actions.
A future where corporations are self governing is not something we should support IMO.