We’re Making the Facebook Papers Public

gizmodo.com

41 points·donohoe··4 comments

Yet another article claiming that Facebook isn't censoring properly and needs to do more censoring. Because that's what it amounts to.

It's buried, of course, in concerns about things that Facebook actually does wrong. But the solution is never "Facebook's censoring is so blatantly inconsistent that we'd be better off if Facebook just didn't even try". It's always "Facebook claims to be battling misinformation and taking action against extremism, but they're not really doing it to well, so we had better make sure that they get rid of all that misinformnation and those extremists properly". The idea that Facebook shouldn't even be in the business of deciding what counts as misinformation occurs to nobody.

That's not really the point of this article tho. It's about the public release of the documents Frances Haugen provided to Congress and the media. Also, people make the argument you're making fairly regularly—indeed, it's been Zuckerberg's basic stance for a while.

Curated censorship seems to be a battle that's impossible to win (and that I'm not sure we should win). I'd much rather have targeted advertising be banned. No censorship needed.

It would enough if facebook would not favour misinformation. The core of the problem is ranking post to maximize profit. Misinformation is only dangerous due to its amplification.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com