Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

http://www.business-review.eu/news/certain-facebook-users-in-romania-see-content-related-to-street-protests-reviewed-under-community-standards-153255

by dcro • 9 years ago

828 313 9 years ago

business-review.eu

paganel2• 9 years ago

This happened as this related article (http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/07/facebook-cant-cope-with-...) was on the front page of HN yesterday.

officemonkey• 9 years ago

Facebook should really think about whether they want to piss off Romanians protesting. Christmas is coming.

paulddraper• 9 years ago

Sorry, but I don't get the reference. Is Santa Claus Romanian?

paganel2• 9 years ago

It's about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Nicolae_and_Elena_Cea... , i.e. we "trialed" and subsequently executed the Ceausescu couple on Christmas Day 1989.

nes350• 9 years ago

They executed Nicolae Ceaușescu on December 25th.

joe_hills• 9 years ago

A previous Romanian protest led to a show-trial on December 25, 1989. The sentence was execution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Nicolae_and_Elena_Cea...

pawelk• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu#Death

I think that, coincidentally, Nicolae would be Romanian for Claus?

merraksh• 9 years ago

Ceausescu was killed on Dec 25 1989, after widespread protests.

cristianpascu• 9 years ago

He, and his wife, were executed so they don't talk. It was not the will of the people, but rather the ones surrounding him in the former regime, who subsequently took the power. Romania, I believe, is the only ex-communist country where the former ruler was executed.

ccozan• 9 years ago

Proof that any technology has a double use. Once is good to filter spam/fake news, but in this case the fast spreading of the news is crucial for rallying people to a cause.

cat1992• 9 years ago

and isn't it surprising that anything that is anti-EU is 'spam/fake news' and that anything that is pro-EU is 'crucial for rallying people to a cause'..

jotm2• 9 years ago

How the fuck did you come up with that one...

simion3142• 9 years ago

FYI this protests are not related at all with EU, this is not the first time when large protests happen with laws that favor the corrupts are attempted to be passed, laws like allowing people condemned for corruption to be able to become prime minster, changing the corruption laws so specific people can escape justice. Again nothing related with EU, migration or whatever you are imagining

eighthnate3• 9 years ago

Welcome to the wonderful world of propaganda. The top voted comments here are praising reddit for cracking down on "upvote rings" when reddit hasn't. Reddit, even their admins, actively work to push liberal propaganda on their platform. Hence why if you go on reddit any time of day, you'll see an anti-trump post.

The hypocrisy of the pro-censorship propagandists is disappointing. But then again, they are only interested in spreading propaganda themselves. They just want everyone to see their own fake news and ban their opponents' fake news.

rdtsc8• 9 years ago

I was joking before and said that it is inevitable that Facebook, Google and Twitter will eventually sell SaaS (Silencing as a Service).

But maybe it wasn't a joke after all...

It is simply too tempting to not do it. They have information which the Stasis and KGBs of the past would kill for.

One thing Romanian government should be careful with is not listening to protesters. That is at least one country where they have learned to not piss off the people. In 1989 they rose up, caught and killed their corrupt dictator. All in the matter of days.

Nobody forgot that. In early 2017 I remember they passed some decree to weaken some corruption laws. People came out to protest and within days decision was reversed. It was quick and short. Everyone wiped hands on pants and went home.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/world/europe/romania-prot...

Occupy and anti-Trump protestors should study and learn how that works. You see to have effective peaceful protests, there has to be a credible threat of extreme and overwhelming violence that will follow unless the government listens. Government should be afraid of the people.

The interesting development is that with Facebook and large centralized social media companies, the strategy seems to silence and prevent these protests from forming to begin with.

vkou3• 9 years ago

Occupy and anti-Trump protestors should study and learn how that works. You see to have effective peaceful protests, there has to be a credible threat of extreme and overwhelming violence that will follow unless the government listens. Government should be afraid of the people.

This is why the Civil Rights movement was successful (To a point). On the one hand, you had MLK preaching peace, and on the other hand, you had folks like Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers, who made it very clear that they will defend their rights.

White America was scared to death of the latter - to the point where they made concessions to the former.

Likewise with Gandhi in India. The British didn't leave because he made them feel bad - they left because if a revolt took place, they knew wouldn't be able to repress it.

TaylorAlexander2• 9 years ago

I’d love for those downvoting you to join in on the debate. I’m less familiar with Ghandi but what you say about Malcom X and MLK is consistent with what I know about the situation.

forapurpose4• 9 years ago

I'm not sure that's true or he much it's true. I've read a bit about Gandhi; his stated belief was that the people of the UK would back justice for India when they saw the treatment of Indians. MLK studied Gandhi and used similar strategies.

flukus• 9 years ago

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

You don't have to be killing anyone, there are many ways to stop the machine, but peaceful protest alone has never changed anything.

thedevil• 9 years ago

Occupy and anti-Trump protestors should study and learn how that works. You see to have effective peaceful protests, there has to be a credible threat of extreme and overwhelming violence that will follow unless the government listens. Government should be afraid of the people.

Please don't encourage violence.

The anti-Trumpers aren't fighting corruption, they're fighting democracy and their fellow citizens.

Note that I'm anti-Trump myself - I voted against him and find him to be an embarrassment. But that's no justification for putting on masks and beating up random people. Nor is it an excuse for encouraging others to do the same.

drb912• 9 years ago

The idea that democracy already failed and americans are already serving oligarchs is more common than you might think.

It’s certainly difficult to see how anti-trump people are anti-democracy: the mechanism with which trump won is distinctly NOT democratic.

To some extent, democracy (and a republic to a far greater extent) only works because of fear of violence. This was discussed heavily in the early days of the republic (well, both the us and rome).

joaomacp• 9 years ago

Unexpected words from the devil himself!

mtgx2• 9 years ago

But the threat of violence is what seems to work:

https://www.vox.com/2015/4/30/8518681/protests-riots-work

Many Americans like to whine about their gun rights because they need the guns to fight an oppressive government! But it seems the U.S. government has gotten away with quite a lot lately in terms of how corrupt they've become and the fact that so many Americans own guns doesn't seem to have deterred them too much.

In fact, every protest seems to be met with increasingly more violence from the government. Something tells me they aren't too scared at all about people's guns. I can only imagine how they will act when they start allowing police departments to launch drones against protesters in the future (taser-armed, pepper spray-armed, whatever).

rdtsc8• 9 years ago

I don't want violence, and getting things done by voting is obviously much better, but for protests to work I think there has to be a threat of impending violence. A bit like how the nuclear deterrence works but on a smaller scale. I think the idea that the government should be afraid of its people is not a strange idea in his country. Now let's think when is the last time that happened?

I am thinking during the Vietnam War protests or Civil Right Movement. I have heard that one reason MLK's protests worked is because there was a credible threat from Malcom X and Nation of Islam, which encouraged gun ownership and self defense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballot_or_the_Bullet

Yielding and accepting MLK's ideas was only possible as a compromise to preventing a more violent outcome from other groups.

frandroid2• 9 years ago

Facebook and Twitter routinely censor on behalf of repressive governments. But the joke is on Facebook and Twitter, as it is them which pay this price as the cost of doing business in these countries.

forapurpose4• 9 years ago

We might hope so, but I don't think that has been true historically. Did the companies that did business with the Third Reich suffer any penalties? What about the oil companies, who do business with many brutal regimes (and who now have one of their CEOs running the U.S. State Department, forswearing the U.S.'s commitment to democracy).

aaron-lebo2• 9 years ago

Those groups cannot begin to challenge the government with violence. What you are suggesting is much more likely to end up in an orgy of bloodshed with innocent people being the victims. It's time we evolve.

simlevesque• 9 years ago

The parent was clearly refering to the early 2017 protests, not those of 1989. It's as if you did not read one of his paragraphs, the one just before what you quoted.

jotm2• 9 years ago

Evolve to what? The government isn't afraid, so why would they do anything for people?

People were literally bombed for wanting better worker's rights a century ago, apparently it's time for that again?

norswap• 9 years ago

The OP's position is naive. So is yours.

rdtsc8• 9 years ago

Those groups cannot begin to challenge the government with violence.

Voting is obviously better. I was just explaining why those protests in Romania were so effective in contrast to the protests here. I remember the science march, the women's march, occupy, which lasted for a long while. Good things came up from those sure. But there were just not an effective way to make the government listen or do anything, at this point in time, in this particular country because the precondition where not there for it.

Organizing and planning for next elections, having a desirable platform that resonates with voters (in all states, not just on the coasts) is the way to go. Without that things, and focusing on how many scoops of ice-cream Trump had, or how long he shook Macron's hand is also not a valid strategy, and it just sets the stage for a re-election.

petre4• 9 years ago

Please don't encourage violence.

The 2017 protests were peaceful.

The ones in 1989 were violent all over Eastern Europe with the exception of Czech Republic. The killing of Romania's late dictator and the mock trial was the doing of former secret police, who's corrupt offspring and relatives are the politicians in power today. They only took advantage of the protests to picture themselves as heroes and sieze power for themselves.

Anti Trump protesters that destroyed private property are just vandals who can't accept the outcome of a democratic election.

rdtsc8• 9 years ago

The ones in 1989 were violent all over Eastern Europe

That's the point. Because the 1989 were violent, allowed for 2017 to be effective. Peaceful protests are easy, but peaceful and effective is hard.

Anti Trump protesters that destroyed private property are just vandals who can't accept the outcome of a democratic election.

I can agree with that. They\ ones that came to DC burned a few trashcans, broken windows and set a car on fire. What they perhaps didn't realize is that DC has pretty steep penalties for that kind of stuff, and now many of them have felonies on their record (in US those are the more serious charges that stay with you for a life and often prevent people from getting a good job in the future).

Also Chomsky has pointed out that Antifa is a great gift to the right.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/noam-chomsk...

That's an interesting way to think about it, but perhaps correct as I think in aggregate their action alienate more people than it inspires and in general fail to make the government afraid so their demands are just not heard and paid attention to.

goldesel• 9 years ago

The ones in 1989 were violent all over Eastern Europe with the exception of Czech Republic.

This is BLATANTLY false, please get your facts straight! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989

chimen2• 9 years ago

That is at least one country where they have learned to not piss off the people. In 1989 they rose up, caught and killed their corrupt dictator. All in the matter of days.

Sorry buddy but Ceausescu was not killed by the people. His trial was a disgrace, was rushed, staged and was brutal by any democratic standard. Ceausescu was killed by those that were already working under his direct command at that time (here's the main actor sitting next to Ceausescu which also became president a few weeks later: http://static3.evz.ro/image-original-605-388/cache/2016-10/c...).

The whole thing was merely a shift in power by cutting the head of the beast and re-growing a new one from the same body. During those days, all the "revolutionaries" that we saw on TV killing Ceausescu and torturing his children LIVE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNpca3Mh7as), formed a "mafia" group that would rule the country for the next decade; a period in which every industry was sold by these people.

People came out to protest and within days decision was reversed.

That's more than a month of protests (18 Jan - 26 Feb). We eventually won but we left those protests knowing that this government will try to do its own ways sometimes later. What we are fighting here is the same party that was formed after the revolution in 1989.

rdtsc8• 9 years ago

Sorry buddy but Ceausescu was not killed by the people.

Yeah people on the street didn't get to fire at him and his wife, someone else who already had some authority did. There was nothing democratic about it, but there was also not much protesting and rioting following it. People in large supported the capture and execution, no?

Do you feel that if there was a prolonged trial that it would have been a fair trial and it would have somehow ended up better for the country? I am asking honestly as an outsider, I don't know much about it.

That's more than a month of protests (18 Jan - 26 Feb).

Sorry, I was going by the NYT article which I linked to which said " After five straight days of spirited mass protests..."

freedomben• 9 years ago

This is exactly why I think it's dangerous to have a company like Facebook censor people, even in the name of "fake news." It's within their right to do so on their platform, but I don't think they should. You'll never get it 100% right, and real/legitimate people will end up silenced because of it. I wouldn't want that on my conscience.

megous• 9 years ago

Centralization is the real issue here. If people were sending emails to each other, this could not have happened.

Some would perhaps end up in spam, but if you're receiving the "same" message from multiple people, the information itself would eventually came through.

andrepd5• 9 years ago

It's within their right to do so on their platform

I will add that I think it isn't even in their right. "Private enterprise" or not, you still need to abide by rules, and just as a newspaper has to follow certain laws of press (and being a private company does not excuse them nor give them the right to do as they please), so does facebook, as the controller of a great deal of information, have to follow laws of neutrality and anti-censorship.

duskwuff• 9 years ago

This is exactly why I think it's dangerous to have a company like Facebook censor people, even in the name of "fake news."

What makes you think this was "in the name of 'fake news'"? It's entirely possible -- and, in fact, much more likely -- that the posts were reported as spam, violent, pornographic, or otherwise abusive. Unless you're arguing that Facebook should throw up their hands and let any content at all on their web site?

leereeves• 9 years ago

It's also possible that Facebook was told to remove this content by the Romanian government. Their policy is to comply.

lerpa5• 9 years ago

The actual problem is not Facebook censoring content. It's actually people trusting them not to, and relying on that. "Oh then it has to be regulated", yeah sure lets trust government to not censor what they don't like, what can go wrong.

tudorconstantin4• 9 years ago

As a Romanian what seems to happen is that a large group of supporters of the ruling party were coordinated in reporting the protests-related posts. I think facebook could easily implement an algorithm to detect reporting rings and actually suspending their member's accounts. Just like reddit is doing with the upvoting rings.

cat1992• 9 years ago

and what precisely is the difference between a 'reporting ring' and an 'activist group', algorithmically?

tankenmate• 9 years ago

The ring is just an indicator of coordination. Coordiniation of what is left up to the humans.

creaghpatr• 9 years ago

Reporting rings are pretty common on Facebook

lerpa5• 9 years ago

Isn't mass reporting done by people a form of activism. Don't know why you want to diferentiate, activism doesn't have to be "good".

mtgx2• 9 years ago

algorithm to detect reporting rings

How the hell is this not a thing already at Facebook? Are you freaking serious, Facebook? And you want to impress us with your lame "AI"?!

Reddit has had ring voting protection for years, and it only has 1/10 of Facebook's userbase.

I sure hope Facebook isn't planning on developing a self-driving car software platform.

AnkhMorporkian• 9 years ago

Why don't you think they have one? Let's take a second and think about how awful Facebook would be right now if they didn't have the protections they have in place already.

Taking an isolated incident of community reporting taking down some posts and accounts doesn't show in any way that they don't have protections against bot rings. What if it's legitimate users who have a vendetta against the protesters? Obviously, that doesn't make the end result OK, but that wouldn't be some weird evidence of technical neglect by Facebook.

eighthnate3• 9 years ago

Reddit has had ring voting protection for years

It does? Is that why reddit is inundated with political propaganda everyday?

r00fus• 9 years ago

Ah it's like the old digg days with bury-brigades.

hkon2• 9 years ago

fake news robot kicking in?

tudorconstantin4• 9 years ago

I doubt. I know a few high profile people with their accounts/pages suspended after they called for people to come protesting yesterday.

hkon2• 9 years ago

Do you think it's a manual process or an automated one? Who is giving the orders, scary to think about.

znpy• 9 years ago

I am not surprised.

frandroid2• 9 years ago

Facebook does this every day. For example, they regularly close Kurdish-related groups and pages at the behest of the Turkish government, and not just Turkish ones; recently there were Kurdish FB groups based in Canada closed as well.

b0rsuk2• 9 years ago

But Kurds, despite having 30_000_000 - 46_000_000 population, don't have a country. And if they're not so organized (this may change in future) states feel okay to ignore them.

photonios• 9 years ago

Couldn't it be that the Romanian government (or someone who has an interest in this matter) is mass reporting these posts and users?

If I wanted to make someone shut up on Facebook; I'd write a bot that uses hundreds of fake Facebook accounts to report certain users. This would cause Facebook's automated systems to temporarily disable posting rights till they've had a chance to review the user in question. Eventually, Facebook's review teams would review the user and lift the block. But, usually there's a delay between reporting a user and Facebook 's review teams looking into it. Which is enough to shut up a user for a couple of hours.

maephisto• 9 years ago

That's most likely the case. There's even no need for bots or automated ways, the ruling party has a lot of followers which are know to follow orders. Plus, there's been plenty of times when they bought votes and people support.

appoll• 9 years ago

This made me giggle. An automated bot developed on behalf of the ruling party.

This should take around 100 years, given that they were not able to host a propaganda website without publicly linking to their office's address.

gergdgdfg• 9 years ago

you can sort of tell that facebook is a company of no principles from its adulatory attitude towards Chinese government and its censorship policies.

flexie2• 9 years ago

I chose to believe that this is a side-effect of facebook trying to combat fake news with some lame algorithms and an understaffed department of reviewers, not facebook actively trying to please the Romanian authorities.

But even so, this shows how utterly unprepared facebook is for its role as a de facto news business. A bunch of engineers thinking they are smarter than they actually are unwillingly facilitate the election of Trump, Brexit, genocide in Myanmar, and apparently the suppression of opposition in Romania. And who knows what.

At the end of the day, relying on a social network run by a bunch of college kids, with absolutely no editorial board, no knowledge of any of the news they show, no local presence anywhere, no income except what they generate on advertisement, and worst of all, an incentive and an ability to show every individual exactly the news he wants to read in order to keep his eyeballs for another ad, is a really bad for civilization.

But that's what we have.

NumberCruncher• 9 years ago

Zuckerberg's Switchblade: Make it look like a side-effect of trying to combat fake news.

wolco2• 9 years ago

Or are they playing along to change the story around how much less time people are using facebook but still checking in and how users are counted. It feels like content generation has slowed and most people are only absorbing.

Change the headline.

anonacct373• 9 years ago

this shows how utterly unprepared facebook is for its role as a de facto news business. A bunch of engineers thinking they are smarter than they actually are unwillingly facilitate the election of Trump.

All of our "respectable" news sources fell into clickbait journalism. You can thank the NYT and NPR for doing their part to elect Trump. Reporting on the latest Trump scandal during the campaign drove far more clicks than "oh, Bernie cares about income inequality. Still. Yay"

TaylorAlexander2• 9 years ago

When Bernie had his largest rally yet (larger by far than anything Hillary had by then), NPR spent 8 minutes of the Newshour talking about something Trump said, and the reactions people had on Twitter.

They chose not to cover Bernie and while I could only speculate why, I agree with you that they helped elevate Trump’s candidacy.

onewaystreet• 9 years ago

Every time Facebook has stepped in to "fix" something they have been criticized by one side or another. They have learned that it's safer for them to do nothing and then blame the algorithm when enough people complain. No one gets fired when the algorithm does something wrong.

Chaebixi3• 9 years ago

They have learned that it's safer for them to do nothing and then blame the algorithm when enough people complain

When Facebook does that, people need to call them out on their bullshit. "The algorithm" and Facebook are exactly the same thing.

CodeWriter23• 9 years ago

It is those opposed to the demonstrations tapping the "Report" button, and shunting those posts off into Facebook Review Oblivion. The "Report" button on Facebook means the reported post (and by implication, the reported party) is guilty until proven innocent.

confounded• 9 years ago

"unwillingly" should probably be "unwittingly".

flexie2• 9 years ago

It should, thanks!

foobaw• 9 years ago

This is valid but what can Facebook do? What steps should the company take to ensure this doesn't happen? Do they have the capability to fix the status quo? Is there an algorithm that can prevent this from happening? We don't know if this is an issue stemmed from lacking reviewers.

CaptSpify• 9 years ago

They could quite easily just stop filtering news and give the users the tools to filter things for themselves.

mherdeg• 9 years ago

Huh. Could you elaborate more on the relationship between Facebook editorial policy and the plight of the Rohingya?

mrtksn5• 9 years ago

It's probably just an algorithm misfiring.

I don't like the censorship approach to combat miss information, I think the problem is digitising social interactions without including the social safeguard dynamics.

What I mean is, the problem is not the malicious information but the lack of accountability for those who introduce the fake information. In a real life, if someone starts a false rumour, although the virility can still happen, when the rumour gets debunked it usually brings punishment to the person who started it.

On the social media, there's no accountability as creating an account and run it programatically is much easier than growing an adult and interact with it in multiple social circles.

ankhkare4• 9 years ago

LOL, 2 posts about this on HN top!? really!?

mrtksn5• 9 years ago

Really what?

perch56• 9 years ago

Here is the Archive.org link as it seems the original website is down. https://web.archive.org/web/20171127203202/https://dorinlaza...

eecc2• 9 years ago

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10003400-the-net-delusio...

timthelion• 9 years ago

I find this especially weird given Facebook's incredibly lax approach to extreme right virulently racist posters in Eastern Europe. Like if Facebook, was censoring things that they found controversial, I'd get it, but it seems that they just censor randomly.

lsd5you• 9 years ago

Surely it's just at the behest of the host governments? i.e. The ones who can threaten to block Facebook from their entire countries? That is to say it is a business decision.

At this point I think we can be entirely cynical about their motives. To the extent that there is any semblance of a moral dimension to their actions (perhaps someone can point to those occasions if they exist) it is probably still just a business decision in that they don't want to harm their brand.

rdiddly• 9 years ago

Yep, Facebook's loyalty is to Facebook. So they haven't so much betrayed the Romanian opposition, as shown the true allegiance they had all along.

dexen• 9 years ago

User from Poland here. It's quite the opposite.

Facebook here is very "trigger happy" about removing posts that have even slight nationalistic flavor or cast just a shed of bad light on any minority - and most of middle eastern countries seemingly fall under that umbrella.

Have seen numerous screenshots of deleted posts and user accounts suspended for days or weeks, circulated on social media as examples of Facebook's overly eager execution.

A particularly egregious example was posts by one refugee from certain middle eastern country who simply documented the abuses she was subjected to, as a woman, and as a religious minority. She is a notable speaker at conferences and universities, telling her story. One of the post that got removed and had her penalized was screencaps of threats she received. Yes, posting screencaps of threats sent to her over Facebook by a third party got her penalized. All in all, many of her posts removed, her account subject to multiple suspensions, as far as I recall.

summner• 9 years ago

Miriam Shaded is not a notable speaker at conferences or universities. However, she is known for spreading hate, and anti-muslim propaganda.

She apparently re-posted threats she got on FaceBook from unidentified Muslim signed as 'Osama J'. Then Facebook took that down because it was reported as not appropriate content. Then the whole thing was spun through Polish right-wing internet to provoke outrage in its readers by showing that even half-Syrian is silenced when she tries to show how bad the Muslim (immigrants) really are.

She never followed through with raising criminal charges against the person supposedly making threats, he also wasn't identified other than the initials "Osama J".

The whole thing looked like a fabricated ploy to provoke outrage in the right wing internet.

Polish internet is sadly rife with anti-muslim propaganda, that's been spun to position the society against the EU and broadly speaking western values. You can see that for yourself if you use Google Translate and go to the frontpage of Polish version of Digg/Reddit called Wykop.pl

bad_user• 9 years ago

I'm a Romanian and I can confirm that posts and accounts have been blocked, probably because of being reported by the other side.

On the other hand, folks, this is a little reminder that censorship is a doubly edged knife ;-) So next time you call for censoring "fake news", think again, because it's not you who will benefit from it.

A couple of years back I was enthusiastic about the rise of social media for informing and coordinating citizens to fight injustice. Now that I'm older and wiser, I can tell you that no evolution or revolution can happen because of Facebook, only regression. Facebook is poison.

wavefunction• 9 years ago

I think the cost borne by propagandists from censorship is higher than those organizing protests like those Romania appears to be facing.

Censoring modern propaganda greatly limits the damage it can cause, while protestors have more traditional ways of organizing their protests.

I am not a fan of censorship but it appears some fraction of credulous humanity requires it to maintain at least a tenuous grasp of reality.

Varcht2• 9 years ago

The "propagandists" have unlimited resources compared to the individuals, filtering them on FB is a small battle in a big war. These individuals' "reality" is much more immediately in peril than some perceived danger of your reality being overwhelmed by propaganda. Teach people discernment if you are truly concerned.

StanislavPetrov2• 9 years ago

Who decides what constitutes a "tenuous grasp on reality"? Is it those who said that Saddam had WMD? The ones who said that the Democratic primary wasn't rigged? The ones who said that it was ridiculous that the US government was spying on its own citizens? If the censors had their way, all of the above may very well passed into history as undisputed facts.

hiram1122• 9 years ago

A couple of good replies have already been written, but I'll add another, using the new gold-standard often used to advocate censorship: The Russians pushing out disinformation to help Trump win the US election.

Millions of Americans weren't instantly converted from open-border advocates to wanting to build a Wall and limit immigration, thus supporting Trump, because of a few Facebook ads.

Propaganda doesn't work in a vacuum. You already need an actual issue to be its catalyst. And censoring anyone who speaks of it, even if it is in an exaggerated way, is probably better in the long run than letting it fester until it really blows up with much more force.

I would same thing for this new idea of hate speech that some people prefer to ban.

oblio2• 9 years ago

As the Romanian government I'd be careful... Romania has a well developed IT sector (especially for a developing country) and they recently pissed off most of the geeks in the country with the new tax code.

I'm also willing to bet that these people as a vast majority weren't voters for the party currently in power.

And the Romanian government is far from having NSA's IT prowess (yes, I know that they botched up quite a few things, but you have to keep in mind that the NSA & US government are playing at an entirely different level than most countries in the world except for maybe China, Russia and 3-4 others). At least on the IT front things the blow back could an order of magnitude bigger than what they're trying to do, clumsily.

Tade02• 9 years ago

and they recently pissed off most of the geeks in the country with the new tax code.

Interesting, would you like share some more information on that?

lucaspiller• 9 years ago

especially for a developing country

I’m not sure ‘developing country’ is the right term here, however I agree compared to Western European countries, most Eastern European countries aren’t quiet as ‘developed’ (disclaimer: I live in one) which I assume is what you meant to imply. Heck even Western/Eastern is bad, because Finland definitely isn’t in the west of Europe... So is there a better term to describe this type of country?

petre4• 9 years ago

The well developed IT sector is mainly due to outside investors. If they leave because of the new tax code and the crusade agaist "multinationals", there won't be a developed IT sector any more.

joering2• 9 years ago

bad_user please use VPN in your country!

And to everyone else, Facebook had tremendous oportunity to stand their/our ground and pissed the FTC off with some sort of minute/minutes/hour blackout in terms of net neutrality. Where was Zuckerberg then??? I know when you read it online its just a news; masses won't care. Instead of your profile, if Zuck would put a black page with number to your local representative and inform it will stay for 10 minutes, imagine the outbreak - FTC president would be out of door by then. Instead Zuck did nothing. Truly despicable that was a moment to create history in the name of freedom that Zuck praise his record on. As bad user said -- Facebook IS poison.

andrepd5• 9 years ago

A couple of years back I was enthusiastic about the rise of social media for informing and coordinating citizens to fight injustice. Now that I'm older and wiser, I can tell you that no evolution or revolution can happen because of Facebook, only regression. Facebook is poison.

I'll add to that. The internet is a great tool for coordinating citizens, spreading information, and fighting injustice. Having facebook, or any similar monolithic capitalist behemoth, in charge of controlling the flow of that information, is a BIG regression.

The internet was going to be great. How did it come to this :(

taurath2• 9 years ago

The internet just increases the amount of information flow - what one does with it reflects whatever their values are.

Stanish• 9 years ago

The internet is simply reflecting the society from which it emerged--a society where wealth buys power, where militarization is an unspoken rule, and where speech rights exist in name only. The internet could potentially help people organize, but unless used deliberately en masse, its inertia will lead for the common person very much in the opposite direction, as we have seen over the past few years.

mseebach• 9 years ago

It came to this after Silicon Valley was thrown into a moral panic over the tools they had built wasn't just for Tunis and Cairo, for Obama and Ron Paul, but also for Brexit and Trump.

Moral panics are never productive, but this won't be the time we learn this either.

simonh13• 9 years ago

Without Capitalism we wouldn’t have anything like Facebook or Twitter. These services don’t control ‘the’ flow of information, they are entirely additive to what we had before. Arguing that we have worse options for communication now is bizarre.

So what is the non capitalist alternative? State controlled social media services? Really? That would be a better option in Romania right now?

Facebook is far from perfect, I barely use it at all because it winds me up, but it’s a fantastic Communications platform. And of course they shouldn’t be interfering like this, but it looks like they’ve been manipulated by people flagging content rather than deliberately taking a political stance. I’m sorry but this anti capitalism whining, without offering even a hint of what you think might work better, really winds me up. It’s just populist posturing.

ryandrake• 9 years ago

Opt out. Nobody is forcing you to use Facebook. If you think it’s poison, don’t use it. The rest of the Internet is still here, trust me!

Retric• 9 years ago

Governments needs to be aware of the problem before they can suppress it. So, their was a wave of social media unrest, and their likely will be gain however it's going to be on new systems not those who are being monitored today.

The printing press sparked many revolutions in the past, newspapers and radio continued the trend. The internet is just part of a long line of technology that exposes society's discontent.

mkempe2• 9 years ago

For now you may think facebook merely facilitates regression. Eventually we'll see them enable repression. The gap is narrow, when one decides to manipulate people by manipulating the news feed they see as well as selling screen space in that "news feed".

Here is an example of the unfortunate side effects of manipulation: One month ago a dear friend of mine posted an obit for her mother. Facebook did not include it in my "feed." I only found out because yesterday I thought "hey, I haven't heard from K for a while..." and typed her name in the search box.

When revolutions shall come, facebook may hide them from you.

hrasyid2• 9 years ago

I don't understand, how is missing your friend's post related to enabling repression?

_Tev5• 9 years ago

It's funny how people who complain about facebook the most are the ones who treat it super seriously. Or why do you allow such stupid feature as "news feed" to be the primary source of your news and then complain about its uselessness?

Facebook is awesome for chatting with friends, organizing events and sometimes even for posting updates about yourself, for those who want to see them. You don't need the news feed for any of that.

mlok• 9 years ago

You are right. We should be wary of Censorship and Facebook is poison. But :

Facebook is a social media. Social Medias are not limited to Facebook.

Example : https://riseup.net/en

elandybarr• 9 years ago

Mass reporting is a common censorship tactic on Facebook. There are Facebook groups of Muslim activists who mass report critics of the religion to trigger autobans.

knowThySelfx• 9 years ago

I agree, FB/Twitter etc, filters or blocks content which doesn't suite their agenda. Saying from experience as well.

knowaveragejoe• 9 years ago

I really don't like that "fake news" became this term that means "news I disagree with". What it was describing at the time it was coming into popular usage, it mostly described "news" sites that in many cases used scripts to generate their content, and for the most part preyed upon far right sentiments. So yeah, we shouldn't censor "fake news" on the premise that it is something we disagree with, but rather whether it is easily verified as false(as many of these were).

losteric• 9 years ago

"Fake news" came into popular usage because Trump was using it to disparage critical real news. It's a dangerous phrase, trivially dismissing real news based on emotions and critically attacking propaganda based on facts.

Just call things as they are. News, lies, propaganda...

adavidoaiei2• 9 years ago

wtf, I am romanian and I posted on all international social networks about this event, It's not only Facebook in this world, be creative guys please.

ixtli• 9 years ago

It sucks that a company is suppressing the will of the people because it's greedy. That said,

So next time you call for censoring "fake news", think again, because it's not you who will benefit from it.

This line of thinking doesn't lead to a society that tries to make things better than they were before. Personally I prefer reminding people that democracy is a 365 day/ year job. Don't avoid doing things because bad people exist in the world: instead, commit to lifelong stewardship of your community along with your fellow community members such that there will always be a conscientious group of people to try to keep bad things from happening.

zaarn4• 9 years ago

It kind of makes me hope that federated networks like Mastodon catch on more. Hugely popular in Japan for not to dissimilar reasons; US Companies not respecting foreign culture and country.

LoSboccacc• 9 years ago

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

this has been known since a while, giving power to censor is giving out power to control the population thinking - it always come in the name of the greater good and it always get abused half generation later.

lerpa5• 9 years ago

No we all know Facebook and Google are both trustfully truth providers, that actually has been their goal all along. And if they don't know, we can always count on Snopes to tell it like it is.

johndevor• 9 years ago

I think Blockstack.org may help with this problem.

danra• 9 years ago

It's probably just Facebook's AI thinking that protesting against the government is dangerously close to suicide, and so protecting its users accordingly.

simion3142• 9 years ago

Your comment is bad, even for a bad sub-reddit standard, the joke is not funny and the only danger after such protests this days is that the prime minster will have to resign if the protests are not handled correctly.

justboxing• 9 years ago

Active Discussion on same story (different source) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15791304

ankhkare4• 9 years ago

this is legit (I am from RO). more about the news - even the US made a public statement about what's going on in Romania: https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2017/11/275899.htm

cies• 9 years ago

The whole US MSM (including online) is notorious for not showing protests. Now please don't tell me they're not corrupt.

bluetwo2• 9 years ago

I'm beginning to have doubts about Facebook's commitment to Sparkle-Motion.

bluetwo2• 9 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=accEKtBebaU

rhizome• 9 years ago

FB's openness has begat an unmanageable monster that is going to require a lot of imagination and brainpower to dial down. This is part of what killed MySpace.

JepZ• 9 years ago

I think what many people don't know or understand, is that facebook is not the internet.

So when you write something at facebook you ask a company to host your story under their domain. And as the company is held responsible for what they host, they have to review everything before publishing it.

When we wrote forum posts back in the day, it was no different. If the forum operator didn't like what you wrote, he just deleted your post. So if you wanted to post something nobody wanted on his website you just made your own website.

And so it is today. Unless you want to periodically write hate posts you should be able to find a web hoster or ISP to share your opinion with the world. The only misconception is that because facebook is such a large 'forum', everybody thinks it cuts his right of free speech when facebook does not want to host his opinion.

Yes, I know that many people use facebook as their primary means of communication and that therefore their channel to the world is 'censored'. And Actually I have no simple solution to this problem, as my solution would involve to not use facebook in the first place.

So I think there is a difference between a moderated facebook 'forum' and a censored internet, which some countries have and which is a real danger to the freedom of speech.

mtarnovan• 9 years ago

You seem to miss two important points: facebook provides a) convenience (most people can't be expected to find a web hoster to "share their opinion with the world", especially in the age of social networks) and b) enormous reach

Raphmedia• 9 years ago

I think what many people don't know or understand, is that facebook is not the internet.

Once, I had a debate online with someone. I linked them an external (non-facebook) link. Their reply was "sorry, my data-plan only covers Facebook".

That to me is very scary. This means that a lot of people like that individual are getting their online content from Facebook's trending news and nothing else.

voltagex_• 9 years ago

I wonder what plan that was - wasn't there a "free" Internet thing planned that'd only allow access to Facebook? Time to start tunnelling data.

icelancer2• 9 years ago

I think what many people don't know or understand, is that facebook is not the internet.

The Internet is whatever people will engage with. That is something the creators and early adopters (30-50 year olds) will have to come to grips with, as we did when Gopher and other protocols were ignored.

_Tev5• 9 years ago

People engage with many more sites than just facebook.

ursa000• 9 years ago

This's why we need decentralized networks.

dang• 9 years ago

We changed the url from https://dorinlazar.ro/the-strange-case-of-facebook-censoring..., which we would probably normally prefer as a more original source, but which is down right now.

beedogs2• 9 years ago

Don't think they won't do this in America when necessary.

catshirt• 9 years ago

thread i participated in yesterday would suggest about half of HN welcomes it with open arms.

beedogs2• 9 years ago

Half of HN are libertarian chuds these days, so it's not exactly a surprise.

azernik• 9 years ago

Yet another lesson in how abuse prevention mechanisms are themselves subject to abuse. This is also practiced against LGBT and feminist groups on Facebook, and against critical reviewers and the ASMR community on YouTube.

stanislavb• 9 years ago

I think we need a distributed alternative of Facebook. I wider adoption of https://mastodon.social/ could be a good start...

4lch3m1st• 9 years ago

Been using Mastodon and I can say it is indeed a very good alternative. One reminder to newcomers: choose wisely which server you'll join, depending on your interests. It will influence what and who you'll see first. Personally, I joined mastodon.gamedev.place which, as the name says, is turned for the game development community, however, it won't stop you from following people from mastodon.social, for example.

anonbanker2• 9 years ago

Be wary of Mastodon. While they were a good idea in the begining, their embrace/extend of GNU Social's protocol, as well as the walling-off of a large chunk of the federated network, is blatant censorship.

kofejnik• 9 years ago

this is a well-known tactic, widely used since 2014 by Russian troll factories re: war in Ukraine

Steeeve• 9 years ago

I see a lot of anti-facebook sentiment here as if they are some sort of evil censor that prevents people from communicating.

On the contrary, all facebook does is connect people.

What we're seeing here is the result of rising political influence on social media. Every major website is being abused by governments because that's how you get your 'message' (i.e. propoganda) across. Like the major sites of yesterday figuring out how to deal with astroturfing, the major sites of today are figuring it out too. The real problem is that there is no solution yet. For all we know, facebook is correctly dealing with this and this post and article are propoganda.

If a communication mechanism is unavailable during anything major, the logical thing to do is to use a fallback method of communication. If facebook won't let you post video, upload it somewhere else and post a link. How hard is that to figure out?

The INTERNET is an INTERCONNECTED NETWORK of computers. There are free services all over the place. If you can't use one, use a different one. That's how this works.

sigsergv• 9 years ago

In Russia Facebook has been exploing for a long time. There are sites where you can “buy” attack to specific user and he/she will be blocked or banned. Attacker just report some user posts as racist, pornographic or something like that and facebook blocks user. Moderation of such complaints is absolutely weak and causes a lot of anger and frustration, some people even leave facebook because of that.

adavidoaiei2• 9 years ago

wtf, I am romanian and I posted on all international social networks about this event, It's not only Facebook in this world, be creative guys please.

Let’s information to spread in internet graph.

ddmma• 9 years ago

Democracy was hacked!

lostctown• 9 years ago

If you still use facebook on a daily basis, you are in part responsible for what is happening to the free web. Sorry. I said it. I'm getting bummed at the frequency I hear the excuse, "But I don't have a choice, network effects..blah blah blah." Doing the right thing isn't fucking easy. So stop the excuses.

skrebbel• 9 years ago

Upvoted you, so this is just a little nitpicky suggestion: your comment would've had more power and less whine if you had omitted the "Sorry. I said it."

worldsayshi2• 9 years ago

I use facebook for keeping track of events. If someone would just make a good replacement for that (that people would use) I wouldn't attribute much utility to facebook.

mariushn• 9 years ago

Do something about it. Every little thing matters.

I just submitted an issue to Mastodon: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/5843

_Tev5• 9 years ago

It helps me organize events and keeping up with events of my friends. Or for just keeping up with friends I can't meet at the moment. It is useful tool. Sorry, I said it. I'm getting annoyed how people like you are always eager to blame facebook for their inability to actually improve their lives with it. It is really easy, so stop the excuses and learn something new. You might realize why people use it and maybe finally appreciate it.

Or learn how to actually make an alternative. No, Mastodon is not even close to it.

Chaebixi3• 9 years ago

You can still use Facebook and still not be part of the problem if you use it to post anti-social-media articles. That's seems a lot better than just deleting your account in protest.

b0rsuk2• 9 years ago

If Facebook was really like a society, it would splinter into a number of communities based on common interests. It doesn't, because it's a farm controlled by Mark Zuckerberg. Farm animals rebel only in books. Facebook controls how and when users interact. Users have no power to cause any change in Facebook. A society of slaves that can't govern itself. Let me know when Facebook has elections.

lerpa5• 9 years ago

Nah, let's go back to arguing like Facebook owes us some fundamental rights and so on.

StephenMelon• 9 years ago

It’s not clear to me whether Facebook is in bed with government agencies at a corporate level, or has just been compromised by them, but I have seen active censorship with my own eyes in the UK during politically sensitive periods so this is no surprise to me.

mihai_maruseac• 9 years ago

At the same time, posts filled with expletives but from people pro-government are reviewed as "we didn't find anything wrong"

eighthnate3• 9 years ago

This, boys and girls, is why you don't want to support censorship. I'm laughing at all the pro-censorship commenters here who are getting upset because their side is now being censored. Give companies/governments/etc to censor the "alt-right" and you are giving them the power to censor the lgbt, protestors, etc.

Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

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