Facebook takes down Britain First ads

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46746601

by jmsflknr • 8 years ago

63 124 8 years ago

bbc.com

gammateam2• 8 years ago

“Political groups have been spending increasing amounts of money on Facebook adverts”

That’s because Cambridge Analytical was the instruction manual

All the hearings and dockets are better free content than any marketing guru’s online course

tossaccount123• 8 years ago

give me a break, Obama's team was allowed to suck up Facebook's entire social graph and also used an app to get the data for all of the app users friends without consent

https://www.fastcompany.com/40546816/obama-campaigns-targete...

Zuckerberg and Sandberg hosted events to raise money for Obama

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-harnessing-facebooks-soci...

The media called it genius and a good thing when obama used data and social media to win. Those dumb dinosaur conservatives were being left behind by tech savvy democrats. Now it's portrayed as evil when the reverse happened. Pure propaganda

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.htm...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...

dashundchen• 8 years ago

This is propaganda level whataboutism that is attempting to conflate two different things.

1. The Obama for America campaign directly asked users permission to access their friend graph, which was allowed and stated in the permissions at the time before FB reduced app permission scope.

2. The action taken on that data was to cross reference publicly available voter registration lists to suggest those most likely to respond to an invitation to join the campaign sent by the first user. No consent was missed here either.

Whereas Cambridge Analytica:

1. Bought the data from a third party, who had slurped it down under the pretenses of "academic research" in a random quiz app. Already a couple layers of misdirection here. This was after FB had tightened up their data usage policy

2. Peddled the data for targeted harassment and voter manipulation with false or misleading info. The leadership pitched services such as staging blackmail by spreading rumors about an opponents sexuality, targeting them with prostitutes and then disseminating that info.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-consultant-and-cambri...

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-campaign-use-tactics...

gammateam2• 8 years ago

I dont think it matters? I didnt say it was evil, interestingly enough you did

Cambridge Analytica is still the instruction manual

Its almost like your response was on your clipboard for anytime you saw CA in a sentence

How would you expect me to respond to that.. sorry that Obama’s team isnt getting credit?

keiferski• 8 years ago

Does anyone else remember when, circa ±2009, Zuckerberg used to frame Facebook as (in his words) a utility? What has happened since? The company grew and became more "normalized" and thus inline with the "company activist" model so prevalent today?

vertex-four• 8 years ago

Among other things, they realised that being a utility would not be as profitable. Also, many of the people who work there legitimately don't want Facebook to be used as a tool to make the world a worse place.

vorpalhex• 8 years ago

As always, this begs the question between hate speech and disfavored political speech. I think Britain First is doing their best to actively revert the UK back 50 years, but I struggle to see why it is they're simply hate speech and not a valid political movement.

xfitm3• 8 years ago

I agree with you here. Details of this particular issue aside - the chilling effects are likely to have a significant impact in the future. I don’t generally agree with censorship, but in cases where it’s needed I think it must be objective and not subjective. Eg. “i’ll know it when i see it”.

Spivak8• 8 years ago

This is always going to be subjective because it has everything to do with the speaker's intent, not the actual words. Determining hate speech is almost always about fishing out intent that the speaker is very protective of.

Spivak8• 8 years ago

The disagreement isn't really between those two things. It's whether such speech is actually political or a proxy for hate speech.

"We don't hire ethnic Muslims" vs. "We don't think you're a good culture-fit for this company."

mc322• 8 years ago

Does this mean countries with nascent independence movements will be able to declare these movements "hate speech"? I don't see much difference. Let's say Chiapas rebels or Puerto Rico or Scotts’ Independence movement want to seek independence, can the government declare that hate speech and have all that taken down? If this argument sticks, I can’t see why the above isn’t in similar vein.

dao-• 8 years ago

Britain First is not an independence movement.

pjc509• 8 years ago

The distinguishing factor is the promotion of hatred and implied violence.

I remember when the UK banned Sinn Fein from appearing on TV, including their actual elected MPs, resulting in the ridiculous "words read by an actor" workaround.

repolfx• 8 years ago

I think a more interesting question is what would Facebook do about the European countries where various aspects of Islam are already illegal.

France has banned the veil.

Switzerland banned the construction of minarets (not mosques) via popular referendum in 2009.

Austria bans mosques from receiving foreign funding.

It would appear that Facebook considers the majority of the populations of many important European countries to be engaged in hate speech, and presumably their governments too?

So I'm not sure we need to look to nascent independence movements to encounter difficulties with the consistency of Facebook's position although, it is an interesting thought experiment.

gwbas1c2• 8 years ago

Because, with politics, it's impossible to be objective.

baddox• 8 years ago

Ads for a Britain First petition to stop a mosque being built in Maidstone, Kent, appeared on Facebook over the Christmas period, despite the group being banned by the social network.
The three ads and the page on which they originated have now been removed, after BBC News contacted Facebook.

I think it’s safe to say that the “to stop a mosque being built” is the important phrase here.

alkibiades2• 8 years ago

why is that hate speech? i don’t want more churches built, is that hate speech?

detaro• 8 years ago

I think it’s safe to say

Why do you think it's that and not the fact they were banned before?

nemo44x2• 8 years ago

The irony is their countries flag depicts a Christian cross and they have a national religion. I can see why people are confused.

xolorg2• 8 years ago

How is that hate speech...

jenscow• 8 years ago

revert the UK back 50 years

In what way?

aaaaaaaaaab• 8 years ago

The number of mosques?

drugme8• 8 years ago

I struggle to see why it is they're simply hate speech and not a valid political movement.

A quick look at their "No More Mosques!" campaign should suffice to provide the insight you seek.

ramblerman2• 8 years ago

Explain to me why that is not something people can vote on?

What if I don't want Saudi funded mosques in particular, is there any nuance allowed. There is no racism or exclusion based on a person's ethnicity here.

Should we lock up Richard Dawkins for being anti catholic?

bluGill• 8 years ago

Regardless of content I don't want to live in a world where corporate interests censor me.

EGreg4• 8 years ago

So join us in building open source alternatives.

js8• 8 years ago

I am curious - which open source alternative to Facebook (and Google) has currently the most traction?

pointillistic• 8 years ago

Anyone remembers how the internet was going to liberate the expression, instead we got two, three bottlenecks manned (or is it personed?) by censors actively supported by the MSM and virtually the entire university system.

porphyrogene• 8 years ago

Facebook is a private entity and they can do with their software what they want. If that drives away users then that’s their problem. You can set up a server or a static page and disseminate your opinions more easily now than ever. No one ever promised the ability to say whatever you want without response or repurcusion from individuals, corporations, charities, political parties or interest groups.

Facebook executives are disrespectful and duplicitous but this is hardly an existential contradiction of the concept of the free and open web. If people choose a corporate platform with corporate censorship then the real problem is that no one is offering a better alternative.

ben_w2• 8 years ago

manned (or is it personed?)

“Staffed”

freehunter6• 8 years ago

That is absolutely not the fault of the Internet and entirely the fault of the people using the Internet. Every time I hear this complaint on a forum other than Facebook or Reddit or Twitter I laugh because if it was true, HN wouldn't exist. The millions of independent phpBB forums wouldn't exist. I wouldn't be allowed to write my own HTML and Javascript if this was true.

Some people willingly put themselves into buckets, yes. It's always been that, it will always be that way. But don't pretend for a second that this is the death of the Internet or a lack of free expression or censorship or any of that nonsense until you can't buy an IP address and host a web server on your own hardware. The web is free and open, and the existence of non-free and non-open parts of the Internet does not negate that in any way.

spaginal4• 8 years ago

https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/08/13/godad...

Domain providers are beginning to police content they deem as unacceptable speech or ideas. Are you going to remember IP addresses when the DNS system itself polices thought?

The problem is, tech companies are beginning to behave like a cartel when it comes to free expression. We don’t just see it in Facebook, we see it across all facets of the digital economy, from payment providers to hosting providers to DNS services themselves.

If your solution for someone getting the scarlet letter is to say they are free to build their own network, then we are approaching a major problem.

gwbas1c2• 8 years ago

Maybe it's time to realize that it's very hard to be objective and neutral. In this case, being objective and neutral is just giving the extremes a platform to promote themselves.

Maybe sites like Facebook should try taking a "no politics" policy, or a policy where a political ad is always placed next to a free ad from the opposing side?

Cthulhu_4• 8 years ago

Then you have to come up with a definition of what is and isn't politics - is a poll about whether you do or do not want a mosque built political? Is paying for an advertisement to sign a petition (about not building a mosque) political?

pjc509• 8 years ago

a political ad is always placed next to a free ad from the opposing side?

This is obviously a disaster, as it gives free rein to put lies on the same footing as truth. But adopting local rules on electoral advertising is a really good idea - UK print political adverts must have an imprint saying who's paid for them, for example.

ramblerman2• 8 years ago

Agreed, but Facebook can't solve this. They have created the biggest echo chamber that has ever existed. The algorithms designed to show people more of what they like combined with political discourse has given rise to something ugly.

To undo all that partisanship and try to pull people out of their comfortable bubbles would hurt FB's bottom line. They are simply not incentivized.

mabbo• 8 years ago

It is concerning that Britain First exist and have the support they do.

It's also concerning that Facebook has the power to decide who is right and wrong when it comes to the most popular form of free speech we have in the world today.

These aren't mutually exclusive facts- they can both be true or false and you can agree or disagree with them to different levels. And I don't have an answer. I'm not even sure any answer the majority would agree with exists. This is the great problem our generation must answer as a society, or destroy everything great we have achieved for having not solved it.

digianarchist• 8 years ago

Britain First have about as much support as Islam4UK which is to say not much.

The EDL was the real worry with membership peaking at 184,000 but today virtually none existent.

The majority of both groups appears to have merged into UKIP.

pjc509• 8 years ago

Which in turn has merged into the Conservative Party. Occasionally an MP or councillor is found posting in a hate group.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zm8zb3/tory-mp-with-histo...

(Sometimes people claim they were added to the group without their knowledge or consent, which FB lets you do - this is a massive misfeature of the system!)

lewisflude4• 8 years ago

I feel like this corporate censorship is awful for free speech. Specifically, because dividing people by beliefs/demographics increases tribalistic behaviour and the spread of misinformation.

I foresee a situation where we have multiple social networks, each with radically different social/political slants. Similar to what we've seen with things like Reddit and Voat.

robertAngst• 8 years ago

It seems like this is the first time non millennials had to deal with 'shitty mods'.

They are new and don't understand- Its time to move off facebook.

Same reason I'm here instead of reddit.

pjc509• 8 years ago

HN is great partly because it has excellent mods, and removes quite a lot of stuff between moderation and flagging. Perhaps a bit overzealous on flagging sometimes though.

rootusrootus2• 8 years ago

Shitty mods have existed far longer than millenials.

lewisflude4• 8 years ago

I think the fact that I've not encountered an "evergreen" community (i.e. one that doesn't go the way of Digg, Reddit eventually) gives me a lot of anxiety with regards to my day to day online community usage.

Online communities often feel ephemeral, but maybe that's healthy in the grand scheme of the internet?

I'm really thankful that we have good mods here on HN.

alistairSH• 8 years ago

How is that different than news papers or long-form magazines deciding what to report and what op-eds to publish?

lewisflude4• 8 years ago

I don't think it is! Major social networks behave more similarly to magazines, newspapers, publishing networks than they do communication protocols that put you directly in touch with someone else (email, phone, letters).

I think a lot of people hold this philosophical belief that social networks have some sort of responsibility to be fair on everyone all of the time, but I don't really see how companies are incentivised towards that in any way.

There is a sort of ethical question, that in the same way that in theory news organisations should be honest, diligent and accurate that social networks do have some sort of responsibility to be fair on everyone.

It's just not enforceable currently, and I feel like trying to force that sort of integrity onto social networks isn't currently viable.

ryanmonroe• 8 years ago

Because news papers and magazines review all their content by hand (and usually make that content themselves). The comparison you're making is like seeing a weekly neighborhood get together where everyone joins in except the black family which is excluded and saying "Well what about all the other private homes that black people never enter?". Those other homes aren't having a neighborhood get together, it's a different thing.

Cthulhu_4• 8 years ago

Free speech on the internet is a dream. Look at what happened while Reddit tried to advocate it - shitholes like coontown, dead girl fetishes, and a lot of other shit. That's "free speech" too. Everyone has their own standards at what is acceptable in online communities.

lewisflude4• 8 years ago

I agree completely! I don't expect free speech as a must for online communities. When it comes down to it, these are private companies, and not public services.

Most of the time when I see people advocating for free speech, it's to be allowed to give controversial opinions, or say things that would otherwise be seen as totally unacceptable.

Any social media site that I'd personally like to be a part of would ideally be "intolerant to intolerance, although I cannot stress enough how I think that people with intolerant opinions shouldn't be restricted from voicing their opinion. At least not at a political level.

EGreg4• 8 years ago

I've seen Britain First ads. While I disagree with their fearmongering, I think they went to great lengths to portray things in a nonviolent and "we Christians just want to make sure our children can still practice Christianity" way.

Really, though, this is beside the point. Just like whether the Internet should be regulated under Title I or Title II was beside the point. The point is that, when you're at a point where it's one or the other one-size-fits-all policy, it's a symptom of too much consolidation: the telcos / banks / platforms / whatever have become too big. It's a cartel.

Look, Facebook is becoming something much different than college social networks, or a "utility". Isn't it time for open source software that we can all move to, like the Web instead of AOL, or like Wordpress instead of Blogger.com ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI

Why are we, in 2018, still relying on giant centralized corporations to connect us and "allow" us to have our own (shocker) chatroom on their servers?

Cthulhu_4• 8 years ago

Why are we, in 2018, still relying on giant centralized corporations to connect us and "allow" us to have our own (shocker) chatroom on their servers?

We're not though, but why are you posting this in a centralized, censored / managed comment section while you could go to one of the decentralized open source alternatives currently being worked on? It's not about options, it's about what everyone wants - engagement, being where the crowds are, being heard, reading other people's opinions. As long as they align enough with your own, of course.

EGreg4• 8 years ago

Actually HN built their own software for their own forum, and I think even released it. They aren't hosted on some huge centralized site. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Would you also say "it's not about options" in other areas like net neutrality, telcos or banking?

skilled2• 8 years ago

"We thank the BBC.."

And why is BBC trying to portray that a canned email response is an official statement?

I don't doubt the matter at hand, but this is very sloppy journalism.

pjc509• 8 years ago

That is the official statement Facebook gave to the BBC, and it's proper journalism to report what they said when asked.

skilled2• 8 years ago

It's not. And I actually feel insulted to have you counter my initial statement. Go read the article again and tell me how is it an official response.

plufz• 8 years ago

I never think ads have been fair or 100% free speech. If I own a web site with ads I very much get to pick which organizations can use my platform for getting out their message. And they are free to start other web pages with their own content. Also if I am a billionarie I can make my voice heard a billion times louder than a poor person, how democratic is that? When Facebook bans actual accounts or pages, I think that is a bit different. You could still argue that they could start their own web page, but I think that is murkier territory when they limit non-paid free speech.

Edit: Would be great to get a reply on why I'm being downvoted?

pjc509• 8 years ago

The ads were first spotted and reported to Facebook as hate speech by user [real name!] on 2 January and he received a standard response from Facebook saying that the page in question did not "go against one of our specific community standards".

They published the real name of the person who made the complaint! That's just asking for him to get death threats. This is one of those moments where "normal journalism" covers things which would be banned from most forums, in this case as "doxxing".

A day later, when the BBC got in touch, it had changed its mind.

This happens a lot. They'll routinely leave terrible violent rhetoric up while censoring anything that looks like a female-presenting nipple.

spaginal4• 8 years ago

The question is, how would Facebook treat reverse bigotry that aligns with their personal biases and values? Would it recieve the same hate speech designation, or does “hate speech” end where your own personal politics begin?

That’s my issue with corporations and media playing speech cop. Free speech wasn’t supposed to have carve outs. As long as you are not committing an actual crime, and not just a thought crime, put every vile idea out in the public and let people discuss it.

Censorship is never a sound policy, the scales slide, when old ideas are squashed, what happens when the victors of censorship disagree with eachother? Is their first impulse to actually debate or just continue designating more ideas as hate speech?

ABCLAW3• 8 years ago

Free speech wasn’t supposed to have carve outs.

Sorry to be a stickler, but what exactly are you referring to here?

This statement is demonstrably false at the principle level, even in Mills' work, let alone in the enabling constitutional, legislative, or treaty-based implementations of Free Speech.

We can have a sound discussion about the optimal place a society should land upon on the more restrictions vs. less restrictions spectrum, but to pretend that the only way the system works is at precisely zero limits warps the conversation and prevents us from taking a deep look into the issue.

dep_b• 8 years ago

OK so let's assume for a moment that those people neither have a problem with the religious part of Islam nor the fact that it's usually practiced by foreigners but only have a problem with the political part. Then let's apply it to something else to see how it feels:

"Facebook removes petition against Communist youth center"

It has a kind of 1950's ring to it and it still doesn't totally remove the smell of stupidity, but this once was a very common stance not only in the US but in most western countries.

"We want Britain to stay capitalist" is absolutely not a strange slogan.

I still think anybody should be able to be a Communist in a free society, as long as they don't plan a violent guerrilla or want to overthrow democracy with some kind of idealistic planned economy dictatorship.

Facebook takes down Britain First ads

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