Facebook removes Indian page, says it spread Iranian propaganda

https://qz.com/india/1629840/facebook-removes-indian-page-says-it-spread-iranian-propaganda/

by kushti • 7 years ago

67 46 7 years ago

Welcome to Facebook Co. Where a clique of Silicon Valley exec yuppies now decide what is right and what is wrong for us to see.

It's a very slippery slope. Cannot wait for the next elections where any candidates with politically "wrong" ideas will see their pages silently being discarded or randomly hidden from timelines without warnings.

TallGuyShort• 7 years ago

Arguably that's already happening. In the last round of Senate elections, Austin Peterson was repeatedly banned with vague explanations about the Terms & Conditions. It's of course just a coincidence that in most cases the post that triggered it were criticizing the incumbent whose reelection Facebook had contributed tens of thousands of dollars to.

GuiA• 7 years ago

No need to wait for anything; see for instance the Nancy Pelosi video fiasco.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/may...

stevenjohns2• 7 years ago

Happened in Australia just weeks ago.

Various pages belonging to the main Libertarian party ("Liberal Democratic Party") started getting shutdown[0] about a month before elections.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/davidlimbrickldp/posts/209817440381...

King-Aaron• 7 years ago

Possibly because LibDem supporters tend to post obscenely racist/xenophobic/hateful things that often get flagged/reported.

sonnyblarney4• 7 years ago

" Where a clique of Silicon Valley exec yuppies now decide what is right and what is wrong for us to see."

I'm not sympathetic at all to FB overall, but I am sympathetic here.

Zuck would definitely prefer to not be in the business of moderating content.

They've created a kind of 'internet platform' and by virtue of their situation, they're kind of forced to do this.

And there is - no - solution.

Every nation has different laws, different thresholds for various kinds of activity, and I suggest most of what FB 'takes down' is probably technically legal, but just beyond what they would like to do.

They are also under considerable pressure from many countries to act explicitly in some cases. I'm not familiar with this Indian/Iranian situation, but it very well could be that Indian government officials leaned on them to do it. The less transparency there is, the more there is political interference in business, the more they have no choice: "We don't like Iran, so stop all this pro-Iran stuff in our country or we shut you down" type threats.

And no doubt the US gov. has their interests as well, both on the 'local petty stuff' (i.e. law enforcement) to 'strategic stuff' (i.e. we don't like Iran either, stop their propaganda).

I do however think that FB will actually try to do the right thing, I think it's just beyond their capability.

I don't think Zuck is trying to promote his view of the world in the filtering. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this is 'an information architectural nightmare' - not really a political thing.

This could be an existential crisis for FB, as this happens more and more, they'll be expected to moderate 'everything' and then the business becomes infeasible.

opportune2• 7 years ago

Serving content and not doing any moderation is a choice to decide what is right and wrong for us to see. They must make the choice and I don't feel sorry for them considering how much money they (facebook as a whole, execs, employees, investors) make

djakjxnanjak• 7 years ago

And congress only had to grill them for a few hours to make it happen!

stjohnswarts• 7 years ago

They are free to exclude whatever they like, they're a private company and not beholden to what you think they should be doing. If they do the wrong thing they will go on the trash-heap of bad ideas in history, so far they're doing okay as far as being a business goes.

yeahigotgoats• 7 years ago

this is such a lazy, sheepish argument. we all know what is happening.

when your private internet provider starts to shut you down for your stupid ideas, or your private bank denies you service lets see how you feel then. and to act like the government does not already regulate the hell out of private business is just a foolish position.

patrick5415• 7 years ago

And yet, we have laws that require businesses to build ADA compliant bathrooms, and laws that forbid them from discriminating in both their employment practices and customer relations. If you want to make the “but they are a private business” argument, will you also argue that a private business should be able to say, serve only white people?

warp_factor3• 7 years ago

They should be seen as a public utility.

I dislike Facebook but for a lot of people it became part of their life and some information is now only available on Facebook.

As a public utility they should be regulated on what they are allow to restrict from their users.

furgooswft132• 7 years ago

Why does this tired argument never seem to come up here when Facebook is doing Bad Privacy Things? They are still a private company in that case, so it seems to equally apply (especially the trash-heap part). But I don't ever see it being made in those threads. Weird.

qrbLPHiKpiux• 7 years ago

Their opinion is that it spread propaganda.

Everything written is propaganda depending on what side of the opinion you were on.

Although I don’t like it, what is happening today is incredibly fascinating, watching it unfold since I have been using computers since 1990.

Gibbon1• 7 years ago

I'm darkly mirthful that people seem upset that Putin walked into the smoke filled room[1], sat down and lit up a cigar.

Mirthful because except for the polonium and nerve gas[2] everyone else has been playing the same games forever.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke-filled_room [2] Boorish to use your own people to kill someone instead of hiring it out like civilized men.

mwfunk• 7 years ago

It all comes down to what specific definitions people are using, but I draw a strong distinction between propaganda and opposing opinions about things. Propaganda is basically marketing copy for politics. It's unreliable in the same way TV ads for pharmaceuticals are unreliable compared to actual advice from actual doctors.

People with opposing political opinions might accuse each other of parroting their side's propaganda, but that's just a way to try to discredit what the person is saying. Like advertising, the only constant with propaganda is that it's bullshit: it might be true, it might not be. The person telling it to you might believe it, or they might not. They may not even know whether or not it's true, and they may not care. The purpose of propaganda, like advertising, is not to convey facts to people, but to convey emotions disguised as facts, and they know ahead of time how they want you to feel about what they're saying. It's not an honest effort to communicate facts, it's often meant to discredit the very notion of facts, so they can conveniently dismiss opposing views as just someone else's opinion.

newsgremlin• 7 years ago

If everything is propaganda then the question is why are we selectively choosing which propaganda to show? In that case, the real propaganda is the omission of certain propaganda, or for another choice of words the 'perspective' of another group.

We are being lied to on a regular basis, this has been going on for decades and the rise of right-wing and extreme right-wing parties reflects this.

jnaddef2• 7 years ago

What bothers me is that there are very few things that are not propaganda.

All Fox News article are propaganda, all CNN articles are propaganda, but yet they are accepted? Clearly a distinction is made between 'acceptable propaganda' and 'unacceptable propaganda', and this distinction is made by Facebook, an American company.

How acceptable is that?

xupybd• 7 years ago

I think this may be it. America has a ban on trade with Iran. I wouldn’t be surprised if American companies also are required to prevent them spreading information.

fuzz4lyfe• 7 years ago

That would be unconstitutional wouldn't it?

sonnyblarney4• 7 years ago

I don't believe that Fox and CNN have political propaganda in the sense you might imply.

Bias, narrative creating ... it's propaganda-like, but it's not the right word.

Interestingly - almost all US outlets have a pretty strong 'nationalist bias'. We don't think of CNN or MSBC like that, but if you watch the press from outside the US (especially during a war) it becomes quite evident.

When push comes to shove, the mainstream press in the US do work with government on some narrative issues of national security, which I think falls into the category of propaganda.

Zuck has painted himself into an impossible corner.

jnaddef2• 7 years ago

I 100% agree with you, so let me clarify what I was trying to say in my first comment.

US will label as propaganda any article coming from RT - for Russia, or that Iranian journal - for Iran, and now FB starts simply censoring those contents.

At the same time in Russia or Iran, news coming from US are labelled as propaganda as well.

Depending on where you live, you get fed either one of these "propaganda" and you feel you are on the "good" side and that others are on the "bad" side.

My point is the world is not divided between "good" and "bad", everything is not black or white, and the fact that a website with billions of users has the power to decide what is good or bad (or has the obligation to follow directives from a government) is a very bad idea imho.

JauntyHatAngle• 7 years ago

I would personally disagree with you, Murdoch has pretty clearly defined playbook which includes propaganda to further his own ends/political world view - FOX news is a part of that. He does the same with his papers in Australia in order to get the Liberal party voted in.

I'm going off the definition of propaganda being information of a biased/misleading/untrue nature, spread to further a political agenda/view.

It's intentionally misleading, and incorrect, in order to lead people down a particular political path.

In my view, this is still different to papers that present a cleaner view of the evidence/facts/situation.

Of course you can always omit/include details to present a story in a different light, but the degree of which makes a big difference. In the case of FOX, it is clearly so over the line that it becomes propaganda (in my view).

Can't comment on CNN though, never watched it.

NeedMoreTea• 7 years ago

I agree with the point about the nationalism, and occasionally jingoism from US outlets across the political spectrum.

Fox, The Sun, and other Murdoch media has so definite an agenda, that it can't be distinguished from propaganda. I don't know how else to describe it. Have seen so little output from CNN that I can't comment.

Murdoch's cosying up to those in power - of both sides of politics - is so blatant and outrageous, in several of the countries he's operated in it's a wonder it's not firmly illegal. It has been his intent to turn many an election.

zachguo• 7 years ago

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

dsl• 7 years ago

tl;dr: They were unwitting accomplices. The propaganda from well known Iranian government outlets was being shared frequently enough, with very little other content, that they were unwittingly part of the machine itself.

opportune2• 7 years ago

That still doesn't really explain why Iranian propaganda is unacceptable when the American, Russian, and Israeli propaganda go unpunished

Aeolun• 7 years ago

What is up with any of the big corporations making these kinds of decisions ‘without appeal or comment’. It borders on criminal to conduct business that way.

kevin_thibedeau• 7 years ago

Can any FB user produce a service contract?

duxup2• 7 years ago

Science fiction generally seemed to assume some evil AI or robots would take over the world and make arbitrary / unappealable decisions ....but naw we humans are happy to do it to each other.

Udik• 7 years ago

This is an Israeli propaganda page with 500k likes:

https://m.facebook.com/DailyCupOfJane/

The "about" section presents it as:

"Sugar, spice, and everything nice.Changing the world, one mug at a time. We're your daily girl power pick-me-up.

Cup of Jane is a community launched by TIP’s Future Media Project in DC. We love our communities!"

The discreet acronym TIP stands for "The Israel Project":

https://www.theisraelproject.org/

The page mixes feminist and feel-good messages with subtle propaganda for Israel. When is Facebook going to take it down?

Waterluvian• 7 years ago

Not sure if this is too far off topic or if I'll get roasted for this. "Cup of Jane" is the kind of title that's so awfully on the nose that I'd mistake it for satire.

duxup2• 7 years ago

I don't know if there is any way to really decide what is inauthentic outside of say only allowing individuals who are verified to post....and nothing else.

saravana85• 7 years ago

reading regular news like these. Guess FB is using Algorithms to ban than using human effort..

Facebook is a perfect example of how a monopoly will treat people

zecg• 7 years ago

“Coordinated inauthentic behaviour", what a refreshingly honestly dystopian syntagm.

rchaud• 7 years ago

This is the risk you take when you are a sharecropper on someone else's land. Probably won't be long until FB takes an Adblock Plus/Yelp gatekeeper approach where they'll ban something, and then allow them back if they purchase a certain amount of advertising.

They won't do it in the West as it would be picked up on the news, but bad actors in places like India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar (those are the ones I know of) would pay to have that "feature".

Facebook removes Indian page, says it spread Iranian propaganda

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