Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532

by koolba • 4 years ago

348 557 4 years ago

I wonder how often they block stories that aren't fabricated... Joe started asking the question but then moved on to something else and Zuck never answered.

There's clearly more censorship then I thought.

UberFly3• 4 years ago

I'd also be interested in the stories that Facebook did end up letting through that same week. It would probably not support Zucks explanation.

aaaddaaaaa11122• 4 years ago

Also, Zuck said that a significant portion of them were deranked... it could be 99% of them for all I know.

psyc8• 4 years ago

One answer is: more frequently each year.

mikece• 4 years ago

That was quite the revelation... though if I was in Zuck's shoes I would be throwing the FBI under the bus too as it deflects the Section 230 arguments.

jeromegv• 4 years ago

From the article:

Zuckerberg told Rogan: "The background here is that the FBI came to us - some folks on our team - and was like 'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that'."

He said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Biden story in particular - only that Facebook thought it "fit that pattern".

secondcoming2• 4 years ago

Whenever someone or something is labelled as being under the influence of Russia, I zone out.

LinuxBender• 4 years ago

Here [1] is part of that related discussion on youtube. They start talking about the laptop around 5 mins into the video.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ [video]

gsatic2• 4 years ago

Gives an interview to Rogan of all ppl randomly :)) Man this time line is hilarious.

93po• 4 years ago

yes, very random, how quirky of mark holds spork

ohiovr10• 4 years ago

Look up Mussolini's definition of a certain political culture.

tomohawk• 4 years ago

This is the same guy who bought off public election officials with $600M.

mc324• 4 years ago

Not censorship to suppress falsehoods (or actual national secrets) but to suppress a true story. How are actions like this not a violation of the first amendment to the US constitution? The Federal Government suppressing speech.

Where is the Justice Department's investigation?

It seems like egregious overstepping. Remember when Qwest refused the FBI requests to phone data and we all hailed them for sticking to principles when ATT and the rest just said "yessirs!"

magpi3• 4 years ago

Well it sounds like Facebook chose to self-censor after talking with the FBI. But they still had the legal right to not do so.

It is a stickier than that though - I imagine Facebook fears regulation, not criminal prosecution. And if so, perhaps that fear led to the act of self-censorship. Can the government unconstitutionally suppress free speech via the threat of regulation? I personally don't think so.

daenz• 4 years ago

Well it sounds like Facebook chose to self-censor after talking with the FBI. But they still had the legal right to not do so.

The optics around this interaction are extremely unethical. Whether or not there was any actual legal pressure is only half of the issue. The other half is the appearance of unethical behavior.

refurb7• 4 years ago

This is the issue.

Companies like Facebook fear regulation the most. Their goal is to just stay under the radar of the government and keep making money.

Not surprised in the least that they’d “follow the FBI’s suggestion” in order to buy some good Will on other fronts.

Rebelgecko• 4 years ago

It's not considered a 4th amendment violation for a cop to ask to search your house without a warrant. It's only unconstitutional if you say "No" and they do it anyway. If the FBI talked to Facebook but there was no coercion, I'm not sure what the 1st amendment violation would be. Although it's still something worth being concerned about (e.g. what else is being censored by FB? What if there's unofficial coercion? Should FB tell users who are being semi-censored?)

mc324• 4 years ago

Yep the FBI should not be communicating with FB regarding what to suppress and not suppress --that would be outright "Censorship Office" kind of stuff, unless the information is regulated in some way (i.e. illegal doxxing, state secrets, etc)

krapp6• 4 years ago

How are actions like this not a violation of the first amendment to the US constitution? The Federal Government suppressing speech.

The First Amendment prevents Congress from passing laws abridging freedom of speech, press and assembly, or creating a state religion. That's all it does.

The government, in this case, simply made a general suggestion about policy to Facebook, which they chose to act upon of their own accord. That's perfectly legal. Scummy, perhaps, but not a First Amendment violation (unless of course SCOTUS were to decide otherwise.)

mc324• 4 years ago

What's the difference, in practice, between passing laws (de jure) and the de facto alternative? Obviously there is a technical difference, but if the result can in some cases be the same, where have we arrived at?

GauntletWizard• 4 years ago

No, no it does not. It prevents the government from taking those actions just as much, it's just harder to prove that the government took that action when it's not official policy. But it absolutely can be held that individual actions were in violation of our bill of rights or our natural rights - See cases like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_v._United_States_(2014) where there was no law nor policy - Just an individual officer's action that violated someone's rights.

The FBI telling Facebook "This is False Information, Censor it" absolutely violates many peoples first amendment rights by way of Tortious interference.

uptown• 4 years ago

“How are actions like this not a violation of the first amendment to the US constitution?”

There’s still no right to publish statements on Facebook enshrined in the Constitution.

mc324• 4 years ago

Right but this is the FBI, the government telling FB to censor a story.

not_a_shill• 4 years ago

Yet a government official can't block you on Facebook. Was that made explicit in the constitution?

I think the better reason is that they never actually told Meta to suppress the story, and I'm not sure if there was a stick to ensure that they'd do it.

defterGoose• 4 years ago

Feels a lot like an adult version of the old "stop hitting yourself" trope.

sib301• 4 years ago

Did you read the article or watch the clip? What you’re describing isn’t at all what happened.

tunap• 4 years ago

Interesting citation on Qwest. Does anyone remember what happened to Nacchio & the top brass shortly after the revelations? Convicted of insider trading, for crimes every other Baby Bell participated in, all the way back to the founding of American Telephone & Telegraph.

Another selective enforcement example; anyone remember when Fife Symington took the National Guard to the Grand Canyon during the federal shutdown? Convicted of accounting malfeasance, for practices that every developer in the modern world uses to pay the bills between project payments.

Trump, well let's agree he's no angel, but he is the primary focus of the latest vendetta from the deep state. Anyone who harms or endangers the deep state will be subjected to this kind of attack. No conspiracy theories, required.

cf141q53258• 4 years ago

Its based on a comment he made on his appearance on the Joe Rogan experience(JRE #1863) a few days ago. Only extracts are on youtube as he moved to spotify. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://open.spotify.com/episode/51gxrAActH18RGhKNza598

Also, i have to say its quite amazing to see Mark Zuckerberg on the JRE. Wouldnt have thought that would ever happen.

aaaaaaaaata• 4 years ago

He sat in rural American homes for chicken dinner...he'll do just about anything to humanize himself.

cf141q53258• 4 years ago

I meant it from the other side.

How many platforms, let alone people, get 3 hour long interviews with Mark Zuckerbg? And do them the way Joe Rogan does?

edit: Then again, he was on with Lex Fridman a few months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zOHSysMmH0

systemvoltage2• 4 years ago

After watching Lex Fridman’s interview with Zuckerberg, I kind of like him. I don’t care what the world thinks of him, from what I saw, he seems like a genuine and nice person. I like him. And it makes me question the demonization of him.

spaceman_2020• 4 years ago

You can be the nicest person and still leave behind an awful world.

Really hard to argue that Zuck and his companies have had a net positive impact on the world.

psyc8• 4 years ago

I realized 15 years ago that close to 100% of people who talk about him, don’t have the first inkling who they’re talking about, when they could easily have at least a better idea. One of the biggest problems big brain people face is that it sounds more clever and worldly to assign complicated self serving ulterior motives to basically everyone. If they have incalculably higher influence than oneself, one can hardly refrain.

spangry• 4 years ago

This is the great fear of many come to pass - censorship by algorithm. Facebook didn't outright ban sharing of the Hunter Biden laptop stories like Twitter did, they instead tweaked their algorithm to prevent the story from spreading. We found out about it this time because Zuckerberg owned up to it, but what about next time? For all we know, Facebook, Google and Twitter are doing this right now on a range of other subjects.

It's scary to think that just 2 to 3 corporations have the power to construct a false reality around us, in a way that's virtually impossible for us to detect.

andy_ppp8• 4 years ago

We do know they are doing this otherwise hate speech, spam and disinformation would be most of their platforms.

seattle_spring• 4 years ago

I wish people would acknowledge this fact more often (and it is unquestionably a fact).

naasking8• 4 years ago

Spam and disinformation are fake account/bot problems. Totally separate issue that can be solved by tying accounts to real people, without necessarily exposing their identity publicly.

As for hate speech, that's not only somewhat subjective, but you can't solve that by banning people. Every instance of people turning away from bigotry was the result of conversation and engagement, like the black Panthers partnering with the KKK to fight a common cause, or the admirable Daryl Davis.

Basically, the outcomes you describe are only inevitable if we make the exact same choices we've already made. Well duh. What's the definition of insanity again?

bamboozled2• 4 years ago

This is assuming there are no other ways for important things to be reported, such as media outlets, forums, 4chan, independent bloggers and pod casters IRC etc

If some major conspiracy was under way, I'm not sure Facbook, Google, Twitter censorhip alone would be enough to stop it?

inglor_cz• 4 years ago

You don't really have to stop it.

American elections have become so polarized that 50 000 votes in strategically important states can swing them.

It is definitely in capabilities of the tech giants to effect such a small change by putting their thumbs on the scales.

Of course, this is a general problem with the "winner takes all" political principle, and already the ancient Greeks knew that problem, but given that you can't have two Presidents at the same time, it is hard to avoid.

Even European countries where the President is usually just a figurehead suffer from bitter polarization when it comes to presidential elections.

deepdriver• 4 years ago

Forums, 4chan and random blogs are the last-ditch avenue for information sharing among a small, extremely attentive, more-paranoid-than-average segment of the population. They are not an effective means for journalism or mass political speech, even when the facts of that speech are clearly established.

hotpotamus16• 4 years ago

So what was up with Hunter Biden's laptop anyway? Was it full of state secrets or something?

readthenotes1• 4 years ago

Among other things, it shows that his father did know about his shady deals (ukraine, china).

Also had videos of various illegal activities that you and I would probably be thrown in jail for if the FBI found them on a laptop of ours

defrost• 4 years ago

The flip side is propaganda by algorithm ...

The pumping to top view of that story that elicits the greatest reaction and stokes the most base fears at the expense of truth and rationality.

We've seen false realities, election fraud, bleach cures, pushed hard by algorithm to the detriment of many.

remarkEon2• 4 years ago

That’s not a “flip side”. That’s the same thing.

mgraczyk8• 4 years ago

This isn't "censorship by algorithm" though.

This was a human being intentionally banning a specific thing. There was no algorithm in the loop. They didn't "tweak their algorithm" anymore than an antivirus tweaks its algorithm to detect a new virus, they specifically censored a specific piece of content.

epgui• 4 years ago

I suggest reading the articles before writing in the comments:

Facebook did not completely ban sharing of the article, but instead limited how much its algorithm automatically shared it to other people for a week, while third-party fact-checkers tried to verify the reporting. So while people could post the article and discuss it, it was less likely to spread organically to new users.

eloisius• 4 years ago

What’s particularly scary about it is because it’s censorship that’s less obvious. Banned books are obviously banned, which only lends credibility to what they contain. In the current age, you can still have your book on the shelf and Barnes and Nobel, but only a handful customers will be able to see it. No banning, no outcry, no one even trying to traffic bootleg copies.

seydor2• 4 years ago

not really censorship, just a regression to the old norms. mainstream media are biased to the politics of their owners. Same with facebook, it s a mainstream medium now

Zuck claims that he was duped , but lets take everything with a grain of salt

colordrops12• 4 years ago

The old norms were censorship too.

bb88• 4 years ago

It's scary to think that just 2 to 3 corporations have the power to construct a false reality around us

I do believe it's been this way for a while. Noam Chomsky wrote Manufacturing Consent in 1988. (There's a movie out there created in 1992 if you don't want to read the book). Basically the same factors at work then are the same factors at work today -- just escalated with an algorithm.

There is an objective reality -- it's just that people are too lazy to go find it.

wjnc2• 4 years ago

Pretty near Chomsky in the realm of ontology are the thoughts that the objective reality isn’t findable by respectively the average person, people in general or at all.

I wouldn’t call people lazy for being unable or unwilling to find out the objective reality. What domains offer enough rewards to do that for? A proper quest towards objective reality costs you from weeks to a lifetime. Humans are satisficers, not optimizers.

inphovore• 4 years ago

There is an objective reality -- it's just that people are too lazy to go find it.

It is not that Truth is impossible to find, rather that undeceiving the self is difficult.

wellthatsawrap1• 4 years ago

And when they are not too lazy to find out, they are labeled as racists, Russian sympathizers, anti-vaxers, conspiracy theorist and have their voices silenced... to protect democracy.

starkd4• 4 years ago

It's not that they are too lazy. People don't have time to devote that much energy to small details. That's why credibility in journalism is of top importance.

JKCalhoun• 4 years ago

Manufacturing Consent on YouTube: https://youtu.be/EuwmWnphqII

keerthiko• 4 years ago

I don't get it. Why did we ever consider the algorithms of private corporations as a fundamental or viable avenue for free speech to begin with? The owners and controllers of private algorithms will always have the ulterior motive(s) of protecting their interests.

The fact that we (the software and information industry worldwide) have conditioned any society to think that algorithmic feeds are a representation of reality is the real problem here, regardless of how many or how few corporations are participating in that.

selfhoster116• 4 years ago

Because initially, there were no such algorithms in place (or at the very least, they had a much lighter touch). The Twitter and Facebook timelines used to be chronological by default. The whole idea of an algorithmic feed as an intermediary of what you see was missing.

xhxjcur• 4 years ago

We didn't.

Facebook used to just be a timeline feed of all your friends interactions.

The day they changed to an algorithm is the day I said this crap is the end result and closed my account.

I guess y'all missed the message.

ProjectArcturis• 4 years ago

We've had the same problem with literal printing presses and their owners for hundreds of years.

roenxi• 4 years ago

It looks a lot like what newspapers have been doing forever. And other forms of media. The most novel part of this story is the existence of the Joe Rogan Experience which is broadcasting unvarnished opinions of the relevant CEO to explain what is happening (big improvement!).

The 2nd most novel part is that this form of massaging the news happens by choosing what personal communication can pass unmolested through a local community.

someguydave8• 4 years ago

Yes newspapers suppress true stories that they don’t like. The difference is that small time media guys were trying to publish a true story that the government did not like and were suppressed at the Facebook layer.

ekianjo2• 4 years ago

scary to think that just 2 to 3 corporations have the power to construct a false reality around us

whats truly scary is not just the limited number but the fact that these corps are always aligned in the same political direction.

hoffs3• 4 years ago

You know what is also scary, that most of higher education is also aligned in the same political direction. It's almost as if there is some correlation that comes with education

cdnfren• 4 years ago

What about the state-actors and other malicious entities that can drive large parts of the population to believe fake narratives, trough fabricating stories and taking advantage of the algorithms & platforms of the said 2-3 corporations? Could they have the power to construct a false reality?

jongjong• 4 years ago

Their algorithms don't just target specific topics, they target specific individuals too. Certain individuals have their social media content promoted while others have their social media content suppressed.

I suspect that people are promoted or suppressed based on their stance towards the current power structure. If you say positive things about people in power and corporate entities, your content will reach more people.

hoffs3• 4 years ago

Or maybe people just don't care about some people and they aren't popular

FowlSoft2013• 4 years ago

Speech is free. Reach isn't.

starkd4• 4 years ago

I remember the laptop story being flagged right here on HN the day it came out. Before it was flagged, many insisted it was a BS story. Links to the Tucker Carlson interview of Tony Bobulinski's connection to the Biden family were also flagged. There's a serious problem with group-think in online communities.

hef198982• 4 years ago

And since those stories all utter BS, I'm ok with the flagging.

whiddershins• 4 years ago

For all we know, Facebook, Google and Twitter are doing this right now on a range of other subjects.

I thought that was a given.

tr1ll10nb1ll2• 4 years ago

There's no right answer to:

- what you should censor

- whether you should censor

when running a social media (more like an ad-platform but irrelevant to the point I'm making) service to this scale serving people from every demographic.

Anything you do is wrong.

If you don't censor, there's misinformation on a platform you control and you will be responsible for further conspiracies and actions/campaigns stemming from it in the worst case scenario. The cost outweighs the benefit. On the other hand, if you do censor, you piss people off anyway.

absrd• 4 years ago

It's a responsibility that no one wants

ohiovr10• 4 years ago

This. Forums live and die on moderation. I've seen a forum self destruct and it isn't pretty. We can't allow black boxes to tell us what is false when you can look out your window to know the thing is lying. And if something gets that big and ugly without enough human moderation or self censorship it will collapse into a firey whirlwind.

10000truths• 4 years ago

My opinion is that a “social media platform” should stop trying to serve people from every demographic. I believe that:

* Facebook was much better when it was an exclusive community of college students

* Reddit was much better when it was a small, self-manageable community of nerds

* Hacker News is much better than either of those two because it’s still a small community with a specific scope and good moderation

tr1ll10nb1ll2• 4 years ago

I wasn't old enough for a small Reddit/college exclusive Facebook so I don't feel too strongly about it.

However, I do agree that we don't have a true social platform (not a corp with other objectives).

We can bemoan this all we want but if they weren't doing it, someone else would've been.

Alternatives can be created over and over but as long as those are consumption-driven corporations, they will try extract every single second of our attention possible. That IS their business after-all.

akira2501• 4 years ago

and you will be responsible for further

They didn't suborn the behavior, they just acted as a carrier for it. And if they didn't, it would find other outlets.

in the worst case scenario

The worst case scenario would be someone using your platform to organize a genocide, not conspiracy theorists communicating ideas to each other; and since Facebook apparently didn't feel too embarrassed about allowing the former the latter barely seems worthy of consideration.

On the other hand, if you do censor, you piss people off anyway.

And you drive them further down the rabbit hole, where true monsters like to gather and feed off their isolation and bitterness.

darth_avocado• 4 years ago

That’s a very bad take. What he said was: 1. FBI said there may be Russian propaganda coming, be on the lookout 2. They decided to allow posting of Hunter Biden story, but reduce the distribution while independent fact checkers confirm it 3. Then eventually allow the story to be distributed

Calling it “censorship at behest of FBI” is very disingenuous and misrepresents the story. I think what they did was very reasonable as a platform.

ohiovr10• 4 years ago

I would not have voted in the election if I knew about the laptop. True story about something that is true.

baskethead3• 4 years ago

The laptop was all over the news at the time. But the news said it was Russian misinformation.

pstuart21• 4 years ago

That was the only point about the laptop -- to smear Biden.

lalaland11252• 4 years ago

I think a lot of people forgot how sketchy the laptop story seemed when it came out.

Even conservative media sources like Tucker Carlson and the WSJ refused to touch it because the idea of Hunter Biden just leaving a water damaged laptop with a blind laptop repair guy (blind so the repair person could never testify to who left the laptop) just seemed so absurd.

rufus_foreman3• 4 years ago

Hunter Biden once rented a car which was then returned in the middle of the night with his driver's licenses and credit cards left behind, along with a crack pipe that had residue of cocaine on it. In addition, the car keys were left in the gas tank compartment instead of the car key drop box.

Do you actually know anyone who smokes crack? They don't always make the most sensible decisions.

I don't find the story absurd in the slightest.

didibus3• 4 years ago

I don't know if tweaking the algorithms can be considered censorship. The current tweaking always censors something over another thing, they have inherent bias, in a sense, and technically it's still there to find if you're looking for it.

The question of what gets pushed to the front page of some media platform is an interesting one, but I'm not sure censorship is the right mental frame. I'd like to think of it more as propaganda. It controls the narrative by choosing what to propagate and flood people with, not so much by censoring.

Another interesting dimension here too is that the previous flood of misinformation seems to also have been part of why this was specifically targeted. If you let too much misinformation go through, you're bound to start to believe everything is misinformation, and so here even the FBI and Facebook and other social media platforms thought: what if this is more misinformation, what if it's more Russian interference?

In fact, I think I read a while back this is a known tactic used by old USSR propaganda. You delegitimize real information by pushing a bunch of false info alongside it, and people can't discern truth from lie, and trust in information is lost.

It begs the question, which is worse, let the lies fly, or risk some false positive flags on the truth?

It's a tough problem all around.

moneytide1• 4 years ago

"Sometimes the brass allows a false rumor to go on so there won't be a leak."

https://youtu.be/7bmMzc28GR8?t=932

ohiovr10• 4 years ago

It is known as a limited hangout.

refurb7• 4 years ago

I’m kind of shocked this isn’t a bigger story.

- Right before a presidential election a major story breaks about a Presidential candidate

- FBI jumps in to say “it’s Russian disinformation”

- Story suppressed across the media including online as “disinformation”

- After the election story turns out to be 100% true

krapp6• 4 years ago

After the election story turns out to be 100% true

Not entirely. The laptop was real, yes, but at the time Trumpists were claiming it had everything from evidence of Biden's conspiracy to steal the election to his child porn stash. This wasn't a story about Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, it was a story about his son that the Trumpists hoped would destroy his candidacy somehow.

Given how much deliberate disinformation and BS the Trump camp was putting out at the time (Sharpiegate? Dominion voting machines? Boxes full of fake ballots?) the reaction to the briefcase shouldn't surprise anyone. Of course, most of what was claimed about the briefcase was still false, because it was mostly an attempt at repeating the character assassination by proxy of the DNC email scandal. If you want to blame anyone, blame the messengers for crying wolf so often.

refurb7• 4 years ago

That might all be true but it distracts from the original point - the FBI helped suppress information about a candidate prior to a Presidential election under the claim it was “disinformation” but had no evidence it was. They just said "it looks like Russian disinformation".

That should worry anyone no matter who you voted for.

Sure, the Trump side may be guilty of twisting it into something it's not, but I'm pretty sure "let's have the FBI suppress true stories to stop them from being twisted for political gain" is a terrible way to address it.

dehrmann2• 4 years ago

The laptop was real, yes,

Weren't only some emails authenticated? The details on how the Washington Post authenticated them weren't enough to make me trust that they knew what they're doing. Email is famously unencrypted in a lot of its transit; could it have been sniffed? Could Biden have been the victim of spyware that captured the emails? It may very well be real, but the story about how it got to the press is bizarre, and the evidence is messy.

baskethead3• 4 years ago

No. That's not what happened.

The FBI told Facebook "Be on the lookout for an uptick in disinformation campaigns." A few weeks later, the Hunter Biden laptop story broke. It had all the hallmarks of what the FBI was warning about, plus if you remember correctly, there was a lot of propaganda from the Dems and former CIA officials saying it was Russian misinformation.

mbg721• 4 years ago

If that isn't what happened, the response isn't convincing anyone, and clearly isn't meant to. This tactic concerns me more than any figurehead.

thro3882• 4 years ago

It is a major story, but not in US. Why do you think states lost respect and credibility worldwide?

mupuff12344• 4 years ago

Huh? If anything it's a story only in the US.

Pretty sure the "lose of respect" mostly occured during Trump's presidency.

cromwellian• 4 years ago

And a nothing burger. Amazing how a Coke addict who failed upwards to get a cushy c suite job like many, is supposed to sway the election but the Trump family running a fraudulent university and a fraudulent charity, paying millions in fines, isn’t literally a disqualification.

bgorman• 4 years ago

The simplest explanation is that Hunter was selling access to Joe Biden.

ohiovr10• 4 years ago

We knew what Trump did. If he did something, we knew. And we always knew. It was a favorite thing to discuss.

psyc8• 4 years ago

It is a big story on the conservative side of the ever more inflamed culture war. Few recognize it as a civil war because it’s 2022, and so is being fought with information rather than gunpowder. Mostly. So far.

lalaland11252• 4 years ago

FBI jumps in to say “it’s Russian disinformation”

This did not happen. As the article details, before the election the FBI gave a general warning and Facebook came to their own conclusion that the laptop looked like Russian disinformation.

ohiovr10• 4 years ago

You can flag it but this story will escape the 2 week limit on people's memory.

jemmyw• 4 years ago

So Facebook didn't censor anything? He didn't admit censoring and the story wasn't censored. Nobody had their posts about it taken down and nobody was prevented from discussing it. Facebook just didn't disseminate the story, they prevented their feeds from selecting it and showing it.

Isn't that what everyone wants? Except that they do that with all stories and have no algorithms at all?

It's not censorship though so I don't know what y'all talking about.

mwint2• 4 years ago

If your ISP decided to only transmit the string “jemmyw” 10% of the time, and blackhole the other 90% of jemmyw-containing packets, we would call that censorship.

Facebook altered an algorithm to transmit a story to fewer people than it otherwise would have. It’s censorship.

lokar4• 4 years ago

If you try to say something to a 3rd person standing next to us and I shout you down, that is censorship.

If I refuse to tell a 3rd person (not present) something you tell me, that is not censorship.

I have no obligation to repeat your nonsense.

WillPostForFood7• 4 years ago

nobody was prevented from discussing it. Facebook just didn't disseminate the story

Facebook didn't disseminate it so you never got the chance to start discussing it.

jshen6• 4 years ago

That’s not censorship

fsociety999• 4 years ago

That is a ridiculous take. If you share a link to an article and Facebook decides to not show it on the feed for other people especially at the direction of the FBI or government, how can you argue in good faith that that is not censorship?

I think in some ways this is even more sinister than what Twitter did by blocking the article completely cause at least on Twitter you were told that you couldn’t retweet or share the link to the article.

On Facebook, anyone who shared it was under the impression that their friends were going to see it, but yet they most likely didn’t.

Server6• 4 years ago

At the end of the day the Hunter Biden laptop story just wasn't that compelling. Everyone knew Hunter Biden had a history and struggled with drugs. It wasn't a secret. Ultimately this story wasn't buried by Facebook or Twitter. It was buried by the firehose of craziness, propaganda, and misinformation that circled the 2020 election. Just toss it on the pile of bullshit with the rest.

tomjen3• 4 years ago

If one of my friends share something that I have not muted, I want to see that in my feed. Thats the point of the feed.

Of course things like youtube searches and related videos is less well defined.

walkhour2• 4 years ago

The FBI interfered in an election and apparently you want to discuss whether censorship is the right word to use or not. Of course it's completely irrelevant whether what happened qualifies as censorship or not.

The issue is a supposedly neutral government agent very likely swayed a free election by "suggesting" to a private company it'd be a good idea to alter the information citizens are exposed to.

baskethead3• 4 years ago

I think Zuckerberg did a great job. I thought he was so robotic from the video clips that I saw but he's in fact quite normal. I think this was a great PR move on his part because I felt like he was being honest and transparent and most of all human.

aschearer• 4 years ago

Very odd that we can discuss Hunter Biden's laptop today but not Trump's affidavit. Don't tell me this comment thread is apolitical.

zenkat• 4 years ago

100% this.

The former President was caught red-handed hiding top secret documents at his freakin' vacation home, with probable intent to commit espionage against the United States, including disclosure of sensitive human intelligence assets ...

And Hacker News has it's knickers in a knot because the FBI warned a social media company that the Hunter Biden story might be a Russian psyops campaign?

Seriously people?

pdonis4• 4 years ago

The former President was caught red-handed hiding top secret documents at his freakin' vacation home

No, he did not "hide" the documents. As a letter quoted in a recent article in Politico [1] shows, the documents were removed from the White House when the administrations changed on Jan. 20, 2021. Which means whoever was responsible for checking documents that were removed from the White House by the outgoing President and his staff screwed up. And now they're in CYA mode.

with probable intent to commit espionage

You have no evidence whatever to back up this claim.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/26/trump-mar-a-lago-af...

psyc8• 4 years ago

The story is that the FBI knowing lied to Facebook.

seydor2• 4 years ago

my take is that the threshold is "amount work the mods need to do to remove comments" . Doesnt really have to do with subject if the convo is not derailed.

jmeister• 4 years ago

The entire universe is discussing T's affidavit and his underwear 24x7. It's ok. HB story has a tech and alphabet agency angle, both directly relevant to HN readership.

acjohnson55• 4 years ago

Rogan kept putting words in his mouth. He kept insinuating that Facebook and the FBI talked specifically about the Hunter Biden laptop story, when Zuckerberg did not say that at all. Zuckerberg said the FBI warned them to be on high alert for propaganda. Facebook's judgment after that conversation was that the Hunter Biden laptop story fit that profile.

As for the story itself, I don't know all of the ins or outs, but my understanding is that it doesn't amount to anything, and certainly nothing in comparison to the entanglements of the Trump family.

I think Facebook did the right thing. It's not the obligation of social media sites to facilitate October surprises. They do not have to allow themselves to be a tool to gin up smoke. Ironically, the FBI itself was played in just such a way in 2016.

rendall20• 4 years ago

I don't know all of the ins or outs, but my understanding is that it doesn't amount to anything, and certainly nothing in comparison to the entanglements of the Trump family.

This is a pretty astounding sentence, but I would let it go, except that I see this all the time.

It reads like a dismissal of the importance of the story because there is nothing that matches the unique danger of "the Trump family". Is that fair?

Bear with me for a second as I ask, respectfully, How would you know?

Perhaps it is true that Trump is a unique evil that must be defeated by extraordinary measures, but whence comes this information? If you rely, for your mental picture of what is good and evil, of what is important and what can be dismissed, on the same institutions that suppress true stories and promote false ones, then how even are you making these choices?

Further, remember, whatever powers are used against the guy you don't like this election, can be used against the guy you do like down the road.

peter4222• 4 years ago

Joe Biden had been in the public eye for 50 years, releasing tax returns, etc. Hunter Biden was not running for office.

Perhaps it is possible that this laptop, at the time completely unverified, had some magic smoking gun to bring down a 50 year career, magically showing up in a random place 10 days before the election. But obviously the much, much more likely situation is that it was either fake or insignificant.

If it were my social network and I cared about my responsibility to society, I don’t see why not promoting this story is at all controversial. It isn’t like Facebook is the entire internet, people still were reading about it.

alsaaro• 4 years ago

Trump proved he was a unique evil after he tried to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power by usurping democracy.

Remember, there are also questions about Trump's loyalty to the United States, he was literally placed under a counter-intelligence investigation for fear he was working for a foreign power, the results of this investigation are still unknown.

Extremism in the defense of liberty isn't a vice. When it comes to obstructing Trump and his acolytes, the ends always justify the means.

pstuart21• 4 years ago

I'll double down on the quoted line.

Do you care about the laptop because it's ostensibly proof of corruption or because it tarnishes the reputation of the sitting president?

If it's the latter then go pound sand. If it's the former, then good, let's investigate and root out the corruption and address it in a court of law. But that requires being open to treating similar treatment of corruption by the prior administration.

Every mention of the laptop so far seems to fall in the "Biden is dirty" camp, not "let's punish this corruption".

How would you know?

There's a wealth of evidence that Trump serves only Trump.

Disclaimer: I think the Hunter Biden affair was genteel corruption but there's been no substantiated evidence that his father was significantly influenced.

I put country over party, do you?

rendall20• 4 years ago

Downvoters: explain!

ss108• 4 years ago

Did Rogan ask about the Uighur or Rohingya genocide? Facebook spread misinformation about both, maybe censored at behest of governments, IIRC

mupuff12344• 4 years ago

But on the other hand trump is/was a danger to society and democracy. I'm happy the story was censored, given that it still seems like a non story (no real crime committed afaik)

And I fully understand the issues with my statement, the hypocrisy of it and the slippery slope nature of the act, but I do think some extreme cases do require bending the rules.

wesleywt• 4 years ago

I totally agree. Seeing how damaged Russia is due to mass misinformation, it is amazing to see how HN commenters think that misinformation is not a big threat. Propaganda works if you give it an even footing as real news.

colordrops12• 4 years ago

You do realize that they used misinformation to bury a true story about the laptop right?

woojoo6662• 4 years ago

You can dislike trump and still see the issue with 3 corporations (facebook, google, twitter) having such enormous political power

mupuff12344• 4 years ago

Sure. But at the same time the story did come out, and most people in the US were exposed to it in some way, it just wasn't amplified to oblivion. So it's not like social media had total censorship power here.

If anything, I think the lesson is that social media should be handicapped before elections for all stories.

psyc8• 4 years ago

We should just have the government switch between corrupt and not corrupt on a case by case basis. It’s the only way to avoid democratically electing the wrong people.

onos• 4 years ago

I think this is one of the most honest takes here from a person supporting what happened, and so appreciate this comment.

I don’t agree this event was justified. Further I think it caused a lot of damage to our country by very significantly lessening institutional and societal trust: fairness of elections (not questioning here the actual vote counting, but the seemingly-partisan silencing of damaging info on one favored candidate), whether politically biased individuals can be trusted to treat those in other camps honestly and fairly.

DubiousPusher3• 4 years ago

The fact that they have this kind of credulous pull with the man who has his fingers on the controls of so much of our information plumbing is even more upsetting than what the right has been charging which is that Zuck is just a big ol lib, especially given some of the bigger screw ups of America's intelligence apparatus.

Watching the Earth move beneath the feet of the gatekeepers in the 00s came with a lot of warranted but clearly unsubstantiated catharsis.

throwaway4good4• 4 years ago

Didn’t Zuckerberg implicitly support trump at one point? (What he is doing here certainly supports trump.) In the hope trump would ban TikTok. I thought that was why the Biden admin put Facebook in the doghouse.

throwaway4good4• 4 years ago

I was referring to stories like this (there are others as well):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo...

Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok

The firm, Targeted Victory, pushed local operatives across the country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American children. “Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger,’ ” one campaign director said.

benreesman7• 4 years ago

I think that it's worth keeping in mind that no matter what you think of their morals (that's a whole other debate for a whole other comment thread), people who have helmed sometime trillion-dollar companies for decades aren't in general stupid, and it would be fantastically stupid to make serious enemies of any candidate in any high-impact political race: if you load the boat on that and guess wrong you're going to have a bad time.

The last thing any of these people want is to be clearly partisan: it jeopardizes favorable regulation, it jeopardizes common-carrier type treatment, and it wins you roughly nothing. You want to sell software/ads/equipment/etc. to both sides obviously, but the Nash point is to get as much of that as possible without taking sides.

woojoo6662• 4 years ago

I found interesting how during the podcast, Zuckerberg compared the suppression of the story to due process in the justice system. A snippet from the podcast (with minor edits, starting from 7:25 of this video clip [1]):

Joe Rogan: is there regret for not having it evenly distributed and for throttling the distribution of that story?
[...]
Zuckerberg: yeah yeah I mean it sucks because I mean it turned out after the fact...I mean the fact directors looked into it no one was able to say it was false right. So basically it had this period where it was getting less distribution
it sucks though I think in the same way that probably having to go through like a criminal trial but being proven innocent in the end sucks. Like it still sucks that you had to go through a criminal trial but at the end you're free
I don't know if the answer would have been don't do anything or don't have any process. I think the process was pretty reasonable you know. We still let people share it. But obviously you don't want situations like that

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ

oldgradstudent5• 4 years ago

Zuckerberg compared the suppression of the story to due process in the justice system.

In the justice system, you are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Here, uncorroborated claims were enough. Not even a probable cause was required.

stuaxo• 4 years ago

Yep, a person who is known for distributing misinformation and Zuckerberg who's platform does that on a huge scale.

andy_ppp8• 4 years ago

Not really, in the justice system you are put on trial on social media first and everyone believes what they want to believe rather than the decision of a court.

You’re stating that fact validation should have the same level of scrutiny as a criminal trial except instantly? How do you stop false claims from being amplified without being cautious immediately? Facts can’t be put on “criminal trial” or got to jail - the metaphor Zuckerberg used is terrible.

johnywalks• 4 years ago

In the justice system, you are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Let's be honest, it rarely works that way.

However i agree, what facebook did here is "shoot fist, ask for forgiveness later".

mrits• 4 years ago

In a lot of cases the trial is worse punishment than the actual sentence.

dan-robertson• 4 years ago

If you’re being tried for a crime, you can still be kept in jail, or otherwise restricted by bail conditions. And even if parts of the state may consider you innocent until proven guilty, having been indicted can be terrible for your employment either in the present (if being trialled means you can’t show up for work) or in the future (if, after background checks, employers wouldn’t like to risk touching you).

So while it id true that there is an ‘innocent until proven guilty’ rule, the actual consequences of being indicted are not the consequences one would expect for someone who is actually assumed to be innocent.

I think your comment is not a helpful way to discuss a nuanced topic.

someguydave8• 4 years ago

uncorroborated claims were enough

ah but they were uncorroborated secret claims by a secret policeman acting under “politically neutral” state authority

When someone is accused under the law “due process” means that the government has to explain what the charge is and provide evidence in public court.

The secrecy is the key and the biggest concerning factor.

throwoutway• 4 years ago

Zuckerberg doesn't even understand the American judicial system

andy_ppp8• 4 years ago

What he’s saying is extremely muddled, I think he’s just ham fisted-ly trying to say “the truth got out there eventually” rather than “our process was as good as a criminal trial and whatever the FBI says constitutes absolute truth until it’s disproven”. I’m really not sure what Facebook should do in this situation, it’s really tricky for them.

hotpotamus16• 4 years ago

What truth got out? This still seems like an enormous effort to prove that Hunter Biden is a dirtbag, which was already proven for years. Like didn't he sleep with his brother's widow and stuff like that?

Obviously they want to use the sins of the son to tarnish the father, but if there was actual proof of some sort of wrong-doing, it'd still be the number one story on Fox News every day.

So really you just get to complain that Facebook and Twitter didn't run it the way you wanted them to. And sure you can complain about that, but it seems pretty disingenuous to then claim that you believe in free speech if you're also trying to compel private companies to carry whatever story you prefer.

itronitron4• 4 years ago

What did you find interesting about that?

beeboop4• 4 years ago

That Mark apparently thinks it's his prerogative to control media narratives until he comes to his own conclusion on what the "truth" is

INTPenis2• 4 years ago

Did no one else react to when Mark said they have "files" on people? It was in the context of someone trying to run a facebook page anonymously and he said Facebook will look at their file to determine if they're a bot or not. Meaning the file on the person running the page, that they already have.

At least that's how I interpreted it but no one else seems to be talking about this.

I mean it's not surprising, it would just kinda confirm everyone's fears already that Google and Meta can track any person regardless of if they give out their real name or not.

wjnc2• 4 years ago

Are you responding to the connotation of, say, Cold War intelligence with the use of ‘file’? For me it’s pretty trivial that Facebook can pull up information per IP, correlated IP (via accounts, usage, magic pixel) and try to work from there. I doubt it’s legal under GDPR to store all that data, but it never sees light and they could argue that they need it for compliance with things like law enforcement and keeping their own platform usable regarding bots and misuse. (Not giving my opinion regarding this tracking by FB here.)

INTPenis2• 4 years ago

Yeah I think it's in their interest to identify internet users for targeted ads, so they have what would amount to Stasi-like files on people. Correlating all the info they have to try and determine an internet users true identity, and they sure have a lot of information.

charcircuit• 4 years ago

Meaning the file on the person running the page, that they already have.

Every site with accounts stores extra data that is tied to your account. The most common of which would be a password hash. From what I understood of what your talking about is that they store whether you have verified your identity as opposed to them trusting that you are who you say you are.

mdrzn• 4 years ago

If your facebook page (fanpage, not profiles) has more than 1k followers you are required to use Geolocation data and send a copy of your ID, so they definitely have "files" on you.

fareesh6• 4 years ago

Is it possible to be an unabashed openly conservative / Republican in a company like Facebook or Twitter or Google?

One gets the impression that it's a club for one kind of animal only.

benreesman7• 4 years ago

At FB I unabashedly made a bunch of obnoxious (to partisans at least, maybe to everyone) criticisms of the fucking stupid Red Team/Blue Team thing. I took grief from colleagues/peers directly (which is clearly in bounds) but if anyone retaliated in terms of my career I never saw a shred of evidence about it. FB had the stated mission of "Making the World More Open and Connected": I posted a bunch of pretty-fucking-non-mainstream shit on my personal account and FB's leadership was always scrupulous about leaving my "personal" Internet presence completely out of it in a way I found very consistent with that mission statement.

In fairness I was a pretty equal-opportunity partisan politics attack dog, maybe it just canceled out.

For a counter-point, Apple seems to have been willing to set their ads business back by years to whack someone over a critically-acclaimed book that had been published for years before the auto da fe was held: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-h..., so maybe there's some dice involved.

fareesh6• 4 years ago

It's good to hear that they allow the team to have their own personal views publicly expressed without impacting their work.

I did, however, notice that you said that you were an equal opportunity partisan politics attack dog and maybe it cancelled out. I guess I could just reframe my question to you and ask whether you ever saw someone who was equally vocal but partisan on the red team. If you saw only vocal people from the blue team, I'd call that a bit telling.

If you saw partisan folks from the red team who were similarly vocal then that fully answers my question.

dmix2• 4 years ago

“We have a lot of conservative-leaning folks in the company as well, and to be honest, they don’t feel safe to express their opinions at the company,” Dorsey said. “They do feel silenced by just the general swirl of what they perceive to be the broader percentage of leanings within the company, and I don’t think that’s fair or right.”

https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-emplo...

benreesman7• 4 years ago

I've met Jack a couple of times, which is a damned-sight short of actually knowing him in any substantial way, but as SV tech billionaires go he seemed both well-intentioned and rather down to Earth.

If I've had any gripe with Twitter's high-profile/political content moderation policiy over the last decade it's that special privileges afforded to important officials should be attached to their official Twitter accounts. `@POTUS` or `@WhiteHouse` or whatever having "special" standards is at least an arguable point. Extending any special treatment to the private accounts (that, not coincidentally, those folks get to keep, or at least hope to keep, after leaving office) is pretty dubious.

IntelMiner3• 4 years ago

I'm curious how, from a logically consistent conservative viewpoint this can be 'fixed'

The ideas that spring to mind fly smack in the face of conservative ideology

- Private companies are allowed to hire who they wish. In our capitalist world the free market would provide for "conservative alternatives" and it does ("truth social" versus twitter for instance)

- Mandating some kind of 'quota' for conservative employees to be hired seems to fly in the face of the premise of businesses being freed from regulation and intervention by the government

- Free speech protects against the government intruding on it, conservative speech included. Extending this to private companies would be a disastrous overreach of unchecked legal power

- Algorithmically "forcing" conservative views would be seen as censorship of otherwise organic views. Conservatives claim (rightly or wrongly) the opposite happens, so logically they would be upset if the opposite were to happen

It seems like the only truly reasonable path is to expect "conservatives" to build their own platforms. Cater to their own audiences. If they are as large a group as they say they are, then the people who execute on this would become the barons of conservative thought and economics

fareesh6• 4 years ago

I don't think it's a problem that needs fixing. I think of it like this - Twitter labels accounts that are Russian government accounts so that the public is aware of where the information they are seeing is coming from. That same benefit in the context of misinformation / selective publishing would go to the public if it was known that companies lean a certain way. For example the public knows that Fox leans right and MSNBC leans left.

prof-dr-ir3• 4 years ago

I think it should be viewed like this: in the eyes of many, Trump is a man who boasted about sexual harassment. Continuing to support such a man is borderline incompatible with holding basic values that one might hope every employee has.

This viewpoint is really difficult to argue with. You can say that such transgressions are perhaps outweighed by any advantages of his presidency that you perceived, but that will not convince many on the left. Indeed, just look at the Cuomos and Franken to see that harassers are simply no longer tolerated on the left - these days such men are simply disqualified without pardon.

I think this fundamental incompatibility of basic values is an important reason why it is difficult to be a Trump supporter at many companies and universities nowadays.

(I conflated being "conservative / Republican" with being a Trump supporter. Feel free to ignore my comment if that is not what you intended.)

fareesh6• 4 years ago

One could simply support a candidate for their choice of SCOTUS judges or recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or opposition to TPP. It's not necessary that a voter endorses everything that the candidate has ever done in their life. I find this standard to be largely driven by the media. The President has a governing role, and different people are affected by it differently. If he is a terribly rude and obnoxious jerk - sure that can be a part of one's judgment, but it's not necessary that everyone has the same hierarchy

benreesman7• 4 years ago

The times are such that urging moderation in anything but vague terms means that I'm now painting a target on my own back. I personally think that President Trump is a crook and worse, but that's just really very separate to whether or not I should ostracize people who voted for him (I shouldn't).

Western civil society doesn't have many strictly saintly people even among our most popular role models. In the United States where I live, we're constantly jammed up between trying to admire legitimate, world-changing accomplishments by our founders/framers and the fact that many/most of them were unapologetic slave owners. I imagine it's similar in a lot of the world.

Even in software anyone who cares has to try to navigate a set of opinions about key figures that range from "Luke Skywalker" to "pedophilia apologist" on the same person while trying to remain somewhat balanced about the whole thing.

Im my travels I've never met a person who isn't a monster judged by their worst act, and who isn't a saint judged by their best.

That's all very platitudinous and PC, so to grind out something actionable: I think every person should be vigorous in determining their own allegiances to and admiration for and condemnation of public figures, and very conservative in judging others for differing opinions. So basically Postel's Law: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others".

I'm bad at this myself, but I'm working on it.

UncleMeat2• 4 years ago

I know a number of very loud Republicans at Google who post regularly on internal discussion boards.

hotz• 4 years ago

It's depressing how dismissive people are of the story.

Don't let hatred, bias and mainstream media take over your critical thinking abilities.

When you open yourself up to news from all sides, you can form a better picture and opinion on what's going on.

The biases from law enforcement and the media are clear to anyone with an open mind.

desindol8• 4 years ago

Well it would help if news outlets that report about it wouldn’t use slurs about the subject they are reporting about or at least write their articles with proper sources instead of „commentaries“.

myko12• 4 years ago

The story is nonsense. Rudy gets a laptop, sits on it, does whatever with it, and then claims it shows malfeasance on the part of Joe Biden (at best it shows Hunter Biden is what everyone already knows–a mild fuckup whose dad loves him).

The rightwing smear campaign attempting to frame Biden and exonerate trump by pretending Hunter is worse than Kushner, Ivanka, and the rest of the trump criminal family is ridiculous.

tyleo• 4 years ago

Frankly, I don’t think that is the ridiculous part. I’d bet Hunter _is_ worse.

The ridiculous thing to me is that this didn’t matter in context. Hunter wasn’t running and Hunter isn’t actively working in the white house like the Trump family. Meanwhile Trump engaged in gross nepotism, had a scandal rich administration, and did not agree to a peaceful transfer of power. Ultimately he went on to oversee the most violent transfer of power in American history.

IMO most folks didn’t care about the Hunter story and I still don’t. Not because it isn’t important but because it’s a candle to the sun. I don’t think our leaders _should_ be corrupt but when you put forth two terrible candidates all you can do is vote for the least corrupt of two bad options.

parkingrift• 4 years ago

So let me get this straight.

Facebook has absolute control to limit the spread of a story or news on their platform.

Facebook has absolute control to outright block specific content based on an algorithm they control.

Facebook can and will editorialize content posted on their platform.

Facebook has absolute control over the content that users see.

Can someone, anyone, please explain to me why Facebook is not a publisher? Why should Facebook continue to receive Section 230 protections? They are gatekeeper, publisher, and editor.

classified• 4 years ago

More like judge, jury, and executioner.

ethanbond• 4 years ago

Hyperbole gets us nowhere

fredgrott2• 4 years ago

see section 230 of a very specific US law-act as that law provided some outs for internet firms as far as being legally not declared a publisher if they volunteered to do specific things.

selfmodruntime• 4 years ago

section 230 is a wildly misunderstood law with many misconceptions.

Contrary to popular belief, it doesn‘t make a clear distinction between platform and publisher.

growse• 4 years ago

Indeed. The word 'platform' doesn't appear in the entire section. The only time the word 'publisher' appears is:

  (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
  No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

josephcsible2• 4 years ago

We know it does protect publishers today. The point is we want it to be changed to only protect platforms.

projektfu• 4 years ago

The law protects small sites, too.

It also makes users responsible for their own words, which is legitimate. Without 230, Facebook would become liable for defamation lawsuits unless it basically censored everything but the most bland content.

You could "hack" the law by saying it only applies to companies with market cap less than 100bn. This is how some laws have been written in the past to specifically jeopardize particular companies.

If you change a law like this to specifically attack one business, you're basically dumping the essence of the rule of law. Generally speaking, people are angry at Facebook's moderation decisions for political reasons. While I think they should abandon the platform, users would prefer that Facebook just enable their tribe to win. It's a silly situation. However, making Facebook liable for defamation as a publisher will just kill the platform entirely and that's not what these users actually want.

philipov4• 4 years ago

How about if instead, we nationalize Facebook. The public square should not be owned by a private corporation. If that's not possible, yes: Facebook should be destroyed.

josephcsible2• 4 years ago

Without 230, Facebook would become liable for defamation lawsuits unless it basically censored everything but the most bland content.
making Facebook liable for defamation as a publisher will just kill the platform entirely and that's not what these users actually want.

What the law should be changed to say is something like "if you censor any legal content based on its message, you become liable for everything". The point is that since being liable for everything would kill them, they'd stop censoring instead.

arinlen7• 4 years ago

Can someone, anyone, please explain to me why Facebook is not a publisher?

Facebook either disseminates posts from their users and/or links to sites operated by third-parties.

Claiming that Facebook is a publisher makes as much sense as claiming hackernews is a publisher.

bo10242• 4 years ago

You seem to be thinking of author, not publisher. Lots of publishers publish material they didn’t write themselves, they’re still publishers when they do that.

jasec57322• 4 years ago

As an offline-platform can make all sorts of bureacratic rules designed to censor those they don't like, this problem is far-far worse on a software-driven platform.

Imagine facebook wants to censor anti-Biden, or anti-Trump, posts. They needn't design an algorithm that does explicitly that - that could be scrutinised under review.

Instead: design an 'anti-spam' algorithm.

Within this anti-spam algorithm, characteristic Y is flagged. Characteristic Y just happens to be heavily-correlated to anti-biden/anti-trump posts. A bit of filtering later (for 'anti-spam measures' of-course), and you have achieved your censorship without being too overt.

goodluckchuck2• 4 years ago

Does Facebook claim to be protected by Section 230?

mcphage• 4 years ago

Why should Facebook continue to receive Section 230 protections?

Because Section 230 was written specifically to allow companies like Facebook to moderate their content. This is why it exists.

krapp6• 4 years ago

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...

justapassenger2• 4 years ago

Hacker news can do (and does on occasions) all of those things as well. It’s called moderation.

Is Hacker News a publisher?

0x445442• 4 years ago

To my knowledge Hacker News does not publish misinformation that labels facts as misinformation. This is what Facebook, Twitter and YouTube do repeatedly. They’re publishers full stop.

kurupt2132• 4 years ago

Even worse, the FBI is going around and silencing valid, independent reporting.

fredgrott2• 4 years ago

Did anyone read the story and compare it to Zuck narrative as they oppose one another.

somesortofsystm2• 4 years ago

To me, the interesting aspect of this interview was how Zuckerberg kept referring to his 'independent council of governance' as the solution to the responsibility problem, absolving the dictator-in-charge of whatever decisions those members made.

But it was not asked - and its disappointing Rogan didn't go there - to whom do these members of a presumably anonymous governance board, answer?

Without being able to observe the governance boards activities, the general public cannot exercise agency over their own rights. This is not a solution to the problem of tyranny and censorship regimes coming from those with much criminality to hide (i.e. governments), but rather cynical acqiuescance to the true source of power: the ability to keep secrets.

andrekandre• 4 years ago

Without being able to observe the governance boards activities, the general public cannot exercise agency over their own rights

i'm not sure that really applies?

facebook is private property of its owners, users don't have control over it unless they can also collectively claim ownership...

somesortofsystm2• 4 years ago

Facebook is a public communications system, akin to a utility. I'd like to know who is on the governance board responsible for oversight of my communication, wouldn't you?

dustinmoris• 4 years ago

In China people can’t access objective and free speech media and they know it that they are being manipulated.

In America people can’t access objective and free speech media but their oppressors make them believe that they 100% can and everyone is falling for it.

Personally I find the latter much more scary and a dangerously broken society.

mercy_dude• 4 years ago

Again it goes to show how the nation state apparatus controls the narrative. If FBI can control FB then what is to them NYT and WP which they served all along in the previous administration as a source of leak. Oh wait we are still under the impression FBI has accountability?

damontal• 4 years ago

Why did he go on Rogan? What was the motivation?

Kye• 4 years ago

His PR people have been unsuccessful in framing him as anything other than a dull automaton from another world. Maybe he thought being able to talk uninterrupted and unedited for 4 hours would humanize him.

cloutchaser• 4 years ago

After the mar-a-lago raid the fbi has written itself off almost completely for republican voters.

Zuck is positioning himself as victim of government and the fbi, and trying to win points with the right. He needs to do this because November will bring a red wave and the next president will almost certainly be red.

Appearing like a democrat ally at this point is suicide for Facebook in 2 years. He needs to repair relations.

kurupt2132• 4 years ago

I don’t understand why Facebook is getting the negative attention instead of the FBI.

This is a classic example of an entity in a position of power abusing said power. How is this different from sexual extortion for a promotion.

I don’t care how rich your company is, the FBI comes knocking, the obvious response is to acquiesce to avoid issues with the federal government

elliekelly• 4 years ago

Plenty of companies have refused or even actively opposed the FBI and have managed to “avoid issues” with the federal government. There absolutely is a point where a company’s wealth and influence affords then the ability to push back against the government with little fear of the possible repercussions. And whatever that level of wealth and influence is Facebook has absolutely far surpassed it.

erikpukinskis2• 4 years ago

Did you read the article? All the FBI did was notify FB that there was likely to be Russian propaganda incoming. Facebook made the determination about the Hunter Biden story independently.

I’ll turn the question around on you: how is this similar to sexual extortion for a promotion? I don’t see the connection.

colordrops12• 4 years ago

Its not clear if that's really what happened behind the scenes. It seems that there was a coordinated effort specifically around the Hunter story. Most media outlets blacklisted it around the same time. Even the news organization that Glenn Greenwald founded (the intercept) censored it, causing an internal battle resulting in Greenwald leaving the organization. There was clearly widespread pressure to subdue this story.

nonplus• 4 years ago

It's interesting to me that (apparently) we consider organic views to be what the algorithm disseminates, and not what humans share to each other.

unloco2• 4 years ago

This headline is clickbait. Zuck said the FBI warned him of potential Russian propaganda during the election. Then, Zuck and his crew slowed down the spread until it was validated.

This entire discussion here is based on a false narrative, it goes off into rants of political discourse that were not true in regards to this story.

The only reason it was censored is because it fit a profile of what was expected to come. Almost all the conjecture from headline readers is covered in the podcast.

The conclusion is, if you want raw data, you can find it. 4chan is right there is you seek it. But big social media sites are not the wild-west everyone THINKS they want.

DoctorOW• 4 years ago

and "censored" isn't wrong but potentially misleading imo. Both because verified factual information, including about this topic can be shared and also because nobody actually was prevented from hearing about the laptop story. It was everywhere.

BaRRaKID• 4 years ago

This needs to be higher. Zuck clearly said that Facebook got a general warning from the FBI regarding the elections, but didn't recall having a specific warning about the Hunter Biden story. Even with Joe Rogan trying to press on the issue (he has been known to be critical of shadow banning) Zuckeberg justified the decisions fairly well, and Joe seemed to agree with him that it was a hard issue and that Facebook handled it the best way possible, and at least better than Twitter.

RickJWagner• 4 years ago

I've long thought that all American media is biased, one way or the other.

What's really disappointing is to see the FBI mixed up in this.

skyzyx• 4 years ago

I think I take issue with the word “censorship”. Is it really censorship if free speech was never guaranteed in the first place?

I mean less the denotative definition and more the connotative definition.

walkhour2• 4 years ago

Fine, use another word then. The FBI interfered in an election, call it censorship or not. That's the issue, not the specific semantics you're worried about.

Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship

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