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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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?
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
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.
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.
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.
It is not that Truth is impossible to find, rather that undeceiving the self is difficult.
Dead Comment
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Zuck claims that he was duped , but lets take everything with a grain of salt
I thought that was a given.
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.
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?
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
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
whats truly scary is not just the limited number but the fact that these corps are always aligned in the same political direction.
If some major conspiracy was under way, I'm not sure Facbook, Google, Twitter censorhip alone would be enough 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Contrary to popular belief, it doesn‘t make a clear distinction between platform and publisher.
Is Hacker News 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.
Because Section 230 was written specifically to allow companies like Facebook to moderate their content. This is why it exists.
Deleted Comment
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
Let's be honest, it rarely works that way.
However i agree, what facebook did here is "shoot fist, ask for forgiveness later".
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.
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.
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.
Watching the Earth move beneath the feet of the gatekeepers in the 00s came with a lot of warranted but clearly unsubstantiated catharsis.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Deleted Comment
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
I’ll turn the question around on you: how is this similar to sexual extortion for a promotion? I don’t see the connection.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ [video]