As a response to Facebook's apathy to moderating any discussion, News agencies should at least take back the power of the public discourse. Disable comments from their posts in Facebook, divert readers to comment on their news websites where discussions can be moderated according to the news agency's policies. The distractors will lose an easy rallying point and the people who follow a news agency on Facebook will not have to endure and sift through an endless stream of spam.
6
Let's just call it "Fakebook."
7
It feels like we've begun our slide down the proverbial slippery slope when even New York Times writers are openly calling for far-reaching censorship. I find Holocaust deniers as repugnant as the next civilized person, but the entire point of our constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech is that we're not supposed to be persecuted for our viewpoints.
5
The article focused on Holocaust denial, but it could have easily used a more recent example of denial.
Facebook has deactivating accounts of Palestinian journalists over the past year, claiming that they spread lies and foment violence, continuing a long policy of the social media enterprise in working with oppressive regimes to stifle dissent*.
The Times and its editors are in complete denial of Israeli intransigence in achieving a peaceful solution to the conflict and of the violent repression of Palestinians, and only on rare occasions can you find the Palestinian viewpoint in the Times or the corporate-media generally.
Clearly, Facebook should NOT be in charge of deciding what is fit to be published, and on the issue of the Palestine-Israel conflict, the Times is not demonstrating journalistic integrity.
* https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Palestine-Journalists-Protest-Aga...
6
Let's be clear here, Facebook is committed to publishing anything that makes Facebook money. Facebook is committed to selling personal information of its users if it makes money. Facebook will not make any changes that impedes it from making money. Zuckerberg is such a money grubber that he would not deal with the false claims of Holocaust deniers even though he himself is Jewish. Want to tame Facebook, don't use it Facebook is not going to do anything to change and neither is the government.
6
What stays and what goes? Delete you accounts, folks. That’s what needs to go. Make a decision to remove yourself from an incredibly evil corporation.
10
Surely the NYT, which for decades has litigated and advocated for free speech, does not want a company that has become the largest forum that ever existed for sharing information to begin acting as censor? I don’t like Inforwars or Holocaust denialism and wish they didn’t exist, but there is NO way to write an acceptable global policy for prohibiting communications that are considered “false” or “unacceptable” by all right-thinking people. And starting down this path inevitably will lead to authoritarian governments and deep-pocketed companies and individuals pushing Facebook to ban content they don’t like.
Would the Times stand for Facebook censoring certain stories from the newspaper’s Facebook page? Of course not. So why is the “paper of record” coming perilously close to advocating that Facebook ban others’ speech?
7
@JB
I understand. But Zuckerberg claims that Facebook is not a publisher of news.
However, I am becoming skeptic of my favorite newspaper, the NYT, as its online publication is supported by a lot of creepy ads. So, from whom and from where are they taking money?
5
Facebook - like Zuckerberg himself - is a con job.
5
Zukerberg is so self involved with printing more billions that responsibility is willfully ignored ... Murdoch on the other hand sees himself as king maker, is willfully engaged in deceptive propaganda dissemination while raking in billions.
How low do we have to go before we — all of us — address this? When accountability is not demanded, important social debate becomes meaningless, the inevitable evolution of society stymied.
Beware the ides of July!
2
Is Facebook "the deep state"?
Is Facebook the precursor to 1984?
2
Facebook is to our society what soft drinks is to our social discourse. Basically, a sweet tasting poison.
2
I hate Facebook as much as anyone (and I have never had a Facebook account). But it seems clear to me from reading this article and others on the subject that Zuckerberg (whom I really, really hate to be defending) is trying his best to follow the rules that court decisions have established for the US Government regarding the First Amendment. (Some of the waffling on details, I suspect, comes from the fact that as a private entity Facebook is vulnerable to lawsuits no matter which way it decides in any particular case.) The language about "imminent violence" comes straight from a Supreme Court decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). Facebook is a private company, not a government, so the Brandenburg decision isn't directly applicable to it. And, as Facebook has pointed out, it operates around the world, including countries that don't have a Bill of Rights. But Zuckerberg is clearly trying to put into his practice the ideas he learned in his high school civics class.
Now if only he felt the same way about the Fourth Amendment and the constitutional right of privacy!
1
@Brian Harvey This is not even close to a freedom of speech issue. The NYTimes is not, for example, obligated to publish this response. My freedom of speech does not obligate anyone to give me a platform.
The big Facebook issue is that began with the happy condition of not being responsible for postings. They had none of the trouble and expense of a publisher. Now they are being asked to take responsibility when all that want is the good old days of harvesting and selling data.
2
I want to know why Mr. Zuckerberg chose to not inform Facebook users that their personal data had been accessed by Cambridge Analytica as soon as he found out that his was stolen too. Despite his self portrayal as a good human being and of Facebook as a transformative do gooder company, Zuckerberg is a greedy selfish person with no redeeming qualities.
5
FB is simply living and implementing the 'Harm Model' espoused in J.S. Mill's On Liberty (1859): "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant."
Their rational response regarding holocaust denial is quite simple - you think it does not deserve a place in absolutely any public discourse - pass a law already - and we will follow the law - which is as it should be.
We really are at the point where we want FB determining what should and should not be shared in public?
4
@SteveRR "We really are at the point where we want FB determining what should and should not be shared in public?"
-------
No, not in public, just on Facebook. There are all sorts of other avenues for deniers of all stripes to get their thoughts out. Let the deniers find them.
The problem is that Mr. Zuckerberg admits there's a problem but doesn't seem to do what he can to solve it.
1
Fine article. Thanks, Mr. Manjoo.
One point, however: Near the end of his article, Mr. Manjoo says Facebook's response to questions about hateful and Holocaust denial content is "not even coherent." I disagree: the responses evidently have been crafted to hold Facebook's critics and potential regulators at bay, and to keep Facebook's cash machine humming. Coherence and continuity animate and characterize Facebook's greed, as well as their desire for continued freedom from oversight.
1
Shut this gossip factory down. Facebook is the enemy of good sense and reason.
6
The media's obsession with Facebook as a content publisher is going too far. Holocaust denial is a bad example, but trying to make Facebook police all user-generated content as if it were the Editorial board of a newspaper turns FB from a free-speech hands-off eco-system to a controlled environment like this comment section where everything has to be approved to appear. Works fine here because we understand the rules, but also that this is a partisan site. FB cannot be. Should it also start taking down climate-change denial posts? What about conspiracies about 9/11? All these extreme views exist on Wikipedia because it is a forum for all. FB is like that user-generated site, not policed like a New Times comment board.
8
Zuckerberg is showing how naive he really is; to say that Holocaust denial is simply a case of "getting it wrong" proves he doesn't understand the first thing about Holocaust denial:
The hate comes first. That's how it works. Holocaust deniers are composed solely and exclusively of anti- Semites. It's no coincidence- the hate comes first. Then come the convoluted lies and the endless revisionist histories.
Now, Mr. Zuckerberg, as CEO of the largest social media network on Planet Earth, learn this, know this and act accordingly: Ban these deniers- it's hate speech pure and simple.
8
WAit, Zuckerberg thinks he can violate someone’s freedom of speech? Um, Mark, Facebook isn’t a government actor. In the US, every bigot and moron can deny the Holocaust and not be prosecuted. And every publisher can choose whether or not to publish racist nonsense and not be sued for refusing to do so.
If FB charged for its services like a normal publisher, I would guess that a lot of the BAD stuff would vanish because the user would have to put his money where his mouth is. Of course that might harm Zuckerberg profits. Having quit FB over a year ago, that thought makes me very happy. Cmon everyone who loves American democracy, join me and dump Facebook.
5
" Facebook still seems paralyzed over how to respond."
DELETE Facebook! They WILL NOT delete the accounts of Holocaust denier! Nothing more needs to be said! It has NOTHING to do with "free speech". IT'S A BUSINESS! A very BAD BUSINESS! Stop using Facebook! They need to be gone.
5
When will the public that these "tech" companies are operated by sociopathic children? That is a more salient question.
4
Mr. Zuckerberg and his executives have reduced Facebook to nothing more than an online tabloid. They will trip up over and over again because the only true guiding principle they have is that of making money. When money is your guiding principle, you are going to trip yourself up every time.
4
Given where we Americans are now, can we say that, as a result of Facebook, our democracy in a better place or that our fundamental privacy is in great shape? Facebook is not the only wormhole through which information is flowing in and out of reality but it is the biggest conduit of social information, ever.
Zuckerberg keeps sounding like the smart college kid he wants to see himself as, doing great things for the world. Except that's not reality, like so much of the alternate universe that Facebook and other social media foster.
4
@Emergence
If you think that Facebook doesn't support democracy, then why is China so deathly afraid of it?
1
I think Zuckerberg's position is perfectly fine. Allow anything that doesn't incite imminent harm and that isn't obviously obscene.
Holocaust denial is offensive but it's what some people honestly believe and that alone isn't enough to likely cause physical endangerment.
2
Facebook says it's "still 'iterating on' its policy." Gosh, is that like "discussing"? "Considering"? "Developing"? Sounds so much more, um, iterative. Since it's from engineering (top notes of precision, hints of 3D modeling, strong finish of drop-testing), it must be better than, say, "thinking."
4
Facebook does not care about it's so-called "Community Standards". The whole process of reporting alleged violations is a useless exercise.
Every imaginable profanity is allowed. Newspapers that link their comments to Facebook do not appear to have any concern either: The "F" word and "B" word are allowed- unfettered.
Too bad- a platform that was created for teens and college
kids has been turned into a monstrosity by Adults.
2
This article was written to criticize how Facebook contradicts themselves when it comes to deciding what to allow and what to block on their website. To start off, let me point out that Facebook is a private company and therefore have the right to choose what to allow on their website. Ultimately, it's their choice. Luckily, Facebook has showed us they do have a system of filtering, but that’s where the confusion comes in. Their hate speech guidelines are messy and don't always work out; it's true. I’d like to remind people that the United States government is also guilty of contradicting themselves all the time. In fact, anyone who has ever tried to filter something will find themselves disagreeing with people and contradicting themselves. So why are we expecting Facebook to be superhuman and not contradict themselves too? For the majority of the article I can understand the anger, but some of their arguments are weak frankly. They criticized that Facebook might change the rules of their brand new policy of removing a post if it might cause imminent violence. Uh, you’re mad that they can’t get it right the first time? That’s why we stuck the policy of amendments in our constitution because we knew we wouldn’t get it right the first time. Instead, focus on the fact that hey, they’re trying to fix the mess they recognized their company was contributing to. That’s called responsibility. Gosh news, why do you have to be so negative all the time?
Except that in several countries FB's policies are leading to the death of innocent people. In other words, FB is irresponsible. And that's why we're so negative!
1
Zuckenberg is tip-toeing around the question of 'what is true?'.
Viewpoints which espouse Holocaust denial, flat Earth, racial superiority, moon-walk fraud et al. are *fake* news and should at least be flagged a such, and probably banned from the internet. They are not just harmless " things that different people get wrong", as Zuckenberg states. They are viewpoints which are demonstrably false and should not be allowed to coexist with rational discourse.
5
Zuckerberg and Fakebook are staunch allies of Trump and Putin, and now Zuckerbrg and Fakebook support Nazis who deny the Holocaust. The purpose of ALL social media to enrich its creators by undermining our shared democratic values in the services of fascists while converting into a warring tribes.
3
Who would be the censors and what would be their flaws?
2
Companies have cultures, usually implicitly defined by their founders and leaders. The prevailing culture permeates the company, because these key people then hire people who fit the prevailing culture. The newer employees then follow the culture since it is the best way to advance in the company. Among today's most visible companies, Uber is the best example of a dysfunctional culture, and we see that the new CEO is having trouble changing their historic culture.
And so it is with Facebook, whose employees want to win the attention and approval of their "fearless leader". If he is OK with publishing the rantings of Alex Jones (Infowars) and the inflammatory anti-Semitic rants of a Holocaust denier, then a challenge to these decisions by a subordinate is a career-limiting move.
Nothing new here: Henry Ford influenced his company for more than a century. We see the same thing in government as a right-wing party has transformed itself into an ugly base that supports a dishonest and narcissistic leader with autocratic tendencies. This new leader has changed the culture of his party.
6
Several writers have compared FB to a telephone or newspaper, in the assumption that it provides communication or news.
Here's another problem with that...how to meet FB's standards to open an account if you like your privacy. I can buy a phone or a newspaper without giving up a ton of information that might be eventually misused or stolen. If all I want to do with my account is read club news or stay in touch with folk, why must FB know my face, real name, or anything else that may make me more vulnerable to cyberthieves?
5
This week, I choose this article because today it is a big problem in our country. I don’t believe that it is Facebooks fault that these people are publishing these fake articles; however, they do need to do something about these articles. I think Facebook should not be blamed as much as the are because other social media platforms have fake news as well. They all need to do something about it, not just Facebook. As of right now, there is a simple fix. Don’t get your news from Facebook until they correct these issues! ([email protected])
Facebook needs restrictions and since Zuckerberg is loathe to do so, individual States or the Feds must. The whole premise of Facebook is to interconnect. We have been able to do so easily with the people we wish to interact with. The issue with Facebook is that they want your neighbors and everyone else within thousands of miles to be part of your conversations also whether you approve or not. It is time to tame Facebook into an entity that is not forming opinions and creating issues among different groups just for the thrill and money. Shut Facebook down.
4
Facebook--what else is there to say about this stupid outfit? Chemistry PhDs from Harvard and CalTech work there, getting paid more money than they could ever hope to make in academia or just a regular, non-social media private company. And what are they paid to do? To make Facebook more addictive than heroin or crack cocaine.
Compared to Zuckerberg I will always have much more respect for Jimmy Wales, one of the inventors of Wikipedia. Now THAT is a useful website.
16
Facebook clearly uses algorithms designed to increase the disagreements among users. It has likely found that users who are disagreeing are staying on Facebook longer. On many politicians' Facebook sites, the very first comment out of the box is often insulting the politician. When you look at the number of reactions and comments associated with that troll post, and compare to the next post, it is often less in both metrics. In other words, Facebook says that people should not "feed the trolls", but Facebook itself likes to bias that content. They are clearly parsing some things, enough to know that the troll post is hostile. They have found through their research that emotionally engaging users create a better return user, and it doesn't matter which emotion ... anger as good as any other.
It should be a very restrictive policy on bad content. Not only should Alex Jones conspiratorial stories be banned, but after x warnings, Alex Jones should be banned. Facebook is letting bad actors spreading false information live on their site for profit. And those posts are weaponized to come on in arguments, and all this is to Facebook benefit, as Facebook loves a good argument. People are emotionally engaged, obsessed to answer next post, so constantly checking, and set up as return customer.
5
The business model of Facebook and the NYT is remarkably similar- create content, sell ads. If/when the NYT criticizes Facebook, shouldn't they also provide some type of notice to readers indicating that they compete for advertising revenue with the company they are criticizing? The article is a good one, but I can't help thinking about this conflict of interest as I read through it.
2
@Nate Does FB provide thoughtful, edited, original content?
1
@Nate
https://qz.com/770743/zuckerberg-says-facebook-will-never-be-a-media-com...
@Nate
There was another article in the Times today about two persons behind a resistance to Breitbart News, which targeted and questioned BN's advertisers, NYT has similar, bizarre advertising. NYT is taking money from anyone, too.
2
If you want to go after Infowars for publishing falsehoods, you should also go after The Onion and every tabloid at the grocery store.
1
@Finny
I guess you don't know that The Onion is satire, and meant to be humorous. They don't pretend to be factual.
3
The Russian Propaganda Machine never had an answer—that's all you need to know.
2
I do know, from personal experience, what IS banned on Facebook.
We have a lot of relatively not-well-to-do dog owners in my small rural town. After my dog died, I tried to post an ad on a local Facebook group, giving away her dog food (a hefty recent supply), folding dog ramp, and machine-washed and steam-sanitized items (leash, rear car seat cover, etc.).
Facebook refused to run my ad. I received a statement saying that it didn't take ads selling pets, notwithstanding the facts that (a) I wasn't trying to sell my dead dog (there being all manner of emotional, moral, and practical problems with that in my own mind), nor was I trying to sell anything -- merely give away useful items in a town where some dog owners have trouble making ends meet.
I tried to argue the point a couple of times. Alas, Facebook is run by robots (Bloomberg Business Week, in fact, confirmed this with six photos of its head bot, the Zuckerbot, on its cover after he zombied his way through a congressional hearing), and my arguments fell on dead ears. After a supposed "review" of my ad, I received the same answer.
Anti-semitic rants? OK with Zuckerbot Media. Give away dog food and supplies? Not so OK.
16
It is because Zuckerberg has never been honest or straightforward in his answers. We should stop expecting honesty from him. For him, it is all about growth of his business, at human cost.
6
FB is an advertising agency. AD agencies are regulated. They cannot, for example, target tobacco ads towards children. FB does not want that type of limit to their power. Mr. Zuckerberg knows who's in charge:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/congratulations-zuckerberg-...
4
Can we please STOP talking about Facebook! I am so tired of these discussions. If you like Facebook, use it. If you don't, don't use it. It is this simple!
2
@dolly patterson
You have a choice not to participate in the discussions, and I will not say the other obvious stuff.
Can DOJ issue a cease and desist order to FB for the three months before the election? Just shut it down. It would be good for the country.
1
@Rick Dale: There you go. Leave all that news that's fit to print to the NYT. Three months before the election the NYT can call itself Pravada.
Unbelievable.
2
for all the "never" people - I am a Never Facebook person. I never understood why anyone would sign up for this "service" I've lived a wonderful life with a real spouse and real friends. It's possible to exist and thrive without creating a false online persona- I really recommend that you try it. Hasn't Facebook created more problems than solutions??
4
Don't wait for FB or the government to regulate content. Just quit FB now and enjoy some free time. FB=vanity and greed.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/congratulations-zuckerberg-...
5
When you begin to monitor content, you are "media," like a newspaper, subject to libel laws and more. Facebook was cool and free until people began the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a theater on it, or spreading lies about people on it. Monitoring content is like being pregnant ... you are or you aren't. No middle ground. The NYT and WaPo, as media, are subject to libel laws based on content; why shouldn't The Facebook be?
6
The internet was developed with public funds and, as such, should be considered public commons (despite corporate-America's intent to turn it into an electronic mall), and therefore should come under free speech protections.
Facebook is not a journalistic enterprise but its format does give access to journalistic enterprises. No private corporation should be in a position to regulate which news sources should be featured in the commons and which shouldn't.
Over the past few years, Facebook as closed accounts of Palestinian journalists using the excuse that they feature misinformation and foment violence.
I'm sure that to many Times readers this might seem like a fair response, but I would contend that this is only because the Times has systematically and deliberately limited access to voices attempting to convey the Palestinian perspective
@Ed Watters
I read about the Palestinian perspective frequently in the Times. The Times has standards of both good writing and factual reporting. A responsible publisher can do that without providing misinformation and inciting violence.
There is a simple way to avoid being force-fed garbage by facebook's misinformation algorithms and paid-for propaganda. Avoid facebook. Use email, use your telephone, read actual newspapers.
4
Why should there be ANY censorship of ideas?
2
The only thing worse than 'fake news' is the power of the censor who decides. Christian,socialist,atheist, capitalist..all have vastly different world views and of ultimate truth.
Whether holocaust ,the shape of the earth or any other odd views are preferable to censors who will ultimately become corrupted by that power.
2
The folks at Facebook need to sit down with an ethicist and a room full of lawyers and rethink this plan.
2
Mark Zuckerberg is a new robber baron from a new guilded age. Facebook is a new" Malefactor of Great Wealth " that deserves and needs to be reigned in and broken up before it is too late. Where are TR and FDR when we need them most?
5
I listened to today's edition of The Daily, and found it completely mind-boggling that the Facebook spokeswoman could not offer a coherent explanation of what criteria Facebook uses to "demote" content from Infowars. This it is a Sisyphean task for Facebook to play arbiter of what is fake news or not is irrelevant. This is a problem of their own making when they decided to publish news content to drive revenue. This is their problem, and the onus is on them to fix it.
4
Compare with Margie Haberman's critique of Twitter: the dream of universal access and unmediated content was nice while it lasted, but it's done, allowed to be highjacked by the raving boobocracy. We were better off as a society with professional editors, highly curated content, and a 20 Nielsen share for top scripted comedy on a random weeknight. College-dropout Zuckerberg can strike a goofy pose of idealism, but it's a sham veneer for his business model. He's monetizing the chaos.
15
The questions facing Facebook are complex which is why a simple black and white response that commentators are demanding just isn't possible. What is offensive and harmful to one group may not be to another group. Its very subjective and we have the issue of freedom of speech.
I'll give Zuckerberg points for trying to frame the complexity of the issue. But in the age of Trump, complexity seems to be a dirty word
3
@Sipa111 - Its really quite simple...the NYT comments section does it daily.
You just post a list of do's and don't's and actually enforce them.
But to allow an electoral college member to post on his page that you can come to Wyoming to see how to hang gays is to allow hate speech on your site.
https://billingsgazette.com/news/government-and-politics/elector-from-mi...
I wrote to Facebook about this and their response was to block the guy. So, I tried to delete my account which ended up with a letter to my State Attorney General because Facebook refuses to delete my account no matter how many which ways I request.
3
@Sipa111
And in the Age of Trump, Zuckerberg is a fan:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/congratulations-zuckerberg-...
1
There is nothing complex about whether the Holocaust happened- it was horrific mass murder perpetrated by the most evil man of all time. Remove Holocaust denier Facebook accounts now.
1
In our society, we can't even agree on what is civil speech. Defining hate speech may be a little easier, but ceding the responsibility of deciding what is acceptable speech to for-profit media companies is ridiculous. They have given you tools - and the responsibility of using them - in being the editor and censor of the content on "your" page. If you're seeing content against your will, you're doing it wrong.
2
@Don Stubbs: "Defining hate speech may be a little easier,"
Oh really?
Quick: If I were to write about my family and friends being the victims of Black on white violent crimes in Detroit with all events accurately portrayed do you think that would be considered hate speech?
Hate speech has become meaningless just as the word terrorist has.
2
I'm not a facebook user, but with my limited knowldge of how the platform works, there are only two things it can do to redeem itself.
1. Stop the "news" feed completely
2. Ban all political advertising
Unless and until Zuckerburg owns up to the fact he and his shareholders are sowing the seeds of collapse of the western democracies, all bets are off.
21
Facebook will be the primary driver of the fall of western democracies. No matter what they do, people will never stop exploiting the platform for political and economic gain. They will always find a way to work aroung any controls Zuckerburg and his cronies put in place. Facebook is the implacable enemy of all people on Earth.
10
@Barbyr
Facebook does nothing more than allow people to communicate with others. If that leads to the fall of western democracies, it's only because it exposed the latent fallacies of their idea - that everyone deserves a voice in politics.
2
@jkw You should replace the word communicate with the word influence. That frames the issue much better.
Mark Zuckerberg's children are still too young for him to even consider what will be thrown their way. Mr. Zuckerberg himself is still very young, naive in the way of the world, as evidenced by the use of FB to attempt manipulation of the 2016 election. He was so wrapped up in his own glow that he didn't notice the propaganda taking over his company's front page.
Possible solutions:
The execs at FB should look at changing the name of what is called News on their pages. By calling it "news" FB itself is declaring the posting of easily verifiable lies as truth. Simply change the header to "What people are saying" and reformat each article with the exact same size type, font, spacing, etc. Articles from Alex Jones would look exactly like articles from ABC, Fox, or the White House. Identify the provider by name, company name, phone number, mailing address and IP address. Open comments on each article; soon readers will identify the liars.
If FB cannot bring itself to perform the real function of a news organization, at the least it should identify every single item listed as news as being verified legitimate, verified lies/untruth/satire, or as unverified information. Simply imprint a "watermark" over each article identifying the category.
Will it require more work and expense on the part of FB? Yes.
To make it cheap, easy and quick. just stop calling it news.
7
From Technology Review:
"A report out yesterday by the Institute for the Future, a California-based public policy group, documented the extent of the practice, and found it to be widespread in both dictatorships and democracies.
How they do it: Using fake accounts, bots, and coordinated attacks by legions of followers, governments make it extremely difficult to distinguish between public opinion and sponsored trolls."
http://www.iftf.org/fileadmin/user_upload/images/DigIntel/IFTF_State_spo...
The report is titled "State Sponsored Trolling: How Governments Are Deploying Disinformation as Part of Broader Digital Harassment Campaigns"
2
There is a definable separation between differences of opinion and misinformation-disinformation. Yes, the division is greyish sometimes, but the majority of fake news is startlingly obvious to even cursory factchecking. FB and others could remove most of the dreck and still be highly profitable. Yes, less wealthy, but still very much so. Shareholders can just get over the difference while appreciating how much better society is when most information really is truth or variances of opinion.
Eclectic Pragmatism — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
Eclectic Pragmatist — https://medium.com/eclectic-pragmatism
2
This is first and foremost about money, monetizing your attention. Anything proposed that deviates much from that path will have Mark Zuckerberg chattering on about Facebook's good intentions, telling us "he'll get back to us" on whatever it is he's avoiding, or an employee telling us that restrictions to Facebook's methods would cause egregious harm to their business model or render them uncompetitive in their "fast-moving" space. When you see Mark Zuckerberg you are about to be fed some untruths.
7
Facebook makes up the rules as it goes along. I had an innocent comment removed because their algorithms determined it to be hate speech. It was a simple statement about Americans being in love with violence. That was too much for the algorithms to process properly. If that's too hard imagine how hard it is to figure out what's truly hate speech, a death threat, etc.
This reader hopes that Facebook is replaced by something that is better and run by someone who is more responsible than the flash in the pan named Mark Zuckerberg.
I will use Facebook but, as I do with everything else, I will not write anything there that I wouldn't say to the person's face.
2
I’ve degrees in formal logic, and 20 years managing web service/IT development and deployment and modern databases. Zukerburg, as well as his drone Business Analysts, are clueless of the depth, indeed, the raw philosophy, arithmetic, and mathematics required to handle such tasks. They ignore the work of B. Russell, R. Carnap, K. Godel, A. Church, and the host of folks far smarter than they or I on this subject. Hint to Zukerburg: there is always one proposition in every system which cannot be determined true or false. Grow up and live with it!
11
As long as Russian rubles and currency from other countries continue to flow into Facebook, Zuckerberg will continue to take no responsibility.
10
The right to free speech is not an imposition on private people and companies to publish other people’s speech. The NYT doesn’t need to publish your op ed, you don’t have a right to be published. But the government can’t tell the NYT what they can’t publish (a double negative of sorts...).
Facebook does curate content. They don’t allow pornography, even though it is legal and an expression of free speech. Their reliance on the slippery slope argument is frustrating. All they need to do is more broadly define hate speech to include holocaust denial and move on.
They need to take more responsibility.
42
@Terence In certain instances, the government can and does tell the New York Times what it can't publish.
1
Mark Zuckerberg should learn from Frank Costanza. Sometimes the world looks at any of us and says: “This guy. This is...not my kinda guy.”
7
I'd rather not have the largest corporations in the world screening what I may see or read, however well intentioned their motives. Its too great a power to place in the hands of a few profit motivated entities.
Instead of placing the burden on social media to differentiate real news from fake news, perhaps the profession of journalism can step up and offer a form of credentialing and certification to journalists and news sites that agree to and do follow recognized professional standards. Board Certification in medical specialties informs the public that a practitioner's knowledge and skills meets recognized standards. The Joint Commission provides accreditation and certification to health care organizations.
News sources carrying a logo of Journalistic Accreditation would assist the reader looking to to filter the real from the more suspect sources of information and weigh each accordingly.
6
I cannot answer for what stays, however I can report that i will be removing FarceBook from my social media platforms.
12
The central and underlying problem is anonymity. Evidently, it is human nature for some (many?) people to openly misbehave if they are certain they will get away with it. Imagine a device (sold secretively on Ebay of course) that would allow the user to simply think of a mother-in-law or a former boss or teacher and that person would fall over dead of a brain hemorrhage. Such a device would sell well and world population of the world would quickly drop by about one-third. Or, imagine that every user of social media were identifiable by name, address, phone number and photograph: there would still be as much free speech, but it would be 100% polite and truthful speech as well.
2
@Jack
This is naïve. Recall the yellow Stars of David and the pink triangles identifying groups of people in Germany after they were required to register with their name, address, phone number, and photograph. It just makes rounding people up for dissenting views or creeds or behavior that much easier. Politely rounding them up, of course.
3
"I think Facebook is trying to thread this needle of trying to claim they’re not a publisher with responsibilities here, when they clearly are,” said Sarah Szalavitz... exactly... Facebook and the other social media companies are publishers and have responsibilities ss such. If you have content and make money off of it, that is publishing. It does not matter how you got the content. Fascinating, that their solution to hate speech is to push it down the feed - a sort of manipulative censorship. What other stuff do they push down the feed? Criticques of Facebook? We are now seeing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act come to roost.
11
@Paul
Facebook is like a telephone. They shouldn't censor what you say, they're just a platform for people to communicate to each other. Use it or don't use it as you wish.
3
@jkw
I don't use Facebook, but many of the websites I visit have FB accounts. How many of those sites are feeding my "visits" and what I search for there into Facebook's data system?
@jkw
"Facebook is like a telephone" is an accurate analogy in terms of capability of a smart phone, not a traditional telephone, and it's a false analogy in terms of actual use. Is there a single person who uses their smart phone to send every text message to all (or most) of their 5,000 contacts? FB has become a news publisher.
The devil is in the details. It seems wonderful to use the standards of "political correctness" (whatever that means in actuality) to ban "hate speech"(whatever that means in actuality). But in practice this isn't a simple task. Add in that once Facebook goes down the path of deciding what can, and cannot, go on its network it becomes a publisher and that opens up a huge can of worms for it legally. It sounds easy to do, but it isn't. That's why the company is incoherent on it. That's also why our national debate on so-called "fake news" is incoherent. A better solution would be an educated society of critical readers and thinkers...oh, oops that's not going to happen.
7
Facebook is supposed to be a social media organization, and it should limit its activities to that purpose. Political ads should not be allowed, and false and misinformation postings should be deleted.
5
@LWK - So, if I say I am a handsome man weighing 160 lbs, my post should be deleted?
1
Anyone who still doubts that Zuckerberg stole the idea for FB hasn't been paying attention. Anyone still on FB deserves what they get.
3
I was caught up on Facebook once, and I found tge,way to kick the habit: I shut it down.
4
Mr. Zuckerberg is living proof that wealth doesn't buy maturity or wisdom.
20
There is a big difference between misinformation and disinformation.
Facebook allows and perpetuates disinformation.
No missteps, nor mistakes about it.
11
I don't think it is that hard. There was an item about a leaked internal memo which said something to the effect that if people get affected for our business to improve, so be it.
Even in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, Facebook is removing posts which incite violence not because people are dying, but because it was affecting its business.
Now shorn of all niceties, the hodgepodge policy just still translates to this - We don't bother if people die if it increases our business.
Melania can help them with some of he coats in the congressional hearings
5
If you think it's so easy to specify what should and should not be published online, write down the rules you would give to a computer programmer to make it happen. Or the rules you would give to an army of "editors" who would check them against every Facebook post before it went online. It's not easy. Maybe your favorite facts will be judged harshly.
I'm not defending Facebook. But the reality is we are in a post-truth world. People have their own facts. Read the Origin section of this Wikipedia article:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
Life is complicated. We don't fit into simple categories. Solutions to our problems are not simple. People with a lot of money have too loud a voice in society. But none of those problems are easy to fix.
Think. Register (and help others to register). Vote.
18
@Dan - Cannabis is legal here in Seattle but I cannot post a pic of my garden on Facebook...or a picture of my nether-regions.
If the moderators at Facebook have no problem telling the difference between my tomato garden and my cannabis garden, they have no problem moderating context just like this comment section does.
Or perhaps they have become too big and need to be broken up into smaller, easier to manage companies?
2
@Dan Sure things may slip through their detection system. But once flagged, they need to have humans who can remove content within reasonable time window, and then they need to update their detection system. Like this piece of content with the words "kill him" in reference to a minority Muslim journalist in Myanmar https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4723552/sen-leahy-propaganda-ad .
We still live in a truth-based world. Some people with an agenda will try to keep the truth "softened up" so they can assert an alternative version more to their advantage.
Giving money or a global soapbox to hate groups, misinformation groups, et al, results in the same thing: support of such groups.
10
The task we have set for Facebook is impossible. It means verification and qualification of every statement and point raised in the free expressions of millions of individuals and organizations, Worldwide. Eventually the safe position would likely be to post, i.e. publish, only the most commonly accepted , most "official" and bland, facts and opinions, and no others. We either have totally free speech, or no free speech at all.
5
@Hanrod Facebook is not a new media organization, not the "free press", NOT part of the Fourth Estate protected by the First Amendment. THEY ARE A BUSINESS, NOT a news outlet. They need to either take corporate responsibility for what they spew, or GO AWAY, due to business realities. "Social media" is not free speech. "Social media" has contributed to the rise of fascism in this country, and the elimination of truth in discourse. DELETE FACEBOOK!
9
@Hanrod
Nonsense--Among other limits, we limit "totally free speech" to prevent chaos and panic (e.g., can't shout "Fire" falsely in a theater), sedition, and false and deceptive advertising.
Facebook's task is impossible only if it continues to structure its business in the way that has currently led to so much harm. There is still plenty of free speech between "totally free" and "no free speech at all." Binary thinking has its limits. j
2
Most coverage of Zuckerberg’s recent attempts to explain what the company did in 2016, what its doing now, and what it plans to do in the future ignores the fact that mainstream privacy advocates - not weirdos on the fringe - warned him (and us) of ALL of this far beyond two years ago.
Not only did he ignore these warnings, but his inchoate “explanations” this year tell me he never even considered the issues they raised. Otherwise, wouldn’t he be able to articulate his rationale?
5
Facebook has been compared with newspapers in that they both disseminate information. Although newspapers depend quite a lot on advertising income, they continue to maintain control of what appears in the paper and on-line. Even readers' letters can be removed either by editorial decision or by readers' complaints.
the Facebook/Zuckerberg empire feels little responsibility for what is published and improves things only under sustained pressure. What a sad company.
10
@Roger Facebook's goal isn't to "publish". It's to enable communication between individuals, not between individuals and facebook's perception of the "the truth".
1
@Gershom Maes
I would say Facebook's goal is simply to make a lot of money with no regard for anything else unless it affects income.
@Roger
Zuckerberg and Sanders do not want to admit they are a media company. They don't want to be held to the same standards that newspapers must adhere to. Thus, you get Zuck making this silly argument that he wants to defend the free speech rights of Holocaust deniers to publish false stories.
4
For the past decade, people whose nations are governed by autocratic regimes have relied on Facebook as a safe place to discuss and criticize the actions of their self-appointed leaders. Now some of those countries have become significant markets for FB services, and their dictators have presented a bill: cooperate with us or we'll see that FB earns no ad revenues here. FB today is quick to take down posts that cybercops deployed by these regimes identify, for example, as 'toxic' or 'incompatible with our fine customs and morals.' It has acquiesced to demands that it store data on users in locations in these nations and render that data up to the cybercops on demand, putting millions of political dissidents worldwide at risk.
6
I shut down my profile on Facebook months ago because I don't think that "profit first and foremost" is antithetical to communication and community. It it illustrates the idea of making corporate and personal gain the only priority, and the wholesale sellout that our government is conducting of public lands and environmental destruction.
4
I’ve been off FB for more than a month, I’ll soon be deleting my account. Too bad because it was a great way to keep up with a huge family, but there you go. I’m back to calls and texts.
24
@Shana Remember MySpace? I hope that soon we'll be asking the same question about Facebook.
Time for a new app to take over from this corrupted mess. Opportunity is knocking!
2
@Shana,
Welcome back! There’s a lot here you’ve been missing.
@Shana I deleted my account 4 years ago and have never looked back. I have email and a phone in order to communicate with the people who matter in my life. I saw this coming a long time ago.
4
There was a 1960s book entitled "Colossus." In it, the U.S. built a computer that controlled all of our weapons with no human intervention. After it was turned on, about 2 weeks later, the computer (Colossus) spontaneously announced, 'There is another machine!' Turns out, the Russians had built one, too. The two machines blackmailed humans to hook them together and went on to rule the World.
Now there's Facebook. The creators thought they were doing a very good thing for society. Turns out, the software seems to have a 'mind' of it's own. No matter what fixes are attempted, the software just keeps on chuggin'.
Facebook can't be fixed because the creators simply don't know HOW! Call it unintended consequences, artificial intelligence, whatever. They've created something with capabilities never envisioned. They are mystified that the creation is no longer under their control.
What do we do now? Punt?
14
@Jim D Great summer bookclub recommendation. Can you remember the "Colossus" author? Thanks.
This is not a face-to-face, social gathering place, for kids to say, “How ya doing,” to each other. Not when the Russians can post lies and political propaganda and pay Facebook to do it. Like the Republicans in congress that put party (money) over truth and country; Facebooks is putting profits (money) over truth and country. Facebook is a business. Treat it as such.
28
@Jerry Sturdivant I think that's the wrong way to think about it.
I would say that people can use facebook to spread political propaganda BECAUSE the service is a face-to-face social gathering place with high-visibility paid content.
Any social gathering place with a large audience is ideal for spreading ideas, including politically dishonest ideas.
1
@Gershom Maes Not exactly. Facebook allows news "services" and businesses to directly publish through their own pages. They probably outnumber individuals at this point.
I DO agree that there are many, many topics that require judgment calls that Facebook is not equipped to make - but Holocaust denial does not fall into that category. Delete Holocaust denial accounts NOW.
51
@common sense advocate Sorry, but you cannot cherry-pick which issues to apply free speech protections. It's an all or none thing.
3
@Ed Watters
No, that is binary thinking. Only machines think that way. There's a lot of room between "all" and "nothing," and we already have some limits on free speech to protect the public from harm (truth in advertising laws, for example). Oooh, I know. Disrupters hate limits, poor things.
One standard principle for FB to follow would be "first, do no harm." From there, define some harms (hint: we have laws that could clue FB in). From there, define what could cause those harms. From there, define groups and types of posts that might produce those harms and weight the probabilities. This involves judgment. This is what grown-up people do.
@Ed Watters See free speech items above.
How hard is it just to do the right thing, Mr. Zuckerberg?
46
@Vickie Ashwill so true. If all that matters are stock prices and bank accounts, Zuckerberg and his ilk have done nothing in life.
4
@Vickie Ashwill: Should Zuckerberg ban vaccine deniers?
2
Stop using Facebook. After all this, if you don’t, I don’t have any sympathy.
23
Facebook is an amoral and, ultimately, anti-social network in so many ways.
22
@Smotri - You are right about the amoral part, and to me that is one of the best things about Facebook. If it were moral, whose morals would it support? Yours, mine, and the next guy's may well be totally different and I do not want a communication service to decide whose is right.
3
I think we need to step back for a minute and think about the broader questions at play here. The problems Fb is dealing with touch upon complex issues of free speech / public good / tolerable censorship. These are problems important enough to warrant a broader public debate and juridical review, and it seems unfair (and foolish tbh) to expect quick, efficient solutions by a single company. One could argue, for instance, that companies should not start censoring information because it is the responsibility of each person to exercise critical thought, thus imposing the burden on citizens rather than prior driven entities. This might be a dead-end reasoning but the answers to these issues are not yet clear cut in the public mind and the laws.
12
What about people who cry "Fire" in a crowded theater? There are limitations to free speech.
10
@Wally
And FB is really just an Ad agency -- Ad agencies cannot, for example, target tobacco ad at kids. FB will do anything to avoid regulation:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/congratulations-zuckerberg-...
2
It's an artificial intelligence project that has slipped it's leash, taken a perverse turn to malevolence. Can it be stopped?
10
@C. Morris
Sure it can. Delete your FB account. If everybody did that, it would stop it cold.
8
Facebook, Google, whats app, and Twitter should be treated like public utilities and not simple for-profit companies. The goals of these corporations has nothing to do with political processes yet they can have massive effects on politics. Do we really care what Zuckerberg thinks about almost anything? And he has no real constituency beyond share holders while Facebook has been clearly shown to help facilitate really awful political manipulation. Western Europe is not having it and is coming down hard on these companies. Of course, these countries still have a strong communitarian sensibility while the US is becoming an unalloyed capitslist free fire zone as it's democracy whithers.
34
The problem with free speech is that it was never intended to be protected under the current conditions where technology allows immediate dissemination and essentially results in a cacophony of "information" without distinction of what's right and what is wrong.
In scientific publishing this is supposed to be controlled by peer review and overall it works very well, even though bad information sometimes makes it through and it can take years to get it corrected.
Point is, there is just so much more information now than the human brain can handle. There must be selection mechanisms to weed out the noise from the signal, otherwise rational decision making is being drowned out.
Those of us working in the field of science understand this very well. But we do have unalienable objective parameters: The laws of nature. They can't be beaten. When it comes to politics and public opinion, these selection parameters no longer apply as rigorously.
And any attempt of censoring necessarily will result in the propagation of one political direction.
We desperately need to find solutions to this problem or our democracy and mankind itself cannot survive.
10
I agree that there should be a way to weed out the garbage, but who is to be the decider on a subjective question? Censorship is a slippery slope.
4
@Kara Ben Nemsi But capitalism is currently stomping all over what you might call the "laws of nature". There can be no objective analyses of "social media" BUSINESSES, as long as society (ours, for example) promotes and protects capitalist organizations OVER the individual citizens who actually pay those same organizations.
I posit that when you say "censoring necessarily will result in the propagation of one political direction", then the "one political direction" should be in concert with the U.S. Constitution. Of course "censoring" is what we all do, internally, constantly, to suppress our id reactions to external reality. Facebook, and all "social media" removes that internal restraint, and that is damaging our society.
2
@Kara Ben Nemsi Another problem of free speech is that there is no longer any accountability. In the 1700s, if you said or published something, it was clear who or what (in the case of a publication) was speaking. With Facebook, we have no idea where the speech is coming from. We can't assess whether or not to believe it or build up an opinion about whether a source can be trusted – and there are an infinite number of sources with fake and constantly changing names, making it impossible to keep up.
3
We all managed just fine for...oh, about a million years...without Facebook. Be honest with yourself, folks, do we really need Facebook, or is it doing more harm than good?
84
Facebook has very real value. It allows people to connect in positive ways. Rediscovering old friends is a plus. There are some excellent groups that link people with shared interests like ornithology, photography, and history. The groups work because they have a human administrator who controls content and can boot out misbehaving members. Facebook also connects citizens to their local town pages. There are pages for weather alerts, for Highway Patrol and crime information, and other safety issues. During the fires and dam crisis Facebook provided evacuation information. It also connected people separated from family when phones were down.
Facebook has become an essential tool in the modern world. There is a lot that is wrong with Facebook. However, there are a number of reasons to like it.
5
@Llewis
By using search engines like DuckDuckGo that don't track you, and by signing up for alerts through city and town websites directly, all of the wonderful services you list can be provided without FB's invasion of privacy and enabling of the undermining of democracies.
Finding lost friends is relatively easy, finding interest groups online is also easy. Sharing photos and updates is also easy. FB is not necessary.
FB users trade a very small amount of convenience for massive invasions of their (and their family's and friends') privacy.
Don't use FB if you value your democratic government and your freedoms. FB doesn't value them--it values only money and its own power. It has "the power to connect people," even when both parties to the connection don't explicitly agree to be connected. Make no mistake: What you see on FB is what FB lets you see--and wants you to see.
Why is the NY Times still using FB? What data are collected about users, and how is that data being funneled to other parties? An article by the NY Times outlining and explaining their involvement--as a publisher and promoter of independent journalism--would be useful.
One could say the same about the book, newspaper, or pen.
4
The problem is that we think of Facebook as a public utility. It's not. It's a private company and we can simply find other platforms.
Don't get your news from Facebook. Don't trust Facebook to protect your identity. In fact, dont trust Facebook period. Why should you? They certainly dont trust you.
74
@John. Most public utilities (electricity, water, etc.) are private companies. Their behavior is (in principle) controlled by strict regulation.
Do you really expect, in the absence of regulation, other social network platforms to behave any better than Facebook?
3
@Darth Vader
I didn't know that about public utlities. Perhaps better to say that people behave as if Facebook acts in the public interest and therefore plays by those rules. They forget that the 1st amedment and other rights dont apply to the website of a privately owned company.
@Darth Vader - That is because of the high costs in establishing an alternative connection to them. You cannot run an independent water system in a city, or string a new set of power lines.
Facebook does not enjoy that connectivity issue; I can quit Facebook and join MySpace in about 30 seconds or less, without leaving my chair. Therefore, the public utility regulation argument is somewhat invalid in my opinion.
The problem of fake, disingenuous or malicious information on the internet applies not only to Facebook, but also to many other social platforms. This is another example of a technology issue that was not foreseen decades ago challenging society, and could have serious repercussions if not addressed.
To allow a single individual like Zukenberg or a single company to determine policy in this area is wrong. The issue needs to be addressed with much discussion and subsequent legislation. Hate speech with malicious intent masquerading as 'free speech' should not be tolerated, and we need specific parameters in place to identify and remove it.
51
This means that the ad I've seen a thousand times where Facebook promises to do more about fake news is itself untrue. Given the content of the article, there is no way that Facebook will correct its policies before the next election.
As rich as he is, I believe the underlying motivation is to collect every dollar and ruble he can, and simply maximize his own income.
79
@Jerry S
Clearly -- https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/congratulations-zuckerberg-...
1