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Facebook Employees Ask Mark Zuckerberg If They Should Try To Stop a Donald Trump Presidency (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Mark Zuckerberg didn't shy from condemning several of Trump's views at his company's developer conference earlier this week. Things are getting tenser now. Gizmodo's Michael Nunez is reporting about a political discussion inside Facebook wherein employees appear to be asking Zuckerberg whether the company should try to "help prevent President Trump in 2017." Every week, Facebook employees vote in an internal poll on what they want to ask Zuckerberg in an upcoming Q&A session. A question from the March 4 poll was: "What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?"An excerpt from the report which talks about Facebook's position :But what's exceedingly important about this question being raised -- and Zuckerberg's answer, if there is one -- is how Facebook now treats the powerful place it holds in the world. It's unprecedented. More than 1.04 billion people use Facebook. It's where we get our news, share our political views, and interact with politicians. It's also where those politicians are spending a greater share of their budgets. And Facebook has no legal responsibility to give an unfiltered view of what's happening on their network.
Skynet us already, all these decisions are taking away valuable Candy Crush playing time!
Particles, stuff that matters.
Facebook is just a forum they should stay neutral and let the Democratic process work. While people may not agree with Trump it doesn't mean stop him from running for president. After all we are the same population whop allowed 2 terms for "W"
Don't confuse elitist CA politics with a consensus view.
--WooooHoooo--
Yes, they do have a legal responsibility. It's one thing to say they have no responsibility for what people post, although they do in their terms in regards to hate speech and the like.
But the officers and Directors of Facebook have a legal responsibility to protect and maximize the value of their shareholders. If Facebook were to take an active stance in filtering content to attempt to alter the political landscape, they risk alienating a rather large userbase those political ideas. The fact is that enough users support Trump that if Facebook attempted to skew the results, they risk alienating that userbase and losing them, which in turn affects Facebook's value and revenue that their officers and Directors are legally required to protect.
And even if it did work, and Trump was defeated and Clinton or Sanders got elected, both the Republicans and the Democrats would unify and pass a law stopping that from ever happening again. Neither party wants a bunch of millenial nitwits having that kind of political clout; that kind of manipulation would be regulated into oblivion with full bi-partisan support.
Attempting to sway a political discussion risks a blowback that could result in a shareholder lawsuit and throwing out the Board and Officers, and is a really stupid idea for a company. Despite the ideology of Facebook employees which most likely skew one particular direction, this would be a very bad idea for Facebook. Their prupose is to provide a social media service to users and in turn sell those users' viewing minutes to advertisers, not to attempt to sway political opinion.
Cruz is far worse than Trump. Even Hillary is worse than Trump on some issues.
National polls have shown that Bernie stands a far better shot at defeating any Republican candidate than Hillary does. If Facebook wants to stop Trump and similar demagogues, their best bet is to support Bernie.
Isn't the argument that firms don't have any responsibility other than the fiduciary interest of their shareholders?
So shouldn't Facebook only care about which Presidential candidate will increase the profitability of Facebook?
Given all the time people seem to spend posting anti-Trump messages on Facebook now, you could almost argue that they have a fiduciary interest in assuring a President Trump because it will surely create the "social dynamics" which leads to more Facebook use.
Or if that analysis isn't good enough, shouldn't they look to support a Presidential candidate whose economic policies will support multinational corporations (lower taxes, more H1Bs, etc etc)?
They've lost me when they can't find "good deeds" to do with higher priority than "stopping" a candidate unlikely to end up on the ballot.
One point of view is that Facebook is inherently making some sort of decisions about which stories to prioritize / have appear in people's feeds, search results, etc. (whether explicitly or through the tuning of the algorithms), so it is already taking a point of view on how an issue like Donald Trump should be handled. That position, right now, might be "nothing", but it is a position.
To take another example, when you Google some offensive terms, Google will show you or give you an explanation of why those results have risen to the top.
Who decides whether some issue rises to the level that it should get some explanation or special treatment? And who decides what the right side of it is -- such that the "democractic" search results should be interfered with? Then, what's the action to be taken, and what outcome is the action attempting to accomplish? Here, the goal would be contributing to someone losing a political race. That's very different from explaining a search result difference... And the problem is that these issues are not imminent threats, like a bomb or child abduction or terrorist threat. They are ideas, not yet actions. That is a hard line to cross, to figure out when it rises to a threshold to act.
Finally remember, as a insightful saying goes, "neutrality or refusal to take a position generally favors the aggressor in a fight". But knowing what to do instead of whether to stay neutral is a very different question.
It's one this for Facebook, Inc. to take a political position and back it with money or what-not.
It's another thing all together for Facebook as a service provider to treat their custumers differently based on their political views or to allow some political discourse but not other dscourse.
The latter usually backfires unless the "silenced" topics are almost universally reviled by your customers and prospective customers or at least that the censorship has nearly-universal customer support.
In other words, if Facebook treated pro-Trump content differently than pro-other-candidate material, it will bite them bad.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
NY Times and other national newspapers had a similar reach within the US only a short while ago... And their electoral endorsements mattered — and were actively sought-out by the politicians. Maybe, not so much any more, but there was never anything illegal or even unethical about it. You have an opinion — you voice it. If you happen to have a bigger megaphone, good for you...
Why can the media endorse a candidate, but not other corporations?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If Facebook did work to defeat Trump, could that be seen as In Kind contribution to his opponents?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It will be fun listening to all the right-wing nut-bars after Trump goes down in flames.
Trump is not "right-wing". He draws his strongest support from independents, and tends to do poorly in more partisan closed primaries. Many of his views are anathema to the right-wing, and many conservative talk radio hosts detest him. Talk radio is credited with his defeat in the Wisconsin primaries. Trump is a populist, with a mish-mash of views, without any ideological consistency.
You know what, I have to second that notion. They're the reason I don't bother to vote for political offices anymore. I'll vote for the referendum issues, i.e. legalize cannabis, the signal to noise on the political offices is polluted by low information voters so bad, it's just not worth bothering.
An example of low information: Most of the anti-Trump crusade thinks he makes racist statements all the time. I don't know whether or not the man is racist, but I personally haven't seen him make any comments that come off to me as racist.
Most commonly cited is stopping Muslims from entering the country; not only do I like Scott Adam's take on it (see this for reference) but Islam isn't a race, and talking down or otherwise disparaging their religious views isn't anymore racist than doing the same thing to a Scientologist or a Christian (something that seems PC to do, in spite of being decidedly un-PC when done to a Muslim.) The exception I take to that is it goes directly against the first amendment, which is unacceptable, but it's not in any way shape or form racist.
Second most common is stopping illegal immigration. Mexico not being a race notwithstanding (hell, as far as I know I'm pure Caucasian, yet half of the Mexicans I know have lighter skin than I do) there have been many a politician who have called for the same thing and haven't been accused of being racist.
You have to have a somewhat low or at least loose standard for what qualifies as "racist" in order to say that (think PC Principal on South Park.)
Now that doesn't mean I endorse Trump; I think his economic ideas are boneheaded and he'll make a terrible chief diplomat. And to be honest, I'm also not particularly interested in a single person that is running for president.
The obvious answer is "None."
Facebook should not interfere with the political process. It has no responsibility to be a political entity.
If you don't like Trump, then it is YOU that has the responsibility to do something about it. Not a private corporation.
s/get/seek/
There, fixed that for you.
without any ideological consistency.
I think that's a good thing. Or rather, it would be nice if policy decisions were made based on technical merit rather than passing some ideological test.
So I rarely post anything and mostly browse through photos, events, and articles posted by my friends...because I only care about myself?
It's a tool. It is a way to connect with others. You can use it in a shitty way, or you can use it in a positive way. The only downside I see is that it gives the shitty people a lot more reach. Those people were shitty and obnoxious before they had facebook accounts...it was just that you only saw it if you were in the same room as them. Now you can see their dumb thoughts in comment sections across the globe!
Bottles.
There won't be riots as long as Trump supporters continue to get their disability checks on time.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well both of those actually are perfect examples of racism. But beyond that:
*His company has been sued by the Justice department on multiple ocassions for not renting to minorities, the first time in 1973
*His comments calling illegal immigrants rapists. Even if you want them out of here, the number of them that are violent criminals is a vanishingly small percent. "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. They're not sending you, they're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems with us. Theyâ(TM)re bringing drugs. Theyâ(TM)re bringing crime. Theyâ(TM)re rapists."
*His constant references to "the blacks", "the muslims", "the hispanics".
And yes, the anti-muslim hate is racist. Its discriminatory to a large diverse group of people- that's what racism is. Not to mention that when Americans think of muslims they do associate it with an ethnic group- Arabs.
*He's a birther, which is just a dog whistle for not wanting a black man in the white house.
*He refused to denounce the KKK. I can't blame a man for who decides to endorse him, but when directly asked he refused to denounce them.
*Other quotes by Trump:
"âoeThe only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yamakas every day.â
âoeLaziness is a trait in the blacks. ... Black guys counting my money! I hate it.â (this is hearsay, but given that
*I'd list out the various sexist quotes by Trump to match, but I'm not sure slashdot has enough storage.
This is what I can find off the top of my head and with the top link in google, I'm not even digging. If you honestly think Trump isn't racist you have your head in the ground.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Having worked at Facebook- there's H1Bs there, but pay isn't a problem at FB. In fact they were one of the few large companies not caught up in the wage fixing lawsuits. They had no problem paying me a ridiculous amount of money in equity. The company has issues, but pay isn't one of them.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I think you may be hung up on the term "racist". If you talk about the things Trump says that people object to think "bigoted" rather than "racist". Bigoted encompasses racism, sexism, religious discrimination, etc.
Trump only exists as a candidate because the Republicans have done such a bad job of representing the average working-class guy who votes Republican. (Conservative is almost meaningless now, as is Liberal, Right, and Left) He's certainly populist, but his supporters aren't populist idealogs for the most part there's just not a better answer being discussed.
Most people understand that "no immigration at all" and "totally open borders" are both really stupid ideas, but those are the only choices people are talking about, so if you have a low-skill job threatened by immigration, it's easy to chose between the two.
I think you're right that that's the only thing Trump has been consistent on this election (and even his populism is fairly recent).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Every bigot in the history of time has had a rationalization for why their bigotry is actually justified. A rationalization that serves to gives them permission to be bigotted but is really just an a circular expression of their bigotry. Your choice to characterize all muslims that way is just another example in that tradition.
It's especially telling that your rationalization is completely distinct from Trump's rationalization. Even if you were right it still wouldn't make Trump any less bigotted.
Why would the average working-class guy even vote for the Republicans? They are, unashamedly, the supporters of the employers of the average working-class guy.
Because parties are coalitions of a wide set of positions they support? Except in recent years, that's just not true any more, and both parties exist only to serve big-money donors and the voters interests don't matter to either side except as rhetoric. That's why both Trump and Bernie keep getting so many primary votes.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Trump did denounce the KKK. He just didn't know what people were talking about at first. A bigger question is why Hillary and Obama associated with former KKK leader Robert Byrd.
I've seen plenty of suspicions with regards to Ted Cruz's status (born in Canada). The birther sentiment isn't limited to race.
Halting immigration from countries with known terror problems is perfectly reasonable. Jimmy Carter did it during the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis. Trump wanted a temporary halt until our immigration system is fixed.
Almost everything you've listed lacks context. I don't know about the Justice Department thing. The only thing I could find was that he didn't want to rent to welfare recipients (disproportionately ethnic minorities) who might end up trashing the places.
My immediate reaction is, "No, as a company they should not try to interfere in the political process."
However, there are so many *other* companies that are already doing just that, going so far as to crease fabricated 'grassroots' organizations to push specific candidates, that I want to say, "You know what? Screw it. Go ahead. At least you're being honest about it."
Perhaps they're emigrating from said countries because they think those laws are bullshit too.
Halting immigration from countries with known terror problems is perfectly reasonable
He didn't say that. He said halting immigration from Muslims, regardless of country of origin.
You're an idiot if you think no immigration is any different than limited immigration.
See, this is what I mean. You're probably against admitting invading armies, or convicted child rapists escaped from jail, or people with a declared (not assumed) intent to commit terrorism. You probably against admitting so many people so fast that it would unquestionably cause mass starvation from simple lack of infrastructure to move people and food around the first year.
You take the obviously wrong extreme position not because you've actually thought about it, but because you want to declare "see, I'm one of the good people, I hold the correct belief"! As do those who state the opposite end, of course.
Black and white answers are for children.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Isn't "technical merit" just another ideology like "economic merit", "political merit", or "religious merit"? Everyone likes to think that their own carefully reasoned opinion is the only one consistent with the facts, while their opponents are just irrational ideologues. Meanwhile, your opponents are thinking the same thing about you.
I use Facebook to communicate with family (some) and very close friends (from real life). I don't get news from Facebook.
I visit or call mine.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"Writing in the New Republic in 2014, Jonathan Zittrain, professor of international law at Harvard University, pointed out that, given the massive amount of information it has collected about its users, Facebook could easily send such messages only to people who support one particular party or candidate, and that doing so could easily flip a close election – with no one knowing that this has occurred. And because advertisements, like search rankings, are ephemeral, manipulating an election in this way would leave no paper trail."
"Are there laws prohibiting Facebook from sending out ads selectively to certain users? Absolutely not; in fact, targeted advertising is how Facebook makes its money. Is Facebook currently manipulating elections in this way? No one knows..."
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts
Now we know.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
> Every bigot in the history of time has had a rationalization for why their bigotry is actually justified.
That has absolutely no relevance.
Islam is a religion. It cuts across all racial boundaries. It has nothing to do with race. Hating on muslims simply does not satisfy the definition of the word racism.
You don't get to redefine words to suit your political agenda or because you are to FUCKING LAZY to use the right term.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Except the Democrats aren't representing my interests either. They want to destroy personal responsibility, discourage self-reliance, make people more dependent on the state, and destroy the economy with communist nonsense. It's gotten so bad that a communist is even running in the Democratic primaries.
I want the upcoming generations to be able to support me in my old age and for the quality of medical innovation to continue. I don't want the destruction of economic incentives that Democrats of all kind seem so fond of.
BOTH parties could do with a massive "rollback" to more sane positions.
Anyone that wants to subject you to Medicare is your enemy. So is anyone that wants to tear down Big Pharma. They make really cool stuff for diseases you've never heard of. They need to continue.
Castrate Skrelli but leave the guys still doing R&D out of your little purge.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Only a complete moron would think that Denmark is a communist country.
You got me. I control every account with UIDs between 3000000 and 4000000. Now I'm in negotiations with Slashdot to give me control over the Anonymous Coward account so I can troll myself.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You complete me.
You are welcome on my lawn.