Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Promises It Won't Mess With Voters' Minds (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader writes: On Friday, Gizmodo reported on an internal discussion among Facebook employees in which they seem to be asking Mark Zuckerberg whether they should do something to "help prevent President Trump in 2017." Facebook is now assuring users that it wouldn't use its algorithms to influence voting in the presidential election this November. "We as a company are neutral -- we have not and will not use our products in a way that attempts to influence how people vote," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement.Media critic Jay Rosen said, "It sounds nutty but Facebook has a rock solid First Amendment right to filter out all Trump news -- if it wanted to."
Make with the transparency. How do the stream sorting algorithms work? If Facebook can't divulge that, I see no reason to trust them.
Maybe. But then they are publishing an opinion. And that will attract the scrutiny of all of the voting and campaign rights regulators. Equal time and access rules may kick in. Safe haven publishing exemptions may be lost. Sounds like a mess that even Zuckerberg wouldn't want to get involved with.
Have gnu, will travel.
In the 1950s, Hollywood had a policy of a blacklisting communist party members, denying employment to screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians and so on. Those people couldn't find work for years after.
Trump seems to be the new communist party. People think nothing of petitioning stores to discontinue his products, disrupting his rallys, or publishing blatant lies. We accept this, because we feel that corporations have free speech, and so can do whatever they want.
I'm glad Facebook is standing up to this nonsense. Businesses exist by license from the government, and with that should come a measure of public good. That means neutrality in their business dealings. If Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook to purchase political ads that's OK, that's what the "corporate free speech" is about.
But denying equal services?
Hurting Trump by indirect means is the new McCarthyism(*).
In other news, Scott Adams has an interesting take on the delegate cheats:
In Iran you can vote for anyone for President so long as that person has been approved by the Ayatollah Khameini. We Americans call that system a dictatorship.
Voters in America recently discovered that they live under an Iranian type of system and didn’t know it. In the primaries, voters participate in some sort of ritualistic placebo voting while party leaders select the candidates.
Remember, boys and girls, only the outcome matters.
Trump has to be stopped, by any means possible!.
(*) Stopping him personally doesn't seem to work, so I expect that soon we'll have businesses tamping down on his supporters. I couldn't find a news article about an employee fired for posting pro-Trump on their facebook page, but I expect that this will happen soon.
> "It sounds nutty but Facebook has a rock solid First Amendment right to filter out all Trump news -- if it wanted to."
It only sounds nutty if you're willfully ignorant (which is understandable given the status of US education).
The vast majority of Americans mis-translate some notion of freedom of expression to mean the right to be heard by anyone or that if a product is big enough, it magically becomes some form of common carrier....oh nevermind.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Even Trump is pretty good at this - his claim about how much the wall will cost is hard to disprove without actually building the damn thing (argue against, yes - disprove, no). But he provably lies pretty often - his stories about seeing Muslims celebrating in the streets as the WTC collapsed are demonstrably false. Or his claims to have never settled a case out of court, or never declared bankruptcy.
As long as it would be done fairly (ie. all candidates are subject to the same scrutiny) and to a set standard, I think this would be a good thing.
Apropos of nothing, why do you cite several of Trump's lies and none of Clinton's?
an internal discussion among Facebook employees in which they seem to be asking Mark Zuckerberg whether they should do something to "help prevent President Trump in 2017
I guess these are Zuckerberg's beloved H1Bs. Understandable.
Welcome to 1984. If you don't understand that you have been receiving Disinformation your whole life then you are still in The Matrix.
Please read "Disinformation" - by Lt Gen Ion Mihai Pacepa
http://www.amazon.com/Disinfor...
The greatest source of disinformation comes from those who believe the Collective should have supremacy over the Individual - for your own good, of course. These believe that you are not competent to run your own life and make your own decisions - hence they are progressively regulating more and more of your life. In the EU they even regulate the amount of power you can have in your toaster and in your lawn mower (of course, their Agenda 21 is to move you to "sustainable" housing where you have no lawn, and further down the track, no private property - only that which the Collective gives you, which the Collective can also take away).
Most folks think that the Free World won the "Cold War". They never think about where the Collectivists went. The reality is they went nowhere and have been promoted in their careers and bureaucracies. And now we are seeing the "Fabian" style gradual increase in control through regulation. The python is squeezing if you are paying attention. When was the last time you heard citizens say "It's a Free Country" and people accept and act on that premise. No, the citizens are cowed into begging Government for scraps and for permission to do things. They are not Free because their minds are enslaved that they are subjugated to the Collective will (which actually means, the 'elites' who rule the transnational-bodies that determine the will of the global Collective).
It is amazing how angry people get when they hear the truth. They would rather cling to the lie that the prevailing disinformation has fed them. Look at all the riots of people who want to deny the Free Speech rights of others, and who think that "free stuff" (actually, resources the Collective extorts using State force from the innovative and industrious) is a sustainable economic model - or somehow a route to a better life for everyone. Madness! Not only Zuckerberg and his minions are subject to this delusion, but even some otherwise-intelligent Slashdotters are captured by it too.
Live Free or Die !
It isn't anything like the Iranian system. Virtually anybody can run for President with only a few restrictions.
During the 2008 election, Ron Paul had 9.1% of the votes (roughly, depending on specific vote and time).
I watched with astonishment how Fox news reported the results for candidates that got less than Ron Paul, but didn't report Ron Paul's results.
During that primary, the GOP had a rule that a candidate needs to win 8 states to be considered a candidate in the convention.
They changed that rule from 5 to 8, specifically to exclude Ron Paul.
Cruz might not win 8 states, so the GOP is changing the rules to lower that number to allow Cruz to be on the ballot.
It isn't *anything like the Iranian system. We have about 200 people who control the election, while Iran has only one.
A really big difference. Big whoop.
Zuck should just be honest about it, and acknowledge the only way he is going to 'do big business in China.' He should become a member of the Communist Party establishment.
He probably can't become a ranking member of the Communist Party of China, but he could become a cadre member of the official US fraternal party. Here is their website: Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
Note that this is not just yet another fringe leftist group. This is the front group for the American Party that has party-to-party relations with the CPC.
On the other hand, if they did decide to influence people politically, would you be able to tell it was happening.
Completely correct. And not just Facebook, but Google and others as well.
There was a fascinating (and disturbing) Aeon essay posted a couple of months ago on this very subject. The short version is that there are many ways to subtly influence people's opinions without them ever knowing they have been targeted, and there is already significant effort and money being spent in this arena (and not just in the obvious case of advertising).
One only need to look at the Facebook "experiment" from 2014 to see what's easily possible and already being done (and that's just the one reported on in the news).
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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There were Muslims dancing in the street during and after 9/11. Maybe not in New Jersey, or even on US soil, but they were certainly dancing in the streets of several of the Islamic countries.
Granted, but here's the exact quote from Trump:
"Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering. [...] There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down."
The problem with Trump is, the above quote isn't even a lie. When he said it, he genuinely believed it to be the truth, because it fit the narrative of his worldview and therefore didn't need to be verified -- and when it was pointed out to him that his 'memory' is of something that never actually happened, he said, essentially: no thanks, I prefer my fabrication over reality.
That's just the sort of emotion-based magical thinking we don't need anywhere near the levers of power, lest it marches us back into another fiasco like the Iraq War, or worse.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Liberals are pro-democracy as long as the candidates are liberals. Otherwise anything goes.
What would happen if a moron was to disrupt a Clinton or Sanders event? Front page of New York Times, outraged panels on Bill Maher, full mayhem. But disrupt Trump events or try to get Facebook to "do something" to prevent him from being elected and you are a hero.
Trump is not the nazis. Those people who are willing to do anything to silence him are.
lucm, indeed.