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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.
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.
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.
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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