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Facebook Decides Which Killings We're Allowed to See
Minutes after a police shooting took place in the Falcon Heights suburbs of Minnesota, a Facebook Live video was published on the social juggernaut website. The death of Philando Castile, 32, was documented in harrowing detail thanks to the live streaming tool offered by the social media giant. The 10-minute video was streamed via smartphone by a woman identified in media reports as Diamond Reynolds. She narrates the video with a mix of eerie calm and anguish. The video was removed from Facebook due to, as company says, a "technical glitch." The video has since been restored, but with a "Warning -- Graphic Video," disclaimer. Motherboard notes that Facebook has become the de-facto platform for such controversial videos, and that there's a pattern in these so called glitches -- as they happen very often time after a questionable content is streamed. This makes one wonder whether it is up to Facebook to decide which kind of controversial videos one should be able to watch The publication writes: As Facebook continues to build out its Live video platform, the world's most popular social network has become the de-facto choice for important, breaking, and controversial videos. Several times, Facebook has blocked political or newsworthy content only to later say that the removal was a "technical glitch" or an "error." Nearly two-thirds of Americans get their news from social media, and two thirds of Facebook users say they use the site to get news. If Facebook is going to become the middleman that delivers the world's most popular news events to the masses, technical glitches and erroneous content removals could be devastating to information dissemination efforts. More importantly, Facebook has become the self-appointed gatekeeper for what is acceptable content to show the public, which is an incredibly important and powerful position to be in. By censoring anything, Facebook has created the expectation that there are rules for using its platform (most would agree that some rules are necessary). But because the public relies on the website so much, Facebook's rules and judgments have an outsized impact on public debate.
Facebook is a private company. Facebook users' data (i.e., the "people catalog" data) are the product it sells. Facebook can do whatever it wants, and allow whatever it wants to be shown on its site.
Newspapers can decline to cover whatever stories they wish. TV news can decline to show whatever footage they wish. Facebook is a private company, and can block whatever content it chooses to block.
The only really scary thing here is the fact that "two thirds of Americans get their news from social media". No wonder the country is so fucked up.
News at 11: CNN, Reuters, ABC, WashPo, Huffington, Faux News, and every other news source also decide which killings, rapes, assaults, incidents, political mishaps and weather event to report.
I'm not advocating anything-goes - I'm not sure what I'm advocating. But I know something is out of balance, here.
I can tell you what's out of balance because I've said it here before. Facebook, Twitter, and friends have become the new AOL. The younger generation has precious little concept of the "internet." For them, the "internet" is their news feed on Facebook. I know a bunch of people that don't even bother to use Google anymore even though Google is a household name. I hear uninformed people talk about the "dark web," and they aren't referring to tor sites, they're referring to anything outside of the smartphone apps that constitute their walled garden social media experience.
This is Slashdot, so the audience here is a little older and more technically minded than most. For me, my first exposure to the internet was Usenet, then IRC, both completely uncensored mediums with no corporate agenda. That's what we think of when we think of the internet but we're squarely in the minority. Hell, even sites like Slashdot have occasionally had to censor comments and that was before they had corporate overlords to answer to.
It's not that Facebook is inherently evil, it's just that it's a large for-profit corporation; they started by censoring what's politically popular to censor, hate speech, ISIS videos, and the like, because they don't want their name tarnished by the association. Then they expanded to censoring other things -- firearms are no longer allowed to be sold in their marketplaces -- that have limited mainstream appeal, because they concluded that the cost benefit wasn't there for them.
In theory, what they do with hate speech is no different than Applebee's declining to host the local KKK's meet and greet, but in practice they've become so large that they're essentially a gatekeeper to the online community, and as noted it's hardly limited to hate speech. Once you decide that you're going to censor your platform -- and the motivations are too strong to resist for a for-profit enterprise -- it's obvious that you're not going to be able to stop at "hate speech," however defined.
I don't know what the solution to this is but it does sadden me when I think of how we escaped AOL only to replace it with Facebook and Twitter.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
How about we stop having panicky gunmen micromanage everyone's driving?
If the glitch is due to a video being slashdotted, then the complaint becomes Facebook's lack of transparency about the cause. I imagine that a notice to the following effect might have been better received: "This video has become incredibly popular. Please wait a moment while we prepare to handle the crowd."
Is that a reasonable assumption? For the first couple of years I lived in the US I don't think it was obvious to me that I should even stay in the car when pulled over. When if my wallet was in my bag in the back of the car? No reason to take it into the front just in case I'm pulled over, after all, especially when you come from a part of the world that has no requirement to carry identification in the car in the first place. Certainly back in the UK I wouldn't assume I couldn't leave the car. This peculiar interaction where the driver has to follow careful rules that are only practically spread through word of mouth and watching TV shows, just in case the cop gets nervous, isn't really optimal, and I don't think assuming that "everyone knows" is a reasonable view of the world..