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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.
It is Their Site. So they make Their rules.
Based on their business model.
They're only permitting the naughty-bits of human bodies in settings "generally recognized as art." It's just so much more dangerous to society to see the image of a female nipple or other male/female naughty-bits than it is to see live-streamed images of graphic violence. (Notwithstanding the fact that we all have those same bits ourselves, simply covered by clothing.)
I'm not advocating anything-goes - I'm not sure what I'm advocating. But I know something is out of balance, here.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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.
Facebook is not the entire internet. Facebook is not even a significant percentage of the entire internet. It's also free to make up whatever the fuck it wants for rules. You're also free to choose whether or not to use it. Hell, you can use it and, brace yourselves now, also use other websites. I'll wait for your head to stop spinning.
Seems there's a typo in the title, the above text was left out.
Newspaper editors never did this, right?
Gently reply
There are two distinct parts to this topic:
Note that FB has usage rights and they could censor stuff, and they do. They block terrorist propaganda, for example. The question here is should it be an all or nothing, or as-decided-by-FB? Regarding the lawsuits, note that in the U.S. there are number of protections on media reporting of minors (as an example). If FB allows such reporting unfiltered, can they be held accountable? I would hope not, but it depends on what the court would agree.
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.
Companies back biased reporting. News at 11
The phrase is "film at eleven" - you're hearing this on the news, so the news is now".
But yes, we've already seen Facebook uses their platform to support their political objectives. That's been obvious for a while really, and most conservatives have left Facebook/Twitter/etc to avoid supporting them in any way. No doubt that was the goal of progressives all along, or anyway delights them.
But an echo chamber that feeds directly into your selection bias is harmful to everyone. Sadly, that's all we seem to have these days, in both new media and old - it's on you to read both conservative and liberal blogs (or, for the elderly, both listen to talk radio and read the paper). Just realize that social media is a progressive echo chamber these days, so you're not going to find perspective if all you consume is social media, MSNBC, and liberal blogs.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The problem is that too many people are using it and expecting it to conform to whatever they want it to be. It is their website, they can do what they want with it. Similarly if you created a video that you want people to see, you have the right to take it wherever you want. If one site doesn't want to show it the way you want it shown, take it somewhere else. People treat facebook as if it is the entire fucking web; they have this power only because people have given it to them (intentionally or not).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If you're a software engineer or a system administrator, you probably already know exactly what the technical glitches are. People are trying to throw a shitfit without understanding technology. "Facebook" isn't just a single server with a single purpose. Information has to be distributed from the content source to the content consumers. If an account normally has a reach of 5-10 viewers, it is easy to have them stream internally though a single server that is handling several streams at once. They are shoved on this particular data delivery path based on past low viewer counts... then all of a sudden they stream something that hits a 100k+ reach? Yes, the content then needs to be moved to high capacity and more dedicated servers. This isn't an instant process. The easiest explanation to the laymen is a "technical glitch", because how many people outside of technology even know what a server or routing digital data even is? This exact scenario DOES happen with other content too, but only when it involves something controversial does it become a conspiracy and censorship theory. A great example of other content that has had this exact issue was the selfie taken at the Grammys that had overf 1,000,000 shares. Yes, that took out an entire Twitter datacenter. Not just a server, the whole datacenter went offline for some time.
It's the all-purpose solution to every complaint. Also, I'm sure Facebook supports this sort of regulation elsewhere. Why not apply it where it's needed most?
Reality has a liberal bias, so the conservatives fled Facebook because they are unhappy with reality. They went to actual walled gardens to hide from the truth, and Facebook, recognizing the users left, displayed a "bias" towards their customers.
Learn to love Alaska
Reality has a liberal bias, so the conservatives fled Facebook because they are unhappy with reality.
This is what confirmation bias looks like. When you're part of the "community-based reality", everything your read or hear shows how smart you are, and what idiots the fools on the other side must be - after all, you never see evidence to the contrary!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And that's why they left facebook, to live in their bubble. AT least you seem to get it, you need to take the time to delve into both sides to get any type of insight. If you are a "liberal" or "progressive" which I can't ignore the fact that you are using as derogatory terms, you need to take in as much from the other side as possible. If you are a conservative or whatever term you want to toss out, you need to listen to what's coming from the liberal side too, because both groups are living in a confirmation bias bubble. Being mostly in the middle I've noticed a trend. Inventing bullshit arguments and creating strawmen.... from both sides. It's funny though because you attempted to trash on AK, but you ignored the fact that you, yourself, posted this: "No doubt that was the goal of progressives all along, or anyway delights them." So who is living in the fantasy bubble? The people using facebook, the people who left, or the dude who thinks this was all a huge "progressive" conspiracy?
I am what you would call a "progressive", and I detest FB.
However, I have conservative relatives who use FB a lot and have their own echo chamber of "news" from what they get through FB.
It works both ways.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Not that I'm defending the shooting, but by now everyone knows what the police officer will want when they pull you over. Get your license out of your wallet and registration/insurance out of the glove compartment, and have them ready in your hands while the officer is walking towards your car. If it's night, turn your dome light on so he can see inside the car.
I was pulled over one night for speeding, and happened to have my camera tripod on the passenger seat. The officer asked what it was, and I made the mistake of reaching over to grab it so he could get a better view. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the officer reach for his gun. They are extremely jumpy about any sudden movements with your hands. Leave your hands in sight at all times, like on the steering wheel.
As for Facebook, what probably happened is when you upload a video it gets put onto a single server that happens to host your FB wall. If the video goes viral, it needs to be moved to a higher capacity server or server farm, to better handle the load.
Except nobody left Facebook. It's just a bunch of people posting their Goodbye Cruel World messages - on Facebook. Then checking in to see how many "likes" they got for quitting Facebook. And then rage-quitting for ten minutes.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How is this any different from what the newspapers and or TV news used to do ? Editors and in some cases for TV the FCC always ruled over what could and would be published, and often it took a day or 2 before that happened. In the age of instant gratification people expect the news to be available seconds after it happened, or as it happens but that doesn't allow for any sort of verification or fact checking. The power of social media can be wonderful or terrible, it has shown great and horrible things, but without clarification we've seen what a misunderstanding can do to someone's life, and I think we can see that kind of instant publicity often drives what some people can and will do. In some cases it is better not give the bad guys what they want but to sensor some details to aid in criminal investigation and preserve the privacy and dignity of victims or families. I think there is certainly room for discussion and some rules need to be established for what can and will be seen. There are other ways to publish video content, e.g. YouTube and if Facebook becomes undependable or tyrannical then some other source of app will fill in the gap.
Note : I don't use Facebook but manage to keep abreast of current events.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Just watched this last night, while I've heard of the issues with content moderators previously, this is the first time I've seen it all laid out including the censorship of legal political parties. Also to be found in the usual places if you'd like a download.
Facebookistan Site
Watch on YouTube Facebookistan english version
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Wow. So you ran a red light and now you deserve to die because you reached for your glovebox out of habit. Land of the free indeed.
Yeah. I remember all the propaganda about the nazi and commie secret police, and how we were the land of the free.
Well, they say that one becomes what one hates, so, here we are.
The largest prison population in the world.
Land of the free indeed.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
First of all, the whole "technical glitch" claim when this new "live content" is suddenly pulled *could* be legitimate. I'm not saying Facebook has done much to deserve the benefit of the doubt based on its actions in the past.... but it's quite possible these live streams of very popular "breaking news story" type content are overloading the servers they're getting hosted on. Maybe FB has to pull stuff when it gets too many simultaneous views and move it elsewhere, to keep it from impacting performance of the rest of the site? I don't know what they have to juggle behind the scenes to keep everything working properly, but I imagine there's a lot of this manual intervention required. Even our MS Exchange mail hosting service has struggles with automatic load-balancers and regularly pins the blame on them when strange things start happening with devices not receiving mail.
Second, I think there have to be some expectations set with "social media" as a whole. Just because social media sites are adding capabilities like live-streaming video doesn't make them a substitute for a commercial news station. At best, they have the same status as your run of the mill blogger. Certainly, some breaking news happens thanks to these sites distributing it first. But there's no guarantee the content will reliably stay online to reference it for others to view or read it, and it's liable to be presented with a strong bias attached.
IMO, there's a weird symbiotic relationship between news media and social media going on. While social media is happy to grab up a lot of the "eyeballs" that would traditionally have watched television news or read printed news instead? The news media benefits, in turn, by selectively rebroadcasting some of the content, straight from social media sites, vs. incurring the expense of sending news teams to record that content themselves all the time. Even if we're talking only printed news -- they can literally break new stories based solely on what they saw happen or read about on social media.
Nope. The truly impartial are the cynics. If I hate everyone equally, I'm not biased, but still think both sides are packed with liars.
Learn to love Alaska
Put yourself in the Rapists's shoes and THINK about what they are concerned about, preferably in advance, and don't do anything stupid and you are very unlikely to get shot. Here are my rules.
1. Limit movements as much as possible when the rapist is near the car (both you and your passengers). Get your panties, bra, and pants off onto the dash if you can before they arrive but be sure to be ready to sit still and spread your legs open before they approach. Have EVERYBODY in the car put their empty hands in their laps and sit quietly. STAY IN THE CAR, unless instructed otherwise and turn off that radio if it's playing anything other than sweet sweet Luther Van Dross.
2. Make sure the rapist can see as much as possible. Turn on interior lights, but don't roll down your tinted windows. It let's the stank out.
3. IF you need to move or reach for something, ASK PERMISSION. "Master, my lube is in the center console. May I reach for it?" Then announce what you are doing "OK, I'm going to get my lube out of the center console now."
4. No matter what the rapist tells you to do, COMPLY, even if you don't think the rapist is acting lawfully. If you are one of those who has purposed not to consent to any rapings, refuse the 'may I put my dick in your trunk?" requests with a polite "No Papi, I do not consent to a penetration of my trunk" but ALWAYS be respectful, nonthreatening and compliant as much as you can. If you really believe the rapist is in the wrong, complain NEVER.
5. Remember that the rapist usually just wants to walk away from the raping alive. And that this is one of the most dangerous thing they do. If you go out of your way to keep the rapist feeling safe, by showing your tits, gyrating slow and not being threatening in your attitude you will make their day that much easier. A rapist who is more relaxed is more likely to let you go with a warning too, so who knows, all your efforts may pay off.
I remember a time when I got pulled over by a rapist in the dead of night with 5 people in a 69VW Bug. I stopped, turned on the dome light and had to tell a girl in the back to keep quiet (she was going off about how unfair it was that I was gonna get raped). It was cold and I had my winter jacket on. There was no way I was going to get my pants off while sitting in the car so I explained to the rapist the issue. I asked if I could get out of my car. He gave me permission and I got out, stood facing away from him and pulled my jeans and thong down. I showed him both holes before I turned around and wasn't surprised that he had his cock in hand. I let him approach me to get the pussy. Where I think I deserved the raping, he didn't gimme one. But I could have been easily been shot and raped because that kind of stop is incredibly dangerous tor rapists, dead of night, car full of people, some 5'6" gal in a long coat reaching towards his zipper. I kept him as comfortable as I could by being as non-threatening as I could and I think it paid off for me.
Most people have some time they fritter frivolously.
Try saying "fritter frivolously on Facebook" ten times fast.
I think that was the Colbert joke. When you are so right, everything else looks left, including the middle, and reality.
Learn to love Alaska