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Facebook Needs To Protect Human Rights Issue, Civil Groups Say (cnet.com)

Facebook needs to be more forthcoming about the kinds of content it takes down. That's according to 73 organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Black Lives Matter, SumOfUs and more, who signed a letter sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. From a report on CNET: The group asks for more clarity on the social networking giant's position on removing video and other content that highlight civil rights issues at the behest of authorities. The growing importance of Facebook in your life means it plays a central role in the news, video and content you see. That was made horrifyingly clear over the summer when its Facebook Live streaming video tool was used to broadcast the shooting of a black man by a police officer in Minnesota. The next day, the medium was used to broadcast a sniper firing shots at police officer at another civil rights demonstration. "With the onset of Facebook Live, your company is taking on an increasingly central role in controlling media that circulates through the public sphere," the letter said. "News is not just getting shared on Facebook: it's getting broken there."

47 comments

  1. Forest for the trees by RageRifter · · Score: 1

    "News is not just getting shared on Facebook: it's getting broken there." That sounds like a quote from the news industry not real people. The news gets broken when it goes to the networks, everyone knows it yet here we are talking about facebook again.

    1. Re:Forest for the trees by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Insightful

      MSM stopped reporting the news a long time ago. It is now just propaganda for the power class. See WikiLeaks for evidence.

      It is Hackers breaking news, and the "networks" trying to keep a lid on it all.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    2. Re:Forest for the trees by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MSM stopped reporting the news a long time ago.

      And nothing of value was lost.

    3. Re:Forest for the trees by Penguinisto · · Score: 1, Insightful

      MSM stopped reporting the news a long time ago. It is now just propaganda for the power class.

      ...and the people too old/lazy/busy to get it anywhere else than their TV set. Until the baby-boom generation is dead, it'll still have that influence for a very long time (that is, the 'TV and papers are the only place to get legitimate news' mindset.)

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    4. Re:Forest for the trees by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2, Funny

      I am a "baby boomer" (supposedly, and depending on when the end date actually is).

      A lot of babyboomers (people older than me) have disconnected from the MSM (Newspapers, TV) completely. They aren't getting "news" at all, because they find it unreliable. The REAL people in love with MSM are the progressives who love pointing to the echo chamber of the MSM for all their own view points.

      For instance, these people are the ones that cannot formulate a single coherent reason why Clinton should be president, except "she has a vagina". And it doesn't matter what WikiLeaks has on her (RUSSIANS!!!!). She could be involved in child sex slavery and they would still vote for her.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    5. Re:Forest for the trees by Tailhook · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The REAL people in love with MSM are the progressives who love pointing to the echo chamber

      This.

      Last Sunday night at 9PM ET an outfit operating from a spare bedroom in Alabama streamed a Trump rally from NM to Facebook. No MSM filter. No MSM commentary condemning everything said as RaYSiSt!!1.

      3.2 million views in less than 2 hours..... on a Sunday night. Several times more eyeballs than all of the cable news echo chamber combined during the same period.

      ESPN SJW crap and malcontent NFL players are driving away viewers so fast that Major League Baseball is starting to win the ratings war for the first time in thirty years. The last reason many people had to pay for cable — pro football — is being ruined by the echo chamber and 621,000 subscriptions ended last month.

      --
      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    6. Re:Forest for the trees by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0

      See WikiLeaks for evidence.

      But I can't read Cyrillic.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    7. Re:Forest for the trees by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 0

      Hillary has more in common with Russia than Trump does. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good troll right?

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    8. Re:Forest for the trees by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Hillary has more in common with Russia than Trump does.

      That's exactly why Putin wants Trump to be president.

      http://thehill.com/blogs/ballo...

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    9. Re:Forest for the trees by mi · · Score: 0

      Putin wants Trump to be president.

      Pathetic... Seriously... Are we supposed to believe, Trump will be better for Russia, than the alternative, who:

      You expect us to ignore all of the above and worry ourselves over "irregular pings" of a server with "Trump's name in it" originating from a Moscow bank?

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    10. Re:Forest for the trees by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      "A former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence provided the FBI with information he says shows the Russian government has spent years trying to influence Donald Trump.

      In June, the officer, who now works for a U.S. firm gathering information on Russia for corporate clients, was told to research the Republican presidential nominee's dealings in Russia, Mother Jones reported Monday night.

      "It started off as a fairly general inquiry," the ex-spy said.
      As he searched, he says he found “an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit."

      Citing it as an “extraordinary situation,” the ex-intelligence officer sent a copy of his report to the FBI.

      In it, he charged that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump and could "blackmail him” and that it had a file on Hillary Clinton compiled from "bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls."

      He said FBI officials greeted his July memo with “shock and horror” but did not request additional information.

      The FBI then asked him for more memos in August, he added, prompting him to submit dossiers on members of Trump’s inner circle with ties to Russia."

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    11. Re:Forest for the trees by mi · · Score: 1

      Unattributed "could, might, what if". Also known as FUD. Like I said: pathetic. The munchkins are in revolt and Her Beautiful Wickedness is doomed.

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    12. Re:Forest for the trees by tsqr · · Score: 1

      She could be involved in child sex slavery and they would still vote for her.

      You're probably right about that. I recently came across a FB "share" originating from "Occupy Democrats". Can't remember it verbatim, but it was along the lines of "If Hillary were found trading blowjobs and state secrets for crack cocaine in the parking lot of a middle eastern 7-11, I'd still vote for her." Most of the comments were of the "LOL, true dat" variety.

    13. Re:Forest for the trees by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

      That may have been true 20yrs ago but not so much these days. For example, I'm pushing 60, the wife and I spend most of our spare time together platooning on world of tanks.I spend about 2hrs a week watching TV and an hour a day scrolling thru my FB/google news feed, even my 84yo dad spends more time on the web than in front of the TV.

      In my experience it has always been difficult to get the full story from anyone, but the web does allow you to hear the story from the horse's mouth on all sides.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    14. Re:Forest for the trees by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Unattributed "could, might, what if". Also known as FUD.

      And the emails on Huma Abedin's laptop could, might, what if contain some evidence of wrongdoing.

      Also known as FUD.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    15. Re:Forest for the trees by mi · · Score: 1

      And the emails on Huma Abedin's laptop could

      Funny, how you choose to ignore, what I posted and attack instead, what I did not. Strawman much?

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    16. Re:Forest for the trees by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Private citizens are also capable of creating propaganda that dwarfs any thing the government can come up with. Hint:In case you have not noticed the government is more vulnerable than the public when it comes to cyber intrusions and cyber attacks. The Internet, which was once a marvelous thing, has been co-opted by governments, companies, and citizens providing content that does nothing but create animosity across the world.

    17. Re:Forest for the trees by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "News is not just getting shared on Facebook: it's getting broken there."

      The original /. article got that much truthfully told.

      The FB moderators are well known for "filtering" the FB news feed ... definitely "breaking the news".

  2. Re:Shocking by tripleevenfall · · Score: 1

    I'm waiting for what feels like will soon be Facebook becoming passe. Does anyone care about the Facebook live garbage? Does anyone find ANY useful content there at all?

    Sure, there's a place for your cousin's kids' Halloween pics, but the content you mildly care about is drowned in a sea of garbage, political nonsense, rants and raves, and a news feed that is almost exclusively "XXX shared XXX" anymore. (Facebook is suffering from many maladies, not the least of which is being ruined by "Shared" the way the RT ruined Twitter)

    It's ironic - like parents dressing like teenagers and adopting (what they think is) current slang, the more Facebook tries to be relevant the less relevant it becomes.

  3. Uphold Journalistic Standards by BigBuckHunter · · Score: 4, Funny

    I believe we need to hold Facebook to the same high standards of Journalism (Accuracy, objectivity, ethics, unbiased and verified) as we do the major media outlets like Fox, CNN, NYT, NPR, and Rolling Stone Magazine.

    (Thank goodness nobody can see my face as I typed that)

    1. Re:Uphold Journalistic Standards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you just draw an equivalence between the accuracy, objectivity, ethics, unbiased, and verified standards of Fox, CNN, NYT, NPR, and Rolling Stones Magazine? False equivalence much?

      That's like drawing an equivalence between jaywalking and murder (hey, they're all crimes, right?). Or saying it's okay for Trump to be a liar (including saying "I never said that" when there is videotape of him saying that on national broadcast stump speeches) because, hey, all politicans lie at some point.

      I'll grant that no media source is 100% perfect. But there is a big difference between "try hard and sometimes make mistakes," "try hard and frequently make big mistakes," "don't try that hard," "taking advantage of people to sell viewership," and "explicitly trying to push a political agenda."

      I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to ascribe which media fits in which category.

  4. We wouldn't have these problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We wouldn't need to make a company do the people's bidding if people made use of the Internet instead of Zuckernet. Stop putting everything behind those walls.

    1. Re:We wouldn't have these problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      We wouldn't need to make a company do the people's bidding if people made use of the Internet instead of Zuckernet. Stop putting everything behind those walls.

      Please address the Farcebook community properly as idiots.

      We "people" don't consider the amplification of narcissism via social media as a viable or accurate channel for news.

    2. Re:We wouldn't have these problems by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's a shame this is at -1, but it's entirely right. If you have a Facebook account and you use it to communicate with people then you are responsible for giving Facebook this power. Don't want Facebook to abuse its power? Don't give it its power in the first place. Boycott Facebook, and more importantly boycott companies that use it to advertise.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:We wouldn't have these problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We wouldn't need to make a company do the people's bidding if people made use of the Internet instead of Zuckernet. Stop putting everything behind those walls.

      hashtag rigged system. hashtag twitter is recentralized irc. hashtag reddit is recentralized usenet. hashtag gmail is recentralized email. hashtag wake up and smell the coffee. hashtag wake up and smell the mainstream media making zero connections between this story and Hillary's choice of squirrelmail competitors over squirrelmail.

      http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7522219498
      http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-k121024.pdf
      https://www.wired.com/2013/07/google-neutrality/
      http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/google-fiber-now-explicitly-permits-home-servers
      https://lwn.net/Articles/658006/

    4. Re:We wouldn't have these problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree with you that centralized services like Facebook shouldn't exist. But there's a comment elsewhere on this thread talking about a Facebook Live stream run by a one-man operation getting 3.2 million viewers. Without a big company with a major datacenter, how is a normal person supposed to get the bandwidth to support that many viewers? In a reasonable world, we would have peer-to-peer technologies to handle such a thing, but I don't know of any for real-time video streaming, especially none that "just work".

  5. Re:Shocking by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

    Hey look, 18 friends are on Facebook Live at the same time! Everybody wants to be a rockstar!

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  6. No, they don't by DaMattster · · Score: 1

    It would be really nice if Facebook would do more to protect and promote civil rights but they're under no obligation to under the law. They're a private, for profit corporation, and as such, they're not required to protect civil rights. The only legal requirements that corporation has are that it not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, and age.

    1. Re:No, they don't by mjr167 · · Score: 2

      People also do not need to be nice people. It makes the world a better place when people are kind and considerate to each other, but there is not law requiring you to be polite. Doesn't mean we don't want people to be nice. We also talk about people having social obligations. These obligations are not mandated by law, but instead by your own personal sense of decency. Corporations are (or should be) the same. They should be 'nice' because it makes the world a better place.

  7. Re:Shocking by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

    Well, yes and no.

    The children and hipster types will have long since moved on, but it is still massively used for older folks (25 yrs and up) to keep in touch with their family members... and that much-higher-disposable-income demographic is probably much more to Facebook's liking insofar as advertising revenue is concerned.

    Given that, I don't think Facebook particularly cares right now if the kids think it's passe', because even the younger crowd will likely still keep an account handy, if only to talk to their parents, siblings, (maybe) cousins, etc.

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  8. Re:Shocking by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The irony is that many of those same SJW's want Facebook, Twitter, et. al. to take down content that disagrees with them ("disagrees with my position = "hate speech" in SJW-World, of course). So, a more accurate summary might be "SJW's demand to know what content Facebook is taking down so they can make sure that they're is only taking down anti-SJW content."

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  9. Nobody forces you to use Facebook.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Plenty of people in the world choose not to participate in this "social network" - that is what these groups should be campaigning against. They have no impetus as a private company to do anything except make money for their shareholders. People hold the power because they are producing free content on a daily basis to Facebook, but they'd rather be vain and self centered than pull themselves away from the site.

  10. List of organizations by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

    That list of organizations reminds me of the "Life of Brian". "The People's Front of Judea" belongs on that list along with "Students for Justice in Palestine" and "Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights"

  11. Power grabs! Power grabs everywhere! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "The growing importance of Facebook in your life means it plays a central role in the news, video and content you see." (aka they have too much power over what you see so we want some of it too)

  12. Get rid of "community standards" by MikeRT · · Score: 1, Insightful

    And just go with the legal requirements of the jurisdiction. Facebook gives us plenty of control over what we see. If a friend of yours is offensive you have plenty of options ranging from blocking news sources from a friend to defriending the person. Social media companies should be far more neutral and just tell people to STFU when they complain about content they're seeing because they provide the tools needed to block content you don't want to see.

  13. "Issue"? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    Facebook Needs To Protect Human Rights Issue, Civil Groups Say

    That headline seems to have got a bit garbled. They're not being told to protect "a human rights issue", whatever that means, but just "human rights."

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:"Issue"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's fascinating that the slashdot editors or upstream activists didn't go for the slightly more specific term "Free Speech". I have my own theories as to what sorts of games with hidden agendas they are playing.

  14. Re:Shocking by Tyrannicsupremacy · · Score: 0

    "this firsthand evidence does not support my mental narrative! It's bigoted and hate-filled!"

    --
    http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
  15. Re:Shocking by tripleevenfall · · Score: 1

    "I have a right not to be offended!"

  16. Re:Shocking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    News Flash - SJWs think Facebook should push their causes more.

    I am a bit astonished someone might rely on FB for news at all. It's ancillary at best for that. And, like the article states, they lie left and right about what is important.

    There are lots of web sites out there with much better (and even biased in your way or non-biased) news on them. No need to rely on the one.

  17. Why just Facebook? by mi · · Score: 1

    Twitter and Youtube are rather lousy in this regard too...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  18. Re:Shocking by tsqr · · Score: 1

    News Flash - SJWs think Facebook should push their causes more.

    I am a bit astonished someone might rely on FB for news at all.

    Are you really astonished, when so many people rely on Stephen Colbert, whatever they're calling The Daley Show now, and Saturday Night Live for news?

  19. Re:Shocking by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

    I am a bit astonished someone might rely on FB for news at all.

    Why? - Every news organisation on the planet has a FB page.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  20. Common sense by TapeCutter · · Score: 0

    Putin is playing Trump like a fiddle, he is the poster boy for what used to be called "useful idiots".

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    1. Re:Common sense by mi · · Score: 1

      Putin is playing Trump like a fiddle

      And you know this from pings "emanating" from a Russian bank?.. Right...

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  21. Follow the funding by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    Back to theocracies, monarchies, kingdoms flooding US social media with their cash for access.
    Users think they are using a free, protected US platform.
    Or will a clean up of any negative comments be policy to keep the easy funding flowing?

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"