Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Said To Create Censorship Tool To Get Back Into China (theverge.com)
The New York Times is reporting (Warning: may be paywalled, alternate source) that Facebook has created a censorship tool to automatically suppress certain posts in specific geographic areas of China, according to three current and former Facebook employees. The tool was created in an effort for Facebook to "get into China, a market where the social network has been blocked." Business Insider notes that several Facebook employees have quit because of the tool: This software would give third parties, like internet service providers, the ability to monitor Facebook for popular stories, and suppress them at will. This tool is one of many that Facebook has experimented with to get back into China, where it's been blocked from users since 2009, says the report, and has never actually been used. Regardless, the fact that company leadership would even consider this approach has reportedly troubled some Facebook employees, seeing it as a betrayal of the social network's values around openness and transparency in the name of getting access to the vast market represented by China.
Hail Zuckerberg!
Ironic we can't see it either because of a pay-wall.
Sure you can. NY Times gives you a certain number of free page-views each month, and tracks them using a cookie. So just right click on any NY Times link, and select "Open Link in Incognito Window". It will work every time.
What would be the motivation? MZ has promised to give away 99% of his facefortune in his lifetime.
So, if it is not about the money, what drives him?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Trump is going to start a trade war with China, so Facebook will end up as a casualty anyway as will every US company.
If I were Facebook. I would implement the censorship tools, but I would make the censorship filters, settings, and collected stat world readable.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
Sells out to Communist China so global the profits flow.
Who wants to be on censored media? How boring is that? Reading what your gov tells you? Been aware that you will be denounced by gov staff or the US brand just with one click?
Time to move to more freedom aware US brands that are fun, real and protect all their users from Communist party members and gov workers.
If a US brand wants to be with Communists, the rest of the world has the freedom find much better quality US brands.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
So that you can sell out 1.3 Billion Chinese people.
several Facebook employees have quit because of the tool
There's a lame joke about even evil having standards hiding somewhere in that quote.
Ezekiel 23:20
I was mostly joking, but pay-walls will work on most regular users. Thus, it's de-facto censorship.
Table-ized A.I.
I was mostly joking, but pay-walls will work on most regular users.
I have shown the "Incognito" trick to plenty of non-geek co-workers and they have no problem remembering it and using it. They just don't understand (or care) why it works.
At the New York Times that's no paywall, that's a trench latrine beyond lies a sewerage lake slowly but surely decomposing, better just to turn away, really why immerse yourself in that lake, join it's fake journalists neck deep in shite, only able to see the instruction of their corporate advertisers. Instead just wait for some one to put up an alternate link https://www.cnet.com/au/news/f.... New York Times, sad to say, is just yesterdays corporate propaganda channel and blatant corrupter of democracy. Better off having nothing what so ever to do with them, far better off.
Perhaps the New York Times can relocate to China and become the Bejing Times it is a market they are far more suited to (if not there perhaps the liars at the New York Times would be happier in Saudi Arabia) and Facebook, well, people have been warned for years to drop it and move on. It is just the way things work with social media channels, delusions of grandeur and power and the fuckers go nutz, censoring and propagandising and monetising their users and everyone moves on, it is just the way of things.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
... money.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
FB == "whore"
that's all.
and that's why I will never join (never saw a FB page, in fact).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Seems to me they might mitigate some issues by coping google and creating a parent company. Then create regional "facebook" like social sites that to a limited extent interoperate and share a lot of their code base. The various sister sites wouldn't have the same moral policies.
Let me try to say it again some other way. IN PRACTICE most either don't know about or won't use that feature. Whether they "can" is moot here. There is only one of you to show the whole world. Nobody else gives a fudge (so far).
Table-ized A.I.
You do realise The New York Times is blocked in China...
May throw a slight spanner into the works of relocating.
Now that's just unfair to sex workers. Prostitution is an old and honest profession, lying to people to sell their info to others is an old and dishonest con. Not remotely the same.
A blog about stuff.
You anonymous cowards are all alike.
Table-ized A.I.