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NYT: Lynchings Around the World are Linked To Facebook Posts (bostonglobe.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
Riots and lynchings around the world have been linked to misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, which pushes whatever content keeps users on the site longest -- a potentially damaging practice in countries with weak institutions and histories of social instability. Time and again, communal hatreds overrun the newsfeed unchecked as local media are displaced by Facebook and governments find themselves with little leverage over the company. Some users, energized by hate speech and misinformation, plot real-world attacks.
A reconstruction of Sri Lanka's descent into violence, based on interviews with officials, victims and ordinary users caught up in online anger, found that Facebook's newsfeed played a central role in nearly every step from rumor to killing. Facebook officials, they say, ignored repeated warnings of the potential for violence, resisting pressure to hire moderators or establish emergency points of contact... Sri Lankans say they see little evidence of change. And in other countries, as Facebook expands, analysts and activists worry they, too, may see violence.
A Facebook spokeswoman countered that "we remove such content as soon as we're made aware of it," and said they're now trying to expand those teams and investing in "technology and local language expertise to help us swiftly remove hate content." But one anti-hate group told the Times that Facebook's reporting tools are too slow and ineffective.
"Though they and government officials had repeatedly asked Facebook to establish direct lines, the company had insisted this tool would be sufficient, they said. But nearly every report got the same response: the content did not violate Facebook's standards."
A reconstruction of Sri Lanka's descent into violence, based on interviews with officials, victims and ordinary users caught up in online anger, found that Facebook's newsfeed played a central role in nearly every step from rumor to killing. Facebook officials, they say, ignored repeated warnings of the potential for violence, resisting pressure to hire moderators or establish emergency points of contact... Sri Lankans say they see little evidence of change. And in other countries, as Facebook expands, analysts and activists worry they, too, may see violence.
A Facebook spokeswoman countered that "we remove such content as soon as we're made aware of it," and said they're now trying to expand those teams and investing in "technology and local language expertise to help us swiftly remove hate content." But one anti-hate group told the Times that Facebook's reporting tools are too slow and ineffective.
"Though they and government officials had repeatedly asked Facebook to establish direct lines, the company had insisted this tool would be sufficient, they said. But nearly every report got the same response: the content did not violate Facebook's standards."
It's likely being coordinated by the right, who is convinced that Facebook is censoring content for promoting conservative views. That's why the Republican representatives almost unanimously tried to turn Diamond and Silk into martyrs during Zuckerberg's testimony. Besides, the Nazis were far right, so if anyone is going to engage in anti-Semitism, it's conservatives.
I mean, six months ago there weren't these constant drumbeats of anti-facebook stories. Now they're everywhere. Is this tied to the idea that Zuckerberg wants to run for President? The well is being poisoned so he won't pose a threat?
There's no conspiracy, it's just how the media works.
2 years ago everybody knew that organizations were mining FB data to push agendas and the News Feeds were rife with misinformation, but it just looked like some weird geek issue and nothing had happened to demonstrate why that might be a problem.
But now we've seen a major electoral upset, and both data mining and misinformation played a role, so people now understand how these abstract FB problems can have real world effects.
So now the news orgs want to send reporters to look into FB and ordinary people want to read about it, and that's why all these stories are coming out.
I stole this Sig
I mean, six months ago there weren't these constant drumbeats of anti-facebook stories. Now they're everywhere.
Journalism is subject to fads. Facebook is just the fad-du-jour, so everyone is piling on. In a few weeks or months, they will move onto something else.
The current drumbeat for censoring Facebook will hopefully pass without effect. Other media induced moral panics have been much more harmful. The media fanning of the Satanic Ritual Abuse Scandal destroyed lives and drove innocent people to suicide.
But most media fads are harmless. For instance the "homelessness" fad in the 1980s had sad stories about homeless people on the news everyday, but mercifully ended with Hands Across America, and without making one iota of difference in the number of homeless in America.
"School shootings" are another current fad, even though they are nothing new, and are actually less common today than they were 25 years ago. So far the media attention has had zero effect on policy.
It turns out there are large portions of the world that are incapable of handling free speech. Sadly, that includes many of our own universities.
-- Will program for bandwidth
So, after a year of investigations and debunked conspiracy / false claim after debunked conspiracy / false claim, the strongest argument for alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US federal election is $100K of non-political or partisan Facebook ads - more than half of which ran after the election, and a quarter of which never ran at all. That's telling.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
That's simply not true. The Trump campaign didn't use Cambridge Analytica data, they used RNC data, which was more accurate.
Cambridge Analytica did digital advertising on behalf of Trump and a pro-Trump PAC, and they would have used Cambridge Analytica data to do that.
So, after a year of investigations and debunked conspiracy / false claim after debunked conspiracy / false claim, the strongest argument for alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US federal election is $100K of non-political or partisan Facebook ads - more than half of which ran after the election, and a quarter of which never ran at all. That's telling.
Huh? Cambridge Analytica is a really scuzzy company and a possible link between Russia and the Trump campaign. They're hardly "the strongest argument for alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US federal election".
I stole this Sig
There were anti-Facebook "drumbeats" as early as 2007, when they first announced the Beacon project (Facebook scripts on non-FB websites). There were plenty of warnings, for those with ears to year and eyes to see.
The reason you only started noticing them six months ago is because you see attacks on Facebook as attacks on Donald Trump's legitimacy. Which they are.
Nobody with money is an outsider when it comes to US politics. Donald Trump is the ultimate insider. He's been shmoozing politicians and the powerful for decades. They way he's opened the executive branch to every two-bit huckster and leech (DeVos, Pruitt, Mnuchin, Pompeo, etc etc) is the Swamp personified. Remember the chief scientist for the Department of Agriculture that had no background in science? Remember Kris Kobach? He made Mike Goddamn Flynn the national security advisor and it turned out he was an agent of at least one foreign government.
For chrissake, where did you get the idea that he's some kind of outsider, or that someone with absolutely no experience governing and little experience running successful businesses could possibly do well as president?
You are welcome on my lawn.
"School shootings" are another current fad, even though they are nothing new, and are actually less common today than they were 25 years ago. So far the media attention has had zero effect on policy.
Less common? How do you measure that? Number of shootings or number of victims?
Because going by number of shootings, according to wikipedia, there have been roughly the SAME number of school shootings in the 3 and a bit years since 2015 (62) as there were in the ENTIRE decade of the 1990s (63).
So. Why do you think they're 'actually less common today' than the early to mid 90s?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.