Facebook Now Deletes Posts That Financially Endanger, Trick People (techcrunch.com) 130
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: It's not just inciting violence, threats and hate speech that will get Facebook to remove posts by you or your least favorite troll. Endangering someone financially, not just physically, or tricking them to earn a profit are now also strictly prohibited. Facebook today spelled out its policy with more clarity in hopes of establishing a transparent set of rules it can point to when it enforces its policy in the future. "We do not, for example, allow content that could physically or financially endanger people, that intimidates people through hateful language, or that aims to profit by tricking people using Facebook," its VP of policy Richard Allen published today. Web searches show this is the first time Facebook has used that language regarding financial attacks.
Re:End so it begins - normalization of censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
It's their platform, and you are not directly paying to access it. They are free to censor or filter content as they wish, and you are free to walk away from it at any time, just like any other online platform that has existed since usenet.
Why do people still treat it like they are entitled to do as they wish with zero consequence? Would you walk into a police station with an NWA "Fuck the police" shit on and expect to be left alone? Of course you wouldn't. If you choose to pull bullshit in someone else's house, expect to be called out. If you do not want to be called out, keep walking.
Re:End so it begins - normalization of censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the web has caused the privatization of public discourse
No. That was clearly done by TV before the web. That was clearly done by radio before TV. That was clearly done by newspapers before radio. That was clearly done by monarchs before free press. Shall I continue? Each iteration has allowed the creation of platforms to become easier, but let's not kid ourselves here, the big ones that everyone notices are organized because unorganized ones don't tend to become massively big things since they just reduce down to pretty much background noise. With that organization comes rules and policies and so forth that inherently censor some groups. What Facebook et al are doing isn't unique, only its medium is. Does that make censorship in general right or wrong? That's a point that's debatable for the ages, but what social media groups are "currently" doing is inline with what has come before and we have seen progress from kings of yore to Internet with that system. So I'd argue that while it would be great to have completely open everything in theory, the actual implementation of that would be horrible, and that the current implementation is balanced enough to get us to whatever the next point on the tech tree of the universe is.
I need you and everyone to understand that this whole topic is arguing a topic that's been brought up since the Classical and Hellenistic Period. How does one allow the free exchange of ideas without the entire thing devolving into madness? Guess what, thirty-six centuries later, we still haven't figured it out. And it's starting to seem like the answer is to the "where does it stop?!" question you are asking is, "somewhere, people need to keep their heads up, but ultimately it stops somewhere." Blanket openness is clearly not an answer, because that's just saying "society as a whole is just lazy and if we don't have complete openness, then we're just a slippery slope away from having all our rights taken away."
Don't worry, I'm sure you'll change your tune once it's taken over and turned against you, though
That is the entire point. It stops at some point because as much as we on Slashdot like to diss the general public, they do ultimately seem to understand when basic rights are being trampled unjustly, Who determines that? Well we all sort of do, there's not a hard and fast rule to that and I get it, that makes some of the hard liner type folks a little uneasy. Society doesn't have clear distinct lines for every single thing. So there's two things a person can do about that.
One, accept that society doesn't have clearly defined boundaries and that you'll have to do your part if and when the time comes.
Two, don't accept that and get all upset that humanity seemingly just can't get its crap together and live your entire life in frustration.
If you are intent on hanging your hat on the latter, well there's not much anyone can do to help you. We're basically always going to be having this discussion until the end of time. Advocacy for human rights isn't a spectator sport. But if you're willing to consider the first point, then you'll have to first start working on the whole, "am I ready to die on this hill or not?" thing. Once you've got a good grasp on that, you'll need to ditch the "slippy slope" argument every time something you don't agree with comes up and work on the whole "persuasive argument" thing. And trust me, there is tons of room in this debate for a rational argument, like the seemingly inequitable application of those policies, and so on. But you are going to fall far and fast if what you lead with is, "They'll be coming for you soon too! Just you watch!"
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A) they enforced their own rules equally
This is pretty much the only argument that you make that has worth. To enforce something equally we would need to have sort some of "thing" (for lack of a better term) that we agreed on that could judge when a policy is being applied equally. In law, we have the court system (for better or worse) that does that (at least in theory, I'm not trying to make this an argument about the shortcomings of the US judicial system). We'd need something for that in things like EULAs and what not. The only problem is
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That would be true if A) they enforced their own rules equally
They are free to enforce their rules anyway they wish to, you agreed to their terms of service when you signed up to use it. If they have a complicated censorship mechanism they owe you zero explanation of it and it is their choice if they wish to incur public outrage by not disclosing it or enforcing it in a negative way.
B) if they were responsible for the content posted on their platform (hint: they're not, otherwise they'd be shut down the moment someone posted child pornography there)
Who says they are not responsible? Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA).
It's more like your phone company cutting off your phone line because they were listening in and didn't like what you were saying.
It is absolutely nothing like your phone company! They are not providing you connectivity to the internet, they
Re:End so it begins - normalization of censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is worth considering the other side of the coin here, though.
The 'net isn't what it was back in the days when we read usenet with tin. It has become massively centralized, and controlled by a very small number of corporations. To a great many people, the 'net IS Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google.
As a result, for all intents and purposes, they are the public square. It may be a privately owned public square, but it is the public square. It's not like protesting with a sign in a private mall; there literally is no other place on the Internet where one can have a reasonable expectation of being heard than the "primary set" of platforms.
So, while yes, these are privately owned platforms, they have also been allowed an unprecedented amount of power over information, thought, and speech. I think that we need to be very careful about giving them carte blanche to silence voices and thoughts that those who control these entities do not agree with.
Re:End so it begins - normalization of censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:End so it begins - normalization of censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
... or people could just use other parts of the Internet.
"Why do you need to be in the public square when there's this back alley available to you?"
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Facebook is more like McDonald's.
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Setting up a web site is incredibly easy, and incredibly cheap, if not free.
The reality is that for most stupid people "The Internet" is "FB, Alphabet and a few select apps on their phone."
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Looks like that's what you've been doing - that was the only coherent part of your post. The rest looks like Joe_Dragon wrote it.
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Massive liability (Score:2)
The thing is that people who lost money due to scams spread through social networks could start sue the (juicy massively rich) networks' owners on the ground that they facilitated the scam spreading.
Until recently, most of the internet giants managed to get considered as a sort of utility company.
They shouldn't be liable of anything said on their platform. They are not responsible for what *other people* say, they are only here to provide a neutral platform.
(The same way you wouldn't accuse a power company
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You (and a huge part of the Slashdot community) seem to be slightly misinformed about US law on these matters. Under US law (which is what matters for most of the big Internet companies, being that they're US based), ISP's are immune to suit and from liability as long as they meet certain, quite minimal, requirements. When I say, ISP, I'm talking about anyone which provides some kind of service over the Internet, not just providers of Internet service. So Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. Anyway, those requi
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Now, I'm not a lawyer, so I may be wrong. But, as I understand it, when you open your property the public, you give up certain rights.
Here in California, as I understand it, if I have a store open to the public, I can't ban solicitors. However, I can ban commercial solicitors--free speech rights do not include the right to sell somebody something.
So I can't stop the people collecting donations for whales. I can't stop people collecting donations for the families of martyrs. I can stop people from sellin
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It would be different if the government were saying you cannot create these sites. But they're not. Nor should they. *That* would be censorship.
The internet is the public square, your website is your protest sign.
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Your protest sign has just been deranked and demonetized by google , GoFundMe and Paypal will not help you with funding, and people linking to you will become invisible on FB, Twitter and other social media. Good luck.
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A bake shop is their own platform.
A T-Shirt shot is their own platform.
But in both those cases, "Censorship" was dressed up in other civil liberty arguments.
So, which is it? Free Speech or not? Their platform or not? Why is it "Their platform" when it is something you agree with, but something else when it isn't?
The worst part is that many are okay with compelled speech with government guns backing it up? And they don't even see the actual threat in that.
Re:End so it begins - normalization of censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
> But in both those cases, "Censorship" was dressed up in other civil liberty arguments.
The baker was being forced to create content. Facebook (or Slashdot) is only required to merely tolerate what you post. It's a VAST difference that you're just casually glossing over.
The baker is also is just one guy, much more like you than a global corporation controlling a platform used by BILLIONS with a large enough share of the market to be subject to the Sherman Act.
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I don't think you understand my post. I think we're on the same side.
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It's their platform, and you are not directly paying to access it.
I can buy that mentality from the anti-Net Neutrality set, who believe the internet is a place for private businesses to engage in the private exchange of monies for private purposes and profit.
What blows my mind is when I hear some leftists make this argument (and they do, quite often, especially in regards to the censorship of speech they find unfavorable), then claim to believe that privately-owned service providers do not have a right to throttle or limit access to content, despite being engaged in a si
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Why do people still treat it like they are entitled to do as they wish with zero consequence? Would you walk into a police station with an NWA "Fuck the police" shit on and expect to be left alone?
I get your argument and somewhat agree with you, but I think your analogy is poor.
If I walk into a police station to pay a parking ticket, say, it should not matter what clothes I wear or what message is printed because it's a public space owned by the city and I have to go there to do something I'm legally required to do (or face worse punishment). And I expect the police to do their job.
That said, if I go to an officer's residence wearing that shirt, yeah, he has every right to tell me to leave.
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Actually I would expect to be able to walk a police station with a fuck the police shirt on. It would be ironic and just expose my stupidity if I actually needed help, but I would not expect non-service, much less harm.
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Would you walk into a police station with an NWA "Fuck the police" shit on and expect to be left alone? Of course you wouldn't.
Why not? This is exactly the kind of thing "freedom of speech" means. The police is the government, the police station is public space, and "fuck the police" is legitimate (though uncouth) political speech.
You could be stopped if you started throwing ink-pots around, or otherwise broke laws on behavior in public areas, but just wearing a message is not against the law, and neither is hurting the policemen's feelings - at least in their guise of government employees.
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Normalization of censorship - done by the big tech mega corp.
Sort of. But publishing companies and newspapers have always decided what they want to publish and what they don't. Internet comment boards have often had moderators that delete posts that violate the site's rules. In American media in general, you won't find too many stories that are more than mildly critical of the United States and its policies. They get on board with the program, and people like Phil Donahue lose their jobs. Stories that make big advertisers look bad often get spiked. It has alway
Re:End so it begins - normalization of censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook has an interest in keeping its site clean and hospitable
I think Zuckerbergs testimony on Capital Hill is relevant particularly with Cruz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Sure, Facebook has an interest in keeping its site clean but they cannot be both a platform (neutral public forum) and a publisher at the same time. They are either responsible for all the content on their site or not. They are either expressing their political speech or they are enabling others to speak. Facebook wants it both ways and the censorship culture and normalization has enabled Facebook and other social media sites to abuse the rights of others and use their position to negatively impact the political discourse.
What is even more worrying is that the culture of censorship is growing. There must be some irony that the left is defending giant international companies to trample over the rights of individuals because of some misguided attempt to sanitize the internet.
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Is it censorship when mama don't allow that sort of language in her home? What Facebook is blocking is in their own home. Is it censorship to stop illegal activities? What Facebook is blocking is illegal in many countries.
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Stupid people deserve to be separated from their money. For example, star citizen backers.
No, of course they don't. Fraud and deception are not okay, even against easy marks.
Are Star Citizens those people who want to be citizens of a satellite and have it recognized by the UN? There are all kinds of wacky people in this world, eh?
Allow me to finish that thought (Score:5, Insightful)
"We do not, for example, allow content that [...] aims to profit by tricking people using Facebook,"
That's our job, dammit!
For a company that claims its not a publisher... (Score:3)
...they sure do edit and moderate a lot of the content. Weird.
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...they sure do edit and moderate a lot of the content. Weird.
Not being a publisher does not mean "anything goes". Even old fashioned telephone companies did not have an anything goes and would take action against sufficiently vexatious users. To be clear: not being a publisher does not imply that users are allowed post arbitrarily bad stuff no matter how bad, nor does it imply that they must allow such things.
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It was never the responsibility of Ma Bell to deal with wire fraud. That was always the job of the government. It's not the role of private corporations to run petty fiefdoms as if they were Robber Barons.
As others have implied, it's quite strange that the same people who will screech "free speech" when discussing FCC regulations will completely gloss over (or even happily embrace) corporate censorship.
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Big projection on the screeching there. Seems that you reckon if you screech loudly enough about screeching then people work think it isn't you.
I said phone companies would block sufficiently vexatious users. This is true. You are attempting to deny it by deflection. I guess you have a bit of a reality problem.
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...they sure do edit and moderate a lot of the content. Weird.
That's a good point.
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They want it both ways. "You can't blame us for the content, we're not a publisher" and "You can't blame us, look at all we're doing to solve the problem" Typical corporate CYA--claim all the arguments you can, even if they contradict each other.
And yet at the same time... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet at the same time facebook sends out hundreds of thousands of emails a day to people to get them to join facebook (which itself financially endangers and tricks people).
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So what you're saying is, that financial information on Facebook has been validated and vetted by Facebook as accurate? That anything I read on Facebook is a solid financial recommendation and will make me rich
Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg! I don't need my broker anymore, I have Facebook!
Like, car ads? (Score:2)
what about comcast ad's that say one price but (Score:2)
what about comcast ad's that say one price but hide lot's of added fees
Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
I never thought I'd see the day when the Left likes a huge corporation buying up all the lawns in town and then banning lawn signs.
"Hey, it's private property after all!"
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I never thought I'd see the day when the Left likes a huge corporation buying up all the lawns in town and then banning lawn signs.
There's an infinite number of "lawns" in this situation, and Facebook can't buy them all.
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I never thought I'd see the day when the Left likes a huge corporation buying up all the lawns in town and then banning lawn signs.
There's an infinite number of "lawns" in this situation, and Facebook can't buy them all.
True, it's not like FB and other major platforms would ever agree to remove something together.
Oh, wait ...
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I doubt that's true, but so what if they did?
You don't have access to news?
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There's been a major news story that Apple, Google, and Facebook removed a bunch of Infowars stuff. I haven't seen anything about them agreeing to do it together. Again, if they did... so what?
So ... what I said is true. They coordinated (obviously; it didn't magically happen that all three did that at the same time) to censor someone. Like I said they did.
So, you did know that.
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Funny you should mention that, I just heard a story on NPR the other day about how the city of Memphis sold its public parks to a private group, so they could legally remove the Confederate statues.
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All websites are equal. Of course, some are created more equal than others...
dang (Score:2)
This is some serious paternalism.
Those of you who like this - what happens when FB (and Google, etc. since they are all working together now) decide that stuff you are interested in is something they must protect the public against?
Or is my post to dangerous, and it might trick you into thinking? Best remove it ...
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B. If you're posting something that's so offensive that Google or Facebook removes it, you should probably turn off the computer, and re-evaluate your life.
C. If what you're posting is THAT important, then post it somewhere else on the Net.
D. If your response to C is , "But then all of the other morons won't see the stupid shit I have to say", then see B.
Televangelists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this going to result in removal of posts by televangelists asking for donations to help God save the donors?
Not only is the God they are peddling an illusion, but televangelists usually spend the money on their own pleasure and comfort instead of any missionary activities of their religion.
They are both useless to the donor and actively fraudulent in their own universe.
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You troll with some skill here.
First, you are clearly biased against religion, which is your right. However, the logic you apply here would also apply to any instance where money changes hand and for which there is not a tangible good provided in exchange. So, donating to your local public broadcasting station, the Red Cross, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Wikimedia, EFF, etc. are all exactly the same thing. The solicitor of the donation claims to provide some intangible to benefit to the donor. Sometime
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Campaign Finance Violation (Score:4, Interesting)
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We don't have functioning campaign finance laws in this country.
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Facebook wants to outsource the moderation to insulate themselves from eventual blowback. So the big boys get to decide what is allowed on the platform and they can settle their conflicts amongst themselves. Here's a link which mentions the outsourcing https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
There might be something else at play here... (Score:4, Informative)
If politicians can run around and suddenly start holding site operators liable for one kind of content, how long until they start holding them liable for all types of damning content? Site operators might just be trying to get ahead of the curve, because of the giant can of worms that FOSTA-SESTA opened up.
If someone wants to cry about First Amendment violations, this is really the avenue you need to approach it from. This is the government forcing a proxy to censor speech by making that proxy liable for any criminal activity that speech perpetrates.
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The funny part about that was how the feminists and SJWs hated the law because it clamped down on sex workers.
People still use facebook? (Score:1, Insightful)
What category does codeisfreespeech dot com fall? (Score:1)
If you try and post or message that link, Facebook gives this error:
You can't post this because it has a blocked link
The content or the page you're trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe:
Which is, of course, nonsense.
Obligatory (Score:3)
"Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means." - Isabel Patterson, The God of the Machine
Does that mean they're ad free now? (Score:3)
Aren't ads just messaging designed to trick people into making bad financial decisions?
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So does that mean... (Score:2)
you can't Rick-roll people any more?
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