Twitter permanently bans Trump (4 Viewers)

[Quint]

There's really no way Trump wrote that. He's never that good with insults.

I would be surprised if Trump has ever used “dour” in any form of communication. 

 

[rockaction]

I would be surprised if Trump has ever used “dour” in any form of communication. 

That's the one that jumped out at me, but the whole sentence wasn't very Trumpian in any respect.

 

[The Commish]

Not surprised it was a mess. Seems like it was thrown together. I remember reading some computer savvy person was able to basically able to grab all their data in 10 minutes and copied TBs of data.

That they were able to set up their little swamp again so quickly alleviates any concerns I had with AWS having too much power.

Complete with drivers licenses because that's how they chose to verify DOB   

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

I know this is the Twitter thread rather than the Facebook thread, but I don't think we have a Facebook thread.

“Mark Changed The Rules”: How Facebook Went Easy On Alex Jones And Other Right-Wing Figures

 

[rockaction]

I know this is the Twitter thread rather than the Facebook thread, but I don't think we have a Facebook thread.

“Mark Changed The Rules”: How Facebook Went Easy On Alex Jones And Other Right-Wing Figures

I read it. Seems like one side (Kaplan and Zuckerberg) are arguing for ideological diversity regarding opinions allowed on Facebook while others see Facebook as a news content provider for a lot of Americans, and that concerns about fake and incendiary news should be the driving impetus behind the allowance of widely disseminated claims rather than the aforementioned diversity. I don't know what to say about who is right about the issue. Alex Jones is a completely unsympathetic character and quite possibly attached to the article to help bolster the side of those who believe that concerns about fake news and incendiary rhetoric should rule the day. That's my take on the article. Regarding how the issues are handled? Doesn't seem like a coalition of two when you're going against your own team's recommendations is really going to fly with respect to both public opinion and potential government regulation of said content.

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

I read it.

I should probably google to see what this refers to instead of going off half-cocked, but here's a phrase that concerns me:

"...which notified users when they interacted with content that was later labeled false by Facebook’s fact-checking partners ..."

I'm fairly confident that thinking of Facebook or its many competitors as monopolies is misguided.

But if "Facebook's fact-checking partners" refers to a small group used not only by Facebook but also by all of the other major social media companies, that gets a lot closer to needing some antitrust scrutiny.

I think it's a good idea for Facebook to have its own fact-checking department. If they don't want to bear the PR burden of that, okay, outsourcing it to an independent contractor seems fine, I guess.

But if all the social media companies use the same fact-checking independent contractor, that seems terrible. That gives the fact-checker way too much influence.

Facebook should have to compete with Twitter et al. on the basis of their fact-checking. They shouldn't collude with each other, explicitly or implicitly.

If Facebook's fact-checking is dumb, Facebook should lose market-share to Twitter. And vice versa. They shouldn't use the same service.

If I ran Facebook, I'd employ my own fact-checking department. Since my fact-checkers wouldn't be privy to the sources used by publishers, it'd be hard to second-guess whether, in some particular case, the publisher followed its own journalistic standards. I'd probably assume that publishers do follow their own standards until a given publisher proves otherwise. So instead of doing fact-checking article-by-article, I'd probably go publisher-by-publisher to determine who's white-listed and who's black-listed based on whether their self-proclaimed journalistic standards meet my criteria. On that basis, the Wall Street Journal would pretty likely be in, and Infowars would pretty likely be out.

It would trickier to try to figure out who's really sticking to their public-facing standards and who isn't.

The fact that it's tricky is what makes it important for different social media companies to compete on that basis, rather than all subscribing to the same service. A lack of competition is a recipe for repeated mistakes.

This is all complicated by the fact that competent fact-checking may not be rewarded in the marketplace. A lot of social media users don't want their info-sharing habits to be constrained by good epistemic practices.

I don't know what to do about that. Often, the solution to a market failure is government regulation. But government regulation is probably the worst possible response to concerns about which information should be allowed to be published. So if best fact-checking practices are contrary to what the market demands, I'm at a loss about how that can be fixed.

(This post refers to moderation regarding the sharing of articles, not to content originating from users themselves.)

 

[fatguyinalittlecoat]

This is all complicated by the fact that competent fact-checking may not be rewarded in the marketplace. A lot of social media users don't want their info-sharing habits to be constrained by good epistemic practices.

This isn't just a "complication", it seems to me to be the entire issue and negates all the stuff you wrote above it.  Fact-checking is not something that social media companies can do well to improve their desirability to consumers.  It's a race to the bottom.  

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

This isn't just a "complication", it seems to me to be the entire issue and negates all the stuff you wrote above it.  Fact-checking is not something that social media companies can do well to improve their desirability to consumers.  It's a race to the bottom.  

That seems pessimistic, but possibly correct.

 

[rockaction]

I should probably google to see what this refers to instead of going off half-cocked, but here's a phrase that concerns me:

"...which notified users when they interacted with content that was later labeled false by Facebook’s fact-checking partners ..."

I was talking about the article you linked to. Your analysis below that relates to the quote seems like a good analysis, but almost entirely unrelated to what I read -- unless the pulled quote was from the article and caused you to really concentrate on the process of how Facebook and end-users interact with each regarding false information. What I gained from the reading was more of an anonymously-sourced insider's account about how decision-making to flag or permit posts and information is made at Facebook, especially concentrating on a former Republican lobbyist's role in the dissemination of information on Facebook. It was a Buzzfeed article, correct? Perhaps I really missed something, or you're thinking of a different article. Perhaps your focus was on that quote and I shrugged it off as I read on. Either way, thanks for the response.

eta* Yeah, I just skimmed it again. I think we're either talking about two different articles, or you really latched onto something I missed.

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

Your analysis below that relates to the quote seems like a good analysis, but almost entirely unrelated to what I read -- unless the pulled quote was from the article and caused you to really concentrate on the process of how Facebook and end-users interact with each regarding false information.

I was discussing a phrase in the article (a tangent to its main point), and I quoted you quoting the link to the article, rather than just quoting the link to the article, because I figured that me quoting you would be less weird than me quoting me.

 

[rockaction]

I was discussing a phrase in the article (a tangent to its main point), and I quoted you quoting the link to the article, rather than just quoting the link to the article, because I figured that me quoting you would be less weird than me quoting me.

LOL. Gotcha. Well, it served its function.

 

[SWC]

swc quotes swc all the time said swc so bam take that to the bank bromigos 

 

[-jb-]

I did a whois lookup on Parler, and it's hosted by Epik Inc.  Interesting write-up on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company)

 

[2Squirrels1Nut]

"Race to the bottom" describes my life since I was a little boy.

 

[rct]

Trump issued a public statement yesterday. How many read it or even care anymore? If he was still on Twitter, people would probably be talking about what he had to say, but now it seems just background noise.