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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday January 20 2018, @08:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the crimes-scenes-want-to-be-anthropomorphized dept.

While there are still lessons to be learned from how the Russians used the social platform to sow discord ahead of America's 2016 presidential election, critics say Facebook — and Zuckerberg — aren't acting quickly enough to prevent meddling in the upcoming midterm elections.

"Facebook is a living, breathing crime scene for what happened in the 2016 election — and only they have full access to what happened," said Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google. His work centers on how technology can ethically steer the thoughts and actions of the masses on social media and he's been called "the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience" by The Atlantic magazine.

Source : Facebook is a 'living, breathing crime scene,' says one former tech insider


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday January 20 2018, @08:44PM (3 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 20 2018, @08:44PM (#625286) Journal

    there are still lessons to be learned from how the Russians used the social platform to sow discord ahead of America's 2016 presidential election

    This is an enormous improvement over the moronic "Russia hacked America's 2016 presidential election," which implies that Russia or its agent(s) somehow hacked a majority of thousands of separate, separately operated county or district voting operations, a suggestion dumb enough that I am surprised that anyone repeats it at all (but that I have heard frequently in the national news).

    critics say Facebook — and Zuckerberg — aren't acting quickly enough to prevent meddling in the upcoming midterm elections.

    Sigh. Such a promising start, and now this.

    People say, post, and share dumb, inaccurate, wrong, things. Many people are lying when they post, or post for reasons that they do not disclose.

    People who do not understand the above are guaranteed the right to vote without poll taxes or intelligence tests by the U.S. Constitution.

    "Facebook and Zuckerberg" are not going to--cannot--fix nor change that.

    America is "hacking" itself, and blaming Russia.

    If Russia posting dumb things on Facebook to stir up the emotional, sure, I can see it being a crime, but a minor one--and if it was really a crime to do things like that, almost the entire userbase of Facebook would be posting from "Dumb Share-Like-Comment Prison."

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:09PM (2 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:09PM (#625299) Journal

    "Facebook and Zuckerberg" are not going to--cannot--fix nor change that.

    And further along this line, I don't trust this "the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience" dude's ideas any more than I trust Facebook. Google has their own agenda, and it appears its far left of the US average.

    We've just had a very good teaching moment:

    We've learned not to trust the press.
    We've learned never to trust polls.
    We've learned that a free press sans ethics and impartiality is at least as bad than a non-free press.
    We've learned that libel laws in the US are way too loose.
    We've learned that some random weakly attributed rant spewed across the internet does not constitute public opinion, or civil discourse.

    .

    There are more lessons coming in the next few months.
    Will we be able to apply our newly learned lessons or simply double down on dumbness?

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 2) by rondon on Sunday January 21 2018, @04:08AM

      by rondon (5167) on Sunday January 21 2018, @04:08AM (#625514)

      Agree with most of your points, except - "We've learned that a free press sans ethics and impartiality is at least as bad than a non-free press."

      I'm not saying that I am sure that you are wrong, but I don't believe that is true. At least there is a chance that I am presented information in a way that isn't pure propaganda when the press is free. Would be willing to reconsider if you presented an argument for the point, though.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @03:42PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @03:42PM (#625665)

      We've certainly learned rich people get tax cuts and federal agencies get gutted.

      But we've not yet learned anything about infrastructure, ex-coal miner jobs, beautiful healthcare, negotiating (lol).