Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday September 27 2019, @08:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the We-don't-need-no-steenkin-facts! dept.

Facebook this week finally put into writing what users—especially politically powerful users—have known for years: its community "standards" do not, in fact, apply across the whole community. Speech from politicians is officially exempt from the platform's fact checking and decency standards, the company has clarified, with a few exceptions.

Facebook communications VP Nick Clegg, himself a former member of the UK Parliament, outlined the policy in a speech and company blog post Tuesday.

Facebook has had a "newsworthiness exemption" to its content guidelines since 2016. That policy was formalized in late October of that year amid a contentious and chaotic US political season and three weeks before the presidential election that would land Donald Trump the White House.

Facebook at the time was uncertain how to handle posts from the Trump campaign, The Wall Street Journal reported. Sources told the paper that Facebook employees were sharply divided over the candidate's rhetoric about Muslim immigrants and his stated desire for a Muslim travel ban, which several felt were in violation of the service's hate speech standards. Eventually, the sources said, CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed in directly and said it would be inappropriate to intervene. Months later, Facebook finally issued its policy.

"We're going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest—even if they might otherwise violate our standards," Facebook wrote at the time.

Source: ArsTechnica


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by VacuumTube on Friday September 27 2019, @01:12PM (7 children)

    by VacuumTube (7693) on Friday September 27 2019, @01:12PM (#899544) Journal

    The power of a Facebook post to whip huge numbers of naive people into a mob-mentality frenzy is unprecedented.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 1) by VacuumTube on Friday September 27 2019, @03:48PM (6 children)

    by VacuumTube (7693) on Friday September 27 2019, @03:48PM (#899605) Journal

    The cost of free speech is therefore much higher than the framers of the constitution could ever have imagined. Likewise, the difficulty of maintaining free speech while preventing such things as trolls inciting violence or illegally manipulating elections is a huge problem. Has our technology already surpassed our ability to control it?

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday September 28 2019, @02:18AM (4 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday September 28 2019, @02:18AM (#899779) Journal

      You could argue that happened during the age of radio, if it comes to that. What's worrying about the modern version, though, is the "stickiness," the addictiveness of it.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by VacuumTube on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:02AM (3 children)

        by VacuumTube (7693) on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:02AM (#899868) Journal

        Although you have a point, I think it's a fairly weak analogy. Radio has the ability to contact millions of people (vs the billions of Facebook users), but only select individuals could gain control of the microphones. There was abuse, sure, but the tools available to facilitate abuse today are far more powerful, and anyone with a mind to do so can have at it.

        I think most of us would like to have less government control of our lives and our businesses, but I don't see an alternative to using laws to prevent a greedy few from gaining absolute control of our society.

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday September 28 2019, @01:47PM (2 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday September 28 2019, @01:47PM (#899900) Journal

          :) Mr. Hallow would tell you that that's a very anti-democratic view of the populace. Odd how the hard authoritarians pretend to some sort of concern for us little people, huh?

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 1) by VacuumTube on Sunday September 29 2019, @03:56PM (1 child)

            by VacuumTube (7693) on Sunday September 29 2019, @03:56PM (#900342) Journal

            I see I wasn't clear in my remarks. I don't advocate for an authoritarian government, far from it, but what do you think we would have right now if everything in this country was decided by popular vote? Our government was structured such that people would more or less democratically decide between qualified candidates. Unfortunately, the candidates aren't always qualified and we don't necessarily choose the best one. Looking at things as they are at present I have to believe that there's got to be a better way, I just don't know what it would be.

            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 02 2019, @02:33AM

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday October 02 2019, @02:33AM (#901668) Journal

              Ranked-choice voting, elimination of first past the post, getting money the *fuck* out of campaigning, actually being serious about rooting out corruption, term limits...lots of things would go into "the solution" to all this.

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:09AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 28 2019, @11:09AM (#899872)

      Has our technology already surpassed our ability to control it?

      I hope it has. The cure is far worse than the disease. Long live the trolls inciting violence and manipulating elections.