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Zuckerberg once wanted to sanction Trump. Then Facebook wrote rules that accommodated him.
Hours after President Trump’s incendiary post last month about sending the military to the Minnesota protests, Trump called Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
The post put the company in a difficult position, Zuckerberg told Trump, according to people familiar with the discussions. The same message was hidden by Twitter, the strongest action ever taken against a presidential post.
To Facebook’s executives in Washington, the post didn’t appear to violate its policies, which allows leaders to post about government use of force if the message is intended to warn the public — but it came right up to the line. The deputies had already contacted the White House earlier in the day with an urgent plea to tweak the language of the post or simply delete it, the people said.
Eventually, Trump posted again, saying his comments were supposed to be a warning after all. Zuckerberg then went online to explain his rationale for keeping the post up, noting that Trump’s subsequent explanation helped him make his decision.
[...] Zuckerberg talks frequently about making choices that stand the test of time, preserving the values of Facebook and subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram for all of its nearly 3 billion monthly users for many years into the future — even when those decisions are unpopular or controversial.
At one point, however, he wanted a different approach to Trump.
Before the 2016 election, the company largely saw its role in politics as courting political leaders to buy ads and broadcast their views, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking.
But that started to change in 2015, as Trump’s candidacy picked up speed. In December of that year, he posted a video in which he said he wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. The video went viral on Facebook and was an early indication of the tone of his candidacy.
Outrage over the video led to a companywide town hall, in which employees decried the video as hate speech, in violation of the company’s policies. And in meetings about the issue, senior leaders and policy experts overwhelmingly said they felt that the video was hate speech, according to three former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Zuckerberg expressed in meetings that he was personally disgusted by it and wanted it removed, the people said. Some of these details were previously reported.
At one of the meetings, Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president for policy, drafted a document to address the video and shared it with leaders including Zuckerberg’s top deputy COO Sheryl Sandberg and Vice President of Global Policy Joel Kaplan, the company’s most prominent Republican.
[...] Ultimately, Zuckerberg was talked out of his desire to remove the post in part by Kaplan, according to the people. Instead, the executives created an allowance that newsworthy political discourse would be taken into account when making decisions about whether posts violated community guidelines.
That allowance was not formally written into the policies, even though it informed ad hoc decision-making about political speech for the next several years, according to the people. When a formal newsworthiness policy was announced in October 2016, in a blog post by Kaplan, the company did not discuss Trump’s role in shaping it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday July 01 2020, @11:36AM (13 children)
Sorry, that's the problem right here. Notice the use of the word "speech". Speech of any sort, even prejudiced, is a far cry from censorship and suppression. I don't see any reason you should like or approve of hate speech. But when you censor or suppress that speech, you just crossed the line and became a worse problem.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:22PM (1 child)
If someone wants to speak lots of hate and intolerance, in violation of a site's TOS, then create your own site. Anyone is free to do so.
You can get started cheaply and scale up.
The fact that people who advocate hate speech won't do this, and insist on being able to spread their hate on someone else's platform, because it is their right (pun intended) to spread hate, is quite telling. Maybe there is no real 'market' for such content. Or maybe their purpose is really not to speak an opinion, but to deface and mar other web sites.
Your right to free speech is unimpeded. Sign up for a Linode or Digital Ocean, or other account today!
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 02 2020, @01:19AM
Not a fact. I know there's sites out there. People are doing that.
So what?
The problem here is that they want the same access to the places where their friends and relatives hang out that you have. Facebook supposedly has the tools to prevent hate speechers from mixing with the general population. But that's apparently not good enough. I find it interesting how these protesters and businesses won't protest in the least Facebook's Big Brother approach, but will protest hate speech.
Frankly, I think the hate spreaders ought to be getting a lot more support from people who care about freedom. Sure, Facebook has a fair bit of room to maneuver here. But we can protest it and put all kinds of legal pressure on them for that as well.
And I think there's a considerable bit of fraud here (it may be legal here, but it's still fraud). Facebook was all about free speech when they were building up their customer base - including benefiting from the patronage by the parties they're banning now. Now that they have that customer base, they're altering the contract. That's bait and switch. What else will they alter in the future?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:43PM (10 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 02 2020, @12:46AM (4 children)
Well, it is true, and well, there is a need to protect speech. So...?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:10PM (3 children)
No, it isn't, in fact you've had multiple opportunities to bear witness to exactly the opposite in the last two months. 🙄
We're actually on the same side of this debate, the problem is your willful oversimplification of it means stepping on people's rights. You'll always be arguing, but never actually progressing.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:06AM (2 children)
Why is that supposed to be a problem rather than evidence to support the abandonment of your position? There's been multiple times my "bearing witness" didn't support your claims. That sounds like evidence to me - just not in your favor.
What rights are being stepped on by the hate speech?
What particularly gets me here is the vagueness of the accusations. I just read through all your posts in this discussion and I still don't get what's supposed to be the problem here, much less that there is an actual problem.
Perhaps an example would help? Suppose I believe the Jews are responsible for everything wrong in the world and I write a journal where I state my opinions on the matter (if it helps, I can point to several such real world journals on SN that do some variation of that). As far as I can tell, that qualifies as hate speech. Whose rights were stepped on by that speech?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:07AM
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:20PM
Sorry, I'm just not interested in digesting a shit-ton of events for you that you've almost certainly have been watching unfold.
You brought up hatred of the Jews... and don't see how acting out on that led to their rights being taken away. Willful.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:09AM (4 children)
The term "hate speech" is itself, the seed of censorship.
Who defines what is hate speech? Those with power. The 1A was invented exactly so those WITHOUT power could speak.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:39PM (3 children)
Yeah, yeah. "You must master your fears before they master you!" 🙄
Clicking "Disagree" on your post is also a 'seed of censorship' depending on wherever your goal posts have moved to. You're not being profound, just formulaic. It's especially easy to do with a word like 'censor' which has a broad definition but also harkens back to a specific set of very dark events, meaning you can have your cake and eat it, too. "The government supports McDonalds requiring you to wear shoes, oh the censorship!" (...based on a true story.)
You're basically just asking: "how do laws get made?", but yes that is a very good question especially right now. You should look into that.
Save it for someone who is actually speaking out against the First Amendment. Groups of people are still getting their rights trampled... which is a really bizarre thing for me to have to point out right now given what the last month has been like. To quote George McFly: "Density has brought us together."
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:20AM (2 children)
So are you going to show how this ambiguity supposedly applies?
My take here, unless you can show otherwise, is that hemocyanin is 100% on the mark and you're just weaseling about red herrings and the like. What's the point of speaking about how "broad" the definition of censor is when it's clear that hemocyanin wasn't using that broad a definition? What's the use of complaining about how unprofound or formulaic hemocyanin was, when all he needs to be is right? Or bringing up a straw man based on a "true story" that well, is a straw man?
Laws go only so far when it comes to intangibles like hate speech. The whole point of law is that it's written down - concrete and well-defined. When you start messing with stuff like hate speech, it becomes a matter of very subjective opinion and hence, depends more on who's enforcing the law than the wording of the law itself. You should be asking not "how do laws get made?" but rather "How do laws get enforced?
Given that you've just spread some woo claiming hate speech is not a far cry from "censorship and suppression", I disagree. A classic attack on the First Amendment is to exaggerate the power of speech to commit wrong. Sure looks like that's being done here.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:27PM (1 child)
I mean, you can threaten to take the side of your like-minded buddy, but I'm not sure why you thought that'd earn you any credibility.
*blink* Umm really? There's nothing at all specific about his post. Heh.
Speaking of subjective, the example you brought up in the other post was not an example of something someone would get the law brought down on them for. I would have let it go if not for your hilariously tone-deaf blurb about hate speech being exaggerated to 'attack the first amendment'. (Oh and I haven't done that, either.)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 05 2020, @11:33PM
"Threaten?" I think I'll just do it. hemocyanin clearly has the better argument.
You haven't provided any support for your argument here. As to credibility, what relevance for credibility exists here? Are facts or arguments more true, if I have a higher credibility rating?
Another red herring. His post doesn't have to specific in order for particular terms to have narrow definitions.
You're wrong in two ways. First, there are countries with laws against that (such as the Netherlands, here's an example [columbia.edu] of "group defamation" (of Moroccans in this case) which is a crime). Second, hate speech can be used as an aggravating factor to yield a harsher sentence and/or elevate the crime to a more serious sort (in the US, such as US state-level crimes being elevated to federal "hate" crimes or a misdemeanor elevated to a felony).
Finally, I think it bears repeating that you have yet to defend your claims. I don't care that you disagree or have feelz. What I care about is what you back it up with. Let's review how you fell far short of providing any sort of support. For example, the classic religious argument that begs the question by assuming the critic is at fault:
Note that not a one of those "multiple opportunities" was ever mentioned. Instead, we get a cop out.
You couldn't even be bothered to digest one such event. That strongly indicates to me that there were no such events in the first place.
Then you conflate behavior with speech:
"Acting out" is not speech. That's the natural place to enforce the law - when people actually start hurting other people.
Then there was that huge school of red herring:
Sorry, your arguments suck. But then again, if you could argue and reason well, you probably wouldn't have tilted at this particular windmill in the first place.