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posted by chromas on Saturday November 17 2018, @04:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the facebook-heroes dept.

Former Instagram CEO: Policing social media is important to the future of the world

Instagram co-founder and former CEO Kevin Systrom said it is important for the future of the world that social media companies be policed well and seriously address the issues of misinformation and harassment on their services.

Systrom said Russian meddling in U.S. elections and the exploitation of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica have highlighted just how big social media companies have become and the implications of their reach.

[...] In particular, Systrom highlighted "deepfakes," which are highly-believable doctored videos that are beginning to make their way onto social services. This emerging type of fake content will be among the next set of problems social media companies will have to contend with, he said. "It's getting on the margin of real," Systrom said. "In an era when you can distribute information widely to the world very, very quickly and amplify it, what happens when you think some political figure said something they didn't?"

Facebook says it's creating an independent body to help it decide which content to remove

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday said the company will establish an independent body to oversee user appeals of content removal, one day after a bombshell report that detailed how the company avoided and deflected blame in the public conversation around its handling of Russian interference and other misuses of its social network.

The move could help Facebook avoid accusations of bias as it removes material deemed problematic, like fake news and hate speech. Some conservative groups and lawmakers have accused Facebook and other social media outlets of censoring politically conservative points of view, a charge that Facebook denies.

See also: Facebook confirmed Mark Zuckerberg's beef with Apple CEO Tim Cook in an official company statement
Mark Zuckerberg reportedly ordered all Facebook executives to use Android phones


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Paranoid Facebook Employees Using Anonymity Apps and Burner Phones to Talk to Each Other 22 comments

Mark Zuckerberg's Biggest Problem: Internal Tensions At Facebook Are Boiling Over

In a year teeming with scandals and missteps, Facebook's latest fiasco has inspired a clutter of leaks, finger pointing, and internal conversations about the future of the company and its leadership. And after more than a year of bad press, internal tensions are reaching a boiling point and are now spilling out into public view.

The tumult is surprising given Facebook's history as a tight-lipped organization where employees had little incentive to leak information or voice dissent outside the company's walls. Throughout the crises, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who maintains majority shareholder control, has proven remarkably immune to outside pressure and criticism — from politicians, investors, and the press — leaving his employees as perhaps his most important stakeholders. Now, as its stock price declines and the company's mission of connecting the world is challenged, the voices inside are growing louder and public comments, as well as private conversations shared with BuzzFeed News, suggest newfound uncertainty about Facebook's future direction.

Internally, the conflict seems to have divided Facebook into three camps: those loyal to Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg; those who see the current scandals as proof of a larger corporate meltdown; and a group who see the entire narrative — including the portrayal of the company's hiring of communications consulting firm Definers Public Affairs — as examples of biased media attacks.

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @04:47PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @04:47PM (#763140)

    I am the last person to have anything good to say about facebook, but do their attempts at manipulation even matter? I mean the people who fall for this stuff are just going to be manipulated by someone else anyway, so who cares who is doing it really.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18 2018, @05:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18 2018, @05:19PM (#763550)

      the slave masters in the gov are fighting with the slave masters in SM over the slaves.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @05:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @05:45PM (#763155)

    Censorship is evil and fascist. Let's build a technology that can defeat it, and let the dweebs masturbate over whether we should.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @06:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @06:17PM (#763162)

    Eirher you control the public discourse about your company, or someone else will.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @06:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @06:27PM (#763167)

    Oh, wait, thats right, you cant do that legally. ( at least in the US, for good reason ). For those that think we need to 'police' speech, in any "forum":

    ....................../´¯/)
    ....................,/¯../
    .................../..../
    ............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
    ........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\
    ........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')
    .........\.................'...../
    ..........''...\.......... _.·´
    ............\..............(
    ..............\.............\...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @06:34PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @06:34PM (#763169)

    Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros.
    It also tapped its business relationships, lobbying a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html/ [nytimes.com]

    Don't delete Facebook, just abandon it, make it the new myspace.

    P.S.: Facebook includes Instagram and WhatsApp

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 17 2018, @06:46PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday November 17 2018, @06:46PM (#763173) Journal

      Kids delete The Facebook and move to The Instagram.

      Maybe we can get them on Tik Tok [theverge.com] instead.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @11:27PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @11:27PM (#763255)

        Tik Tok?

        Out of the frying pan into the fire.
        Or may a say 火.

  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday November 17 2018, @07:57PM (1 child)

    by Nuke (3162) on Saturday November 17 2018, @07:57PM (#763188)

    Amid Calls to "Police" .... Facebook Announces ....

    Did anyone else momentarily read this as people are calling the police about Facebook? Has it now got that bad?

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday November 17 2018, @09:11PM

    by looorg (578) on Saturday November 17 2018, @09:11PM (#763210)

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday said the company will establish an independent body ...

    Isn't this on the level of when Phillip Morris or similar sets up independent bodies/thinktanks or similar to prove to use, the public, that smoking isn't bad but it makes you look really really cool and all the other kids do it and chicks love it.

  • (Score: 2) by crafoo on Saturday November 17 2018, @10:32PM

    by crafoo (6639) on Saturday November 17 2018, @10:32PM (#763229)

    Maybe some day people will stop voluntarily filling out their NSA/CIA profiles themselves, and getting advertisements crammed into their eyes for their effort.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 18 2018, @02:20AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 18 2018, @02:20AM (#763313) Journal

    Russian influence, if real at all, was negligible. We have a mole hill, put under a microscope, and made to look like a mountain. A few feeble actions with insignificant results have been banged up into a major threat. The only reasonable reaction to those small actions would have been a few small covert actions taken to ensure that future attempts don't succeed.

    Instead, we have a media giant setting up a police force. Judge, jury, and executioner, all combined into one small agency, "independent" of - whom, exactly? Independent of Facebook? That one gets a LOL. Independent of - users, I would imagine. And, stockholders, maybe. Someone does something, outrage ensues, users and stockholders alike tell Facebook to "Do something!" And, Facebook replies, "Well, the independent police force is working on it, we think, we hope."

    Meanwhile, this old dude on Madison Avenue has a card table with a pea on it. He takes some half walnut shells, and hides the pea, then swiftly moves that pea around on the table, then asks you to guess which shell hides the pea. Let us focus on those walnut shells, shall we?

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