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Facebook had a problem on its hands. People were making posts that got caught in the company's automated moderation system or were taken down by its human moderators. The problem wasn't that the moderators, human or otherwise, were wrong to take down the posts. No, the problem was that the people behind the posts were famous or noteworthy, and the company didn't want a PR mess on its hands.
So Facebook came up with a program called XCheck, or cross check, which in many instances became a de facto whitelist. Over the years, XCheck has allowed celebrities, politicians, athletes, activists, journalists, and even the owners of "animal influencers" like "Doug the Pug" to post whatever they want, with few to no consequences for violating the company's rules.
"For a select few members of our community, we are not enforcing our policies and standards," reads an internal Facebook report published as part of a Wall Street Journal investigation. "Unlike the rest of our community, these people can violate our standards without any consequences."
"Few" must be a relative term at Facebook, as at least 5.8 million people were enrolled in the program as of last year, many of them with significant followings. That means a large number of influential people are allowed to post largely unchecked on Facebook and Instagram.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:09PM (8 children)
He who owns the server makes the rules. If you are surprised by this then you don't understand how servers, private property or capitalism work.
Now if we want to start talking about something actionable, like anti-trust violations, then we might be able to have a conversation!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:52PM (2 children)
Even anti-trust might be difficult. What's the market? How do you define it? How are they excluding competitors?
Yes, because of network effects they *are* a monopoly (though probably not a trust), but I'm not sure the laws as written cover this exact case. You'd probably need to depend on something like "We're going to withdraw your immunity against suits based on libel that you ""print"", but which were posted by someone else."
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:58PM (1 child)
You could probably find something in all the acquisitions that leverage Facebook's existing market share.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday September 15 2021, @01:43AM
copyrights and patents
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:52PM (4 children)
It's pretty clear from this that they shouldn't have section 230 protections when they're not being neutral about the content. They're publishing the material rather than just passing on the content that the creators are making.
As for antitrust, absolutely, part of the issue is that a handful of sites have virtually all of the accounts leading to a sort of internet death penalty if you get blocked from them. Not to mention that the 1st amendment needs to be extended to reflect the fact that these are the new town square and that your ability to get a message out depends on having access to these sites. None of the major sites would even exist without government funded infrastructure and government money in their early stages. Sure, you can still get a message out, but not anywhere near as quickly or as broadly as posting to one of the major social media platforms.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 14 2021, @04:17PM (3 children)
It's pretty from this that you don't know what section 230 says.
47 U.S. Code § 230 - Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material [cornell.edu]
It says absolutely nothing about requiring neutrality, allows removal of anything subjectively objectionable, and even specifically ALLOWS removal of speech that would be constitutionally protected if the government were involved..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @05:57PM (2 children)
Did you actually read what you posted? The protection doesn't apply if they're not acting in good faith, and it's rather clear that they're not acting in good faith if they have a long list of people that are allowed to violate the ToS with respect to their content. It's supposed to be there to protect them from being sued for content that they couldn't pre-screen or weren't aware of being on their platform, not because they are choosing who is and isn't allowed to violate their guidelines.
You're an idiot if you think that making a good faith attempt to remove the material allows them to keep extensive lists of people allowed extra leeway. That's not good faith, that's a cynical act and they should be stripped of any protections they get from this section.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @06:38PM
You could make a similar argument if a service allowed paying customers to be exempt from content oversight. It is a business model, and we don't have to agree with their practices.
I detest facebook, but it is clear you are reacting from a "persecuted conservative" standpoint that quite frankly is a bunch of whingey hokum. The stats are clear, FB massively hosts and distributes rightwing content.
Would you like the worst gun offenders to be used as examples to justify stripping away 2A rights? Or would you prefer a more targeted approach that addressed the problems instead of nuking rights from orbit? If you could make a legal case against FB for having this list of users that get a free pass, well I'd be all for it! Punishing sites like this one by allowing legal reprisals for user comments is a bad idea.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @12:44AM
"Good faith"
You use that word. I do not think it means what you think that it means.