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Facebook Democrats United States Politics

Biden Campaign Blasts Facebook for 'Regression' (axios.com) 198

On the eve of the first presidential debate, the Biden campaign is pressing Facebook to remove posts by President Trump -- and slamming the social media company as "the nation's foremost propagator of disinformation about the voting process." From a report: By publicly escalating the conflict, the campaign is pressing Facebook to enforce its policies against misinformation more aggressively. "Rather than seeing progress, we have seen regression," campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a three-page letter obtained by Axios. "Facebook's continued promise of future action is serving as nothing more than an excuse for inaction," the letter says. "We will be calling out those failures as they occur over the coming 36 days."
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Biden Campaign Blasts Facebook for 'Regression'

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  • Madness (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @12:04PM (#60554180)

    Does anyone else find it crazy that ANY political party finds it acceptable to demand to remove social media content from any other party?

    You are supposed to win by having a better message, not by suppressing other messages you disagree with.

    • Re:Madness (Score:5, Insightful)

      by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @12:07PM (#60554192) Journal

      It's not about "suppressing" a message you don't agree with. It's about having known, deliberate misinformation, designed to suppress voters or give false information about a subject removed.

      What is crazy that any political party would stand by and not only allow such lies which are harmful to this country to be spread, but embrace them as part of their platform.

      Perhaps we should start there.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        But who gets to decide what is disinformation and what constitutes voter suppression?

        Where lines are to be drawn, etc. Surely voter registration suppresses some votes, but there is legitimate merit to registration, for example.

        • Re:Madness (Score:4, Insightful)

          by LenKagetsu ( 6196102 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @12:26PM (#60554266)

          "But who gets to decide", I only seem to see this phrase when someone points the finger at an abusive power.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Moryath ( 553296 )
            Precisely this. "But who gets to decide" is a gaslighting ploy, designed to distract from the reality and provable facts of the situation at hand.
            • I've often answered that question with things like "People who don't drown newborn daughters for starters" or whatever atrocities their group is guilty of.

            • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

              Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • Precisely this. "But who gets to decide" is a gaslighting ploy, designed to distract from the reality and provable facts of the situation at hand.

              Since many of those bad-people-who-aren’t-you no doubt vote, why are you so concerned about voter suppression? Since elections ostensibly give everyone an equal say, are you not advocating for these awful people to have the same say as you?

              I mean, if they shouldn’t be allowed to post on Facebook, should they be allowed to vote?

              It seems that your real

          • "But who gets to decide", I only seem to see this phrase when someone points the finger at an abusive power.

            In other words, “my party gets to decide”.

        • Re:Madness (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @12:27PM (#60554280)
          "But who gets to decide" is a nonsensical gaslighting ploy. There is such a thing as fact-checking and there is such a thing as objective fact.
          • Re:Madness (Score:5, Insightful)

            by fuzznutz ( 789413 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @12:34PM (#60554310)
            Viral Video Shows Boys in ‘Make America Great Again’ Hats Surrounding Native Elder
            - New York Times Jan 19, 2019
            • Re:Madness (Score:4, Insightful)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @01:00PM (#60554412) Homepage Journal

              One screw up does not mean the whole system is broken beyond repair, especially since it was widely publicised.

              Anyway we are not talking about that kind of thing, this is people posting verifiably inaccurate information about polling stations or voting procedures. Easiest thing is just to have a blanket ban on anything to do with voting beyond "go vote" and have Facebook themselves push out accurate info on how to do it.

              • Re:Madness (Score:5, Insightful)

                by fuzznutz ( 789413 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @01:06PM (#60554434)
                Since I can't post a picture:

                CNN Mocked for Calling Kenosha Riots 'Fiery but Mostly Peaceful Protests'
                - Newsweek, 8/27/20
              • Pick a number (Score:3, Insightful)

                by SuperKendall ( 25149 )

                One screw up does not mean the whole system is broken beyond repair

                How many then? As we are now in the thousands, possibly tens of thousands just what number is enough for you to make that determination?

                this is people posting verifiably inaccurate information

                You say that but offer no proof, and many many times claims of "inaccurate" have been made against people that turned out later to be quite accurate indeed.

                Too many times arguments that something is "inaccurate" is used as a tool to stifle debate and c

                • Re:Pick a number (Score:5, Informative)

                  by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @03:12PM (#60554922) Journal
                  ow many then? As we are now in the thousands, possibly tens of thousands just what number is enough for you to make that determination?

                  Well yes, the con artist has lied thousands of times since he assumed the office, and continues to do so every day. Just what number is enough for you to make the determination he's a liar?

                  You say that but offer no proof,

                  Bullshit. Many times proof is offered and you, and others like you, immediately deny the truth. For example, the con artist and his minions continue to repeat the lie that voting by mail is ripe with fraud and abuse. However, every single study, including by states themselves, shows such actions are insignificant out to four decimal places.

                  I say, once is more than enough to prove the case the system is broken and you cannot reliably block what may be considered "inaccurate" at the moment, by anyone.

                  Ah, so once and done. No chance to go back and admit a mistake was made and publicly state so to correct the record. And we're suppose to believe you are always, 100 percent of the time, accurate in what you say and write and never lie. Good to know you have a god like ability to do so.

                  Unlike the con artist who said he never slept with Stormy Daniels, never paid her off to keep quiet, who has said he's a billionaire without offering any proof (see above), who has stated a myriad of lies and yet it's always the press which is fake.
                • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                  How many times have you been wrong in your life? It doesn't matter, what matters is if you corrected yourself and tried to do better next time.

                  That's the problem with Trump. He's not just wrong, he's an unrepentant, deliberate liar.

          • Fact-checking can be biased very easily. In practice I see fact-checkers nitpicking on one group of politicians, while excusing obvious lies and manipulations of others due to formalities.

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            Not when purely subjective stances are being discussed. I've seen enough cases of Liberals claiming differing viewpoints on topics such as immigration and abortion are hate speech and therefore verboten.

            In fact I see this as more often the case than any actual disinformation. Because facts are rarely ever disputed outside of fringe groups such as antivaxers, which exist across political lines anyways.

            Your claim of gaslighting is in itself gaslighting. Asking who gets to decide is completely valid. Plenty of

          • Re:Madness (Score:4, Insightful)

            by LatencyKills ( 1213908 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @02:37PM (#60554810)
            This has probably been Trump's greatest assault on western civilization - convincing about 40% of the electorate that there is no objective truth in many cases. Yes, worn correctly masks do help. No, Mexico has not paid for the wall. No, tariffs on goods from China are not paid by China. No, we will not have an adequately vetted or available vaccine by Nov 3. But Trump calls out fake news - which as near as I can tell is something that is true, but he doesn't believe is worth talking about - and suddenly everyone pretends their hairbrained ideas are facts. As for his taxes, he is currently claiming (A) fake news (of course), (B) the information was obtained illegally, and (C) none of the information is true. Clearly both B and C cannot be true.
          • "But who gets to decide" is a nonsensical gaslighting ploy. There is such a thing as fact-checking and there is such a thing as objective fact.

            An advocate for more election participation calls the suppression of election participation a ‘nonsensical gaslighting ploy’.

            If what you’re saying is true, then what is the point of elections at all? I mean, what if people pick the candidate who doesn’t square with objective fact-checking??? Are you really willing to risk that? If what you

          • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

            There is such a thing as fact-checking and there is such a thing as objective fact.

            Fact-checking sites have grades other than "fact" and "not fact." Politifact, for example, has an analog meter ranging from "true" to "pants on fire." Snopes and Factcheck.org are similar. One can post a 100% factually correct article that highlights things in such a way as to be misinformation.

            Let me give you some examples:

            I just recently got a Fox news article from my parents where the headline said that Covid-19 was ada

        • But who gets to decide what is disinformation and what constitutes voter suppression?

          What’s interesting, is that those opposed to the phrase “who gets to decide?”’, and those who support their right to be the deciders, are the exact same people who claim to be concerned about voter suppression.

          Irony.

        • by Rhipf ( 525263 )

          But who gets to decide what is disinformation and what constitutes voter suppression?

          I would say common sense gets to decide. As an example:

          Candidate A puts out several ads stating that there has been massive voter fraud via mail-in ballots.
          There is no evidence of massive mail-in voting fraud (even an investigation by Candidate A's own people fail to find evidence of such fraud).

          Is it really that hard to determine if the ad campaigns are disinformation? You could debate whether this disinformation constitutes voter suppression though I guess.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        That doesn't seem to be the issue at all. Facebook is already censoring on behalf of Biden at mass scale. Deliberately misleading 'fact check' posts are being used throughout on supposedly misleading material but when you read the fact check rational either it isn't actually based on facts at all, doesn't support the conclusion, or is beating down a strawman issue instead of what was claimed in the original post.

        A great example crossed my feed the other day. A post indicating Kamela Harris had indicated sh

        • Snopes used to be my go-to for fact checking. Unfortunately they have proven they are more than happy to lie or misrepresent if it serves their purpose. As I tell my kids, it takes years to build trust and only an instant to destroy it.
          • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            Snopes, politifact, etc have all gotten bad. None of them stick to just the facts anymore.

            The issue here isn't so much that the fact checkers are misrepresenting but that facebook is (via whatever process is used, maybe even submission) incorrectly associating strawman fact checks with posts which sound related.

            Another I recently saw related to a law passed in California which suspended automatic sex offender registration between children at least 14 yrs old and adults up to 10 years older in instances of o

            • Unfortunately, any entity that gains a reputation for being a fair and neutral "fact checker" will eventually be infiltrated and turned into an asset. It's only a matter of time.

              Authority always needs to be questioned.

              • Authority always needs to be questioned.

                Unless it’s authority one agrees with or it’s been made socially unpopular to question it.

        • I agree that these "fact checker" sites often have questionable quality. However, I've found mistakes & slop both ways. Without more detailed "flaw" statistics, Hanlon's razor should be the default.

          • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            With Zuckerbergs stated stance of essentially 'staying neutral and out of it' I want to agree. That said Hanlon's razor is popularly known and exploited.

          • I agree that these "fact checker" sites often have questionable quality. However, I've found mistakes & slop both ways. Without more detailed "flaw" statistics, Hanlon's razor should be the default.

            These sites should be taken over and given to the Facebook purifiers.

            Those guys are never wrong.

        • by Ksevio ( 865461 )

          The fact check attempted to suppress that Trump made comments about 'grabbing them by the pussy' whereas Biden actually did it.

          Say what? Trump has multiple accusations of raping women and is recorded saying he sexually assaults them. Biden has one by a woman that has pretty low credibility in part due to her admiration for Putin (someone who has previously claimed to interfere with the US election process in support of Trump).

        • Strictly speaking, they aren't censoring, they are flagging. The original posts remain for anyone who wants to see them.
      • Basically concurrence, but I think there should be additional focus on the cost of production. Doing actual research to get the truth is expensive, just starting the with value of the researchers' time.

        In contrast, lies are cheap. For any (possibly expensive and hard won) truth, it's trivial to bury it under 20 cheap lies, which if taken seriously, then have to be refuted with additional research. Just to take the most obvious example-of-the-day, Trump has no talent beyond cheap lies. Trump is only special

      • by torkus ( 1133985 )

        It's about having known, deliberate misinformation, designed to suppress voters or give false information about a subject removed

        Funny enough, the definition of false information is far more subjective than one would imagine. Heck, the definition of news has changed from facts to opinion spin in most cases.

        This isn't about picking sides because both sides are very clearly guilty of doing so. Each has their own flavor, but if you're sitting there going 'not my candidate/rep/party' then you've fallen for the same fallacy.

      • It's not about "suppressing" a message you don't agree with. It's about having known, deliberate misinformation, designed to suppress voters or give false information about a subject removed.

        The problem is that it's all "deliberate misinformation, designed to suppress voters or give false information", a.k.a. propaganda.

        So either ban all social media or allow it all. Picking and choosing which groups get to spread their propaganda is way too easily abused.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • What is crazy that any political party would stand by and not only allow such lies which are harmful to this country to be spread

        You do realize that both sides claim that their opponents do this on a regular basis?

      • by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

        They don't even have to prohibit specific messages (though clearly 'up == down' false ones probably should be flagged or deleted). What needs to happen is to refuse access to the targeted ad system for political ads. Transparency would fix a lot of the problem and cost Facebook nothing. Actually, it'd probably get them more revenue, since campaigns would have to blanket Facebook to reach who they want to reach. Actually there should a special, lower ad rate offered for political ads, since the targeting

    • Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences. Otherwise libel and slander wouldn't exist (and in the rare cases of yelling "fire" in a crowded place). I am somewhat torn on this myself, I think if people were less gullible we wouldn't need the torts of libel and slander. But I figure that real progress in this area is somewhat delayed by a few decades just due to the fact that old mindsets take some time to clear out.

    • Trump has indeed been spreading misinformation, calling into question mail in voting and claiming it will be used to steal the election from him when there is overwhelming evidence this is a lie.

      It's also not hard to understand why Trump is doing that:

      1. He wants to clog the polls (which due to COVID are undermanned) with voter so that young, Democrat leaning voters will give up. In Obama's 2 elections blue districts repeatedly reported wait times of 5-6 hours and polls being closed early.

      2. Tru
    • This is like someone trying to promise a better future and laying out his plans while a bussed-in crowd screams that he's a pedophile.

    • Re:Madness (Score:4, Insightful)

      by eaglesrule ( 4607947 ) <eaglesrule@pmLAPLACE.me minus math_god> on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @12:31PM (#60554296)

      Crazy? No, a disdain for free speech and taking 'direct action' to suppress and censor and use a heckler's veto is consistent and predictable behavior.

      The claim that Dems and leftists value free speech is a component of their gaslighting tactics. You can say whatever you want, as long as they approve of it.

      Anything else falls under the umbrella of "no platform for hate", where pulling fire alarms at speaking events is justified.

      I predict this will be modded down, so take that as further evidence.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Or maybe they just want Facebook to enforce its terms equally for everyone, which means just being POTUS or a politician doesn't mean you get to try to suppress the vote or lie about the other candidate.

        You know, the thing you have been calling for, same rules for everyone evenly applied.

      • but not consequence free speech. Those are different things.

        If the Government orders Facebook to take down a post that is an infringement of Free Speech.

        If a Citizen, even if they are a politician suggests Facebook should take down posts for misinformation and/or incitement to violence that is not a free speech issue. That is the consequences of spreading misinformation and inciting violence.

        It doesn't become a free speech issue unless that Citizen uses their power as a government official to fo
        • "I'm a Dem and I value free speech, but not consequence free speech."

          Then comes the part where "if it isn't the government doing it, then it's ok", plus the usual obfuscation that excuses eroding respect for the very principle of free speech that leftists will use after they slash your tires because they don't like your political bumper sticker. We're back to "you can say whatever you want as long as we approve" or else there will be "consequences".

          GRB's death comes at a significant loss, because it is a se

      • Crazy? No, a disdain for free speech and taking 'direct action' to suppress and censor and use a heckler's veto is consistent and predictable behavior.

        The claim that Dems and leftists value free speech is a component of their gaslighting tactics. You can say whatever you want, as long as they approve of it.

        Every time, it seems, that right-wingers want to defend outright lies, they come up with this "free speech" / "permission required" crap.
        You're aware that Trump (a non-leftist president) is the one calling the media "the enemy of the people" and frequently suggesting tougher libel laws so nobody can say anything bad about him?

        • The media will only take anyone they want, anyone at all, and callously ruin their lives if they think they profit from it and get away with it. The corporate media absolutely is no friend to the public. It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that ethics in corporate "journalism" is a myth. All it takes is for your to be involved in circumstances beyond your control, but marketable to the public interest, and you absolutely will be used as fuel for their propaganda machine.

          "anything bad about him"

  • by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @12:19PM (#60554224)
    They don't want to moderate. They saw what happened last time. No matter what they do somebody will blame them for the election outcome somewhere. There is no winning move here for Facebook but to survive and hope that somebody bigger (Russia/China) gets more attention after the election.
    • Facebook moderates. Likely, the bigger problem is that Facebook seemingly isn't taking a more active role in putting their thumb on the scale like their sibling Google/Alphabet is. [projectveritas.com]

      Because, you know, "it’s like a small company cannot do that."

    • They don't want to moderate. They saw what happened last time. No matter what they do somebody will blame them for the election outcome somewhere.

      Are you implying they "moderated" last time? Holy shit, if that's "moderated" I'd can only assume that most of Facebook underneath is actually the worst of 4chan, but daamn, ... they fucked up.

      Literally anything they do would be better than last time. There's a shitton they could do if they wanted. They are afterall the self proclaimed best data analytics company on the planet.

  • The problem is not Trump or Biden, the problem is Facebook. I mean, it was enabling genocide in an article a while back. Maybe genocide is a bigger problem to be fixed first?
  • As bad as "misinformation" (from both sides) may be, the alternative is censorship, and that is worse. And as bad as censorship is, it's even worse when it's a mega-corporation that gets to decide what gets censored. The only real solution here is to simply allow everything, teach people to be as critical as possible about what they read, and not simply gobble it up as gospel because they like what they hear.
  • by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @01:26PM (#60554504)
    Any time someone screams censorship and tries to justify it, the underlying reason seems to be either:

    1) We are afraid our message is not compelling
    2) We think voters are stupid and cannot be trusted with making their own judgements

    Having lived in both sophisticated urban enclaves and simple towns, and been both well-off and poor, I can tell you that the average guy or gal on the street has a much stronger bullshit detector than most elites. If you think 'simple people' need to be protected from misinformation, I think you're either a liar or horribly sheltered.
    • Me too. Simple people need the truth. They have jobs, kids, parents to deal with. They do not need to become experts in virus control, tax law, ... just to know who is lying.
  • by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @01:32PM (#60554530)
    here [xkcd.com].
  • The DNC is still not pushing at the grassroots level, like Obama did on Facebook using Cambridge Analytics in 2008 to setup a micro payments system for supporters, and which Trump then did in 2016 with an Astroturf campaign that cleverly sent memes to targeted supporters and fence sitters. The edge goes to the candidate that can effectively spread the most BS these days.
  • why no one is chasing people who buy misleading ads!?
  • The Trump team wanted to check to make sure that there weren’t going to be any earpieces or electronic devices involved helping Joe Biden but that the Biden team is now refusing the check. According to Ebony Bowden of the New York Post, the Biden team actually agreed to the inspection for earpieces several days ago, but is now backing out of it.

    NEW: Joe Biden’s campaign agreed to an inspection for electronic ear pieces at tonight’s debate several days ago but are now declining, a source familiar tells me. — Ebony Bowden (@ebonybowden) September 29, 2020

  • Does the Biden campaign oppose posts regardless of which party they support?

    Or do they just oppose posts that are critical of Biden's campaign?

    The answer to this would make a huge difference.

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