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Twitter and Facebook Admit They Wrongly Blocked Millions of Posts About Gaza Strip Airstrikes (msn.com) 156

"Just days after violent conflict erupted in Israel and the Palestinian territories, both Facebook and Twitter copped to major faux pas: The companies had wrongly blocked or restricted millions of mostly pro-Palestinian posts and accounts related to the crisis," reports the Washington Post: Activists around the world charged the companies with failing a critical test: whether their services would enable the world to watch an important global event unfold unfettered through the eyes of those affected. The companies blamed the errors on glitches in artificial intelligence software.

In Twitter's case, the company said its service mistakenly identified the rapid-firing tweeting during the confrontations as spam, resulting in hundreds of accounts being temporarily locked and the tweets not showing up when searched for. Facebook-owned Instagram gave several explanations for its problems, including a software bug that temporarily blocked video-sharing and saying its hate speech detection software misidentified a key hashtag as associated with a terrorist group.

The companies said the problems were quickly resolved and the accounts restored. But some activists say many posts are still being censored. Experts in free speech and technology said that's because the issues are connected to a broader problem: overzealous software algorithms that are designed to protect but end up wrongly penalizing marginalized groups that rely on social media to build support... Despite years of investment, many of the automated systems built by social media companies to stop spam, disinformation and terrorism are still not sophisticated enough to detect the difference between desirable forms of expression and harmful ones. They often overcorrect, as in the most recent errors during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or they under-enforce, allowing harmful misinformation and violent and hateful language to proliferate...

Jillian York, a director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that opposes government surveillance, has researched tech company practices in the Middle East. She said she doesn't believe that content moderation — human or algorithmic — can work at scale... Palestinian activists and experts who study social movements say it was another watershed historical moment in which social media helped alter the course of events...

Payment app Venmo also mistakenly suspended transactions of humanitarian aid to Palestinians during the war. The company said it was trying to comply with U.S. sanctions and had resolved the issues.

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Twitter and Facebook Admit They Wrongly Blocked Millions of Posts About Gaza Strip Airstrikes

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  • by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @02:39AM (#61435962)
    Nobody ever gets in trouble for screwing Palestinians.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by flyingfsck ( 986395 )
      I've lived in Israel for a few years. It is like a bar in Eastern Europe. The people are only happy when they are fighting.
    • by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @03:31AM (#61436014) Journal
      "Err on the side of caution" is the central mechanism behind a new wave of censorship, especially here in Europe where this idea is increasingly taking hold. Politicians want to get rid of certain speech (sometimes with good intentions, often just to have no opposition to their narrative), but not many of them are willing to openly call for censorship or mess with our freedom of speech too much. Well, now that a lot of free speech happens to occur on a few large social media platforms, they have found a way to have censorship without actually having to impose it. They simply scare social media companies in doing it for them; with somewhat vague criteria combined with serious penalties. What constitutes "fake news", is it unverified stories too? What is "hate speech", does that include criticism of religions or social justice groups? Where do we draw the line at "glorifying terrorism", can we show Palestine kids throwing rocks at police in riot gear? Better be sure... so better to err on the side of caution, and not show any of that.
      • by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @07:05AM (#61436326) Journal

        Officials in the US wasted no time threatening social media with billions to hundreds of billions in stock losses, unless they censored harrassment. This gets cheers, in spite of violating the First Amendment. And immediately they pointed out to start with the "harrassing tweets" of their political opponents, which was done.

        Then they moved on to "dangerous" speech, because, hey, who could argue about that? What they meant was a slightly more acceptable reason, but in form it was the same thing: ban the speech of our political opponents.

        Here is the same, just that it's "the other side". One could facetiously claim, since Palestine started the attacks, anything pro-Palestinian attack was dangerous speech.

        I don't think that, but the gleeful censors do. Remember that. This is the bed you made, a terrible mistake.

      • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @07:42AM (#61436410)

        Politicians want to get rid of certain speech (sometimes with good intentions, often just to have no opposition to their narrative), but not many of them are willing to openly call for censorship or mess with our freedom of speech too much.

        I wish legislators, (and the social media moguls as well, but good luck with that), would realize and admit that the problem isn't a lack of censorship. Rather, it's a false choice between two varieties of censorship.

        On the one hand, there's the obvious and crude kind that governments, and by extension social media, impose on users: the 'delete' hammer and the 'ban' hammer. On the other hand, there's the 'feed shaping' knife that social media use - cutting dissenting opinions, alternative points of view, and even whole topics of discussion right out of a user's feed.

        These practices result in echo chambers and silos of thought, and even action. So I wonder if the solution here is to take off ALL the restrictions - everybody says and writes whatever they want, however they want to say it, and NONE of it is edited or "shaped" in any way, except things like child pornography and 'fire in the theatre' equivalents.

        I've been saying for well over a decade now that the internet has become societal infrastructure and should be made a public utility. I'm starting to think the same thing applies to social media.

        • by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @08:00AM (#61436462) Journal

          the internet has become societal infrastructure and should be made a public utility. I'm starting to think the same thing applies to social media

          I was glad to see EU politicians starting to think along similar lines: large social media platforms are a de facto oligopoly on access to the public, and potentially have an undue influence on public opinion. One country (I think it was Poland) even started to draw up legislation which would effectively make social media a common carrier: they would be forbidden from censoring or hiding any content that did not break the law. Unfortunately the legislators who said "Social media companies should not dictate public opinion" are now adding "... that's our job" to that sentence.

      • "Err on the side of caution" is the central mechanism behind a new wave of censorship, especially here in Europe where this idea is increasingly taking hold.

        It is hard to get away from European tendencies, if history is any indicator. Much has been done in the name of safety and caution.

      • "Err on the side of caution" is the central mechanism behind a new wave of censorship, especially here in Europe where this idea is increasingly taking hold.

        There's nothing new about speech censorship in Europe. Those laws in many countries date back to just after the war and have been developing continuously for the past 70 years.

        • There's nothing new about speech censorship in Europe. Those laws in many countries date back to just after the war and have been developing continuously for the past 70 years.

          And a lot of those laws are made specifically to oppress and suppress ideas and groups. They tend to be groups that I don't like (so I don't complain), but it is clear that the purpose is oppression and suppression.

    • Because they have no lobbyists.
    • Nobody takes on a different meaning in this case. Still spot on, as AI = "no body"

    • Unless she comes home pregnant. Then youre in for it.
  • All this does is turn people against Israel, I'm sure the use of the Jewish echo has been increasing as of late.

  • the company said its service mistakenly identified the rapid-firing tweeting during the confrontations as spam

    But the service wasn't mistaken.

  • Ambiguity. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @02:55AM (#61435984)

    Conspiracy? Or mysterious failure of machine-learning black boxes? We don't know, and likely never will. A perfect hiding place for all manner of shadowy policies, that I am sure will see a lot of use in the future. When a company gets caught seemingly discriminating or otherwise doing something of dubious legality or morality, they can just blame their algorithm. No-ones fault, that's just how algorithms work.

    • Re:Ambiguity. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AxeTheMax ( 1163705 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @03:47AM (#61436030)
      Agreed. IT makes a perfect screen for distancing the actor from the consequences. 'The software was buggy' (not we made a mistake in programming). That excuses everything, make a promise to look into it and it is accepted.

      Distancing is the key. If there is a structure or method to separate the actor from the consequences, then that can be exploited. It is the parallel of what happens when the military kills civilians. A soldier shoots civilians that he can see in front of him, that's a war crime. A drone pilot or a pilot drops a bomb, he does not see the civilians and does it from far away, that's collateral damage blamed on faulty information or whatever.

      • Showing pictures of what the drone attack has caused incites hate and outrage and will therefore be suppressed by the hate speech detection algorithms. Where's the bug?

        • Showing pictures of what the drone attack has caused incites hate and outrage and will therefore be suppressed by the hate speech detection algorithms. Where's the bug?

          Violations of the First Amendment using that as an argument. In the US, anyway, home of these platforms, censoring hate speech, not to be "with it", but because government is twisting your arm, or, "you know, things like section 230 might get broke", is a First Amendment violation.

          It is the ultimate and inviolable "customer requirement" for government action. Hurting companies financially unless they censor the way politicians want is not acceptable to the concept, and so a bug.

          Now when not in the US, I r

          • Are you trying to make a point? Legal rulings on hatespeech are a different area from moderator practices against hate speech. When they demonetize your site , derank it or block it it is enough that there is some argument about it being hatespeech-ish , incitement-ish or desinformation-ish. If an important partner says it's hate speech to them then this is usually sufficient reason. After all, private company and no need to justify yourself and all that.

            • We need to replace "demonetize" with "remonetize". When companies say they "demonetize", they aren't actually not monetizing it--they're just keeping the money for themselves.

              The doublespeak is real.

            • by Entrope ( 68843 )

              Private entities can violate the First Amendment when they limit someone's protected speech because of government demands. The general term for this is becoming a state actor [wikipedia.org]. From Blum v. Yaretsky (1982): "a State normally can be held responsible for a private decision only when it has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the State."

              • I'm no lawyer but that looks like an interesting precedent. Only it only stops so much and from what I see there is an awful lot of censorship and pseudocensorship going on. I can hypothesize how that works.
                For starters how how does it apply on the web where many nationalities interact? The topic article is for a large part about non-US posts and whatever one might claim it is a long term policy [theintercept.com]. Then there is the logic of 'as long as it still exists it is not censorship if we just make it impossi

  • by Anonymous Coward

    You can handwave them away as being russian bots. And besides, corporations have the right to do whatever they want with speech on their platform and we should be thankful to have their boots on our necks.

  • Not a "mistake" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Uberbah ( 647458 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @03:12AM (#61435998)

    Social media has spent years suppressing Palestinian activists while turning a blind eye to all the racism supporting Apartheid Israel.

  • by tinkerton ( 199273 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @03:19AM (#61436000)

    most of the global effort fighting fake news is merely those with power trying to impose their narrative. The salient stories about really stupid stories going viral are merely the sales pitch.
    Sure, an awful lot of people are buying the sales pitch so maybe it's not merely a pitch but what a lot of people really believe in. But the result is still that the permitted narrative gets decided by those in power at the expense of those without power.

    • You know, if enough of us get together and make them take it down, government cant use those tools either. Sure we will have to rely on email and instant messaging to spread information but its not an impossible mechanism, it just works a but slower.
      • I don't know who is 'us' but I'm pretty sure 'just a bit slower' makes a huge difference in the modern age. It means 'your' information gets crowded out and only a tiny minority get to see it.

  • Step 1: Command techie pond life to produce "AI" system to screen out naughty thoughts and words.

    Step 2: Delegate moderation/censorship to new AI, because the computer is always right.

    Step 3: PROFIT!!

    Step 4: When people complain that you are massively censoring comments you shouldn't, blame the AI.

  • You people should stick to tech stuff instead of defending terrorists who lob thousands of rockets on the most progressive, inclusive and humane society in the Middle East. That's as polite as I can put it.
    • Are you by any chance from Israel?

      If yes, then you should remember that what happened to your people throughout centuries, and most recently 80 years ago, was horrible and is being rightfully condemned by the world. But it is not something you should be giving back.

      This is as polite as I can put it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by glum64 ( 8102266 )
        You compare a war to a genocide. That's apples to oranges. Being polite too.
      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Which is why they're not "giving it back". If they did, there would be a grand total of zero Arabs in Israel and Palestine today. Israel has had the capacity to do so for many decades at this point, and the total number of Palestinians in the region has GROWN.

        That's now how genocide works.

        On the other hand, Palesitinians are completely open about what they would do should they ever get the ability to exterminate Jews. It's literally in the foundational text of HAMAS. Exterminate all Jews in the Palestine, t

    • Even if your point may be valid, you and everyone who uses the term anti-semetism should understand what it really means.
      First the grouping of humans as Semites, Hamites and Japhetites was a racist middle ages terminilogy developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism and slavery.
      Second, the Semites are the people of Asia as labeled by Europeans, whih includes Palestinians and other middle easterns, so an Anti Semite would be a European who is against both jews and and Palestinians, technica
    • by znrt ( 2424692 )

      censorship and/or bias through ai in social networks is very much tech stuff today.

      your off topic propaganda though is very much irrelevant and uncalled for, that's as polite as i can put it.

    • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @08:46AM (#61436576)

      You people should stick to tech stuff instead of defending terrorists who lob thousands of rockets on the most progressive, inclusive and humane society in the Middle East. That's as polite as I can put it.

      Ever heard of Miko Peled [wikipedia.org]? His grandfather signed Israel's Declaration of Independence. His father was a general in the Six-Day War. He himself joined the Israeli Special Forces and earned a red beret. He lost a 13-year old niece to an anti-Israel attack in Jerusalem.

      So the man has some serious skin in the game. And yet he denounces his country's policies toward the Palestinians, explicitly calls Israel an apartheid state, and says of it that "half of the population lives in what it thinks is a Western democracy while keeping the other half imprisoned by a ruthless defense apparatus that is becoming more violent by the day."

      He also says that Israel is "occupying another nation and that in order to save lives the right thing to do is to end the occupation and negotiate a just peace with our Palestinian partners". He is a warrior seeking peace through peaceful means, and his history suggests that he knows something about the matter. Would you care to share your reasons for disagreeing with him?

      BTW, if you have the intellectual courage, you might watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]. It offers a pretty compelling counterpoint to the common 'historical' narrative around the founding of Israel.

      • "while keeping the other half imprisoned by a ruthless defense apparatus that is becoming more violent by the day."

        That doesn't seem to be true. That is, over time they are becoming less violent.

        • "while keeping the other half imprisoned by a ruthless defense apparatus that is becoming more violent by the day."

          That doesn't seem to be true. That is, over time they are becoming less violent.

          You could be right. But I suspect that the Israelis aren't becoming less violent. I think they're running stealthier, less noisy campaigns that don't make the news because they rely less on missiles and more on the increased presence and hostility of soldiers with guns. And I think that to a large extent the Western media significantly under-report the aggression of Israel towards Palestine. If you watch the video I linked you might draw the same conclusions.

          • I suspect that the Israelis aren't becoming less violent. I think they're running stealthier, less noisy campaigns that don't make the news because they rely less on missiles and more on the increased presence and hostility of soldiers with guns

            What on earth are you talking about here? Are you just "guessing"?

            • What on earth are you talking about here? Are you just "guessing"?

              Why, yes. Yes I am. Hence my prefacing of the comment with the phrase "I suspect". It's possible that my "guess" was influenced by watching videos such as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]. It's not proof, nor even direct evidence - but for me, it's a sufficient basis for inference, and therefore suspicion.

              • Why, yes. Yes I am. Hence my prefacing of the comment with the phrase "I suspect".

                That's what I thought, you are very confident in your ignorance.

      • by Mitreya ( 579078 )

        Would you care to share your reasons for disagreeing with him?

        I have not heard of Miko Peled. But I have read through the wiki page and it was quite interesting. Some reasons for disagreeing with him:

        He has said that "The State of Israel Will Crumble and We Will See A Free Democratic Palestine from the River to the Sea Sooner than Most People Think"

        In 2016, Peled generated controversy after tweeting that "Jews have reputation [for] being sleazy thieves,"

        "Zionists should be treated like Nazis", pro-Palestinian speakers told a 150 strong audience at University College London (UCL) on Friday evening.

        Why would I take him seriously? I checked, the tweet was not out of context [twitter.com].

        • In 2016, Peled generated controversy after tweeting that "Jews have reputation [for] being sleazy thieves,"

          I have to agree, that's pretty inexcusable. The full quote from the Tweet you linked to, ("Then theyr surprised Jews have reputation 4being sleazy thieves") seems to be a little less over-the-top, in that it refers to an (unfortunately common) belief held by many anti-Semites and other racist types. Still, Peled's implication that anti-Semitic beliefs are somehow explained or justified is pretty horrific.

          "Zionists should be treated like Nazis", pro-Palestinian speakers told a 150 strong audience at University College London (UCL) on Friday evening.

          As far as I'm able to determine Peled didn't say that, although he was present when it was said and for

          • by Mitreya ( 579078 )

            Everybody says and does stupid, unthinking things from time to time.

            From my reading, he is strongly in support of creation of "one state" which probably won't be called "Israel" (that is never stated but there are references to "Israel/Palestine" state throughout). I think that illustrates the difficulty Israel can have in negotiating -- for example, having full control in granting citizenship within your country is not a point of negotiation. But here, this appears to be a prerequisite for even having a negotiation.
            Supporting evidence from Miko Peled's blog:

            Expecting Palestinians to accept the rights of an exclusively Jewish state is, plain and simple, stupid. The Jewish state has an insatiable appetite for Palestinian land, it imprisons and forces millions of Palestinians to live in exile and poverty, making the demand for acceptance by Palestinians clearly outrageous. For nearly thirty years Arafat and his successors have bent over backwards to show that they accept the existence of an exclusively Jewish state, even as that very state continued to oppress and imprison Palestinian people and disposes them of their land.

            The myth of Israel being a democracy is still being perpetuated even in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

            1. Granting all Palestinians full equal rights with Israelis.
            2. Granting Palestinians unrestricted freedom of movement within Israel/Palestine.
            3. Reigning in the Israeli forces and withdrawing them of from population centers.
            Until these conditions are met, Palestinians have no reason to negotiate or cooperate with the Israeli authorities.

  • by nokarmajustviewspls ( 7441308 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @04:16AM (#61436058)

    So I worked on a documentary on the 20,000 jews that were trapped in China (mainly Shanghai) during WWII. Once Japan had conquered (that part of) China, Hitler asked them to send the jews to Germany, presumably to be sent to the concentration camps, The Japanese (politely?) declined. Evidently they were not sure they wanted to get on the wrong side of a culture that had produced arguably the three most important individuals in human history (see below*). Anyway, the Japanese let the Jewish people stay in place and, although they didn't have such a great time there, by and large they survived.

    Whether or not people in the U.S. are awed by such observations, it is clear that they have historically put a heavy hand on the scales of justice against the Palestinians. While the Israeli government has been credibly accused of apartheid, it appears that there are no serious repercussions coming from the U.S. government; contrast that with the crippling sanctions the U.S. imposed on S. Africa (including forcing them to abandon their nuclear weapons program). This is despite only 7m jews living in the U.S. (and a substantial fraction of those don't support the Israeli government's policies). That is why some think that the jews are dictating American policies and politics (and other spheres of society but that is another discussion). Others think that it's the American evangelicals who, in their desire to see certain apocalyptic prophecies fulfilled, wish to return Jerusalem to Jewish control (or something like that). Or perhaps it's for American support of the only democracy in the Middle East (but American foreign policy has never seemed to prioritize that: i.e. the Shah of Iran).

    My own take is, speaking as a descendant of another oppressed culture (but aren't we all?), the Palestinians can be understood as resisting to an absolutely dominant oppressor. (I am of Korean descent, my parents having survived the Japanese occupation). So when I hear of suicide attacks and whatnot I ask myself, would I be doing the same? I'm not saying it's right but when I read of the daily indignancies that have been going on now for GENERATIONS, I'm wondering if a quick death would be preferable to lifelong humiliation. I mean, let's face it, Israel never has, and never will treat the Palestinians as equals; just look at how they kept them from being vaccinated (despite themselves having the highest vaccination rate in the world). So they seem to be content on oppressing them, forever.

    After the holocaust, the World owes the Jews. But now the Jews owe the Palestinians.

    *Arguably the three most important individuals in human history are:
    Science - Albert Einstein (even before the atomic bomb he had revolutionized physics)
    Politics - Karl Marx (introduced communism to the world which was one of the great movements of the 20th century)
    Religion - Jesus Christ (even if you don't think he was the son of God, he did found one of the great religions of the world)

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Don't blame the Jews for Karl Marx. He did all he could to reject his ancestry, and his followers viciously persecuted Jews.

      • by jodido ( 1052890 )
        Anyone who persecuted, or persecutes, Jews, is not a follower of Marx, but an enemy of Marxism, the goal of which is to unite the working class and all oppressed in order to overthrow capitalism, which *does* persecute Jews. And Palestinians, and Kurds, and on and on. https://www.theatlantic.com/in... [theatlantic.com]
    • by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @04:41AM (#61436112)
      Err... The Palestinian West bank and Gaza rule themselves. They have to look after their own medical issues. Israel has many Arabs living in the country proper and there are even Arabs in the Israeli government. Calling it Apartheid is not far off the mark, but it is the only system that can work when everyone is quarrelous.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by glum64 ( 8102266 )

        Calling it Apartheid is not far off the mark

        That statement is completely off charts. Do you realise that Israel is a sovereign state that has no territorial claims in Gaza? Do you realise that Israeli Arabs are citizens of Israel while the Arabs of Gaza are not? Do you realise that the current rulers in Gaza call for destruction of the State of Israel (no, they do not accuse Israel of not granting them citizenship). Following your logic, any state conducts a policy of apartheid against its neighbor states by having national borders.

    • by glum64 ( 8102266 )

      the Israeli government has been credibly accused of apartheid

      How credible are these accusations, could you please elaborate?

      the Jews owe the Palestinians

      The Jews owe `Palestinians' precisely nothing. Sorry to shatter your view of the conflict.

      • by dryeo ( 100693 )

        the Israeli government has been credibly accused of apartheid

        How credible are these accusations, could you please elaborate?

        What are the marriage laws in Israel? To my way of thinking, any country that limits who you can marry based on religion and any country that limits citizenship through marriage based on nationality is practicing apartheid.

    • Only the perpetrators of the holocaust owe them, the "World" does not owe them.
    • I think its dangerous to weigh in on a conflict thats not in our backdoor. Too often we only get part of what is going on. Do you live in the US? Ever get annoyed when a European decides he wants to give you his opinion on US politics? They rarely get most of the information so they can never truly ever understand why 150million people might not share their opinion.
    • While the Israeli government has been credibly accused of apartheid

      Israel is the most diverse country in the Middle East and it's not even close. If they wanted to segregate like any of their neighbors, surely it would be easiest to start within their own borders.

  • Nobody actually believes any of this ridiculous narrative, surely. This is laughable in the contempt it shows for the reader. Or, perhaps not. Underestimating stupidity... I have a bad habit of that.

  • ...that Social Media, is now selling to both sides?

    Perhaps we should be more cautious as to who controls these weapons.

  • by rapjr ( 732628 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @05:47AM (#61436222)
    >Jillian York, a director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that opposes government surveillance, has researched tech company practices in the Middle East. She said she doesn't believe that content moderation — human or algorithmic — can work at scale.

    This is an interesting idea. Content moderation is very subjective and community standards vary wildly. When is speech free speech and when is it a danger to society, and to which society? I can well believe that content moderation can not scale and is infeasible in a very basic way. So what are the alternatives?

    Empathy classes in grade school? "Safe places" with restricted speech plus "wild west spaces" where anything goes? That seems to be what we're doing now. Everyone runs their own media filters and selects the level of hate they will currently tolerate? Having an authority control speech is a problem (newspapers only allowed limited points of view before the internet), but having the community control speech is also a problem (gangs take over forums). AI is not good enough to solve this because we don't understand how to control bias in algorithms (and bias is inherent in people, so who or what gets to decide what is biased?)

    It seems like there must continue to be absolutely unrestricted speech /somewhere/ because it is useful in that it exposes opinion and generates new ideas. That some speech also harms societies and subgroups also seems obvious. The solution is probably not monolithic, it is probably many solutions resulting from many (and continuously ongoing) experiments. There is no "fix" there is only continuous evolution.

    • One of the problems with the endemic disease of revealing private conversations is that it prevents exactly the sort of free thinking that is necessary if good but difficult choices are to be made. Instead noone wants to be the first to advance ideas which are badly wrong - but which can be amended into something good in the end. We therefore recycle the bad ideas of the past until they really don't work any more.

      President Wilson started this, with his demand for open agreements, 'openly achieved'. This my

  • Had blocked or restricted millions of mostly Palestinian propaganda posts.

    Reality: Hamas and Islamic Jihad puts rocket launchers and bomb making factories next to schools and then hold up pictures of wounded children when the other side defends themselves after enduring more random rocket attacks. And MSNBC defends them. I guess they want the Islamists to win so they can have more stories of middle eastern religious intolerance, killing people who want to leave Islam, misogyny, homophobia, Sharia law in g
  • You have to be clever and diplomatic if you want to talk about these subjects online in general. You have to assume that you might be censured for it.

    Facebook is incompetent at best, and evil at worst. I only wish people would use other social media services. I've tried to lure them to them, but the take rate is basically fuck-all.

    I wanna go where the people are...

  • The core of Marxism was economic class war - a concept of sorting society into economic classes, where the higher economic classes oppressed the lower classes, and the lower classes should fight against the upper classes.

    The exact same concept is now replicated, except economic classes is replaced by social and racial classes.

    "software algorithms that are designed to protect but end up wrongly penalizing marginalized groups that rely on social media to build support"

    A part of class war is that whether an ac

  • It is inevitable that AIs will make this sort of mistake, so it should be expected that humans will be in the loop to confirm that items have been correctly censored.

    The problem, of course, is that it's less risky LEGALLY for social media to censor than allow. They may upset a few people, but aren't going to be hit with large fines for allowing criminally culpable material. This, of course, reveals the core problem of 'freedom of speech' in the age of social media; historically there was some degree of acco

  • Just as personal Facebook posts are propaganda about your personal life, political Facebook posts are propaganda about political topics.

    It's bad enough that the #^&*( use human shields.

  • When social media companies began taking sides in political disputes rather than leaving moderation to discussion group leaders, they demolished any possibility of becoming platforms. They are now more like swamps.

  • Was finding these posts in groups where the rules clearly stated that all posts needed to be on point to the group.

    What they do outside those groups isnâ(TM)t really a concern to me. But, I didnâ(TM)t enjoy seeing dead babies while trying to discuss programming and developer topics.

  • Facebook disabled my account and deleted 12 years of my life, calling me a terrorist supporter because I posted some facts from Wikipedia to teach someone what Hamas was.
    They once suspended me for posting about the history of Volkswagen because it was founded by the nazis and there was a swastika in a picture somewhere.
    They also suspended me for showing my own obese chest, claiming it was female.
    They suspended me for saying I hate waiting in line, because the word for line/queue is also a gay slur (just lik

  • ... deemed "not a relyable source of information."

    Oooo, geee whizz. Who would've thunk?

  • [A version of this post was also put on another Slashdot thread. Sorry but I spent a lot of time writing it so I want to spread it around]
    [This comment is aimed at Israel but really applies to any group that is oppressing another: Han Chinese / Uyghurs, Burmese / Rohingas, (White Americans / Blacks?). Ultimately it extends to smaller and smaller groups ...]

    Have you heard of the $400 bet between Steven Pinker and Martin Ree? It states that between 2017 and 2020 there will be an act of bio-terror or bio-er

    • Have you heard of the $400 bet between Steven Pinker and Martin Ree? It states that between 2017 and 2020 there will be an act of bio-terror or bio-error that kills a million people.

      Here is a citation [longbets.org]. A Harvard professor loses to a Princeton professor, no surprise there.

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