"This is [sarcastic reference] coming from [personal reference] who [cherry-picked outrage bit]" is a trope that doesn't lead anywhere interesting. It ratchets up indignation, fries curiosity, and removes any semblance of ontopicness.
Also, I assume that's a skewed pseudo-quotation since no one would actually say that. Please don't play that internet game here either.
Agree that the snarky reply doesn't help, but the quotation isn't really skewed (though it is a paraphrase). It comes from an internal memo that leaked in 2018 that states:
Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.
And still we connect people.
The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good.
This comment [1] linked to an article [2] with the leaked memo.
Thank you for this feedback. Definitely a failure on my part to follow my personal guideline of if I don't have anything thoughtful to post then it's better not to post at all, not to mention the actual posting guidelines that I violated.
Andrew Bosworth somehow short-circuits me though as he is responsible for so much bad in the world (I have multiple grandparents who have been totally captured by the Facebook infinite-scroll newsfeed -- his idea and for which he shows no shame). Like this sociopath can just get away with it all: multi-millionaire AND wannabe thought-leader? And I'm supposed to just scroll by and let his pontifications about moral philosophy get promoted on this site. That being said, I thought about posting something more significant in my OP but gave up because who am I convincing anyway. That should've been the trigger not to post at all.
Thanks for the call-out and for the compliment on my ant-post from back in the day.
That’s the beauty of it. It’s only a short stretch from the argument here to the end justifies the mean and I think that’s what is truly implied. “Obviously we are good people because we succeeded.”
That’s a reasoning which exonerates one from any moral failing. It’s also a significant departure from what Franklin actually believed.
I actually disagree; it would be far more convenient for a sociopathic entity like Facebook to claim good intentions to deflect from the actual consequences of their actions. "Good intentions" are the weapon of the sociopath, not "good consequences".
Meta's censorship policies reflect the ideology of their owner.
They have loosened hate speech restrictions in some areas to curry favour with Trump but declared that Zionism is a protected category while they have banned a ton of Palestinian voices:
As has been every attempt at censorship thus far, since everyone that attempts it has their own agenda. A tale as old as time, and nothing new under the sun. Also, the reason why censorship will never be the ideal solution to any problem.
> They have loosened hate speech restrictions in some areas to curry favour with Trump but declared that Zionism is a protected category while they have banned a ton of Palestinian voices
That’s crazy because the most explicit antisemitism I see now days is on Facebook. And I mean real antisemitism.
> That’s crazy because the most explicit antisemitism I see now days is on Facebook. And I mean real antisemitism.
I haven't seen that on Facebook but I guess it depends on context. I see the absolute worst racism of all types (antisemitism, Islamophobia, explicit white/Christian nationalism) on X though - with 10s of millions of views. It is a total cesspool and I think it is corrosive on society as a whole as it encourages tribalism as it raises voices of the most intolerant.
You are aware that when HRW is talking about the systematic censorship of Palestinian voices by Meta, they are not talking about jihadists. I encourage you to read the article rather than that just repeating prejudices:
> "Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel. The documented cases include content originating from over 60 countries around the world, primarily in English, all of peaceful support of Palestine, expressed in diverse ways."
I read the report and it actually made me realize how much of a propaganda campaign HRW was engaging in. It reminded me of PETA campaigns and how offputting many of them were (this is coming from someone who was vegan for 7 years in spite of them).
I know that organizations like HRW and SPLC have to draw attention to topics, but I found the bias and lack of nuance in the report very troubling. The report suffers from the same sort of bias that is so prevalent in most reporting these days, which has gotten to be tiresome.
If HRW reviewed over a thousand cases of censorship, why don't they provide the raw, unedited examples? Instead they include categories of examples, like stating the slogan "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free" was frequently censored. For many that is seen as a call for a different type of genocide, one which HRW gives no indication of whatsoever, simply stating:
For instance, the words in each of these statements on their face do not constitute incitement to violence, discrimination, or hostility.
It's true that other slogans that were censored are neutral, such as "Ceasefire now" and "Stop the genocide." But lumping the first phrase in as if there were no legimate concerns with it is disingenuous at best.
That said, I'll still support HRW in much of its work, but I hate the tactics that mirror the broad cultural shift to inject more and more biased viewpoints. I really want to go back to the time where bias in the media and nonprofit organizations was much less pronounced in general.
> What is inconsistent between banning hate speech and banning advocacy for terrorism?
Two things, Meta has reduced controls for hate speech except in the areas relating to Israel and Zionism. That seems inconsistent - Meta hasn't just overall become more restrictive, it is very selective restrictions.
The HRW report I cited is not about Meta removing "advocacy for terrorism" posts, it is a human rights group after all. Here is a key quote from the report:
"Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel. The documented cases include content originating from over 60 countries around the world, primarily in English, all of peaceful support of Palestine, expressed in diverse ways."
My takeaway is that they willingly ignore the moral dimension and encourage others to do the same, the coping mechanism being
1) choosing a core business metric
2) claiming it's not a core business metric
3) saying that increasing said metric is always good
What I found more chilling is:
> The work we will likely have to do in China some day.
They know if they expend to china, they will be tasked with profiling people based on their private communication and their connections and sending them to gulags. I mean reeducation camps.
And they don't give a fuck because they are just increasing a metric and they declared that's good.
This is a fair response. I googled "bosworth + terrorists will kill people" before I posted this to make sure I got the wording right but purposely didn't link to what I found because it's mostly clickbait stuff and anyways the real source is that I was an employee at facebook when he wrote "The Ugly".
Never good to be posting in anger but I truly can't stand this guy and I can't help but throw in something snide when I see him trying to smart-wash the fact that he's just Zuck's enshittification czar: Ads --> VR --> and now CTO
I asked because I didn't know who he was (didn't read his about page until after) but his blog had a search prompt and I couldn't find anything related.
Didn't mean my question as criticism but advice.
I've been in situations where I had to convince somebody well-liked by the majority was actually abusive to a selected minority.
And it's really hard.
People are not willing to expend effort in order to search for arguments in your favor. They will very often not even read then if you give them direct links. But at least a few will see it, which might lead to a discussion and others who are too lazy to click links will at least skim the discussion.
Can we please not play this internet game here?
"This is [sarcastic reference] coming from [personal reference] who [cherry-picked outrage bit]" is a trope that doesn't lead anywhere interesting. It ratchets up indignation, fries curiosity, and removes any semblance of ontopicness.
Also, I assume that's a skewed pseudo-quotation since no one would actually say that. Please don't play that internet game here either.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. You're a good commenter otherwise and I even put https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26787519 in https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights.
Agree that the snarky reply doesn't help, but the quotation isn't really skewed (though it is a paraphrase). It comes from an internal memo that leaked in 2018 that states:
This comment [1] linked to an article [2] with the leaked memo.[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45721016
[2]: https://techthelead.com/incendiary-leaked-memo-facebook/
Ok good point!
Thank you for this feedback. Definitely a failure on my part to follow my personal guideline of if I don't have anything thoughtful to post then it's better not to post at all, not to mention the actual posting guidelines that I violated.
Andrew Bosworth somehow short-circuits me though as he is responsible for so much bad in the world (I have multiple grandparents who have been totally captured by the Facebook infinite-scroll newsfeed -- his idea and for which he shows no shame). Like this sociopath can just get away with it all: multi-millionaire AND wannabe thought-leader? And I'm supposed to just scroll by and let his pontifications about moral philosophy get promoted on this site. That being said, I thought about posting something more significant in my OP but gave up because who am I convincing anyway. That should've been the trigger not to post at all.
Thanks for the call-out and for the compliment on my ant-post from back in the day.
That’s the beauty of it. It’s only a short stretch from the argument here to the end justifies the mean and I think that’s what is truly implied. “Obviously we are good people because we succeeded.”
That’s a reasoning which exonerates one from any moral failing. It’s also a significant departure from what Franklin actually believed.
In the immortal words of Homer Simpson:
“If he’s so smart why’s he dead?”
Can’t get much simpler ethics than that
I actually disagree; it would be far more convenient for a sociopathic entity like Facebook to claim good intentions to deflect from the actual consequences of their actions. "Good intentions" are the weapon of the sociopath, not "good consequences".
Meta's censorship policies reflect the ideology of their owner.
They have loosened hate speech restrictions in some areas to curry favour with Trump but declared that Zionism is a protected category while they have banned a ton of Palestinian voices:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/02/meta-new-poli...
https://amnesty.ca/human-rights-news/metas-zionism-zionist-h...
https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti...
It is all inconsistent.
> It is all inconsistent.
As has been every attempt at censorship thus far, since everyone that attempts it has their own agenda. A tale as old as time, and nothing new under the sun. Also, the reason why censorship will never be the ideal solution to any problem.
> They have loosened hate speech restrictions in some areas to curry favour with Trump but declared that Zionism is a protected category while they have banned a ton of Palestinian voices
That’s crazy because the most explicit antisemitism I see now days is on Facebook. And I mean real antisemitism.
> That’s crazy because the most explicit antisemitism I see now days is on Facebook. And I mean real antisemitism.
I haven't seen that on Facebook but I guess it depends on context. I see the absolute worst racism of all types (antisemitism, Islamophobia, explicit white/Christian nationalism) on X though - with 10s of millions of views. It is a total cesspool and I think it is corrosive on society as a whole as it encourages tribalism as it raises voices of the most intolerant.
[flagged]
You are aware that when HRW is talking about the systematic censorship of Palestinian voices by Meta, they are not talking about jihadists. I encourage you to read the article rather than that just repeating prejudices:
> "Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel. The documented cases include content originating from over 60 countries around the world, primarily in English, all of peaceful support of Palestine, expressed in diverse ways."
https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
I read the report and it actually made me realize how much of a propaganda campaign HRW was engaging in. It reminded me of PETA campaigns and how offputting many of them were (this is coming from someone who was vegan for 7 years in spite of them).
I know that organizations like HRW and SPLC have to draw attention to topics, but I found the bias and lack of nuance in the report very troubling. The report suffers from the same sort of bias that is so prevalent in most reporting these days, which has gotten to be tiresome.
If HRW reviewed over a thousand cases of censorship, why don't they provide the raw, unedited examples? Instead they include categories of examples, like stating the slogan "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free" was frequently censored. For many that is seen as a call for a different type of genocide, one which HRW gives no indication of whatsoever, simply stating:
It's true that other slogans that were censored are neutral, such as "Ceasefire now" and "Stop the genocide." But lumping the first phrase in as if there were no legimate concerns with it is disingenuous at best.That said, I'll still support HRW in much of its work, but I hate the tactics that mirror the broad cultural shift to inject more and more biased viewpoints. I really want to go back to the time where bias in the media and nonprofit organizations was much less pronounced in general.
What is inconsistent between banning hate speech and banning advocacy for terrorism?
> What is inconsistent between banning hate speech and banning advocacy for terrorism?
Two things, Meta has reduced controls for hate speech except in the areas relating to Israel and Zionism. That seems inconsistent - Meta hasn't just overall become more restrictive, it is very selective restrictions.
The HRW report I cited is not about Meta removing "advocacy for terrorism" posts, it is a human rights group after all. Here is a key quote from the report:
"Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel. The documented cases include content originating from over 60 countries around the world, primarily in English, all of peaceful support of Palestine, expressed in diverse ways."
https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
Not that I disbelieve you but accusations like this work much better if you can link to a source (even archive.org)
Just read "Careless People"
Found the quote here: https://techthelead.com/incendiary-leaked-memo-facebook/
My takeaway is that they willingly ignore the moral dimension and encourage others to do the same, the coping mechanism being
1) choosing a core business metric
2) claiming it's not a core business metric
3) saying that increasing said metric is always good
What I found more chilling is:
> The work we will likely have to do in China some day.
They know if they expend to china, they will be tasked with profiling people based on their private communication and their connections and sending them to gulags. I mean reeducation camps.
And they don't give a fuck because they are just increasing a metric and they declared that's good.
This is a fair response. I googled "bosworth + terrorists will kill people" before I posted this to make sure I got the wording right but purposely didn't link to what I found because it's mostly clickbait stuff and anyways the real source is that I was an employee at facebook when he wrote "The Ugly".
Never good to be posting in anger but I truly can't stand this guy and I can't help but throw in something snide when I see him trying to smart-wash the fact that he's just Zuck's enshittification czar: Ads --> VR --> and now CTO
I asked because I didn't know who he was (didn't read his about page until after) but his blog had a search prompt and I couldn't find anything related.
Didn't mean my question as criticism but advice.
I've been in situations where I had to convince somebody well-liked by the majority was actually abusive to a selected minority.
And it's really hard.
People are not willing to expend effort in order to search for arguments in your favor. They will very often not even read then if you give them direct links. But at least a few will see it, which might lead to a discussion and others who are too lazy to click links will at least skim the discussion.
On the plus side, Boz is liked by basically nobody (certainly very few who have had the misfortune to work for him)