Sacha Baron Cohen Uses ADL Speech to Tear Apart Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
Do yourself a favor and watch it in its entirety -- before commenting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM
Among the many thorny issues and questions raised by Cohen:
* The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement, which is greatest for content that arouses the basest instincts and feelings of human beings, including fear and hatred. Social media companies earn more with the basest content.
* Social media companies are ideal propaganda machines, enabling anyone willing to appeal to the worst in human nature to reach billions of people with a click.
* Do social media companies bear responsibility for the negative impact their products have on society, in the same way that, say, car companies bear responsibility for faulty engines or airplane manufacturers bear responsibility for faulty plane designs?
* Are social media companies publishers, like broadcast TV networks, magazines, and newspapers? Should social media companies be held to decency standards, like all publishers?
I'm barely scratching the surface.
Do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing!
This is what so many people miss in this debate. We already outlaw a wide variety of speech that infringes on the rights of others. You can't threaten violence against me because that infringes on my rights. You can't slander me because it infringes on my rights. You can't reproduce my copyrighted speech because it infringes on my rights. You can't use my image to advertise your product because it infringes on my rights.
The debate isn't free speech versus no free speech. We already decided against universal free speech. The debate is now where do we draw the line between one person's rights and another person's rights.
We can't just reduce things down to being either censorship or free speech. Real life is messier than that.
I also think that saying “Google shows you all these neonazi sites” (probably not an accurate quote, but he said something of that sort) demonstrates ignorance of what Google is supposed to be.
And what Google is supposed to be?
They stopped being a dictionary-like search engine some time ago.
These days they seem to show personalized web page recommendations, loosely based on the search terms.
Should accumulated wealth be the equivalent of having the loudest megaphone?
I think there's a line there between free users of social media vs. paid advertisements. Still, I'm not sure social media is public space rather than an establishment, so the idea of how you apply freedom of speech has to be carefully weighed.
Oh, this applies to social media too. Super surprised. Thanks Sacha.
In my opinion the real complaint is the old guard against the up and coming media, and they feel threatened and are looking for a way to bring the new media into conformity with their worldview monopoly.
This is the business model of many companies and industries, including advertising and marketing, legacy media companies, and gaming.
As a software developer myself I'm always looking to discuss this topic with layman and other software developers since we're always looking to develop a new architecture/a new paradigm for conveying better and more concise data to clients. Even without the business model, how would you create a scalable model for all of humanity, regardless of culture or creed, that displays the information people need to do what they need to do? And what does that even mean, "information people need to do what they need to do?" The toughest part of programming is designing scalable architecture. It's so complicated and difficult that we've all but given up on trying to figure this shit out and now we're just building AI hoping something computationally faster and less human can possibly do it better.
Also think to yourself why this is front and center? Whereas cigarettes literally kill millions a year and they are perfectly legal. Why? Because politicians cant control their agendas with open social media platforms.
Corporates should not be responsible for regulating their content, unless they are publishers. Social media platforms should be open with the onus on society to teach truth and government to prevent threatening behavior.
Publishers should then be directly held accountable for anything that’s posted on their sites. Fake news, racism, slander, etc.
This is a flimsy comparison. The sale and use of cigarettes is tightly regulated, with sale banned to minors and use banned in most public and commercial spaces. If there was anywhere close to this level of restriction on social media usage you might have a point.
P.S. Facebook also contributed to the killing of thousands in Myanmar. So there’s that.
The current crop of populist politicians are benefiting far more from social media platforms than they are from cigarettes.
I might prefer Youtube-nocookie.
I did. I guess you have to be fan. I agreed there's an issue. I didn't agree with any of his suggested solutions.
> * The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement,
How would you change it? All media is powered by engagement. Look at the covers of most magazines at the checkout counter. They'll are covered in sensational titles.
> * Do social media companies bear responsibility for the negative impact their products have on society, in the same way that, say, car companies bear responsibility for faulty engines or airplane manufacturers bear responsibility for faulty plane designs?
That analogy breaks pretty quick it seems to me. If 15% of Ford drivers started running over children is that Ford's fault? I'd say no. So who's fault is it when my dad posts climate change is a lie posts on Facebook? It's my dad's fault.
I'm as worried as everyone else about how to deal with this but I'm having a hard time finding a cure that's not worse than symptoms. It's hard for me not to imagine too many false positives in targeting fake news. It would be interesting to make a quick site and have people judge what they'd take down. I suspect it would show in issue pretty quick. I'm also not sure how you couldn't get around it just by hedging. "Many scientists say X is false". Who decides what's "many"? It doesn't say "all". It doesn't say "most" or "a majority".
Let's take an example (i'm not taking a side here, only pointing out what I perceive as difficult).
Mr. Cohen mentioned getting some white middle America guy to profess his racism against muslims. Another POV might look at what Muslim's profess to want and think "No, if that's what they want then they are not welcome". Examples
> In South Asia, high percentages in all the countries surveyed support making sharia the official law, including nearly universal support among Muslims in Afghanistan (99%). More than eight-in-ten Muslims in Pakistan (84%) and Bangladesh (82%) also hold this view. The percentage of Muslims who say they favor making Islamic law the official law in their country is nearly as high across the Southeast Asian countries surveyed (86% in Malaysia, 77% in Thailand and 72% in Indonesia)
You can go through sharia law and find that you likely wouldn't agree with it.
I'm not trying to single out Islam or sharia here. Older Christian beliefs are just as bad. The difference is, at least at the moment, few Christians are actually calling for things like stoning your wife for various reason where as
> at least half of Muslims who favor making sharia the law of the land also favor stoning unfaithful spouses
Note, the point above is not to pick a side. I have no idea if those facts are correct. The point is Mr. Cohen seemed to be saying bring up topic like that should be banned because it's racist against Muslims. It's arguable there's more to it. It should be discussable but of someone says "The majority of muslims want to stone adulterous women and force them to hide their faces and bodies therefore I don't want them here" who decides if that's a racist statement or a prudent one given certain data?
https://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-relig...
I have muslim friends and they're great and seem mostly tolerant but I get an ear full from my non-Muslim Malaysian friends about all the ways the law in Malaysia favors Muslims over non-Muslims. The point being there's an arguably valid POV to be worried about the influence of a lot of people coming into your neighborhood with those beliefs.
Sure they are, but a magazine is liable for what he does, both from a social stand point, but also a legal one.
We all have a similar power as theses magazines through social media, but Facebook promote the worst kinds because they are the most sensational ones. If something wrong come outs of its, they just push the responsibility to the one that made the post/ads. A magazine can't do that, because they still chose to publish it nonetheless.
> If 15% of Ford drivers started running over children is that Ford's fault?
I'm pretty sure that would certainly trigger some kinds of major investigation which would certainly affect Ford itself. There's no way there wouldn't be any kind of regulation added on Ford cars in that case.
> The difference is, at least at the moment, few Christians are actually calling for things like stoning your wife for various reason where as
Why do you think that happens? Is it because we hated Christians for theses older beliefs or because we hated theses older beliefs? It's pretty hard to make someone change his whole belief at once, I'm pretty sure it's actually impossible. What you can do though, is to change the issues that come from that belief and for that, you need to accept him to be able to interact with him in a civil manners.
> The majority of muslims want to stone adulterous women and force them to hide their faces and bodies therefore I don't want them here
The issue is with the end of that sentence. them is the muslims or the majority? The thing is, most people is saying the former, which is the racist part of it. Condemn the wrong behavior, that's fine, but don't put everyone in the same bucket.
I find it funny that you believe that Ford shouldn't be liable for belief of others, but you certainly believe that if it's a Muslim.
Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.
There is such a thing as objective truth.
They could fix these problems, if they wanted to.
Half of the arguments I see that are pro private-platform censorship revolve around the idea that "private businesses can censor who they want." Fine, that's fair. If you believe that, then also you shouldn't have any problem with a public space online being uncensorable. But pro-censorship people will have a problem, because that's the true issue, isn't it? What they really want to stop is the spreading of ideas that they cannot control. People arguing for pro-censorship under the facade of supporting the rights of private businesses are only doing it because it's a convenient tool. Take that out of the equation and you'll see that it's not about the rights of private businesses at all. But we need that public space online and we need it fast.
It's really a shame, from the perspective of someone who seriously does not care what others speak.
It's like most people lack the ability to simply ignore what they find distasteful. They instead feel compelled to destroy it.
These tendencies are at the core of our current online reality. It's a scary world out there!
I'm sorry but I can't help to think that you're only able to speak from this perspective if you were never threatened. Of course I care if someone says all Jews should be killed, because I know the next day someone might actually try to kill me and my children. It's a simple as that. My inner organs shake when I see something like that online because I know some people do actually take it seriously. I'm happy for you that you don't have to worry about this, but history shows that certain words are not only distasteful, they are dangerous.
If we're really talking about "most" people? As in, the majority? Then the fact is, they do believe in free speech. It's just that they don't care about free speech. At all. Whether they agree with it or are interested in it or any other thing means absolutely nothing to them because they feel they have more important things to do.
Let me give you a fairly realistic for instance of what the great unwashed masses think about free speech when compared to even something trivial like college football:
Member of great unwashed mass: "What the hell is this f'in free speech debate doing on my tv when LSU is about to play Georgia!?!?!?!"
Young, idealistic, activist: "Well, um, I thought maybe everyone would like to see how their rights are being eroded by increasingly powerful concentrations of industrial and technological weal..."
Member of great unwashed mass: "Shut the F up!!! Put the Ohio State/Wisconsin game back on so I can catch the last little bit of that before LSU/Georgia kicks dick head!"
This is what we're fighting against, and we need to be far more realistic about how powerful apathy is in shaping policy. At least in the US.
I don't think that's really it.
First, I will say that I'm not wholly decided on the issue. I think free speech is important, but I also think there are reasonable limitations on that freedom (as with any freedom).
I actively encourage debate. I truly enjoy hearing other people's perspectives and considering things from opposing views. I often find myself changing positions on things because I realize I hadn't thought about an issue in a particular way before. People like me are not so rare, I think (so long as you approach the discussion politely and with manners).
But I believe Facebook (to pick one example) is problematic. That they don't vet political advertisements prior to running them is problematic. That they experiment on people's psyches by manipulating their news feeds is also problematic. That they encourage the formation of echo chambers (for all people) is — you guessed it — problematic. These factors have contributed to an atmosphere of hostility and a lessened desire to listen to opposing view points. People want to hear from other people who think like them, and that's exactly what they get. It radicalizes people (to use a perhaps slightly dramatic term) by exposing them only to notions with which they already agree.
Now getting back to the part of your comment that I quoted.
I do not lack the ability to ignore things I find "distasteful". I ignore Alex Jones and all his conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook. I ignore Flat Earthers, and 911 conspiracists, and other people like them. Interacting with them is not worth my time, and reading their positions never leaves me feeling more enlightened than before I went in.
But I am privileged to not be subjected to some of the things that others are.
To pick another specific example: semi-recent discourse online has contributed to an atmosphere of hostility towards non-white people (at least here in the US where I am). This has real consequences for such people. They find themselves subjected to everything from mild harassment to actual murder.
Suggesting that they should just "ignore" things online which are "distasteful" in this manner is 100% missing the forest for the trees. There is a problem with the fact that people that are violently racist (and I mean "violent" literally) are able to organize and find a platform in the same space as other people. This creates a culture that is unwelcoming and dangerous in a very real sense.
I do believe there is a need for some form of regulation, not because I am unable to ignore things that I do not agree with, but because there are groups of people who must be deprived of their platforms for the benefit of the physical and emotional well-being of others. I do not want everything to be sugar-coated or covered in bubble-wrap, but I do want public platforms to be devoid of open hostility. I don't think that's so much to ask.
Because sometimes it really is about the children.
Could I post as much as I want? Do bots that I authored, posting on my behalf, count as my own speech? What if I effectively DDoS the system, will I be censored then? Preventing DDoS is essentially censorship, even though the DDoS is also essentially censorship of others by preventing them from being heard at all. It’s like the paradox of tolerance.
It reminds me of a “free speech wall” in a city I used to live in. At some point all writing on that wall becomes unreadable due to volume. It was also regularly wiped clean.
With FB we’re talking about psychological DDoS of truth, instead of infrastructural DDoS of information.
No.
We need people to say whatever they like, and we need the government to prevent anyone from silencing them by force, potentially meaning we need the government to prevent domination of media.
This is a real question. This is not a thing that has existed in the past; why is it necessary that it exist now? If you look back to the founding of the US, political discourse was done frequently through pamphlets. The government didn't provide some "uncensored" pamphlet distribution service, and I find it unlikely that print shops of the time did not occasional reject orders that they didn't like.
(Source: a memory of a comparative politics lecture in college, where the professor used it as an example of what’s written and what’s implemented being sometimes a little different...)
I'm completely against that.
The last thing we need is the government to step in and say, "This is our brand new Free Speech site! Come on in to post whatever you like and pay no attention to the lady in the blue FBI windbreaker behind the curtain."
Such a site could trap many an unfortunate idealist who actually believed they could put whatever they wanted on that site. To me free speech is, you can put whatever you want up, and the government can't stop you in any way. Including potentially, you putting the information up there completely anonymously.
A government controlled space will not allow that.
Here, your view "to provide a free speech public platform" is under attack because such platforms would give people freedom and power. We are about to separate people from freedom. So-called "white" people will go first (they still have some power), the others will follow. Technological evolution is brutal.
The banning of child pornography is legally sanctioned censorship. The legal argument being that the content is "Child Abuse Material" (CAM), which is audio-video evidence of a crime, which in that legal argument is not protected free-speech.
Obviously child pornography is horrible and should NOT be permitted to be spread due to a variety of negative consequences associated with it, namely for the victims involved. I am highlighting that censorship is a tricky issue.
That said, political speech should always be permitted in the public sphere, even if what is being advocated for is horrific. I believe in allowing people to make complete fools of themselves ("give them a long enough rope"). Sure, Neo-Nazis might gain a few followers by allowing them to stomp around the streets, but I'd wager that 95% of the people who see them immediately classify them as complete assholes and fucking degenerates.
While I'm not a fan of folks being "doxxed" online for holding dumb-ass views, I do have a mental line where if you are actively meeting and assembling physically to advance immoral and un-American causes, I think you should be prepared to stand behind your association with said movement under your real identity. And that will have an impact on your friends, family, employment, social standing, etc.
That is not a bug, that is a feature. It creates self-harmonizing communities where horrible behavior (actions) has social consequences, especially when the viewpoints or behaviors are not actually illegal, but still equally shitty.
Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.
Freedom of speech. Duty of thinking.Yes, you can go to a group of people and get them to sing anti-semitic songs, just as you can bluster them with an unlabeled map or have them fall prey to trivial parlor magic. That's a terrible basis for attacking basic human rights on.
He calls the openness of platforms a defect, and he would like to censor every single word before it is public - that is not freedom, it is authoritarianism.
I suspect he believes that most people are dumb sheep - this is after all how he made his money - and he sees himself as protecting the poor sheep. He believes that because his intent is just, his actions are just - that the end justifies the means. He is the most dangerous kind of strongman: the self-righteous kind.
Kind of like Eminem and Michael Vick, it'll probably work.
And... it makes sense. Can you imagine if his movie portrayed a ridiculous caricature of a Jewish person, the way he portrayed a ridiculous caricature of a gay man ten years ago, today?
So yes. I can imagine such a movie today. And it would be funny as hell.
Wait! Actually this already exists as a TV show, it’s called I Am America and Cohen frequently portrays a caricature of a Jewish Mossad agent.
Edit: misspelling.
Cohen isn't a surrealist who is using a medium to convey the depth of life, he's just a comedian with an editing team.
Just like Bill Hicks, he's a political comedian that reveals hard to stomach truths. Unlike Bill Hicks who creates an abstract persona (of a particular kind of bigot, etc.) and then critiques it, Cohen astonishingly shows you a concrete instance.
Cheney autographed a milk jug he was convinced was used for waterboarding. Saying a joke about this on stage would be pretty funny, but Cheney himself autographed a waterboarding milk jug on camera and lamented about how much it would be worth as a collectors item.
He never said that. He said that a publishing delay just enough to filter out potential illegal content (snuff, hate speech are illegal under US law) would benefit the society overall.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.A.V._v._City_of_St._Paul
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_St...
False - explained by a 1st Amendment lawyer: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-white-first-amen...
If you have 2 opposing views, and one is delayed long enough, you've effectively censored it, in favor of the other.
Which is exactly what's going to happen. Once the dissenting view "passes filter", the news cycle is over, the unfiltered view remains in everyone's retinas, the filtered one ignored, despite any merits it may have.
This is just preparing the field for stronger, more arbitrary censorship.
SBC's argument is self-contradictory. On the one hand, he paints tech companies as greedy, untrustworthy, and arguably evil. At the same time, he feels that these companies should be trusted to regulate speech to a degree beyond what they already are doing. (In his example, through regulatory force telling them to do so.)
In general, he wants the end (no "bad" speech) but doesn't provide a clear picture of the means to get there. This is common.
The argument against companies regulating more speech is that people who are not Nazis will be caught in the crossfire, and that will lead to unintended consequences. In his speech, SBC admits as much, citing Twitter's claim that algorithmic regulation of speech would result in de-platforming politicians. SBC claims that this may not be a bad thing. This illustrates the problem: SBC like many others are perfectly fine with people being de-platformed not just for true hate speech, but for speech they disagree with, because it is algorithmically similar to hate speech. This is the crux of the issue, and it's at least good for someone to admit it: typically proponents of centralized speech regulation pretend like the issue of false positives doesn't exist. Such false positives will result in law-abiding citizens being de-platformed, and that is unacceptable to many.
To whatever degree that strategy is taken, you can bet your money on these companies losing their power to decentralized platforms. If it's no longer possible to post on social media without a reasonable risk that your words will get nuked because of being mis-flagged (and your reputation unjustly soiled) -- people will move elsewhere. The irony will be that the net effect will be way worse than today: completely unmoderated, unregulated speech with global reach. (this is probably inevitable for a variety of reasons, but this current dynamic probably accelerates it.)
edit: appreciate the downvotes, feel free to check back here in 10 years when facebook + twitter are no longer serious platforms because they're policed by over-zealous, government-mandated moderators, and anyone posting anything interesting is on a decentralized platform or some new centralized platform which has yet to be put under public scrutiny.
The MPAA example is a perfect and very clear example. Lots of publishers have gone through the same thing: regulate yourself or be regulated by the people.
> The irony will be that the net effect will be way worse than today: completely unmoderated, unregulated speech with global reach.
I certainly don't see unregulated speech on decentralised platforms with global reach as a bad thing. Indeed, I see it as the goal. And as to moderation (which can be a good thing), that can be applied by a third party of the user's choosing, without requiring regulation or policing i.e. everyone gets to say whatever they like and you can look at it raw or you can choose what subset you see determined by a moderator of your (not the government's, nor the hosting platform's) choice.
My extended interpretation: he feels that, if we are going to tolerate them, we should at least require them to dampen the worst of the ill effects they have on society. If, in doing so, they lose presence and that leads them to wither and die, too bad^W^Wthat's ok.
My love for the Web and freedom of discussion and how it would free us from the powers of authority. This was me imagining the future of information in the early 2000s.
I'm thinking this may very well be a lie: as Sasha so eloquently and comedically touches several points about how these social media giants (Facebook, Twitter etc) have developed algorithms to satisfy our most basic "monkey brain" instincts: we want information that is agreeable.
The comparison he made with "fake scientists" on the internet getting more attention than nobel prize winners really hit me hard.
The issue seems to be that with the internet we got rid of authority, but another type of hierarchy grew out of this: algorithm hierarchy. Where we don't have authorities in charge of giving us information, rather we have algorithms.
An obvious solution to this (from a programmer's point of view) would be to allow users to freely and openly (through an open source kind of movement) change these algorithms to fit their needs. For instance I want information that is "not biased" and I can quickly get the "non biased algorithm" from github (as an example) and plug it into my social media. If I want information from academica I would get the "academia algorithm" and plug in. And so on.
I don't know how something like this can help, but it seems we may need to stop thinking in terms of social media companies being the problem; it's the fact that we can't change these algorithms that is the problem.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7...
my fear of everything being decided by algorithms that exist to please us, is us being trapped in the past and creativity being extinguished. if netflix makes shows based on what it knows will be popular, what happens to visionaries that have an idea nobody else can comprehend. risk, exploration, adventure, new, is replaced by nostalgia, familiarity, comfort.
we can debate fighting google and facebook, or we can come up with a "Human Best Practices" behavior guide for how to best consume content, and spread it. There will always be temptation, moderation is either taught or learned. If not facebook, there will be another mind drug to over indulge. Spend effort countering the concept of unlimited "picked-just-for-me feed" or "whats popular with everyone today" intake, not attacking this specific villain. We need new ways to surface and propagate novel, intelligent, thought provoking content, AND we need to teach people to resist human hedonistic urges and impulses, and offer social support and encouragement to deviate from consuming new and fresh news. Watching the news (on tv anyway) is, and shouldnt be, looked up to.
If I were making a tldr of guide v.01, it would start: "Supplant your facebook, google, and reddit intake with https://aldaily.com/ https://redef.com/ https://longform.org/ https://longreads.com/ "
and here i am now moving on to the next n.yc post.
After all, we do need comfort for sleep - so it could be .. maybe the role of BIG companies should be comfort focused.
Visionaries can still exist - we would only need to improve their discoverability and ensure they are not at risk of financial crisis as a result of going outside the line
I think there is inherent need for specialization to occur on digesting information and drawing conclusions from it. And when someone is good at it, we should want them to leverage other people parroting what they say to help signal boost
Sasha's idea of delaying the spread of information via a timer is very interesting. It can get people a chance to second guess their posts and also give a chance for something in-between to publish or not. If every retweet was delayed then the network spread slows down a lot which might have really interesting consequences.
But ultimately I believe the problem we have is we have chosen the mall over the public park.
You have to buy and maintain your own server and pay for uptime. That all costs a continued stream of knowledge and money and it’s very hard. Maybe not for you and I, but for many other people.
Perhaps a better way to attack this is to allow them to continue, but break them up - ie, mandate competition, and admit that monopolies in markets like search and social media (not to mention specific segments of advertising) are as dangerous as monopolies in operating systems or telephone services.
Before this, he "bent the knee" with his portrayal of Eli Cohen. Wasn't a terrible film but his reverence for the character was a bit much.
FB is a dumpster fire, I don't think anyone argues otherwise these days. But differentiating between freedom of speech and "reach" is just as dangerous as saying we need to treat freedom of speech on a case by case basis.
We either have freedom of speech or we don't. If we don't, sooner or later we're all fucked.
There are no sounds that I can make with my mouth that are dangerous. If people are easily convinced to hate other people, the problem is not dangerous speech or ideas. The problem is a breakdown in fundamental education, i.e., those people are dangerously ignorant.
We need to work on the fundamental issues, not grant more power to groups with specific political / authoritarian agendas.
Shouting fire in a crowded theatre that could lead to a stampede that puts people in danger. Deliberately misinforming people about the risk of an action they are about to take could be too.
Point is, this exact argument could be (and has been) used to justify some pretty bad ideas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Now open your mouth and make the sounds "education is bad, our young people are being corrupted by an educational elite that is destroying America".
Thank god those sounds aren't dangerous.
We can cope with people saying stupid things. It happens regularly.
In my opinion, prohibition of symbols, under the premise that they're subversive, like the Nazi ones, is one of the biggest cultural blunders of our time. It castrates entire generations of the possibility to experience the difference between ideas and their effect on us. It is ceding to the symbols, saying "you have power over us, with which we cannot come to terms with, the only thing we can do is prohibit your use".
The seeming culture-wide inability to discuss politics, religion or other dividing topics in a constructive way is part of the same phenomenon, in my view.
If we mute people talking about races and skin color, prohibit to single out minorities, do we actually relieve the pressure in the society, or help build it up to a radical level and fuel even more hatred that way?
If Facebook would just stop manipulating and selling your attention it would have a better defense against calls to filter the content on it.
Bad ideas spread through exposure.
If speech can effect change, how can you be sure it is incapable of being dangerous?
This might just be revealing a lack of imagination on your part. I'd argue the opposite: there are sounds you can make with your mouth that can change the course of history.
Which dovetails perfectly with the intent of the OP... police just as much, or arguably even more, than every other person, need to think about what they here and not just knee jerk respond.
So you're arguing that Osama Bin Laden, who did not himself commit violent acts but merely persuaded others to do so, was in fact not dangerous?
(Agree with your other points.)
So Facebook, a site used by hundreds of millions of people, is fine because... you don't see any propaganda?
I don't think so.
> those people are dangerously ignorant.
I think that is a gross oversimplification.
Much of the repulsive vile speech, such as hate speech, is generally festered among a group bouncing their ideas off each other. You may or may not label such groups as echo chambers. Part of the reason for this is that many people find comfort organizing into groups and generally fear/distrust originality. In other words many people value conformance more than the message to which they are conforming because an idea or message gains credibility the less original it appears and because there is security in numbers.
Mild changes of technology will not instantaneously cure original hateful speech any more than it will instantaneously modify behavior in advance or increased originality or critical thinking. It can, however, vastly alter the reach of that speech allowing vile ideas to proliferate or be constrained to faithful believers.
The balance there is if you modify technology to open wider reach then all speech, including vile hate speech and conspiracy theories, are widely available. If you modify technology to restrict reach then all speech is restricted including objective research and educational material.
My personal solution is to just avoid the online swamps where people congregate merely for the point of gathering and try not to worry about the loud volume of amplified stupidity that leaks out. When the stupidity confronts me in the real world I respond as directly as I can without regard for making people feel stupid or embarrassed, because I generally presume when people bring the full force of unoriginal ideas to me conversationally they do so in a quest to solve their personal insecurities. Don't waste time with stupid.
But in the current environment noise and distraction is incentivized and amplified and that makes things like education even more complicated and time consuming.
With reeducation camps reappearing in parts of the world and sensitivity, bias and other types of training in other parts ... that makes me somewhat uncomfortable as idea. The ones in power always want to educate the wrongthinkers.
And judging how easily Democrats learned to hate everything Trump related and before them Republicans - everything Obama, and hating each other - I would say that it is not a problem with education. People hate because it is fun and pleasurable.
The problem we have these days is it's become impossible for the casual observer to separate fact from fiction. Which then just encourages people to take information spread within their own echo chamber at face value (since, rightly or wrongly, that's the network they trust). If we can at least remove the falsehoods from the conversation that is a step forward in having open debates.
Someone will no doubt point out that there's a fuzzy line between a lie and something that is true but intentionally misleading, so where do you draw the line. Unfortunately there's no easy answer to that. However I personally believe things have gotten bad enough where it's now worth the trying.
What exactly has Cohen ever said that's anti-Semitic? The racism in his work, like Borat, is satire. If anything, he should've offended Kazakhs by implying they ignorantly hate Jews.
> There are no sounds that I can make with my mouth that are dangerous. If people are easily convinced to hate other people, the problem is not dangerous speech or ideas. The problem is a breakdown in fundamental education, i.e., those people are dangerously ignorant.
OK, so let's say we agree that the fundamental problem is lack of education. That's great in theory, but that doesn't solve a problem today.
There are societies where unfettered lies about groups caused genocides. You can lament the poor education that contributed, but that doesn't change the fact that it can happen again.
The real issues are that lies are much harder to undo than they are to create; that many people are resource-poor, under-educated, and susceptible to lies; and that we have a biological tendency toward out-group violence that requires a thick layer of socialization to counteract.
Nothing FB is doing is threatening speech in the US. If you want them to have less power over the broadcast of speech, I'm on your side, and I'll be voting for people who want to break them up and decrease Zuckerberg's power.
This coming from the guy who played Borat and Bruno- it was ok when he did it, because he is on the right side of history you see.
Can you explain this? I dont know what censorship ability the ADL has on Google and Twitter?
>Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft, among others, are joining with the ADL to form a Cyberhate Problem-Solving Lab, the companies and the civil rights group said Tuesday. They'll exchange ideas and develop strategies to try to curb hate speech and abuse on the companies' various platforms and across the internet.
>"These companies have an added responsibility to do everything within their power to stop hate from flourishing on their watch," ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. "We look forward to tackling this pressing challenge together."
Most media outlets are propaganda machines, full of white lies. The problem many have with facebook is there's no longer a high barrier to entry to control people's opinions.
You should be opposed to this even if you believe strongly in the marketplace of ideas, because one of the bedrock principles of the marketplace of ideas is that people can fight false claims by responding to them. But if they aren't aware those false claims even exist because Facebook is secretly only showing them to targeted subsets, that assumption is broken.
This doesn't even get into the number of blog-style news orgs out there. And it's coming from all sides, and really hard sometimes to tell what is, and isn't actually truthful. I'm not sure I can expect FB/Twitter to be able to handle it on an even larger scale.
Everyone is in their bubbles and it's pretty toxic in a lot of ways. And I'm not sure I could even begin to suggest a way out...
I've been trying to convince people to take the week of Christmas off social media (5-9 days, depending on weekends) ... and no traction at all. I don't have a large follower base.
I can't believe people WANT Facebook to ascertain the veracity of political ads. How do you do that? How does Facebook look at an ad for something like the recently proposed 'Green New Deal' and apply a truth value to it? And if they do 'allow' it, now it's an implicit statement of support for the position (the way Twitter's blue-check marks are a de facto mark of some kind of recognition by Twitter) and if they disallow it, it's not.
In it, SBC includes the basic point that Facebook and similar are publishing companies. As such, they should "abide by basic standards and practices just like newspapers, magazines, and tv news do every day".
This issue is not about opinion, omissions, or so called "white lies". It is about outright falsehoods, many of which are detailed in this speech. SBC himself in this speech includes an anecdote where he himself replicated his own version of the Milgram experiment; he convinced someone that antifa were attempting to induce spontaneous sex changes in babies at a protest. He gave this person fake devices which he was told would kill these people, and the person in fact went off and used them as instructed; that is, he willfully murdered three people as far as he was aware. (found a link describing this: https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/403743-sac...)
this is not about dissatisfaction with the various biases of the news media, this is about weaponized propaganda. There is a difference, and these companies have more than enough resources to successfully tell the difference.
> Twitter could deploy an algorithm to remove more white supremacist hate-speech, but they have reportedly haven't because it would eject some very prominent politicians from their platform.
> Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.
While I appreciate the sentiment behind a lot of Baron Cohen's speech, and generally distrust Facebook, the idea of having what can be said on the platform regulated either by algorithms or by a large number of monitors does sound to me like a step too far. An algorithm that ejects prominent politicians is political censorship—that should not be OK.
It seems to me that misinformation should be fought with information, not censorship. Steps that are already being enacted, like “reduc[ing] the distribution of that content” and adding fact checking annotations to incorrect information, seems to do much of the same good while not also shifting the overton window towards Ministry of Truth roles for our already-too-powerful tech companies.
That's not working. The New York Times, Washington Post, testimony from state department officials, climate scientists, etc etc etc etc etc
etc etc
etc etcetcetctectetc
hasn't gotten through to this country. Believing that "truth wins in a marketplace of ideas" relies on
a) people caring about the truth above all else, including their emotions
b) people having access to the truth
c) people being able to tell truth from fiction
The counter-point to these is the entirety of human history.
We have built technology that has hacked human nature for profit.
Sugary and fatty foods overwhelm our capacity to differentiate food that is good from food that is good for us.
Heroin creates tremendous addiction that is, for most people, entirely unbreakable.
Social media has consumed a generation with performative outrage, diminishing attention spans, and hyper-targeted misinformation.
The mortgage crisis was triggered by people buying homes on financial terms that they did not understand, which would have worked out only in an impossible scenario where home prices never go down, interest rates sit at near-zero, and their income continues to go up.
It might be time to admit that "just give people options and they'll make the right choice" is bullshit. It doesn't work. People aren't rational creatures with infinite will.
This isn't an argument between the Ministry of Truth and infinite freedom. Even the 1st Amendment—which doesn't apply here—has limitations, because we live in a society and some lies can get people killed.
It's not as hard as people make it out to be to take incremental steps towards quelling humanity's worst impulses. We can do this.
I'm not of the opinion that reduced visibility and annotations will solve the problem. I just don't trust people like the above to know where the slope is, and so I don't trust them with tools for censorship.
Probably a few perfectly fine posts would be deleted. But the amount of hate speech and manipulation in social platforms is way too much and it is an annoyance.
And is evidence that the _algorithms aren’t working correctly_. They’re supposed to pinpoint indisputably hateful rhetoric and if they’re producing significant false positives then yes, Mr. Cohen, that _is_ a bad thing. A _very_ bad thing.
Do you think ISIS and Al Qaeda should have broader reach?
I don’t buy that. They either are ignorant (which is fine, until the point they become aware of it–I really doubt many people at FB are ignorant of the social issues it brings up), or they inevitably are aware and have rationalized why it is or is not an issue.
I’m not saying it is FB’s absolute responsibility. I’m saying it is the responsibility of each individual who works there. There’s a difference. Corporations are not people, the people in them are what make possible the goods or evils the corporations use to make money and thrive.
The pen is mightier than the sword. Social media is mightier than the atom bomb. People need to act accordingly. Morals are the impetus of action so I’d say they are highly relevant.
The first seems to be pretty much the definition of "amoral".
"Lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something."
Sometimes the truth is inflammatory.
I think it's hard to argue at this point that Facebook is not a force for evil in the world. Engineers spending their productive years to further this evil company should feel some shame.
Bronn then answers "Without question? No. I'd ask how much."
It is now time to review the Communications Decency Act and perhaps take back some of its provisions based on what we have learned in the last 23 years. Sacha Baron Cohen is right, social media companies should be held to the same decency standards as traditional publishers.
From my perspective, your last sentence perfectly describes the prior. The most prominent purveyor of “fake news” is, by far, the major networks themselves. Hate speech has never been less unbridled, and terrorist propaganda never had anything to do with the CDA.
When a magical cure company makes false claims about the efficacy of their products, you sue the company, not the newpaper who printed the ad.
Why do people want to give the authority to Facebook to decide whether an ad is within the acceptable range? That's what laws and courts are for.
I tend the think the source of the lie is the thing that should be attacked. Who has the most responsibility here: the advertiser for lying, the network for showing the lie, the ISP for delivering the content with a lie, the laptop for displaying the lie?
I'm so tired of libertarian fairy tales.
Facebook’s entire argument, until recently, is that they aren’t a publisher.
For TV “The FCC has primary responsibility for determining whether specific advertising is false or misleading, and for taking action against the sponsors of such material.”
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/complaints-about-broadc...
And the Federal Trade Commission... “When consumers see or hear an advertisement, whether it’s on the Internet, radio or television, or anywhere else, federal law says that ad must be truthful, not misleading, and, when appropriate, backed by scientific evidence.”
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advert...
The reason we hear about magical cures in spam email & telemarketing is precisely because publishers are held accountable for what they publish & don’t allow those ads in newspapers, magazines, or on TV.
No. In newspapers and billboards there are human beings involved who have sense enough to make sure things like this don't happen (thought there are cases where bosses will override common sense).
For Google and Facebook, everything is automated so there is zero accountability by design. And when something goes wrong, SV companies point fingers at algorithms and put out pithy press releases saying, "We can do better" but things only seem to get worse.
Not true, there are laws that govern what can and cannot be advertised, and how. The reason cigarette companies don't publish TV or print ads is because the government made it illegal to do so. Publishers would face legal action for running illegal ads.
> Why do people want to give the authority to Facebook to decide whether an ad is within the acceptable range?
They already have this authority, and they choose again and again to exercise zero discretion. The fact that we're arguing over whether or not FB should have the right to choose whether or not to run these types of ads is so absurd.
Do they currently not hold such power?
“I think we could all agree that we should not be giving bigots and paedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims.”
To me that's a good way of looking at it. Censorship will bring nothing positive, regardless of much we may dislike the words being said. However, we don't need to provide the those with opinions we disagree with a platform to utter those words.
Of cause Facebook is free to provide a platform to who ever they want, assuming wish to be associated with those messages.
I'm also completely fascinated by the speed of which Facebook will take down a picture of naked breasts, but they can't screen the ads being run on their site.
I realize that the major difference is how easy it is for someone to have an audience on FB/Twitter vs. Running their own blog. But there’s no real barrier to someone we might not agree with to build that audience outside those platforms too.
I'd like to call Occam's Razor, but, then, when has it become that the most selfish interpretation of an organization's motivations is the simplest one? Maybe it's simple simply because it aligns with my beliefs. Something to ponder.
"Freedom of speech" is the new mantra you have to repeat if you want Americans to stop thinking about a problem.
How self-serving they are when the criticism comes from all directions and they take no risks in joining the chorus.
How conveniently they point their finger to the to the west when a bit further to the east they’d rather the world’s gaze not firm into a stare and a squint.
However, as long as we are free to speak to each other about our differences of opinion, we can avert catastrophe and build a diverse, and therefore stronger, civilisation.
Those who would lecture the masses on what is and isn't free speech, don't seem to be getting the point. Words, in and of themselves, never kill.
A world-wide, sudden enlightenment at the hands of celebrity figures in an attempt to create a godhead may .. or may not .. be the kind of solution to collective destruction .. we should be celebrating.
There seems to be this underlying assumption that nationalism, paleoconservatism and various commonly-held views that are wrongly called "fascism" are actually things people want to hear, and if we allow them the same access to services as any other views, their popularity will overturn this entire neoliberal scheme that's being artificially propped up by organizations like the ADL rooting out free speech in every area they can legally do so. I sort of agree - this entire project would fail without censorship.
And, if as Baron Cohen implies, we're really just a bunch of stupid hateful beasts always primed to commit another Holocaust as soon as the boot is off our neck, well...then we've got deeper problems in our society than a lack of social media censorship.
Whataboutism at its best from you.
"This is ideological imperialism. Six unelected individuals in silicon valley imposing their vision on the rest of the world, unaccountable to any government..."
"Now here's an idea, instead of letting the silicon six decide the fate of the world, let our elected representatives voted for by the people of every democracy of the world have at least some say..."
Democracy is a political system, not a system of rational inquiry. It can not establish facts, outside of voting statistics. Dressing up censorship with the pretenses of democracy is nothing more than appealing to the tyranny of the masses. Democracy as we know it requires a free and open forum for discussion.
The trend towards 'fact checking' disappoints me. Individuals must be capable of processing and consuming information without authoritarian hand-holding. To pessimistically dismiss this possibility is to refute the premises of democracy. It baffles me how proponents of censorship feel that they can have it both ways here.
Furthermore, the underlying philosophy of fact-checking dismisses the fallible nature of man. Information is constantly emerging. The horizon is contentious by definition. What would fact checkers have said to Copernicus? That a scientific consensus has already been formed?
The popular view that we have somehow escaped these human limitations is nothing more than special pleading: "This time is different. This is the age of reason and science. Dogma is dead."
This time is not different. Progress will continue to unfold and regressive ideologies will continue to limit us. On the historical scale we are becoming more tolerant. One has to wonder if the pessimistic view which highlights hatred is accurate.
Is it a meaningful assertion to say that you are intolerant of intolerance? Should we applaud this as noble? Perhaps a more rational inquiry would be to ask who would benefit from the proposed censorship and fact-checking regime.
Was that his original intent or is that a retcon? Maybe I was too young to "get it" at the time, but I watched the original Da Ali G Show when it came out and don't really remember that being the point. Maybe if Ali G asked legitimate questions despite his low-status dress/speech mannerisms you'd have a point, but the character was actually incredibly stupid.
George Carlin is a pretty impressive example of a comedian affecting meaningful change, or at least forcing a legal confrontation, though probably not in the way he wanted [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_v._Pacifica_Foundation
Suggesting that companies - remember Zuckerberg is ethnically Jewish, Pichai is a migrant, Brin is a migrant, Page is ethnically Jewish - want to do nothing is bizarre (and, again, somewhat conspiratorial). These companies pay almost no regard to shareholder value (again, this is a conspiratorial point). The issue is that it is hard to know how to generalise.
To be honest, I don't think anyone has a good grip on this topic. It is certainly true that political parties have always been allowed to make inflammatory adverts (and sorry, but it is both sides here). And if you believe anti-semetic propaganda, is a Facebook post really the thing that puts you over the edge? Or is it just the thing that we can now observe.
A similar point is that celebrities today often complain about the abuse they get on social media...but these people have always been there, and some people won't like you regardless of what you do. That is part of having a public profile. I have heard minor celebrities recommending that social media gets shuts down because someone tweeted at them that they found their voice annoying...everyone hears this kind of stuff in life. It is normal.
I don't know what the solution is but we are still clearly quite a long way from the point where a solution emerges.
In fact, I suspect that this persistent campaign against "new media" is nothing more than a turf war, waged as it were by the losers.
Good riddance to the self-appointed gatekeepers. It's no surprise this speech is sponsored by the ADL. They are probably good allies with racist MSNBC, lying NYTimes etc.
Which is, I guess, probably true, but man is that a weak way to justify contributing to an atrocity.
In a system that permits free speech, the solution to bad speech is good speech, not controlled speech.
"Select is not broken" in the parlance of Pragmatic Programmer.
Why is that bad?
"free speech" is not curtailed when Facebook disallows hate groups from reaching one third of the planet. These groups may have all the "speech" they want but global media platforms need not facilitate them.
Social media merely enable our worst to come out. But it doesn't cause it.
The solution is not censorship. But to somehow make it so that people see through the bullshit. but how!?
It's handing out copies of what you wrote to potentially countless people.
Should someone in 1938 advocating launching war against Germany after they invaded tchekosloviakia and calling chamberlain a coward be censored as promoting « hate speech » ?
Facebook has put profit & self-interest over ethics. They have taken a step-back, reflected, and fully embraced the damage they have caused, are causing, and will continue to cause.
Some of this is reactionary. Zuckerberg feels that "the left" (as if there is one, unified left) has gone to war against him (via his company). Front-runner 2020 candidates like Warren and Sanders are explicitly stating they will examine regulation & oversight legislation to reel in some companies behaviors. His concern may be legitimate, however his reaction is childlike.
Zuckerberg is now taking private dinners with the current POTUS, probably to curry policy favor even though there will be inevitable strings attached (as is always the case). It also means he now has a stake in a "side" of the US body politic and so his actions will move in the direction of support for that side.
Attempting to curry policy favor isn't new, is has happened, does happen, and will happen. That being said, Zuck's newfound eagerness to spread misinformation via the power of his platform is eyebrow-raising.
I would argue that this lack of ethics will ultimately hurt both "sides" of the US political spectrum, it will just take longer for one "side" to feel it than the other.
Note: I use "sides" in quotes specifically because Americans are quite often divided into two opposing sides, even when there are many actual sides, interests, groups.
Facebook has put profit & self-interest over ethics. They have taken a step-back, reflected, and fully embraced the damage they have caused, are causing, and will continue to cause.
Some of this is reactionary. Zuckerberg feels that "the left" (as if there is one, unified left) has gone to war against him (via his company). Front-runner 2020 candidates like Warren and Sanders are explicitly stating they will examine regulation & oversight legislation to reel in some companies behaviors. His concern may be legitimate, however his reaction seems childlike and full of emotion.
Zuckerberg is now taking private dinners with the current POTUS, probably to curry policy favor even though there will be inevitable strings attached (as is always the case). It also means he now has a stake in a "side" of the US body politic and so his actions will move in the direction of support for that side.
Attempting to curry policy favor isn't new, is has happened, does happen, and will happen. That being said, Zuck's newfound eagerness to spread misinformation via the power of his platform is eyebrow-raising.
I would argue that this lack of ethics will ultimately hurt both "sides" of the US political spectrum, it will just take longer for one "side" to feel it than the other.
Note: I use "sides" in quotes specifically because Americans are quite often divided into two opposing sides, even when there are many actual sides, interests, groups.
Repulsive.
Moreover, who determined what is "banworthy"? This is dangerous territory. I agree with the sentiment of SBC's speech, but in reality, that's such a slippery slope into suppressing speech simply because somebody is going to dictate what penetrates the filters.
https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-commends-house-f...
This means that currently the ADL is already lobbying the American parliament and government to obstacle, possibly even outlaw, a political and human rights movement that goes against Israel's interests.
First off, there is a very strong axiom here that "the masses" are extremely malleable and incapable of critical thinking. So, just like with children, it's the responsibility of the "influencer" to control the audience "properly". This is a very strong axiom that, while I personally agree with it, I'm guessing most people wouldn't when presented explicitly. This axiom has far reaching consequences for Free Speech as Free Speech only works when personal responsibility is a given. This is a classic "you can't have it both ways" situation.
But assuming this axiom and its implications (that people are not 100% responsible for their actions), the next question is how much of the external responsibility does the metaphorical printing press have? Is it ok for my OS to allow me to type "kill jews"? Is it ok for your browser to render said text? Should Microsoft censor the content of Word documents so they can't be used to spread hate speech? (this is not so far fetched: Photoshop blocks attempts to edit images of money bills for fear of being a tool for counterfeiting) Is it ok for a CDN (like Cloudflare) to decline services to websites based on their content (like 8chan and Daily Stormer)? If yes, must they decline and actively police the content of all "19 million Internet properties that use Cloudflare's service"? Should Google not deliver emails based on their content? etc.
How much do we want Facebook/Twitter to bare responsibility for the content of users and advertisers and thus actively censor based on their own criteria? What should be this criteria be?
Here is where this line of doesn't work too well with what Baron Cohen is saying: Facebook/Twitter/etc are centralized publishers. He is arguing they are equivalent to Random House, NBC, or TIME. If a hate group owns its own printing press, it's not the press' fault because they are a publisher of the organization. But if Random House prints and publishes works of a fringe group, do you think there would be push back? Why are they giving this group legitimacy? It legitimizes them if they are published by the same entity as works of literature. Sacha is saying that by allowing hate groups and non-hate groups the same publishing capability, Facebook is legitimizing them.
Well, I guess that almost every ad-based model has it, as a core principle. Contemplate sentence "the best washing powder".
I would bet that most of the marketing is precisely about white lies. Every ad is a piece of propaganda, but business rather than a political option.
Frankly I'm not sure this would be effective because of the lawlessness of the internet and the ease of moving information, but it doesn't seem impossible either.
> The U.S. internet giant has collaborated with Beijing’s Tsinghua University since June 2018, when it launched a new AI research body, the Tsinghua University Institute for Artificial Intelligence (TUIFAI).
> Earlier that month, it was revealed that the university received significant funding from the Chinese military to work on a project aimed to advance the military’s AI capabilities.
> Google and Tsinghua The university announced the opening of the TUIFAI on June 28, 2018, during a joint Google–Tsinghua symposium held in Beijing.
> During the symposium, Tsinghua University also announced the appointment of Jeff Dean, head of Google AI, as a member of the computer science advisory committee at the university.
Remember, Tsinghua is a state university, run by the same government that is currently running concentration camps: https://www.businessinsider.com/muslim-woman-describes-horro...
> Sauytbay describes being forced to witness a gang rape while at the camp. A young woman, she says, was forced to disrobe after being forced to "confess" her sins in front of around 200 prisoners. The young woman was then raped by several police officers, Sauytbay said.
> "While they were raping her they checked to see how we were reacting. People who turned their head or closed their eyes, and those who looked angry or shocked, were taken away and we never saw them again."
1. https://www.theepochtimes.com/nervous-system-damage-from-the...
2. https://www.theepochtimes.com/space-aliens-live-quietly-amon...
I'm fully on board with Cohen, except that he doesn't go into enough detail about what Facebook is. Facebook is no longer a social network on which you can connect with friends and share your thoughts and aspects of your life. Facebook is an influence-amplification network where with enough money you may change the minds of hundreds of millions of people.
In other words it's ad targeting that when taken to its logical conclusion becomes the ultimate propaganda system.
- He admits he’s played a lot of characters, and he’s now playing his least favourite for the first time, Sasha Baron Cohen.
- He admits all the times he’s gotten people, many of which were important and intelligent, to side with him and his ideas while he’s in character.
- It would be a good comedy and satire to see an entity like the ADL rave and cheer for certain ideas. Then again, he admits some people might not find it funny.
Thank you Mr. Cohen, my new favourite character ;)
This speech is precisely an example of what it is exposing – clickbaits.
This TD article sums it up well i think: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191122/00412943432/sacha...
https://www.adl.org/news/article/sacha-baron-cohens-keynote-...
It's really disturbing that FB will run any political ad given the Russians are still f'ing with our elections.
if censorship is cool now, how about starting with the crass bullshit people like SBC beam into people's living rooms?
i'm willing to bet money that people will do a better job sorting fact from fiction when they're no longer immersed in hollywood stupidity 24x7.
You can't even choose to visit websites that are free from Google ads. They're too ubiquitous.
You have no choice as a consumer. There is no invisible hand that can hurt Google or Facebook now, which is why the breakup talk is important.
I don't know like you, but Hitler's 'final solution' seems to be fitting the violence bucked, so should be taken down. So at least the title is not right.
The solution is to educate others how to understand and process the sources of information they're getting/receiving; what's being said and not said. This applies to everything, not just "social media".
Wait a minute. Zuck, a Jew himself, is saying the Holocaust denier ads are okay-ish?
Edit: note that (1) paid ads are not free speech and (2) while you can say what you want, a commercial entity has no obligation to amplify your voice.
Here's some quotes of him that I believe illustate it really well.
> This is not about limiting anyone's free speech. This it about giving people including some of the most reprehensible people on Earth the biggest platform in history to reach the third of the planet.
This basically advocates for banning people off Facebook if they fall into a certain category deemed undesirable.
In a tightly connected world social networks like Facebook play increasingly important role in people's lives. More and more social live migrates there and losing access would have very significant career and social implications. In a way, you could compare modern day social networks to roads and highways, except privately owned. Imagine being "banned" from drinving on the road. Sure, you can still walk to some places, but so much opportunity would become unavailable to you just because travelling trivial distances is prohibitively expensive. In this sense, social networks become much closer to being a "utility" rather just a service one could choose to use or not to. I don't think this trend is going to slow down any time soon.
So, maybe losing access to Facebook is not 100% equal to limiting free speech, but it's quite close.
Again, maybe we could somehow limit the reach of information that has undesirable effect, but more on that futher...
> We're not asking these companies to determine the boundaries of free speech across society, we just want them to be responsible on their platforms.
Leaving the ambiguity of "be responsible" aside here, I think these platforms are quite representative of the society as a whole. Again, Facebook is not some elitist club, it's almost an utility being used across all of the society.
> Now if a neo-nazi comes into a restaurant and starts threatening all the customers and say he wants to kill jews, would the owner of the restaurant, a private business, be required to serve him an elegant eight-course meal? Of cource not. The restaurant owner has every legal right and moral obligation to kick this nazi out
This is a perfect example of false equivalence. SBC raves about the importance of Facebook, and then compares this situation to some private restaurant. Facebook is a more like a restaurant chain, available all over the world, that dominates the market to the point where none other restaurants are able to compete and are forced to shut down. If you're not welcome in Facebook-restaurant, you're not welcome in all restaurants. There's no other place you can go to to have a meal. This is a very important distinction imo.
> Six unelected individuals in Silicon Valley imposing their vision on the rest of the world, unaccountable to any government and acting like they're above the reach of law. It's like we're living in the Roman Empire and Mark Zeckenberg is Caesar.
Except it's the opposite. SBC critisizes people who refuse to become arbiters of what's acceptable and permissible on their platforms as "imposing their vision" and urges them to impose more control of their own vision on their platforms. This is a very clear contradiction.
Again, he calls Zuch unaccountable Ceasar for refusing to exercise his power to control.
> Now here's an idea. Instead of letting the Silicon Six decide the fate of the world, let our elected representatives, voted for by the people of every democracy in the world, have at least some say.
Multiple problems with this one.
Certain democracy in the world have elected Donald Trump. This individual has a known tendency to call any information not representing him in the best way possible "fake news". He, while not being terribly informed, has opinions on almost every subject and has would love to "have some say" in what Facebook should and should not allow to host and what Google/Youtube should show in its search results.
Having politicians control what is allowed in public discource is a terrible idea and I'm surprized SBC actually uttered this with a straight face and audience cheered. Have we all lost our minds?
> Objective facts do exist and if these internet companies really want to make a difference, they should hire enough monitors to actually monitor.
This is so naive and idealistic and impossible in real world with the current state of technology and failing to recognize it is a massive issue.
> Yes, drawing the line can be difficult, but here's what he's actually saying: removing those lies and conspiracies is just too expensive. These are the richest companies in the world, and they have the best engineers in the world. They can fix these problems if they wanted to.
Nobody has yet proposed a solution that is actually viable and not prohibitely expensive. It doesn't mean that the solution doesn't exist necessary, it just means that similar to traveling salesman problem, existing tech can't solve it at a large enough scale.
> Twitter could deploy an algoritm to remove more white supremacist hate speech, but they have reportedly haven't because it would eject some very prominent politicians...
Define "white supremacist" first. There's some fringe tankies on Twitter who consider Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters white supremacists. Whose definition of "white supremacy" should Twitter use here? Yours? Well, you're also one according to some.
It's easy to speculate on how Twitter could just do this or that when you forget that other people might have criteria that is significanly different from yours.
Twitter is already in some very interesting position where they're forced to remove tweets quoting established scientific facts in response to some crazed trans-activists because those are deemed hate-speeach (see https://twitter.com/louiecaruana/status/1186861368835788801)
Nobody can agree on what is or is not bigotry anymore, and forcing their hand here is hardly beneficial to anyone.
It's indicative of profound moral confusion that we're talking about Alex Jones for some reason instead.
Are you unaware of what the US is doing to asylum-seekers at the US-Mexico border?
However, my understanding is that the NAZI party did not run any ads for the 'final solution', despite Hitler's having totalitarian rule over the NAZI empire, thus, were facebook in existence during the period of Hitler's rule, Hitler would likely not have ran ads through facebook for the 'final solution'.
Also, as for the role of truth in public discourse: If at least a majority still gave a shit, Trump couldn't be president. The propagandists produce, but the masses gobble up that crap as if it meant their life. Entertainment has won over truth and without the customers ("users", like if the product were a drug) that buy it the propagandists, and Zuckerberg, would have no market and nothing to sell.
No. Some ads are simply straightforward and factual. Ads which tell you that "the election is on" or "the circus is in town" or "items are now half the usual price" aren't lies.
We need more officials with common sense—and I’d like to say we need officials with guts, but it seems there is one with guts, who made it to president of a very large country, lacking all other attributes one would expect from a world leader, so obviously guts is not enough—and integrity. Most cases are not gray-zone free speech or not. Most cases are pretty damn clear cut.
This is rich coming from Sacha Baron Cohen who made a career out of appealing to our baser instincts. Pretty much all his films are built on outrageous scenes and mocking people.
Sacha Baron Cohen does it for comedic effect. Others do it to influence elections, destabilise societies, hurt minorities etc.