Facebook Employees Criticize Zuckerberg’s Inaction over Trump | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Employees Criticize Zuckerberg’s Inaction over Trump

bloombergquint.com

62 pointscalanya38 comments

Whenever I see articles like this, my BS radar detector goes off. These articles make it seem like huge numbers of employees are up in arms and ready to quit, but really it is almost always a loud vocal minority looking to impose their personal worldview on the company.

The only conditions under which a company should react to activist input is if they have done a company wide anonymous poll (and probably of their customer base as well). Otherwise, they will just hear from those who are committed to the cause (radicals/zealots) or have psychological safety to voice their views. Given that big tech companies are mostly SF-based and secondarily Seattle-based, those internal cultures reflect only one perspective (the far-left progressive). Just remember, those far-left progressives make up just 8% of the population (https://hiddentribes.us/profiles). There are almost certainly moderate and conservative employees that back Zuckerberg's position as well.

But when you sample only Silicon Valley companies including Facebook, the percentage is much higher than 8%.

I’m going to be the guy in this thread who says that censorship is scary. Bots need to be stopped, and politically inflammatory fake news needs to be flagged and corrected... but we don’t get to say what we want unless people we hate/fear also get to say what they want.

Zuckerberg knows he has a large conservative older user base. Losing them I bet is his concern

deleting them is way more controversy generating than not. companies avoid controversy.

to be fair, twitter didn't delete it - only hid it.

To the general public these are effectively the same.

That’s fair, but Zuckerberg has absolutely made his PR situation worse by creating high minded rules and applying them unequally.

I think his concern is the amount of money from political campaigns this coming season. If that stuff was fact-checked, they would not be making as much money.

The side effect of people internet hating on stuff on FB is lots of ad revenue for FB (aka page views). It doesn't matter what side is what, if things on FB are fact checked then there is likely going to be less sharing since there would be less content.

Political ads are a tiny portion of FB revenues, just around 0.5%. In fact, they may be losing money on this as it needs a lot of manual moderation

Political ads are not fact-checked, per FB policy - https://www.facebook.com/business/help/182222309230722

Zuckerberg isn't insane. People in silicon valley sometime forget how much of a bubble they live in. Twitter just effectively started a full-scale war with the federal government.

Zuckerberg knows the blowback is coming. I can't see how twitter doesn't become a life long target of the Trump administration to make an example of. If Facebook doesn't want to get caught in the splash zone they might want to back away from this one.

> Twitter just effectively started a full-scale war with the federal government.

This is kind of true, but also points to just how insane this historical moment is. Can you imagine any prior administration acting this way? Can you imagine Bill Clinton raging out about AOL, or GW Bush trying to sic the FCC on Yahoo because it sent his email to spam?

Someone should point out to Trump that Google is classifying his emails as spam. It’s true, because I signed up for his newsletter and mark it spam.

Brilliant

>>>Can you imagine any prior administration acting this way?

I wasn't alive for them, but I wouldn't be surprised if Truman or Eisenhower would crush Twitter in the age of McCarthyism. Although they tended to focus on individuals rather than companies or organizations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

Yep. Truman called the press “paid prostitutes of the mind”.

I can imagine a lot of prior administrations fighting with the media.

“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”

- Thomas Jefferson

plenty more where that came from at https://www.history.com/news/presidents-relationship-with-pr...

Yeh but imagine a social media site censoring or correcting a sitting president. The president didn't start that. What if AOL or Yahoo did the same to GW Bush or Clinton I doubt the response would be any different. It may of been worse

As they should. All it takes for evil is for good people to do nothing. FB and Twitter have been weaponized. This reduces the value of their platforms.

What do you do when a bully is the most powerful person in the world? Well you stand up to them as a community.

Take away his microphone.

At this point. If Trump can violet TOS and get away with it. Why can’t I or a bot. Side need to chosen and battle needs to be fought. It’s a lose lose for the likes of Twitter but at least Twitter is doing the right thing now.

The Twitter TOS are pretty ridiculous if you read through them. For example you cannot celebrate, praise, or condone murders or mass shootings committed by civilians. However you can celebrate, praise, and condone murders and mass shootings all you'd like if they were committed by governments.

From Twitter's Glorification of Violence Policy: "Exceptions may be made for violent acts by state actors, where violence was not primarily targeting protected groups."

"Exceptions may be made" doesn't sound like "you can [do it] all you'd like."

Right, but this is another problem which is at the crux of the issue. These exceptions throughout the TOS give Twitter the power to editorialize without requiring them to take on any liability for the content on their site.

I don't even believe Trump was glorifying violence, but calling him out as if he did sure could rally the people who are actually starting the violence against innocent businesses and civilians. Too bad Twitter doesn't have to govern themselves.

Trump's tweet showed he was concerned, not glorifying. If he wanted to glorify it, he would probably say something more along the lines of "Get in line or we will use our GREAT guns and military and open fire on you thugs." He also wouldn't need riots as an excuse to tweet about such things.

Zuckerberg is supporting freedom of speech when his company didn't have to choose to. He is correct that censoring only worsens the problem and it removes opportunities to improve the situation. If Trump were censored, people would not know him or what he is doing as well as they do now. Amidst all the risk to MZ's company and the violence happening around us, his decision is highly courageous and respectable as he is serving the American people and their rights, even though he said himself that he doesn't like what Trump said.

Besides, even if he were censored, people would see it and repost screenshots anyway

Is this news or opinion piece? Incendiary is clearly an opinion. "(...)not to take action on incendiary comments posted to the social network by U.S. President Donald Trump."

Last I checked there is flames everywhere now and he is certainly fanning them.

How is warning people not to loot 'fanning the flames'?

The exact wording was a reference to what a police chief in Miami said in 1967. It was meant to evoke that event, which could easily be called “fanning the flames.”

> The exact wording was a reference to what a police chief in Miami said in 1967 it was meant to evoke that event

Really? I'm pretty sure it was meant to /rhyme/.

Can’t tell if you are trolling or not. Do some reading. https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/864818368/the-history-behind-...

If it's genuinely not obvious, I'm surprised you believe a conspiracy that Trump was secretly refering to an event most people have never heard of, rather than rhyming.

This is the same attempt at plausible deniability of Republican institutional racism since the Nixon Southern Strategy as clearly, undeniably, articulated by its inventor. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...

Trump peddled a racist lie and conspiracy theory for five years, before he was even in politics. Birtherism. And before that, the Central Park Five. And before that the federal lawsuit against him and his dad for discrimination in housing. It's not plausibly deniable. And this is the same thing.

Exactly re: birtherism and Central Park five. Trump's racism is overt. Not secret messages.

"When the looting starts, shooting starts"

Read that above statement, how is it not fanning the flames? That a way a president get to talk to an oppressed black population?

You should not treat black people as synonymous with looters.

Are average HK citizens exposed to more police brutality than minorities and the poor in the US?

Our administration acts like that's the case (especially during the HK protests) but it doesn't ring true.

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