Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump
facebook.com
facebook.com
We went from specious claims and conspiracy theories being the subject matter of newsletters to their public broadcast to millions via talk radio ~and Fox News~, thus allowing people to descend into their own bubbles without ever having their views challenged. Now people seem to rely on social media to give them the same experience. When challenged too much people just pull up stakes to insulate themselves: voat, parler, and private facebook groups are only three recent examples.
It'll be interesting to see if whoever replaces Ajit Pai holds a different view on public intercourse over the airwaves.
Edit: Well as some people have pointed out, Fox News would have been exempt from the Fairness Doctrine as a cable network, i.e. it doesn't use the public spectrum.
As Wikipedia says "The channel was created by Australian-American media mogul Rupert Murdoch to appeal to a conservative audience, hiring former Republican media consultant and CNBC executive Roger Ailes as its founding CEO." So my personal view that Fox (among others) is responsible for a) exposing millions to fact-free content without opposing views and b) people got used to that and don't like it when it's challenged created the bubble we have today. I'm wrong that the Fairness Doctrine would have prevented Fox, although it might have prevented talk radio.
And no, none of them appeal to a general audience. The ads that each network displays will tell you exactly who their specific audience is.
Twitter's audience is narrow: Most of the people I know (across countries, religions, genders, professions) do not have a Twitter account. So, they make decisions that suit their userbase, which is significantly narrower than Facebook's.
Facebook user base is closer to the general public. Unfortunately, their platform also enables an echo chamber. So, they have a tough job to do and in this regard. They have to be careful about whom to censor. Whatever they choose will be closer the law. I think they're trying their best.
Leave it for entertainment and deep documentaries. If we had no more news channels and nightly programs, I think we'd both be happier and better informed.
It's quite possible that there was US protagonism on that process, and it's quite possible that the bill was a relevant factor, but the bill doesn't have an worldwide impact, and the US influence does certainly not come from it.
1 - It looks quite dead by now, nearly everything we call by that name is free of any usable information. Of course there's some activity here or there, but it's dead like a dead forest, something spurs here or there, but nothing is able to grow.
If you look at surveys, people understand Fox has a bias. But it’s very hard to listen to news from people who don’t appear to share your basic values.
Consider this summer. We can debate the merits of whether violent rioting, setting police stations on fire, etc., is a justified response in certain circumstances. But the public has divergent opinions on this, and journalists have a pretty uniform opinion on this issue. This is a divergence that didn’t exist during the 20 years between when CNN was started and when Fox got popular. But it does now. And it’s very hard to watch coverage of this issue when the person behind the news desk obviously sees the world very differently than you.
Fox didn’t create this divergence. It responded to a divergence that grew. And it’s a divergence that’s become more extreme as media consolidation has resulted in most media being beamed from the coasts into the rest of the country.
Film Review: ‘Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes’
https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/divide-and-conquer-the...
Really hoping you mean "public discourse" :-)
The FCC will have close to zero impact on twenty first century media.
I don't know how or even if we can fix this.
Yes, but city-wide local Fox-affiliate news channels broadcast over the public airwaves would not have been exempt. Those are often watched in their local environments more than their cable alternatives. See also Sinclair Broadcast Group: broadcasting over public airwaves is in the name!
230 renders the Fairness Doctrine moot. Even if it still existed today.
I think the word you mean is discourse not intercourse.
* Enables and encourages (and makes money off of) spreading hate messages on their platform for years
* Hamhandedly does a full reverse and bans of one of the leading spreaders only after it's too late to make a difference.
* But just in time to curry favor with the groups newly in power.
A twist to the old cliche: too much, too late.
How cowardly.
I think you underestimate how much damage he can still do
* Doing it only now to curry favor with the groups newly in power
* Not doing it earlier because of pretty certain retribution from the group (man) who was in power.
Interesting times.
> "May you live in interesting times" is an English expression that is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. While seemingly a blessing, the expression is normally used ironically; life is better in "uninteresting times" of peace and tranquility than in "interesting" ones, which are usually times of trouble. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_ti...
Absolutely nothing has changed in the President’s speech or behavior since his 1st speech announcing his candidacy 5 years ago.
We needed a John Hancock 5 years ago that was willing to draw a line on violent speech and disinformation regardless of the consequences. Instead we got media leadership with their thumbs to the wind ignoring their platform policies and hiding behind a “public interest” rationale.
Too little too late.
But yes, these are hard to predict times.
Of all places, you'd think HN would support free speech, but yesterday, you got downvote brigaded for mentioning that facebook and tech companies shouldn't be our censors.
The logic was "we must protect democracy by having zuckerburg censor an elected government official".
One moment it's facebook is evil. The next moment, facebook and zuckerburg are the heroes we need to save democracy. Go figure.
It's not surprising at all given his behavior. Being president doesn't excuse it.
You're completely right, it's not anonymity that causes people to act like this, it's the fact that we as humans can't perceive text on a screen as another human being that activates the empathy center in our brains. Coronavirus has made this 100X worse as people are losing their humanity being locked away from everyone else.
I've had some of my best social interaction recently on VRChat of all places as it gets the closest of anything I've found so far of making it feel like there's actually a human being in front of you.
That backfired spectacularly.
Facebook being a cesspit doesn't prove that anonymity can't make things worse.
From my understanding the video that got banned asked everyone to go home peacefully but then continued to claim election fraud?
Each side could choose to only hear what they want, or recognize it for the manipulation it is. We know what his followers will do - hear what they want to hear. We know what his opposition will do - hear it for the manipulation it is. Therefore we can conclude that it was not a genuine urging of his followers to actually give up and leave.
https://nypost.com/2021/01/06/trump-releases-statement-telli...
Someone described this video as taking a log off the fire while simultaneously pouring gasoline which I think is a fair characterization.
This seems pretty obvious?
If you believe what Trump says then you must believe that the entire system of democratic representation has broken down. Under this mindset it makes sense to resort to violent action and storm the capitol - what other recourse do you have? That's why rioters left a "WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN" note on Pelosi's desk. And when Trump says the loves and supports the rioters, that's the mindset he's reinforcing and encouraging.
When Trump says everyone should go home - why should we treat that statement as normative? When virtually everything else this man has said agitates and encourages insurrection, why should we glom onto this one positive statement?
> The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.
The account bans are not just because of this one video considered in isolation. The bans are happening because of the systematic anti-democratic and seditious behavior of the president and his campaign.
edit: Leaving my comment intact as there are people who have replied. VBProgrammer pointed out that a portion of my statement is not true. This morning the DC police revealed two officers were hospitalized with injuries and one was described as having serious injuries while 12 others suffered other injuries.
What a bunch of spineless opportunists.
I honestly don't know how people can work at facebook in good conscience these days.
Nothing wrong with working for a paycheck, but it would definitely keep me up at night.
At some point Facebook is going to have to take a stand on which one it is. Indefinitely or for the next two weeks.
It does not mean "permanently", though it's often used to imply that without saying it outright.
So in this case they're saying "anything from two weeks and up, with no decided end".
"we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts for at least the next two weeks, but potentially longer."
They are laying some of their cards bare here, but what I find funny is that if the president doesn't use Twitter, Instagram or Facebook as the dominant way to promote their message, they're not under the thumb of those platforms either.
Just like ordinary people aren't under the influence of social medias manipulation (intentional or not) if they just don't use the platform. We all willingly hand over that power to the platforms.
(More seriously, they'll wait until the dust has settled; they're hedging against the possibility of the peaceful transition of power not happening)
1. Indefinitely: The date range has no end.
2. And for at least two weeks: The beginning of the date range is at least two weeks away.
From this, I conclude that Mr. Trump's account will be muted for at least two weeks, and thereafter it could be un-muted at any time, but possibly the heat death of the universe may make the whole thing moot at some point.
They are in a real sense permanently banning “President Trump”
Hiding the thermometer doesn't make the fever go away.
Removing a constant toxic input helps cure the patient.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/trump-hosted-zuckerbe...
That is the system. Companies that want to make money need to keep on the good side of people in power. But isn't that how democracy works? Better that they adapt to every incoming elected administration than have them hold loyalties to old regimes. Seeing them so regularly bend to the will of voters isn't a horrible thing.
This is at best closing the gate after the horse has bolted, made it to the next county, been hit over on the motorway causing a massive multi-vehicle pile-up which left a fireworks transporting lorry in flames such that its rockets went off setting light to nearby chemical processing facilities.[1]
And that is being charitable. This is simply sucking up to the new regime the same way they've effectively sucked up to the old one, on the very day the transition was finally confirmed by all parties. It can't hurt that it will distract some attention away from the bad PR relating to WhatsApp.
[1] I look forward to the final stages of the story though: the horse in question declared lame after the accident and processed into glue.
The consequence of this however will be political division. If you thought the political division was bad now because of 'echo chambers'. Wait until the camps are no longer talking because they arent on the same platforms.
I'm sure this had nothing to do with the attempted coup
Trump got power, Zuckerberg got power and they meet to discuss how to proceed. Trump loses power, Zuckerberg locks down his account because the arrangement is no longer viable.
The deal itself could have been anything, maybe Trump threatening to regulate the hell of FB if they don't play ball, maybe Zuckerberg had a good idea on how to get rid of TikTok with the help of Trump in exchange of letting him do his thing. Who knows?
Zuckerboi the greedy one. w/out him and his FB Inc. lot, and that vastly overrated egotist Assange [who never ever has been even close to ethical grounds of, for instance, E. Snowden] the sick-orange cretin HeWas45 never would have made it in the first place
just fits to what's been posted here earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662215
A target where people can vent their frustrations and anger, and once Trump leaves get that dopamine hit and simmer down -- until next cycle.
If none of the events of the past month happened people would have to face the reality of their situation. Now they can just scream at Trump. Who knows maybe he's being paid handsomely under the table.
Sorry if this comes across as bitter. I’m very disappointed at how the large social networks’ have conducted themselves at this point to the point that for a large swathe of the US and the UK, the facts don’t matter any more.
Zuckerberg just knows now that Democrats will be in power so this is a safe move to appear like he hasn't been perfectly fine helping Trump increase the spread of his violent platform ("Facebook cannot be the arbiter of truth"). It was all about allowing "engagement" that helped Facebook's revenue.
Zuckerberg does not get to change the narrative now.
[1] https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
> we judged that their effect -- and likely their intent -- would be to provoke further violence
Inciting violence should be punished by the law, not by Facebook. For regular people it makes sense to outsource some of this to Facebook, to minimize the load on the legal system. POTUS however is one very high profile person. His statements are not being missed by those who have the authority to enforce the law. There is public debate ongoing over what should be done. Facebook should not need to help out here.
Of course, as a result of an ubstroctionist attorney general (the baseless memo protecting the president from prosecution) and Senate (refusing to convict for political reasons) Facebook might actually be the best practical route, but them having to take that roll is actively damaging to society.
If I say to you, "please shoot john smith", and you do - I should either be held responsible for saying thus, or accomplice in the result. I can't imagine anyone would claim I was without fault or responsibility. To my mind, free-speech maximalism should hold me innocent of saying it, but has no bearing on my being accomplice to the result.
Yet at the same time its' hard to balance the idea that I want people to have as much free speech on these platforms... and at the same time support the use of these platforms to push anti democratic / misinformation / and actions that would seem to lead to ... other people's rights being infringed and curtailed.
And we can dispense with the "calls to violence" argument, which has been the democrat party platform since 2016.
I have the theory that we never really defeated fascism in western society. But mass media limited what you could say in public and so we kept a lid on it. Imagine someone disputing an election or calling for violence in the New York Times or on prime time TV. But with the internet and social media, this control function fell away. As a society we are realizing how problematic this can be and slowly reinstating the limitations that we had before the internet.
This silences the violent, the racist, and the extreme right-wing-nuts, but it can also silence progressive ideas and marginalized voices if we are not careful.
Right now we are moving to a situation where people like Trump cannot speak on the common public forum (putting the lid on them), but they can cause a lot of damage. I'd rather have the opposite situation, where they can rant as much as they want, but the society is so strong and principled that they cannot cause damage. But we are far from that, so I guess the pragmatic solution is to put the lid back on for now...
Did Trump really call for violence? Are those tweets still accessible somewhere? (Serious question, I did not follow his account.)
Why do you believe this? The very last message Trump put out was telling people to go home. I've covered both BLM and Trump reallies and I've always felt safer at every Trump protest than at BLM. Even in the case of yesterday, we're seeing clear media manipulation. No one is covering how Trump supporters were let in; how Capitol Police lowered barricades.
Either Capitol Police were terribly incompetent at protecting one of the most secure buildings in the US, or they let this happen. There are videos of people taking selfies with capital police and patting them on the shoulder, thanking them for their service inside the building!
> But if you believe inciting violence and other kinds of things should be punished by law, then you can hardly disagree with this.
YES! Lets' arrest every single person who burned and looted a building during the BLM protests and put them all in jail! Every last one.
Same with the people who went in to the Cap building and stole things. Those are federal crimes; that will get you 3 ~ 8 years! I'm for that too.
Oh and that Federal Guard that shot the Air Force woman, he certainly needs to go to jail.
Only some of those things will happen. Pay attention to which ones.
Are you suggesting that Trump made direct calls to violence and to insurrection? If so, that is patently false.
From Trump's actual Tweet on December 19th: "... Big Protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"
All he did was call upon his base of supporters to exert their first amendment right to assemble. To suggest this was anything more than that is pure confabulation.
Instead people who feel that "discrepancy" was wide are being looked down upon and that does not give people space to talk to.
I am not aware of a good example but I am pretty sure there will be another example where the "others" are looked down upon with disdain. Such behaviour only creates more division and makes the echo chamber stronger.
You will find very smart people in each of these echo chambers so cannot say that these people cannot think properly.
Blaming social media for it is like print media was blamed when it first came out and opposed churches.
Edit: Changed the word biased to "cannot think properly" in the last but one sentence.
"Slippery slope" is also most commonly a fallacy, which a lot of people seem to ignore.
> the fallacy of arguing that a certain course of action is undesirable or that a certain proposition is implausible because it leads to an undesirable or implausible conclusion via a series of tenuously connected premises [1]
Anyone arguing these points, especially related to Facebook, are arguing just for the sake of it. Playing devil's advocate is not a noble cause, and doesn't really add anything to the discussion at large.
[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/slippery-slope-argument [1]
Whoever gets the power to define what's acceptable and not acceptable speech is given too much power. You might trust that arbiter now, tomorrow, but do you honestly believe their incentives will always remain pure?
Many people, both anarchists and non-anarchists, would strongly disagree with that statement. And not all of those people are uneducated edgelords whose main argument is that it's a slippery slope.
It's the same reason why anything non-tech gets flagged nowadays until dang removes protects the threads: they don't want to see news attacking their "Dear Leader", so they flag it as non-relevant. If it was a story about a democrat doing something wrong, I'm pretty sure they won't get flagged as quickly.
Dang: would be REALLY interesting to compare who is flagging with their comments in these and other threads.
That is far too vague.
The problem is you will brand anything you dont like as intolerant or hate, and might makes right!
who get to decide what should/shouln't be tolerated ? harmful/harmful ? facebook ?
If you want a 'voice' then the GOVERNMENT should make a social media platform in which NO ONE at all can be censured. Because your silly free speech argument doesn't have anything to do with private companies, although you already knew that, but conveniently ignore it.
If Trump decides to start posting on HN, does HN owe him a voice?
You are the one making slippery slope arguments, not the other way around.
I agree that some speech shouldn't be tolerated. But it cannot be Zuckerberg, or Trump, or Biden, or you, or me, who unilaterally decides what speech is fine, and what speech is banned.
We must embrace intolerance to snuff out intolerance?
Yesterday has provided perfect cover for folks to do what they want to by using their positions in these companies for political reasons.
Unfortunately many folks think the ends justify the means. Patriot act, WMD in Iraq, FISA courts, now arbitrary banning of politicians by morally dubious companies.
What could possibly go wrong?
If you made a list of Trump's top 10 most outrageous posts they would all hinge on some opinionated postmodernist take on his statements.
On the flip side, when other entities choose to exert their private property rights in a manner unfavorable to them (e.g. by banning certain users from their servers) they are completely blindsided and insist they are being "oppressed".
Extremely too little too late. The damage has already been done, and done, and done. Over and over again. Journalism is a husk of what it was before Facebook's algorithms became the primary way many consume news. Engagement as the key performance metric has damaged the human project.
This company cannot be brought to heel quickly enough. I have zero faith in american regulators, hopefully the EU can do something, anything, to lessen the penetrative rot of this company.
That you can say that and not think of yourself as authoritarian is the reason the US is so divided right now.
The latter is at risk so trump is going under the policy of other dictator type leaders where FB is stricter and more willing to remove access.
https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f...
This is a slippery slope and, quite frankly, it’s the people that lose.
Is it someone's right to use a platform to push an agenda that leads to impacting other people's rights?
Change this to
> publicizes the ones expected to make FB the most money
and I agree with you. Either way, they should not be an arbiter of public discourse.
If I come to your house and rant about my favorite subject you shouldn't be able to silence me?
Should Trump (or anyone else) have the right to sully FB in defiance of its management wishes?
FB doesn't have a special responsibility, it's a for-profit business that has an obligation to it's shareholders.not society.
Though the timing aligning with a new set of committee heads in the Senate is more than suspect. Zuck knows how easy it is for the government to break them up and he's trying to make amends for his original sin of not stopping Trump in 2016.
The argument that "this speech is too dangerous" can be made by anyone about just about anything. This isn't fire in a theater. It's political speech and disagreement. If you accept the outcome here, you or your children will one day regret it when their voices are the ones that are muffled.
Conversely, Mr Trump is now a free agent looking for a nest elsewhere. There is probably lots of closed door planning happening: "What do we do if he decides to use our platform for 2024?"
Does that mean in the future demonstrations and protests that could potentially end up in violence like that be suppressed by Facebook and Twitter? Or can we expect partisanship and see them bless other protests that turn to violence?
Note: I do not condone occupying public buildings like this. That’s unacceptable. But I think that should be applied evenly to all protests and wherever property is destroyed.
"Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete."
Over the past few years reading comments here it seems that the people are already communist and the government is just now catching up. Trump helped avoid it for a short while.
Tech used to be creative, respectful, and open. I simply cannot believe the commenters here are my peers. The double speak, double standards, and vitriol toward anything Trump/conservative related is unbelievable.
Now that the real fascists have power, there is big trouble ahead. Conform or lose everything. Just like the CCP.
Thanks for the good times.
We are seeing the fracture of the human mind. Part of it is simply the lockdowns which prevent us from being able to see and talk to each other openly. I just wrote about this before all the insanity happened:
https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/the-fracturing-of-the-h...
I get - votes and people yelling at me for bad faith all the time in this thread, but I cannot simply ignore it anymore. Someone has to call people out on their intolerance and media fueled 24/7 hate. We are not in Orwell's world, because there is no way Orwell could even make this shit up. This world would frighten Orwell, and when you bring up 1984, some people will even tell you that Orwell supported fascism.
> “Don’t you see the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expresses in exactly ONE word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten” -George Orwell, 1984
The hard left is controlling language. Major dictionaries changed the definition of a phrase because of what a D-Hawaii said on the floor during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. This is insanity.
"So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause." -Star Wars II
The numbers show that suffering news organizations like the NYT were resuscitated with massive subscriptions since 2016. MSNBC and the Washington Post might as well be "The Trump Post" and "MS Trump NBC" because it's all they talked about. Why wouldn't they, if it poured eyeballs into their bottom lines.
The media dumbed us down LONG before Silicon Valley, Trump and the rest of the nightmare of the past years. Yes, algorithms made it worse.
No, the popular (as in, seemingly upvoted) analyses here read like the world began four (or was it twelve) years ago and takes place in the Bay Area and Seattle.
Some recommended reading material: Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky, which covers these issues back in the 90's, Matt Taibbi, a media critic, on YouTube "Rising" from The Hill, Useful Idiots podcast, and if you don't mind salivation and rants, Glenn Greenwald.
> The Stop The Steal hashtag is still active. Stop The Steal events are "currently happening" ras we speak. And there are Stop The Steal groups with thousands of members you can join right now.
https://mobile.twitter.com/broderick/status/1347228893124702...
Which is a slippery slope because if you knew you were wrong, you wouldn't be in a certain opinion and if you are so sure you are right, to the point you don't think the other side has anything valid to stand on, you probably shouldn't be trusted with decisions of this kind that impact people that may not be exactly like you.
https://twitter.com/jmpalmieri/status/1347064818944118784?s=...
The proof of that: there have been people who tweet the things Trump has tweeted (but not via retweet, just typing it in verbatim) and they get blocked for the content of their messages.
Which one is it? Indefinitely or for the next two weeks?
The first reason I feel this is a bad decision is that it is selective enforcement. As an example, in Seattle, we have had BLM and antifa groups encouraging, inciting, and participating in all kinds of criminal acts - illegal assemblies, failure to follow police orders, property damage, physical violence, blockading of highways, arson, and of course the infamous CHAZ/CHOP autonomous zone incident. Why aren't all those accounts also banned when the damage they have caused is much more consistent and much more clearly an act of violence? Why weren't "journalists" streaming coverage of CHAZ banned from Twitch, Twitter, and Facebook for amplifying the message of those criminals? To this day, the 'Everyday March' group in Seattle (who blocks roads/highways) has used Instagram and Twitter to promote and coordinate dangerous, illegal acts daily. Every single day. And yet no action has been taken by big tech to censor them.
The second reason this doesn't make sense to me, is that I don't see clear evidence of Trump "inciting" people to break the law and storm the capitol. I may just be ignorant and unaware, so if someone could share the evidence I'd appreciate it. But as far as I can tell, there is no tweet or Facebook post where Trump explicitly tells people or encourages them to storm the capitol. Even claiming that Trump "condones" this act is a step too far, putting words in his mouth. I agree he hasn't condemned it explicitly, and that is despicable. But I am not seeing how Trump's posts incite violence, condone the storming of the capitol, or would materially encourage further violence. I get that he doesn't have to be explicit to have that effect, but that is not enough for me to feel that big tech is justified in censoring his posts.
Not only in virtual spaces.
'In 2010, during a London Assembly planning and housing committee meeting, Jenny Jones, from the Green party, said: “It has taken us eight years to negotiate with More London so that we politicians can do a TV interview outside our own building.”'[1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/04/pops-privatel...
I see flagging messages and banning as Twitter (and really all online platforms) version of an editorial.
Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.
Yes, what Trump said was highly inappropriate, was pretty obviously intended to agitate a bunch of angry protesters, and resulted in a violent and destructive riot. And when things finally boiled over, instead of condemning the rioters he only tried to walk them back to just before the breaking point. That is obviously unacceptable conduct for a president and I think Facebook has correctly assessed the situation when they say his posts' "effect -- and likely their intent -- would be to provoke further violence".
However... it's also important to note that assessment was made in hindsight. Facebook did not block his account or remove his posts until the riots had already run their course. I suspect that is because Trumps posts (at least the ones I've seen) never directly called for violence - even if that was his intent. What Trump said yesterday was not inconsistent with what he has been saying ever since he lost the election. In context yesterday was different, but that context was never considered until well after events had already unfolded.
So what's the precedent here? Would Trump's posts still be a block-able offense if the riots never happened? What if the context were different and he made the same posts on just another normal Wednesday? Does intent play into it? I believe Trump had bad intent here, but how do you prove that?
Ultimately, I have to ask all these questions because I don't trust Facebook. Their business model is based on establishing and re-enforcing echo chambers to maximize engagement and ad revenue. Those echo chambers have become factories for misinformation and social unrest. Facebook's response is to establish vague and inconsistent policies regarding appropriate content as they scramble to de-platform the echo chambers they consider to be problematic.
Praising Facebook here feels to me like praising BP for their efforts to clean up the 2010 oil spill. Except BP's oil spill and subsequent cleanup efforts didn't threaten to underpin democracy and plunge the nation into a prolonged period of violence.
If I'm running a service (let's pretend I'm a bit better than facebook please) I would find it hard to keep the Trump account going for the time being:
There's a balance between allowing a form of free speech on the site... and dealing with folks who using their speech incite acts that are inherently undemocratic and if allowed to continue would incite violence, and acts that clearly have no regard for democracy or anyone's rights but their own...
I don't think there's any magic way of deciding this fairly, but I also think it is hard to ignore the implications of allowing for such things.
The failure to imagine "attempted coup succeeding" when hearing "attempted coup" is astounding to me.
So what platform is Donald Trump go to? I bet his presence is worth even more dollars than Joe Rogan ...
HN readers should be happy: Facebook is about to get some real competition.
It’s hard not to see the bending-over-backwards academic justifications for why we shouldn’t be suppressing riots last year as anything other than the pretext and lead up to what’s happening now.
I’m not calling legitimate protesting riots - rather the media was fully complicit with ignoring blatant rioting last year. Buildings were burning and government buildings were being swarmed and destroyed.
Riots needs to be suppressed with law and order - full stop. Unfortunately many seem 6 months late to this concept.
edit: looks like at least one person was inside the capitol with a firearm and four others were arrested in DC for open carrying firearms.
The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.
His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect -- and likely their intent -- would be to provoke further violence.
Following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after inauguration pass peacefully and in accordance with established democratic norms.
Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.
We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.
I mean it reads like something a head of state might say.
Nonetheless, at least they are doing it.
Whatever you think about Trump, it is not a good thing that 3 companies (Twitter, Facebook, Google) have the ability to effectively silence the democratically elected US President.
Zuck crashed the car and killed a few people, but now acts like he is doing the right thing by selling it for scrap metal.
He has been scumbag from day one.
[1] https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-facebook-...
All that being said: Until November of this year, he wasn't "just Donald Trump" - he was the PUSA. There's a very big difference between banning PUSA and banning DJT. Now if you want to argue they should've done this the day that the results were in back in late November - sure. But the previous 4 years? I'm not sure that was a path either company was willing to test and I can't entirely blame them.
Also: Trump serves them no value? Are you crazy? The viewers haven't gone down, and won't go down in any significant manner. For all the bluster from right-wingers of "we're making our own social network" - they all still somehow seem to be participating on both platforms.
This half-measure is the most dangerous of all paths. Depending on your interpretation of the 1st Amendment, you have to do either A or B. This is short-term survival at great long-term cost.
Anyone has seen the video and texts in question and can tell me?
EDIT: mass downvoting people, seriously? I didn't even defend Trump (or Biden), I asked a question, I am from Brazil and wanted to know what happened.
What I'm not seeing the media talk about is what difference does or does not exist between a group of people breaking into the capital (a political event at a political location) vs. cordoning off parts of a city, burning businesses, etc. If you don't recall, in June of last year, parts of Washington were quite literally on fire.
Without that discussion it greatly appears that they just support one group and their ideas but not the other, all the while calling others divisive.
Start your own goddamn website! Zuck and Jack don't owe you anything.
I'm sure this will get about a thousand downvotes...
From the look of the allegiance of the newly certified admin, it's not hard to entertain the possibility that in some distant future it may not be possible to criticize say, China, or Bill Gates, without facing repercussions comparable to denying the Holocaust–the difference being that this time, your social graph, preferences, biometric data, and metrics of online behavior are held against you, as a warrant.
Private companies and private interests can conveniently play the role of the data collection and profiling arm of the coercive capability of governments, or they simply use governments as proxies to exert coercion directly (as is the case with 'mandates'), if allowed to do so.
What a time to be alive!
It's pretty hard to justify how banning Trump benefits shareholders. Without a doubt, his precense drives user engagement and therefore ad revenue. There's no credible threat of boycott. It's pretty clear executives made this decision in the interest of democracy rather than maximizing shareholder returns. Facebook has never disclosed this consideration on its SEC filings. Therefore under American corporate law, that opens up management to liability.
I'm not taking a stance whether this is good or bad. But I do think that politically motivated security fraud lawsuits against Twitter and Facebook are eventually inevitable. Not least because political opponents will heavily subsidize the plaintiffs, even if the case doesn't look likely to win.
A publicly traded company has silenced the current Lame Duck President.
Guild wars when?
”I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election. But we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated — that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace."
This is a Rorschach test for what you want it to be.