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Comment by gameswithgo | Hacker News Reader

Facebook should be receiving some of the same scrutiny parler did. Improve moderation or get out

Unlike Parler, Facebook hosts its own metal. Beyond that it even owns its own domain registrar, CDN, and CA authority. There's no feasible way to deplatform it. (A good thing IMO, I just wish that same rock solid resistance to censorship was available to everybody.)

Probably doesn't feel like a good thing when you're hiding under your bed, hoping the angry mob will tire of searching, and move on with their machetes to the next village.

Which of the mobs?

He could be referring to how Facebook was used in the Rohingya genocide, which they admitted to over two years ago:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...

It was a made-up example. I suppose I combined the Rohingyan and Rwandan genocides. FB had nothing to do with the latter, of course.

Unless Zuckerburg has a time machine I'd have to agree with you.

Any of them. When you're hiding under your bed, it doesn't matter which mob it is.

Apple and Google can remove it from their app stores. The content peddled on Facebook is vile and, as this article points out, dangerous.

ISPs can ban it on the consumer end.

for science, we did this at work by blocking facebook at the firewall. the employee's started murmoring about facebook being down, until someone smart enough tried it out on their BYOD. eventually, the mob got large enough and vocal enough that it was forced to be reverted. we wanted to see if productivity would increase with lack of access. however, it actually went down as people stopped working completely to start complaining about the jack booted IT decisions.

Maybe Intel and AMD could be pressured into not selling them CPUs. You aren’t censorship resistant until you can fab your own chips.

While I get that you’re joking, couldn’t Facebook exist for literally decades at their current scale (or near it if stuff breaks) just on the metal they already own?

Or on used chips!

Would be pretty easy for Apple and Google to remove them from stores

If they don't moderate better, I'm sure Apple would love to use that as an excuse to remove FB from its stores. If Apple thought they could get away with it, they would. And they probably could get away with it if FB provided them with a solid enough pretext.

FB is probably praying that the Inauguration goes off without a hitch, or that's the deathnell for the light content moderation regime of FB.

I’ve reported so many comments that are clearly TOS breaking (such as ones saying it’s ok to be violent against politicians who failed us (or even ones saying one of them should be shot)), but they say they “don’t violate their community standards”. It’s garbage. And when you “appeal”, they say “no, we looked at it again, and it’s still ok”. I’ve given up on hoping FB moderation improves. They need to be smacked down hard. What good is “community standards” if they’re not enforced?

Instagram, interestingly, it a lot more heavy handed (still not great though). Joan Cornella[0], who makes surrealist(?) comic strips, has posted on his IG story about his posts being removed for “violence” or whatever.

[0]: https://instagram.com/sirjoancornella

Probably more luck on reporting pictures with nipples.

Nope. Facebook (including Instagram) are huge sales drivers for Apple. Millions of customers buy new devices every year primarily to use those social networks. Apple isn't stupid enough to cut that off just because a tiny minority of people are upset about some fringe Facebook posts.

You're misunderstanding. Apple doesn't care about FB driving sales, people would by Apple devices FB or no FB. Apple doesn't care about Pro-Trump loonies. (Or rather, they only care that the Pro-Trump loonies give them a pretext.)

What they care about is the opportunity shift more content from the control of large competitors, to content that is centered and dependent on their devices.

I'll give you a for instance, have you ever wondered why they are so hesitant to allow other providers to link in to their messaging games tech? They're slowly moving into these more social networking type areas, and very few consumers are even noticing. For consumers they just think, "Hey! look what my iphone does now!"

If you think Apple needs the money FB generates for them more than they want the money they can generate for themselves, you're fooling yourself.

In short, with Apple, it's not about social good, it's about money. They don't care about your cause, nor your enemy's. They care about gaining greater control over more and more revenue streams. If they can use social good to justify that revenue grab, all the better. Anti trust law is what keeps Apple in line, not their FB partnership.

No that's not how it works. Apple will never give up the hardware sales driven by billions of Facebook users worldwide. Apple will bend over backwards and make exceptions to their rules in order to keep Facebook, at least until users switch to different social network.

As I said, if you believe FB drives Apple sales, you're misguided. Apple is not your friend, and they are certainly no friend of FB. (FB is not your friend either, but that's a separate issue.)

If FB was shut down tomorrow, people would still go to their Apple stores the day after. That's just reality.

Is it not integrated into their mobile OSs?

Not to mention its use for SSO.

> Is it not integrated into their mobile OSs?

No? Some Android phones ship with it pre-installed, but that's it.

Apple and Google could effectively de-platform them in a day.

could they? their .com site would still work. their .onion site would still work. sure, people would bitch about not having native app any more, but unless Apple/Googs rolled an OS update to block specific .com traffic, then people could still access it via website.

Apple and Google are already facing antitrust action. Politically they can't afford to make an enemy of Facebook right now.

It is.

Here Biden talks about revoking Section 230 because it shields FB from liability for the stuff that it helps spread: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/17/opinion/joe-b...

> [Zuckerberg] knows better. And you know, from my perspective, I’ve been in the view that not only should we be worrying about the concentration of power, we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you’re not exempt. [The Times] can’t write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he can. The idea that it’s a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms.

More discussion about the difference between the Democrat and Republican objections to 230 - but that they both have some - is here https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-joe-... among other places.

Facebook invented Trump. Twitter was his big broadcast medium, but the “movement” was born there.

Bernie was similar but didn’t have the appeal to the dumb and old.

Yeah Bernie took the young and dumb crowd.

They don’t vote!

Why are we letting Twitter off the hook when it was literally his biggest megaphone? Is it because Twitter is popular with liberals?

Nah, it’s a broadcast medium, not a community. Twitter is awful too, just for different reasons.

Without saying anything at all about what is and is not appropriate censorship policy there is a significant difference between facebook and twitter.

Twitter is all in public. I don't need a twitter account to be able to read posts from any twitter account. [1][2]

Facebook is private. Given I have no account I can't see any posts on facebook at all. Facebook can target the mentally unstable with incendiary, racist, sexist, violent and awful content /in/ /secret/. Whether by ads or through groups or similar. You have no idea what privately broadcasted communication is happening there at all. You probably have no idea of the nature of something as simple as political advertisements targeting those of a different political persuasion. None at all. It's dark to all of us.

These are two quite different ways of broadcasting. You may wish to regulate communication on both or one but not the other or neither. Unless it's neither you favour it seems unlikely that the same regulation and enforcement is appropriate for each of these things.

[1] Locked accounts on twitter don't appear to be a significantly used thing. Will obviously update that opinion in the light of better information, eg if it turns out that violent groups coordinate and recruit using locked twitter accounts. I don't believe much like that to be happening at the moment.

[2] Without anything more than a browser you can read for example, Glenn Greenwald's latest twitter post at time of writing. https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1349514741358669824 Then agree, disagree, decide if he's a russian spy or a principled journalist focused on social justice, brilliant or a moron, or just right or wrong on just this one thing or you may decline to form a view. It's not secret. It's not communication happening behind your back that you don't know exists. (This particular post is also obviously not incitement to violence).

Huh, the stupid was there before Candidate Trump (before that, he was just some fuckwit from New York hanging out with Epstein), remember Palin and the Tea Party? And the birthers who could never be satisfied with any kind of certificate?

Although, Palin came along in 2008. Twitter got popular in 2007 and Facebook opened to the public in 2006, the iPhone was introduced in 2007 and with it the always-connected world. I guess social media did accelerate the destruction of civilization..

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