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> Allen left Facebook soon after that for a data scientist job at the Democratic National Committee.

So the guy on the election integrity team then takes a job with the DNC. This is called a revolving door.

And now, curiously, he is part of the effort to push for more censorship of Facebook. This concerted effort to cow Facebook into censoring their platform more is coming from the RNC, DNC, Congress, and the mainstream media.

This founders' letter from their website is dripping with hubris:

https://integrityinstitute.org/founders-letter

They talk about keeping the Internet "safe" and "good" but not free.

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I had the same take away from that founders letter as you did - full of arrogance, as well as very chilling and creepy in my opinion.

Somewhere in this thread one of them is commenting, and made a point to link to that same letter saying how proud he was of it.

Just a complete disconnect.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” - C. S. Lewis

Forget the military industrial complex, welcome to the social media industrial complex.

In our current descent into technofascism, I think every industry is going to be gamed.

Not surprising. I know a few people who have family members who are ex US intelligence apparatus or FBI turned Facebook investigators. They investigate the bad bad stuff like CP, human trafficking, and animal torture. I’m sure they are specifically hired for connections.

The current conversation isn't about the real bad stuff (which I thankfully have never seen on FB), but rather about how much control the government should have over Facebook as a platform, and the direction seems to be universally in favor of more restriction of speech, not less.

I think it’s still very similar. Misinformation is still bad stuff but not the worst of it. If a foreign political group was buying billboard or newspaper ads there would be some kind of legal accountability. Instead of ads like this we have troll farms targeting Black and Christian Americans with misinformation. Maybe it’s time there was some kind of legal framework about posts and foreign influence but I don’t pretend to be any sort of policy maker.

To extend this somewhat, not only does paid and quasi-paid political speech(paying operatives/algorithms rather than a newspaper) not face the same accountability re content on Facebook (for example), Facebook does not face the same accountability for providing equal access to it's platform for all political points-of-view.

Do you really disagree that there's way, way too much bad stuff on Facebook and it's had a hugely harmful impact on our society? Or, do you just think we shouldn't do anything about it?

Yes, I disagree with that. Even if I agreed, I'd still think we shouldn't do anything about it.

How much bad stuff is "too much?" Which stuff is "bad"? Who gets to decide? Why should I trust them? Who and what else is influencing them? What happens when the people making those decisions change? Why should I cede the authority to decide which "stuff" I get to see to anyone other than myself?

There are no good answers to any of these questions, and there never will be.

I don't think we need to get that philosophical about it. Can't use bots, can't pay people to astroturf. Ez.

yep.

I don't think the comment was about "too much bad stuff on facebook" at all, rather it was about how an actual facebook employee, who now works for the dnc, is forming a group that will advocate for policy that will affect facebook. When this happens in the banking industry, we call it regulatory capture. When it happens in the insurance/healthcare industry, we call it regulatory capture. When a board member of an oil company is appointed head of the epa, we call it regulatory capture. Why is this case any different?

(here's another way of looking at it: if the guy was hired as a "data scientist" by the republicans, wouldn't you question his motives?)

What are you talking about, he went to the DNC. No government relation and no regulatory power.

Also I work in politics, and people move between the private, political, and public sector all the time. The GOP hires data scientists from tech whenever they can, because they're sought after professionals.

My point was if former social media staffers can't work against this stuff, what should they do.

That’s exactly what this and all the efforts to control Facebook are - a power grab.

Slap some “feel good” language around protecting democracy (ha!) and they can nicely make sure it’s their message that’s approved (of course! They are protecting democracy) and not their opponents (they are harming democracy!).

This is either a Trojan horse or an exercise in self-aggrandizing pomposity.

What is this about “not breaking your NDAs” with Facebook? If you had integrity the NDAs wouldn’t matter, because no moral framework is constrained by respecting an arbitrary document drafted by a megacorporation to keep you silent. When your first move is to assuage any fears from your former employer that you might do something as drastic as break your NDA, it’s obvious your priorities are nowhere near where you claim them to be. So the question becomes, is this intentional dishonesty, or lack of self-awareness? I suspect a bit of both.

Don’t tell me what integrity means.

Edit: Apparently I read this wrong, and they haven’t actually quit their jobs? So this is just a cartel of self-righteous employees at tech corps with plans to maximize efficiency of collaborative deplatforming? Lol!!!

The line about the one founder taking a job with the DNC was enough for me, but I'm glad I read until this part because I think it's even more illuminating:

>"Frances is exposing a lot of the knobs in the machine that is a modern social media platform," Massachi said. "Now that people know that those knobs exist, we can start having a conversation about what is the science of how these work, what these knobs do and why you would want to turn them in which direction."

Which I translated to:

>Now that someone else has broken their NDA, we can use our jobs that we are not quitting to make more money.

> If you had integrity the NDAs wouldn’t matter, because no moral framework is constrained by respecting an arbitrary document drafted by a megacorporation to keep you silent.

The desire to not spend the next several years mired in lawsuits brought by a company that can hire an army of lawyers doesn't need to be explained by a moral framework. Wouldn't you rather spend that time being an activist instead of sitting in the courtroom, wondering if you're going to survive the financial fallout?

The recent whistleblower has also been suggested to be a tactic to control and set the terms of the concern about Facebook, utlimately not challenging its reach as a monopoly but to allow for certain censorship actions that facebook would be more than happy to oblige to do.

You really think Frances is a deep cover op by Facebook? Really? Wow.

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