Tech
Facebook Threatens to Destroy Conservative Group After One User Posts Fake News
Facebook found a new way to censor conservatives on the platform.
Facebook will now penalize Facebook groups if individual users post news articles, videos, or images the platform considers “false news.”
After a user in the Facebook group “God Emperor Trump: Official” posted an article the website considers fake, admins of the group were given a notification that their entire group could be penalized if the behavior is repeated.
According to Facebook’s message, the platform will use its endless fight against “false news” as an excuse to “push all of that group’s content down in News Feed, which may mean fewer people visit the group.”
The platform “may also stop suggesting that people join the group.”
So now Facebook expects my team of mods to vet news stories, and if we don't, they will kill the reach/growth/impact of my Facebook group with 20k+ members.
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— God Emperor Trump (@realGETrump) April 12, 2019
“God Emperor Trump: Official” uses an all volunteer group of moderators to police its content and ensure it follows Facebook’s community standards. The platform now expects this volunteer group of conservatives to independently research and vet the truthfulness of every post in the group, a superhuman feat the multi billion dollar platform itself has trouble doing effectively.
This also raises concerns about satire. News checkers have repeatedly fact checked articles by Babylon Bee, a Christian satire website, branding them as “fake news” for their satirical content.
In 2018, fact checkers called a satire article from Babylon Bee claiming that CNN purchased an industrial sized washing machine to spin the news before publication “fake news.” They did the same with a satire article suggesting Planned Parenthood defended Bill Cosby because sexual assault was “only 4%” of what he does.
This year fact checkers felt the need to declare another Babylon Bee article claiming CNN hired hoaxer Jussie Smollett after he formed a story out of thin air “fake news.”
All of these satire articles, when posted to Facebook, now come with a disclaimer showing they are not real news.
The development raises the questions: Should volunteer moderators for “God Emperor Trump: Official” prohibit group members from posting satire articles? Are satirical memes safe?
This also raises concerns about potential abuse. It is now entirely possible for radical leftists to infiltrate conservative Facebook groups and purposely post fake news articles to destroy the group.
If taken to its furthest logical conclusion, perhaps moderators should only allow only articles from CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News in the conservative group to be safe.
Facebook’s new enforcement measure seems to be another thinly veiled attempt to censor conservatives by holding them to unreasonable standards, and offering no clarification about what is acceptable and what the volunteer moderators should censor.
Free Speech
YOUR NEW MASTER: Twitter’s Head of Conversational Safety, a “Young, Queer Asian-American Businesswoman,” is “Rethinking” the Concept of User Safety
Do you trust someone like her to make Twitter “a safer place”?
The media company Protocol, a sister site of Politico, recently published an article about Twitter’s new “head of product for conversational safety,” Christine Su. It claims that Su, a “young, queer Asian-American businesswoman,” is revolutionizing what “user safety” on social media means.
Twitter hired Su around six months ago to be in charge of “what might be the most difficult task on Twitter,” despite having no apparent experience in politics, programming, and media relations. But Twitter seems to like her for her “creative” and “somewhat radical new ideas” about user safety.
“As a queer woman of color who is an Asian American in tech in rural America, that experience is a very intersectional one. I’ve had plenty of experiences moving through spaces where I wanted more safety,” Su said.
Protocol writes that Su’s vision incorporates “transformative and procedural justice.” Transformative justice ostensibly refers to a non-retributive form of repairing harm done to someone and preventing it from happening again; procedural justice to enacting a set of rules that “make harm rarer in the first place.”
This all sounds nice and dandy—but beware. So-called transformative and procedural justice will not benefit you, but will crush you. Anything that’s perceived as “harmful” against “women and people from marginalized groups” can and will be used to censor you. Christine Su may reassuringly claim that “the point is not to make the entire world a safe space,” but she’s open about the fact that she will help give the Coalition of the Fringes more control over what people are allowed to do and say on Twitter.
Examples from the article:
- Creating an audio hangout feature called “Spaces,” which will allow users to determine who is allowed to participate, as well as who can speak and when. (Note that it’s being tested on “women and marginalized groups of people” first.)
- Potentially doubling down on functions that “encourage people to read content before reposting it.” (Which is exclusively done to censor or limit the reach of conservative and other right-wing content.)
- Building tools that “create private pathways for apologies, forgiveness and deescalation.” (The finer details are still a work in progress according to Su.)
- Defining what a “meaningful conversation” is. (Would people like Su think that anything right-wingers say or believe belongs in a “meaningful conversation”? Let’s just say I wouldn’t bet money on it…)
You know full well that a company like Facebook would shortly follow suit. After all, it’s not just Twitter that Su is “revolutionizing,” but the concept of social media itself. Figure out where all this is heading.
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