[warp_factor]

Welcome to Facebook Co. Where a clique of Silicon Valley exec yuppies now decide what is right and what is wrong for us to see.

It's a very slippery slope. Cannot wait for the next elections where any candidates with politically "wrong" ideas will see their pages silently being discarded or randomly hidden from timelines without warnings.

[TallGuyShort]

Arguably that's already happening. In the last round of Senate elections, Austin Peterson was repeatedly banned with vague explanations about the Terms & Conditions. It's of course just a coincidence that in most cases the post that triggered it were criticizing the incumbent whose reelection Facebook had contributed tens of thousands of dollars to.

[sonnyblarney]

" Where a clique of Silicon Valley exec yuppies now decide what is right and what is wrong for us to see."

I'm not sympathetic at all to FB overall, but I am sympathetic here.

Zuck would definitely prefer to not be in the business of moderating content.

They've created a kind of 'internet platform' and by virtue of their situation, they're kind of forced to do this.

And there is - no - solution.

Every nation has different laws, different thresholds for various kinds of activity, and I suggest most of what FB 'takes down' is probably technically legal, but just beyond what they would like to do.

They are also under considerable pressure from many countries to act explicitly in some cases. I'm not familiar with this Indian/Iranian situation, but it very well could be that Indian government officials leaned on them to do it. The less transparency there is, the more there is political interference in business, the more they have no choice: "We don't like Iran, so stop all this pro-Iran stuff in our country or we shut you down" type threats.

And no doubt the US gov. has their interests as well, both on the 'local petty stuff' (i.e. law enforcement) to 'strategic stuff' (i.e. we don't like Iran either, stop their propaganda).

I do however think that FB will actually try to do the right thing, I think it's just beyond their capability.

I don't think Zuck is trying to promote his view of the world in the filtering. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this is 'an information architectural nightmare' - not really a political thing.

This could be an existential crisis for FB, as this happens more and more, they'll be expected to moderate 'everything' and then the business becomes infeasible.

[opportune]

Serving content and not doing any moderation is a choice to decide what is right and wrong for us to see. They must make the choice and I don't feel sorry for them considering how much money they (facebook as a whole, execs, employees, investors) make

[djakjxnanjak]

And congress only had to grill them for a few hours to make it happen!

[someotherperson]

Happened in Australia just weeks ago.

Various pages belonging to the main Libertarian party ("Liberal Democratic Party") started getting shutdown[0] about a month before elections.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/davidlimbrickldp/posts/209817440381...

[King-Aaron]

Possibly because LibDem supporters tend to post obscenely racist/xenophobic/hateful things that often get flagged/reported.

[stevenjohns]

No, they don’t. And that doesn’t justify shutting down the pages of three(!) state(!) parties with sitting parliament members weeks before elections.

If Facebook has issues with commenters, then those commenters should be punished.

[warp_factor]

Racism is becoming the catch-it-all excuse that you can throw at pretty much anything to justify why you should take it down.

[GuiA]

No need to wait for anything; see for instance the Nancy Pelosi video fiasco.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/may...

[stjohnswarts]

They are free to exclude whatever they like, they're a private company and not beholden to what you think they should be doing. If they do the wrong thing they will go on the trash-heap of bad ideas in history, so far they're doing okay as far as being a business goes.

[patrick5415]

And yet, we have laws that require businesses to build ADA compliant bathrooms, and laws that forbid them from discriminating in both their employment practices and customer relations. If you want to make the “but they are a private business” argument, will you also argue that a private business should be able to say, serve only white people?

[warp_factor]

They should be seen as a public utility.

I dislike Facebook but for a lot of people it became part of their life and some information is now only available on Facebook.

As a public utility they should be regulated on what they are allow to restrict from their users.

[root_axis]

> a lot of people it became part of their life

So what? World of Warcraft became a part of a lot of people's lives, does that mean WoW should be a utility?

[yeahigotgoats]

this is such a lazy, sheepish argument. we all know what is happening.

when your private internet provider starts to shut you down for your stupid ideas, or your private bank denies you service lets see how you feel then. and to act like the government does not already regulate the hell out of private business is just a foolish position.

[root_axis]

A single social media website is not at all comparable to an ISP or a bank though. Facebook is a wholly unimportant distraction.

[furgooswft13]

There's sooo many banks though. There's probably 3 right next to each other right now on Main St. North Bumble Fuck. Less ISPs sure, but if Comcast is throttling your Netflix, you could probably nab cellular internet, or satellite, or gasp dial up. Sure those options suck, but so does hosting your businesses social media presence on Myspace, or your neighbors kid's basement hosted phpBB forum.

[furgooswft13]

Why does this tired argument never seem to come up here when Facebook is doing Bad Privacy Things? They are still a private company in that case, so it seems to equally apply (especially the trash-heap part). But I don't ever see it being made in those threads. Weird.