Techdirt Podcast Episode 91: Is Facebook Moderation A Necessary Evil?
from the damned-if-you-do dept
Facebook's efforts to moderate content that appears on the social network have run into numerous problems, most recently with a famous war photo and a bunch of blog posts. Some have made absurd demands in response, such as giving old-school media editors special posting privileges, while others have objected to the idea of Facebook censoring any content whatsoever. But is that objection realistic? This week, we discuss the complicated question of Facebook moderation, and what the company's role can and should be.
Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: censorship, free speech, moderation, podcast
Companies: facebook
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Flawed premise
Case in point, the Streisand Effect. Most attempts to censor speech usually winds up giving that suppressed cause a much bigger platform and audience. Literally suppressing and hiding things is what makes it all so very attracted to the light of day!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Flawed premise
I hope you see the inherent flaw in that observation. Speech that gets Streisanded is by definition spread everywhere and seen widely, so of course we get the impression that this happens more often than speech which is successfully censored, which by definition we see very little of.
The truth is, Facebook successfully censors huge amounts of content — spam, infringement, and violation of terms of service and community standards — every day, and the vast majority of that content never gets any bump from the Streisand Effect.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
FTFY
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Facebook, Google, Twitter all have their thumbs on the scale;
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Facebook, Google, Twitter all have their thumbs on the scale;
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Flawed premise
Every attempt by an authority to suppress a story or a voice means only one thing. Corruption. This is one of the reasons that the very first Amendment to the US Constitution is one of Freedom of Religion and Press. They are invariably the first things assaulted when a confrontation occurs and also one the most problematic things to suppress because it only breaths more life and desperation in the suppressed while causing the oppressor to ratchet down harder and harder in response until blood is shed.
Both sides experience far less blood loss when voices can be heard. It is very clear that humanity is a shit stained species because we participate readily in suppressing others with glee and vigor!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Facebook, Google, Twitter all have their thumbs on the scale;
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Norway's PM
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Facebook, Google, Twitter all have their thumbs on the scale;
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Take this story, keep it exactly the same as far as is possible to do so, but replace "Facebook" with "Comcast," and Mike's position would almost certainly have been the polar opposite of the opinions expressed here. He would have (quite reasonably!) pointed out that a content delivery platform needs to deliver the content and stay out of deciding what content is worthy of delivering and what content is not, no?
Does that strike anyone else as odd?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Facebook, Google, Twitter all have their thumbs on the scale;
Those are your choices, Mason.
That the third party options never garner more than 1% of the vote is the problem; people prefer to vote for Kang or Kodos because each team is afraid that the other bad guy will get in.
That some of them are frankly nuts (Prohibition party? Really?) is not an issue. The problem is that the ones who are determine to stay true to their ideals tend to form their own parties (and thereby split the vote) while those who are determined to get into office tend to join one of the Big Two. You get the odd exception but it's odd because people fear change, they won't get out of the box they're accustomed to being in.
Hell, I even find it hard to throw away old clothes and shoes, it must be something like that for voters.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Compliance with a range of industry regulations is a major part of the operation of any large business. I deal with FGas registers and TM44 survey certificates, FB deals with "How's your CP and copyright infringement takedown effort going?"
[ link to this | view in thread ]