Zuckerberg said senior Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to “censor” content in 2021. “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken,” he wrote to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). “Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” Zuckerberg added.

  • shish_mish@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Asking them to take down stuff that is clearly false and can endanger people is not censorship.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      not to mention, basically, he’s handing the platform to a very vocal minority.

      A minority that probably hates his guts. because lets face it, everybody hates Zuck the Cuck

      • RidcullyTheBrown@lemmy.world
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        A minority that probably hates his guts.

        How is this relevant to us? The subject here is about the platform’s influence on society, not of Zuckerberg.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          The platform is accommodating people- or trying to, anyhow- that would likely turn on him in a heart beat.

          It’s patently stupid to alienate the vast majority of people, who look at antivax as rampant stupidity, to accommodate people who will inevitably prove to be too extreme.

          Look at what’s happening on twitter, with advertisers leaving.

          That’s about to be Facebook.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            Okay, look: I really need you to knock it off with this argument, please. 'Cause if you keep going with it, you’re gonna start convincing me that maybe we should let Zuckerberg post all the anti-vaxxer bullshit his shriveled, blackened heart desires, after all!

            (And that’s bad because, as much as I’d love to see Zuck fuck up, @RidcullyTheBrown is right.)

          • RidcullyTheBrown@lemmy.world
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            17 days ago

            that would likely turn on him in a heart beat.

            Again, what happens to him personally or to Facebook as a company is irrelevant when it comes to how our lives are affected. The regulation of social platforms is good for society regardless of the efect regulation has on the owners or the companies owning the platforms.

            Your argument is built around the wrong desirable outcome.

            • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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              17 days ago

              This isn’t argument for regulation social spaces.

              This is me passing around the popcorn and watching Facebook go up in flames.

              Zuck is being dementedly stupid here. That’s all I’m saying.

      • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        Unless they can infiltrate his underground bunker in Hawaii, I doubt he cares how much they hate him.

    • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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      You can also not claim freedom of speech when yelling fire in a crowded Theatre. I don’t understand why this is different. In this case the platform is amplifying people yelling fire and even creates spaces for people yelling fire to gather and talk strategy.

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      17 days ago

      Taking down anything is, by definition, censorship. Censorship doesn’t mean only taking down things you agree with.

      The mistake people make is thinking censorship is inherently bad.

    • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      Wat? It’s literally the definition of censorship. I think you mean to say censorship is not, in and of itself, bad.

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    Zuckerberg thinks Facebook should self regulate and that means in this case be free to allow posts of anti-vax propaganda and covid conspiracy theories that literally cost lives.

    This is just a great example of why social media needs external regulation.

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      This is just a great example of why social media needs external regulation.

      And “needs external regulation” here just means “needs to not be above the law”.

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        They are not above the law, because these is no law in the US that regulates how social media platforms should be moderated. This is new territory. The EU only recently passed the Digital Services Act that broadly deals with this topic.

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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          They are not above the law, because these is no law in the US that regulates how social media platforms should be moderated.

          And that is entirely coincidental and has nothing to do with the endless billions pouring into political bribery in the US. The EU started regulating it because the shit was piling up so high, it started to smell over the Atlantic.

          What I mean by being above the law is both that they get to write the law, and that even if they run afoul of it, they get to get off with bullshit fines, often without admitting that they did anything wrong.

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      Can you picture a world in which an authoritarian like Trump is President and then immediately abuses this authority to choose what’s allowed to be said on social media? Because then you might begin to understand how this could be a problem.

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        But there is surely room between “controlled by the government” and “not accountable for the content on its platform.”

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          There isn’t. They’re the same thing. How is the government going to hold them accountable without controlling the speech?

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            Do you think the government has complete control over your speech now? Do you think you are absolutely free to say whatever you want? I don’t even know where to start with someone who doesn’t understand that it doesn’t have to be one or the other despite, right now, it not being one or the other.

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              Do you think the government has complete control over your speech now?

              …no? No one thinks that.

              I don’t know where to start with someone who doesn’t understand the concept of a slippery slope or legal precedent.

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                I don’t know where to start with someone who doesn’t understand the concept of a slippery slope or legal precedent.

                Well, when you figure it out, let me know where because it’s clear you don’t understand either of those terms.

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      He hired Joel Kaplan over ten years ago.

      Kaplan was a Bush toadie who participated in the Brooks Brothers Riot that stopped the recount in Florida in 2000 letting the corrupt jackasses on the Supreme Court to steal the election for Bush.

      Kaplan has personally exempted right wing “news” sources from Facebook’s truthfulness standards.

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    Meta really needs to be split up, along with Google and Microsoft. Nobody can be allowed to have this much influence on public opinion without it going terribly wrong.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      People need to stop using Meta’s products. They can’t survive without users.

      Facebook, Instagram, Threads, etc. are all Meta.

      Worst case scenario I see brewing is that Google gets split up and Meta and Microsoft just buy up their assets.

      With Android near the top of the divestment list, that’s a scary notion.

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        That’s just not going to happen. Unfortunately the average consumer doesn’t much care about any of these things. It’s the job of governments to prevent excessive concentration in industry. They’ve been doing a piss poor job in recent decades.

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        Facebook has enough money and influence to just buy the next big social media. Hell, most people don’t even seem aware Instagram is owned by them.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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    Ah, the “express regret” module was installed yesterday. It’s nice to see his upgrades are coming along.

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    we should not compromise our content standards

    You have to have standards to be able to compromise them.

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    The Meta CEO also said the company “shouldn’t have demoted” a New York Post story about corruption allegations involving President Biden’s family ahead of the 2020 election while waiting for fact-checkers to review it.

    The social media company has since updated its policies and processes, including no longer demoting content in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers, he noted.

    This seems to be the only concrete thing in here and it seems like a terrible idea to me. No information about what exactly the pressure was from the government or what specific content they took issue with, leaving us all to come up with the guesses that most comfortably confirm our own biases.

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        The letter said it has all the hallmarks of Russian propaganda, not that it was. This is certainly something that certainly has not been disproven by a long shot.

        It’s funny how often people need to turn to blatant disinformation in order in a desperate attempt to both sides the issue of disinformation. Quite telling, in fact.

        • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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          The letter said it has all the hallmarks of Russian propaganda, not that it was.

          The FBI knew for certain the laptop was genuine, because they had the original (not just the disc image). Yet they led twitter and Facebook to believe it was Russian Propaganda and made no effort to correct the public perception.

          This is certainly something that certainly has not been disproven by a long shot.

          Incorrect. The serial number on the back of the laptop matches the serial number provided in Apple Inc.’s response to a subpoena for records.

          It’s funny how often people need to turn to blatant disinformation in order in a desperate attempt to both sides the issue of disinformation.

          It’s funny how a campaign of blatant disinformation by the FBI has been completely ignored. A campaign so successful that Hunter’s laptop is still mislabelled as Russian propaganda by most Americans.

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            Yet they led twitter and Facebook to believe it was Russian Propaganda and made no effort to correct the public perception.

            The letter did not come from the FBI. More lies or spin to cover up previous lies and spin only further confirms my point.

            The serial number on the back of the laptop matches the serial number provided in Apple Inc.’s response to a subpoena for records.

            The letter doesn’t say the laptop is fake. Are you sure you know at all what happened?

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    The further we go down the misinformation hole the more these guys do their best to make their platforms shitty in the US while they comply with every dictator’s political oppression policies outside the US.

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    The only reason this shitbag’s site is still relevant is because it is a boomer propaganda machine

    He knows he’s complicit in the collapse, and just wants to make enough money to survive the world wide riots that will result. Every decision he makes is to guarantee that goal.

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    17 days ago

    He seems confident ® will win the next election. Either presidency or enough of congress.

  • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works
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    I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again

    Well, I did need a good laugh this morning, I just didn’t expect it to come from the lies this fucker tells himself so he can recharge sleep at night…