Facebook takes down main page of Myanmar military(reuters.com) |
Facebook takes down main page of Myanmar military(reuters.com) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukaradeeb_wedding_party_massa...
The purpose is not to harm or pressure the Burmese military authorities -
Its to virtue signal to left-leaning activists in the USA and other Western Countries.
Technology companies have dug themselves into a hole of censorship and deplatforming, and they have no choice but to keep digging.
A country's military firing live rounds on their own citizens with seemingly no remorse is different than a country's military committing violence in foreign countries.
I'm certainly not condoning either example of military force presented here, but the duty of the military should ultimately be to preserve their citizens. Killing its own citizens and then using social media to lie about it is something I don't think the US military has done.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/world/asia/aung-san-suu-k...
See, e.g., this interview by Der Spiegel w/ the president of Uganda:
> DER SPIEGEL: Observers complain that they have been denied access to social media.
> Museveni: If you're talking about the all-powerful rulers of Facebook, I can tell you it was the other way around. Facebook blocked my party's accounts. Is that freedom of expression? If the people at Facebook think they're silencing me, they're wrong.
> DER SPIEGEL: It wasn't just about Facebook. The entire internet was blocked in Uganda for days.
> Museveni: That was done for security reasons. The internet was misused to stir up trouble. The opposition spread misinformation about the election results. The block has long since been lifted.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-ug...
Even the developed and democratic world doesn't look to the US, still less US corporations, as an actual inspiration for its policies on speech.
It's true without FB's actions, Museveni could've immediately started with "security reasons & dsinformation", but that would've been a far weaker answer.
> Even the developed and democratic world doesn't look to the US, still less US corporations, as an actual inspiration for its policies on speech.
The trend everywhere, it seems to me, is to look to China for inspiration on speech policies.
I'm merely commenting that I'm reasonably convinced they're (in general) removing news and politics from the platform because its _in their interests_ to do so.
Considering the wider issue faced in Australia at the moment, its fair commentary and sarcastic responses don't contribute to the discourse.
Because Myanmar people lobbied for it, and because the Myanmar military is terrorizing its own people, then lying about it.
The military is shooting its own people, kidnapping them in the middle of the night, and torturing them.
Over 10 protestors dead and 50+ injured, as they are using live rounds on protestors. Over 500+ disappeared or kidnapped. Protestors killed include two teenagers shot in the head, one of them a medic. They also shot at ambulance. They’ve threatened to kill doctors, and kidnapped many of them. Stole the covid vaccination after beating doctors trying to stop them.
Last night they shot a neighborhood watchman in my neighborhood (we have neighborhood watch to try and prevent late night kidnapping/disappearing by military).
We lobbied hard to get Facebook to take down this page and others where the Tatmadaw are attempting to cover up the truth.
Do they have people there?
Does that local manager have experience dealing with tanks driving into the parking lot?
The military is shooting its own people, kidnapping them in the middle of the night, and torturing them.
Over 10 protestors dead and 50+ injured, as they are using live rounds on protestors. Over 500+ disappeared or kidnapped. Protestors killed include two teenagers shot in the head, one of them a medic. They also shot at ambulance. They’ve threatened to kill doctors. Stole the covid vaccination after beating doctors trying to stop them.
Last night they shot a neighborhood watchman in my neighborhood.
The question here is: would (some) misinformation be worth it to avoid total blackout. And I mean this places other than North America and Western Europe.
In huge swathes of the world, internet and facebook are interchangeable. And where democratic values are strong enough, any government can take down the main channel of (free, non-governmental sanctioned) information for a whole country.
Interestingly, Costa Rica went as far as to disband their entire army because in a poor and unstable state, having any military can actually be a big liability in terms of having frequent coups.
Just to fast-forward this thread a bit for everyone:
- Free speech doesn't exist on some for-profit company's platform. Communities should be moderated on some ethical standard for the benefit of peace
- Free speech trumps ethics and peace -- without free speech, we have neither
It's a man who proposed Xi Jinping to name his firstborn.
Him attacking some minor military junta is barely symbolic.
It's horrible injustice Americans not only get away with war crimes and aren't held accountable by the IIC, but also technocrats and buerocrats working for these public companies are able to do so with impunity.
Facebook has "interfered" more against the interests of sitting US presidents without a single black ops operation against its staff.
If you've followed this conversation at all for the last 5-10 years, there's no way it makes sense to think that these decisions are somehow driven by Facebook'(or any tech company's) desires. Leaving aside the intense liberal values personally held by Zuckerbeg, Page, Brin, Dorsey, et al, the responsibility for speech policing is a can of worms that the tech platforms have been consistently and loudly opposed to. It's the baying of illiberal lunatics (primarily on the left, in recent years) and the associated PR and regulatory threats that have forced them into this position.
They want to be a utility for communication. They would much prefer government decide it.
But many people are like "government being the decider of truth" is bad.
So this is where we are at; the private companies can ban whomever it wants and play the decider of truth.
BTW: Hitler was also democratically elected, wouldn't have been the worst thing if the Wehrmacht made a coup then, like for example "operation valkyrie".
At best, you could call AASK an apologist for military. But that ignores that she was really their prisoner even while “free”, and the delicate negotiation she engaged in an attempt to build a civilian government, as flawed as it was.
Ah yes, then shes definitely not responsible...irony off.
>>she took the podium on Wednesday at the United Nations’ highest court to defend her homeland against accusations of genocide, arguing that there had been no orchestrated campaign of persecution.
>>Instead, she insisted that what foreign observers have called an organized, years-long campaign of atrocities against the Rohingya has been exaggerated and misconstrued.
2019/12/11 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/world/asia/aung-san-suu-k...
2018/07/07 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/07/world/asia/myanmar-rohing...
I think that is interesting.
Die Facebook, die.
I really don't understand the purpose of these fortune cookie slogans. First off, how does 'ethics' vanish if we curb free speech? Like is there a date where we solved ethics and now every moral framework that does not value freedom of speech highly is just invalid, like some sort of math problem?
Regarding peace it's just flat out wrong. Of course you can have peace without free speech, probably much more of it. Of course it's worthy asking if sacrificing speech for more peace is justified or not.
But in all seriousness can we stop being dogmatic and unthinking about free-speech, which is in itself kind of ironic? You can debate everything, just not whether free speech is debatable apparently.
Ethics are normative. They shift over time and everyone contributes, partly through speech. Restricting speech cripples this long-running, civilization ethical discussion.
You are engaged in sawing off the branch we're all standing on.
The graph of freedom of speech versus personal liberty looks like the Laffer curve for government income vs tax rate.
One end is zero for obvious reasons; the other end is also zero because it is a power vacuum, one which e.g. charismatic narcissistic Machiavellian sociopaths exploit it to rise to power and they kick away the free speech ladder after they get it.
Parler was a competitor to Twitter, and you saw how that played out. The next competitor is going to have to deal with that quandary.
I haven't used it for ten years, can't say I miss it.
Why does there have to be a competitor? I think we will do fine without social media.
Noone needs Facebook, it serves no valid purpose for the human race. Same with Twitter. We don't need them, and we don't need competition for them. They should go away with no replacement.
Source: was Facebook engineer. Listened to Fuckerberg make one too many all-hands speeches about engagement. Resigned several years ago.
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/facecrook-dealing-with-a-...
As soon as I see a dumb typo like that the rest of the article imo is now trash
Toxicity, violent rhetoric, racism, conspiracy theories, and lies in general all seem to thrive on social media. The Streisand effect is also a real thing. But there doesn't appear to be a meaningful overlap between the two after about a month.
Infowars gained a huge number of people when that guy was deplatformed, but that kind of nonsense needs a constant influx of new people when people eventually get burnt by believing something like Sandy Hook never happened, Q is real, Jews and black people are the cause of all your problems because you're special, etc and hard evidence gets presented. People wise up and peel off.
The legal aspect may include legislation to forbid governmental organs and/or employees (of note) to use platforms such as FB and Twitter to disseminate and or engage the "public". If they engage the "public" then the platform must be open to "public" without restriction.
Look at how attacked any right wing site is - they go after their ISPs, their CDNs, their DNS registrars, their hosting companies.
The Internet has got to the point that you cannot even operate a business if it goes against the "values" of big tech, or they chop all your arms off.
Also, police departments are far more localized and I think hold much less clout than a national organization.
" Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else's academic freedom. (This is "political correctness.") The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control. "
To be clear, there are leftists and rightists that explicitly own the rejection of liberal values (Communists/tankies, racial essentialists like the "woke" and neo-Nazis, neoreactionaries). But the majority of these dynamics are driven by useful idiots who can't even grasp what's happening.
> The trend everywhere, it seems to me, is to look to China for inspiration on speech policies.
And yet there is more access to less censored media in most parts of the world than at any point in human history.
You're taking the position that no, it wouldn't make any difference, other entities will just do what they were going to do anyway.
But I don't think the US example is entirely without influence. Eventually policies reflect beliefs which reflect narratives; the narrative of the internet as a non-partisan enhancer of freedom becomes much harder to sustain when its major sites are clearly picking sides.
> And yet there is more access to less censored media in most parts of the world than at any point in human history.
Because of the internet, of course.
Now, in reaction, we are seeing rising censorship (since the internet suddenly made speech much more available and powerful). Whether we'll end up having more or less uncensored access to information ultimately is still unknown, I think.
No. Why would people and parties who have journalists arrested and tortured become true believers in freedom of political speech because a foreign website allows it? Big Tech's social media actually has skewed quite close to US censorship norms (i.e. you can censor anything you like but be very careful if it claims to be political) for most of its existence and the results are not something most liberal democracies see as admirable, never mind paternalistic ultraconservative countries or outright dictatorships.
> Now, in reaction, we are seeing rising censorship (since the internet suddenly made speech much more available and powerful)
It's not "rising censorship" because a couple of companies decided EULA policies they'd enforced with varying degrees of consistency against everyone else since the beginning also applied to mouthpieces of the POTUS or the Burmese military. Censorship has been around everywhere forever, and claims a website which has long censored people for not using their real name or showing a nipple has stepped into unacceptable censorship when reasons for bans were political violence is a very narrow, US-centric concept of "rising censorship" that apart from anything else is highly unlikely to convince most cultures that "rising censorship" would be a bad thing.
It's a bit of a "rules for rulers" paradox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs&ab_channel=CGPGr... in the sense that power structures exist independently of whether we like them or not.
From another perspective, I also think the benefits of Facebook are ephemeral. Yes, many people use these platforms right now for turning themselves into commodities; but other platforms and methods certainly exist, are longer lasting, and you don’t have to worry about a sudden ban.
People who manage to monetize $platform are probably tiny, tiny %.
Also there are negative consequences of using social medias.
The coup proves that she never really had any authority to begin with.
Why then the lies about the genocide?
What we know is that she doesn't really have any authority.
If she does something the military didn't like, whoops there's a coup.
If the military is likey or feels so so about it, then it's fine.
If the military wants her to do something, she probably has to.
The coup proves that.
Western people are out of touch. You cannot speak up or playing a martyr in these countries because they will actually kill you and your family and everyone involved.
To answer your question, we'll probably never know.
Apparently, you probably don't know either since your question implied that she had authority.
There are different factions in the military, one of which was the architect of Burma’s democratic transition, the other which opposes the transition (who current dictator/CIC is part of).
The military miscalculated, as they didn’t intend for ASSK or NLD to outsmart them in constitution of their own design. Military had expected to win enough seats with their proxy party + military appointed seats to prevent NLD choosing a president. But NLD won enough seats to choose president, and their chosen president gets to appoint commander-in -chief (military must confirm). Never before had a president appointed the CIC. The military saw this has a threat to their power. They do not want to be under any civilian control. And Min Aung Hlaing (current dictator) is also probably afraid of genocide charges if he is no longer in power.
She had no involvement in the military’s decisions in Rakhine state. Yes, she defended the perpetrators at ICJ, either as part of a political strategy of reconciliation with military, or because she just felt like defending them because she secretly likes what happened. You guess which explanation is more likely.
And i don't feel like arguing with someone who defends a genocide denier, and explains it with "who don’t really know anything about Burma or her situation".
>either as part of a political strategy of reconciliation with military, or because she just felt like defending them because she secretly likes what happened. You guess which explanation is more likely.
Sound like the later one, defending a genocide for "reconciliation with military" is pure evil, and is never a sound strategy.
If you read carefully, you'll notice I'm not making claims one way or the other about the goodness of the censorship. I think a rising demand for censorship is a predictable reaction to technology enhancing the power of speech.
I would not say trend of speech restriction is limited to social media giants. E.g., the US is attempting to extradite and prosecute Julian Assange under the Espionage Act, which, if successful, will, in the words of the NY Times, "open the door to criminalizing activities that are crucial to American investigative journalists who write about national security matters".
Quite the opposite, you think that was different in Hitlers reich? Do you think peoples who denied concentration camps and had no authority (but knew about it) where innocent?
>If the military wants her to do something, she probably has to.
That's is and was the lamest excuse for every human being ever!
And of course when it does, the now-illiberal faction rationalizes it with some manner of, "liberalism, except when..."
The problem with liberalism is that—while it is the most sane mode of structural organization—it is extremely brittle in the face of illiberalism.
Liberalism—and its ancestors/influences—never ate itself, unlike illiberalism. But it does always fall to barbarism. It's like having an argument with an insane person: you may be right, but you'll never win that fight.
That is a seriously concerning weakness, because when liberalism is threatened, the default modes of self preservation are either: roll over and get beaten (as a matter of principal) or reject some (or all) liberalism in order to fight back. In either case, liberalism goes away.
I'm not sure that anyone has ever come up with a reasonable defense. (And maybe there is none.) Humanity seems to prefer pendula. The grass is always greener...
I've definitely learned not to be fazed by downvotes on political topics, especially in the current political environment. Like I said (and like you say, more diplomatically), most people are just too dim to understand not only this dynamic, but the very concept of liberalism.
>>she took the podium on Wednesday at the United Nations’ highest court to defend her homeland against accusations of genocide, arguing that there had been no orchestrated campaign of persecution.
>>Instead, she insisted that what foreign observers have called an organized, years-long campaign of atrocities against the Rohingya has been exaggerated and misconstrued.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/world/asia/aung-san-suu-k...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/07/world/asia/myanmar-rohing...
Fact is:
-Aung San Suu Kyi defended actively a genocide for not being one, while speaking in The Hague.
-The civilian government was informed and partially included in the genocide.
Both points are fact, and NOT speculations.
The military does not take orders from civilian government, it’s the other way around. Civilian gov has no legal or de facto control over Tatmadaw, or border control, or home affairs (police, courts). There is no civilian legislative control over Rakhine operations. Tatmadaw just does whatever they wants.
And anyone who speaks against their actions is imprisoned. If AASK spoke against them they would have imprisoned her again, like they just did. The politics AASK is dealing with are complex.
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/anaylsis/2019/11/21/Myanm...
https://burmacampaign.org.uk/argentinean-courts-urged-to-pro...
>If AASK spoke against them they would have imprisoned her again
She could just stay at the Haag and tell the truth...how about that?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/12/transcript-aung-sa...
Even if you could come up with some alternative or even decentralised way of doing that, this doesn't change the fact that you're addressing the purpose of Facebook, rather than proving your claim that "it serves no purpose". At university (pre-Facebook) I had a friend who ran a Facebook-like server for sharing photos amongst our group of friends. That need was already there and strong enough he wrote code for it.
Additionally, I’ve never grasped what those Facebook features supposedly used for private communication elevate them over simple email use in general. I’ve found them more cumbersome to deal with than email, to be honest.
Also, the original use case of Facebook was for Mark and his buddies to rate the attractiveness of their female classmates and share inside information on them. Despicable.
Your original comment made out that Facebook has no uses at all. I think you were just trying to really emphasise your point that it's a net benefit overall, but you've ended up saying something totally different. I know that sounds pedantic but it undermines your point because most people will read its literal meaning (like I did) and then just think, oh, this comment is factually incorrect.
I quit fb around 2015 or so and it bit me when dealing with groups/events and social exchanges. Meetup wasn’t as big and it’s still not as good as fb since less people use it.
Fb marketplace is more useful for me than craiglist usually, but both are good to check.
Billions of people find value in facebook and use it daily. Who are you to make that call?
I do agree that there isn’t a alternative for fb groups. And marketplace is better than Craigslist in my area.
Interesting. Can you elaborate? Like is DuckDuckGo using some of Yandex’s open source? Or the Bing search API?
I'm not making that call, I'm making a prediction and hoping it comes true, and contributing to a discussion that may possibly, in some small way, contribute to it coming true. If you look around this thread, you'll notice some other people that seem to be aligned to this. I'm not the first to point these things out, and I won't be the last. As a former Facebook employee, I have a responsibility to speak up.
A friend of mine's 85 year old mom post her activities daily on FB. Great joy and peace of mind for my friend, as they live ocean apart. The old lady wouldn't gonna stop using FB, or wait for a different platform that suits your world view.
By all means, work on a better solution, don't just speak up if you feel strongly about it. My apologies if I don't take it very well idealistic view that disregards other people's way of life.
On the broader point, you're making a strong assertion. Facebook is probably the most popular consumer product in the history of the world (apart from maybe Coke). You brush off what they do as just providing services that others had provided before Facebook "gobbled" them up, or providing some services that no one really needs or can be trivially replicated.
It's a big claim and there's a huge payoff if you're right. There are thousands of companies trying to pick away at facebooks services, but despite that Facebook usage and engagement grows every quarter.
You can speak up and make your prediction and hope it comes true. But it looks like wishful thinking at this point and it's underlying premise is wrong IMO. Trying to challenge Facebook or encourage others to do so with that framework won't work.
“The Rohingya people are facing an existential threat. For decades, the Myanmar authorities have tried to wipe us out by confining us to ghettos, forcing us to flee our home country and killing us. The global community must act now to end this genocide and bring those responsible to justice,” said Tun Khin, President of BROUK.
Shame on you!
How much of that growth is through aquisition though? Facebook was losing photo sharing, so they bought instagram, they were losing messaging, so they bought WhatsApp.
Its all well and good to say Facebook has value, and thats because they are using a behemoth (almost, but not quite monopolistic) position to squeeze competitors.
Take Facebook Marketplace, it has a huge number of posts that probably equals Craiglists - and they did that because they already captured peoples attentions. And they'll do it with their next product - hell they are still pushing their Portal picture frame on people.
Facebook can't claim credit for natural human activity just because Facebook's network effects give most people no choice in what digital city to live.
> Fuck small businesses. Fuck big businesses too. Death to capitalism.
Perhaps you’d enjoy Venezuela. As a small business owner myself I don’t take too kindly to this comment, but would like to offer some advice.
Maybe go out and start a business or cause your passionate about and that interests you. This anti-capitalism / business attitude negativity is toxic for you. I’ve traveled pretty decently all over the world and yet to find a country that provides the opportunity of the US. You can literally do most anything you want, and it sounds like you being a previous FB employee you are super smart and probably not desperate for income in the short term.
Since you didn't, however, you should know that your advice is pointless. Everything you've achieved will be lost. All your loved ones will die, along with your enemies. All the same is true for me.