“Facebook, Apple and YouTube remove pages and podcasts from Alex Jones for hate speech violations”

Posted on August 6, 2018 by edwardm

Source: Apple bans Alex Jones podcasts; Facebook pulls four pages

But not Twitter – says Jones’ does not violate their policies.

Alex Jones is a long time conspiracy theorist (everything that happens in the world is a plot by secret powers) who used social media platforms to amplify his often untrue and hurtful ideas. Millions of people are said to have subscribed to his propaganda operation.

(Amusingly, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, PInterest, LinkedIn, and MailChimp – all made their shutdown effective roughly simultaneously, which in turn, is feeding the conspiracy theories that this was a coordinated shutdown by Big Tech…. arghhh…)

Separately, earlier this year, Patreon cut off China’s most watched Youtuber and Maker, Naomi Wu. It’s a complicated story but Vice.com apparently used their legal team to cut off Wu’s Patreon account (and her primary source of funding). Their “legal team” was Sarah Jeong, a lawyer recently appointed to the NY Times Editorial Board. Jeong has come under fire for hateful and angry tweets of her own.

Elsewhere, left wing Media Matters advocates that Facebook should censor “climate change deniers”.

When social media organizations cut off access, it raises questions about the power of corporations to control what we see, what we read, and how we are influenced. Censorship is one of the most powerful forms of propaganda as it cuts off alternate views from being expressed, especially from those we may disagree with. Censorship is the opposite of diversity.

The traditional view of free speech is that the answer to speech we do not like is more speech, not censorship.

Update: Social media platforms have long argued they are not responsible for the user content on their platforms, claiming a “safe harbor” that they are similar to a telephone company which is not responsible for the content of phone calls. However, once they begin censoring the content on their platform, they are de facto admitting they are responsible for the content posted on their platforms. It is difficult to see how these companies can have it both ways – not responsible yet responsible for content.

Commentary

Many people publish items on social media that can at best be described as dumb, but which are also hurtful, mean, and in some cases, are offensive “hate speech”. Many notable personalities have lost their job over past comments. Many of those cut off were posting items that lack class and decorum and were mostly rude to obscenely rude and hurtful. What prompts such people to engage in this way on line?

There are many recent incidents where it seems arrogance plays a role. Perhaps more on that another day.

‘The idea of free information is extremely dangerous’

Posted on August 6, 2018 by edwardm

Why is liberalism under particular threat from big data?

Liberalism is based on the assumption that you have privileged access to your own inner world of feelings and thoughts and choices, and nobody outside you can really understand you. This is why your feelings are the highest authority in your life and also in politics and economics – the voter knows best, the customer is always right. Even though neuroscience shows us that there is no such thing as free will, in practical terms it made sense because nobody could understand and manipulate your innermost feelings. But now the merger of biotech and infotech in neuroscience and the ability to gather enormous amounts of data on each individual and process them effectively means we are very close to the point where an external system can understand your feelings better than you. We’ve already seen a glimpse of it in the last epidemic of fake news.

There’s always been fake news but what’s different this time is that you can tailor the story to particular individuals, because you know the prejudice of this particular individual. The more people believe in free will, that their feelings represent some mystical spiritual capacity, the easier it is to manipulate them, because they won’t think that their feelings are being produced and manipulated by some external system.

….

The idea of free information is extremely dangerous when it comes to the news industry. If there’s so much free information out there, how do you get people’s attention? This becomes the real commodity. At present there is an incentive in order to get your attention – and then sell it to advertisers and politicians and so forth – to create more and more sensational stories, irrespective of truth or relevance. Some of the fake news comes from manipulation by Russian hackers but much of it is simply because of the wrong incentive structure. There is no penalty for creating a sensational story that is not true. We’re willing to pay for high quality food and clothes and cars, so why not high quality information?

Source: Yuval Noah Harari: ‘The idea of free information is extremely dangerous’ | Culture | The Guardian

The Facebook advertising company continues to discriminate against workers based on their age and gender

Posted on July 26, 2018 by edwardm

“Right now as we speak, Facebook is literally sending job ads that exclude people on the basis of their age,” he said. “It’s laudable that the AG has gotten Facebook to agree to some basic first steps, but this agreement really doesn’t do much more than what FB has agreed to do voluntarily.”

The agreement also enables Facebook to continue doing ad discrimination on the basis of gender.

Source: Facebook is now legally bound to stop advertisers from excluding people because of their race – SFGate

Until this agreement was made, Facebook permitted discrimination based on race and sexual orientation. Even after this agreement, however, Facebook will continue to permit advertisers to narrowly target ads based on age and gender.

Numerous large and small corporations in the U.S. have used this feature to display their ads only to those aged 21-34 (as an example) or to target, say, nursing or elementary school teaching ads, only at women. By preventing workers from seeing the job ads, companies use this feature to legally discriminate against hiring workers in entire classes because workers never see the ads and therefore, never apply for the jobs.

Incredibly, the State of Washington’s Attorney General signed an agreement with Facebook that continues the status quo in Facebook age and gender discrimination.

While many may think, “Oh, this only affects ads shown on Facebook”, that is incorrect. Virtually all online ads are delivered by either the Facebook or Google ad networks. Essentially all online advertising including employment ads, is targeting age and gender.

Mark Zuckerberg has long believed in age discrimination and now owns the largest ad network in the world to further his “master age” thesis. Before he turned 30 years old, he famously told Stanford University students in 2007:

“I want to stress the importance of being young and technical,” the tech genius told budding technology entrepreneurs at Stanford University in 2007.

“Young people are just smarter. Why are most chess masters under 30? I don’t know. Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family. Simplicity in life allows you to focus on what’s important.”