When an edited video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) began spreading across the Web this week, researchers quickly identified it as a distortion, with sound and playback speed that had been manipulated to make her speech appear stilted and slurred.
But in the hours after the social-media giants were alerted, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube offered widely conflicting responses that potentially allowed the viral misinformation to continue its spread.
YouTube offered a definitive response Thursday afternoon, saying the company had removed the videos because they violated “clear policies that outline what content is not acceptable to post."
Twitter declined to comment. But sharing the video would likely not conflict with the company’s policies, which permit “inaccurate statements about an elected official” as long as they don’t include efforts of election manipulation or voter suppression. Several tweets sharing the video, often alongside insults that Pelosi was “drunk as (a) skunk," remained online Friday.
But Facebook, where the video appeared to gain much of its audience, declined Friday to remove the video, even after Facebook’s independent fact-checking groups, Lead Stories and PolitiFact, deemed the video “false."
“We don’t have a policy that stipulates that the information you post on Facebook must be true,” Facebook said in a statement to The Washington Post.
I don't want this to sound demeaning, because I am all in favour of people getting rid of their facebook accounts, but… especially in tech circles where most people are 1) aware of fake news and...
I don't want this to sound demeaning, because I am all in favour of people getting rid of their facebook accounts, but… especially in tech circles where most people are 1) aware of fake news and generally good at spotting it/have feeds mostly devoid of it; 2) are generally more privacy conscious in the first place and aware of the implications of facebook's data practices; and 3) are probably the best people who could actually do something meaningful about the downsides/toxicity of facebook…
Well, to me, it sounds like in such places, calling for people to delete their facebook account is not just circlejerkish, but it sounds icky in the same way that a vegan berating you for eating eggs does, and how if you personally stop eating eggs, the world will be so much better for it.
I really dislike the position facebook holds right now. I want to do something about it. And I think for example, the fact you're active on tildes has a much bigger impact on the existence of facebook than whether or not you delete your account. The latter may in fact have a net negative effect to what you're trying to achieve.
If I deleted facebook today, I'd lose contact with… maybe a dozen people. Not many, I have a very small and curated friends list, and I barely use FB at all (I log into it maybe a couple times a month; although I do use Messenger). And those people, I barely talk to, but losing contact with them entirely would prevent me from, say, moving them to a different platform if I found one that I actually thought was better.
You have to work with what you got. I don't think deleting facebook is useful, and I don't think veganism is how we'll stop climate change. The "every little helps" mindset is harmful, IMO; it drives people to do something unimpactful, make them feel like they made a difference, and often enough prevents real change from occuring.
Stay on facebook and share a couple of articles about the importance of privacy online, for example; or about how to spot fake news. If just one person reads it you'll probably have made a bigger difference than by deleting what was not useful to FB in the first place.
The interview the facebook VP gave on Cooper last night was just bonkers. The amount of bullshit and question dodging she was spewing was off the charts. How do these people keep getting away with...
The media almost always totally ignores reddit, it's always been a weird gap. It has comparable traffic to Twitter, and arguably more influence in its ability to generate and spread content. But...
The media almost always totally ignores reddit, it's always been a weird gap. It has comparable traffic to Twitter, and arguably more influence in its ability to generate and spread content. But it seems like nobody in the media really understands reddit, so they always just ignore it.
I definitely would have agreed with that 10 years ago, and probably even 5 years ago, but it's really not much like that any more. Open an incognito window and go to reddit.com, or download the...
I definitely would have agreed with that 10 years ago, and probably even 5 years ago, but it's really not much like that any more. Open an incognito window and go to reddit.com, or download the official app. You'll see a bunch of funny pictures, gifs, memes, occasional news, etc. in an infinite-scrolling format built around casual browsing that looks a lot like Twitter or any other social media site.
The niche forums are still there, but they're not the face of the site any more, and the user base has moved far more towards "everyone". They get somewhere in the range of 330 million unique monthly visitors, that's almost exactly the same as Twitter.
I agree with that as well. But the problem is that the laws are totally inadequate for the issues social media is causing. And it's clear from the Zuckerberg hearing that our lawmakers don't...
The way I understand it, these companies choose to set the boundary at the bare minimum, i.e. not breaking the law, which I also believe is where the boundary should be as to go further is to tread the ground of being politically involved.
I agree with that as well. But the problem is that the laws are totally inadequate for the issues social media is causing. And it's clear from the Zuckerberg hearing that our lawmakers don't understand the basics of how these platforms work. So how could they possibly write laws to solve these issues?
they are a neutral ground for people to interact with each other.
They're not though. All social media sites have become bubbles for people to confirm their own beliefs. If misinformation is posted, it doesn't get shot down as inaccurate. It gets reverberated by people who want to believe it, or are pushing an agenda. That's why it is important for facebook to shoot down this kind of video. All it does is leave millions of people misinformed.
having an upfront warning for fallacious content is as much as we can expect from a platform as universally adopted as Facebook to implement while remaining neutral.
I'm not sure that would work. You see the right already thinks facebook is biased against them. That would simply add fuel to that belief. It's better than nothing though, and definitely worth trying. No clue why facebook can't do that right now. Youtube already sticks a link to wikipedia under videos prone to misinformation.
I think the Boston Bomber situation really did irreparable damage to Reddit's credibility in the view of the media to the point that any discussion regarding the website is deemed unnecessary and...
I think the Boston Bomber situation really did irreparable damage to Reddit's credibility in the view of the media to the point that any discussion regarding the website is deemed unnecessary and silly.
alt link: https://outline.com/2THeqF
partial excerpt:
I don't want this to sound demeaning, because I am all in favour of people getting rid of their facebook accounts, but… especially in tech circles where most people are 1) aware of fake news and generally good at spotting it/have feeds mostly devoid of it; 2) are generally more privacy conscious in the first place and aware of the implications of facebook's data practices; and 3) are probably the best people who could actually do something meaningful about the downsides/toxicity of facebook…
Well, to me, it sounds like in such places, calling for people to delete their facebook account is not just circlejerkish, but it sounds icky in the same way that a vegan berating you for eating eggs does, and how if you personally stop eating eggs, the world will be so much better for it.
I really dislike the position facebook holds right now. I want to do something about it. And I think for example, the fact you're active on tildes has a much bigger impact on the existence of facebook than whether or not you delete your account. The latter may in fact have a net negative effect to what you're trying to achieve.
If I deleted facebook today, I'd lose contact with… maybe a dozen people. Not many, I have a very small and curated friends list, and I barely use FB at all (I log into it maybe a couple times a month; although I do use Messenger). And those people, I barely talk to, but losing contact with them entirely would prevent me from, say, moving them to a different platform if I found one that I actually thought was better.
You have to work with what you got. I don't think deleting facebook is useful, and I don't think veganism is how we'll stop climate change. The "every little helps" mindset is harmful, IMO; it drives people to do something unimpactful, make them feel like they made a difference, and often enough prevents real change from occuring.
Stay on facebook and share a couple of articles about the importance of privacy online, for example; or about how to spot fake news. If just one person reads it you'll probably have made a bigger difference than by deleting what was not useful to FB in the first place.
The interview the facebook VP gave on Cooper last night was just bonkers. The amount of bullshit and question dodging she was spewing was off the charts. How do these people keep getting away with this? It's insane.
And once again. Twitter, youtube and facebook face tons of pressure over this video, yet reddit isn't mentioned once by anyone in the media. Why?
The media almost always totally ignores reddit, it's always been a weird gap. It has comparable traffic to Twitter, and arguably more influence in its ability to generate and spread content. But it seems like nobody in the media really understands reddit, so they always just ignore it.
I definitely would have agreed with that 10 years ago, and probably even 5 years ago, but it's really not much like that any more. Open an incognito window and go to reddit.com, or download the official app. You'll see a bunch of funny pictures, gifs, memes, occasional news, etc. in an infinite-scrolling format built around casual browsing that looks a lot like Twitter or any other social media site.
The niche forums are still there, but they're not the face of the site any more, and the user base has moved far more towards "everyone". They get somewhere in the range of 330 million unique monthly visitors, that's almost exactly the same as Twitter.
I agree with that as well. But the problem is that the laws are totally inadequate for the issues social media is causing. And it's clear from the Zuckerberg hearing that our lawmakers don't understand the basics of how these platforms work. So how could they possibly write laws to solve these issues?
They're not though. All social media sites have become bubbles for people to confirm their own beliefs. If misinformation is posted, it doesn't get shot down as inaccurate. It gets reverberated by people who want to believe it, or are pushing an agenda. That's why it is important for facebook to shoot down this kind of video. All it does is leave millions of people misinformed.
I'm not sure that would work. You see the right already thinks facebook is biased against them. That would simply add fuel to that belief. It's better than nothing though, and definitely worth trying. No clue why facebook can't do that right now. Youtube already sticks a link to wikipedia under videos prone to misinformation.
because reddit isn't generally mentioned by the media period, lol. they generously get serious media attention once a year, if that.
I think the Boston Bomber situation really did irreparable damage to Reddit's credibility in the view of the media to the point that any discussion regarding the website is deemed unnecessary and silly.