Dave Willner
@dwillner.bsky.social
Folks are mostly missing the forest for the trees re: the recent Meta announcement. Specifically, the focus on the move from fact checking to community notes. There two different changes that are a much bigger deal that have received less focus. 🧵 1/11
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First: Meta will not try to proactively detect "lesser" violations, instead relying on user reports. It is unclear (probably intentionally) exactly what this includes, but it definitely includes hate speech. Unfortunately, user reports are crap, have always been crap, and will always be crap.🧵 2/11
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There are two reasons user reports are crap. Users report emotionally, not rationally, so reports are very noisy. Users also don't report bad stuff they like. So reports are both over *and* under inclusive. This is widely known in the industry, and undoubtedly known by Meta. 🧵 3/11
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In practice this means that a lot of very nasty stuff will be missed *and* that missing this stuff is intentional on Meta's part. They are actively choosing to design the system to miss a lot of garbage. 🧵 4/11
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Second: Meta seriously weakened its hate speech standards in a way that makes all protected groups generally, and immigrants, women, and LGBTQ+ people specifically, much more vulnerable to abuse on the site. 🧵 5/11
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The ostensible purpose of these changes was to accommodate debate about legislation and public policy. Thus, they loosened restrictions on calling for sex-segregated spaces (e.g. locker rooms). But they actually went way further than advertised. 🧵 6/11
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Among other things, in my reading of what their rules say, you can now say that all members of any race or religion are thieves, can call women furniture, and can say that people are mentally ill because of their sexual orientation. It is unclear to me what legislative debates this serves. 🧵 7/11
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Zuck positioned these changes as a return to history practice but, for these policy changes, that is untrue. The specific examples I called out above have been prohibited on the site since I wrote the first set of hate speech standards in 2009. 🧵 8/11
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Instead, these below-the-fold changes are very clearly designed to avoid having to penalize people like Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the increasingly dehumanizing language they use against these specific groups. You can tell because of the changes they *didn't* make. 🧵 9/11
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So, for example, you still cannot call all members of a specific religion mentally ill. I can't come up with a reason for that difference other than the fact that it would be frequently applied to Evangelicals and also isn't (currently) a meme on the American Right. 🧵 10/11
Continue thread...
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Bluesky. You’re welcome
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Not interested in the minutia, it’s an evil corporation, delete the apps and spread the word.
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The proposed TikTok ban has nothing to do with US security as they would like you to believe. It has everything to do with profits for FB, X, Amazon, etc for which TikTok is a major competitor. Always follow the money not the conspiracies when you want to know what’s really going on.
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This 🧵👇: one of the best parsings of Meta’s recent sweeping changes to its content moderation I’ve seen on social media. Well worth reading and sharing esp. with anyone who is still using Meta products.
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I'm a genius in life along with the millions of others who aren't on Meta platforms.😁 I'm doing fine. Head not filled with virtual world worry about likes/dislikes. I liken this debate to people saying I hate the bar I go to, but I will just deal with it. Just stop going to the bar.
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Taking control isn't something people seem to do well.
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Thank you for your work and insights on this. They're very elucidating!
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A great opportunity for a developer to create a Bluesky-like Facebook replacement. Most of the organizations I belong to post their events to fB so I can’t leave yet. And I’d miss the photos of my family and friends.
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What about the harm done to family and friends?
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Yes, they need photographic evidence of such.
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I wonder, if Meta made the move to acquire Twitter/X followers. Good time to capitalize on Musk’s madness. I wonder how many have left Mets sites though. Zuckerberg’s post shows some real concern.
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This country now needs a military coup to get rid of the incoming government 😡
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America literally never *needs* a military coup.
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Portugal had an antifascist military coup and ended up 800% better country as result so USA should try copying that trick verbatim
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You realise most military coups just lead to dictatorships beings installed
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You would know you American piece of shit, you've been behind most coups.
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I am keeping my FB account open as I use it for connections with my international family. I am tightening as much as I can what gets in or out. I don’t respond to anyone I don’t ACTUALLY know anymore.
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I’m hoping someone will see this as an opportunity to create a Bluesky-like Facebook.
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Tks, Dave. I left all Meta as did many people I know. There is truly something wrong with little yucky Zucky. I hope it all blows up in his face
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Just change the name to Xbook and get it over with.
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It's hard to build a fascist state without persecution of minority groups.
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Doesn't matter if you dump Meta.
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So essentially it becomes Shitter. Glad I deleted all Meta platforms.
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Great points! Just re: "reports are both over *and* under inclusive" Both are partially addressed: 1) Meta doesn't take action on the report alone; it just triggers an additional review 2) Arguably, if no one who saw the 'hate speech' post is offended for it to be reported, it did less damage
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My amazing wife was the inquest lawyer for Mollys family… we all experienced first hand the pure, demonic evil at the very heart of that that organisation and let me tell you all, what’s publicly reported only scratches the surface. Meta is a toxic toxic cult. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
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Zuck saw how great Twitter turned out when they opened it up to the worst people's worst impulses and figured he could do the same thing for Meta. Maybe he can change the name to Y.
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Or Y bother
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Two days ago, I posted on Facebook that due to these changes I would no longer be posting there or engaging, but would keep my account to avoid squatters. I provided my bsky handle and said people could message me there. Facebook took my post down, supposedly for violating cybersecurity policies!!
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I posted my announcement about leaving all Meta earlier today… I’m winding down … my final exit date is set for Jan. 20. … That seems like a great day to make a move.
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Thank you for the information. Meta will clearly evolve into X 2.0 with these measures and we know how that ended up... I just hope that these decisions make people leave, and with it, all the "we have to allow hate speech for our politicians propaganda" dies in their own niche.
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I’d like to see Facebook return to a time before they had an algorithm. Say like, pre-2008.
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Why would I want the opinion of some fucking monster who works for OpenAI and AirBNB. You are the same type of piece of shit as Musk and Mark.
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Wow. Well... i don't think THAT was called for.
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It sounds like Zuck is pandering to the Religious Freedom Crowd. Freedom of Speech from the Religious Freedom crowd tends to mean that want to use hateful language and not get called names back. With a Conservative SC/Trump the lawsuits against Meta would have bankrupted them so Zuck caved to Trump.
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Intriguing take—those hidden changes could really reshape things in unexpected ways, can’t wait to hear your full breakdown!
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In my day ('60s) you could tell a lot about a person by their hangout bars. - Nasty bars w/bad food. (pickled eggs) - Friendly bars w/pub food. (decent pizza) - Fancy bars w/actual menus, no chalkboard. (tables, no TV, 3&4 syllable words in the air) Virtual bars blur a once useful self-segregation.
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Just one point … pickled eggs *are* pub food, often seen with pickled onions. 🙃
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Not missing any forest, Dave, this all is pretty obvious to anybody who’s paying attention.
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I’m here cause Mike Masnick says you’re smart.
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And what would those be, pray tell?
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Unrolled thread, for sharing on other platforms: skywriter.blue/pages/dwilln...