[article]She Joined Facebook to Fight Terror. Now She’s Convinced We Need to Fight Facebook.

Enter your email to keep reading for free. // This is not a paywall.

Yeah, and my avatar is not Aiai and her cig. /s (inb4 yes, I'm aware of removepaywalls.com)

That’s because terrorism, her instructors insisted, was not something governments do.

See, when I shit on "ackshyually", it's because of things like this: technically true statements can mislead you into believing completely outrageous implicit claims.

Byrne would only notice her mistake due to her first-hand experience. But how many people would never notice it? And I don't mean just dumb people, I mean otherwise reasonable people, who get caught in the words.

It wasn’t just the shock of a reversal on the Azov Battalion, but the fact that it had happened so abruptly — Byrne estimates that it took no more than two weeks to exempt the group and allow praise of it once more.

"Oceania was always in war with Eurasia" style. (Reminder 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a textbook.)

“We’re taking some of the most complex, unrelated, geographically separated, just different fucking things, and we’re literally using this word terrorism, or misinformation, or disinformation, to treat them as a binary.”

Yet another example on why getting caught on the words might literally kill.

Unlike past Big Tech dissidents like Frances Haugen, Byrne doesn’t think her former employer can be reformed with tweaks to its algorithms or greater transparency. Rather, she fundamentally objects to an American company policing speech — even in the name of safety — for so much of the planet.

As much as I love to shit on the three stooges (the governments of China, USA, and Russia), this shit would be equally problematic if Facebook was the armed force of another government.

IMO the best policing is like the one here, in the Fediverse. Government? Corporation? Nah, it's a bunch of non-profit-motivated individuals acting on their moral principles.

Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”

Some food for thought for the folks here.

Sorry if this sounds like rambling, I was commenting as I was reading the text.

6 comments

Enter your email to keep reading for free. // This is not a paywall.
Yeah, and my avatar is not Aiai and her cig. /s (inb4 yes, I'm aware of removepaywalls.com)
That’s because terrorism, her instructors insisted, was not something governments do.
See, when I shit on "ackshyually", it's because of things like this: technically true statements can mislead you into believing completely outrageous implicit claims.
Byrne would only notice her mistake due to her first-hand experience. But how many people would never notice it? And I don't mean just dumb people, I mean otherwise reasonable people, who get caught in the words.
It wasn’t just the shock of a reversal on the Azov Battalion, but the fact that it had happened so abruptly — Byrne estimates that it took no more than two weeks to exempt the group and allow praise of it once more.
"Oceania was always in war with Eurasia" style. (Reminder 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a textbook.)
“We’re taking some of the most complex, unrelated, geographically separated, just different fucking things, and we’re literally using this word terrorism, or misinformation, or disinformation, to treat them as a binary.”
Yet another example on why getting caught on the words might literally kill.
Unlike past Big Tech dissidents like Frances Haugen, Byrne doesn’t think her former employer can be reformed with tweaks to its algorithms or greater transparency. Rather, she fundamentally objects to an American company policing speech — even in the name of safety — for so much of the planet.
As much as I love to shit on the three stooges (the governments of China, USA, and Russia), this shit would be equally problematic if Facebook was the armed force of another government.
IMO the best policing is like the one here, in the Fediverse. Government? Corporation? Nah, it's a bunch of non-profit-motivated individuals acting on their moral principles.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
Some food for thought for the folks here.
Sorry if this sounds like rambling, I was commenting as I was reading the text.
- I haven’t read the article yet (about to), but you can type in any word, followed by @website.suffix for the email gate
- moral principles
  And individual petty ego rampages and social reflexes.
  Which is still orders of magnitude better.
  
  Govs and corpos are also subjected to petty ego rampages and social knee-jerk reactions. Cue to Trump or Musk. Except their power to silence moral discourses and highlight immoral discourses is way, way higher than the power of a bunch of individuals acting separately.
Not fight. Starve.
It's extremely easy and they can't do a thing to stop it.