Sacha Baron Cohen on the state of society

I have about 140 Facebook friends and only use it to keep track of concerts to go to. If Zuckerberg wants to use smellovision when I take a shit, that’s one thing. I expect that. Look at that fucking twat. If he wants to use it to brainwash people into keeping a retard in the White House to push America fully into a feudal society, then it’s time to get some fucking boots on the ground. 

  On 11/30/2019 at 5:49 AM, chassis said:

Necessity is irrelevant, as soon as you are interacting with the public you are required to uphold certain standards. If that's your own standard or a standard that someone places upon you.

Required by whom ?

  On 11/30/2019 at 7:49 AM, Candiru said:

If he wants to use it to brainwash people into keeping a retard in the White House to push America fully into a feudal society, then it’s time to get some fucking boots on the ground. 

lol

how about instead of snopes.com it's snipes.com and wesley snipes fact-checks ur news

  On 11/30/2019 at 9:28 PM, Salvatorin said:

how about instead of snopes.com it's snipes.com and wesley snipes fact-checks ur news

i had hope for this plan but.. bummer. snipes is already a thing. 

https://www.snipes.com

  On 11/30/2019 at 3:59 PM, drillkicker said:

Required by whom ?

This isn’t hard. Required by the norms of society. 
Facebook et al are media companies. 
They should therefore be regulated like media companies. No paid advertisements that promote things like racism (not hard to define, there is an enormous amount of case law), terrorism, incite violence, etc. 
Slander and libel should also be that list of unacceptable paid advertisements. 
 

as for the users: more monitoring done by the companies. Yes this is a hard job for the actual monitors,  but Facebook has resources to properly train and support those monitors. 

Why do you get to decide what the norms of society are ?

Mate,

I'm not deciding the norms of society. That is generally decided through institutions like the courts and legislative assemblies, where people who have the time and understanding* to do so debate issues of the day and make decisions thereon. Ironically enough, the media is another institution that plays a role in shaping normative opinions. Traditional media is regulated quite heavily, and the courts and legislative bodies are constrained through their laws (including constitutional documents).

There is no reason that social media, which is definitely an institution in the modern world, should not face regulation, and be held accountable when they fail to abide by those regulations.

Regulations will not be perfect, and will not cover every possible situation. That doesn't mean governments shouldn't try to find a solution to the problems in social media that are widely recognized (it's not just Sascha Baron Cohen talking about this issue).

Or people can just stop using Facebook.  The government shouldn’t be a substitute for common sense.  This is how genocides happen.

Yeah, regulating Facebook leads inevitably to genocide

  On 12/2/2019 at 4:26 PM, drillkicker said:

Or people can just stop using Facebook.  The government shouldn’t be a substitute for common sense.  This is how genocides happen.

I'm not quite sure how you get to genocide from Government regulation of Facebook, so I'm not going to touch that part.

At this point, while I agree that (old) people spend too much time on Facebook, I think that telling people to simply "stop using Facebook" is much the same as telling them to give up TV/Newspaper news. I'm more interested in regulating the algorithms used to determine people's preferences (to try and avoid the ideological bubbles that occur through showing more and more extreme material "relevant to a person's interests"), and regulating the ability of advertisers to spread hateful/obscene messages on the platform.

I'm not sure how a government would approach this (as I barely have time to do my own work, let alone research that sort of initiative), but I believe that this is the correct path to take.

  On 12/2/2019 at 4:42 PM, darreichungsform said:

Yeah, regulating Facebook leads inevitably to genocide

facebook and genocide go together well. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html

  On 12/2/2019 at 6:27 PM, ignatius said:

facebook and genocide go together well. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html

 

Yeah, unregulated Facebook that is. Goebbels would have loved Facebook. In fact, Hitler adored the American ad industry. But they would have liked it unregulated

  On 12/2/2019 at 5:17 PM, chenGOD said:

I'm not sure how a government would approach this (as I barely have time to do my own work, let alone research that sort of initiative)

And yet you somehow justify having blind faith that the government knows what it's doing.  Regulating Facebook doesn't lead to genocide, but having this level of trust in the government without bothering to think about what it's doing is exactly the kind of mentality that results in genocides.

  On 12/2/2019 at 7:34 PM, drillkicker said:

And yet you somehow justify having blind faith that the government knows what it's doing.  Regulating Facebook doesn't lead to genocide, but having this level of trust in the government without bothering to think about what it's doing is exactly the kind of mentality that results in genocides.

I don't have blind faith in government. But i trust the government to act more in the public interest than corporations.

  On 12/2/2019 at 7:20 PM, darreichungsform said:

Yeah, unregulated Facebook that is. Goebbels would have loved Facebook. In fact, Hitler adored the American ad industry. But they would have liked it unregulated

user data can be a rather dangerous tool in the hands of authoritarians. zeynep tufekci is an excellent speaker on the topic

  On 12/2/2019 at 7:42 PM, chenGOD said:

I don't have blind faith in government. But i trust the government to act more in the public interest than corporations.

Why ?  Personally, I don't see a difference.

  On 12/3/2019 at 12:40 AM, drillkicker said:

Why ?  Personally, I don't see a difference.

You don’t see the difference between a body that is elected by the public vs a group of individuals beholden to no one except shareholders? This is not a productive conversation. 

No, I don't see a difference.

this fuckin guy

Elected politicians and business executives are both just trying to sell something.  Politicians are trying to sell themselves to the public, while business executives are trying to sell themselves to the shareholders.  Neither group has honest intentions, because honesty doesn't sell.  It's that simple.  The modern republic is a political system that effectively disqualifies honest people from leadership, and ensures that only those who are willing to manipulate the passions are inaugurated into public office.  This has been especially apparent in the most recent U.S. presidential election, but even a cursory overview of the political world reveals it to be the case.

Do you have an idea of how government at the municipal, state, and federal levels work? Do you know what politicians do beyond what you see about Trump or when another politician acting in bad faith makes the news? Sure, a simplistic take is that politicians are trying to sell themselves to the public. To what end though? Yes Congressmen and Senators get a decent salary, but they are selling themselves to the people to represent the people’s wishes, and if they don’t, they can (and often are) voted out of office. American politics at the federal level are kind of fucked up because of the extreme partisanship, but that has been a recent development (brewing admittedly since the 80s, when Reagan was elected). But the people can fix it, if they truly desire to do so.

Do you understand that government is not just the politicians? The bureaucracy is made up of individuals who are trying to implement the desires of the people as expressed through their voting preferences. These people are, by and large, not in government to get rich quick (there are far easier ways to do that),  or are they there on some Machiavellian power trip, but rather out of some sense of civic duty. 
 

I doubt I’ve changed your mind at all, but the difference between politicians and corporate executives is vast. 

youtube and twitter have taken some action, at least. 

  Quote

...

In October, responding to a groundswell of concern, Twitter announced it would ban political advertising on its platform. Google and its subsidiary YouTube do not ban these ads, but the company last month came out with adjustments and clarifications to its policy, including limiting microtargeting of users.

...

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/300-trump-ads-taken-down-by-google-youtube-60-minutes-2019-12-01/

Drill, is it that simple? I think you've got some very superficial ideas on politics and government.

I probably shouldnt have posted this response, because I'm wondering why it shouldn't be equally simple to list a couple of fundamental differences between corporations and government. It's a large list. And the differences should be both obvious and significant. But here we are. I must say it's rather difficult to stay civilized and respectful, and all that. 

Lets just stick to saying that it's ok to be critical of government (both the principle and the practice) and to voice your criticism. But to argue the extreme (no differences between corporations and governments) is just undermining your credibility. And tells me it's a waste of time to even bother responding. 

suddenly.. this thread is full of..