Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues Meta, citing chatbot’s reply as evidence of shadowban
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues Meta, citing chatbot’s reply as evidence of shadowban
Presidential candidate believes Meta’s chatbot can reliably reveal shadowbans.
On the one hand, I hope he loses.
On the other hand, I hope Meta also loses.
Something tells me we are the ones who lose.
And on the brain... Worms!
Regardless, the lawyers win.
And for once I'm OK with that
"When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers"
I am the one who walks away from Omelas.
I can't see how Meta could lose. 1 unreliable information, and 2 they can deny access to anyone they want if they are a private company last I knew.
The brain worm is up to something...
There is no freedom of speech guarantee in private or public enterprise. Only government.
Yet another tool that uses “freedom of speech” incorrectly to basically mean “I want to force people to listen to my bullshit.” How these people running for office don’t get the first amendment is amazing.
Yet another tool that uses “freedom of speech” incorrectly
Often freedom of speech is a moral ideal, a moral aspiration, and dismissing it on legal grounds is missing the point.
If I say "people should have a right to healthcare", and you respond "people do not have a legal right to healthcare", you are correct, but you have missed the point. If I say people should have freedom of speech and you respond that the first amendment doesn't apply to Facebook, you are right, but have again missed the point.
In general, when people advocate for any change, they can be countered with "well, the law doesn't require that". Yes, society currently works the way the law says it should. But what we're talking about is how society should work and how the law should change.
Okay, but you don't win lawsuits based on how the law ought to be
The thing is people shouldnt have that level of "freedom of speech"
No one is above reproach.
There is no freedom of speech guarantee in private or public enterprise.
And the consequence of this policy is a back-door path to censorship. A combination of surveillance, selective-admittance, and media saturation allow certain ideological beliefs to suffice the "marketplace of ideas" while others are silenced.
“I want to force people to listen to my bullshit.”
Its more that privatized media infrastructure allows for a monopolization of speech.
Big media companies still force people to listen to bullshit, by way of advertising and algorithmic promotion. Go on YouTube, click through their "recommended" list a few times, and you'll quickly find yourself watching some Mr. Beast episode or PraegerU video, simply because these folks have invested so heavily in self-promotion.
But there's a wide swath of content you won't see, either because YouTube's algorithm explicitly censors it for policy reasons, because the media isn't maxing out the SEO YouTube execs desire (the classic Soy Face thumbnail for instance), or because you're not spending enough money to boost visibility.
This has nothing to do with what the generic video watcher wants to see and everything to do with what YouTube administration wants that watcher to see.
RFK Jr is a nasty little freak with some very toxic beliefs. But that's not why he's struggling to get noticed on the platform, when plenty of other nasty freaks with toxic beliefs get mainstream circulation.
Yeah. That’s also a problem. But then you have to upend corporate ownership of the control of speech, and we’re already facing that problem.
Really don't need to hear anything coming from this guy. It's always batshit crazy and it's a waste of time.
I remember seeing be was a guest on Rogan and thinking, "Oh, wow. I guess I'll listen to Rogan again this one time to hear a Kennedy talking."
Turns out it was right on fucking brand for Rogan.
Ha ha ha
It’s always hilarious to read and worth a laugh imo
So what? How does he think Meta is liable for anything here?
it’s gotta be posturing for his base “lone hero stands up to big tech”
He lets the worm do the thinking.
They’re oppressing him! The chatbot said so!!
Let them fight. I want a discovery on this
I’m betting this gets dismissed before discovery
Shadow banning is definitely too much imo. It's simply unethical no matter how you look at it.
First, it doesn't do anything to prevent bots. It takes less than a second for a bot to check whether they are shadow banned. It's simply a tool to bully and gaslight people - just block them. Why these abusive games?
IDK, I think it can be an effective tool against trolls because it wastes the time they'd otherwise spend harassing people.
But that's not what RFK is, he's a legitimate candidate for president and should be given the same consideration other candidates are, not shadowbanned because someone doesn't like his message.
bro he looks like the heavens gate guy
For real!
he really does, doesn't he
He could have been a great dude but he just HAD to go down the antivax rabbit hole. Fuckin’ shame.
Sadly, that’s not the only conspiracy he’s into
Yea, which is crazy. I don't agree with him but I like him. Something about him is engaging him. I'd love to see him chat with Steve Novella or someone like that.
Real life Connor Roy soldiers bravely on.
Not the onion.
Thought about posting it there but I had already made one RFK post there last night and didn’t want to do 2 in a day lol
Meta is a private company and can do whatever the fuck they like.
This guy shouldn't be let anywhere near a position of decision making, let alone the highest office in the nation.
Private companies should not be able to do whatever the fuck they like. They have a very important responsibility, and they will not consider ethics over profit, unless we as a society force them to.
Okay sure, but there's nothing on the books that says that meta has to allow people to use their platform. You are not entitled to unlimited access to a private service.
Ever single person from RFK and Donald Trump to you and me all sign the exact same fucking EULA and TOS when you register for an account. Stop holding these people above the law by pretending that the rules shouldn't apply to them.
No, they have to follow laws.
Private company in what way? The company is publicly traded - there are rules and regulations that organizations have to abide by. it's not totally lawless current state ... They're legally beholden to shareholders to maximize value. They can do what they like but probably don't want them allowing certain folks to have a platform (moderating the platform). Meta uses the grey area to manipulate and addict users, that's just their business practice to drive value and generate views/engagement with their platform.
Agree this dude is unhinged.
private company in that it is not owned by the government. Those are the two categories.
Either they're owned by the government or they're owned by private citizens. Being traded on the stock market, or traded privately, or not traded at all makes no difference to them being a private company
EDIT: publicly traded still means privately bought and owned by private citizens and private businesses/companies. At no point does the government become involved.
The corpos are way too ban happy
The whole problem with shadowbans is that they are not very easy to prove (without cooperation from Meta). One can be shadowbanned from one area (by geolocation), but not from another. One can be shadowbanned for some users but not for other. The decisions here can be made based on any kind of data and frankly Meta has a lot to make it efficient and yet hard to prove.
Shadowbans should just be illegal as a thing, first, and second, some of the arguments against him from the article are negligible.
I just don't get you people hating him more than the two main candidates. It seems being a murderer is a lesser problem than being a nutcase for you.
Shadowbans should just be illegal as a thing
I bet you scream about your first amendment rights being violated whenever a moderator deletes your posts.
A problem is that social media websites are simultaneously open platforms with Section 230 protections, and also publishers who have free speech rights. Those are contradictory, so which is it?
Perhaps @rottingleaf was speaking morally rather than legally. For example, I might say "I believe everyone in America should have access to healthcare"; if you respond "no, there is no right to healthcare" you would be right, but you missed my point. I was expressing an moral aspiration.
I think shadowbans are a bad mix of censorship and hard to detect. Morally, I believe they should be illegal. If a company wants to ban someone, they can be up front about it with a regular ban; make it clear what they are doing. To implement this legally, we could alter Section 230 protections so that they don't apply to companies performing shadowbans.
Shadowbans help prevent bot activity by preventing a bot from knowing if what they posted was actually posted. Similar to vote obfuscation. It wastes bot’s time so it’s a good thing.
Shadowbans help prevent bot activity by preventing a bot from knowing if what they posted was actually posted
I have not seen anything to support the theory that shadowbans reduce the number of bots on a platform. If anything, a sophisticated account run by professional engagement farmers is going to know it's been shadowbanned - and know how to mitigate the ban - more easily than an amateur publisher producing sincere content. The latter is far more likely to run afoul of an difficult-to-detect ban than the former.
It wastes bot’s time
A bot has far more time to waste than a human. So this technique is biased against humans, rather than bots.
If you want to discourage bots from referencing their own metrics, put public metrics behind a captcha. That's far more effective than undermining visibility in a way only a professional would notice.
I've seen reddit accounts who regularly posted comments for months all at +1 vote and never received any response or reply at all because nobody had ever seen their comments. They got hit with some automod shadowban they were yelling into the void, likely wondering why nobody ever felt they deserved to be heard.
I find this unsettling and unethical. I think people have a right to be heard and deceiving people like this feels wrong.
There are other methods to deal with spam that aren't potentially harmful.
There's also an entirely different discussion about shadowbans being a way to silence specific forms of speech. Today it may be crazies or hateful speech, but it can easily be any subversive speech should the administration change.
I agree with other commenter, it probably shouldn't be allowed.
Why should shadow bans be illegal?
Shadowbans should just be illegal as a thing
I mean, regional coding makes sense from a language perspective. I don't really want to see a bunch of foreign language recommendations on my feed, unless I'm explicitly searching for content in that language.
But I do agree there's a lack of transparency. And I further agree that The Algorithm creates a rarified collection of "popular" content entirely by way of excluding so much else. The end result is a very generic stream of crap in the main feed and some truly freaky gamed content that's entirely focused on click-baiting children. Incidentally, jesus fucking christ whomever is responsible for promoting "unboxing" videos should be beaten to death with a flaming bag of nalpam.
None of this is socially desirable or good, but it all appears to be incredibly profitable. Its a social media environment that's converged on "Oops! All Ads!" and is steadily making its way to "Oops! All scams!" as the content gets worse and worse and worse.
The shadowbanning and segregation of content is just a part of the equation that makes all this possible. But funneling people down into a handful of the most awful, libidinal content generators is really not good.
Yes, thank you for explaining the same thing politely, I had a slight hangover yesterday.
The problem is with unneeded people making unneeded decisions for you anonymously (for them), centrally and obviously with no transparency.
The advantages of the Internet as it came into existence for us were disadvantages for some people. Trapping people inside social media with one entry point and having the actual communication there allows for control which the initial architecture was intended to make hard.
Does everyone hate Bobby Kennedy so much that they’ll side with Facebook and Zuckerberg over a career environmental attorney because he’s running for president?
He's an unhinged anti-vaxxer and all around conspiracy theorist. Summarizing him as an environmental lawyer is being real generous.
“Let’s imagine: It’s time to elect a world leader, and your vote counts. Which would you choose:
“Candidate A: Associates with ward healers and consults with astrologists; has had two mistresses; chain-smokes and drinks eight to ten martinis a day.
“Candidate B: Was kicked out of office twice; sleeps until noon; used opium in college; drinks a quart of brandy every evening.
“Candidate C: Is a decorated war hero, a vegetarian, doesn’t smoke, drinks an occasional beer, and has had no illicit love affairs.
“Which of these candidates is your choice? You don’t really need any more information, do you? Candidate A is Franklin Roosevelt. Candidate B is Winston Churchill. Candidate C is Adolf Hitler.”
Biased and selective comparisons can prove anything.
No, because he’s actually quite mad and belongs nowhere near any kind of power. I can see his conspiracy theories appealing to the Q type, but most of them are going to go for Trump. He’s polling this highly because he’s an unknown. As more people start paying attention to who he actually is, he will be the Herman Cain of the race.
According to Kennedy, Meta is colluding with the Biden administration to sway the 2024 presidential election by suppressing Kennedy's documentary and making it harder to support Kennedy's candidacy. This allegedly has caused "substantial donation losses," while also violating the free speech rights of Kennedy, his supporters, and his film's production company, AV24.
In this case, Meta and the Biden administration are claimed to be co-conspirators colluding to block citizens from promoting their favorite presidential candidate.
We can very much dislike both while also agreeing that this is fucking stupid. While we continue to very much dislike both, one is clearly in the wrong on this issue and pointing out the sheer stupidity of Kennedy’s actions is not “siding” with Zuckerberg.
I don’t care what his profession is/was - he’s wrong and it would be disingenuous to give him a pass because he did a thing at some point in his life that I agreed with.
The second quote is stupid, but acceptable in a contentious environment. He can say that.
The first quote is formally wrong (because Meta is a privileged entity which is a platform when it's convenient and a private something not subject to free speech when that is convenient), but in fact almost certainly true. Even obvious. It would take Meta to go out of their way to not do that.
I don't think anyone "hates" him. He's just an absurd human that no one takes seriously. And we all agree we have much more dire things to discuss than what rich white people are calling managers about now.
Nah he's great. He should take the rest of those brain worms, I think the worms should be in charge!
Worms/Kennedy 2024!
Yeah, I'm no fan of RFK, but I would much rather live in a world where people like RFK can speak their mind instead of this one where Meta gets to decide whose voices are heard. It's pretty easy to ignore a crazy person, it's hard to find worthwhile content the major players don't want you to find.
So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, having a free society means we'll have to deal with people like RFK every so often.
