They’re position basically boils down to “Facebook won’t tell us what problems were identified with the domains that caused the blocks, but it’s better to have guards against malicious domains than not”. That is a false dichotomy.
A better response is, “unless Facebook is actually disclosing what issues with the domains caused the flagging, we should not allow them to block news websites, especially when they’ve been critical of Facebook”. To do otherwise is basically just giving them carte blanche to block domains whenever they want to, and assuming on their behalf that they’re being honest and benevolent.
They go on to make excuses for Meta all throughout the article:
Whatever issue Facebook flagged regarding those ads — Kendall is not clear, and I suspect that is because Facebook is not clear either
While this interpretation of a deliberate effort by Facebook to silence critical reporting is kind of understandable, given its poor communication and the lack of adequate followup, it hardly strikes me as realistic.
For an even simpler example, consider how someone forgetting a password for their account looks exactly the same as someone trying to break into it. On any website worth its salt, you will be slowed down or prevented from trying more than some small number of password attempts, even if you are the actual account owner. This is common security behaviour; Meta’s is merely more advanced.
As someone who works in security, this is actually a hilarious indictment of how inadvanced Facebook’s security would have to be to be mistaking actual organic shares and reposts with malicious boosting attempts, and once again is assuming innocence on their behalf where no assumption of innocence is warranted.
Even their sarcastic line,
If you wanted to make a kind-of-lame modern conspiracy movie
is an unwarranted dismissal of assertions that Meta polices political content on their platforms as being akin to a conspiracy, even though we in fact know they do that. Reporting has shown that Meta does actively take political stances and translate those into actions and policies in their sites.
Hanlon’s Razor is about assumptions sans evidence, because of the natural human tendency to automatically interpret actions that harm you as intentional. It’s not, however, meant to discount evidence of patterns of malicious behavior by actors known to be problematic.
And this is not a new, one-off behavior on Facebook’s part:
The writer also totally skips over, as far as I can tell, the escalating series of blocks of additional outlets who were covering the story. With each additional one, it becomes geometrically less likely that it was just the kind of mistake he is claiming is a plausible explanation (which, he then parlays into arguing that it means it is the plausible explanation).
Interesting take. You’ve certainly got me thinking about it a bit more.
I won’t try to interpret the author’s intent because that’s for him to do and I don’t want to speak on his behalf. But I do think he’s right about the tone of the response to the error being wildly wrong. News orgs should be dispassionate and I don’t get a sense that they were at all.
I think Meta fucks up. I think mass media is terrible at understanding what they’re reporting about. I think conservatives in particular see boogie men everywhere. Anyway, I’d read Nick’s piece earlier in the day and that had been my only exposure to the story, so I chose to link to it because to me it was a reasonable response.
Nick Heer wrote intelligently about this.
https://pxlnv.com/blog/hanlons-razor-kansas-edition/
Hard disagree with this person.
They’re position basically boils down to “Facebook won’t tell us what problems were identified with the domains that caused the blocks, but it’s better to have guards against malicious domains than not”. That is a false dichotomy.
A better response is, “unless Facebook is actually disclosing what issues with the domains caused the flagging, we should not allow them to block news websites, especially when they’ve been critical of Facebook”. To do otherwise is basically just giving them carte blanche to block domains whenever they want to, and assuming on their behalf that they’re being honest and benevolent.
They go on to make excuses for Meta all throughout the article:
As someone who works in security, this is actually a hilarious indictment of how inadvanced Facebook’s security would have to be to be mistaking actual organic shares and reposts with malicious boosting attempts, and once again is assuming innocence on their behalf where no assumption of innocence is warranted.
Even their sarcastic line,
is an unwarranted dismissal of assertions that Meta polices political content on their platforms as being akin to a conspiracy, even though we in fact know they do that. Reporting has shown that Meta does actively take political stances and translate those into actions and policies in their sites.
Hanlon’s Razor is about assumptions sans evidence, because of the natural human tendency to automatically interpret actions that harm you as intentional. It’s not, however, meant to discount evidence of patterns of malicious behavior by actors known to be problematic.
And this is not a new, one-off behavior on Facebook’s part:
The climate divide: How Facebook’s algorithm amplifies climate disinformation - Feb2022
Facebook did not label over 50% of posts from top climate change deniers, says new report - Feb2022
Facebook’s New Ad Policies Make It Harder for Climate Groups to Counter Big Oil - Mar2022
I can’t tell if the author thinks Facebook’s security is advanced, or incompetent.
Thank you
The writer also totally skips over, as far as I can tell, the escalating series of blocks of additional outlets who were covering the story. With each additional one, it becomes geometrically less likely that it was just the kind of mistake he is claiming is a plausible explanation (which, he then parlays into arguing that it means it is the plausible explanation).
Interesting take. You’ve certainly got me thinking about it a bit more.
I won’t try to interpret the author’s intent because that’s for him to do and I don’t want to speak on his behalf. But I do think he’s right about the tone of the response to the error being wildly wrong. News orgs should be dispassionate and I don’t get a sense that they were at all.
I think Meta fucks up. I think mass media is terrible at understanding what they’re reporting about. I think conservatives in particular see boogie men everywhere. Anyway, I’d read Nick’s piece earlier in the day and that had been my only exposure to the story, so I chose to link to it because to me it was a reasonable response.
This is a well written and a very rational take on the situation. Nick is probably right.
Nice try, Nick.