Comment on Polls on reactions to Threads

• donuts@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I can see from your other post that you're talking about Facebook's role in the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar, right? I think this part of the wikipedia article is relevant to the conversation:

  The internet.org initiative was brought to Myanmar in 2015. Myanmar's relatively recent democratic transition did not provide the country with substantial time to form professional and reliable media outlets free from government intervention. Furthermore, approximately 1% of Myanmar's residents had internet access before internet.org. As a result, Facebook was the primary source of information and without verifiable professional media options, Facebook became a breeding ground for hate speech and disinformation. "Rumors circulating among family or friends’ networks on Facebook were perceived as indistinguishable from verified news by its users."[227] Frequent anti-Rohingya sentiments included high Muslim birthrates, increasing economic influence, and plans to takeover the country. Myanmar's Facebook community was also nearly completely unmonitored by Facebook, who at the time only had two Burmese-speaking employees. [Emphasis added by me, btw.]

  Like I said above, I got off Facebook more than a decade ago and I don't use their products. As a platform it has been very well documented that Facebook has been a hive for disinformation and social unrest in [probably] every country and language on Earth. You and I might avoid Facebook and Meta like a plague, but the sad truth is that Facebook has become ubiquitous all over the world for all kinds of communication and business. Weirdos like us are here on the fediverse, but the average person has never even heard of this shit, don't you agree?

  So what's my point? Why is any of that relevant?

  As true as it is that Facebook was complicit in the atrocities in Myanmar (as well as social unrest and chaos on a global scale), a key component there is centralization, imo.

  There are an estimated ~7,000 languages on Earth today across ~200 countries. To put it bluntly, what I'm saying is that content moderation across every language and culture on Earth is infeasible, if not straight-up impossible. Facebook will never be able to do it, nor will Google, X, Bluesky, Tiktok, Microsoft, Amazon, or any other company. In light of that it's actually shocking that Facebook had 2 Burmese speakers among their staff in the first place, considering many companies have 0. In other words, there is no single centralized social network on Earth who can combat against global disinformation, hate speech, etc. I think we can all agree to that. Hell, even Meta's staff would probably agree to that.

  So what's the solution to disinformation, hate speech and civil unrest?

  Frankly I'm not sure that there is one, simple solution, as the openness and freedom of the internet will always allow for someone, somewhere, to say and do bad things. But at the same time I strongly believe that federation and decentralization can be at least a part of the solution, as it give communities of every nation and language on Earth the power and agency to manage and moderate their own social networks.

  I think you and I probably feel similarly about Facebook (and, for me at least, Tiktok, Instagram, X, and other toxic centralized corporate social networks that put profit about all else). After all, that's why we're talking here instead of there, right? I would much rather have everyone just leave Facebook for somewhere that is owned and controlled by individual communities. But that's simply not in our power. And so, at least as I see it, ActivityPub becoming a widely-adopted standard for inter-network communication at least creates more opportunity for decentralization and community-moderation.

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  • ttmrichter@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The issue with Facebook and the Rohingya isn’t just that they “didn’t moderate properly”. It’s that they knew for a long time that it was a problem and chose to ignore it. Note those last four words: chose to ignore it. In that other thing I posted I linked to someone who brought the receipts. The higher-ups at Facebook at the time knew this was happening and chose to put their corporate goals over literally tens of thousands of lives. This is inexcusable.

    The simple solution is to keep Meta contained. To shun those who support it with their labour, their money, or their personal information (indirectly money). I don’t want to interact with quislings and I won’t. Nor should anybody else repelled at their complete and utter apathy in the face of mass murder and genocide.

    (Note: Twitter was no better. Fucking Jack “Dipshit” Dorsey was in Myanmar meditating with the very same Buddhist fucks that were behind the Rohingya genocide, singing out their praises all while this was going on.)

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