Facebook censorship getting worse again

This 27 August 2018 video from the USA is called Abby Martin On Billionaires Silencing Independent Media.

From Forbes magazine in the USA today:

Facebook‘s Employee Bonuses Now Hinge on ‘Social’ Progress

Facebook’s nearly 36,000 employees are about to be judged on a whole new metric: The company’s ability to tackle problems like misinformation and hate speech on its service.

According to Facebook, corporate media never ever practice ‘misinformation and hate speech’. No matter how often the German Bildzeitung tabloid falsely accuses refugees of sexual violence. No matter how often the Rupert Murdoch empire preaches transphobia, racism, warmongering, etc.

However, if not so rich anti-racists in the USA call on Facebook for demonstrating against neo-nazis in Washington, or for protest against Donald Trump’s xenophobia: then, presto! Facebook will consider these anti-racists to be purveyors of ‘misinformation and hate speech’ and ‘tools of Russia‘, and will delete their accounts.

While open admirers of Adolf Hitler, like the Dutch Nederlandse Volks-Unie, will still be welcome on Facebook.

Previously, Facebook’s employee bonus formula was based on six factors, including user growth, increased sharing by users …

The shift is at least partly driven by the desire to incentivize workers to prioritize safety and security on the platform. …

it now has more than 30,000 people working on safety and security (some of these are contractors), up from 10,000 a couple of years ago …

But it’s not yet clear exactly how Facebook will measure any improvements on its “social issues”, and therefore what any potential impact there would be to employee compensation … though the company is tracking and now publishing many metrics, like how many fake accounts it takes down daily.

So, if a Facebook worker does not censor ‘enough’ accounts, then she or he will be punished with less wages. While zealous censors will get more money. Unless their zeal is so big that they accidentally censor corporate media content. Eg, really fake news in the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world. Like the Post‘s hoax about ‘Russian cyber crime’ in Vermont in the USA. If a zealous Facebook worker would try to censor that, then his or her boss would remind him or her to limit censorship to non-establishment sites.

Dutch NOS TV comments today (translated):

At the same time, it was conspicuous that [Facebook big cheese] Zuckerberg in his review did not name a number of major problems – such as the scandal around Cambridge Analytica, … problems in countries such as Myanmar and a major hack last fall – concretely.

On February 15 Facebook suspended four pages run by Maffick Media, including In the Now, Soapbox, Back Then and Waste-Ed, which posted content critical of US foreign and social policy. … Rania Khalek, a commentator for Maffick, told CNN, “We should judge journalists on the content that they produce. So, if you want to judge me, judge me on the content. Judge me on the facts I’m presenting”: here.

She continued, “If I oppose a US war, does that automatically mean I’m going to be accused of being aligned with the Kremlin? I feel like this is a very, very dangerous McCarthyist tactic to start saying that leftist views, anti-war views are just the Kremlin government’s talking points.”

GERMANY CURBS FACEBOOK’S DATA GATHERING Germany’s competition authority told Facebook it can only continue gathering data about users outside its app and website if it gets consent. The social network said it will appeal. [Reuters]

FACEBOOK ‘INTENTIONALLY’ VIOLATED UK LAW A report issued by British lawmakers finds that Facebook “intentionally and knowingly” violated the United Kingdom’s data privacy and competition laws. [HuffPost]

On June 30, Facebook announced plans to begin banning ads that discourage people from voting in US elections. In a Newsroom blog post called “A Second Update on Our Civil Rights Audit,” COO Sheryl Sandberg announced Facebook’s anti-democratic policy by writing that a cross-functional team had been dedicated to a full-time effort “to protect elections” by blocking “don’t vote” advertising: here.