Facebook to Remove Misinformation That Leads to Violence

"Under the new rules, Facebook has said it will create partnerships with local civil society groups to identify misinformation for removal." - how do these "civil society groups" determine what is information vs misinformation?

This is the most American comment section. Somehow the fact that Facebook might remove lies that lead to violence is objectionable on free speech grounds. That they remove pictures of nipples is somehow not a matter of great concern...

The only thing that can and ought to be realistically removed is illegal speech and SCOTUS has already defined what that is... Any other attempts, while well intentioned, will probably backfire. FB seems to take one step forward and two steps back each time they try to take some moral high ground when it comes to free speech... I like the fact they recently increased transparency behind who is paying for ads - whether they are advertising fake or true info, the reader gets to decide what&#x27;s veritable vs what isn&#x27;t ultimately, as it should be. Now, they will &quot;identify misinformation&quot;.. in other words, they will appoint themselves as adjudicators of what is truth (e.g. &quot;mis-information&quot;) vs what is not... they are a medium for free speech - not a scientific, peer-review type of website where consensus kills off or approves publishing of content.<p>This continuous grasping at straws by FB, Twitter, google, whomever really - of determining what is acceptable in the realm of opinion&#x2F;1st Amendment speech is really exhausting and will mean the death of their platforms.

Working with local communities to come up with culture-fit solutions is exactly the right thing to do. Most of the problems people seem to have with Facebook is their past attempts to apply a single concept of decorum to a global population.<p>It&#x27;s usually fine to let police handle threats, but they can quickly spiral in places on the brink of erupting, or in populations the police aren&#x27;t always good about protecting.

Censorship is wrong, it&#x27;s impossible for anyone to have an unbiased opinion.

&quot;Leads to&quot;<p>Anyone can claim anything leads to anything. This is nothing but a blanket censorship policy for Facebook to stifle any speech it wants and claim that it could possibly have led to violence, which is entirely impossible to prove or disprove. Not at all surprising give the track record of Facebook.

<i>&quot;FB has said it will create partnerships with local civil society groups to identify misinformation&quot;</i><p>Thank goodness FB is not the real Internet. Imagine winding up on the wrong side of a secret rule-making group who marks your free speech as unacceptable.

I hope none of you have to deal with the pain of a loved one going deep down the right-wing conspiracy rabbit hole. This isn&#x27;t just people getting convinced Obama wasn&#x27;t born in America. This is people going behind their spouses back to convert retirement savings into gold coins and survivalist paraphernalia. These are people who will cut off friends and family because they don&#x27;t &quot;understand what&#x27;s really going on&quot;.

It seems like our current laws already cover the dangerous stuff that needs to be taken down.<p>If someone makes an explicit call to violence, that is already illegal and should be covered under our existing laws.<p>No need to change any policies when the existing policies work well enough for stopping the obviously dangerous content.

[deleted]

In PR terms we call this a classic “non concession.” It’s a diversionary, empty news announcement a company like Facebook puts out to mask bad news.<p>It is a higher order advanced PR technique. Only the best do things like this.<p>In this case they are masking the documentary about far right groups being allowed to exist on Facebook.<p>So the counter is to make a low value, obvious announcement to bury the documentary news or counteract it with other news.<p>I actually am mostly on Facebook’s side here. I think the media are generally out to get them and they deserve to ensure free speech of all kinds happens.<p>Let’s be clear though: This is a classic non concession to mask other news.