५ जून, २०२१

"But anyone who has spent a small amount of time with Mr. Zuckerberg knows that he’s uncomfortable with his immense power..."

"... he agonizes deeply about his every step. In my innumerable conversations with him over many years — often late at night over a phone, giving them the feel of a college-dorm jaw session — he maintained that he trusted Facebook’s larger community to clean out the vile, often-toxic dreck that flowed over his ever-larger platform. Mr. Zuckerberg believes in the perfectibility of man. I have studied the use of propaganda in Nazi Germany and during China’s Cultural Revolution. I told him that there is no low that some people will not sink to if it is in their interests to do so. Once, when Mr. Zuckerberg was still talking to me, we argued about some much-less-serious violation of rules on Facebook, issues that now seem quaint in comparison. Trying to lighten the mood, I invoked the old journalism bromide: He should trust, yes, but always verify. 'If your mother says she loves you, check it,' I said to him, trying to convince him that he could not rely on the community or algorithms or anything else but his own decision making when push from bad actors inevitably came to shove. He did not get the joke at all. He also missed my larger point that the world was an ugly place and that he had handed some very bad people in it a potent weapon of destruction. They would take advantage of his belief that the truth will always out. Even now, I have a hard time describing the blank stare on his typically blank face. It was as if I was talking in another language to another species on another planet."

From "The Terrible Cost of Mark Zuckerberg’s Naïveté" by Kara Swisher (NYT).

Notice what she's saying — that the traditional liberal principles of freedom of speech are stupidly naive.  I think! She isn't fairly representing Z's side of the conversations (the "jaw session," as she calls it), but I think his position was the classic belief in the marketplace of ideas, where all the ideas come out and are heard and responded to and people make their choices about what to believe, rejecting what is bad and selecting what is good. That's what I'm guessing is behind Swisher's assertion "Mr. Zuckerberg believes in the perfectibility of man" and "his belief that the truth will always out." 

The most obvious response to the marketplace of ideas concept is that people are not necessarily shopping for truth and even if they are, they might be distracted into making an impulse purchase of something more exciting or soothing, like the way you go into the grocery store thinking of buying fresh fruits and vegetables and end up buying Coke and Tostitos. But that doesn't mean that everyone who's sticking with free speech and citing the marketplace of ideas theory is naive. The nonnaiveté lies in the understanding that the alternative approaches are worse. 

Swisher seems to be saying that because the world is "an ugly place" with "some very bad people," censorship is better than free speech. She's just as open to an accusation of naiveté as he is. What depth of understanding is she showing about the harms of the suppression of speech? The question isn't what's perfect, but what's better. And instead of facing that, which I would call the real world, Swisher reverts to the standard bashing of Zuckerberg: he seems like "another species on another planet." He doesn't seem normal

Here, there's room on the couch with these guys:

७ टिप्पण्या:

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

K writes:

"Yankee Doodle is going to town again. By which I mean, I feel we are going through a replay of the American Revolution. Once again, some are committed to free speech and to the right of a community to govern itself as a nation. Once again, some insist that certain forms of speech must be banned and the same group insists it can correctly judge what must be banned while (so strange) the group also insists that self-governing entities like nations must now be governed by indifferent, arrogant centralists (with far-away look in their eyes as they destroy) who despise nations and and national cultures as provincial, as Yankee Doodles. Once again, there is a very large, uncertain group slowly responding to actions by either side. In America there is no philosophy to clarify issues. What to do? There is history embodying ideas. That's how we do. History shows that freedom is one of those things, like religion, that can't be inherited, it must be chosen. Freedom must be chosen and, moreover, one way or another, you must choose - freedom or not. And ... you can't choose the consequences. Oh, Yankee Doodle. Keep it up."

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Joe writes: "The subtext that I read from the excerpt is "Mark Zuckerberg is aware of his immense power and wants to use it carefully. Sadly, he is not making decisions that I [Ms. Swisher] wish he would make.""

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Darryl writes:

"I have studied the use of propaganda in Nazi Germany and during China’s Cultural Revolution."

I have difficulty comprehending the simultaneous arrogance and cognitive dissonance required of an author who can boast about vast knowledge of the forced implementation of a government monopoly on speech by brutal oppressive totalitarian regimes as an explanation... no as a justification ... for suppressing free speech.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Ray So-Cal writes:

Nice post on your part that did not bring up all the Trump stuff in the original article. I can understand trying to focus on the bigger issue of principles of freedom of speech. Unfortunately, Trump is the elephant in the room and can't be ignored.

The article calls out to me the civility bullshit tag.

Why?

Zuckerberg is not naive. This is the actions that FB Censored Trump for?
THe 7 most violence-inciting statements in Donald Trump's speech to the crowd on January 6th.

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-7-most-violence-inciting-statements.html

And yet other Facebook users, Democrat Politicians, are not shunned and exiled from facebook? What of Maxine Waters?
"If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgPVkcLBjK8

And what of the use of fact checks at Facebook to throttle coverage of anything that hurts the Democrats?
Hunter Biden's Laptop? Currently it's Fauci's Emails.

Looking at the authors background, she is far left, and it shows in the article how anti Trump it is by what she includes, and what she left out. She used to be married to a google executive per Wikipedia. The article did not mention the $350 Million Dollars at least, that Zuckerberg donated for voter outreach efforts, and just happened to occur in areas that went against Trump.

I am not sure on the purpose of the article. Is she trying to suggest that Zuckerberg was naive for letting Trump use Facebook? That he got suckered? And it was only after Trump "lost" that Zuckerberg woke up, and realized what a bad person Trump was? And Zuckerberg's efforts have nothing to do with the anti Trust action that was initiated against Facebook under the Trump administration. That is not naivete, that is cold blooded real politics.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Newton writes: "“The answer to bad speech is more speech.” (Forget who said it.)"

It was Justice Brandeis: "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence" (concurring in Whitney v. California).

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Birches writes:

"I started reading the post wondering who the author was. But when I got to the detail about late night phone calls, I knew immediately it was Kara Swisher. I'm glad to see that Zuckerberg isn't talking her calls anymore, but that decision probably came too late. Swisher, more than anyone else, is responsible for the new big tech censorship regime. She's pestered them for years about it. And though Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg don't take her calls anymore, it doesn't matter because all of their employees follow her lead."

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Chris writes:

I clicked through to read Kara Swisher’s essay. My first response was fear. It’s frightening to see how easy it is to rationalize censorship. All you need to do is make an unfavorable historical analogy, and poof, there it is. I am afraid of the legion of Kara Swishers who want to determine who I can read or listen to. It reminds me of a comment I read years ago (perhaps on Althouse), that there is a difference between being liberal and just being on the left. I think a truly liberal worldview is diminishing daily in influence in our society."

Yes, it's the opposite of liberal.