Spocko's Brain

When Trump returns to Facebook he will likely instantly violate their lax new “guardrails.” We know it will happen. Adam Schiff even pointed out what the violations will be in a letter to Meta in December 2022.
When it happens we should demand that Meta enforce their own rules. Will they?

If they do, they will lose engagement. In Zuckerberg’s mind more engagement, even engagement that violates their community standards, means more revenue. We know this from the Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen. We also know from the Jan 6th committee memo on Social Media (Link to gifted Washington Post article) that Zuckerberg overruled his staff who wanted to ban Trump for his multiple violations of their community standards before Jan 6th.

But engagement isn’t the only metric for Meta’s success. Meta’s stock price can be hurt in multiple ways. Stories about management making bad decisions hurt the stock. Stories about management supporting and enabling domestic terrorists can hurt the stock price. Big investors put pressure on management all the time when they see them making bad decisions (like they did on Zuckerberg for investing in the legless VR experience). Zuck thought it was going to be huge, he was wrong. Many investors think bringing Trump back to Facebook is a bad idea. It will be filled with controversy and advertisers don’t like controversy.

The investment community can punish Meta if it keeps Trump on OR if they kick Trump off. It all depends on how they see his return. A case can be made either way. Let’s help make it clear bringing Trump back on Facebook is a bad decision. And make this decision hurt Zuckerberg financially.

When the violations happen the mainstream media will ask Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs who announced the guardrails, what Meta is going to do about the violation.

I’ve watched Clegg in interviews on TV. The media isn’t going to pin him down and this pisses me off. He’s a trained spokesperson, so I’d push him harder about the past & his promises for the future and ask “You decided to let a man with a history of inciting violence and threats of violence on your platform. You created special guidelines and said you would act when he does violates them. Now that he has violated the new guidelines, where is that action?
Why won’t you tell us what is happening and who is making the decisions?
Where is the transparency you promised?”

The media typically only think about all the ways Trump coming back on Facebook can help Meta be profitable. They don’t look at the big picture. Here’s the thing, Facebook doesn’t operate in a vacuum. The Trump of 2016 – Jan 6th 2020 is not the same as today’s Trump. He has a history of inciting violence. He is not going to stop being who he is. He will keep inciting violence and spreading lies about the election. To ignore that history and bring him back on Facebook is a bad decision by the CEO. And investors should to punish Zuckerberg for it.

Yes, there are a bunch of people who believe bringing Trump back on Meta is going to be profitable. But is that the only outcome? NO! Right now there are people talking to the instructional investors saying, “Trump’s return is going to have a negative impact on Meta.”

When I read the new guidelines and policies I saw that they are clearly designed to give Trump multiple ways to stay on the platform, no matter what he says. But some violations are clearly worse than others. THAT is what we should focus on.

Here are some of Meta’s community standards on violence and incitement. I’ve read them all. There are multiple ways that Trump has violated them and WILL violate them.

META Violence and Incitement Policies
Do Not Post:

• Threats that could lead to death (and other forms of high-severity violence) and admission of past violence targeting people or places where threat is defined as any of the following:
• Statements of intent to commit high-severity violence. This includes content where a symbol represents the target and/or includes a visual of an armament or method to represent violence.
• Calls for high-severity violence including content where no target is specified but a symbol represents the target and/or includes a visual of an armament or method that represents violence.
• Statements advocating for high-severity violence.
• Aspirational or conditional statements to commit high-severity violence.
• Statements admitting to committing high-severity violence except when shared in a context of redemption, self-defense or when committed by law enforcement, military or state security personnel.

Link to META Violence and Incitement Policies

The New Paper Mâché Guardrails For Trump

Meta’s previously bent the rules to keep TFG on the platform, ranging from their “newsworthiness allowance” to their creation of a Public Figures and Civil Unrest Policy for when there is a riot happening. They have a policy for restricting accounts of public figures during civil unrest and now they have a “Crisis Policy Protocol” which is a basically a black box of people who are supposed to “assesses the risks of imminent harm both on and off of our platform so we can respond with specific policy and product actions that will help keep people safe. ” The specifics on what the Crisis Policy Protocol contains are not made public and, as we have learned, the decisions made can be overruled by Mark Zuckerberg.

(BTW. they have this weird sanction/rule that what Trump puts up on his Facebook feed will be visible only to HIM, but nobody else will see it, even if they follow him. This is a blatant dodge designed just for Trump (as if his minions can’t figure out what is happening. “Hey we posted his Truth Social Murder Rant on Facebook and I can see it on his page, but when I look at my own personal account it doesn’t show up!” )

This policy will have NO impact on stopping the spread of his messages of violence, in practice they will be amplified. The policy was created just so Meta can say, “But we HAVE limited what he said! We removed the reshare button!!!” This is a lame sanction especially for someone who already starts with a massive audience for the original message.

What will happen is that the media will COVER what was made “invisible” to Trump’s followers thereby amplifying the message AND now making it “newsworthy” which allows Meta to keep it up because now it’s “News.” (It will likely be something that was already said on Truth Social that the Trump team didn’t bother to change for Facebook’s TOS.)

The followers will scream “They are censuring him!” They will cover it on Fox News, post if all over their platforms that have content moderation policies, but don’t enforce them. The followers don’t care that it was clear violation of Facebook’s defined policy, like incitement directed at a person. They just will scream CENSORSHIP! And what pisses me off is that there will be a bunch of woolly headed people who refuse to focus on the issue of Meta’s Community Standards and clear violations of them and talk about “The 1st Amendment.” and “Free speech.”

We have to stop giving TFG & his supporter the benefit of the doubt when they make threats! We now have multiple cases where threats were made, intent was the confirmed and action taken. And they are doing it again! Just last week, Trump promotes message from ‘locked and loaded’ supporter who vows to ‘physically fight’ for him

The minute Trump violates Facebook’s the media SHOULD dig into the evidence of how Trump and the right wing influencers used social media to incite violence and how they were protected by Zuckerberg–even when they clearly violated Meta’s own terms of service.

The right wing have been whining and complaining for years about how the “Woke Left” at Social Media companies are censoring them. It’s like how they worked the refs in the mainstream media. “The reporters are Democrats. They can’t be objective! They are covering us unfairly!” “The Social Media employees are Democrats. They are banning us for no reason! We need to be protected from being shadowbanned!”
Of course it’s all BS, but it worked on the media and it works on social media.

Here’s the deal, Meta EMPLOYEES created policies based on definitions of various types of comments people make, like threats of violence. They apply those policies in multiple areas. They are a private entity and can make decisions on what they allow to be posted. They have procedures to address what to do when there are violations. What we have learned from Frances Haugen (the Facebook Whistleblower) and the January 6th committee on Social Media, is that Zuckerberg consistantly overrules policies, decisions and the recommendations of his Trust and Safety employees.

The 122 page memo from the January 6th committee on Social Media covered the role they played before, during and after the insurrection. Big takeaways for me include:

• Popular right-wing figures are protected from enforcement of Meta’s terms of service.
• They can incite violence & intentionally spreading disinformation and get no “strikes”
• Trump had perpetual “Zero Strikes”

Another big take away is that Zuckerberg worries most about negative press and criticism from the right vs. criticism from the left. Right wing groups come to him complaining that they were being removed for no reason (even when the reasons are very clear) they are given “a person” to call to complain to when they are reported by humans. And if they trigger Facebook’s AI, they are given the chance of human review (Which is a HUGE deal at a company where it’s almost impossible to talk to a human.)

Bottom line is that there have been no negative financial consequences to Zuckerberg for his bad decisions about Trump on Meta, so we need to make them happen to him.

Elon Musk has unbanned the guy who runs The Daily Stormer

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Andrew Anglin, Neo-Nazi Twitter User restored by Elon Musk. Notice how he positions himself as the victim in advance?

Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, who was booted off Twitter in 2013, has had his account restored. Right Wing Watch is a part of the Southern Poverty Law Center

Factory owner welcomes back employees fired for intentionally spreading toxic gas

I’m imagining a “community meeting” where the factory owner has to explain his decisions to the community who has been hurt in the past and could be affected again in the future because of the owners decision. I was going to make this a press conference, but cunning factory owners know how to deal with the media. Public: Aren’t you worried they will do it again?Factory Owner: I have robots in place that will suspend them if they put out toxic gas again.Public: Why risk it? Why allow them a chance?FO: (Answer for public) They will make tons of gases daily but only a small percent <.01% will unleash toxic gas.

Also many useful gases are toxic, but we control them with safety measures. (Answer for investors: . . . → Read More: Factory Owner Reinstates Employees Fired For Unleashing Toxic Gas

Musk is making massive blunders in his take over of Twitter. It’s great fun to point and laugh. Which I will happily do. It’s an opportunity to show him (& the rest of the world) why his definition of “free speech” is juvenile and harmful. It’s also a time to point out that when social media companies fail to act on known harmful content, there should be consequences.

I’m @Spockos@mastodon.online

Showing companies the financial consequences of their failure to act on harmful rhetoric is a powerful tool for change. It’s one of the methods that I have developed and taught multiple groups & people for the last 15 years.

Bloggers Take on Talk Radio Hosts — New York Times January 15, 2007

A San Francisco talk radio station pre-empted three hours of programming on Friday in response to a campaign by bloggers who have recorded extreme comments by several hosts and passed on digital copies to advertisers.

The lead blogger, who uses the name Spocko, said that he and other bloggers had contacted more than 30 advertisers on KSFO-AM to inform them of comments made on the air and to ask them to pull their ads.

The activist . . . → Read More: Musk’s Twitter blunders lead to hilarity & harm

Remember the woman who called the police on a black man who was bird watching? You probably saw the clip when it went viral. Her company saw it, investigated it and fired her. She then SUED the company for defamation. Well, SHE LOST the case.I want to use this story to illustrate how the RW responds when someone finally faces justifiable negative consequences for their words and actions. They have learned to flip the script and will try to convince everyone that they are the REAL victims. They aren’t. We need to anticipate their use of this strategy, point it out when it is used, then refocus on the harm they have caused to actual victims as we seek justice.

This is good example of how the RW always has to be the victim EVEN after they face justifiable negative consequences for their actions. The good news is because there was DUE process and an investigation when they fired her, the company was on solid ground and proved even MORE so that she was fired for a justified cause.This is why I was talking about giving the people making threats a chance to do the right thing before . . . → Read More: Central Park Karen Loses Lawsuit Against Former Employer

I’m a big fan of the TV show Leverage, when the team is going after a bad guy they study them first and anticipate how they will respond. They then USE how he respond as part of the process to take him down. They also plan for contingencies. “If the mark does X then we do Y. After we do Y he will likely do Z, but he might do “C” so prepare for that too. “

We, as the viewer, are brought along in the process to a certain degree, but we don’t always see the whole story. At the end of the show, when the bad guy is caught and the victim gets some kind of justice, they show the prep they did that was off camera. The show involves former Con men & women, thieves, hackers and muscle working with an insider, someone who understands “The system” either the corporate system or the legal & justice system. The insider’s job is to say, “Here’s how the mark got away with it before by using the system. This is how we can USE that system against them if they try it again. ”

In the latest . . . → Read More: How the DOJ is Leveraging Trump’s BS responses.