Facebook and challenging the status quo on acceptable diversity

[Maxxtraxx]

The online communities at Facebook, Twitter, Google, ect. Have been heavily focused upon and in the spotlight recently. Much of the criticism has had been rightly placed on the companies due to the ways they have handled(or mishandled)the occurances.

 

I am personally entirely in favor of our community and the internet as a whole being held as closely to complete freedom of speech as possible. Regulation of allowable content and ideas, by nature, will always place one bias against another... These biases are real and our own blindness to them is also very real.

 

Brian Amerige at Facebook has posted an internal memo in an attempt to draw attention to a topic that he and many others have been afraid to express for fear of personal consequences from coworkers and from the company itself.

 

His short 1 and a bit page memo is blunt and upfront about the concerns that he and some of his fellow employees have regarding the situation inside the company from an outsider employee's point of view.

 

I believe it's a great topic for discussion and agree almost entirely with the ground rules he lays out for the content of the discussion that is allowable and what is not 

 

The memo can be read here:

 

full.pdf

 

Commentary can be read from other sources linked below.

 

Daily Wire: Here

 

NYT: Here

Edited August 29, 2018 by Maxxtraxx
Shpelling

[ivan134]

Buhahahhahahahaha ????????

[Mr. Smiley]

Got to love it.  Already complaining and calling it offensive 

 

Quote

As if to prove Amerige's point, some Facebook employees have filed complaints about the creation of the new group, characterizing it as offensive to minorities.

 

[Syntaxvgm]

This will be just like the Google Memo and the guy will be fired and publicly lynched. 

[TacoSenpai]

"Progressive and Inclusive"

[AnonymousGuy]

Agree with the memo.  There's way too many people who feel you should only have an opinion if it's in agreement with the vocal majority.  If you're not in that group then you must be racist/sexist/misogynist/xenophobe/homophobe etc.  I straight up don't discuss political topics with anybody for this reason....and no one understands the concept of gray area it's always black and white, us and them, for or against.

[Yoinkerman]

Lol does the poor conservative snowflake need a safe space?

 

Yes I only reach for low hanging fruit I have short arms.

[ltguy]

Facebook will promptly "prove him wrong" but doing to him exactly everything he's outline in his memo.

 

Also i don't think LTT forums is a free and open space where we can talk about these issues, this thread will get locked fast.

[DanielMDA]

3 hours ago, Maxxtraxx said:

The online communities at Facebook, Twitter, Google, ect. Have been heavily focused upon and in the spotlight recently. Much of the criticism has had been rightly placed on the companies due to the ways they have handled(or mishandled)the occurances.

 

I am personally entirely in favor of our community and the internet as a whole being held as closely to complete freedom of speech as possible. Regulation of allowable content and ideas, by nature, will always place one bias against another... These biases are real and our own blindness to them is also very real.

 

Brian Amerige at Facebook has posted an internal memo in an attempt to draw attention to a topic that he and many others have been afraid to express for fear of personal consequences from coworkers and from the company itself.

 

His short 1 and a bit page memo is blunt and upfront about the concerns that he and some of his fellow employees have regarding the situation inside the company from an outsider employee's point of view.

 

I believe it's a great topic for discussion and agree almost entirely with the ground rules he lays out for the content of the discussion that is allowable and what is not 

 

The memo can be read here:

 

full.pdf

 

Commentary can be read from other sources linked below.

 

Daily Wire: Here

 

NYT: Here

This isnt news, it´s an opinion, at most.

[Mihle]

3 hours ago, Syntaxvgm said:

This will be just like the Google Memo and the guy will be fired and publicly lynched. 

Well, this memo isnt worded bad in the same way that one was...

[GumblesGrambles]

Tech were given special leeway to grow during the boom to ensure world dominance, they were able to avoid basic things like taxes, and of course the eyes of the regulators because they were the golden goose.  They are effective monopolies now, oligopolies, trusts, whatever you wish to call it, and the fact is Microsoft was slapped hard for doing far less.  If their argument is that they have become integral to the electoral system and that foreign influences are an attack on our democracy, they can no longer claim to be private spaces where they can arbitrarily do what they wish.

 

 

 

Petition

And yes,  silicon valley culture is toxic to the point where google fired a man over legitimate science.  They have proven that they aren't fit arbiters of the truth.  Its been fun watching the left stoop to becoming the defenders of corporate corruption and market abuse.

 

And it goes far beyond this, because what these companies build, will always eventually be used by the government.

 

[Brooksie359]

17 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Well, this memo isnt worded bad in the same way that one was...

The Google contained a very similar message with in it like this but it was only part if it. It will be interesting if this time it will be different. I do think it is unhealthy to disallow people to talk about what they believe out of fear of negative repercussions. People should be able to talk about what they believe in without fear of getting in trouble as long as it doesn't fall under harassment or hate speech.  

[Drak3]

10 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

hate speech. 

Hate speech is just a pseudonym for censorship.

[D13H4RD]

4 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Agree with the memo.  There's way too many people who feel you should only have an opinion if it's in agreement with the vocal majority.  If you're not in that group then you must be racist/sexist/misogynist/xenophobe/homophobe etc.  I straight up don't discuss political topics with anybody for this reason....and no one understands the concept of gray area it's always black and white, us and them, for or against.

That’s basically my beef with the online community right now

[Brooksie359]

2 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Hate speech is just a pseudonym for censorship.

you would be hard pressed to find a single company that doesn't have a rule about hate speech. I never said you shouldn't be allowed to use hate speech but rather that you shouldn't be protected from repercussions for doing so. the point being is that if you use hate speech at work you are probably going to get fired.

[Commodus]

Political diversity is fine, and you should be careful not to make feel people completely unwelcome, but companies are also allowed to have their own culture... and sometimes those decisions are as much functional as anything.

 

Take Uber, for example.  For years, it didn't include extensive safety features to prevent and report sexual assault because -- surprise -- all the designers were men.  It wasn't until drivers were sexually assaulting women passengers in significant numbers (particularly a rape in India) that Uber realized it should acknowledge the safety concerns of women.  Diversity would likely have avoided that situation simply by giving women input.  "Hey guys, maybe you hadn't heard, but women have had to worry about creepy taxi drivers for decades..."

 

It's a similar thing with immigration; companies like Facebook support immigration as much because it increases their talent pool (it might also let them hire someone for less, although that's not as likely at Facebook's size) as any moral position.

 

Besides, think of the long-term company strategy: if you're going to design a product that has to accommodate virtually all the world's cultures, why would you want company policy shaped almost exclusively by white American dudebros?

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Hate speech is just a pseudonym for censorship.

They are 2 separate things if you think rationally.

[Syntaxvgm]

5 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

you would be hard pressed to find a single company that doesn't have a rule about hate speech. I never said you shouldn't be allowed to use hate speech but rather that you shouldn't be protected from repercussions for doing so. the point being is that if you use hate speech at work you are probably going to get fired.

He's saying the label 'hate speech' is stretched to mean whatever one wants, and in the UK they are turning this into legal action. 

[Drak3]

Just now, coolkingler1 said:

They are 2 separate things if you think rationally.

No, they're not. "Hate speech" is cited as derogatory speech against marginalized groups, but in practice, it's literally only able to be used to attempt to invalidate opposing opinions on the basis of appeal to emotion. That's 100% what "hate speech" has always been. Saying something factual can be deemed hate speech (and often is).

 

Call to action, more specifically, Call to Violence, is another beast completely. You're not saying that such and such group is statistically more likely to do/be this, or that such and such group shouldn't get this because that. You're actively trying to rally people to create lynch mobs.

 

But "hate speech" is just having an opinion that someone else doesn't agree with and wants to invalidate.

[Mihle]

28 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

The Google contained a very similar message with in it like this but it was only part if it. It will be interesting if this time it will be different. I do think it is unhealthy to disallow people to talk about what they believe out of fear of negative repercussions. People should be able to talk about what they believe in without fear of getting in trouble as long as it doesn't fall under harassment or hate speech.  

For me, this one is worded in a way that is much more reasonable than the Google one. It's worded in less offensive way. To me at least. Well, maybe offensive is not the right word but I don't know what words to use right now.

[Guest]

Great memo. It's important, especially for social media not to be biased. It's absolutely absurd to go after someone just because they support trump (About half or less than half of the US population? Ridiculous)  or have a political opinion - or even post a few bad words on social media. Thats what is is after all, social media and not really work-related. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. 

 

Apart from a casual lunchtime chat I fail so see what this has to do with anyones work performance at any rate. If I were to employ someone I couldn't care less what they post on instagram or twitter etc, just as long as they do their job. It's up to them what they do in their spare time. 

[Arika]

15 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

you would be hard pressed to find a single company that doesn't have a rule about hate speech.

Oh they all do, but it's how it's enforced that is wrong.

 

I've seen countless posts that are very seriously anti-white on twitter and don't get removed, but there are accounts that take these same posts, change the race from white to any minority and they get immediately account banned. 

 

There is absolutely a bias in social media platforms because they know if they also remove these anti-white posts they will be flooded with comments about being racist or for contributing to (minority) erasure

[Guest]

Quote

No, they're not. "Hate speech" is cited as derogatory speech against marginalized groups,

Exactly, speech coming from a place of hatred, it's not unclear.

 

Quote

but in practice, it's literally only able to be used to attempt to invalidate opposing opinions on the basis of appeal to emotion.

By extreme people, speech can definitely come from a place of hatred, the definition itself is not different because some people misuse the word for censorship.

 

Quote

Saying something factual can be deemed hate speech (and often is)

Deemed, doesn't make it so.

 

Quote

But "hate speech" is just having an opinion that someone else doesn't agree with and wants to invalidate.

If people misuse it yes, but 'hate speech' is just what it sounds like, speech coming from a place of hatred. What you think it is, is actually called a 'disagreement' and that exact statement makes me think you do not want to have an opinion challenged, which is of course not realistic and ridiculous, you can say whatever you want, that doesn't mean it won't have repercussions because other people can also say whatever they want about your opinion.

 

If people misuse the term 'hate speech' that doesn't change the definition and it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It means they are misusing it to further their goals.

 

Something can be both hate speech and censored, but that doesn't mean they are one and the same to me at all.

[Trik'Stari]

I'm going to quote one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time here.

 

 

"In the beginning I was just as ready as anyone to fall into step, to seek out the guilty and to punish the sinners, even to become a leader. Nothing, I felt, would give me more gratification than riding the steed of yellow journalism into crusade, doing the book that would right the old wrongs. Reevaluation raised haunting questions.I now believe that evolution, or deevolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability."

-Frank Herbert

 

My interpretation:

Society must be allowed to evolve on its own. Any seriously impactful attempts at guiding a society will only create problems for some members of that society (you can't please everyone) that end up creating the machinations of your own downfall as a being, entity, or group capable of guiding that society. While we shouldn't do nothing to better ourselves, doing too much can have an equally negative effect on society as a whole.

 

My example would be current day China, and the social media eugenics program they've been implementing where if you get a bad rating on social media, your kids might not get to go to the best schools or you might not get that job you want.

 

*mic drop*

 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

 

 

Sounds okay