Month: July 2018

Facebook Should Trust Our Innocence

… while still reacting quickly and with clear intent once it’s clear that any of us, its users, has abandoned it and is tempting others to do the same.

Plenty of commenters have criticized Mark Zuckerberg after an interview with Recode in which he seemed to suggest that those who deny the existence of the Holocaust, something that the social media mogul finds offensive, should not be outright banned from Facebook because it is very hard if not impossible for the company to know their intent and their real beliefs.

Zuckerberg has since clarified his comments and there’s some nuance in the interview that many critics should have picked up on. But the biggest mistake that this line of criticism makes is that it fails to show trust in individuals and in the better angels of our human nature.

When one individual engages in speech that suggests the Holocaust has not happened Facebook should be aware of his or her position and even flag their posts in a non-public way, while giving them more information, alternatives, clear signs that their position is not supported by facts. Only when and if that user of Facebook fails to engage with this new info and doubles down on his position should the platform take down the offending post and maybe even consider taking down the account if the offense is repeated.

Humans do not have the time and the energy to always investigate everything and to make sure that all their ideas are entirely based on facts. Sometimes their wrong ideas or their biased judgements have no direct impact on their conduct or simply fail to be offensive in any way. There’s no need for a social network to police those but there might be a place to give friends or acquaintances of a poster a way to do so.

Only when someone posts something clearly aims to recruit others to their false opinion or when they are aiming to weaponize a false piece of info should Facebook step in, gently at first and (although it is impossible to perfectly evaluate the inner life of a social media user) then make a decision on what and why it can remove.

When and if an official page denies the Holocaust or delivers clearly false information (the type of situation that InfoWars often finds itself in) then Facebook needs to be more forceful in its enforcement, mainly by cutting down the reach of offending pages while taking down individual posts and then by banning them.

Facebook and Zuckerberg are often, these days, in the crosshair and rightfully so but we should not force a very negative view of humanity on the company and on its employees. Humans, the companies they create and the social spaces that they create are often flawed and filled with falsehoods. Bans and takedowns are necessary tools but we cannot entirely rely on them to create a pristine world, filled entirely with beliefs and opinions based on perfect knowledge.

More Regulation for the Videogames Market, Available Soon

Pre-orders are one of the most weird aspects of the modern videogames marketplace and one of the biggest ways for developers and publishers to extract money from players, regardless of the value that they actually deliver.

Both major and minor titles are listed on a variety of marketplaces, with Steam the dominating one, sometimes without a clear launch date other than a simple “available soon” or “[insert year here]” and gamers, driven by allegiance to companies, intense marketing, personal loyalties or all of the above, part with their hard earned currency. A portion of them are invariably disappointed on launch by the quality of the experience that they receive, to say nothing about those projects that entirely fail.

Crowdfunding sites at least indicate that there’s no promise of delivery for those who pledge to projects (although those warning should be clearer and more prominent) but pre-orders come with almost no protections for those who pay early. And it seems that governments are taking notice and that change might be coming.

According to Heise Online, quoted by GreenManGaming, new regulations in Germany will make it impossible to simply list products, including videogames, with the “available soon” date. Such a law would be welcomed but it does not go far enough.

It’s true that videogame development is hard and that launch dates change depending on a variety of factors but those who market upcoming titles should be forced to specify a month and year when players will get their hands on a game. Those can and will probably change but the pressure of offering that information to those who pre-order will make the entire transaction more equitable.

Ideally we should, as consumers, aim for a world where pre-orders simply do not happen (or come with significant price cuts for those willing to pay early), where demos are plentiful and show off what a game has to offer, where no money is used by publishers to create organic marketing via streamers or reviewers. At the moment we are clearly far away from that lofty destination but placing some limitations, however limited is a good start. It remains to be seen whether the European Union puts its bureaucratic and legislative muscle behind this German idea and uses its size to impose change in the online marketplace space.

Teodorovici și lipsa de responsabilitate

Eugen Teodorovici este ministru de finanțe în guvernul României. Ca majoritatea politicienilor moderni el are o pagină de Facebook, folosită teoretic ca să comunice mai eficient cu cetățenii. După ce câțiva comentatori nemulțumiți de acțiunile percepute ale ministrului identitatea socială a trecut la represalii, atacând relativ grosier și neinspirat un număr de oameni care i-au contestat intențiile și acțiunile.

Teodorovici a replicat, pentru Știrile TVR, că el nu administrează direct prezența de pe Facebook și că, oricum, contul a fost spart pentru a se realiza o campanie de denigrare. Omul politic nu a oferit nici o dovadă pentru cele două afirmații și nu a oferit scuze direct celor afectați de atacurile de pe Facebook.

Chiar dacă explicațiile oferite (foarte convenabile și ușor contradictorii) sunt adevărate politicianul nu înțelege că, chiar dacă el nu administrează toate prezențele sale din social media și chiar dacă a fost victima unui atac, el tot rămâne responsabil pentru ele și datorează cel puțin scuze dacă nu o prezentare clară atât a modului în care altcineva administrează prezența sa publică cât și a modului în care a funcționat presupusul atac informatic și campania de denigrare din spatele lui.

Teodorovici este atacat în comentarii online pentru că este perceput ca un slujitor umil al președintelui Partidului Social Democrat, Liviu Dragnea, după ce a spus că ministerul lui acționează pentru a recupera banii pe care președintele României, Klaus Iohannis, i-ar datora în cazul casei din Sibiu pe care a pierdut-o în justiție. Un număr mare de cetățeni i-au atras atenția ministrului că el a acceptat public că are o datorie de mai mult de 70.000 RON la fisc iar documentul care certifica existența ei a fost eliminat recent de pe site-ul oficial al ANAF.

Politicienii trebuie să accepte că noua era a comunicării, cu accentul pe reacții rapide și deschise pe platforme cum este Facebook, înseamnă că ecghipa pe care fiecare dintre ei o folosește trebuie să fie capabilă de interacțiuni relevante și, mai important, civilizate. Chiar dacă un comentator este dur un politician nu câștigă prea mult dacă devine foarte negativ la rândul lui, mai ales dacă are o imagine mai degrabă neutră.