[HN Gopher] The ex-CIA agents deciding Facebook's content policy...
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The ex-CIA agents deciding Facebook's content policy (2022)
Author : WhereIsTheTruth
Score : 100 points
Date : 2025-08-12 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mronline.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (mronline.org)
| buyucu wrote:
| Meta has basically been taken over by US and Israeli intelligence
| agencies.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| If you see "Trust and Safety" it is actually a partnership
| between major tech companies. It provides guidance on how their
| TOS / community standards should be defined. Twitter was also a
| member until Elon bought it out. This is where things like
| policies on misinformation come from (or anything in general
| really). Every major social media company you can imagine is part
| of it, Discord, Reddit, Meta, Apple, etc.
|
| The part that always concerns me is things like this are ripe for
| abuse. Whoever controls the partnership potentially controls all
| major platforms. They'll say you dont have to follow it to the
| letter, but that doesn't mean some wont.
|
| This is also why when reddit changes internal rules Discord
| follows suit.
|
| I am interested in this subject because I've seen Facebook become
| hostile over the years on specific types of remarks. I actually
| quit Facebook over its AI moderation, I made a harmless meme /
| joke comment and it flagged me, and when I appealed, it flagged
| me. Meanwhile others post much worse and I get dinged for making
| meme references that harm no one, my what? 50 friends on facebook
| will read it and not get my reference?
|
| I've also seen other platforms shift their policies (a reddit
| comment section today is a night and day difference from a reddit
| thread in say 2010).
|
| Digital Trust & Safety Partnership website here:
|
| https://dtspartnership.org/
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I think the model actually cares about where you post though,
| or at least there's some kind of location based standard.
|
| I've used Reddit for ages, but recently received two 'account
| suspensions' both which misrepresented my remarks, one in which
| the appeal was ignored, the other in which the response to the
| appeal was a false claim that the remark was a threat.
|
| But both happened very soon after I participated in discussions
| in /r/ukpolitics. I especially think they want to get rid of
| discussion concerning the proscription of Palestine Action. I
| don't think it's somebody from there following my comment feed
| and reporting things but instead something actually automated
| and part of Reddit itself, because it was rather fast.
| hungmung wrote:
| > /r/ukpolitics
|
| Found your problem.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes, but there's a reason I thought a foreign perspective
| could be useful to them.
| jennyholzer wrote:
| does "a partnership between major tech companies" mean
| "centralized control"?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| That's my question after learning about DTS.
| newsclues wrote:
| Partners are big tech and government (or government staffed
| and funded 3rd parties).
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It's not "centralized control" in the same way that a closed
| market with a few players not caring to compete on price
| isn't a "conspiracy" to keep prices high. Nobody is
| coordinating, corresponding or otherwise conspiring but
| everyone is smart enough to know what's good for them.
| ninininino wrote:
| From what I can tell (I have a coworker I get lunch with who
| works in the Risk & Policy side of TNS at a tech major), it's
| not necessarily a "here's the top-down orders of what our new
| policy will be" as much as:
|
| 1) the people in this sub-industry role attend conferences and
| network and make friends and build professional relationships
| (for job referrals if there are layoffs at one tech co but
| hiring in the same area at different tech co)
|
| 2) at conferences, in group chats (w/ friends made at other
| companies in previous roles or friends from said conferences),
| common news events, developments in the field, and trends are
| discussed and ideas bounced off each other, which means even if
| there's no top-down order, there's sort of an averaging-effect
| and consensus building and battle-testing of ideas and
| approaches
|
| 3) there's a revolving door of people who work at one company
| in this area developing real-utility experience that translates
| well to working at another, so people move about and policy
| ideas cross-pollinate and spread. if you plucked someone off
| the street, even if it helped ideologically diversify the pool,
| they would truly be less effective as they ramped up and
| learned.
|
| You don't actually need anything nefarious to happen, just an
| insular, small community with similar educational backgrounds,
| shared values, etc. Not a lot of Repubs from Alabama decide to
| attend Barnard and study _relevant_humanities_field_slash_law_
| and then join tech to try to fight
| injustice/CSAM/bias/misinfo/election interference at the right
| time during ZIRP and then build the resume to then continue to
| land those roles.
|
| These people are all doing what they think is right, they just
| aren't a super diverse group ideologically and there are social
| channels that tend to create more cross-brand homogeneity.
|
| And even if you disagree with their moderation policy, there
| are huge, non-controversial areas you never see or think of
| that they are fighting everyday too (anti-terrorism, anti-
| suicide, connecting victims to resources, anti-CSAM, etc).
|
| Probably the same way in physics departments, String Theorists
| hire other String Theorists and over time it grows and grows
| and grows. Or how economists all arrive at modern monetary
| theory.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| So you're saying it actually _is_ a cabal?
| jennyholzer wrote:
| it's obviously a cabal
| ninininino wrote:
| If it's a cabal then everything is a cabal.
| Duwensatzaj wrote:
| Same as it ever was.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
|
| GameJournoPros during GamerGate.
|
| Not sure what the "Trust and Safety" people use to
| coordinate. My guess is Discord.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >These people are all doing what they think is right, they
| just aren't a super diverse group ideologically and there are
| social channels that tend to create more cross-brand
| homogeneity.
|
| Exactly. Nothing intentionally nefarious is happening.
| Unintentionally nefarious things are happening all the time
| as a result of subsets of industries becoming insular circle
| jerks of like minded individuals. You see this in everything,
| it's not just for RightSpeak enforcers at FAANG.
|
| It's just there's a lot more consequences for the rest of us
| bunch people at Meta do it to influence public discourse than
| when some business gets run off a cliff because the MBAs had
| too many sigmas or whatever.
| lwo32k wrote:
| This is what Max Weber calls Moral Detachment. These people
| are not in direct contact with people who suffer. And so
| their intentions will always be mistrusted. Costs of which
| will mount with time and manifest in all kinds of shocks and
| surprises.
|
| Worth looking at why the Church (which has survived much
| longer than govts, businesses, science/tech orgs) emphasizes
| direct contact with suffering, through things like Pastoral
| Care. This is not an accident. They have learnt that lesson
| the hard way again and again through out history.
| jennyholzer wrote:
| My cousin doesn't buy it when I tell him the United States has
| more aggressively censored media than China.
| jennyholzer wrote:
| we're 20 years into social media 1984 and Americans still want
| to believe that it's unimaginably worse in China.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It seem by all account imaginably worse in China,
| particularly in Xinjiang. I might also call to attention the
| disappearance from western social media of a prominent
| Chinese maker. I'm also unaware of anyone in the US being
| sent to prison for political speech online.
| buyucu wrote:
| Julian Assange might disagree with that.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| What exactly did he say online that got him accused of
| espionage? I seem to remember the issue being that he was
| accused of conspiring with Manning to release classified
| documents, and possibly gaining unauthorized access to
| congressional records via an exploit in the systems
| access controls. I don't like the idea of the US
| government hounding journalists who work with leakers,
| but Assange was always tiptoeing up to and possibly just
| past laws unrelated to speech. I not a simple and
| straightforward case and does not prove that the US is
| like China in terms of censorship. You can be jailed in
| China for simply talking about the Tienanmen Square
| massacre or implying Taiwanese sovereignty, nothing
| comparable happens in the US.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| That statement is still incorrect. China censors directly and
| heavily, eg "pooh bear"
|
| In the US you are still very much free to insult the president,
| etc but if you post things deemed to be pro-terrorist or
| against what the Government wants to promote on social media,
| it won't go anywhere. Firearms or vaping content during the
| Biden admin as an example.
|
| The current admin has heavily gutted the federal funding and
| workforce that backed these efforts and issued bulletins to
| private industry, but I suspect there is still pressure from
| pseudo-government "advocates".
| adamsb6 wrote:
| You can buy Winnie the Pooh merchandise in every mall in
| China.
|
| You can't use Winnie the Pooh as code to agitate against the
| government.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| But here "Winnie the Pooh" is just calling Xi a lazy
| authoritarian.
|
| That's an insult, not "agitat[ing] against the government"
| pizzathyme wrote:
| My understanding was in the US, they can openly criticize the
| government
|
| You are saying that is inaccurate? Or you are talking about a
| different type of censorship?
| jennyholzer wrote:
| speech is heavily, heavily restricted in the united states,
| in particular on American social media platforms.
|
| there are a massive number of subjects which cannot be spoken
| about on social media without risking massive deboosting and
| the blacklisting of your accounts.
|
| this censorship is directed by "former" CIA agents working at
| all major American social media companies. In other words,
| this is direct government censorship of private citizens'
| speech.
| ipython wrote:
| What is "deboosting"? If I own a social media site wouldn't
| you argue that I should be able to control what content I
| "boost" in the first place? Am I forced to compulsory
| "boost" your content? In which case wouldn't that mean I am
| "censoring" the PoV of the social media company?
|
| Can you share the topic contents that are subject to your
| accusations? If you're able to share them here without fear
| of government reprisal then I would argue that's not
| censorship.
| dkiebd wrote:
| > If I own a social media site wouldn't you argue that I
| should be able to control what content I "boost" in the
| first place? Am I forced to compulsory "boost" your
| content? In which case wouldn't that mean I am
| "censoring" the PoV of the social media company?
|
| That sounds cool as long as you forfeit your Section 230
| rights since at that point you're more of a newspaper
| than a social network.
|
| Yes, I know all social networks do this currently which
| is why they should all lose their Section 230 rights.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| A current example would be Tiktok artificially boosting
| ice related challenges.
|
| Why? Because it makes searching for immigration and
| customs enforcement content much more difficult to find.
| It lower the social temperature and stops it from
| metaphorically boiling over.
|
| Is crowding out content censorship? Who knows. If tilting
| feeds in one direction and away from another has the same
| effect and isn't censorship because of a definitional
| technicality, does it really matter?
| pixl97 wrote:
| >If you're able to share them here without fear of
| government reprisal then I would argue that's not
| censorship
|
| I mean, the definition of censorship is far larger than
| just that, and what you're talking about is it's more
| extreme form.
|
| Moreso you ignore all the modern subtlety and nuance of
| modern censorship. The government doesn't need to attack
| you directly, they just tell the large companies that
| contract with the government they can't do business with
| companies that do certain things. Or they tell payment
| processors that businesses that are 'high risk' need to
| be audited more and will invite more government
| intervention in which the payment processors just drop
| said businesses.
|
| I mean, if you were on a corner protesting, then the
| government came in and closed the roads and routed all
| traffic around you so no one saw you, it would be really
| sus, right?
| ipython wrote:
| I think we are starting to see that under the current
| administration, yes. But the question was - does it rise
| to the level that Chinese have? I argue no.
|
| I also worry about some sort of policy where a site
| "must" carry content. That has its own risks as well,
| which should be obvious.
| legitster wrote:
| We're literally on a social media platform right now
| criticizing the US with publicly available information
| about US intelligence.
|
| What content are you worried would blacklist your account?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| In China, dissent is caged because it still has teeth. In the
| US, free speech is allowed because the teeth are all gone. We
| parade the animal about, saying, "Look, we still have free
| speech", but it has no ability to bite.
|
| I don't know what's worse, being trapped in a cage or de-
| fanged and let loose. I've only ever lived without teeth, so
| the idea of biting sounds almost beautiful.
| pstuart wrote:
| The last time it had teeth was the 60s into the 70s with
| the protests _for_ Civil Rights and _against_ the Vietnam
| War.
|
| But angry crowds can still remind them that the threat
| exists -- witness Josh Hawley fleeing the capital when the
| angry mob broke through (the irony being that the mob was
| in service of his boss, Trump).
| aisosodndn wrote:
| You can about some things. Others (most recently anything too
| anti Israel) will get you deported, debanked, etc.
|
| The saddest part of US censorship is it isn't even pro
| American. It's pro American billionaires who are
| disproportionately pro Israel.
| afroboy wrote:
| Say something bad about Israel in your public social media.
| euleriancon wrote:
| The nature of Chinese censorship makes it difficult to provide
| hard numbers, but it really is worse. America's handling of
| censorship is certainly not the best, and it has gotten worse
| recently, but it is not on the level of China.
| antonymoose wrote:
| At least the Chinese have the courtesy to be obvious about
| it. The American and European powers pretend we're free and
| open societies while actively undermining public speech that
| it doesn't like.
| ambicapter wrote:
| You think they're obvious about it intentionally?
| rangestransform wrote:
| I think they cultivate the image of having a panopticon
| to say to citizens "don't even try", but in reality the
| censors can't see everything
| antonymoose wrote:
| Isn't that the entire point of their system, the social
| score lets you know exactly what's going on?
| aisosodndn wrote:
| The social score is not real. That is western propaganda
| in action.
| euleriancon wrote:
| What are you referring to?
|
| gov.cn page on social credit system plan https://www.ndrc
| .gov.cn/xxgk/zcfb/tz/202406/P020240604321155...
|
| gov.cn page on social credit system suggested
| changes/opinions
| https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/202503/content_7016535.htm
|
| baidu page on social credit system https://baike.baidu.co
| m/item/%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E4%BF%A1%E7%...
|
| Are you making the distinction that its name is actually
| the social credit system and not social score? Or that
| the system isn't fully in place yet.
|
| Or perhaps are you suggesting that gov.cn and baidu are
| part of the deep state's propaganda plan against China.
| aisosodndn wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
|
| I think this answers all your questions? It has no real
| effect (many people don't have one). But, I'm not sure
| what your question really is.
|
| The American propaganda definition (which may vary) is
| incorrect because the system doesn't really exist.
| euleriancon wrote:
| I agree that the American understanding of the Social
| Credit System is flawed, but to suggest it doesn't exist
| is an extreme overreach.
|
| Furthermore, it clearly is a system that is important to
| the CCP and has an effect.
|
| From the Baidu page:
|
| Jian Li She Hui Xin Yong Ti Xi Shi Bao Chi Guo Min Jing
| Ji Chi Xu , Wen Ding Zeng Chang De Xu Yao
|
| Establishing a social credit system is necessary to
| maintain sustained and stable growth of the national
| economy
|
| Certainly Mainland China does need a credit system, and
| undoubtedly the Social Credit System will and has helped
| in that regard, but it does have legitimate flaws with
| regards to privacy.
|
| Its goals extend beyond ensuring creditworthiness to
|
| She Hui Xin Yong Ti Xi Ju You Jie Shi Gong Neng ,Neng Gou
| Yang Shan Cheng E ,Ti Gao Jing Ji Xiao Lu ;
|
| The social credit system has a revealing function, can
| promote good and punish evil, and improve economic
| efficiency;
|
| And its integration with the National Healthcare Security
| Administration, and other government and private entities
| extend its reach far beyond what the Western credit
| systems do.
| pyth0 wrote:
| Your links (at least the ones I could translate) seem to
| describe a system very similar to a Credit Score like you
| have in Western economies. At least it seems very
| different from the propagandized version of a score that
| tracks your every action and determines "how good of a
| citizen are you".
| euleriancon wrote:
| You're completely right, it is very similar to the
| western style credit score, and is often either
| accidentally or deliberately misrepresented. That being
| said, it covers behaviors not covered by western credit
| scores that does have elements of tracking "how good of a
| citizen are you".
|
| I think this article from Beijing University does a great
| job of highlighting some of the issues.
|
| Web page:
|
| https://fzzfyjy.cupl.edu.cn/info/1035/11343.htm
|
| Pdf:
| https://www.law.pku.edu.cn/docs/20210927092933450384.pdf
| adamsb6 wrote:
| Social scores aren't real.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| On a scale from credit score to being debanked, where
| does China's social score rank on the Western oubliette
| spectrum?
| antonymoose wrote:
| I'm not here to rank societies.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| there's a paper that compares both when it comes to promoting
| organized political action (which is the only type of
| censorship that is not morally justifiable under any
| semblance of democracy) and both countries scored the same
| low points.
|
| both got high passing grades on allowing meaningless
| complaining about government.
| ipython wrote:
| Really? Who do you think douyin hires to perform content
| moderation for example?
|
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714013
|
| Also, don't forget to obtain your icp license from the
| government before establishing a website in the mainland!
| paxys wrote:
| And let me guess, you think the USA is currently more fascist
| than Nazi Germany?
| afroboy wrote:
| Yes, read what they did to Muslims in middle east.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| So what you're saying is "my cousin has viewpoints grounded in
| reality"?
| elteto wrote:
| And he's right, one shouldn't buy into crap.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2022)
|
| Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32191637
| zthrowaway wrote:
| I remember when this was dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy
| theory.
| r721 wrote:
| >Originally published: MintPress News
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintPress_News
| guizadillas wrote:
| Right now Tiktok is suppressing any content related to the LA
| protests, they adopted new terms to avoid this censorship by
| saying they are 'music festivals'
|
| It reminds me of the play on words they do in Chinese's social
| media to avoid this kind of censorship
| lobf wrote:
| >It reminds me of the play on words they do in Chinese's social
| media to avoid this kind of censorship
|
| A new way of speaking which removes nuance and is formed
| entirely of acceptable concepts and terminology as determined
| by the regime. We could call it newspeak.
|
| Seems double-plus ungood to me.
| legitster wrote:
| Keep in mind the government pumps tens of thousands of enlisted
| through military intelligence analyst programs every year. These
| people are trained to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours a day reading
| mostly garbage and making objective summaries.
|
| So a lot of highly trained intelligence analysts hit the market
| every year (I personally know about half a dozen). It's just
| going to be natural that some of the more experienced
| intelligence analysts are going to be sought out for these
| content moderation positions, especially now that foreign and
| nation-state actors are present.
|
| I am pretty skeptical more of the more "deep-state"/"thought-
| police" concerns. Obviously these people are going to be biased
| towards collecting intelligence and collaborating with the
| government. But the CIA would almost certainly rather keep any
| media manipulation campaigns clandestine and in-house rather than
| trust former analysts to do their bidding.
| skarz wrote:
| >These people are trained to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours a day
| reading mostly garbage and making objective summaries.
|
| You just described the entire Cyber Mission Force, lol.
| MeIam wrote:
| Even the article itself gives people a pause in order to avoid
| being blacklisted.
|
| It basically says that they are watching you so you will self
| censor.
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