This is an awful development at Facebook -- moderators coming in and deciding without an abuse report that your comment is not "constructive" and can't be posted.
Ugh.
More research has to be done here to see whether this is happening frequently (I've never seen it), whether it is in fact the result of abuse reports, or whether in fact only spam is meant.
I'm guessing it isn't really about spam, whatever the claims, but about the quintessential geeky "betterworld" view that demands people to be "constructive" and "not negative" and therefore eliminates critical debate, especially of the platform owners themselves. And the latest comment from FB about this suggests to me it's not really just spam, but also about "abusive" comments -- which is whatever they decide. Says TechCrunch, who received a statement back from FB representatives, "The company says that the intention is to bar spammy or abusive commenters."
Scoble brought this to light -- and I don't know if he is just pissing on Facebook on the eve of their big IPO because he's in fact moved over to Google+. (BTW, G+ is just as bad in enabling people to mute and make "not exist" people and their comments, but so far it does not seem to be done by Google itself, but by various thin-skinned geeks overpopulating it as users and "thought influencers.")
But I think he's more likely just responding to the awfulness of a message that intrudes needlessly with political undertones not as the result of an abuse report, but of the company's own monitoring. Ugh.
I'm not buying this explanation from Facebook that it's mainly about spam at all, because the wording was consciously devised with that smarmy "constructive" stuff and obviously doesn't refer to spam; if it did, they would have worded it differently from the get-go. It looks much more like social engineering in keeping with Zuckerberg's "betterworldism," where he thinks he knows best what is useful and helpful for his masses of customers.
This very idea -- that you have to "contribute in a positive way" to a discussion in fact is HUGELY widespread among all the Silicon Valley gurus and developers and their fanboyx -- that it appeared now in Facebook in this way isn't an isolated case but is merely the manifestation of an outlook they all share, Scoble included. They have only themselves and their own geeky culture to blame for this. They all believe that those people who "don't contribute" and who are "negative" (by their narrow and subjective definitions) shouldn't even get to participate in a debate. They all believe in incremental positives rather than yes/no votes or debates and dissent. It's a concept they took directly from the open-source software cult.
So I have to say that the pearl-clutching going on here from the tech set is really very hypocritical, because they themselves love to mute, ban, delete other people's critical comments on these very same overbroad notions of "not contributing positively", and they ensure that every platform they make or become early beta testers for has these features that can remove other people -- especially if they are big "influencers" who want zillions of followers but who what to remove "negativity" and "trolling" -- read: criticism they don't like.
G+ is worse than Facebook in some ways because when someone blocks your comment the system gives a message, "that does not exist". The only way you can see what is being written by someone who has blocked you is to log out and search for them -- and one wonders how long that capacity will remain on both Twitter and Google+, because there are determined geeks who want the ability to remove even that, so that anyone they don't like will not be able even to see them or visa versa -- something that goes beyond the principle of Google's neutral access to search.
That Google already is customizing search to your preferences means that it is dangerously close to removing your ability to see the content of people who have blocked you (as it already does when you are logged in to G+). This will be done in the name of "freedom" and "privacy" of the user who "isn't required" to see your content, but it will be particularly abused by the "thought leaders" who want maximum publicity and maximum followers, but also want to make sure that nothing they don't like gets in their stream. Scoble is no different in this regard.
Recent Comments