andrewducker | Interesting Links for 27-04-2021

There is something weirdly naive about Facebook, and Zuckerberg I think.

There's been a lot of fear around interfering in politics that has then led to them allowing interference in politics.

Numerous cases of "We started to automatically flag accounts that were spreading calls for violence and making fraudulent claims, but then discovered that this affected most Republican senators, so we stopped."

I suspect it's a case of the Upton Sinclairs.

?

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Ah gotcha.

I suspect that in this specific case there is an element of "surely white people wouldn't actually try to violently overthrow the government" along with a general incredulity about the risks of politcal violence in long-term stable democracies.

And I wonder if Facebook really understand the potentcy of their platform enough to be on guard for it's risk in a coup.

I have tended to notice in Zuckerberg’s testimony a belief in human nature that fails to take into account inter alia the madness of crowds.

Yeah, a tendency when prodded about what would happen if people mis-used his platform to think that people obviously wouldn't and so no further thought is required.

Not sure if that's a philosophical or ideological blind spot, or a lack of appreciation that people have other goals that are differently sized and shaped and defined from his own.

He's inviting some potentially existential regulation from some states I think.

For me the example that always stays in my head is his apparent genuine incomprehension that there are people who might have good reasons for using false identities or experience genuine threat if their accounts are found by others.

Absolutely. I don't think he exhibits much empathy, for good or for ill.

I've noticed that disconnect.

Others want his finances investigated. Because suspicion of Russian oligarchs' money being tied into Facebook.

Tied in, in that they are investing illegal money in Facebook, or tied in, in that they are using money to influence FB policies in a way that facilitates some useful propaganda?

All of that, apparently.

What would be the consequence for the USA if Erdogan did start calling the treatment of Native Americans a genocide?

I'm thinking not much.

Whereas I think Armenia would get some advantage in their ongoing dealings with Turkey.

Considering that public opinion in the US and Canada on this subject is already veering in the general direction of owning up to the crime being a Good Thing...and Canada already went there with our Truth and Reconciliation Commission and is fitfully working on the consequences of that nowadays...I can't see much harm coming to the US from this "threat" of Erdoğan's denunciation either.

For North America, where the people who were the victims of the genocide are largely dead or disenfranched and outsiders already have an understanding of what happened or don't care there seems little likely tangible downside to admitting that a bad thing was done and then trying to reconcile from that position.

A pretty fair number of Americans would be in sad agreement with Erdogan's classification, so no real change there. My understanding is that most Germans acknowledge the Holocaust in the same way. It's only Turkey which seems to have real problems with its genocide, which is especially odd since it wasn't the Republic of Turkey which was responsible, since that didn't exist yet, but the now long-expired Ottoman Empire.

Erdoğan may be the same sort of revanchist that Putin and Xi would like to be on this point. There are things all three want to get away with in the here-and-now, and making genocide non-denounceable may well be among them.

Echoing the above, historians at least already routinely consider the treatment of Native Americans to be genocide, so I'm not sure that is as much of a threat as Erdogan seems to think it is, I can't think of any real consequences from that being more widely acknowledged.

Erdogan is not acknowledging that the treatment of the Armenians was genocide, he is merely trying to kick America's shins. If both sides acknowledged their culpability and tried to make some restitution, that would be progress. This is just name-calling in the playground.

Mr. Tiedemann nails it. Right to the front door of the (church/masjid/shul/gurdwara/etc.).

Yeah. I thought it was very on point. I feel bad for the women stuck in these situations.

Interesting Links for 27-04-2021

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Erdogan threatens to recognise killings of Native Americans as genocide

As for Trump and the "Christian" Right...

Re: As for Trump and the "Christian" Right...