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Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#81

Post by abakker »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #70
wpietri wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And the way it's often argued, it treats the status quo as some sort of natural given, like the weather. The line of argument seems to be that if Facebook and Twitter can't run safe platforms while maintaining their current revenue models and profit margins, well, we'll just have to live with that lack of safety. I find this line of argument odd when it's about actual natural givens, like dangerous weather. I'm…

Yes, I've always found the 'YouTube gets too much video to moderate it' a particularly shit argument. Maybe they not be allowed to have as much content then.

That doesn’t seem to be a useful solution, either. I mean, eat tool would you use to manage that?

Limit total videos per website? How do you determine who gets to stay? Money? Clicks?

Moderating all the videos is hard, but if the videos go to a different platform, they still need that same moderation, right?

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#82

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

marcinzm wrote: post #16
menacingly wrote: post #5

I get that facebook my have complicated motives here, but I don't know that "easy to spot" is a good yardstick. First, there are the countless instances where something is trivial for a single person to suss out that doesn't scale. Second, and perhaps most importantly, I don't think simple hunches about fake accounts are really actionable here. Having an account that "originated in the Middle East" that now presents…

The issue is also one of false-positives. Even if you could spot fake accounts 100% of the time if you also flagged 1% of legitimate accounts as fake by that approach then it's non-viable. Remember that at Facebooks scale a 1% false-positive rate means 20 MILLION accounts. That's too much to even try sending for manual review.

20 million reviews per year * 1/(2000 hours per personyear * 10 reviews per personhour) = 1000 people

Facebook could afford a thousand fulltime account reviewers, they just don't want to.

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#83

Post by briandear »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #70
wpietri wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And the way it's often argued, it treats the status quo as some sort of natural given, like the weather. The line of argument seems to be that if Facebook and Twitter can't run safe platforms while maintaining their current revenue models and profit margins, well, we'll just have to live with that lack of safety. I find this line of argument odd when it's about actual natural givens, like dangerous weather. I'm…

Yes, I've always found the 'YouTube gets too much video to moderate it' a particularly shit argument. Maybe they not be allowed to have as much content then.

Why is moderation needed?

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#84

Post by nerfhammer »

panic wrote: post #79
nerfhammer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) ANY single prominent example of a false positive or false negative will enrage some community. People's brains can only think of examples, not rates. 2) With billions of accounts zero examples of error is an absurdity. 3) different communities drastically disagree on which things false positives and false negatives should be defined as. 4) More perceived effort to work on (1) increases the outrage, i.e. the percei…

These are all great arguments for why Facebook's current model can never be a good way to run a social network. We need tools for people to build their own networks and make their own decisions, not a centralized network where all the decisions for the entire world are made by a small team in California.

Some of the value of a network comes from everyone else being on it. The term for this is even literally called "network effect".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#85

Post by sfifs »

menacingly wrote: post #5

I get that facebook my have complicated motives here, but I don't know that "easy to spot" is a good yardstick. First, there are the countless instances where something is trivial for a single person to suss out that doesn't scale. Second, and perhaps most importantly, I don't think simple hunches about fake accounts are really actionable here. Having an account that "originated in the Middle East" that now presents…

there's no real incentive to work on this unless ad revenue takes a hit. When YouTube ads appearing in front of extremist videos caused brand money to get pulled out, solutions started magically appearing.

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#86

Post by briandear »

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #43

Fuck Facebook. Delete your account. A corporation's singular goal is to maximize profits, by definition. That's exactly what they've done by taking Russian money and using it to influence our elections. If you want justice, it's simple. Delete your account and don't use any Facebook services. Then we need laws regarding political "ads" and the internet, in addition to a lot of other changes our system obviously needs…

Hilary Clinton spent more on her wardrobe than the Russians spent on Facebook. It was roughly $160k. Hardly enough to influence an election when campaigns spent close to a billion dollars.

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#87

Post by smelendez »

sverige wrote: post #58
anigbrowl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't care anyway. A while back I got a notification that a sexually explicit picture had been removed from my page. I had never seen the picture in question, said so, and asked where it had been posted, as I was worried that my account had been compromised. They completely ignored the question and I got back a standard 'we've reviewed the picture and found it's not compliant with our community standards' reply.…

> Like many people, I'd really like to leave the platform but not the network of friends that I communicate regularly with. And no, email and or other channels are not good substitutes. Any alternative has to offer at least the same degree of functionality/convenience to be worth using. Not picking on you specifically, but I've noticed that this is the standard line used by people who love to complain about how shitt…

Facebook has existed for just over a decade but a lot of people and institutions have already moved communications there that used to be elsewhere. Other communications that might not have taken place at all because of cost or other factors are now taking place on social media.

It's sometimes the only place people post to let people know they're sick or well, in or out of danger (e.g., in the hurricanes this year), or had a major life event. Sometimes it's impossible to get this information another way without alarming or traumatizing someone, or tying up someone's phone line or draining their battery during an emergency.

I've noticed some small music venues, theaters, etc. use it as their primary place to post events.

About six years ago, I got one very good full-time job that I learned about through a tweet--I wouldn't have thought to even check if that employer had such a job without Twitter. I've since gotten freelance work that I only learned about through Twitter and Facebook. (I've also gotten work through email, Slack, Google Talk, SMS, LinkedIn, physical posters, and word of mouth).

Lots of people use social media to vet potential dates, and see Facebook classifieds (tied to a real identity) as safer than Craigslist, etc.

Facebook, Twitter and all have flaws and things I wish they'd change--so do my phone company, my cable company and the postal service. But using them is a net positive.

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#88

Post by sanderjd »

ksk wrote: post #75
dymk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're falling into (3) and ignoring how important (1) is

Um, the person simply defined a problem into existence. There is no agreed upon basis of thinking like this.

But you haven't attempted to refute the well-described basis of that problem statement. Which parts do you think are wrong?

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#89

Post by Natsu »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #82
marcinzm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is also one of false-positives. Even if you could spot fake accounts 100% of the time if you also flagged 1% of legitimate accounts as fake by that approach then it's non-viable. Remember that at Facebooks scale a 1% false-positive rate means 20 MILLION accounts. That's too much to even try sending for manual review.

20 million reviews per year * 1/(2000 hours per personyear * 10 reviews per personhour) = 1000 people Facebook could afford a thousand fulltime account reviewers, they just don't want to.

You're implicitly assuming that manual reviews would have a 1% or better error rate. I sincerely doubt that's realistic based on what I've seen of assembly line style processes.

Re: Facebook Says It’s Policing Fake Accounts, but They’re Still Easy to Spot

#90

Post by ern »

lostapathy wrote: post #2

A major failing with Facebook's process for reporting accounts is that there is no way to enter any text to help them figure it out. I have seen numerous accounts that are breaking the TOS, but it's only obvious if you know some other bit of easily verifiable information. Without fail, whenever I report one of these accounts facebook tells me "thanks but they're fine, feel free to block them if you still feel this wa…

I've been flagging accounts for years, and the quality of decision-making seems to me to have gotten worse recently. I wonder if the push to hire more moderators has lowered the standard.
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