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Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#131

Post by rconti »

makosdv wrote: post #8

The thing that troubles me the most is the hubris of Facebook to think that they can even attempt to define and enforce speech codes. It is their site, so they can do what they want, but I can also do what I want and not use it. Given Facebook's massive drop in stock price this year, it seems like their investors think Facebook is following the wrong path as well.

These global sites, which have now been told it's not acceptable to just throw up their hands and say "it's not our fault, we're just a platform!" are now trying to ham-handedly manage the content we've told them to manage. I don't know what the answer is, but I wouldn't call this hubris. I'd call it... reluctant compliance?

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#132

Post by username90 »

beatpanda wrote: post #50
jmspring wrote: post #5

Having a bunch of likely millenial aged individuals with limited life experience based in Menlo Park to have a say in discourse that crosses so many boundaries? What could possibly go wrong?

This is exactly why Silicon Valley engineers, and engineers generally, need to stop being so dismissive of people with "useless" liberal arts educations, and instead bring in sociologists and anthropologists to think through these processes in a comprehensive way. I'm being downvoted into oblivion elsewhere on this site for suggesting this, but I feel like it's a very obvious move for tech companies that have this pr…

Governments are typically packed with liberal arts majors but that never stopped them from doing stupid shit.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#133

Post by quanticle »

enitihas wrote: post #78
quanticle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that nothing that Facebook does will actually solve the problem. The solution that will actually solve the problem, having different social networks, with different community standards for each, is antithetical to Facebook's existence. Facebook will continue to make more PowerPoint presentations and hire more outsourced content moderators in a desperate attempt to make the unworkable work... or at leas…

I keep hearing that additional social networks will solve the problem. How exactly do additional social networks solve this problem? Won't they be even more inclined to serve addictive content under the threat of cut throat competition. For example, WhatsApp too used a lot for propagation of rumours. How will additional social networks make people immune from their biases, or magically neutralize all the extrme opini…

Additional social networks will prevent Facebook from imposing a one-size-fits-all speech policy on the entire world. Yes, some countries' social networks will be filled with hate speech and conspiracy theories. Other countries will ban such speech, just like Germany bans Nazi memorabilia. Yet other countries will err towards allowing a free marketplace of ideas, like the US does with its First Amendment guarantees.

Facebook cannot and should not be the one attempting to reconcile cultural norms across the entire world into a single speech code that satisfies everyone.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#134

Post by quanticle »

nradov wrote: post #98
quanticle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that nothing that Facebook does will actually solve the problem. The solution that will actually solve the problem, having different social networks, with different community standards for each, is antithetical to Facebook's existence. Facebook will continue to make more PowerPoint presentations and hire more outsourced content moderators in a desperate attempt to make the unworkable work... or at leas…

Why is that a problem that needs to be solved?

Not everyone wants Facebook to be imposing its notion of community standards on their online discourse. Right now, Facebook is the only social network, so if you want to reach people, you have to play by Facebook's rules, no matter how arbitrary and culturally-imperialistic they are. If there were a plethora of social network, you could reach people while maintaining the norms of your community, even if those norms were opposition to the US.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#135

Post by stevenicr »

snowmaker wrote: post #2

The look at the actual rulebook is fascinating. It reminds me a bit of Google's guidelines to the outsourced workforce that hand-reviews search results ( https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en... ). I wonder if Facebook has had to hire political experts in every region to draft these guidelines. I would think you would need a sizable task force of political experts to have the necessary expertis…

I was thinking about that google rule book when responding to this recent hn thing here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18773263 about google (Google Is Smashing Multi-Discipline Websites to Combat Fake News),

The truly terrible thing is that most people do not know that F and G are censoring to the degrees they are.

Most (99.9%?) - don't know that there is a group of human moderators and site rankers that are trying to follow some esoteric multi-page set of guidelines to determine what is shown and what is not shown.

We know nothing of these people who are choosing what gets seen or not seen on our state / country / city, etc. What are their political leanings? religious views?

How much time are these people given to decide if something you say or think you are going to hear is blocked? How much do these people make for making these important decisions? What is their education level?

What about those things for the people who make these sets of rules. Also, how are these things affecting the algorithms?

These things matter. The lack of transparency is bad for users and those who think they speaking to their audience.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#136

Post by 2812_0957 »

bduerst wrote: post #3

While the individual examples listed here are not good, what is the false-positive and false-negative rates for FB's method of censorship? Globally scaling hate-speech censorship is a problem that many content websites (Youtube, Twitter, etc.) face. This article with it's leaked deck and false-positive examples seems like it's trying to generate shock at "how the sausage gets made". Any process involving humans will…

The entire point is that you can't measure false-positive or false-negative rate since any definition of what should be banned or not is subjective and somewhat arbitrary. If the result could be non-ambiguously measured then the censorship could be non-ambiguously implemented.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#137

Post by gaius »

beatpanda wrote: post #50
jmspring wrote: post #5

Having a bunch of likely millenial aged individuals with limited life experience based in Menlo Park to have a say in discourse that crosses so many boundaries? What could possibly go wrong?

This is exactly why Silicon Valley engineers, and engineers generally, need to stop being so dismissive of people with "useless" liberal arts educations, and instead bring in sociologists and anthropologists to think through these processes in a comprehensive way. I'm being downvoted into oblivion elsewhere on this site for suggesting this, but I feel like it's a very obvious move for tech companies that have this pr…

with "useless" liberal arts educations

Ironically it’s these graduates with the strongest opinions on what people should and shouldn’t be allowed to say. It’s not mechanical engineering grads freaking out on Twitter over cultural appropriation, tone policing, etc. They are the last people you would want to entrust with this power.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#138

Post by Joeboy »

beatpanda wrote: post #50
jmspring wrote: post #5

Having a bunch of likely millenial aged individuals with limited life experience based in Menlo Park to have a say in discourse that crosses so many boundaries? What could possibly go wrong?

This is exactly why Silicon Valley engineers, and engineers generally, need to stop being so dismissive of people with "useless" liberal arts educations, and instead bring in sociologists and anthropologists to think through these processes in a comprehensive way. I'm being downvoted into oblivion elsewhere on this site for suggesting this, but I feel like it's a very obvious move for tech companies that have this pr…

But the actual relationship between nerds and liberal arts people is more like https://www.xkcd.com/743/ . I can see how the argument you're making would play well in some communities, but HN is not the right audience.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#139

Post by white-flame »

rntz wrote: post #80
fromthestart wrote: post #67

We can barely agree on what constitutes hate speech in the U.S.; fb is expecting to define and police hate speech globally?

From Facebook's perspective, what is the alternative? _Not_ trying to define censorship guidelines - and consequently (as we saw in Myanmar) enabling genocide?

That would be the route of framing themselves as a common carrier, as opposed to the current model of a content-promoting, editorializing publisher.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#140

Post by yqh »

beachy wrote: post #28
quanticle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that nothing that Facebook does will actually solve the problem. The solution that will actually solve the problem, having different social networks, with different community standards for each, is antithetical to Facebook's existence. Facebook will continue to make more PowerPoint presentations and hire more outsourced content moderators in a desperate attempt to make the unworkable work... or at leas…

Reddit may be coming to it's golden age.

Back in the day, yes. Today, they ban everything that's not "US kosher", pun intended.
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