Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos

#51

Post by gbear605 » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 7:16 PM UTC

huffmsa wrote: post #6

x38iq84n wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NZ goes even further, threatening 10 years prison for a “possession of a video”. Kiwis have gone bananas. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-16/nz-threatens-10-ye...

It still strikes me that it can be illegal to be in possession of a device which has a certain combination of positive and negative polarities embedded in it. Shakespeare's typing monkeys come to mind.

In the end, everything is just subatomic particles arranged in different ways, so why should anything be illegal? If you’re going to reduce one idea to its base elements, you should at least be consistent.

On the other hand, perhaps if we think about everything at a more reasonable level, we can see why some digital things should be illegal, just as some physical things should be illegal.

Re: Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos

#52

Post by swiley » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

warning26 wrote: post #9

I know people on here will disagree with this, but I think many of these events indicate that online censorship is needed. I believe it's becoming increasingly clear that merely allowing far-right dialogue online is essentially responsible for ease of radicalization, and that proactive censorship would be the best approach to forestall this.

Personally I'm more tempted to blame AI content curation pushing people into echo chambers than a lack of censorship.

If we want less division we should be listening more to each other not less.

Re: Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos

#53

Post by whytaka » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

tibbydudeza wrote: post #17

Simulacra wrote: post #13

People around the office were watching it. Shockingly easy to find.

You have ask what sort of people would watch this ???.

- Politicians

- The Police

- The Military

- Journalists

- The people who care to carefully understand a situation before forming a stance

Re: Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos

#54

Post by etaioinshrdlu » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

I've done some work in the AI content moderation space and I have come to suspect that while computer vision is advanced enough to probably detect all of this, the neural nets are so big and deep that it costs over 10x what anyone is willing to pay to run, on such a large scale.

It's like looking for needles in a haystack, and it is expensive.

There is a cost-quality tradeoff with these neural nets as well, but if you go cheap, then your accuracy isn't useful either.

I don't know such a sweet spot exists today where it is both cost effective and useful.

Re: Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos

#55

Post by ben_w » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 7:21 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #14

warning26 wrote: post #9

I know people on here will disagree with this, but I think many of these events indicate that online censorship is needed. I believe it's becoming increasingly clear that merely allowing far-right dialogue online is essentially responsible for ease of radicalization, and that proactive censorship would be the best approach to forestall this.

>I believe it's becoming increasingly clear that merely allowing far-right dialogue online is essentially responsible for ease of radicalization, and that proactive censorship would be the best approach to forestall this. Because of course, censorship only blocks the material you personally don't want others to view and never material you personally would want others to view. I can see a lot of politicians, especiall…

This is why my own position is not settled.

Publications, preachers, performances, etc. change people’s behaviour and beliefs — if they didn’t, nobody would advertise or campaign. That change can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depending on your point of view.

I want the spread of harmful memes to be slowed (and, if possible, prevented), but I also ask myself “What if I’m wrong about what is harmful?” — for example, I don’t believe in the Christian god, and have seen harm done in his name, but what if he actually does exist and banning Christian memes condemns people to hell?

Or sexuality? I know people whose sexuality has been outlawed this decade in much of western Europe, as a result of campaigns by people totally convinced that their preferences are innately harmful, which side is right?

I think solving this is also an important part of safe A.I., so it would still be a very important problem for me even if I didn’t know people directly affected.

Re: Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos

#56

Post by Chris_Chambers » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

OmarIsmail wrote: post #21

All the "free speech" advocates here, do you still stand by that when it comes to child porn, or specific threats against individuals? If you do, and publicly, well... at least you're consistent. If you don't then you're already ok with some kind of censorship, and the argument is just about where the line is drawn. I really don't like when people talk about "censorship in general" when they really mean "This is belo…

Obviously the production should be illegal, but child porn itself is evidence of a crime. The more people who have it, the more likely the criminals will be identified by someone who recognizes them by a birthmark, freckles, a balding pattern, the watch they’re wearing, etc.

Threats are also potential evidence of a crime. If someone is angry enough to publicly threaten to kill you, and then they actually do it and plan it perfectly in such a way that they would definitely get away with it if it hadn’t been for the previous public threat where they gave their intentions away, then the fact that twitter censored their threat is what enabled them to get away with it.

Any other brilliant examples of “good” censorship?

Re: Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos

#57

Post by mrkstu » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #36

mrkstu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same people who gathered around TVs on 9/11 after the first strike and then saw the 2nd strike live? So most of the country?

On the morning of September 11, 2001 nobody knew there would be a second attack on the other tower. I distinctly remember everyone including myself thinking about the B52 that accidentally ran into the Empire State building. We were all at work so it wasn't like we were watching TV. You're assuming at the time that everyone knew it was a terrorist attack, which is false. Nobody knew that until well after the second p…

No assumptions. We were gathered around the TV in the conference room after the first one hit and part of the conversation was whether it was terrorism, since it was pretty obvious you don't just happen to ram into the side of the tallest building in the country.

But your comment is a non-sequitur regardless- even once we all knew it was a terrorist attack it was replayed endlessly on TV for months, including the people throwing themselves off the building.

I haven't watched any of the footage of the New Zealand attack, but to somehow say it is exceptional to watch the footage is historically speaking, incorrect.

Re: Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos

#58

Post by ben_w » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

40acres wrote: post #11

We have yet to have a real discussion about what we expect the largest platforms to do about content like this. The nature of online content is that once it's created it can be copied quite easily, if Facebook was able to block 80% of this content that should be commended. AI is not at the point where we can expect 100% of this content to be removed and if it was there would likely be some collateral damage that othe…

20% not being caught is surprisingly high to me. I would have assumed the majority of the upload attempts would be byte-for-byte identical, and that even if there were a dozen minor variations of the same content, they would be able to deal with >95% automatically.

Re: Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos

#59

Post by megous » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 7:30 PM UTC

warning26 wrote: post #9

I know people on here will disagree with this, but I think many of these events indicate that online censorship is needed. I believe it's becoming increasingly clear that merely allowing far-right dialogue online is essentially responsible for ease of radicalization, and that proactive censorship would be the best approach to forestall this.

Well, bannings, also serve as a rallying call. They will put out a "Critical message from Whoever" video, and talk about how they're under attack from the media, and corporations, and how now, more than ever it is important for people who believe the same as them to spring into action (donate more to the cause), etc.

...

Re: Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos

#60

Post by holymacaral » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

OmarIsmail wrote: post #21

All the "free speech" advocates here, do you still stand by that when it comes to child porn, or specific threats against individuals? If you do, and publicly, well... at least you're consistent. If you don't then you're already ok with some kind of censorship, and the argument is just about where the line is drawn. I really don't like when people talk about "censorship in general" when they really mean "This is belo…

Hi I found your comment interesting. Yes, we have free speech forums where you can say and share anything without censorship. Yes, there are illegal things there although 99% of the content is legal. The idea is that you are in control of your own experience. You can & should blacklist entire sections of the website.

It's all peer-to-peer and onion routed. The only one who can censor things is the owner although moderators might be able to curate content on their boards (similar to what HN does). Oh, and if the owner throws away his private key then it will keep running just without new updates to the site.

People are afraid of freedom but it all works pretty well in the end.

Also, I agree with the Ayn Rand definition of free speech, i.e. the term censorship only applies to governments. When a company (such as Facebook) censors something they are really just expressing their private property rights.