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Facebook are 'morally bankrupt liars' says New Zealand's privacy commissioner

theguardian.com

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Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt liars' says New Zealand's privacy commissioner

#71

Post by zapzupnz »

FakeComments wrote: post #66
HNthrow22 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook has no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform, and their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it. The idea that Facebook is causing/enabling such behaviors is ridiculous. I contend as a society we should hold these massive tech orgs (who have more power than most governments) to the standard of moderating the content that's posted to their platforms. They have the money and profits to hire hum…

Your vision for society is one in which private companies moderate civic discourse? Sounds hellish — and very likely to be practiced disequitably, compounded with the power to silence critics of the system as extremists.

You make it sound as though private companies are the only means through which communication occurs. T'was a time when companies had their own means marketing, people ran their own blogs, and there were no huge private companies controlling the majority of online discourse.

Anybody else remember email?

We'll never go back to it, but don't act like the social media-driven scenario we have today is all there will ever be. If things like Twitter and Facebook became moderated, and people became dissatisfied, they'll do the same as they ever did with social media: go elsewhere. (By the way, let's take a moment to remember Digg)

And maybe, just maybe, we can go back to a saner time where we don't have to defend the status quo, hideous as it is.

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt liars' says New Zealand's privacy commissioner

#72

Post by underwater »

HNthrow22 wrote: post #56
acdc4life wrote: post #35

"[They] allow the live streaming of suicides, rapes, and murders, continue to host and publish the mosque attack video, allow advertisers to target ‘Jew haters’ and other hateful market segments, and refuse to accept any responsibility for any content or harm." I stopped reading after this point. Facebook has no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform, and their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it. Th…

> Facebook has no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform, and their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it. The idea that Facebook is causing/enabling such behaviors is ridiculous. I contend as a society we should hold these massive tech orgs (who have more power than most governments) to the standard of moderating the content that's posted to their platforms. They have the money and profits to hire hum…

You're not wrong, but holding social media companies responsible to that level is a relatively new idea. That Facebook is doing that yet doesn't make them unequivocally evil.

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt liars' says New Zealand's privacy commissioner

#73

Post by kevintb »

acdc4life wrote: post #35

"[They] allow the live streaming of suicides, rapes, and murders, continue to host and publish the mosque attack video, allow advertisers to target ‘Jew haters’ and other hateful market segments, and refuse to accept any responsibility for any content or harm." I stopped reading after this point. Facebook has no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform, and their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it. Th…

[flagged]

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt liars' says New Zealand's privacy commissioner

#74

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

djsumdog wrote: post #52
sigzero wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I for one welcome a decentralized privacy-first web with zero advertisements. That will never happen.

I try to do my part to encourage people to use the Fediverse. I dream of a day when Facebook, Twitter and others will have to permit ActivityPub integration just to stay relevant. Hmm .. MySpace should really implement activitypub. Might make a comeback.

As Facebook has repeatedly discovered over the past few years, open integrations are fundamentally incompatible with data privacy. A world where arbitrary third parties can easily interoperate with Facebook is a world where arbitrary third parties have everyone's data.

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt liars' says New Zealand's privacy commissioner

#75

Post by xupybd »

xupybd wrote: post #50
djsumdog wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and why the focus of Facebook? This could have happened to Twitch.tv or a self-hosted platform (and who do you go after then? Vultr? Amazon? DigitalOcean?) Live streams are a game changer in helping people get out content. If you try to force more providers to vet material, it breaks down the massive availability. Sure it might foster a growth in self-hosted solutions like PeerTube, and help increase more tooling for…

Yeah we are looking at introducing hate speech laws after the attack. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/04/08/524142/what-will-happe... Many people here don't value free speech even a little bit. I fear where this will lead us.

To show how bad it is here. Our Civil Liberties society doesn't fight for free speech https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/03/there-sho...

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt liars' says New Zealand's privacy commissioner

#76

Post by shripadk »

nutjob2 wrote: post #57
forgotmyhnacc wrote: post #3

Why is a random Twitter rant on the front page of hacker news? Also re: Jew haters, he does realize that the top two people at Facebook are Jewish, right? (Mark and Sheryl)

[flagged]

Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem and recognized Jerusalem as capital of Israel. His actions do not show him being an anti-semite. After all his son-in-law is himself a Jew and from what I hear wields a lot of power in the White House.

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt liars' says New Zealand's privacy commissioner

#77

Post by m0zg »

HNthrow22 wrote: post #56
acdc4life wrote: post #35

"[They] allow the live streaming of suicides, rapes, and murders, continue to host and publish the mosque attack video, allow advertisers to target ‘Jew haters’ and other hateful market segments, and refuse to accept any responsibility for any content or harm." I stopped reading after this point. Facebook has no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform, and their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it. Th…

> Facebook has no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform, and their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it. The idea that Facebook is causing/enabling such behaviors is ridiculous. I contend as a society we should hold these massive tech orgs (who have more power than most governments) to the standard of moderating the content that's posted to their platforms. They have the money and profits to hire hum…

What you're asking for also leads to total, Chinese-style censorship, as the government finds more and more content on these network it doesn't particularly like and therefore considers "extremist". Fun fact: Russia has recently passed a set of laws under which you can go to jail for simply "disrespecting" a government official. This "disrespect" can take the form, for example, of pointing out that their spending is several orders of magnitude more than their official salary would allow.

It boggles my mind that people can be simultaneously against the Chinese censorship and in favor of NZ censorship. It's the same exact thing, just cranked to a different degree. How do you live with both points of view in your head at the same time?

And lest I be deliberately "misinterpreted", I don't think that this shooting video should be on FB or that removing it from there represents "censorship". I also don't think we should go much beyond removing mass shooting livestreams however. Nor should anyone go to prison for 14 years for redistributing it.

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt liars' says New Zealand's privacy commissioner

#78

Post by profmonocle »

HNthrow22 wrote: post #56
acdc4life wrote: post #35

"[They] allow the live streaming of suicides, rapes, and murders, continue to host and publish the mosque attack video, allow advertisers to target ‘Jew haters’ and other hateful market segments, and refuse to accept any responsibility for any content or harm." I stopped reading after this point. Facebook has no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform, and their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it. Th…

> Facebook has no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform, and their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it. The idea that Facebook is causing/enabling such behaviors is ridiculous. I contend as a society we should hold these massive tech orgs (who have more power than most governments) to the standard of moderating the content that's posted to their platforms. They have the money and profits to hire hum…

> They have the money and profits to hire human moderators

Do they? Most content posted to Facebook has very low reach. If I live stream something for my friends it’s not going to bring in enough revenue to pay a minimum wage employe to watch it in real time.

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt liars' says New Zealand's privacy commissioner

#79

Post by dmoy »

FakeComments wrote: post #66
HNthrow22 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook has no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform, and their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it. The idea that Facebook is causing/enabling such behaviors is ridiculous. I contend as a society we should hold these massive tech orgs (who have more power than most governments) to the standard of moderating the content that's posted to their platforms. They have the money and profits to hire hum…

Your vision for society is one in which private companies moderate civic discourse? Sounds hellish — and very likely to be practiced disequitably, compounded with the power to silence critics of the system as extremists.

Reddit moderators aren't even part of the company. It's literally just random volunteers. (Not random as in random selection /.)

Re: Facebook are 'morally bankrupt liars' says New Zealand's privacy commissioner

#80

Post by AndrewKemendo »

acdc4life wrote: post #69
HNthrow22 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook has no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform, and their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it. The idea that Facebook is causing/enabling such behaviors is ridiculous. I contend as a society we should hold these massive tech orgs (who have more power than most governments) to the standard of moderating the content that's posted to their platforms. They have the money and profits to hire hum…

None of these tech companies have the ability to do that. What you are suggesting would mean the death of every social media company.

Which I think may be the appropriate answer. It's unclear that the net benefit to society is greater with these social media companies than without them. If anything, the data we have so far is that it is a net negative.
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