Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

81–90 of 353 posts

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

#81

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.

What's the downside?

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

#82

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.

If social media companies exist because they are not held responsible for negative externalities, and actually recognizing the externalities would result in the death of said companies, then maybe they don't deserve to exist. We as a society have a real serious problem contending with companies that have massive negative externalities

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

#83
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it Nothing is impossible, especially when you are a multi-billion tech company. FB loves to justify their lack of action with technical limitations that often do not really exist.

This is a bad take. FB has taken the most action out of any big tech company in terms of hiring human moderators and investing in their AI auto-detection. It's nonsensical and lazy to claim that there aren't serious technical challenges involved with creating a perfect detection system, even for a company like Facebook.

you've got to feel for the human moderators though. Some of the content they have to watch, it's really the worst job possible. it's going to lead to a lot of PTSD. I think the easier solution would to just not have the features in the product.

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

#84
post #6

I'm a New Zealander. I think our privacy commissioner is so totally wrong here. It's a hard technical problem to solve. It's an even harder political problem to solve. Automatic censorship of live feeds, how do you do that? Automatic take downs of videos doctored to avoid being removed, how to do you do that? Then if you have these automatic systems in place how do you avoid getting accused of censoring everyone? I d…

If you don't care about user experience and cost it's a pretty simple problem to solve - everything vetted before it gets posted

The more 1984 process is that laws are put into place where all video can be tracked back and we can punish people for their speech.

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

#85

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.

If a car manufacturer is faced with a problem so that it loses the ability to prevent accidents, would you let that manufacturer continue its business?

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

#86
post #77

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…

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…

You don't see any difference here? One government is trying to keep their people from seeing violent and disturbing content. The other is trying to keep their people from learning about violent and disturbing things that very government is commiting themselves to its own people.

I don't think the NZ government is scooping up and murdering political disedents.

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sincere question: is this UCLA law professor mistaken in his first paragraph? https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

He's right, however, managers can simply say, "We believe long term wealth maximization is dependent on not being assholes and getting the company regulated out of existence," and that will be the end of any shareholder lawsuit on the subject. US case law gives wide leeway to managers to determine what is best for the business.

and 12 years later "that will be the end of any shareholder lawsuit on the subject".

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

#88

"[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…

[deleted]

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

#89

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.

[deleted]

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

#90

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.

That sounds fine. They bought it, so they own it. If they make money from someone's work, then they are responsible for at least as much money as they made.
Post reply on HN