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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

#181

Post by DSingularity »

o10449366 wrote: post #111
DSingularity wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? You expect us to believe that Facebook and Youtube can’t afford to hire 50,000 content regulators each? 30,000 of them would probably be paid less than 5000$ a year.

Facebook already employs tens of thousands of human moderators. What you're really proposing is that every piece of content that's uploaded to any internet website should be manually reviewed and approved by another human. You don't think that's a ridiculous and unrealistic proposition that could be turned into a weapon by bad actors (just like a livestream feature?)?

The face that you would reduce my proposal to a brain dead, dumbest possible solution shows you aren’t really interested discussion.

Don’t you think they would, for example, be able to prioritize content based on reputation/hidden metrics?

Don’t you think, for example, that a fair amount of videos categories can be auto filtered with extremely high accuracy?

Don’t you think, for example, that if they had enough content moderators they would have been able to stop the stream and to take down this video faster?

Do you really think I am proposing that they review every video in FIFO order? Or did you want to reduce my proposal to that so you can easily dismiss it.

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

#182

Post by [deleted] »

shard972 wrote: post #165
xupybd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't value? They have been begging for free speech to be utterly decimated and cry foul if you even suggest that maybe they shouldn't lockup a teenager over sharing the video. They just want to "teach people lessons", it's quite sad really.

[deleted]

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

#183

Post by laughinghan »

o10449366 wrote: post #162
mavdi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. It’s a hard problem to solve while keeping the business profitable. But so is safety in mining, aviation, oil drilling, medicine etc. Some tech companies won’t be viable businesses once regulations kick in. Good riddance.

There's something hilariously ironic in saying that tech companies should be treated like mining, aviation, and medical companies. How many natural disasters have the biggest mining companies caused and what repercussions have they faced? Do you really think Boeing is going to dissolve or that the pharmaceutical companies that kill tens of thousands each year by selling opioids and bankrupt millions more are actually…

Just to clarify, is it your position that the FAA, FDA, and OSMRE are circus shows and that abolishing the FAA would make aviation safer, abolishing the FDA would make medicine safer, and abolishing the OSMRE would make mining safer?

Or are you saying those agencies don't do enough to hold accountable the companies that caused all those problems? Because that doesn't seem like an argument against regulating tech companies. That seems like an argument for regulating tech companies, and those other companies, more strictly.

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

#184

Post by DSingularity »

o10449366 wrote: post #158
djpilot wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is flat out not true. FB doesn't employ 10s of thousands of human moderators. According to a 3-month old article, $FB supposedly employs 7,500 moderators [0], though it's unclear what constitutes "employment" in this case. Probably a salary of less than $5k/yr. Are there really thouhsands of content moderators pulling up to FBHQ in Menlo Park 5 days a week? I don't think so, no. [0] https://www.inc.com/christine…

"By the end of 2018, in response to criticism of the prevalence of violent and exploitative content on the social network, Facebook had more than 30,000 employees working on safety and security — about half of whom were content moderators." [0] That number has only increased in recent months and will likely continue to increase in the near future. Not all of them are designated content moderators, it's true, so techn…

Great. Now we need more and we need to give those moderators teeth and tools.

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

#185

Post by rndgermandude »

DSingularity wrote: post #99
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…

Why is it sensationalism to demand accountability? Why can’t we just say something as simple as “hey Zuck, Every time someone is murdered live on FB you owe society 50 million”. Is that so horrible?

First of all, nobody ever murdered anybody on facebook. People murdered and streamed it, or uploaded pictures and videos.

There is plenty of places where murder gets shown, either live or recoded. How many millions do the TV stations owe in fines in your estimates for airing live footage and recorded footage of 9/11?

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

#186

Post by kristianc »

freediver wrote: post #179
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…

Ad-driven business models ultimately lead to intelligence insulting outcomes. Whether you look at Google or Facebook, you can notice that these platforms have been highly optimized to produce and stimulate user experiences that are far from sensible or pleasant. The main product for both companies are ads. One uses massive distribution channel in terms of free internet search the other one in terms of free content. T…

> It could (theoretically) hire 1 million workers to curate the platform at $50k/year.

Theoretically, no, Facebook could not spend nearly its entire annual revenue on content moderators and still have a platform to speak of.

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

#187

Post by laughinghan »

kaveh_h wrote: post #180

I call bullshit on Zuckerbergs claim as birthday parties and group hangs streams are primarily with people you have direct relationship status with on Facebook and thus can be distingishued when distributed to users by Facebook as non-related users can have a delay added for review. This would at least greatly reduce the spread of said material to limited groups and if individuals within that groups choose to resubmi…

THIS. No one else has seem to have even brought up, as just a potential idea, a time delay only for the public stream but allow pre-confirmed friends to view the stream live. Or instead of pre-confirmed friends, people who were invited and responded to a Facebook event. Or something.

That would solve the birthday use case while inhibiting the virality.

That's not necessarily good! Maybe the ability to live-streaming police brutality or vote stuffing or whatever, in a way that could go viral, is an important public good. But no one seems to have brought that up, either.

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

#188

Post by phs318u »

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…

Yes, the claim is sensational but not entirely without merit.

Zuckerberg has written that, “live videos often lead to discussion among viewers on Facebook—in fact, live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos.” [0]. Live streams are far more valuable to Facebook due to the more "meaningful" interactions they generate. When coupled with their ability to identify and target quite specific demographics (see 'detailed targeting' [1],[2] ), they absolutely have the power to better target any AI and human moderators. If they were to couple this with a built-in live-stream delay (allowing say for some level of video content analysis prior to display) then I contend they could score 'harmful' material reasonably accurately - perhaps accurately enough to pipe into a queue for human vetting before publication (of course, unless they try, we'll never know for sure, so arguments on this are kind of moot). However, each of these elements come at a cost to FB's business model. MZ has already spoken out against delays in live streaming.

Also, your rebuttal is disingenuous. The claim that they "have no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform", doesn't jibe with their self-described abilities (as pitched to their advertiser customers as "detailed targetting"). I agree that they can't identify with 100% accuracy, but that's not required. If they can get the accuracy high enough that a higher-scrutiny vetting process can be imposed (wether AI or human), then that's sufficient. As for the claim their AI "isn't powerful enough to detect it", can you provide anything to back up that statement?

The real question is: are Facebook and the other social-media and tech content publishers responsible for the content they publish (irrespective of where it's sourced)? My belief is 'yes'. When someone posts on Facebook they are not pubhlishing. They are contributing. Facebook are publishing. Hence, Facebook should be held to the same standards as other publishers.

Arguments that "censoring Facebook means the end of free discourse", are pretty weak when there are still many alternatives (e.g. Mastodon and others) that are more user-centric and resistant to both censorship and abuse (through higher rates of group-local self-moderation).

People have a right to free speech. They don't have a right to impose speech on others. They don't have a right to voilate other's freedoms (as hate speech and trolling often does). Similarlly, companies don't have a right to operate without any kind of regulation at all. Regulation exists to ensure a balance between the good of the market and the good of the commons.

[0] https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-algorithm/

[1] https://www.facebook.com/business/help/717368264947302

[2] https://www.facebook.com/business/help/182371508761821

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

#189

Post by Nextgrid »

DuskStar wrote: post #150
Nextgrid wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think that’s perfectly realistic, and in fact how forums have worked for ages. There are also automated measures such as user trust levels where an account has to earn trust before they can do certain things like post links, embed pictures, etc. Being on the platform isn’t a right either and it would be perfectly fair for them to rate-limit the amount of public posts someone can make to an amount that’s ma…

> and in fact how forums have worked for ages. What forums are those? Because this isn't the case with the forums I frequent. The boards I read / participate in tend to operate on the principle of "don't make me come over there", and everything is reactive, not proactive. I'm not sure how you'd get things like "user was banned for this post" etc otherwise...

The boards I used to frequent (about computer hardware & video-games, though both had a very active "off-topic/chat" section) had pretty good moderation coverage. It was indeed reactive, however the moderators were active members of the community and as a side-effect they were bound to see every post within 24 hours, but usually much sooner. New users were also restricted in what they could do so the potential for damage was limited even if moderators weren't active.

I don't have a problem with moderation being delayed. I have a problem with there being no moderation or clueless moderation (I have reported hundreds of obviously fake accounts or pages promoting outright illegal activity, and the majority of those got ignored).

Of course, the scale was much smaller than Facebook, but my point is that maybe if you can't solve this problem then you shouldn't be in a position to broadcast & promote stuff to the entire world? The danger of Facebook (& other social networks) isn't in your friends seeing your malicious post, it's that your malicious post can go "viral" and be put in front of people who haven't asked for anything since the ranking algorithm is based on stuff like "likes", shares, etc (and a lot of garbage content tends to attract likes unfortunately) which can also be manipulated by a determined attacker (using fake/compromised accounts to "like" the post, etc).

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

#190

Post by Jedi72 »

Where do you draw the line. If I throw up an open internet forum, am I responsible for administering everything that gets sent on it? If the Christchurch shooter had set up their own live-streaming box, who would we be getting mad at? Do you need a licence to broadcast on the internet now?? Every day we get further and gurther from a free internet, and its incredibly sad to see people on HN supporting this foolish sentiment.
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