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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

#241

Post by flexie »

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" because they conveniently have decided to have no clue.

Facebook enjoys the protection of its IPR and the right to sell advertisement overseas in places like New Zealand or Europe. Why should New Zealand or Europe allow their business model of close to zero oversight of content? Facebook is not a startup. It's a huge company making billions showing ads to billions.

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

#242

Post by ukoki »

djaychela wrote: post #222
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…

If they don't know what's being posted, maybe they should change how their platform works? If a normal business behaved like this and then just shrugged their shoulders, no one would stand for it. A traditional broadcaster would have their licence revoked. A print publisher would be in serious trouble. But when it happens online, somehow it's someone else's problem. This seems odd to me.

> If a normal business behaved like this and then just shrugged their shoulders, no one would stand for it

That's not quite true. No one blames the US postal service for death threats sent in the mail. Facebook is not the USPS, but it's not a traditional publisher either — and just like the USPS it simply couldn't work if you wanted the same level of editorial oversight as a publisher.

edit: typo

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

#243

Post by neop1x »

Jedi72 wrote: post #190

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 se…

Lots of people are killed by alcohol, why is it not banned already? Lots of people are killed in cars - let's ban them. You are not eating healthy, not enough vitamins and nutritions? Put you in jail!

Tragedies happen, but why can't we live with them and try solve the causes instead of results? How many people read the manifesto written by the killer? I don't agree with any brutality but there are some points to think about.

If they ban one service, they will use another one next time. Or people will watch it from an archive. Or they won't watch the it at all and trust news blindly.

But the censorship will harm everyone. It will force people to post positive, optimistic posts only. It will control what is good and what is bad. It will present a fake ideal reality.

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

#244

Post by ben_w »

RandomTisk wrote: post #160
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take it to the absurd. I am NOT shifting any blame from the perpetrator. I am placing additional blame on a medium that isn't willing to exercise adequate restraint or control. A bank undoubtedly has security measures in place to prevent robbery, if they don't bother, they won't last long. Nonetheless, there are regulations on what may and may not be done for public spaces, how crowded they may be to pass fire…

Why stop at Facebook? The GoPro or iPhone he used should have caught it before it even reached facebook. The ISP should have caught it too. Lock them all up? How about the pavement the killer walked on, it should have swallowed him, let's sue the city for not designing shooter eating sidewalks? You're looking to go down a ridiculous road imo.

Which of those examples already have copyright infringement detection filters built in which should have been capable of preventing, e.g. re-uploading of the original livestream?

Do any of them boast about their natural language processing and engage in psychological experiments on their users to detect, e.g. suicidal tendencies?

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

#245

Post by ben_w »

smallgovt wrote: post #212
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have the ability to control your premises, or employ enough security, perhaps you should not be permitted to operate those premises. Unsafe clubs get closed down. They - or any other social media company - don't have a right to exist. If societies around the world conclude they do more harm than good as they currently operate, it's perfectly reasonable to require them to moderate adequately. If they cann…

>> Facebook could employ thousands more to moderate and supervise - without destroying their ability to make profit You're underestimating the scale of this problem. Facebook users create billions of new posts a day. And, tens of millions of these posts get reported for moderation per day. "Thousands of more" employees isn't going to solve the problem. Assuming each posts takes 10 minutes of labor to review, you woul…

> "Thousands of more" employees isn't going to solve the problem. Assuming each posts takes 10 minutes of labor to review, you would need an army of 200K individuals, and this amount of labor would cost many billions of dollars per year.

Agreed. Let’s require them to do that.

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

#247

Post by tomp »

doldge wrote: post #197
xupybd wrote: 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 are a New Zealander, then you should know better. Freedom of speech is NOT an unalienable right in NZ, nor has it ever been. The ridiculous scare-mongering by some of the sibling comments on this post about this being "the start of the end for NZ" is not representative of: A) New Zealand B) Most countries outside of the US. (Because it's a continuation of existing policy; That not all speech is protected). As…

> More generally, I feel government exists to ensure the collective safety and security of society.

Do you honestly believe that if FB (and no other platform except self-hosting) offered no live videos (in NZ or worldwide), the shooting would not have happened?

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

#248

Post by bamboozled »

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…

Actually they should not allow live content posts, just like TV broadcasting corporations are required to have a delay in case something harmful or disturbing were to be broadcast.

They're 100% responsible for building a platform which allows for this kind of content to be posted and broadcast en-masse with zero responsibility or accountability.

It amazes me people think that making a profit from this kind of "platform" is acceptable.

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

#249

Post by raxxorrax »

dc_gregory wrote: post #47
zhaso wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing this at Facebook's scale is very much not "pretty simple".

The underlying assertion (and debate) here is that the value facebook is providing to society is worth the cost.

government censorship comes with a significant price to a society. Far to high as to push problems on it that amounts to bad parenting and consuming objectionable comments.

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

#250

Post by timomax »

flexie wrote: post #241
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" because they conveniently have decided to have no clue. Facebook enjoys the protection of its IPR and the right to sell advertisement overseas in places like New Zealand or Europe. Why should New Zealand or Europe allow their business model of close to zero oversight of content? Facebook is not a startup. It's a huge company making billions showing ads to billions…

Exactly. There is no cult of "free speech" in Europe. We will just block such sites if they don't reform.
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