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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

#281

Post by pjc50 »

HNthrow22 wrote: post #257
o10449366 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, psychopaths don't have to publish in TV or newspapers because they do it for them. Go back a decade or two before Facebook was a big deal and you'd see CNN, NYTimes, NBC, etc. all feverishly covering Columbine, spending weeks profiling the shooters and every detail of their lives, broadcasting bar graphs and rankings of mass murders like it's a video game scoreboard and openly publishing their manifestos and na…

There's a huge difference between covering terrible events as a news story and providing the platform for content engineered to divide and radicalize to proliferate to millions. Also yes YouTube should be liable, not for the video of the NZ shooting being re-uploaded, but for the thousands of hours of hateful violent propaganda they allow to spread on their platform even facilitating it by suggesting it to users with…

> 20 people were to stand up on a soapbox with a megaphone in times square screaming about /r/redpill, /r/fatpeoplehate, etc concepts they would be removed if legal, and if not legal a huge countermovement would appear to try to force them out

I think you badly underestimate the apathy towards this stuff. Perhaps a better comparison would be the anti-abortion protestors, who can be pretty extreme.

> 30 minute produced broadcast dedicated to sharing fake crime stats about Muslims

This is absolutely routine in the regular media.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-the-british-media-i... / https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/27/islamo...

The Times is today running a series of highly misleading selectively quoted articles about gender identity services, presumably with the intent of causing violence against and suicide among trans people.

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

#282

Post by factsaresacred »

timomax wrote: post #250
flexie wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you reform a billion-person platform to detect a suicide attempt in real-time?

There's much wrong with Facebook but blaming them for not preventing the actions of their users at the moment those actions take place is moronic.

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

#283

Post by boomlinde »

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…

> 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.

The question isn't whether it's currently technically viable for Facebook to monitor the content their users post, but that since they're hosting it, maybe they should have a clue and design the service accordingly. If they are held liable for it and can't solve the problem technically, just let them (and services like it) die off. It wouldn't be a great loss to society as far as I'm concerned.

> It's similar to when Marilyn Manson got blamed for Columbine

What was Marilyn Manson's connection to the Columbine shooting? What is Facebook's connection to hosting morally repulsive content on their service? In my opinion these answers are different enough to merit the question on which grounds you make this comparison.

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

#284

Post by pjc50 »

o10449366 wrote: post #105
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…

Well as much as HN or the news media would like you to believe, societies around the world have definitely not concluded that FB does more harm than good and I don't see that changing anytime soon. You may think the club is unsafe, but a billion people are still attending all night and they feel perfectly comfortable.

The presence of a lot of people doesn't tell you whether it's safe, only how many people are at risk if a fire does start. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire

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

#285

Post by pjc50 »

o10449366 wrote: post #125
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attendance proves nothing at all. We've no idea if they are comfortable or not. Many appear to have come to think of it as a necessary evil. Millions of people were eating adulterated food every meal prior to food regulations. Political process and advertising was rife with corruption prior to attempts to instil a semblance of fairness limiting what was allowed and when. Yet people attempted to vote before this.

You're claiming simultaneously that we have no idea whether these users are comfortable or not and that most of them think of it as a necessary evil. Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media. You can't make a comparison between social media and food because one is necessary for survival and one isn't (I'm sure I'm going to invite a ton of comments here on how 'Facebook has become so ubiqui…

It doesn't actually matter whether people are "comfortable" on Facebook or not, it matters whether they're being incited to murder people. Facebook has an effect outside its users. The Bhopal of racism.

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

#286

Post by boomlinde »

factsaresacred wrote: post #282
timomax wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How do you reform a billion-person platform to detect a suicide attempt in real-time? There's much wrong with Facebook but blaming them for not preventing the actions of their users at the moment those actions take place is moronic.

Frankly, that should be their problem. Maybe billion-person platforms are altogether not morally scalable?

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

#287

Post by bloak »

drak0n1c wrote: post #268
baby wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. How many knife attacks are there been in London? I thought it was only a few times?

The murder rate in London just surpassed NYC. There were many articles over the weekend about it if you’re interested. Knives are prohibited there, and they have public knife amnesty bins (which occasionally get ransacked by thieves). Much like other cases of prohibition, it’s not really restricting the behavior of criminals.

Perhaps it's seasonal. London had more murders than New York in Feb or Mar 2018, but not in other months of 2018, I think. Did the same thing happen this year?

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

#288

Post by maxaf »

profmonocle wrote: post #112
maxaf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I challenge the premise that anything needs to be “posted”. What is it with this incessant drive to give everyone a voice? It turns out that the majority of “user-generated content” is either trivial or outright harmful. Perhaps the time has come for this experiment to end.

If we abandon the idea that everyone gets a voice, then who decides who does , and how do they do so?

Professional guilds, such as those which have existed for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild

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

#289

Post by maxaf »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #43
maxaf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I challenge the premise that anything needs to be “posted”. What is it with this incessant drive to give everyone a voice? It turns out that the majority of “user-generated content” is either trivial or outright harmful. Perhaps the time has come for this experiment to end.

> I challenge the premise that anything needs to be “posted”. Agreed, delete Usenet. The web should just be for Disney, Universal Studios, Netflix and Amazon. The common person does not need nor deserve a voice.

Don't be so dramatic. The common person really does not have anything interesting to say. I'm sure you've seen Facebook: that's what the common person is like. This isn't new: people have been boring for a long time, but until recently we had no way to know exactly how boring. Now we do.

If you haven't been bored to death with this comment, I may have to try harder. Let me know.

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

#290

Post by orf »

raxxorrax wrote: post #254
timomax wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Mabe this is a reason it isn't popular? Edit: nor competative. For that matter.

Europe as a whole is neither competitive nor popular (?) because they don't ascribe to the USA's view on free speech?
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