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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

#291

Post by sametmax »

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…

Besides, I honestly prefer to have a platform censoring nothing, and letting through the occasional idiot, than starting the slippery slopes of drawing an arbitrary line that will get moved when the wind change.

Plus, facebook is full of tracking, so it's very nice to have place to create a full graph of all data of the haters. If you need an investigation, it's easier to find people IRL. Win-win.

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

#292

Post by j16sdiz »

pjc50 wrote: post #272
ukoki wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> No one blames the US postal service for death threats sent in the mail Mailing death threats is illegal: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/876 (so much for "free speech", eh?) It doesn't appear to be illegal to post them on Facebook?

It is illegal to post on facebook too.

The question is: who should be enforcing the law....

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

#293

Post by raxxorrax »

orf wrote: post #290
raxxorrax wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In the market of digital services, Europe is as good as non-existent. Maybe I can come up with one or two names in the top 20 of the most successful software enterprises.

And those are probably already dinosaurs compared to most recent developments on that market.

Europe is exceptionally bad at creating their own services. Maybe because it is just too convenient to use American ones or that there isn't really any venture capital available here. But the fact remains.

Subjectively, it seems we often also lack the openness for new ideas compared to America, especially around older generations.

Europe doesn't even know the significance of freedom right know. Not taking the right decision is often less important than owning it yourself. Americans seem to get that. Most of the time at least.

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

#294

Post by [deleted] »

chillacy wrote: post #58
angott wrote: 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.

I mean it’s not like YouTube has this problem solved either... are all tech companies just incompetent?

[deleted]

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

#295

Post by HNthrow22 »

ryanlol wrote: post #273
HNthrow22 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>If 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. On Reddit you get both the megaphone and the safe space, but are still just as easily accessible to the public as anywhere. I wouldn't be so sure. People would probably just…

To clarify you're responding to a comment I've quoted from another user-

The issue becomes with the internet being able to silence all dissent and create re-enforcing echo chmabers. The forces at play are not stupid and they target disenfranchised, lonely, young males full of angst.

Imagine a packed hall with hundreds of people loudly cheering for someone calling for genocide of X group, this is what these hate clusters look like and if we saw it in the real world no one would say "This is an acceptable cost of free speech"

There exists speech that has no redeeming qualities and serves only to incite violence and hate. To argue as many commented here have that outlawing this would lead down a slippery slope of authoritarian government censorship is simply ridiculous. We've outlawed child pornography and that hasn't led us down any slippery slopes.

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

#297

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ukoki wrote: post #242
djaychela wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> No one blames the US postal service for death threats sent in the mail

If people were regularly mass mailing death threats to large fractions of the population, it would sure as hell get regulated.

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

#298

Post by 3xblah »

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…

Further down in this thread you claim that if Facebook were to delay live streams made to "Public" it would mean "the death of every social media company".

That seems a bit "sensationalist".

I think that really what you mean to say is that regulation of "broadcasting" user-generated content (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_delay), especially sensationalist content that appeals to people's emotions^1, could mean the end of social media's lucrative profit margins. Social media could still exist even if it were not very profitable.

Facebook does have a clue what is posted. For example, a recent docuentary on public television showed teams of people in the Phillipines reviewing individual posts.

1. Sensationalism, appealing to people's emotions. The same tactic that caused you to stop reading is also what caused you to start reading. It is the same tactic Facebook must use to attract and keep people's attention. The non-sensationalist (boring, non-controversial) personal content that is posted to Facebook -- what makes the website useful for so many people -- is not helping Zuckerberg's business. In the face of endless competition for people's attention on the internet, it stands to reason that he has an incentive to allow and even promote sensationalist content.

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

#299

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> None of these tech companies have the ability to do that

Yet they can attach an ad to it in a millisecond. They’re incentivised to do one and not the other. These bills are about rebalancing those incentives.

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