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Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

wsj.com

111–120 of 158 posts

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#111
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called punishment, and it helps to discourage negative behavior.

Ah, okay. I thought we were looking to solve a problem, instead we want to inflict vendetta because we don't like something.

> Assumes FB causes no harm because we've yet to articulate the problems it causes.

Look through my posts in this thread. FB causes shitstorms of damage not the least of which is aggregation / indoctrination of dissention through isolation.

FB is basically pushing monsters outside of its gates in hopes they "go away". They wont. lol.

Also there are legal practices call "punitive damages" so yes there exists legal statutes for punishing things that we determine we dont like.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#112
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mass media is going nuts about not controlling the narrative anymore, that's why they want to bury big tech. They will lose in the end, so I don't know if it's worth it to fight.

Big tech also wants to control the narrative. Due to the nature of their platforms, it's much more difficult to do but that hasn't stopped them from making a mess trying.

I think each time Big Tech tries to control the narrative more and more is a step in a direction that is short sighted.

I get wanting to pull down literal Nazis and I mostly agree. But scope creep on who is a Nazi and the ever vaguer "hate speech" will spell true trouble as they get even more unclear.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Realize that FB is the defacto platform for social discussion and realize that discussion at this scale is the singular path towards cohesive integration of multi-culture societies. Stop policing speech/thoughts/ideas/communication. Nobody has asked facebook to be the arbiter of social-morality. You at facebook are creating an echo chamber and driving dissenting voices away because they dont adhere to the 'woke'…

You're denying the existence of a problem, not offering a solution. Implicitly, this says that you don't value the opinions of people who very strongly believe that there is a problem. It's not a great place to argue from.

> You're denying the existence of a problem, not offering a solution

Actually, I believe @unearthed acknowledged a problem, and asserted the best solution was to do nothing.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're denying the existence of a problem, not offering a solution Incorrect. Im saying the solution IS NOT the dogmatic oversight that facebook is pursuing here. Instead the solution is: "The droves of people using facebook are sufficiently large that an organic zeitgeist can emerge without interference" Surely You're NOT suggesting: "Yes we require the dogmatic, bureaucratic, oversight of speech to create harmony…

> We require the dogmatic, bureaucratic oversight of speech to create harmony This is an open, legitimate debate. It's complicated with Facebook due to its lack of competition. Companies moderating speech on their services is time tested and likely necessary. If the market presents a diversity of services, no one system of moderation gets a stranglehold on public discourse. Facebook, however, is dominant. As a result…

> It's complicated with Facebook due to its lack of competition.

Twitter, Reddit, Snapshat, Marco Polo...lots of competition in the social media space.

Is there a successful FB clone, a la Google+? No there is not. That does not mean FB somehow owns social media.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#115
HN et. al. have become really quite cynical about FB these days, but I suggest reality is something more pragmatic, however ugly --> yes, FB likes taking money from anyone, but I'll bet they really, really don't want to be in the business of content filtering, or having to make such decisions, and would rather wash their hands of it.

There's little pragmatic leadership coming from the powers that be over this stuff - obviously there's a good deal of noise out of governments concerning 'fake news' - but I'd argue it's much more difficult than one would imagine given 100 different nations, different laws, lobbying power, even aside from the concerns over really deciding 'what is fake'. I think a lot of TV spots might reasonably fall under the category of 'not exactly factual' as well.

If there were reasonable, clean and coherent direction from US gov (probably not going to happen), it would be easier. A lot of the EU thinking/legislation I suggest mightn't be specifically nuanced enough as well.

I am not cynical about this announcement. I'd wager FB would be somewhere in the range of 'happy' to comply with a set of reasonable bits of legislation, especially if was applied universally and coherently. In the absence of anyone actually doing anything, they're going to set it up themselves.

Impartial? Hardly, but it's probably better than nothing.

$130M is not chump change, this is a big deal. Perhaps wit a change in governance maybe something will happen. (I'm not making a political statement other than to say the Trump regime will never do anything about this).

Absent any real collective movement on this issue ... I think this is a positive step. It's better than the status quo.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#116
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree strongly with closing off an entire sector of content to political advertising. It seems like the goal, or at least the unintentional effect, is to reinforce the traditional media’s monopoly on political discourse.

Traditional media political ads can't micro-target people that are more likely get sucked into their made up "facts" and conspiracy theories. They also are broadly broadcast so that they can be dis-proven and discussed. Instead they are hidden away only shown to people that won't question it. If facebook wants to do political ads then it needs to disconnect them from targeting, publish them for public display, publis…

> Traditional media political ads can't micro-target people

They may not "micro-target", but they can definitely target them.

Any political campaign will tell you they do their damnedest to ensure their ads are running at the right times on the right TV/radio stations.

Honestly, hours of traditional media itself (Fox, MSNBC) likely does far more to bias opinion than handfuls of 30-second ads.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#117
post #23

Hey I am a Facebook employee and I am really confused by all the comments here. Really feels like a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation. Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative? Not saying there isn't one, I am just not seeing one being proposed.

Stop trying. This isn’t your problem. Wether or not Brexit is a Soros plot is not something a glorified BBS needs to worry about. Should AMD be pressured into adding logic to block people from making deepfakes? I know there is a tendency to be consumed with your own importance combined with political heat, but the best course is to develop great filtering tools for users and “Let the people decide.”

The "is this the platform responsibility?" debate is long time over and everyone agreed (EU and USA) that it is FB's responsibility. States in which Facebook operates have regulations about internet/advertisements/fake news, and FB must find a solution to comply globally with all regulations.

If it was only Facebook, FB would accept any ad as long as someone is willing to pay to display it.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#119
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big tech also wants to control the narrative. Due to the nature of their platforms, it's much more difficult to do but that hasn't stopped them from making a mess trying.

I think each time Big Tech tries to control the narrative more and more is a step in a direction that is short sighted. I get wanting to pull down literal Nazis and I mostly agree. But scope creep on who is a Nazi and the ever vaguer "hate speech" will spell true trouble as they get even more unclear.

The reason this is happening is becoming more clear. Despite what tech types like us believe and echo to each other on forums like HN, there is the reality of an apathetic environment in which most people live.

Most people, most content creators, most content consumers, most people in general, really don't give 2 mosquito dicks about any of the issues I think are important.

Privacy from the government? Nope. If you're not a crook, you've got nothing to fear.

Tech companies having too much info about you that they will share with the government? Ditto.

Nazis can't get free speech? Who cares. In fact, GOOD, I don't want that crap popping up on my kids' recommended list anyway. Good job YouTube!

Lately I have been beginning to understand the magnitude of the problem. Apathy is far more powerful than any government.

And the worst part of all? The only thing they have to do to fuel apathy is keep the trains running on time and keep the walmart/grocery store shelves stocked. That's all.

I'm becoming convinced that this problem is being attacked wrong. We need to stop talking about Nazis and politicians and start talking about some group that is actually respectable that may be shut out. I don't know off hand what that content would resemble. But I do know that almost no one likes politicians, nazis, and pedophiles. So it's making me believe that continuing to have those groups attaching themselves to our arguments is counterproductive at this point.

Re: Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

#120
post #79

In fairness, here in the UK at least, the print media are going nuts about Facebook and Google failing to stop fake news and politicians' lies. Coincidentally they're bashing their competitors for something they themselves do just as much, make of that what you will... That is one reason fb (and maybe Google too and twitter and whoever else) are donating: make an independent sock puppet, they can decide and you just…

The mass media is going nuts about not controlling the narrative anymore, that's why they want to bury big tech. They will lose in the end, so I don't know if it's worth it to fight.

The internet, even "big tech" platforms with 1000 different ML algorithms for downranking and banning things, is just a different medium than broadcast media altogether, so there's bound to be tension between tech companies and broadcast media, even ignoring the whole ad money thing. There's so much going on at the same time and there's just no presumption that any particular piece of content is authoritative or popular like there is on TV or in a newspaper.

To put it another way, it seems like it's not just about the difference between the framing of the "big story" on the NBC evening news and on TruthS33k3r_42's channel; it seems more about the difference between having or caring about a single story at all, and perhaps just chatting on Discord/forums/Twitter/Messenger about something completely separate.

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