Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by Tempest1981 » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #93

jmedefind wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> people that are more likely get sucked into their made up "facts" and conspiracy theories. If these people are so easy to fool and manipulate, why do we allow them to vote? If all it takes is some post on Facebook to change their votes, there will be dozens of other easy ways to manipulate them. Are the other ways better because they more opaque or tend towards one ideology or another? Almost all of these arguments…

Not dumber, but easily influenced by lies. Similar to how scammers prey on the elderly.

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

#122

Post by aylmao » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

pesenti wrote: 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.

> Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative? Ban non-geographically targeted political ads. Create a public repository of all political ads. Creating a puppet entity and calling it a court is dishonest and insulting. (The only proper solution, of course, is breaking up Facebook into, at the very least, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Concentrated market power is the fundamental problem.)

> Ban non-geographically targeted political ads.

This actually sounds like a good idea. Ads about issues pertaining a whole region should be seen by the whole region.

> Create a public repository of all political ads.

Doesn't this exist already? https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/

> The only proper solution, of course, is breaking up Facebook into, at the very least, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Not saying this wouldn't be good, but how would this help with the whole content moderation debacle? It looks to me like Twitter, YouTube, etc has the same issue. This specific problem doesn't sound like something that would be magically fixed if there was more competition, though I might be wrong.

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

#123

Post by pootpucker » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

Who is going to run this board? It's probably going to be the last people on earth you want in those positions.

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

#124

Post by grmn » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

0x445442 wrote: post #60

pesenti wrote: 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.

> Can anybody suggest a better alternative? Yes, quit attempting to police speech.

We're still policing reading.

DRM on digital books, "renting" books on digital platforms, banned books by governments, banned books on shopping sites, religions sentencing and/or cursing the "unclean" reader, communists banning religious books....

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

#125

Post by burkaman » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

chapium wrote: post #71

burkaman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all have an enormous effect on your life whether or not you use them. Yes, Google should be broken up too.

how?

Facebook's immense power makes it much more difficult for competing messaging systems, social networks, VR-related companies, and others to enter the market. When they do find any success, Facebook usually acquires them. The effects of monopolies and oligopolies on economies and societies are well-established.

If you live in the US, or Europe, or pretty much any country Facebook operates in, the company is spending millions of dollars every year to lobby your government. While that may not sound like a lot, political influence is surprisingly cheap, and effects you whether or not you choose to participate in the political process. The CEO meets regularly with the president of the United States and his close associates, and has met and spoken with many other world leaders.

Facebook is a major facilitator of violence and ethnic cleansing around the world (https://time.com/5197039/un-facebook-myanmar-rohingya-violen..., https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-india-content/fa..., https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/chinse-media-fa...). You might argue that if they couldn't use Facebook, people would just use some other platform or tool to accomplish the same goal. That's possible, but if it's happening on Facebook, the company has a responsibility to take action, and they have failed. I don't think there is any other platform that could be used as effectively as Facebook and WhatsApp for this purpose.

Even if you don't use Facebook, they likely have a profile for you if anybody you know uses it. They collect contacts from peoples' phones, and scan for faces in all photographs (and correlate the results with other photos). If you don't have robust ad and tracker blocking in your web browser, Facebook is tracking your behavior with their ubiquitous like buttons and analytics scripts.

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

#126

Post by grmn » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:49 PM UTC

MaupitiBlue wrote: post #99

pesenti wrote: 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.”

I don't know about you but me and my family like living, you're going handle all the political heat with just a sturdy front door?

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

#127

Post by scotty79 » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #64

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…

> "arbiter of truth"

They should just call it Ministry of Truth or even Minitrue as a nod to the Orwell.

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

#128

Post by rumanator » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #89

rumanator wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree strongly with closing off an entire sector of content to political advertising. I feel like you are inadvertedly misrepresenting OP's point. The OP specifically referred to geographically targeted ads, which have already a long history of being manipulated to subvert the Democratic process by foreign actors with disastrous consequences, and instead you somehow are talking about "closing off an entire sec…

OP said “ban non-geographically targeted ads.” Besides, the “long history of being manipulated ... with disastrous consequences” is a [citation needed] assertion. Certainly, the thin support for that position doesn’t overcome the fact that it makes total sense to allow targeting ads by geography. There is no point in Trump running ads in Baltimore, or Warren running ads in rural Virginia.

> OP said “ban non-geographically targeted ads.”

Yes, and you've made a gross misrepresentation by equating it wi "closing off an entire sector of content to political advertising." It's a very disingenuous take on what was actually said.

> Besides, the “long history of being manipulated ... with disastrous consequences” is a [citation needed] assertion.

Really? In this day and age are you still trying to turn a blind eye to the elections in the US and the UK?

> Certainly, the thin support for that position doesn’t overcome the fact that it makes total sense to allow targeting ads by geography.

You're again coming off as very disingenuous by misrepresenting what was actually said, as the OP specifically talked about non-geographically targeted ads and you in turn decided to talk about the exact opposite.

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

#129

Post by eindiran » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:00 PM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #64

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…

"Regulatory farming" is a great concept. There is a very similar concept called "regulatory shopping", where institutions can choose the (existing) regulatory agency that they want to be regulated by.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulator_shopping

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

#130

Post by rumanator » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

deusofnull wrote: post #21

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

> A corporate trust managed by financial services firm Brown Brothers Harriman will in turn oversee the board’s budget and administration Any details on how board members will be appointed, vetted and selected? This looks like Facebook creating a red herring it can blame for the consequences of policing its platform.

from the article, > While Facebook will select the first 11 members of the board, the eleven will choose the remaining board members, with terms lasting three years. facebook picks the first 11 board members and then those 11 staff new appointments for 3 year terms, but not sure if the first 11 also control staffing throughout the org. if this is a "facebook supreme court" then its kinda fishy if the stakeholders get…

> While Facebook will select the first 11 members of the board, the eleven will choose the remaining board members, with terms lasting three years.

So Facebook reserves its right to dictate who serves on the board, whether directly or indirectly.