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The level of delusion and entitlement of some people is simply to hard to understand for me.
I doubt anyone at Facebook is freaking out about Mastodon and setting out to censor all mention of it. It's probably just a keyword or link that tends to co-appear with other, actually rule-breaking content, and some automated system has learned to block it. Still, it does seem like the sort of thing that could get Facebook in trouble with a regulator if you squint at it.
Yes, Facebook's upper management is definitely not freaking out about Mastodon. However, from my own experience working at a large, somewhat ethically-challenged organisation (not fb), it would not surprise me in the least if they gently yet actively pushed down a competitor, provided it can be done discreetly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, Facebook's upper management is definitely not freaking out about Mastodon. However, from my own experience working at a large, somewhat ethically-challenged organisation (not fb), it would not surprise me in the least if they gently yet actively pushed down a competitor, provided it can be done discreetly.
Doubt it, not worth the liabillity risk.
So, the author is surprised that a private business doesn't let him use their free platform to promote their competition at the same time that they trash them... The level of delusion and entitlement of some people is simply to hard to understand for me.
Note: I don’t use Facebook so perhaps I’m missing something.
I doubt anyone at Facebook is freaking out about Mastodon and setting out to censor all mention of it. It's probably just a keyword or link that tends to co-appear with other, actually rule-breaking content, and some automated system has learned to block it. Still, it does seem like the sort of thing that could get Facebook in trouble with a regulator if you squint at it.
I have personally never heard of, or seen, any scams or malware related to mastadon - aren't you giving too much benefit of the doubt? My best guess is that their lists of competitors to keep an eye on got mixed up with other stuff. Or, of course, that they simply don't want to promote competitors on their platform, which would be normal for any non-monopoly.
Source: I used and helped maintain one of the “don’t federate with these instances” list.
I doubt anyone at Facebook is freaking out about Mastodon and setting out to censor all mention of it. It's probably just a keyword or link that tends to co-appear with other, actually rule-breaking content, and some automated system has learned to block it. Still, it does seem like the sort of thing that could get Facebook in trouble with a regulator if you squint at it.
I have personally never heard of, or seen, any scams or malware related to mastadon - aren't you giving too much benefit of the doubt? My best guess is that their lists of competitors to keep an eye on got mixed up with other stuff. Or, of course, that they simply don't want to promote competitors on their platform, which would be normal for any non-monopoly.
It would be interesting to do some experiments here: post the same text to see if it gets removed again, and then repost it and remove sentences to see which one triggered the filter.
I went to joinmastadon.org Please disable your ad blocker and reload the page. I disable adblock and reload. Please disable your ad blocker and reload the page. Yknow
It's joinmastOdon.org, not joinmastAdon.org. We don't own the misspelled domain. I wonder how many people fall prey to it though.
That said: the company sees 2--3 billion MAU,[1] and sees on the order of 5 billion pieces of content submitted per day.
The best I understand, their measure of exposure is not items but "prevelance, that is, the number of total presentations* of a particular content.[2] Long-standing empirical media evidence suggests that this follows a power curve, where the number of impressions is inverse to the number of items. So, say, 1 might see 1 million impressions, 10: 100k, 100: 10k, 1,000: 1k, etc.
This means that a service can budget and staff for either the minimum prevalence threshold before manual review, or the total number of items granted more than some maximum unreviewed threshold. Machine-assisted filtering can help. In either case, though, mistakes will happen, and at 5 billion items/day, the number of misclassifications even at very high accuracy is large:
- 1%: 50m/dy
- 0.1%: 5m/dy
- 0.01%: 500k/dy
- 0.001%: 50k/dy
... which necessitates secondary review and additional costs, as well as, of course, malicious appeals by bad-faith actors. If the filtering system is fed by user reports (flags and the like), then malicious or simply disagreement-based flags may well trigger moderation. (Crowdsourcing has its own profound limits.)
Another element is that, especially with AI-based filtering systems, what results is determination without explanation. We know that a specific item was rejected, but not why. And in all likelihood, FB and its engineers cannot determine the specific reason either.
(I've encountered this situation more often from Google, again, as I don't use FB, but the underlying mechanics of AI-based decision systems are the same between such systems.)
The upshot though is:
- Moderation is necessary.
- It's ultimately capricious and error-prone. There are initiatives and proposals for greater transparency and appeals.
- Cause-determination is ... usually ... poorly founded.
________________________________
Notes:
0. https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius Also Diaspora (see below).
1. Monthly active users. https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...
2. See Guy Rosen, VP of Integrity for both content and prevalence references: https://nitter.kavin.rocks/guyro/status/1337493574246535168?... I've written more on the topic here: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/f3617c90793101396840002590d8e...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Censorship, meet Filter Bubble. Filter Bubble, Censorship. And this little tike you've got with you, what's his name? Engagement Metric? Oh, how cute. Nice to meet you. You look innocent. I'm guessing you couldn't do any major societal damage at all. You're certainly not a little problem child.
Filter bubble is not a real problem: https://twitter.com/degenrolf/status/1261164727486615559?lan... https://twitter.com/degenrolf/status/1067780924014772224 Whereas censorship is lindy among things that have bad effects on society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect So give the most caution against the proven bad thing and not the one you're in a trendy moral panic about.
I'm going to adopt this style of argument from now on.
"Oh, you think that X is a big problem? Well, it isn't, because you have problem X, and only think that way because of it! It's your cognitive distortions talking! Zing!"
Censorship is always abused. Maybe this time or maybe not. But it's always abused. And yes, it's worse than misinformation.