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Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

wsj.com

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Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#361

Post by josefresco »

nindalf wrote: post #110

Huh, never thought I’d see XCheck in a news article. I used to work at Facebook and spotted abuse of this system by bad actors and partly fixed it. It’s still not perfect but it’s better than it used to be. I think I might have agreed with the author of this article before working in Integrity for a few years. But with time I learned that any system that’s meant to work for millions of users will have some edge cases…

> Huh, never thought I’d see XCheck in a news article.

Is everyone at Facebook this naive? You didn't think a system that creates a secret tier of VIP accounts where the rules (and laws) don't apply while publicly claiming the opposite would end up ... in the news?!?!

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#362

Post by dragonwriter »

wanderingstan wrote: post #326
dragonwriter wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Social media was supposed to help level the playing field of society, not exacerbate its inequalities. This is literally the first time I’ve heard anyone voice this expectation, and it is a ludicrous expectation to have had at any point in time.

This expectation was indeed common in tech circles in the 00’s “web 2.0” days, and it didn’t seem ludicrous. Removing government and corporate gatekeepers (like newspapers and TV networks) meant that disenfranchised voices could finally be heard —anyone could have a blog or whatever and be heard. It wasn’t crazy to think that if only everyone in the world could finally talk to each other that we could work out differ…

> This expectation was indeed common in tech circles in the 00’s “web 2.0” days, and it didn’t seem ludicrous.

I heard people voice similar expectations about roughly equally ludicrous categories of online services then, but never social media as such. Most of them were ludicrous for reasons that were obvious at the time, and apply equally to social media:

(1) In the short term, the digital divide was acute, and any benefits they brought would naturally increase inequality across that divide.

(2) In the longer term, where one might presume the digital divide would erode, they overlooked that while the services involved were generally still in the venture-subsidized artificially underpriced/undermonetized phase, any plausible business model would either promote inequality by narrowing reach to an elite or promote inequality by creating sharply tiered service or (most commonly) a sharp division between a broad class of users being engaged to be marketed to moneyed interests and the moneyed interests buying their eyeballs. Any prediction of resolving inequality was based on venture subsidies and monopoly building dumping being converted into a permanent state out of charity.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#363

Post by [deleted] »

pkilgore wrote: post #145
owl_troupe wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction lies in whether the service provider has rendered themselves a "publisher" under 230. The protection has historically been broadly interpreted but, in theory, Facebook could lose the protection if it chose, selectively, what content to promote or remove in violation of its own public TOS. Generally: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10306

You have case law for this claim? Or hell, I'll take a quote from your "source" you think supports it. (that's a trick question: No such case exists. What you say is not the law -- for anyone interested in a more-entertaining version summarizing the state of the law in this area than court decisions and statues, check out https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello... )

[deleted]

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#364

Post by [deleted] »

roughly wrote: post #315
shadowgovt wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's honestly pretty easy to imagine. Given any company with a clarified goal, the default answer to "How much of the market do we want?" is "All of it." Rare is the company that sets as a goal "10% of the potential customers."

That’s because they don’t have to pay for externalities. If Facebook was to be held liable, criminally or financially, for the negative impacts of their service, they wouldn’t be viable as a business (and nor would anything else trying to operate at that scale). It’s only because they can dump the waste products of their enterprise into our collective psychological water supply without consequence that it appears lik…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#365

Post by imbnwa »

gkop wrote: post #147
Aunche wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brock Turner wasn't elite in any sense besides his acceptance into Stanford, which had been revoked. His father was an electrical engineer and his mom was a nurse. Also, the judge who made the ruling was fired.

> All-American swimmer https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/03/3... Athletics are another sense in which he was elite.

Seriously, top athletes live on another planet in University. I remember working at the UT-Austin textbook store in my 20s and while everyone else had to find what they needed on their own, the football team had special permits they could bring you to not only get their books for free but you had to go get them for them

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#366

Post by isk517 »

JadeNB wrote: post #207
isk517 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the rules and laws. The system tends to be very good at punishing rich people that swindle money from other rich people.

> The system tends to be very good at punishing rich people that swindle money from other rich people. … Eventually? I'm surely not the only one who thinks of Madoff first, and he got away with it for almost a decade after suspicions were first reported.

Madoff got 150 years once he was convicted, though you are correct, I probably should have stated that the system is very good at punishing rich people that are CAUGHT swindling other rich people.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#367

Post by cbsmith »

bo1024 wrote: post #298
nindalf wrote: post #110

Huh, never thought I’d see XCheck in a news article. I used to work at Facebook and spotted abuse of this system by bad actors and partly fixed it. It’s still not perfect but it’s better than it used to be. I think I might have agreed with the author of this article before working in Integrity for a few years. But with time I learned that any system that’s meant to work for millions of users will have some edge cases…

Thanks a lot for posting these details and dealing with the critical replies. I think that with your background and investment in improving these problems, it will be hard for you to understand the perspective many people have that Facebook is fundamentally rotten at this point. These conflicts arise from FB's core business model. It calls up a torrent of hate speech and misinformation with the right hand while tryin…

Note that moderation is not part of the business plan. FB was pretty much dragged kicking and screaming into that function.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#368

Post by Sebb767 »

cratermoon wrote: post #306
q1w2 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to remember that high profile accounts get 10000x the number of abuse-reports than a normal account - nearly all bogus. The normal automated moderation functions simply do not work. Many users will simply mash the "report abuse" button if they see a politician they don't like, or a sports player for an opposing team. If the normal rules applied identically to everyone, all high profile accounts would simply…

> high profile accounts get 10000x the number of abuse-reports Has anyone considered the possibility that this is a signal from the non-elites that something is wrong? That ignoring this "mass downvote" is the essence of the structural elitism?

Even if it was, it's really not Facebooks job to rework the social structure.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#369

Post by cheath »

nindalf wrote: post #110

Huh, never thought I’d see XCheck in a news article. I used to work at Facebook and spotted abuse of this system by bad actors and partly fixed it. It’s still not perfect but it’s better than it used to be. I think I might have agreed with the author of this article before working in Integrity for a few years. But with time I learned that any system that’s meant to work for millions of users will have some edge cases…

One of my favorite things about HN is seeing people come out of the woodwork to raise their hand and say that they worked on a system and give their insight. Thanks for sharing this perspective.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#370

Post by rwmj »

nindalf wrote: post #110

Huh, never thought I’d see XCheck in a news article. I used to work at Facebook and spotted abuse of this system by bad actors and partly fixed it. It’s still not perfect but it’s better than it used to be. I think I might have agreed with the author of this article before working in Integrity for a few years. But with time I learned that any system that’s meant to work for millions of users will have some edge cases…

So when Mark Zuckerberg buys a new phone or whatever, what happens?
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