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

wsj.com

401–410 of 549 posts

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

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might not work. In the eternal September of Facebook there may always be enough new accounts to continuously file false reports against high profile accounts.

HN has addressed this problem by not granting new users flagging privileges - you need a certain karma threshold to flag an article or comment. And flagging/vouching privileges can be removed for HN users who abuse them.

Yeah but you can just buy warmed-up verified accounts on SEO marketplaces, often several years old and patiently curated to be blandly inoffensive and ready to be turned into whatever you need.

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

#402
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in my 30s and a friendly email (from a person not relating to business) has never existed in my life haha Man I'd love it if I could communicate socially via email, nobody I know would go for it

I have no overlap between people I know IRL and people I know on SM. They are wholly separate worlds. If I know them IRL, it's text and email - never ever SM. For me, the point of SM is burnable bridges. It's a place to take risks and later apply the lessons to meatspace. In spite of that, I've cultivated many lasting online relationships but I can't see myself ever meeting any of them in person.

SM?

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

#403

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?!?!

One of the nice things about transparency is not having to engage in performative theatrics at a later date.

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

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Let's take your example of Mark Z. What makes you think that this is unique case? What about people that suddenly come to fame, like viral video subjects? A simple solution is to disallow logging in from new devices and the attempt being silently dropped so you are not bothered, unless you do some magic like generate one time key to complete the procedure on the new device. I could think of a lot of peopl…

> unfortunately most sites that purport to allowing 2FA can't do it well because they either don't allow configuring multiple tokens or if they do, they don't allow really lock your account so it is not possible to log in the next time without the token. This is a great point. AFAIK, Google is the only service which allows you to set mandatory U2F login requirements. Does any other service offer this functionality?

Many enterprise apps you can force it or depend on authentication from Google or Azure kind of SSO providers, who have this feature.

Consumer apps try hard not to do hard security unless they are forced to, usually for cost reasons.

Security measures like these create a ton of administrative tickets - check any sysad ticket queue a good chunk is password reset/recovery, in enterprise apps the org sysads are paid to handle this.

In consumer apps, the app company has to manage it, also it lot harder to verify identity of a random user than company employees making it harder to do this kind of support.

A good jarring example is AWS, the amazon.com and AWS did (does?) share authentication stack so some basic 2FA functionality like backup codes is not there for AWS .

Google is better at this because they have for long time also focused on SSO service as a product.

Many companies use Google AD /SSO workspace/suite because third party apps support google login out-of the box free[1], maybe charge for AzureAD/SAML2 and likely not support others at all without customization costs.

[1]It is standard because SMB/mid market companies are more likely to use Google for productivity than Azure/o365 as it is easier to manage albeit with lesser features. Third party apps don't want to expend support time on smaller customers if they can avoid it

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

#405
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further, why do we continue to accept the fiction that rules and laws apply to the elite as for the masses? Even the not-so-elite, the Stanford swimmer who brutally raped and assaulted Chanel Miller, though convicted, was given light sentence because of his "bright future", according to the judge.

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.

The existence of a remedy isn't a good excuse for avoidable injuries. The resolutions you allude to in that case took place after the public became incensed at the delicate treatment handed out to a guy who was literally caught in the act of humping a passed out woman behind a dumpster.

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

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Facebook is already doing that. It just happens to be making choices about how to do it that maximize its profits while ignoring the voices of most of its users.

I would rather them maximize profits rather than decide to actually take a stance in manipulating society. At least I know where I stand with a greedy corporation.

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

#407
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a common belief in the early history of blogging. Facebook was a later manifestation of social media.

Why did people believe that?

It's hard to imagine now, but at the end of the 20th century, if you weren't employed by a Newspaper or a TV network, about the only way you could let the world know your views was to write a letter to the editor of your local paper. And even if you could somehow make a friend in a far-away land, phone calls and postal mail were expensive. (I'm still sad I lost touch with students I met in Japan, Taiwan, and Indonesia in the 80's)

The internet, and social media in particular, changed all that. First only nerds could make a web pages. Some, like me, published our thoughts there using raw HTML. Then Moveable Type allowed anyone with an FTP site to publish. Then Blogger allowed anyone with a browser to publish. Then Flickr and Facebook and Twitter and all the rest. It was an exciting time.

I hope this help explains why we thought this would "level the playing field." What we read and what we watched was no longer dictated by TV Network bosses or editorial boards. Governments could no longer demonize people in other lands, because we were all free to (for example) be Facebook friends with those people. At least that was the theory. As I mentioned in another comment, it sure hasn't worked out that way.

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

#408
post #237
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people that work on this feature mean well - or at least they think that they mean well. But as a result, we have a two-tier system where the peasants have one set of rules and the nobility has an entirely different one. It may have started as a hack to correct the obvious inadequacies of the moderation system, but it grew into something much more sinister and alien to the spirit of free speech, and is ripe f…

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…

>Maybe a better system would penalize reporters that are found to have reported content that do NOT violent content policies?

This might work if the response to a report wasn't so arbitrary. I've been given bans for using heated language, yet had comments that were just as heated AND making direct threats at people marked as not violating any rules when I made the report.

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

#409
In other words, a feature that makes sure posts from useful idiots with lots of followers on the left are never accidentally censored.

I'm sure they also have the opposite version of this tool built to more quickly censor posts from high-profile users on the right.

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

#410
post #191

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…

I think people that work on this feature mean well - or at least they think that they mean well. But as a result, we have a two-tier system where the peasants have one set of rules and the nobility has an entirely different one. It may have started as a hack to correct the obvious inadequacies of the moderation system, but it grew into something much more sinister and alien to the spirit of free speech, and is ripe f…

Meh, we already live in a world with one set of rules for the peasants and another for the nobility. Seems like just another area where Facebook reflects the real world.
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