Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 549 posts

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

#461

Post by TeeMassive »

msteffen wrote: post #77

It seems like no one has figured out a good system for moderation on the internet. IIUC, Facebook hired contractors to do it, then realized that that didn't work and created XCheck to cover the visible cases, and is now in trouble because XCheck also doesn't work and rubber-stamps everything. Even before this there were news stories about the horribleness of those contract moderator jobs. Reddit tried to federate mod…

> It seems like no one has figured out a good system for moderation on the internet.

I use locals.com; lots of small disjointed communities, where posters have to pay (or not) a small fee per month (1$ to 5$). which keep the trolls and influence campaigners away.

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

#462

Post by alanlammiman »

dado3212 wrote: post #266
AlexandrB wrote: post #19

> In a written statement, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said criticism of XCheck was fair, but added that the system “was designed for an important reason: to create an additional step so we can accurately enforce policies on content that could require more understanding.” Would be great if us plebs could get the privilege of accurately enforced policies.

This kind of makes sense. For every high profile person posting an ML-flagged “Napalm Girl” in the context of discussion around the Vietnam war, there’s thousands of instances of real child porn.

it cuts both ways. for every high profile person posting real porn (eg Neymar's revenge porn in the article) there are thousands of instances of regular users with ML flagged 'napalm girls'

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

#463

Post by alanlammiman »

beezischillin wrote: post #400

Outside of the Facebook issue, can you ever really automate solutions for managing society-scale interactions while still being fair to people? If you happen to become a similar edge case to a celebrity but actually adding a fix to the problem you also suffer bumps into corporate budgetary restrictions (you’re not worth it but the celebrity is so the solution is to just add them to a no mod whitelist while you suffer…

depends on your definition of 'automate'. If you mean by computer software, perhaps not, but it begs the question of why one would presume that automation to be necessary. If you just mean 'software' (not necessarily computer software), then yes, rule of law is software that has scaled to manage society scale interactions and run for hundreds of years. Whether it is 'fair' is still debatable, but it is at least more legitimate than FB's system.

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

#464

Post by themacguffinman »

specialist wrote: post #447
robocat wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn’t say that: none of their comments seem to be defending Facebook. They are giving their opinion that human moderation is not a simple solution. I super appreciate nindalf’s comments here. It is a shame that an ex -developer who knows the problem space and is clearly explaining some if the issues is getting flamed by association.

Sincere question. Not flaming. If human moderation won't work. And whatever they're doing now is an unqualified disaster. Then what is the solution? Oil companies tell us that oil spills and pollution and ruined ecologies and the burning planet are just part of using oil. Sad face. They're doing their very best to minimize the negatives. They hire the very best lobbyists and memory hole as much as possible and donate…

If you're not morally comparing Facebook to oil companies & toxic polluters, why do you constantly analogize them to Facebook and describe their memory holes & ruined ecologies & the burning planet as if that's comparable to what Facebook is doing? Where does "unqualified disaster" even come from?

Toxic waste companies engaged in the conduct you described and had the impact you described and they were condemned after we found solid evidence that they were doing so. Do you have any argument or evidence whatsoever that Facebook is behaving similarly? If you want to argue the moral equivalency, argue it. Don't spin an evocative narrative about the disasters of the oil industry in the same breath as Facebook's moderation policies then disclaim it "I'm not saying that...".

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

#465

Post by alanlammiman »

GDC7 wrote: post #46

Facebook is used by 3B people. When a company (or even more generally a social phenomenon) is so big, the only logical consequence is that it becomes embedded in the layer that it services. In society not everybody is equal, a social movement with the massive scope that Facebook has cannot deviate from such rule. Power law is a thing, you can't escape it, not even the Universe can. It's not right and it's not wrong.…

In society not everybody is equal, however in societies with rule of law, the idea is that everybody is at least deemed equal under the law. That this unfortunately often fails in practice is very different from explicitly and intentionally having separate rules

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

#466

Post by alanlammiman »

toddmorey wrote: post #100
hcrisp wrote: post #91

> At least some of the documents have been turned over to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to Congress by a person seeking federal whistleblower protection, according to people familiar with the matter. The story-within-the-story here is that there is a FB whistleblower who wanted to bring this to light, not unlike other high-profile cases involving government surveillance. It amazes me that one person can…

Am I right to think of it more as a partnership? It does take at least one person with insider knowledge and access. Otherwise, the reporting would lack the backing documents that brings it credibility. And companies seem to be rather opaque to purely outside sources.

Unfortunately it's not just that. A few years ago a friend reached out to a few investigative journalists with documents about wrongdoing at a big co. No response. This was at the time of the Mossack Fonseca hack when many of those same publications were calling out individuals who owned offshore companies, even when it was perfectly legal for them to do so. Maybe she was unlucky, but my anecdotal takeaway was that perhaps it simply required less work, and got more clicks than real investigative journalism.

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

#467

Post by alanlammiman »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #273

So the more followers someone has, the less scrunity of their content to make sure it follows Facebook's guidelines they get... this seems backwards.

Indeed, and therefore it reveals that enforcing guidelines is not the priority.

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

#468

Post by alanlammiman »

wldcordeiro wrote: post #216

The same is true of its advertisements. 'High-profile' organizations get freedom to literally spam you and the report action is meaningless.

Yes. In both directions: 'Low-profile' advertisers (millions of dollars per year is still low-profile) meanwhile get the nonsensical AI rejections and shadowbans

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

#469

Post by brianpan »

nindalf wrote: post #274
smsm42 wrote: 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…

Let me try to explain it again. Suppose an integrity system has a true positive rate of 99.99%. That would be good enough to deploy right? Except that when applied to millions of accounts, 0.01% is still a massive number of people. This is even worse when those people are unusual in some way. For example they might open conversations with hundreds of strangers a day for good reasons. But their behaviour is so similar…

It's not a problem that there's a different technical solution to high-profile users. There's no problem with FB hiring more (or more skilled) moderators for higher-profile users.

The problem is when the rules are not applied evenly, especially when high profile users with greater audience can abuse those rules.

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

#470

Post by alanlammiman »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #337

It is extremely distressing that a few companies, all located in the same country, and many located in the same state, if not quite the same city, run by a few men with similar politics has the immense power that they do. Some people do not quite understand why. Imagine in they were all Russian and owned by friends of Putin. It should be a matter of national security for other nations to develop regional competitors.…

Indeed. I can see the logic for the US - accept that these guys milk your own citizens a bit in exchange for bringing in loads of cash from abroad plus massive spying and influence capabilities wrt the rest of the world. But why GB, EU etc go along with it is beyond me. Seems like a strategic blunder.
Post reply on HN