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

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471–480 of 549 posts

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

#472

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.…

If you zoom out, it's not especially concerning. The history of media companies suggests all of these companies will become less influential in little time. A few people used to own radio stations. Then it was TV stations. Overlapping them was newspapers/magazines. Things come and go, they tend to concentrate power, but they don't seem to last very long. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube are young. There is li…

True, but lots of harm can be done in 20 years and lots of harm was done by concentrated media in the past (eg all the cases in Manufacturing Consent)

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

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if hundreds of people reported the content posted by a celebrity, or if a classifier misfired on the content posted by a celebrity, there shouldn’t be any protection for the content?

The content should be evaluated according to the same set of the rules that apply to everyone else. If the content classification rules are properly implemented, no amount of button-smashing should result in a different outcome.

If you know how to build a bug-free system with content classification rules that are properly implemented for 2 billion people in every conceivable circumstance, I think Facebook (or any other big social media company) would pay you a lot of money to implement that. Like, an unbelievably large sum of money.

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

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only systems that have figured out moderation at scale are Wikipedia and StackExchange. But see what HN thinks about that. Nobody wants to admit that the only type of moderation that actually works at scale is an entrenched group of somewhat-expert overly-attached users gatekeeping contributions with (what looks like to the novice and sometimes even to the established user) extreme prejudice on a website with int…

StackExchange’s moderators have a huge bias issue against newcomers to the field (some can say it is justified) and sometimes, (though I have only personally noticed this), there is a huge bias against those who can’t speak English well. I have noticed at times, people with high rep make rude remarks as they misunderstand what the original author had to say. For me, I take time to edit questions with poor grammar and…

i think that's the point that the parent is trying to make: the only sites that have "figured out" moderation have erred almost ridiculously on the side of rejecting a ton of content, often in biased ways. the sites that do this generally seem better for it, even if it's not really fair.

moderation that works well is generally not very nice. content moderation that isn't somewhat cruel doesn't work very well.

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

#475
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it funny how we use phrases like "Russian oligarchs" all the time without batting an eye, but we never use them when referring to the Bushes or the Clintons in the US.

There's a minor genre of imagining US journalism standards for world reporting applied to reporting on the US: https://slate.com/tag/if-it-happened-there

LOL. It's telling that even in these satires they don't quite get the tone right - it still has a tinge of US- centrism in there

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

#476

>“We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly,” said the confidential review. Why do we even have the collective fiction where corporate messaging around a sore topic is treated as trustworthy? Especially with companies that we know lie all the fucking time?

Today I asked the public transportation company here to either enforce their mask mandate, or to let it completely be so people who actually care can decide for themselves how big of a risk they are willing to take. By having a mask mandate which is not being enforced many customers might get a false feel of security. Same goes for Facebook. If people think that everybody is being fact checked and false information c…

ah, but you are assuming that the inconsistent enforcement is an accident. "for my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law"

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

#478

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.

No.

HN has addressed this problem by keeping it text-only.

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

#479
post #205
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy relating to Zuckerberg is absurdly tone deaf.

No it is not. What if Trump or Biden could not login to Facebook due to too many failed attempts ? Would they scream that Facebook is blocking them and FB MUST unblock them. Should FB just tell them, "Tough, you can't use Facebook, deal with it?" What if it was Ronaldo or Brad Pitt. A company will make exemptions for very famous people. In every case, when something grows too big, you will find that are special cases…

I recall twitter having special rules for accounts with a large number of followers, like keeping them on dedicated hardware or DB instances just so they could replicate them differently.

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

#480

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…

The only systems that have figured out moderation at scale are Wikipedia and StackExchange. But see what HN thinks about that. Nobody wants to admit that the only type of moderation that actually works at scale is an entrenched group of somewhat-expert overly-attached users gatekeeping contributions with (what looks like to the novice and sometimes even to the established user) extreme prejudice on a website with int…

> The only systems that have figured out moderation at scale are Wikipedia and StackExchange.

Some edit wars on Wikipedia suggest the opposite.

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