Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#31

Post by mbreese » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

statguy wrote: post #25

hirundo wrote: post #7

A better way to quell hate speech is to provide the tools for individuals to do it, however they want to define it. Call it a bubble construction kit. If you think a post is hate speech, mark it as such to exclude it and its creator from your bubble. Allow other users to subscribe to your bubble, and visa versa, such that you share your include/exclude lists with them, out to a given degree of separation, with any ex…

This does not address the problem of “Michelle Obama is a chimpanzee” or the “holocaust did not happen” going viral in one of those communities!

I think the point would be to let these things happen in smaller, isolated communities. You can wall them off from the rest of the world, but still let them share whatever they want.

I guess the benefit would be the ability to get updates from your crazy family members while not having to see everything they post?

Whether or not this is a net positive for the world is a different question.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#32

Post by cblconfederate » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #21

cblconfederate wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think people disagree that antiquated religious texts do contain a lot of hate speech

Which "people?" The secular descendants of white protestants--people who, despite maybe no longer being believers, retain distinctly protestant views of religious authority and interpretation? Yes. But certainly not, say, virtually all Muslims. I'm not disagreeing with the approach--I'm just pointing out that societies can't help but encode their religious and quasi-religious views onto putatively secular rules. What…

Most religious people are not zealots. I don't think they condone slavery, women's subjugation etc just because they go to church sometimes. You think they hang gays in Turkey?

Besides, the overreliance on the writings of scriptures is a distinctly protestant characteristic

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#33

Post by InitialLastName » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

harpiaharpyja wrote: post #9

hirundo wrote: post #7

A better way to quell hate speech is to provide the tools for individuals to do it, however they want to define it. Call it a bubble construction kit. If you think a post is hate speech, mark it as such to exclude it and its creator from your bubble. Allow other users to subscribe to your bubble, and visa versa, such that you share your include/exclude lists with them, out to a given degree of separation, with any ex…

People should be empowered to create their own communities. The community aspect is really important and seems to get overlooked by the big social networks.

The big social networks aren't "overlooking" community. Communities with constructive relationships between humans who know each other on a personal level are _competition_ for the social networks whose goal to profit off being the middleman in every social transaction.

- If somebody shows you photos of their new baby in person, you don't have to go to Facebook and look at their ads to see them.

- If you need to buy a car, and you know somebody who is selling a car, you don't need to go to Facebook Marketplace and use them as an intermediary to buy a car from a stranger

- If politicians and businesses are interacting directly with constituents/customers in their community, they don't need to pay Facebook to boost their political ads.

It's not at all surprising, then, that social media companies (particularly Facebook) have done everything they could possibly do to undermine any community that risks drawing people away from the newsfeed.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#34

Post by tomjen3 » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

statguy wrote: post #25

hirundo wrote: post #7

A better way to quell hate speech is to provide the tools for individuals to do it, however they want to define it. Call it a bubble construction kit. If you think a post is hate speech, mark it as such to exclude it and its creator from your bubble. Allow other users to subscribe to your bubble, and visa versa, such that you share your include/exclude lists with them, out to a given degree of separation, with any ex…

This does not address the problem of “Michelle Obama is a chimpanzee” or the “holocaust did not happen” going viral in one of those communities!

Sure it would, as it would mean we didn’t have to see it.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#35

Post by mbreese » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

bertjk wrote: post #30

hirundo wrote: post #7

A better way to quell hate speech is to provide the tools for individuals to do it, however they want to define it. Call it a bubble construction kit. If you think a post is hate speech, mark it as such to exclude it and its creator from your bubble. Allow other users to subscribe to your bubble, and visa versa, such that you share your include/exclude lists with them, out to a given degree of separation, with any ex…

In addition to what you described, we can also add a bit more logic: "Only exclude if it is blocked by more than X subscribed lists" or "Only exclude if it is blocked by both Rachel Maddow and Ben Shapiro".

That's putting a lot of pressure on individuals to manually curate and block content. Interestingly, you might end up creating an entirely new class of job -- social media curator. You could sign up for an individual (or multiple) user's block list. Then they curate the information that's informative, accurate, and fits a particular community. It's almost like a return to the old-school newspaper editor...

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#36

Post by hairofadog » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

logicalmonster wrote: post #22

viggity wrote: post #5

I think preciously few people necessarily dislike the idea of quelling hate speech. The real problem is who gets to decide what classifies as hate speech. When there is a large contingent of america chanting nonsense like "silence is violence" one moment and "punch terfs" the next moment, I'd rather that nobody gets to make the decision of what does and does not constitute hate speech.

I think there's a minority, but still substantial number of authoritarians, who absolutely do like the idea of quelling what they view as hate speech. The classification problem is not one that can ever be agreed to though as you point out, so I'd rather that larger platforms like Facebook simply provide tools to choose and mark the kind of content you'd prefer to see rather than blocking comments that a vocal group…

What qualifies as hate speech and what to do about it is certainly arguable, but the underlying issue is that in both the U.S. and rest of the world there's a long history of powerful social groups fomenting actual, measurable, real-world violence and suppression of minority social groups.

It's true that social media is full of pearl-clutching, and that's what you propose to remedy with your "sticks and stones" curriculum, but it doesn't address the real problem of hate speech. And again, I can't stress this enough: I'm not saying that Facebook deleting posts is any kind of answer; what I'm saying is it seems you think the question of hate speech has to do with people being offended rather than people being actively harmed. Given the hyperbole in the media (social or otherwise) it's understandable why you would think that was the case, but social media isn't the best place to get your information.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#37

Post by varispeed » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

So if you see a racist post, making derogatory remarks against your race and you report it, Facebook reviews it and says it meets community standards, then you send it for reconsideration and nothing happens for weeks... What are the next steps? Do you report Facebook to the Police or are they immune? I read many times that someone posted something on Twitter and police raided their home the next day. Can they do the same with Facebook for spreading racist messaging?

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#38

Post by willcipriano » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

bertjk wrote: post #30

hirundo wrote: post #7

A better way to quell hate speech is to provide the tools for individuals to do it, however they want to define it. Call it a bubble construction kit. If you think a post is hate speech, mark it as such to exclude it and its creator from your bubble. Allow other users to subscribe to your bubble, and visa versa, such that you share your include/exclude lists with them, out to a given degree of separation, with any ex…

In addition to what you described, we can also add a bit more logic: "Only exclude if it is blocked by more than X subscribed lists" or "Only exclude if it is blocked by both Rachel Maddow and Ben Shapiro".

I'd count blocks in the same way Facebook tracks likes. "2534 People didn't want to see this". Also let people sort content by how many people blocked it, either direction.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#39

Post by helen___keller » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #19

helen___keller wrote: post #8

> like a user who posted an image of a chimpanzee with the caption, "Here's one of Michelle Obama." Anecdotally, I’ve seen these sort of images shared across Facebook many times and it was a large part of a decision to step back my usage of the product around 2016, including having my account deactivated for several years This topic is commonly viewed in a political lens (free speech, etc) but I view it in a free mar…

I don't see any inflammatory garbage. It's all a matter of which friends and pages you follow.

An example in case you’re curious: I once learned about a train meme group from a friend. I’m a transit enthusiast, so I joined and I loved this group. for a while it was one of the highlights of Facebook.com for me. I’m lib-left politically, which fit with the lefty slant of the group, but still there came to be frequent shitstorm threads all within the scope of lefty discourse. for example, upzoning vs gentrification, should we ban cars, should we eat the rich, things like that. Eventually it got to the point where I hated seeing a post from that group on my timeline because I knew it was going to be another comment shitstorm, and so I left the group.

Was it a moderation issue? Was it FB optimizing for engagement? Could algorithmic moderation of inflammatory content have even helped? I don’t know, but what was one of the few things I stayed on FB for, instead became a heap of garbage with the occasional scattered gem.

Re: Facebook Execs Nixed Employees' Plan to Quell Hate Speech: Report

#40

Post by verall » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #21

cblconfederate wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think people disagree that antiquated religious texts do contain a lot of hate speech

Which "people?" The secular descendants of white protestants--people who, despite maybe no longer being believers, retain distinctly protestant views of religious authority and interpretation? Yes. But certainly not, say, virtually all Muslims. I'm not disagreeing with the approach--I'm just pointing out that societies can't help but encode their religious and quasi-religious views onto putatively secular rules. What…

> the imam was narrating over passages from scripture to conform it to how Americans view things

Or the imam had been influenced by American culture and was conforming it to their own views.

I totally agree that people discount how much impact protestantism had/still has, but these views have been secularized and can thrive without any religious framework.

It's all culture, basically; I don't think I'm disagreeing with you.