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

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

#61

Post by actually_a_dog »

helen___keller wrote: post #55
actually_a_dog wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...should we eat the rich.... Of course we should. They make a delightful bolognese sauce. But, seriously, I don't think this phenomenon you're seeing is because of anything Facebook is doing to metaphorically stir the pot. It's because there's not a lot of left unity as a whole. Ask any 5 socialists what their ideal socialist utopia would look like, and you'll get 7 different answers. I see this all the time on simi…

> I don't think this phenomenon you're seeing is because of anything Facebook is doing to metaphorically stir the pot. Maybe not stir the pot specifically, but it’s their user experience and they own it. Which post shows up first on my feed greatly alters the user experience, and FB has to make a decision on that. It’s not chronological, and it seems to frequently involve me seeing 3 day old shitstorms.

I see. It sounds like they are showing you posts that get a lot of activity. That does kinda make sense: if a lot of people similar to you have already interacted with a post, that's a signal that you might like it, too.

But, tell me: would it make any difference to you if you saw these "3 day old shitstorms" when they were only 1 day old? If anything, what they really want you to do is discover these posts in their pre-shitstorm posts, so you can be involved in getting the shit flying. It seems like this actually represents a failure of algorithmic moderation, to me.

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

#62

Post by mdoms »

varispeed wrote: post #37

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…

The next steps are you move on. Dwelling on a Facebook post for weeks is not healthy.

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

#63

Post by random314 »

rayiner wrote: post #14

> so that hate speech against Black, Jewish, LGBTQ , Muslim , and multiracial people would be taken down through an automated system And what happens when the system takes down quotes from the Quran--which Muslims believe to be not only the inspired, but perfect word of God--as "hate speech."

I don't recall any verse in the Quran that compares the black wife of a king or leader to a chimpanzee.

This is a pretty disingenuous slippery slope argument which can be used to argue against any censorship of virulent hate speech on any private platform.

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

#64

Post by jfengel »

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…

That's great!

What button do I click to opt out of hate-speech-fostered discrimination, harassment, abuse, and genocide?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2021/09/23/faceboo...

I'd really like that.

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

#65

Post by logicalmonster »

hairofadog wrote: post #36
logicalmonster wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" curri…

Imagine making a phone-call and talking with your friend about some hot political topic and then an AT&T operator bursts in and says that this call is now blocked because you're engaging in hate-speech that might theoretically cause harm. Is this where we want society to go?

As far as real world harm when it comes to permitting or not permitting speech goes, I'd put the danger of effective societal censorship creating authoritarianism that harms masses of people as so far beyond the level of harm created by some random insane person who sees some negative comments about some group on social media that it's not even on the same planet of harm.

In and of themselves, words cannot cause anybody harm.

As far as your concern about people being actively harmed, that's a big topic that's certainly debatable, both in terms of whether anybody is being harmed to a discussion of who is being harmed. I'm not sure if this is the best venue for this kind of debate because there's a lot that cannot be spoken about in a forum like this.

But I think your preferred social media network of choice isn't the proper avenue for this task. Society has developed a police and criminal justice system over thousands of years to prevent and punish actual criminal acts (violations of life, liberty, and property) while at the same time taking great care to protect the rights of the accused. It's imperfect in many ways, yes of course, but at the moment it's the system that's actually credible. The idea that society is expecting people like Mark Zuckerberg to effectively become the society-shaping, crime-prevention czar seems insane to me.

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

#66

Post by david38 »

mzs wrote: post #50
spfzero wrote: post #26

It seems this falls into the category of: Company has idea, investigates it, decides not to go ahead for the time being. Big deal. This is what all businesses do all the time. They task some employees to come up with a plan or to research a possible plan. Then they consider it from various angles, then they might decide to go ahead with it as is, modify it, or table it. It is always an "Employees' Plan" because the p…

There is something notable, that a conservative VP protected those users at the expense of more vulnerable ones again. >Kaplan, the company’s most influential Republican, was widely known as a strong believer in the idea that Facebook should appear “politically neutral,” and his hard-line free speech ideology was in lockstep with company CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (Facebook recently changed its corporate name to Meta.) He…

At the expense of vulnerable ones?

You can literally use that sentence to quell any free speech just by saying I’m triggered.

If your feelings are hurt, stop reading a particular platform. There are enough groups online you can isolate yourself from any opinion you don’t like.

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

#67

Post by david38 »

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…

Maybe you should follow different people. I fail to see how this is Facebook’s fault.

Unfriend or unfollow people who don’t post what you want to see. Join groups you like.

This is like blaming Netflix for a random show they showed you when you actively give them indications you would like it. All you have to do is add shows you want to your queue.

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

#68

Post by david38 »

helen___keller wrote: post #39
nradov wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gentrificati…

Absolutely moderation.

I belong to scuba diving groups and they all have different rules on off-topicness.

Join or start a group that strictly prohibits political or off-topic discussions.

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

#69

Post by mardifoufs »

cblconfederate wrote: post #32
rayiner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Overrreliance" on scripture is an extremely important concept in islam. In fact I think every major sect (sunni or shia) and madhab are centered on that "reliance". Even the islamic schools of thought that usually take a less literal approach to the koran would probably be much much literal in their interpretation than your average protestant denomination. Innovating on the scripture by derivation, by cherrypicking or by selectively discarding part of it for social expediency is explicitly not allowed and is one of the biggest sin in islam.

In a way, from an islamic perspective, it's much much better to just acknowledge that you are not living by the teachings of the koran even if that means living a sinful life than it is to try to remake or drastically reinterpret the koran in way that whatever you are doing isn't a sin anymore.

Now obviously that does not apply to the hadiths which are, a part from the extremely consequential early caliphate intestine wars, probably one of the biggest source of inter and inner sect conflict and disagreement. Much more so than the koran itself imo. How to interpret them, how much theological value they hold and even which are valid are all questions that will probably be debated forever.

In fact we (in my direct entourage, not all Muslims obviously ;) ) always find it a bit odd how... cavalier christians can be with their scripture when it comes to picking what they like and discarding what they don't. To me I couldn't see the point, but I know enough to understand that christian theology is much much more complicated and extremely intricate, but that's still what it can look like from my perspective. So it's funny to me to see someone say that not everyone is as literal as... protestants!

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

#70

Post by hairofadog »

logicalmonster wrote: post #65
hairofadog wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" curri…

Imagine making a phone-call and talking with your friend about some hot political topic and then an AT&T operator bursts in and says that this call is now blocked because you're engaging in hate-speech that might theoretically cause harm. Is this where we want society to go? As far as real world harm when it comes to permitting or not permitting speech goes, I'd put the danger of effective societal censorship creatin…

It's like talking to a wall.
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