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Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam

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Re: Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam

#31

Post by hobofan »

arboles wrote: post #30
learndeeply wrote: post #3

Why would facebook block an open source initiative, considering that they've contributed a ton of open source software (react, graphql, pytorch, etc)? The more simple explanation is that an automated detector misclassified the link because it shares patterns with spam links.

Quoted post unavailable.

Could you please explain why you think this is being naive?

Same as GP, I don't see what interest Facebook would have in blocking this initiative. The impact the initiative would have would have very little impact on Facebook's business. Their moat is their userbase and no amount of good "public code" would change that.

Re: Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam

#32

Post by b112 »

lakomen wrote: post #28
b112 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe, they are trying to cost-save, by using algorithmic methods to block people, and spam? And maybe, just like the little guy, they should curtail, and moderate manually? There is no reason they cannot, other than it costs. And if the "little guy" can manually moderate a forum, and respond to unblock requests, then it is no problem for Facebook, or any other big player too. In truth, Facebook would still save o…

I ran a site in the mid 2000s with about 2500 forums. The site barely paid the server cost. I was no Facebook ofc. I had about a million visitors per month. So me not being able to monetize this circumstance lead to me manually fighting spam, which took up all my time. Plus answering support requests and continued development of the site as well as maintenance. I can absolutely understand they automate that. It IS im…

Facebook has a much more profitable revenue stream than you ever had, and as I mentioned, the ability to code tools to vastly improve the moderation workflow.

There is nothing wrong with automatic flagging, only with automatic action after that flagging.

And key here is, a way to legitimately dispute.

Your case is not a parallel case.

Re: Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam

#33

Post by entropyie »

lakomen wrote: post #28
b112 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe, they are trying to cost-save, by using algorithmic methods to block people, and spam? And maybe, just like the little guy, they should curtail, and moderate manually? There is no reason they cannot, other than it costs. And if the "little guy" can manually moderate a forum, and respond to unblock requests, then it is no problem for Facebook, or any other big player too. In truth, Facebook would still save o…

I ran a site in the mid 2000s with about 2500 forums. The site barely paid the server cost. I was no Facebook ofc. I had about a million visitors per month. So me not being able to monetize this circumstance lead to me manually fighting spam, which took up all my time. Plus answering support requests and continued development of the site as well as maintenance. I can absolutely understand they automate that. It IS im…

Similar to arguments about getting human support from Google being impossible... There is a very simple solution: allow users to pay a modest amount, say €25, to get 10 minutes of real human support. This will immediately rule out people spamming at scale. The other side of this equation, is that if the ban is upheld, they must justify it in human terms, beyond : "the ML said it's bad". A positive judgement could then then be used to train the ML to be more lenient on this user going forward, at least when it's a borderline case

Re: Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam

#34

Post by nyuszika7h »

lakomen wrote: post #28
b112 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe, they are trying to cost-save, by using algorithmic methods to block people, and spam? And maybe, just like the little guy, they should curtail, and moderate manually? There is no reason they cannot, other than it costs. And if the "little guy" can manually moderate a forum, and respond to unblock requests, then it is no problem for Facebook, or any other big player too. In truth, Facebook would still save o…

I ran a site in the mid 2000s with about 2500 forums. The site barely paid the server cost. I was no Facebook ofc. I had about a million visitors per month. So me not being able to monetize this circumstance lead to me manually fighting spam, which took up all my time. Plus answering support requests and continued development of the site as well as maintenance. I can absolutely understand they automate that. It IS im…

They don't have to look at every single post manually. But there needs to be a proper appeal process in place for posts/comments flagged as spam by their algorithms that doesn't require making a big fuss about it on social media / HN to get an actual human to respond to you. Big companies like Facebook, Google, etc. would have absolutely no problem affording that, they're simply greedy and prefer to maximize profit at the expense of users.

Re: Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam

#36

Post by b112 »

b112 wrote: post #25
IntrepidWorm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legally, the government can force compliance by large technical companies. In practice, there's no current chance of that happening. Believing that Facebook, Google, Twitter et. al. are beholden to the government given the past several years is somewhat laughable. Government is slow, and tech business is fast. Our politicians cannot keep up, even when they try.

Tech corporate change has slown down significantly, in as, the market is now full of entrenched players, and the market place is extremely static compared to 20+ years ago. Plus, 20 years ago only a small number of people were on the internet compared to now. Where did all of Google's, of Facebook's growth come from? An expanding internet. That's over . US adoption rates went from basically single digits, to essentia…

And to speak to this...

Electronic computers have essentially been around for a century. The internet is easentially a subset of that market, and bam!, that massive growth.

With that growth has come all of this change. Some of this change is not even about the internet, but instead, about storage, capacity growth, and thus centralized control.

(Not just govenment, but for example, large banks have a central office approve or deny things, where 50 years ago branches made such decisions).

My point is, big change in an existent market, due to new tech.

That market has cooled, with repect to change. Another grows. Biotech.

Fueled by computing changes, and other tech changes, it will soon be as transformative as the internet was. Just genetically engineer humans as a start.

But all the other tech surrounding this, it will make the change the internet wrought seem tiny in comparison.

Just imagine furries everywhere, for example.

shudder

Re: Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam

#37

Post by matthewmacleod »

On the contrary, it's not even slightly difficult to believe that this is not deliberate because it happens all the time.

Not everything has to be a mad conspiracy. It's roughly one billion times easier to believe that a bad automated flagging system has triggered and marked this particular link as spam, than it is to believe that someone at Facebook is twirling their moustache, stroking their long-haired white cat, and hatching a plot to thwart the dastardly freedom-fighters of the open-source movement.

Facebook's automated moderation systems are famously shit.

Re: Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam

#38

Post by danschumann »

With so many large "crime waves", these small ripples which seem like crimes... Are they? Is MZ(read: Mark Zuckerberg) next to AC(read: Al Capone)? Does he still, in his heart of hearts, refer to his users as "stupid *f's"(as he referred to them in 2000's for "trusting" him. Nothing changed to make his users any smarter, so getting caught openly admitting how he feels did not change his opinion on his users, merely changed who he talks openly with, and the medium.

Re: Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam

#39

Post by pmlnr »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #5

Facebook is fighting against the "huge target on its back" effect. The bigger of an audience you are, the more interest there is in posting abusive content, whether it's spam, trolling, or something else. The result is usually that you end up digging a bigger and bigger moat around your submission and curation process, so that your service is not completely flooded with crap. I think this is what you are seeing here,…

> I understand that there's no malicious intent on Facebook's part in this

There mere existence of such system is malicious intent.

Re: Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam

#40

Post by pmlnr »

learndeeply wrote: post #3

Why would facebook block an open source initiative, considering that they've contributed a ton of open source software (react, graphql, pytorch, etc)? The more simple explanation is that an automated detector misclassified the link because it shares patterns with spam links.

open source software from bigco it's only a smoke and mirrors to make it look like they are nice.

https://publiccode.eu/ and the current legislation trends in the EU are not fun, because they are not able to drive the narrative.

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