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

Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

rollingstone.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 407 posts

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#331

Post by 650REDHAIR »

nradov wrote: post #320
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #172

Here we are, deep down in the dystopia of Automatic Content Classification by robots. Far less important of an example, but I was just put in "Facebook jail" for 24 hours for posting a picture of my son at the beach in his bathing suit with no shirt. Y'know, as one does at the beach. I can only assume it's because my son has long hair and the Convolutional Neural Network or whatever decided he was a girl and therefor…

"We" don't need to retreat back into smaller forums. Despite the huge number of false positives flagged by content review systems, they still impact less than 1% of active users. So everyone else will continue using it. Facebook is terrible and unethical in many ways but it's still the fastest, most convenient way to share pictures and updates with friends and family scattered across the world. I don't have enough ho…

I’ve flagged 100s of illegal firearms sales on Reddit and FB and not a single one has been taken down.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#332

Post by protomyth »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #328
protomyth wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes wonder what would happen (it won't) if some fed-up Congressperson drafted a bill that would allow folks to sue Facebook, etc. for libel when it accused you of being a ped0, criminal, or other malcontent. Perhaps they would be a bit less happy to accuse their users of vile things.

Sec 230 repeal? Or something adjacent to that strategy? https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/08/white-house-renews-... https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

More in the way of a specific law. I don't think a full Sec 230 repeal is a good idea. I really, really want services to have to specify what you did wrong, and you should have some actual options to deal with these services. They have become utilities and need to have some accountability when they call you something vile.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#333

Post by nobody9999 »

yamtaddle wrote: post #271
nradov wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a meaningless question because it's tangential to the Communications Decency Act. Censoring content or changing a social media feed algorithm isn't classified that way. You might not like the law but that's how it works based on the plain language of the statute and confirmed through extensive case law.

Asking about the effect of a passage in the Communications Decency Act is a "meaningless question" and is tangential to the Communications Decency Act?

>Asking about the effect of a passage in the Communications Decency Act is a "meaningless question" and is tangential to the Communications Decency Act?

Given the extensive case law[0] generated since the passage of the CDA, yes it is pretty meaningless.

Because that case law clearly defines what those terms mean and they don't mean aggregators like Facebook.

It's reasonable to question, given the moderation choices made by entities like Facebook, how much impact they may have on public discourse.

However, the meaning of the text of the CDA, and especially Section C(1) has been clarified many, many times and doesn't mean what you think it means.

Whether that's right or wrong/good or bad is a different question. But the question you asked[1], given the law and its application over the past 25 years or so, is pretty meaningless in the sense that it has been repeatedly answered (and that answer is 'no') over that quarter century.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32869002

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#334

Post by nobody9999 »

matrix_overload wrote: post #230
BrainVirus wrote: post #189

This is not an exception. This is the norm. All major social media platforms operate under the assumption that it's better to ban 100 innocent people than to let one "bad" person publish something. The scale of censorship is ming-boggling. The scale of denial and ignorance about censorship on HN is even more astounding. The big lie of online censorship is that controversial cases where most people think the person "d…

The platforms do it because of armies of miserable people online looking for an outlet to their outrage. So the platforms are stuck trying to appease the angry mob, while spending as little resources on it as possible (hence, shitty algorithms). And I think I even know where the mob came from. Humans apparently have an intrinsic need to have some goals to be passionate about. And since the "economies of scale" have o…

>So the platforms are stuck trying to appease the angry mob, while spending as little resources on it as possible (hence, shitty algorithms).

Actually, I'd posit that the platforms are drooling with anticipation and glee at being able to monetize that angry mob. Anger, fear and outrage boosts engagement after all.

And that's what platforms want, because increased engagement means increased ad revenue. And that's not exactly breaking news either.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#335

Post by xdennis »

etchalon wrote: post #174
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy: stop moderating. Just allow everything.

"Crime sure is hard to stop." "Well, just make everything legal."

> "Crime sure is hard to stop."

> "Well, just make everything legal."

It's a bit of a straw man to say that GP meant we shouldn't enforce the law in the real world.

GP wasn't very clear what he meant, but presumably he's referring to not doing excessive moderating and instead rely on the law mandates.

More ~~laws~~rules, less justice. When you have a lot of internal policies, you're inevitably going to have ridiculous results such as this one. If you only follow the legal rules (which you have to) there's less unfairness.

(Of course, you have to have some internal policies such as not allowing spam, but the point is: the fewer onerous rules, the better.)

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#336

Post by xdennis »

etchalon wrote: post #293
kbelder wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow legal things. Block illegal things. It seems crazy that it's impossible to find a major platform that has this policy.

Pornography is legal. If Facebook allowed pornography, it would quickly overwhelm the platform due to engagement metrics. It would make the platform unusable. Vile hate speech? Completely legal. But its mere presence would turn away huge numbers of users. It would make the platform unattractive and hurt the business. It is in the platform's best interest to block otherwise legal things.

> If Facebook allowed pornography, it would quickly overwhelm the platform due to engagement metrics.

You're arguing with hypotheticals even through real world examples exist.

Reddit has lots of porn and it's nowhere to be seen on the frontpage.

Allowing something doesn't mean you shouldn't classify it and filter it.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#337

Post by Calvin02 »

Veserv wrote: post #291
commandlinefan wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they can not moderate then their service is defective Well wait a minute, couldn't you say the same about the ISPs that host websites in the first place? Isn't the standard pro-big-tech-censorship position "if you don't like it, make your own website"? If Facebook has to moderate content (according to any standard) in order to exists, why don't hosting providers also have to moderate? (FWIW I'm anti-censorship)

I am responding to the article and the poster’s response in context. The article asserts that Facebook’s moderation is defective. The person I was responding to presented a standard generic argument that is of the form: “Yes, it is defective, but the problem is too hard for anybody to produce a non-defective solution. Therefore, the provider has no choice but to provide a defective service.” I am arguing that is untr…

The argument that you’re making is extremely flawed.

It is similar to: car manufactures can’t guarantee that their cars won’t kill people therefore their products are flawed and shouldn’t be sold. In this case, the user is held liable for ensuring that it is safely operated.

By your logic, we would stop building roads or ask car manufactures to stop selling cars because people cause accidents that kill other people.

The condition “service providers must moderate content and adjudicate disputes” is what’s flawed.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#338

Post by nradov »

650REDHAIR wrote: post #331
nradov wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" don't need to retreat back into smaller forums. Despite the huge number of false positives flagged by content review systems, they still impact less than 1% of active users. So everyone else will continue using it. Facebook is terrible and unethical in many ways but it's still the fastest, most convenient way to share pictures and updates with friends and family scattered across the world. I don't have enough ho…

I’ve flagged 100s of illegal firearms sales on Reddit and FB and not a single one has been taken down.

Perhaps, but so what? At that scale there will be huge numbers of both false positives and false negatives in any content moderation system. If you dig into any popular online classified sales site you can find some illegal items.

Criminal activity is quite a different thing than censoring legal content which possibly violates corporate terms of service. If you have evidence of an actual crime then you should report that to law enforcement instead of expecting a private for-profit company to handle the incident.

And absent further hard evidence, I am frankly skeptical of your claim. Most people aren't experts on the nuances of firearms sales laws in various jurisdictions, so a post that appears to be soliciting a crime might be entirely legal (or vice versa). I don't really use Reddit, but I've been on Facebook for years and have never seen a post for an illegal firearms sale. Do you at least have some screen snapshots?

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#339

Post by Veserv »

Calvin02 wrote: post #337
Veserv wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am responding to the article and the poster’s response in context. The article asserts that Facebook’s moderation is defective. The person I was responding to presented a standard generic argument that is of the form: “Yes, it is defective, but the problem is too hard for anybody to produce a non-defective solution. Therefore, the provider has no choice but to provide a defective service.” I am arguing that is untr…

The argument that you’re making is extremely flawed. It is similar to: car manufactures can’t guarantee that their cars won’t kill people therefore their products are flawed and shouldn’t be sold. In this case, the user is held liable for ensuring that it is safely operated. By your logic, we would stop building roads or ask car manufactures to stop selling cars because people cause accidents that kill other people.…

No, the argument I am making is:

The Rolling Stone thinks Facebook is providing a defective service (i.e. a service that is net harmful). If you agree with that contention, then you should also agree that Facebook should not offer that service. The comment I was responding to was making the generic argument that: “The problem is too hard. Nobody can make a non-defective solution. Therefore, the provider has no choice except to provide a net harmful service.” That is a flawed argument.

You may also disagree with the premise: “Facebook is providing a net harmful service”, but that is independent of the invalidity of the argument presented which assumed it was providing a net harmful service, but they should be allowed to do so anyways due to the argument presented.

Re: Facebook bans Holocaust film for violating race policy

#340

Post by prvc »

lupire wrote: post #317
mynameisvlad wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It banned a film from its ad program. And the user who tried to advertise it. And the composer of the title track. I mean, they're not banned from Facebook, but the title didn't say that either. It said that the company Facebook banned a film. Which it did.

They can presumably advertise the film under a different title, with a clickthrough to info with the proper title. Facebook should have better credibility vetting, for things like movies distributed by recognized distributors with a good reputation.

Interestingly, according to the IMDB, the "blue eyes" title is already the second one used for the film. Why they'd choose something so dicey by Facebook's standards, when Facebook ads were supposedly such a crucial part of their business plan is unclear.
Post reply on HN