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Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

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Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#41

Post by hulitu »

aaomidi wrote: post #27
zug_zug wrote: post #26

I hate meta as much as the next person, but I find this whole line of reasoning farsical and a distraction from the many actually bad things to worry about. I think there's a huge difference between "inciting hatred" and "not deplatforming racist stuff quickly enough in one case." It's my understanding that meta actively tries to prevent hateful content in over 500 languages. It's a cool experiment to try to deplatfo…

For what it’s worth, if Facebook is unable to exist without potentially being a catalyst of hate and genocide then maybe it shouldn’t exist. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

A lot of PR companies would like to dissagree with you (hello Cambridge Analytica).

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#42

Post by reaperducer »

gretch wrote: post #25
hourago wrote: post #16

> Abrham Amare, a researcher and son of chemistry professor Meareg Amare, said that his father was targeted by a series of threatening posts because he was ethnically Tigrayan. He reported the posts, some of them shared over 50,000 times, to Facebook because they contained his father's address and called for his death. Eight days after the elder Amare was murdered, Facebook finally removed the post, according to the…

Did facebook _cause_ it? Or would it have happened anyway? Lynchings have happened frequently throughout human history, long before the invention of facebook. Racism and ethnic hatred have always been there. To me this is like saying 'well the guy who killed him was wearing nike shoes, nike caused his death'. It's pretty clear to me that if he didn't have nike shoes, he would have done the same things wearing any oth…

Did facebook _cause_ it? Or would it have happened anyway?

Hair splitting.

"Guns don't kill people. Bullets do!"

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#43

Post by hulitu »

felipelemos wrote: post #12
missedthecue wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article expressly states that violent content is not allowed and was actively policed. Facebook moderators are not fully omniscient and omnipresent. That is not grounds for a $2 billion lawsuit. That fact that people died is sad, but ultimately immaterial to the arguments here considered.

If they can't determine if a post is violent or not, then they shouldn't blindly promote it.

They don't promote it blindly. They promote it knowingly.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#44

Post by giraffe_lady »

knaik94 wrote: post #30

Unless there is news about Facebook employees intentionally changing their algorithm to promote violence directly, none of these arguments feel genuine. We're past the point where we can compare the world with and without Faceboook, when a social media site becomes unavailable to a certain group they will go to an alternative, as seen with Parler. Facebook mining and profiting from harvesting political user data show…

> Assigning morality to the math used in an algorithm is a failure to understand the purpose or function of it.

No this is rhetorical judo; no one intends to ascribe moral agency to the algorithm itself. The function of an algorithm is what it does, and the moral culpability is carried by the people who designed it for, and applied it to, a given purpose causing that outcome.

We can decide that for example they could not have predicted this outcome and so are not liable, or that they should have and were neglectful, or something else. The full range of tools and consequences we use when assessing culpability in other damaging situations are available to us here. The fact that an algorithm was the tool of harm doesn't constrain us.

Whether or not they profit from it is also beside the point. It may make it more evil, it may change their civil liabilities to harmed parties, but it doesn't increase or decrease their responsibility for the outcomes themselves.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#46

Post by Zak »

knaik94 wrote: post #30

Unless there is news about Facebook employees intentionally changing their algorithm to promote violence directly, none of these arguments feel genuine. We're past the point where we can compare the world with and without Faceboook, when a social media site becomes unavailable to a certain group they will go to an alternative, as seen with Parler. Facebook mining and profiting from harvesting political user data show…

A machine designed to self-optimize to manufacture as many paperclips as possible with no regard to any other parameters is not capable of morality. A person who creates one without taking steps to ensure it does not eat the world to turn the raw materials into paperclips is capable of morality and is morally responsible for that outcome.

Facebook has created a machine to capture attention and increase engagement with little regard to any other parameters. Despite being shown evidence that its machine contributes to political extremism and violence, it has typically refused to make changes that would reduce those effects if those changes would also reduce engagement.

It's fair to claim innocent intent early on, but someone who is aware their behavior has harmful impacts and continues that behavior has, at best negligent intent.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#47

Post by toofy »

lostlogin wrote: post #9
missedthecue wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A civil suit for $2 billion which alleges that Facebook's algorithm promoted popular posts with lots of engagement more than it promoted unpopular posts is frivolous and deserves to be tossed.

It resulted in death. That seems a key detail. Do you think that aspect matters? It was raised with them, they didn’t act and someone died. They have no responsibility for spreading death threats? If that content is ok, what content is not ok?

> If that content is ok, what content is not ok?

sharing the flight plan of an airplane, apparently.

the reality is, these people truly do understand how posts impact real world safety. they fully understand and are outraged if the posts are directed in anyway towards their group—they just don’t care, or maybe worse.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#48

Post by tsol »

gretch wrote: post #25
hourago wrote: post #16

> Abrham Amare, a researcher and son of chemistry professor Meareg Amare, said that his father was targeted by a series of threatening posts because he was ethnically Tigrayan. He reported the posts, some of them shared over 50,000 times, to Facebook because they contained his father's address and called for his death. Eight days after the elder Amare was murdered, Facebook finally removed the post, according to the…

Did facebook _cause_ it? Or would it have happened anyway? Lynchings have happened frequently throughout human history, long before the invention of facebook. Racism and ethnic hatred have always been there. To me this is like saying 'well the guy who killed him was wearing nike shoes, nike caused his death'. It's pretty clear to me that if he didn't have nike shoes, he would have done the same things wearing any oth…

Facebook allowed them to disseminate information leading to his murder. You can theorize all day about whether you think it would have happened anyways, but that doesn't really add any facts to the case.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#49

Post by gretch »

tsol wrote: post #48
gretch wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did facebook _cause_ it? Or would it have happened anyway? Lynchings have happened frequently throughout human history, long before the invention of facebook. Racism and ethnic hatred have always been there. To me this is like saying 'well the guy who killed him was wearing nike shoes, nike caused his death'. It's pretty clear to me that if he didn't have nike shoes, he would have done the same things wearing any oth…

Facebook allowed them to disseminate information leading to his murder. You can theorize all day about whether you think it would have happened anyways, but that doesn't really add any facts to the case.

The concept of a controlled experiment is quite important to scientific discovery and obtaining new knowledge.

What you just said is pretty equivalent to saying: When the moon is full, there is more murder. Therefore full moons must be contributing to violence. No need to theorize what happened when there's not a full moon, that's not adding any facts to the case!

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#50

Post by mikem170 »

felipelemos wrote: post #12
missedthecue wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article expressly states that violent content is not allowed and was actively policed. Facebook moderators are not fully omniscient and omnipresent. That is not grounds for a $2 billion lawsuit. That fact that people died is sad, but ultimately immaterial to the arguments here considered.

If they can't determine if a post is violent or not, then they shouldn't blindly promote it.

That's a good answer to this. They should be responsible for what the algorithm decides to inject into people's feeds, when they are acting as a publisher.

If they don't have enough resources to review the outputs from their algorithm, then to bad, just show posts from friends only.

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