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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

#51

Post by jeromegv »

gretch wrote: post #49
tsol wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

His fucking address and call for murder was shared 50,000 times.

And here you are, parroting the idea of controlled experiment and wanting to discuss scientific discovery.

This is someone's life we are talking about. Clearly it is a failure in moderation policy. This type of thing would not have happened in the US.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#52

Post by jszymborski »

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…

You're right! We all die eventually... Meta just expedited it.

I know I'd feel _totally_ OK with that if I worked at Meta. /s

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#53

Post by knaik94 »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #44
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 coul…

> 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.

We fundamentally disagree on whether or not what Facebook "should" have expected or "should" have done is worth considering. I don't think it's legally relevant. Profits can demonstrate incentive that otherwise wouldn't exist.

The existing legal precedent for how algorithms are considered under tort liability [1] are still unclear. It's clear to me that allowing this lawsuit to move forward would be directly contradicting the ruling of Force v. Facebook (2019) and would force a ruling on how AI algorithms should be held liable with respect to section 230.

From the perspective of the user, making a platform liable would mean that the platform would fundamentally shift what users are allowed to post and strongly weakens basic rights to freedom of expression. It's hard to depict how different and more censored the internet would be if section 230 continues to become weakened.

"Critically, the finding that AI algorithms can be found to be harmful allows for the tort liability process to come into effect. While this kind of legal approach has not yet been taken, Patel indicates that corporate liability is a possibility. If an AI algorithm causes harm, it must be prosecuted through tort liability."

"However, in the same timeframe as Patel’s ruling in 2019, ... a group of U.S. citizens who were victims of a Hamas terrorist attack, sued Facebook, arguing that Facebook implicitly assisted Hamas by keeping their violence-promoting content online through their AI algorithm’s oversight. [12] However, in accordance with 42 U.S.C. 230(c)(1), the rule that protects social media platforms from liability for content on their platforms, the court found that Facebook could not be found to have criminal or civil liability for content. [13] This case complicates the implications of Patel, as it found that Facebook was shielded from liability because the content itself was not created by the platform. "

[1] https://www.culawreview.org/journal/extending-corporate-tort...

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#54

Post by subradios »

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.

So a US based company, operating under US law, is responsible to use its US based platform and employees to decide how users in a totally different country use the internet?

If you're gonna support the British Empire, fine, be my guest, but be aware that this is pretty close to noblest oblige views of colonialim

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#55

Post by saint_fiasco »

jeromegv wrote: post #51
gretch wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

His fucking address and call for murder was shared 50,000 times. And here you are, parroting the idea of controlled experiment and wanting to discuss scientific discovery. This is someone's life we are talking about. Clearly it is a failure in moderation policy. This type of thing would not have happened in the US.

> This type of thing would not have happened in the US

That's because the real police would intervene, not because murderers are afraid of social media moderators.

That said, I do believe that if Ethiopian law enforcement can't (won't?) handle their murderous mobs, they should censor their social media until they can figure out what is going on. And foreign social media companies should cooperate with them.

But the initiative has to come from Ethiopia.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#56

Post by gretch »

jeromegv wrote: post #51
gretch wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

His fucking address and call for murder was shared 50,000 times. And here you are, parroting the idea of controlled experiment and wanting to discuss scientific discovery. This is someone's life we are talking about. Clearly it is a failure in moderation policy. This type of thing would not have happened in the US.

Your saying that I’m missing an obvious point about the 50k shares, and I think your missing the even more obvious backdrop that this took place amidst a civil war!

Is this the only guy that died in this civil war? Did fb cause the civil war?

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#57

Post by joshuaissac »

subradios wrote: post #54
tsol wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So a US based company, operating under US law, is responsible to use its US based platform and employees to decide how users in a totally different country use the internet? If you're gonna support the British Empire, fine, be my guest, but be aware that this is pretty close to noblest oblige views of colonialim

> So a US based company, operating under US law

When Facebook operates in Ethiopia, it is expected to follow Ethiopian law.

> If you're gonna support the British Empire [...] this is pretty close to noblest oblige views of colonialim

The British Empire has forced subjugated countries to recognise a concept of extraterritoriality for British merchants operating in those countries, where they would not be subjected to local laws. But the US has not made such an agreement with Ethiopia about Facebook.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritoriality

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#58

Post by PeterisP »

jeromegv wrote: post #51
gretch wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

His fucking address and call for murder was shared 50,000 times. And here you are, parroting the idea of controlled experiment and wanting to discuss scientific discovery. This is someone's life we are talking about. Clearly it is a failure in moderation policy. This type of thing would not have happened in the US.

> His fucking address and call for murder was shared 50,000 times.

That still doesn't mean that the medium for sharing caused the murder or is responsible for it. This is one of cases where intent and/or explicit action is required for both moral and legal culpablity - simply doing nothing may be an asshole thing to do, but it doesn't make you an accomplice in a crime, and if you do try assisting by moderating but are bad at it and fail sometimes, that's definitely not being an accomplice, because there is no duty to be perfect at that; a failure in moderation policy is just that - a failure in moderation policy, not becoming co-guilty of the too-slowly-moderated thing unless that post was kept up by someone with the explicit intent to facilitate that murder. I'd say that every single one of the 50,000 sharers is each more culpable than Meta.

Like, we have serious precedent for propagandists considered liable for inciting murderous hatred like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Nahimana and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Bosco_Barayagwiza , but the bar there is met because they actively and intentionally made the propaganda; on the other hand, all the many people who (for example) kept the radios running and/or could have somehow stopped the propagandists but didn't - well, they are not liable for the crime.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#59

Post by daniel_reetz »

Zak wrote: post #46
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 wit…

Yes. And this is an unprecedented industrial process, not least because attention is the input, and behavioral changes (well-tracked viewing and purchasing) are the output.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#60

Post by [deleted] »

noworriesnate wrote: post #22
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…

I have a friend and an ex-coworker who work at Meta. I've asked them about things like this in the past, their responses have boiled down to something like this: If Facebook's algorithms reduced millions of micro-aggressions but simultaneously enabled the death of one person, then they're probably still in the green. It's like public policy-making. There are tradeoffs everywhere, and somebody will always draw the sho…

[deleted]
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