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

Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

dw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 97 posts

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#81

Post by knaik94 »

Eleison23 wrote: post #40
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…

Social media's aims are unlike any other social space to come before. Restaurants gather people together around delicious food and everyone is able to enjoy themselves at the table with a meal and friends. Friendly engagement. Parks invite people to have recreation at various stages in life, whether with team sports, a playground, just running around the grass, or a picnic. Friendly engagement. Public transit helps p…

I have not experienced the toxic negativity you have associated with only modern social media. I am in a couple of online groups of the things you are describing as social spaces of before, there's a local hiking group, an unofficial puzzled pints group, multiple AI and Defcon related groups, TV show discussion groups, and occasionally concert groups for when an artist I enjoy is playing near me. If you're not using Facebook or Discord or some other social media for this, I would suggest you look into it. Social media is focused on self curation as much as algorithmic curation. If you have to approach your social media feed like a warzone, I would start by muting or unfollowing as many problematic people as possible. It'll be up to you to make sure your feed doesn't become an echo chamber, but at a minimum you won't feel such negative anger towards a literal piece of code.

Like and Dislikes are only as valuable as users allow them to be. A great counterexample to many of your arguments is the social media site we are discussing this topic on. The culture on Hacker News de-emphasizes Likes and Dislike. Comment karma is visible to the poster, but to a reader, a +100 karma comment is equal to a +4 karma comment with the only difference being what is seen first. I personally forget about that and end up reading comments to the end of threads I enjoy anyway.

I think letting such hostility build for the concept of social media is as damaging as any political extremism the censorship is supposed to combat. It feels like the extremism isn't gone, just redirected. Social media and the internet has changed who people interact with, not just how. In the past extreme ideas existed, but were tempered because of others around them. Social media has allowed people to choose to only listen to people with the same perspective, letting extreme ideas go uncontrolled. You can argue that it's the fault of the technology, but the main responsibility falls on the individuals.

Social media doesn't make people hateful, it makes it easier for hateful people to convince other to think like them. Bullies have existed long before social media and continue to exist in every context.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#82

Post by rightbyte »

Manuel_D wrote: post #72
rightbyte wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those manipulate any "feed".

Yes, they can. Ordering by time is still a "feed" - a simple one, but it's a feed nonetheless. Many modern phones surface messages from frequent contacts up to the top, above more recent messages from low-frequency contacts. That's also a "feed". Furthermore, most of the calls to violence were made over Facebook messenger which is arguably a lot more like SMS and IRC. I find the argument that Facebook's feed was sign…

Ye well I agree.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#83

Post by phendrenad2 »

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…

So a perfect free-speech forum where there is no algorithm would be okay? Or is the lack of algorithm also an algorithm? Is there any way to win this? Or is every website now doomed to an arbitrary level of required content moderation?

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#85

Post by phendrenad2 »

barbazoo wrote: post #15
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.

> 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 th…

> Doesn't sound like they "actively policed" the content sufficiently

See that's the problem with omniscience, you kind of need it to police EVERYTHING. Something will always make it through.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#86

Post by phendrenad2 »

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.

There will always be false negatives. Is one false negative enough to drag them into court? So every website on earth will just have that one moment where they accidentally promote (or don't actively de-promote) something toxic, and they'll get to go to court over it. I wonder how much Twitter will have to charge now. $8/mo isn't going to cut it. More like $80,000/mo

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#87

Post by phendrenad2 »

Zak wrote: post #76
interactivecode wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can't guarantee the safety of the people using their software. Facebook shouldn't be allowed to operate. The same is true for venues, sports, shops, workplaces, etc... why not software companies?

The analogy is pretty weak here. People commit crimes inside businesses all the time, and under most circumstances the owner of a business is not liable for damages resulting from a third-party committing a crime on their property. People also use various communication tools to advocate and plan crimes, and the operators of those tools are almost never liable. What's different here is that Facebook makes decisions ab…

I don't think it's been proven that "muh algorithm" did anything of the sort.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#88

Post by phendrenad2 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #64
nier wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case they should have demonstrated better security around their place. A person was singled out and PII was published. It was reported and they took down the information only 8 days after the person’s death. They clearly need more moderators for what they do and the way they play with people’s attention.

These things always come down to people not being able to define "should". Would it be a good thing if Facebook had more moderation? Probably. Are they morally or legally liable because a bunch of third parties committed a crime off of the platform? No, not at all. You might disagree, but then you have to explain why facebook in particular are liable. Why aren't the actual murderers? Or the people who posted the info…

Exactly. People want a special carve-out for Facebook and don't want to apply the same logic to public places and text apps. The magical "algorithm" is supposedly at blame, simply because there is supposedly an "algorithm" somewhere inside Facebook that sinisterly pulls the strings, whatever string, in order to make money.

Re: Facebook owner Meta sued for inciting hatred in Ethiopia

#90

Post by throwaway313313 »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #83
Zak wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So a perfect free-speech forum where there is no algorithm would be okay? Or is the lack of algorithm also an algorithm? Is there any way to win this? Or is every website now doomed to an arbitrary level of required content moderation?

Large crowds in some kinds of shapes of open spaces randomly result in stampedes and people dying.

All shapes of spaces are not subject to this.

There are general designs that don't have this problem and there are people that have various practical guidelines to counteract the stampede problem.

Same with forums where people can say things.

For example a simple algorithm that does not suffer from as gross feedback effects, that facebook eliminated early on, was the timeline view of activity.

Timeline sorting did not use popularity or advertising promotion to sort items.

Would the service be usable like this, well yes, facebook was perfectly usable during the era it worked like this.

What is the hit to their bottom line if they changed their algorithm back to simple timeline sorting? Well we can guess it must be pretty big because their current algorithm seems to be pretty psychotic by comparison (in that it intentionally fans the flames of outrage with it's interaction seeking behavior) and they are willing to take all the negative PR for the sake of this interaction uplift.

Post reply on HN