151–160 of 514 posts
>That’s right: I teach courses in Python and Pandas. Never mind that the first is a programming language and the second is a library for data analysis in Python. Meta’s AI system noticed that I was talking about Python and Pandas, assumed that I was talking about the animals (not the technology), and banned me. If this is true, that is insanely embarrassing for a company that purports to be a sophisticated programmat…
What's wrong with talking about animals anyway? Truly bizarre.
Trade in animals is covered by a number of laws¹ intended to protect them, and fb has a blanket ban on advertising trading animals. This is a perfectly logical thing to declare wrong.
What has happened here, most likely, is that a right thing (selling courses about Python and Pandas, the technical things of that name not the animals) has been misidentified as that wrong thing, by an automated system that doesn't understand that two concepts can have the same names, with no practical way for the affected advertiser to appeal or even query the automated decision.
Basically this is a variant of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem.
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[1] Morals too, of course, but companies like FB work based on laws/regulations² rather than based on what is considered [im]moral.
[2] or based on working around laws/regulations!
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Don't need for book references, that is how it is today in many countries, and it has been always in less democratic societies.
Yeah! How dare they, referencing literature.
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And some of these companies pride themselves as AI technology pioneers. Yet it seems their automated systems in this case are simply doing keyword matching. Mind-boggling!
Another sad anecdote: A bank in Finland suspended an account for a text in free-form message field of a bank transfer. The message was for a vet visit of a dog named Ira. When you say "Ira's payment" in Finnish, you add suffix -n, so the text field said Iran, which of course must indicate money transfer to a sanctioned country. It is comforting to know that the bank system catches all the illegal activity that the sa…
Yes, "the document", without telling which document. When calling the support, they first said that it must be indicated, no kidding. And then they said that it was not possible (despite getting screenshots).
It is sometimes a matter of having the wrong attribute set somewhere in a database and welcome to hell.
I'm banned for life from all Facebook properties (except for WhatsApp) because of my surname. They believe it's fake (or too controversial) and a copy of my passport hasn't changed their minds. I used to have a Facebook account ~13 years ago before their real name policy came into force, but I closed it because I found it awkward to refuse or accept so many contact requests by people from my distant past. Now unfortu…
and what is your surname?
- Phillip K. Dick, etc., So like a body part or cuss word, or even an ethnic slur, for instance in Papua New Guinea a hundred or so people have the surname “Wop” which might trigger an algorithm. “Fokker” is a Dutch example of this, refers to someone who was an expert in getting animals to breed—possibly some other culture has a variant like Fucker that's the same.
- The name could be identical to a celebrity, for instance a Malcolm X born to Arthur and Jenny X having nothing to do with the more famous person of that name. Then you would still say “it’s because of my surname.” Alternatively the celebrity could be notorious e.g. if your name were “Jack Hittler.”
- The James Randi Educational Foundation once dismissed an application for a prize that they administer, because the person did not appear to be using their real name. This had to be reopened when notarized copies of a court order changing the name were submitted, confirming that he had indeed changed his first name to Prophet and his surname to Yahweh. So if that guy has kids with more normal first names...
In opposition to what the author thinks, I do think that the appeal was viewed by a human (probably from an outsourced agency somewhere far away) who simply didn't have 1) the capacity to understand what the author is selling 2) time enough to read the appeal, research and understand the problem and 3) possibly sufficient control over the English language
Meta staff have been hijacking Facebook, Insta accounts (and few dozen have been fired for doing so). It would be not surprising if some working for Meta, or their spouse or friend, is doing what you are doing and they are cutting your legs.
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Perhaps you're not allowed to use Facebook for selling animals. Which would be sensible IMO
Selling pets should be fine?
Also it can be difficult to reliably distinguish between an individual passing on a pet, a properly licensed breeder selling animals, and a bad actor doing the same (selling exotic animals, being an unlicensed breeder in jurisdictions where this is not permitted (generally or for particular animals), etc.). For this reason many advertising companies simply have a blanket ban on advertising any animal trading. Being more selective potentially leaves them open to legal issues if the selection process makes a bad decision and lets something illegal through, and that risk is not worth taking in order to allow (and therefore take a cut from) the more legitimate trade.
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Isn't it already under GDPR where entity using AI to make decisions need to provide an explanation how it arrived at it?
Not just AI, it applies to any form of automated decision making ( https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ ): The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her. But there's the usual "explicit consent" caveat, which Meta will argue they have because…