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Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'

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Re: Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'

#21

Post by AlexanderDhoore »

masklinn wrote: post #17
AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #14

Facebook has gotten too big for it's own good. How can they be held accountable for every single thing said by their users?! It goes against human nature. People curse, people are horrible to each other, people make fun of terrible things... It's a fact of life. You can't cleanse the world of bad human behaviour. That's a fight you can't win. Facebook will try and censor their systems, people will hate it, and Facebo…

> How can they be held accountable for every single thing said by their users?! That could stand if they didn't try to police their users at all, but they do, significantly, on a number of areas: facebook has banned or censored groups and images on such sujects as breastfeeding, breast cancer or children with birth defects[0]. Yet, and there's the rub, rape and violence groups were allowed to run unimpeded and report…

I know that's the situation. What I'm trying to say is this: that list (breastfeeding, breast cancer or children with birth defects, joking about rape, violence...) is just going to grow longer, and longer, and longer...

In the article it says: "... Facebook says it will process more complaints and will train its staff of reviewers ...". That means they are doing a big part of the censoring MANUALLY! You will NEVER be able to remove garbage faster than people creating it.

Re: Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'

#22

Post by nakedrobot2 »

This is (I would guess) a direct response to something that occurred last week. There was a "photo meme" being passed around on facebook, showing a photo of a girl with her mouth taped, with the caption "tape her and rape her". Someone made a screenshot of this, with an add for Audible on the page.

A shitstorm ensued, with people blaming Audible and/or Facebook for showing an ad next to such an image (it's rather hard to parse a meme photo for what text is actually written on the image, right?) You can see more info about this on a google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+audible+tape+her+an...

I guess Audible has leaned heavily on Facebook to respond to what has apparently been a very difficult PR issue for them.

Disclosure: I have nothing to do with Facebook or Audible, I am just passing on what I have heard from people involved.

Re: Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'

#24

Post by masklinn »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #21
masklinn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can they be held accountable for every single thing said by their users?! That could stand if they didn't try to police their users at all, but they do, significantly, on a number of areas: facebook has banned or censored groups and images on such sujects as breastfeeding, breast cancer or children with birth defects[0]. Yet, and there's the rub, rape and violence groups were allowed to run unimpeded and report…

I know that's the situation. What I'm trying to say is this: that list (breastfeeding, breast cancer or children with birth defects, joking about rape, violence...) is just going to grow longer, and longer, and longer... In the article it says: "... Facebook says it will process more complaints and will train its staff of reviewers ...". That means they are doing a big part of the censoring MANUALLY! You will NEVER b…

> I know that's the situation. What I'm trying to say is this: that list (breastfeeding, breast cancer or children with birth defects, joking about rape, violence...) is just going to grow longer, and longer, and longer...

Sure, but that's got nothing to do with the part I quoted: you asked why they can be "held accountable" (for extremely loose definitions of "held" and "accountable") for everything their users say, and the answer is: because they decided to police what their users say, once they start policing they're held accountable for what they police and how they police it.

> That means they are doing a big part of the censoring MANUALLY!

Yes?

> You will NEVER be able to remove garbage faster than people creating it.

You probably won't do it automatically either, at least not without significant collateral damages anyway (see: Google).

And as far as I know, Facebook mostly acts on reports (which happens to be the way HN works as well), they generally don't remove content preemptively.

Re: Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'

#26

Post by evincarofautumn »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #14

Facebook has gotten too big for it's own good. How can they be held accountable for every single thing said by their users?! It goes against human nature. People curse, people are horrible to each other, people make fun of terrible things... It's a fact of life. You can't cleanse the world of bad human behaviour. That's a fight you can't win. Facebook will try and censor their systems, people will hate it, and Facebo…

The intent of Facebook’s censorship seems mainly to create a positive environment where a person can feel safe to express their identity. That would attract a majority of people who don’t want to deal with the unpleasant details of the web and internet at large. Sadly, no absolute censorship policy will please everyone, and no relative policy can be enforced consistently.

Re: Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'

#27

Post by lowboy »

smegel wrote: post #23

Hard to see how this won't slide down the slippery slope of banning all "offensive" content...at what point do you say we are OK with this particular group being offended but not others? Perhaps when the mainstream media starts agitating over it...

At least you invoked the name of the logical fallacy.

And it's more than just offense in this case. Sexual assault is a very serious and terrible thing to have happen. Joking about it legitimizes and normalizes it, contributing to incidents. I imagine it's the same thing as with hate speech: it could prompt acts of violence toward people of the targeted group.

Re: Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'

#28

Post by user24 »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #22

This is (I would guess) a direct response to something that occurred last week. There was a "photo meme" being passed around on facebook, showing a photo of a girl with her mouth taped, with the caption "tape her and rape her". Someone made a screenshot of this, with an add for Audible on the page. A shitstorm ensued, with people blaming Audible and/or Facebook for showing an ad next to such an image (it's rather har…

Useful background info, thanks.

> it's rather hard to parse a meme photo for what text is actually written on the image, right?

Actually it's trivial, but I suspect it's just not being done because most pictures on facebook don't have text so why would facebook bother?

Re: Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'

#29

Post by lowboy »

JimJames wrote: post #20
onan_barbarian wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a rather disingenuous comment. Maybe they didn't anticipate that a site that rigorously polices (for example) breast-feeding pictures and race hate material wouldn't rigorously police "rape a bitch" image macros. They have discovered that having their ads next to this sort of content is not what they signed up for, after all, and are planning to unsign up for this stuff. Companies change their minds all the t…

I will not be sad to see "rape a bitch" macros go but having their ads next to stuff like this is exactly what they signed up for. They signed up for their ads to be displayed next to whatever anyone posted. Anyone who has used the internet for any length of time knows there are large amounts of disturbing content on it which will definitely spill into any user generated content site. I find it hard to believe that 1…

They signed up for having their ads shown next to content that is within Facebook's posting guidelines. Or else why not advertise on /b/ if you truly had no qualms about the content?

While I don't discount that they're going to get some press over this, raising issues over Facebook tacitly supporting rape culture is perfectly acceptable for a company.

Re: Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'

#30

Post by spindritf »

lowboy wrote: post #27
smegel wrote: post #23

Hard to see how this won't slide down the slippery slope of banning all "offensive" content...at what point do you say we are OK with this particular group being offended but not others? Perhaps when the mainstream media starts agitating over it...

At least you invoked the name of the logical fallacy. And it's more than just offense in this case. Sexual assault is a very serious and terrible thing to have happen. Joking about it legitimizes and normalizes it, contributing to incidents. I imagine it's the same thing as with hate speech: it could prompt acts of violence toward people of the targeted group.

> Sexual assault is a very serious

Are videos where people actually get hurt[1], not just their feelings, also banned from Facebook? Or are those less serious?

I heave heard this claim that rape jokes somehow contribute to the prevalence of the problem. Is there any empirical proof for that?

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNuaaPoLu1Q&t=44s (unpleasant to watch)

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