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

Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 207 posts

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#111

Post by mactyler »

int_19h wrote: post #109
mactyler wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“...the hubris of facebook to think that they can even attempt to define and enforce speech codes?” What about this is hubris? Wouldnt you argue they have a responsibility to try? Wouldnt it be hubris to build such a powerful platform and not think to care about minimizing the amount of damage malicious actors could do with it?

The hubris is in doing it extralegally. They should work with legislatures and law enforcement in their respective countries of operation to figure out what those countries (and their people) actually want them to do. Some countries have strong hate speech laws; some have strong freedom of speech protections. Ideally, this should be reflected in their communication platforms. One size doesn't fit all.

While I completely agree that one size doesn’t fit all, you can’t deny facebook might run into some problems if the governments of each country they are working with aren’t exactly pushing for what facebook thinks are some of the most forward thinking morals like individual freedom of speech or lgbtq rights or gender equality. It puts you in a rough precedent and a likely banning from a country to start working with some governments on rules and not some with others. I think I agree with some of the aspects of your statement but there should be a larger body responsible for defining the base set of ethics for the digital world but on a global scale and something more like the geneva convention. I think its often unfair to all the people that work on these problems that truly care about finding solutions to imply that there is an easy alternative they are somehow incredulously ignoring.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#112

Post by killjoywashere »

baybal2 wrote: post #73
Animats wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Here, Facebook is making a good-faith effort to censor, we can see how difficult a time they are having writing rules for it, and Facebook is being criticized for it. There is no good way to do prior restraint. Read Justice Brandeis' concurring decision in Whitney vs. California. [1] He wrote the classic decision on this subject, and I can't improve on that. "Those who won our independence believed that the fina…

That's excellent. Man, where are such lawyers today???

They said to hell with it and went into contract law.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#113

Post by sayno3 »

By the logic of this new system, if I give someone the opportunity to steal or do drugs (bait car, free drugs), they "get what's coming to them"; but if I say words that inspire someone to steal or do drugs, then I am guilty in the same way as yelling "fire" in a crowded theater? Maybe we should ramp up the propaganda and hate-speech and let all these lower life forms take care of themselves (not serious so don't ramp up the psych-torture, big brother is love is the law is to walk on two legs).

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#114

Post by dragonwriter »

Animats wrote: post #58
monochromatic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So-called hate speech doesn’t cause harm other than to feelings. It’s constitutionally protected in the US, and Facebook is going down the wrong path trying to eliminate it.

Yes. Here, Facebook is making a good-faith effort to censor, we can see how difficult a time they are having writing rules for it, and Facebook is being criticized for it. There is no good way to do prior restraint. Read Justice Brandeis' concurring decision in Whitney vs. California. [1] He wrote the classic decision on this subject, and I can't improve on that. "Those who won our independence believed that the fina…

> “Immediate serious violence". That's the US standard for prior restraint.

No, it's the US standard for applying the coercive power of government to prior restraint.

The US standard for private actors applying prior restraint to their own platforms is “do what you will, so long as you apply any prior restraint the government has dictated based on immediate serious violence.”

> That's what Facebook, as a US company, should be using.

Facebook is not the US federal or a US state government, and thus the logic underlying why the government is limited to prior restraint in those narrow conditions does not apply.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#115

Post by sunsetMurk »

nradov wrote: post #97
beatpanda wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why Silicon Valley engineers, and engineers generally, need to stop being so dismissive of people with "useless" liberal arts educations, and instead bring in sociologists and anthropologists to think through these processes in a comprehensive way. I'm being downvoted into oblivion elsewhere on this site for suggesting this, but I feel like it's a very obvious move for tech companies that have this pr…

Classical liberal arts educations are tremendously valuable in teaching people how to think critically. However when we're dealing with complex emergent systems no one is capable of reliably predicting problems regardless of how much education in sociology and anthropology they have. Active monitoring and fast responses are the only viable approach.

but what about seriously brainstorming some hypothetical scenarios as part of the process?

For example, documenting some sort of 'ideal' or 'pro/con' type lists of potential fallout. When architecting a system.. or in design/feature proposals.

Surely folks less in the weeds of technical requirements and actual implementation could help decide earlier on if something is 'good'.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#116

Post by sunsetMurk »

jmspring wrote: post #54
beatpanda wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why Silicon Valley engineers, and engineers generally, need to stop being so dismissive of people with "useless" liberal arts educations, and instead bring in sociologists and anthropologists to think through these processes in a comprehensive way. I'm being downvoted into oblivion elsewhere on this site for suggesting this, but I feel like it's a very obvious move for tech companies that have this pr…

I have no problem with anthropologists and those in the liberal arts employed when there are skills they have that help a company. Bubble-1, many humanities students were hired around working with content. That wasn't a bad thing. As I said in another post, companies also actually used to hire people outside the tech bubble to deal with things like categorization of websites, etc. That went away once they could achie…

..and now with ML/etc.!

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#117

Post by wnmurphy »

monochromatic wrote: post #35
bduerst wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were completely full of willing listeners for hate speech, then that might be applicable. Hate groups aren't sending private forum messages to each other, they're broadcasting Even John Stuart Mill, a founding philosopher of free speech, postulated that speech needs to be curtailed when the expression harms others.

So-called hate speech doesn’t cause harm other than to feelings. It’s constitutionally protected in the US, and Facebook is going down the wrong path trying to eliminate it.

You've clearly never heard of "stochastic terrorism". Words have consequences, and hate speech can have serious consequences. Just because something is included under blanket protections doesn't mean it's harmless to society.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#118

Post by djohnston »

gojomo wrote: post #15
bduerst wrote: post #3

While the individual examples listed here are not good, what is the false-positive and false-negative rates for FB's method of censorship? Globally scaling hate-speech censorship is a problem that many content websites (Youtube, Twitter, etc.) face. This article with it's leaked deck and false-positive examples seems like it's trying to generate shock at "how the sausage gets made". Any process involving humans will…

If you don't believe in censoring communications between a willing-speaker & willing-listener, anything they do has a 100% false-positive rate.

it is very often not a willing listener. and there is plenty of content that should be blocked between participants regardless of their willingness to share it.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#119

Post by toofy »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #93
toofy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe words are so inconsequential, why do you fight so hard for them? You fight hard for speech because words have an incredible impact on society. No matter where you fall in regards to Facebook’s right to set standards on their own platform, implying that words are meaningless is silly.

The poster never said they were meaningless, simply that they aren't violence. That is, speech itself cannot deprive someone of liberties. Only physical action can do that. It's unquestionable that certain forms of speech[1] can "incite" violence, and we have laws that cover such speech. [1] intent, imminence, and likelihood from: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test

> The poster never said they were meaningless, simply that they aren't violence.

Indeed, and the top post in this thread didn’t use the word “violence.”

The point is that words do have profound impacts on society. Words can and do lead to material conditions which may cause actual harm to someone’s day to day life.

As I said, regardless of where one falls on Facebook’s right to pick and choose their own standards, let’s not pretend words are so meaningless they will never lead to material changes in someone’s life. That’s a silly implication. We fight hard for speech precisely because words have so much power.

Edit: clarifying.

Post reply on HN