Live data from Hacker News

Class-action suit filed against Meta for facilitating Rohingya Genocide [pdf]

edelson.com

141–150 of 164 posts

Re: Class-action suit filed against Meta for facilitating Rohingya Genocide [pdf]

#141
post #23
post #13

This reminds me of something I’ve been mulling over for a while. Should it be illegal for a media outlet to publish the untested claims of a lawsuit? I’ve seen this behavior all too often. “XYZ happened, person A did this, claims new suit”. You can sue over just about anything, and make whatever absurd claims you want. People see these headlines and believe as if they have been settled in court when this is almost ne…

I think making that sort of thing illegal raises a lot of thorny free speech and press freedom issues; a related and perhaps more approachable question might be: should it be considered journalistically unethical to produce such a headline?

It would be far more ethical to produce both suit and opposition. "Person A alleges Company B did X, causing them to suffer damages. Company B states that X was actually Y and that they are not responsible for the damages Person A suffered. The courts will decide."

Re: Class-action suit filed against Meta for facilitating Rohingya Genocide [pdf]

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems kind of a wild leap to blame the rise of ISIS on Twitter. ISIS came from the events in Iraq and is an offshoot of "Al Qaeda in Iraq". It even stands for "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant". They existed long before the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring started in 2010 and ISIS didn't enter Syria (which I think is the connection you're making?) until well after that.

Twitter, and others, is a tool of the government, and national security state, and was weaponized multiple times to overthrow governments, institute color revolutions, allow terrorists to flourish etc... The Obama administration even bragged about it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/17/obama-iran-twi... https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/middleeast/17media....

PSYOPs existed long before Twitter and others. Social networks and ML just made the tools more powerful and precise.

Re: Class-action suit filed against Meta for facilitating Rohingya Genocide [pdf]

#143
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think making that sort of thing illegal raises a lot of thorny free speech and press freedom issues; a related and perhaps more approachable question might be: should it be considered journalistically unethical to produce such a headline?

It would be far more ethical to produce both suit and opposition. "Person A alleges Company B did X, causing them to suffer damages. Company B states that X was actually Y and that they are not responsible for the damages Person A suffered. The courts will decide."

That is essentially what sueing is. Class action lawsuit filed seems very clear and concise to me. I expect to find those exact details in the article given the title

Re: Class-action suit filed against Meta for facilitating Rohingya Genocide [pdf]

#144
post #134
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but Facebook is eager to take on the moderator role. They would have been much smarter to, like a radio provider or telco say: "we are just the pipeline, we are happy to follow all court orders but we aren't moderating past that", but now that they have actively embraced these kind of moderator roles they've lost the ability to make that claim.

Facebook moderates content heavily because that's what advertisers want. The major ad buyers don't want their ads to show up next to anything highly offensive. So no, from a profit standpoint it wouldn't be smarter to stop moderating.

Yes, we understand the incentives. My kids want to stay up past their bedtime, but I still say no because of the consequences the next day. I'm sure you agree that simply because someone wants you to do something it has no bearing on whether it was the correct choice or not.

Re: Class-action suit filed against Meta for facilitating Rohingya Genocide [pdf]

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be far more ethical to produce both suit and opposition. "Person A alleges Company B did X, causing them to suffer damages. Company B states that X was actually Y and that they are not responsible for the damages Person A suffered. The courts will decide."

That is essentially what sueing is. Class action lawsuit filed seems very clear and concise to me. I expect to find those exact details in the article given the title

Yes, but that is what I think the press should support, rather than amplifying the most outrage producing view of the situation (of the type where the headline reads: "Company B's faulty widgets lead to Person A's excruciating death!" subtitle: "Screamed for hours the whole time he was dying. Family sues for millions" and then you later find out that Person A bought a bank vault full of widgets and swan dived into them like Scrooge McDuck).

Neutral news, or at least somewhat equally amplified and balanced views that don't have to be arbitrarily oppositional in nature.

Re: Class-action suit filed against Meta for facilitating Rohingya Genocide [pdf]

#146
post #13

This reminds me of something I’ve been mulling over for a while. Should it be illegal for a media outlet to publish the untested claims of a lawsuit? I’ve seen this behavior all too often. “XYZ happened, person A did this, claims new suit”. You can sue over just about anything, and make whatever absurd claims you want. People see these headlines and believe as if they have been settled in court when this is almost ne…

Media Outlets can lie about anything, that includes already objectively justified data that came out of a direct legal proceeding.

I've seen this done a lot and it's done in such a way where they have blatantly lied and stated "X did Y" but actually the case stated and proved that "X never did Y".

How to correct that Media Outlet? Waste $$$ and time to get them to change their fake news. It doesn't work.

Re: Class-action suit filed against Meta for facilitating Rohingya Genocide [pdf]

#147
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a bit more detail on this determined role they took to spread the speech from reuters. "To this day, the company continues to rely heavily on users reporting hate speech in part because its systems struggle to interpret Burmese text. Even now, Facebook doesn’t have a single employee in the country of some 50 million people. Instead, it monitors hate speech from abroad. This is mainly done through a secretive…

In fairness to Facebook you can hardly expect them to hire employees in Myanmar. It would be impossible to keep them safe.

I wasn't totally clear about the difference between total apathy, which I'm sure facebook had for a small country with a language not in system vs "determined effort".

Re: Class-action suit filed against Meta for facilitating Rohingya Genocide [pdf]

#148
post #74

Will someone do the same against Twitter for the Arab springs which lead to the rise of ISIS?

I think the Iraq invasion of 2003 is what really set us down the path of ISIS.

The spread outside of Iraq to the rest of the Levant is most certainly due to neighboring countries being destabilized.

Re: Class-action suit filed against Meta for facilitating Rohingya Genocide [pdf]

#150
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I think I agree with you, but on forums this is subtly different. In a general internet forum, it's up to you decide what you read. On FB, there's an algorithm that determines your feed, and therefore the profit of Facebook itself. If FB were connecting people, making the world a better place, and making profit by doing that, I think I'd be fine with that. But it looks like FB can trade the general good wi…

Every forum has an algorithm (including this one, which sorts by upvotes and hides dead content unless the user asks for it).

Hacker News doesn't have an algorithm to decides what's the best posts and should appear in a person's feed. It has editors/moderators.
Post reply on HN