Facebook's Fix-It Team • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook's Fix-It Team

#21

Post by yial » Fri, May 25, 2018, 1:23 PM UTC

JshWright wrote: post #20

yial wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most interestingly is "... (The reason: While people may commit a single homicide accidentally or in self-defense,..." homicide would be unlawful killing, so now I'm curious, is this per incident... as in, imagine someone had to kill two individuals at once in self defense, would they be banned from facebook? sidebar: I have had my facebook deleted since 09/2015 so I may not be the key audience ever of facebo…

Homicide is not necessarily unlawful. It simply means someone was killed by another Homo sapiens. There are all sorts of situations where that could occur lawfully.

This is where I become confused; your definition seems to align with Wikipedia, but my in browser dictionary and googles dictionarh Service both include an “unlawful”.

Re: Facebook's Fix-It Team

#22

Post by yial » Fri, May 25, 2018, 1:25 PM UTC

gnarbarian wrote: post #6

yial wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most interestingly is "... (The reason: While people may commit a single homicide accidentally or in self-defense,..." homicide would be unlawful killing, so now I'm curious, is this per incident... as in, imagine someone had to kill two individuals at once in self defense, would they be banned from facebook? sidebar: I have had my facebook deleted since 09/2015 so I may not be the key audience ever of facebo…

Key word there is convicted. Homocide in certain situations can be legal. Killing someone in self defense is legal (in the us). Another example of homicide with no fault to you would be someone jumping out in front of your car. Neither case would normally yield a conviction or even a case. Also homicide is different than murder. Murder implies intent.

I don’t disagree with you, and I am pretty sure you’re 100% correct. I think my confusion started to stem from my in browser dictionary and googles dictionary service which both throws and “unlawful” in the definition, coupled with the self defense part... and that I hadn’t had any coffee yet it made it very hard for me to parse.

Re: Facebook's Fix-It Team

#23

Post by pentae » Fri, May 25, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #9

duxup wrote: post #7

"In the spring of 2017, Rosen put a team of engineers on “lockdown,” a Facebook practice in which people drop everything to solve a problem. The problem was dire indeed: People were using Facebook Live, a video-streaming service that had just launched, to announce their intention to kill themselves, and even to stream themselves doing it." While I've got some strong feelings about Facebook and their actions... that's…

This is the kind of empathy that I think lots of people fail to have when it comes to sites with user-generated content. As another example, lots of people seem to think Facebook is negligent for failing to properly delineate between fake and real news articles or between organic political speech and propaganda. Purely from an engineering perspective, I just don't see how they could possibly do even an adequate, let…

Well from an engineering perspective you could create a blacklist and a whitelist. There's not a huge amount of variance in news sources out there, i'd say 80% of news sources being shared on social media are less than 100 domains. The rest of the fake news sites domains could be added to the blacklist based on a combination of user reporting and moderation. You could literally put a team of about 5 people on this and over a long enough timeline it would be solved.

Re: Facebook's Fix-It Team

#24

Post by forgottenpass » Fri, May 25, 2018, 1:52 PM UTC

aylmao wrote: post #12

borplk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only recently that people have started to assign blame and responsibility to the platform hosting the content (really only after the US election drama). Back in the earlier days of the internet the attitude was quite different. It was all celebrated free speech and "anyone is empowered to do anything it's all open and free and happy for everybody and there's some bad stuff so what" (happy early Web 2.0 days wher…

> Now a pin drops and 50 publications write an "Facebook negligently allowed someone to ... they must be held accountable and regulated and broken apart" article. I think part of it is this; those "50 publications" --the media-- is paying attention now, and they judge the internet like a media publication and not a forum. There's debate of course; does the sorting of the newsfeed equate editorial curation? Does this…

>I think part of it is this; those "50 publications" --the media-- is paying attention now, and they judge the internet like a media publication and not a forum.

The funny thing is, those internet companies had a chance to show the media they're not be seen as publications. But the platforms didn't. They wanted an out that let them exercise power over content at the discretion of the people in control of the platform.

It's the cost-benefit tradeoff they signed up for. And now other entities are exercising their soft power over the platform to get them to exercise power over the content on the platform.

Re: Facebook's Fix-It Team

#25

Post by billysielu » Fri, May 25, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

When I click the link to this article all I see is a terms and conditions document which I don't agree to. I should not have to sacrifice privacy just to read a public web page.

The content pasted below for those who can't see it / already agreed it:

About Your Privacy on this Site

Welcome! To bring you the best content on our sites and applications, Meredith partners with third party advertisers to serve digital ads, including personalized digital ads. Those advertisers use tracking technologies to collect information about your activity on our sites and applications and across the Internet and your other apps and devices.

You always have the choice to experience our sites without personalized advertising based on your web browsing activity by visiting the DAA’s Consumer Choice page, the NAI's website, and/or the EU online choices page, from each of your browsers or devices. To avoid personalized advertising based on your mobile app activity, you can install the DAA’s AppChoices app here. You can find much more information about your privacy choices in our privacy policy.   Even if you choose not to have your activity tracked by third parties for advertising services, you will still see non-personalized ads on our site.

By clicking continue below and using our sites or applications, you agree that we and our third party advertisers can:

    transfer your personal data to the United States or other countries, and
    process your personal data to serve you with personalized ads, subject to your choices as described above and in our privacy policy.

Re: Facebook's Fix-It Team

#26

Post by AndrewKemendo » Fri, May 25, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

For 20 minutes on the morning of May 1, Facebook users saw a curious query at the end of every update on their feeds. “Does this post contain hate speech?” they were asked, in small font next to “yes” and “no” buttons.

I once believed this ultra basic, explicit supervised reinforcement learning query system would be the future of user interfaces and AI. That if you asked people to close the loop in a learning system, some number of them would give good feedback and you could make an increasingly better decision loop.

What early tests like these seem to prove, and maybe I'm being pessimistic, is that people generally don't want to help make systems better (with "better" defined loosely). Even if they do want to help, users either can't differentiate their own perception or the interface doesn't give clear enough directions.

It seems to boil down to users and the companies not being explicitly value aligned. Or rather, when they need to take an action which reveals an explicit value proposition, the user responds to the emotional/signaling request with noise, rather than data. As a result the users don't take it seriously and so they break the system. It seems to be built into humans to reject the concept of providing explicit value input (aka voting on if something is good or not) into a system that you haven't been totally indoctrinated into - like voting for politicians. I would also guess that it being tied to your person makes that even less likely to happen.

Re: Facebook's Fix-It Team

#27

Post by makomk » Fri, May 25, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

aylmao wrote: post #12

borplk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only recently that people have started to assign blame and responsibility to the platform hosting the content (really only after the US election drama). Back in the earlier days of the internet the attitude was quite different. It was all celebrated free speech and "anyone is empowered to do anything it's all open and free and happy for everybody and there's some bad stuff so what" (happy early Web 2.0 days wher…

> Now a pin drops and 50 publications write an "Facebook negligently allowed someone to ... they must be held accountable and regulated and broken apart" article. I think part of it is this; those "50 publications" --the media-- is paying attention now, and they judge the internet like a media publication and not a forum. There's debate of course; does the sorting of the newsfeed equate editorial curation? Does this…

They're definitely not judging the internet like a media publication; for the most part, they're quite happy to defend almost anything their fellow publications do. They're treating it like a dangerous new threat that's not part of their clique and is eating directly into their profit margins. Compare, for example, how they cover Google and Facebook's compliance with the GDPR and abuse of personal data with how they cover publications doing the same. For instance Fortune and Forbes are doing some heiniously noncompliant stuff in order to ensure they can use people's personal info for profit, but this doesn't seem to be getting any coverage. In order to view this very article, you must go through a forced-consent wall of the very kind the GDPR forbids.

Re: Facebook's Fix-It Team

#28

Post by makomk » Fri, May 25, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #15

fyfy18 wrote: post #8

Is there a way to pass the GDPR consent dialogue without giving them permission to do whatever they like with my data? I thought the purpose of the GDPR was to give users a choice as to whether their data is used?

Facebook’s GDPR modal explains what they do with your data and why it’s legitimate. You can opt out of targeted advertising. The only thing that Facebook doesn’t offer is not filtering your News Feed by interest, which they see as a key feature.

Facebook's GDPR modal may do, the one on the linked Fortune article simply doesn't allow you to access Fortune unless you agree to let them use all your personal information for advertising.

Re: Facebook's Fix-It Team

#29

Post by bonniemuffin » Fri, May 25, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

pentae wrote: post #23

sanderjd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of empathy that I think lots of people fail to have when it comes to sites with user-generated content. As another example, lots of people seem to think Facebook is negligent for failing to properly delineate between fake and real news articles or between organic political speech and propaganda. Purely from an engineering perspective, I just don't see how they could possibly do even an adequate, let…

Well from an engineering perspective you could create a blacklist and a whitelist. There's not a huge amount of variance in news sources out there, i'd say 80% of news sources being shared on social media are less than 100 domains. The rest of the fake news sites domains could be added to the blacklist based on a combination of user reporting and moderation. You could literally put a team of about 5 people on this an…

There's a huge long tail of small publishers though-- probably tens of thousands, and shadier fake news sites can always put up a new domain if they get blacklisted.

Re: Facebook's Fix-It Team

#30

Post by thecatspaw » Fri, May 25, 2018, 2:28 PM UTC

billysielu wrote: post #25

When I click the link to this article all I see is a terms and conditions document which I don't agree to. I should not have to sacrifice privacy just to read a public web page. The content pasted below for those who can't see it / already agreed it: About Your Privacy on this Site Welcome! To bring you the best content on our sites and applications, Meredith partners with third party advertisers to serve digital ads…

> To avoid personalized advertising based on your mobile app activity, you can install the DAA’s AppChoices app here.

this is ridiculous. Is this even GDPR compliant?