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Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

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Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#261
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but in this case we're comparing the treatment (by courts, etc) of the elite vs non-elite in America.

There are peculiarities of eliteness in America that matter here. Because Americans maintain the fiction of a classless society and don't have the legal framework of a caste system, what counts as elite in America affects how the world views American elites, and how Americans view elites in other cultures. We don't for example, care how many cows in a bride's dowry.

> Because Americans maintain the fiction of a classless society

There is nobody in the US that believes US society is classless. Talk about fictions.

Everyone knows upper class, middle class, lower class segmentation. So how is it you reconcile your premise of Americans not thinking there are classes when everyone in the country defines themselves by such structures? Americans are taught the class structures all throughout school. Americans are informed about the class structures 24/7 by popular media and news, from the NYTimes to CNBC and everything inbetween.

The hyper rich and the poor have been an always part of US society. There are no exceptions in terms of grasping the distinction, nobody fails to get it. The US has had hyper rich and poor since its founding and everyone here has always been aware of the divisions. It's in our history books, it's in our earliest literature. It's omnipresent as a thing.

Before there was the industrial wealthy and working poor, there were the land barons and British lords, farmers, agrarian workers and the slaves that were brought to the US by the conquering European empires. The class systems here quite pre-date the country, so yes, Americans are fully aware of it all. It has never not been part of US society.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#262

>“We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly,” said the confidential review. Why do we even have the collective fiction where corporate messaging around a sore topic is treated as trustworthy? Especially with companies that we know lie all the fucking time?

Further, why do we continue to accept the fiction that rules and laws apply to the elite as for the masses? Even the not-so-elite, the Stanford swimmer who brutally raped and assaulted Chanel Miller, though convicted, was given light sentence because of his "bright future", according to the judge.

replying to cratermoon as a English born nearly retired child of a now almost entirely American family, whose parents totalled 100 years of life and was taught to program and think by my uncle who would be 121 years old if alive and who worked intimately with with the American war command, I have no answer to your question other than that is the defining of the American Way to believe that the rules apply for all of us equally. The definition of 20th century British nature is to be the inbred product of generations of ancestors who never doubted the rules for the privileged are not even comparable to those for the populace.

I am too old for reconsidering the possibilities of a investment linked naturalisation process, but the development in American political culture since 2016 has convinced me that I would be committed to doing everything possible to reverse recent real and far more damaging perceived decay of moral and judicial common citizenry in the USA. The rest of the world doesn't know how terrible this is for everyone.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem seems to be though, that while the company may have tools to detect abuse, if they're choosing selectively when to enforce things it defeats the entire point Edit: downvotes from shills

That wasn’t my experience over several years. Whenever we found a new vector of abuse or detected systems misfiring we would take it seriously.

are you from the UK or india?

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#264
"Turns out managing communication for nearly the entire human race is hard! And requires a lot of people"

Yeah, no shit! You say that like Facebook didn't completely strong-arm their way into wanting to become the sole communication provider for the entire world. They struck deals and started entire projects making sure telcos in emerging markets would only get priority to Facebook, and Wikipedia, and basically no other competitors. They tried to convince the Indian government to make access to Facebook 100% free of charge until backlashed pushed them out.

If they didn't want to become the mediator of all human communication, that's fine, they can stop at any time. But they themselves chose to put themselves here as the messenger, growth-at-all-costs style, and that means they get to deal with the consequences. It's not like they stumbled into this problem by accident.

I can't feel pity for a company that wanted world domination, achieved it, and is now stuck with the issues. Turns out when you're the communication provider for 3 billion users, you get the problems of your 3 billion users! You can't say they didn't know that going in...

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It got replaced by social media

It did, but did it ever _have_ to be?

Nothing ever _has_ to happen; that implies intent in markets.

Efficiencies and user experience are better for more users on social media than email, despite it's obvious flaws.

Did regional steel mills _have_ to replace local blacksmiths? No, but they did.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#266

> In a written statement, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said criticism of XCheck was fair, but added that the system “was designed for an important reason: to create an additional step so we can accurately enforce policies on content that could require more understanding.” Would be great if us plebs could get the privilege of accurately enforced policies.

This kind of makes sense. For every high profile person posting an ML-flagged “Napalm Girl” in the context of discussion around the Vietnam war, there’s thousands of instances of real child porn.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#267
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anyone walking around that actually believes that rules and laws apply to the elite? Some seem to think that the reason this is excused is because (in the US at least) every poor schmuck seem to think they they will be rich and powerful someday and get to partake. I've never found that very credible, but smarter people than me seem to think so.

I often debate this with HNers, so yes, there are quite a few that believe the world is perfectly fair, more so in “democratic” countries.

Yeah I wonder why this is. Perhaps misplaced idealism of human nature and authority. The Judge, CEO, or the Journalist despite their lofty titles are human too and can be influenced by others. They also are not immune to their own personal desires and biases as well.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven’t really touched on the main problem discussed in the article, which is that to Facebook, there are special users - mainly celebrities and politicians - who get to play by different rules than the rest of us. Social media was supposed to help level the playing field of society, not exacerbate its inequalities.

I did touch on that problem. Like I pointed out Zuckerberg can’t log in on new devices anymore. That’s because of the thousands of attempts per second to log into his account. Those attempts happen because he’s a celebrity. His experience is objectively different because of who he is. It’s the same with Neymar. How many times do you think his profile is reported for any number of violations by people who don’t like h…

>If you have an idea for a better way, you should share it.

I'm certain that the other poster won't present some kind of practical outline because part-way through the brainstorming they will realize they are designing a "Social Credit Score" and become too frustrated to continue.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concede that some accounts probably deserve that specific type of protection. However, it doesn’t explain the other kinds of protections these people have, including exemption from content-based rules. Those are the issues of real concern.

The fact that the content couldn’t be taken down was a bug. I feel like you, the author and most critics of Big Tech discount the possibility of bugs existing.

But facebook comes across as unwilling and uninterested to fix the bugs in cases like these. Sometimes, even, the bugs themselves seem to surface resulting from fundamentally misstructuring the problem.

Re: Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules

#270

Huh, never thought I’d see XCheck in a news article. I used to work at Facebook and spotted abuse of this system by bad actors and partly fixed it. It’s still not perfect but it’s better than it used to be. I think I might have agreed with the author of this article before working in Integrity for a few years. But with time I learned that any system that’s meant to work for millions of users will have some edge cases…

I disagree.

Let's take your example of Mark Z.

What makes you think that this is unique case? What about people that suddenly come to fame, like viral video subjects?

A simple solution is to disallow logging in from new devices and the attempt being silently dropped so you are not bothered, unless you do some magic like generate one time key to complete the procedure on the new device.

I could think of a lot of people that would find it useful.

Or allow setting up 2FA token (other than mobile) correctly.

Instead what FB does is make it impossible to secure your account because they insist whatever you want you should always be able to recover your password with your phone number.

Years ago when I was still using it (I had reason) I tried to secure it with my Yubico. Unfortunately, it wasn't possible to configure FB to not allow you to log in on a new device without the key.

I understand how the discussion probably went: "Let's make it so that we can score some marketing points but let's not really make it requirement because we will be flooded with requests from people who do not understand they will never be able to log in if they loose the token."

But that's exactly what I want. I have a small fleet of these so it is not possible for me to loose them all but unfortunately most sites that purport to allowing 2FA can't do it well because they either don't allow configuring multiple tokens or if they do, they don't allow really lock your account so it is not possible to log in the next time without the token.

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