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Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#91

Post by slededit »

bduerst wrote: post #24
gojomo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

John Stuart Mill had higher criteria than mere harm. The words spoken in the French revolution lead directly to the deaths of nobility. The fact they lead directly to the harming of individuals did not mean they should not have been spoken. The words spoken at a trial may directly lead to the imprisonment of the accused, should those words too not be spoken due to the harm they cause the accused?

The classical line has been at incitement. It understands that humans are prone to irrationality in the heat of anger. But outside of that it is understood that some harm may be necessary for justice or other ideals to be served. Speech is the mechanism we use to weigh the costs of our actions.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#92

Post by zakum1 »

Noble aspirations (including those of the founding fathers of the US) that rational dialogue is the answer and not censorship need to be reinterpreted in a Facebook-world where dialogue is largely impossible. It demands a new citizenship, which I believe requires us to eschew platforms like Facebook, not because we want to turn back the clock, but because by their nature they are incapable of supporting true social dialogue. It isn’t a question of censorship, it is a personal question of ethical standards.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#93

Post by AndrewKemendo »

toofy wrote: post #84
assblaster wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words can not be violent. If you think one person being offended means speakers must be silenced, then you're on a dangerous pathway to fascism.

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

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#94

Post by jjtheblunt »

chrisseaton wrote: post #89
jmspring wrote: post #5

Having a bunch of likely millenial aged individuals with limited life experience based in Menlo Park to have a say in discourse that crosses so many boundaries? What could possibly go wrong?

> Having a bunch of likely millenial aged individuals with limited life experience A millennial is going to be around 30. They're not children. In fact they likely have children of their own.

Not there they don't.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#95

Post by colordrops »

bduerst wrote: post #24
gojomo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

"harm" is a pretty vague word, and the supreme court has laid down a very narrow definition of it with regards to speech.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#96

Post by gojomo »

bduerst wrote: post #75
gojomo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These platforms also censor private person-to-person messaging, between people who don't complain about the content. That's willing-speaker-to-willing-listener, and being censored. And, rather than trying to square-the-circle of global speech standards enforced by crude algorithms and rushed, underinformed low-wage moderators, they could make the remedy for unwanted speech simply unsubscribing/unfriending the source.…

They do censor private messaging, but usually because it's used in targeted harassment of individuals. FB and others could also do as you said - make quarantine zones for specific prejudicial groups and their ideologies. Except time and again these groups have proven they're not wanting to stay in their own special self-moderated zones but are actively looking to broadcast. There are businesses built upon these preju…

No, they mostly block specific content, and often because they don't approve of the content by policy – not because the receiver has objected:

https://www.wired.com/2010/11/facebook-link-blocking/

https://444.hu/2016/11/14/facebook-is-reading-your-private-m...

(The intended receiver can be frustrated or confused that they couldn't receive the message their friend wanted to send.)

And as you typically have to opt-in to messaging with someone new, they could wait for complaints rather than have content-based prior restraint. And, react to specific abuse with post-action blocking of the harasser, or quarantining-the-harasser as someone who'd need extra explicit acceptance before their messages are delivered.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#97

Post by nradov »

beatpanda wrote: post #50
jmspring wrote: post #5

Having a bunch of likely millenial aged individuals with limited life experience based in Menlo Park to have a say in discourse that crosses so many boundaries? What could possibly go wrong?

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.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#98

Post by nradov »

quanticle wrote: post #25
40acres wrote: post #22

I commend Facebook for allocating more resources to enforce its community standards, what's the point in outlining standards if there is no enforcement? I'm not surprised that the initial implementation has had some rough patches. For this effort to be successful Facebook and other platforms are going to have to heavily invest in building relationships with cultural experts and stakeholders in hundreds of different c…

The problem is that nothing that Facebook does will actually solve the problem. The solution that will actually solve the problem, having different social networks, with different community standards for each, is antithetical to Facebook's existence. Facebook will continue to make more PowerPoint presentations and hire more outsourced content moderators in a desperate attempt to make the unworkable work... or at leas…

Why is that a problem that needs to be solved?

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#99

Post by hyperdunc »

mactyler wrote: post #29
makosdv wrote: post #8

The thing that troubles me the most is the hubris of Facebook to think that they can even attempt to define and enforce speech codes. It is their site, so they can do what they want, but I can also do what I want and not use it. Given Facebook's massive drop in stock price this year, it seems like their investors think Facebook is following the wrong path as well.

“...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?

Facebook thinks it can push its own moral standards for speech on users while at the same time repeatedly compromising the privacy and data of users.

And Facebook does this without a hint of recognition that such imposition will be (and already is) being used as a political weapon against dissident voices.

That's hubris.

Re: Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech

#100

Post by qaq »

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…

The problem is the system is being gamed heavily. Russian troll factory was very effectively banning Ukrainians speaking out against Russian agression by mass flagging posts on FB and the fact that the moderators for the region were/are mostly russians was not helping either.
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