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Facebook to add 3k people to community operations team to improve moderation

159 points by tinodotim 9y ago

zepto 9y ago
Does anyone else think it is dangerously Orwellian to describe speech as people 'hurting themselves and others'? We seem to have a serious problem resulting from people living in bubbles of information sources that only confirm their own viewpoint. How can the solution to that problem be to have a single corporation design the bubble for everyone? (Note: I know he's taking about actual videos of violence taking place. However my point is that violence is already happening, and hiding that from public view is 'out of sight, out of mind')
- artursapek 9y ago
  Nobody's forcing you to have a Facebook account, or participate in it. It's not "for everyone".
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - apostacy 9y ago
    Unfortunately, it kind of is becoming that way. Facebook is becoming a de-facto public utility. The phone and telegraph companies started out as "optional" services. If you didn't like the telegraph company arbitrarily blocking journalists that criticized them, you were free to not use telegraphs. Facebook is being tied to credit worthiness, and job applications, whether we like it or not. And in some parts of the developing world, it is more important than a phone number. It is recognized as being so vital, that providing Facebook access is subsidized. We can no longer pretend that Facebook is some sort of toy, and dismiss criticism by saying that if you don't like it you shouldn't use it.
    - artursapek 9y ago
      > Facebook is being tied to credit worthiness, and job applications, whether we like it or not. Where, how? I've never heard of someone needing a Facebook account for credit and any employer asking for your Facebook profile is a huge red flag.
      - apostacy 9y ago
        > Where, how? I've never heard of someone needing a Facebook account for credit and any employer asking for your Facebook profile is a huge red flag. Here[1]. Saying "wasted" as a status update can affect a credit score. And even if it isn't disclosed, employers, and other entities, may use your Facebook activity. This is a totally valid issue. So, yes, Facebook does matter, whether you like it to or not. It isn't just a toy, and you can't just stop using it, without it potentially harming you. I think it's totally unfair, but people now have to consider their online presence when hunting for a job. And they don't have to ask for your Facebook account specifically. Companies like ru4.com can tie your financial identity to your social media identity[2]. Just like how even though you didn't submit anything to the 3 credit bureau, they will find data for you, it is also becoming true with social media. I can't log into chase.com without allowing scripts from ru4.com. Luckily, I use a sandboxed Firefox profile, that has never touched Facebook. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/aug/28/social-media-facebook-credit-score-banks https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog... [2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/05/02/1521239/even-the-ad-industry-doesnt-know-whos-tracking-you https://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/05/02/1521239/even-the-ad-...
- Tharkun 9y ago
  Walled gardens are awful things in my book.
- tommynicholas 9y ago
  He may be referring to speech in part, but he's also referring to people killing themselves and others on camera on Facebook. I think that's what has triggered this.
  - panzer_wyrm 9y ago
    Like the videos that sparked Black Lives Matter and United? Are you sure you want them silenced? And which hurt and kill is sharing worthy? Any rule that limits speech can be twisted into censorship of worthy causes. And the restrictions on speech always hurt the weaker sides. (not talking about first amendment which is about who has the right to limit it and in what conditions, just the effects of said limitations)
- schnable 9y ago
  Pretty sure he is talking about physical violence.
- efaref 9y ago
  I thought he was referring to situations like the person who killed his daughter on Facebook Live[1]. [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thai-man-films-hanging-killing-baby-daughter-facebook-live-video-24-hours-phuket-wife-wuttisan-a7703071.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thai-man-films-...
- LeeHwang 9y ago
  Its unclear to me as well. I've been hearing speech can be violence from my younger coworkers.
  - hyperdunc 9y ago
    Your younger coworkers are wrong. By definition, violence is physical. There is, however, a push within educational institutions to redefine terms like "violence" as part of a wider "social justice" programme. The crux of it is that offending someone else is a very bad thing to do, regardless of whether it's intentional or your words are true.
    - Tenhundfeld 9y ago
      Is it true that violence is physical, by definition? It is one definition, but there are other more abstract definitions that mean "an unjust exertion of force or power", "rough or immoderate vehemence, as of feeling or language", "damage through distortion", etc. For example, the phrase "violent scolding" is stuck in my mind from a fairy tale I read as a child, and indeed, if you search Google Books for that phrase, you'll see many examples dating back to at least the 1800s, examples that do not mean physical violence. So, I don't think it's some new redefinition of violence to use it more abstractly. I think of it similar to the term abuse. Sure, abuse often means a physical act, but it often means verbal/emotional acts.
      - apostacy 9y ago
        Maybe we need a word that is more powerful than harassment, that isn't physical violence. I've heard people say things like "virtual rape". I think it's problematic to say that something that occurs in text can compare to having your body physically violated.
      - ptaipale 9y ago
        In "violent scolding", the violent is a figure of speech. It's not real violence. Like a particularly showy car could be colored "violently red". Still, it's not violence that anyone should step in to stop.
- davexunit 9y ago
  It's a delicate balance, but Facebook can't even remove overtly racist/sexist/etc. posts/accounts with any reliability right now.
whatnotests 9y ago
How is this different than astroturfing?
- Burritamos 9y ago
  It doesn't seem to fit the definition of astroturfing. [1] >Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by a grassroots participant(s). Are they concealing the source of the messages? It seems like they are just adding more people who have the authority to remove content that violates the TOS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
- blowski 9y ago
  Depends what they remove, and how they remove it.
- blauditore 9y ago
  Astroturfing is building opinions by faking or artificially mis-weighting some opinions, like using fake accounts on social networks to vote and contribute with a particular sentiment, making it look like more people feel that way than actually do. What Facebook does is to allow and disallow certain types of content based on public guidelines. Even if those rules are nonsense, unfair or politically motivated, it's at least not done secretly unlike real astroturfing.
malandrew 9y ago
Since social media use itself contributes to lower self image and depression, how much are they going to look into their own product as contributing to a problem getting worse for an individual. It would seem that work being done to drive engagement is most problematic for those at risk.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- xatan_dank 9y ago
  Probably not at all. Facebook's collective desire for higher engagement and profit will likely outweigh any concern for individual or collective users.
  - zackmorris 9y ago
    I hear what you're saying, but from a slightly different angle. I wonder if the profit motive creates a conflict of interest the same way that corporate news tends towards bias to satisfy advertisers. I am thinking of exiting Facebook for at least a couple of months because my posts/shares (which tend to have a political slant or at least broader perspective to them) don't seem to get any reaction or be shared anymore. Neither do music, alternative culture, or sustainability/environmental posts. If Facebook is unable to give people the dignity to fail at debating one another and be challenged by new ideas, then that may not be compatible with democracy. I hope they fix whatever is going on with their feed algorithm, and maybe 3000 people training AIs will help, but I wonder if the problem isn't technology.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Your premise is overbroad. Some kinds of social media use patterns can certainly have such a result. For others it's a great help. I had catastrophic problems with self image and depression long before there was such a thing as the public internet and my online social networks are absolutely essential to my health and wellbeing.
  - 9y ago
phoenixProgram 9y ago
this jew needs to be sent to the gas chamber getting sick of him
gm-conspiracy 9y ago
Are they hiring pre-cogs from Mars?
bluetwo 9y ago
Was just talking last week that the last thing any of these large internet companies wants to do is hire a large room filled with low paid workers to do anything, especially here in the US. If they are making this move they must see some large liability looming on the horizon.
- lallysingh 9y ago
  Politically that's a great idea. Put those large rooms in the right states and you can get favorable bills passed.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    and some tax breaks I bet
- JMCQ87 9y ago
  They don't want politics to get active to interfere with their business.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  I didn't understand the "especially here in the US" part of your comment. Can you explain?
  - walshemj 9y ago
    its not like low paid and probably part time workers have many employment rights in the USA
    - excalibur 9y ago
      The minimum wage itself is a barrier here, along with overtime regulations and a host of other things designed to prevent employer abuse.
      - walshemj 9y ago
kensai 9y ago
3000 persons on top of the current 4500 is a big addition. If all these persons are dedicated to the prompt elaboration of complains and violations of TOS, it might indeed make the difference. I don't ask if it is economically viable, I guess he knows what he is doing. Facebook is not losing money anytime soon.
- aristus 9y ago
  He is keenly aware (cf the privacy bugs fiascos of mid 2010) that trust in the system is hard to build up and easy to lose. It takes enormous sincere and public effort to pull out of loss-of-trust spirals.
- excalibur 9y ago
  You can count on the positions being low-paid in developing countries. 12 hours a day at $1 an hour maybe.
  - vadym909 9y ago
    The current ones are in Palo Alto and pay $17-20/hr. They are staffed by vendors Accenture/Collabera - obviously with very few benefits compared to facebook. http://apps.collabera.com/jobs/57642-Content-Review-Analyst--jobs-Palo%20Alto-CA http://apps.collabera.com/jobs/57642-Content-Review-Analyst-...
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Isn't there a lot of cultural and language nuance in determining what's objectionable though? I can't see that working out well.
  - gtirloni 9y ago
    The majority of them should be from developing countries, since that's where most of FB users are.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      Oh great, like I want my feed curated by someone from the other side of the world with radically different sensibilities. What could possibly go wrong?
user5994461 9y ago
What is "CO"?
- stefantalpalaru 9y ago
  > What is "CO"? Community Operations
- stingraycharles 9y ago
  Community Operations, it's mentioned in the article.
stefantalpalaru 9y ago
> removing things we don't allow on Facebook like hate speech or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Censorship
andrewclunn 9y ago
Not on Facebook for just over 2 years now. No regrets. Web forums and sites with individual focuses are such better communities in general.
problems 9y ago
This is sort of ridiculous, they can't seriously be expected to be held responsible for every video served on their platform. Nor should there be anything inherently worse about live-streaming of violence than that violence occurring in the first place. I can only see this as a good thing if they manage to catch people before the act and intervene. Is this a primary goal of the program?
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Yeah, random acts of violence getting exposure as they're live-streamed on Facebook has been interesting, to say the least. Without the criminal's willful publication of their act, the crimes may have gone unsolved and ignored for a very long time. I'm not sure that we really need to stop people from publishing videos of themselves executing old men at random. It certainly seems to lead to a speedy resolution and really heightens the impact over the impersonal "Another shooting today..." on the evening news. It's virtually the same as walking yourself into the police station, with the added bonus that the whole country now hates you and is looking for you.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Without an audience the crimes might never have happened in the first place.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      that seems highly unlikely to me, given the abundant history of covert violence. Obviously it's hard to assess for individual cases but across a distribution people seem to avoid notoriety. Perhaps we can make inferences by parallel; trolls engage in obnoxious behavior when granted anonymity or insulation from direct consequences. Is it likely that absent an audience for their trolling, they would be nice all the time? Seems unlikely, and the historical record suggests that cruelty, criminality, and impunity are a common combination.
    - cookiecaper 9y ago
      I don't know, these types of crimes have happened for a long time sans audience. Perhaps some are motivated by the audience, but there are definitely some who would've committed the crime anyway, and their broadcast of their criminal activity only speeds up their arrest. I can see that politicians and businesspeople would not like this development, because it makes a) their cities seem more violent, since we can actually see someone get killed in it; b) their businesses seem less positive and soft and fluffy, since we can actually see someone get killed on it. However, I don't see why those concerns should override the public safety benefit of allowing criminals to broadcast their crimes to thousands of witnesses and simultaneously preserving an indisputable copy of the evidence for posterity. Steve Stevens was caught only because the exposure from his broadcast allowed him to be recognized by a McDonald's clerk hundreds of miles away from the crime scene. Without his broadcast, assuming the execution would've occurred, it would've just been another routine story that wouldn't have made it past the local news. There would probably have to be some real research conducted to find out if this is a net loss by spurring new crime or a net win by allowing us to easily capture the most oblivious criminals (who are not necessarily least dangerous).
avar 9y ago
I predict that Facebook's current PR problem related to this is going to be replaced by a swatting problem before long. I.e. someone reports someone on Live as suicidal, SWAT/police show up, shoot their dog etc, public outrage against Facebook ensues.
blauditore 9y ago
I wonder if this will reduce the problem of fake accounts. I regularly get such friend requests, and it starts to get annoying. Also, those seriously affect the attractiveness of ad campains. I dipped my toes into it once, but it looks like a large percentage of gained "users" are just fake ones...
- tyingq 9y ago
  My wife made an account for our dog, with an appropriate headshot as the profile photo, about 9 years ago. He posts regularly, and we tag him in photos. My guess is that they only block fake accounts if they are manually reported by someone.
  - Flammy 9y ago
    You would think this, but as a counter example Xbox (back in the 360 days) had a "report gamertag as offensive" (aka offensive username). Users could pay $ to change their gamertag (~$10). It was fairly common to see people publically asking "please report my name as offensive" as it was known that if you got enough reports, you would be "forced" to change your name for free. People who wanted to change their name anyway would solicit reports against themselves to avoid a $10 fee. Clearly no human was reviewing these reports... and that was a paid service!
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    That's true. I know a lot of people with a lot of fake accounts for entirely legitimate reasons, as well as some trolls who abuse the ease with which they can be created. A good number of people in the first group maintain multiple sock puppets because their subject to frequent attacks by trolls who report accounts to under false pretences, knowing that FB's response is as likely to be wrong as right. Really, what's needed is a decentralized approach where no central authority exists, only mutual reinforcements. I have found a marvellous solution for the next generation of social and informational networking but alas this comment field is too small to contain it.
flexie 9y ago
In parts of Eastern Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa, Facebook could hire 3,000 college educated employees for less than $3M monthly, including taxes. So while this from a human point of view is a very decent thing to do, it's not necessarily as costly as one might think, especially not when considering the possible liability or regulatory backlash they may run into if they do nothing and Facebook becomes the place for suicides and violence. Now, if they add all those jobs in SF, it's another thing entirely.
mmahemoff 9y ago
Dear mods, I enjoy TLAs as much as the next geek, but can we please change CO to Community Operations? edit - that was quick, thanks!
blfr 9y ago
What's weird is that Facebook cannot rely on their users to report blatantly criminal acts witnessed by thousands of people. It probably says more about Facebook users than the platform and makes me doubt that doubling this or that team size can make a meaningful difference. Especially with this approach of manual monitoring which will probably just result in more questionable deletions Facebook is already known for.
- Burritamos 9y ago
  >What's weird is that Facebook cannot rely on their users to report blatantly criminal acts witnessed by thousands of people...and makes me doubt that doubling this or that team size can make a meaningful difference. Then wouldn't it make sense to add more people whose job specifically is to report criminal acts instead of relying on the users to do it?
  - blfr 9y ago
    Are the reviewers going to browse random content? Somewhat possible with trend detection (make a human look at quickly rising stuff) but very wasteful since most of that will be either benign or incomprehensible to the outsider. Will they watch private streams and read private messages? That sounds like a privacy disaster even Facebook would prefer to avoid. Which leaves them with reports from users. Basically, reviewing millions of "hate speech" reports and either effectively instituting a very strict speech code or ignoring vast majority of them leading to further complaints.
    - ksk 9y ago
      Maybe I'm missing something but I don't quite see the point of rebutting issues you raise through your own speculation.
- VLM 9y ago
  "report blatantly criminal acts" The marketing campaign will be against murderers, the implementation will be against people who voted for Trump.
fortyniners 9y ago
Machine Learning and AI are dropping the ball here?
zoul 9y ago
Slashdot’s moderation and meta-moderation system (https://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml https://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml) always comes to mind. Could something like that work for Facebook self-moderation?
- fsiefken 9y ago
  yes, i always think of this. Why is this system not in use at Reddit or HN? Is it patented? I would pay 1000 euro's if they could implement it for my facebook group, with 2000 members it takes an hour a day which would halved with such as system, 14 hours a month.
  - Crespyl 9y ago
    Even without the meta-moderation aspect, just having multiple dimensions for evaluating any given post is so useful and seemingly unique. "Upvote/Downvote" is not nearly as useful for ranking as the range of, say "+1 Funny, +1 Insightful, +1 Agree, -1 Disagree, -1 Spam, -1 Flamebait/Troll" (I've forgotten exactly what set /. uses)
genkaos 9y ago
Recomended minidoc "Field of Vision - The Moderators" https://vimeo.com/213152344 https://vimeo.com/213152344
chinathrow 9y ago
We laughed when China added x thousands to their great firewall content moderation team.
losteverything 9y ago
Mr zuckerberg's involvement signals it is a huge problem, one unable to spin away.. People always figure out a way around the latest attempt to control - and these measures will be overcome by bad intenders. So if FB admits it has a community safety and fake news problem - by hiring 3000 additional enforcement agents, why would one stay with FB if there is an alternative. Which there isn't. I would like a FB lite. Photo sharing and comments and discovery of old friends. No news. No menu of features. I wish there could be an alternative. ("Its just like. fB but without the news and crap)
- m3ta 9y ago
  I'm not quite sure I follow. I only see news posted by my friends and the pages I follow. What would FB lite look like?
- xatan_dank 9y ago
  I think some alternatives do exist, but I do not believe an near exact clone of Facebook with less of the problems of Facebook exists. Maybe it's just infeasible to properly monitor such a massive social network? I don't know for sure, but I left Facebook long ago and have not regretted it at all.
- macrael 9y ago
  Try Instagram!
unklefolk 9y ago
I suspect the long term plan is to create a training dataset labelled by the 3000 people and, when they have sufficient training data, let machine learning / AI take over.
- partisan 9y ago
  Do things that don't scale... Until you can scale. I think you are absolutely correct on this point.
- itburnslikeice 9y ago
  I assumed this too, those datasets would worth too many $$$
- hetspookjee 9y ago
  Imagine the horror that awaits the 3000.
- tyingq 9y ago
  100% automated ML doing this well seems far off to me. Google's ML for rich snippets thinks a quarter is worth 50 cents. http://imgur.com/1nNreR2 http://imgur.com/1nNreR2 Really parsing language for meaning is hard. Sentiment analysis, which seems simpler than this problem, still has relatively poor accuracy. I could see it perhaps thinning out how much has to be done manually, but I don't see it removing that need entirely.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    That information is so bad for such an easy question, I can only wonder if google is more interested in using their userbase as a training ground than actually providing a useful service.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      It's not an outlier either. I can find about 1 obviously bad answer a minute just randomly typing fact type questions that pop into my head.
davexunit 9y ago
Not optimistic but hopefully things will improve. As of now Facebook can't even remove an account for a hate blog local to my area.
zoew 9y ago
Hopefully things will improve and we will see better things in our feed
deegles 9y ago
I wonder if Facebook made much money on the ads displayed alongside this type of content (or perhaps pre- or mid- roll ads). Do they have a responsibility to treat this income differently?
avivo 9y ago
They already had 4500 people. And use of the moderated features is likely still growing rapidly. It's great that Facebook is increasing it's moderation numbers, but it's unclear if this was already planned and simply used (successfully) as a PR response to recent events.
hartator 9y ago
I wonder if they will push some politic agenda or if they will manage to stay neutral. Even if I have own opinions on the subject, I think the whole "fake news" thingy seems to politicaly motivated. Doesn't mean they are wrong by doing this, but it's hard to be claiming they are still somehow neutral.
- loceng 9y ago
  All of their actions should be transparent and a forum exist for people to discuss those actions and specific moderators (they can and should likely have a pseudonym associated with their actions); a little more difficult for moderation that aren't published as public.
- yincrash 9y ago
  Are you saying that news of fake news is fake news?
- ma2rten 9y ago
  As long as they have clear and fair guidelines, I don't see an issue.
  - ProAm 9y ago
    Have you seen the moderators on reddit or stack overflow?
    - Moter8 9y ago
      Moderators on reddit have 1) full control of their subreddit and only have a few basic guidelines/rules to follow but basically they can do/ban what/who they want 2) are not paid.
      - MisterBastahrd 9y ago
        This is correct. I started r/cubancigars for example. It's mine. I can kick every single moderator off the team, shut the sub down, or change the rules without care. I don't, but I can, and nobody would stop me.
tiatia 9y ago
"I wonder if they will push some politic agenda or if they will manage to stay neutral." Nah. They will be neutral. But facebook is stupid. They should let somebody else pay for it. Like Facebook Germany uses money donated by Soros to make sure everything is in line with the outstanding current German government. http://soros.news/2017-02-10-facebook-fact-checker-censorship-team-funded-by-george-soros-aim-is-to-silence-real-facts.html http://soros.news/2017-02-10-facebook-fact-checker-censorshi... Correctiv, the German "fact checking" organization, just exposed a female politician who has worked as a prostitute before. Enjoy!
- hooph00p 9y ago
  How does this relate to the discussion?
  - tiatia 9y ago
    1. That this "moderation" is probably not a very good thing 2. In other countries are already highly intransparent and opaque organizations like "correctiv" involved in these "fact checking" and "counter news" operations. https://correctiv.org/en/ https://correctiv.org/en/ 3. To make things worse, people (like Soros) donate money to these organizations that have their own agenda. (not to mention the boulevard style exposure of this politician who is unfortunately form the wrong political party)
- notadoc 9y ago
  Wow "soros.news" sounds like a really legitimate news source! Would you say they on par with WSJ and Financial Times? Maybe even better?
  - tiatia 9y ago
    Agreed. But I took the first English news site that showed up. There are enough others.
- sctb 9y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14256973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14256973 and marked it off-topic.
sebow 9y ago
dude censorship lmao
GCA10 9y ago
Can't help but think of Deming's famous advice on how to deal with quality issues: "Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place." If Mark Zuckerberg and his product teams could travel back in time a decade or so, would they still have built everything the way they did?
- mcrad 9y ago
  Market share was likely always more important than quality. Besides, do app developers even understand statistical quality control? I tend to think this kind of software grew up on a very black/white, functional/broken, bug trackers, etc., a very narrow view on quality as a concept.
olivermarks 9y ago
https://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/tech-confessional-the-googler-who-looks-at-the-wo?utm_term=.voVYAdXJ7#.fjplEpV02 https://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/tech-confessional-the-google... The horrible reality of trying to keep offensive materials from appearing online. 1.86 billion FB active users divided by 3000 thought police equals 620k accounts per clean up team operative...
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  Buried somewhere deep inside their 1,000 page employment agreement is probably something along the lines of "you willingly agree to subject yourself to this obvious psychological torture and we are in no way responsible for the mental problems which will inevitably result from your job duties."
paradite 9y ago
Western social media seems to be one step behind the Chinese counterparts in terms of moderation strategies. Living streaming scene in China has already went through this entire discussion and various forms of implementations on moderations of offensive and inappropriate contents sometime last year when it was rapidly growing. Again with government intervention, it is so much faster and easier to enforce standards of moderations for private companies to follow.
- burkaman 9y ago
  I don't think government censorship is a step ahead or behind, it's more like a completely different path.
  - paradite 9y ago
    Well it really depends on how you define the "appropriate scope of moderation". If you think controversial topics related to politics should not be subjected to moderation, then of course government censorship is not good.
    - burkaman 9y ago
      I'm not saying it's good or bad, just that "a step ahead" doesn't really make sense to me. The path Facebook is heading down does not lead to government censorship, and the path American society is heading down doesn't either. That would require a huge shift in public opinion and philosophy.
- kyledrake 9y ago
  > Western social media seems to be one step behind the Chinese counterparts in terms of moderation strategies. I totally agree. We have the NSA so the total information awareness network is there, but we've really fallen behind China on using it to address suicide intervention.
  - paradite 9y ago
    I understand your sarcasm but I believe you have misunderstood my point. I'm not talking about secret operations, but rather some transparent guidelines or laws issued by the government (legislative branch in the case of US? I'm not sure.) that are enforceable by private entities like Facebook.
OedipusRex 9y ago
The issue with work like this is it is very distressing. Having to look at videos and pictures of horrific acts (suicides, child porn, etc) is not a pleasant job. Many of those who do this in law enforcement (mainly child porn) have high rates of PTSD and other issues.
asdfGUYasdfn 9y ago
You mean, Progressive Liberal Content Sponsoring / Promotion.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
narrator 9y ago
China has 30,000 people who work full time moderating the Internet: http://certmag.com/the-great-firewall-how-china-polices-internet-traffic/ http://certmag.com/the-great-firewall-how-china-polices-inte...
socrates1998 9y ago
Long overdue. I sort of get these online social media companies skimping on moderation while they are growing and don't have cash. Facebook is rolling in cash and this has clearly hurt their brand. Hiring moderators to take out the worse of Facebook could help a lot to dealing with the utter bullshit that goes on. Reddit and Twitter have similar problems, they want to either farm out moderation to volunteer users (Reddit) or automate everything and only step in when the NY Times gets a hold of something (Twitter). Either way, their moderation leaves a lot to be desired. Reddit is particularly strange. I don't know how this could be true, but they claim that without the volunteer mods, they couldn't exist. Either they are lying or are just awful at running a business, neither would surprise me. Does anyone know if Reddit actually makes money? And if they do, how? Ads seem sparse and selling "gold" just doesn't seem like much.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Why doesn't Facebook give people a way to have input to their 'community standards'? Basically it's a black box that's presumably stuffed with lawyers, marketers, and some analytics people. I see zero evidence that there is any actual input from the people who use FB. It's essentially a dictatorship dressed in a costume of democracy, and I would far prefer it if the 'community standards' were called what they are, 'Rules of Mark's Club.' This is a sore point for me as an artist. It's tedious when posts are removed because they depict or seem to depict nudity and you have to go through and assure some anonymous and wholly unaccountable person that they're not. One of my friends teaches art history at UCLA and - surprise - he posts lots of fine art on his wall. He has to have 8 or 10 accounts because he is constantly getting temp banned for posting famous paintings of people with no clothes. It also bothers me on a more general level, eg it's fine if I take a picture of myself with my shirt off but if one of my female friends does the same thing she risks being restricted from posting or having her account terminated because her breasts are apparently a worse thing than extreme gory graphic violence that comes with a warning but is nevertheless acceptable to post. That's sexist bullshit that turns women into second class citizens. I utterly fail to understand how it's OK to share pictures of just about any violent subject matter, but any kind of nudity, sexual or not, is grounds for having your account terminated. Here's a list of some of the things I've seen on FB over the last year, some with an automatic clickthrough content warning (which is a good idea and mostly well implemented) and some not. As far as I'm aware none of these have resulted in account terminations for people who posted them: Beheadings (video, multiple examples); hanging; people being shot/have been shot; serial killers and their refrigerators stuffed with human meat; disembowelments; autopsy photos. In each of these cases I don't mean grimy thumbnails where you can sort of imagine what was going on, but photos and video of sufficient clarity to be used in a news broadcast if not for the disturbing nature of their subject matter. I'm leaving out other stuff that I found sufficiently disturbing that I prefer not to even describe it. I'm not into gore, beyond watching a few horror movies in a given year. But I'm pretty open with my friends list and allow people to join me to groups, so I'm exposed to a certain amount from trolls and of course there are episodes of violence in the real world that are newsworthy, and I prefer my news without censorship of any kind. You'll notice that I'm not calling for this stuff to be removed or banned from FB. I think the 'graphic content, are you sure?' warning strikes a sensible balance between protecting people's sensibilities and allowing free discussion and information. We live in a world that is often violent and I believe that concealing the ugliness of violence often allows it to proceed unchecked. It's also true that some people become obsessed with or celebrate violence, and that admitting it as cultural currency risks desensitization or normalization of violence. Those are tricky questions to which I do not believe any one person, firm, or society has a perfect answer, but given that the instinct of criminal persons and regimes is generally to conceal rather than reveal transgressions, exposure and condemnation is probably a more effective response than obscurity and censorship. After that unpleasant detour into the pits of human awfulness, I really want to hear from someone at Facebook: a) why it's OK to engage with the reality of people inflicting horrible violence on others, but it's not OK to let people engage with the reality of sexual or aesthetic expression, and b) why the 51% female majority of the population are subject to tighter restrictions than the male minority, and c) why the 'community standards' don't offer any formal mechanism for community input and decision-making. Think about it, Folks. A picture of a healthy naked body is grounds for account suspension or a ban, but it's totally OK to show that same body hacked to pieces? That's some grade A bullshit, and platitudes about how 'we try to reflect the prevailing standards of society' isn't going to cut it. Automation intensifies whatever process you choose to automate, and if you automate a standard whereby erotic desire and self-expression are constrained but extreme violence and interpersonal aggression are less constrained, guess which you'll end up with more of? Likewise if men are allowed freedoms that are systematically withheld from women, guess whose freedoms are going to be expanded and whose are going to be reduced? I demand answers on this. Facebook is one of the most powerful political entities on the planet and those who own it need to explain why, within Facebook, there is greater tolerance for violence than nudity or sexuality, and why one half of the population is subject to greater restrictions than the other half.
d1ffuz0r 9y ago
Censure is coming
6stringmerc 9y ago
I get the feeling the job itself might have some side-effects, if this article from quite a while ago has any relevance to the subject at hand: https://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/tech-confessional-the-googler-who-looks-at-the-wo https://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/tech-confessional-the-google...
devdoomari 9y ago
I don't expect much from this... I've reported countless spammy comments like "free ladies!" and "free $50 per click!" But FB replies are 100%: "...but our community deemed that comment to be ok with FB guidelines" FB should definitely see what Korean FB is like recently...

159 points by tinodotim 9y ago

Does anyone else think it is dangerously Orwellian to describe speech as people 'hurting themselves and others'? We seem to have a serious problem resulting from people living in bubbles of information sources that only confirm their own viewpoint. How can the solution to that problem be to have a single corporation design the bubble for everyone? (Note: I know he's taking about actual videos of violence taking place. However my point is that violence is already happening, and hiding that from public view is 'out of sight, out of mind')

artursapek 9y ago
Nobody's forcing you to have a Facebook account, or participate in it. It's not "for everyone".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- apostacy 9y ago
  Unfortunately, it kind of is becoming that way. Facebook is becoming a de-facto public utility. The phone and telegraph companies started out as "optional" services. If you didn't like the telegraph company arbitrarily blocking journalists that criticized them, you were free to not use telegraphs. Facebook is being tied to credit worthiness, and job applications, whether we like it or not. And in some parts of the developing world, it is more important than a phone number. It is recognized as being so vital, that providing Facebook access is subsidized. We can no longer pretend that Facebook is some sort of toy, and dismiss criticism by saying that if you don't like it you shouldn't use it.
  - artursapek 9y ago
    > Facebook is being tied to credit worthiness, and job applications, whether we like it or not. Where, how? I've never heard of someone needing a Facebook account for credit and any employer asking for your Facebook profile is a huge red flag.
    - apostacy 9y ago
      > Where, how? I've never heard of someone needing a Facebook account for credit and any employer asking for your Facebook profile is a huge red flag. Here[1]. Saying "wasted" as a status update can affect a credit score. And even if it isn't disclosed, employers, and other entities, may use your Facebook activity. This is a totally valid issue. So, yes, Facebook does matter, whether you like it to or not. It isn't just a toy, and you can't just stop using it, without it potentially harming you. I think it's totally unfair, but people now have to consider their online presence when hunting for a job. And they don't have to ask for your Facebook account specifically. Companies like ru4.com can tie your financial identity to your social media identity[2]. Just like how even though you didn't submit anything to the 3 credit bureau, they will find data for you, it is also becoming true with social media. I can't log into chase.com without allowing scripts from ru4.com. Luckily, I use a sandboxed Firefox profile, that has never touched Facebook. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/aug/28/social-media-facebook-credit-score-banks https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog... [2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/05/02/1521239/even-the-ad-industry-doesnt-know-whos-tracking-you https://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/05/02/1521239/even-the-ad-...
Tharkun 9y ago
Walled gardens are awful things in my book.
tommynicholas 9y ago
He may be referring to speech in part, but he's also referring to people killing themselves and others on camera on Facebook. I think that's what has triggered this.
- panzer_wyrm 9y ago
  Like the videos that sparked Black Lives Matter and United? Are you sure you want them silenced? And which hurt and kill is sharing worthy? Any rule that limits speech can be twisted into censorship of worthy causes. And the restrictions on speech always hurt the weaker sides. (not talking about first amendment which is about who has the right to limit it and in what conditions, just the effects of said limitations)
schnable 9y ago
Pretty sure he is talking about physical violence.
efaref 9y ago
I thought he was referring to situations like the person who killed his daughter on Facebook Live[1]. [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thai-man-films-hanging-killing-baby-daughter-facebook-live-video-24-hours-phuket-wife-wuttisan-a7703071.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thai-man-films-...
LeeHwang 9y ago
Its unclear to me as well. I've been hearing speech can be violence from my younger coworkers.
- hyperdunc 9y ago
  Your younger coworkers are wrong. By definition, violence is physical. There is, however, a push within educational institutions to redefine terms like "violence" as part of a wider "social justice" programme. The crux of it is that offending someone else is a very bad thing to do, regardless of whether it's intentional or your words are true.
  - Tenhundfeld 9y ago
    Is it true that violence is physical, by definition? It is one definition, but there are other more abstract definitions that mean "an unjust exertion of force or power", "rough or immoderate vehemence, as of feeling or language", "damage through distortion", etc. For example, the phrase "violent scolding" is stuck in my mind from a fairy tale I read as a child, and indeed, if you search Google Books for that phrase, you'll see many examples dating back to at least the 1800s, examples that do not mean physical violence. So, I don't think it's some new redefinition of violence to use it more abstractly. I think of it similar to the term abuse. Sure, abuse often means a physical act, but it often means verbal/emotional acts.
    - apostacy 9y ago
      Maybe we need a word that is more powerful than harassment, that isn't physical violence. I've heard people say things like "virtual rape". I think it's problematic to say that something that occurs in text can compare to having your body physically violated.
    - ptaipale 9y ago
      In "violent scolding", the violent is a figure of speech. It's not real violence. Like a particularly showy car could be colored "violently red". Still, it's not violence that anyone should step in to stop.
davexunit 9y ago
It's a delicate balance, but Facebook can't even remove overtly racist/sexist/etc. posts/accounts with any reliability right now.

whatnotests 9y ago

How is this different than astroturfing?

Burritamos 9y ago
It doesn't seem to fit the definition of astroturfing. [1] >Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by a grassroots participant(s). Are they concealing the source of the messages? It seems like they are just adding more people who have the authority to remove content that violates the TOS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
blowski 9y ago
Depends what they remove, and how they remove it.
blauditore 9y ago
Astroturfing is building opinions by faking or artificially mis-weighting some opinions, like using fake accounts on social networks to vote and contribute with a particular sentiment, making it look like more people feel that way than actually do. What Facebook does is to allow and disallow certain types of content based on public guidelines. Even if those rules are nonsense, unfair or politically motivated, it's at least not done secretly unlike real astroturfing.

malandrew 9y ago

Since social media use itself contributes to lower self image and depression, how much are they going to look into their own product as contributing to a problem getting worse for an individual. It would seem that work being done to drive engagement is most problematic for those at risk.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
xatan_dank 9y ago
Probably not at all. Facebook's collective desire for higher engagement and profit will likely outweigh any concern for individual or collective users.
- zackmorris 9y ago
  I hear what you're saying, but from a slightly different angle. I wonder if the profit motive creates a conflict of interest the same way that corporate news tends towards bias to satisfy advertisers. I am thinking of exiting Facebook for at least a couple of months because my posts/shares (which tend to have a political slant or at least broader perspective to them) don't seem to get any reaction or be shared anymore. Neither do music, alternative culture, or sustainability/environmental posts. If Facebook is unable to give people the dignity to fail at debating one another and be challenged by new ideas, then that may not be compatible with democracy. I hope they fix whatever is going on with their feed algorithm, and maybe 3000 people training AIs will help, but I wonder if the problem isn't technology.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Your premise is overbroad. Some kinds of social media use patterns can certainly have such a result. For others it's a great help. I had catastrophic problems with self image and depression long before there was such a thing as the public internet and my online social networks are absolutely essential to my health and wellbeing.
- 9y ago

phoenixProgram 9y ago

this jew needs to be sent to the gas chamber getting sick of him

gm-conspiracy 9y ago

Are they hiring pre-cogs from Mars?

bluetwo 9y ago

Was just talking last week that the last thing any of these large internet companies wants to do is hire a large room filled with low paid workers to do anything, especially here in the US. If they are making this move they must see some large liability looming on the horizon.

lallysingh 9y ago
Politically that's a great idea. Put those large rooms in the right states and you can get favorable bills passed.
- walshemj 9y ago
  and some tax breaks I bet
JMCQ87 9y ago
They don't want politics to get active to interfere with their business.
bogomipz 9y ago
I didn't understand the "especially here in the US" part of your comment. Can you explain?
- walshemj 9y ago
  its not like low paid and probably part time workers have many employment rights in the USA
  - excalibur 9y ago
    The minimum wage itself is a barrier here, along with overtime regulations and a host of other things designed to prevent employer abuse.
    - walshemj 9y ago

kensai 9y ago

3000 persons on top of the current 4500 is a big addition. If all these persons are dedicated to the prompt elaboration of complains and violations of TOS, it might indeed make the difference. I don't ask if it is economically viable, I guess he knows what he is doing. Facebook is not losing money anytime soon.

aristus 9y ago
He is keenly aware (cf the privacy bugs fiascos of mid 2010) that trust in the system is hard to build up and easy to lose. It takes enormous sincere and public effort to pull out of loss-of-trust spirals.
excalibur 9y ago
You can count on the positions being low-paid in developing countries. 12 hours a day at $1 an hour maybe.
- vadym909 9y ago
  The current ones are in Palo Alto and pay $17-20/hr. They are staffed by vendors Accenture/Collabera - obviously with very few benefits compared to facebook. http://apps.collabera.com/jobs/57642-Content-Review-Analyst--jobs-Palo%20Alto-CA http://apps.collabera.com/jobs/57642-Content-Review-Analyst-...
- tyingq 9y ago
  Isn't there a lot of cultural and language nuance in determining what's objectionable though? I can't see that working out well.
- gtirloni 9y ago
  The majority of them should be from developing countries, since that's where most of FB users are.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Oh great, like I want my feed curated by someone from the other side of the world with radically different sensibilities. What could possibly go wrong?

user5994461 9y ago

What is "CO"?

stefantalpalaru 9y ago
> What is "CO"? Community Operations
stingraycharles 9y ago
Community Operations, it's mentioned in the article.

stefantalpalaru 9y ago

> removing things we don't allow on Facebook like hate speech or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Censorship

andrewclunn 9y ago

Not on Facebook for just over 2 years now. No regrets. Web forums and sites with individual focuses are such better communities in general.

problems 9y ago

This is sort of ridiculous, they can't seriously be expected to be held responsible for every video served on their platform. Nor should there be anything inherently worse about live-streaming of violence than that violence occurring in the first place. I can only see this as a good thing if they manage to catch people before the act and intervene. Is this a primary goal of the program?

cookiecaper 9y ago
Yeah, random acts of violence getting exposure as they're live-streamed on Facebook has been interesting, to say the least. Without the criminal's willful publication of their act, the crimes may have gone unsolved and ignored for a very long time. I'm not sure that we really need to stop people from publishing videos of themselves executing old men at random. It certainly seems to lead to a speedy resolution and really heightens the impact over the impersonal "Another shooting today..." on the evening news. It's virtually the same as walking yourself into the police station, with the added bonus that the whole country now hates you and is looking for you.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Without an audience the crimes might never have happened in the first place.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    that seems highly unlikely to me, given the abundant history of covert violence. Obviously it's hard to assess for individual cases but across a distribution people seem to avoid notoriety. Perhaps we can make inferences by parallel; trolls engage in obnoxious behavior when granted anonymity or insulation from direct consequences. Is it likely that absent an audience for their trolling, they would be nice all the time? Seems unlikely, and the historical record suggests that cruelty, criminality, and impunity are a common combination.
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    I don't know, these types of crimes have happened for a long time sans audience. Perhaps some are motivated by the audience, but there are definitely some who would've committed the crime anyway, and their broadcast of their criminal activity only speeds up their arrest. I can see that politicians and businesspeople would not like this development, because it makes a) their cities seem more violent, since we can actually see someone get killed in it; b) their businesses seem less positive and soft and fluffy, since we can actually see someone get killed on it. However, I don't see why those concerns should override the public safety benefit of allowing criminals to broadcast their crimes to thousands of witnesses and simultaneously preserving an indisputable copy of the evidence for posterity. Steve Stevens was caught only because the exposure from his broadcast allowed him to be recognized by a McDonald's clerk hundreds of miles away from the crime scene. Without his broadcast, assuming the execution would've occurred, it would've just been another routine story that wouldn't have made it past the local news. There would probably have to be some real research conducted to find out if this is a net loss by spurring new crime or a net win by allowing us to easily capture the most oblivious criminals (who are not necessarily least dangerous).

avar 9y ago

I predict that Facebook's current PR problem related to this is going to be replaced by a swatting problem before long. I.e. someone reports someone on Live as suicidal, SWAT/police show up, shoot their dog etc, public outrage against Facebook ensues.

blauditore 9y ago

I wonder if this will reduce the problem of fake accounts. I regularly get such friend requests, and it starts to get annoying. Also, those seriously affect the attractiveness of ad campains. I dipped my toes into it once, but it looks like a large percentage of gained "users" are just fake ones...

tyingq 9y ago
My wife made an account for our dog, with an appropriate headshot as the profile photo, about 9 years ago. He posts regularly, and we tag him in photos. My guess is that they only block fake accounts if they are manually reported by someone.
- Flammy 9y ago
  You would think this, but as a counter example Xbox (back in the 360 days) had a "report gamertag as offensive" (aka offensive username). Users could pay $ to change their gamertag (~$10). It was fairly common to see people publically asking "please report my name as offensive" as it was known that if you got enough reports, you would be "forced" to change your name for free. People who wanted to change their name anyway would solicit reports against themselves to avoid a $10 fee. Clearly no human was reviewing these reports... and that was a paid service!
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  That's true. I know a lot of people with a lot of fake accounts for entirely legitimate reasons, as well as some trolls who abuse the ease with which they can be created. A good number of people in the first group maintain multiple sock puppets because their subject to frequent attacks by trolls who report accounts to under false pretences, knowing that FB's response is as likely to be wrong as right. Really, what's needed is a decentralized approach where no central authority exists, only mutual reinforcements. I have found a marvellous solution for the next generation of social and informational networking but alas this comment field is too small to contain it.

flexie 9y ago

In parts of Eastern Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa, Facebook could hire 3,000 college educated employees for less than $3M monthly, including taxes. So while this from a human point of view is a very decent thing to do, it's not necessarily as costly as one might think, especially not when considering the possible liability or regulatory backlash they may run into if they do nothing and Facebook becomes the place for suicides and violence. Now, if they add all those jobs in SF, it's another thing entirely.

mmahemoff 9y ago

Dear mods, I enjoy TLAs as much as the next geek, but can we please change CO to Community Operations? edit - that was quick, thanks!

blfr 9y ago

What's weird is that Facebook cannot rely on their users to report blatantly criminal acts witnessed by thousands of people. It probably says more about Facebook users than the platform and makes me doubt that doubling this or that team size can make a meaningful difference. Especially with this approach of manual monitoring which will probably just result in more questionable deletions Facebook is already known for.

Burritamos 9y ago
>What's weird is that Facebook cannot rely on their users to report blatantly criminal acts witnessed by thousands of people...and makes me doubt that doubling this or that team size can make a meaningful difference. Then wouldn't it make sense to add more people whose job specifically is to report criminal acts instead of relying on the users to do it?
- blfr 9y ago
  Are the reviewers going to browse random content? Somewhat possible with trend detection (make a human look at quickly rising stuff) but very wasteful since most of that will be either benign or incomprehensible to the outsider. Will they watch private streams and read private messages? That sounds like a privacy disaster even Facebook would prefer to avoid. Which leaves them with reports from users. Basically, reviewing millions of "hate speech" reports and either effectively instituting a very strict speech code or ignoring vast majority of them leading to further complaints.
  - ksk 9y ago
    Maybe I'm missing something but I don't quite see the point of rebutting issues you raise through your own speculation.
VLM 9y ago
"report blatantly criminal acts" The marketing campaign will be against murderers, the implementation will be against people who voted for Trump.

fortyniners 9y ago

Machine Learning and AI are dropping the ball here?

zoul 9y ago

Slashdot’s moderation and meta-moderation system (https://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml https://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml) always comes to mind. Could something like that work for Facebook self-moderation?

fsiefken 9y ago
yes, i always think of this. Why is this system not in use at Reddit or HN? Is it patented? I would pay 1000 euro's if they could implement it for my facebook group, with 2000 members it takes an hour a day which would halved with such as system, 14 hours a month.
- Crespyl 9y ago
  Even without the meta-moderation aspect, just having multiple dimensions for evaluating any given post is so useful and seemingly unique. "Upvote/Downvote" is not nearly as useful for ranking as the range of, say "+1 Funny, +1 Insightful, +1 Agree, -1 Disagree, -1 Spam, -1 Flamebait/Troll" (I've forgotten exactly what set /. uses)

genkaos 9y ago

Recomended minidoc "Field of Vision - The Moderators" https://vimeo.com/213152344 https://vimeo.com/213152344

chinathrow 9y ago

We laughed when China added x thousands to their great firewall content moderation team.

losteverything 9y ago

Mr zuckerberg's involvement signals it is a huge problem, one unable to spin away.. People always figure out a way around the latest attempt to control - and these measures will be overcome by bad intenders. So if FB admits it has a community safety and fake news problem - by hiring 3000 additional enforcement agents, why would one stay with FB if there is an alternative. Which there isn't. I would like a FB lite. Photo sharing and comments and discovery of old friends. No news. No menu of features. I wish there could be an alternative. ("Its just like. fB but without the news and crap)

m3ta 9y ago
I'm not quite sure I follow. I only see news posted by my friends and the pages I follow. What would FB lite look like?
xatan_dank 9y ago
I think some alternatives do exist, but I do not believe an near exact clone of Facebook with less of the problems of Facebook exists. Maybe it's just infeasible to properly monitor such a massive social network? I don't know for sure, but I left Facebook long ago and have not regretted it at all.
macrael 9y ago
Try Instagram!

unklefolk 9y ago

I suspect the long term plan is to create a training dataset labelled by the 3000 people and, when they have sufficient training data, let machine learning / AI take over.

partisan 9y ago
Do things that don't scale... Until you can scale. I think you are absolutely correct on this point.
itburnslikeice 9y ago
I assumed this too, those datasets would worth too many $$$
hetspookjee 9y ago
Imagine the horror that awaits the 3000.
tyingq 9y ago
100% automated ML doing this well seems far off to me. Google's ML for rich snippets thinks a quarter is worth 50 cents. http://imgur.com/1nNreR2 http://imgur.com/1nNreR2 Really parsing language for meaning is hard. Sentiment analysis, which seems simpler than this problem, still has relatively poor accuracy. I could see it perhaps thinning out how much has to be done manually, but I don't see it removing that need entirely.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  That information is so bad for such an easy question, I can only wonder if google is more interested in using their userbase as a training ground than actually providing a useful service.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    It's not an outlier either. I can find about 1 obviously bad answer a minute just randomly typing fact type questions that pop into my head.

davexunit 9y ago

Not optimistic but hopefully things will improve. As of now Facebook can't even remove an account for a hate blog local to my area.

zoew 9y ago

Hopefully things will improve and we will see better things in our feed

deegles 9y ago

I wonder if Facebook made much money on the ads displayed alongside this type of content (or perhaps pre- or mid- roll ads). Do they have a responsibility to treat this income differently?

avivo 9y ago

They already had 4500 people. And use of the moderated features is likely still growing rapidly. It's great that Facebook is increasing it's moderation numbers, but it's unclear if this was already planned and simply used (successfully) as a PR response to recent events.

hartator 9y ago

I wonder if they will push some politic agenda or if they will manage to stay neutral. Even if I have own opinions on the subject, I think the whole "fake news" thingy seems to politicaly motivated. Doesn't mean they are wrong by doing this, but it's hard to be claiming they are still somehow neutral.

loceng 9y ago
All of their actions should be transparent and a forum exist for people to discuss those actions and specific moderators (they can and should likely have a pseudonym associated with their actions); a little more difficult for moderation that aren't published as public.
yincrash 9y ago
Are you saying that news of fake news is fake news?
ma2rten 9y ago
As long as they have clear and fair guidelines, I don't see an issue.
- ProAm 9y ago
  Have you seen the moderators on reddit or stack overflow?
  - Moter8 9y ago
    Moderators on reddit have 1) full control of their subreddit and only have a few basic guidelines/rules to follow but basically they can do/ban what/who they want 2) are not paid.
    - MisterBastahrd 9y ago
      This is correct. I started r/cubancigars for example. It's mine. I can kick every single moderator off the team, shut the sub down, or change the rules without care. I don't, but I can, and nobody would stop me.

tiatia 9y ago

"I wonder if they will push some politic agenda or if they will manage to stay neutral." Nah. They will be neutral. But facebook is stupid. They should let somebody else pay for it. Like Facebook Germany uses money donated by Soros to make sure everything is in line with the outstanding current German government. http://soros.news/2017-02-10-facebook-fact-checker-censorship-team-funded-by-george-soros-aim-is-to-silence-real-facts.html http://soros.news/2017-02-10-facebook-fact-checker-censorshi... Correctiv, the German "fact checking" organization, just exposed a female politician who has worked as a prostitute before. Enjoy!

hooph00p 9y ago
How does this relate to the discussion?
- tiatia 9y ago
  1. That this "moderation" is probably not a very good thing 2. In other countries are already highly intransparent and opaque organizations like "correctiv" involved in these "fact checking" and "counter news" operations. https://correctiv.org/en/ https://correctiv.org/en/ 3. To make things worse, people (like Soros) donate money to these organizations that have their own agenda. (not to mention the boulevard style exposure of this politician who is unfortunately form the wrong political party)
notadoc 9y ago
Wow "soros.news" sounds like a really legitimate news source! Would you say they on par with WSJ and Financial Times? Maybe even better?
- tiatia 9y ago
  Agreed. But I took the first English news site that showed up. There are enough others.
sctb 9y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14256973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14256973 and marked it off-topic.

sebow 9y ago

dude censorship lmao

GCA10 9y ago

Can't help but think of Deming's famous advice on how to deal with quality issues: "Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place." If Mark Zuckerberg and his product teams could travel back in time a decade or so, would they still have built everything the way they did?

mcrad 9y ago
Market share was likely always more important than quality. Besides, do app developers even understand statistical quality control? I tend to think this kind of software grew up on a very black/white, functional/broken, bug trackers, etc., a very narrow view on quality as a concept.

olivermarks 9y ago

https://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/tech-confessional-the-googler-who-looks-at-the-wo?utm_term=.voVYAdXJ7#.fjplEpV02 https://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/tech-confessional-the-google... The horrible reality of trying to keep offensive materials from appearing online. 1.86 billion FB active users divided by 3000 thought police equals 620k accounts per clean up team operative...

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
Buried somewhere deep inside their 1,000 page employment agreement is probably something along the lines of "you willingly agree to subject yourself to this obvious psychological torture and we are in no way responsible for the mental problems which will inevitably result from your job duties."

paradite 9y ago

Western social media seems to be one step behind the Chinese counterparts in terms of moderation strategies. Living streaming scene in China has already went through this entire discussion and various forms of implementations on moderations of offensive and inappropriate contents sometime last year when it was rapidly growing. Again with government intervention, it is so much faster and easier to enforce standards of moderations for private companies to follow.

burkaman 9y ago
I don't think government censorship is a step ahead or behind, it's more like a completely different path.
- paradite 9y ago
  Well it really depends on how you define the "appropriate scope of moderation". If you think controversial topics related to politics should not be subjected to moderation, then of course government censorship is not good.
  - burkaman 9y ago
    I'm not saying it's good or bad, just that "a step ahead" doesn't really make sense to me. The path Facebook is heading down does not lead to government censorship, and the path American society is heading down doesn't either. That would require a huge shift in public opinion and philosophy.
kyledrake 9y ago
> Western social media seems to be one step behind the Chinese counterparts in terms of moderation strategies. I totally agree. We have the NSA so the total information awareness network is there, but we've really fallen behind China on using it to address suicide intervention.
- paradite 9y ago
  I understand your sarcasm but I believe you have misunderstood my point. I'm not talking about secret operations, but rather some transparent guidelines or laws issued by the government (legislative branch in the case of US? I'm not sure.) that are enforceable by private entities like Facebook.

OedipusRex 9y ago

The issue with work like this is it is very distressing. Having to look at videos and pictures of horrific acts (suicides, child porn, etc) is not a pleasant job. Many of those who do this in law enforcement (mainly child porn) have high rates of PTSD and other issues.

asdfGUYasdfn 9y ago

You mean, Progressive Liberal Content Sponsoring / Promotion.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

narrator 9y ago

China has 30,000 people who work full time moderating the Internet: http://certmag.com/the-great-firewall-how-china-polices-internet-traffic/ http://certmag.com/the-great-firewall-how-china-polices-inte...

socrates1998 9y ago

Long overdue. I sort of get these online social media companies skimping on moderation while they are growing and don't have cash. Facebook is rolling in cash and this has clearly hurt their brand. Hiring moderators to take out the worse of Facebook could help a lot to dealing with the utter bullshit that goes on. Reddit and Twitter have similar problems, they want to either farm out moderation to volunteer users (Reddit) or automate everything and only step in when the NY Times gets a hold of something (Twitter). Either way, their moderation leaves a lot to be desired. Reddit is particularly strange. I don't know how this could be true, but they claim that without the volunteer mods, they couldn't exist. Either they are lying or are just awful at running a business, neither would surprise me. Does anyone know if Reddit actually makes money? And if they do, how? Ads seem sparse and selling "gold" just doesn't seem like much.

anigbrowl 9y ago

Why doesn't Facebook give people a way to have input to their 'community standards'? Basically it's a black box that's presumably stuffed with lawyers, marketers, and some analytics people. I see zero evidence that there is any actual input from the people who use FB. It's essentially a dictatorship dressed in a costume of democracy, and I would far prefer it if the 'community standards' were called what they are, 'Rules of Mark's Club.' This is a sore point for me as an artist. It's tedious when posts are removed because they depict or seem to depict nudity and you have to go through and assure some anonymous and wholly unaccountable person that they're not. One of my friends teaches art history at UCLA and - surprise - he posts lots of fine art on his wall. He has to have 8 or 10 accounts because he is constantly getting temp banned for posting famous paintings of people with no clothes. It also bothers me on a more general level, eg it's fine if I take a picture of myself with my shirt off but if one of my female friends does the same thing she risks being restricted from posting or having her account terminated because her breasts are apparently a worse thing than extreme gory graphic violence that comes with a warning but is nevertheless acceptable to post. That's sexist bullshit that turns women into second class citizens. I utterly fail to understand how it's OK to share pictures of just about any violent subject matter, but any kind of nudity, sexual or not, is grounds for having your account terminated. Here's a list of some of the things I've seen on FB over the last year, some with an automatic clickthrough content warning (which is a good idea and mostly well implemented) and some not. As far as I'm aware none of these have resulted in account terminations for people who posted them: Beheadings (video, multiple examples); hanging; people being shot/have been shot; serial killers and their refrigerators stuffed with human meat; disembowelments; autopsy photos. In each of these cases I don't mean grimy thumbnails where you can sort of imagine what was going on, but photos and video of sufficient clarity to be used in a news broadcast if not for the disturbing nature of their subject matter. I'm leaving out other stuff that I found sufficiently disturbing that I prefer not to even describe it. I'm not into gore, beyond watching a few horror movies in a given year. But I'm pretty open with my friends list and allow people to join me to groups, so I'm exposed to a certain amount from trolls and of course there are episodes of violence in the real world that are newsworthy, and I prefer my news without censorship of any kind. You'll notice that I'm not calling for this stuff to be removed or banned from FB. I think the 'graphic content, are you sure?' warning strikes a sensible balance between protecting people's sensibilities and allowing free discussion and information. We live in a world that is often violent and I believe that concealing the ugliness of violence often allows it to proceed unchecked. It's also true that some people become obsessed with or celebrate violence, and that admitting it as cultural currency risks desensitization or normalization of violence. Those are tricky questions to which I do not believe any one person, firm, or society has a perfect answer, but given that the instinct of criminal persons and regimes is generally to conceal rather than reveal transgressions, exposure and condemnation is probably a more effective response than obscurity and censorship. After that unpleasant detour into the pits of human awfulness, I really want to hear from someone at Facebook: a) why it's OK to engage with the reality of people inflicting horrible violence on others, but it's not OK to let people engage with the reality of sexual or aesthetic expression, and b) why the 51% female majority of the population are subject to tighter restrictions than the male minority, and c) why the 'community standards' don't offer any formal mechanism for community input and decision-making. Think about it, Folks. A picture of a healthy naked body is grounds for account suspension or a ban, but it's totally OK to show that same body hacked to pieces? That's some grade A bullshit, and platitudes about how 'we try to reflect the prevailing standards of society' isn't going to cut it. Automation intensifies whatever process you choose to automate, and if you automate a standard whereby erotic desire and self-expression are constrained but extreme violence and interpersonal aggression are less constrained, guess which you'll end up with more of? Likewise if men are allowed freedoms that are systematically withheld from women, guess whose freedoms are going to be expanded and whose are going to be reduced? I demand answers on this. Facebook is one of the most powerful political entities on the planet and those who own it need to explain why, within Facebook, there is greater tolerance for violence than nudity or sexuality, and why one half of the population is subject to greater restrictions than the other half.

d1ffuz0r 9y ago

Censure is coming

6stringmerc 9y ago

I get the feeling the job itself might have some side-effects, if this article from quite a while ago has any relevance to the subject at hand: https://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/tech-confessional-the-googler-who-looks-at-the-wo https://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/tech-confessional-the-google...

devdoomari 9y ago

I don't expect much from this... I've reported countless spammy comments like "free ladies!" and "free $50 per click!" But FB replies are 100%: "...but our community deemed that comment to be ok with FB guidelines" FB should definitely see what Korean FB is like recently...