7 ms·

Let's Stop Pretending Facebook and Twitter's CEOs Can't Fix This Mess

24 points by strict9 8y ago

mundo 8y ago
This is reprehensibly crass. As a former CEO of Reddit, the author is uniquely qualified to know just how difficult and intractable a problem online harassment is; to portray it as having a straightforward solution, which could be implemented tomorrow if only the evil Zuckerbergs and Dorseys of the world weren't so greedy, is baldly dishonest and irresponsible.
- ABCLAW 8y ago
  Do you recall Ms. Pao's time at reddit and the actions which took place at the time? She lived this. Directly. She dealt with this. Directly. It may be intractable to go 100->0 on harassment. Sure. But what if you could go to 50? To 20? Is the difficulty in stamping out all harassment enough of a hurdle to not try stamping any of it out? Or is it just window dressing to ignore the issue. She says it's the latter. If anything, her story makes it clear that it really isn't that hard to identify groups and communities that breed harassment then take action against them.
- charlesism 8y ago
  > difficult and intractable a problem online harassment is She is saying is that it's only "difficult and intractable" if you operate a social network the way they all do: "engagement" above any other consideration. I don't see a whole lot of calls for genocide on any Apple property. I don't see a whole lot of calls for genocide on HN. Use Twitter in Germany and suddenly the bulk of the NeoNazi tweets disappear. She's right. Whether you like censorship or hate censorship, it just isn't hard to implement it an order or two of magnitude more effectively than what we have now. So the next time some journalist writes an article about one of these social networks, it would be great if they got it right. They prattle on and on about how lost Google and Facebook are when it comes to text-filtering and data-mining. It's silly.
bufferoverflow 8y ago
Another anti-free speech nonsense article. Did you guys not read 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 in high school? Free speech is very important, especially the one you disagree with.
- Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
  Free speech means you have the right to call the President of your country a moron without legal consequences. It means you get to have political debates. But it doesn't mean you get to harass people, send death threats, post people's private information (doxxing), and spread nude photos that were never supposed to be released.
  - luso_brazilian 8y ago
    > But it doesn't mean you get to harass people, send death threats, post people's private information (doxxing), and spread nude photos that were never supposed to be released. That is accurate and there are legal remedies for that. For instance, Kurt Eichenwald, a person on the receiving end of most of the activities you mentioned, collected the evidence and used the justice system to secure a Grand Jury indictment against his harasser [1], [2] Here is the abridged transcript of the indictment: > CRIMINAL COMPLAINT I, > On or about December 15, 2016, in the Dallas Division of the Northern District of Texas and elsewhere, defendant John Rayne Rivello, with the intent to kill, injure, harass, and intimidate, did knowingly and intentionally use an interactive computer service and an electronic communication service to engage in a course of conduct that placed a person in reasonable fear of the death of and serious bodily injury to that person and caused, attempted to cause, and would be reasonably expected to cause substantial emotional distress to that person; > in that Rivello posed as Twitter user Ari Goldstein and used his Twitter account @jew _goldstein to post an animated Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) on the victim's Twitter feed, knowing that the victim was an epileptic and knowing that the animated GIF was a strobe bearing the message "YOU DESERVE A SEIZURE FOR YOUR POSTS." And here is the central point > In violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2261A(2)(A) and (B), and 18 U .S.C. § 226l(b)(3). This criminal complaint is based on the facts set out in the attached affidavit. Most of the activities you describe, online or whatnot, are already in the US Code as actual crimes. I do not believe private companies should take over the role of the government in policing speech through prior restraint simply out of the possibility of potential criminal activities. It creates a chilling effect on legitimate speech and a dangerous precedent of private companies (potentially in collusion with the government) being in position to stifle speech. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kurt-eichenwald-case-texas-grand-jury-says-gif-deadly-weapon-n736316 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kurt-eichenwald-case-te... [2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/949676/download https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/949676/downlo... (pdf)
siruncledrew 8y ago
These questions get brought up too late. Of course they are much harder to address when a company is at virtual hyperscale. Investors wanted growth, and they got growth. Growth also comes with consequences, but it's a lot harder to convince investors you aren't doing work contributing to growth in order to look at non-immediate consequences.
anthillturf 8y ago
It's amazing how similar this narrative is to the criticism of Apple after their encryption dispute [1], right down to the "blood on your hands" and "profit-over-safety" tropes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute#Support_for_FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d... The debate should include discussion of the degree to which these large companies mediate the exercise of fundamental human rights.
- britch 8y ago
  I agree there needs to be more discussion about the degree to which large companies can impact peoples human rights. I think there's an important distinction in the criticism though, even though the rhetoric might be similar. Apple was holding its ground against the US Gov't and defense community to avoid setting a dangerous precedent that would violate their user's rights. While it's true that in some ways Facebook, Youtube, or Twitter are defending user's free speech, I think there's some question as to how they (or their algorithms) promote extreme views. Does everyone have free speech if you give the most extreme voices a megaphone?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dvvss 8y ago
As long as our online conversations and social interactions are mediated by third parties that are incentivized to manipulate them, those third parties should face the kind of scrutiny that Pao is suggesting. In my view, the long term solution is (ideally market-driven) disintermediation of these third parties. The same is true for banking. As long as our financial transactions are mediated by third parties with an incentive to manipulate them, those third parties should face intense scrutiny. But ideally, they will be disintermediated rather than refereed in the long term.
aestetix 8y ago
Because we saw how well the author, Ellen Pao, fixed reddit.
tengbretson 8y ago
I think the solution to this problem is pretty simple: Sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. need to invent an entirely new language for people to communicate in and simply make the expression of these kinds of ideas semantically impossible.
- britch 8y ago
  I think a lot of anger is misplaced from people who are calling for a lot of censorship. While people complain about it, it's not necessarily the problem that FB/Twitter/YouTube allow extreme views on their platform. It's that they amplify those extreme views. I don' think they set out trying to do it, but their algorithms do seem to prefer things that get a reaction out of people (positive or negative). If someone posts something hateful, a lot of people may click on it or respond, but that doesn't mean it's good. Social media companies put a lot of faith being put into machine learning on human behavior, but people don't behave perfectly rationally. Especially when they're scrolling through Twitter to kill time on the can. People who call for censorship have gone too far, but if you think Facebook/Twitter/whatever are doing an A+ GreatJob when it comes to social responsibility I strongly disagree.

24 points by strict9 8y ago

This is reprehensibly crass. As a former CEO of Reddit, the author is uniquely qualified to know just how difficult and intractable a problem online harassment is; to portray it as having a straightforward solution, which could be implemented tomorrow if only the evil Zuckerbergs and Dorseys of the world weren't so greedy, is baldly dishonest and irresponsible.

ABCLAW 8y ago
Do you recall Ms. Pao's time at reddit and the actions which took place at the time? She lived this. Directly. She dealt with this. Directly. It may be intractable to go 100->0 on harassment. Sure. But what if you could go to 50? To 20? Is the difficulty in stamping out all harassment enough of a hurdle to not try stamping any of it out? Or is it just window dressing to ignore the issue. She says it's the latter. If anything, her story makes it clear that it really isn't that hard to identify groups and communities that breed harassment then take action against them.
charlesism 8y ago
> difficult and intractable a problem online harassment is She is saying is that it's only "difficult and intractable" if you operate a social network the way they all do: "engagement" above any other consideration. I don't see a whole lot of calls for genocide on any Apple property. I don't see a whole lot of calls for genocide on HN. Use Twitter in Germany and suddenly the bulk of the NeoNazi tweets disappear. She's right. Whether you like censorship or hate censorship, it just isn't hard to implement it an order or two of magnitude more effectively than what we have now. So the next time some journalist writes an article about one of these social networks, it would be great if they got it right. They prattle on and on about how lost Google and Facebook are when it comes to text-filtering and data-mining. It's silly.

bufferoverflow 8y ago

Another anti-free speech nonsense article. Did you guys not read 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 in high school? Free speech is very important, especially the one you disagree with.

Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
Free speech means you have the right to call the President of your country a moron without legal consequences. It means you get to have political debates. But it doesn't mean you get to harass people, send death threats, post people's private information (doxxing), and spread nude photos that were never supposed to be released.
- luso_brazilian 8y ago
  > But it doesn't mean you get to harass people, send death threats, post people's private information (doxxing), and spread nude photos that were never supposed to be released. That is accurate and there are legal remedies for that. For instance, Kurt Eichenwald, a person on the receiving end of most of the activities you mentioned, collected the evidence and used the justice system to secure a Grand Jury indictment against his harasser [1], [2] Here is the abridged transcript of the indictment: > CRIMINAL COMPLAINT I, > On or about December 15, 2016, in the Dallas Division of the Northern District of Texas and elsewhere, defendant John Rayne Rivello, with the intent to kill, injure, harass, and intimidate, did knowingly and intentionally use an interactive computer service and an electronic communication service to engage in a course of conduct that placed a person in reasonable fear of the death of and serious bodily injury to that person and caused, attempted to cause, and would be reasonably expected to cause substantial emotional distress to that person; > in that Rivello posed as Twitter user Ari Goldstein and used his Twitter account @jew _goldstein to post an animated Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) on the victim's Twitter feed, knowing that the victim was an epileptic and knowing that the animated GIF was a strobe bearing the message "YOU DESERVE A SEIZURE FOR YOUR POSTS." And here is the central point > In violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2261A(2)(A) and (B), and 18 U .S.C. § 226l(b)(3). This criminal complaint is based on the facts set out in the attached affidavit. Most of the activities you describe, online or whatnot, are already in the US Code as actual crimes. I do not believe private companies should take over the role of the government in policing speech through prior restraint simply out of the possibility of potential criminal activities. It creates a chilling effect on legitimate speech and a dangerous precedent of private companies (potentially in collusion with the government) being in position to stifle speech. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kurt-eichenwald-case-texas-grand-jury-says-gif-deadly-weapon-n736316 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kurt-eichenwald-case-te... [2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/949676/download https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/949676/downlo... (pdf)

siruncledrew 8y ago

These questions get brought up too late. Of course they are much harder to address when a company is at virtual hyperscale. Investors wanted growth, and they got growth. Growth also comes with consequences, but it's a lot harder to convince investors you aren't doing work contributing to growth in order to look at non-immediate consequences.

anthillturf 8y ago

It's amazing how similar this narrative is to the criticism of Apple after their encryption dispute [1], right down to the "blood on your hands" and "profit-over-safety" tropes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute#Support_for_FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d... The debate should include discussion of the degree to which these large companies mediate the exercise of fundamental human rights.

britch 8y ago
I agree there needs to be more discussion about the degree to which large companies can impact peoples human rights. I think there's an important distinction in the criticism though, even though the rhetoric might be similar. Apple was holding its ground against the US Gov't and defense community to avoid setting a dangerous precedent that would violate their user's rights. While it's true that in some ways Facebook, Youtube, or Twitter are defending user's free speech, I think there's some question as to how they (or their algorithms) promote extreme views. Does everyone have free speech if you give the most extreme voices a megaphone?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dvvss 8y ago

As long as our online conversations and social interactions are mediated by third parties that are incentivized to manipulate them, those third parties should face the kind of scrutiny that Pao is suggesting. In my view, the long term solution is (ideally market-driven) disintermediation of these third parties. The same is true for banking. As long as our financial transactions are mediated by third parties with an incentive to manipulate them, those third parties should face intense scrutiny. But ideally, they will be disintermediated rather than refereed in the long term.

aestetix 8y ago

Because we saw how well the author, Ellen Pao, fixed reddit.

tengbretson 8y ago

I think the solution to this problem is pretty simple: Sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. need to invent an entirely new language for people to communicate in and simply make the expression of these kinds of ideas semantically impossible.

britch 8y ago
I think a lot of anger is misplaced from people who are calling for a lot of censorship. While people complain about it, it's not necessarily the problem that FB/Twitter/YouTube allow extreme views on their platform. It's that they amplify those extreme views. I don' think they set out trying to do it, but their algorithms do seem to prefer things that get a reaction out of people (positive or negative). If someone posts something hateful, a lot of people may click on it or respond, but that doesn't mean it's good. Social media companies put a lot of faith being put into machine learning on human behavior, but people don't behave perfectly rationally. Especially when they're scrolling through Twitter to kill time on the can. People who call for censorship have gone too far, but if you think Facebook/Twitter/whatever are doing an A+ GreatJob when it comes to social responsibility I strongly disagree.