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This. Isn't. Facebook's. Job. No, seriously. Facebook should host content and serve ads. That's it. They don't need to worry about being the arbiter of truth

This. Isn't. Facebook's. Job. No, seriously. Facebook should host content and serve ads. That's it. They don't need to worry about being the arbiter of truthful news. They don't need to stop "hate". They don't need to make calls about who needs a psych eval. They just need to host content. But if they truly want to do this, what happens when someone sues them for not making the call? I made the new year's resolution to delete my account yesterday. I almost chickened out, but then this article comes up.

dannyr 8y ago
Facebook does not just host content. I would agree with you that Facebook should not be an arbiter of truthful news or stop hate. But they are indeed an arbiter. They continue to push content to users to keep them consuming their product. They promote content that makes people engaged and that usually means content that makes people angry. If they stop inserting posts from sources users don't follow and not rank stories from friends, I would agree with you.
- austincheney 8y ago
  They also host advertising. I wonder how much advertisers would be willing to pay for suicide risk flags.
RA_Fisher 8y ago
With great power comes great duty.
pcurve 8y ago
I hear you... But what if they have a reasonably accurate model that tested well (say 75%). Once day, their researchers decide to test how accurate the model is by setting real time flags, but take no action. And let's say, it turns out, of 100 people, 75 people did end up taking their life. What would you propose they do?
- lobotryas 8y ago
  Nothing, because Facebook should not be in the business of making these decisions. For sone folks, like me and the GO, there are no “buts” about it.
- imgabe 8y ago
  There are any number of measures we could take that would prevent deaths. We could lock people in a cage and monitor them 24/7. That would keep them alive. Should we do it? # of deaths reduced is not the sole factor we should use to determine whether a particular course of action is good
  - CM30 8y ago
    Agreed with this. In fact, I feel a lot of the issues society has with privacy and freedom of speech right now come from how it seems to be willing to trade virtually all freedom for the illusion of 'safety'. A free society is also often a risky society, but the rewards of freedom outweight said risks.
- austincheney 8y ago
  I would have them either enter the mental health and public safety industries or I would have them throw the algorithm away.
- bjt2n3904 8y ago
  Say there's a car manufacturer that makes a car. It's a reasonably safe car, but sometimes people speed in it. Without really telling anyone, they install a webcam and point it at the driver to see whether they might speed on a certain day, based on facial expression and skin color. Why those? Just a weird hunch! They find that the person actually did speed. (Turns out, they didn't really tell anyone that all your driving data was uploaded to their servers, too!) The problem is two fold. First, they shouldn't have been collecting this data on their users in the first place. The manufactures job is to build a car, not ensure that the car is being used responsibly. This is simply an impossible task to charge anyone with, and the implications are frightening. Second, I'm not a believer in using algorithms to predict behavior. Too much black box "mangle the numbers until it works". You could make an argument that there's a correlation between skin color and speeding. You might even be able to make pretty charts, but I think this is simply bad science. You make it sound like this model would actually continue to work at 75% perpetually. I think that it's far more likely it worked this one test, and performance would trend sharply downwards. However it makes this decision, I think it's about as absurd and wrong as the crazy example above. On the other side of the coin, people are putting too much trust in magic algorithms they don't properly understand, and are far too complacent about egregious invasion of privacy.
crocodiletears 8y ago
I mentioned in a previous HN thread that there likely wasn't a line Facebook could cross that might make me delete my account. I'm not there yet, but I'm willing to admit before that I was wrong. If I posted on Facebook, I would leave the platform here and now. I've had two friends who went to take advantage of university counseling services for anxiety and depression that they wanted help with, only to be committed to a local hospital involuntarily for saying the wrong thing until their families intervened to have them discharged. The episode would have merely been stressful for them, but they were each restricted from returning to their classes until the next semester. Neither of them were at any level of risk for suicide or self-harm, but the universities they went to naturally were obligated to err on the side of caution. Such events are relatively rare, but keep many students who are suffering from mental illness from taking the risk of using available resources. I'd honestly hate to be committed because I was a little too sarcastic in a Facebook comment, and much like public universities I fear Facebook is incentivized to make the least risky call.
- bjt2n3904 8y ago
  I still might chicken out. There's a lot of people that are likely going to fall off my radar. The thought makes me sad.
  - crocodiletears 8y ago
    Don't get me wrong. Leaving isn't worth it yet. Still quite a ways off.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Applejinx 8y ago
  Least risky to who, exactly?
- wolfgke 8y ago
  > Such events are relatively rare, but keep many students who are suffering from mental illness from taking the risk of using available resources. Even more: Exactly these kinds of rules lead to a strong incentive to simply commit the suicide because talking about it, will lead to worse consequences.
UncleMeat 8y ago
It isn't facebook's job. They can choose not to do these things. But I'd rather that they did do these things. They have an opportunity to make some people's lives better by doing things like this and I think it would be nice for them to do that.

dannyr 8y ago

Facebook does not just host content. I would agree with you that Facebook should not be an arbiter of truthful news or stop hate. But they are indeed an arbiter. They continue to push content to users to keep them consuming their product. They promote content that makes people engaged and that usually means content that makes people angry. If they stop inserting posts from sources users don't follow and not rank stories from friends, I would agree with you.

austincheney 8y ago
They also host advertising. I wonder how much advertisers would be willing to pay for suicide risk flags.

RA_Fisher 8y ago

With great power comes great duty.

pcurve 8y ago

I hear you... But what if they have a reasonably accurate model that tested well (say 75%). Once day, their researchers decide to test how accurate the model is by setting real time flags, but take no action. And let's say, it turns out, of 100 people, 75 people did end up taking their life. What would you propose they do?

lobotryas 8y ago
Nothing, because Facebook should not be in the business of making these decisions. For sone folks, like me and the GO, there are no “buts” about it.
imgabe 8y ago
There are any number of measures we could take that would prevent deaths. We could lock people in a cage and monitor them 24/7. That would keep them alive. Should we do it? # of deaths reduced is not the sole factor we should use to determine whether a particular course of action is good
- CM30 8y ago
  Agreed with this. In fact, I feel a lot of the issues society has with privacy and freedom of speech right now come from how it seems to be willing to trade virtually all freedom for the illusion of 'safety'. A free society is also often a risky society, but the rewards of freedom outweight said risks.
austincheney 8y ago
I would have them either enter the mental health and public safety industries or I would have them throw the algorithm away.
bjt2n3904 8y ago
Say there's a car manufacturer that makes a car. It's a reasonably safe car, but sometimes people speed in it. Without really telling anyone, they install a webcam and point it at the driver to see whether they might speed on a certain day, based on facial expression and skin color. Why those? Just a weird hunch! They find that the person actually did speed. (Turns out, they didn't really tell anyone that all your driving data was uploaded to their servers, too!) The problem is two fold. First, they shouldn't have been collecting this data on their users in the first place. The manufactures job is to build a car, not ensure that the car is being used responsibly. This is simply an impossible task to charge anyone with, and the implications are frightening. Second, I'm not a believer in using algorithms to predict behavior. Too much black box "mangle the numbers until it works". You could make an argument that there's a correlation between skin color and speeding. You might even be able to make pretty charts, but I think this is simply bad science. You make it sound like this model would actually continue to work at 75% perpetually. I think that it's far more likely it worked this one test, and performance would trend sharply downwards. However it makes this decision, I think it's about as absurd and wrong as the crazy example above. On the other side of the coin, people are putting too much trust in magic algorithms they don't properly understand, and are far too complacent about egregious invasion of privacy.

crocodiletears 8y ago

I mentioned in a previous HN thread that there likely wasn't a line Facebook could cross that might make me delete my account. I'm not there yet, but I'm willing to admit before that I was wrong. If I posted on Facebook, I would leave the platform here and now. I've had two friends who went to take advantage of university counseling services for anxiety and depression that they wanted help with, only to be committed to a local hospital involuntarily for saying the wrong thing until their families intervened to have them discharged. The episode would have merely been stressful for them, but they were each restricted from returning to their classes until the next semester. Neither of them were at any level of risk for suicide or self-harm, but the universities they went to naturally were obligated to err on the side of caution. Such events are relatively rare, but keep many students who are suffering from mental illness from taking the risk of using available resources. I'd honestly hate to be committed because I was a little too sarcastic in a Facebook comment, and much like public universities I fear Facebook is incentivized to make the least risky call.

bjt2n3904 8y ago
I still might chicken out. There's a lot of people that are likely going to fall off my radar. The thought makes me sad.
- crocodiletears 8y ago
  Don't get me wrong. Leaving isn't worth it yet. Still quite a ways off.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Applejinx 8y ago
Least risky to who, exactly?
wolfgke 8y ago
> Such events are relatively rare, but keep many students who are suffering from mental illness from taking the risk of using available resources. Even more: Exactly these kinds of rules lead to a strong incentive to simply commit the suicide because talking about it, will lead to worse consequences.

UncleMeat 8y ago

It isn't facebook's job. They can choose not to do these things. But I'd rather that they did do these things. They have an opportunity to make some people's lives better by doing things like this and I think it would be nice for them to do that.