2 ms·

It's a 'bad headline' if it will be commonly understood as something not representative of the content. It's done on purpose by all publications, because the n

It's a 'bad headline' if it will be commonly understood as something not representative of the content. It's done on purpose by all publications, because the nuanced reality of most situations isn't inflammatory enough to drive clicks and create commotion. Given this situation i.e. wherein it's really hard to track down and manage the colloquial lingo used around the world for various things ... the headline is unfair. "Facebook fails to stop advertisers from targeting some extremist memes" "Facebook unable to tamp down extremists shifting lingo" "Nazis by another name: advertisers target extremists using shifting terminology on Facebook" There is definitely a more responsible headline here, and surely the editorial staff are capable of that if they wanted to. Surely the staff at many publications are wary of this as well, it's one of the ugly pressures of business reality that 'someone' is enforcing. As for FB ... this has to be hard, whack-a-mole kind of things. Sometimes I'm sympathetic to them, other times I think $100B and some of the best AI folks in the world should be able to mostly figure this out. Much like rampant fake goods on Amazon ... Bezos can land a rocket by itself, but can't get counterfeit goods off of Amazon? ...

ryandrake 8y ago
Not that I'd defend either company, but to be fair, landing a rocket is applied engineering and math. Invest enough to build it right, and it will land. Making subjective calls about "good vs bad" content or products, where what's considered good or bad may ebb and flow with current political/cultural whims, is not so straightforward. While "are nazis bad?" is pretty black-and-white, there are a lot of gray area topics. Not sure if adding magical AI fairies would help.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  I disagree with both points. "Counterfeit goods" are 'black and white'. Not 'maybe good or bad'. They're either counterfeit or they are not. Maybe tricky to track down in some cases, but ultimately - objective. Yes, stopping it might probably be fairly manual process involving process and overhead, but it's achievable. Bezos spends $1B a year on his rockets - you don't think he can tamp down counterfeit goods for that amount? I'm always shocked at people defending Bezos flagrant hustling of counterfeit goods. He can stop most of it, he knows about it, therefore he implicitly choses not to. ... 'Nazis = bad'? That's easy. But this is not the subject at hand. You're missing the issue that the headline is misrepresenting the subject! Facebook has banned ads for Nazis, because that's easy. We're talking about ads for 'Skinhead Bands' - or other ill defined groups. Well, Skinhead is a complicated subgenre, it's not black and white. But ok, ban that in ads. What about 'Reggae Skinheads'? 'Black Metal' - wait, is that a Nazi thing in Europe, or just basically 'metal'? And what about terms in France? Ukraine? Algeria? Every culture has a broad set of terminology, sub groups and political dynamics that make this thing fairly difficult to interpret. More important is the underlying fact that it's subjective. Nobody can really satisfy all voices because we all have different notions of what 'wrong/evil/bad/offensive' is. Just like there is effectively no way to ban 'hate speech' on FB because there's no globally accepted definition of what that is, kind of the same applies to ads. They can stop Nazis, but maybe not some weird 'bad' skinhead subgenres that popup now and again.
  - ehmish 8y ago
    Counterfeit goods are a good example where it's not black and white. Say Louis Vuitton runs a factory, and it's workers sneak back into the factory, make a couple of handbags and then sell them themselves, literally the exact same product as Louis Vuitton sells, but isn't sold by Louis Vuitton, I would say that is still a genuine "Louis Vuitton handbag", on the second level, whether or not counterfeiting is bad is also not black and white, counterfeiting makes it harder for companies to sell their products, but also reduce prices for consumers by increasing competition.

ryandrake 8y ago

Not that I'd defend either company, but to be fair, landing a rocket is applied engineering and math. Invest enough to build it right, and it will land. Making subjective calls about "good vs bad" content or products, where what's considered good or bad may ebb and flow with current political/cultural whims, is not so straightforward. While "are nazis bad?" is pretty black-and-white, there are a lot of gray area topics. Not sure if adding magical AI fairies would help.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
I disagree with both points. "Counterfeit goods" are 'black and white'. Not 'maybe good or bad'. They're either counterfeit or they are not. Maybe tricky to track down in some cases, but ultimately - objective. Yes, stopping it might probably be fairly manual process involving process and overhead, but it's achievable. Bezos spends $1B a year on his rockets - you don't think he can tamp down counterfeit goods for that amount? I'm always shocked at people defending Bezos flagrant hustling of counterfeit goods. He can stop most of it, he knows about it, therefore he implicitly choses not to. ... 'Nazis = bad'? That's easy. But this is not the subject at hand. You're missing the issue that the headline is misrepresenting the subject! Facebook has banned ads for Nazis, because that's easy. We're talking about ads for 'Skinhead Bands' - or other ill defined groups. Well, Skinhead is a complicated subgenre, it's not black and white. But ok, ban that in ads. What about 'Reggae Skinheads'? 'Black Metal' - wait, is that a Nazi thing in Europe, or just basically 'metal'? And what about terms in France? Ukraine? Algeria? Every culture has a broad set of terminology, sub groups and political dynamics that make this thing fairly difficult to interpret. More important is the underlying fact that it's subjective. Nobody can really satisfy all voices because we all have different notions of what 'wrong/evil/bad/offensive' is. Just like there is effectively no way to ban 'hate speech' on FB because there's no globally accepted definition of what that is, kind of the same applies to ads. They can stop Nazis, but maybe not some weird 'bad' skinhead subgenres that popup now and again.
- ehmish 8y ago
  Counterfeit goods are a good example where it's not black and white. Say Louis Vuitton runs a factory, and it's workers sneak back into the factory, make a couple of handbags and then sell them themselves, literally the exact same product as Louis Vuitton sells, but isn't sold by Louis Vuitton, I would say that is still a genuine "Louis Vuitton handbag", on the second level, whether or not counterfeiting is bad is also not black and white, counterfeiting makes it harder for companies to sell their products, but also reduce prices for consumers by increasing competition.