4 ms·

Hot on the heels of their announcement yesterday. The irony is sweet

bilbo0s 8y ago
That's likely WHY they announced they were getting rid of extremists. They would have had knowledge of these charges today, as well as knowledge of other things the government is looking into vis-a-vis their business. So I'd imagine their lawyers are preempting a lot of things because they seem to be entering an age where there is potential to be charged even if you are secondarily associated with criminal activity. (Potential not just for Facebook, but for everyone else too.) It's a crazy time right now, because you never know what some person you provided a service for might do.
- mcguire 8y ago
  "...you never know what some person you provided a service for might do." Well, you are in the business of knowing everything inferrable about all people, everywhere.
  - cr0sh 8y ago
    > knowing everything inferrable about all people, everywhere. Which makes me wonder if the FAANGs and others will go this route - basically robo-ban people from their services who meet certain criteria (or maybe no criteria at all - maybe some kind of neural network or something decides who should be allowed to use the service and who shouldn't). Make the ban based on various obvious and non-obvious metrics. Like credit score, comments or whatnot made using the service, how they treated other people or products in their comments - as well as things like how they typed, or moved their mouse around, or other info from their browser (or even side-channel info if that can be done from a browser - which it probably can). So once banned - even if they tried to go back with a completely different computer, home address, IP, etc - they'd still eventually get flagged as being banned in the past. Then have a service that all of them use to make a centralized "blacklist". It wouldn't surprise me if they don't already have this in testing in some manner.
daenz 8y ago
It's all PR. If a company knows some bad press is about to resurface, they'll try to dominate the news with their own good press. People think it's them being virtuous, but it's all a game.

That's likely WHY they announced they were getting rid of extremists. They would have had knowledge of these charges today, as well as knowledge of other things the government is looking into vis-a-vis their business. So I'd imagine their lawyers are preempting a lot of things because they seem to be entering an age where there is potential to be charged even if you are secondarily associated with criminal activity. (Potential not just for Facebook, but for everyone else too.) It's a crazy time right now, because you never know what some person you provided a service for might do.

mcguire 8y ago
"...you never know what some person you provided a service for might do." Well, you are in the business of knowing everything inferrable about all people, everywhere.
- cr0sh 8y ago
  > knowing everything inferrable about all people, everywhere. Which makes me wonder if the FAANGs and others will go this route - basically robo-ban people from their services who meet certain criteria (or maybe no criteria at all - maybe some kind of neural network or something decides who should be allowed to use the service and who shouldn't). Make the ban based on various obvious and non-obvious metrics. Like credit score, comments or whatnot made using the service, how they treated other people or products in their comments - as well as things like how they typed, or moved their mouse around, or other info from their browser (or even side-channel info if that can be done from a browser - which it probably can). So once banned - even if they tried to go back with a completely different computer, home address, IP, etc - they'd still eventually get flagged as being banned in the past. Then have a service that all of them use to make a centralized "blacklist". It wouldn't surprise me if they don't already have this in testing in some manner.

daenz 8y ago

It's all PR. If a company knows some bad press is about to resurface, they'll try to dominate the news with their own good press. People think it's them being virtuous, but it's all a game.