8 ms·

None of these tech companies have the ability to do that. What you are suggesting would mean the death of every social media company.

AndrewKemendo 7y ago
Which I think may be the appropriate answer. It's unclear that the net benefit to society is greater with these social media companies than without them. If anything, the data we have so far is that it is a net negative.
- o10449366 7y ago
  What data are you referencing exactly? I would love to see it.
  - AndrewKemendo 7y ago
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181108164316.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181108164316.h... https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/06/gse-phones-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/06/gse-phones-st...
gafferongames 7y ago
What's the downside?
TAForObvReasons 7y ago
If social media companies exist because they are not held responsible for negative externalities, and actually recognizing the externalities would result in the death of said companies, then maybe they don't deserve to exist. We as a society have a real serious problem contending with companies that have massive negative externalities
esalman 7y ago
If a car manufacturer is faced with a problem so that it loses the ability to prevent accidents, would you let that manufacturer continue its business?
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > it loses the ability to prevent accidents Car manufacturers can't prevent accidents - what do you mean?
- blue6249 7y ago
  We do allow car companies to continue to build cars that cannot prevent accidents. Even beyond preventing accidents we as a society also allow the car companies to build cars with varying levels of safety and have a rating system for them.
  - esalman 7y ago
    We do. However, car manufacturers usually try to downplay reports of issues with the cars to the point when they can't do anymore. That's when something like a recall happens, which results in a substantial financial loss for them. Obviously not every affected vehicle owner can or may afford to have their vehicle serviced, so many keep using them despite the risk- like the people who are using social media knowing its weaknesses. I think social media are at a point when they are forcefully downplaying the social issues which they are actually responsible for. We've already seen state and other actors exploit the social media and cause mass epidemics; anti-vaxx, white nationalism, Rohingya issue etc. to name a few. Let's see how far it goes before the damage is too much.
- o10449366 7y ago
  Oh please, this is as ridiculous as blaming the manufacturer of the truck for the psychopath that used it to run people over in France. As far as I know Facebook doesn't released public numbers on this kind of information, but their automated systems and human moderators have undoubtedly caught millions of objectionable content streams, you just don't hear about them. If we're making car analogies they would probably be the safest vehicle on the road.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
username223 7y ago
That sounds fine. They bought it, so they own it. If they make money from someone's work, then they are responsible for at least as much money as they made.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
If you don't have the ability to control your premises, or employ enough security, perhaps you should not be permitted to operate those premises. Unsafe clubs get closed down. They - or any other social media company - don't have a right to exist. If societies around the world conclude they do more harm than good as they currently operate, it's perfectly reasonable to require them to moderate adequately. If they cannot they can close, or withdraw from that region, and someone else may wish to try. Facebook could employ thousands more to moderate and supervise - without destroying their ability to make profit. Pretending the problems don't exist, as all the platforms have done so far, looks like it's not going to be tenable for much longer. Not only am I fine with that, I think it long overdue.
- o10449366 7y ago
  Well as much as HN or the news media would like you to believe, societies around the world have definitely not concluded that FB does more harm than good and I don't see that changing anytime soon. You may think the club is unsafe, but a billion people are still attending all night and they feel perfectly comfortable.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Attendance proves nothing at all. We've no idea if they are comfortable or not. Many appear to have come to think of it as a necessary evil. Millions of people were eating adulterated food every meal prior to food regulations. Political process and advertising was rife with corruption prior to attempts to instil a semblance of fairness limiting what was allowed and when. Yet people attempted to vote before this.
    - o10449366 7y ago
      You're claiming simultaneously that we have no idea whether these users are comfortable or not and that most of them think of it as a necessary evil. Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media. You can't make a comparison between social media and food because one is necessary for survival and one isn't (I'm sure I'm going to invite a ton of comments here on how 'Facebook has become so ubiquitous and powerful it's now synonymous with survival!') If the negatives really outweighed the positives people would be leaving Facebook by the droves. It's only on HN and in the news media that this narrative is being spun.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
DSingularity 7y ago
Are you serious? You expect us to believe that Facebook and Youtube can’t afford to hire 50,000 content regulators each? 30,000 of them would probably be paid less than 5000$ a year.
- o10449366 7y ago
  Facebook already employs tens of thousands of human moderators. What you're really proposing is that every piece of content that's uploaded to any internet website should be manually reviewed and approved by another human. You don't think that's a ridiculous and unrealistic proposition that could be turned into a weapon by bad actors (just like a livestream feature?)?
  - djpilot 7y ago
    This is flat out not true. FB doesn't employ 10s of thousands of human moderators. According to a 3-month old article, $FB supposedly employs 7,500 moderators [0], though it's unclear what constitutes "employment" in this case. Probably a salary of less than $5k/yr. Are there really thouhsands of content moderators pulling up to FBHQ in Menlo Park 5 days a week? I don't think so, no. [0] https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/facebook-content-moderator-lawsuit.html https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/facebook-content-moder...
    - o10449366 7y ago
      "By the end of 2018, in response to criticism of the prevalence of violent and exploitative content on the social network, Facebook had more than 30,000 employees working on safety and security — about half of whom were content moderators." [0] That number has only increased in recent months and will likely continue to increase in the near future. Not all of them are designated content moderators, it's true, so technically they likely only employ one or two "10s of thousands", but I'm mainly addressing the misconception in the thread that Facebook is "doing nothing." That's a significant amount of moderators. Is it enough? No, but to claim or pretend that they aren't actively doing anything is facetious and something I've been seeing more and more of on HN lately. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...
axaxs 7y ago
Then change the model. It wouldn't be terrible if it came with a cost.
salgernon 7y ago
I think “social” is the key. If you are using a carrier to facilitate private conversations then I feel you should have a right to privacy. But a forum or online group is by its nature and intent a public platform and the provider should be responsible for policing that space.
rodgerd 7y ago
Set your location to Germany when you use Twitter. You'll almost never see far-right content any more. I'm sorry you've internalized their bullshit, but that's what it is: bullshit. They can do it when it sells ads or stops someone senior going to jail.
DCoder 7y ago
When RIAA/MPAA/etc. came with astronomical fines, those same companies suddenly created the capabilities to block things that even smelled like copyrighted material. Whatever your opinion of MAFIAA is, it would seem this sort of detection can be done when a large enough stick is presented.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> None of these tech companies have the ability to do that Yet they can attach an ad to it in a millisecond. They’re incentivised to do one and not the other. These bills are about rebalancing those incentives.

AndrewKemendo 7y ago

Which I think may be the appropriate answer. It's unclear that the net benefit to society is greater with these social media companies than without them. If anything, the data we have so far is that it is a net negative.

o10449366 7y ago
What data are you referencing exactly? I would love to see it.
- AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181108164316.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181108164316.h... https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/06/gse-phones-study/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/06/gse-phones-st...

gafferongames 7y ago

What's the downside?

TAForObvReasons 7y ago

If social media companies exist because they are not held responsible for negative externalities, and actually recognizing the externalities would result in the death of said companies, then maybe they don't deserve to exist. We as a society have a real serious problem contending with companies that have massive negative externalities

esalman 7y ago

If a car manufacturer is faced with a problem so that it loses the ability to prevent accidents, would you let that manufacturer continue its business?

chrisseaton 7y ago
> it loses the ability to prevent accidents Car manufacturers can't prevent accidents - what do you mean?
blue6249 7y ago
We do allow car companies to continue to build cars that cannot prevent accidents. Even beyond preventing accidents we as a society also allow the car companies to build cars with varying levels of safety and have a rating system for them.
- esalman 7y ago
  We do. However, car manufacturers usually try to downplay reports of issues with the cars to the point when they can't do anymore. That's when something like a recall happens, which results in a substantial financial loss for them. Obviously not every affected vehicle owner can or may afford to have their vehicle serviced, so many keep using them despite the risk- like the people who are using social media knowing its weaknesses. I think social media are at a point when they are forcefully downplaying the social issues which they are actually responsible for. We've already seen state and other actors exploit the social media and cause mass epidemics; anti-vaxx, white nationalism, Rohingya issue etc. to name a few. Let's see how far it goes before the damage is too much.
o10449366 7y ago
Oh please, this is as ridiculous as blaming the manufacturer of the truck for the psychopath that used it to run people over in France. As far as I know Facebook doesn't released public numbers on this kind of information, but their automated systems and human moderators have undoubtedly caught millions of objectionable content streams, you just don't hear about them. If we're making car analogies they would probably be the safest vehicle on the road.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

username223 7y ago

That sounds fine. They bought it, so they own it. If they make money from someone's work, then they are responsible for at least as much money as they made.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

If you don't have the ability to control your premises, or employ enough security, perhaps you should not be permitted to operate those premises. Unsafe clubs get closed down. They - or any other social media company - don't have a right to exist. If societies around the world conclude they do more harm than good as they currently operate, it's perfectly reasonable to require them to moderate adequately. If they cannot they can close, or withdraw from that region, and someone else may wish to try. Facebook could employ thousands more to moderate and supervise - without destroying their ability to make profit. Pretending the problems don't exist, as all the platforms have done so far, looks like it's not going to be tenable for much longer. Not only am I fine with that, I think it long overdue.

o10449366 7y ago
Well as much as HN or the news media would like you to believe, societies around the world have definitely not concluded that FB does more harm than good and I don't see that changing anytime soon. You may think the club is unsafe, but a billion people are still attending all night and they feel perfectly comfortable.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Attendance proves nothing at all. We've no idea if they are comfortable or not. Many appear to have come to think of it as a necessary evil. Millions of people were eating adulterated food every meal prior to food regulations. Political process and advertising was rife with corruption prior to attempts to instil a semblance of fairness limiting what was allowed and when. Yet people attempted to vote before this.
  - o10449366 7y ago
    You're claiming simultaneously that we have no idea whether these users are comfortable or not and that most of them think of it as a necessary evil. Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media. You can't make a comparison between social media and food because one is necessary for survival and one isn't (I'm sure I'm going to invite a ton of comments here on how 'Facebook has become so ubiquitous and powerful it's now synonymous with survival!') If the negatives really outweighed the positives people would be leaving Facebook by the droves. It's only on HN and in the news media that this narrative is being spun.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

DSingularity 7y ago

Are you serious? You expect us to believe that Facebook and Youtube can’t afford to hire 50,000 content regulators each? 30,000 of them would probably be paid less than 5000$ a year.

o10449366 7y ago
Facebook already employs tens of thousands of human moderators. What you're really proposing is that every piece of content that's uploaded to any internet website should be manually reviewed and approved by another human. You don't think that's a ridiculous and unrealistic proposition that could be turned into a weapon by bad actors (just like a livestream feature?)?
- djpilot 7y ago
  This is flat out not true. FB doesn't employ 10s of thousands of human moderators. According to a 3-month old article, $FB supposedly employs 7,500 moderators [0], though it's unclear what constitutes "employment" in this case. Probably a salary of less than $5k/yr. Are there really thouhsands of content moderators pulling up to FBHQ in Menlo Park 5 days a week? I don't think so, no. [0] https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/facebook-content-moderator-lawsuit.html https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/facebook-content-moder...
  - o10449366 7y ago
    "By the end of 2018, in response to criticism of the prevalence of violent and exploitative content on the social network, Facebook had more than 30,000 employees working on safety and security — about half of whom were content moderators." [0] That number has only increased in recent months and will likely continue to increase in the near future. Not all of them are designated content moderators, it's true, so technically they likely only employ one or two "10s of thousands", but I'm mainly addressing the misconception in the thread that Facebook is "doing nothing." That's a significant amount of moderators. Is it enough? No, but to claim or pretend that they aren't actively doing anything is facetious and something I've been seeing more and more of on HN lately. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...

axaxs 7y ago

Then change the model. It wouldn't be terrible if it came with a cost.

salgernon 7y ago

I think “social” is the key. If you are using a carrier to facilitate private conversations then I feel you should have a right to privacy. But a forum or online group is by its nature and intent a public platform and the provider should be responsible for policing that space.

rodgerd 7y ago

Set your location to Germany when you use Twitter. You'll almost never see far-right content any more. I'm sorry you've internalized their bullshit, but that's what it is: bullshit. They can do it when it sells ads or stops someone senior going to jail.

DCoder 7y ago

When RIAA/MPAA/etc. came with astronomical fines, those same companies suddenly created the capabilities to block things that even smelled like copyrighted material. Whatever your opinion of MAFIAA is, it would seem this sort of detection can be done when a large enough stick is presented.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> None of these tech companies have the ability to do that Yet they can attach an ad to it in a millisecond. They’re incentivised to do one and not the other. These bills are about rebalancing those incentives.