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Hey I am a Facebook employee and I am really confused by all the comments here. Really feels like a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation. Can anybod

Hey I am a Facebook employee and I am really confused by all the comments here. Really feels like a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation. Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative? Not saying there isn't one, I am just not seeing one being proposed.

lonelappde 7y ago
Sometimes you paint yourself into a corner and no good options remain. Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose.
annoyingnoob 7y ago
My solution is do not use Facebook.
- malloreon 7y ago
  or instagram, or whatsapp, or messenger.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > My solution is do not use Facebook. How effective is that? Doesn't Facebook collects data on everyone's online behavior even if they don't have an account?
  - annoyingnoob 7y ago
    It may be that FB collects data on everyone they can. The subject of this article is about content/content moderation. If I do not produce or consume content on FB then I might not care about or be subject to any moderation practices.
bananocurrency 7y ago
Have you tried not being a total sellout and working for an advertising company?
burkaman 7y ago
I would prefer that Facebook lose enough power and influence that this is no longer necessary, probably by being broken up.
unearthed 7y ago
Yes. Realize that FB is the defacto platform for social discussion and realize that discussion at this scale is the singular path towards cohesive integration of multi-culture societies. Stop policing speech/thoughts/ideas/communication. Nobody has asked facebook to be the arbiter of social-morality. You at facebook are creating an echo chamber and driving dissenting voices away because they dont adhere to the 'woke' dogma. You're taking all the monstrous ideas and pushing them outside. You're giving them no option but to aggregate + further radicalize each other. This is why shit like 8chan has gotten so wretched. Theres already WAY too much involvement + dogmatic oversight of 'moral right' by facebook. Stop doing what you're doing and accept that if you're ACTUALLY interested in the mass-culture integration you claim you're working towards, banning + policing thoughts aren't the way towards that ends. What actually needs to happen is for the bad to be extrema to be buffered though interaction w the socially normal beliefs. What facebook is CURRENTLY doing is radicalizing groups. Somehow zuck cant see this as the repressive puritanical system that it is.
- sdenton4 7y ago
  You're denying the existence of a problem, not offering a solution. Implicitly, this says that you don't value the opinions of people who very strongly believe that there is a problem. It's not a great place to argue from.
  - unearthed 7y ago
    > You're denying the existence of a problem, not offering a solution Incorrect. Im saying the solution IS NOT the dogmatic oversight that facebook is pursuing here. Instead the solution is: "The droves of people using facebook are sufficiently large that an organic zeitgeist can emerge without interference" Surely You're NOT suggesting: "Yes we require the dogmatic, bureaucratic, oversight of speech to create harmony"
    - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
      > We require the dogmatic, bureaucratic oversight of speech to create harmony This is an open, legitimate debate. It's complicated with Facebook due to its lack of competition. Companies moderating speech on their services is time tested and likely necessary. If the market presents a diversity of services, no one system of moderation gets a stranglehold on public discourse. Facebook, however, is dominant. As a result, its decisions approach the breadth of government censorship. That's a fundamental disconnect they're trying to paper over.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative? Ban non-geographically targeted political ads. Create a public repository of all political ads. Creating a puppet entity and calling it a court is dishonest and insulting. (The only proper solution, of course, is breaking up Facebook into, at the very least, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Concentrated market power is the fundamental problem.)
- chapium 7y ago
  I have no obligation to use any of these services, why do they need to be broken up? Google is a far more threatening power over my day to day activities.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - burkaman 7y ago
    They all have an enormous effect on your life whether or not you use them. Yes, Google should be broken up too.
    - chapium 7y ago
      how?
      - burkaman 7y ago
        Facebook's immense power makes it much more difficult for competing messaging systems, social networks, VR-related companies, and others to enter the market. When they do find any success, Facebook usually acquires them. The effects of monopolies and oligopolies on economies and societies are well-established. If you live in the US, or Europe, or pretty much any country Facebook operates in, the company is spending millions of dollars every year to lobby your government. While that may not sound like a lot, political influence is surprisingly cheap, and effects you whether or not you choose to participate in the political process. The CEO meets regularly with the president of the United States and his close associates, and has met and spoken with many other world leaders. Facebook is a major facilitator of violence and ethnic cleansing around the world (https://time.com/5197039/un-facebook-myanmar-rohingya-violence/ https://time.com/5197039/un-facebook-myanmar-rohingya-violen..., https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-india-content/facebook-a-megaphone-for-hate-against-indian-minorities-idUSKBN1X929F https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-india-content/fa..., https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/chinse-media-facebook-ads-xinjiang-uighur-propaganda https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/chinse-media-fa...). You might argue that if they couldn't use Facebook, people would just use some other platform or tool to accomplish the same goal. That's possible, but if it's happening on Facebook, the company has a responsibility to take action, and they have failed. I don't think there is any other platform that could be used as effectively as Facebook and WhatsApp for this purpose. Even if you don't use Facebook, they likely have a profile for you if anybody you know uses it. They collect contacts from peoples' phones, and scan for faces in all photographs (and correlate the results with other photos). If you don't have robust ad and tracker blocking in your web browser, Facebook is tracking your behavior with their ubiquitous like buttons and analytics scripts.
beatgammit 7y ago
How about an independent third party (outside the company) that has a binding contract with Facebook? This third party could handle other social media sites as well that choose to opt in. Personally, I'd rather just see Facebook stop being such a huge force in the market and instead move toward a decentralized model like Mastodon with ActivityPub, but there's no way Facebook is going to go that voluntarily, nor is there any reason that they should. So, at the very least, they could make this organization completely outside of Facebook's oversight, kind of like how the ESRB works. Maybe this is their end goal, idk, but if they choose to retain control, people are always going to be skeptical.
zepto 7y ago
If this is to be serious, there needs to be absolute transparency about how it is independent. As it stands, there is zero evidence of this. If Zuck is displeased with it, then he can just not contribute more once the initial money is used.
goalieca 7y ago
How about facebook spends some money fighting for a better government. Right now the billionares and corporations are running stingy charities where they decide how the money is spent and how much money is spent and this mostly in their self interest. It would be more in the public interest if facebook and corporations just handed over their fair share of taxes and got out of the way of the government. They should also respect the laws and regulations in other countries where they do business. Quite frankly, in my country of Canada, we have regulations on news in order to keep them honest (no fox news bullshit here!). But facebook is increasingly become a news outlet and so it must start to be treated like one.
cabaalis 7y ago
If I have friends or groups on facebook, I want to see what they put up. If I don't like what they put up to the point that it really bothers me, they won't remain my friends or groups. You're policing speech. It hasn't historically worked well.
m12k 7y ago
I can sympathize with that feeling, but you sort of are in a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation. No one is expecting the wolf to stop eating sheep, and as admirable as its proposal to fund a shepherd might be, we would be negligent if we didn't doubt its sincerity.
floatingatoll 7y ago
Have content reviewers be employed (not contracted!) by this third-party organization with independent editorial control over the content they're reviewing, using this "Supreme Court" to ensure that their editorial decisions are just and sound, and to provide Facebook a forum to request changes in editorial policy without the implied "do whatever we say or else we'll fire you and replace you, you cogs" that the reviewers suffer under today.
kick 7y ago
For anyone curious, this is the same Pesenti as the one that founded Vivisimo. Some of the people replying to you are a bit...ich, but: Why not give the funds to someone battle-tested and with a good reputation like John Gilmore to distribute for the purpose? Something can't be independent with as much Facebook control over it as the post implies.
0x445442 7y ago
> Can anybody suggest a better alternative? Yes, quit attempting to police speech.
- grmn 7y ago
  We're still policing reading. DRM on digital books, "renting" books on digital platforms, banned books by governments, banned books on shopping sites, religions sentencing and/or cursing the "unclean" reader, communists banning religious books....
buboard 7y ago
stop censoring and dont listen to hacker news
- dvtrn 7y ago
  dont listen to hacker news This is critical advice for a lot of topics.
mattrp 7y ago
Here’s my comments and I hope to be as constructive as possible: 1) I listened to Zuckerburgs podcast on free speech. I felt that while it had the appearance of adhering to the principles of the first amendment I think the purpose of the podcast and the reasoning of its participants is that the first amendment in facebooks eyes shouldn’t be the only consideration. For me personally, I am close to what con law people call absolutist. The first amendment means what it says. However the first amendment says nothing about tv, radio and the internet (for obvious reasons). That’s where I am willing to extend my definition to be first amendment + Supreme Court precedent. This is the standard I view as the gold standard of individual liberty. I stopped using Facebook last January as an experiment / New Years resolution to focus my time more effectively but I would say after hearing the podcast, intellectual and well meaning as it was, the positions presented are completely incompatible with my view of individual liberty. I may decide this new year to simply deactivate my account altogether for this reason. 2) there is a growing trend of companies acting like governments. For ex, look at the surveillance powers created by nest/amazon. Look at the efforts to use private satellites for sub 1m resolution surveillance (formerly the only application was defense/intelligence related). And now look at Facebook and Twitter deciding on new rules for speech/content. Facebook’s Supreme Court is a way to manage the complex arguments for going beyond our own legal system. It is borne, in my opinion, both as an means to enact rules to curb individual liberty but also to subvert the existing expensive and lengthy process of taking something to the Supreme Court. And that’s just in the US ... never mind countries that don’t have the legal infrastructure to decide these issues. In short, this is Facebook deciding it can hack / disrupt government. There’s no coincidence this is happening at the same time that it is introducing libra. I am not a citizen of Facebook. I’m less than a citizen. I’m simply a physical embodiment of a life whose digital representation is owned and marketed by a private company. And now it wants to govern my digital representation’s speech and money. And I don’t single out Facebook. How long before I can subscribe to a private Nest police force? Government is slow. Government is inefficient. Government is corrupt. As far as I’m concerned governments sole purpose is to protect my individual liberty. What is facebooks sole purpose?
_Microft 7y ago
> Really feels like a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation Maybe this is something that you (=FB) should have given some thought before navigating yourself into that situation. Finding a solution for this is hardly anything that outsiders should have to do. Solve the mess yourself and better do it fast.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
- dang 7y ago
  That crosses into personal attack and is not ok here. If people get harangued for showing up and mentioning their employer, that will only disincentivize them and others to participate on topics they know a lot about. That will make HN strictly worse. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20disincent&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
MaupitiBlue 7y ago
Stop trying. This isn’t your problem. Wether or not Brexit is a Soros plot is not something a glorified BBS needs to worry about. Should AMD be pressured into adding logic to block people from making deepfakes? I know there is a tendency to be consumed with your own importance combined with political heat, but the best course is to develop great filtering tools for users and “Let the people decide.”
- grmn 7y ago
  I don't know about you but me and my family like living, you're going handle all the political heat with just a sturdy front door?
- antpls 7y ago
  The "is this the platform responsibility?" debate is long time over and everyone agreed (EU and USA) that it is FB's responsibility. States in which Facebook operates have regulations about internet/advertisements/fake news, and FB must find a solution to comply globally with all regulations. If it was only Facebook, FB would accept any ad as long as someone is willing to pay to display it.
  - MaupitiBlue 7y ago
    What state has laws about fake news?
    - antpls 7y ago
      Singapore : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21661958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21661958
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mulmen 7y ago
If you don't like the smell then you could simply stop selling (political) ads. Facebook made the decision to enter the advertising business, this is just par for the course.
Meekro 7y ago
I don't blame you guys, and don't envy the position you're in. Near as I can tell, the mainstream media has spent years telling conservatives that their voices are being silenced at a disproportionate rate by left-leaning Facebook employees. At the same time, they're telling liberals that Facebook is deliberately allowing the spread of disinformation to help more conservatives get elected. Almost as though someone wants the left and right united in their hated of social media. The next step is obvious: pass laws to cripple the major social media companies and restore the mainstream media to its former position of unchallenged power.
reilly3000 7y ago
This could be easily solved if moderation records were made public for public posts. Keeping the process opaque will never quell doubt about its impartiality. I know if I saw a record of what post was banned, which policy it violated, any appeals process records, and a list of previously banned posts by that user, I would be able to feel confident that the system was being managed well, and a strong defense for FB and its private judiciary to demonstrate its application of company policies.
smsm42 7y ago
There's no "better" alternative really - if Facebook censors content - which it absolutely does and which it will be forced to do by politicians even if they didn't want to - then Facebook is also responsible for these censorship decisions. Making a sock puppet to deflect responsibility is a transparent move that is not going to fool anybody. It makes situation slightly worse as it insults the intelligence of the community by implying this transparent trick could work, but otherwise everything stays the same. In theory, Facebook could figure out a way to have truly independent panel of experts than are non-partisan and aren't beholden to Facebook in any way, but I have no idea how they could do it in practice, and even if they did, it'd backfire on them very quickly as soon as that panel would make a decision that some activist group wouldn't like, as those activists would surely target Facebook and Facebook would have a choice to either annihilate the credibility of the panel by ignoring its decision or face the wrath of activists which the Facebook have proven many times in the past they can't withstand and will have to cave anyway. So I really don't see any positive outcome here. Once you're in the censorship game, you're in the censorship game, with all that involves.
remmargorp64 7y ago
For starters, Facebook could offer a paid version of Facebook that allows people to completely opt out of all ads. I would be happy to pay $4 a month for this option (or maybe something like $30 a year), even though I use adblock to block all your ads anyways. Also, I would really like to just see my activity feed from all my followed friends in straight up chronological order, with no filtering, dang it. The way you all display stuff right now is obviously designed so you can sprinkle ads into the feed as if they were actual content. But I don't want to see ads. At all. Period.

lonelappde 7y ago

Sometimes you paint yourself into a corner and no good options remain. Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose.

annoyingnoob 7y ago

My solution is do not use Facebook.

malloreon 7y ago
or instagram, or whatsapp, or messenger.
rumanator 7y ago
> My solution is do not use Facebook. How effective is that? Doesn't Facebook collects data on everyone's online behavior even if they don't have an account?
- annoyingnoob 7y ago
  It may be that FB collects data on everyone they can. The subject of this article is about content/content moderation. If I do not produce or consume content on FB then I might not care about or be subject to any moderation practices.

bananocurrency 7y ago

Have you tried not being a total sellout and working for an advertising company?

burkaman 7y ago

I would prefer that Facebook lose enough power and influence that this is no longer necessary, probably by being broken up.

unearthed 7y ago

Yes. Realize that FB is the defacto platform for social discussion and realize that discussion at this scale is the singular path towards cohesive integration of multi-culture societies. Stop policing speech/thoughts/ideas/communication. Nobody has asked facebook to be the arbiter of social-morality. You at facebook are creating an echo chamber and driving dissenting voices away because they dont adhere to the 'woke' dogma. You're taking all the monstrous ideas and pushing them outside. You're giving them no option but to aggregate + further radicalize each other. This is why shit like 8chan has gotten so wretched. Theres already WAY too much involvement + dogmatic oversight of 'moral right' by facebook. Stop doing what you're doing and accept that if you're ACTUALLY interested in the mass-culture integration you claim you're working towards, banning + policing thoughts aren't the way towards that ends. What actually needs to happen is for the bad to be extrema to be buffered though interaction w the socially normal beliefs. What facebook is CURRENTLY doing is radicalizing groups. Somehow zuck cant see this as the repressive puritanical system that it is.

sdenton4 7y ago
You're denying the existence of a problem, not offering a solution. Implicitly, this says that you don't value the opinions of people who very strongly believe that there is a problem. It's not a great place to argue from.
- unearthed 7y ago
  > You're denying the existence of a problem, not offering a solution Incorrect. Im saying the solution IS NOT the dogmatic oversight that facebook is pursuing here. Instead the solution is: "The droves of people using facebook are sufficiently large that an organic zeitgeist can emerge without interference" Surely You're NOT suggesting: "Yes we require the dogmatic, bureaucratic, oversight of speech to create harmony"
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > We require the dogmatic, bureaucratic oversight of speech to create harmony This is an open, legitimate debate. It's complicated with Facebook due to its lack of competition. Companies moderating speech on their services is time tested and likely necessary. If the market presents a diversity of services, no one system of moderation gets a stranglehold on public discourse. Facebook, however, is dominant. As a result, its decisions approach the breadth of government censorship. That's a fundamental disconnect they're trying to paper over.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> Can anybody actually suggest a better alternative? Ban non-geographically targeted political ads. Create a public repository of all political ads. Creating a puppet entity and calling it a court is dishonest and insulting. (The only proper solution, of course, is breaking up Facebook into, at the very least, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Concentrated market power is the fundamental problem.)

chapium 7y ago
I have no obligation to use any of these services, why do they need to be broken up? Google is a far more threatening power over my day to day activities.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- burkaman 7y ago
  They all have an enormous effect on your life whether or not you use them. Yes, Google should be broken up too.
  - chapium 7y ago
    how?
    - burkaman 7y ago
      Facebook's immense power makes it much more difficult for competing messaging systems, social networks, VR-related companies, and others to enter the market. When they do find any success, Facebook usually acquires them. The effects of monopolies and oligopolies on economies and societies are well-established. If you live in the US, or Europe, or pretty much any country Facebook operates in, the company is spending millions of dollars every year to lobby your government. While that may not sound like a lot, political influence is surprisingly cheap, and effects you whether or not you choose to participate in the political process. The CEO meets regularly with the president of the United States and his close associates, and has met and spoken with many other world leaders. Facebook is a major facilitator of violence and ethnic cleansing around the world (https://time.com/5197039/un-facebook-myanmar-rohingya-violence/ https://time.com/5197039/un-facebook-myanmar-rohingya-violen..., https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-india-content/facebook-a-megaphone-for-hate-against-indian-minorities-idUSKBN1X929F https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-india-content/fa..., https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/chinse-media-facebook-ads-xinjiang-uighur-propaganda https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/chinse-media-fa...). You might argue that if they couldn't use Facebook, people would just use some other platform or tool to accomplish the same goal. That's possible, but if it's happening on Facebook, the company has a responsibility to take action, and they have failed. I don't think there is any other platform that could be used as effectively as Facebook and WhatsApp for this purpose. Even if you don't use Facebook, they likely have a profile for you if anybody you know uses it. They collect contacts from peoples' phones, and scan for faces in all photographs (and correlate the results with other photos). If you don't have robust ad and tracker blocking in your web browser, Facebook is tracking your behavior with their ubiquitous like buttons and analytics scripts.

beatgammit 7y ago

How about an independent third party (outside the company) that has a binding contract with Facebook? This third party could handle other social media sites as well that choose to opt in. Personally, I'd rather just see Facebook stop being such a huge force in the market and instead move toward a decentralized model like Mastodon with ActivityPub, but there's no way Facebook is going to go that voluntarily, nor is there any reason that they should. So, at the very least, they could make this organization completely outside of Facebook's oversight, kind of like how the ESRB works. Maybe this is their end goal, idk, but if they choose to retain control, people are always going to be skeptical.

zepto 7y ago

If this is to be serious, there needs to be absolute transparency about how it is independent. As it stands, there is zero evidence of this. If Zuck is displeased with it, then he can just not contribute more once the initial money is used.

goalieca 7y ago

How about facebook spends some money fighting for a better government. Right now the billionares and corporations are running stingy charities where they decide how the money is spent and how much money is spent and this mostly in their self interest. It would be more in the public interest if facebook and corporations just handed over their fair share of taxes and got out of the way of the government. They should also respect the laws and regulations in other countries where they do business. Quite frankly, in my country of Canada, we have regulations on news in order to keep them honest (no fox news bullshit here!). But facebook is increasingly become a news outlet and so it must start to be treated like one.

cabaalis 7y ago

If I have friends or groups on facebook, I want to see what they put up. If I don't like what they put up to the point that it really bothers me, they won't remain my friends or groups. You're policing speech. It hasn't historically worked well.

m12k 7y ago

I can sympathize with that feeling, but you sort of are in a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation. No one is expecting the wolf to stop eating sheep, and as admirable as its proposal to fund a shepherd might be, we would be negligent if we didn't doubt its sincerity.

floatingatoll 7y ago

Have content reviewers be employed (not contracted!) by this third-party organization with independent editorial control over the content they're reviewing, using this "Supreme Court" to ensure that their editorial decisions are just and sound, and to provide Facebook a forum to request changes in editorial policy without the implied "do whatever we say or else we'll fire you and replace you, you cogs" that the reviewers suffer under today.

kick 7y ago

For anyone curious, this is the same Pesenti as the one that founded Vivisimo. Some of the people replying to you are a bit...ich, but: Why not give the funds to someone battle-tested and with a good reputation like John Gilmore to distribute for the purpose? Something can't be independent with as much Facebook control over it as the post implies.

0x445442 7y ago

> Can anybody suggest a better alternative? Yes, quit attempting to police speech.

grmn 7y ago
We're still policing reading. DRM on digital books, "renting" books on digital platforms, banned books by governments, banned books on shopping sites, religions sentencing and/or cursing the "unclean" reader, communists banning religious books....

buboard 7y ago

stop censoring and dont listen to hacker news

dvtrn 7y ago
dont listen to hacker news This is critical advice for a lot of topics.

mattrp 7y ago

Here’s my comments and I hope to be as constructive as possible: 1) I listened to Zuckerburgs podcast on free speech. I felt that while it had the appearance of adhering to the principles of the first amendment I think the purpose of the podcast and the reasoning of its participants is that the first amendment in facebooks eyes shouldn’t be the only consideration. For me personally, I am close to what con law people call absolutist. The first amendment means what it says. However the first amendment says nothing about tv, radio and the internet (for obvious reasons). That’s where I am willing to extend my definition to be first amendment + Supreme Court precedent. This is the standard I view as the gold standard of individual liberty. I stopped using Facebook last January as an experiment / New Years resolution to focus my time more effectively but I would say after hearing the podcast, intellectual and well meaning as it was, the positions presented are completely incompatible with my view of individual liberty. I may decide this new year to simply deactivate my account altogether for this reason. 2) there is a growing trend of companies acting like governments. For ex, look at the surveillance powers created by nest/amazon. Look at the efforts to use private satellites for sub 1m resolution surveillance (formerly the only application was defense/intelligence related). And now look at Facebook and Twitter deciding on new rules for speech/content. Facebook’s Supreme Court is a way to manage the complex arguments for going beyond our own legal system. It is borne, in my opinion, both as an means to enact rules to curb individual liberty but also to subvert the existing expensive and lengthy process of taking something to the Supreme Court. And that’s just in the US ... never mind countries that don’t have the legal infrastructure to decide these issues. In short, this is Facebook deciding it can hack / disrupt government. There’s no coincidence this is happening at the same time that it is introducing libra. I am not a citizen of Facebook. I’m less than a citizen. I’m simply a physical embodiment of a life whose digital representation is owned and marketed by a private company. And now it wants to govern my digital representation’s speech and money. And I don’t single out Facebook. How long before I can subscribe to a private Nest police force? Government is slow. Government is inefficient. Government is corrupt. As far as I’m concerned governments sole purpose is to protect my individual liberty. What is facebooks sole purpose?

_Microft 7y ago

> Really feels like a "Damned if you do/Damned if you don't" situation Maybe this is something that you (=FB) should have given some thought before navigating yourself into that situation. Finding a solution for this is hardly anything that outsiders should have to do. Solve the mess yourself and better do it fast.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dang 7y ago
That crosses into personal attack and is not ok here. If people get harangued for showing up and mentioning their employer, that will only disincentivize them and others to participate on topics they know a lot about. That will make HN strictly worse. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20disincent&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

MaupitiBlue 7y ago

Stop trying. This isn’t your problem. Wether or not Brexit is a Soros plot is not something a glorified BBS needs to worry about. Should AMD be pressured into adding logic to block people from making deepfakes? I know there is a tendency to be consumed with your own importance combined with political heat, but the best course is to develop great filtering tools for users and “Let the people decide.”

grmn 7y ago
I don't know about you but me and my family like living, you're going handle all the political heat with just a sturdy front door?
antpls 7y ago
The "is this the platform responsibility?" debate is long time over and everyone agreed (EU and USA) that it is FB's responsibility. States in which Facebook operates have regulations about internet/advertisements/fake news, and FB must find a solution to comply globally with all regulations. If it was only Facebook, FB would accept any ad as long as someone is willing to pay to display it.
- MaupitiBlue 7y ago
  What state has laws about fake news?
  - antpls 7y ago
    Singapore : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21661958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21661958

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mulmen 7y ago

If you don't like the smell then you could simply stop selling (political) ads. Facebook made the decision to enter the advertising business, this is just par for the course.

Meekro 7y ago

I don't blame you guys, and don't envy the position you're in. Near as I can tell, the mainstream media has spent years telling conservatives that their voices are being silenced at a disproportionate rate by left-leaning Facebook employees. At the same time, they're telling liberals that Facebook is deliberately allowing the spread of disinformation to help more conservatives get elected. Almost as though someone wants the left and right united in their hated of social media. The next step is obvious: pass laws to cripple the major social media companies and restore the mainstream media to its former position of unchallenged power.

reilly3000 7y ago

This could be easily solved if moderation records were made public for public posts. Keeping the process opaque will never quell doubt about its impartiality. I know if I saw a record of what post was banned, which policy it violated, any appeals process records, and a list of previously banned posts by that user, I would be able to feel confident that the system was being managed well, and a strong defense for FB and its private judiciary to demonstrate its application of company policies.

smsm42 7y ago

There's no "better" alternative really - if Facebook censors content - which it absolutely does and which it will be forced to do by politicians even if they didn't want to - then Facebook is also responsible for these censorship decisions. Making a sock puppet to deflect responsibility is a transparent move that is not going to fool anybody. It makes situation slightly worse as it insults the intelligence of the community by implying this transparent trick could work, but otherwise everything stays the same. In theory, Facebook could figure out a way to have truly independent panel of experts than are non-partisan and aren't beholden to Facebook in any way, but I have no idea how they could do it in practice, and even if they did, it'd backfire on them very quickly as soon as that panel would make a decision that some activist group wouldn't like, as those activists would surely target Facebook and Facebook would have a choice to either annihilate the credibility of the panel by ignoring its decision or face the wrath of activists which the Facebook have proven many times in the past they can't withstand and will have to cave anyway. So I really don't see any positive outcome here. Once you're in the censorship game, you're in the censorship game, with all that involves.

remmargorp64 7y ago

For starters, Facebook could offer a paid version of Facebook that allows people to completely opt out of all ads. I would be happy to pay $4 a month for this option (or maybe something like $30 a year), even though I use adblock to block all your ads anyways. Also, I would really like to just see my activity feed from all my followed friends in straight up chronological order, with no filtering, dang it. The way you all display stuff right now is obviously designed so you can sprinkle ads into the feed as if they were actual content. But I don't want to see ads. At all. Period.