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I don't understand why doesn't Facebook just: -Allow all posts -Allow users to customize what they want to see (e.g. "dont show me posts that glorify violence"

I don't understand why doesn't Facebook just: -Allow all posts -Allow users to customize what they want to see (e.g. "dont show me posts that glorify violence" or "only allow covid posts that match WHO guidelines" or "allow exceptions from political figures or of historical significance") and allow users to ban hide posts that are found untruthful by third parties (snopes, etc). To me effectively everyone wins. Facebook users who want to curate their experience can do so. Facebook gets out of the censorship business so governments can lay off. Governments will have a hard time objecting because it is the users controlling their information, not the company. "Sources of truth" have to compete to get the customer's business. Its hard but not that hard, and its Facebook's core business.

lordnacho 6y ago
My bet is most people would not realize this was available and would continue to see whatever the default options were. And so you get back to square one, what should the defaults be?
- zarkov99 6y ago
  That is not square one, its a far better place than where we are now.
sneak 6y ago
It's not about users being outraged about what they can read. "Those other people are idiots and will kill us all without some rules" is a basic human conceit. These people calling for censorship on Facebook don't want to see that stuff, sure, but way more importantly they want FB to censor so that other people CAN'T read that stuff. They think that if they shout loud enough, they will get to decide what other, more gullible/radicalized/violent/whatever people are allowed to read. It's really condescending nonsense to claim that you know better than another adult what they should be allowed to read. Lots of really famous/successful people are thinking along these lines lately. It's quite popular amongst the "thought leadership" set to think that Facebook has some moral obligation to play publishing cop and shut down private groups where people say things they don't like, because people other than the ones calling for censorship are so gullible and malleable and childlike that they'll turn into a terrorist if they read enough about 5G or vaccines or antifa or whatever in private FB groups or something. A handy example is John Gruber's recent post on the matter: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/06/02/schnitt-facebook https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/06/02/schnitt-faceboo... The correct answer to people being wrong is education, never censorship. I defer, as always, to Heinlein: > “Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: "Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop." Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them "for their own good" — not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.”
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > they want FB to censor so that other people CAN'T read that stuff I'm having a hard time believing that they want to stop with Facebook, either. I suspect this will move on to hosting providers next.
  - sneak 6y ago
    There was an effort by Anonymous people to negatively affect Cloudflare in some capacity called #OpISIS due to the fact that Cloudflare generally tries to be a content-neutral pipe, and was continuing to host websites used by the Islamic State. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/19/cloudflare-accused-by-anonymous-helping-isis https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/19/cloudflar... I wish there were more companies like Cloudflare.
    - anonymousab 6y ago
      > Cloudflare generally tries to be a content-neutral pipe They did a complete 180 over the past couple of years, for particularly distasteful content (in their opinion). For better or worse.
- anonymousab 6y ago
  >The correct answer to people being wrong is education, never censorship. What do you do when people reject education itself as a matter of course or principle? Or can only view such attempts defensively, see them as patronizing at best, and so radicalize further as a result? Heck, even "this post is misleading" approaches, which leave the original content intact, are seen by some as a form of censorship (and definitely as propaganda to be discarded) and I don't think that's an unreasonable response based on their existing point of view. Fundamentally, if misinformation is more appealing and attractive than truths, how far can educational approaches go? If it's information junk food, then I see education helping no more than it helps for the obesity crisis - perhaps less so because that unhealthiness actually feels bad and prompts action. There's no equivalent with disinfo.
  - 6y ago
valleyjo 6y ago
I agree. But this would reduce engagement and therefore profits. Do you see FB opting in to reducing profits?
- mchusma 6y ago
  I'm not so convinced it would reduce engagement. I would think that me giving Facebook feedback on what I want would potentially increase engagement. But it feels more sustainable to me, and less prone to unwanted regulation. In fact, if I were Facebook and wanting to reduce competition, I would try to pass legislation that requires these kinds of controls, making it harder for upstarts.
nautilus12 6y ago
When you turn on the WHO guidelines filter are you just filtering or are you curating? Ultimately you have to form an opinion about whether the piece fits into that classification. With that particular class it may be clear, but with others it may be more grey. Right or wrong, thats what facebook is trying to avoid, attaching an opinion to the content, because then they subject to the same scrutiny twitter is facing with 230.
syshum 6y ago
See you have a healthy respect for the idea of free expression, as do I Unfortunately we are in the minority, the majority wants SOMEONE ELSE to choose what they can see, what is the "good speech" and what is the "bad speech" They want someone else to tell them what the "good things" are they should be supporting, and what the "bad things" are that they need to oppose In short, people no longer want to think critically for themselves, they want the magic box to do that for them
- readams 6y ago
  We simultaneously hate and fear Mark Zuckerberg and we want him to be the ultimate censor on everything we see and read. Somehow, we've decided that we want to demand that he take even more power.
  - discordance 6y ago
    I don’t use his surveillance platforms and I don’t fear him
- xphilter 6y ago
  I honestly don’t understand how this ignorant of a comment still gets on HN. What y’all are talking about is “The Internet” where all the trash and racist are free to make whatever content they want. What everyone else is talking about is private companies that publish trash based on recommendation engines, timeline visibility algorithms, sharing functions, and whole other bunch of programmed ways to “increase engagement.” If Facebook just wants to be the internet where you publish trash then I have to go find it on my own accord then manually share it to a list of other people, or where I can make a page with no special boosting to parrot that trash, then go right ahead. But that’s not what FB is doing, so don’t pretend that is.
  - ytNumbers 6y ago
    We are discussing Facebook censoring the POTUS.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
gus_massa 6y ago
> don't show me posts that glorify violence Does this include "We killed Osama Bin Laden" [perhaps with some details and photos of the operation]?
- sneak 6y ago
  One thing I have to hand it to Twitter for is that they wrote an explicit carve out for their "no glorifying violence" rules to militaries and governments. This seems to be somewhat implicit in our society ("violence is bad, unless it's our heroes doing it to people another color far away, then woohoo bombs away!") but usually unsaid and unexamined. It's a good moral move by Twitter to point out the contradiction. A better move would have been for them to simply ban everyone calling for violence, militaries included (if and only if they are going to be banning people selectively based on content, which they are, which I think is bad). https://www.cnet.com/news/twitters-new-abuse-enforcement-violence-rules-military-governments/ https://www.cnet.com/news/twitters-new-abuse-enforcement-vio...
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
Hmm. I think you may be onto something. Tagging may not be that hard ( though false positives may be an issue ) and only showing stated preferences. But do we want to move into slippery slope of 'show me car accidents with at least one fatality'.
- mchusma 6y ago
  That is where it gets hard, but I think its doable. And just to play with the thought experiment you would probably weigh things. Like would you want to see any car accidents on your street within 50 feet of your house? Maybe yes. 2 miles away? Probably not, but may be if they have a fatality sure. Car accident of a friend in another country? Maybe. A train wreck with 100 deaths in your state? Basically you can adjust the likelihood of something showing on your feed by severity weighted by location and friend graph (showing less severe things closer to you and more severe things further away). This matches how I think humans actually process information.
anonymousab 6y ago
Defaults are important because, fundamentally, misinformation and superstition spread faster, farther and stronger than the truth, with much more staying power. There's also the practical problem with social networks - within a degree or two of connections, you'll at least have some people who are part of communities covered by your own blocks. But it is in Facebook's interests to show you those communities and extend those linkages; likewise, people would simultaneously object to 1) Facebook not showing them content from friends even if it violates their own content settings 2) Facebook violations their content settings. It would be a lose/lose situation. It is now, too. They could then no more wash their hands of it than they can now: if people are using your platform to do bad things, or things society rejects, then you'll take the blame nomatter what level (or lack thereof) of interference you take.
- davidw 6y ago
  > Defaults are important because, fundamentally, misinformation and superstition spread faster, farther and stronger than the truth, with much more staying power. The amount of effort involved in telling a lie is pretty low. Going out to do good research to tell the truth is often much more expensive in terms of effort. Or, said another way: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
- mchusma 6y ago
  Yes defaults matter, and people will campaign heavily for the default settings, but perfect can't be the enemy of good and I can't see how this is worse. I think its not only possible but relatively easy to have user settings that allow people to toggle on/off "1) Facebook not showing them content from friends even if it violates their own content settings".
LatteLazy 6y ago
Very simply, the biggest threat to Facebook and other tech companies is the legacy media they're replacing. Censorship is a complex issue. So any solution will get them eaten alive for not suiting literally everyone. Then you'll be pilloried for failing to appease the one nano-segment of society that thinks you went too far or not far enough. For your solution, the NY Times will run stories about Facebook censoring us on Monday then stories about Facebook letting Nazis eat babies on Tuesday. That's the issue Facebook faces here: not minimising social damage or maximising freedom, it's protecting share price and avoiding legislation due to economically motivated attacks. Fyi, I actually really like your answer.
zarkov99 6y ago
Of course. That is exactly what FB should be doing and its likely where Twitter is going as well. Nothing else is sustainable. What exactly gives a bunch of 20 to 30 year old privileged nerds the moral authority or wisdom to decide what information the country gets access to? Pardon my French, but fuck that.
ng12 6y ago
Doesn't Facebook work like this already? I imagine most of the people really angry about things Trump is posting don't follow him anyways. I'll occasionally unfollow (not unfriend) people who post nonsense repeatedly and my feed is remarkably clean.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Facebook usage scales with controversy. Rage is a more reliable predictor if virality than other emotions, so they want the controversy.
newacct583 6y ago
> I don't understand why doesn't Facebook just: -Allow all posts [...] To me effectively everyone wins. "Everyone", including racists, terrorists, drug cartels, human smugglers, child pornographers, scammers, phishers, hackers, gun nuts, anarchists... I know you say you'd be fine with all that stuff, but if I write long enough I'll find something you're not OK with. And everyone else has a different something. Finding common ground on which we can all agree isn't a mistaken goal or an unnatural side effect of having a public forum. It is the purpose of having a public forum. This is just another variant of the "forums should be unmoderated" argument. No one wants that. And the proof? You're making the point on a heavily moderated forum.
- Hitton 6y ago
  >No one wants that. And the proof? You're making the point on a heavily moderated forum. That's terrible argument. HN already works pretty close to what mchusma proposes. See "showdead" option in profile setting.
- z0r 6y ago
  A public forum can also be common ground to disagree on.
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  People in the "everyone" categories you mention can be heard if they want to, the world and Internet are big enough for everyone. And I have the impression that you think you are the owner of the truth by putting categories that should NOT have free speech because you KNOW they are bad. You are wrong multiple times, first because your categories are extremely subjective (I know gun nuts that are very nice people with a passion for the Olympic sport called precision shooting), second because in a country where SCOTUS said something like "there is no exception for hate speech in the 1st A, so hate speech is protected speech" you want private organizations to be restrict what the government is not allowed to. For you free speech is a bad idea, but you think you can post on forums about that and benefit from the fact that the forums do not restrict your posts like you want to restrict others. Maybe your posts are more nocive than child porn, some food for thought.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
What do you do about illegal content?
jmhnilbog 6y ago
Facebook doesn't have anything more that the dream of a promise that some day they'll have AI smart enough to curate content as well as humans can. They don't even have a hope of doing so in a way that all humans can agree is fair. They are criminally negligent in allowing themselves to be what they are: a publishing platform designed to divide humanity into smaller and smaller subgroups in order to ease marketing, without regard to public safety or any conception of common good. Social media does not care about the blood it spills. Want the good old web back? Enforce responsibility for content published on the publisher. Let's see facebook moderate every post. Let hateful shitheads find a place to host them, and let them start their own blogs, with their identifiable information publicly available. Failing that, maybe we can do something like this idea I posted this morning. (https://www.reddit.com/r/socialmedia/comments/gwhiie/trust_and_social_responsibility_in_social_media/ https://www.reddit.com/r/socialmedia/comments/gwhiie/trust_a...)
at_a_remove 6y ago
Ah, that word "just." Whenever I see "just" in some kind of kind of technical demand in the first line, I immediately know that there's a lot of stuff to unpack. Here, you have requested something fairly close to a general AI which understands both written language, images, and even more fun, images of language. Cartoon violence right on down to "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" And will quoting Henry II of England set off your detector? Let's unpack your COVID post thing -- note that WHO guidelines have changed a few times. Recall that era wherein they said that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. Also, don't buy masks. So you'd have to factor in a time domain as the guidelines change, in addition to your generalized AI as above. In IT, I have frequently heard requests for "why can't we just get the things we know we will like?" and such. It all boils down to that mind-reading, future-predicting generalized AI. Why don't we just turn it on?
- joecasson 6y ago
  Couldn't agree more. Also the implication that users will manage or update settings to their preferences is incredible in its own right. So, let's just do it.
- banads 6y ago
  Okay, but companies like Google, FB, and Twitter are already putting great efforts towards implementing that type of thing in production. Whats so difficult about letting a user toggle those existing filters on and off? Or allowing users more control over their news feed, such as allowing it to be chronological? Or hiding items based on keywords? Its our job as technologists to not only tell people if/when their request is technologically impractical/impossible, but more importantly, to make informed recommendations of what is technically feasible and most closely matches their intended goals (which they might not yet even fully understand themselves).
  - giardini 6y ago
    banads says>"Whats so difficult about letting a user toggle those existing filters on and off? Or allowing users more control over their news feed, such as allowing it to be chronological? Or hiding items based on keywords?"< This! And... allow 3rd-party individuals/companies to create user-filters that users could load up at their preference. Allow a proliferation of filters to compete. So, say, if you don't want profanity you could view FaceBook with the, say, "FaceBook-no-profanity" filter active. Or if you don't want antisemitic remarks you can load up FaceBook with, say, the no-antisemitic filter. Filters could be loaded, unloaded, switched on and off at the users desire. So everyone could see the Internet they want or, at any time, view everything or part of it. And if you want to see what a friend is talking about, you could load the filter(s) (s)he is using. Sets of filters could be grouped, e.g., TomT's filters, Mary's filters, Mom's filters, etc., so you can, so to speak, "see the (Internet) world through their eyes". I see where this is going...in the long run the Internet will turn into a vast wasteland with gardens of little consequence and minimal membership. It will become defunct and all else will be simple P2P over TCP/IP.
johannes1234321 6y ago
> -Allow users to customize what they want to see This means that Facebook has to provide a process to categorize posts into the categories. Facebook argues they don't want to do that categorization.
- zarkov99 6y ago
  No it doesn't. The customization could be done based on the source (Always/never show government officials posts, for example) or the votes of a trusted entity (the WHO, The White House, CNN, your cool friend who knows what is going on, etc). Plenty of empty gas bags have been identified by their reaction to Pandemic but also plenty of people who were right, early (and widely mocked at the time). There is signal there that users should be able to leverage.
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    I shortened my quote, for context the GP post had these examples: > e.g. "dont show me posts that glorify violence" or "only allow covid posts that match WHO guidelines" or "allow exceptions from political figures or of historical significance") Glorifying violence isn't objective measurable. How do you identify matches to WHO guidance (incl. satire, valuable critique, ...) How exactly do you identify "political figures or of historical significance" sure, you can identify elected officials, but what about opposition leaders which often are not formally designated or cases where elections are disputed? And to be clear: I think the stance of "we are neutral" is wrong. And I don't think this can be offloaded to the user, while Facebook stays "neutral".
    - zarkov99 6y ago
      I agree that "hide things I won't like" isn't going to work but I think that for people in good faith the proxies I mentioned would be good enough. That however would not afford FB or anyone else control over other's speech, which I guess is what you think should be possible? Can you elaborate as to why you think that would be a net good?
    - mchusma 6y ago
mbostleman 6y ago
Because that would just be the Internet.
netcan 6y ago
> Its hard but not that hard That depends on how you define "it." Media is not neutral. At least, we haven't yet had a neutral mass media. In 2020 that means defaults, recomendation engines & such. These are core to FB's product, business model. They're not neutral. You need to take the scale FB's influence into account. Elections, revolutions, mass protests, primary political narratives... all determined on FB. What happens on Facebook can determine presidencies and prime ministerships. The have more power than Rupert Murdoch. At this scale you can't just "get out of the censorship business." Youtube, for comparison, appears to be trying to get out of the harder problems by exiting the space entirely. On hard news issues, they're defaulting to (more than defaulting to) television news sources. I don't think they want politics on their platform anymore. It's too dangerous. FB can't do that as easily, but I expect they'll try something similar. Basically... social media will try to hand the problem back to traditional media somehow.
deathgrips 6y ago
Silicon Valley people live in a bubble where everyone they know is smart and liberal. After a while they forget that there exist smart people who are not liberal and implicitly think that if someone disagrees with them, they are uneducated and just wrong. Consequently they take it upon themselves to demand that people not be allowed to say incorrect and uneducated opinions (really just anything the Silicon Valley hivemind disagrees with). When nearly everyone in your bubble has the same beliefs on politics and culture you will react violently towards threatening ideas.
jedimastert 6y ago
> "only allow covid posts that match WHO guidelines" That's cool, except for all of those people that have been that the WHO is secretly out to get them some how. The issue goes deeper...
dredmorbius 6y ago
Because when you operate at a scale measured in billions of souls, impacts and consequences are neither inconsequential nor personal. Neither are remediations and mitigations. You find lone actors committing mass killings: "New Zealand mosque shooter broadcast slaughter on Facebook" https://apnews.com/ce9e1d267af149dab40e3e5391254530 https://apnews.com/ce9e1d267af149dab40e3e5391254530 You find genocides: "A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... You find radicalisation: "Prosecutors say Dylann Roof ‘self-radicalized’ online, wrote another manifesto in jail" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/22/prosecutors-say-accused-charleston-church-gunman-self-radicalized-online/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/2... You find disinformation with global consequences: "How fear of the unknown sows disinformation during a pandemic" https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2020/4/10/21201986/misinformation-corona-virus-covid-19-social-media-facebook-twitter-instagram https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2020/4/10/21201986/misinform... Yes, the examples listed include more than Facebook, but Facebook, and its "they trust me, dumb fucks" unitary executive (https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/11/19/18099011/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-stock-nyt-wsj https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/11/19/18099011/mark-zuck...) is very much at the. heart of the problem. Or, as some may better recognise the notion, "with great power comes great responsibility". Facebook and Zuckerberg consistently shirk theirs, and externalise the concommitant costs. Anticipating the usual rebuttal that Facebook could not operate if it were required to act responsibly: if an organisation cannot exist or operate at scale without actively harming society, then it shouldn't exist. The "individual responsibility" argument, going back to 1970s anti-littering campaigns and the crying (fake) Indian (fake) TV advert (and before), are corporate gambits to shirk their own obligations: Annie Leonard, "Moving from Individual Change to Societal Change" (2013) [pdf] http://www.pfree.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Moving-from-Individual-Change-to-Societal-Change-Annie-Leonard-2013.pdf http://www.pfree.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Moving-fro... Don't buy it.
illumin8 6y ago
What you're essentially advocating for is Facebook, exactly as it is today. Unless you default to censoring information, which is incredibly unlikely, you default to amplifying all hateful information.
amadeuspagel 6y ago
This wouldn't satisfy the people angry at Zuckerberg. To them it's not about what they see, it's about what other people are allowed to see.

lordnacho 6y ago

My bet is most people would not realize this was available and would continue to see whatever the default options were. And so you get back to square one, what should the defaults be?

zarkov99 6y ago
That is not square one, its a far better place than where we are now.

sneak 6y ago

It's not about users being outraged about what they can read. "Those other people are idiots and will kill us all without some rules" is a basic human conceit. These people calling for censorship on Facebook don't want to see that stuff, sure, but way more importantly they want FB to censor so that other people CAN'T read that stuff. They think that if they shout loud enough, they will get to decide what other, more gullible/radicalized/violent/whatever people are allowed to read. It's really condescending nonsense to claim that you know better than another adult what they should be allowed to read. Lots of really famous/successful people are thinking along these lines lately. It's quite popular amongst the "thought leadership" set to think that Facebook has some moral obligation to play publishing cop and shut down private groups where people say things they don't like, because people other than the ones calling for censorship are so gullible and malleable and childlike that they'll turn into a terrorist if they read enough about 5G or vaccines or antifa or whatever in private FB groups or something. A handy example is John Gruber's recent post on the matter: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/06/02/schnitt-facebook https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/06/02/schnitt-faceboo... The correct answer to people being wrong is education, never censorship. I defer, as always, to Heinlein: > “Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: "Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop." Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them "for their own good" — not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.”

commandlinefan 6y ago
> they want FB to censor so that other people CAN'T read that stuff I'm having a hard time believing that they want to stop with Facebook, either. I suspect this will move on to hosting providers next.
- sneak 6y ago
  There was an effort by Anonymous people to negatively affect Cloudflare in some capacity called #OpISIS due to the fact that Cloudflare generally tries to be a content-neutral pipe, and was continuing to host websites used by the Islamic State. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/19/cloudflare-accused-by-anonymous-helping-isis https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/19/cloudflar... I wish there were more companies like Cloudflare.
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    > Cloudflare generally tries to be a content-neutral pipe They did a complete 180 over the past couple of years, for particularly distasteful content (in their opinion). For better or worse.
anonymousab 6y ago
>The correct answer to people being wrong is education, never censorship. What do you do when people reject education itself as a matter of course or principle? Or can only view such attempts defensively, see them as patronizing at best, and so radicalize further as a result? Heck, even "this post is misleading" approaches, which leave the original content intact, are seen by some as a form of censorship (and definitely as propaganda to be discarded) and I don't think that's an unreasonable response based on their existing point of view. Fundamentally, if misinformation is more appealing and attractive than truths, how far can educational approaches go? If it's information junk food, then I see education helping no more than it helps for the obesity crisis - perhaps less so because that unhealthiness actually feels bad and prompts action. There's no equivalent with disinfo.
- 6y ago

valleyjo 6y ago

I agree. But this would reduce engagement and therefore profits. Do you see FB opting in to reducing profits?

mchusma 6y ago
I'm not so convinced it would reduce engagement. I would think that me giving Facebook feedback on what I want would potentially increase engagement. But it feels more sustainable to me, and less prone to unwanted regulation. In fact, if I were Facebook and wanting to reduce competition, I would try to pass legislation that requires these kinds of controls, making it harder for upstarts.

nautilus12 6y ago

When you turn on the WHO guidelines filter are you just filtering or are you curating? Ultimately you have to form an opinion about whether the piece fits into that classification. With that particular class it may be clear, but with others it may be more grey. Right or wrong, thats what facebook is trying to avoid, attaching an opinion to the content, because then they subject to the same scrutiny twitter is facing with 230.

syshum 6y ago

See you have a healthy respect for the idea of free expression, as do I Unfortunately we are in the minority, the majority wants SOMEONE ELSE to choose what they can see, what is the "good speech" and what is the "bad speech" They want someone else to tell them what the "good things" are they should be supporting, and what the "bad things" are that they need to oppose In short, people no longer want to think critically for themselves, they want the magic box to do that for them

readams 6y ago
We simultaneously hate and fear Mark Zuckerberg and we want him to be the ultimate censor on everything we see and read. Somehow, we've decided that we want to demand that he take even more power.
- discordance 6y ago
  I don’t use his surveillance platforms and I don’t fear him
xphilter 6y ago
I honestly don’t understand how this ignorant of a comment still gets on HN. What y’all are talking about is “The Internet” where all the trash and racist are free to make whatever content they want. What everyone else is talking about is private companies that publish trash based on recommendation engines, timeline visibility algorithms, sharing functions, and whole other bunch of programmed ways to “increase engagement.” If Facebook just wants to be the internet where you publish trash then I have to go find it on my own accord then manually share it to a list of other people, or where I can make a page with no special boosting to parrot that trash, then go right ahead. But that’s not what FB is doing, so don’t pretend that is.
- ytNumbers 6y ago
  We are discussing Facebook censoring the POTUS.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago

gus_massa 6y ago

> don't show me posts that glorify violence Does this include "We killed Osama Bin Laden" [perhaps with some details and photos of the operation]?

sneak 6y ago
One thing I have to hand it to Twitter for is that they wrote an explicit carve out for their "no glorifying violence" rules to militaries and governments. This seems to be somewhat implicit in our society ("violence is bad, unless it's our heroes doing it to people another color far away, then woohoo bombs away!") but usually unsaid and unexamined. It's a good moral move by Twitter to point out the contradiction. A better move would have been for them to simply ban everyone calling for violence, militaries included (if and only if they are going to be banning people selectively based on content, which they are, which I think is bad). https://www.cnet.com/news/twitters-new-abuse-enforcement-violence-rules-military-governments/ https://www.cnet.com/news/twitters-new-abuse-enforcement-vio...

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

Hmm. I think you may be onto something. Tagging may not be that hard ( though false positives may be an issue ) and only showing stated preferences. But do we want to move into slippery slope of 'show me car accidents with at least one fatality'.

mchusma 6y ago
That is where it gets hard, but I think its doable. And just to play with the thought experiment you would probably weigh things. Like would you want to see any car accidents on your street within 50 feet of your house? Maybe yes. 2 miles away? Probably not, but may be if they have a fatality sure. Car accident of a friend in another country? Maybe. A train wreck with 100 deaths in your state? Basically you can adjust the likelihood of something showing on your feed by severity weighted by location and friend graph (showing less severe things closer to you and more severe things further away). This matches how I think humans actually process information.

anonymousab 6y ago

Defaults are important because, fundamentally, misinformation and superstition spread faster, farther and stronger than the truth, with much more staying power. There's also the practical problem with social networks - within a degree or two of connections, you'll at least have some people who are part of communities covered by your own blocks. But it is in Facebook's interests to show you those communities and extend those linkages; likewise, people would simultaneously object to 1) Facebook not showing them content from friends even if it violates their own content settings 2) Facebook violations their content settings. It would be a lose/lose situation. It is now, too. They could then no more wash their hands of it than they can now: if people are using your platform to do bad things, or things society rejects, then you'll take the blame nomatter what level (or lack thereof) of interference you take.

davidw 6y ago
> Defaults are important because, fundamentally, misinformation and superstition spread faster, farther and stronger than the truth, with much more staying power. The amount of effort involved in telling a lie is pretty low. Going out to do good research to tell the truth is often much more expensive in terms of effort. Or, said another way: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
mchusma 6y ago
Yes defaults matter, and people will campaign heavily for the default settings, but perfect can't be the enemy of good and I can't see how this is worse. I think its not only possible but relatively easy to have user settings that allow people to toggle on/off "1) Facebook not showing them content from friends even if it violates their own content settings".

LatteLazy 6y ago

Very simply, the biggest threat to Facebook and other tech companies is the legacy media they're replacing. Censorship is a complex issue. So any solution will get them eaten alive for not suiting literally everyone. Then you'll be pilloried for failing to appease the one nano-segment of society that thinks you went too far or not far enough. For your solution, the NY Times will run stories about Facebook censoring us on Monday then stories about Facebook letting Nazis eat babies on Tuesday. That's the issue Facebook faces here: not minimising social damage or maximising freedom, it's protecting share price and avoiding legislation due to economically motivated attacks. Fyi, I actually really like your answer.

zarkov99 6y ago

Of course. That is exactly what FB should be doing and its likely where Twitter is going as well. Nothing else is sustainable. What exactly gives a bunch of 20 to 30 year old privileged nerds the moral authority or wisdom to decide what information the country gets access to? Pardon my French, but fuck that.

ng12 6y ago

Doesn't Facebook work like this already? I imagine most of the people really angry about things Trump is posting don't follow him anyways. I'll occasionally unfollow (not unfriend) people who post nonsense repeatedly and my feed is remarkably clean.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Facebook usage scales with controversy. Rage is a more reliable predictor if virality than other emotions, so they want the controversy.

newacct583 6y ago

> I don't understand why doesn't Facebook just: -Allow all posts [...] To me effectively everyone wins. "Everyone", including racists, terrorists, drug cartels, human smugglers, child pornographers, scammers, phishers, hackers, gun nuts, anarchists... I know you say you'd be fine with all that stuff, but if I write long enough I'll find something you're not OK with. And everyone else has a different something. Finding common ground on which we can all agree isn't a mistaken goal or an unnatural side effect of having a public forum. It is the purpose of having a public forum. This is just another variant of the "forums should be unmoderated" argument. No one wants that. And the proof? You're making the point on a heavily moderated forum.

Hitton 6y ago
>No one wants that. And the proof? You're making the point on a heavily moderated forum. That's terrible argument. HN already works pretty close to what mchusma proposes. See "showdead" option in profile setting.
z0r 6y ago
A public forum can also be common ground to disagree on.
AdrianB1 6y ago
People in the "everyone" categories you mention can be heard if they want to, the world and Internet are big enough for everyone. And I have the impression that you think you are the owner of the truth by putting categories that should NOT have free speech because you KNOW they are bad. You are wrong multiple times, first because your categories are extremely subjective (I know gun nuts that are very nice people with a passion for the Olympic sport called precision shooting), second because in a country where SCOTUS said something like "there is no exception for hate speech in the 1st A, so hate speech is protected speech" you want private organizations to be restrict what the government is not allowed to. For you free speech is a bad idea, but you think you can post on forums about that and benefit from the fact that the forums do not restrict your posts like you want to restrict others. Maybe your posts are more nocive than child porn, some food for thought.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

What do you do about illegal content?

jmhnilbog 6y ago

Facebook doesn't have anything more that the dream of a promise that some day they'll have AI smart enough to curate content as well as humans can. They don't even have a hope of doing so in a way that all humans can agree is fair. They are criminally negligent in allowing themselves to be what they are: a publishing platform designed to divide humanity into smaller and smaller subgroups in order to ease marketing, without regard to public safety or any conception of common good. Social media does not care about the blood it spills. Want the good old web back? Enforce responsibility for content published on the publisher. Let's see facebook moderate every post. Let hateful shitheads find a place to host them, and let them start their own blogs, with their identifiable information publicly available. Failing that, maybe we can do something like this idea I posted this morning. (https://www.reddit.com/r/socialmedia/comments/gwhiie/trust_and_social_responsibility_in_social_media/ https://www.reddit.com/r/socialmedia/comments/gwhiie/trust_a...)

at_a_remove 6y ago

Ah, that word "just." Whenever I see "just" in some kind of kind of technical demand in the first line, I immediately know that there's a lot of stuff to unpack. Here, you have requested something fairly close to a general AI which understands both written language, images, and even more fun, images of language. Cartoon violence right on down to "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" And will quoting Henry II of England set off your detector? Let's unpack your COVID post thing -- note that WHO guidelines have changed a few times. Recall that era wherein they said that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. Also, don't buy masks. So you'd have to factor in a time domain as the guidelines change, in addition to your generalized AI as above. In IT, I have frequently heard requests for "why can't we just get the things we know we will like?" and such. It all boils down to that mind-reading, future-predicting generalized AI. Why don't we just turn it on?

joecasson 6y ago
Couldn't agree more. Also the implication that users will manage or update settings to their preferences is incredible in its own right. So, let's just do it.
banads 6y ago
Okay, but companies like Google, FB, and Twitter are already putting great efforts towards implementing that type of thing in production. Whats so difficult about letting a user toggle those existing filters on and off? Or allowing users more control over their news feed, such as allowing it to be chronological? Or hiding items based on keywords? Its our job as technologists to not only tell people if/when their request is technologically impractical/impossible, but more importantly, to make informed recommendations of what is technically feasible and most closely matches their intended goals (which they might not yet even fully understand themselves).
- giardini 6y ago
  banads says>"Whats so difficult about letting a user toggle those existing filters on and off? Or allowing users more control over their news feed, such as allowing it to be chronological? Or hiding items based on keywords?"< This! And... allow 3rd-party individuals/companies to create user-filters that users could load up at their preference. Allow a proliferation of filters to compete. So, say, if you don't want profanity you could view FaceBook with the, say, "FaceBook-no-profanity" filter active. Or if you don't want antisemitic remarks you can load up FaceBook with, say, the no-antisemitic filter. Filters could be loaded, unloaded, switched on and off at the users desire. So everyone could see the Internet they want or, at any time, view everything or part of it. And if you want to see what a friend is talking about, you could load the filter(s) (s)he is using. Sets of filters could be grouped, e.g., TomT's filters, Mary's filters, Mom's filters, etc., so you can, so to speak, "see the (Internet) world through their eyes". I see where this is going...in the long run the Internet will turn into a vast wasteland with gardens of little consequence and minimal membership. It will become defunct and all else will be simple P2P over TCP/IP.

johannes1234321 6y ago

> -Allow users to customize what they want to see This means that Facebook has to provide a process to categorize posts into the categories. Facebook argues they don't want to do that categorization.

zarkov99 6y ago
No it doesn't. The customization could be done based on the source (Always/never show government officials posts, for example) or the votes of a trusted entity (the WHO, The White House, CNN, your cool friend who knows what is going on, etc). Plenty of empty gas bags have been identified by their reaction to Pandemic but also plenty of people who were right, early (and widely mocked at the time). There is signal there that users should be able to leverage.
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  I shortened my quote, for context the GP post had these examples: > e.g. "dont show me posts that glorify violence" or "only allow covid posts that match WHO guidelines" or "allow exceptions from political figures or of historical significance") Glorifying violence isn't objective measurable. How do you identify matches to WHO guidance (incl. satire, valuable critique, ...) How exactly do you identify "political figures or of historical significance" sure, you can identify elected officials, but what about opposition leaders which often are not formally designated or cases where elections are disputed? And to be clear: I think the stance of "we are neutral" is wrong. And I don't think this can be offloaded to the user, while Facebook stays "neutral".
  - zarkov99 6y ago
    I agree that "hide things I won't like" isn't going to work but I think that for people in good faith the proxies I mentioned would be good enough. That however would not afford FB or anyone else control over other's speech, which I guess is what you think should be possible? Can you elaborate as to why you think that would be a net good?
  - mchusma 6y ago

mbostleman 6y ago

Because that would just be the Internet.

netcan 6y ago

> Its hard but not that hard That depends on how you define "it." Media is not neutral. At least, we haven't yet had a neutral mass media. In 2020 that means defaults, recomendation engines & such. These are core to FB's product, business model. They're not neutral. You need to take the scale FB's influence into account. Elections, revolutions, mass protests, primary political narratives... all determined on FB. What happens on Facebook can determine presidencies and prime ministerships. The have more power than Rupert Murdoch. At this scale you can't just "get out of the censorship business." Youtube, for comparison, appears to be trying to get out of the harder problems by exiting the space entirely. On hard news issues, they're defaulting to (more than defaulting to) television news sources. I don't think they want politics on their platform anymore. It's too dangerous. FB can't do that as easily, but I expect they'll try something similar. Basically... social media will try to hand the problem back to traditional media somehow.

deathgrips 6y ago

Silicon Valley people live in a bubble where everyone they know is smart and liberal. After a while they forget that there exist smart people who are not liberal and implicitly think that if someone disagrees with them, they are uneducated and just wrong. Consequently they take it upon themselves to demand that people not be allowed to say incorrect and uneducated opinions (really just anything the Silicon Valley hivemind disagrees with). When nearly everyone in your bubble has the same beliefs on politics and culture you will react violently towards threatening ideas.

jedimastert 6y ago

> "only allow covid posts that match WHO guidelines" That's cool, except for all of those people that have been that the WHO is secretly out to get them some how. The issue goes deeper...

dredmorbius 6y ago

Because when you operate at a scale measured in billions of souls, impacts and consequences are neither inconsequential nor personal. Neither are remediations and mitigations. You find lone actors committing mass killings: "New Zealand mosque shooter broadcast slaughter on Facebook" https://apnews.com/ce9e1d267af149dab40e3e5391254530 https://apnews.com/ce9e1d267af149dab40e3e5391254530 You find genocides: "A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... You find radicalisation: "Prosecutors say Dylann Roof ‘self-radicalized’ online, wrote another manifesto in jail" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/22/prosecutors-say-accused-charleston-church-gunman-self-radicalized-online/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/2... You find disinformation with global consequences: "How fear of the unknown sows disinformation during a pandemic" https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2020/4/10/21201986/misinformation-corona-virus-covid-19-social-media-facebook-twitter-instagram https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2020/4/10/21201986/misinform... Yes, the examples listed include more than Facebook, but Facebook, and its "they trust me, dumb fucks" unitary executive (https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/11/19/18099011/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-stock-nyt-wsj https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/11/19/18099011/mark-zuck...) is very much at the. heart of the problem. Or, as some may better recognise the notion, "with great power comes great responsibility". Facebook and Zuckerberg consistently shirk theirs, and externalise the concommitant costs. Anticipating the usual rebuttal that Facebook could not operate if it were required to act responsibly: if an organisation cannot exist or operate at scale without actively harming society, then it shouldn't exist. The "individual responsibility" argument, going back to 1970s anti-littering campaigns and the crying (fake) Indian (fake) TV advert (and before), are corporate gambits to shirk their own obligations: Annie Leonard, "Moving from Individual Change to Societal Change" (2013) [pdf] http://www.pfree.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Moving-from-Individual-Change-to-Societal-Change-Annie-Leonard-2013.pdf http://www.pfree.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Moving-fro... Don't buy it.

illumin8 6y ago

What you're essentially advocating for is Facebook, exactly as it is today. Unless you default to censoring information, which is incredibly unlikely, you default to amplifying all hateful information.

amadeuspagel 6y ago

This wouldn't satisfy the people angry at Zuckerberg. To them it's not about what they see, it's about what other people are allowed to see.