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> The removed labels are among more than half a dozen instances in which Facebook managers have interfered with fact-checks in ways that appear at odds with the

> The removed labels are among more than half a dozen instances in which Facebook managers have interfered with fact-checks in ways that appear at odds with the program’s spirit of independence and nonpartisanship. At times, its employees have used a broad exemption for opinion content and previously undisclosed powers to make editorial decisions in ways that favored certain publishers. Content that has been deemed false by its fact-checkers has not always been labeled false on Facebook. In some cases, Facebook has reevaluated fact-check labels or penalties after fact-checkers had acted, often in the wake of political, financial, and PR pressures. > In one previously unreported label change, for example, Facebook pressured fact-checkers to downgrade a label on a video shared by influential conservative publisher PragerU from “false” to “partly false.” So standard question when terrible stories like this are posted: there are many HN members who work at FB. How do you deal with stories like this and continuing to work there?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
intended 6y ago
Because FB is probably one of the few places actually trying to grapple with the scope of this problem in a manner that makes business/practical sense. Not at FB. Content moderation is developing so fast, and with problems so thorny, that the difference between intuitions of normal people and trust and safety teams is whiplash causing. Current moderation practices are perhaps analogous to the ages of proto police forces. Since there is also no separation of powers, moderation is a cost center, and comprehension of moderation principles is nascent and disregarded outside of T&S teams, you have people from sales/strategy/Personal connections overturning rules/policy. The speaker at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J19Xa3-SN1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J19Xa3-SN1M, has a book on this topic which discusses some of the many problems this field throws up. FB is trying to resolve this problem by offloading the problematic thought policing to the state, in some way or form - white paper sent in the UK is a case in point. This is likely the way forward for major firms, it seems unfortunate, but unless someone reframes the incentives and problems, government sanctioned censorship is the likely future.
- loopz 6y ago
  Corporations cannot outsource "thought policing" to "the State", as the State deems social media platforms able to effect elections. A tiny percentage, but not most, is covered by Law. Shunning accountability only go so far. Sooner or later it is optimized into a closed, shrinking circle.
  - intended 6y ago
    Well in the UK, that is starting to happen, the online harms paper is out, and OFCOM will be taking some amount of that work. Since foreign agencies are able to use platforms to influence elections then governments are going to take action to protect their processes. At the same time, from the firm's perspective, they have to be arbiters of issues that the public has never discussed or dealt with, the political powers of the polity are involved in it = all of which has to be done at massive scale, across multiple jurisdictions and laws. This is an unsolvable problem. Right now they get told of for not removing conspiracies and for removing conspiracies, all the while being told off for harming free speech. Having an outside third party to play referee is just cheaper, so they will fight and lobby for it in some for or the other.
- roudaki 6y ago
  I have seen at Youtube how 5 people can approve content and team lead but management from marketing and branding had admin privileges and would overrule our decision. I can point to a couple YouTubers that Youtube loves but Google management demonetize regularly every time they say something against Youtube. (Phillip DeFranco is a good example.) The problem in Facebook is that more management has access and they are weird and politically motivated or just snobs.
allthecybers 6y ago
> So standard question when terrible stories like this are posted: there are many HN members who work at FB. How do you deal with stories like this and continuing to work there? I’ve been interested in hearing a cogent response to this question as well. Obviously FB is held in regard as a tech company to work for and member of FAANG, but I believe their core platform facilitates more harm to society and democracy than good. I’d love to hear from some HN members who work there and understand their reasoning better. I’m open to entertaining a different perspective.
- samtho 6y ago
  Not a Facebook employee but I did interview there. There are a few reasons why I would, personally, not want to leave had I accepted that offer. First are the people you get to work with. As I’ve progressed through my career, coworker tolerability is a huge must for me and they’ve managed to hire a lot of really good people. Second, which I can speak to from experience, a large tech company that can pay 150% your target salary at any other company with fantastic benefits, retirement, medical, etc is hard to leave (Golden handcuffs). Not everyone has the luxury to just up and quit a job just because the company appears to do unsavory things. As an aside, being in a large company, it’s hard to identify with a division different than your own. From the outside, you may see members of Facebook as equally complicit, but while inside you can always resolve cognitive dissonance by saying, “well that’s not _my_ team doing evil things, we’re trying to do good here.”
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
There are reasonable arguments that Facebook is worse than other companies, but this isn't one of them. All big companies engage in and respond to political pressure; it's an occupational hazard.
mgraczyk 6y ago
I work there, not on anything remotely related to this. For me the "justification" is mainly three things. 1. What Facebook is doing is not morally wrong. 2. This is not a moral issue, it's a political one with powers much larger than Facebook duking it out on the fact-check surfaces. 3. IMO the fact checkers use marginal cases to reinforce a political agenda. Often "fact checks" will call exaggerations made by conservatives "false" while calling similar exaggerations made by others "partly false" or "mixed". I am absolutely not a conservative and generally despise the conservative publishers subject to fact-check drama, but it's also very clear to me that these appeals make treatment more fair.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  Regarding point number three, didn't Facebook pick the fact checkers? I don't get how you can assemble a team of "third party" fact checkers and also pressure them to change their minds, and feel consistent or moral about that. If the fact checkers suck, that's on Facebook to get new fact checkers, not to put their thumbs on the scale. I don't think we really need Facebook employees to weigh in here. "Why do you keep your safe, cushy, lucrative job when though your company is doing something immoral?" Isn't exactly a brain teaser, and the answer isn't one, two, or three of what you've presented here.
  - mgraczyk 6y ago
    My comment is a reply to "FB employees, how do you ...". So I do feel like my weighing in here is appropriate. > how you can assemble ... and also pressure them Because they make mistakes and/or are biased? It's not an exact science. If you hire a speechwriter you may still make edits and give notes. There's nothing immoral about that.
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
      It completely undermines the idea of independent arbiters if they actually are not independent but under direction. To represent that fact checkers are "independent" while you give them direction is immoral. This isn't comparable to a speechwriter, where there would be no pretense of impartiality, but more like you hired a referee for a contest and when you didn't like the outcome you told the referee to change it. Regarding your weighing in, I didn't mean to suggest that it was inappropriate or uncalled for, but simply not needed. Obviously the reason that Facebook employees would work for an organization that does immoral things is because they consider it, on net, to their benefit to do so and not because of some secret obscure reason where transparently immoral actions are somehow moral.
croissants 6y ago
There is an argument like: the moral quality of institutions/companies is determined by the people inside it, so if all of the conscientious people vacate the institution/company then they are effectively ceding their places to the unconscientious people. If said institution/company is powerful, it's not clear that this is going to make things better. A counter-argument for this is that working at such places makes one complicit, and most generic software engineers, regardless of their technical acumen, have close to 0 potential to affect the moral compass of the institution/company at all. Such people may be viewed as keeping an immoral institution/company afloat. But if there is a charismatic, driven, conscientious person who does have the potential to accumulate enough power at Facebook to shift its moral compass . . . it might be nice if they actually worked there.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

intended 6y ago

Because FB is probably one of the few places actually trying to grapple with the scope of this problem in a manner that makes business/practical sense. Not at FB. Content moderation is developing so fast, and with problems so thorny, that the difference between intuitions of normal people and trust and safety teams is whiplash causing. Current moderation practices are perhaps analogous to the ages of proto police forces. Since there is also no separation of powers, moderation is a cost center, and comprehension of moderation principles is nascent and disregarded outside of T&S teams, you have people from sales/strategy/Personal connections overturning rules/policy. The speaker at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J19Xa3-SN1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J19Xa3-SN1M, has a book on this topic which discusses some of the many problems this field throws up. FB is trying to resolve this problem by offloading the problematic thought policing to the state, in some way or form - white paper sent in the UK is a case in point. This is likely the way forward for major firms, it seems unfortunate, but unless someone reframes the incentives and problems, government sanctioned censorship is the likely future.

loopz 6y ago
Corporations cannot outsource "thought policing" to "the State", as the State deems social media platforms able to effect elections. A tiny percentage, but not most, is covered by Law. Shunning accountability only go so far. Sooner or later it is optimized into a closed, shrinking circle.
- intended 6y ago
  Well in the UK, that is starting to happen, the online harms paper is out, and OFCOM will be taking some amount of that work. Since foreign agencies are able to use platforms to influence elections then governments are going to take action to protect their processes. At the same time, from the firm's perspective, they have to be arbiters of issues that the public has never discussed or dealt with, the political powers of the polity are involved in it = all of which has to be done at massive scale, across multiple jurisdictions and laws. This is an unsolvable problem. Right now they get told of for not removing conspiracies and for removing conspiracies, all the while being told off for harming free speech. Having an outside third party to play referee is just cheaper, so they will fight and lobby for it in some for or the other.
roudaki 6y ago
I have seen at Youtube how 5 people can approve content and team lead but management from marketing and branding had admin privileges and would overrule our decision. I can point to a couple YouTubers that Youtube loves but Google management demonetize regularly every time they say something against Youtube. (Phillip DeFranco is a good example.) The problem in Facebook is that more management has access and they are weird and politically motivated or just snobs.

allthecybers 6y ago

> So standard question when terrible stories like this are posted: there are many HN members who work at FB. How do you deal with stories like this and continuing to work there? I’ve been interested in hearing a cogent response to this question as well. Obviously FB is held in regard as a tech company to work for and member of FAANG, but I believe their core platform facilitates more harm to society and democracy than good. I’d love to hear from some HN members who work there and understand their reasoning better. I’m open to entertaining a different perspective.

samtho 6y ago
Not a Facebook employee but I did interview there. There are a few reasons why I would, personally, not want to leave had I accepted that offer. First are the people you get to work with. As I’ve progressed through my career, coworker tolerability is a huge must for me and they’ve managed to hire a lot of really good people. Second, which I can speak to from experience, a large tech company that can pay 150% your target salary at any other company with fantastic benefits, retirement, medical, etc is hard to leave (Golden handcuffs). Not everyone has the luxury to just up and quit a job just because the company appears to do unsavory things. As an aside, being in a large company, it’s hard to identify with a division different than your own. From the outside, you may see members of Facebook as equally complicit, but while inside you can always resolve cognitive dissonance by saying, “well that’s not _my_ team doing evil things, we’re trying to do good here.”

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

There are reasonable arguments that Facebook is worse than other companies, but this isn't one of them. All big companies engage in and respond to political pressure; it's an occupational hazard.

mgraczyk 6y ago

I work there, not on anything remotely related to this. For me the "justification" is mainly three things. 1. What Facebook is doing is not morally wrong. 2. This is not a moral issue, it's a political one with powers much larger than Facebook duking it out on the fact-check surfaces. 3. IMO the fact checkers use marginal cases to reinforce a political agenda. Often "fact checks" will call exaggerations made by conservatives "false" while calling similar exaggerations made by others "partly false" or "mixed". I am absolutely not a conservative and generally despise the conservative publishers subject to fact-check drama, but it's also very clear to me that these appeals make treatment more fair.

ALittleLight 6y ago
Regarding point number three, didn't Facebook pick the fact checkers? I don't get how you can assemble a team of "third party" fact checkers and also pressure them to change their minds, and feel consistent or moral about that. If the fact checkers suck, that's on Facebook to get new fact checkers, not to put their thumbs on the scale. I don't think we really need Facebook employees to weigh in here. "Why do you keep your safe, cushy, lucrative job when though your company is doing something immoral?" Isn't exactly a brain teaser, and the answer isn't one, two, or three of what you've presented here.
- mgraczyk 6y ago
  My comment is a reply to "FB employees, how do you ...". So I do feel like my weighing in here is appropriate. > how you can assemble ... and also pressure them Because they make mistakes and/or are biased? It's not an exact science. If you hire a speechwriter you may still make edits and give notes. There's nothing immoral about that.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    It completely undermines the idea of independent arbiters if they actually are not independent but under direction. To represent that fact checkers are "independent" while you give them direction is immoral. This isn't comparable to a speechwriter, where there would be no pretense of impartiality, but more like you hired a referee for a contest and when you didn't like the outcome you told the referee to change it. Regarding your weighing in, I didn't mean to suggest that it was inappropriate or uncalled for, but simply not needed. Obviously the reason that Facebook employees would work for an organization that does immoral things is because they consider it, on net, to their benefit to do so and not because of some secret obscure reason where transparently immoral actions are somehow moral.

croissants 6y ago

There is an argument like: the moral quality of institutions/companies is determined by the people inside it, so if all of the conscientious people vacate the institution/company then they are effectively ceding their places to the unconscientious people. If said institution/company is powerful, it's not clear that this is going to make things better. A counter-argument for this is that working at such places makes one complicit, and most generic software engineers, regardless of their technical acumen, have close to 0 potential to affect the moral compass of the institution/company at all. Such people may be viewed as keeping an immoral institution/company afloat. But if there is a charismatic, driven, conscientious person who does have the potential to accumulate enough power at Facebook to shift its moral compass . . . it might be nice if they actually worked there.