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Facebook creates these features and refuses to own their consequences. They gave everyone a megaphone and a private tv channel. Now they want to run away from o

Facebook creates these features and refuses to own their consequences. They gave everyone a megaphone and a private tv channel. Now they want to run away from owning responsibility for the content which they use to bring the users who will see the ads which line their pockets. Unacceptable. Maybe it’s time to cancel features if you don’t want to dedicate some portion of your many billions of profits to solve the problems which said features create for society. Oh and to everyone who will say it’s hard, maybe you can’t solve these problems then you shouldn’t be rolling out a feature. It’s just that simple.

gfxgirl 6y ago
So the phone company provided a way for criminals to organize in secret and communicate with each other without having to meetup in person so the phone company is responsible for that crime? Unless I mis-understood your argument. It seemed to be that you should be responsible for everything bad someone else does with something you made. You made a cooking knife. Someone stabs someone with it. It's your responsibility. You shouldn't have introduced cooking knives into the world knowing that people might stab others with them.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  My take on the debate over internet censorship is that the "free speech" contingent badly wants to deal with it using elegant, consistent, universal principles. While a solution that meets those criteria should always be the goal, we must recognize when it isn't possible. If we don't, we wind up with something that satisfies our ideology without actually being a good solution. Such issues often result in new law. If any phenomenon creates a certain level of harm, a society is liable to alter its laws to deal with it, breaking with convention if necessary. Regarding your phone company example, what that means is that the answer to your question might depend on the extent to which the criminal activity is harming society. Regarding Facebook, I'm open to betraying my normal principles, because the amount of injury Facebook does to the world justifies exceptional remedies.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > You made a cooking knife. Someone stabs someone with it. It's your responsibility. You shouldn't have introduced cooking knives into the world knowing that people might stab others with them. This is the logic used to put drug dealers and manufacturers in prison when people overdose on their drugs and die.
- deelowe 6y ago
  > So the phone company provided a way for criminals to organize in secret and communicate with each other without having to meetup in person so the phone company is responsible for that crime? This is a bad analogy. The phone company isn't a broadcaster. Facebook is.
- bjelkeman-again 6y ago
  That is a simplified argument. Facebook is not a phone company. A phone company has an amplification effect on communication, but Facebook, with a billion customers reachable through their choice of algorithms is in a totally different class. A phone company doesn’t push content on the user. Facebook does.
- Xelbair 6y ago
  Not really, it would be akin to phone company allowing it's users to create multi-user international terrorist hotline, and refusing any kind of responsibility for it... while also sending out promotional material to people they deemed 'potential terrorists'
- scotu 6y ago
  I think you are not taking into account that the knife and the phone are not "mass/broadcast" tools. They are one to one, one to few at most. Moreover facebook is not a neutral conduit, the algorithmic feed act as an editor for a newspaper (and an editor that can give each person their own personal newspaper at that!)
indymike 6y ago
I don't see that. The reason that Facebook was even possible is safe harbor laws that shield them and every one of their vendors from liability.

gfxgirl 6y ago

So the phone company provided a way for criminals to organize in secret and communicate with each other without having to meetup in person so the phone company is responsible for that crime? Unless I mis-understood your argument. It seemed to be that you should be responsible for everything bad someone else does with something you made. You made a cooking knife. Someone stabs someone with it. It's your responsibility. You shouldn't have introduced cooking knives into the world knowing that people might stab others with them.

uniqueid 6y ago
My take on the debate over internet censorship is that the "free speech" contingent badly wants to deal with it using elegant, consistent, universal principles. While a solution that meets those criteria should always be the goal, we must recognize when it isn't possible. If we don't, we wind up with something that satisfies our ideology without actually being a good solution. Such issues often result in new law. If any phenomenon creates a certain level of harm, a society is liable to alter its laws to deal with it, breaking with convention if necessary. Regarding your phone company example, what that means is that the answer to your question might depend on the extent to which the criminal activity is harming society. Regarding Facebook, I'm open to betraying my normal principles, because the amount of injury Facebook does to the world justifies exceptional remedies.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> You made a cooking knife. Someone stabs someone with it. It's your responsibility. You shouldn't have introduced cooking knives into the world knowing that people might stab others with them. This is the logic used to put drug dealers and manufacturers in prison when people overdose on their drugs and die.
deelowe 6y ago
> So the phone company provided a way for criminals to organize in secret and communicate with each other without having to meetup in person so the phone company is responsible for that crime? This is a bad analogy. The phone company isn't a broadcaster. Facebook is.
bjelkeman-again 6y ago
That is a simplified argument. Facebook is not a phone company. A phone company has an amplification effect on communication, but Facebook, with a billion customers reachable through their choice of algorithms is in a totally different class. A phone company doesn’t push content on the user. Facebook does.
Xelbair 6y ago
Not really, it would be akin to phone company allowing it's users to create multi-user international terrorist hotline, and refusing any kind of responsibility for it... while also sending out promotional material to people they deemed 'potential terrorists'
scotu 6y ago
I think you are not taking into account that the knife and the phone are not "mass/broadcast" tools. They are one to one, one to few at most. Moreover facebook is not a neutral conduit, the algorithmic feed act as an editor for a newspaper (and an editor that can give each person their own personal newspaper at that!)

indymike 6y ago

I don't see that. The reason that Facebook was even possible is safe harbor laws that shield them and every one of their vendors from liability.