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Reading Amazon's reasoning, tech companies are basically setting a standard that if you want to have user-generated content, you must have professional moderato

by ENOTTY 6y ago

Reading Amazon's reasoning, tech companies are basically setting a standard that if you want to have user-generated content, you must have professional moderators. This seems like it will be a barrier to innovation.

marstall 6y ago
so was the FDA?
omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
What was their reasoning? I only saw this. Amazon declined to comment on the suspension.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  AWS's reasoning is included in the article; a direct copy of their email to Parler is quoted. > Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. It also seems that Parler is still trying to determine its position on content moderation. You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always with urgency. Your CEO recently stated publicly that he doesn’t “feel responsible for any of this, and neither should the platform.” This morning, you shared that you have a plan to more proactively moderate violent content, but plan to do so manually with volunteers. It’s our view that this nascent plan to use volunteers to promptly identify and remove dangerous content will not work in light of the rapidly growing number of violent posts. This is further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the content that we’ve sent you. Given the unfortunate events that transpired this past week in Washington, D.C., there is serious risk that this type of content will further incite violence.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
    Thank you. It does seem like Amazon requires professional moderation when someone's service is used to incite violence. I wonder if this is in part due to concerns about revising section 230.
    - organsnyder 6y ago
      I think it's more that they require an effective strategy for removing content that violates their ToS—it's more that volunteer moderation isn't cutting it. Coupled with Parler's pretty obvious mission of intentionally providing a home for that content, it's really not surprising that AWS is reaching this decision. Repealing section 230 would lead to many more proactive measures like this, by all platforms.
- jazzyjackson 6y ago
  My sibling here has the official response but I'll just add that "inciting violence" probably refers to a very out in the open effort to interrupt Biden's inauguration
eropple 6y ago
No, it's not. AWS is saying "we don't believe that your volunteer moderators are gonna do their jobs, and you've already screwed up, and your CEO is out there saying he thinks this doesn't matter." That's a very different thing than "thou must have professional moderators". Professional moderation is an option, but what you are actually obliged to do is ensure that your platform is not a hotbed of violent content. There are a lot of approaches to that, including aggressive bans of nuts before they get a critical mass. Given that Parler is where the nuts go when they get booted off Twitter, that was never in the cards.
- ultimoo 6y ago
  Yep, I do think it's more of this and dealing with things on a case-by-case basis to asses a company's stance as opposed to setting a precedent. I have a hard time imagining aws booting off a company that is making a good faith attempt at moderation.
mcphilip 6y ago
No provider wants the cesspool to be pinned on them. I get that emotionally, but this is nuts. Obviously they have the right to make these moves, but god knows what happens when the new administration starts reflecting on the role played by Big Tech in this mess. Washing hands long after infection, so to speak. What happens when congress uses these moves as evidence that Big Tech acknowledges the need to take responsibility for harmful content and then expects the same moves made for much smaller stakes?
- panarky 6y ago
  This is the dictionary definition of the slippery slope logical fallacy.
  - mcphilip 6y ago
    Absolutely, but funny how often the fallacy plays out time and time again.
  - 015UUZn8aEvW 6y ago
    In three years, the slippery slope has gone from deplatforming a tiny handful of online Nazis to deplatforming the President and an app with 10 million users.
    - lostcolony 6y ago
      I'm not sure the concerns of censorship change due to who or how many are espousing the toxic calls to violence. Nazi Germany had a Chancellor/Dictator, with 8.5 million in the Nazi party in 1945. The reason it's okay to deplatform Nazis today is not because their numbers have dwindled.
    - rob74 6y ago
      Well, in three years the president has gone from claiming that there were more people at his inauguration than there actually were, to undermining democracy by persisting for months in his claims of election fraud despite failing to produce any evidence for it in the courts (while ignoring a pandemic that is currently killing 3000 people a day in his country). How about that for a slippery slope?
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
I wouldn't be so doubtful. The Pirate Bay seems to always come back no matter what.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  The only people who care deeply about suppressing TPB is a small cadre of copyright lobbyists who need to arse judges throughout the world to do their bidding every once in a while to show that they're tough on copyright crime. As far as enforcement priorities go it's a minor annoyance at best for both the justice system as well as the telcos and ISPs who get forced to block them.
adewinter 6y ago
Counter argument: having dedicated moderation might just be the low bar, in the same way that there is the expectation that you pay your employees a reasonable salary or pay for other services required to run your business. If you can't afford to do these basic things you may not have a viable business model. Aside: is Moderation as a Service the new shovel to be sold during the gold rush?
- jerrya 6y ago
  > Moderation as a Service the new shovel to be sold during the gold rush? I've been wondering about that as well, given the chances that §230 will be revoked Can someone spin up a competent ML based/human moderator hybrid to moderate comments at Internet scale? (Disqus?) and perhaps offer an insurance plan to webhosts?
  - adewinter 6y ago
    Sentiment analysis tech, GPT-3 level AI, and some human moderators in the mix... Maybe it could scale?
  - nrmitchi 6y ago
    I'm waiting for the announcement tomorrow of "AMS: Amazon Moderation Service"
  - ativzzz 6y ago
    https://www.sentropy.com/ https://www.sentropy.com/ is a startup that appears to be doing this
  - dillondoyle 6y ago
    FB is spending a huge amount of money on this, because they have to pay a growing army of human moderators. Here's a blog post about their ML moderation of hate speech. Probably won't sell as a SaaS but shows the big value even with 230 in place https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ai-advances-to-better-detect-hate-speech/ https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ai-advances-to-better-detect-ha...
- 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
geofft 6y ago
Incidentally, this is the legal standard you'd have if you get rid of Section 230 - you can either do literally no moderation at all (and be immediately overrun by spammers, scammers, and people using you as a numbers station for hosting pirated content), or you can employ a team of professional moderators such that no user-generated content says anything you wouldn't be willing to be legally seen as the speaker of.
015UUZn8aEvW 6y ago
No it won't, because they aren't going to apply the standard consistently. It will be used against specific sites for political reasons.
floatingatoll 6y ago
That sounds amazing. Good idea. I think you’re describing the next step in user-generated content. Amazon has repeatedly proven that AI algorithms can’t save us from computer-generated trash and Twitter and Facebook have shown that algorithms can’t save us from malicious hate mobs and military psyops. Human moderation was the right solution, and we’ve tried for two decades to dodge that duty. Welcome back at last, reality.
wonnage 6y ago
More like "fucking finally!" Also, there are plenty of communities (Reddit, Wikipedia, Steam forums, HN, etc.) with moderators that haven't devolved into a dystopian policed-speech nightmare.
- atypicaluser 6y ago
  Those communities are dwindling in number. Increasingly, you step out of line once with the Left-leaning mindset, you are muted or banned. And these moderators will tell you to go elsewhere. Except Google, Apple, AWS, etc. are now actively ridding the Internet of that 'elsewhere'. Funny how just a few short years ago Google & Co. justified running Stormfront off the internet because of their extreme views. Funny how in just a few steps the justification went from 'extreme views' to 'Alex and Milo' to 'they say things we don't like'. Good luck staying amused with what comes over the next couple years.
  - wonnage 6y ago
    I think the next couple of years are gonna be great, for me, but maybe not for you.
  - camel_Snake 6y ago
    > Increasingly, you step out of line once with the Left-leaning mindset, you are muted or banned. This isn't ideology-based. There is good moderation and bad moderation. the /r/conservative and former /r/T_D subreddits swing the ban hammers more liberally than any other subreddits I've seen.
  - vyhd 6y ago
    > Increasingly, you step out of line once with the Left-leaning mindset, you are muted or banned. Citation needed.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    I find it intereting that you equate banning people planning violence with the left-leaning mindset. I don't know if that's what you meant, but that's how it sounds.
fatbird 6y ago
Say it is a barrier to innovation. Is that a problem? Is the innovation that would occur, absent moderation, so valuable that we should allow the facilitation of anti-democratic coups in order to preserve it? As engineers, we should understand trade-offs. We have more values than just "innovation!"
dillondoyle 6y ago
I don't it's that far. It's make a reasonable attempt to prevent illegal / violent content and don't purposely create a system meant to fail and flout that's the whole intention of your app (and in Parler's case brag about it to the NYTimes )

by ENOTTY 6y ago

marstall 6y ago

so was the FDA?

omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago

What was their reasoning? I only saw this. Amazon declined to comment on the suspension.

ceejayoz 6y ago
AWS's reasoning is included in the article; a direct copy of their email to Parler is quoted. > Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. It also seems that Parler is still trying to determine its position on content moderation. You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always with urgency. Your CEO recently stated publicly that he doesn’t “feel responsible for any of this, and neither should the platform.” This morning, you shared that you have a plan to more proactively moderate violent content, but plan to do so manually with volunteers. It’s our view that this nascent plan to use volunteers to promptly identify and remove dangerous content will not work in light of the rapidly growing number of violent posts. This is further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the content that we’ve sent you. Given the unfortunate events that transpired this past week in Washington, D.C., there is serious risk that this type of content will further incite violence.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  Thank you. It does seem like Amazon requires professional moderation when someone's service is used to incite violence. I wonder if this is in part due to concerns about revising section 230.
  - organsnyder 6y ago
    I think it's more that they require an effective strategy for removing content that violates their ToS—it's more that volunteer moderation isn't cutting it. Coupled with Parler's pretty obvious mission of intentionally providing a home for that content, it's really not surprising that AWS is reaching this decision. Repealing section 230 would lead to many more proactive measures like this, by all platforms.
jazzyjackson 6y ago
My sibling here has the official response but I'll just add that "inciting violence" probably refers to a very out in the open effort to interrupt Biden's inauguration

eropple 6y ago

No, it's not. AWS is saying "we don't believe that your volunteer moderators are gonna do their jobs, and you've already screwed up, and your CEO is out there saying he thinks this doesn't matter." That's a very different thing than "thou must have professional moderators". Professional moderation is an option, but what you are actually obliged to do is ensure that your platform is not a hotbed of violent content. There are a lot of approaches to that, including aggressive bans of nuts before they get a critical mass. Given that Parler is where the nuts go when they get booted off Twitter, that was never in the cards.

ultimoo 6y ago
Yep, I do think it's more of this and dealing with things on a case-by-case basis to asses a company's stance as opposed to setting a precedent. I have a hard time imagining aws booting off a company that is making a good faith attempt at moderation.

mcphilip 6y ago

No provider wants the cesspool to be pinned on them. I get that emotionally, but this is nuts. Obviously they have the right to make these moves, but god knows what happens when the new administration starts reflecting on the role played by Big Tech in this mess. Washing hands long after infection, so to speak. What happens when congress uses these moves as evidence that Big Tech acknowledges the need to take responsibility for harmful content and then expects the same moves made for much smaller stakes?

panarky 6y ago
This is the dictionary definition of the slippery slope logical fallacy.
- mcphilip 6y ago
  Absolutely, but funny how often the fallacy plays out time and time again.
- 015UUZn8aEvW 6y ago
  In three years, the slippery slope has gone from deplatforming a tiny handful of online Nazis to deplatforming the President and an app with 10 million users.
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    I'm not sure the concerns of censorship change due to who or how many are espousing the toxic calls to violence. Nazi Germany had a Chancellor/Dictator, with 8.5 million in the Nazi party in 1945. The reason it's okay to deplatform Nazis today is not because their numbers have dwindled.
  - rob74 6y ago
    Well, in three years the president has gone from claiming that there were more people at his inauguration than there actually were, to undermining democracy by persisting for months in his claims of election fraud despite failing to produce any evidence for it in the courts (while ignoring a pandemic that is currently killing 3000 people a day in his country). How about that for a slippery slope?

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

I wouldn't be so doubtful. The Pirate Bay seems to always come back no matter what.

Daishiman 6y ago
The only people who care deeply about suppressing TPB is a small cadre of copyright lobbyists who need to arse judges throughout the world to do their bidding every once in a while to show that they're tough on copyright crime. As far as enforcement priorities go it's a minor annoyance at best for both the justice system as well as the telcos and ISPs who get forced to block them.

adewinter 6y ago

Counter argument: having dedicated moderation might just be the low bar, in the same way that there is the expectation that you pay your employees a reasonable salary or pay for other services required to run your business. If you can't afford to do these basic things you may not have a viable business model. Aside: is Moderation as a Service the new shovel to be sold during the gold rush?

jerrya 6y ago
> Moderation as a Service the new shovel to be sold during the gold rush? I've been wondering about that as well, given the chances that §230 will be revoked Can someone spin up a competent ML based/human moderator hybrid to moderate comments at Internet scale? (Disqus?) and perhaps offer an insurance plan to webhosts?
- adewinter 6y ago
  Sentiment analysis tech, GPT-3 level AI, and some human moderators in the mix... Maybe it could scale?
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  I'm waiting for the announcement tomorrow of "AMS: Amazon Moderation Service"
- ativzzz 6y ago
  https://www.sentropy.com/ https://www.sentropy.com/ is a startup that appears to be doing this
- dillondoyle 6y ago
  FB is spending a huge amount of money on this, because they have to pay a growing army of human moderators. Here's a blog post about their ML moderation of hate speech. Probably won't sell as a SaaS but shows the big value even with 230 in place https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ai-advances-to-better-detect-hate-speech/ https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ai-advances-to-better-detect-ha...
6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

geofft 6y ago

Incidentally, this is the legal standard you'd have if you get rid of Section 230 - you can either do literally no moderation at all (and be immediately overrun by spammers, scammers, and people using you as a numbers station for hosting pirated content), or you can employ a team of professional moderators such that no user-generated content says anything you wouldn't be willing to be legally seen as the speaker of.

015UUZn8aEvW 6y ago

No it won't, because they aren't going to apply the standard consistently. It will be used against specific sites for political reasons.

floatingatoll 6y ago

That sounds amazing. Good idea. I think you’re describing the next step in user-generated content. Amazon has repeatedly proven that AI algorithms can’t save us from computer-generated trash and Twitter and Facebook have shown that algorithms can’t save us from malicious hate mobs and military psyops. Human moderation was the right solution, and we’ve tried for two decades to dodge that duty. Welcome back at last, reality.

wonnage 6y ago

More like "fucking finally!" Also, there are plenty of communities (Reddit, Wikipedia, Steam forums, HN, etc.) with moderators that haven't devolved into a dystopian policed-speech nightmare.

atypicaluser 6y ago
Those communities are dwindling in number. Increasingly, you step out of line once with the Left-leaning mindset, you are muted or banned. And these moderators will tell you to go elsewhere. Except Google, Apple, AWS, etc. are now actively ridding the Internet of that 'elsewhere'. Funny how just a few short years ago Google & Co. justified running Stormfront off the internet because of their extreme views. Funny how in just a few steps the justification went from 'extreme views' to 'Alex and Milo' to 'they say things we don't like'. Good luck staying amused with what comes over the next couple years.
- wonnage 6y ago
  I think the next couple of years are gonna be great, for me, but maybe not for you.
- camel_Snake 6y ago
  > Increasingly, you step out of line once with the Left-leaning mindset, you are muted or banned. This isn't ideology-based. There is good moderation and bad moderation. the /r/conservative and former /r/T_D subreddits swing the ban hammers more liberally than any other subreddits I've seen.
- vyhd 6y ago
  > Increasingly, you step out of line once with the Left-leaning mindset, you are muted or banned. Citation needed.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  I find it intereting that you equate banning people planning violence with the left-leaning mindset. I don't know if that's what you meant, but that's how it sounds.

fatbird 6y ago

Say it is a barrier to innovation. Is that a problem? Is the innovation that would occur, absent moderation, so valuable that we should allow the facilitation of anti-democratic coups in order to preserve it? As engineers, we should understand trade-offs. We have more values than just "innovation!"

dillondoyle 6y ago

I don't it's that far. It's make a reasonable attempt to prevent illegal / violent content and don't purposely create a system meant to fail and flout that's the whole intention of your app (and in Parler's case brag about it to the NYTimes )