9 ms·

I don't deny there is probably some favoritism going on, but is Facebooks willingness to moderate their content not at least part of the reason? Parler was comp

by shlant 6y ago

I don't deny there is probably some favoritism going on, but is Facebooks willingness to moderate their content not at least part of the reason? Parler was completely hands off when it came to any sort of moderation of the content its users were posting (by design) which allowed for threats of violence to go unchecked and flourish within the platform. That seems like a pretty significant determinant when considering which site had a more direct connection to the events that transpired.

leetcrew 6y ago
> That seems like a pretty significant determinant when considering which site had a more direct connection to the events that transpired. does it really? "tries but fails to moderate extremism at massive scale" doesn't seem better than "makes no effort to moderate at much smaller scale". I guess the first leaves some potential for improvement in the future, but I don't expect a whole lot from facebook.
- andrewzah 6y ago
  Intent does matter. Why don't you try moderating posts at the scale facebook receives them, and we can compare the results. edit: I am not advocating for or against facebook being so large. What I am saying is there is a clear distinction between facebook and e.g. parler in terms of moderation.
  - jimmydorry 6y ago
    As we saw with Parler, your fledgling site can get deplatformed by the few key players in the cloud / app distribution / and service providers. "Just make it" is no longer as convincing a non-sequitor as it used to be.
    - spaced-out 6y ago
      Parler only has 30 employees, has some very well-publicized security and design flaws suggesting a lack of engineering talent, and is backed by just one private investor. The only way they were even able to release an app of that scale is because of all the services they bought from companies like Amazon. The lesson the business world should take from this is: invest in your engineers.
      - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
        I’m not sure I follow the “only giant, mature, and billions/trillion dollar companies should be allowed to have public services” argument. Twitter had 30 engineers at one point, they weren’t deplatformed before becoming a better product.
        spaced-out 6y ago
        First, Parler would still be up if they followed AWS's terms of service. Second, they've already found a new host (https://www.npr.org/2021/01/13/956315632/after-booted-by-big-tech-parler-registers-with-hosting-service https://www.npr.org/2021/01/13/956315632/after-booted-by-big...), yet they announced they'll still likely go offline because that host can't provide all the engineering talent Parler relied on. They just need built up their teams and do the work to develop their internal infrastructure. They don't need to become a billion dollar company to do that.
        jelliclesfarm 6y ago
        This is an illuminating example of Silicon Valley(CA)vs Silicon Alley(NY) of startups. I guess in this particular case, Gab vs Parler. Access to capital isn’t enough. Companies also need good legal advice, scale strategy and testing. Etc. A teachable moment.
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      Its going to be okay. This whole "Just make your own Twitter!", "Just make your own datacenter!", "Just make your own payment processor!" is exactly what will eventually happen. I think we might be seeing the start of a total division of society along political sides.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    why are we starting with the assumption that anyone needs to receive and moderate posts at the scale facebook does?
    - sigmaprimus 6y ago
      Good point, my response would be that everyone seems to agree that a certain portion of social media is toxic. I think the main reason these big social media and tech companies devote so many resources to moderation is their leaders are tired of being called into televised political hearings that sole purpose seem to be political grandstanding of self righteous politicians.
    - jpadkins 6y ago
      because humans are social creatures. So as long as we desire to communicate with each other, someone will profit by building services to fulfil that desire.
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    Have you calculated how many more moderators could be deployed full time out of facebook's $16 billion profit? At $20 per hour, approximately 400,000.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    Results matter more than intent. As a side note: as long as they (FB, YT, ...) can not moderate properly and automatically, they have not solved scale. They might have figured out making money but scale regarding social networks? - I do not grant them that achievement.
  - lesstenseflow 6y ago
    Respectfully, this is bullshit. As mentioned above, the question was about dollars, cents, and optics. Parler costs nothing to cut & there's little PR hit (probably a benefit), Cutting Facebook would cost the platforms money. The "terms of use violations" or whatever BS they're referencing for booting Parler doesn't even enter into it, the action is based at least 99% on cost/benefit to the platform, not some sanitary inflexible set of rules. Dorsey showed Twitter's rules mean nothing. Trump violates rules: "oh well he's an exception because he's a head of state [and he's the best thing that ever happened to engagement!]." Trump is losing power & allies are fleeing him: "sure he's still a head of state but this is the exception to the exception, so we're booting him [plus the tides just turned against him and dumping him is more palatable]." Soon we'll have the exception to the exception to the exception. So let's not play dumb and assert that this is about some fixed set of rules, the tech chiefs are clearly making the rules up as they go along based on "who is in power at the moment, what speech is unpopular at the moment" and above all "what will this cost us in dollars." And the minute your speech is unpopular (I'm looking at you, anarchists, communists, and libertarians), out the door you go.
    - asxd 6y ago
      > So let's not play dumb and assert that this is about some fixed set of rules I think that's exactly what makes this such a complex issue. It's unprecedented. Never in the past have social media companies been suddenly used as an outlet for national leaders. > the tech chiefs are clearly making the rules up as they go along Again, to the above point, this is obviously the case. There's no fixed set of rules to perfectly mediate this situation and appease everybody. It's going to be a bit fluid.
  - dx87 6y ago
    "If nobody knows how to do it safely, then it's fine to cause harm" is a strange way to look at the world. Maybe Facebook should be treated like other companies that sell products that are proven to be dangerous, and they can't operate until they prove it can be done safely.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
Nextgrid 6y ago
> Facebooks willingness to moderate their content Facebook moderates content only when it draws too much attention, but either way Facebook profits off said content as their algorithms promote it (because said content generates "engagement").
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  Not necessarily. I only have a few friends, and a few months ago before the election, I made a post recommending they stock up on food, water, and emergency medications just in case. I don't have many friends and it was probably only seen by a handful of people, yet the post was removed. It's hard to say exactly what they moderate or how.
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    A couple of teenagers where driving mopeds in other peoples yards this morning. Someone on Facebook suggested dealing with the problem by hitting them with a baseball bat. That hasn’t been taken down and it won’t. If you write in a less spoken language Facebook struggle to moderate you. Unless you’re trying to sell animals, because they spot that in seconds.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      > Unless you’re trying to sell animals, because they spot that in seconds. Facebook is happy to let bad content stay and profit off it unless said content carries a risk of bringing bad PR; I'm assuming this is the case with the "selling animals" thing because some animal rights groups escalated the issue to the media, and it is now the case with anything Trump- or election-related (not that I'm defending said content, but pointing out that its removal is for PR reasons as opposed to Facebook actually caring about democracy or discouraging violence).
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    They moderate things that risk bringing bad PR, including in some cases putting overzealous rules that would cause false positives like you described. However, it's clear they aren't acting in good faith and aren't actually interested in moderating bad content. Cybercrime-related Facebook groups which don't even attempt to conceal themselves are commonplace on Facebook: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/a-year-later-cybercrime-groups-still-rampant-on-facebook/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/a-year-later-cybercrime-... despite detecting them being trivial based on a simple keyword match.
ctrlp 6y ago
That's false. Please don't spread false information, whatever your politics. Parler had very similar terms of service to other content companies prohibiting illegal, violent, or copyrighted content. They also paid a team of content moderators to adjudicate flagged posts. They worked happily with their reps at Apple, Google, and AWS right up until the Friday Night Massacre. They were a small company experiencing massive user growth because if Twitter policies during the past year and especially the past months. There was not a peep about their content until from their reps until 1/6. Was it the riot or the senate flipping? My intel may be false, but my understanding is that they successfully cleared their backlog of flagged tickets before the deadline, working like hell to save their company, for nothing. The fix was in. This was a hit. We should all be very alarmed by this.
- asxd 6y ago
  I won't pretend to be close to the matter, but my understanding was Parler's value proposition to users was that they wouldn't moderate as heavily?
  - lesstenseflow 6y ago
    There's a lot of space between "what violates the law" (or explicit ios/play store Terms of Use for that matter) and "what will get you kicked off twitter" and I believe Parler operated in that space. Users could post stuff that would get them booted off twitter, but that was legal speech. This was fine with iOS & play store & AWS until they all simultaneously and independently (wink wink) realized it violated their terms of use. Unless we grant that this had nothing to do with newly discovered terms of use violations, it was crushing Parler in reaction to a change in the political winds (read: this is what happened).
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
      > Users could post stuff that would get them booted off twitter, but that was legal speech I'm curious what kind of posts would definitely fall into this distinction. I see plenty of really distasteful, vile comments show up on Twitter. And AFAIK inciting violence is illegal. So the area between those seems to me like it would be pretty narrow. My impression of Parler is more that they only deleted illegal speech of a particularly egregious nature, e.g. child porn.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
>but is Facebooks willingness to moderate their content not at least part of the reason? At some level, for these type of issues, intent doesn’t really matter, only results. I am sure big oil companies do t intend to cause global warming, however they put profits ahead of any concern for pollution. Same with Facebook. I am sure they don’t intend to be harmful and toxic, but at some level they put profits ahead of any concern for pollution.

by shlant 6y ago

leetcrew 6y ago

> That seems like a pretty significant determinant when considering which site had a more direct connection to the events that transpired. does it really? "tries but fails to moderate extremism at massive scale" doesn't seem better than "makes no effort to moderate at much smaller scale". I guess the first leaves some potential for improvement in the future, but I don't expect a whole lot from facebook.

andrewzah 6y ago
Intent does matter. Why don't you try moderating posts at the scale facebook receives them, and we can compare the results. edit: I am not advocating for or against facebook being so large. What I am saying is there is a clear distinction between facebook and e.g. parler in terms of moderation.
- jimmydorry 6y ago
  As we saw with Parler, your fledgling site can get deplatformed by the few key players in the cloud / app distribution / and service providers. "Just make it" is no longer as convincing a non-sequitor as it used to be.
  - spaced-out 6y ago
    Parler only has 30 employees, has some very well-publicized security and design flaws suggesting a lack of engineering talent, and is backed by just one private investor. The only way they were even able to release an app of that scale is because of all the services they bought from companies like Amazon. The lesson the business world should take from this is: invest in your engineers.
    - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
      I’m not sure I follow the “only giant, mature, and billions/trillion dollar companies should be allowed to have public services” argument. Twitter had 30 engineers at one point, they weren’t deplatformed before becoming a better product.
      - spaced-out 6y ago
        First, Parler would still be up if they followed AWS's terms of service. Second, they've already found a new host (https://www.npr.org/2021/01/13/956315632/after-booted-by-big-tech-parler-registers-with-hosting-service https://www.npr.org/2021/01/13/956315632/after-booted-by-big...), yet they announced they'll still likely go offline because that host can't provide all the engineering talent Parler relied on. They just need built up their teams and do the work to develop their internal infrastructure. They don't need to become a billion dollar company to do that.
      - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
        This is an illuminating example of Silicon Valley(CA)vs Silicon Alley(NY) of startups. I guess in this particular case, Gab vs Parler. Access to capital isn’t enough. Companies also need good legal advice, scale strategy and testing. Etc. A teachable moment.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    Its going to be okay. This whole "Just make your own Twitter!", "Just make your own datacenter!", "Just make your own payment processor!" is exactly what will eventually happen. I think we might be seeing the start of a total division of society along political sides.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- leetcrew 6y ago
  why are we starting with the assumption that anyone needs to receive and moderate posts at the scale facebook does?
  - sigmaprimus 6y ago
    Good point, my response would be that everyone seems to agree that a certain portion of social media is toxic. I think the main reason these big social media and tech companies devote so many resources to moderation is their leaders are tired of being called into televised political hearings that sole purpose seem to be political grandstanding of self righteous politicians.
  - jpadkins 6y ago
    because humans are social creatures. So as long as we desire to communicate with each other, someone will profit by building services to fulfil that desire.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  Have you calculated how many more moderators could be deployed full time out of facebook's $16 billion profit? At $20 per hour, approximately 400,000.
- _Microft 6y ago
  Results matter more than intent. As a side note: as long as they (FB, YT, ...) can not moderate properly and automatically, they have not solved scale. They might have figured out making money but scale regarding social networks? - I do not grant them that achievement.
- lesstenseflow 6y ago
  Respectfully, this is bullshit. As mentioned above, the question was about dollars, cents, and optics. Parler costs nothing to cut & there's little PR hit (probably a benefit), Cutting Facebook would cost the platforms money. The "terms of use violations" or whatever BS they're referencing for booting Parler doesn't even enter into it, the action is based at least 99% on cost/benefit to the platform, not some sanitary inflexible set of rules. Dorsey showed Twitter's rules mean nothing. Trump violates rules: "oh well he's an exception because he's a head of state [and he's the best thing that ever happened to engagement!]." Trump is losing power & allies are fleeing him: "sure he's still a head of state but this is the exception to the exception, so we're booting him [plus the tides just turned against him and dumping him is more palatable]." Soon we'll have the exception to the exception to the exception. So let's not play dumb and assert that this is about some fixed set of rules, the tech chiefs are clearly making the rules up as they go along based on "who is in power at the moment, what speech is unpopular at the moment" and above all "what will this cost us in dollars." And the minute your speech is unpopular (I'm looking at you, anarchists, communists, and libertarians), out the door you go.
  - asxd 6y ago
    > So let's not play dumb and assert that this is about some fixed set of rules I think that's exactly what makes this such a complex issue. It's unprecedented. Never in the past have social media companies been suddenly used as an outlet for national leaders. > the tech chiefs are clearly making the rules up as they go along Again, to the above point, this is obviously the case. There's no fixed set of rules to perfectly mediate this situation and appease everybody. It's going to be a bit fluid.
- dx87 6y ago
  "If nobody knows how to do it safely, then it's fine to cause harm" is a strange way to look at the world. Maybe Facebook should be treated like other companies that sell products that are proven to be dangerous, and they can't operate until they prove it can be done safely.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

Nextgrid 6y ago

> Facebooks willingness to moderate their content Facebook moderates content only when it draws too much attention, but either way Facebook profits off said content as their algorithms promote it (because said content generates "engagement").

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
Not necessarily. I only have a few friends, and a few months ago before the election, I made a post recommending they stock up on food, water, and emergency medications just in case. I don't have many friends and it was probably only seen by a handful of people, yet the post was removed. It's hard to say exactly what they moderate or how.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  A couple of teenagers where driving mopeds in other peoples yards this morning. Someone on Facebook suggested dealing with the problem by hitting them with a baseball bat. That hasn’t been taken down and it won’t. If you write in a less spoken language Facebook struggle to moderate you. Unless you’re trying to sell animals, because they spot that in seconds.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    > Unless you’re trying to sell animals, because they spot that in seconds. Facebook is happy to let bad content stay and profit off it unless said content carries a risk of bringing bad PR; I'm assuming this is the case with the "selling animals" thing because some animal rights groups escalated the issue to the media, and it is now the case with anything Trump- or election-related (not that I'm defending said content, but pointing out that its removal is for PR reasons as opposed to Facebook actually caring about democracy or discouraging violence).
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  They moderate things that risk bringing bad PR, including in some cases putting overzealous rules that would cause false positives like you described. However, it's clear they aren't acting in good faith and aren't actually interested in moderating bad content. Cybercrime-related Facebook groups which don't even attempt to conceal themselves are commonplace on Facebook: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/a-year-later-cybercrime-groups-still-rampant-on-facebook/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/a-year-later-cybercrime-... despite detecting them being trivial based on a simple keyword match.

ctrlp 6y ago

That's false. Please don't spread false information, whatever your politics. Parler had very similar terms of service to other content companies prohibiting illegal, violent, or copyrighted content. They also paid a team of content moderators to adjudicate flagged posts. They worked happily with their reps at Apple, Google, and AWS right up until the Friday Night Massacre. They were a small company experiencing massive user growth because if Twitter policies during the past year and especially the past months. There was not a peep about their content until from their reps until 1/6. Was it the riot or the senate flipping? My intel may be false, but my understanding is that they successfully cleared their backlog of flagged tickets before the deadline, working like hell to save their company, for nothing. The fix was in. This was a hit. We should all be very alarmed by this.

asxd 6y ago
I won't pretend to be close to the matter, but my understanding was Parler's value proposition to users was that they wouldn't moderate as heavily?
- lesstenseflow 6y ago
  There's a lot of space between "what violates the law" (or explicit ios/play store Terms of Use for that matter) and "what will get you kicked off twitter" and I believe Parler operated in that space. Users could post stuff that would get them booted off twitter, but that was legal speech. This was fine with iOS & play store & AWS until they all simultaneously and independently (wink wink) realized it violated their terms of use. Unless we grant that this had nothing to do with newly discovered terms of use violations, it was crushing Parler in reaction to a change in the political winds (read: this is what happened).
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    > Users could post stuff that would get them booted off twitter, but that was legal speech I'm curious what kind of posts would definitely fall into this distinction. I see plenty of really distasteful, vile comments show up on Twitter. And AFAIK inciting violence is illegal. So the area between those seems to me like it would be pretty narrow. My impression of Parler is more that they only deleted illegal speech of a particularly egregious nature, e.g. child porn.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

>but is Facebooks willingness to moderate their content not at least part of the reason? At some level, for these type of issues, intent doesn’t really matter, only results. I am sure big oil companies do t intend to cause global warming, however they put profits ahead of any concern for pollution. Same with Facebook. I am sure they don’t intend to be harmful and toxic, but at some level they put profits ahead of any concern for pollution.