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According to modern zeitgeist, if Facebook can't be trusted to moderate their users, Facebook should be deplatformed and shut down. Edit: wow, that blew up. Fo

According to modern zeitgeist, if Facebook can't be trusted to moderate their users, Facebook should be deplatformed and shut down. Edit: wow, that blew up. For the record, I don't think Facebook should be shut down, and I don't think Parler should have either. I'm rather anti-social media, so I've never used either. We should have better reasons for doing things, and stick to them. Section 230 exists for a reason.

prophetjohn 6y ago
I'm no Facebook fan or apologist, but I do think there's a distinction between failing to moderate perfectly (or even well) and refusing to even attempt to moderate.
- a3n 6y ago
  This isn't failure of anything. It's targeted advertising. They meant to do that. The system is working, "as advertised."
  - mminer237 6y ago
    This is a failure of targeted advertising. Do you think Facebook would approve this if they had a human looking at the algorithm?
    - a3n 6y ago
      Yes. Targeted advertisement, and the resulting money, is the entire purpose of Facebook. Automation just makes the process faster. And cheaper; you know, that whole money thing. I abhor both Parler and Facebook. In the context of these threads, I don't think either has done anything illegal, which is what passes for "ethics" in our economy. Of course IANAL. I don't think Apple, Google and Amazon did anything illegal to Parler. And until these kinds of companies are legally and explicitly made into utilities, I don't think we can expect them to do anything except whatever they want.
      - mminer237 6y ago
        They want to target their ads in general, but they don't actually want to sell military gear to insurrectionists. It was just the AI working too well. Once they noticed, they have now blanket banned such ads until after the inauguration: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-protests-facebook/facebook-to-ban-ads-promoting-weapon-accessories-protective-gear-in-u-s-idUSKBN29L0S5 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-protests-facebo...
- optimiz3 6y ago
  Clearly Facebook's systems are able to associate correct ads based on the semantics of the content. Since this is true, why can't those systems moderate said content?
  - ben_w 6y ago
    If I assume that they are operating in good faith, false positives versus false negatives. Showing the wrong advert loses you a few pennies each time, incorrectly blocking legitimate content has a power-law distribution of cost in political capital, depending on whose stuff you block. I don’t trust FB enough to want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this would still be true if I did.
- lesstenseflow 6y ago
  Parler did have moderation. What platform are you referring to here?
  - typenil 6y ago
    Referring to the straw man platform, obviously.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    Parler had a moderation process. It verifiably failed to actually prevent violent rhetoric (c.f. Lin Wood calling for Pence's execution days before the crowd took the capitol chanting "Hang Mike Pence!"). In this interview (audio, but there's a transcript) Matze details some of it, and basically explains that violent-but-popular content is going to be left up because of "free speech": https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-john-matze.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/sway-kara-swisher...
    - wrycoder 6y ago
      Parler had deleted several of Wood's posts, and a number of users had used the "report" function to raise the flag to Parler management. I think he was close to being banned.
      - newacct583 6y ago
        That particular post was still up when the site went down, I believe. I mean, sure, it's possible they would have gotten better. But this wasn't an abstract issue, we'd just had an attack on congress and there was (and remains) serious worry that something similar or worse would happen at the inauguration. Certainly the rhetoric on the site had not significantly moderated in the few days between the capitol riot and their ban.
    - itsoktocry 6y ago
      >It verifiably failed to actually prevent violent rhetoric How do you suppose you prevent violent rhetoric? You can only react to it. And if that's the baseline, Facebook and Twitter have far more objectionable content yet-to-be-removed.
- rchaud 6y ago
  Incitement to terrorism isn't something where failing to moderate perfectly should be tolerated. There is already a zero-tolerance approach to numerous extremist groups, regardless of whether they are active on American soil or not. Why should this be treated any differently?
  - newacct583 6y ago
    > Why should this be treated any differently? Obviously this is a rhetorical question. But the answer is an elephant-in-the room kind of thing so I think it needs to be said: The reason is that the overlap between "extremism" and our (now) minority political party is so large as to have muddled the distinction. Per one poll, 45% of Trump voters approve of the sacking of the capitol. It's really not possible to distinguish people who merely post angry political speech and the ones who stray into extremist rhetoric about revolution and violence. The same people are doing all of it. So right now, "moderating communities with extreme content" simply looks a lot like "censoring republicans". But... I don't see how that gets better by outlawing the moderation. Republicans need to fix their rhetoric first.
  - itsoktocry 6y ago
    >Why should this be treated any differently? Being as how Twitter isn't shutdown for the same offense, I'm also curious as to why Parler was "treated differently"? Political pressure, period.
    - rchaud 6y ago
      Twitter can claim to make a good-faith effort to reduce misinformation, and threats of violence and incitements to terrorism are taken down quickly. Parler's raison d'etre is that it makes no such efforts. From the AWS team's motion to dismiss: "There is no legal basis in AWS’s customer agreements or otherwise to compel AWS to host content of this nature. AWS notified Parler repeatedly that its content violated the parties’ agreement, requested removal, and reviewed Parler’s plan to address the problem, only to determine that Parler was both unwilling and unable to do so. AWS suspended Parler’s account as a last resort to prevent further access to such content, including plans for violence to disrupt the impending Presidential transition." From: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Washington_Western_District_Court/2--21-cv-00031/Parler_LLC_v._Amazon_Web_Services_Inc/10/ https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Washington_Western_Distric...
- IncRnd 6y ago
  > I do think there's a distinction between failing to moderate perfectly (or even well) and refusing to even attempt to moderate. That may be a distinction without a difference. What company failed to even attempt to moderate?
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  Parler’s chief policy officer contends that they were (1) actively hiring content moderators (to augment their jury system) and (2) working with Amazon to get AWS AI facilities so they could implement automated moderation. These programs were in progress right up until the site went down. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000r4vm https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000r4vm
ben_w 6y ago
Various advertising companies have temporarily withdrawn from FB over the years precisely because of issues like this. Most famously and recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Facebook_ad_boycotts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Facebook_ad_boycotts
waheoo 6y ago
These are ads so it's ok. It's only when it's the people that it's the problem. It's never the 1%. I miss the occupy movement, at least they talked sense.
gurleen_s 6y ago
There’s a difference between what happened to Parler (vendors refusing to do business with them) and Facebook (relatively more self reliant).
- shockeychap 6y ago
  Isn't Facebook dependent on backbone service providers at their data centers? Are those vendors at liberty to discontinue service? Edit: For a multitude of reasons - money, money, and money - I don't expect any vendors would discontinue service with Facebook. The question is more of a thought exercise.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ethanbond 6y ago
    > Are those vendors at liberty to discontinue service? Depends on their contracts and that’s all it depends on.
    - IncRnd 6y ago
      > Depends on their contracts and that’s all it depends on. That's not true. Laws supercede contracts. You cannot write a contract that creates new law between parties.
      - mminer237 6y ago
        There is no relevant law that would require Facebook or Parler to do any moderation because of Section 230, right?
        IncRnd 6y ago
        You are talking about something different. I had replied to a comment which said Facebook breaking the contract they have with their backbone provider is the only way their provider can terminate the connection. That's clearly false. There are many laws outside of the CDA.
eganist 6y ago
> According to modern zeitgeist, if Facebook can't be trusted to moderate their users, Facebook should be deplatformed and shut down. They've got (poorly paid and treated) human mods for user interactions, but apparently ad mods aren't a thing with them. So I'm largely in the same camp; if they're enabling armed insurrection by white supremacists (or extremists in the middle east, etc), Facebook should be boycotted by their partners. That's what happened with Parler. Facebook's more likely to weather the storm. Parler evidently wasn't able to.
- a3n 6y ago
  That's not what happened with Parler. They were boycotted by their vendors.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
throwawayin12 6y ago
How to moderate Facebook and make sure there is no illegal content is a big topic in Europe. Some open problems: * Nazi propaganda * Content that's dangerous to the development of children (violence, eating disorders, ...) * Sexual harassment * Libel and slander So yes, take that together with Facebooks data transfers across the Atlantic and there is a real chance of Facebook shutting down in Europe.
mtnGoat 6y ago
I for one would be ok with that.
RIMR 6y ago
Parler rented all their infrastructure from companies that get to choose how their infrastructure gets used. Private companies can run themselves as they please. Facebook owns all their own infrastructure and gets the final say on how their infrastructure is used. Private companies can run themselves as they please. If you violate the terms of your rental agreement, your landlord gets to kick you out. If you can't afford to own your own infrastructure, you answer to those who do. Welcome to Capitalism.
- andrew_ 6y ago
  Political alignment or ideology is not a protected class - that's the lone reason they were able to do this. If they would have shut down or refused business to say, a company promoting the interests of Hispanics, the platforms refusing business would have been sued into oblivion. "Private companies can run themselves as they please." is disingenuous, and tossing that statement around carelessly is not aiding discourse. Private companies have rules they have to abide by, just as restaurants do at the moment.
- fvdessen 6y ago
  I think it's obvious that private companies should not be able to 'run themselves as they please'. Also in my country landlords can't kick renters out if they disagree politically. I think that's a good thing. Maybe similar regulation should apply to infrastructure providers.
  - whoknew1122 6y ago
    Parler wasn't kicked off AWS because of a political disagreement. It was kicked off for multiple terms of service violations and unwillingness to adequately moderate its platform to ensure that further ToS violations didn't occur. Surely in your can get kicked out of your rental if you violate the lease. Especially if your landlord sits down with you and discusses the issues and you still can't commit to not violating your lease. I can get evicted from my rental if I don't have renter's insurance. Let's suppose my landlord sat down with me and said: '[name], you are in violation of your lease agreement without renter's insurance.' If my response is 'well, I'll find someone to volunteer to look for renter's insurance for me', I would expect to be evicted. And I'm not even facilitating or enabling people to openly advocate and plan for violent overthrow of a democracy on my property.
a3n 6y ago
Facebook's vendors are free to do that. Some might. Some might not. Absolutely their choice, in any context.
busterarm 6y ago
> For the record, I don't think Facebook should be shut down. That's cool, I'm down for making all social media apps illegal. Today. We've given guns to chimpanzees. Perhaps the human race needs to mature a little before we're shoving our entire lives into everyone else's face. Turns out that despite having more things in common than not, we still don't like each other very much. 10 years ago, most of the American left and center were shouting at banks about being the 99%. In the wake of that, these apps have been used to divide and conquer us. They've turned us against each other. Our best hope is to shun these tools en masse.
jlj 6y ago
How much of the ad spend is coming from PAC's with unrestrained fundraising abilities, and dark money sources? Cut off that money supply with election reform and a lot of these ad network problems coupled to political polarization become a lot smaller.

prophetjohn 6y ago

I'm no Facebook fan or apologist, but I do think there's a distinction between failing to moderate perfectly (or even well) and refusing to even attempt to moderate.

a3n 6y ago
This isn't failure of anything. It's targeted advertising. They meant to do that. The system is working, "as advertised."
- mminer237 6y ago
  This is a failure of targeted advertising. Do you think Facebook would approve this if they had a human looking at the algorithm?
  - a3n 6y ago
    Yes. Targeted advertisement, and the resulting money, is the entire purpose of Facebook. Automation just makes the process faster. And cheaper; you know, that whole money thing. I abhor both Parler and Facebook. In the context of these threads, I don't think either has done anything illegal, which is what passes for "ethics" in our economy. Of course IANAL. I don't think Apple, Google and Amazon did anything illegal to Parler. And until these kinds of companies are legally and explicitly made into utilities, I don't think we can expect them to do anything except whatever they want.
    - mminer237 6y ago
      They want to target their ads in general, but they don't actually want to sell military gear to insurrectionists. It was just the AI working too well. Once they noticed, they have now blanket banned such ads until after the inauguration: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-protests-facebook/facebook-to-ban-ads-promoting-weapon-accessories-protective-gear-in-u-s-idUSKBN29L0S5 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-protests-facebo...
optimiz3 6y ago
Clearly Facebook's systems are able to associate correct ads based on the semantics of the content. Since this is true, why can't those systems moderate said content?
- ben_w 6y ago
  If I assume that they are operating in good faith, false positives versus false negatives. Showing the wrong advert loses you a few pennies each time, incorrectly blocking legitimate content has a power-law distribution of cost in political capital, depending on whose stuff you block. I don’t trust FB enough to want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this would still be true if I did.
lesstenseflow 6y ago
Parler did have moderation. What platform are you referring to here?
- typenil 6y ago
  Referring to the straw man platform, obviously.
- newacct583 6y ago
  Parler had a moderation process. It verifiably failed to actually prevent violent rhetoric (c.f. Lin Wood calling for Pence's execution days before the crowd took the capitol chanting "Hang Mike Pence!"). In this interview (audio, but there's a transcript) Matze details some of it, and basically explains that violent-but-popular content is going to be left up because of "free speech": https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-john-matze.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/sway-kara-swisher...
  - wrycoder 6y ago
    Parler had deleted several of Wood's posts, and a number of users had used the "report" function to raise the flag to Parler management. I think he was close to being banned.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      That particular post was still up when the site went down, I believe. I mean, sure, it's possible they would have gotten better. But this wasn't an abstract issue, we'd just had an attack on congress and there was (and remains) serious worry that something similar or worse would happen at the inauguration. Certainly the rhetoric on the site had not significantly moderated in the few days between the capitol riot and their ban.
  - itsoktocry 6y ago
    >It verifiably failed to actually prevent violent rhetoric How do you suppose you prevent violent rhetoric? You can only react to it. And if that's the baseline, Facebook and Twitter have far more objectionable content yet-to-be-removed.
rchaud 6y ago
Incitement to terrorism isn't something where failing to moderate perfectly should be tolerated. There is already a zero-tolerance approach to numerous extremist groups, regardless of whether they are active on American soil or not. Why should this be treated any differently?
- newacct583 6y ago
  > Why should this be treated any differently? Obviously this is a rhetorical question. But the answer is an elephant-in-the room kind of thing so I think it needs to be said: The reason is that the overlap between "extremism" and our (now) minority political party is so large as to have muddled the distinction. Per one poll, 45% of Trump voters approve of the sacking of the capitol. It's really not possible to distinguish people who merely post angry political speech and the ones who stray into extremist rhetoric about revolution and violence. The same people are doing all of it. So right now, "moderating communities with extreme content" simply looks a lot like "censoring republicans". But... I don't see how that gets better by outlawing the moderation. Republicans need to fix their rhetoric first.
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >Why should this be treated any differently? Being as how Twitter isn't shutdown for the same offense, I'm also curious as to why Parler was "treated differently"? Political pressure, period.
  - rchaud 6y ago
    Twitter can claim to make a good-faith effort to reduce misinformation, and threats of violence and incitements to terrorism are taken down quickly. Parler's raison d'etre is that it makes no such efforts. From the AWS team's motion to dismiss: "There is no legal basis in AWS’s customer agreements or otherwise to compel AWS to host content of this nature. AWS notified Parler repeatedly that its content violated the parties’ agreement, requested removal, and reviewed Parler’s plan to address the problem, only to determine that Parler was both unwilling and unable to do so. AWS suspended Parler’s account as a last resort to prevent further access to such content, including plans for violence to disrupt the impending Presidential transition." From: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Washington_Western_District_Court/2--21-cv-00031/Parler_LLC_v._Amazon_Web_Services_Inc/10/ https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Washington_Western_Distric...
IncRnd 6y ago
> I do think there's a distinction between failing to moderate perfectly (or even well) and refusing to even attempt to moderate. That may be a distinction without a difference. What company failed to even attempt to moderate?
gorgoiler 6y ago
Parler’s chief policy officer contends that they were (1) actively hiring content moderators (to augment their jury system) and (2) working with Amazon to get AWS AI facilities so they could implement automated moderation. These programs were in progress right up until the site went down. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000r4vm https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000r4vm

ben_w 6y ago

Various advertising companies have temporarily withdrawn from FB over the years precisely because of issues like this. Most famously and recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Facebook_ad_boycotts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Facebook_ad_boycotts

waheoo 6y ago

These are ads so it's ok. It's only when it's the people that it's the problem. It's never the 1%. I miss the occupy movement, at least they talked sense.

gurleen_s 6y ago

There’s a difference between what happened to Parler (vendors refusing to do business with them) and Facebook (relatively more self reliant).

shockeychap 6y ago
Isn't Facebook dependent on backbone service providers at their data centers? Are those vendors at liberty to discontinue service? Edit: For a multitude of reasons - money, money, and money - I don't expect any vendors would discontinue service with Facebook. The question is more of a thought exercise.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ethanbond 6y ago
  > Are those vendors at liberty to discontinue service? Depends on their contracts and that’s all it depends on.
  - IncRnd 6y ago
    > Depends on their contracts and that’s all it depends on. That's not true. Laws supercede contracts. You cannot write a contract that creates new law between parties.
    - mminer237 6y ago
      There is no relevant law that would require Facebook or Parler to do any moderation because of Section 230, right?
      - IncRnd 6y ago
        You are talking about something different. I had replied to a comment which said Facebook breaking the contract they have with their backbone provider is the only way their provider can terminate the connection. That's clearly false. There are many laws outside of the CDA.

eganist 6y ago

> According to modern zeitgeist, if Facebook can't be trusted to moderate their users, Facebook should be deplatformed and shut down. They've got (poorly paid and treated) human mods for user interactions, but apparently ad mods aren't a thing with them. So I'm largely in the same camp; if they're enabling armed insurrection by white supremacists (or extremists in the middle east, etc), Facebook should be boycotted by their partners. That's what happened with Parler. Facebook's more likely to weather the storm. Parler evidently wasn't able to.

a3n 6y ago
That's not what happened with Parler. They were boycotted by their vendors.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

throwawayin12 6y ago

How to moderate Facebook and make sure there is no illegal content is a big topic in Europe. Some open problems: * Nazi propaganda * Content that's dangerous to the development of children (violence, eating disorders, ...) * Sexual harassment * Libel and slander So yes, take that together with Facebooks data transfers across the Atlantic and there is a real chance of Facebook shutting down in Europe.

mtnGoat 6y ago

I for one would be ok with that.

RIMR 6y ago

Parler rented all their infrastructure from companies that get to choose how their infrastructure gets used. Private companies can run themselves as they please. Facebook owns all their own infrastructure and gets the final say on how their infrastructure is used. Private companies can run themselves as they please. If you violate the terms of your rental agreement, your landlord gets to kick you out. If you can't afford to own your own infrastructure, you answer to those who do. Welcome to Capitalism.

andrew_ 6y ago
Political alignment or ideology is not a protected class - that's the lone reason they were able to do this. If they would have shut down or refused business to say, a company promoting the interests of Hispanics, the platforms refusing business would have been sued into oblivion. "Private companies can run themselves as they please." is disingenuous, and tossing that statement around carelessly is not aiding discourse. Private companies have rules they have to abide by, just as restaurants do at the moment.
fvdessen 6y ago
I think it's obvious that private companies should not be able to 'run themselves as they please'. Also in my country landlords can't kick renters out if they disagree politically. I think that's a good thing. Maybe similar regulation should apply to infrastructure providers.
- whoknew1122 6y ago
  Parler wasn't kicked off AWS because of a political disagreement. It was kicked off for multiple terms of service violations and unwillingness to adequately moderate its platform to ensure that further ToS violations didn't occur. Surely in your can get kicked out of your rental if you violate the lease. Especially if your landlord sits down with you and discusses the issues and you still can't commit to not violating your lease. I can get evicted from my rental if I don't have renter's insurance. Let's suppose my landlord sat down with me and said: '[name], you are in violation of your lease agreement without renter's insurance.' If my response is 'well, I'll find someone to volunteer to look for renter's insurance for me', I would expect to be evicted. And I'm not even facilitating or enabling people to openly advocate and plan for violent overthrow of a democracy on my property.

a3n 6y ago

Facebook's vendors are free to do that. Some might. Some might not. Absolutely their choice, in any context.

busterarm 6y ago

> For the record, I don't think Facebook should be shut down. That's cool, I'm down for making all social media apps illegal. Today. We've given guns to chimpanzees. Perhaps the human race needs to mature a little before we're shoving our entire lives into everyone else's face. Turns out that despite having more things in common than not, we still don't like each other very much. 10 years ago, most of the American left and center were shouting at banks about being the 99%. In the wake of that, these apps have been used to divide and conquer us. They've turned us against each other. Our best hope is to shun these tools en masse.

jlj 6y ago

How much of the ad spend is coming from PAC's with unrestrained fundraising abilities, and dark money sources? Cut off that money supply with election reform and a lot of these ad network problems coupled to political polarization become a lot smaller.