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One of the problems with this is opening up to criticism, liability, and further argumentation. If you say "We removed them because of their political views,"
by csense 6y ago
One of the problems with this is opening up to criticism, liability, and further argumentation.
If you say "We removed them because of their political views," then you get criticized for being openly partisan.
If you say "We removed them because their comments were inciting violence," you'll get arguments about how their comments didn't actually tell people to do violent things (for example, in the US I'm sure for the near future, a lot of people will be arguing very loudly whether the specific phrases "fight like hell" and "trial by combat" are metaphorical rhetorical devices or literal instructions to take violent actions.)
People will start finding and pointing out situations where you made different decisions in near-identical circumstances, and criticize you for that too.
It's better for users if the platform's transparent.
But the platform has no incentive to do so. Less than 1% of the time will users say "Okay you told us why this person was banned, we now see the ban's fair, and we'll shut up and go home." Instead, 99% of the time they'll turn your explanation into another reason to be enraged at you, or argue you need to reconsider, or even sue you because that line of reasoning makes you liable.
From the platform's point of view, it's usually better to let the reasoning behind a ban be a question mark.
> "a big neural network said so"
This is part of it too. With ML-driven bans or other actions, it's possible that nobody understands what criteria it uses to make decisions.
- a1369209993 6y ago> One of the problems with this is opening up to criticism, liability, and further argumentation. That's not a problem; it's the point. > It's better for users if the platform's transparent. Exactly. > or even sue you because that line of reasoning makes you liable. Also the point. Corporations are not people, and their reasoning should be assumed liability-worthy unless shown otherwise.
- edmundsauto 6y agoIt also leads bad actors to game the system.
- CamperBob2 6y agoThat's unfortunate. Not the victim's problem, though.
- alisonkisk 6y ago"bad people might behave better to we can't ban them easily" is a pretty poor argument. Zuckerberg has $50,000,000,000; he can afford to hire some people to do the job.
- a1369209993 6y agoTo be scrupulously fair, I think the concern is more "bad people might behave just as bad, but in ways that technically don't fit whatever criteria we banned the last group for". Or, less directly, "bad people might find good people who behave in ways that technically do fit those criteria, and try to get them banned".
- edmundsauto 6y agoLooking at their financials, it looks like they’ve massively increased headcount to battle these “integrity” problems. It at least looks like they’ve invested a ton of money. From the outside, I am not sure it’s been effective, but to be fair, have there been as many issues since they started investing significantly around 2018? Most of the major problems look like it happened before. (Not to excuse that time, but if they are fixing issues then it changes the future projections while still not letting them off the hook for past problems)
- einpoklum 6y agoBad actors don't need to game the system, they either: * Get their government cronies/buddies to skew the system in their favor. * Use their business relationship with Facebook to skew the system in their favor. * Own the system from the get-go.
- edmundsauto 6y agoThere are many worse people in the world than this. I should have been more clear in saying malicious and maliciously motivated actors.
- CamperBob2 6y agoOne of the problems with this is opening up to criticism, liability, and further argumentation. Too bad. They must do it anyway. None of those are valid excuses for removing all accountability from the moderation process.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago> Instead, 99% of the time they'll turn your explanation into another reason to be enraged at you, or argue you need to reconsider, or even sue you because that line of reasoning makes you liable. Social networks seem to optimize for serving content that engages, and that typically means news with a negative sentiment. So, giving a ban with a reason would engage people for longer, to serve them more ads, and make the audience more profitable.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago> Instead, 99% of the time they'll turn your explanation into another reason to be enraged at you, or argue you need to reconsider, or even sue you because that line of reasoning makes you liable. // Which is 'fine', let them be enraged. Transparency shows it to be fair and removes the ability to reasonably argue otherwise. Then at least one can decide if the platform is right for you, and indeed of the rules are anti-democratic we can move for changing them. 'I'm so enraged, $platform said that inciting violence wasn't allowed, then I incited violence and got censored', whose going to rally around that flag?