5 ms·

I suspect that the fundamental issue here is not even about hate speech, really, it's about labor. The court wants a human to write a message to the user sayin

I suspect that the fundamental issue here is not even about hate speech, really, it's about labor. The court wants a human to write a message to the user saying "we took down your message/banned your account because [reasons]". Facebook doesn't want to have a human in the loop, because they have billions of users and would have to hire tens of thousands more people to monitor that. I suspect that European governments will continue to badger FB (and Twitter, and Google, and etc.) on this until they up their headcount to deal with it using humans-in-the-loop. The question is whether or not social networks are actually profitable if you have human moderation. I suspect they are not.

frockington1 5y ago
Does this also apply to German companies (I'm ignorant on this matter)? If not, all this regulation does is build a massive moat around US Tech companies
frankfrankfrank 5y ago
I get your perspective, but I don't think even a European/German court would be that cynical. Although I would agree that the court is actually just demanding a reason be provided for the removal of speech and expression, not even that really that a human must do it. My expectation is that Facebook will increase efforts to automate more granular and broad surveillance on users and content in order to provide automated reasons for removing content. The crux, after all is not that the content was removed, but rather that no reason was given. Maybe the short term solution is simply an overwhelmingly broad legalese that covers broader reasons for censorship. I don't see the Germany polity desiring the increase in humans doing such rote and banal work. We have seen the damage it does to people to essentially be enforcers of human rights violations. It is psychologically and emotionally damaging to abuse people. No, this will be a move towards more automation of the control, surveillance, and censorship that the ruling class demands. You may agree with it since it's the censorship of "racism", but don't be surprised when what you believe or say is all the sudden "racism" too or that your lèse-majesté will be included in the list of forbidden speech and thought next. If allowed to manifest … and we are racing towards this end … things will soon look like right out of 1984 where you don't even have the chance to disseminate anything the regime dislikes. Instead, you will instead you will be whisked away or have your life ruined if you say anything the regime will intentionally arbitrarily deem "hate speech" or whatever other rationalization they come up with. It will be anyone's guess what it is that the regime may not like at any given time and therefore no one will dare say anything. It is what others have called anarcho-tyranny, but I simply see as rather fundamental abusiveness 101 that any abused spouse can describe and you can read about the the most basic psychology textbooks.
- joejerryronnie 5y ago
  You mention the censorship and info control of the “ruling class” and the “anarcho-tyrannical regime”, but this exact scenario is already happening today and being driven by roving bands of online Leftists. I agree with your premise that banning free speech we don’t like will inevitably lead to the restriction of free speech we feel is vitally important, i.e. you’ve got to let the nazis and anti-vaxers spout their bs if you want to be able to criticize your local politician, you can’t have it both ways.
WaitWaitWha 5y ago
The subheading appears to contradict your conjecture. > Facebook acted illegally in taking down racist posts and blocking the account of their author because the social network failed to inform the user or give a reason for shutting them down. (my emphasis)
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
But a real human is affected by trusting the AI. A real human might lose his/her only effective way to communicate with some people/communities who only use facebook. On the other hand, an AI cannot detect sarcasm, nonstandard quotes, and can be biased. I know some people (even here) very much support removing and banning people for stuff they disagree with, and call all of that disinformation, but things change, you won't always be on the "right side", and then it'll be too late. And even "sides" change... Covid is one such example, where not so long ago, you could be calling for people to wear masks to protect themselves, and with current facebook tools, your posts would be removed for misinformation and conspiracies/fearmongering about covid, because "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly" [0] Then a few weeks/months later "whoops", let's ban "the other side". [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-mas...
- 13years 5y ago
  It is far beyond reasonable expectations that FB can be a neutral arbitar of all information. Not only are they not qualified, as you state even the "experts" change minds, disagree etc. Having so much power to decide or influence what people know should be a very disturbing and chilling concept of itself.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Yep. But some people still argue for FB (google, apple,...) to have that power (and more), because they believe they'll always be on the same side of "truth".
mc32 5y ago
Kind of a tangent, but doesn’t the Chinese censorship program use (or at least used to) use mostly actual people taking down “illegal” posts? So it seems they have proven it’s possible to do with people in the loop.
- yorwba 5y ago
  There's no single Chinese censorship program. Every company has their own process for deleting content, and they don't always make the same decisions. At least the biggest platforms definitely use a lot of automation. E.g. I follow Professor Hu Fanzhu of East China Normal University's National Discourse Ecology Research Center on WeChat. A week ago, he published an article "Nine questions about Zhengzhou" that appeared in my feed, but displayed the message that it couldn't be sent because it might be inappropriately using the names of government institutions or employees. This was probably automated. Then he republished it as "Nine questions about ZZ", which displays the message that it was taken down after being reported by users. He's now switched to publishing a series of articles (five so far, here's the first: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Rf2t5cRoHJGh8Yb-3fFXSA https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Rf2t5cRoHJGh8Yb-3fFXSA ) of which the second was taken down, again mentioning user reports as the reason. But I actually managed to read that one before it disappeared. To generalize a bit, any new event escapes censorship at first, because neither automated systems nor human reviewers have been instructed to censor it. Once the censors are aware, new keywords like "Zhengzhou" can be added to the filter lists. But those are easy to get around by using different words, so humans are still needed to clean up the rest. And it can take them a long time to do so, during which tens of thousands of people may have read something the government didn't want them to know about.

frockington1 5y ago

Does this also apply to German companies (I'm ignorant on this matter)? If not, all this regulation does is build a massive moat around US Tech companies

frankfrankfrank 5y ago

I get your perspective, but I don't think even a European/German court would be that cynical. Although I would agree that the court is actually just demanding a reason be provided for the removal of speech and expression, not even that really that a human must do it. My expectation is that Facebook will increase efforts to automate more granular and broad surveillance on users and content in order to provide automated reasons for removing content. The crux, after all is not that the content was removed, but rather that no reason was given. Maybe the short term solution is simply an overwhelmingly broad legalese that covers broader reasons for censorship. I don't see the Germany polity desiring the increase in humans doing such rote and banal work. We have seen the damage it does to people to essentially be enforcers of human rights violations. It is psychologically and emotionally damaging to abuse people. No, this will be a move towards more automation of the control, surveillance, and censorship that the ruling class demands. You may agree with it since it's the censorship of "racism", but don't be surprised when what you believe or say is all the sudden "racism" too or that your lèse-majesté will be included in the list of forbidden speech and thought next. If allowed to manifest … and we are racing towards this end … things will soon look like right out of 1984 where you don't even have the chance to disseminate anything the regime dislikes. Instead, you will instead you will be whisked away or have your life ruined if you say anything the regime will intentionally arbitrarily deem "hate speech" or whatever other rationalization they come up with. It will be anyone's guess what it is that the regime may not like at any given time and therefore no one will dare say anything. It is what others have called anarcho-tyranny, but I simply see as rather fundamental abusiveness 101 that any abused spouse can describe and you can read about the the most basic psychology textbooks.

joejerryronnie 5y ago
You mention the censorship and info control of the “ruling class” and the “anarcho-tyrannical regime”, but this exact scenario is already happening today and being driven by roving bands of online Leftists. I agree with your premise that banning free speech we don’t like will inevitably lead to the restriction of free speech we feel is vitally important, i.e. you’ve got to let the nazis and anti-vaxers spout their bs if you want to be able to criticize your local politician, you can’t have it both ways.

WaitWaitWha 5y ago

The subheading appears to contradict your conjecture. > Facebook acted illegally in taking down racist posts and blocking the account of their author because the social network failed to inform the user or give a reason for shutting them down. (my emphasis)

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

But a real human is affected by trusting the AI. A real human might lose his/her only effective way to communicate with some people/communities who only use facebook. On the other hand, an AI cannot detect sarcasm, nonstandard quotes, and can be biased. I know some people (even here) very much support removing and banning people for stuff they disagree with, and call all of that disinformation, but things change, you won't always be on the "right side", and then it'll be too late. And even "sides" change... Covid is one such example, where not so long ago, you could be calling for people to wear masks to protect themselves, and with current facebook tools, your posts would be removed for misinformation and conspiracies/fearmongering about covid, because "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly" [0] Then a few weeks/months later "whoops", let's ban "the other side". [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-mas...

13years 5y ago
It is far beyond reasonable expectations that FB can be a neutral arbitar of all information. Not only are they not qualified, as you state even the "experts" change minds, disagree etc. Having so much power to decide or influence what people know should be a very disturbing and chilling concept of itself.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Yep. But some people still argue for FB (google, apple,...) to have that power (and more), because they believe they'll always be on the same side of "truth".

mc32 5y ago

Kind of a tangent, but doesn’t the Chinese censorship program use (or at least used to) use mostly actual people taking down “illegal” posts? So it seems they have proven it’s possible to do with people in the loop.

yorwba 5y ago
There's no single Chinese censorship program. Every company has their own process for deleting content, and they don't always make the same decisions. At least the biggest platforms definitely use a lot of automation. E.g. I follow Professor Hu Fanzhu of East China Normal University's National Discourse Ecology Research Center on WeChat. A week ago, he published an article "Nine questions about Zhengzhou" that appeared in my feed, but displayed the message that it couldn't be sent because it might be inappropriately using the names of government institutions or employees. This was probably automated. Then he republished it as "Nine questions about ZZ", which displays the message that it was taken down after being reported by users. He's now switched to publishing a series of articles (five so far, here's the first: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Rf2t5cRoHJGh8Yb-3fFXSA https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Rf2t5cRoHJGh8Yb-3fFXSA ) of which the second was taken down, again mentioning user reports as the reason. But I actually managed to read that one before it disappeared. To generalize a bit, any new event escapes censorship at first, because neither automated systems nor human reviewers have been instructed to censor it. Once the censors are aware, new keywords like "Zhengzhou" can be added to the filter lists. But those are easy to get around by using different words, so humans are still needed to clean up the rest. And it can take them a long time to do so, during which tens of thousands of people may have read something the government didn't want them to know about.