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Apple threatened Facebook ban over slavery posts on Instagram
- gedy 5y agoAmericans love to beat each other up over the legacy of slavery, sexism, and related - but it's so strange to me how unpassionate? many of the same people are about what's happening now elsewhere in the world. I wish we could do more to help people now no matter where.
- jdavis703 5y agoUS slavery was different than most historical and present day forms of forced labor. Slavery was called the “peculiar institution” because it was unique in the condition of slavery being inherited. As for feminism, the western world spent trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives trying to bring gender equality to Afghanistan. Truly the western world would be better off using soft power to create a more equal world instead of bombing people in to a culture of tolerance.
- pcf 5y agoHow do you know that only US slavery was "different" in the "condition of slavery being inherited"? Have you investigated all other forms of slavery all over the world? Especially since there are more people in slavery now than ever before?
- long_time_gone 5y ago==As for feminism, the western world spent trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives trying to bring gender equality to Afghanistan.== Are you claiming that the purpose of the Afghanistan war was to promote feminism? I don't remember that sales pitch. It's certainly one way to make a useless war sound noble.
- swebs 5y agoThat was not the purpose of the Afghanistan war, but it did happen incidentally.
- erellsworth 5y ago> As for feminism, the western world spent trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives trying to bring gender equality to Afghanistan. Was that why we were there? Was it really?
- cafard 5y agoIt was called the "peculiar institution" because (by then) it was peculiar to one portion of the country.
- z3ncyberpunk 5y agoWhat the hell are you talking about? There's nothing unique about that to the US. I would argue slavery in the US was far less brutal than that of the ancient Arab world and Rome
- SamBam 5y ago> I would argue slavery in the US was far less brutal than that of the ancient Arab world and Rome And your evidence to support that is..? There were essentially no limits to the brutality that could be inflected on a slave in the US, so any brutality that you find in the ancient world is easily matched by a brutality inflected in the US.
- rhcom2 5y agoI don't know about the ancient Arab world but Roman slavery wasn't race based, wasn't generational, slaves could buy their freedom, and eventually slaves gained some forms of legal protection. Oh and it was almost 2000 years ago.
- sa501428 5y agoSame in the Arab world/Middle East.
- sa501428 5y agoSlaves in the Arab/Ottoman world could purchase their freedom, were not enslaved by race (rather as POWs), their children were free, had some legal protection, and had the potential for upward mobility (in rare cases slaves that became viziers, ministers, or kings). Also Arab society post-Islam highly encouraged freeing slaves (considered a major virtue/source of reward/form of penance). May be more accurate to say slavery in the US was less brutal than slavery in the French Caribbean or Spanish Argentina.
- sitkack 5y agoAnd it isn't like those women were freed from captivity once the "apps were pulled" or the instagram accounts closed. If the same crime was committed against money the response would be a lot swifter.
- user-the-name 5y agoWhat are you trying to argue here? That Apple should just be fine with it?
- sitkack 5y agoAbsolutely not, rather than just _close_ their access, FB and Insta are clearly already a honeypot. The governments and tech should use it to roll up every trafficking operation until the slave traders find another place, then they should get them there.
- Ekaros 5y agoIt's almost as if signalling in itself is more valuable than actual action or results. And ofc. no one is ready to sacrifice anything, like stopping buying cheap or even expensive goods...
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> signalling in itself is more valuable than actual action or results Apple privately threatening to ban Facebook is virtue signalling?
- Ekaros 5y agoI would take company more seriously if they didn't keep manufacturing in plants with questionable practises...
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- fallingknife 5y agolove to beat themselves up. It's only upper middle class white people you hear it from, and it's pathetic.
- baybal2 5y agoWhat about Apple doing the right thing, and stop enabling modern day slavers by quitting the Saudi Arabia instead?
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- dwighttk 5y agoI would have preferred they pull the plug until Facebook complied but that isn’t really how business is done (and that is easy for me to say because I don’t use the Facebook app.)
- pmontra 5y agoI think that one year off Facebook is going to improve anyone's life. There are infinite other ways to communicate with the people we care no matter how far away they are.
- donatj 5y agoApple should see some of the horrendous things I’ve found in their own app, Safari. /s In all seriousness I think Apple holding apps accountable for all content anyone on earth posts is just ludicrous.
- user-the-name 5y agoApple is holding you responsible to effectively moderate content you distribute through your service. This is completely reasonable.
- andrewinardeer 5y agoWho holds Apple responsible to effectively moderate the gigabytes of CSAM filmed with their products on a daily basis?
- kube-system 5y agoFacebook has a moral, contractual, and sometimes a legal obligation to moderate Instagram.
- fallingknife 5y agoBut not Safari?
- kube-system 5y agoCorrect, because Safari doesn’t host content.
- spiderice 5y agoI can't believe how many people are trying to argue this point. You really can't see the difference between Facebook and a web browser? Are you REALLY suggesting that web browsers should censor the entire web, and if they don't then no website should be required to censor anything? Or are you just trolling/playing devil's advocate. Because it certainly feels like the latter.
- 1cvmask 5y agoSo would they remove any Obama content as he created slave markets in Libya (and committed genocide in Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Syria amongst so many others): https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/11/27/clinton-ponders-2020-run-lets-not-forget-her-real-libya-scandal-glenn-reynolds-column/895853001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/11/27/clinton-po... https://www.newsweek.com/obama-responsible-libyan-slave-trade-730875 https://www.newsweek.com/obama-responsible-libyan-slave-trad... https://www.newsweek.com/slave-auctions-libya-smugglers-are-selling-migrants-400-dollars-710623 https://www.newsweek.com/slave-auctions-libya-smugglers-are-...
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- Areibman 5y agoHuman trafficking is rife on Facebook. It doesn't take very long to find some really disgusting stuff. There are some NGOs like IJM who have teams of analysts that scout for trafficking victims on Facebook all day. It's largely a manual process that requires infiltrating public groups and connecting with suspicious profiles. Oftentimes, it's just strange dogwhistles to look out for like profiles of young women that say "Frycook at the Krusty Krab." I helped build an app for an anti-human trafficking hackathon (we dubbed it "The Creeper Crawler") that scraped abusive profiles. I think ML could be a powerful tool for flagging these profiles, but this is a larger moderation problem I see no easy solution to.
- hef19898 5y agoEverytime I think FB cannot be any worse, something like this comes up...
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> Human trafficking is rife on Facebook Even looking at HN’s reaction, which has a strong component rationalising for Facebook, it’s unsurprising that Facebook is itself divided on its responsibility to moderate. Even when we get to literal slavery. A risk from this is contagion. The fish rots from the head down. But it’s been rotting for some time. Those people will, after Facebook, move on to other roles of influence.
- blunte 5y agoWhat amazes me is that we know HN is full of FB employees/devs. How can someone work for a company that has such a history of doing or allowing dirty deeds, often suppressing the evidence. Starting from the very top of Facebook, it is a completely amoral company. Google, on the other hand, is just moreso just naive and seems to believe it can solve problems with AI, without human judgment or oversight.
- nivenkos 5y agoYou could say the same for most companies though - Microsoft's dodgy QDOS and Mosaic deals, Amazon's warehouses and temp hiring practices.
- literallyaduck 5y agoMaybe we should stop doing business with countries that allow slavery for any reason including punishment for a crime.
- erellsworth 5y agoIf we did that, we'd have to stop doing business with ourselves.
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- tsimionescu 5y agoI think it's likely GP was explicitly targetting the USA with that comment.
- z3ncyberpunk 5y agoWhere no nationally sanctioned slavery exists... Got it.
- user-the-name 5y ago...except for the case of prisoners, who are explicitly excluded.
- exhilaration 5y agoWhy the downvotes? Have you folks not read the 13th Amendment? Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
- dvtrn 5y agoOnce again the prison exemption is completely forgotten about in a discussion of slavery.
- mc32 5y agoApple are hypocrites. It's obvious that traffickers use any means to ply their trade, be it in people, drugs and other illegal activities. They will use FB, IG and apple solutions. But Apple talks the talk about exploitation but keeps seeking the China market and continues to leverage Chinese manufacturing knowing well that China engages in activities that were they done in any US state or Western country, Apple would have a fit and would threaten to pull offices, staff and cease doing business as well as contributing to local opposition voices because they want to be part of the change--but they do none of that in China and, in effect, add the the problem. Anyway, are Apple going to now refuse to sell phones to traffickers or run of the mill felons too lest they enable these baddies?
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- okamiueru 5y agoIf by "activities" you mean slavery/forced labour. Then you should make a distinction between US and other western countries. The US constitution allows for forced labour as a punishment in prison, and is also readily used, with at least 18% of inmates "employed" by UNICOR. If you wish to morally object to forced labour in other countries, it falls flat on my ears if you imply that it is "as opposed to how US conducts itself". That said, China is doing bad stuff, checks out. Apple is complicit in benefiting from it, sure. So this isn't an objection to that, just to the "that wouldn't fly in the US"-hypocrisy.
- mc32 5y agoAgreed. But there is a very important difference. In China you don't have to be convicted of a crime to be sent to labor camps/re-education camps. I think that's an important difference.
- exporectomy 5y agoYou know that people in the US can spend a year in jail waiting for their trial, right? People keep making up arbitrary reasons why US=good and other country=bad just to justify their existing belief. And what about forced education for children in the US? Nobody bats an eye at that, except the victims themselves.
- post_break 5y agoI don't get it. You should see what gets posted on Twitter, Craigslist, Nextdoor, Instagram, Facebook. Should Apple pull all those too? Will they pull browsers that allow you to visit these websites next?
- qwertyuiop_ 5y agoIf it’s not Facebook it will be another home grown crud app. Slavery in Middle East is an open secret. All middle class families have a servant or worse a child trafficked from poor countries like Bangladesh, India as bonded labor.
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- schleck8 5y agoInstagram is also actively used to sell hard drugs It's fair to say that their moderation sucks
- ipaddr 5y agoSo is twitter,facebook, reddit and you can find it on here if you ask around. Where people exist their problems follow them.
- sneak 5y agoFacebook has already replaced the community center and the telephone company. Both of their replacements are worse for society, from a privacy standpoint as well as a quality of service standpoint. Arbitrary censorship, no recourse for errors, et c. Now people want them to take over for police, too. There is already an organization whose job it is to police illegal activity.
- blunte 5y agoThis pressure should be applied to the very top - eliminating trade with countries where these behaviors are common. And US companies should choose to not, and perhaps should be banned from, operating in countries where their services are used for human trafficing. FB and Google shareholders should demand this from their companies. Of course it will mean some reduced revenue, but I think most Americans regardless of political affiliation would agree that human trafficing is just unacceptable. Additionally, Facebook and Google are very smart. They can connect dots (accounts). They know who is selling humans, and they could perma-ban these people. Essentially it should be possible to prevent these people from ever using any account on any of the major tech services.
- brightball 5y agoAn alternative perspective…should FB and Google continue to offer their services so that they can inform and assist international authorities with stopping it? It just seems like platform bans do very little other than move the activity into more shadowy places.
- blunte 5y agoI'm not convinced the authorities in those countries really object to the practices. Normally I would agree about bans pushing the activity into shadowy places, but at least in this case it would probably limit the exposure to just the countries with the bad practices. Basically it would hopefully limit more international trade of people. From the opposite perspective, since Facebook unfortunately seems to be a common place for businesses to promote themselves, cutting off a country (with clear explanation why) would perhaps make some of its businesses put pressure on the government to enact some changes. Basically it would limit economic activities, and most individuals/businesses/governments don't want that.
- acdha 5y agoThere's a balance here but it really is important to consider how much less effective those shadowy places would be without free use of tools built by billions of dollars of developer and SRE time. Facebook and Google give them platforms they could never afford on their own and there's a big question of access when it comes to things like recruiting being more effective when it can happen on a legitimate mainstream platform. Now, there is some question about the value of cooperation with international authorities but that is undercut by the long history of not working with those organizations and concealing problems rather than reporting them. I'm not sure that can happen without something like a regulatory requirement with personal liability for senior management in the event of non-compliance — they need to fear this at least as much as, say, a financial firm fears lying to the SEC.
- bashinator 5y ago> Following an investigation prompted by an inquiry from the BBC, we conducted a proactive review of our platform. That's pretty much the opposite of "proactive".
- diab0lic 5y ago> The paper also quoted a 2019 internal report from Facebook, suggesting that the social media giant knew about, and had been investigating, the online slave trade before the BBC got in contact. The article seems to conflict itself on this subject.
- dylan604 5y agoproactive in terms of legislation/gov't investigation. if some news platform asks about it and even publishes something about it, it means nothing to FB. it's not like their users are going to stop. if the gov't looks in, it could mean that a new toothless wrist slap fine could be coming.
- jussij 5y agoWhen big companies, institutes and political parties use the word 'proactive' it generally means find a way to limit the damage and then find a way to hide the problem.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoHa ha, can't spell "proactive" without "PR".
- icestormsmoke 5y agoThe issue is that there won't be an international political, business and academic boycott of the Arab Gulf countries before we transition away from oil. Moving away from oil will also severely affect the income in these countries, effectively saving millions of young women from slavery. Side note, this article shows how easy and perversely widespread this barbarity is, however these women also endure physical beatings, emotional abuse and sexual exploitation (rape).
- balozi 5y agoThis is a serious issue but it still reminds me of Ricky Gervais' masterpiece of a joke about Apple's TV drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing.
- stickfigure 5y agoI am puzzled. The zeitgeist of HN is white hot outrage that this content can be found on Facebook/Google/etc, yet also to champion decentralized sharing systems which would make this sort of content uncensorable. Can someone explain this to me? I ask this genuinely.
- dylan604 5y agoI would also be interested in honest answers here, but would not expect anyone to be willing to have this conversation. Facebook == bad/evil, so easy reaction. Censorship == bad/evil, so easy reaction. Fixing some of FB's bad requires censorship. uh-oh. This one might require some thought vs reaction.
- dimitrios1 5y agoWe are looking the externalities. Until we start examining the root cause of what is causing people to behave this way on these platforms, and start addressing those issues, which is arguably much harder, everything is going to be lipstick on a pig IMO.
- travisgriggs 5y agoAgreed 100%. But oh the irony. You took time (and I’m taking more time) to put comments about the issue on an obscure forum of geeky people. As you’re pointing out, the roots of these problems (human trafficking) is not an internet problem. So internet censorship is not a real solution. And then we use the very internet (and our time) to diagnose this very issue. Maybe we should all spend more time in the real world doing real things that make the world a better place so these evils happen less collectively. I’m going to do just that. I’ve just got a few more threads I need to comment on first…
- jensensbutton 5y ago> Until we start examining the root cause of what is causing people to behave this way on these platforms... People were just outraged at facebook last week for researching just that (how insta affects teens). I don't have much optimism in our ability to go beyond the surface.
- josh_today 5y agoIs almost as if we need a group of elected officials to create laws for this new digital world so that for profit, multi national, corporations do not and should not have to take matters into their own hands
- PontifexMinimus 5y agoApple manufacture a lot of their phones etc in China. I wonder what proportion of Apple products have slave labour in them?
- naomeux 5y agoIt's a good thing that they discovered the posts. It's a messed up world up here, and we still don't know how many of those slaves will be sold in other platforms that haven't been caught yet.
- vmception 5y agoFacebook's various unofficial marketplaces like on Instagram and Whatsapp would be much safer if Facebook itself was involved and acting as escrow. Safer for the buyers and sellers I mean, not the slaves. Too many scammers out there, advertising slaves - in this context, but really any market - but are in fact without said goods.
- vjancik 5y agoIt's like Facebook stopped developing it's content moderation technology 6 years ago despite their website growing in complexity (and range of use) to this day. Can't they outsource the moderation to an Amazon Turk-like system, if they aren't willing to employ sufficient moderators themselves? A lot of groups and pages (like newspapers) that have to "self-moderate" due to hate / propaganda spam posts and comments would be willing to pay a monthly fee for a quota in a Turk-like system for moderation.
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