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I agree there is a tension — similar to how regulation to protect privacy also tends to reinforce monopolies. However, in this case, sometimes it seems like Fa

I agree there is a tension — similar to how regulation to protect privacy also tends to reinforce monopolies. However, in this case, sometimes it seems like Facebook wants to both be highly centralized and very powerful ("Just LOOK at how effective we are at convincing people to do things! Buy ads on Facebook!") and to also cede responsibility for some pretty abhorrent things that happen on its platform. If you centralize, you own the platform - the good & the bad. It feels unjust to reap massive profits and then hand-off all the social ills you cause. I think this is more of a philosophic POV rather than a legally enforceable one (at least in the US today), but probably gets at some of the frustration people have with Facebook.

jjkaczor 5y ago
...unjust to reap massive profits and then hand-off all the social ills you cause... That is my take on AI/auto content moderation and the enforcement - they can't have it both ways; centralized platform, with no responsibilities. So - hire people. Actual human beings - train them and hire large numbers from many demographic and geographic locations. But - this would cut into profits.
- sgregnt 5y ago
  If more people would automatically solve the problem, it would already be solved. Facebook hires like crazy, and it's integrity org is massive...
  - jjkaczor 5y ago
    Ah, ok - but - then, do employees actually have the mandate to change anything? I have seen a few articles that basically seem to indicate the only way that things change are because of whistleblowers or investigations. Doesn't sound very proactive.
    - sgregnt 5y ago
      It is very well known within the industry that facebook employees have a lot of power to change things: "Move fast and break things", "be bold" etc.. It is very open and democratic company. I'd guess that employees at facebook have much more power than say in google, let alone in apple.
  - BoiledCabbage 5y ago
    How massive? Like actual Amazon delivery/warehouse workforce sized massive? Or just a small org? I'm gonna assume the latter. And forget about 'massive', they clearly don't even want to hire enough to make it decently large. Tech companies are fine hiring people when they can't just push the costs (social and monetary) onto others. But Facebook thinks it can - so it is.
    - worker767424 5y ago
      I haven't actually gone through the math, but my gut tells me the amount of human moderation that would make people happy, basically having a human look at every potentially bad post, is so high that Facebook wouldn't be profitable. The only company that's solved moderation at scale is Reddit. It punted the problem to unpaid moderators, so Reddit only needs to moderate the existence of subreddits, not posts.
  - snthd 5y ago
    >integrity org is massive Because the userbase is so ludicrously big "Massive" doesn't really convey the level of staffing in relative terms. How many posts does the network have per moderator-workday?
    - sgregnt 5y ago
      This is the question to people who accuse facebook of negligence. It's basically guilty unless proven innocent. But why not switch the roles? What is the number for integrity, that you think would solve the problem and why? how so this compares to other companies and facebook. Luckily we have so many social networks we can do statistics? And then, vefore you know this, and the problem at hand, maybe you should suspend your harsh judgment?
    - snthd 5y ago
      To answer my own question, apparently this Dublin-based, outsourced moderator does around 100 tickets a day. The work is psychologically scarring: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57088382 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57088382 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/technology/facebook-accenture-content-moderation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/technology/facebook-accen... >...15,000 people whom Facebook has said it has hired to inspect its posts.
      - sgregnt 5y ago
        IMO, that does not it really answer anything. It's just one date point. How many similar contractors are there, say what about India? Another thing, the moderation is a combination of ml technique and human, the next question is how much load ML takes a way from human operator. How efficient are their tools? What is recall and precision of removing violent content? How does this compare with other social networks? How much moderation is done organically by users?
  - mtnGoat 5y ago
    i know first hand that facebook has tried repeatedly to solve problems with computers they KNOW can be solved by humans, but humans are more expensive. its about money, not the lack of ability.
    - sgregnt 5y ago
      Everything is about money. If you yourself is middle class in a western country. Than you can sell your house buy a smaller one and buy back a few women that are now sold to slavery, or donate money to orgs that fight this, give me good reason why you do not do this?
fouric 5y ago
Yes. This is why all the people that copy-pasta "you're wrong about section 230"[1] on HN are missing the point. Even if the law doesn't say "Once a company like that starts moderating content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher" - that's still a moral position that many people (including me) take. Like you said, "If you centralize, you own the platform - the good & the bad." and I would extend that to "You can either choose moderation or waiving liability, but not both, because that's morally wrong (or, selfish/inconsistent/harmful/unfair)." [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Well put, this is a great summary. I’m starting to think how we scorn at oil companies for spilling oil in the gulf, give them a small slap on the wrist for environmental damage, and yet these adtech behemoths continue to erode society, mutual trust, democracy and social well-being while reaping enormous amount of profits. No slap on the wrist, but a mild stare at best.
  - mrRandomGuy 5y ago
    Getting down voted because you spoke the truth it seems?
    - fouric 5y ago
      Complaining about downvotes is explicitly discouraged on HN: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."[1] I didn't downvote GP - indeed, I can't, as it's a reply to my comment. My guess for why it was downvoted is because it's not directly connected to my point. I was trying to say "with great power comes great responsibility", but it's not clear that that principle is necessarily being violated with the examples given by GP. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Aunche 5y ago
By that logic, any nation's government is also highly centralized and even more powerful. Are politicians complicit with human trafficking because it exists within their nation's borders?
- milesskorpen 5y ago
  Most politicians have less power over their country than Zuckerberg has over Facebook. Degree of complicity adjusts a bit with knowledge & actual power to address. But yes. People who have the power to fix something unjust and don't are complicit in that thing.
- aendruk 5y ago
  The logic says yes, they are complicit to the extent that the government is powerful enough to intervene (granting this level of power is typically at odds with other values we hold) and to the extent that specifically politicians bear responsibility for the behavior of the government (as opposed to the people or organizations that empowered them).
Dracophoenix 5y ago
The problem with this "moral" expectation you want to put Facebook or any company in a social space under is that it's self-contradictory and hypocritical. I don't know any reasonable person who would want the phone company, a very centralized system, to play the role of morality police over who can use the telephone and who can't. This "Centralization = ownership of everyone's actions" view just imposes the burden of a mass of cultural expectations on companies that never agreed to any of it.
- greenonions 5y ago
  I don't blame ISPs for the content of the internet. I do blame Facebook for what happens on their platform though, because unlike a telephone carrier or ISP, Facebook's entire purpose is to get me to interact with content. If you got food that made you sick, do you blame the delivery service or the restaurant? If the business is ads, data, and eyeballs, you should be responsible for what is on it.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    >I don't blame ISPs for the content of the internet. I do blame Facebook for what happens on their platform though, because unlike a telephone carrier or ISP, Facebook's entire purpose is to get me to interact with content. Then why blame Facebook? Almost all the content on Facebook is user-generated. And don't think ISPs don't bank on getting you interact with content as though they're perfectly neutral platforms. >If you got food that made you sick, do you blame the delivery service or the restaurant? If it's a restaurant where the average joe can be a chef, then I blame particular person who cooked my meal. Not the restaurant (who only provided the facilities and menu) or the delivery service. >If the business is ads, data, and eyeballs, you should be responsible for what is on it. Only to the extent it's own ads are false. Beyond that, their is no duty for to police content in accordance with the desires of others. Information does not imply obligation.

jjkaczor 5y ago

...unjust to reap massive profits and then hand-off all the social ills you cause... That is my take on AI/auto content moderation and the enforcement - they can't have it both ways; centralized platform, with no responsibilities. So - hire people. Actual human beings - train them and hire large numbers from many demographic and geographic locations. But - this would cut into profits.

sgregnt 5y ago
If more people would automatically solve the problem, it would already be solved. Facebook hires like crazy, and it's integrity org is massive...
- jjkaczor 5y ago
  Ah, ok - but - then, do employees actually have the mandate to change anything? I have seen a few articles that basically seem to indicate the only way that things change are because of whistleblowers or investigations. Doesn't sound very proactive.
  - sgregnt 5y ago
    It is very well known within the industry that facebook employees have a lot of power to change things: "Move fast and break things", "be bold" etc.. It is very open and democratic company. I'd guess that employees at facebook have much more power than say in google, let alone in apple.
- BoiledCabbage 5y ago
  How massive? Like actual Amazon delivery/warehouse workforce sized massive? Or just a small org? I'm gonna assume the latter. And forget about 'massive', they clearly don't even want to hire enough to make it decently large. Tech companies are fine hiring people when they can't just push the costs (social and monetary) onto others. But Facebook thinks it can - so it is.
  - worker767424 5y ago
    I haven't actually gone through the math, but my gut tells me the amount of human moderation that would make people happy, basically having a human look at every potentially bad post, is so high that Facebook wouldn't be profitable. The only company that's solved moderation at scale is Reddit. It punted the problem to unpaid moderators, so Reddit only needs to moderate the existence of subreddits, not posts.
- snthd 5y ago
  >integrity org is massive Because the userbase is so ludicrously big "Massive" doesn't really convey the level of staffing in relative terms. How many posts does the network have per moderator-workday?
  - sgregnt 5y ago
    This is the question to people who accuse facebook of negligence. It's basically guilty unless proven innocent. But why not switch the roles? What is the number for integrity, that you think would solve the problem and why? how so this compares to other companies and facebook. Luckily we have so many social networks we can do statistics? And then, vefore you know this, and the problem at hand, maybe you should suspend your harsh judgment?
  - snthd 5y ago
    To answer my own question, apparently this Dublin-based, outsourced moderator does around 100 tickets a day. The work is psychologically scarring: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57088382 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57088382 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/technology/facebook-accenture-content-moderation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/technology/facebook-accen... >...15,000 people whom Facebook has said it has hired to inspect its posts.
    - sgregnt 5y ago
      IMO, that does not it really answer anything. It's just one date point. How many similar contractors are there, say what about India? Another thing, the moderation is a combination of ml technique and human, the next question is how much load ML takes a way from human operator. How efficient are their tools? What is recall and precision of removing violent content? How does this compare with other social networks? How much moderation is done organically by users?
- mtnGoat 5y ago
  i know first hand that facebook has tried repeatedly to solve problems with computers they KNOW can be solved by humans, but humans are more expensive. its about money, not the lack of ability.
  - sgregnt 5y ago
    Everything is about money. If you yourself is middle class in a western country. Than you can sell your house buy a smaller one and buy back a few women that are now sold to slavery, or donate money to orgs that fight this, give me good reason why you do not do this?

fouric 5y ago

Yes. This is why all the people that copy-pasta "you're wrong about section 230"[1] on HN are missing the point. Even if the law doesn't say "Once a company like that starts moderating content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher" - that's still a moral position that many people (including me) take. Like you said, "If you centralize, you own the platform - the good & the bad." and I would extend that to "You can either choose moderation or waiving liability, but not both, because that's morally wrong (or, selfish/inconsistent/harmful/unfair)." [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

systemvoltage 5y ago
Well put, this is a great summary. I’m starting to think how we scorn at oil companies for spilling oil in the gulf, give them a small slap on the wrist for environmental damage, and yet these adtech behemoths continue to erode society, mutual trust, democracy and social well-being while reaping enormous amount of profits. No slap on the wrist, but a mild stare at best.
- mrRandomGuy 5y ago
  Getting down voted because you spoke the truth it seems?
  - fouric 5y ago
    Complaining about downvotes is explicitly discouraged on HN: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."[1] I didn't downvote GP - indeed, I can't, as it's a reply to my comment. My guess for why it was downvoted is because it's not directly connected to my point. I was trying to say "with great power comes great responsibility", but it's not clear that that principle is necessarily being violated with the examples given by GP. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Aunche 5y ago

By that logic, any nation's government is also highly centralized and even more powerful. Are politicians complicit with human trafficking because it exists within their nation's borders?

milesskorpen 5y ago
Most politicians have less power over their country than Zuckerberg has over Facebook. Degree of complicity adjusts a bit with knowledge & actual power to address. But yes. People who have the power to fix something unjust and don't are complicit in that thing.
aendruk 5y ago
The logic says yes, they are complicit to the extent that the government is powerful enough to intervene (granting this level of power is typically at odds with other values we hold) and to the extent that specifically politicians bear responsibility for the behavior of the government (as opposed to the people or organizations that empowered them).

Dracophoenix 5y ago

The problem with this "moral" expectation you want to put Facebook or any company in a social space under is that it's self-contradictory and hypocritical. I don't know any reasonable person who would want the phone company, a very centralized system, to play the role of morality police over who can use the telephone and who can't. This "Centralization = ownership of everyone's actions" view just imposes the burden of a mass of cultural expectations on companies that never agreed to any of it.

greenonions 5y ago
I don't blame ISPs for the content of the internet. I do blame Facebook for what happens on their platform though, because unlike a telephone carrier or ISP, Facebook's entire purpose is to get me to interact with content. If you got food that made you sick, do you blame the delivery service or the restaurant? If the business is ads, data, and eyeballs, you should be responsible for what is on it.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  >I don't blame ISPs for the content of the internet. I do blame Facebook for what happens on their platform though, because unlike a telephone carrier or ISP, Facebook's entire purpose is to get me to interact with content. Then why blame Facebook? Almost all the content on Facebook is user-generated. And don't think ISPs don't bank on getting you interact with content as though they're perfectly neutral platforms. >If you got food that made you sick, do you blame the delivery service or the restaurant? If it's a restaurant where the average joe can be a chef, then I blame particular person who cooked my meal. Not the restaurant (who only provided the facilities and menu) or the delivery service. >If the business is ads, data, and eyeballs, you should be responsible for what is on it. Only to the extent it's own ads are false. Beyond that, their is no duty for to police content in accordance with the desires of others. Information does not imply obligation.