5 ms·

It's a misleading comparison. From what I read, trafficking / sex slavery was (is) happening via some places on FB, the company knew about it, did nothing. For

It's a misleading comparison. From what I read, trafficking / sex slavery was (is) happening via some places on FB, the company knew about it, did nothing. For example. Edit: the article from this HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28741532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28741532 , search for "traffickers" and "drug cartels". /Edit. Understaffed moderation teams, although FB had lots of money

vladd 5y ago
Let's try to phrase it in an actionable way for the law-makers to act upon it. Are you suggesting that any profitable company hosting user-submitted content should invest all the profits in moderation teams to the point where they are either a) becoming profit-neutral or b) all the relevant content has been reviewed by a human moderator? And how do you define relevant content -- having had 50 views? 10 views? 1 view? Who should decide where to set these limits? Do we believe politicians are going to do a better job at it rather than the existing situation? Or should we ban any non-human reviewed post just to move the certainty of illegal posts removals from 99.9% to 99.99%? (humans do make mistakes too) (Facebook is really big so having just 99.99% of posts in compliance still means an awful amount of them escaping the system undetected)
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > Are you suggesting that any profitable company hosting user-submitted content should invest all the profits in moderation teams to the point where they are either a) becoming profit-neutral or b) all the relevant content has been reviewed by a human moderator? Yes, obviously. Why should a company get to profit from sex traffic or any other such content on their platform, just because it would cost money to take it down?
dfadsadsf 5y ago
I know that somebody is raping someone in NYC right now and somebody will be killed in Chicago by the end of the day today. Should we ban the cities or at least force them to spend all their budget on security? Or set up curfew for citizens? May be public hanging a la Taliban - those definitely reduce crime. Humans are using FB and where you have humans they commit crimes. Trying to eradicate all crime when you have humans in the loop is generally not great idea. Besides fighting trafficking/sex slavery with very few exceptions generally means harassing women with zero benefit to society or reduction in actual sex crimes.
- freetinker 5y ago
  But because we know humans rape and kill, we take measures to create circumstances that reduce the probability of such things happening. Such as well-lit streets or gun control laws.
haroldp 5y ago
Sex slavery is being facilitated by telephone conversations. What is the phone company's obligation to do about that?
- finfinfin 5y ago
  Would you agree that it would be wrong for telephone companies to amplify sex slavery conversations? Like they would call you directly and just let you participate in the conversation because that would generate more engagement?
  - haroldp 5y ago
    That is a very good counter point. I haven't read this facebook story yet, but I am willing to assume for argument that describes what happened. I guess it would depend for me on whether people saw sex-slavery content and decided to amplify it, vs an algorithm that finds and promotes "engaging" things without being very smart about what they are.
  - vladd 5y ago
    When phone companies came into existence, that's exactly what they did -- they amplified such conversations by making it easier for people to have phone calls and talk at a distance of each other. They also got amplified whenever long distance calls got cheaper (as the overall volume of conversations increased).
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    How are you defining "amplification"? Phones already operate by complex signal amplification over long distances. Why do you think burner phones are still prevalent for all manner of illicit activity? I don't think the phone company should be shut down because others can use it in a way that's considered devious. I don't think the phone company should play "morality police" either. I simply expect the phone company to simply provide the service I paid for. This type of thinking strikes as the kind that would damn Gutenberg for inventing the movable-type printing press because print has been used to disseminate propaganda and debauchery to billions of people several centuries later.

vladd 5y ago

Let's try to phrase it in an actionable way for the law-makers to act upon it. Are you suggesting that any profitable company hosting user-submitted content should invest all the profits in moderation teams to the point where they are either a) becoming profit-neutral or b) all the relevant content has been reviewed by a human moderator? And how do you define relevant content -- having had 50 views? 10 views? 1 view? Who should decide where to set these limits? Do we believe politicians are going to do a better job at it rather than the existing situation? Or should we ban any non-human reviewed post just to move the certainty of illegal posts removals from 99.9% to 99.99%? (humans do make mistakes too) (Facebook is really big so having just 99.99% of posts in compliance still means an awful amount of them escaping the system undetected)

tsimionescu 5y ago
> Are you suggesting that any profitable company hosting user-submitted content should invest all the profits in moderation teams to the point where they are either a) becoming profit-neutral or b) all the relevant content has been reviewed by a human moderator? Yes, obviously. Why should a company get to profit from sex traffic or any other such content on their platform, just because it would cost money to take it down?

dfadsadsf 5y ago

I know that somebody is raping someone in NYC right now and somebody will be killed in Chicago by the end of the day today. Should we ban the cities or at least force them to spend all their budget on security? Or set up curfew for citizens? May be public hanging a la Taliban - those definitely reduce crime. Humans are using FB and where you have humans they commit crimes. Trying to eradicate all crime when you have humans in the loop is generally not great idea. Besides fighting trafficking/sex slavery with very few exceptions generally means harassing women with zero benefit to society or reduction in actual sex crimes.

freetinker 5y ago
But because we know humans rape and kill, we take measures to create circumstances that reduce the probability of such things happening. Such as well-lit streets or gun control laws.

haroldp 5y ago

Sex slavery is being facilitated by telephone conversations. What is the phone company's obligation to do about that?

finfinfin 5y ago
Would you agree that it would be wrong for telephone companies to amplify sex slavery conversations? Like they would call you directly and just let you participate in the conversation because that would generate more engagement?
- haroldp 5y ago
  That is a very good counter point. I haven't read this facebook story yet, but I am willing to assume for argument that describes what happened. I guess it would depend for me on whether people saw sex-slavery content and decided to amplify it, vs an algorithm that finds and promotes "engaging" things without being very smart about what they are.
- vladd 5y ago
  When phone companies came into existence, that's exactly what they did -- they amplified such conversations by making it easier for people to have phone calls and talk at a distance of each other. They also got amplified whenever long distance calls got cheaper (as the overall volume of conversations increased).
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  How are you defining "amplification"? Phones already operate by complex signal amplification over long distances. Why do you think burner phones are still prevalent for all manner of illicit activity? I don't think the phone company should be shut down because others can use it in a way that's considered devious. I don't think the phone company should play "morality police" either. I simply expect the phone company to simply provide the service I paid for. This type of thinking strikes as the kind that would damn Gutenberg for inventing the movable-type printing press because print has been used to disseminate propaganda and debauchery to billions of people several centuries later.