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Comparing customer service of Facebook to a mortgage servicer is tricky because of the value and the volume. Facebook has orders of magnitude (I'll get 10,000x

Comparing customer service of Facebook to a mortgage servicer is tricky because of the value and the volume. Facebook has orders of magnitude (I'll get 10,000x more) content to moderate than a mortgage servicer where they really only answer questions when something goes wrong (3x every 5 years) the stakes are a million times higher. The options for social media are really free (or cheap) to use and occasionally bad moderation or pay $5 per post or comment ($10 for risky ones) that see multiple human moderators to limit abuse and false positives. Or no social media. My point is the amount and quality of moderation people say they want is more expensive than they'd pay for these services, but there's still a lot of value to them, so we're left with imperfect moderation.

munk-a 5y ago
So instead of the company bearing the cost of proper moderation we as a society are perfectly happy to let them offload the cost as an externality on all the rest of us? Before social media existed the world got along just fine - if these companies are causing problems then they need to address those problems or they can go back to not existing... both seem like perfectly reasonable options to me.
- ben_w 5y ago
  I agree with requiring them to cover any new costs they’re creating for society as a whole, but it definitely isn’t the case that “Before social media existed the world got along just fine”. Racism, sexism, homophobia, sectarian terrorism, and that’s just what I remember from childhood. Go back further, Cold War nukes and McCarthyism and presidential assassinations, Trade Union strikes and The Winter of Discontent, the Winds of Change and the Cypriot war of independence[0]. We’ve always been like this; the question is if social media is making it worse, and how much worse. [0] the Cypriot war of independence isn’t ever discussed in the UK, to the extent that until a few years ago I assumed Cyprus just used to be part of Greece and not under British colonial rule

munk-a 5y ago

So instead of the company bearing the cost of proper moderation we as a society are perfectly happy to let them offload the cost as an externality on all the rest of us? Before social media existed the world got along just fine - if these companies are causing problems then they need to address those problems or they can go back to not existing... both seem like perfectly reasonable options to me.

ben_w 5y ago
I agree with requiring them to cover any new costs they’re creating for society as a whole, but it definitely isn’t the case that “Before social media existed the world got along just fine”. Racism, sexism, homophobia, sectarian terrorism, and that’s just what I remember from childhood. Go back further, Cold War nukes and McCarthyism and presidential assassinations, Trade Union strikes and The Winter of Discontent, the Winds of Change and the Cypriot war of independence[0]. We’ve always been like this; the question is if social media is making it worse, and how much worse. [0] the Cypriot war of independence isn’t ever discussed in the UK, to the extent that until a few years ago I assumed Cyprus just used to be part of Greece and not under British colonial rule