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Facebook approved paid ads inciting violence against the Rohingya

326 points by tareqak 5y ago

manuelabeledo 5y ago
I wonder if this is greed or negligence. Last year it was reported that Facebook failed to remove anti Muslim content in India, another country rife with ethnic tensions. India also happens to have Facebook's largest user base.
- Taters91 5y ago
  It's greed. At this point, they have been in more than one country that has used their product to advance genocide. Gross negligence, apathy, greed.
- AnonHP 5y ago
  Corruption is what it is. i recall there being news reports in the past about how Facebook didn’t do anything even when content was reported by users. Facebook likes the money coming from ads but is unwilling to care enough. It’s a sick company run by perverse incentives.
- hef19898 5y ago
  It could be both, couldn't it?
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  I recall reading somewhere that Facebook's non-english moderation staff is much smaller in number than their English counterparts so this does not surprise me. Hopefully bad press like this gets them to hire a number of moderators that's appropriate for the user base in each language. Ah, here: https://multilingual.com/facebook-linguistic-gaps-allow-hate-speech-to-spread-dont-match-demographic-realities/ https://multilingual.com/facebook-linguistic-gaps-allow-hate...
- cies 5y ago
  > greed or negligence greed breeds negligence
- annadane 5y ago
  Both. It's Facebook. It's Zuckerberg in charge.
- ankit219 5y ago
  I doubt it's any of the two. At the scale they operate, they will have multi level checks - automated and manual. Some automated checks would approve the ad, and then if the ad is getting a huge reach and engagement, they may have a manual user to look at it again, and probably disapprove it. Same with how some images can be posted, and then removed later if they get good engagement > The group pulled the ads before they were posted or paid for This is just a way to create buzz about an upcoming study/report at Facebook's expense. I don't like Facebook, but if they/AP were really serious, we could see the report and look at the way they executed the whole experiment. The other data point is that how many did they try, cos as far as I know, they use AI to detect text on images. Probably not that effective in Thailand's local language. One other aspect here, while Facebook deserves no sympathy, let's not forget misses happen even with editorial oversights. Let's not forget how NYT exclusive about nuclear weapons in Iraq was the final trigger for the war, and that report was false.
hunglee2 5y ago
it is hard task. There are 7,100 official languages on planet earth, presumably all of them include language which can used to incite violence. If we hold Meta to a 'zero hate' standard, the only solution would be have native language speakers in every language, on call and ready to deploy in order vet every single advert before publication. Maybe Meta should indeed do this, but we can at least acknowledge that there are significant practical constraints involve to maintain a zero hate standard
- jfarina 5y ago
  That doesn't seem unreasonable in any way shape or form. If they're capable of launching the platform in every language, they're capable of moderating it in every language.
  - ambrozk 5y ago
    > If they're capable of launching the platform in every language, they're capable of moderating it in every language. Uhhhhh this does not follow at all. "If you're capable of launching feature set A, you're capable of launching expanded feature set B" is asinine.
    - rickspencer3 5y ago
      > If they're capable of launching the platform in every language, they're capable of moderating it in every language. Said differently, if they aren't capable of moderating in every language, they they aren't capable of launching in every language. At least not ethically.
    - eropple 5y ago
      Half-trillion-dollar companies do not need defenders for how hard it is to make safe the "public" square they have decided to take over for themselves. When you are Facebook, it must be table stakes.
    - timdiggerm 5y ago
      It's not asinine, it just depends on if you value ethics or growth.
Karawebnetwork 5y ago
> A new report has found that Facebook failed to detect blatant hate speech and calls to violence Is this surprising to anyone who has spent time on the platform? Even outside of advertising, the platform is filled with violence and hate. Many pockets are equivalent to the content that can be found on 4chan, with thinly veiled racism and LTGBTQ+phobia hidden behind emojis and jargon that is clear to humans but opaque to algorithms. Reports against groups such "[Black circle] should unalive" or "[same sex couple emoji] are [slur]" where the content is 100% hate speech are routinely flagged as "It doesn't go against one of our specifit community standards". Even when they contain nothing but photos of other Facebook users and links to people's profiles with invitations to brigade and spam hate. To my eyes, that's one of the main factors of the migration away from Facebook yet it is so rarely covered.
- klyrs 5y ago
  > Is this surprising to anyone who has spent time on the platform? No. "Your house is still on fire" may not be news, but it's still relevant to keep talking about until the problem is solved.
  - Karawebnetwork 5y ago
    Exactly, which is why I end with questioning as to why the rampant hate is not covered outside of the extreme exemples. The extreme exemples should absolutely be covered but as long as the daily occurence are not put under the spotlight the platform will remain the same. Yes, those 8 paid ads should absolutely get taken down and Facebook should be held responsible for it. But the remaining hate groups will still breed genocide, especially when the users of those groups are well aware that their actions are protected by the platform and will not be taken down. Worst of it, they are often put back online after the group managers ask for a second scan of the reports.
martpie 5y ago
Can we change the HN title to the actual title of the article? "‘Kill more’: Facebook fails to detect hate against Rohingya".
- w-j-w 5y ago
- DocTomoe 5y ago
speeder 5y ago
[flagged]
sircastor 5y ago
Automation is imperfect, and I wonder if the reality is that, if you can’t successfully automate the approval of ads or copyrighted material, or account suspension, then maybe you’re too big or trying to do too much. Maybe the answer is that these things can’t ever be automated and if you can’t staff the process then you (and therefore nobody) should be working at this scale.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  I agree. At this scale these things must be automated. I don't buy that since they are automated these companies should get a pass. I tend to think that a lot of these problems can be attributed to too much tech consolidation.
- zelphirkalt 5y ago
  I am inclined to agree with you on automation being imperfect and that some things might not be automatable for now, at our current level of tech. However, I would add, that also non-automated processes have imperfection. There can be internal incentives to allow such ads. The FB culture is rich of processes which are profit-oriented rather than ethics-oriented. Who is to say, that such ads would not have been approved by some spineless group working at FB? I would not deem it impossible. Maybe after the 1000th ad you approve, you might become sort of blunt. Add to that a small signal from above, that this add would bring a lot of profit and you might wave it through as "Just another ad, how bad can it truly be?". I am unconvinced, that many people working at FB have high ethical standards and even less convinced, that FB puts people with high ethical standards in the position to approve ads. So in total, I am not convinced, that FB is actually capable of completely preventing such ads, even if they do not automate. This however, is not to say, that they should not be held accountable. They should. In full force. It is rather to say, that their business model is not appropriate and they cannot guarantee it to be ethically OK. (Ethically OK apart from the already ethically very questionable act of targetting ads and spying on everyone they can in the first place and doing that for their own gain / money.)
  - somehnacct3757 5y ago
    We are dancing around a conversation about accountability. Automated processes (or algorithms, romantically) currently diffuse accountability. This is a problem because we rely on rule of law to keep the peace. We would like corporations profiting off the algorithms to be held accountable, but this is hard today and lawmakers have moved too slowly on a solution. One alternative is to outlaw algorithms operating at a scale larger than our current accountability framework can handle. The reason this works is because it forces a human back into the chain of accountability. The corp will pass the potato and fire the employee who approved the ad. The employee's incentives are slightly more nuanced than you wrote - they want to maximize dollars while avoiding being fired. Since the employee is a regular human and not a corp with superlawyers and deep pockets, there's a better chance of criminal or civil followup targeting the former employee. With this accountable-scale bottleneck in place, we now have incentive for lawmakers and corporations to legislate the original problem and remove the bottleneck. That's why I think GP's proposal is a step forward. Even though the net harm may be the same at automation-scale and human-scale, the accountability envelope is closer to the desired end state.
roywiggins 5y ago
> Shortly after Myanmar became connected to the internet in 2000, Facebook paired with its telecom providers to allow customers to use the platform without having to pay for the data As far as I can tell, that program started in 2016, not "shortly after... 2000"
- tareqak 5y ago
  TechCrunch supports your claim: “Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch that Free Basics did indeed end in Myanmar in September 2017, a little over a year since its June 2016 launch in the country.” https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/01/facebook-free-basics-ending-myanmar-internet-org/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/01/facebook-free-basics-endin...
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  - kyawzazaw 5y ago
    AP has great journalism. Not sure what you are trying to imply here.
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      Internet griefers just like to rail against "the media" the way previous generations complained about the weather.
      - wutbrodo 5y ago
        I think you may be projecting here. I don't have the highest opinion of "the media", but framed that broadly, it's practically a "boo light". There are plenty of outlets that I have a lot of respect for, that can largely be counted on to get the facts right and make cautious inferences rigorously. The AP is not one of them. This is a reasonably high standard, but it's commensurate with the importance of journalism.
bamboozled 5y ago
Post a photo of a woman's nipple and you'll have your account removed...
- orangepurple 5y ago
  I heard a few years back your account will be properly purged from their archives if you post gore, rather than simply flagged as "disabled." Not sure how true this is.
titzer 5y ago
Yesterday, on one of my increasingly rare Facebook peeks, I kept getting this ad which was a link to a controversy with Mayim Bialik where she apparently got into a big spat with a producer over her touting new CBD gummies that supposedly cure dementia, and then it exploded into a huge thing, with even Tucker Carlson from Fox News weighing in, blah blah blah. It was perfectly-crafted clickbait because I clicked through just to read how insane it was. The whole thing never happened! Complete and total hoax. A pump and dump scheme that Snopes got wise to more than a week ago. And it showed up in my feed 4 times in scrolling five minutes. I reported every single one of them as a scam. I swear, no one is at the helm over there.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  Ordinarily, I would say that we can't expect Facebook to investigate the truth of every ad like this. But if Snopes had already debunked it, it makes me wonder how much effort Facebook is really putting into vetting this stuff.
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    Actually, Facebook heavily moderates anything making anything close to a medical claim in an ad. Or, more accurately, Facebook has a lot of rules that they impose on the third parties and few first party ad reviewers, especially in the area of medical claims.
    - bryan_w 5y ago
      This leads to some weird ads where the ad mentions a drug (by it's clinical name) and _maybe_ also mentions a health condition but makes no claim correlating the two and that's it.
      - aspenmayer 5y ago
        But make sure to ask your doctor about it!
- Nextgrid 5y ago
tppiotrowski 5y ago
It would add a lot of context if we could see these ads. From what I found they were image based and in Burmese and if you want to see them you have to contact GlobalWatch over email. [1] I’ve sent them an email to see if there’s some indication of how they might have been missed. [1] https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/rohingya-facebook-hate-speech/ https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/r...
ineedasername 5y ago
Automation isn't a great way to approve these things. In Facebook's defense, they really like making money, and sometimes letting their platform be used for awful things is very profitable. It's a win-win. Well, except for Rohingya. I wonder if they're comforted by the incremental profit FB made off their destroyed lives?
lizardactivist 5y ago
[flagged]
naruvimama 5y ago
Forget automation or the complexity of language or interpretation, use of slang. Simply put social media should not be monitoring content other than graphic ones where it is clearly a violation. It is only expected to take down content based on government or court orders. One of the reasons why I have a big problem with social media moderating content is that it provides perverse incentives for the stronger party to stifle freedom of speech. A lot can be left to interpretation.
- yoavm 5y ago
  Why is graphic one "clearly a violation" and "we need to kill more" isn't?
  - z3c0 5y ago
    Look at the flipside, and it's pretty obvious. "We need to kill more zerglings" could trigger an algorithm detecting calls for violence, and maybe invoke feelings of concern in anybody who doesn't know what a zergling is. A video of me killing zerglings would provide enough context to render the "call to violence" benign.
  - ankit219 5y ago
jsnell 5y ago
> “I accept the point that eight isn’t a very big number. But I think the findings are really stark, that all eight of the ads were accepted for publication,” said Rosie Sharpe, a campaigner at Global Witness. That doesn't seem like a particularly stark finding. Eight ads submitted by the same organization getting approved just tells us that they probably had a high reputation. Now, eight ads submitted by a mix of different actors all getting approved would make for a much stronger case, what we got here was somebody running the exact same experiment eight times and pretending to be shocked that it gave the same result each time.
JasonFruit 5y ago
I'm not sure what point this addresses; maybe none. But I have to ask: who are the targets of these ads? Who are the people who would not have committed violence and genocide against the Rohingya until they saw a Facebook ad advocating it?
- AmIDev 5y ago
  My family members, some friends, relatives and neighbours have been radicalized due to fake news and hate messages on whatsapp. My mother, who used to take me to temples, churches and mosques alike as a child, now hates minorities. My sister who's childhood best friend used to be a Muslim, now says that most Muslims should be killed. So while such ads/posts might not make you want to kill the "others" immediately, there is significant population which will get radicalized over a period. Then one trigger event is all it takes for a mob to turn into murderers. You can read about how Radio Rwanda fueled the genocide. IMO the difference between who gets radicalized and who doesn't is based on how much exposure one has to different cultures. But then my sister who has visited Auschwitz supports genocide, so there must be more to it.
astura 5y ago
I know nerd rage-bait about anything Facebook is "cool," but the submitted title is misleading and against HN rules. Flagging. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." The title of the AP article is "‘Kill more’: Facebook fails to detect hate against Rohingya." The submission title is "Facebook approved 8 paid ads inciting violence and genocide against the Rohingya." The editorialized version intentionally misrepresents Facebook as endorsing violence and genocide rather than automated systems failing an explicit test (these weren't real ads). Can we please do better?
DitheringIdiot 5y ago
For those who don’t know the larger story here is something like this… - Facebook subsidised the internet in places that had never had it before — effectively making Facebook free in those areas and making it the main source of news for many people. - They have very little content moderation in these languages. - The algorithm optimises for engagement. Anger is the easiest way of creating engagement, and lies are an easy way to spark anger — hence the inciting of violence and genocide. - Facebook profits Mark Zuckerberg and his staff are responsible for this, and they should face consequences — but they wont.
- yoavm 5y ago
  This is puzzling. If I had billboard in the middle of the city, and I'd get paid for a "kill all $group_name" ad, all while people are actually killing $group_name, in what world will it not make total sense to hold me accountable? They're literally making money of the war.
yrgulation 5y ago
In Romania there is a public figure that discovered quite a few pro putin, and obvious mis information bots. They share obvious fake news and have been reported over and over again. Their accounts are still up and running. Facebook acts only when there is media outcry and when it happens in obvious cases. Only government action seems to be able to get us rid of this cancer.
- lucian-g 5y ago
  Do you have a link you can share?
  - yrgulation 5y ago
    Not sure if i should post the troll’s account link or name here just in case they are a real person. However, Newsweek editor in chief (former Adevarul), Ramona Ursu (suppose i can share her name since she is a public figure and not the alleged offender) made a post on the 17th of march on her facebook profile with details. Notice the high number of people saying the profile of the would be troll has been reported. On the trolls page, filled mainly with pictures of putin, you will see loads of anti western, anti vax content. Profiles of people posting replies to the trolls posts follow a remarkably similar pattern. The issue is that a simple translation from romanian to english may not reveal the subtlety of their propaganda.
baobabKoodaa 5y ago
Why are most people in this thread acting like people at Facebook care about hate speech and merely failed to prevent hate speech in this instance? What makes you think that tech companies / their employees care about this at all? You can go on any social media site right now and write hate speech against Russians - literally calling for the death of specific Russian individuals - and you will not be censored. That's because hate speech rules never were about preventing hate speech in general, they always were about selective enforcement where those in power can protect their preferred in-groups, while leaving out-groups outside of any protections. In this case, "Rohingya" were not a part of western tech circles' in-group, so nobody in power cares about their genocide.
- tharne 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
a0-prw 5y ago
FB promotes a lynch-mob mentality. It's poison, even if they remove all the ads for genocide. Also, Insta is degrading and dehumanizing. Nothing Meta have made or meddled with will ever promote anything good or wholesome in human beings.

326 points by tareqak 5y ago

I wonder if this is greed or negligence. Last year it was reported that Facebook failed to remove anti Muslim content in India, another country rife with ethnic tensions. India also happens to have Facebook's largest user base.

Taters91 5y ago
It's greed. At this point, they have been in more than one country that has used their product to advance genocide. Gross negligence, apathy, greed.
AnonHP 5y ago
Corruption is what it is. i recall there being news reports in the past about how Facebook didn’t do anything even when content was reported by users. Facebook likes the money coming from ads but is unwilling to care enough. It’s a sick company run by perverse incentives.
hef19898 5y ago
It could be both, couldn't it?
AlexandrB 5y ago
I recall reading somewhere that Facebook's non-english moderation staff is much smaller in number than their English counterparts so this does not surprise me. Hopefully bad press like this gets them to hire a number of moderators that's appropriate for the user base in each language. Ah, here: https://multilingual.com/facebook-linguistic-gaps-allow-hate-speech-to-spread-dont-match-demographic-realities/ https://multilingual.com/facebook-linguistic-gaps-allow-hate...
cies 5y ago
> greed or negligence greed breeds negligence
annadane 5y ago
Both. It's Facebook. It's Zuckerberg in charge.
ankit219 5y ago
I doubt it's any of the two. At the scale they operate, they will have multi level checks - automated and manual. Some automated checks would approve the ad, and then if the ad is getting a huge reach and engagement, they may have a manual user to look at it again, and probably disapprove it. Same with how some images can be posted, and then removed later if they get good engagement > The group pulled the ads before they were posted or paid for This is just a way to create buzz about an upcoming study/report at Facebook's expense. I don't like Facebook, but if they/AP were really serious, we could see the report and look at the way they executed the whole experiment. The other data point is that how many did they try, cos as far as I know, they use AI to detect text on images. Probably not that effective in Thailand's local language. One other aspect here, while Facebook deserves no sympathy, let's not forget misses happen even with editorial oversights. Let's not forget how NYT exclusive about nuclear weapons in Iraq was the final trigger for the war, and that report was false.

hunglee2 5y ago

it is hard task. There are 7,100 official languages on planet earth, presumably all of them include language which can used to incite violence. If we hold Meta to a 'zero hate' standard, the only solution would be have native language speakers in every language, on call and ready to deploy in order vet every single advert before publication. Maybe Meta should indeed do this, but we can at least acknowledge that there are significant practical constraints involve to maintain a zero hate standard

jfarina 5y ago
That doesn't seem unreasonable in any way shape or form. If they're capable of launching the platform in every language, they're capable of moderating it in every language.
- ambrozk 5y ago
  > If they're capable of launching the platform in every language, they're capable of moderating it in every language. Uhhhhh this does not follow at all. "If you're capable of launching feature set A, you're capable of launching expanded feature set B" is asinine.
  - rickspencer3 5y ago
    > If they're capable of launching the platform in every language, they're capable of moderating it in every language. Said differently, if they aren't capable of moderating in every language, they they aren't capable of launching in every language. At least not ethically.
  - eropple 5y ago
    Half-trillion-dollar companies do not need defenders for how hard it is to make safe the "public" square they have decided to take over for themselves. When you are Facebook, it must be table stakes.
  - timdiggerm 5y ago
    It's not asinine, it just depends on if you value ethics or growth.

Karawebnetwork 5y ago

> A new report has found that Facebook failed to detect blatant hate speech and calls to violence Is this surprising to anyone who has spent time on the platform? Even outside of advertising, the platform is filled with violence and hate. Many pockets are equivalent to the content that can be found on 4chan, with thinly veiled racism and LTGBTQ+phobia hidden behind emojis and jargon that is clear to humans but opaque to algorithms. Reports against groups such "[Black circle] should unalive" or "[same sex couple emoji] are [slur]" where the content is 100% hate speech are routinely flagged as "It doesn't go against one of our specifit community standards". Even when they contain nothing but photos of other Facebook users and links to people's profiles with invitations to brigade and spam hate. To my eyes, that's one of the main factors of the migration away from Facebook yet it is so rarely covered.

klyrs 5y ago
> Is this surprising to anyone who has spent time on the platform? No. "Your house is still on fire" may not be news, but it's still relevant to keep talking about until the problem is solved.
- Karawebnetwork 5y ago
  Exactly, which is why I end with questioning as to why the rampant hate is not covered outside of the extreme exemples. The extreme exemples should absolutely be covered but as long as the daily occurence are not put under the spotlight the platform will remain the same. Yes, those 8 paid ads should absolutely get taken down and Facebook should be held responsible for it. But the remaining hate groups will still breed genocide, especially when the users of those groups are well aware that their actions are protected by the platform and will not be taken down. Worst of it, they are often put back online after the group managers ask for a second scan of the reports.

martpie 5y ago

Can we change the HN title to the actual title of the article? "‘Kill more’: Facebook fails to detect hate against Rohingya".

w-j-w 5y ago
DocTomoe 5y ago

speeder 5y ago

[flagged]

sircastor 5y ago

Automation is imperfect, and I wonder if the reality is that, if you can’t successfully automate the approval of ads or copyrighted material, or account suspension, then maybe you’re too big or trying to do too much. Maybe the answer is that these things can’t ever be automated and if you can’t staff the process then you (and therefore nobody) should be working at this scale.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I agree. At this scale these things must be automated. I don't buy that since they are automated these companies should get a pass. I tend to think that a lot of these problems can be attributed to too much tech consolidation.
zelphirkalt 5y ago
I am inclined to agree with you on automation being imperfect and that some things might not be automatable for now, at our current level of tech. However, I would add, that also non-automated processes have imperfection. There can be internal incentives to allow such ads. The FB culture is rich of processes which are profit-oriented rather than ethics-oriented. Who is to say, that such ads would not have been approved by some spineless group working at FB? I would not deem it impossible. Maybe after the 1000th ad you approve, you might become sort of blunt. Add to that a small signal from above, that this add would bring a lot of profit and you might wave it through as "Just another ad, how bad can it truly be?". I am unconvinced, that many people working at FB have high ethical standards and even less convinced, that FB puts people with high ethical standards in the position to approve ads. So in total, I am not convinced, that FB is actually capable of completely preventing such ads, even if they do not automate. This however, is not to say, that they should not be held accountable. They should. In full force. It is rather to say, that their business model is not appropriate and they cannot guarantee it to be ethically OK. (Ethically OK apart from the already ethically very questionable act of targetting ads and spying on everyone they can in the first place and doing that for their own gain / money.)
- somehnacct3757 5y ago
  We are dancing around a conversation about accountability. Automated processes (or algorithms, romantically) currently diffuse accountability. This is a problem because we rely on rule of law to keep the peace. We would like corporations profiting off the algorithms to be held accountable, but this is hard today and lawmakers have moved too slowly on a solution. One alternative is to outlaw algorithms operating at a scale larger than our current accountability framework can handle. The reason this works is because it forces a human back into the chain of accountability. The corp will pass the potato and fire the employee who approved the ad. The employee's incentives are slightly more nuanced than you wrote - they want to maximize dollars while avoiding being fired. Since the employee is a regular human and not a corp with superlawyers and deep pockets, there's a better chance of criminal or civil followup targeting the former employee. With this accountable-scale bottleneck in place, we now have incentive for lawmakers and corporations to legislate the original problem and remove the bottleneck. That's why I think GP's proposal is a step forward. Even though the net harm may be the same at automation-scale and human-scale, the accountability envelope is closer to the desired end state.

roywiggins 5y ago

> Shortly after Myanmar became connected to the internet in 2000, Facebook paired with its telecom providers to allow customers to use the platform without having to pay for the data As far as I can tell, that program started in 2016, not "shortly after... 2000"

tareqak 5y ago
TechCrunch supports your claim: “Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch that Free Basics did indeed end in Myanmar in September 2017, a little over a year since its June 2016 launch in the country.” https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/01/facebook-free-basics-ending-myanmar-internet-org/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/01/facebook-free-basics-endin...
wutbrodo 5y ago
- kyawzazaw 5y ago
  AP has great journalism. Not sure what you are trying to imply here.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    Internet griefers just like to rail against "the media" the way previous generations complained about the weather.
    - wutbrodo 5y ago
      I think you may be projecting here. I don't have the highest opinion of "the media", but framed that broadly, it's practically a "boo light". There are plenty of outlets that I have a lot of respect for, that can largely be counted on to get the facts right and make cautious inferences rigorously. The AP is not one of them. This is a reasonably high standard, but it's commensurate with the importance of journalism.

bamboozled 5y ago

Post a photo of a woman's nipple and you'll have your account removed...

orangepurple 5y ago
I heard a few years back your account will be properly purged from their archives if you post gore, rather than simply flagged as "disabled." Not sure how true this is.

titzer 5y ago

Yesterday, on one of my increasingly rare Facebook peeks, I kept getting this ad which was a link to a controversy with Mayim Bialik where she apparently got into a big spat with a producer over her touting new CBD gummies that supposedly cure dementia, and then it exploded into a huge thing, with even Tucker Carlson from Fox News weighing in, blah blah blah. It was perfectly-crafted clickbait because I clicked through just to read how insane it was. The whole thing never happened! Complete and total hoax. A pump and dump scheme that Snopes got wise to more than a week ago. And it showed up in my feed 4 times in scrolling five minutes. I reported every single one of them as a scam. I swear, no one is at the helm over there.

lelandfe 5y ago
Ordinarily, I would say that we can't expect Facebook to investigate the truth of every ad like this. But if Snopes had already debunked it, it makes me wonder how much effort Facebook is really putting into vetting this stuff.
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  Actually, Facebook heavily moderates anything making anything close to a medical claim in an ad. Or, more accurately, Facebook has a lot of rules that they impose on the third parties and few first party ad reviewers, especially in the area of medical claims.
  - bryan_w 5y ago
    This leads to some weird ads where the ad mentions a drug (by it's clinical name) and _maybe_ also mentions a health condition but makes no claim correlating the two and that's it.
    - aspenmayer 5y ago
      But make sure to ask your doctor about it!
Nextgrid 5y ago

tppiotrowski 5y ago

It would add a lot of context if we could see these ads. From what I found they were image based and in Burmese and if you want to see them you have to contact GlobalWatch over email. [1] I’ve sent them an email to see if there’s some indication of how they might have been missed. [1] https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/rohingya-facebook-hate-speech/ https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/r...

ineedasername 5y ago

Automation isn't a great way to approve these things. In Facebook's defense, they really like making money, and sometimes letting their platform be used for awful things is very profitable. It's a win-win. Well, except for Rohingya. I wonder if they're comforted by the incremental profit FB made off their destroyed lives?

lizardactivist 5y ago

[flagged]

naruvimama 5y ago

Forget automation or the complexity of language or interpretation, use of slang. Simply put social media should not be monitoring content other than graphic ones where it is clearly a violation. It is only expected to take down content based on government or court orders. One of the reasons why I have a big problem with social media moderating content is that it provides perverse incentives for the stronger party to stifle freedom of speech. A lot can be left to interpretation.

yoavm 5y ago
Why is graphic one "clearly a violation" and "we need to kill more" isn't?
- z3c0 5y ago
  Look at the flipside, and it's pretty obvious. "We need to kill more zerglings" could trigger an algorithm detecting calls for violence, and maybe invoke feelings of concern in anybody who doesn't know what a zergling is. A video of me killing zerglings would provide enough context to render the "call to violence" benign.
- ankit219 5y ago

jsnell 5y ago

> “I accept the point that eight isn’t a very big number. But I think the findings are really stark, that all eight of the ads were accepted for publication,” said Rosie Sharpe, a campaigner at Global Witness. That doesn't seem like a particularly stark finding. Eight ads submitted by the same organization getting approved just tells us that they probably had a high reputation. Now, eight ads submitted by a mix of different actors all getting approved would make for a much stronger case, what we got here was somebody running the exact same experiment eight times and pretending to be shocked that it gave the same result each time.

JasonFruit 5y ago

I'm not sure what point this addresses; maybe none. But I have to ask: who are the targets of these ads? Who are the people who would not have committed violence and genocide against the Rohingya until they saw a Facebook ad advocating it?

AmIDev 5y ago
My family members, some friends, relatives and neighbours have been radicalized due to fake news and hate messages on whatsapp. My mother, who used to take me to temples, churches and mosques alike as a child, now hates minorities. My sister who's childhood best friend used to be a Muslim, now says that most Muslims should be killed. So while such ads/posts might not make you want to kill the "others" immediately, there is significant population which will get radicalized over a period. Then one trigger event is all it takes for a mob to turn into murderers. You can read about how Radio Rwanda fueled the genocide. IMO the difference between who gets radicalized and who doesn't is based on how much exposure one has to different cultures. But then my sister who has visited Auschwitz supports genocide, so there must be more to it.

astura 5y ago

I know nerd rage-bait about anything Facebook is "cool," but the submitted title is misleading and against HN rules. Flagging. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." The title of the AP article is "‘Kill more’: Facebook fails to detect hate against Rohingya." The submission title is "Facebook approved 8 paid ads inciting violence and genocide against the Rohingya." The editorialized version intentionally misrepresents Facebook as endorsing violence and genocide rather than automated systems failing an explicit test (these weren't real ads). Can we please do better?

DitheringIdiot 5y ago

For those who don’t know the larger story here is something like this… - Facebook subsidised the internet in places that had never had it before — effectively making Facebook free in those areas and making it the main source of news for many people. - They have very little content moderation in these languages. - The algorithm optimises for engagement. Anger is the easiest way of creating engagement, and lies are an easy way to spark anger — hence the inciting of violence and genocide. - Facebook profits Mark Zuckerberg and his staff are responsible for this, and they should face consequences — but they wont.

yoavm 5y ago
This is puzzling. If I had billboard in the middle of the city, and I'd get paid for a "kill all $group_name" ad, all while people are actually killing $group_name, in what world will it not make total sense to hold me accountable? They're literally making money of the war.

yrgulation 5y ago

In Romania there is a public figure that discovered quite a few pro putin, and obvious mis information bots. They share obvious fake news and have been reported over and over again. Their accounts are still up and running. Facebook acts only when there is media outcry and when it happens in obvious cases. Only government action seems to be able to get us rid of this cancer.

lucian-g 5y ago
Do you have a link you can share?
- yrgulation 5y ago
  Not sure if i should post the troll’s account link or name here just in case they are a real person. However, Newsweek editor in chief (former Adevarul), Ramona Ursu (suppose i can share her name since she is a public figure and not the alleged offender) made a post on the 17th of march on her facebook profile with details. Notice the high number of people saying the profile of the would be troll has been reported. On the trolls page, filled mainly with pictures of putin, you will see loads of anti western, anti vax content. Profiles of people posting replies to the trolls posts follow a remarkably similar pattern. The issue is that a simple translation from romanian to english may not reveal the subtlety of their propaganda.

baobabKoodaa 5y ago

Why are most people in this thread acting like people at Facebook care about hate speech and merely failed to prevent hate speech in this instance? What makes you think that tech companies / their employees care about this at all? You can go on any social media site right now and write hate speech against Russians - literally calling for the death of specific Russian individuals - and you will not be censored. That's because hate speech rules never were about preventing hate speech in general, they always were about selective enforcement where those in power can protect their preferred in-groups, while leaving out-groups outside of any protections. In this case, "Rohingya" were not a part of western tech circles' in-group, so nobody in power cares about their genocide.

tharne 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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a0-prw 5y ago

FB promotes a lynch-mob mentality. It's poison, even if they remove all the ads for genocide. Also, Insta is degrading and dehumanizing. Nothing Meta have made or meddled with will ever promote anything good or wholesome in human beings.