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If you are only using Facebook for its original purpose of keeping up with old friends and family, then it doesn't actually have the scaling problem: if one of

by saurik 4y ago

If you are only using Facebook for its original purpose of keeping up with old friends and family, then it doesn't actually have the scaling problem: if one of your friends or someone in your family starts posting a ton of racist bullshit you either confront them about it or drop them as a friend (preferably bilaterally), and either result is actually better for society than having Facebook attempt to present a skewed view of them that tries to just pretend they aren't posting all of the horrible stuff in the first place (whether by blocking it from being posted, quickly removing it once posted, or running some complex ranking algorithm that does a good job of hiding it). It is only when you start having strangers talking to strangers that you run into a need for moderation, and even there you should be able to scale by sharding and punting the problem to others: if you have a group--similar to a real-world club--the moderation is on you, as the issues in your community shouldn't leak to people who haven't joined your community (and if people leave your community because you fail, all the better). The only real issue is that Facebook wants to--for the increased engagement, and thereby ad revenue--run a ton of recommendation algorithms that shove content from people you have no affiliation to in your face constantly (which one might notice should already be considered antithetical to the design of a social network) which leads to a ton of stranger-to-stranger interactions that are entirely "on Facebook" to ensure are clean.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
And yet here I was, posting a picture of my kids at the beach so my mom and friends could see them, and I ended up banned from participating on Facebook for 24 hours and accused of violating community decency. They're f*cked.
- saurik 4y ago
  Yeah... so I honestly consider this to be a separate (also horrible, for avoidance of doubt) problem than "moderation"? Like, Apple and Google aren't exactly having a moderation problem when it comes to attempts to curtail CSAM stored on their photos platforms (which has led to their automated flagging systems and then need to scale to the entire world of users appeals and escalation, and then the subsequent concern about "are they going to call the police on me when I fail my appeal?!")... it is more of an attempt to deal with awkward regulatory "think of the children" overreach and hostile American law enforcement. Facebook seems to me to be doing the same thing here and failing. Imagine a world where social networks were built by people who simply didn't care about "engagement" at all and weren't being motivated by ad revenue... I think you could design an end-to-end encrypted version of the system where no-one except your friends--and certainly not the network operators--even knew what you were posting in the first place and they would hopefully be able to avoid installing client-side filters for CSAM (but, with stuff like FOSTA and SESTA, maybe not?). This model should even work, I'd think, for Twitter/Instagram-like broadcast models (though the legal implications of the well-known "secret" key being published and accessible to the network might lead to various problems; you might have to go fully-decentralized).
  - soundnote 4y ago
    You don't need to worry, Google's already doing it: And destroying your digital life if you've put too much stuff in their care. With the characteristic Google customer service of "go fuck yourself". https://archive.ph/W41mf https://archive.ph/W41mf
commandlinefan 4y ago
> using Facebook for its original purpose of keeping up with old friends and family Not that Facebook lets you do that any more. I was off of FB for a while and recently rejoined because my community and my kid's schools only use FB for communications now. I'm connected to a very small circle of actual friends and family, but I still get daily political memes in my feed (politics I vehemently disagree with as well) no matter how many times I try to block them.
- saurik 4y ago
  Yeah sorry, I meant something more like "if you look at the goal of the original use case of Facebook" not "if you as a user simply use some subset of the website". The greed to maintain and grow the valuation of a publicly-traded company--and thereby to optimize the entire thing for explicitly only maximal revenue (and thereby maximal engagement)--has so universally destroyed the dream of social networking that we simply don't actually have a large social network anymore.
- end_of_line 4y ago
  The biggest spam I get from Facebook ads itself. I live in Switzerland and I am BOMBARDED with financial frauds, scams and ponzi like schemes served directly from their ads. I checked why in their system and got answer "primary location: Switzerland and male 25 - 35 years old". I tried to report, block them all but facebook support always if replied at all, it was saying all in line with their policies. So, I deactivated facebook account and now using only messanger
  - lakomen 4y ago
    Same. Not Switzerland but those fraudulent ads made me delete my account for the last time now. Facebook is a hostile platform.
ok_dad 4y ago
Facebook was originally gated to just university students from specific universities, then they started to open it to everyone. It was basically a university bulletin board.
- saurik 4y ago
  Yeah: I am actually old enough to have been waiting for Facebook to be supported at my University ;P. I remember it already spawning with the same functionality of, say, Friendster, and so it already was based on the "social network" concept of people having "walls" they posted to and the concept of "friends" that you were thereby keeping up with... which frankly isn't anything like a "bulletin board" (virtual or physical) and was much more like people posting stuff on the door of their dorm. It could be that it was a bit different, though, in the first handful of institutions before it got around to supporting mine.
  - ok_dad 4y ago
    You’re right, it was more like those small whiteboards everyone had on their door at my university. I remember having poke wars, too.

by saurik 4y ago

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

And yet here I was, posting a picture of my kids at the beach so my mom and friends could see them, and I ended up banned from participating on Facebook for 24 hours and accused of violating community decency. They're f*cked.

saurik 4y ago
Yeah... so I honestly consider this to be a separate (also horrible, for avoidance of doubt) problem than "moderation"? Like, Apple and Google aren't exactly having a moderation problem when it comes to attempts to curtail CSAM stored on their photos platforms (which has led to their automated flagging systems and then need to scale to the entire world of users appeals and escalation, and then the subsequent concern about "are they going to call the police on me when I fail my appeal?!")... it is more of an attempt to deal with awkward regulatory "think of the children" overreach and hostile American law enforcement. Facebook seems to me to be doing the same thing here and failing. Imagine a world where social networks were built by people who simply didn't care about "engagement" at all and weren't being motivated by ad revenue... I think you could design an end-to-end encrypted version of the system where no-one except your friends--and certainly not the network operators--even knew what you were posting in the first place and they would hopefully be able to avoid installing client-side filters for CSAM (but, with stuff like FOSTA and SESTA, maybe not?). This model should even work, I'd think, for Twitter/Instagram-like broadcast models (though the legal implications of the well-known "secret" key being published and accessible to the network might lead to various problems; you might have to go fully-decentralized).
- soundnote 4y ago
  You don't need to worry, Google's already doing it: And destroying your digital life if you've put too much stuff in their care. With the characteristic Google customer service of "go fuck yourself". https://archive.ph/W41mf https://archive.ph/W41mf

commandlinefan 4y ago

> using Facebook for its original purpose of keeping up with old friends and family Not that Facebook lets you do that any more. I was off of FB for a while and recently rejoined because my community and my kid's schools only use FB for communications now. I'm connected to a very small circle of actual friends and family, but I still get daily political memes in my feed (politics I vehemently disagree with as well) no matter how many times I try to block them.

saurik 4y ago
Yeah sorry, I meant something more like "if you look at the goal of the original use case of Facebook" not "if you as a user simply use some subset of the website". The greed to maintain and grow the valuation of a publicly-traded company--and thereby to optimize the entire thing for explicitly only maximal revenue (and thereby maximal engagement)--has so universally destroyed the dream of social networking that we simply don't actually have a large social network anymore.
end_of_line 4y ago
The biggest spam I get from Facebook ads itself. I live in Switzerland and I am BOMBARDED with financial frauds, scams and ponzi like schemes served directly from their ads. I checked why in their system and got answer "primary location: Switzerland and male 25 - 35 years old". I tried to report, block them all but facebook support always if replied at all, it was saying all in line with their policies. So, I deactivated facebook account and now using only messanger
- lakomen 4y ago
  Same. Not Switzerland but those fraudulent ads made me delete my account for the last time now. Facebook is a hostile platform.

ok_dad 4y ago

Facebook was originally gated to just university students from specific universities, then they started to open it to everyone. It was basically a university bulletin board.

saurik 4y ago
Yeah: I am actually old enough to have been waiting for Facebook to be supported at my University ;P. I remember it already spawning with the same functionality of, say, Friendster, and so it already was based on the "social network" concept of people having "walls" they posted to and the concept of "friends" that you were thereby keeping up with... which frankly isn't anything like a "bulletin board" (virtual or physical) and was much more like people posting stuff on the door of their dorm. It could be that it was a bit different, though, in the first handful of institutions before it got around to supporting mine.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  You’re right, it was more like those small whiteboards everyone had on their door at my university. I remember having poke wars, too.