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Wrongfully or not, people blame Facebook for inflammatory content posted by humans on their platform. How much worse would it be if that content was generated w

Wrongfully or not, people blame Facebook for inflammatory content posted by humans on their platform. How much worse would it be if that content was generated with FB-trained models?

dannyw 4y ago
People blame Facebook for their intentional, and continued choice to use algorithms that amplify and surface inflammatory content.
- capitalsigma 4y ago
  I think it's a hard problem and I'm not sure what the right solution is; clearly extremism is a problem but I can't say I'm 100% happy with Facebook being the final judge of Truth. Regardless, though, it is unambiguous that FB's role in "making" problematic UGC is much less direct than Google's role in making Imagen outputs.
- _joel 4y ago
  It's amazing isn't, how much crap can get spouted on the internet nowadays
Gigachad 4y ago
Facebook is a recommendation engine. The problem isn't so much the content, its that facebook chooses to show it to people who did not actively seek it out. You never see people complain at Chrome for showing the content or nginx for hosting it. Recommendation engines are more responsible than basic infrastructure.
- capitalsigma 4y ago
  So you would say that if FB fails to censor a video titled "vaccines cause autism" that drives engagement, they are more morally culpable for the content than if Google spends TPU cycles rendering the Imagen prompt input: "detailed video about why vaccines cause autism, scientific, realistic, in the style of a public health announcement" ?
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    IMO facebook should stop "engagement based" recommendation engines until they have the ability to stop them being abused. Change the platform to show chronological posts from things users have subscribed to. They could perhaps have a curated selection of content that FB employees have screened to be good for general distribution. There is a world of difference between someone manually seeking out and subscribing to a misinformation source than FB automatically suggesting it to them.
    - capitalsigma 4y ago
      That is definitely one opinion that you can hold about Facebook but it's unclear to me how it relates to this post about Google's new generative model
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        I don't think google is responsible for the content created any more than Windows is for running the program or your ISP is for serving it. Promotion and discovery are the places where moderation and responsibility come in.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    They did ban such videos and now people take videos like this seriously. Don't be so naive. This is a PR message, nothing else. The whole banning spree did more damage to vaccine acceptance than flat earther and lizard people together. It isn't even comparable. Because of course they ended up censoring legitimate criticism and scientific data. That was inevitable, no matter how well intended. Now they made themselves unreliable because someone on the internet was crazy.

Wrongfully or not, people blame Facebook for inflammatory content posted by humans on their platform. How much worse would it be if that content was generated with FB-trained models?

dannyw 4y ago

People blame Facebook for their intentional, and continued choice to use algorithms that amplify and surface inflammatory content.

capitalsigma 4y ago
I think it's a hard problem and I'm not sure what the right solution is; clearly extremism is a problem but I can't say I'm 100% happy with Facebook being the final judge of Truth. Regardless, though, it is unambiguous that FB's role in "making" problematic UGC is much less direct than Google's role in making Imagen outputs.
_joel 4y ago
It's amazing isn't, how much crap can get spouted on the internet nowadays

Gigachad 4y ago

Facebook is a recommendation engine. The problem isn't so much the content, its that facebook chooses to show it to people who did not actively seek it out. You never see people complain at Chrome for showing the content or nginx for hosting it. Recommendation engines are more responsible than basic infrastructure.

capitalsigma 4y ago
So you would say that if FB fails to censor a video titled "vaccines cause autism" that drives engagement, they are more morally culpable for the content than if Google spends TPU cycles rendering the Imagen prompt input: "detailed video about why vaccines cause autism, scientific, realistic, in the style of a public health announcement" ?
- Gigachad 4y ago
  IMO facebook should stop "engagement based" recommendation engines until they have the ability to stop them being abused. Change the platform to show chronological posts from things users have subscribed to. They could perhaps have a curated selection of content that FB employees have screened to be good for general distribution. There is a world of difference between someone manually seeking out and subscribing to a misinformation source than FB automatically suggesting it to them.
  - capitalsigma 4y ago
    That is definitely one opinion that you can hold about Facebook but it's unclear to me how it relates to this post about Google's new generative model
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      I don't think google is responsible for the content created any more than Windows is for running the program or your ISP is for serving it. Promotion and discovery are the places where moderation and responsibility come in.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  They did ban such videos and now people take videos like this seriously. Don't be so naive. This is a PR message, nothing else. The whole banning spree did more damage to vaccine acceptance than flat earther and lizard people together. It isn't even comparable. Because of course they ended up censoring legitimate criticism and scientific data. That was inevitable, no matter how well intended. Now they made themselves unreliable because someone on the internet was crazy.