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It makes sense from a technical perspective why you'd build a system like XCheck. The problem is that once you build XCheck you actually need to say to your C-s

It makes sense from a technical perspective why you'd build a system like XCheck. The problem is that once you build XCheck you actually need to say to your C-suite and PR department "Actually no, you can't say we treat everyone equally, we're manually going in and exempting certain people from scrutiny, and that's entirely within our discretion." The problem isn't technical, it's legal - you can't build a system that operates one way and then publicly misrepresent it.

yeasurebut 4y ago
xani_ 4y ago
As facebook shows you can, and get away with it.
pjc50 4y ago
Legally, their TOS probably allows them to be completely opaque and arbitrary. And any system which involves reporting from the public will need to build a "this account gets lots of false reports of category X, to save time assume they're all false" system. As well as "all the reports made by this user are bogus".
etchalon 4y ago
There are no laws which say a company has to be transparent and accurate when discussing its moderation systems.
- lmm 4y ago
  Given that people pay to advertise on facebook, any false statements they make about their moderation systems via the internet almost certainly constitute wire fraud.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    You make that claim with a high level of confidence, but have you actually read the contract in place between Meta and the advertiser?
    - lmm 4y ago
      No, but I've read the relevant section of the USC. Statutes override contracts, you can't contract out of being bound by the law of the land.
  - etchalon 4y ago
    It would almost certainly not.
- nocoiner 4y ago
  As Matt Levine says, “everything is securities fraud,” and this is probably the area of greatest exposure for a company with a substantial degree of departure between their stated practices and their actual practices. It’s not likely to be more than a nuisance to defend and not terribly expensive to settle, but an enterprising plaintiff’s lawyer could probably find a cause of action that passes summary judgment.
KrishnaShripad 4y ago
> "Actually no, you can't say we treat everyone equally, we're manually going in and exempting certain people from scrutiny, and that's entirely within our discretion." Isn't that literally what Twitter does as well? Making exceptions for Politicians and Government Representatives? Or does HN's bias towards Twitter exempt it from any form of scrutiny?
- caslon 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- nl 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 4y ago
    Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. You perpetuated this one badly and that's not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - KrishnaShripad 4y ago
    When it comes to India, Twitter is typically at the forefront of mainstreaming propaganda and selectively applying rules. So my perspective comes from that (since this article concerns feud between Meta and The Wire which covers India). Whenever Twitter gets mentioned (atleast in HN) concerning its role in policy with regards to politicians it mostly gets a pass. Let me put it this way: what you feel Meta is doing in the West, is what many in India (like me) feel Twitter is doing here. And the sentiment I see is mostly anti Meta and mostly pro Twitter here. After all it is my perspective and I could be wrong (as I obviously don't have statistics to say if HN definitely has a Twitter bias or not). But I believe I have a right to express my opinion on what I feel is HN sentiment towards big tech censorship (which mostly circles around Meta but rarely around Twitter).
crmd 4y ago
Legal will certainly advise leadership they can continue claiming that the system treats everyone equally, because scope of the word system includes the entire Trust organization people + automation, and “equally” can mean almost whatever Mark needs it to mean. “Senator, thank you for the question. We treat everyone equally. To be clear this means every single user on our platform is subject to the same terms of service they agreed to when signing up.”
- IncRnd 4y ago
  In other words, you'd lie to Congress. Being glib is not the same as being truthful.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    When was the last time a rich or powerful person got in any trouble at all for lying to Congress?
    - IncRnd 4y ago
      So, you'd also lie to Congress, because you wouldn't expect to get caught. Got it.
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  By the definitions you're using, Mark Zuckerberg personally logging in to the database and type DELETE FROM USERS WHERE "Policital_Affiliation_heuristic" == "Conservative". So fine, if you want to define the words as meaning something they clearly don't, and want to try and fight that battle in the media... ok. But almost certainly the first thing that happens is something exactly like this - some nerdy engineering comes out and goes "Well no actually, we manually intervene for the people we like". And then you get to go back to Congress and explain to them why you clearly lied to them, and you're not going to get out of that by using Mark Zuckerberg's pure eye-watering levels of charisma.
lazide 4y ago
Why can’t they exactly?
8note 4y ago
I think the tag based system infers everyone is treated the same. Everyone can get the tag. That's opposed to an Id or different account types, where if you didn't register with a specific type, you cannot be granted that same exemption
DannyBee 4y ago
Most carefully claim that the laws they write apply equally to everyone, not that they equally apply them to everyone Which (and I hate to ever sound likey I'm defending Facebook) is quite common in legal systems.
- pixl97 4y ago
  One user type the law binds but does not protect, and another user type the law protects but does not bind.
concinds 4y ago
I see zereo issue with what Facebook is doing. They are indeed "treating users equally." To not have special measures in place protecting accounts that are orders of magnitude more likely to receive false reports would be unequal treatment, and would result in celebrities' accounts being very frequently taken down. "Unequal treatment" would mean: these users are not subject to our policies. That's not the case here. XCheck just turns off the "we receive 100 reports, an algo shuts that account down" phenomenon. Humans review those cases manually, and the account can still be suspended or banned. How in the world could that be contentious?
- smolder 4y ago
  Your stance, as described, doesn't make any sense. You're being willfully obtuse here. Equal treatment would mean that users are treated the same by the company. They are not, in the same situation.
  - aozgaa 4y ago
    Imagine the following three enforcement schemes for taking down a post due to reports: * if your post gets reported 10 times, it gets taken down * if your post gets reported (# of followers / 10) times, it gets taken down * if your post gets reported (# of followers * 100) times, it gets taken down Which of these are fair in your opinion? For an account with a huge # of followers, the last one effectively means their posts can't be taken down. It seems a system like XCheck is a step function where at a certain point, you get exempt from certain checks altogether. The "equality" here could refer to each account's potential to go through the vetting that would give them exempt status. ============== Maybe this deserves a separate response, but another way to think of this is to compare it to income taxes. There are different income brackets that affect your marginal tax rate in the US. Is it equal for everyone to pay the same dollar amount in income taxes? The same rate? A progressive rate? Are people treated equally under the law in all these cases? In none of them?
    - smolder 4y ago
      > Which of these are fair in your opinion? Who said anything about fair? The only one that is "equal treatment" is the one where 10 reports takes them down. It's shitty policy, but that's a different question isn't it? Number of followers playing a role is where treatment stops being equal. I'm not arguing what's the right way to handle this, I'm just contradicting rhetoric aiming to justify their policy by fallacious argument. Edited to add: I don't think tax code is meant to or treats people equally, even though they're all subject to the same rules. The rules explicitly divide taxpayers into categories with different treatment.

yeasurebut 4y ago

xani_ 4y ago

As facebook shows you can, and get away with it.

pjc50 4y ago

Legally, their TOS probably allows them to be completely opaque and arbitrary. And any system which involves reporting from the public will need to build a "this account gets lots of false reports of category X, to save time assume they're all false" system. As well as "all the reports made by this user are bogus".

etchalon 4y ago

There are no laws which say a company has to be transparent and accurate when discussing its moderation systems.

lmm 4y ago
Given that people pay to advertise on facebook, any false statements they make about their moderation systems via the internet almost certainly constitute wire fraud.
- pavlov 4y ago
  You make that claim with a high level of confidence, but have you actually read the contract in place between Meta and the advertiser?
  - lmm 4y ago
    No, but I've read the relevant section of the USC. Statutes override contracts, you can't contract out of being bound by the law of the land.
- etchalon 4y ago
  It would almost certainly not.
nocoiner 4y ago
As Matt Levine says, “everything is securities fraud,” and this is probably the area of greatest exposure for a company with a substantial degree of departure between their stated practices and their actual practices. It’s not likely to be more than a nuisance to defend and not terribly expensive to settle, but an enterprising plaintiff’s lawyer could probably find a cause of action that passes summary judgment.

KrishnaShripad 4y ago

> "Actually no, you can't say we treat everyone equally, we're manually going in and exempting certain people from scrutiny, and that's entirely within our discretion." Isn't that literally what Twitter does as well? Making exceptions for Politicians and Government Representatives? Or does HN's bias towards Twitter exempt it from any form of scrutiny?

caslon 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nl 4y ago
[flagged]
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. You perpetuated this one badly and that's not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- KrishnaShripad 4y ago
  When it comes to India, Twitter is typically at the forefront of mainstreaming propaganda and selectively applying rules. So my perspective comes from that (since this article concerns feud between Meta and The Wire which covers India). Whenever Twitter gets mentioned (atleast in HN) concerning its role in policy with regards to politicians it mostly gets a pass. Let me put it this way: what you feel Meta is doing in the West, is what many in India (like me) feel Twitter is doing here. And the sentiment I see is mostly anti Meta and mostly pro Twitter here. After all it is my perspective and I could be wrong (as I obviously don't have statistics to say if HN definitely has a Twitter bias or not). But I believe I have a right to express my opinion on what I feel is HN sentiment towards big tech censorship (which mostly circles around Meta but rarely around Twitter).

crmd 4y ago

Legal will certainly advise leadership they can continue claiming that the system treats everyone equally, because scope of the word system includes the entire Trust organization people + automation, and “equally” can mean almost whatever Mark needs it to mean. “Senator, thank you for the question. We treat everyone equally. To be clear this means every single user on our platform is subject to the same terms of service they agreed to when signing up.”

IncRnd 4y ago
In other words, you'd lie to Congress. Being glib is not the same as being truthful.
- kadoban 4y ago
  When was the last time a rich or powerful person got in any trouble at all for lying to Congress?
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    So, you'd also lie to Congress, because you wouldn't expect to get caught. Got it.
SilverBirch 4y ago
By the definitions you're using, Mark Zuckerberg personally logging in to the database and type DELETE FROM USERS WHERE "Policital_Affiliation_heuristic" == "Conservative". So fine, if you want to define the words as meaning something they clearly don't, and want to try and fight that battle in the media... ok. But almost certainly the first thing that happens is something exactly like this - some nerdy engineering comes out and goes "Well no actually, we manually intervene for the people we like". And then you get to go back to Congress and explain to them why you clearly lied to them, and you're not going to get out of that by using Mark Zuckerberg's pure eye-watering levels of charisma.

lazide 4y ago

Why can’t they exactly?

8note 4y ago

I think the tag based system infers everyone is treated the same. Everyone can get the tag. That's opposed to an Id or different account types, where if you didn't register with a specific type, you cannot be granted that same exemption

DannyBee 4y ago

Most carefully claim that the laws they write apply equally to everyone, not that they equally apply them to everyone Which (and I hate to ever sound likey I'm defending Facebook) is quite common in legal systems.

pixl97 4y ago
One user type the law binds but does not protect, and another user type the law protects but does not bind.

concinds 4y ago

I see zereo issue with what Facebook is doing. They are indeed "treating users equally." To not have special measures in place protecting accounts that are orders of magnitude more likely to receive false reports would be unequal treatment, and would result in celebrities' accounts being very frequently taken down. "Unequal treatment" would mean: these users are not subject to our policies. That's not the case here. XCheck just turns off the "we receive 100 reports, an algo shuts that account down" phenomenon. Humans review those cases manually, and the account can still be suspended or banned. How in the world could that be contentious?

smolder 4y ago
Your stance, as described, doesn't make any sense. You're being willfully obtuse here. Equal treatment would mean that users are treated the same by the company. They are not, in the same situation.
- aozgaa 4y ago
  Imagine the following three enforcement schemes for taking down a post due to reports: * if your post gets reported 10 times, it gets taken down * if your post gets reported (# of followers / 10) times, it gets taken down * if your post gets reported (# of followers * 100) times, it gets taken down Which of these are fair in your opinion? For an account with a huge # of followers, the last one effectively means their posts can't be taken down. It seems a system like XCheck is a step function where at a certain point, you get exempt from certain checks altogether. The "equality" here could refer to each account's potential to go through the vetting that would give them exempt status. ============== Maybe this deserves a separate response, but another way to think of this is to compare it to income taxes. There are different income brackets that affect your marginal tax rate in the US. Is it equal for everyone to pay the same dollar amount in income taxes? The same rate? A progressive rate? Are people treated equally under the law in all these cases? In none of them?
  - smolder 4y ago
    > Which of these are fair in your opinion? Who said anything about fair? The only one that is "equal treatment" is the one where 10 reports takes them down. It's shitty policy, but that's a different question isn't it? Number of followers playing a role is where treatment stops being equal. I'm not arguing what's the right way to handle this, I'm just contradicting rhetoric aiming to justify their policy by fallacious argument. Edited to add: I don't think tax code is meant to or treats people equally, even though they're all subject to the same rules. The rules explicitly divide taxpayers into categories with different treatment.