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A civil suit for $2 billion which alleges that Facebook's algorithm promoted popular posts with lots of engagement more than it promoted unpopular posts is friv

A civil suit for $2 billion which alleges that Facebook's algorithm promoted popular posts with lots of engagement more than it promoted unpopular posts is frivolous and deserves to be tossed.

lostlogin 4y ago
It resulted in death. That seems a key detail. Do you think that aspect matters? It was raised with them, they didn’t act and someone died. They have no responsibility for spreading death threats? If that content is ok, what content is not ok?
- missedthecue 4y ago
  The article expressly states that violent content is not allowed and was actively policed. Facebook moderators are not fully omniscient and omnipresent. That is not grounds for a $2 billion lawsuit. That fact that people died is sad, but ultimately immaterial to the arguments here considered.
  - felipelemos 4y ago
    If they can't determine if a post is violent or not, then they shouldn't blindly promote it.
    - hulitu 4y ago
      They don't promote it blindly. They promote it knowingly.
    - mikem170 4y ago
      That's a good answer to this. They should be responsible for what the algorithm decides to inject into people's feeds, when they are acting as a publisher. If they don't have enough resources to review the outputs from their algorithm, then to bad, just show posts from friends only.
    - phendrenad2 4y ago
      There will always be false negatives. Is one false negative enough to drag them into court? So every website on earth will just have that one moment where they accidentally promote (or don't actively de-promote) something toxic, and they'll get to go to court over it. I wonder how much Twitter will have to charge now. $8/mo isn't going to cut it. More like $80,000/mo
  - barbazoo 4y ago
    > Abrham Amare, a researcher and son of chemistry professor Meareg Amare, said that his father was targeted by a series of threatening posts because he was ethnically Tigrayan. He reported the posts, some of them shared over 50,000 times, to Facebook because they contained his father's address and called for his death. > Eight days after the elder Amare was murdered, Facebook finally removed the post, according to the researcher. Doesn't sound like they "actively policed" the content sufficiently.
    - metamann 4y ago
      Who determines sufficiency (well, a jury here…)? If an ethnic conflict occurs in a relatively obscure region are they going to spin up new moderators on the AWS spot market? These things aren’t perfect or fast.
      - cyberphobe 4y ago
        The discussion wasn't about perfection, it was about whether this was a "frivolous lawsuit", which it obviously is not. You probably knew this, metamann, brand new account which has only commented in this thread about how Facebook's inaction lead to death.
    - phendrenad2 4y ago
      > Doesn't sound like they "actively policed" the content sufficiently See that's the problem with omniscience, you kind of need it to police EVERYTHING. Something will always make it through.
  - interactivecode 4y ago
    If they can't guarantee the safety of the people using their software. Facebook shouldn't be allowed to operate. The same is true for venues, sports, shops, workplaces, etc... why not software companies?
    - Zak 4y ago
      The analogy is pretty weak here. People commit crimes inside businesses all the time, and under most circumstances the owner of a business is not liable for damages resulting from a third-party committing a crime on their property. People also use various communication tools to advocate and plan crimes, and the operators of those tools are almost never liable. What's different here is that Facebook makes decisions about what content to show to people. It uses an algorithm to do so, and it is aware that the algorithm has a tendency to promote violent content. While I'm broadly for platform immunity, that seems like a good situation to add an exception.
      - phendrenad2 4y ago
        I don't think it's been proven that "muh algorithm" did anything of the sort.
  - last_responder 4y ago
    - dang 4y ago
      Hey, please don't break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. I understand that some important issues involve strong feelings, but we can't have discussion degenerating to this level. You've unfortunately been breaking the guidelines in other places to, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945042. We have to ban accounts that keep doing that, so please don't! If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- metamann 4y ago
  Well, the key here would be “raised with them.” How that was handled. Had they seen human review and wrongly rejected? Was it thrown up the chain and a VP said “fuck then skinnies!”? Was it just lost in a message queue? All in all, this reminds me a bit of the old joke “The mail man is my drug dealer, and he doesn’t even know it.” Well, if I mail a letter to the Post Master telling him my neighbor buys fentanyl via the post and he doesn’t read it in time, I can’t blame him for not getting to it… barring dereliction. So, no, blanket hating FB here is just smooth-brain outrage culture.
- toofy 4y ago
  > If that content is ok, what content is not ok? sharing the flight plan of an airplane, apparently. the reality is, these people truly do understand how posts impact real world safety. they fully understand and are outraged if the posts are directed in anyway towards their group—they just don’t care, or maybe worse.
Nextgrid 4y ago
If they use an algorithm to promote posts to increase their bottom-line instead of some neutral and transparent way (such as reverse-chronological feed of what people explicitly followed) they effectively act as an editor and should lose whatever Section 230-equivalent protection they are currently using. Facebook (and other "growth & engagement" platforms) currently want to have their cake and eat it too. They act as an editor, selectively promoting certain content that increases engagement and thus their bottom-line while not taking any of the liability. Newspapers can do this too (and to a certain extent, do) but are under strict regulation which limits the damage (yes, tabloids are a thing, but none of them would publish outright calls to violence and promote illegal activities, something very commonplace on Facebook because outrageous content generates more engagement).
kderbyma 4y ago
Why should a company be free to manslaughter as they please? I feel like the directors should be brought to account for that region...imho

A civil suit for $2 billion which alleges that Facebook's algorithm promoted popular posts with lots of engagement more than it promoted unpopular posts is frivolous and deserves to be tossed.

lostlogin 4y ago

It resulted in death. That seems a key detail. Do you think that aspect matters? It was raised with them, they didn’t act and someone died. They have no responsibility for spreading death threats? If that content is ok, what content is not ok?

missedthecue 4y ago
The article expressly states that violent content is not allowed and was actively policed. Facebook moderators are not fully omniscient and omnipresent. That is not grounds for a $2 billion lawsuit. That fact that people died is sad, but ultimately immaterial to the arguments here considered.
- felipelemos 4y ago
  If they can't determine if a post is violent or not, then they shouldn't blindly promote it.
  - hulitu 4y ago
    They don't promote it blindly. They promote it knowingly.
  - mikem170 4y ago
    That's a good answer to this. They should be responsible for what the algorithm decides to inject into people's feeds, when they are acting as a publisher. If they don't have enough resources to review the outputs from their algorithm, then to bad, just show posts from friends only.
  - phendrenad2 4y ago
    There will always be false negatives. Is one false negative enough to drag them into court? So every website on earth will just have that one moment where they accidentally promote (or don't actively de-promote) something toxic, and they'll get to go to court over it. I wonder how much Twitter will have to charge now. $8/mo isn't going to cut it. More like $80,000/mo
- barbazoo 4y ago
  > Abrham Amare, a researcher and son of chemistry professor Meareg Amare, said that his father was targeted by a series of threatening posts because he was ethnically Tigrayan. He reported the posts, some of them shared over 50,000 times, to Facebook because they contained his father's address and called for his death. > Eight days after the elder Amare was murdered, Facebook finally removed the post, according to the researcher. Doesn't sound like they "actively policed" the content sufficiently.
  - metamann 4y ago
    Who determines sufficiency (well, a jury here…)? If an ethnic conflict occurs in a relatively obscure region are they going to spin up new moderators on the AWS spot market? These things aren’t perfect or fast.
    - cyberphobe 4y ago
      The discussion wasn't about perfection, it was about whether this was a "frivolous lawsuit", which it obviously is not. You probably knew this, metamann, brand new account which has only commented in this thread about how Facebook's inaction lead to death.
  - phendrenad2 4y ago
    > Doesn't sound like they "actively policed" the content sufficiently See that's the problem with omniscience, you kind of need it to police EVERYTHING. Something will always make it through.
- interactivecode 4y ago
  If they can't guarantee the safety of the people using their software. Facebook shouldn't be allowed to operate. The same is true for venues, sports, shops, workplaces, etc... why not software companies?
  - Zak 4y ago
    The analogy is pretty weak here. People commit crimes inside businesses all the time, and under most circumstances the owner of a business is not liable for damages resulting from a third-party committing a crime on their property. People also use various communication tools to advocate and plan crimes, and the operators of those tools are almost never liable. What's different here is that Facebook makes decisions about what content to show to people. It uses an algorithm to do so, and it is aware that the algorithm has a tendency to promote violent content. While I'm broadly for platform immunity, that seems like a good situation to add an exception.
    - phendrenad2 4y ago
      I don't think it's been proven that "muh algorithm" did anything of the sort.
- last_responder 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Hey, please don't break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. I understand that some important issues involve strong feelings, but we can't have discussion degenerating to this level. You've unfortunately been breaking the guidelines in other places to, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945042. We have to ban accounts that keep doing that, so please don't! If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
metamann 4y ago
Well, the key here would be “raised with them.” How that was handled. Had they seen human review and wrongly rejected? Was it thrown up the chain and a VP said “fuck then skinnies!”? Was it just lost in a message queue? All in all, this reminds me a bit of the old joke “The mail man is my drug dealer, and he doesn’t even know it.” Well, if I mail a letter to the Post Master telling him my neighbor buys fentanyl via the post and he doesn’t read it in time, I can’t blame him for not getting to it… barring dereliction. So, no, blanket hating FB here is just smooth-brain outrage culture.
toofy 4y ago
> If that content is ok, what content is not ok? sharing the flight plan of an airplane, apparently. the reality is, these people truly do understand how posts impact real world safety. they fully understand and are outraged if the posts are directed in anyway towards their group—they just don’t care, or maybe worse.

Nextgrid 4y ago

If they use an algorithm to promote posts to increase their bottom-line instead of some neutral and transparent way (such as reverse-chronological feed of what people explicitly followed) they effectively act as an editor and should lose whatever Section 230-equivalent protection they are currently using. Facebook (and other "growth & engagement" platforms) currently want to have their cake and eat it too. They act as an editor, selectively promoting certain content that increases engagement and thus their bottom-line while not taking any of the liability. Newspapers can do this too (and to a certain extent, do) but are under strict regulation which limits the damage (yes, tabloids are a thing, but none of them would publish outright calls to violence and promote illegal activities, something very commonplace on Facebook because outrageous content generates more engagement).

kderbyma 4y ago

Why should a company be free to manslaughter as they please? I feel like the directors should be brought to account for that region...imho