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The article expressly states that violent content is not allowed and was actively policed. Facebook moderators are not fully omniscient and omnipresent. That is

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.

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.