3 ms·

I don't see how spam or fraud brings value to advertisers (which is what I assume you're talking about?) or any one else for that matter (other than the spammer

I don't see how spam or fraud brings value to advertisers (which is what I assume you're talking about?) or any one else for that matter (other than the spammer/fraudster). Perhaps I can squint and see how an email platform like Gmail could be read as a protection racket, but I don't see it in other platforms.

pdonis 3y ago
> I don't see how spam or fraud brings value to advertisers It doesn't; that's not the point. The point is, as I said, that the big platforms make money by selling access to as large a pool of users as possible, and that requires them to not crack down on spammers and fraudsters--because at their scale, it is impossible for them to reliably distinguish the spammers and fraudsters from the rest of their users. So they can't crack down on spammers and fraudsters without also reducing the size of their user pool and thereby killing their business model. The article explicitly talks about this: Either you have to back off and only ban users in cases where you're extremely confident, or you ban all your users after not too long and, as companies like to handle support, appealing means that you'll get a response saying that "your case was carefully reviewed and we have determined that you've violated our policies. This is final", even for cases where any sort of cursory review would cause a reversal of the ban, like when you ban a user for impersonating themselves. And then at FB's scale, it's even worse and you'll ban all of your users even more quickly, so then you back off and we end up with things like 100k minors a day being exposed to "photos of adult genitalia or other sexually abusive content".
Nextgrid 3y ago
> I don't see how spam or fraud brings value to advertisers Spam and fraud still generates "engagement" (whether the bad content itself or the people getting outraged by it) which contributes to the numbers they use to attract & bill advertisers. The modus operandi of these platforms when it comes to moderation is to quickly take down whatever will get them in trouble fast with the law (DMCA takedowns, CSAM), or what will provide ammunition for attack pieces in the media (pornography, sometimes drug- or weapon-related content). But anything else is fair game to stay and earn "engagement" even in the face of user-submitted reports. In the unlikely event that this "anything else" does get reported on in some big media, then it'll be taken down and they'll issue an apology and how they will do better in the future, and everyone seems to buy it no matter how many times they've done this.

pdonis 3y ago

> I don't see how spam or fraud brings value to advertisers It doesn't; that's not the point. The point is, as I said, that the big platforms make money by selling access to as large a pool of users as possible, and that requires them to not crack down on spammers and fraudsters--because at their scale, it is impossible for them to reliably distinguish the spammers and fraudsters from the rest of their users. So they can't crack down on spammers and fraudsters without also reducing the size of their user pool and thereby killing their business model. The article explicitly talks about this: Either you have to back off and only ban users in cases where you're extremely confident, or you ban all your users after not too long and, as companies like to handle support, appealing means that you'll get a response saying that "your case was carefully reviewed and we have determined that you've violated our policies. This is final", even for cases where any sort of cursory review would cause a reversal of the ban, like when you ban a user for impersonating themselves. And then at FB's scale, it's even worse and you'll ban all of your users even more quickly, so then you back off and we end up with things like 100k minors a day being exposed to "photos of adult genitalia or other sexually abusive content".

Nextgrid 3y ago

> I don't see how spam or fraud brings value to advertisers Spam and fraud still generates "engagement" (whether the bad content itself or the people getting outraged by it) which contributes to the numbers they use to attract & bill advertisers. The modus operandi of these platforms when it comes to moderation is to quickly take down whatever will get them in trouble fast with the law (DMCA takedowns, CSAM), or what will provide ammunition for attack pieces in the media (pornography, sometimes drug- or weapon-related content). But anything else is fair game to stay and earn "engagement" even in the face of user-submitted reports. In the unlikely event that this "anything else" does get reported on in some big media, then it'll be taken down and they'll issue an apology and how they will do better in the future, and everyone seems to buy it no matter how many times they've done this.