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> Your link says the opposite of what you claim I don’t know where you got that from. Meta’s self-congratulatory takedown of “27 pedophile networks” is a drop

> Your link says the opposite of what you claim I don’t know where you got that from. Meta’s self-congratulatory takedown of “27 pedophile networks” is a drop in the ocean. Here’s a fairly typical example of them actively deciding to do nothing in response to a report. This mirrors my own experience. > Like other platforms, Instagram says it enlists its users to help detect accounts that are breaking rules. But those efforts haven’t always been effective. > Sometimes user reports of nudity involving a child went unanswered for months, according to a review of scores of reports filed over the last year by numerous child-safety advocates. > Earlier this year, an anti-pedophile activist discovered an Instagram account claiming to belong to a girl selling underage-sex content, including a post declaring, “This teen is ready for you pervs.” When the activist reported the account, Instagram responded with an automated message saying: “Because of the high volume of reports we receive, our team hasn’t been able to review this post.” > After the same activist reported another post, this one of a scantily clad young girl with a graphically sexual caption, Instagram responded, “Our review team has found that [the account’s] post does not go against our Community Guidelines.” The response suggested that the user hide the account to avoid seeing its content.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
Your claim was that they "actively refuse" to do anything about it, but they clearly do actually take measures. As mentioned, the issue is that they get zillions of reports and vast numbers of them are organized scammers trying to get them to take down legitimate content. Then you report something real and it gets lost in an sea of fake reports. What are they supposed to do about that? It takes far fewer resources to file a fake report than investigate one and nobody can drink the entire ocean.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  Active refusal can (and commonly does) take the form of intentionally being unable to respond or merely putting on such an appearance. One of the curious things about Twitter pre-aquisition was that underage content somewhat frequently stayed up for months while discriminatory remarks were generally taken down rapidly. Post acquisition such content seemed to disappear approximately overnight. If the system is pathologically unable to deal with false reports to the extent that moderation has effectively ground to a standstill perhaps the regulator ought to get involved at that point and force the company to either change its ways or go out of business trying?
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > One of the curious things about Twitter pre-aquisition was that underage content somewhat frequently stayed up for months while discriminatory remarks were generally taken down rapidly. Post acquisition such content seemed to disappear approximately overnight. This isn't evidence that they have a system for taking down content without a huge number of false positives. It's evidence that the previous administrators of Twitter were willing to suffer a huge number of false positives around accusations of racism and the current administrators are willing to suffer them around accusations of underaged content.
    - fc417fc802 1y ago
      I agree that on its own it isn't evidence of the ability to respond without excessive false positives. But similarly, it isn't evidence of an inability to do so either. In the context of Australia objecting to lack of moderation I'm not sure it matters. It seems reasonable for a government to set minimum standards which companies that wish to operate within their territory must abide by. If as you claim (and I doubt) the current way of doing things is uneconomical under those requirements then perhaps it would be reasonable for those products to be excluded from the Australian market. Or perhaps they would instead choose to charge users for the service? Either outcome would make room for fairly priced local alternatives to gain traction. This seems like a case of free trade enabling an inferior American product to be subsidized by the vendor thereby undercutting any potential for a local industry. The underlying issue feels roughly analogous to GDPR except that this time the legislation is terrible and will almost certainly make society worse off in various ways if it passes.
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        > I agree that on its own it isn't evidence of the ability to respond without excessive false positives. But similarly, it isn't evidence of an inability to do so either. It is in combination with the high rate of false positives, unless you think the false positives were intentional. > If as you claim (and I doubt) the current way of doing things is uneconomical under those requirements then perhaps it would be reasonable for those products to be excluded from the Australian market. If they actually required both removal of all offending content and a low false positive rate (e.g. by allowing customers to sue them for damages for removals of lawful content) then the services would exit the market because nobody could do that. What they'll typically do instead is accept the high false positive rate rather than leave the market, and then the service remains but becomes plagued by innocent users being victimized by capricious and overly aggressive moderation tactics. But local alternatives couldn't do any better under the same constraints, so you're still stuck with a trash fire.
- riffraff 1y ago
  But this goes back to the original argument: maybe if you can't avoid causing harm then you shouldn't be allowed to operate? E.g. if you produce eggs and you can't avoid salmonella at some point your operation should be shut down. Facebook and its ilk have massive profits, they can afford more moderators.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > But this goes back to the original argument: maybe if you can't avoid causing harm then you shouldn't be allowed to operate? By this principle the government can't operate the criminal justice system anymore because it has too many false positives and uncaptured negative externalities and then you don't have anything to use to tell Facebook to censor things. > Facebook and its ilk have massive profits, they can afford more moderators. They have large absolute profits because of the large number of users but the profit per user is in the neighborhood of $1/month. How much human moderation do you think you can get for that?
    - fc417fc802 1y ago
      > By this principle the government can't operate the criminal justice system Obviously we make case by case decisions regarding such things. There are plenty of ways in which governments could act that populations in the west generally deem unacceptable. Private prisons in the US, for example, are quite controversial at present. It's worth noting that if the regulator actually enforces requirements then they become merely a cost of doing business that all participants are subject to. Such a development in this case could well mean that all the large social platforms operating within the Australian market start charging users in that region on the order of $30 per year to maintain an account.
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        > Obviously we make case by case decisions regarding such things. You can make case by case decisions regarding individual aspects of the system, but no modern criminal justice system exists that has never put an innocent person behind bars, much less on trial. Fiddling with the details can get you better or worse but it can't get you something that satisfies the principle that you can't operate if you can't operate without ever doing any harm to anyone. Which implies that principle is unreasonable and isn't of any use in other contexts either. > It's worth noting that if the regulator actually enforces requirements then they become merely a cost of doing business that all participants are subject to. Such a development in this case could well mean that all the large social platforms operating within the Australian market start charging users in that region on the order of $30 per year to maintain an account. The premise there is that you could solve the problem for $30 per person annually, i.e. $2.50/month. I'm left asking the question again, how much human moderation do you expect to get for that? Meanwhile, that's $30 per service. That's going to increase the network effect of any existing service because each additional recurring fee or requirement to submit payment data is a deterrent to using another one. And maybe the required fee would be more than that. Are you sure you want to entrench the incumbents as a permanent oligarchy?
- coryrc 1y ago
  > What are they supposed to do about that? Do like banks: Know Your Customer. If someone performs a crime using your assets, you are required to supply evidence to the police. You then ban the person from using your assets. If someone makes false claims, ban that person from making reports. Now your rate of false positives is low enough to handle.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    This is the post people should point to when someone says "slippery slope is a fallacy" in order to prove them wrong, both for the age verification requirements and for making banks do KYC. But also, your proposal would deter people from reporting crimes because they're not only hesitant to give randos or mass surveillance corporations their social security numbers, they may fear retaliation from the criminals if it leaks. And the same thing happens for people posting content -- identity verification is a deterrent to posting -- which is even worse than a false positive because it's invisible and you don't have the capacity to discover or address it.
- bigfatkitten 1y ago
  > but they clearly do actually take measures. Some times, but clearly not often enough. Does a refusal get more active than a message that says “Our review team has found that [the account’s] post does not go against our Community Guidelines”? > Then you report something real and it gets lost in an sea of fake reports. It didn’t get ‘lost’ — they (or their contract content moderators at Concentrix in the Phillipines) sat on it, and then sent a message that said they had decided to not do anything about it. > What are they supposed to do about that? They’ve either looked at the content and decided to do nothing about it, or they’ve lied when they said that they had, and that it didn’t breach policy. Which do you suppose it was?
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > Does a refusal get more active than a message that says “Our review team has found that [the account’s] post does not go against our Community Guidelines”? That's assuming their "review team" actually reviewed it before sending that message and purposely chose to allow it to stay up knowing that it was a false negative. But that seems pretty unlikely compared to the alternative where the reviewers were overwhelmed and making determinations without doing a real review, or doing one so cursory the error was done blind. > They’ve either looked at the content and decided to do nothing about it, or they’ve lied when they said that they had, and that it didn’t breach policy. Which do you suppose it was? Almost certainly the second one. What would even be their motive to do the first one? Pedos are a blight that can't possibly be generating enough ad revenue through normal usage to make up for all the trouble they are, even under the assumption that the company has no moral compass whatsoever.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

Your claim was that they "actively refuse" to do anything about it, but they clearly do actually take measures. As mentioned, the issue is that they get zillions of reports and vast numbers of them are organized scammers trying to get them to take down legitimate content. Then you report something real and it gets lost in an sea of fake reports. What are they supposed to do about that? It takes far fewer resources to file a fake report than investigate one and nobody can drink the entire ocean.

fc417fc802 1y ago
Active refusal can (and commonly does) take the form of intentionally being unable to respond or merely putting on such an appearance. One of the curious things about Twitter pre-aquisition was that underage content somewhat frequently stayed up for months while discriminatory remarks were generally taken down rapidly. Post acquisition such content seemed to disappear approximately overnight. If the system is pathologically unable to deal with false reports to the extent that moderation has effectively ground to a standstill perhaps the regulator ought to get involved at that point and force the company to either change its ways or go out of business trying?
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > One of the curious things about Twitter pre-aquisition was that underage content somewhat frequently stayed up for months while discriminatory remarks were generally taken down rapidly. Post acquisition such content seemed to disappear approximately overnight. This isn't evidence that they have a system for taking down content without a huge number of false positives. It's evidence that the previous administrators of Twitter were willing to suffer a huge number of false positives around accusations of racism and the current administrators are willing to suffer them around accusations of underaged content.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    I agree that on its own it isn't evidence of the ability to respond without excessive false positives. But similarly, it isn't evidence of an inability to do so either. In the context of Australia objecting to lack of moderation I'm not sure it matters. It seems reasonable for a government to set minimum standards which companies that wish to operate within their territory must abide by. If as you claim (and I doubt) the current way of doing things is uneconomical under those requirements then perhaps it would be reasonable for those products to be excluded from the Australian market. Or perhaps they would instead choose to charge users for the service? Either outcome would make room for fairly priced local alternatives to gain traction. This seems like a case of free trade enabling an inferior American product to be subsidized by the vendor thereby undercutting any potential for a local industry. The underlying issue feels roughly analogous to GDPR except that this time the legislation is terrible and will almost certainly make society worse off in various ways if it passes.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      > I agree that on its own it isn't evidence of the ability to respond without excessive false positives. But similarly, it isn't evidence of an inability to do so either. It is in combination with the high rate of false positives, unless you think the false positives were intentional. > If as you claim (and I doubt) the current way of doing things is uneconomical under those requirements then perhaps it would be reasonable for those products to be excluded from the Australian market. If they actually required both removal of all offending content and a low false positive rate (e.g. by allowing customers to sue them for damages for removals of lawful content) then the services would exit the market because nobody could do that. What they'll typically do instead is accept the high false positive rate rather than leave the market, and then the service remains but becomes plagued by innocent users being victimized by capricious and overly aggressive moderation tactics. But local alternatives couldn't do any better under the same constraints, so you're still stuck with a trash fire.
riffraff 1y ago
But this goes back to the original argument: maybe if you can't avoid causing harm then you shouldn't be allowed to operate? E.g. if you produce eggs and you can't avoid salmonella at some point your operation should be shut down. Facebook and its ilk have massive profits, they can afford more moderators.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > But this goes back to the original argument: maybe if you can't avoid causing harm then you shouldn't be allowed to operate? By this principle the government can't operate the criminal justice system anymore because it has too many false positives and uncaptured negative externalities and then you don't have anything to use to tell Facebook to censor things. > Facebook and its ilk have massive profits, they can afford more moderators. They have large absolute profits because of the large number of users but the profit per user is in the neighborhood of $1/month. How much human moderation do you think you can get for that?
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    > By this principle the government can't operate the criminal justice system Obviously we make case by case decisions regarding such things. There are plenty of ways in which governments could act that populations in the west generally deem unacceptable. Private prisons in the US, for example, are quite controversial at present. It's worth noting that if the regulator actually enforces requirements then they become merely a cost of doing business that all participants are subject to. Such a development in this case could well mean that all the large social platforms operating within the Australian market start charging users in that region on the order of $30 per year to maintain an account.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      > Obviously we make case by case decisions regarding such things. You can make case by case decisions regarding individual aspects of the system, but no modern criminal justice system exists that has never put an innocent person behind bars, much less on trial. Fiddling with the details can get you better or worse but it can't get you something that satisfies the principle that you can't operate if you can't operate without ever doing any harm to anyone. Which implies that principle is unreasonable and isn't of any use in other contexts either. > It's worth noting that if the regulator actually enforces requirements then they become merely a cost of doing business that all participants are subject to. Such a development in this case could well mean that all the large social platforms operating within the Australian market start charging users in that region on the order of $30 per year to maintain an account. The premise there is that you could solve the problem for $30 per person annually, i.e. $2.50/month. I'm left asking the question again, how much human moderation do you expect to get for that? Meanwhile, that's $30 per service. That's going to increase the network effect of any existing service because each additional recurring fee or requirement to submit payment data is a deterrent to using another one. And maybe the required fee would be more than that. Are you sure you want to entrench the incumbents as a permanent oligarchy?
coryrc 1y ago
> What are they supposed to do about that? Do like banks: Know Your Customer. If someone performs a crime using your assets, you are required to supply evidence to the police. You then ban the person from using your assets. If someone makes false claims, ban that person from making reports. Now your rate of false positives is low enough to handle.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  This is the post people should point to when someone says "slippery slope is a fallacy" in order to prove them wrong, both for the age verification requirements and for making banks do KYC. But also, your proposal would deter people from reporting crimes because they're not only hesitant to give randos or mass surveillance corporations their social security numbers, they may fear retaliation from the criminals if it leaks. And the same thing happens for people posting content -- identity verification is a deterrent to posting -- which is even worse than a false positive because it's invisible and you don't have the capacity to discover or address it.
bigfatkitten 1y ago
> but they clearly do actually take measures. Some times, but clearly not often enough. Does a refusal get more active than a message that says “Our review team has found that [the account’s] post does not go against our Community Guidelines”? > Then you report something real and it gets lost in an sea of fake reports. It didn’t get ‘lost’ — they (or their contract content moderators at Concentrix in the Phillipines) sat on it, and then sent a message that said they had decided to not do anything about it. > What are they supposed to do about that? They’ve either looked at the content and decided to do nothing about it, or they’ve lied when they said that they had, and that it didn’t breach policy. Which do you suppose it was?
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > Does a refusal get more active than a message that says “Our review team has found that [the account’s] post does not go against our Community Guidelines”? That's assuming their "review team" actually reviewed it before sending that message and purposely chose to allow it to stay up knowing that it was a false negative. But that seems pretty unlikely compared to the alternative where the reviewers were overwhelmed and making determinations without doing a real review, or doing one so cursory the error was done blind. > They’ve either looked at the content and decided to do nothing about it, or they’ve lied when they said that they had, and that it didn’t breach policy. Which do you suppose it was? Almost certainly the second one. What would even be their motive to do the first one? Pedos are a blight that can't possibly be generating enough ad revenue through normal usage to make up for all the trouble they are, even under the assumption that the company has no moral compass whatsoever.