[HNthrow22]

> Facebook has no clue what kind of stuff gets posted on their platform, and their AI isn't powerful enough to detect it. The idea that Facebook is causing/enabling such behaviors is ridiculous.

I contend as a society we should hold these massive tech orgs (who have more power than most governments) to the standard of moderating the content that's posted to their platforms. They have the money and profits to hire human moderators, the 'dumb pipe' defense doesn't fly for me anymore.

Twitter/Reddit should face harsh penalties for failing to moderate and remove content that encourages and indoctrinates extremists. I'm not talking about anything that's borderline, I'm talking about pure unfiltered hate speech that directly encourages violence.

The question then becomes who decides what's acceptable content, the only answer is regulations and legislation for this otherwise for-profit tech giants will be the ones who decide and they're more concerned with user-engagement than far reaching detached societal implications.

[o10449366]

Why are you implying that Facebook isn't actively moderating their platforms or that governments would be able to do a better job? Facebook has hired thousands of human moderators in the past few years, significantly more than Google and Twitter. They've also invested significantly in improving their AI detection systems. That doesn't mean there isn't work to do still, but you're insinuating that they aren't actively moderating their platforms and that simply isn't true. Furthermore, the idea that harsh penalties and regulations are going to prevent psychopaths from broadcasting their killing spree is ridiculous. Facebook doesn't need an incentive to prevent mass shootings from being broadcast on its platform, and punishing them with monetary fines or regulations would only hurt their ability to do so.

[llukas]

> Furthermore, the idea that harsh penalties and regulations are going to prevent psychopaths from broadcasting their killing spree is ridiculous

Nobody is broadcasting in TV or newspapers - they are actually liable for content that gets published on those platforms.

Maybe we finally remove exception for internet?

[o10449366]

Haha, psychopaths don't have to publish in TV or newspapers because they do it for them. Go back a decade or two before Facebook was a big deal and you'd see CNN, NYTimes, NBC, etc. all feverishly covering Columbine, spending weeks profiling the shooters and every detail of their lives, broadcasting bar graphs and rankings of mass murders like it's a video game scoreboard and openly publishing their manifestos and names for all to read and be influenced by. This is despite the well-studied phenomenon of media coverage inspiring copycat killers and terrorists and yet none of these publishing companies are held liable for their part in encouraging and incentivizing these horrible events.

All of this still happens today. Just two weeks ago I read an article in the NYTimes reporting on how NZ's prime minister asked people not to use or spread the shooter's name. In the same article NYTimes revealed it multiple times. The only frames from the video I've seen are the ones the Washington Post used--The shooters face blown up as the huge cover photo for the story. It just happens that now the internet is the biggest publication platform instead of television or print, so it naturally attracts psychopaths that are seeking the greatest impact.

The reality is that none of these publishing platforms are held liable and the media and HN don't want the internet to be held liable, either--they want FB to be held liable because they don't like FB. No one here is screaming for YouTube's heads after they failed to prevent millions of copies of the videos from being uploaded in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

[HNthrow22]

There's a huge difference between covering terrible events as a news story and providing the platform for content engineered to divide and radicalize to proliferate to millions. Also yes YouTube should be liable, not for the video of the NZ shooting being re-uploaded, but for the thousands of hours of hateful violent propaganda they allow to spread on their platform even facilitating it by suggesting it to users with their algorithm.

Drawing parallels between mediums like TV/Film is problematic because there's never been anything like the internet in human history, that being said a TV example of the kind of content that shouldn't be legal: 30 minute produced broadcast dedicated to sharing fake crime stats about Muslims and encouraging viewers to organize violent attacks on their local mosques - this is what goes on the internet. Users from 8chan were (and still are) encouraging and validating the NZ shooter. We have specific incidents and shooters we can point to now. Elliot Rodgers (Santa Barbara shooter) was an active redditor and incel and had his extreme beliefs were both validated and enforced by that community before he took action, ending innocent lives. One could make a case that without the wide ranging communal support these psychotic individuals wouldn't have been emboldened to act on their hateful beliefs. Nothing even close to this is broadcast to a wide audience anywhere but the internet and it shouldn't be permitted on the internet either.

Relevant comment from HN in 2017: taurath on July 19, 2017 [-]

If 20 people were to stand up on a soapbox with a megaphone in times square screaming about /r/redpill, /r/fatpeoplehate, etc concepts they would be removed if legal, and if not legal a huge countermovement would appear to try to force them out. On Reddit you get both the megaphone and the safe space, but are still just as easily accessible to the public as anywhere.

Its "real" freedom of information, without many of the mechanisms that larger society uses to fight back against it. Instead it is just ignored and left to fester and grow until it pops into the public forum at the point where huge efforts are required to fight it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14806974

[pjc50]

> 20 people were to stand up on a soapbox with a megaphone in times square screaming about /r/redpill, /r/fatpeoplehate, etc concepts they would be removed if legal, and if not legal a huge countermovement would appear to try to force them out

I think you badly underestimate the apathy towards this stuff. Perhaps a better comparison would be the anti-abortion protestors, who can be pretty extreme.

> 30 minute produced broadcast dedicated to sharing fake crime stats about Muslims

This is absolutely routine in the regular media.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-the-british-media-i... / https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/27/islamo...

The Times is today running a series of highly misleading selectively quoted articles about gender identity services, presumably with the intent of causing violence against and suicide among trans people.

[ryanlol]

>If 20 people were to stand up on a soapbox with a megaphone in times square screaming about /r/redpill, /r/fatpeoplehate, etc concepts they would be removed if legal, and if not legal a huge countermovement would appear to try to force them out. On Reddit you get both the megaphone and the safe space, but are still just as easily accessible to the public as anywhere.

I wouldn't be so sure. People would probably just disregard the crazy screaming r/redpill or r/fatpeoplehate preachers, just like they disregard the Black Hebrew Israelites.

It's not terribly unusual to see people preaching about crazy hateful shit on the street, it is unusual for anyone to actually care though.

[cotelletta]

It amazes me that RedPill gets such hate. It's just Cosmo for men: mediocre life and dating advice, with a nugget of truth. Here are the current top posts.

- "Sexual Selection and Existential Fear": about disregarding the notion that men always want sex and women do the choosing. In other words, self respect.

- "How to Structure Your Day to Maximize Productivity." This could be plucked from a magazine.

- "Practice what you learn." Pretty much what it says, basic life advice about persistence.

- "Day game works--get out there and approach" If you want to date women, approach them and make conversation. Duh.

- "Be thoroughly logical about what you want from women and what you're prepared to pay for it" Again, have some self respect and don't roll over.

This is apparently so threatening that it must be quarantined. How fragile must women be that giving men some basic sanity checking, and telling them not to worship every vagina on sight, is a threat to society and must be hysterically misrepresented and demonized at every turn.

The sad part is, red pill is probably the first time in these guys' lives that someone has given these dudes a script that can actually succeed. It's not great, it misses a lot of nuance, but it's a start. What do you want instead, incels who resent the world and think they are literally incapable of being loved, so they shouldn't try?

Actually yes, that's exactly what people seem to want. For the undesirables to go away, and for sociable people to continue to enjoy the privilege of being sufficiently attractive and sufficiently high class that useless feel good advice like "just be yourself!" is all anyone will ever need. And then calling that empathy.

[HNthrow22]

To clarify you're responding to a comment I've quoted from another user-

The issue becomes with the internet being able to silence all dissent and create re-enforcing echo chmabers. The forces at play are not stupid and they target disenfranchised, lonely, young males full of angst.

Imagine a packed hall with hundreds of people loudly cheering for someone calling for genocide of X group, this is what these hate clusters look like and if we saw it in the real world no one would say "This is an acceptable cost of free speech"

There exists speech that has no redeeming qualities and serves only to incite violence and hate. To argue as many commented here have that outlawing this would lead down a slippery slope of authoritarian government censorship is simply ridiculous. We've outlawed child pornography and that hasn't led us down any slippery slopes.

[rndgermandude]

The internet isn't exempted. You're just looking at the wrong party for liability. The people who actually put up those live streams are liable, and abusing facebook's service.

Same as TV and newspapers; you don't sue Comcast or the guy who installed your satellite dish, you sue the TV station; You don't sue the paper boy, you sue the news paper.

[jocoda]

>The people who actually put up those live streams are liable

Yet we insist on allowing anonymity on the net.

Either you know exactly who is doing what and can then make them liable for any consequences that follow from their actions OR you allow anonymity and live with the consequences of that decision as dark as these may be.

[mcv]

One of the primary reasons anonymity is important, is to enable critics of oppressive regimes to voice their opinion.

However, enabling complete anonymity everywhere might not be necessary for that; if you can get someone else, in a different country, to take responsibility for it, that might work too. That's similar to how journalists keep their sources secret, or how wikileaks works.

Stuff that's important will still get published as long as you can get someone else to recognise its importance. But who's going to take responsibility to publish your child porn or snuff movie in their own name?

[NeedMoreTea]

Facebook, Youtube or whichever platform is the broadcaster in this instance.

If they're not, why do we sue the TV station rather than the production company of the programme? CBS can yell "don't look at us, we didn't make Game of Thrones".

It's their exception that is looking increasingly absurd.

[onion2k]

We don't sue the company who owns the radio tower if it's terrestrial TV, or the hosting company if it's on-demand, or the bandwidth provider if it's cable. The important bit is who makes the decision to broadcast something; in the case of a TV show it's CBS, and in the case of a live stream on Facebook that's the user.

I think a potential solution would be to delay livestreams by 20 minutes for anyone who isn't doesn't have a direct and established connection (eg following for more than 24 hours) to the broadcaster to give platforms time to censor the worst stuff. Obviously this would make platforms responsible for effective and fast moderation though...

[bloak]

"in the case of a live stream on Facebook that's the user"

You need to argue that rather than just state it. I can see arguments for and against the proposition, but the facts that Facebook attaches advertising, sometimes removes content, carefully tunes their platform to maximise "engagement", and the user has no direct relationship with the receivers of the live stream, do rather suggest that Facebook is the publisher and the role of the user is more like that of someone who writes a letter to the editor that gets published in a newspaper - except, of course, that Facebook is publishing nearly everything, but I don't see that that's a fundamental difference.

[afureta]

Isn't this letting Facebook and Comcast have their cake and eat it, too? Giving them full authority to censor whatever they want, but still not holding them liable for what they host?

[llukas]

Not true: https://www.fastcompany.com/90273352/maybe-its-time-to-take-...

(c) (1) No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

[tannhaeuser]

Nope. FB gets billions for ads. They can't just shrug and say "we're just providing the platform".

[rndgermandude]

I am not shrugging. I am saying, with conviction: They are just providing the platform.

[miluge]

TV is usually not user generated content though...

[ben_w]

And when it is, the TV programs (where I grew up) need a delay in the loop so they can beep-out rude words if it’s before 21:00. Even mere expletives, let alone directed personal threats of violence, get censored on TV and radio.

[acdc4life]

None of these tech companies have the ability to do that. What you are suggesting would mean the death of every social media company.

[NeedMoreTea]

If you don't have the ability to control your premises, or employ enough security, perhaps you should not be permitted to operate those premises. Unsafe clubs get closed down.

They - or any other social media company - don't have a right to exist. If societies around the world conclude they do more harm than good as they currently operate, it's perfectly reasonable to require them to moderate adequately. If they cannot they can close, or withdraw from that region, and someone else may wish to try. Facebook could employ thousands more to moderate and supervise - without destroying their ability to make profit. Pretending the problems don't exist, as all the platforms have done so far, looks like it's not going to be tenable for much longer.

Not only am I fine with that, I think it long overdue.

[WillPostForFood]

If you don't have the ability to control your premises, or employ enough security, perhaps you should not be permitted to operate those premises.

So we should shut down the mosques in New Zealand because they didn't control their premises and keep the shooter out? Should we shut down banks because they didn't have enough security to keep a bank robber out? You are shifting the blame away from the perpetrator. Every crime ever could be blamed on the victim for lack of security.

[ethbro]

Those other businesses aren't running 40% profit margins.

It's a fair question to ask, "If a company is that profitable and having toxic effects, then why shouldn't it pay some of the cost of addressing its toxic effects?"

The tendency on HN is to say exploitive governments want to tax technology startups.

But we're not talking about technology startups. We're talking about the new old-old ATT.

[zimpenfish]

> "If a company is that profitable and having toxic effects, then why shouldn't it pay some of the cost of addressing its toxic effects?"

cf oil or chemical companies polluting via spills, etc.

[DSingularity]

I would argue that unlike your examples — the bank that got robbed; the mosque that got shot up — Facebook perpetrated and facilitated the crime.

A better question would be, should a bank be held liable after being robbed if it failed its duties by designing cheap systems to save money — yes. Should a mosque/church be held liable if they received a threat and they ignored causing large loss of life — yes.

Facebook is culpable. They know the kind of garbage that floats in their platform. They continue to develop their platform and they continue to improve their ad systems. Why won’t they dedicate as much engineering effort to gain an advantage on racism/hate speech/fascism? I’ll tell you why.

Because Zuckerberg simply does not care. He owns the platform that dominates information flows and public discourse. Why would he undermine that?

[NeedMoreTea]

Let's take it to the absurd. I am NOT shifting any blame from the perpetrator.

I am placing additional blame on a medium that isn't willing to exercise adequate restraint or control.

A bank undoubtedly has security measures in place to prevent robbery, if they don't bother, they won't last long. Nonetheless, there are regulations on what may and may not be done for public spaces, how crowded they may be to pass fire regulation and so forth. Neither a mosque nor bank should be closed for a circumstance that could not reasonably have been predicted.

[o10449366]

> Neither a mosque nor bank should be closed for a circumstance that could not reasonably have been predicted.

How is this any different from Facebook? A bank has security measures in place to prevent robbery, but a robbery could still take place in one and is more likely to occur in one because it's a high value target. Facebook has human and AI moderation in place that automatically processes anything you upload. Users are also able to report content. However, just like sometimes banks are robbed, sometimes objectionable content slips through their filters. By your own logic Facebook shouldn't be closed down because mass shootings cannot be reasonably predicted. The basis for your argument is fundamentally flawed and if you extrapolate it to your own examples you'll quickly see how ridiculous and illogical it is.

[ben_w]

> How is this any different from Facebook?

Primarily because we’ve been telling them they need to do a better job about this for years, so “could not reasonably have been predicted“ absolutely does not apply. They have literally been condemned by a United Nations investigator for what happened in Myanmar [1]. Multiple government have been unhappy with their attitude problem [2]. In this report, one of the problems is they “continue to host and publish the mosque attack video”, which they absolutely don’t have any excuse for not being aware of, not any more.

If this is the best that the state of the art can manage, then the state of the art is not good enough for Facebook to continue to exist. If Facebook were a human, it would have been fired for gross negligence.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/13/myanmar-u...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/31/uk-and-ca...

[NeedMoreTea]

It isn't - if they were not providing a broadcast platform. The local bank branch broadcasts nada, if they do somehow broadcast your financial info they can be prosecuted for failing their duty of care, and you'll be eligible for compensation even without prosecution.

Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit have size and reach enough that turning a blind eye is no longer credible. We've seen countless issues crop up with regard to elections, election advertising, hate speech, and in this case broadcasting a slaughter. All of which serve to demonstrate they are unwilling to self-regulate taking them into territory where it's clear current regulation is not adequate.

Calling for adequate regulation to require moderation and oversight, and to require a duty of care to their users, viewers and listeners is not calling for them to be closed down. That comes if they prove unwilling to obey said regulation, as does any of the other measures brought to bear against habitual law breakers - fines, asset seizure, blocking etc. Regulation that will vary between different countries as they will choose differing limits.

[gsich]

Sometimes? I think the repeated uploads from the Christchurch video showed that their AI is not working.

[thoughtfunction]

We can apply the same argument to governments with their lack of censorship of bad words as people walk the streets. We don't because it's ridiculous on it's face, and we don't want a blatant surveillance society such as that.

[raxxorrax]

adequate restraint or control is a subjective impression most users probably do not agree with.

[o10449366]

Well as much as HN or the news media would like you to believe, societies around the world have definitely not concluded that FB does more harm than good and I don't see that changing anytime soon. You may think the club is unsafe, but a billion people are still attending all night and they feel perfectly comfortable.

[NeedMoreTea]

Attendance proves nothing at all. We've no idea if they are comfortable or not. Many appear to have come to think of it as a necessary evil.

Millions of people were eating adulterated food every meal prior to food regulations. Political process and advertising was rife with corruption prior to attempts to instil a semblance of fairness limiting what was allowed and when. Yet people attempted to vote before this.

[o10449366]

You're claiming simultaneously that we have no idea whether these users are comfortable or not and that most of them think of it as a necessary evil.

Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media. You can't make a comparison between social media and food because one is necessary for survival and one isn't (I'm sure I'm going to invite a ton of comments here on how 'Facebook has become so ubiquitous and powerful it's now synonymous with survival!') If the negatives really outweighed the positives people would be leaving Facebook by the droves. It's only on HN and in the news media that this narrative is being spun.

[Barrin92]

>Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media.

Yes, it proves that network effects can force people into bad equilibra. If you think high university costs are harmful for society in the long run, but if you personally don't attend you will incur significant cost in the short run, with nobody cooperating, how do you behave?

[zimpenfish]

> Attendance absolutely proves something when it comes to social media.

Not really - I would love to be able to delete my account from Facebook but it's the only place some people that I want to keep in touch with will use.

(I did the next best thing - deleted the apps and only check the website infrequently.)

[pjc50]

It doesn't actually matter whether people are "comfortable" on Facebook or not, it matters whether they're being incited to murder people. Facebook has an effect outside its users. The Bhopal of racism.

[NeedMoreTea]

OK, definitely can't take you seriously now.

I am claiming your statement "and they feel perfectly comfortable" is unknown. Further that it is highly unlikely.

Many is not most - it probably is most of my friends and relatives, but they are representative of nothing at all. Yet there is now a certain discomfort in almost all discussions of Facebook - no matter where that takes place - that simply was not there 5 or so years ago.

[kylecazar]

Exactly. Generally speaking, the onus is on the userbase to react to perceived (or real) immorality by refraining from using Facebook.

However, it remains the office of government to introduce enforceable regulation in this (or any) space to protect their constituents, and hold those in violation accountable. I don't suspect it's an easy task, as the problems are broad and can be a grey area. I.e, some of the problems with Facebook stem from mischievous users -- exactly how accountable the platform is for their behavior isn't universally agreed upon.

I think if rules of engagement happen, people will have less problems with just letting the market decide.

[dylan604]

What's the internet version of the fire marshall? If the people that feel the club is unsafe, a simple call to the authorities will have the marshall come out and declare it unsafe and shut it down. Can we get Fire Marshall Bill to do it?

[pjc50]

The presence of a lot of people doesn't tell you whether it's safe, only how many people are at risk if a fire does start. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire

[smallgovt]

>> Facebook could employ thousands more to moderate and supervise - without destroying their ability to make profit

You're underestimating the scale of this problem.

Facebook users create billions of new posts a day. And, tens of millions of these posts get reported for moderation per day.

"Thousands of more" employees isn't going to solve the problem. Assuming each posts takes 10 minutes of labor to review, you would need an army of 200K individuals, and this amount of labor would cost many billions of dollars per year.

>> Pretending the problems don't exist, as all the platforms have done so far

You must be joking. Facebook has already made massive investments into moderation. It's their top priority for 2019. In many ways, they are doing the opposite of pretending this problem doesn't exist.

>> They - or any other social media company - don't have a right to exist.

Nobody is arguing that FB has an inherent right to exist. The only point GP made was that (as made evident by your comment) many people are underestimating the associated costs with manual moderation of content.

[ben_w]

> "Thousands of more" employees isn't going to solve the problem. Assuming each posts takes 10 minutes of labor to review, you would need an army of 200K individuals, and this amount of labor would cost many billions of dollars per year.

Agreed. Let’s require them to do that.

[javagram]

Should all online platforms be required to do that? I can post here on HN right now and no moderator is pre-approving my content.

I could go find the shooter’s illegal manifesto and post it here, I might be banned after some period of time but just like on Facebook it would have had time for other people to see it.

Applied consistently this standard would kill most online forums and that type of thing.

[ben_w]

It’s a matter of scale. Even before they became larger than the largest single nation on Earth, Facebook used to get in the news for stories like “1000 people show up to birthday party after teen accidentally forgets privacy settings”. Hacker News can #ahem# slashdot servers it links to, so it’s not exactly small, but it’s still peanuts compared to Facebook.

Just as software engineering practices need to change for the big names compared to everyone else, so do social practices.

[xupybd]

So why not fault the ISPs for allowing this?

[Nextgrid]

If you host a hateful or illegal website and someone complains to your ISP they’ll cut you off immediately.

No reason Shitbook shouldn’t be held to the same standard.

[xupybd]

They do the same thing. They worked all night to prevent the video from propagating. What they are calling for here is preventing it from being published. So this would require your ISP to prevent the content before people complain.

[antpls]

> The question then becomes who decides what's acceptable content, the only answer is regulations and legislation for this otherwise for-profit tech giants will be the ones who decide and they're more concerned with user-engagement than far reaching detached societal implications.

What about this : all content is potential knowledge and should be made available. That way no one get to decide what is "acceptable content". At the end of the day, the laws still forbid anyone to kill people, content or not.

A good read is : https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2018...

[DCoder]

When RIAA/MPAA/etc. came with astronomical fines, those same companies suddenly created the capabilities to block things that even smelled like copyrighted material. Whatever your opinion of MAFIAA is, it would seem this sort of detection can be done when a large enough stick is presented.

[salgernon]

I think “social” is the key. If you are using a carrier to facilitate private conversations then I feel you should have a right to privacy. But a forum or online group is by its nature and intent a public platform and the provider should be responsible for policing that space.

[rodgerd]

Set your location to Germany when you use Twitter.

You'll almost never see far-right content any more.

I'm sorry you've internalized their bullshit, but that's what it is: bullshit. They can do it when it sells ads or stops someone senior going to jail.

[axaxs]

Then change the model. It wouldn't be terrible if it came with a cost.

[JumpCrisscross]

> None of these tech companies have the ability to do that

Yet they can attach an ad to it in a millisecond. They’re incentivised to do one and not the other. These bills are about rebalancing those incentives.

[gafferongames]

What's the downside?

[DSingularity]

Are you serious? You expect us to believe that Facebook and Youtube can’t afford to hire 50,000 content regulators each? 30,000 of them would probably be paid less than 5000$ a year.

[o10449366]

Facebook already employs tens of thousands of human moderators. What you're really proposing is that every piece of content that's uploaded to any internet website should be manually reviewed and approved by another human. You don't think that's a ridiculous and unrealistic proposition that could be turned into a weapon by bad actors (just like a livestream feature?)?

[DSingularity]

The face that you would reduce my proposal to a brain dead, dumbest possible solution shows you aren’t really interested discussion.

Don’t you think they would, for example, be able to prioritize content based on reputation/hidden metrics?

Don’t you think, for example, that a fair amount of videos categories can be auto filtered with extremely high accuracy?

Don’t you think, for example, that if they had enough content moderators they would have been able to stop the stream and to take down this video faster?

Do you really think I am proposing that they review every video in FIFO order? Or did you want to reduce my proposal to that so you can easily dismiss it.

[o10449366]

> Don’t you think they would, for example, be able to prioritize content based on reputation/hidden metrics?

What you're proposing is discrimination and isn't a solution.

> Don’t you think, for example, that a fair amount of videos categories can be auto filtered with extremely high accuracy?

No, not really, but please provide some examples. I'm assuming you mean content category, not literal tagged category, in which case you can't really distinguish between someone livestreaming in their car vs. the Christchurch shooter driving up to the mosque.

> Don’t you think, for example, that if they had enough content moderators they would have been able to stop the stream and to take down this video faster?

Sure, but they already have many thousands of moderators in addition to automated systems in place today. It's inevitable that unless every post is hand-reviewed by a human that some objectionable content will slip through.

I get that your point is that FB and the other big tech companies can certainly afford to be doing more than they currently are, but to the extent that we would almost certainly be in this exact same position even if they had hired your proposed 50,000 moderators there's not much substance to your proposal that I can even reduce.

[ynx]

> Don’t you think they would, for example, be able to prioritize content based on reputation/hidden metrics?

Like rank/derank the feed based on contextual clues? No way this wasn't the first thing done.

> Don’t you think, for example, that a fair amount of videos categories can be auto filtered with extremely high accuracy?

They've touted high accuracy in "using AI" for content moderation, like 95% or 99% or something. i.e. using machine learning to automatically tag content.

> Don’t you think, for example, that if they had enough content moderators they would have been able to stop the stream and to take down this video faster?

So your proposal boils down to "hire more people so more content can be filtered faster". GP perhaps didn't steelman your argument for you but if your proposal were to be applied the only real delta would be workforce size. It follows that your proposal in effect reduces to "hire more people".

[djpilot]

This is flat out not true. FB doesn't employ 10s of thousands of human moderators.

According to a 3-month old article, $FB supposedly employs 7,500 moderators [0], though it's unclear what constitutes "employment" in this case. Probably a salary of less than $5k/yr. Are there really thouhsands of content moderators pulling up to FBHQ in Menlo Park 5 days a week? I don't think so, no.

[0] https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/facebook-content-moder...

[o10449366]

"By the end of 2018, in response to criticism of the prevalence of violent and exploitative content on the social network, Facebook had more than 30,000 employees working on safety and security — about half of whom were content moderators." [0]

That number has only increased in recent months and will likely continue to increase in the near future. Not all of them are designated content moderators, it's true, so technically they likely only employ one or two "10s of thousands", but I'm mainly addressing the misconception in the thread that Facebook is "doing nothing." That's a significant amount of moderators. Is it enough? No, but to claim or pretend that they aren't actively doing anything is facetious and something I've been seeing more and more of on HN lately.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...

[DSingularity]

Great. Now we need more and we need to give those moderators teeth and tools.

[boomlinde]

If it is not viable to actively moderate all the content, there are two conflicting concerns here:

1. Online services should maintain an acceptable legal and moral standard of the content they serve. 2. Online services should be able to profitably facilitate the communication between millions and billions of users.

Which of these concerns seems more important to you, regardless of what you believe is an acceptable legal and moral standard?

[Nextgrid]

I actually think that’s perfectly realistic, and in fact how forums have worked for ages. There are also automated measures such as user trust levels where an account has to earn trust before they can do certain things like post links, embed pictures, etc. Being on the platform isn’t a right either and it would be perfectly fair for them to rate-limit the amount of public posts someone can make to an amount that’s manageable by their current moderation capacity.

Forums have managed to keep undesirable content at bay with often no budget at all, so anyone claiming Facebook can’t do the same is false. They don’t want to do it, because abusive content still brings them clicks and ad impressions (remember that for every nasty piece of content that turns into a PR disaster there are thousands that go unnoticed but still generate money for them).

[DuskStar]

> and in fact how forums have worked for ages.

What forums are those? Because this isn't the case with the forums I frequent. The boards I read / participate in tend to operate on the principle of "don't make me come over there", and everything is reactive, not proactive. I'm not sure how you'd get things like "user was banned for this post" etc otherwise...

[Nextgrid]

The boards I used to frequent (about computer hardware & video-games, though both had a very active "off-topic/chat" section) had pretty good moderation coverage. It was indeed reactive, however the moderators were active members of the community and as a side-effect they were bound to see every post within 24 hours, but usually much sooner. New users were also restricted in what they could do so the potential for damage was limited even if moderators weren't active.

I don't have a problem with moderation being delayed. I have a problem with there being no moderation or clueless moderation (I have reported hundreds of obviously fake accounts or pages promoting outright illegal activity, and the majority of those got ignored).

Of course, the scale was much smaller than Facebook, but my point is that maybe if you can't solve this problem then you shouldn't be in a position to broadcast & promote stuff to the entire world? The danger of Facebook (& other social networks) isn't in your friends seeing your malicious post, it's that your malicious post can go "viral" and be put in front of people who haven't asked for anything since the ranking algorithm is based on stuff like "likes", shares, etc (and a lot of garbage content tends to attract likes unfortunately) which can also be manipulated by a determined attacker (using fake/compromised accounts to "like" the post, etc).

[NeedMoreTea]

At least a couple of newspaper comment sections, and forums have had pre-moderation for sensitive topics.

Nothing is visible until it's been validated. Guardian comments still do this for some topics.

With all the assorted profiling going on, I'm sure just as some users (like via Tor or VPN) are automatically given harder Google captchas, or some boards make you earn enough karma to perform certain actions, reactionary moderating could be something you have to earn, and sustain. Perhaps certain interests would trigger proactive moderating too.

Not perfect but certainly capable of taking much load off human moderators.

[esalman]

If a car manufacturer is faced with a problem so that it loses the ability to prevent accidents, would you let that manufacturer continue its business?

[blue6249]

We do allow car companies to continue to build cars that cannot prevent accidents. Even beyond preventing accidents we as a society also allow the car companies to build cars with varying levels of safety and have a rating system for them.

[esalman]

We do. However, car manufacturers usually try to downplay reports of issues with the cars to the point when they can't do anymore. That's when something like a recall happens, which results in a substantial financial loss for them. Obviously not every affected vehicle owner can or may afford to have their vehicle serviced, so many keep using them despite the risk- like the people who are using social media knowing its weaknesses.

I think social media are at a point when they are forcefully downplaying the social issues which they are actually responsible for. We've already seen state and other actors exploit the social media and cause mass epidemics; anti-vaxx, white nationalism, Rohingya issue etc. to name a few. Let's see how far it goes before the damage is too much.

[o10449366]

Oh please, this is as ridiculous as blaming the manufacturer of the truck for the psychopath that used it to run people over in France. As far as I know Facebook doesn't released public numbers on this kind of information, but their automated systems and human moderators have undoubtedly caught millions of objectionable content streams, you just don't hear about them. If we're making car analogies they would probably be the safest vehicle on the road.

[chrisseaton]

> it loses the ability to prevent accidents

Car manufacturers can't prevent accidents - what do you mean?

[username223]

That sounds fine. They bought it, so they own it. If they make money from someone's work, then they are responsible for at least as much money as they made.

[TAForObvReasons]

If social media companies exist because they are not held responsible for negative externalities, and actually recognizing the externalities would result in the death of said companies, then maybe they don't deserve to exist. We as a society have a real serious problem contending with companies that have massive negative externalities

[AndrewKemendo]

Which I think may be the appropriate answer. It's unclear that the net benefit to society is greater with these social media companies than without them. If anything, the data we have so far is that it is a net negative.

[o10449366]

What data are you referencing exactly? I would love to see it.

[AndrewKemendo]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181108164316.h...

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/06/gse-phones-st...

[profmonocle]

> They have the money and profits to hire human moderators

Do they? Most content posted to Facebook has very low reach. If I live stream something for my friends it’s not going to bring in enough revenue to pay a minimum wage employe to watch it in real time.

[boomlinde]

Perhaps enough for a minimum wage employee to service a report?

[chrisseaton]

> They have the money and profits to hire human moderators

How many people do you think it would take to proactively moderate all the video uploaded to YouTube? Back in 2017 it was apparently 300 hours a minute. Do the Fermi estimate on that. That's not a productive use of humanity.

[mr_toad]

Why draw the line at social media companies? Why not include AWS and Gmail? Why not force data-centres to moderate as well. Hell, why not force anyone proving egress of data to moderate it all?

[stale2002]

How about, instead of that, companies that want to moderate content, compete in the free market, and those that prefer to be the dumb pipe, do that as well.

That way users can choose which platform they prefer, the more censored version, or the less censored version.

[underwater]

You're not wrong, but holding social media companies responsible to that level is a relatively new idea. That Facebook is doing that yet doesn't make them unequivocally evil.

[everdev]

300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute...

https://merchdope.com/youtube-stats/

[m0zg]

What you're asking for also leads to total, Chinese-style censorship, as the government finds more and more content on these network it doesn't particularly like and therefore considers "extremist". Fun fact: Russia has recently passed a set of laws under which you can go to jail for simply "disrespecting" a government official. This "disrespect" can take the form, for example, of pointing out that their spending is several orders of magnitude more than their official salary would allow.

It boggles my mind that people can be simultaneously against the Chinese censorship and in favor of NZ censorship. It's the same exact thing, just cranked to a different degree. How do you live with both points of view in your head at the same time?

And lest I be deliberately "misinterpreted", I don't think that this shooting video should be on FB or that removing it from there represents "censorship". I also don't think we should go much beyond removing mass shooting livestreams however. Nor should anyone go to prison for 14 years for redistributing it.

[fapjacks]

The amount of vocal support for censorship in here is frankly unbelievable, bordering on comically absurd.

[spaginal]

It is an uncomfortable trend.

I’ve largely ducked out of these conversations on HN anymore, trying to explain why basic free speech is important, and hitting resistance, shows the obvious failings (success?) of public modern schooling.

We have a new young generation that seems to unquestionably look to government for all answers, and demand to be silenced by biased censors and it’s shocking.

[m0zg]

  >> We have a new young generation that seems to 
  >> unquestionably look to government for all answers

This is especially weird given that the very same people consider the current US government to be incompetent (for the record, I disagree, based on the results in a number of areas).

The very same people seem to suggest that we abolish the 1st and 2nd amendment, and in the same breath suggest that "our democracy is dying" and we're on our way to "totalitarianism". How these things can be suggested at the same time, I don't know. Seems like utter and complete lack of critical thinking skills to me.

[raxxorrax]

Failed education and experience in my opinion. And it is true that something outrageous is easily found on the net.

[jjeaff]

You don't see any difference here? One government is trying to keep their people from seeing violent and disturbing content. The other is trying to keep their people from learning about violent and disturbing things that very government is commiting themselves to its own people.

I don't think the NZ government is scooping up and murdering political disedents.

[drdeca]

The government in general shouldn’t be trying to prevent people from being able to see violent or disturbing content.

[AnonTechDrone]

I'm an ex-USSR resident and I see a good bit of difference between a liberal society where free speech is seen as a basic human right and a budding Communist nation with a "Chief Censor" who gets to dictate the bounds of acceptable discourse.

[m0zg]

  >> I don't think the NZ government is scooping 
  >> up and murdering political disedents [sic].

That's because the Overton window isn't quite there yet. Continue down this path and eventually it will shift. The basic truth of the matter is: it's much, much easier to rule if there's no freedom of speech. That's why it's the typically the first thing to go before the rest of the personal rights. Makes things super comfy for the ruling class: someone says something you don't like? Just throw them in jail, it's for their own good. The UK is much further down this path already: there you can end up in jail for posting wrongthink on your Facebook page or filming _outside_ the court during grooming gang proceedings.

[antidesitter]

> One government is trying to keep their people from seeing violent and disturbing content.

That should be up to the people, not the government.

[raxxorrax]

My country does employ active discrimination so I think this idea is terrible.

[FakeComments]

Your vision for society is one in which private companies moderate civic discourse?

Sounds hellish — and very likely to be practiced disequitably, compounded with the power to silence critics of the system as extremists.

[CJefferson]

Private companies already moderate civic discourse, by shoving the extreme views into our faces, every day.

If thry were "dumb pipes" I would have more sympathy, but they are spending yens of millions on AI to tune exactly what to shove in front of us, to keep us engaged.

[zapzupnz]

You make it sound as though private companies are the only means through which communication occurs. T'was a time when companies had their own means marketing, people ran their own blogs, and there were no huge private companies controlling the majority of online discourse.

Anybody else remember email?

We'll never go back to it, but don't act like the social media-driven scenario we have today is all there will ever be. If things like Twitter and Facebook became moderated, and people became dissatisfied, they'll do the same as they ever did with social media: go elsewhere. (By the way, let's take a moment to remember Digg)

And maybe, just maybe, we can go back to a saner time where we don't have to defend the status quo, hideous as it is.

[FakeComments]

Okay.

None of what you wrote is a response to what I said, beside “well, if it gets bad enough, society will adapt”.

You admit that in the current market, those companies are vastly important in a way that can’t change quickly and their acting as censors could turn so bad, it would force a change to the very way we communicate.

I think “hellish” is an apt description of “would reshape hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars of economic activity in response to the social disfunction it caused”.

[zapzupnz]

> Your vision for society is one in which private companies moderate civic discourse?

> None of what you wrote is a response to what I said

My post was that there are alternatives to Facebook and Twitter having the monopoly on public discourse, proved it by demonstrating alternative methods by which no one (or two) entities have any such monopoly.

You spoke about a "vision for society". Typically when people talk about a vision, they're talking about the future. I gave a vision of the future.

> You admit that in the current market, those companies are vastly important in a way that can't change quickly and their acting as censors could turn so bad, it would force a change to the very way we communicate

I didn't say any of that. I mean, I agree with you. But you were talking about a vision for society. I gave mine.

I think you've decided I said something quite different from what I actually said.

[FakeComments]

You have a second vision that had nothing to do with what we were talking about before, which was changing the current system to one where entrenched private interests would be censors — the envisioned change I was responding to.

Your non-sequitur other wishes have nothing to do with that being a hellish vision.

[zapzupnz]

> You have a second vision that had nothing to do with what we were talking about before

I'm sorry, I didn't realise you were the discussion warden. If we're not keeping strictly in step with the topic you've put up for discussion, we're to be derided, are we?

> Your non-sequitur

Goodness, your tone is nothing but rude. Your previous comment's lone "Okay." was much the same. Just because we're not all agog at your comment and have our own points of view to contribute…

Try adding a touch of flexibility to your interlocution.

[dmoy]

Reddit moderators aren't even part of the company. It's literally just random volunteers. (Not random as in random selection /.)