[djaychela]

If they don't know what's being posted, maybe they should change how their platform works? If a normal business behaved like this and then just shrugged their shoulders, no one would stand for it. A traditional broadcaster would have their licence revoked. A print publisher would be in serious trouble. But when it happens online, somehow it's someone else's problem. This seems odd to me.

[ukoki]

> If a normal business behaved like this and then just shrugged their shoulders, no one would stand for it

That's not quite true. No one blames the US postal service for death threats sent in the mail. Facebook is not the USPS, but it's not a traditional publisher either — and just like the USPS it simply couldn't work if you wanted the same level of editorial oversight as a publisher.

edit: typo

[andyjpb]

The thing that makes Facebook different from the postal service is that Facebook provides an amplifier.

You can send one message and it'll be received by many.

Facebook may not have to take responsibility for users' content or wrangling with issues such as free speech but they must take responsibility for what and how they choose to amplify and recommend that content to others.

Traditionally this is a power that has only been held by broadcasters. Broadcasters have things like time delays and "dump switches" when they are conducting live shows. The time delays are mostly used to insert the "bleeps" for bad language. The "dump switch" is a more brutal approach that allows them to avoid broadcasting something that is going terribly wrong.

Broadcasters also have "watersheds" that place time constraints on when certain types of things can be broadcast and broadly define who the expected audiences are.

In this case, Facebook are acting more like a broadcaster than a publisher or message conveyer. Because the audience can be more tightly controlled than a regular broadcaster, there is a case to be made for making the responsibility bar higher, not lower, so that inappropriate content cannot be deliberately targeted at vulnerable people.

[bigiain]

<stupid pushing the analogy too far reply> If US Post opened and scanned all the letters, and offered to sell targeted firearm advertising to people who send death threats, nobody would say "That's OK, they're just 'The Platform'"...

[groby_b]

> but it's not a traditional publisher either

Then maybe it shouldn't behave like one. FB actively selects articles to show on your feed - via algorithm, instead via human, but the effect is the same.

That is a choice they could easily undo. It is also a choice a large number of people would be happy to see. ("I just want my feed ordered by date, no filtering" is a very common request). The only reason that doesn't happen is that the enragement metrics go up if you select what you present to people.

So FB is deliberately choosing articles to show you, and it is making that selection for monetary gain. How is that not a publisher?

[pjc50]

> No one blames the US postal service for death threats sent in the mail

Mailing death threats is illegal: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/876 (so much for "free speech", eh?)

It doesn't appear to be illegal to post them on Facebook?

[j16sdiz]

It is illegal to post on facebook too.

The question is: who should be enforcing the law....

[negamax]

So yeah, change the law. Hold the posters accountable. Why Facebook? That's absurd

[JumpCrisscross]

> No one blames the US postal service for death threats sent in the mail

If people were regularly mass mailing death threats to large fractions of the population, it would sure as hell get regulated.

[djaychela]

I'm not sure that the USPS parallel works completely, but I do get your point.

I agree that it couldn't work in the way it currently does, but that's what I'm getting at - that maybe it shouldn't be able to work in the way that it does presently. I think that it is much more like a broadcaster than a 'platform', but I know not everyone agrees with that.

[boomlinde]

On the other hand the USPS doesn't turn your letters into public announcements. They don't decide which letters you see and which you don't. They don't decide what ads go with it. The analogy is fundamentally flawed.

[tjpnz]

Exactly this. I work in C2C e-commerce which in my jurisdiction has very strict laws around ensuring we do due diligence on the people we allow onto our platform. If we didn't we would be finished. The only way to get Facebook to start taking this more seriously is through more regulation.

[bigiain]

I partly agree.

It'd also be nice if individuals were held responsible for death threats and rape threats they post on-line.

Facebook are morally corrupt because they aid and abet morally corrupt individuals. Both Facebook and those individuals should be held to account for that.

[jackvalentine]

Not saying you personally do this, but it seems every time Europe prosecutes someone for threats of violence on twitter there are the usual fools here shouting "it's just free speech!"

[bigiain]

Yeah. Most people shouting "free speech" are fully aware that shouting "Fire! Fire!" in a cinema might be "free speech" but is certainly not free of consequences.

I'm pretty sure "the usual fools" turn out to be complete hypocrites when it's their girlfriend/sister/mother getting rape threats too...

And there's no "1st Amendment to the US constitution" right to "free speech" in most of the world. If your Nazi hate speech ends up in Germany, both you and Facebook will be held to account for that no matter how many Ayn Rand books you've read or how dedicated to ethics in video game journalism you are.

[jackvalentine]

As much as the mainstream on here/reddit is afraid of Europe 'breaking' the internet I'm kinda excited. The interesting stuff will remain underground/out of the mainstream and these 'scale monsters' in US social media might not be able to operate in the way they have been pushing all the negative externalities on to society even if we don't use them.

For those of us outside the U.S. that don't subscribe to their view on free speech... it's not a negative.

[jeltz]

In Sweden the a bunch of publishers are using the same defence as FB right now. They are being investigate for automatically republishing slander originating from a company similar to AP.

If they win their case I do not see why FB should be held to a higher standard.