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by factsaresacred 2634 days ago
How do you reform a billion-person platform to detect a suicide attempt in real-time?

There's much wrong with Facebook but blaming them for not preventing the actions of their users at the moment those actions take place is moronic.
1 comments
boomlinde 2634 days ago
Frankly, that should be their problem. Maybe billion-person platforms are altogether not morally scalable?
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ivanhoe 2634 days ago
If there was an existing AI solution in place anywhere in world capable to detect a suicide, I'd agree - but there's nothing even close to that at the moment. You can't blame a company for not using something that's technologically probably not even possible to make reliably today. And what if it's not "morally scalable", you shut it down? You break it by force like it was done with Bell system? Would having "Face corp." and "Book corp." really solve any of these issues, which are fundamentally a problem of human nature?
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boomlinde 2634 days ago
> If there was an existing AI solution in place anywhere in world capable to detect a suicide, I'd agree - but there's nothing even close to that at the moment.

Should we let the technical infeasibility of them profitably solving a problem that they themselves have created be our moral compass?

> You can't blame a company for not using something that's technologically probably not even possible to make reliably today.

The point IMO is not to assign blame. It's to create legislation for the betterment of society. You can agree or disagree that it would be better, but don't reduce it to a blame game.

> And what if it's not "morally scalable", you shut it down? You break it by force like it was done with Bell system? Would having "Face corp." and "Book corp." really solve any of these issues, which are fundamentally a problem of human nature?

As I said, as far as I'm concerned, that's their problem. You implement the legal framework necessary to uphold a desirable moral standard and let that have its effect on the market. In those terms it's irrelevant how Facebook fares.

And no, this is not fundamentally a problem of human nature. Millions-to-billion user social networks have only been a problem for a brief moment of human history. Much like other problems throughout history it might go away some day. Not by itself, but by systematically working on improving the human condition.

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