Facebook removed 1.5M videos of the Christchurch attacks within 24 hours | Hacker News Reader

Facebook removed 1.5M videos of the Christchurch attacks within 24 hours

washingtonpost.com

One point five million uploads and counting. What a fucking waste of time, CPU cycles, and bandwidth. For Facebook, it is Whack-a-mole on steroids and meth.

Yet politicians still seem to want more, something along the lines of no anonymity / fully moderated social media. Not going to happen in free countries.

Maybe that will be a rallying cry during the next civil war: "We're entitled to watch snuff films on Facebook!"

There will be a civil war...but it won't be over being able to watch videos on FB...the underlying problem that caused the video is what needs to be addressed

I think it is more that in order to prevent people watching or reading or thinking or smelling things we do not like we would have to impose a level of control which stops them reading or thinking or smelling things other people deem good and useful.

    to prevent people watching or reading 
    or thinking or smelling things we do not like

If a person ever finds himself supporting the distribution of a snuff film, that person might do some introspection and ask how he got to that point. Because that view is straight out of A Clockwork Orange.

Well ultimately platforms like Facebook should be held responsible for the content they distribute in the same way that newspapers were. The safe harbor provisions should not apply to platforms that do way more than just passively host content. Google and Facebook should not be able to hide behind algorithms if the real world outcomes of these algorithms are as bad as they currently are. If they can't find a way to police their platform automatically, they will have to change something else. One thing would be to require people to provide proof of real identity, so that anyone that redistributes content like this can be sued and it gets much harder to create fake profiles.

The amount of harm these platforms have caused is at this point much larger than any positive value they provide.

I agree with your point about these platforms causing more harm, but I disagree with this proposition.

> One thing would be to require people to provide proof of real identity, so that anyone that redistributes content like this can be sued and it gets much harder to create fake profiles.

Firstly, real names don't really keep people from doing things that can get either themselves or others in trouble. Facebook, the platform that probably has real names for most of its users, is where so much hatred is spread by people using their real names. People use the same Facebook logins on news and other sites to comment with their real name and say hateful things. Just as most companies and people don't really care much about software security (because the consequences of breaches are not widespread and not expensive enough to take these seriously), most people don't care about legal consequences of their online behavior either. Imposing legal consequences on a platform that by itself violate its users' privacy repeatedly with no real regrets or change of heart is a slippery slope that would lead to many innocent people being processed.

Secondly, "fake" names are used by many people who are vulnerable (for various reasons – could be victims of abuse or marginalized groups or people who are discriminated against or activists or dissidents). Not allowing that would cause a lot of real problems for real people (running in millions or hundreds of millions). Such names may also be used by those who value privacy. Not all of them...let me correct myself, not even most of the people who use such names are involved in spreading terror and hatred (however much politicians with self-serving interests might use this argument to try to fool the public).

We seem to live in a time where people are openly proud of being bigots and using their real names to prove that on every platform, as if it's a badge of honor. That cannot be solved with identity verification or forcing real names without causing a lot more harm to many more people.

To me this not so much about the name that is displayed publicly, but about the fact that if you allow someone to publish on your platform, you should have proof of their identity, so that you can hold them legally accountable for their actions. At least in Germany hate speech, defamation, harassment, incitement to violence and so on are actually prosecuted and proof of identity would make that prosecution much easier (and yes I understand that there are different standards for speech in the US)

   The amount of harm these platforms
   have caused is at this point much
   larger than any positive value they
   provide.

That is something for which you really need to provide some proof.

In addition I do not believe that someone watching that video is in any danger of any sort.

These calls for censorship are just taking advantage of an emotional situtation to impose very dangerous state control on information.

> The amount of harm these platforms have caused is at this point much larger than any positive value they provide.

You want proof of this, but I think the standard should be higher - to prove that platforms like these cause greater harm than state censorship would. Censorship that has, even in the US, been used to criminalize anti-war activism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

That's a stronger argument for sure.

Well it is undisputed that ISIS used Twitter and Facebook very effectively to recruit and spread propaganda. Whatever you think of the outcome of the last presidential election in the US and the Brexit vote it can not be a good thing for democracy to fracture opinions and reinforce beliefs by optimising for engagement in the way the Facebook and Twitter algorithm seem to do. Plus the way they work as AD platforms is also fundamentally different compared to traditional campaign advertisement, because not the same ads are shown to everyone.

This is not about censorship and this kind of content is not information. I don't object to this footage being available in an archive and that it can be retrieved by anyone free of charge if they explicitly asked for it. I do not even object to it being freely available somewhere on the internet. What I object to is that Facebook and Youtube can get away with pretending they are passive conduits of information, while they in fact curate and profit directly from the content they host.

They should be held to the same standards as traditional media companies, which they are in the process of displacing. A traditional media company would never have been allowed to show uncontextualized and extremely violent content such as this. If the algorithm does not catch this, that is not an excuse. They should be held accountable, as they should be held accountable for allowing ISIS to use their platforms.

   so that anyone that redistributes content
   like this can be sued

Why?

Simple: This kind of content would not be allowed to be broadcast on a tv station, you would not be able to show it in cinemas. The fact that it is accessible on Facebook and Youtube to minors and the only excuse they can offer is that the algorithm didn't catch it is simply not acceptable. They should be held to the same standards as any other media company.

You seem to be mixing two rationales in there:

1. That TV and cinemas are not allowed to publish such material. That just pushes the question further back down the line. Why should such content not be broadcast?

2. That minors might be exposed to it. Minors should not have unfettered access to Facebook and YouTube anyway. The consquences of displacing the proper locus of control from parent to state ends up making minors out of all of us.

(Note: in this case I do not believe that there is anything to be gained from watching such videos -- I may be wrong. The objection is that, as always, the ability to exercize such control in the hands of government means that other, potentially more important information becomes censorable.)

> Not going to happen in free countries.

It happened in South Korea [1]. Fortunately, their courts eventually struck the law down. Got fantastically little coverage in western media.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-name_system#South_Korea

From that link, there's a explanation for why the court in South Korea rolled back this change:

The Constitutional Court said, "The system does not seem to have been beneficial to the public. Despite the enforcement of the system, the number of illegal or malicious postings online has not decreased. Instead, users moved to foreign Websites and the system became discriminatory against domestic operators. It also prevented foreigners who didn’t have a resident registration number here from expressing their opinions online."

Yeah, I would have preferred a more principled reason, but what can you do.

They are probably looking for signatures and do this very easily and in an automated way.

It would be more fun to have an application that randomized the pitch, speed, volume and compression of a file, to REALLY make a moderator waste time, CPU and bandwidth.

Maybe we can make this standard given the prevalence of how people want to share.

Apparently hosting this video is part of a violation of the law in New Zealand, population of 4 million.

For Facebook why not just block New Zealand? Looking for thoughtful responses

edit: seems there are reports of New Zealand ISPs blocking very many sites and web services. So for Facebook this is also a compelling option to just block the country and continue business as usual, focusing on important things like those user metrics. Censoring videos is an antiquated law forcing silly compliance burdens.

Just having it saved on your pc is a crime there.

The PR would be great:

“Facebook asked to block snuff film, instead decides to block entire country and continue to distribute the snuff film.”

Facebook clearly don’t want to distribute snuff films, child porn, or other objectionable material, regardless of where in the world the operate.

They put themselves in this position of deciding to arbitrarily delete things such that this PR would even be possible.

If they weren't in the business of policing the network this way, the deletions would only be in response to a court order - which do happen. Then they would be in the PR favor by deciding to ignore "another country's" court order, and "exiting that market" if it was a better business decision.

This is one of the grand luxuries of international business, and Facebook is paying for it - in this case - instead of enjoying the privilege.

Someone should tell them PM to change her statement to "Our censorship laws are about to change"

You think refusing to delete a snuff film would give them good PR? Presumably because they stuck to their principles???

What world do you live in? People by and large do not actually want that level of free speech.

there are companies hosting the file, not sure what your point is because that is the world I live in

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