Facebook Knew Calls for Violence Plagued ‘Groups’, Now Plans Overhaul

wsj.com

22 points·erentz··7 comments

Why do we think that people organizing violence on Facebook is Facebook's fault?

We don't think it's T-Mobile or AT&T's fault when people coordinate via SMS. We don't blame Samsung or Apple for selling them phones. Why is Facebook being singled out for not being an effective enough pre-crime censor?

Facebook already polices everything you do on Facebook to make sure you never see a female nipple. Their complete control of what you see on Facebook makes them responsible for what is on Facebook.

The same can be said for SMS. Your carrier already polices everything you send, such as spam or illegal messages.

Their proactive algo promoting the thing ? Guess, AT&T is not calling you on their own to cordinate for ... ?

Sorting by last posted on a message board is also an algorithim that promotes engagement. Does that mean message boards are promoting extremism?

"It is the algorithim and prioritizing means they are responsible" is a propaganda meme repeated uncritically. How the fuck is /any/ algorithim supposed to meet thr standards of responsibility? Not to mention the arbitrary demands are impossible even for a hypothetical utterly impractical billion employee manual Facebook approval.

Facebook is not being singled out. Look what happened to Parler. It is probably worse in terms of Parler since Facebook and Twitter were used to coordinate the capital riots and Parler was just the scapegoat.

I think "can this service be used, in a pinch, to attempt to overthrow the government" is going to be my new metric for safety in evaluating online services.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com