Funny enough, her book is about the dangers of an algorithm-based AI supersystem...
Facebook is the worst.
I advertised some masks my grandma has sewn on FB. It was ok, expansive clicks like always but ok. This was running for at least a week or two. But when I changed some text it triggered a new ad review and within no hour my account was banned. It didn't even took a hour to deny my appeal as well and my account was lost forever (without ever naming any reason)
This account had 50+ (harmless) groups with way over 100k followers as well as a few thousand dollars in ad spend just that year. I didn't socialize at all on Facebook which I guess made my account fishy to some degree but all data was correct and passport verified.
This is the reason I completely ignore Facebook and all its platforms for whatever reason these days. I don't care if it could help my business, it's not worth the trouble.
That's basically my stance since 2004 when I first heard about them. I lost some opportunities, I guess, but it also allowed me to tell everyone how I feel about data privacy while keeping a straight face.
Same here. I not only don't condemn people for using Facebook, I almost always defend their use of Facebook. But since I mean what I say when I'm talking about the site, I haven't had an account in at least a decade and I block the domains. I dislike the site, not its users.
But honestly I don't care anymore. Their ad platform barely worked for me and their numbers didn't match my log numbers for years before this happened.
I haven't had any other use for the platform either way.
I don’t know if any one customer has enough money to get proper first class human service with Facebook.
I once had a similar deal when I lived in a house with several guys for a year in college. We divvied up the utilities, and I was in charge of the phone bill. I set up automatic payment, and never had a problem. But 5 years later, the phone company accused me of skipping my June payment, and carefully deducting that amount from the "total owed" amount in every subsequent month. It's insane, and every human I spoke to agreed with me, but no one had the power to do anything about it. I could either travel cross country to go to court, with no evidence other than common sense, or just pay the $30 bill plus another $40 in penalties.
Is the review not human? Do they run it through the same algorithm a second time?
Do they lie about the review?
Is the reviewer so out of touch they don’t recognize real violence vs just the use of “beat?”
This could be the key point. Penalties for letting something bad slip past, but no penalties for falsely flagging. It’s a pragmatic solution, but it is almost by definition inhuman.
Yes, yes, and yes. There's a context-illiterate AI deciding what you can say or not, even if the later heavily depends on context.
And just like it'll trigger a bazillion of false positives, it'll also trigger a bazillion of false negatives; someone can easily spread hate through Facebook, unimpeded, by simply encoding language in a way that the algorithm doesn't understand, but humans do; or with simple irony.
People don't often realise, but users are a resource just like any other. And if a resource is abundant, you'll often sacrifice a bit of that for the sake of something else.
So... sure, bad content (false negatives) and being handled unfairly (false positives) sours users, prompting them to leave the platform. And both things are bound to happen, if you put an algorithm reviewing stuff instead of a person. But since there are so many users, Facebook is better off doing this crap than actually spending money by hiring enough people to actually review the reports, checking the context to decide if they apply or not.
And you'll see other businesses doing exactly the same decision; that's why, for example, Reddit became such a shithole, and people outright complain about the Anti-Evil Operations all the time. Twitter is likely the same, dunno. And it shows that we cannot and we should not rely on mass social media, we should be sticking to smaller alternatives.[/soapbox]
Anyway I do remember FB's "a cool "open source" way to do front-end development, feel "free" to use it, you can't sue us though". So maybe there is some shitty clause like that when you sign up.
Withholding your money and then when you (rightfully) sue them for that, retaliating and kicking you off the platform entirely?
This is true (if we take "was" literally). Though IIRC it was only if you sued them over patents.
> React is MIT licensed
And this is also true (now).
In this situation there would be no judgement because there is no right to have a facebook account therefore they can close your account because they don't like your face or indeed because you sued them. Why would you imagine that a jury would basically award you all facebook's money because they closed your account? Yes sir Mr soandso they were clearly jerks I award you Facebook now try not to be as big a jerk as Zuck and good day to you!
I looked into it and while a hassle it is on par with renewing your car insurance level of hassle (so some hassle, but doable, a "side project"). And worth it for the "stick it to the man" factor. In the end I got it almost all back by being nice, so no need.
In addition to small claims, there are credit card charge backs.
I believe that in many states the company that demanded arbitration has to bear the costs also.
Your account is totally blank and joined in 2021. You also submitted an article about rethinking app development at FB. In a comment you also post you work for a large company.
Do you work for Facebook?
However doesn’t change the fact that a lot of things get accepted at face value if they align with what someone’s view of things is
(It it is just one piece of data, and people are good at finding data that supports their viewpoint of course. Given all the scandals FB is under and problems on this thread, I do think it supports a narrative of FB having massive problems around ethics and moral actions.)
Here is a fun story :)
I have an ad account at FB for a company I closed in early 2020 due to Covid.
I wanted to delete the account, but FB makes it impossible to do that. I message their support and they tell me they can remove it, but they need my ID and a handwritten letter. I am stunned. A handwritten letter??? How does that achieve anything :)
So I write out a short note with a bit of snark about a tech company needing a handwritten letter, take a picture and send it to their support chat/ticket along with my ID. They do not like that I was snarky and refuse to do anything, even after I remove some of my snark and resend it.
Thus, I still have the account and 14 support replies later they still refuse to help me.
(note, they didn't want a letter send to them via the post office, they literally wanted me to write it and send it to them. So weird...)
Not that that's practical for a mom and pop shop.
Really cool author out of the Netherlands, I highly recommend the book. It is dark sci fi, and she calls it "Neon Science Fiction". Which sums the story up nicely (dark and gritty with a flippant attitude)
I believe the line she got hit with was "Can You Beat The Neon God's Algorithm?"
She also did a list on my site about books that inspired her creation of neon science fiction (and how she defines that): https://shepherd.com/best-books/inspired-neon-science-fictio...
Let me know what you think if you read it! There was one scene in the book I can't get out of my head... ever...
All the topics are hooked into Wikidata on the ML side, eventually I want to build knowledge graphs using the Wikidata info and play with historical timelines etc and see what I can do...
I am working on adding individual book pages and then genres and age group data is next.
Skynet is here.