And Chinese filters can't be applied to the world wide version because they won't be able to compete with other addictive social media.
Negligently letting it be pushed onto people is much worse.
Imagine if facebook were doing the same thing now, there would me massive uproar.
by all means put a content warning or maybe a suicide prevention hotline or other help but I'm tired of clowns trying to solve any problem with "bad content" with censorship. Like that didn't misfire enough times in history...
If you have a problem with it, you should instead be demanding an open index of all content on these platforms so that you can be assured that all information submitted is available and free from real censorship.
No not "random" but systematic, targeted and effective "censorship"
When a news corp chooses to not run a news story for the third day in a row, is that censorship?
When I am pissed off at a customer services agent, and instead of shouting "GET FUCKED YOU USELESS SHIT" is that censorship?
When I am walking along the road and see a very sexy person, and I _don't_ shout out "HEY THERE SEXY, I'D LIKE TO FUCK/GET FUCKED BY YOU!" is that censorship?
A well ordered society requires rules. Those rules need to be clear, and generated by consensus.
When you negligently and repeatedly show footage to a vulnerable person designed to deliberately illicit harm, that is not what a well ordered and productive society allows.
But then the US is not a well ordered society, so do what you want kid.
It can be. If it were a news story that made a company or a government look bad and the news corp was bribed or pressured to kill the story and stop talking about it, that's absolutely censorship.
> When I am pissed off at a customer services agent, and instead of shouting "GET FUCKED YOU USELESS SHIT" is that censorship? When I am walking along the road and see a very sexy person, and I _don't_ shout out "HEY THERE SEXY, I'D LIKE TO FUCK/GET FUCKED BY YOU!" is that censorship?
That first one's not a full sentence, but if both cases are about self-censorship then you should know that's a very real thing and often it's a good thing. Especially when the decision on what gets censored is based on your own thoughts and feelings more than external factors. Being able to choose for yourself what to say or not say is a freedom, not a problem. Self-censorship isn't always ideal though (Self-censorship as a result of chilling effects for example).
> When you negligently and repeatedly show footage to a vulnerable person designed to deliberately illicit harm, that is not what a well ordered and productive society allows.
When something has already been judged as negligent it's automatically something a well ordered and productive society wouldn't allow. I'm not sure that's the case here though. If they just didn't care enough to make sure their algorithm wasn't doing more harm than good then maybe it would be negligence. If they are intentionally trying to harm people that would be something else.
However the content is being used/misused I'm not sure that I agree that the content was designed to deliberately illicit harm. I'd bet that most of these types of videos are created by suicidal people expressing their own feelings and looking to share them with others who are going through similar trials. I think there should be freedom for people who are struggling with mental health to participate in a community of others and to express themselves in memes and tiny videos.
I also think people should have the freedom to end their own lives if they choose to. Having places online where people can talk and share information about that subject is perfectly reasonable. Although I think there are children for whom suicide might be a legitimate option, even if most others would disagree not everything online needs to be appropriate for children, let alone suicidal children.
The problem with tiktoc isn't that the content exists, it's that it's being heavily promoted to children. This is the same problem with youtube. The algorithms push more narrow and extreme views without considering anything except their profits (unless you're one of the people who think tiktoc is intentionally trying to kill off Americans one suicidal teenager at a time in which case it'd not just be monetary considerations driving their choices). It would be so much better if algorithms were designed to present a more balanced view of things so that even if someone were thinking about suicide and interested in hearing perspectives on the subject they didn't only get the most extreme videos saying it's a great solution.
So why even bring it up? It's completely disingenuous imho.
A bit like the production of fentanyl precursor chemicals and their export to Mexico...
Let's suppose there is no law on the books that explicitly fleshes out liability if you train a model and it does not do as you expect, we'll need to figure out some nearest neighbor matching.
So you will have to shoehorn this novel issue into some preexisting framework of precedent. Maybe something about negligence liability and a common public use item, like a bridge or something. But a bridge isn't as complicated as an ML model and a bridge failure is way more auditable. Bridges don't hallucinate. Also there are unintended consequences to doing this sort of legal massaging, before you know it, campaign finance = speech.
"Hold them accountable" is so broad that verges on meaninglessness. Part of the whole living in a rapidly evolving tech landscape is living with laws that are always a few steps behind the times. Which bleeping sucks, but until we press for a better large scale solution, it is going to keep sucking.
In case of alcohol, sure I can see it but that is not exactly comparable. Enough alcohol will kill you 100% of the time, this aint even close.
that being said some content warning or a bit of push to seek help wouldn't be a bad idea when someone gets stuck in some topic like that
We can deflect saying "Anyone who knows a bit about recommendation systems", blame my use of the platform or play these off as a technical problem but imo it seems like Google and the other tech companies know exactly what they are doing in these use cases and are just cynically deploying this content with the culture war filter on because they know it makes the most money. I think when people ascribe political leanings to tech companies that maybe the mean belief of their employee's but as an org it is not the standard opined ultra left havens.
They have an algorithm that chooses what videos to show you based on types of videos you view. I'm not sure how that doesn't qualify as intentional.