Facebook (2 Viewers)

I find the argument that if you are using algorithms to choose what people see in their newsfeed then you are a publisher and should be regulated as such to be persuasive.
 
Wildly overstated, and objectively wrong. I can't see anything in the details of the whistleblower case that's actually villainous, and I can't see any concrete "crimes" apart from "helps people with similar ideas to find and connect with each other (and some of those people/ideas are bad)"

I agree that social media has negative side effects, and afaict that's a direct consequence of optimising for engagement. FB is, at worst, a paperclip maximizer - there is no crime, and there's no villain*.

I think you are understating it - which is similar to how you saw me talking about peoples brains being turned to much by AI making sure the mushy bit gets excercised all day.

Consider Asimovs three laws of robots, I'm aware this is from a book and not the law btw.

First Law- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third LawA robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Now if FB is running on AI - it basically breaches these every day, like multiple times a day. Anywhoo wikipedia goes on to say:

Robots and artificial intelligences do not inherently contain or obey the Three Laws; their human creators must choose to program them in, and devise a means to do so. Robots already exist (for example, a Roomba) that are too simple to understand when they are causing pain or injury and know to stop.

That could be said of fb, twitter etc etc - the program is optimised for engagement, regardless of the outcome. No more than a roomba sucking you neck tie in while bouncing off your forehead, fb slams information, real or not at people till they react, they are bigger than a long list of countries on earth and comparing that to cute little bot that collects paperclips is wild understatment.
 
I don't really see how it's possible to regulate the big social networks in a meaningful way. Do you have any suggestions?
Maybe break them up a bit, they're too big, monopolizing the social media space. It might be better if there were more AI algorithms selecting and hiding stuff for people in opaque ways rather than just one.
 
I dunno really, make instagram a separate entity, do something about anti-competitive business practices that suck everything and everyone into facebook. Something like that maybe. Same for the likes of Amazon too obviously. Do they really need to do everything?
 
Wildly overstated, and objectively wrong.

the “history’s greatest villains” bit is clearly a bit of pretentious rhetorical flourish, but the war crimes are real. we tend to forget that most prosecutions for war crimes are prosecutions for *knowing that something was happening* and *choosing to do nothing about it* — which is exactly what facebook is doing.

there is no crime, and there's no villain

this was pretty much the tobacco company moral framing — people make choices, we’re just good business-people serving the market. it’s bullshit.

I guess framing it in those terms might create enough public outrage to fuel some political will to Do Something About It, but what can actually be done? I think your tobacco analogy is probably a good one, and I suppose regulations against optimisation-for-engagement could be created, but I don't really see how it'd be possible to enforce them in practice even if the political will existed. Are governments going to hire an army of algorithm experts to examine every social network's source code and make sure they're not optimising for the wrong things?

like lili said — if they were treated as publishers they would have to do their own work to not break the law. (this presumes that the state would be willing to pass such a law, that the law would be coherently written, have wide support, be consistently enforced, have proportionate effect to the harm, yadda yadda; it also would only work in nice neat western electoral and legal systems — so basically right now it’s a thought experiment more than a practical option.)

but basically everyone knows that these companies are awful and no-one really knows what to do about it. china has made one choice: come down on them like a ton of bricks and reinforce the authority of the party. we don’t have that option.

* Cory Doctorow himself is optimising his content for engagement by making these grandiose claims - he's doing exactly the same harmful thing that he's criticising FB for.

yes. but that’s a cheap point to try to score. no whataboutery on thumped! we’re better than that!
 
Erm ... the paperclip maximizer is a thought experiment where a simple algorithm innocently destroys the world. If only there was some way of making it obvious when some text was a link, eh @thumped ?

Maybe if your post had been less understated. I'm not sure if anything can be more understated than

'FB, is at worst 'paperclip maximiser'

being you trying to say

'FB is at worst machine that will destroy the world'.

Oh if it at very worst if at all it does is destroy the world then why are we even discussing it...

My point on understatment stands :).

Anywhoo to work on the paperclip maximiser theory - facebook is not an idiot bot looking for one thing, it is a bot that monetises interpersonal conflicts and falsehoods - an amplifier for the worst of the human - an amplifier for whatever will keep you sitting there another minute regardless of consequences - and as long as it turns up that noise every day, you'll hear less of what the world is actually like.

I had a mate tell me last week that thier dad sat them down a few months ago and said

'family, the worst thing that could ever happen me (starts to get emotional, teary) is that if any of you were to get vaccinated'.

They said they tried to talk once or twice and they realised that the misinformation travelled at a speed that they could not deal with. (both the dad and the kid). Months of household frostiness, wife eventually sneaks a vaccine, household split down the middle.

That machine will keep that man sitting there for another few years if that is what is profitable.
 
I don't really see how it's possible to regulate the big social networks in a meaningful way. Do you have any suggestions?
Well to begin with i'd ask our resident regulation expert @ann post if Ireland's newspapers regulations are any good? My understanding is that they are quite light touch, self regulating, and have led to the Denis O'Brien consortium of "Independent News & Media" leading with a far from independent stance on everything.

But in regards suggestions, I dunno,

1) A regulator that can issue fines to Facebook that will force FB to maybe not allow hate-speech to hang around for so long.

2) Yes, someone to take a look at their algorithms. I mean, they wrote their algorithms, such people exist. If FB refuse to disclose it then they are not allowed to be accessed in Ireland/Europe/whatever

I believe both of the above already exist in one form or another, but FB would have be defined as a publisher for this kind of thing to actually happen. Also, if FB is constrained by not forcing intense emotions and "engagement" on their users then their business model falls apart so they will fight this tooth and nail to the very bitter end. I suspect that, like Amazon's Mechanical Turk stuff, much of their alleged "algorithmic" content is in fact incredibly low-paid workers somewhere far away making decisions to drive towards clicking links.

It's very easy to go "Oh it's too hard, can't be done, let's not try" and certainly big corporations have encouraged that kind of thinking from day one. I can see the argument on 1920s Thumped: So what, you want highly trained literary experts to read every newspaper, every day, from cover to cover, to ensure they aren't publishing hate speech?? Can't be done, don't even try, nothing is possible.
 
Last edited:
yes. but that’s a cheap point to try to score. no whataboutery on thumped! we’re better than that!
Haha ok I concede this point

most prosecutions for war crimes are prosecutions for *knowing that something was happening* and *choosing to do nothing about it* — which is exactly what facebook is doing
It's not though, it's more that it's incredibly difficult even for them to do anything about it. They've put in automatic filters for stuff. I see content all the time that's marked as ... oh I can't remember the exact wording, but it's something like "we think this is untrue". People who run ads on FB get their ad accounts disabled regularly because some bot has flagged the content as problematic when it actually isn't. That's why some famous people have the bot filters disabled and instead are (supposed to be) moderated manually - because the filters are AIs too and therefore get it wrong a lot of the time

I suppose like the nerd that I can't help being I'm disagreeing with stuff here because it's not technically accurate. FB is an idiot bot looking for one measurable thing - engagement. Everything, good and bad, that happens because of facebook is a consequence of that
 
it's incredibly difficult even for them to do anything about it.

in the technical sense, yes, this is absolutely true. it’s a bit like arguing that the tobacco company can’t invent a non-cancer-causing cigarette. so what? sane people want reductions in social harm caused by the overall effect of the existence of this company. saying that it’s technically difficult is a parallel discussion. meanwhile in the real world people are being murdered right now in northern ethiopia because zuckerberg’s machines keep whirring.
 
in the technical sense, yes, this is absolutely true. it’s a bit like arguing that the tobacco company can’t invent a non-cancer-causing cigarette. so what?
This was directly aimed at your "crimes against humanity" accusation. They have discovered that there are harmful side-effects to what they are doing, and they are trying to eliminate those side-effects. That is not equivalent to "knowing something is happening and choosing to do nothing about it"

edit ... just another rhetorical point, really, it's not that relevant to this discussion one way or the other
 
This was directly aimed at your "crimes against humanity" accusation. They have discovered that there are harmful side-effects to what they are doing, and they are trying to eliminate those side-effects. That is not equivalent to "knowing something is happening and choosing to do nothing about it"

edit ... just another rhetorical point, really, it's not that relevant to this discussion one way or the other

but the side-effects *are* the product. you can’t have tobacco without cancer. and you can’t have facebook without mind cancer.
 
I only found out recently that filters on cigarettes were a marketing tool that does nothing dreamt up to sell plastic because the cigarette, oil, and plastic companies all work together and share lawyers etc..
 
Well to begin with i'd ask our resident regulation expert @ann post if Ireland's newspapers regulations are any good? My understanding is that they are quite light touch, self regulating, and have led to the Denis O'Brien consortium of "Independent News & Media" leading with a far from independent stance on everything.

Newspaper regulations wouldn't do too much because NUJ is more in the direction of code of honour, protecting sources and public interest stuff - I've not read the print stuff for a few years but largely if I remember correct it deals with the relations between sources, public interest and protection of either. It also references the journalist specifically.

Broadcast regulations in Ireland, if applied strictly to fb would close it down in nanoseconds.

This would be on the basis of 'right to reply' - how this applies in broadcast is basically if a claim is made about someone then they should be there, or within a reasonable time frame be given opportunity to defend themselves (and a few other version of this but basically alex jones wouldn't last a week in Ireland)

A private facebook group with say, 50+ members would breach this daily - because while 'private' at certain point how the person is viewed by the public can be tarnished (libel buzzer!!).

I would note on the print code (newspapers) that while it might seem wooly, both our broadcast and print codes are considered to be some of the best in the english speaking world in terms of balancing freedom of speech with protection of the individual.

We are actually in one of the best positions globally to address any of this.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Activity
So far there's no one here

21 Day Calendar

Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Gig For Gaza w/ ØXN, Junior Brother, Pretty Happy & Mohammad Syfkhan
Vicar Street
58-59 Thomas St, The Liberties, Dublin 8, Ireland
Bloody Head, Hubert Selby Jr Infants, Creepy Future - Dublin
Anseo
18 Camden Street Lower, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland

Support thumped.com

Support thumped.com and upgrade your account

Upgrade your account now to disable all ads... If we had any... Which we don't right now.

Upgrade now

Latest threads

Latest Activity

Loading…
Back
Top