[HN Gopher] Facebook to target harmful coordination by real acco...
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook to target harmful coordination by real accounts
Author : hobbesthompson
Score : 95 points
Date : 2021-09-16 16:10 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| eplanit wrote:
| Glenn Greenwald did a piece on exactly this topic just yesterday:
| https://rumble.com/vmkc0j-democratic-officials-continue-to-t...
| ballenf wrote:
| I think we also need transparency around coordination of these
| efforts with any government actors. At least to the extent the
| efforts affect citizens.
|
| Kind of like transparency reports with regard to data requests.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| Right so those with the privilege of deciding who the good guys
| are and what constitutes misinformation are current political
| parties and financial interests. Which is great, because
| governments have never been responsible for orchestrating their
| own attacks and campaigns of misinformation. I'm so glad we can
| trust Facebook to have our best interest at heart.
| noptd wrote:
| At least there is some level of accountability and
| transparency potential for elected officials. I don't see how
| we would be better off by having a small number of private
| individuals making these decisions for us.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Governments have set up departments to forward requests for
| takedowns directly to Facebook, sidestepping whatever due
| process they usually would require to get a court order:
|
| "Watchdogs say that this coordination between governments and
| online platforms lacks transparency and operates through an
| alternative enforcement mechanism that denies due process of
| law. In the vast majority of cases, the Cyber Unit doesn't file
| a court order based on Israeli criminal law and go through the
| traditional legal process to take down online posts. Instead,
| the Unit makes appeals to the platform's content moderation
| policies and community standards. The enforcement of these
| policies though can be selective, devoid of different cultural
| contexts, and flexible to the interests of the powerful."
|
| https://prospect.org/world/how-secretive-cyber-unit-censors-...
| pyronik19 wrote:
| This coordination is being attacked in 1a lawsuites as
| defacto free speech violation due to FB and other big tech
| acting as agents of the state.
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210916192204/https://www.reuter...
|
| https://archive.is/lJoWA
| ggggtez wrote:
| Only about a decade too late.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> as it announced a takedown of the German anti-COVID
| restrictions Querdenken movement.
|
| I don't know if that group used any particularly bad tactics, but
| on the surface that statement sounds like squashing free speech.
| IDK about germany, but I'm sure FB will do that in the US too.
| All because "it's our private platform and we are not the
| government so no first amendment here".
| mc32 wrote:
| Nikki Minaj of all people was suspended by Twitter because she
| mentioned friends of hers had a bad reaction to a particular
| vaccine.
|
| Like what the eff. People can't even freely mention an anecdote
| anymore if it is contrary to the set narrative?
|
| What the eff happened to us in the last two years?
|
| It's frankly, disgusting and very concerning.
| cjensen wrote:
| That's not what happened. Minaj claimed "a friend of a
| cousin" had a simply impossible side effect. This is pretty
| clearly a simple case of an urban legend being shortened from
| "friend of a friend of a friend" and so the rumor always gets
| passed on as "friend of a friend" no matter how many links
| there are in the chain.
|
| Did you notice that you shortened it from "Minaj claimed a
| friend of a cousin..." to "Minaj claimed a friend...?" Hey,
| you're human too just like all of us. We suck at passing
| along rumors.
| mc32 wrote:
| Let's say it's unsubstantiated rumor (she said it was her
| (not 'a') cousin's friend) What every medical rumor gets
| knocked out? Only the ones they don't like? What makes them
| the right decision makers to decide?
|
| It's no different from the banning of the Wuhan lab escape
| theory that was banned because... I dunno some republican
| happened to like it? Meanwhile lots of virologist believed
| it should at least be investigated. But no, originally only
| racists could consider it as a possibility.
|
| No, Twitter can eff off.
| SSilver2k2 wrote:
| Twitter can suspend anyone and anything for any reason. You
| play on someone else's server you play by their terms.
|
| Nothing is stopping Nikki from hosting her own website.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Twitter can suspend anyone and anything for any reason.
| You play on someone else's server you play by their terms.
|
| Yes, but then, why should there be laws that shield these
| services from any legal responsibility as to what their
| users post? The government shouldn't need to protect these
| businesses either and let them off the hook because of the
| scale of the moderation. it goes both ways. Private
| companies can accept whatever they want, the government
| doesn't have to protect them either, they are a private
| company after all. They should bear all the risk.
| [deleted]
| renewiltord wrote:
| Why does it go both ways? The symmetry isn't obvious. I
| can kick you out of my house for whatever reason but I'm
| not automatically complicit if I let you visit and you
| pull out a rifle and shoot someone out the window when I
| wasn't looking. That is right. And it should be that way.
| mc32 wrote:
| Sure. An individual can't count on a message being carried,
| yeah we know, it's a private company and all...
|
| But... it should concern people the concerted effort to
| censor anything including the truth if it doesn't fit a
| particular narrative.
|
| What is Twitter decided hey, they wanna be on the side of
| the police and now anyone reporting anything that goes
| against the police narrative gets banned, true or made up.
| Does that sound okay?
|
| It's effed up of people think that that's okay because they
| are a private company and it's their platform...
| [deleted]
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| I'm surprised it's taken this long for them to get somewhat
| serious about this. I've worked with clients who have hate
| brigades that report everything they do and publish in an effort
| to get their pages and ad accounts shut down. I've gone as far as
| finding in infiltrating Facebook groups that openly talk about
| this while planning their next attack. Reported the groups for
| months and no one at FB cared.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _Reported the groups for months and no one at FB cared._
|
| Analysis: Engaged, active users. Encourage them to engage more!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Maybe try adding a letter to who you are contacting, FBI, to
| see if it would get the response you are hoping.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If the desired response is "Huh?", sure.
|
| The FBI is not going to intervene in Facebook brigading.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, I read too much into this thinking that it wasn't
| just mis-information campaigns but the other violent groups
| posting their vitriol as well.
| beebmam wrote:
| The truth is that tech companies don't give a shit about
| working with law enforcement and actively try to avoid ever
| dealing with them at all.
|
| The ONLY time a tech company works with police is when they
| are obligated to, by law. It's actually quite a shame, I
| think it's actively harming our society. Laws without
| enforcement are worthless.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| The only time a tech company should work with police is
| when they're required to by law, and not always even then.
| What are we coming to when we side with police before even
| knowing what law they're enforcing?
| btilly wrote:
| Without knowing who your clients are, or why they are being
| targeted, I have no idea whose side I would be on.
|
| For example what you are saying could be said by Cassie at
| Crowdsurf against the #FreeBritney crowd. But given that she's
| helping the public image of an unconstitutional and abusive
| conservatorship means that I don't WANT FB to do what she
| wants.
|
| However it could also be said by someone representing the
| latest person who has been canceled for failing to be
| sufficiently politically correct. And in that case I'd be
| sympathetic.
| dudus wrote:
| That's the problem with corporations deciding what is right
| and what is wrong. Or what is considered hate speach.
|
| Most people would agree Nazis are bad (except for the Nazis
| themselves), then you have anti-vax. In my opinion bad but
| clearly not an opinion shared by a large group of people.
|
| We'll live in a world where free speech is controlled by tech
| corps. Which is all well and dandy when their views align
| with yours but horrific when they don't. The other option
| would be to not have anyone policing speach which has shown
| to be problematic as well.
|
| The legal system needs to step up and own online speach
| monitoring and removals
| _jal wrote:
| > The legal system needs to step up and own online speach
| monitoring and removals
|
| (I'm guessing you're US-based.) So instead of many poor
| systems trying to do better, we'll end up with one uniform
| system working poorly, that just became a nuclear-hot
| political target implicating the 1st Amendment.
|
| The only arguably positive thing that does is relieve
| pressure on the platforms, while not allowing any
| behavioral diversity and making any future moderation
| adjustments a massive culture-war fight.
| dudus wrote:
| It puts the burden on judging what is or isn't protected
| free speech or hate speach in the hands of actual judges
| that are appointed for that purpose exactly.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| You were doing okay up to that last disastrous couple
| sentences. The legal system most emphatically should not
| engage in monitoring and removal of speech. It's bad enough
| when private companies do it, and that should be opposed as
| strongly as possible -- but government shouldn't begin to
| touch the decision of what opinions are and are not
| allowable.
| dudus wrote:
| What's a good solution then? Who should be the judge of
| right vs wrong if not for actual judges?
|
| Or you think no monitoring is the best scenario, even
| with evidence of how speach has been weaponized on social
| media to push for conflict.
| mc32 wrote:
| I think not knowing is a better framework from which to work
| with to work out a neutral way to address misdeeds. We should
| not take sides and should be impartial when making these
| decisions (goose/gander).
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| That's not true at all. Context is the _only_ way to make
| any useful judgements. A couple examples:
|
| Person A tackles person B to the ground and holds them
| there against their will. Is that morally acceptable?
| There's no way to tell.
|
| If A is B's estranged ex-husband and is upset that she
| hasn't returned his calls, most people would say it's
| unacceptable behavior. If A is a bystander to a knife
| attack by B on London bridge, most people would (and did)
| say that it is justified.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| In your first case: it is later revealed that the reason
| for A's action was B making threats of violence towards
| their kid and about to realize them.
|
| The problem with third parties passing judgement is that
| they often lack _full_ context.
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| I completely agree. Outside of these toy examples, there
| really is no way to know the complete truth. But I don't
| think we should give up on doing _the best we can_ to
| recover as much context as possible, and we certainly
| shouldn 't fall into some sort of epistemic learned
| helplessness and try to make all judgements from a
| position of zero knowledge.
| mc32 wrote:
| Yes we can look at particulars when applying the law to a
| particular case.
|
| When we make out laws they should be impartial and not
| put the thumb on the scale when writing them.
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| I'm not sure what you think a law would look like that is
| completely impartial. The very _existence_ of a law
| represents a thumb on the scales of otherwise
| unconstrained human behavior. What specifically should we
| make laws impartial _to_?
| mc32 wrote:
| We don't have to consider ridiculous extremes. We need to
| consider our philosophy, mores and ethics to inform laws.
|
| We don't say, it's illegal to commit theft, well, unless
| you're the government or the judge, then it's okay
| because we know you must have good intentions.
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| Okay, so we should not give exemptions to specific
| categories of people who are a priori assumed to be good.
| I think that's fair. Are you concerned that that's the
| situation in the original context? Or would be, if we
| somehow knew who the original commenter was talking
| about?
| mc32 wrote:
| It would be healthier to not know the identity to avoid
| introducing unnecessary bias in the decision.
|
| It shouldn't be like: oh it was Joe the grocer, yeah he's
| okay, let 'im go. Vs, oh it was Ernie the latrine digger,
| he always makes my skin crawl; throw the book at him!
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| So if the hate brigades were being launched by a group
| with a long track record of bad-faith and abusive
| behavior, you don't think that should inform your
| decision making?
| mc32 wrote:
| Why not make a rule to address all brigading? why
| targeted against groups you like or dislike? The groups
| you like and dislike are not going to be concentric with
| other people's so keep it consistent.
| jjcon wrote:
| > But given that she's helping the public image of an
| unconstitutional and abusive conservatorship means that I
| don't WANT FB to do what she wants.
|
| Imo if Facebook wants to be less toxic (no pun intended?)
| they would want to quell these as well. As long as we are
| algorithmically deciding what gets views id prefer the bias
| skew positive and not negative no matter how justified.
| elliekelly wrote:
| When you say "planning their next attack" do you mean a literal
| attack on your client's security or do you mean a coordinated
| facebook brigading type of "attack"?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Finally. The first ones that seem to be hit were German anti-
| vaxxers ("Querdenken", per
| https://www.sueddeutsche.de/service/internet-facebook-loesch...).
| scohesc wrote:
| People should not expect pleasant discourse on social media. You
| have every single statement, opinion, or reasoning scrutinized by
| robots or vastly under-paid contractors - none of which
| understand nuances of conversation like context, sarcasm, etc.
|
| Social media is a cancer that's growing on society. We need to go
| back to smaller online presences instead of a "global village" as
| it were. Too many things to worry about in the world, and too
| many companies want to sell you fear with advertising.
| boplicity wrote:
| One of the things about a small community is that there are
| real social consequences for not staying within the confines of
| polite behavior. People can get embarrassed, shunned, ignored,
| etc. Their reputations are harmed, often leading to
| consequences in terms of work, friends, family, etc.
|
| On Facebook, people who are rude & impolite are rewarded with
| more engagement. Real consequences are very rare.
|
| It's a real problem.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > Social media is a cancer that's growing on society. We need
| to go back to smaller online presences instead of a "global
| village" as it were. Too many things to worry about in the
| world, and too many companies want to sell you fear with
| advertising.
|
| I feel like this is a big part of why Discord has gotten hugely
| popular. Communities are isolated and only semi-publicly
| accessible; most critically, they're not indexed by Google. On
| most servers, people are using aliases which are not (directly)
| linked to their real-life identities, but they're still people
| you get to know and befriend, unlike Reddit-likes where the
| people commenting are mostly interchangeable. These things make
| the internet feel a lot closer to how it was in the 90s and
| early 00s, where you could talk freely with your friends
| without worrying if someone with a grudge would take what you
| wrote and turn it into a mob-driven character assassination.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Facebook never should have started down this road. There's no
| winning endgame for them here.
| mcguire wrote:
| What would a winning endgame look like?
| Applejinx wrote:
| Facebook getting to disavow everything they've been paid to
| do, and accepting payment from a new set of bosses who turned
| out to have more authority over them than their previous
| paying customers had.
|
| Basically, entering the witness protection program and
| selling out those they've worked for in the past. Getting a
| huge cash-out, reputation laundering, and going away to
| preside over a dwindling number of hapless and heavily
| surveilled 'users', reporting on their doings to the
| authorities.
|
| That is very much the winning endgame for Facebook. They
| turned out not to be bigger than governments.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| Something like 1984, probably.
| 10000truths wrote:
| Depends on how you define 'winning', really. If 'growth at
| all costs' is your metric, then sure, Facebook is winning. If
| 'adherence to original vision' is your metric, then you could
| argue that Facebook went astray a long time ago.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| "Harmful coordination by real accounts" appears to mean mass-
| reporting and brigading. The truth is, that because Facebook's
| moderation is so unreliable, with innocent comments frequently
| leading to bans, while actual death threats and incitement to
| violence are deemed "not in violation of our community
| standards", mass-reporting and brigading are among the only
| recourse real users have to get actual harmful content removed.
| They're not reliable, of course, and they can be used by all
| sides, but if Facebook is effective at this, we're looking at a
| situation where Facebook only does something when Zuckerberg is
| hauled in front of Congress over something. I'm glad I haven't
| been on Facebook for many years now, but opting out isn't a
| solution for everyone.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Is there anything to be said for leaving the harmful content
| there? If the crapflood made people like facebook less, or get
| more skeptical, or made the company get serious about not
| shoveling manipulative garbage down people psyches then I'd be
| pleased.
|
| I know "deplatforming" seems like a good idea, and is effective
| in the short term, it just strikes me as ultimately the wrong
| level at which to attack anti-social behaviour on "social
| networks".
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The crapflood just caused people to invade the capital
| building and refuse to get vaccinated. If anything it made
| them more engaged and less skeptical.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _If the crapflood made people like facebook less, or get
| more skeptical, or made the company get serious about not
| shoveling manipulative garbage down people psyches then I 'd
| be pleased._"
|
| I believe that experiment has already been run.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| So not ever 'real identity' can save us? Heaven forbid, could it
| be that the serious facade that facebook sold to advertisers is
| collapsing?
| boplicity wrote:
| Facebook can't even handle extremely basic moderation and spam
| fighting.
|
| For example, I reported a post today that was a blatant attempt
| to steal my log-in information. Facebook's response: "it doesn't
| go against one of our specific Community Standards."
|
| This was for a post that was impersonating Facebook.
|
| I've heard very similar stories from many other people.
|
| Obviously, Facebook just can't handle even the most basic
| problems to do with moderation. There are so many problems on
| their platform that go beyond the most obvious attempts at fraud
| and scams. Yet, if they can't properly handle the most obvious
| scams, how can we trust them to properly moderate anything at
| all?
| agolliver wrote:
| At 2 am last night a bot impersonating a family member added
| every one of their friends on facebook & sent them messages. I
| reported it as a fake account, a ticket which was instantly
| closed.
|
| Facebook sent a notification later to them that the account was
| not impersonating anyone, no action would be taken, and there
| was no way to appeal.
|
| Interestingly, messenger did splat a bunch of pretty good
| warnings on top of the DM they sent me:
| https://i.imgur.com/gigUA7G.png
| georgeecollins wrote:
| When Facebook talks about "real accounts" they mean only
| accounts that are not very obviously fake in a way an algorithm
| can detect. It's unquestionable that it is easy to set up a
| fake account in FB and it always has been. If they tried
| harder-- and they almost certainly will have to due to
| political pressure-- it will still be pretty easy to find more
| sophisticated ways to fake an account.
|
| With an advertising model there are always going to be
| incentives to fake accounts, and disincentives to FB to close
| any account. The simple way to stop fake accounts would be to
| introduce even a small cost to have an account which would make
| faking accounts not cost effective. But that's not their model.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Are you kidding me? Of course they can but it's complicated.
| They don't want to lose money. They don't want to be accused of
| censorship for moderating. If they "moderate" certain people
| too much they might bring regulation. Etc.
| mftb wrote:
| Regarding fake accounts, at the beginning of 2021 I saw this
| story a number of places -
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-
| disables-1-3-billion.... That in 2020 fb shutdown 1.3 billion
| (with a b, fake accounts). I can no longer find a good number
| for the total size of fb's membership. I think around this time
| I saw it reported as 4 billion. Does anyone have such a number?
| If the four billion number were accurate, then when this story
| ran fb was admitting that something like 20-25% of the platform
| up until then was fake.
| sayonaraman wrote:
| This is great, Facebook should add "Two Minutes Hate" feature to
| the user timeline to address the spread of misinformation by
| these enemies of the people.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| literallyaduck wrote:
| We have always been at war with misinformation.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Facebook most certainly has not. You can get paid very
| handsomely for facilitating misinformation that wouldn't
| otherwise catch on without a lot of surreptitious advocacy,
| preferably astroturfed. The cash value of this has everything
| to do with how well you can get away with it. It's just
| market dynamics in action.
|
| They are simply running into externalities, that's all.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Perhaps they should target harmful coordination by themselves
| intended wrote:
| From what I can tell, Facebook's internal research on mitigation
| is leaning towards studying the connections people have to
| determine the threat profile - not just the individuals posting
| habits.
|
| Can't say more, because it's a guess based on posts and job
| requirements.
|
| So front/standard moderation is outsourced and more advanced
| threat detection is looking at large coordinated networks.
|
| It's a huge pity that the state of the art in modern troll combat
| is behind NDAs.
|
| I'll also admit, that as poor security through obscurity is, it's
| a useful speed bump here.
|
| It's kinda odd to contemplate how this space will evolve.
| Applejinx wrote:
| >From what I can tell, Facebook's internal research on
| mitigation is leaning towards studying the connections people
| have to determine the threat profile - not just the individuals
| posting habits.
|
| This is not unreasonable. I don't think for a second it's just
| organic trolling that's causing them problems. They have taken
| money from literal nation-states attempting to wage war by
| informational means and crush their enemies. Genocides in small
| countries doesn't begin to sum up the real threat profile here.
| Facebook could bear responsibility for actively aiding efforts
| to plunge the globe into hot war, if their paying customers got
| ambitious and foolish enough.
|
| Small wonder they're trying to get things under control, but
| under control THEIR way. If they don't mitigate, they're liable
| to end up in the Hague.
| cstoner wrote:
| > It's a huge pity that the state of the art in modern troll
| combat is behind NDAs.
|
| I mean... do _you_ have any ideas about how to fix this sort of
| thing that would survive being published for the world to see?
|
| I don't mean to offend you or anything, I just want to point
| out that the second you go public with your rules about how
| these things are detected, the people you are targeting will
| adjust their behavior to evade them.
|
| I think that the secrecy is unfortunately a hard requirement
| until perhaps we could all coordinate into a global "behavioral
| score" system. And to be honest, that sort of shit is
| terrifying, so we should probably never do it.
| intended wrote:
| No I fully agree, which is why I made a mention of security
| through obscurity.
|
| However, I will make the case that something of this
| magnitude should be available to the public.
| 13415 wrote:
| > _do _you_ have any ideas about how to fix this sort of
| thing that would survive being published for the world to
| see?_
|
| I would try to come up with a rule-based system that
| _actually_ detects the bad behavior they don 't want to have.
| Of course, people are then free to circumvent that system by
| not behaving badly.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is pretty much the equivalent of "I would try to make
| a rocket that just lands on Mars instead of crashing". All
| I gotta do is make it take off instead of not taking off.
| mzs wrote:
| Sure:
|
| Settings > Timeline X chronological X
| only what your friends share
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| I'm curious how things look for people who are only friends
| with people of their extreme political persuasion and only
| likes/follows similarly extreme pages? Does giving some
| variety of relatively less extreme viewpoints cause a
| reduction extreme viewpoints?
| ggggtez wrote:
| There certainly is academic research that touches on these
| topics. Honestly, I'm sure the academics are moving faster than
| FB given that this has been a known problem for over a decade,
| and has only gotten worse over time.
| intended wrote:
| I guarantee that academics have been fighting to get data
| from FB, and are behind the curve.
|
| I've read papers which specifically highlighted this lacuna.
| mcguire wrote:
| Not been involved in this specific issue, but the problem is
| that academic research tends to be limited unless they have
| access to, say, Facebook's internal data. In which case
| they're under the NDAs
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| > [...] studying the connections people have to determine the
| threat profile - not just the individuals posting habits.
|
| Well that's just TERRIFYING. My account can get flagged... Not
| because of what I say, but because of who I know?
|
| Talk about a way to unperson someone. Make it so that even
| associating with them causes the social graph to collapse.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I think is is more about detecting highly connected groups
| and finding what they have in common.
|
| For example, if there is a group where each member connects
| to most other members and nazism is the common denominator,
| then it is identified az a nazi group. If you connect to a
| large part of the group, then you are a potential nazi. If
| you know someone in that group and most of your other
| contacts are unrelated, you are probably not a nazi.
|
| It is not that someone is marked as a supernazi and turns
| everyone he touches into a nazi.
| daenz wrote:
| User bjt2n3904 has expressed a strong negative reaction to
| threat profiling. Increase threat profile score by .4
| [deleted]
| dudus wrote:
| So Facebook will (in addition to policing free speech) police the
| right of assembly. There's no way this can go wrong.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| So, it's true that the Constitution doesn't protect rights from
| infringement by private businesses, but you're onto something
| important. The rights of free speech and free assembly are
| critical to a functioning republic, and their curtailment ---
| even legally, and by private corporations --- is doing great
| harm to our tottering system.
|
| I don't want government to force businesses to allow speech,
| but we need to actively oppose private enterprises when they
| limit speech, and support alternatives that embrace freedom.
| void_mint wrote:
| Websites have always moderated incoming content.
| plumeria wrote:
| The Google Play Store needs this as well...
| yosito wrote:
| On the one hand, I can see how using this to combat organized
| misinformation could be a good thing. Combating organized vaccine
| misinformation is the obvious current example. On the other hand,
| it's a bit dystopian to have a platform used as a public square
| that cracks down on organizers they don't like.
| pyronik19 wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember when stating covid came out of a
| wuhan lab was "dangerous misinformation" that could get you
| removed from social media. Not so much "misinformation"
| anymore...
| btilly wrote:
| Here is one of the challenges with this space. What can be used
| to suppress misinformation can also be used to suppress
| information as well. Doing nothing has been weaponized. Doing
| something will be as well. And we have plenty of examples of
| things which have been ruled "harmful misinformation" that later
| turned out not to be. With consequences for those who posted what
| later turned out to be mainstream.
|
| A few examples. There is a reasonable possibility that COVID-19
| escaped from a lab. Vaccine passports for COVID-19 are likely to
| become a thing. The conservatorship of Britney Spears is
| unconstitutional, and has been a vehicle for grand larceny.
|
| So how do we suppress harmful misinformation, such as that the
| 2020 election was stolen through widespread fraud. And not
| provide tools that can be misappropriated against truths which
| are inconvenient to people with money and influence?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It's almost as if algorithms and procedures aren't enough, that
| values and judgements matter.
| makomk wrote:
| Any attempt to suppress "harmful misinformation" will be seen
| as partisan because, well, it pretty much is. There was a huge
| amount of utter bullshit pushed on social media about the 2016
| election being stolen by fraud, including stuff that the author
| obviously could not possibly have worked as described or been
| used to steal the election, and a large proportion of the US
| population literally believed Russians had hacked the voting
| tallies. It obviously wasn't harmless either: someone
| radicalized by Facebook went and shot a Republican senator, and
| it was only through masses of luck and intrusive medical
| interventions that he survived. Yet the only thing the
| mainstream media showed an iota of concern for was the fact
| that anyone objected to this.
|
| Hell, even in the run-up to the 2020 elections the press were
| pushing the narrative that it'd be impossible to know the
| results weren't hacked and the election was valid - right up
| until it became clear Trump had lost, at which point it became
| absolutely certain they were valid and the audit chains and
| processes so robust only a conspiracy nut would question them.
| The same kinda happened in reverse in 2016.
| btilly wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the "senator" you are naming was
| Congressman Steve Scalise. I have not specifically heard that
| the shooter, James Hodgkinson, believed in conspiracy
| theories about a stolen 2016 election. But he may have.
|
| However the big difference between partisan beliefs about the
| two elections is this. After 2016, Democrats mostly believed
| that they lost at the polls due to an effective
| disinformation campaign run by the Russians. After 2020,
| Russians believed that they lost due to widespread vote
| counting fraud. As
| https://www.rollcall.com/2021/02/24/partisan-voters-claim-
| we... says, Democrats and Republicans believe this by almost
| exactly the same margins.
|
| But _what_ is believed matters. Democrats may have been
| furious, but they believed in rule of law. Radical
| Republicans, by contrast, attempted to overturn the election
| via an insurrection.
| sixothree wrote:
| Let's not pretend Facebook ever was or ever will be some
| bastion for democratic values.
|
| We shouldn't expect that not "suppressing information" is ever
| in their best interest. Or that it would be something new for
| them. It seems like fantasy to think in those terms.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > So how do we suppress harmful misinformation, such as that
| the 2020 election was stolen through widespread fraud. And not
| provide tools that can be misappropriated against truths which
| are inconvenient to people with money and influence?
|
| We recognize that the "we" you're referring to are the "people
| with money and influence." "Harmful misinformation" from their
| perspective is information that they dispute either factually
| _or through implication or perspective_ that could harm them,
| the people with money and influence.
|
| > So how do we suppress harmful misinformation, such as that
| the 2020 election was stolen through widespread fraud.
|
| With clear and extensive explanations and transparency. The
| people who insisted loudly that there was no widespread fraud
| the moment the election ended in their favor were operating
| with as little factual, auditable information as the people who
| were insisting that there was. The people who were insisting on
| a fraud narrative were of course consuming a lot more
| misinformation, but both sides were pretending that they were
| knowledgeable about something they weren't, at all.
| btilly wrote:
| First, the "we" that I was referring to was "we as a society"
| and, more specifically, "we as technologists". As in, how can
| we create a technology and social norms that both encourage a
| fact-based narrative while being resistant to political
| manipulation.
|
| Also to your specific example of the election, a lot of
| people who spoke out fairly quickly against the fraud
| information were operating on the factual, auditable
| information that both sides were presenting their data to
| judges of various persuasions around the country, and the
| judges were virtually unanimously concluding that there was
| no case. And then various recounts began coming back,
| likewise concluding that there was no fraud.
|
| I don't know what standard of evidence you think people
| should have spoken out at. But that seemed at the time to be
| a reasonable level of evidence. And it still does. The judges
| in this case were literally a collection of people chosen to
| be trustworthy, with varying political alignments, who were
| making informed decisions on the basis of more data than I
| have, and consistently came to the same conclusion.
|
| A similar kind of thing for fact checks would be a standard
| that I could be comfortable with. But it has to be similar. A
| collection of independent people. Chosen on the basis of
| methodology. With different political alignments. And it is
| only when they broadly agree that we are willing to impose
| rules.
| anderson1993 wrote:
| We know all social media is hit with attempted manipulation, the
| hard part is figuring out how and why. I doubt Facebook can
| figure it out.
| daenz wrote:
| With the current logic that Facebook is using, "manipulation"
| can mean any behavior that they don't endorse. For example
| someone is "manipulating" their network by posting anti Biden
| memes.
|
| I recognize that I am extrapolating real group behavior to real
| individual behavior, but I think that extrapolation is
| warranted given that we've just made the jump from group bot
| behaviour to group people behavior.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I find it entirely implausible that facebook, with their vast
| troves of data and an army of the very best computer scientists
| money can buy, is incapable of reliably identifying posts and
| users responsible for mass manipulation on their platform.
| Unwilling? Sure. Unable? Not a chance.
| yosito wrote:
| It's a bit hard for them to figure it out when they're one of
| the main culprits and depend on manipulation for profit.
| drummer wrote:
| Dumpsterfire is flaring up again.
| slim wrote:
| Facebook is threatening freedom of association
| mwint wrote:
| So they're going to use this to stop people spreading harmful
| misinformation, like, say, the conspiracy theory that governments
| would create vaccine passports, or that a virology lab in Wuhan
| might have been involved in a virus that came out of Wuhan.
|
| Or that masks are a good idea.
|
| Dissent from the popular opinion is good and healthy, going both
| ways.
| shuntress wrote:
| > Dissent from the popular opinion is good and healthy, going
| both ways
|
| _" You gotta hear both sides"_ is extremely harmful when it is
| used to equate massively unequal opinions.
|
| Of course dissenting opinions should be heard and assessed but
| it is also obviously absurd to treat some opinion such as "I
| think that we should vacuum the floors to prepare for guests"
| with the same weight and validity as "I think we should murder
| our guests when they arrive that way we wont have to worry
| about vacuuming"
| [deleted]
| silicon2401 wrote:
| So is this counter-argument. Who decides what's absurd? Two
| people may have completely different and legitimate views on
| what's absurd.
| colpabar wrote:
| Make whatever strawman analogies you want, but the fact of
| the matter is that massive online communication platforms
| like facebook are increasingly censoring dissenting opinions.
| One day, an opinion that you hold will become "dangerous",
| and you'll have to choose between conformity or being
| excluded from our increasingly digital society.
|
| edit: why do we keep giving these companies the benefit of
| the doubt when they continue to lie about _everything_?
| shuntress wrote:
| Don't try to change the subject. My comment is not about
| facebook, censorship, corporate-run dystopias, or thought-
| crime exile.
|
| Move the goalposts all you want but the fact is that all
| opinions are not equal in merit.
|
| If you do actually want to have a good-faith discussion
| about how to limit the reach of worse opinions while
| increasing the reach of better opinions I would be happy to
| hear your suggestions.
|
| Or if you would prefer to discuss how to find agreement on
| what we consider a "good" or a "bad" opinion, I would start
| by offering that I think the opinion _" face masks do not
| prevent the spread of airborne respiratory infections"_
| should be considered significantly less reasonable than the
| opinion _" face masks are effective at preventing the
| spread of airborne respiratory infection"_.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Our leaders at the start of 2020 explicitly said to not
| buy or wear masks [1] in contrast to well established
| research supporting masks from the 1990s SARs epidemic.
|
| People supporting masks were censored for misinformation.
|
| So you would have been one of those censored at the time,
| despite being backed by the evidence and correct.
|
| What makes you think such mistakes won't happen again?
|
| [1] - https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/face-masks-
| coronavirus...
| ManBlanket wrote:
| It's funny how we look at opinions as reasonable mostly
| out of convenience to our own foregone conclusions these
| days instead of statistics from which we derive evidence
| that substantiates our conclusions. This guy likes masks,
| he's one of the good ones. Not one of those baddies who
| don't. Let's ignore the fact we have almost 2 years of
| global data pertaining to mandates, transmission, and
| death rates, and decide who we agree with based on which
| tribe they hail from. Super reasonable.
| colpabar wrote:
| I don't think I'm changing the subject, I am asking you
| to look at the bigger picture. Your comment may not have
| been about facebook specifically, but we are in a thread
| about a new facebook initiative regarding yet another
| form of censorship. You list an opinion that you say has
| more merit than another, and fine, let's say I agree. My
| problem with looking at things through such a small lens
| is that "merit" seems pretty subjective, and if we
| continue to stand by as we let these tech companies
| decide what merit means, one day they will go too far,
| and it'll be too late.
|
| Here's an example of two opinions that I think are
| unequal. "the government has the right to confine people
| who have not broken any laws to their homes" and "the
| government does not have the right to confine people who
| have not broken any laws to their homes." In Australia,
| the government has decreed that the first opinion has
| more merit than the second. Should facebook follow suit,
| and censor anyone in australia who disagrees?
| shuntress wrote:
| > I am asking you to look at the bigger picture > My
| problem with looking at things through such a small lens
| is that "merit" seems pretty subjective
|
| Ok, the bigger picture with a bigger lens is this: _How
| do you slow the spread of harmful ideas?_
|
| You agree that some ideas are "better" than others. I
| think you would also agree that there is no simple
| definition over what "better" exactly means. It's complex
| and often elicits complex discussion.
|
| My point, that you are trying again to skip over, is that
| presenting any idea as if it is inherently equal in merit
| to any other idea is fundamentally bad. To be specific, I
| think this because I believe that good ideas will
| eventually prove themselves out over time (even if they
| spread very slowly) while bad ideas will tend to rely on
| rapid spread to reach critical mass before they are
| disproven.
| jmaygarden wrote:
| The post that is now flagged was referring to Dr. Fauci's
| March 8, 2020 statement that "there's no reason to be
| walking around with a mask." Dr. Fauci made that
| statement in a context of trying to ensure that enough
| protective equipment was available for frontline health
| workers at a time when there were runs on toilet paper in
| stores.
|
| I believe you are mischaracterizing the argument that was
| made. Unfortunately, we may no longer view the original
| post because your opinion has apparently been deemed more
| correct.
| mcguire wrote:
| Ok, apparently this is the hill I'm going to die on.
|
| Up through roughly April-May 2020, many, if not most,
| epidemiologists and virologists believed that masks would
| not help the situation: they thought respiratory viruses
| were spread through large droplets produced by
| symptomatic individuals and that physical separation,
| sanitation, and behavior would work as well as trying to
| convince people to were useful masks consistently and
| correctly. (Earlier today, I walked past a woman wearing
| a bandana tied around her head. Below her nose. Why!?)
|
| After that time, reports began to appear showing
| coronavirus could be spread asymptomatically, by normal
| breathing and speech, in an aerosol form that could stay
| airborne for long times. Under those situations, masks
| are the only solution.
|
| The "ensure that enough protective equipment was
| available for frontline health workers" thing was mostly
| a response to "but it couldn't hurt" thinking.
|
| "Then there is the infamous mask issue. Epidemiologists
| have taken a lot of heat on this question in particular.
| Until well into March 2020, I was skeptical about the
| benefit of everyone wearing face masks. That skepticism
| was based on previous scientific research as well as
| hypotheses about how covid was transmitted that turned
| out to be wrong. Mask-wearing has been a common practice
| in Asia for decades, to protect against air pollution and
| to prevent transmitting infection to others when sick.
| Mask-wearing for protection against catching an infection
| became widespread in Asia following the 2003 SARS
| outbreak, but scientific evidence on the effectiveness of
| this strategy was limited.
|
| "Before the coronavirus pandemic, most research on face
| masks for respiratory diseases came from two types of
| studies: clinical settings with very sick patients, and
| community settings during normal flu seasons. In clinical
| settings, it was clear that well-fitting, high-quality
| face masks, such as the N95 variety, were important
| protective equipment for doctors and nurses against
| viruses that can be transmitted via droplets or smaller
| aerosol particles. But these studies also suggested
| careful training was required to ensure that masks didn't
| get contaminated when surface transmission was possible,
| as is the case with SARS. Community-level evidence about
| mask-wearing was much less compelling. Most studies
| showed little to no benefit to mask-wearing in the case
| of the flu, for instance. Studies that have suggested a
| benefit of mask-wearing were generally those in which
| people with symptoms wore masks -- so that was the advice
| I embraced for the coronavirus, too.
|
| "I also, like many other epidemiologists, overestimated
| how readily the novel coronavirus would spread on
| surfaces -- and this affected our view of masks. Early
| data showed that, like SARS, the coronavirus could
| persist on surfaces for hours to days, and so I was
| initially concerned that face masks, especially ill-
| fitting, homemade or carelessly worn coverings could
| become contaminated with transmissible virus. In fact, I
| worried that this might mean wearing face masks could be
| worse than not wearing them. This was wrong. Surface
| transmission, it emerged, is not that big a problem for
| covid, but transmission through air via aerosols is a big
| source of transmission. And so it turns out that face
| masks do work in this case.
|
| "I changed my mind on masks in March 2020, as testing
| capacity increased and it became clear how common
| asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection were (since
| aerosols were the likely vector). I wish that I and
| others had caught on sooner -- and better testing early
| on might have caused an earlier revision of views -- but
| there was no bad faith involved."
|
| "I'm an epidemiologist. Here's what I got wrong about cov
| id."(https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/04/20/ep
| idemiolo...)
| jmaygarden wrote:
| Fauci himself told The Washington Post that mask supply
| was a motive back in July 2020. So, it was a combination
| of two factors as you rightly point out. Thank you for
| correcting my omission.
|
| "We didn't realize the extent of asymptotic spread...what
| happened as the weeks and months came by, two things
| became clear: one, that there wasn't a shortage of masks,
| we had plenty of masks and coverings that you could put
| on that's plain cloth...so that took care of that
| problem. Secondly, we fully realized that there are a lot
| of people who are asymptomatic who are spreading
| infection. So it became clear that we absolutely should
| be wearing masks consistently."
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/washington-post-
| live/fa...
| mcguire wrote:
| I hold many dangerous ideas. I also am not terribly shy
| about spreading them.
|
| But if this:
|
| https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e09ac35bd7596e18cb21562bcb4b
| 0...
|
| ever becomes my chosen way of doing so, I can only _hope_
| someone censors me. And takes me to a nice, comfortable
| assisted living facility where I cannot hurt myself or
| others.
|
| P.s. Ever heard of the Gish Gallop?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-09-16 23:00 UTC)