Legal and free speech issues aside, on Twitter I’m subscribed to an account that posts the ‘Top 10 most engaged articles/accounts on FB this week’ lists and it’s just damning how dominant hateful far-m right content is.
I get the idea of joining Facebook to do excellent engineering work, but for most at the company the outcome of all that excellent engineering is more people spending more time engaging with ‘Obama is a secret Muslim’ and QAnon type articles.
I hope Ashok finds good work at a quality company soon.
nailed it - same thing utterly convinced me, observing the top daily stories over time makes you clear-eyed.
it's no different than when i was 7, at the grocery store, and wouldn't stop asking my mom why tabloids were sold on the checkout lane caps if they were made up lies about conspiracies
It’s @FacebooksTop10 and it’s run by Kevin Roose who is a tech writer for NYT. He focuses some of his time on how hate speech and conspiracy theories thrive on Facebook, which is pretty interesting.
Facebook is the one major social network not censoring the right. The left doesn't make the top 10 because they are far too diffuse among other networks, but no less hateful. Reddit is actively working towards censoring anything right of Hilary and barely tolerating anything right of Bernie. Twitter is actively suppressing the POTUS. Far left views get diluted between Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit.
Because the left-wing is a hodge-podge of views and "principles" inconsistent to each other, the internal cannibalization of the left-wing front is a given. This is just one episode from this never ending saga of the left circular shooting squad. See: #MeToo, Rowlings, Feminists vs. LGBTQ+, etc.
All these happening in what's arguably the most diverse, the most open, the most immigrant-welcoming society on Earth.
Same as should happen to people who say "death to all cops" and the like? No single group should endure these epithets. Either you allow them all or you allow none.
Being a cop (an agent of the state permitted to use deadly force) is a job. It is in no way comparable to being a member of a persecuted ethnic and religious minority.
EDIT: Amazed at how much I’m being downvoted for this. Didn’t realize how many “blue lives matter” people browse HN.
There is a subtlety here, which I'll attempt to get into (and we'll see whether I'm downvoted for it too).
"Death to all cops" is bad for one reason: it endorses the idea of extrajudicial, unaccountable killing.
"Death to all Jews" is bad for two reasons: it endorses the idea of extrajudicial, unaccountable killing of people, based on an immutable aspect of their person and independent of choices that they have made.
If I understand you right, you're not endorsing the idea of extrajudicial, unaccountable killing (but, being charitable to the downvoters, I suspect that they think you're endorsing the former statement wholesale). You're just protesting the false equivalence between these two statements. I would agree with that protest: there is a meaningful difference between, say, "Cops are controlling our society without accountability and we should remove them from power" and "Jews are controlling our society without accountability and we should remove them from power," and you can quite sensibly come up with platform guidelines that say that the former is fine and the latter is not.
>being charitable to the downvoters, I suspect that they think you're endorsing the former statement wholesale
I'd be fascinated to know if this was true - I usually try to look at things from all angles, but I can't even see how any person could take this angle.
Er, I should clarify by "endorsing" I mean "endorsing that Facebook should leave up messages saying 'death to all cops,'" not "endorsing 'death to all cops.'"
I think that, in context, ihm's statement can quite easily be read as implying "...so, no, Facebook should not remove 'death to all cops' because it's not hate speech, only 'death to all Jews.'" I am guessing that's not actually what ihm is trying to communicate.
My point is in “death to _nouns_” there should not be nouns more deserving or less deserving of the treatment. All nouns deserve the same treatment.
It’s like saying death to commies or death to all Marxist sympathizers is okay but death to Capitalists is not okay. No, either all are okay or none is okay.
As a moderation rule, this makes sense, but it's too specific to be useful. What people actually say is usually more complex, and that makes it less clear cut which "sides" are more or less punished than others. But I realize you were just replying to sg47's comment, which I agree doesn't present a useful example.
Eh, sort of, as a moderation rule, the people who say "Death to those who have voluntarily chosen to do certain acts" get their post removed with a stern warning, the people who say "Death to those who were born in certain circumstances" get kicked off the platform.
You can absolutely believe that both comments don't belong on the platform and respond differently.
(We're also forgetting "Death to those who have been duly convicted of murder by a fair court of law," "Death to those who are actively threatening me with a loaded weapon," "Death to those who take up arms against my countrymen," and "Death to those who provide informed and free consent to it," all of which are positions that IMO should remain on your platform, if you value keeping a broad range of ideas. I might disagree with some of those but they're widely acknowledged to be civilized positions to take.)
He or she is probably just mad their preferred hate speech isn't as viral as they'd like. It's right to denounce violence from the fringe right, but likewise one would imagine the same denunciation would go for far leftist violence which mostly hurts the neighborhoods they light up.
It's a strange way to support a cause by causing property loss to the people who can least afford it (not that anyone would deserve it). But it's like people are blind to this violence because it hurts the narrative.
Show me the property damage militias have caused vs caused by ANTIFA in concerned neighborhoods.
Honestly, denying it is a detriment to the movement it purports to support. People see this and get turned off.
The far left exists. There are genuine Maoists and Tankies out there, unquestionably. But they have no political power, no majorly successful political candidate or party, and ultimately no impact on today's discourse.
The actual left that stands up to the far right powers that are running things in countries like the US and Brazil does not participate in hate speech.
Intolerance of hatred (whether it's misogeny or racism) is not itself intolerance or hatred, any more than being Anti-Fascism is an ideology like fascism itself.
When you see Leftist terrorists or Bombers in today's 21st Western society, then come back to me about leftist hate speech.
Until then, get out of here with your both-sidesism
This is absurd, the past 100+ days far-left/left/antifa/"blm" have been wielding immense political power by rioting, looting, burning, shooting, and antagonizing throughout multiple US cities.
The term "far-right" has no meaning when it's been applied to every human not condoning left-wing mob politics.
Is calling for the public execution or extrajudicial killing of a confirmed racist hatred in your books? Because there's innumerable examples of that from the left.
How many people called for the execution of Derek Chauvin prior to confirming his guilt in a court of law?
The right isn't burning down buildings, the left is. The right isn't violently clashing with the police, the left is. The right is not looting, the left is. The right is not setting vehicles on fire, the left is. The right is not rioting, the left is. The right is not marching in the street as a political show of force, the left is. The right is not attacking people and businesses based on the owner's race or political leaning, the left is.
Until recently I lived in downtown Seattle. I saw all of this with my own eyes. I saw them torch the building next to mine because the owner was an "evil white capitalist". I saw them torch the Starbucks 2 blocks from my building because of the "evil capitalists". I saw them march down my street every single night forcing people out of their cars, stopping traffic, looting and vandalizing as they felt like it.
There's hundreds upon hundreds of hours of documented video evidence of your side turning to violence. It's so absurd that your side is ACTIVELY throwing away everything we've built, throwing away our justice system, turning to violence and anarchy, and you want us to just ignore that. Your side is literally turning to domestic terrorism to forcefully coerce your political ideology.
But no, me peacefully sitting at home, watching your side literally burn our country down, apparently makes me the evil one, there's nothing wrong at all with what you're doing, I need to be censored out of existence. That's real tolerant.
There are people on the left with national significance who say heinous things about entire demographics, demographics by virtue of their birth, nonetheless, who have their message spread via social media.
And you know, I'm fine with them getting to have their say, as long as everyone gets their say.
The logical conclusion of the "far right" type ideologies, that seek ethnic purity, and everyone to be in their right place, is to destroy(segregate and kill) all threats to purity. The logical conclusion of people opposed to that, is to stop people being killed, and when that isn't happening let everyone go about their business. They are not comparable.
We do get to both-sides this. The thing Facebook did amazingly well is silo people who hold identical opinions, and drive inflammatory false content to them. This maximized clicks, while inflaming and radicalizing people on both sides.
Hatred doesn't last long when you talk to people. But Facebook doesn't let people talk to each other across boundaries. It's segregatory. See Brown v. Board. Now, there is no middle, and we have a mess to clean up.
This maximized clicks. Facebook weren't the only ones doing it, but Facebook is the giant in the room. Facebook could have connected people on the left and on the right, and facilitated civil discussions. It chose not to do that.
Do I blame them for it? I'm not sure. Market forces are powerful, and I suspect its hand may have been forced. Nevertheless, it's something we need to fix. Regulation is nice since it changes market forces.
To say the polarized left isn't harmful is false. I don't much care about terrorists or bombers. There aren't enough of them to matter. I care about racists on the right. I care about vigilante doxers on the left. I care about people losing their careers. I care about kids from some communities not learning. I care about people hating each other. That's as much of a problem on each side.
There was an article I ran into earlier today about how the far left which just caused a USC professor to be suspended from teaching for saying 那个 in a course on communications (which sounds a lot like an American racial slur). This stuff happens all the time in the far left. Watch the video. What he said is exactly what you'll hear in China all the time.
As a footnote, if you do want to see terrorists on the left, tune into Fox News. They play nonstop footage of BLM protesters beating people up, setting fires, and in one case, executing someone. You can't just close your eyes here; half of America is seeing one reality, and half is seeing another. To start closing the gaps, it's helpful to see both.
>Hatred doesn't last long when you talk to people.
I talk to people almost every day in a completely uncensored environment who have nothing but the purest hatred and mockery for all liberal or leftist people and liberal or leftist ideologies. They unabashedly want to murder their enemies. They applaud the killing and beating and gassing of BLM protesters. Yes, "the left" has places where they mock the right unreasonably too, and they fire somebody sometimes for a stupid misunderstanding or for being too offensive, or they ban somebody from a web site for a not-good-enough reason - it's stupid and awful, but there is simply no comparison. Calling what the worst elements on the right are doing to society and discourse "stupid and awful" would be a comedic understatement. And yes, in the right-now, people in the protests are burning things and assaulting people, but they are responding to being murdered by police. If the state murders you in the street, it's hard to find a ceiling for responses past which I couldn't understand people going, even if the response ends up ultimately doing more harm than good, which I can't even predict. The thing they're responding to is one of the worst things that can happen in a civilization.
Edit: Somebody replied to me with the recent death of the Trump supporter, but got flagged (predictably so, considering the rest of their post). I just wanted to point out that it's a good example of cherry picking. Each time somebody dies, the people "on their side" will hold it up alone as evidence of how evil the enemy is. Of course, I'm speaking of the big picture, and I'm aware of the many smaller pieces, and I take pains to consider them.
> I talk to people almost every day in a completely uncensored environment who have nothing but the purest hatred and mockery for all liberal or leftist people and liberal or leftist ideologies.
And I live in one with the same feelings for the right! We're like brothers, I guess?
> They applaud the killing and beating and gassing of BLM protesters. Yes, "the left" has places where they mock the right unreasonably too, and they fire somebody sometimes for a stupid misunderstanding or for being too offensive, or they ban somebody from a web site for a not-good-enough reason - it's stupid and awful, but there is simply no comparison.
To be clear, I shared an institutional response from just about the most credible type of institution you might find on the left -- a university. This is not an individual response. Individual words are far, far worse. I'm not sure how you've gone from there to claiming the worst the left does is to "ban somebody from a web site."
Really? Are you willfully blind? You really need to tune into Fox News more. You're seeing the bad stuff on the right, and not the bad stuff on the left. For a lot of the stuff, they show real videos, so you know it's not fake! It might be rare -- in a country with 300 million people, just about anything happens somewhere -- but it's not fake.
> Each time somebody dies, the people "on their side" will hold it up alone as evidence of how evil the enemy is.
That's exactly what happens. Fox News cherry picks. You'll get the nights' selection of Worst Stuff on the Left.
The left goes back and cherry-picks too. The number Fox News constantly runs is that in 2018, a total of 18 unarmed black men were killed by police. We can quibble about statistical methods, but far more of the problems come from police brutality and from the extreme biases in our justice system end-to-end (The New Jim Crow is an excellent book) than the isolated police shooting. A lot of the stuff you see on smaller more left-leaning media designed to drive outrage (and especially the stuff that spreads virally on Facebook) is just fake too.
And you can be sure that Fox News careful takes apart the most fake news on the left, in the same way the left takes apart the most fake news on the right, so (rightfully) neither side believes the other.
And by the end of it, we live in a polarized nation with two very different perceptions of reality.
Watching Fox News doesn't mean you have to agree with it. Citing someone as saying something doesn't mean you need to agree with them either -- a citation means that you're pointing to what someone is saying. I read (and cite) everything from moderate sources to foreign state propaganda newspapers, to radical extremists from all sides (not just US red-blue).
Sun Tzu said: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Fox News is the top-rated news show in America. It has about the same ratings as CNN and MSNBC combined. If you're not watching Fox News, you can't understand where half of America is coming from. If that's the basis you're starting from, good luck working productively towards change.
The reality is half of America is seeing police violence. Half of America is seeing protester violence. That's the reality of our media. The things they show are real, but cherry-picked. It's actual video footage half of America is seeing. You can't just ignore that, and claim to understand what's going on.
You can't read about it either. Primary sources. Articles about what other people are saying are about half-fabrications at this point (on all sides).
Methinks that if you think that the best use of your time in "understanding what is going on" and fighting the battle against "inflammatory false content" is to watch it, cite it in conversation, and talk to people who watch it- it's your life and choice, but, forgive me: citing it is a mistake, because it is a false reflection of reality (on a personal level, an important distinction from the aggregate medium is the message level), and, trying to combat it by talking to people is like talking to an addict. Fox and other content providers are there because people want it. There is demand and dependence. You can get a reasonable conversation from one part of someone's brain that is disconnected from actual behavior, because the other is hungering for the hit.
Sounds like you've got it all figured out. Read what you've written again. You've dehumanized half of America, and, well, subhumans ain't worth talkin' to. It'd be nice if someone saved them from themselves, but they can't be saved anyways, and besides, they wouldn't be worth saving if you tried.
Why, might a reasonable person ask?
Well, obviously, because they've dehumanized another part of America.
To quote you back: "Was that deliberately meta or just completely un-self-aware?"
No. Be careful with conclusions of dehumanization. That is the Fox narrative. It is the most insidious of the falsehoods.
More precisely, a choice to consume deliberately false and deadly toxicity to engage in communication to reach past "hate" in the interest of "saving"....is just that, a choice. It's maybe hopeful and optimistic but also sanctimonious, patronizing, sisyphean, and in some cases blind. If a humane choice, it's absolutely not the only humane choice. Fox is not the first deadly religion, and it won't be the last. There are many toxic forces and powers, and the deepest tragedy is that so many of them are so much greater than that of a single individual. There is needless pain and suffering and loss not only among the afflicted but the unafflicted as well, as the defensive walls are necessarily porous.
Best wishes in your task. Be careful about both sidesing, it is the devil's best trick, and aware of limits to empathy. Appreciate the engagement. I will see a response but will not be responding again. Take care.
I am careful with conclusions about dehumanization. Be careful with what you write about whole groups of people.
The culture we're born into is NOT a choice. Whether you're in a red-state culture, a blue-state culture, a Chinese culture, a Middle Eastern Muslim culture, or a Peruvian culture is up to your parents. Religion, political ideology, beliefs about male-female relations, beliefs about parent-child relations, and a whole slew of things follow.
Most people from all major demographic groups are good people. You may disagree with them. But most people are basically good. Every major group has a psychopathic minority. That's common to ALL of humanity, at least as far as I've seen. In most cases, members of the in-group will say that someone is not a "real Christian/Muslim/feminist/etc." about those psychopathic elements. There are also toxic elements to any culture, and being on the inside, it's very hard to see them. It takes work and engagement with other cultures. It's easiest to see this historically. For example, look at how we treated [insert minority group] [insert number of decades ago].
Yes, there are toxic beliefs in red state cultures. Yes, there are toxic beliefs in blue state cultures. They're no worse or better than, for example, mainstream views in China on Tibet or Taiwan. As much as it might seem that way, neither side is Nazi Germany.
There is an old joke where a man is about to commit suicide, and another man tries to save him. They have a conversation, where they seem to be building empathy through a series of questions, coming to the conclusion that their both Christians, Protestants, Presbyterians, and so on. At the end, one asks the other if they're from the reformation in 1938 or the reformation of 1948. It ends with one being pushed off of the bridge with a scream of "Die heretic!" I recall it being funny when I was a little kid, but I can't find it with Google, and can't tell with a good punchline.
But that's sort of what's happening here. Most American liberals are pretty well able to engage with people from all around the world, despite the well-known toxic elements of those cultures. See the defense of Muslims post-9/11 (whom I mention because they share so much similarity to many red state cultures along the lines liberals care about). Somehow, that can't happen close to home. Empathy goes away. Hate comes. We can read and cite Chinese government media objectively when trying to understand that culture, but we're bad people if we do the same with US right-wing media.
I will worry about radical Maoists when it's plausible that they (or people using their votes for political gain) win a presidential election, obstruct the senate, have a majority in the supreme court, stockpile 400m guns, and have elected officials that write online manifestos about the need to kill their political opposition [1]. It's time to take the DHS and the FBI at their word; far right movements are the largest danger to the US right now. It does not make sense to worry about a mosquito while there's an angry grizzly running towards us. "Antifa" protesters that commit violence can be dealt with via regular law enforcement just fine.
Maybe you're unaware of what's happening with the extremes on both sides, but they're feeding off each other and rapidly regressing (thanks in large part to Facebook/Twitter). While each is enabled/emboldened by the free pass from their side, who are either unaware of their own extremes or just more afraid of the other. It's a negative feedback loop and we really need both sides to start pushing back on their own.
It's a huge red flag to tell people they are simply "X" or "X or Y", where all options are basically synonymous with stupid or lying. I agree with the parent, and I am painfully aware of what is happening with the extremes on both sides.
You are mixing up the far right with the right-liberal part of the Liberal faction.
We live in a chimeric system and it confuses nearly everybody in it. There are always two factions working against a third.
I think political partisans are victims - they have been given a bad political map. Spectrum, compasses - all ideas given credibility by their political competitors. You should ask yourself who benefits from these models. It isn't the left or right. It's a third faction hiding in the blindspot of the other two factions.
I have to admit it's very clever and it took me a long time to realize what was going on. I have to thank outsider science fiction author Liu Cixin who vividly bought the topic to life with his Straussian description of our political order in the Three Body Problem.
For most of the population it's the perfect political Venus Fly Trap and probably the explanation for why the West has dominated the world for centuries.
Agree 100% with this. "Being bold" and "taking down content" should not be used in the same sentence. The leadership team, and many people trying to make Facebook great understand that.
If you read his goodbye message, it doesn't sound reasoned at all. What is the alternative he is proposing exactly? It's implicitly silencing voices, based on what people at Facebook think is hate.
When it comes to something so critical to society, moving fast on that is ridiculous.
Facebook isn't the kind of platform where everyone is equal. Facebook's main function is to decide what people see, and what they don't see. That's what happens in everyone's news feed, and with the ads. For example, prioritizing "group" content over news predictably leads to more consumption of fake news and extreme content (and it was predicted: https://mondaynote.com/facebook-is-done-with-quality-journal... ) The alternative is to accept that FB has this power, be accountable and transparent about it, and take responsibility for the type of content that gets promoted.
Thank you for the deep response, alongside with the links.
I agree that Facebook has a power to choose what content gets promoted, which is very dangerous. My key point is, that given this state, they must tread very, very carefully. The second order consequences to changes can be dire. A common argument is that inaction can be worse, but given that most solutions involve _more_ intervention rather than less, the tail only grows more catastrophic.
Not only that, but I think Facebook has a lot less power here than people think. There are competitors, and not everyone will choose to reduce addictiveness for the greater good.
These two questions I think are what leadership / great eng are grappling with the most. In my opinion, the solution involves removing slowly the intervention that Facebook already has, while introducing other means to keep people engaged (or else, they will simply leave and join whatever other thing will radicalize them)
- There is significantly more hate speech from the far right than from the left.
- Facebook proactively removes hate speech from the left.
- More people report hate speech from the left.
- Facebook is more afraid to remove hate speech from the right, because the right has more political power in Facebook's jurisdiction and has recently summoned them for a legislative investigation into censorship of right-leaning content.
- There are more real-world consequences of hate speech from the far right (genocides, shootings, etc.) than from the left.
Despite the names, the "right" and the "left" are not mirror images of each other. They have different political views, worldviews, and moralities, and so we cannot assume that there is exactly as much hatefulness on one side as the other, and that if you see N examples of hate speech from one side, there must be exactly N equally-venomous examples from the other, and the only reason you're not listing them is that you didn't bother looking.
I don’t think so. In this situation Facebook does heavily skew to the far right of politics. Here’s a Twitter account that uses Facebook’s own CrowdTangle tool to track the most shared news sources per week, and the results speak for themselves. Facebook is constantly filled with Fox News, Breitbart, the Trump campaign, Ben Shapiro, and other far right sources.
It’s possible that Facebook is censoring center or left wing news and that would explain why such extreme far right sources are so prevalent, but that’s almost worse in my opinion. Because then Facebook would be deciding the outcome of the election without any oversight or transparency.
No word on the proliferation of Antifa-affiliated groups on the platform though, fresh after their cold blooded execution of a peaceful Trump supporter during mass rioting in Portland. [1]
Alternative title: Politically biased engineer quits because his company won't censor his ideological enemies.
Here’s a link to the letter. I almost joined FB for a ridiculous sum of money/equity and chose not to due to their participation in the proliferation of right wing/white supremicist hate speech. Two years later I am glad to have my position be vindicated by, inter alia, this letter.
This is literally just a political rant scribbled while slamming the door on an ex-employer. Seems like Facebook has reduced it's bias by one engineer as a result.
Thailand forced FB to restrict access to a group criticizing the monarchy. Should FB comply with governments that want to silence and lie to their people? Should FB push for Western free speech ideals everywhere? I think FB is in a no-win situation. There is no consistent policy that works globally. All the discussion has been narrowly focused on the US, yet most FB users are outside the US. What should the policy be in countries with oppressive governments you don’t like?
In Myanmar, Facebook has such a presence, that the word "facebook" was used in place of the internet. Mobile providers gave preferential(unmetered) access to facebook, so everyone uses it[0]. At the time of the ongoing genocide of the Rohingya, facebook had maybe one or two people who could speak the local language on staff..[1] Despite it being used by the whole country. The government used FB extensively to spread messages of ethnic hate, about the bad things Rohingya were doing.[2] I volunteered with some young Myanmar students in Japan at the time. They were completely adamant that Muslims were coming across the boarder and attacking Burmese people, and the government was just sending soldiers for security.
They also let politicians spread hate in The Philippines (look up Maria Ressa's years of work about this.[3])
We don't need Tech experts running platforms of social exchange, we need them to be run by society experts..
We all walk around with our model of the world in our heads. When we see something that reinforces our model we get a dopamine hit. "I knew I was right!" Instead of Fox or MSNBC selecting stories for a target audience facebook uses machine learning to find the perfect selection of stories to keep you hooked.
Before Facebook had an algorithm you'd see peoples posts in chronological order. The moment they altered that was where they began to influence behavior.
I do think that facebook is in the position to do something about its negative influence. And taking no action or saying "it's too hard to fix" is basically being complicit. You don't get to profit off of this machine without being responsible for its negative externalities. At least from a moral standpoint.
The solution? Stop the manipulation of what users see based on machine learning. Users should see what their friends and groups post chronologically. What would be the downside of that? I'd spend less time on facebook (an upside if you ask me) and facebook would make less money.
This is a very interesting solution: in effect _remove_ our interventions.
If done cautiously, it could be very effective.
Some of the counter to it could look like this:
a. "Addicting" can be another synonym for "something people want, despite themselves", which means that it may not be up to Facebook:
- If you remove sugar from snickers for example, it doesn't immediately follow that they will eat less sugar: they could just as well buy kit kats instead.
The interesting question could be: how can we remove the machine learning intervention, while keeping engagement high?
I'd argue that engagement is the wrong metric. For example, when Microsoft made the Windows Phone OS, they tried to keep interactions with the phone as brief as possible. Palm, too, had a three-click-maximum rule for their UI design.
If we can't think of a good metric that should apply to everyone, just give users more control over what they see so they have a chance of figuring out something for themselves.
This issue lies in the example: why isn’t windows phone dominant today?
We may argue that engagement is the wrong metric, but ultimately what matters is what customers will choose. If choosing between A and B, they choose the more engaging one, you’re in a tough spot.
I agree with your alternative, but with a twist: in effect you need to come up with something, that users will like _more_ then what they are doing now. More customization could be an option, but this hasn’t proven to be true in the market.
It seems motivated by ad dollars. If a potential customer wants to sell vitamins to someone with far right views, the platform needs those customers to be active.
It needs them to provide signals so that it can identify who to show the ads to. Its that simple. I met up with a friend who spends thousands a day on Facebook ads.
I have only spend $20 a week at most before, but it was just for testing. I had no idea how the latest system works. He opened my eyes to how valuable the profiles of people are to Facebook.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] threadI get the idea of joining Facebook to do excellent engineering work, but for most at the company the outcome of all that excellent engineering is more people spending more time engaging with ‘Obama is a secret Muslim’ and QAnon type articles.
I hope Ashok finds good work at a quality company soon.
it's no different than when i was 7, at the grocery store, and wouldn't stop asking my mom why tabloids were sold on the checkout lane caps if they were made up lies about conspiracies
they don't sell them on the checkout caps anymore
All these happening in what's arguably the most diverse, the most open, the most immigrant-welcoming society on Earth.
Sounds like Ashok is just upset Facebook doesn’t censor political views he disagrees with.
defund the police and "ACAB" is far from "death to all cops"
EDIT: Amazed at how much I’m being downvoted for this. Didn’t realize how many “blue lives matter” people browse HN.
"Death to all cops" is bad for one reason: it endorses the idea of extrajudicial, unaccountable killing.
"Death to all Jews" is bad for two reasons: it endorses the idea of extrajudicial, unaccountable killing of people, based on an immutable aspect of their person and independent of choices that they have made.
If I understand you right, you're not endorsing the idea of extrajudicial, unaccountable killing (but, being charitable to the downvoters, I suspect that they think you're endorsing the former statement wholesale). You're just protesting the false equivalence between these two statements. I would agree with that protest: there is a meaningful difference between, say, "Cops are controlling our society without accountability and we should remove them from power" and "Jews are controlling our society without accountability and we should remove them from power," and you can quite sensibly come up with platform guidelines that say that the former is fine and the latter is not.
I'd be fascinated to know if this was true - I usually try to look at things from all angles, but I can't even see how any person could take this angle.
I think that, in context, ihm's statement can quite easily be read as implying "...so, no, Facebook should not remove 'death to all cops' because it's not hate speech, only 'death to all Jews.'" I am guessing that's not actually what ihm is trying to communicate.
It’s like saying death to commies or death to all Marxist sympathizers is okay but death to Capitalists is not okay. No, either all are okay or none is okay.
You can absolutely believe that both comments don't belong on the platform and respond differently.
(We're also forgetting "Death to those who have been duly convicted of murder by a fair court of law," "Death to those who are actively threatening me with a loaded weapon," "Death to those who take up arms against my countrymen," and "Death to those who provide informed and free consent to it," all of which are positions that IMO should remain on your platform, if you value keeping a broad range of ideas. I might disagree with some of those but they're widely acknowledged to be civilized positions to take.)
It's a strange way to support a cause by causing property loss to the people who can least afford it (not that anyone would deserve it). But it's like people are blind to this violence because it hurts the narrative.
Show me the property damage militias have caused vs caused by ANTIFA in concerned neighborhoods.
Honestly, denying it is a detriment to the movement it purports to support. People see this and get turned off.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/06/02/tech...
Meanwhile the Charlottesville white supremacy rally and Kenosha militia were allowed to plan their events on Facebook.
The far left exists. There are genuine Maoists and Tankies out there, unquestionably. But they have no political power, no majorly successful political candidate or party, and ultimately no impact on today's discourse.
The actual left that stands up to the far right powers that are running things in countries like the US and Brazil does not participate in hate speech.
Intolerance of hatred (whether it's misogeny or racism) is not itself intolerance or hatred, any more than being Anti-Fascism is an ideology like fascism itself.
When you see Leftist terrorists or Bombers in today's 21st Western society, then come back to me about leftist hate speech.
Until then, get out of here with your both-sidesism
The term "far-right" has no meaning when it's been applied to every human not condoning left-wing mob politics.
edit: downvote all you want, racists, it’s true.
How many people called for the execution of Derek Chauvin prior to confirming his guilt in a court of law?
Until recently I lived in downtown Seattle. I saw all of this with my own eyes. I saw them torch the building next to mine because the owner was an "evil white capitalist". I saw them torch the Starbucks 2 blocks from my building because of the "evil capitalists". I saw them march down my street every single night forcing people out of their cars, stopping traffic, looting and vandalizing as they felt like it.
There's hundreds upon hundreds of hours of documented video evidence of your side turning to violence. It's so absurd that your side is ACTIVELY throwing away everything we've built, throwing away our justice system, turning to violence and anarchy, and you want us to just ignore that. Your side is literally turning to domestic terrorism to forcefully coerce your political ideology.
But no, me peacefully sitting at home, watching your side literally burn our country down, apparently makes me the evil one, there's nothing wrong at all with what you're doing, I need to be censored out of existence. That's real tolerant.
There are people on the left with national significance who say heinous things about entire demographics, demographics by virtue of their birth, nonetheless, who have their message spread via social media.
And you know, I'm fine with them getting to have their say, as long as everyone gets their say.
Modern McCarthyism, the attempt to control thought and speech is very much a problem of the left.
Hatred doesn't last long when you talk to people. But Facebook doesn't let people talk to each other across boundaries. It's segregatory. See Brown v. Board. Now, there is no middle, and we have a mess to clean up.
This maximized clicks. Facebook weren't the only ones doing it, but Facebook is the giant in the room. Facebook could have connected people on the left and on the right, and facilitated civil discussions. It chose not to do that.
Do I blame them for it? I'm not sure. Market forces are powerful, and I suspect its hand may have been forced. Nevertheless, it's something we need to fix. Regulation is nice since it changes market forces.
To say the polarized left isn't harmful is false. I don't much care about terrorists or bombers. There aren't enough of them to matter. I care about racists on the right. I care about vigilante doxers on the left. I care about people losing their careers. I care about kids from some communities not learning. I care about people hating each other. That's as much of a problem on each side.
There was an article I ran into earlier today about how the far left which just caused a USC professor to be suspended from teaching for saying 那个 in a course on communications (which sounds a lot like an American racial slur). This stuff happens all the time in the far left. Watch the video. What he said is exactly what you'll hear in China all the time.
https://reason.com/2020/09/03/usc-greg-patton-chinese-word-o...
As a footnote, if you do want to see terrorists on the left, tune into Fox News. They play nonstop footage of BLM protesters beating people up, setting fires, and in one case, executing someone. You can't just close your eyes here; half of America is seeing one reality, and half is seeing another. To start closing the gaps, it's helpful to see both.
I talk to people almost every day in a completely uncensored environment who have nothing but the purest hatred and mockery for all liberal or leftist people and liberal or leftist ideologies. They unabashedly want to murder their enemies. They applaud the killing and beating and gassing of BLM protesters. Yes, "the left" has places where they mock the right unreasonably too, and they fire somebody sometimes for a stupid misunderstanding or for being too offensive, or they ban somebody from a web site for a not-good-enough reason - it's stupid and awful, but there is simply no comparison. Calling what the worst elements on the right are doing to society and discourse "stupid and awful" would be a comedic understatement. And yes, in the right-now, people in the protests are burning things and assaulting people, but they are responding to being murdered by police. If the state murders you in the street, it's hard to find a ceiling for responses past which I couldn't understand people going, even if the response ends up ultimately doing more harm than good, which I can't even predict. The thing they're responding to is one of the worst things that can happen in a civilization.
Edit: Somebody replied to me with the recent death of the Trump supporter, but got flagged (predictably so, considering the rest of their post). I just wanted to point out that it's a good example of cherry picking. Each time somebody dies, the people "on their side" will hold it up alone as evidence of how evil the enemy is. Of course, I'm speaking of the big picture, and I'm aware of the many smaller pieces, and I take pains to consider them.
And here they are celebrating the death of that innocent man minutes later: https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1299960525120352258
And I live in one with the same feelings for the right! We're like brothers, I guess?
> They applaud the killing and beating and gassing of BLM protesters. Yes, "the left" has places where they mock the right unreasonably too, and they fire somebody sometimes for a stupid misunderstanding or for being too offensive, or they ban somebody from a web site for a not-good-enough reason - it's stupid and awful, but there is simply no comparison.
To be clear, I shared an institutional response from just about the most credible type of institution you might find on the left -- a university. This is not an individual response. Individual words are far, far worse. I'm not sure how you've gone from there to claiming the worst the left does is to "ban somebody from a web site."
Really? Are you willfully blind? You really need to tune into Fox News more. You're seeing the bad stuff on the right, and not the bad stuff on the left. For a lot of the stuff, they show real videos, so you know it's not fake! It might be rare -- in a country with 300 million people, just about anything happens somewhere -- but it's not fake.
> Each time somebody dies, the people "on their side" will hold it up alone as evidence of how evil the enemy is.
That's exactly what happens. Fox News cherry picks. You'll get the nights' selection of Worst Stuff on the Left.
The left goes back and cherry-picks too. The number Fox News constantly runs is that in 2018, a total of 18 unarmed black men were killed by police. We can quibble about statistical methods, but far more of the problems come from police brutality and from the extreme biases in our justice system end-to-end (The New Jim Crow is an excellent book) than the isolated police shooting. A lot of the stuff you see on smaller more left-leaning media designed to drive outrage (and especially the stuff that spreads virally on Facebook) is just fake too.
And you can be sure that Fox News careful takes apart the most fake news on the left, in the same way the left takes apart the most fake news on the right, so (rightfully) neither side believes the other.
And by the end of it, we live in a polarized nation with two very different perceptions of reality.
Racism? You really think it's OK to allow both sides of discourse into that discussion?
Complaining about Facebook optimizing for rage clicks and then...citing the OG practitioners of rage attention optimization...
Was that deliberately meta or just completely un-self-aware?
Watching Fox News doesn't mean you have to agree with it. Citing someone as saying something doesn't mean you need to agree with them either -- a citation means that you're pointing to what someone is saying. I read (and cite) everything from moderate sources to foreign state propaganda newspapers, to radical extremists from all sides (not just US red-blue).
Sun Tzu said: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Fox News is the top-rated news show in America. It has about the same ratings as CNN and MSNBC combined. If you're not watching Fox News, you can't understand where half of America is coming from. If that's the basis you're starting from, good luck working productively towards change.
The reality is half of America is seeing police violence. Half of America is seeing protester violence. That's the reality of our media. The things they show are real, but cherry-picked. It's actual video footage half of America is seeing. You can't just ignore that, and claim to understand what's going on.
You can't read about it either. Primary sources. Articles about what other people are saying are about half-fabrications at this point (on all sides).
Best wishes to you.
Why, might a reasonable person ask?
Well, obviously, because they've dehumanized another part of America.
To quote you back: "Was that deliberately meta or just completely un-self-aware?"
More precisely, a choice to consume deliberately false and deadly toxicity to engage in communication to reach past "hate" in the interest of "saving"....is just that, a choice. It's maybe hopeful and optimistic but also sanctimonious, patronizing, sisyphean, and in some cases blind. If a humane choice, it's absolutely not the only humane choice. Fox is not the first deadly religion, and it won't be the last. There are many toxic forces and powers, and the deepest tragedy is that so many of them are so much greater than that of a single individual. There is needless pain and suffering and loss not only among the afflicted but the unafflicted as well, as the defensive walls are necessarily porous.
Best wishes in your task. Be careful about both sidesing, it is the devil's best trick, and aware of limits to empathy. Appreciate the engagement. I will see a response but will not be responding again. Take care.
The culture we're born into is NOT a choice. Whether you're in a red-state culture, a blue-state culture, a Chinese culture, a Middle Eastern Muslim culture, or a Peruvian culture is up to your parents. Religion, political ideology, beliefs about male-female relations, beliefs about parent-child relations, and a whole slew of things follow.
Most people from all major demographic groups are good people. You may disagree with them. But most people are basically good. Every major group has a psychopathic minority. That's common to ALL of humanity, at least as far as I've seen. In most cases, members of the in-group will say that someone is not a "real Christian/Muslim/feminist/etc." about those psychopathic elements. There are also toxic elements to any culture, and being on the inside, it's very hard to see them. It takes work and engagement with other cultures. It's easiest to see this historically. For example, look at how we treated [insert minority group] [insert number of decades ago].
Yes, there are toxic beliefs in red state cultures. Yes, there are toxic beliefs in blue state cultures. They're no worse or better than, for example, mainstream views in China on Tibet or Taiwan. As much as it might seem that way, neither side is Nazi Germany.
There is an old joke where a man is about to commit suicide, and another man tries to save him. They have a conversation, where they seem to be building empathy through a series of questions, coming to the conclusion that their both Christians, Protestants, Presbyterians, and so on. At the end, one asks the other if they're from the reformation in 1938 or the reformation of 1948. It ends with one being pushed off of the bridge with a scream of "Die heretic!" I recall it being funny when I was a little kid, but I can't find it with Google, and can't tell with a good punchline.
But that's sort of what's happening here. Most American liberals are pretty well able to engage with people from all around the world, despite the well-known toxic elements of those cultures. See the defense of Muslims post-9/11 (whom I mention because they share so much similarity to many red state cultures along the lines liberals care about). Somehow, that can't happen close to home. Empathy goes away. Hate comes. We can read and cite Chinese government media objectively when trying to understand that culture, but we're bad people if we do the same with US right-wing media.
Take care.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Shea
Maybe you're unaware of what's happening with the extremes on both sides, but they're feeding off each other and rapidly regressing (thanks in large part to Facebook/Twitter). While each is enabled/emboldened by the free pass from their side, who are either unaware of their own extremes or just more afraid of the other. It's a negative feedback loop and we really need both sides to start pushing back on their own.
Good job.
We live in a chimeric system and it confuses nearly everybody in it. There are always two factions working against a third.
I think political partisans are victims - they have been given a bad political map. Spectrum, compasses - all ideas given credibility by their political competitors. You should ask yourself who benefits from these models. It isn't the left or right. It's a third faction hiding in the blindspot of the other two factions.
I have to admit it's very clever and it took me a long time to realize what was going on. I have to thank outsider science fiction author Liu Cixin who vividly bought the topic to life with his Straussian description of our political order in the Three Body Problem.
For most of the population it's the perfect political Venus Fly Trap and probably the explanation for why the West has dominated the world for centuries.
Agree 100% with this. "Being bold" and "taking down content" should not be used in the same sentence. The leadership team, and many people trying to make Facebook great understand that.
If you read his goodbye message, it doesn't sound reasoned at all. What is the alternative he is proposing exactly? It's implicitly silencing voices, based on what people at Facebook think is hate.
When it comes to something so critical to society, moving fast on that is ridiculous.
There are more detailed suggestions along these lines here: https://www.wired.com/story/creating-ethical-recommendation-...
I agree that Facebook has a power to choose what content gets promoted, which is very dangerous. My key point is, that given this state, they must tread very, very carefully. The second order consequences to changes can be dire. A common argument is that inaction can be worse, but given that most solutions involve _more_ intervention rather than less, the tail only grows more catastrophic.
Not only that, but I think Facebook has a lot less power here than people think. There are competitors, and not everyone will choose to reduce addictiveness for the greater good.
These two questions I think are what leadership / great eng are grappling with the most. In my opinion, the solution involves removing slowly the intervention that Facebook already has, while introducing other means to keep people engaged (or else, they will simply leave and join whatever other thing will radicalize them)
- There is significantly more hate speech from the far right than from the left.
- Facebook proactively removes hate speech from the left.
- More people report hate speech from the left.
- Facebook is more afraid to remove hate speech from the right, because the right has more political power in Facebook's jurisdiction and has recently summoned them for a legislative investigation into censorship of right-leaning content.
- There are more real-world consequences of hate speech from the far right (genocides, shootings, etc.) than from the left.
Despite the names, the "right" and the "left" are not mirror images of each other. They have different political views, worldviews, and moralities, and so we cannot assume that there is exactly as much hatefulness on one side as the other, and that if you see N examples of hate speech from one side, there must be exactly N equally-venomous examples from the other, and the only reason you're not listing them is that you didn't bother looking.
It’s possible that Facebook is censoring center or left wing news and that would explain why such extreme far right sources are so prevalent, but that’s almost worse in my opinion. Because then Facebook would be deciding the outcome of the election without any oversight or transparency.
https://twitter.com/facebookstop10
Alternative title: Politically biased engineer quits because his company won't censor his ideological enemies.
[1] https://nypost.com/2020/09/05/antifa-shooter-michael-reinoeh...
In fact, you appear to be attempting to disprove him in his own words, since he claimed to be "100% ANTIFA", again on Facebook. [2]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/michael-for...
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-reinoehl-suspect-portla...
https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/do...
Edit: thanks for the readable links!
We don't need Tech experts running platforms of social exchange, we need them to be run by society experts..
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/01/facebook-free-basics-endin...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-...
[2] https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/dangerous-speech-anti-muslim-v...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed7s4OL65IA
Before Facebook had an algorithm you'd see peoples posts in chronological order. The moment they altered that was where they began to influence behavior.
I do think that facebook is in the position to do something about its negative influence. And taking no action or saying "it's too hard to fix" is basically being complicit. You don't get to profit off of this machine without being responsible for its negative externalities. At least from a moral standpoint.
The solution? Stop the manipulation of what users see based on machine learning. Users should see what their friends and groups post chronologically. What would be the downside of that? I'd spend less time on facebook (an upside if you ask me) and facebook would make less money.
If done cautiously, it could be very effective.
Some of the counter to it could look like this:
a. "Addicting" can be another synonym for "something people want, despite themselves", which means that it may not be up to Facebook:
The interesting question could be: how can we remove the machine learning intervention, while keeping engagement high?If we can't think of a good metric that should apply to everyone, just give users more control over what they see so they have a chance of figuring out something for themselves.
We may argue that engagement is the wrong metric, but ultimately what matters is what customers will choose. If choosing between A and B, they choose the more engaging one, you’re in a tough spot.
I agree with your alternative, but with a twist: in effect you need to come up with something, that users will like _more_ then what they are doing now. More customization could be an option, but this hasn’t proven to be true in the market.
It needs them to provide signals so that it can identify who to show the ads to. Its that simple. I met up with a friend who spends thousands a day on Facebook ads.
I have only spend $20 a week at most before, but it was just for testing. I had no idea how the latest system works. He opened my eyes to how valuable the profiles of people are to Facebook.
https://siasky.net/EAC6We3XQV511dL6QnW4i0v5P7nkXrZaqbturF9ft...
and the md:
https://siasky.net/CAC3i72n4nno0lrq_gx_m3TanpTOgPFbIVolDUMRT...