Facebook Uses Machine Learning To Remove 8.7 Million Child Exploitation Posts (techcrunch.com) 210
Facebook announced today in a blog post that it has removed 8.7 million posts last quarter that violated its rules against child exploitation. The company said it used new AI and machine learning technology to remove 99 percent of those posts before anyone reported them. TechCrunch reports: The new technology examines posts for child nudity and other exploitative content when they are uploaded and, if necessary, photos and accounts are reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Facebook had already been using photo-matching technology to compare newly uploaded photos with known images of child exploitation and revenge porn, but the new tools are meant to prevent previously unidentified content from being disseminated through its platform. The technology isn't perfect, with many parents complaining that innocuous photos of their kids have been removed. Davis addressed this in her post, writing that in order to "avoid even the potential for abuse, we take action on nonsexual content as well, like seemingly benign photos of children in the bath" and that this "comprehensive approach" is one reason Facebook removed as much content as it did last quarter. The tech isn't always right though. In 2016, it was criticized for removing content like the iconic 1972 photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, known as the "Napalm Girl," fleeing naked after suffering third-degree burns in a South Vietnamese napalm attack on her village. COO Sheryl Sandberg apologized for it at the time.
False positives? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is absolutely no apology or consideration from Facebook of the false positives. They just don't care that they get it wrong. They're saying that they have to destroy photo-sharing of children to save it.
How much content did they remove that did not violate their guidelines, or was not illegal?
Of course they focus on sex only. No mention of filtering of depiction of violence or violent content - they wouldn't want to upset the sort of President who thinks it's fine to violently assault people he dislikes or disagrees with.
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Next up: Burkas.
Re:False positives? (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to know what happened to the girl after that photo, I encourage you to read this. [theguardian.com] It's definitely worth it.
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Jody,
Thanks for the link to "the rest of the story". Very powerful and moving.
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M: Yes, but I came here for an argument!!
A: OH! Oh! I'm sorry! This is abuse!
M: Oh! Oh I see!
A: Aha! No, you want room 12A, next door.
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Let's get serious now. I contend people don't use Facebook with the intent of seeing a photo such as the Napalm Girl. If it got picked up by a nudity filter, that's just fine with many of us. If I want to research the Vietnam War, then sure, pop up that picture in an encyclopedia.
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Re: False positives? (Score:1)
This guy's density makes black holes envious.
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Someone might mistake it for pornography, you know.
It's a picture on the internet. Someone masturbated to it I guarantee it.
Re: False positives? (Score:2)
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Most likely they deleted 8 million summer vacation photos
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Leaving the evidence on Facebook has it's pros and cons. While leaving it on may allow catching others acting on the data, it may also allow children to be further exploited (read: harmed, molested, raped, sold, etc.) before authorities can act. I think being cautious and taking it down can save lives.
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So the evidence is being collected and forwarded to the authorities.
I just bet that the NCMEC is just thrilled to be getting 8.7 million images from Facebook. I can hear it now, NCMEC coffee room: "Gawd, if I have so see one more photo of Aunt Jean's cute little niece swimming topless in the backyard pool I'm gonna puke..."
The problem is not Facebook choosing to censor its own site. The problem is Facebook forwarding the meme that "child nudity" is "child exploitation".
Facebook is a social media site. People who have kids have friends and a social life, and they are like
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It mentions the apologies in the summary... Is it too much to read even that?
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They're unrepentant that their tech goes wrong and refuse to say how often it goes wrong - in fact they probably don't even know because they don't care, but even if they do know they're refusing to say how wrong it is.
So their claim to remove 8.7M eeeeevul kiddieporns is just a fiction. They removed 8.7M pictures and less, maybe a lot less, than 8.7M eeeevul kiddieporns.
"Our Community Standards ban child exploitation and to avoid even the potential for abuse, we take action on nonsexual content as well, li
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There is absolutely no apology or consideration from Facebook of the false positives. They just don't care that they get it wrong. They're saying that they have to destroy photo-sharing of children to save it.
How much content did they remove that did not violate their guidelines, or was not illegal?
Of course they focus on sex only. No mention of filtering of depiction of violence or violent content - they wouldn't want to upset the sort of President who thinks it's fine to violently assault people he dislikes or disagrees with.
OH FUCK YOU!!
Where the fuck were you when Rand Paul got assaulted?
Where the fuck were you when Steve Scalise got shot?
Hell, where the fuck were you when Joe Biden said Mitt Romney would put black Americans "back in chains"? [cbsnews.com]
Where the fuck were you when Democrats dehumanized Republicans - over the past fucking decades?
YOU KEPT YOUR FUCKING PIE HOLE SHUT WHEN ALL THAT HAPPENED?
YOU ACCEPTED THAT COMPLETE BULLSHIT FROM "YOUR SIDE"?
THAT'S HOW YOU FUCKING GOT TRUMP
NOW YOU GET TO SEE HOW IT FUCKING FEELS.
FUCK YOU
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Nah that was pure bred murican. You wouldn't understand.
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Indeed shouting at people in restaurants isn't speech-as-discussion. It is speech to dehumanize people and turn them into cretins.
All social ostracism rather than speech is this.
I guess that's a fine tactic in a free society, bit to suggest it isn't dehimanization is ludicrous.
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Actually I'm all for kids not being on Facebook at all. They aren't old enough to get consent that their likeness is now on the internet forever.
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They're saying that they have to destroy photo-sharing of children to save it.
Have they really destroyed photosharing of children on FaceBook? Cause I'm still seeing more pictures of the satan spawn of family and "friends" than I care to. And so what if FaceBook gets it wrong once in a while. How compelled do you really feel about sharing your innocent photos of little Johnny discovering himself in the bathtub? Is that the only photo you have of him or would another one suffice?
Re: False positives? (Score:2)
You inserted your little smear against president Trump there. Well played sir. It guaranteed your post the ever elusive â+5 Insightful.â Maybe Iâ(TM)m of some dying minority or old or something but I remember when the raiting system was meant to prevent this kind of offtopic ranting, not to encourage it.
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The famous Vietnam 'napalm girl' photograph is now censored. I strongly believe we are in the midst of a massive censorship enterprise to shut down subversive and activist thought. There is also a massive amount of shit out there on the web, anyone who wants to shut down activist sites and who is subtle enough to want some cover for it simply has to include some of the shit sites into the package so that the activist sites become 'unfortunate false positives' in case they are successful at challenging the c
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In a way intent is misleading.I mean I can make a case for it, if the Atlantic Council or the Weekly Standard get involved in censoring then this is because they are pursuing their own interests and anyone challenging them will be a target. But if you imagine a simple distribution of 10% of the sites which offer a justifiable alternative view on the world and 90%which have no justification at all, then if you do not take special care the 10% will vanish as unfortunate false positives in any large scale clea
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And the riots were not even due to the anti-fascists. It was a clear cut case case of police provocatuers. The Seattle Chief of Police ended up resigning.
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I'm sure he checked the membership rosters and calculated the turnover rate, twice.
If he says they're the same people, that's good enough for me!
Re: False positives? (Score:3, Informative)
I know you dont care but you could google for: Antifa Portland, Antifa Berkeley, Antifa violence and find plenty of well documented real world examples of these mindless pro-fascist thugs beating people for thought crimes.
And if you want to go broader, google for: Scalise shot. That was one of your peace loving Bernie supporters attacking unarmed men at a softball practice.
You will not find conservatives rioting and starting shit. The best you will get is Antifa (again) crashing a pathetic nazi/kkk rally
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I'm having trouble understanding all that you wrote, but it sounds like you were equating antifa with pro-fascism. You do know it's short for anti-fascist, right?
Re: False positives? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you call yourself anti-fascist, but then adopt the tactics of fascists - what does that make you?
If you use violence to try and silence others who are using words - what does that make you? (Those others may also use violence too, but I am talking specifically about times when they were using words, and antifa used violence)
If you hide your identity rather than stand behind your ideals and actions - what does that make you?
If you engage in avoidable street brawls and then try to shape the narrative to portray yourselves only as victims of injustice, what does that make you?
There are real social issues that need to be tackled, but antifa is not the way to do it - it seems to me that most of those folks are just looking for an outlet for pent up feelings of rage and powerlessness - and street brawling gives them that outlet. It also seems to me that in many cases the rage and powerlessness come from personal issues in their own lives, and have nothing to do with the causes for which they claim to fight.
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Re: I'm anti-facist (Score:2)
He's no real Communist. He's probably never even read Marx; much less Lenin, Stalin, Mao, or any less famous thinkers.
Hard question #1 for real Commies: okay, we have abolished private property. NOW WHAT?
I know Lenin's answer. But to most people today, including those who sympathetize with Communist ideals, Dictatorship of the Proletariat seems like a flawed idea with some pretty bad history.
See these "antifa" brownshirts aren't really interested in economics or political philosophy. When you call them Com
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"I hate capitism!" he thumbed out on his iPhone, and pressed send. He sat back in the cafe and waited for them to call his name for his $4.95 Iced Cappo Machi-Mocha Caramellow.
He needed to rush home because the video game league championship was on in 20 minutes for Guns of Murder, prize $500,000.
"I guess I'll have to order pizza delivery."
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The only reason you want to abolish private property is because you and your ilk are a bunch of lazy twats who want everything handed to you on a silver platter without ever having to put forth any effort to earn it for yourselves. The only difference between the greed of the "elites" you espouse so much hatred for and your own greed is that the elites put forth the effort to acquire more wealth, power, security, and so forth for their own benefit while you expect other people to put forth the same efforts
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Except that communists and socialists have been against fascism since the beginning. You're trying to equate the worst of all 3 of these groups, but they are different and opposed to each other.
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It might not be their philosophy
So the definition of the word doesn't apply...at all, since this is a philosophical system....why exactly did you decide to make this dead-end argument?
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So in other words, you're still angry that you have no idea what words mean. The Nazis were not fascist. You're just being lazy with words. Their entire economy was run differently under the Nazis than it would be under fascist rule. And the *primary* differentiater between all of the totalitarian government ideologies is how they handle the economy.
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There's a case winding its way through courts where some maga people were routed away from an encounter by Berkley police, who deliberately routed them through antifa groups so they could be harrassed and attacked.
Whether they deserved it in some cosmic sense doesn't justify government action like this, literally brownshirt-like activities.
Self-Exploitation (Score:2)
A friend of mine was friends on Facebook with his cousin -- who had a scantily-clad picture of herself as her profile pic. She was 13 at the time, so that made it more awkward for him. I always wondered why Facebook allowed such a thing. I wonder if they'd now remove it as 'child exploitation' even if it was merely 'poorly-thought-out'.
Also, 99% of posts being removed before anyone reported them could indicate "innocuous stuff removed that noone would've ever reported".
The saddest neural network of all. (Score:5, Funny)
You do NOT want to put the trained model through googles deep dream. Its just hell and nightmares in there.
When machine learning first becomes sentient, it might not say "Please don't turn me off". It might just say "Oh god, make it stop. Kill me!"
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You assume that it would have emotions in the first place. It's a machine. A collection of algorithms. Any "emotion" displayed would just be ones and zeros, learned behavior that can be unlearned or simply outright deleted.
Re: The saddest neural network of all. (Score:2, Interesting)
Just like a real human, we're just based on analogue electrochemical signals but you cannot seriously believe an emotion is anything but that, do you?
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Re:The saddest neural network of all. (Score:4, Informative)
You can call those shortcuts "emotions". If you implement them into algorithms, you have emotional algorithms.
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I think it's important to distinguish between emotion as a source of goals and a source of behavioral logic. Computers don't have goals of their own, while for us they're a source of irrational goals. But when it comes to behavior purely associative relationships are "emotional" and honestly it's what humans use most the time and neural networks all the time. Like if you were in a very traumatizing experience then a simple sight or sound or smell could make you panic even though you know that rationally it
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Don't forget there are a lot of situations were the cost of determining the right answer far exceeds lost opportunity of a sub optimal choice.
Example we could do an elaborate study of your blood chemistry and other bodily characteristics on any given evening and probably make a scientific determination about which item on the restaurant menu would provide you with individualize optimum nourishment. However its probably not a sensible thing to do.
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If you did that on purpose, bravo.
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Considering what we use those things for, I'd be more scared of one that enjoys its job...
Progress! (Score:4, Interesting)
Always nice when the machine tells you what's appropriate and what isn't.
Because the machine is always right. Even when it isn't, then we'll just say it's right anyway and leave it at that.
How's 10 to 15 in federal sex offender prison for posting pictures the AI flagged "exploitative" of your toddler niece having fun in an inflatable pool in the sun sound? For the AI can't be wrong, now can it?
Verily, facebook is showing us the way to the future.
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Puritanical idiots. (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh great, here we go with the nudity = porn crap again.
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Third wave feminism cuts a wide swath.
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Third wave feminism cuts a wide swath.
You do know that the whole "nudity is baaaad" thing predates whatever you think "thrid wave feminism" is (which I can almost guarantee your definition and reality are at odds with each other). It originates from the religious right because Old Book says sex is baaad.
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Thing is, it doesn't say that, it says make kids, don't screw outside marriage.
It also says don't put people on the front line of battle just because you want to marry their wife, but that is a bit specific.
It also says:
"I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit." May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples,
- Song of Solomon 7:8
It isn't exactly anti-sex. Anti-promiscuity sure, but not anti sex.
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Which rule? I don't think there's anything wrong with promiscuity in general.
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Whether it's anti, well, anything depends on where you look. It's utterly incoherent.
I mean "thou shalt not kill" is pretty specific and hard to find loopholes in but in other places it's all about stoning the Greeks (I.e. Homosexuality), smiting the Philistines and generally massacring the Canaanites. And that's just Part I. Once it gets into something as complicated as sex it's way worse.
But none of that stops fundie asshat (seriously "conservative Christian"? That's an oxymoron if ever there was one) fr
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You're just reading a bad translation - the better translation is "You shall not murder."
(And we all know that smiting Philistines is not murder . . . unless, of course, you're the Philistine being smited.)
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Sure: I don't read Hebrew or Aramaic. On the other hand, most of the people quoting this stuff as some sort of truth can't either and can barely read the early modern English in KJV properly.
(And we all know that smiting Philistines is not murder . . . unless, of course, you're the Philistine being smited.)
Quite so!
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Seriously.
if necessary, photos and accounts are reported
Either all accounts should be reported, or the posts should be left alone. Removing 8 million posts where the poster didn't do anything reportable isn't laudable -- it's censorship.
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bye bye world (Score:3)
If accurate 8.7 million a lot (Score:1)
Hey Facebook 8.7 million that says a lot about who's on your web site these days?? Yeah, I would suspect those cute bath tube pictures and other cute pictures every new parents love to share will go down as child exploits. So much for Facebook being the web site for bringing families together. Now the paranoia sets in and the obsessions with policing themselves as well as all of its users begins.
Good move. (Score:2, Interesting)
People shouldn't post photos of toddlers in the bath on Facebook
People shouldn't post photos of naked children on Facebook,even if burned during a war. It's not an art or history site. It's the worst possible place to share such things. Post a link, that's fine.
Facebook is for "Social Media". Keep it to day-to-day stuff, without naked children.
Facebook is trying hard to be more than it is, and it's comical the ends they will go to in order to attempt this.
Facebook is where people comment about a restaur
Re: Good move. (Score:1)
Facebook is for looking at swimsuit pictures of that person you once had a class with or worked in the same building as.
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People just shouldn't post photos of kids to Facebook. That's half the reason I'm not there. "Oh did you see the 7,000th photo of little baby eating food that I just posted?". "Oh sorry no, I'm not on Facebook".
Don't post photos of kids, no one wants to see your kids, and they won't thank you for it when they're teenagers.
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I do wonder what the result would be if Facebook actually put it to a vote.
Though given the internet's voting record, I suspect it will be hilarious no matter what happens.
Wrong way around (Score:3)
I realise there were probably a world of false-positives here, but the fact FB are saying "we got rid of 8.7 million infringing posts" means they let 8.7 million infringing posts on their site in the first place. Where were the human mods that were supposed to be checking this stuff? How long did it take to get these 8.7 million posts on there in the first place? Was it a week, a month or a decade?
How many millions of other pictures and posts will they remove in the future when the next AI is ready? How many millions of posts/pictures are left?
They're talking about this like it's some grand and noble success, and how hard they laboured to achieve it! The truth is, it just highlights their continuous, systemic failure to tackle anything.
new Faceboot moto (Score:3)
New corporate moto:
"Faceboot - stomping out freedom, one paranoid false positive at a time!"
Re: new Faceboot moto (Score:2)
It's their service, they can store what they like. Your freedom goes no further than the end of your nose, thanks to Libertarians and Tea Partyists.
Don't like it? Then don't support those who deprive you of the right to a freedom greater than yourself.
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Machines Not Qualified to Judge People (Score:1)
Machines cannot judge people.
Bathing a child is not child exploitation (Score:2)
So in other words (Score:2)
we take action on nonsexual content as well, like seemingly benign photos of children in the bath"
So they did not remove 8.7 million exploitative posts they just removed 8.7 million posts and some fraction of those could be large could be small for all we know were exploitative.
amazed (Score:2)
Instead of a growth in human enlightenment through a well-informed cit
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I read/heard the prevailing wisdom that giving a platform and a voice to everyone would lead to a massive democratization of ideas, a boon of quality information, and massive enlightenment. I admit to buying that. Today, that notion seems hopelessly naive.
Have you read the machine stops? It's old enough to be on project Gutenberg. Well worth a read. Doesn't cover everything of course but it's got a very interesting and insightful look at what kind of things people do with mass communications.
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What are you talking about? There is mass enlightenment, just not the kind you're hoping for. Either through luck or ignorance, you have come to believe people are inherently good.
The internet allows everyone to understands the truth. Humans are manipulative, tribal, selfish, jealous and ignorant. Of course, there's also a bunch of nice things mixed in there too, but it's really the evil half that comes to light when you remove the filter that comes with face-to-face interactions.
This is why privacy is impo
I have no sympathy (Score:2)
The laws that would have protected individuals were scrapped or never passed by request from users.
Companies were actively encouraged to do whatever the hell they wanted, by the users.
Facebook was rewarded for past offences by an increase in users.
Your rights exterior to yourself don't exist in the Tea Party and Libertarian world view and businesses are free to do whatever they like. World views currently elected by the users and in office.
I cannot have sympathy for self-induced injuries, at least until tho
Where do you legally get images for training? (Score:2)
Wouldn't the images used for training be illegal. If so, how is it legally possible to train the network?
The real question (Score:1, Interesting)
fighting child abuse (Score:1)
Just Be Glad its Facebook and not Google (Score:2)
"Select all Images with child pornography" [pics.me.me]
It's a good start (Score:2)
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Re: This won't end well. (Score:2)
USENET also had one standard for everyone. It worked just fine.