In 'Bold Experiment', Facebook Creates Independent 'Oversight Board'' For Content Decisions (siliconvalley.com) 112
Facebook is being applauded for a new "bold experiment" in content decision-making by tech journalist Larry Magid, a founding member (for the last 10 years) of what he describes as "the less powerful Facebook Safety Advisory Board, which is composed of safety experts mostly representing nonprofit organizations in several countries....
"We are not empowered to overrule Facebook's management." Facebook is a company, not a government, but its user base is bigger than the population of any country in the world and the decisions made by its staff affect people in some of the same ways as decisions made by legislatures and courts in many countries. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way Facebook regulates speech. What it allows and forbids affects people's ability to communicate, but also impacts their safety, privacy, security and human rights... [W]hen it comes to some decisions, even Zuckerberg realizes that the stakes are too high for one person or one company to hold all the cards, and that's one of the reason's Facebook is in the process of putting together an Oversight Board for Content Decisions.
That board, which will be made up of a diverse group of about 40 people from around the world, will be like what The Verge called a "Supreme Court for content moderation." The board, according to Facebook, will serve as an "independent authority outside of Facebook," and have the power to "reverse Facebook's decisions when necessary...." This is an extraordinary and mostly unprecedented undertaking from a private company which recognizes the potential impact of its decisions. If the board operates as planned, it will have the ability to overrule Zuckerberg himself on matters of what content is and isn't allowed on the service... If Facebook does a good job in creating a board which is both representative and independent and if it faithfully abides by its decisions, even when they are in conflict with what executives like Zuckerberg want, it will be at least a partial shift in the nature of corporate governance by creating a body that is neither controlled by the corporation itself or the governments in countries where the corporation operates.
At the end of the day, local law in each jurisdiction will trump any decisions by this board and -- I suppose -- Facebook could change its mind and fail to implement one or more of the board's decisions, but if we take the company at its word, that isn't supposed to happen... Although Facebook is not completely rewriting the rules of corporate governance, it is making a bold move that changes the way some of its most important decisions will be made by empowering people who represent those affected by the company who -- without such a board -- would have no power over how the company operates. It is, to an extent, taking on powers held by governments as well as powers held by stockholders and board members. It's a bold experiment.
"We are not empowered to overrule Facebook's management." Facebook is a company, not a government, but its user base is bigger than the population of any country in the world and the decisions made by its staff affect people in some of the same ways as decisions made by legislatures and courts in many countries. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way Facebook regulates speech. What it allows and forbids affects people's ability to communicate, but also impacts their safety, privacy, security and human rights... [W]hen it comes to some decisions, even Zuckerberg realizes that the stakes are too high for one person or one company to hold all the cards, and that's one of the reason's Facebook is in the process of putting together an Oversight Board for Content Decisions.
That board, which will be made up of a diverse group of about 40 people from around the world, will be like what The Verge called a "Supreme Court for content moderation." The board, according to Facebook, will serve as an "independent authority outside of Facebook," and have the power to "reverse Facebook's decisions when necessary...." This is an extraordinary and mostly unprecedented undertaking from a private company which recognizes the potential impact of its decisions. If the board operates as planned, it will have the ability to overrule Zuckerberg himself on matters of what content is and isn't allowed on the service... If Facebook does a good job in creating a board which is both representative and independent and if it faithfully abides by its decisions, even when they are in conflict with what executives like Zuckerberg want, it will be at least a partial shift in the nature of corporate governance by creating a body that is neither controlled by the corporation itself or the governments in countries where the corporation operates.
At the end of the day, local law in each jurisdiction will trump any decisions by this board and -- I suppose -- Facebook could change its mind and fail to implement one or more of the board's decisions, but if we take the company at its word, that isn't supposed to happen... Although Facebook is not completely rewriting the rules of corporate governance, it is making a bold move that changes the way some of its most important decisions will be made by empowering people who represent those affected by the company who -- without such a board -- would have no power over how the company operates. It is, to an extent, taking on powers held by governments as well as powers held by stockholders and board members. It's a bold experiment.
PR scapegoat (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of this new board sounds like being a scapegoat, if something goes wrong, FB will have the option to say "the independent board approved". The board authority is there until there isn't, does anyone really see a situation where this board and Zuck disagree, and they prevail? Worst case scenario, he can dissolve the board, or suspend it, or remove dissenting members. No large company can give some independent board an overriding control of the company - no investors would ever agree.
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Once you've loaded the app on your phone, you are an active FB user. The app will track everything you do and report it to FB. It doesn't matter if you post anything or read anything on someone else's page.
If you loaded the app so you could see that cat picture everyone was raving about you fell into the trap.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The purpose of this new board sounds like being a scapegoat, if something goes wrong, FB will have the option to say "the independent board approved".
I don't think the intention is to create a "scapegoat", exactly. That may sometimes be the effect, but I think the real goal is to offload a problem.
Facebook doesn't have any interest in regulating content on Facebook. It's a lot of work that doesn't contribute to the bottom line. On the other hand, failing to regulate content generates howls of disapproval, including Congressional hearings, and regulating contentincorrectly generates other howls of disapproval. Facebook has accepted that they have to r
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You're not serious. FB has always heavily regulated content according to their political agenda. They've gone to extreme lengths to protect and privilege bay area crybullying, antifa calls for violence, islamic fanaticism, left wing antisemitism, and social justice fascism.
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You're not serious. FB has always heavily regulated content according to their political agenda. They've gone to extreme lengths to protect and privilege bay area crybullying, antifa calls for violence, islamic fanaticism, left wing antisemitism, and social justice fascism.
Your comment is just one of the ways in which content regulation is a minefield, and an excellent example of why Facebook wants to offload this problem to someone else.
Re: PR scapegoat (Score:3)
"staffed with a diverse array of respected people from every side of every major issue"
If you really believe that's going to happen, I've got a great deal for you on a slightly used bridge in Brooklyn...
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Bingo. This is nothing more than virtue signalling mixed with accountability avoidance. They now get to pick a couple dozen people with the "right" politics and then the two groups can point fingers in so many directions nobody will ever be held responsible for facebooks slide into an orwellian dystopia.
Ethics Board (Score:2)
Structurally speaking, how is this different from, say, a medical ethics board? I.e. is it less or more independent?
If the board is funded by Facebook, and makes decisions that can affect Facebook's financials, that could lead to a conflict of interest to defund the board or ignore its recommendations; or worse, for the board to be stacked with toadies who follow whatever FB wants.
Re:Ethics Board (Score:5, Insightful)
Structurally speaking, how is this different from, say, a medical ethics board?
A medical institutional review board has the full power of law behind it, with external auditors and potential job loss, fines, or jail time for offenders. It exists to protect people being studied (so scientists don't inject them with syphilis, for example).
Facebook's board exists to offload responsibility (primarily blame) for deciding what to censor and what to not censor. It has no legal weight, and does not protect users, only Facebook.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Facebook called for government regulation of their content a couple of weeks ago. They want the government to decide what is acceptable and what isn't, to take the responsibility away from them.
Re: Ethics Board (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah that's bullshit. If they really wanted the government to take responsibility they would adopt a simple stance of "everything stays unless a legal challenge has been initiated". They certainly wouldn't be deleting comments which use politically incorrect words.
Re:Ethics Board (Score:4, Informative)
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That seems redundant and stupid. The government already regulates FB content. No child porn, no libel, no threats of violence, etc, etc. The 1st amendment and 300 years of interpretation spells out what the government can and cannot control regarding speech.
Those 300 years of interpretation are still woefully inadequate to create what Facebook wants which is an oracle they can feed a conversation/photo and get a definitive true/false answer. Let's take threats, "If I ever see your face here again it'll be for the last time." can be a genuine death threat while "Don't tell my parents, I'll kill you" is normally not. You can write pages of opinion with references but it's all subject to debate and they will blame Facebook when it turns out the mafia just needs t
Re: Ethics Board (Score:3)
No, broham, the solution is super easy. All speech shall remain free until an American court specifically orders it to be censored. Foreigners using Faceboot deserve the same protection for their speech. If that means FB can't do business in some countries, so be it. Freedom isn't free.
The only reason this is complicated is because the Nazis in charge of Faceboot have contempt for fundamental American values.
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Re: Ethics Board (Score:2)
Re: Ethics Board (Score:2)
Ignorant trolls gonna troll ignorantly.
Federal law - the National Research Act of 1974 - mandates that medical research on human subjects be approved by an independent Institutional Review Board (IRB). No approval from the IRB means the research cannot lawfully be carried out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It does not make Facebook liable (Score:2, Informative)
The Right Wing is presently attacking the law because their guys keep getting banned for stepping a little too close to the third rails that are violence and racism (remember the Adpocalypse? Th
Re: It does not make Facebook liable (Score:3)
Please stop misrepresenting CDA 230.
That law was explicitly intended to protect children and schools from lewd content. Congress clearly did not envision it being used as cover for corporate censorship of political speech in the digital town square.
Moreover, the law was written in 1996, when there was far less concentration of monopoly power over internet communication. The law speaks of vibrant competition among internet services - a situation that no longer obtains after Faceboot and Big Brother Google bo
It's not like their rulings could get worse.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Your specific wording is effectively a misleading statement, which would likely bring the ban-hammer down, even if the statement was fully read and comprehended. That said, there's a good chance they had a knee-jerk reaction and didn't manage (or possibly even bother) to comprehend the rest of the sentence.
You can improve your communication by leading with qualifiers, e.g.: "A subset of all groups, such as atheists, are indeed murderers."
Also, avoid making a strong generalization followed by a weak qualifie
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“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
We're bringing coal back!
#MAGA
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A few days ago, in response to a video called "atheists are murderers, debunked" I said "It's true though, atheists are murderers, just like christians and muslims are murderers, not all of them, of course, but some subset of all of these groups, yes, absolutely" and it was flagged as hate speech, then reevaluated and the decision was upheld ..... where anyone that knows how to read could clearly see that I was saying that their are murderers that exist within pretty much any population segment that you choose to single out and that I wasn't singling out any specific group and calling them murderers, which would be hate speech ..... facebook is ridiculous.
Oh, so you were intentionally trolling, throwing fuel on the proverbial fire, and got misinterpreted as hate speech instead of just a troll that sounds a lot like hate speech.. I will play you a sad song on this tiny violin I am holding.
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Facebook is not a free speech political discussion platform. It's not the place to go for that stuff.
Twitter allows that kind of thing and is generally better at policing in. If that isn't enough then there is Gab, or 4chan.
Don't give Facebook the ad revenue, or expect competence or moral behaviour from them. They have repeatedly demonstrated they are not capable of any of that.
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We have pro-Facebook trolls now? Or triggered snowflakes upset that the only examples of their free speech paradises are 4chan and Gab?
Re: It's not like their rulings could get worse.. (Score:2)
"Facebook is not a free speech political discussion platform"
Not yet. A Federal consent decree will fix that soon enough.
This is not going to be a popular opinion (Score:2)
What is the value in pointing out something that obvious? Yes of course, there are murders among any group. As the saying goes, "It goes without saying". You haven't actually made a point germane to the subject.
For some context, here [youtube.com] is the video the parent is referring to. The TL;DW of the video is that without God we would not have morality (hence "All Atheists are Murders").
If the parent's video just consisted of pointing out the obvi
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It seems like there might actually be a lot of people who cannot cope with the complexity of some identifiable group of people having individuals who behave, you know, individually.
So individuals with no bone to pick? (Score:1, Troll)
or
Single Issue Bias Activist from the Correct PC thought police crowd?
Just wondering!
Just my 2 cents
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"representing nonprofit organizations in several countries"
It'll be a bunch of Soros people.
Reviewing is not what Zuck wants us to believe (Score:2)
The following story:
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/01... [npr.org]
shows just how broken the reviewing system can be. The workers are treated horribly and application of the criteria is too arbitrary. No wonder Facebook wants to AI it all.
Re:Great Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
True dialog without censorship is the last thing we need.
Haven't you ever noticed that beauty, talent, and brains are all relatively limited among humans? That's why we put beautiful people on TV and in ads, why professional sports teams and olympic athletes are so amazing to watch, and why smart people tend to become scientists, professors, engineers, doctors, etc. In each of those areas systems that filter people in those categories were developed over many decades, even centuries, to exclude the talentless, the unattractive, and the dopes. Then along comes FB and the bad idea that all opinions are equally valuable.
FB is open mic night on the internet. Everyone's point of view IS heard. That's the problem. Dopes are elevated to the same level as the folks who know what they're talking about, and the majority in the audience is too dumb to know the difference between good and bad information. That's why antivaxxers, homeopaths, flat earthers, 6000 year old earthers, intelligent designers, anti climate changers, etc., are still around. Those people don't deserve a loud voice. They and many others deserve public shaming for their stupidity.
All opinions/information is not of equal value. Until dopes learn this (never?), society has to come up with some filtering schemes to protect the structure of society from all the idiots whose ideas would lead to chaos and anarchy.
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You don't need censorship. You don't need to step on bad ideas. You only need to promote good ideas. Over time, the good ideas win. You say "why hasn't this happened" and the answer is that a lot of time, money, and effort has been spent promoting bad ideas, because some people have figured out ways to profit from their promotion. But those people are powered by US. We (as a species) promote their shitty ideas, to our own detriment, because we get tricked into it.
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Pretty much your whole logic has been used word for word to argue why democracy is a bad thing and that we should let the elite rather than the commoners run the country. History has shown time and time again that is a terrible mistake, it's the same with free speech. You're not going to become enlightened, you're going to become subjugated and manipulated.
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Decisions and policies based on facts (facts as truth, not "alternative facts" which are GOP-speak for "bullshit") are inherently better than those based on bullshit. Your TV, computer, cell phone, electric power, fresh water supply, sewer systems, vaccines, food refrigeration and distribution, airplanes, and automobiles were designed by understanding the physical world (facts) and figuring out how to manipulate materials to do what was wanted/needed. There was precious little room for bullshit in the pro
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True dialog without censorship is the last thing we need.
Haven't you ever noticed that beauty, talent, and brains are all relatively limited among humans? That's why we put beautiful people on TV and in ads, why professional sports teams and olympic athletes are so amazing to watch, and why smart people tend to become scientists, professors, engineers, doctors, etc. In each of those areas systems that filter people in those categories were developed over many decades, even centuries, to exclude the talentless, the unattractive, and the dopes. Then along comes FB and the bad idea that all opinions are equally valuable.
FB is open mic night on the internet. Everyone's point of view IS heard. That's the problem. Dopes are elevated to the same level as the folks who know what they're talking about, and the majority in the audience is too dumb to know the difference between good and bad information. That's why antivaxxers, homeopaths, flat earthers, 6000 year old earthers, intelligent designers, anti climate changers, etc., are still around. Those people don't deserve a loud voice. They and many others deserve public shaming for their stupidity.
All opinions/information is not of equal value. Until dopes learn this (never?), society has to come up with some filtering schemes to protect the structure of society from all the idiots whose ideas would lead to chaos and anarchy.
You ignore the nature of Man. The nature of Man is to war.
You can either allow the warring to occur in the realm of ideas and words or you will have actual war with real death.
Censored ideas and those who hold them do not disappear, they arm themselves for revolt as they are left with no alternative. Better to defeat bad ideas in the realm of reason and discourse than on a bloody battlefield.
Strat
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All opinions/information is not of equal value. Until dopes learn this (never?), society has to come up with some filtering schemes to protect the structure of society from all the idiots whose ideas would lead to chaos and anarchy.
That's literal totalitarianism. Fascists, nazis, stalinists, maoists, they all took turns to define which ideas "would lead to chaos and anarchy".
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No such thing as safety from words/pictures (Score:2)
These are groups and individuals who misuse words commonly understood to describe physical injury in order to give their controlling nature a potective sheen of kindness and to tug at the heartstrings of ordinary people.
You were not unpatriotic to resist the manias of the Bush era.
You are not unkind to resist the manias of the social media era.
"If we take the company at its word" (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly why none of this PR bullshit matters.
So don't blame us, blame them! (Score:3)
The board, according to Facebook, will serve as an "independent authority outside of Facebook,"
The board, in other words, will be the scapegoat. Any criticism will be directed at them. Any controversy will be their failure.
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So a company board is a committee with a variety of experience and opinions. Seems to work well enough.
Fuck them all (Score:3)
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The strategy for keeping people in the dark has shifted. No longer are they quieting the signal, but burying it in noise.
Globalism to the rescue (Score:1)
>"That board, which will be made up of a diverse group of about 40 people from around the world, will be like what The Verge called a "Supreme Court for content moderation."
Oh, wonderful. A globalist moderation board composed, no doubt, of a super-majority of representatives from places which have little or no concept of American freedom of speech. I am sure that will work out well.
FAIL
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>"It said "people from around the world", not Globalists."
Whatever the word or concept, for an American company to hand over content or policy moderation or influence to a collection of people "all over the world" is not a good thing for Americans. Americans don't need and shouldn't want the rest of the world moderating or influencing what we see/say/read.
>"Of course when Facebook does finally appoint someone from Myanmar to advise on moderating content in Myanmar"
But that is not what the article is
Wrong solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously no-one is going to trust Facebook to do something like this ethically, and the most likely outcome will be an increase in bias and censorship.
I think it reflects how civilization is not dealing well with the downsides of the Internet in general. When Europe got the printing press, it was a long time before the dissemination of information was done more or less responsibly, and it's not even perfect now. Perhaps it can never be perfect.
But with the Internet case we see disinformation and the rare actual hate speech doing real harm out in the real world. We haven't figured out how to respond to that, except that we know censorship is not a good option.
Facebook gegen entartete Kunst (Score:1)
Will they be sending Antifas over to your house to kick in the door and search for evidence of wrongthink?
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They cannot do it any way else. Look at Google: the outrage shitstorm when they tried to get conservatives on their ethics board got so bad they scrapped the whole thing.
Progressives do not tolerate any other opinion or compromise.