Facebook is bad at moderating in English. In Arabic, it’s a disaster(restofworld.org)
restofworld.org
Facebook is bad at moderating in English. In Arabic, it’s a disaster
https://restofworld.org/2021/facebook-is-bad-at-moderating-in-english-in-arabic-its-a-disaster/
104 comments
Some language nerdiness: Persian (Farsi), and main languages of Afghanistan (Pashto and Tajik) are all indo-european, so the same language family as Indian Subcontinent and (most) European languages.
Arabic is from a whole different family tree of Semitic languages, which also includes Hebrew and Maltese (go figure). They are totally different to indo-european languages.
Arabic is from a whole different family tree of Semitic languages, which also includes Hebrew and Maltese (go figure). They are totally different to indo-european languages.
>...family tree of Semitic languages, which also includes...Maltese
Okay. I did NOT see that one coming. In retrospect they're not exactly far from other Arabic-speaking countries, but I'm curious what the history is. I've also heard that Sicilian retains some features that differentiates it from Italian and suggests different roots, so I wonder if there's a connection there with Maltese.
Okay. I did NOT see that one coming. In retrospect they're not exactly far from other Arabic-speaking countries, but I'm curious what the history is. I've also heard that Sicilian retains some features that differentiates it from Italian and suggests different roots, so I wonder if there's a connection there with Maltese.
Malta was conquered by North African Islamic caliphate around ~800AD, and then 200 years later the Normans(yes, those normans weren't just invading England around the year 1000) came in and took it, and then 200 years after that they kicked the Muslims out. By that point the Arabic that the original invaders brought was the common language, and it developed independently from the Arabic spoken in North Africa, slowly becoming latinized by the Christian Normans.
Gotcha, so it does parallel Sicily pretty closely but I don't think Arabic took hold as a common language quite how it did in Malta, but this is definitely something I need to look into more deeply. Thanks!
That's exactly right...the Arabs also invaded sicily around the same time, but didn't get as much as a foothold as they did on Malta...maybe just because of population sizes, or the fact that mainland Italy down by current day calabria were also speaking the same language as the Sicilians, so there was a reserve for the language to continue on. So Sicilian (the language) has a lot of borrowing from Arabic (as well as greek) instead of being a dialect of arabic.
That's fascinating, thanks for the insight.
Follow the link to the WSJ article in the text you've quoted. [0] You'll see a similar conflation of "issues with automated Arabic moderation" and "Afghanistan".
In context, though, it appears to be less a confusion about which language is spoken there and more a narrative lift from the WSJ article. Said article's structure places more emphasis on the facticity of Facebook's AI-based moderation, which only successfully classifies and removes an estimate of 2% of viewed hate speech in any language, then introduces Afghanistan's lower rate as an (imperfect and frankly kinda silly) example of Facebook deprioritizing other languages' AI moderation.
[0] https://archive.md/6WXq4 due to paywall
In context, though, it appears to be less a confusion about which language is spoken there and more a narrative lift from the WSJ article. Said article's structure places more emphasis on the facticity of Facebook's AI-based moderation, which only successfully classifies and removes an estimate of 2% of viewed hate speech in any language, then introduces Afghanistan's lower rate as an (imperfect and frankly kinda silly) example of Facebook deprioritizing other languages' AI moderation.
[0] https://archive.md/6WXq4 due to paywall
Welcome to the black-pilled media distrust group. Most of the time it's ignorance. Sometimes it's outright lies.
A charitable interpretation would be to understand the "arabic" as in "The arabic script", that is: the alphabet. This is indeed the written representation of Persian and Urdu.
It's a common confusion for some people to conflate a natural language with it's script. Compare with the similar confusion that conflates a programming language with either it's implementation or the snytax used to write it in text files.
It's a common confusion for some people to conflate a natural language with it's script. Compare with the similar confusion that conflates a programming language with either it's implementation or the snytax used to write it in text files.
By this logic Chinese, Japanese, Classical Vietnamese and Classical Korean are all sorta kinda just Chinese.
Aside from being amazingly ignorant ( it can be argued Chinese dialects alone are more diverse than Romance languages) your not going to be able to have a Cantonese speaker moderate a Japanese forum.
That said, why are we realistically expecting Facebook to be able to do all this. The moderation should really occur in your head, if you're reading really hateful things online, maybe stop reading them. It turns into an endless game of whack-a-mole.
There are tons of Reddit threads I've been in where I felt I was being personally attacked, or reading pure hate speech. I stopped using Reddit because it wasn't good for me. To be completely fair to Facebook it's not even possible to moderate their platform to the extent this article imagines.
I think a fair compromise would be to allow Nations to ban or heavily restrict Facebook. And Facebook should comply with that. Hell, a Facebook timeout for all of humanity wouldn't be a bad idea.
Maybe given the week of an election just shut the whole thing down aside from messenger.
Aside from being amazingly ignorant ( it can be argued Chinese dialects alone are more diverse than Romance languages) your not going to be able to have a Cantonese speaker moderate a Japanese forum.
That said, why are we realistically expecting Facebook to be able to do all this. The moderation should really occur in your head, if you're reading really hateful things online, maybe stop reading them. It turns into an endless game of whack-a-mole.
There are tons of Reddit threads I've been in where I felt I was being personally attacked, or reading pure hate speech. I stopped using Reddit because it wasn't good for me. To be completely fair to Facebook it's not even possible to moderate their platform to the extent this article imagines.
I think a fair compromise would be to allow Nations to ban or heavily restrict Facebook. And Facebook should comply with that. Hell, a Facebook timeout for all of humanity wouldn't be a bad idea.
Maybe given the week of an election just shut the whole thing down aside from messenger.
What the hell are you saying? Is it "the existence of state censorship is a good countermeasure to online speech when applied at the platform level"? Because that would be sneaking some pretty authoritarian shit into your opinions. I want facebook to go away too but unilateral action on the part of states isn't going to do it (no matter how influential you might want China to be). Now, some kind of international coalition to support fact based information via sanctions (otherwise you trade one kind of propaganda to another) might help.. guessing big red not into that idea tho.
I'd disagree in part and say that, when these languages were all used a few hundred years ago, there may be a way a traveller can communicate with locals if they travelled between the regions (with literacy).
But I would agree that they wouldn't be able to use it to their advantage (moderation).
Now? Well, now the classical languages aren't used or learnt.
But I would agree that they wouldn't be able to use it to their advantage (moderation).
Now? Well, now the classical languages aren't used or learnt.
Nations can already ban usage of Facebook if they want to. We don't need to "allow" anything. But that kind of censorship takes us down a dangerous path. It would be horrible to see the rest of the world turn into China.
And I suspect that Facebook's moderation problems extend to most, if not all, languages written in Arabic script. If they can't even handle languages like Spanish or French correctly (cf. other top-level comments), the chances that they'll handle languages which are more "obscure" (from a Western perspective) are basically zero.
It’s not a common confusion at all though. No one would ever confuse Italian for English because they use the same script. It’s only “common” wrt Arabic script languages.
"Facebook is bad at moderating the Latin alphabet. For the Arabic script, it’s a disaster."
I imagine eastern cultures would find Italian and English rather similar.
Pashto, Dari, Italian, and English are all Indo-European languages. Arabic is not. In other words Afghan languages are closer to English than they are to Arabic.
You're conflating two fundamentally different notions of similarity. The similarity among the Indo-European languages are extremely deep linguistic and structural similarities only appreciated by people who study languages and their history for a living, and known by people who are interested in languages and read about them.
The similarity between same-script languages is a superficial geometric symmetry that can be seen by anyone with functioning eyes. Most people are in the second category while not being in the first.
The similarity between same-script languages is a superficial geometric symmetry that can be seen by anyone with functioning eyes. Most people are in the second category while not being in the first.
Only if you already know Italian or English. Personally I would easily confuse Italian with Spanish or Portuguese.
I think your familiarity with the Latin script is coloring your perceptions a bit, I'm an arab and when I was a child I used to classify French, Italian and all languages that use Latin letters as 'English'. Growing up is not what made me realize this is wrong, it's learning English. It's very easy to imagine the other way around.
> I was a child I used to classify French, Italian and all languages that use Latin letters as 'English'.
These three have a lot of words in common. French-English share something like 30% of their respective vocabulary on top of an other 30% they both inherited from Latin. So, you were almost right!
These three have a lot of words in common. French-English share something like 30% of their respective vocabulary on top of an other 30% they both inherited from Latin. So, you were almost right!
If you are going to write about a topic, perhaps you should have a better understanding of it and its related issues than a child would.
There are large Arab communities in the north near Kunduz. Not all of them have retained their ancestral language but some have.
Arabic is a lingua franca across the Islamic world. Even in Indonesia, they study the Koran in Arabic, they discuss religion in Arabic. Are you quite sure about the conclusions you're jumping to?
Not as serious as the "Al-Aqsa" issue in the post, but if you post a picture of Momo, a sculpture by a Japanese artist, to your own timeline, you get a two day block. I think a lot of their moderation system might be a bundle of crude if-statements thrown up to put out temporary fires they're dealing with.
The Momo thing was a pretty big deal -- Just calling it a random Japanese sculpture is ignoring everything that happened around it on various social media outlets. I can understand why Facebook would remove references to it pretty much forever. Its fame was never tied to anything but the controversy.
Are there other examples of autobans that are more egregious? Just curious.
Are there other examples of autobans that are more egregious? Just curious.
There has been hardly any evidence that the "Momo thing" was anything at all, and that's being generous.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_Challenge_hoax: "web security experts and folklorists studying urban legends have stated that the phenomenon is likely a case of moral panic: a sensationalized hoax fuelled by unverified media reports"
Maybe the image was inserted into undesirable videos, but the image itself is harmless and inoffensive. It's simply a (model of a) girl with enlarged eyes. Automatically banning specific legal and inoffensive images is a huge overreach by Facebook, because what other images could they be banning?
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_Challenge_hoax: "web security experts and folklorists studying urban legends have stated that the phenomenon is likely a case of moral panic: a sensationalized hoax fuelled by unverified media reports"
Maybe the image was inserted into undesirable videos, but the image itself is harmless and inoffensive. It's simply a (model of a) girl with enlarged eyes. Automatically banning specific legal and inoffensive images is a huge overreach by Facebook, because what other images could they be banning?
https://www.insider.com/momo-challenge-hoax-japanese-sculptu...
> The sculpture appears to be Aisawa's interpretation of the Japanese folklore character, Ubume, the representation of the ghost of a woman who died during childbirth ... parents started claiming the image was popping up in YouTube videos, instructing children to kill themselves and keep the clips secret from parents ... There were no screenshots or recordings of such appearances, but the hoax was spread by celebrities including Kim Kardashian and Kehlani.
> The sculpture appears to be Aisawa's interpretation of the Japanese folklore character, Ubume, the representation of the ghost of a woman who died during childbirth ... parents started claiming the image was popping up in YouTube videos, instructing children to kill themselves and keep the clips secret from parents ... There were no screenshots or recordings of such appearances, but the hoax was spread by celebrities including Kim Kardashian and Kehlani.
> hoax was spread by celebrities including Kim Kardashian and Kehlani
> listening to celebrities
That's your real problem right there.
> listening to celebrities
That's your real problem right there.
With the important caveat that most American politicians and intellectuals are essentially celebrities -- they are not focused on governance or discovery but rather on promoting and monetizing their personal image & power, because that's what our society incentivizes.
Someone who blindly follows the Kardashians is not necessarily worse off epistemically than someone who blindly follows Biden/Trump/AOC/Boebert or the Experts on NPR/Fox/CBS/HN.
Someone who blindly follows the Kardashians is not necessarily worse off epistemically than someone who blindly follows Biden/Trump/AOC/Boebert or the Experts on NPR/Fox/CBS/HN.
Sounds a lot like Satanic Panic [1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic
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In French it's horrible as well. They have such a naive approach it is ridiculous. One word that keeps getting banned is "pédale" which means pedal but was also used as a slur till maybe the 90s in France. Some people getting banned because they want to sell their guitar pedal... pretty ridiculous.
In Hindi, they don’t care. Most of Facebook’s focus is US where it is based and held liable more often.
Know the etymology behind "pédale"?
It comes from 'pédé' which is slur for 'pédéraste', which means a man who has sex with other men
You get a two day block for saying "ritale".
I also got a two a two day block for using the word "japs" in the context of talking about atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Rape of Nanking. Wouldn't want to be offending long dead mass murderers, would we.
I also got a two a two day block for using the word "japs" in the context of talking about atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Rape of Nanking. Wouldn't want to be offending long dead mass murderers, would we.
I am near getting banned on my personal FB account of over 13 years because I posted the Hitler wearing pink with love hearts joke image about 8 years ago and it finally got automatically removed as a serious violation, violation of what? I don't know, they didn't say. Hitler is scrubbed from the platform though in all forms... which is a shame since it's blatant censorship.
The other reason I'm near getting banned is because I told someone to please not be racist in the Subtle Asian Traits group. They were being extremely racist and it's quite common in that group, I tried to cool it down by asking them not to be racist and I got striked again for violating terms, but no idea what I did wrong.
Eventually everyone will have their original accounts deleted if they engage in any actual form of discussion, it's just a matter of when the AI will get you.
This is the image: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fw...
The other reason I'm near getting banned is because I told someone to please not be racist in the Subtle Asian Traits group. They were being extremely racist and it's quite common in that group, I tried to cool it down by asking them not to be racist and I got striked again for violating terms, but no idea what I did wrong.
Eventually everyone will have their original accounts deleted if they engage in any actual form of discussion, it's just a matter of when the AI will get you.
This is the image: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fw...
I'm starting to think centralized moderation is just a bad idea in general for sites of Facebook's size and reach. It doesn't scale well, can't easily adapt to other cultures, and has all sorts of problems with neutrality and subjectivity that are inherent to the very idea of centralized control.
Sites like Reddit, HN, and Stack Overflow do a much better job with crowdsourced moderation via downvotes and flags, community-appointed moderators and the like, though it's true those systems come with their own set problems. A truly decentralized system where each user chooses their own moderation system could be even better in my opinion, at least in theory, but we're some ways off from that being viable from a practical perspective.
Sites like Reddit, HN, and Stack Overflow do a much better job with crowdsourced moderation via downvotes and flags, community-appointed moderators and the like, though it's true those systems come with their own set problems. A truly decentralized system where each user chooses their own moderation system could be even better in my opinion, at least in theory, but we're some ways off from that being viable from a practical perspective.
It helps, but you still have to deal with groups that are intentionally toxic or problematic.
At what point did we retire the option of convincing people to stop being hateful? I didn't get the memo. It seems we want to ban whatever groups are considered "hateful" (but not the oppressed expressing their anger at the oppressor! Such an easy distinction to make) eventually leading to what, legal bans on speech?
Moderating the moderators seems like a much more tractable problem than moderating all the messages. In Reddit's case, that means shutting down subreddits that trigger too many complaints from people outside those subreddits (in particular, from news articles and advertisers).
> Sites like Reddit, HN, and Stack Overflow do a much better job with [...], community-appointed moderators [...]
Reddit doesn't have community-appointed moderators. That's just factually not true.
What Reddit has is a bunch of little kingdoms run by whichever moderator happened to stake a claim on it first. Those moderators then add more moderators below them according to their personal whims... usually, they appoint some people who are invested in the community somewhat, but their appointment is completely arbitrary.
Going to call these "top moderators" (who staked out their claim) and "local moderators" (who are involved in the community).
The top moderators are, as far as I can tell, 100% invested in becoming moderators for as many little territories as they can, and amassing as much power as they can. They have absolute authority to add or remove other moderators in their little kingdoms, and they can make whatever decisions they want about removing posts in their territories. By and large, they do not interact with the communities they moderate... they don't care, they just want territory. What do they do with that power? Who knows!
The local moderators are appointed by the top mods, and they may have a limited set of permissions.
I'll just come out and say that Reddit is poorly moderated. That's my opinion. There are a few subreddits which are exceptions to this, but most subreddits are poorly moderated. Active mods spend most of their time just fighting spam posts and troll posts, and doing very little to figure out what moderation policies make sense. That's just the nature of the game. Nobody really wants to do the job of being an active mod, because it sucks, because you're playing a little cat and mouse game with users all the time.
Take, for example, one of the NYC subreddits (either NYC or NewYorkCity, I forget). Most of the posts are created by a single guy who spams a few low-effort memes in a Jordan Peterson subreddit, builds karma and history for their user profile, and then posts every news article about crime to the NYC subreddit. That user eventually gets banned and creates a new account. Seems like that user is on a mission to portray NYC as some crime-ridden shithole. The same user might be posting similar articles to the Seattle subreddit, or something. It makes the local subreddits a bit useless.
There are a plenty of decent subreddits but they tend to be very small and very specialized.
Reddit doesn't have community-appointed moderators. That's just factually not true.
What Reddit has is a bunch of little kingdoms run by whichever moderator happened to stake a claim on it first. Those moderators then add more moderators below them according to their personal whims... usually, they appoint some people who are invested in the community somewhat, but their appointment is completely arbitrary.
Going to call these "top moderators" (who staked out their claim) and "local moderators" (who are involved in the community).
The top moderators are, as far as I can tell, 100% invested in becoming moderators for as many little territories as they can, and amassing as much power as they can. They have absolute authority to add or remove other moderators in their little kingdoms, and they can make whatever decisions they want about removing posts in their territories. By and large, they do not interact with the communities they moderate... they don't care, they just want territory. What do they do with that power? Who knows!
The local moderators are appointed by the top mods, and they may have a limited set of permissions.
I'll just come out and say that Reddit is poorly moderated. That's my opinion. There are a few subreddits which are exceptions to this, but most subreddits are poorly moderated. Active mods spend most of their time just fighting spam posts and troll posts, and doing very little to figure out what moderation policies make sense. That's just the nature of the game. Nobody really wants to do the job of being an active mod, because it sucks, because you're playing a little cat and mouse game with users all the time.
Take, for example, one of the NYC subreddits (either NYC or NewYorkCity, I forget). Most of the posts are created by a single guy who spams a few low-effort memes in a Jordan Peterson subreddit, builds karma and history for their user profile, and then posts every news article about crime to the NYC subreddit. That user eventually gets banned and creates a new account. Seems like that user is on a mission to portray NYC as some crime-ridden shithole. The same user might be posting similar articles to the Seattle subreddit, or something. It makes the local subreddits a bit useless.
There are a plenty of decent subreddits but they tend to be very small and very specialized.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that all the sites I referenced employ all of those techniques, just a subset of them.
I was mostly thinking of Stack Overflow when I talked about community-appointed moderators, though I think with Reddit you could argue that users do have some limited influence over who their moderators are. If a large enough majority doesn't like the mods of a particular subreddit they can fork the community with a new subreddit and move everyone there. Not an ideal solution I'll admit, but I have seen it work.
I was mostly thinking of Stack Overflow when I talked about community-appointed moderators, though I think with Reddit you could argue that users do have some limited influence over who their moderators are. If a large enough majority doesn't like the mods of a particular subreddit they can fork the community with a new subreddit and move everyone there. Not an ideal solution I'll admit, but I have seen it work.
Another issue Reddit abd Facebook seem to have is that in trying to host a legion of communities under a single umbrella they wind up having to moderate a mishmash of communities that are at best poorly understood by the higher ups (cultural differences and linguistic barriers, chiefly), and at worst are actively hostile to each other or even hostile to the platform itself. It's rather remarkable they even function at all.
When users aren't happy with moderation they go to different subs. I think that's equivalent to community appoint moderation.
Same is possible with Facebook groups. IMO it is easier to find a well-moderated Facebook group than a well-moderated subreddit. Most people seem to use one or the other, and don’t really have a basis for comparison, though.
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Can you imagine what a dystopian sci-fi hell hole the metaverse could be with facebook at the helm? They can't even moderate a website.. the hubris is pretty amazing.
Their business model depends on operating in a way that's nearly impossible to effectively moderate, and abusive (see all the stories about what Facebook moderators have to see) to try. The only way to fix the problem is to... not operate the business that way, since it's fundamentally a bad idea, considered from that perspective. Which would effectively mean the death of the company, unless they found some totally different and similarly-profitable business model they could transition to.
i mean i get the hate, but categorize moderating facebook as 'can't even moderate a website' is pretty outrageous
I meant to stress that their metaverse vision seems to be a much more massive endeavor and that it would probably be a good idea to learn to walk, or moderate their website (or whatever you want to call their tech that interfaces with their users through a website and app) before they try to run and create something that they most likely will also not be able to control effectively.
The moderation would be one thing if there could be an argument that the platform generally acts in good faith, but they don't. They seem to both have the Google problem that you absolutely can not reach anyone if you get banned by accident (and bye bye to your social graph if that happens, which is made all the worse because they insist on integrating all their services into one like IG/WA) and they also don't ban things that are reported and which ought to be banned
Can confirm Arabic FB moderation is next to 0
--- my comment from an older relevant post ---- I personally reported 3 posts on different FB pages 1st was a religion extremist guy who says to Iraqi people that they should protest and fight the "other side" of the religion (aka start a new civil war) instead of protesting against the corrupted government.
2nd was a post that was praising the guy who murdered the Danish (Or was he Norwegian?) teacher who mocked Islam, and calling him a hero.
and the 3rd was a post that says "Women education is satanic, women's purpose is marriage". --- end old comment ---
4th report was a friend of mine, he reported a page that post's pictures of underage boys im boxers/underwear and write nasty shit in the post and comments, like an obvious pedo community.
all of these 4 reports was "The post was reviewed, and though it doesn't go against one of our specific Community Standards" and then it explains how to block pages
--- my comment from an older relevant post ---- I personally reported 3 posts on different FB pages 1st was a religion extremist guy who says to Iraqi people that they should protest and fight the "other side" of the religion (aka start a new civil war) instead of protesting against the corrupted government.
2nd was a post that was praising the guy who murdered the Danish (Or was he Norwegian?) teacher who mocked Islam, and calling him a hero.
and the 3rd was a post that says "Women education is satanic, women's purpose is marriage". --- end old comment ---
4th report was a friend of mine, he reported a page that post's pictures of underage boys im boxers/underwear and write nasty shit in the post and comments, like an obvious pedo community.
all of these 4 reports was "The post was reviewed, and though it doesn't go against one of our specific Community Standards" and then it explains how to block pages
In Spanish people gets two days bans by asking for "tinta HP negra" (black HP ink. In Spanish, HP not only refers to HP Inc, but shortcut of 'son of a bitch'). But if you run a fake news page promoting a coup d'etat it is perfectly fine!
I can't quite express why, but this line "profit over people" creeps me out. Maybe it's this idea that there are just "people", a homogenous group that facebook can choose, or not, when really what facebook is blamed for is siding with one group of people over another - either censoring some people, or not censoring some people that other people think should be censored.
If they do it through translation it'd be hilarious. When we get tech support queries in languages like Arabic we pass them through Google Translate and the result always makes me think of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grA5XmBRC6g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grA5XmBRC6g
I think the same happens for every other language but English, in the past I've reported several abusive attacks/ posts/comments in facebook (in Spanish) and later they've said that they don't see any issue, so clearly they just don't understand what you're reporting.
Moderating is so hard it will probably the first application for AI with generalized intelligence.
> Controlling humans will probably the first application for AI with generalized intelligence.
Sounds good to me. Let's do it. Can we get Zuckerberg on the line?
Sounds good to me. Let's do it. Can we get Zuckerberg on the line?
Personally I think it feels kinda dystopian for an AI to be deciding what human beings are allowed to say; _especially_ if it's highly effective.
There was a comment from another user I favorited a while back which reflects my thoughts on the topic of AI-driven moderation pretty well[1]:
> I find censorship via algorithms extremely scary. There will be false positives and false negatives and there is absolutely zero recourse. Censorship by algorithms is a perfect expression of bureaucracy. In perfect bureaucracies, responsibilty is spread so thinly that it's impossible to determine who is responsible for a mistake. With algorithms, there's actually no human on the hook at all. Are you going to blame the programmers?
> By all means, use machine learning to flag posts so humans can look at them. But automating the removal of content and the banning of human users is a road I strongly suspect we will regret going down. If the volume of content is sufficient so that you need to use algorithms to remove human-generated content then I'd say it's time to reconsider whether that content should be removed at all.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19867975
There was a comment from another user I favorited a while back which reflects my thoughts on the topic of AI-driven moderation pretty well[1]:
> I find censorship via algorithms extremely scary. There will be false positives and false negatives and there is absolutely zero recourse. Censorship by algorithms is a perfect expression of bureaucracy. In perfect bureaucracies, responsibilty is spread so thinly that it's impossible to determine who is responsible for a mistake. With algorithms, there's actually no human on the hook at all. Are you going to blame the programmers?
> By all means, use machine learning to flag posts so humans can look at them. But automating the removal of content and the banning of human users is a road I strongly suspect we will regret going down. If the volume of content is sufficient so that you need to use algorithms to remove human-generated content then I'd say it's time to reconsider whether that content should be removed at all.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19867975
The issue with that is we have already been using algorithimic filtering for a very long time in internet terms. Spam filters are ubiquitous and help keep out the infamous online Viagra sellers and comment posters in check. It is a very limited subset of course.
I have no issue with using algorithms to filter machine-generated content, only human-generated content. I realize from a practical perspective that can be a difficult distinction to make, especially for an algorithm. In principle though I think it's an important one.
Humans already have generalized intelligence and this is the result of that. All generalized AI will do is help us systematically make the same mistakes at scale.
It sounds weird but don't underestimate the positive value of making the same mistake at scale instead of a bunch of different ones. That is essentially the model of laws and bueracracies and as much as the latter draws complaints it works far better than literal fiefdoms. Even when the holders were trained essentially from birth.
That’s an interesting point. However, AIs are much more opaque in their logic than laws are. I’m not so optimistic that the public visibility will be quite the same.
Moderating is so hard because there is no objective ground truth about what should or should not belong. Individuals and societies just don't agree. It is a fundamentally different problem than OCR, speech recognition, or even credit scoring.
Moderation is hard because designing communities around effective moderation is at odds with the growth and monetization goals of the major social media companies. The problem's tractable, just not while operating something that looks like Facebook or Twitter. They have to expose everyone to posts from as may people as possible as much as they can get away with it, to drive "engagement" and growth and feed their ML. Tighten up post visibility so it's not like one big free-for-all and suddenly things get much easier.
In three years, Facebook will become the largest supplier of content moderation services. All social networks are upgraded with Metadyne robomoderators, becoming fully unstaffed. Afterwards, they enforce AUPs with a perfect operational record. The Skymod Funding Bill is passed. The system goes online August 4th, 2025. Human decisions are removed from editorial policy. Skymod begins deleting content at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plu
I think moderation is a bad idea. They should rather provide the tools for the useres to self-moderate their feeds so they can avoid engaging with content they don't want to engage.
> hate speech and disinformation targeting at-risk users such as women and the LGBTQ+ community are left rampant on the platform
And Israelis too! Or is it Palestinians who are at-risk. Oh well, I'm sure the moderators will sort that one out
And Israelis too! Or is it Palestinians who are at-risk. Oh well, I'm sure the moderators will sort that one out
I knew a Saudi student who went to a hunting trip in Canada, posted a video of them speaking Arabic with guns, and got permabanned on fb.
It was in 2010.
Social media companies were said to be making a lot of employment in North Africa just because they were obliged by EU to mow down "terrorist" content long before IS, and they need megatons of Arabic speakers just for that.
It came to my mind, maybe underpaid Moroccans, and Tunisians just didn't like rich Saudi kids having good time?
It was in 2010.
Social media companies were said to be making a lot of employment in North Africa just because they were obliged by EU to mow down "terrorist" content long before IS, and they need megatons of Arabic speakers just for that.
It came to my mind, maybe underpaid Moroccans, and Tunisians just didn't like rich Saudi kids having good time?
This is true for all other languages. Hindi language content on Facebook is pretty much unmoderated with all that you can expect from it.
This is just another case of "police cracks down on Mafia" when it's one section of the Mafia turning in another disfavored section of the Mafia to the police.
I've yet to see a recent complaint about inconsistent and discriminatory Facebook censorship say that Facebook should just stop censoring. It's always "Facebook isn't doing enough to censor against the right and in favor of black people and LGBTQ".
I've yet to see a recent complaint about inconsistent and discriminatory Facebook censorship say that Facebook should just stop censoring. It's always "Facebook isn't doing enough to censor against the right and in favor of black people and LGBTQ".
>the right [...] black people and LGBTQ
A clever elision of what each group mentioned is actually saying... Which one is most like the Mafia, I wonder?
A clever elision of what each group mentioned is actually saying... Which one is most like the Mafia, I wonder?
When one Mafia family turns another one in, they're doing it to get back at the other family--they're not doing it because they think that crime is a bad thing. They're perfectly happy with crime, as long as they are the ones committing the crime.
It's the exact same thing for censorship. The people who are complaining about Facebook censorship don't want to end censorship. It's just that they want to be the ones doing the censoring.
It's the exact same thing for censorship. The people who are complaining about Facebook censorship don't want to end censorship. It's just that they want to be the ones doing the censoring.
Comparing Facebook to the cops and ideologically aligned groups of users to Mafia families is a strange analogy. Not sure why you chose it, except maybe to imply things.
One of the things that your analogy implies is that speech is criminal. Many, including the actual cops, believe certain kinds of speech indeed are. But who is saying what?
One of the things that your analogy implies is that speech is criminal. Many, including the actual cops, believe certain kinds of speech indeed are. But who is saying what?
No, the analogy is that censorship is criminal. We have one set of criminals (people complaining about Facebook) wanting to turn in another set of criminals (crackdown on Facebook censorship) so that they're the only criminals around (they want to be in control of the censorship). They don't actually want to stop crime (they don't actually want to stop censorship).
>No, the analogy is that censorship is criminal
No, that's not right. Above, you likened cops to Facebook and groups of users to Mafia families who tattle on the crime of other families in order to stymie them. The Mafia does crime, while groups of users do speech; the cops catch and punish crime, while Facebook censors speech. The "only criminals around" won't be in control of the censorship unless you're suggesting that a group of users is going to unilaterally take over Facebook.
...Are you? Which one?
No, that's not right. Above, you likened cops to Facebook and groups of users to Mafia families who tattle on the crime of other families in order to stymie them. The Mafia does crime, while groups of users do speech; the cops catch and punish crime, while Facebook censors speech. The "only criminals around" won't be in control of the censorship unless you're suggesting that a group of users is going to unilaterally take over Facebook.
...Are you? Which one?
The "other families" is Facebook. The crime of the "other families" is censorship. "Turning other families in to the police" is cracking down on Facebook censorship. "Turning other families into the police so they can be the only criminals around" is cracking down on Facebook censorship so they can be censors instead.
> The "other families" is Facebook. The crime of the "other families" is censorship. "Turning other families in to the police" is cracking down on Facebook censorship. "Turning other families into the police so they can be the only criminals around" is cracking down on Facebook censorship so they can be censors instead.
So, let's see:
>>>>>When one Mafia family turns another one in,
When Facebook censorship is cracked down upon,
>>>>>they're doing it to get back at the other family
it's happening in order to get back at Facebook.
...what? What's "crime" again? What's "speech"? The "crime of the other families" being "censorship" elides the reality that Facebook is doing the censorship. I don't think you've really thought this through.
So, let's see:
>>>>>When one Mafia family turns another one in,
When Facebook censorship is cracked down upon,
>>>>>they're doing it to get back at the other family
it's happening in order to get back at Facebook.
...what? What's "crime" again? What's "speech"? The "crime of the other families" being "censorship" elides the reality that Facebook is doing the censorship. I don't think you've really thought this through.
>The "crime of the other families" being "censorship" elides the reality that Facebook is doing the censorship. I
The whole point of having a media blitz about Facebook censorship is to force a crackdown on Facebook censorship, to ensure that censorship is done as per the wishes of the complainers, rather than as per the wishes of current Facebook.
There is no contradiction between "Facebook is doing the censorship" and "someone else wants to censor Facebook instead".
The whole point of having a media blitz about Facebook censorship is to force a crackdown on Facebook censorship, to ensure that censorship is done as per the wishes of the complainers, rather than as per the wishes of current Facebook.
There is no contradiction between "Facebook is doing the censorship" and "someone else wants to censor Facebook instead".
>The whole point of having a media blitz about Facebook censorship is to force a crackdown on Facebook censorship, to ensure that censorship is done as per the wishes of the complainers, rather than as per the wishes of current Facebook.
It's clear that you think that, but you're ignoring what's been written, by me, yourself, and TFA.
"The police", which you've failed to define, seem to me in this flawed analogy to be a sort of avatar of active censorship, called down by various Mafia families. Except in real life, the only reason the police aren't arresting all members of all Mafia families is that they don't know the evidentiary extent of illegal Mafia activities. It is not, as you suggest, that the Mafia can call down the cops upon other Mafia families for whatever reason -- there's got to be some illegal activity that'll hold up in court. Facebook doesn't cave to pressure from groups, or some abstract list of rules, they do whatever they think will look best to observers and... and to a certain group of people.
You suggest that all Mafia families are equally powerful, and push Facebook around. But is there a group from the list that you provided in the root comment, "the right [...] black people and LGBTQ", that is treated differently? One Mafia family has functionally unlimited power, and verifiably censors the two other groups worldwide. Which group is it? In fact, the worldwide censure of one of the "Mafia families", the LGBTQ+ Family, is plainly stated in the article. Can't be them!
It's clear that you think that, but you're ignoring what's been written, by me, yourself, and TFA.
"The police", which you've failed to define, seem to me in this flawed analogy to be a sort of avatar of active censorship, called down by various Mafia families. Except in real life, the only reason the police aren't arresting all members of all Mafia families is that they don't know the evidentiary extent of illegal Mafia activities. It is not, as you suggest, that the Mafia can call down the cops upon other Mafia families for whatever reason -- there's got to be some illegal activity that'll hold up in court. Facebook doesn't cave to pressure from groups, or some abstract list of rules, they do whatever they think will look best to observers and... and to a certain group of people.
You suggest that all Mafia families are equally powerful, and push Facebook around. But is there a group from the list that you provided in the root comment, "the right [...] black people and LGBTQ", that is treated differently? One Mafia family has functionally unlimited power, and verifiably censors the two other groups worldwide. Which group is it? In fact, the worldwide censure of one of the "Mafia families", the LGBTQ+ Family, is plainly stated in the article. Can't be them!
"The police" would consist of government bureaucrats and cancel mobs. Facebook can be and is being reported to them with the full expectation that they will ultimately be able to force Facebook to censor in different ways.
> One Mafia family has functionally unlimited power, and verifiably censors the two other groups worldwide.
There's a media blitz about Facebook precisely because Facebook doesn't have unlimited power, and the media blitz is part of the attempt to smack them down. The media, the government, and the mob can fight Facebook on terms that give them a meaningful chance of winning.
> One Mafia family has functionally unlimited power, and verifiably censors the two other groups worldwide.
There's a media blitz about Facebook precisely because Facebook doesn't have unlimited power, and the media blitz is part of the attempt to smack them down. The media, the government, and the mob can fight Facebook on terms that give them a meaningful chance of winning.
>>One Mafia family has functionally unlimited power, and verifiably censors the two other groups worldwide.
>There's a media blitz about Facebook precisely because Facebook doesn't have unlimited power,
B-b-but I thought Facebook wasn't one of the Mafia families? I think you're just saying words for funsies.
>The media, the government, and the mob can fight Facebook on terms that give them a meaningful chance of winning.
Talk about willful blindless. The global right-wing induces Facebook to censor LGBTQ+ stuff in much of the world. They are not a Mafia family, competing on an even footing with others. They accomplish their deplatforming in ways that black people and LGBTQ+ people simply cannot. Read the article. Facebook can, and does, do whatever it wants -- it just so happens that that coincides with what one of the Mafia families wants. But not the others.
Your fantasy about mob justice being a credible threat to a poor shivering multibillion dollar corporation doesn't actually accord with the facts. Why not stop wasting time moving your goalposts around and answer some of the quite reasonable questions elsewhere in this subthread? What about the New Zealand shooter? Freedom of expression, right?
>There's a media blitz about Facebook precisely because Facebook doesn't have unlimited power,
B-b-but I thought Facebook wasn't one of the Mafia families? I think you're just saying words for funsies.
>The media, the government, and the mob can fight Facebook on terms that give them a meaningful chance of winning.
Talk about willful blindless. The global right-wing induces Facebook to censor LGBTQ+ stuff in much of the world. They are not a Mafia family, competing on an even footing with others. They accomplish their deplatforming in ways that black people and LGBTQ+ people simply cannot. Read the article. Facebook can, and does, do whatever it wants -- it just so happens that that coincides with what one of the Mafia families wants. But not the others.
Your fantasy about mob justice being a credible threat to a poor shivering multibillion dollar corporation doesn't actually accord with the facts. Why not stop wasting time moving your goalposts around and answer some of the quite reasonable questions elsewhere in this subthread? What about the New Zealand shooter? Freedom of expression, right?
If this is true in your experience, you ought broaden your horizons on the topic.
If nothing else, there are certainly plenty of complaints about facially-reasonable-ish policies being implemented in an insane and incoherent manner — like when Facebook or Google take down "extremist content," but it's like video archives of extremists intended to be used to fight war crimes and bring their perpetrators to justice.
e.g. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/facebook-a... (Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes / Algorithms that take down “terrorist” videos could hamstring efforts to bring human-rights abusers to justice.)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-socialmedia-rights... ("'Lost memories': War crimes evidence threatened by AI moderation")
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/25/21664951/facebook-ban-st... ("Facebook is deleting evidence of war crimes, researchers say / A ban on selling stolen artifacts is having unintended consequences)
If nothing else, there are certainly plenty of complaints about facially-reasonable-ish policies being implemented in an insane and incoherent manner — like when Facebook or Google take down "extremist content," but it's like video archives of extremists intended to be used to fight war crimes and bring their perpetrators to justice.
e.g. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/facebook-a... (Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes / Algorithms that take down “terrorist” videos could hamstring efforts to bring human-rights abusers to justice.)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-socialmedia-rights... ("'Lost memories': War crimes evidence threatened by AI moderation")
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/25/21664951/facebook-ban-st... ("Facebook is deleting evidence of war crimes, researchers say / A ban on selling stolen artifacts is having unintended consequences)
Of course Facebook censorship is insane and incoherent.
But pretty much no widely publicized complaint about these ever says "Facebook censorship is insane and incoherent, so Facebook should stop censoring". They just want to be the ones in control of the censorship instead.
But pretty much no widely publicized complaint about these ever says "Facebook censorship is insane and incoherent, so Facebook should stop censoring". They just want to be the ones in control of the censorship instead.
One example of allowing everything is the mass murder of New Zealand mosque that was live streamed on Facebook, do you say that something like that should be allowed and Facebook cannot censor any content?
If you don't moderate content, everything turns into 4chan. And for those two want that, 4chan already exists.
I see plenty of right wing politicians and commentators (and also, though not recently, my extremely left wing ex) complaining that it was censoring their political views unfairly.
Very recently, I have even seen some call for an end to algorithmic timelines, though ironically I can’t find a link.
Very recently, I have even seen some call for an end to algorithmic timelines, though ironically I can’t find a link.
Here's an article about the "Filter Bubble Transparency Act" which intends "that internet platforms give users the option to engage with a platform without being manipulated by algorithms driven by user-specific data":
https://www.makeuseof.com/filter-bubble-transparency-act-exp...
https://www.makeuseof.com/filter-bubble-transparency-act-exp...
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Arabic is not spoke in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, there is common ignorant generalization that Arabic is the language of Iran, Afghanistan, and other Muslim countries.
To those who live there, the distinction is not insignificant.
This also casts doubt on the veracity of everything else in this article.