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Facebook reveals 25 pages of takedown rules for hate speech and more
Facebook has never before made public the guidelines its moderators use to decide whether to remove violence, spam, harassment, self-harm, terrorism, intellectual property theft, and hate speech from social network until now. The company hoped to avoid making it easy to game these rules, but that worry has been overridden by the public's constant calls for clarity and protests about its decisions. Today Facebook published 25 pages of detailed criteria and examples for what is and isn't allowed.
Facebook is effectively shifting where it will be criticized to the underlying policy instead of individual incidents of enforcement mistakes like when it took down posts of the newsworthy "Napalm Girl" historical photo because it contains child nudity before eventually restoring them. Some groups will surely find points to take issue with, but Facebook has made some significant improvements. Most notably, it no longer disqualifies minorities from shielding from hate speech because an unprotected characteristic like "children" is appended to a protected characteristic like "black".
Nothing is technically changing about Facebook's policies. But previously, only leaks like a copy of an internal rulebook attained by the Guardian had given the outside world a look at when Facebook actually enforces those policies. These rules will be translated into over 40 languages for the public. Facebook currently has 7500 content reviewers, up 40% from a year ago.
Also at MarketWatch.
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(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday April 24 2018, @03:21PM (12 children)
To have a set of rules and to uniformly and fairly apply those rules are two very different things.
Facebook worries about users gaming the rules. Facebook has rules in place to specifically allow Facebook to game the rules while claiming fairness and impartiality.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday April 24 2018, @03:53PM (7 children)
You seem to think that the rules should apply equally to rich and poor alike.
We do not live in a world of equality. For instance the rich are underprivileged because they cannot commit crimes. Nothing they do can be defined as a crime.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 24 2018, @05:32PM
I suppose we could spend thirty seconds googling, say for tax evasion, and disprove that vapid joke, but what would be the point? I'll instead note that in the same sarcastic vein, the poor don't commit crimes either. They're just oppressed.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by VLM on Tuesday April 24 2018, @07:42PM (5 children)
Another classic example is its a white privilege to commit hate crimes, only whites are permitted that designation.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:07PM (1 child)
Another classic example is its a white privilege to commit hate crimes, only whites are permitted that designation.
That is simply not true.
Here is a recent example. [chicagotribune.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:35PM
There is still a bias.
She got 200 hours of community service and four years of probation for beating someone.
This guy http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/18/florida-man-gets-year-in-prison-for-mosque-threat.html [foxnews.com] got a year in jail for making a phone call that : "Court documents say the message used profanity against Islam, the prophet Muhammad and the Quran and threatened to "go down to your center" and shoot people."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:36PM (2 children)
ha ha! *nelson voice*
VLM you need to accept the FACT that you are a bigot, only then can you begin to understand your journey through life. You can hide behind all sorts of "logical and factual" rationale all you want, but eventually the walls will crumble and you'll have to face yourself. Do it now before your latent hatred becomes ingrained and you end up as one of those old racist assholes people barely tolerate.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:18PM
Meaningless word salad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:32PM
It seems you're day late and a dollar short! :-)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @03:57PM
It's a good marketing decision. They should change their branding to be the Fair and Balanced social network.
(Score: 2) by rigrig on Tuesday April 24 2018, @04:10PM (1 child)
No, Facebook worries about advertisers paying them less money.
This can happen because of
a) people leaving Facebook, resulting in less people to advertise to.
So far repeated apologies and promises to not do whatever they were found out doing again (and again and again) seem to work pretty well to keep users around.
b) advertisers leaving Facebook because of public pressure calling specific companies to boycott Facebook because their black-box moderation resulted in some outrage-worthy mishap. (even though the company would quite like to continue advertising to such a well-tracked group of advertees)
From now on, Facebook and these companies can point to the rulebook, and claim they couldn't foresee the latest mishap (because if they could have seen it coming, anybody could, so why didn't they speak up before?). Also, the rules will be updated to prevent this from ever happening again, so no need to boycott them.
(Alternatively: this specific incident was because of someone mot properly following the rulebook, so they will receive better training, and it obviously isn't a systematic outrage-worthy problem)
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:02PM
Good point. This is probably the actual motivation.
I think there is a real internal motivation to unevenly apply the rules to mould public perception according to a particular ideology though. Above and beyond the primary concern of advertising money.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday April 24 2018, @10:24PM
Are the published rules also the rules that apply to the more "senior" moderators?
Or, asking a different way: are the 'published' rules the *only* moderation rules?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex