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posted by janrinok on Tuesday April 24 2018, @03:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the devil-in-the-detail dept.

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.

Related:
Facebook Reports BBC for Reporting Child Porn Images Found on Facebook
Facebook Blocks Users from Sharing World Socialist Web Site Promotional Video
Facebook-Owned Instagram Removes Opioid-Related Posts


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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 24 2018, @06:40PM (10 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday April 24 2018, @06:40PM (#671265)

    Both (legal) Mexican immigrants and Norwegian immigrants arrive under the same terms: They are generally ineligible for public assistance of any kind, and will be deported if they're caught doing anything they're not supposed to. The Mexican immigrant might be a brilliant hardworking person, the Norwegian immigrant might be a lazy idiot, but rather than try to figure out whether the individuals trying to immigrate are going to help or harm the country you're instead assuming Norwegian=good and Mexican=bad.

    Racism is basically a short-circuit in the brain that convinces people that somebody's skin color, language, nationality, etc allows you to infer anything at all about their character. It doesn't, and that fallacy does real harm to all involved. Not just the people whose skin color, language, nationality, etc have been associated with negative traits: As an example, a lot of rich white Jewish people trusted Bernie Madoff because he was at least at first glance a rich white Jewish guy.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 24 2018, @07:40PM (3 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 24 2018, @07:40PM (#671285)

    Racism is basically a short-circuit in the brain that convinces people that somebody's skin color, language, nationality, etc allows you to infer anything at all about their character.

    Oh, I thought that was called "statistics" or maybe "science"

    A lot of that has to do with creationist theory. Creationist theory in the sense of all minds and characters are identical across all races, just like height or skin color or ... oh wait.

    Now there's a totally separate issue used to propagandize the issue, such that noticing any difference is claimed to be the same as firing up the crematoriums, which is obviously hilarious. I'm not the same person as my neighbor does not necessarily result in I must put him in a camp, but for propaganda reasons any noticing of race is portrayed negatively as nazi this and that, which sold pretty well for awhile but less so in recent decades and years.

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:07PM (2 children)

      by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:07PM (#671299)

      Racism is basically a short-circuit in the brain that convinces people that somebody's skin color, language, nationality, etc allows you to infer anything at all about their character.

      Oh, I thought that was called "statistics"

      Then you fundamentally misunderstand statistics.

      For the sake of argument, let's say someone did a study and discovered that 45% of houses in X County have white siding, whereas in most of the state only 30% of houses have white siding. Now, what would be a valid conclusion is "houses in X County are substantially more likely to have white siding." What you are advocating, though, is "This is a house in X County, and everyone knows houses in X County are much more likely to have white siding, so this house probably has white siding," which is incorrect because more than half of houses in X County don't have white siding.

      Statistics can help you understand aggregate trends, but without theory about what those statistics mean, they don't help you accurately understand the data points that led to that statistic. As another simple example, if the median income of 500 people is $75,000, that tells you is that 250 people earned less than $75,000 and 250 earned more than $75,000 but it doesn't tell you whether any particular person earned $10,000 or $100,000,000.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:28PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:28PM (#671348)

        "Everyone knows houses in X County are much more likely to have white siding, and looking at white siding can trigger my epileptic seizures, so it is safer if I stay out of X County."

        No, there isn't a 100% safe place, and living in X County wouldn't make it 100% likely to have a seizure and then fall down and crack a skull, but the conclusion should be obvious: it is safer to stay away.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:17PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:17PM (#671594)

        What you are advocating, though, is "This is a house in X County, and everyone knows houses in X County are much more likely to have white siding, so this house probably has white siding,"

        Not really, no.

        Its a strange jump from "anything" to this very specific example.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 24 2018, @07:51PM (5 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 24 2018, @07:51PM (#671291) Journal

    The Mexican immigrant might be a brilliant hardworking person, the Norwegian immigrant might be a lazy idiot

    Or it might be a Mexican lazy idiot and a brilliant hardworking Norwegian. Those happen too. Most likely it would a Norwegian pulled in by a good job in the states versus an illegal immigrant who slipped through the wall. The former being better economically than the latter (as well as being less likely to be in competition most of the people who are concerned about illegal immigration).

    While the economic reason isn't greatly compelling, it does exist. The US would have a considerably better time of it economically absorbing typical Norwegians than typical Mexicans. However, the sort of people of the two countries who want to migrant to the US for economic reasons by far tend to come from Mexico. The US isn't likely to attract the economically most desirable people from the world (unless they happen to be fleeing persecution). I agree that it would make more sense to educate and train weaker immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere than it would be to pine for better quality immigrants from Europe who aren't so willing to immigrate when they usually have a good thing going in their home countries.

    Racism is basically a short-circuit in the brain that convinces people that somebody's skin color, language, nationality, etc allows you to infer anything at all about their character. It doesn't, and that fallacy does real harm to all involved. Not just the people whose skin color, language, nationality, etc have been associated with negative traits: As an example, a lot of rich white Jewish people trusted Bernie Madoff because he was at least at first glance a rich white Jewish guy.

    And what does that have to do with the subject?

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:15PM (4 children)

      by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:15PM (#671302)

      Racism is basically a short-circuit in the brain that convinces people that somebody's skin color, language, nationality, etc allows you to infer anything at all about their character. It doesn't, and that fallacy does real harm to all involved.

      And what does that have to do with the subject?

      Because rather than devising methods to screen people for "brilliant", "hard-working", "educated", etc, you're advocating screening people based on "Norwegian" and "Mexican" and making all kinds of assumptions about them based solely on their national origin. You are, in essence, intentionally making decisions based on ignorance rather than data.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:33PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:33PM (#671317)

        Thexalon your responses are inspiring, actually giving good objective feedback. I have a hard time getting past this level of ignorance and taking an empathetic educational approach.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @02:26AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @02:26AM (#671470)

        You are, in essence, intentionally making decisions based on ignorance rather than data.

        Well I don't know about that! But then, neither does khallow, which is kind of the point, I guess. Ignorance, the essence of khallow! Interesting.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 25 2018, @01:38PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 25 2018, @01:38PM (#671616) Journal

        Because rather than devising methods to screen people for "brilliant", "hard-working", "educated", etc, you're advocating screening people based on "Norwegian" and "Mexican"

        Who is devising and implementing these methods? It's certainly not the people making the judgments based on incomplete data. It's certainly not the dynamics by which people enter the US illegally. Sure, we could consider the hypothetical situation where the US gets the crap Norwegians and the best Mexicans, but why should the deplorable in question buy that is happening in reality?

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 25 2018, @10:45PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 25 2018, @10:45PM (#671921) Journal

        based on "Norwegian" and "Mexican"

        Those aren't ethnic or racist categories. They are first and foremost political/societal categories. Let us recall that a key concern of the anti-immigration is whether a large group of immigrants will bring the problems of their homelands with them. The problems of Norway are far more palatable than the problems of Mexico.

        One also sees this at the US state level. There are similar complaints (with some merit) about people migrating from states with problems, like California or New York, and then recreating, intentionally or not, those problems in their new home states (such favoring regulation and lawsuits from California, or aggressive driving behavior from New York).

        So before stereotyping stereotyping as "racism", perhaps you ought to be thinking about the reason this mental short-circuit exists in the first place. Inheritable traits don't appear out of nowhere. There has to be some survival value to them - that is, evolution-wise, stereotyping is accurate enough to have survival value else we wouldn't be seeing the behavior in the first place.