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Facebook 'Profits from Hate' Claims Engineer Who Quit

posted by martyb on Wednesday September 09 2020, @11:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the $$$ dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

BBC:

A Facebook engineer has quit the firm, saying they "can no longer stomach" being part of an organisation "profiting off hate".

Ashok Chandwaney is the latest employee to go public with concerns about how the company deals with hate speech.

The engineer added it was "choosing to be on the wrong side of history".

Facebook responded by saying it had removed millions of hate-related posts. Another of its ex-engineers has also come to its defence.

The thrust of the post by Ashok Chandwaney - who uses "they" and "them" as personal pronouns - is that Facebook moves quickly to solve certain problems, but when it comes to dealing with hate speech, it is more interested in PR than implementing real change.

Can [or should] Facebook successfully purge its platform of speech it considers harmful?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday September 10 2020, @07:06AM (3 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday September 10 2020, @07:06AM (#1048845) Journal

    Most of the STEM in SoylentNews, these days, is responding to the alt-right white supremacist, misogynist gamer-gate and QAnon crap fomented by the original founders (well, chromas, at least) and the TMB, who is a non-woke Native American, or a delusional Oklahomian, which is easier to expect. We real Soylentils, we want science, applications of science, and stuff normal intellectual people grounded in reality are interested in. Not some Nutherguy right wing spin on shit. Runaway is ignorant of almost all aspects of STEm, and reality, and truth, so all his subs, via IRC, are suspect, and reduce the reputation of SN as a reliable aggregator of news. So, lose the nutherguy, or lose the rest of us. This is the ultimatum. SoylentNews could be dead, Netcraft confirms it [battleswarmblog.com]. And this time, we mean it.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 10 2020, @04:51PM (1 child)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday September 10 2020, @04:51PM (#1049053) Journal

    We spend a lot of time telling people that Chemistry works, even when those chemicals are part of the atmosphere, too.

    That's STEM, right?

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @12:10AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @12:10AM (#1049269)

      We spend a lot of time telling people that Chemistry works

      Pedantically speaking, Global Warming and greenhouse gasses deal mainly with the Physics. Still STEM, yes.

  • (Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Thursday September 10 2020, @11:24PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 10 2020, @11:24PM (#1049256) Journal

    Most of the STEM in SoylentNews, these days, is responding to the alt-right white supremacist, misogynist gamer-gate and QAnon crap

    I just hope you're not spending much for that STEM, because it's not working.