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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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @05:03PM (4 children)
> but I doubt most of them are there to spread hatred
Again, you seem to see this as a matter of composition, as if Facebook also hosting millions of cute pictures of puppies makes any difference in the area we're discussing.
> I'm still going to go with a very slim margin of all online hate happening on Facebook compared to the rest of the Internet
The fact that they've "removed millions of hate-related posts" (see TFS) makes your interpretation seem unlikely.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday September 10 2020, @09:19PM (3 children)
I don't really know what you are on about. You seem concerned that the hate content exists, profit or no profit. But that wasn't what the article was about. The article was regarding profiting from Hate. Facebook doesn't really profit from hate. No, or many, advertisers want to be caught dead advertising on a page that have "hate content" (whatever that is). So the very few cases where it happens is not what is going to be driving the Facebook bottom line. Even on a billion sized user base, they are not all hatemongers. So it does in fact matter that they host millions of cat pictures, have soccer-moms share images or talk about cookies or whatever people do on Facebook these days or is regarded as normal content. Cause the "profit" from hate is such a vanishingly small part compared to the normal usage. It might not actually even be a profit, hosting hate might actually be a loss. But even if there is some minuscule profit involved it's going to be trivial in size at best compared to the rest of the company. So if anything they should just be honest and tell you they want to remove it cause there is no profit involved in to to talk about.
Beyond that you seem to be under the impression that Facebook is the main source of discussion regarding race, hate or whatnot. It's not. Why? Cause they censor and it's public. Facebook is the end of the line, it might be where the converted or interested meet the masses or where the various echo-chambers butt heads and meet. But it's not where the "thinking" (if you will), talking among the believers or actual discussions take place. Even in closed groups. There are places on the internet where this should be considered a larger problem, if it's even a problem.
That Facebook removes millions of "hate-related posts" (whatever that is) means nothing on a user base of billions and compared to the amount of normal, or non-hate related, content created on a daily basis. Millions removed over what? Per day? Per year? Forever? If it's any of the last two then that kinda proves my point that it's not really a common issue or problem that should be on the top of the list of concerns. That this is just Chandwaney trying to shine the light on a non-issue. Even if they removed millions of hate-content per day it still wouldn't be all that much compared to the actual content created or shared via Facebook on a daily basis. Plus as noted, there wouldn't be any profit involved to talk about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @11:13PM (2 children)
I can't tell you what the engineer quoted in the article is referring to by "profiting," but there's more to profiting than the literal amount of dollars they bring in from PPC/PPV ad revenue. Even if the content in question is itself largely not monetizable there's still soft benefit from remaining the dominant platform where people people of certain political bents share the monetizable parts of their lives, and this leaves Facebook with an incentive to tread lightly in certain areas to avoid pissing people off.
That being said, yes, let me get out of the way that deep down inside I am less concerned with the profiting than simply the enabling.
I too don't know what the time frame for the removal of "millions" of posts might be, but even if you assume that's Facebook lifetime total it suggests a scale that smaller platforms or forums might not have the pleasure of ever hosting for their entire existence. We also don't know the time frame that actual posts lived before they were removed... not every removal is equally valuable if it's already been consumed by almost everybody who will ever consume it.
This leads me to network effects. The echo-chambers of Facebook are absolutely a cause for concern as a huge distribution medium (if not the literal event-planning platform) for the thinking and strategizing that goes on in the "other places." This is really the crux. Even if the other places on the internet are largely the "source," people who wouldn't ever venture to, or have heard of, the other places can to an extent get their radicalization in the same app they get their baby pictures.
Your continual rehashing of hate content's relatively small place within the Facebook corpus, makes understandable why you view it as a non-issue. I'm both highly skeptical that there's so little profit derived from this... but as I said earlier, I am primarily concerned with Facebook's impact on society, largely due to the scale of the platform.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday September 11 2020, @12:55AM (1 child)
It's not that I like or feel some great urge to defend Facebook, I think they are a pox on society in general. That said I have serious doubt, as noted, that they are profiteering from hate or hatemongering -- unless you have a very wide definition on what constitutes as hate and profit etc in which case it could be pretty much anything and then it would just be ridiculous.
If radicalization is the issue then that is as far as I am concerned another issue. In that way I'm sure that Facebook can act as some kind of gateway or point of exposure. Even tho I don't think it's where the "interesting" things happen. I just don't think there are many advert dollars in hatemongering on Facebook or in general as the corporations with money are not that interested in having their precious image tarnished by such content. But sure it would be interesting to see some kind of actual breakdown, even tho I don't think Facebook will or would ever provide one to us.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 11 2020, @02:48AM
It is difficult to monetize racial grievance unless you use a very, very broad definition of bias. At this point in time we have reached about the maximum possible definition of bias, and it has been monetized with alacrity by bias counselors, pundits, and all those who make bank on selling the idea that we're all biased and that that can ever change. Look at what the ADL and SPLC do on a regular basis, with their interpreting absolutely every mishap and crime that ever occurs to a non-white, non-male person as a HATE CRIME!!! Their entire existence as organizations depends on priming that primal pump every six months or so.
In other words, it's a scam. Whenever the Sierra Club or Greenpeace officers in DC feel they need a raise to afford that cute summer home on the Chesapeake, they float stories in the media about some overwrought climate disaster. Whenever the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists needs to rake in cash to meet their bottom line, they pick some random tidbit in the world news and ADJUST THEIR CLOCK CLOSER TO MIDNIGHT!!!
Washington DC delenda est.