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Facebook had a problem on its hands. People were making posts that got caught in the company's automated moderation system or were taken down by its human moderators. The problem wasn't that the moderators, human or otherwise, were wrong to take down the posts. No, the problem was that the people behind the posts were famous or noteworthy, and the company didn't want a PR mess on its hands.
So Facebook came up with a program called XCheck, or cross check, which in many instances became a de facto whitelist. Over the years, XCheck has allowed celebrities, politicians, athletes, activists, journalists, and even the owners of "animal influencers" like "Doug the Pug" to post whatever they want, with few to no consequences for violating the company's rules.
"For a select few members of our community, we are not enforcing our policies and standards," reads an internal Facebook report published as part of a Wall Street Journal investigation. "Unlike the rest of our community, these people can violate our standards without any consequences."
"Few" must be a relative term at Facebook, as at least 5.8 million people were enrolled in the program as of last year, many of them with significant followings. That means a large number of influential people are allowed to post largely unchecked on Facebook and Instagram.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @01:43PM (28 children)
Power and centralisation, of both ecnomics and technology, are moving our society away from the rule of a common law.
We are moving towards what I call "a rule of unlaw", a world of -- sometimes codified -- double standards.
There are insiders, who enjoy better access, protections, privileges, and then there are outsiders whose rights, access, freedoms, employment, etc are ultimately subject to veto on the whims of connected insiders.
All of this is increasingly justified under the notion of privatisation: Websites, banks, etc are owned by private corporations who may do as they please. Including, now, literally writing their own laws to discriminate for and against whomsoever they please, even as they voraciously swallow up what remains of the public sphere.
No law, no court ruling, no legislature, and no democratic process lies behind the "unlaws" like this XCheck (an no doubt dozens of other such private codes among tech and financial companies). They exist, and increasingly govern populations, by fiat. There are no appeals, no accountability, in many cases of such "rules" nothing is even written down! This isn't order, it's chaos!
We are allowing unchecked financial and monopoly power to walk us down a dark road towards a lawless, corrupt, and caste based society. No amount of technological progress will be enough to undo the damage of casting us all back to the dark ages. Zuckerberg & Big Tech Co. are legal biker gangs dressed up in hoodies and a smile.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @02:06PM (13 children)
redundant.
all societies have class structures, never in human history have laws or rules applied to all equally.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:54PM
This is true, but generally things have been moving towards less centralization of control more towards democratic processes. Obviously, you do get backsliding in some areas, but the overall motion has been towards freedom and some form of democratic leadership. The troubling bit here is how willing people are to give up hard fought rights just because they can get cat videos and images of their relatives easily.
(Score: 4, Informative) by garfiejas on Tuesday September 14 2021, @04:05PM (8 children)
Not quite sure thats right - we (the royal we) forced one king to write the rights down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta [wikipedia.org] and his successors to write it down again every now and again over 800 years ago and when that didn't work executed another King https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England [wikipedia.org] to prove that the law indeed applies to everyone...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @05:25PM (5 children)
Quite right.
It also shows that we cannot trust profit-making entities to self regulate. Given the choice they will take profit, i.e. they are corrupt. The government, paid for and elected by We The People, is the only known mechanism for short-circuiting corruption. Anyone wanting to let the market decide is advocating for corruption, as plain as day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @06:21PM (1 child)
That doesn't follow as stated.
We may not be able to trust anyone (whether profit-making or simply government departments) to self-regulate, but that's in line with the idea of power corrupting, and absolute power corrupting absolutely. Anyone wanting to let the government decide is advocating for corruption as surely as if they were advocating for individual market participants to decide unilaterally. There is a known solution, but it involves auditing and review - something for which government organs and bureaucrats are known to have a horror.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @04:31PM
The feedback mechanism is "paid for and elected by We The People". This strips away the profit-motive for corruption and introduces a competitive component to expose eachothers' bullshit. Show me a better solution - your "audit" idea is just a subset of these 2 things, i.e. what prevents auditors from being corrupt?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 14 2021, @08:39PM (1 child)
The tecnical term in the field of economics is "efficient" or "successful".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @04:33PM
Yes, and if it's more efficient to bulldoze your house or put a pipeline through your property, they will do that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @02:41AM
I don't know that their behavior necessarily confers corruption, in fact it could be purported that they're diligently performing the duties ascribed to them and thus paying their debt to society; it's the excision of moral culpability, the lack of skin in the game, the insulated existence, and the willing delusion, and most of all their position in the upkeep of the bureaucratic machinery that creates the air of putrescense. The reality of it is, they're oriented, morally and intellectually, to exploit the system and directed to do so. Regulation is actually really, ultimately kind of circular, the whole system of governance that acts as the undergirding for the support of undue private property is ultomately what defines all of civilizations ailments. These guys just happen to be the highly visible scapegoats at the end of the levers, and they're really just doing their jobs, and like anyone they want a quiet day at the office.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @02:01AM (1 child)
Uh, that was the nobility grabbing rights for themselves. Where were the peasants given equal rights?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @04:37PM
An ongoing process - see, e.g., history.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @05:05PM (2 children)
Well, no. But it depends on how you define society, as well. Look up the term "egalitarian", plenty of people have and continue to live under those systems. Have they put shit on the moon? No. Have they committed genocide, cast millions into the bloody tides of combat, manufactured weapons capable of manifesting extinction level events, created oppressive caste systems based on lineage and luck while falsely narrating that it's "hard work" that creates it, have they divided the population to the point where human discussion is made difficult? No, they haven't. Are they perfect? No, they aren't. Are they human? I'd say far more so than any "developed nation".
It's likely you don't even know your neighbors.
"Peter Freuchen spent time living with the Inuit of Greenland over 100 years ago ... happily hunting walruses, whales, seals, even polar bears. One day, after he’d been on an unsuccessful expedition, he met another hunter dropping off several hundred pounds of meat outside his hut. Freuchen thanked the hunter profusely but the man snapped back: “Up in our country we are human! And since we are human we help each other. We don’t like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow.”"
from that same exchange:
"By gifts one makes slaves, and by whips one makes dogs."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @08:28PM (1 child)
fuck you race traitor or jew.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @12:55AM
How is it you've come to the conclusion I have any interest in race whatever? Is it my unwillingness to lick clean the boot of my oppressor? I operate under the certitude that they certainly have no interest in my welfare, and history evinces of this time and time again on a timeline to that spans to time immemorial. It's simply by circumstance that today it's "whites". Tomorrow it may just as easily be Chinese. Nor am I beholden to any religious affiliations, and I certainly, by that virtue, don't represent their interests. I want the hierarchies which any select group may leverage destroyed, that we might once again act with the true virtues that mankind was once vested.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:01PM (13 children)
There are laws that explicitly have double standards. Two name two obvious ones
The PDT rule (you have to have 25K or more to be able to pattern day trade all you want). It favors those with money.
The SEC won't let you invest in Peerstreet unless you meet some ridiculous financial requirements. Again, this favors those with money.
One set of laws for the rich and another set of laws for the poor.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:02PM
(and before you go on about how these laws are intended to 'protect' the poor, the government is perfectly fine with the poor gambling all their money away).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:15PM
err ... to name two obvious ones *
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:59PM (4 children)
The PDT exists to protect smaller investors that might not have the money to cover their trades. Remember, it still takes time for trades to actually be finalized, so if you're trading repeatedly across a given day, the funds haven't cleared, so the $25k is there to help reduce the likelihood of you not having the money to cover things if they go wrong.
A smaller investor just does not have time to engage in PDT and definitely shouldn't unless that's their main job and with less than $25k, it's definitely not their job.
I'm not familiar with peerstreet, but I would point out that the big boys mainly benefit from being allowed to front run stock orders and that doesn't really help small traders out much as they'd have to be doing a lot of trading in order to benefit from those small sums of money. It's only really a problem because the big boys are doing it so much and so often that those fractions of a dollar, or even cent, add up over time. For smaller investors a fintech which allows you to put money in and get it automatically balanced and rebalanced as appropriate based on allocation of stocks and bonds, both foreign and domestic, is far more than what they'd need, or have time to manage in many cases.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @04:24PM (3 children)
"The PDT exists to protect smaller investors that might not have the money to cover their trades"
No, because when you buy a stock and sell it the trade is covered by the sale.
The PDT rule does not exist in other countries and there is no problem. The brokers just keep track of everything and make the necessary exchanges.
This is just an arbitrary rule the SEC imposes on the brokers. Otherwise the brokers can (and in other countries do) figure it out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @05:49PM (2 children)
But, that's not the case, the money isn't back until the trade has cleared, usually a few days later and definitely not before the end of the day. It takes time for the funds to actually move between different banking institutions to make that happen. You're owed the money when you sell, and you owe the money when you buy, but that doesn't magically happen immediately. It takes several days for the bankers to get the money transfer to complete the transaction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @06:06PM (1 child)
I understand what you're saying but the banks can keep track of who is owed what until the exchanges are finalized and it's not a problem. They do it with accounts over 25K and the U.S. is one of the only, if not the only (I'm sure if you tried hard enough you can find some other country) country that has the PDT rule and this is never a problem in other countries. It was also never a problem in the U.S. before the SEC passed the PDT rule.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @06:11PM
Also I don't believe the PDT rule applies to crypto (ie: on Robinhood). The banks/brokers figure it out.
It's just an arbitrary rule the SEC imposes on banks/brokers for no good reason. It's oppressive and needs to be abolished.
Also, yes, I have more than 25K in one of my accounts. I don't want to fund every single brokerage account with 25K just to trade freely. I shouldn't have to. In other countries they don't have to. Abolish the PDT rule.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @05:29PM (5 children)
> There are laws that explicitly have double standards.
Then VOTE for someone else. The laws are made by those we elect so ultimately we decide the laws. This results in a compromise, not a perfect set. Better than any other option known.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @05:40PM (4 children)
Part of this discussion is to inform people that our current regulators are passing bad laws and we should either get them to change the laws or vote them out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @04:41PM (3 children)
Well my reading of your post was that the existence of an unfair law is proof that the current system needs to be changed. Perhaps I misunderstood? There is no perfect set of laws, just like there is no perfect organism. As long as we have the back-and-forth of feedback then we are doing as best as one can, IMHO. Tearing it all down... for what? Something better? Show me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @08:42PM
No, just that the law needs to be changed. I am just pointing out which laws need to be changed. Making more people aware of a bad law is the first step towards getting it changed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @09:07PM (1 child)
Well my reading of your post suggests that we shouldn't discuss bad laws whatsoever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @09:09PM
(We should just shut up and accept them).