A side theme of these articles is a rebuttal to all the “why does this company need so many people?” criticisms. Because if you’re successful there are Y people (where Y is large) working to exploit your product for their own means.
Most tech companies are hilariously understaffed for what we should probably demand with a regulatory mandate. Tech companies balk at customer service departments and similar things which "don't scale" because using automated tools is cheaper, and who cares about the negative impact?
When you expect a company that's making a hundred billion a year to actually hire humans to make
moderation decisions they cry that it's "too hard". The honest truth is it's just "less profitable" and our political system is unwilling to admit that super high profitability only happens by harming the public.
I like this series, thanks for independently taking the time to break this down.
I’m silent on other conflicts because we’re silent on this conflict. Nobody - zero - people were telling me to pick a side or understand the history or even try to berate me for merely being silent on the Myanmar one. Kind of weak to attempt that on a different one.
I find my country’s involvement to be arbitrary and would like it to not be involved in the ones people are used to it being involved in
The geopolitics aren't really that consequential for me or many of us, thats what the two gigantic oceans are for
Lets at least stick to placating the regimes that have natural resources, or semiconductors, until we have them too. Everyone else can figure it out.
> Lets at least stick to placating the regimes that have natural resources, or semiconductors, until we have them too. Everyone else can figure it out.
I’m amazed that one could read that entire series and come to this conclusion
I've only read this article, not the rest of the series, so take this as a grain of salt...
But the author's conclusion about decentralized networks seems extremely understated and optimistic. She correctly points out that they are vulnerable to the same coordinated actors as Facebook & co, that hostile actors are likely to have many more resources than the people running these decentralized networks, and yet she concludes with:
> The inescapable downside of not relying on centralized networks to fix things is that there’s no single entity to try to pressure. The upside is that we can all work toward the same goals—better, safer, freer networks—from wherever we are. And we can work toward holding both centralized and new-school networks accountable, too.
So basically, "it's up to all of us to hold 'them' accountable". And she acts like this is anything but wishful thinking.
If you have a single soldier defending a position against a full battalion of tanks and an artillery barrage, you can hold your soldier "accountable" as much as you like, the enemy is still going to take the position.
As the rest of the article points out, the problem is "scale". Propaganda network can output more content faster than individual users, and moderators can't up. This is especially true when the content already plays off the audience's existing biases: unfortunately, most of the Myanmar population did not bat an eye at the horrifying atrocities perpetrated on the Rohingya. So your Fediverse instances in Myanmar are going to be full of Myanmar citizens with conservative/regressive opinions who will actively promote the government propaganda and ban any users linking to pro-democracy content as foreign agents.
(And it's not like the "resistance" will be of much help. Many of the politicians in the NUG didn't protest at all when the Rohingya genocide took place.)
And that's another problem the article doesn't address at all: "truth", "propaganda", "hate campaigns" and "resistance" are subjective and interchangeable terms. The author ends with a mention of the renewed Israel-Gaza conflicts, but how the fuck is Facebook supposed to moderate that?
When you're asked to consider "We should kill all the jewish oppressors / We should put down the muslim terrorists in gaza / We should slaughter the russian orcs until our land is free", which ones count as defensive patriotism and which ones count as hate speech?
The author acts like good and evil are legible concepts that Facebook and social networks ought to enforce. I don't pretend I have a solution for these problems (and we do need to make progress, urgently), but if we ever find one it won't be with the mindset she displays.
Meta (Facebook) actually changed their policy to allow calls for slaughtering the Russians invading Ukraine. It's impossible to set consistent rules on this stuff while satisfying users, advertisers, and politicians.
A side theme of these articles is a rebuttal to all the “why does this company need so many people?” criticisms. Because if you’re successful there are Y people (where Y is large) working to exploit your product for their own means.
Most tech companies are hilariously understaffed for what we should probably demand with a regulatory mandate. Tech companies balk at customer service departments and similar things which "don't scale" because using automated tools is cheaper, and who cares about the negative impact?
When you expect a company that's making a hundred billion a year to actually hire humans to make moderation decisions they cry that it's "too hard". The honest truth is it's just "less profitable" and our political system is unwilling to admit that super high profitability only happens by harming the public.
Companies were able to do it in the past.
1 reply →
I like this series, thanks for independently taking the time to break this down.
I’m silent on other conflicts because we’re silent on this conflict. Nobody - zero - people were telling me to pick a side or understand the history or even try to berate me for merely being silent on the Myanmar one. Kind of weak to attempt that on a different one.
I find my country’s involvement to be arbitrary and would like it to not be involved in the ones people are used to it being involved in
The geopolitics aren't really that consequential for me or many of us, thats what the two gigantic oceans are for
Lets at least stick to placating the regimes that have natural resources, or semiconductors, until we have them too. Everyone else can figure it out.
> Lets at least stick to placating the regimes that have natural resources, or semiconductors, until we have them too. Everyone else can figure it out.
I’m amazed that one could read that entire series and come to this conclusion
I mean, if we are to stick to policing conflicts at all, stick to the ones with resources
2 replies →
I've only read this article, not the rest of the series, so take this as a grain of salt...
But the author's conclusion about decentralized networks seems extremely understated and optimistic. She correctly points out that they are vulnerable to the same coordinated actors as Facebook & co, that hostile actors are likely to have many more resources than the people running these decentralized networks, and yet she concludes with:
> The inescapable downside of not relying on centralized networks to fix things is that there’s no single entity to try to pressure. The upside is that we can all work toward the same goals—better, safer, freer networks—from wherever we are. And we can work toward holding both centralized and new-school networks accountable, too.
So basically, "it's up to all of us to hold 'them' accountable". And she acts like this is anything but wishful thinking.
If you have a single soldier defending a position against a full battalion of tanks and an artillery barrage, you can hold your soldier "accountable" as much as you like, the enemy is still going to take the position.
As the rest of the article points out, the problem is "scale". Propaganda network can output more content faster than individual users, and moderators can't up. This is especially true when the content already plays off the audience's existing biases: unfortunately, most of the Myanmar population did not bat an eye at the horrifying atrocities perpetrated on the Rohingya. So your Fediverse instances in Myanmar are going to be full of Myanmar citizens with conservative/regressive opinions who will actively promote the government propaganda and ban any users linking to pro-democracy content as foreign agents.
(And it's not like the "resistance" will be of much help. Many of the politicians in the NUG didn't protest at all when the Rohingya genocide took place.)
And that's another problem the article doesn't address at all: "truth", "propaganda", "hate campaigns" and "resistance" are subjective and interchangeable terms. The author ends with a mention of the renewed Israel-Gaza conflicts, but how the fuck is Facebook supposed to moderate that?
When you're asked to consider "We should kill all the jewish oppressors / We should put down the muslim terrorists in gaza / We should slaughter the russian orcs until our land is free", which ones count as defensive patriotism and which ones count as hate speech?
The author acts like good and evil are legible concepts that Facebook and social networks ought to enforce. I don't pretend I have a solution for these problems (and we do need to make progress, urgently), but if we ever find one it won't be with the mindset she displays.
Meta (Facebook) actually changed their policy to allow calls for slaughtering the Russians invading Ukraine. It's impossible to set consistent rules on this stuff while satisfying users, advertisers, and politicians.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst...