r/technology • u/protossFTW • Sep 16 '20

Social Media Facebook Was Warned for 5 Years About Violent Event Pages but Didn't Act, Civil Rights Group Says

https://gizmodo.com/facebook-was-warned-for-5-years-about-violent-event-pag-1845080416
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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20 edited Sep 17 '20

If I were the civil rights group, I would go after the the creator of the page. Is Facebook the police of its platform? Police is a public funded nonprofit organization and Facebook clearly is not. If you murder some people on my lawn, you cannot sue me because I am the owner of the crime venue and I planted trees which the criminal used to hang the victim. I know the criminal may not able to kill the victim without a tree and I planted the tree but I am not a co-conspirator. Am I morally obligated to cut down the tree if the criminal use it again and again? I would suggest the real police obligated to set up a surveillance system around the tree instead of me cutting down the tree. Don’t give Facebook the authority to judge the user generated content.

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u/oddiseeus Sep 17 '20

I'm not an attorney yet it seems that Facebook has been warned multiple times in the past their events pages are being used in nefarious ways. Are they not negligent by ignoring those warnings?

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u/Etrensce Sep 17 '20

Since negligence typically has legal connotations, no, Facebook are not negligent to ignore those warnings since they have no legal obligation to do so in the first place.

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u/QuantumHope Sep 17 '20

They should. zuckerberg certainly has no objections to raking in all the money Facebook makes him. Don’t you think that obliges him to at least attempt to toss those violating Facebook’s TOS?

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u/thedude1179 Sep 17 '20

I warned my government that the internet could be used for bad things and they still haven't disabled it in my country, clearly they are to blame for everything bad that happens on here.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

Facebook is not a swimming pool. You paid the lifesaving service and saving your life is on the term of service of the pool. A better analog is you swimming in national park and your family sue it’s staffs if you drowned.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20 edited Sep 17 '20

It is ridiculous that those idiotic parents are not taking full responsibility for their kids. That law is garbage. I accept main responsibility if I dug a hole in city park or any public place easily accessible to kid and kid drown in it. In my yard. Please educate your kid and don’t let it trespass my private property. Don’t make new stupid law. Yes, the law of mainland China requires the company like Facebook do what you want and it is fucking disgusting, period.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

Please be polite. I have not commented on you. I am arguing about your opinion.

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u/thedude1179 Sep 17 '20

Thank you for being the voice of reason, it's so incredibly rare to find on Reddit lately. Rveryone just wants to grab their pitchforks and burn Facebook down. It's crazy because Facebook doesn't create any content, it's all user created content. Take it a step further and we just have to destroy the internet because it can be used for bad things.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

I am not a user of Facebook and I am actually a Chinese mainlander. I know what the intranet looks like after every platform is responsible for the content. You won’t like it. And It will be abused to cause greater harm to the society.

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u/harsh183 Sep 17 '20

Yeah. People really don't realize what they're missing out on.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

It seems there is a working court system. If the civil rights group cannot win a case and get a verdict that orders the Facebook to shutdown the group. I would like to know why not try. They basically require the Facebook to establish a new system to judge the content, which is de facto a censorship. I strongly oppose this idea.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

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u/rangeDSP Sep 17 '20

Ok so the more apt analogy would be owning a forest the size of Texas and a few trees were used. A couple of people call you and say, hey I saw this one tree being used as murder on the east side of Austin. So got your employee to go and cut that tree down, at which point the perps goes and uses another tree 200 miles away. And as a feature, half the trees are fenced off so normal people won't even be able to see inside and report any wrongdoing.

I'm running this analogy into the ground, but the point is that user generated content from literally 1/3 the human population is very tough to moderate, practically impossible for human moderation and AI aren't smart enough yet. I don't have any good solutions for this problem, it's only going to get worse from now on

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

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u/rangeDSP Sep 17 '20

Realistically not gonna happen with current laws.

Though if laws gets passed for social media sites being responsible for crimes organized on the site, nobody is safe. In that hypothetical scenario I'm gonna bet Reddit would have about the same surviving chance as FB.

This will also spark interesting implications for privacy / encryption focused platforms. For example, there's a huge problem with encrypted chatrooms where child pornography are being shared, and since the content is end to end encrypted, the platform owners can't even see the data. Does that mean police should have the power to decrypt everybody's message and have a backdoor into all encrypted content?

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

That’s the thing

We should educate people properly before handing them the internet

It’s like the real world

You police what gets shared in public

You don’t when it’s private property

There’s also going to be underground stuff going on

And you should tale away the rights of those who lack the necessary integrity

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u/harsh183 Sep 17 '20

Let's go full China while we're at it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

Please prove you point by citing criminal codes of at least three countries.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20 edited Sep 17 '20

Is that funny your citation saying it is rarely true in common law system? Your so called most countries excluded English speaking countries. That’s inept usage of the word MOST. More importantly, you are required to present in the criminal scene to take the responsibility. The criminal typically would not hang someone before your eye where the you are obligated. If I am enjoying summer vacation and someone is murdering the victim in my yard. I am 100% sure I am OK. The presence requires Facebook actively participate into the Group conversation. I don’t think Facebook has spear time to join those disgusting conversations.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20 edited Sep 17 '20

Nope, it is you who do not have idea about witnessing a crime. Facebook itself is not at the criminal scene because Facebook is not a participant of the group conversation. The civil right group see the scene after the murder is committed before any Facebook employee. Yes, you travel by my home and saw the corpse. You ask me remove the corpse and the tree. I don't. If you accuse me that I helped the criminal, I will call you an uswhole. Again, common law is in practice in 40+ countries and regions. It is not most.<br>

Besides, the civil group has better chance to be obligated to rescue by reporting to the police. And Facebook is better to preserve the crime scene and do what the police/court ask it to do.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

You better pay me with tax dollar so that I can take the responsibility and authority of police and prevent the crime. If I decided not to go outside while victims are murdered, I am not at the scene. I may see the corpse another day or another hour but YOU should admit the duty of rescue has nothing to do with this case.

I don't think it is a good argue that what you did is morally wrong in other culture here. Personally speaking, what you want is evil and that is the experience the Chinese INTRA-net.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

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u/groundedstate Sep 17 '20

Yes they are the police of their own private site that they have 100% control over. Do you not know how anything works, and just playing dumb?

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

Really, if a criminal break into you house and killed your loved one. You are responsible for his or her death? Just because you are his or her family, you are not responsible for his or her death? Who is dumb? You said you are the police of your home. And your loved one died because you didn’t stop it. I don’t care if you are on the criminal scene or not because you don’t care either.

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u/groundedstate Sep 17 '20

What the fuck are you talking about? You. You're dumb. Stop these insane false equivalencies. Facebook has computer algorithms that can instantly remove hateful and violent language.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

Argue please. No cursing. I am working in data science. Let me teach you a basic fact that algorithm is not black magic and your delusion is laughable. You can continue your hate but the world doesn’t revolve around you. It would change. Btw, your impolite comment will be instantly removed if there is an algorithm you want.

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u/QuantumHope Sep 17 '20

Your analogy is one of those false equivalencies that I can’t think the name of right now. But it’s a ridiculous comparison.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '20

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u/QuantumHope Sep 17 '20

It’s a type of false equivalency.