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Facebook's press releases are always a pleasure to read. The company regards itself as a facilitator for a world-wide community guided by love and understanding. If Zuckerberg was any cuter, it would be an idyllic place. Alas, all that is just a smokescreen to hide the hateful and violent truth. That's why Facebook is now legally forced to remove particularly despicable content. Still, questionable posts stay online - and an undercover journalist from the British Channel 4 recently discovered why.
If Mark Zuckerberg's life was a cartoon, he'd be rolling in money but also be struck by falling anvils daily. His shareholders are salty because he's made ridiculous amounts of money but still fell short of their overblown expectations. This withdrawal of love already cost Facebook a quarter of their share value, i.e. 119.4 billion dollars. Now, politicians are forcing him to remove hateful speech or face severe fines. And as if that wasn't enough, he was recently duped by a reporter and had to give an interview without a lawyer or prepared statements - it was a disaster. To cap it off, an investigative journalist has now uncovered what was supposed to never become public - I see another anvil coming.
So what happened? A resourceful reporter from British TV station Channel 4 had faked his interest in becoming a Facebook moderator. These are the people that decide what stays and what goes on Facebook. What he learned during his training was cruel and inhumane. Apparently, depictions of violence and hate aren't generally deleted but rather subject to fairly dubious internal rules. Let's start with the obvious: Child and youth protection. Rule #1: Users below the age of 13 are not allowed on Facebook as stated in the general terms and conditions. Still, moderators are supposed to only delete posts from minors if said minors expressly state they're under the minimum required age. Even depictions of self-destructive behavior shall be handled as if posted by adults. This means, moderators will look the other way - after all, why scare away potential customers? When it comes to user profiles, something is better than nothing, right?
Enough fans and followers? You can stay!
Rule #2: Ban extremists - at least in theory. Extremists are experts at polarization and, you guessed it, generate a lot of attention, discussions, shares and clicks. That's why, on Facebook, the number of followers outweighs extremist views any day no matter how many complaints are piling up. They're treated like big media outlets or government organizations. To sum it up, popular and famous extremists can stay since they serve Facebook's overarching interests. This also applies to hateful speech against ethnic or religious groups. The latter are protected as per Facebook's guidelines but, again, there are unexpected shades of legality. For example, defaming Muslims in general is considered taboo, insulting Muslim immigrants is not as they're just a fraction of a religious group. The obvious question, why it is okay to stir up hatred against a group of people at all, remains unanswered.
Response times are also quite interesting. Facebook originally promised to check all flagged comments within 24 hours. And timing definitely matters when users are threatening to commit suicide, engage in other self-destructive behavior or attack others and their reputation. Online, it takes just a few hours to ruin someone's reputation for good when defamatory posts are read and shared by millions irrespective of their veracity. Behind closed doors, Facebook openly admits to their total inability to even remotely meet this deadline, breaking a commitment made to concerned politicians and consumer interest groups. It certainly takes time to see, understand and evaluate a post and moderators are tasked with processing a whopping 7,000 comments every day. What time is there for details under these conditions?
Not every depiction of violence gets removed
Violence is a no-no on Facebook as every Facebook employee will attest to. Reality paints a different picture - and there's a method to it. During one training session, a video depicting child abuse was shown. Moderators have the option to delete, ignore or mark such content as offensive, which is considered a warning shot. Still, these videos often stay online as long as the accompanying texts do not glorify violence or signal disrespect. That's why a video showing a violent altercation between two teenagers (which are easily identifiable) wasn't deleted at the request of said teenagers because the associated comments condemned violence. Even a video depicting maltreatment of a small child has been available since 2012, and was even used during training, though it was marked "offensive". Users now have to perform an additional click to start watching while Facebook feels justice is served. Roger McNamee, one of the original big Facebook investors, calls a spade a spade: In his view, it's the extreme, dangerous and polarizing statements that attract and lock visitors into Facebook. Without them, people would spend less time, and watch less ads, on the portal.
To Facebook, it's all about reach, interaction and clicks. The goal is clearly not to protect users, since fake news or extremist content is tolerated as long as the viewing rates suit Facebook's business interests - and that is all they care about, everything else is secondary no matter who is harmed in the process. Facebook will likely defend themselves saying moderators are trained by subcontractors. But who would honestly believe these subcontractors aren't subject to Facebook's guidelines in one way or another? Even if the above cases were all isolated incidents, why hasn't Facebook altered their training methods yet? They seem to still follow the same procedures the reporter encountered during his training. It'd be great if, for once, Facebook put their money where their mouth is instead of putting out neat press releases.
What's your take on this? Is it even morally justifiable to keep using Facebook after these revelations?
I think people will wake up to services that should be called Stalkbook, Goostalk/Alphastalk, Twitstalk, all with 3rd-party stalkers.
All social media and many search engines are no more than digital stalkers. While stalking seems to be illegal, digital stalking isn't due to implied consent to be tracked, traced, followed and SOLD. Human trafficking is illegal, but the sale of people's personal lives is not.
When my 19 year old son was only 11 he was using Facebook just like his similarly aged friends were. Stated ages ranged from anything between 13 and 21 or so from memory. I wasn't happy f with Facebook's privacy policies then, so did not have a Facebook Account myself, and as it seemed to be impossible to contact them by any means except via a Facebook account, their own platform which seemed very unreasonable, I found it difficult to let them know that my son was under-age. From what I remember, I set up a fake account myself just to let them know that my son was a Facebook user who had not reached 13 yet and it seemed they were not interested and he continued to use Facebook behind my back despite not being allowed to. It is also hard for parents to know where to draw a line or achieve retention of that line for their children because access is so easily available for them one way or another unless you move to some remote place and are very controlling. I was in fact very controlling but still failed miserably. All scenarios seem to fall short of the ideal. That is especially a good reason why we need organisations like Facebook to behave responsibly.
Does it matter as long as our so-called leaders get top ranking all the time with their hateful chatter? I've grown so sick of it I look for alternative media sources and rarely bother with Facebook. There is nothing social remaining on Facebook where friends could chat and stay in touch.
What is happening on FB reminds me of the final year or two on MySpace. Blogs, photos, videos and forums were deleted at random without a reason. I noticed last week there were 65 advertisements and more than 35 trackers on Facebook and YouTube. (on one page) What a relief it was after I deleted the FB app from my cell. Now my garden is far more important and gets a lot of attention as do my real friends.
This problem goes back around 2000 years. That's how long ago the Roman poet Juvenal wrote "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" - "who will guard the guards themselves?"
As Nick Ray has observed in his post, we now need the Facebook moderators to be moderated.
I watched the Channel 4 programme here in the UK. I'd like to say that I was horrified by the revelations about Facebook's so-called 'moderation' process. However, I'm sad to say that my cynicism has developed to such a degree that I wasn't even surprised. It's becoming increasingly apparent that the internet giants have all cast aside any sense of morality in their pursuit of the big bucks.
Although I have a Facebook page I've never really made any extensive use of it. And of course the revelations in the TV documentary have ensured that I never will.
Now I just have to persuade my wife to adopt the same policy.
What baffles me is why anybody uses Facebook at all. Quite apart from its blatant misuse of subscribers' data, and the platform it provides for extremist nutters of all political persuasions, encouraging the posting of personal details online is an open invitation to identity theft. Onion News Network once did an excellent skit on Facebook as the go-to source of information for the FBI/CIA/NSA when snooping on the public without having to get court orders - worth a watch!
As for Mr Lester's question "When someone posts some fake to totally untrue news, why aren’t these people banned from Facebook?" - that's easy: if they were, Facebook's membership would drop by 95% and they would go out of business. "... a world-wide community guided by love and understanding ..." - pardon me while I barf. It's ALL about money with Zuckerberg. In our house, the Z is generally replaced with an F.
This is why social media is despicable and untrustworthy, 99.9% of them are only in the business for the MONEY and NOTHING else! They don't care one iota about the privacy or safety of their users, or the truth or "facts" of what is on their systems, only the MONEY that they make off them. This is why I don't use them, or would put any useful information on one if I did use one. Suckerberg is a liar and an evil manipulator of the users of his so-called "service". Social Media is the Bain of our society today and has caused a rift in as many families as it has allowed to keep contact with one another.
I have never used social media, having no use for it, and seeing it progress from people wasting so much time (sending photos of what they are eating!) and seeing youngsters in particular being divorced from direct human interaction.
Then came bullying, catastrophic bullying; then fake news with news feed being tailored to what the user responds to - in other words, news not only fake but totally out of balance. Then we see almost certain intrusion influencing American elections (and who knows where else). Now we have these revelations, some aspects of which many would have suspected, but now confirmed beyond our worst fears.
Ultimately this must result in Facebook and its ilk being internationally banned (and, I hope, the focus of very extensive legal action resulting in Zuckerberg losing everything - at least). But how long this might take is another issue.
[By the way, Zuckerberg cute?? I trust you mean in has actions as I don't think there is another human being physically more plain.]
Better still - don't use Facebook! Don't read, don't support!
I have never been on Facebook and never planned on it but I find it appalling that they're allowed to do what they do all for the glory of money no Facebook no problem
Thanks Sven
Given a choice I would not be on FB but my uni sends on a lot of information on their page, so to keep up I have it, outside of that I don't use it. I prefer to talk to people face to face not from behind a screen
It may be hard to believe but there was a time before Facebook and other social media platforms for that matter and by many accounts life did exist back then.
I placed my FB account in sleep mode a couple of years ago and have not missed it one bit. [ I didn't fully delete the account to preserve images if I ever wanted to retrieve them].
I did get sucked in by one of those third party competitions and had some personal data compromised although with no monetary loss. That was the final straw for me.
But the greater part of my decision to exit FB was because in many ways it is now an unforgiving medium riddled with expletives and soul destroying text toward those who express a personal, respective worldview.
Back in those days where people communicated more directly there was greater acceptance of alternate views and to debate was not to berate.
The down side of leaving FB is that many of the members of my wider family still use it to share family news and at that level I feel quite disconnected now, often hearing about things months after the crisis or event has passed.
I suppose at face value FB was a good idea but somewhere along the way it has been high-jacked by many intolerant people who preach 'tolerance'.
My personal opinion is that the platform has grown so large that it is no longer possible to police all the content posted and as your article says people are getting hurt - yet the original idea as far as I know was to allow social fabric to strengthen - so it would seemed then that the exercise has failed big time.
There are SOOO many untrue and hurtful posts on Facebook. I rarely go to FB but only keep the account to see pics and posts of close friends and family. I have even personally admonished former students of mine for things they have posted.
I wish more people knew about Snopes.com and actually checked the ridiculous posts that seem to circulate year after year. I use it and cut and paste the true info to the original posts.
A well written exposé. Thank you Sven. I wondered why there is so much banned language allowed on Facebook. Obviously money, not rules, prevails.
Censorship sucks
Censorships is a tool of totalitarianism
Why do some people assume while they themselves are smart enough to be exposed to "offensive" content or avoid it, everybody else is stupid mindless drones who can are easily lead?
Censorship is like chemotherapy, it should be reserved for serious cancers.
If it's not illegal it shouldn't be censored.
Life is a contact sport. You will be offended. You will be insulted. Get used to it. Previous human generations dealt with it just fine.
The way to combat "offensive" speech is more free speech, not an erase button.
As a political commentator eloquently said on a cable TV program, "Facebook cannot solve its problems. Facebook is the problem." Facebook has facilitated the spread of garbage in the name of "information" and apparently there are a lot of people who are all too willing to consume garbage. Mark Zuckerberg recently had to clarify his remarks that posts from Holocaust deniers shouldn't be taken down because he thought they weren't "intentionally getting it wrong."
That, in a nutshell, is Facebook. Online junk food for those who think "If it's on the Internet, it must be true".
Facebook to me is a has been.
They serve NO useful purpose at all but to hurt people to line their own pockets with money. They really have no concern who it hurts or how it hurts them.
They lie to the Government and many people fall for it, a disgrace they are as they have no regard for humanity, compassion or anything else. They are like demons from hell, lurking in the shadows to see who they can grab to make money on.
I left Facebook over a year ago As I figured out what they really were doing. They can not be at all Trusted!
If your on Facebook get off it now, but before you do, delete all your info. Your not at all safe on Facebook and it is time to wake up and see the real truth of it all, Get away from them, Evil stays and good people are banned, disgusting.
This is my opinion of Facebook, the so called demon from hell who pretends to be a good place to have fun, ya right!!
It is about money and power. Facebook has become too big for even the legal system. A team of lawyers, a few million here and there.....Petty cash as best.
Facebook may have started out as a facilitator of communication, but it is now obvious what it has become. It has and continues to be used for a variety of malicious purposes. For some reason I cannot understand it appears to be highly addictive to its users who do not appear to be able to function without regular "fixes" from the idiotic app.
I have never seen the need for it and frankly regard most of its users as idiots who have nothing of value to contribute.
Great article !
Facebook has long since had the money to fund
more moderators to take down all the hateful posts,
so the clear question still stands, “why don’t they remove these harmful posts?”
When someone posts some fake to totally untrue news,
why aren’t these people banned form Facebook?
Well as far as I know the moderators need moderating. I was shared an animal abuse video, which I will not detail but can vividly recall, I wrote a scathing comment about the people in the video and how FB are obviously only in it for the money, then "deleted" my account. So yes I could have chosen not to watch the video, but I am human and so curious by nature. I was disgusted that this had been allowed out in the wild as it were. So I don't rate FB's ability to control anything other than how underhand they are at information gathering. This is why the closest I get to social media now is this blog. Thanks Sven for allowing folk like me to get a word in.