Facebook Developing AI To Flag Offensive Live Videos (reuters.com)

Facebook is working on automatically flagging offensive material in live video streams, building on a growing effort to use artificial intelligence to monitor content, said Joaquin Candela, the company's director of applied machine learning. Reuters added: The social media company has been embroiled in a number of content moderation controversies this year, from facing international outcry after removing an iconic Vietnam War photo due to nudity, to allowing the spread of fake news on its site. Facebook has historically relied mostly on users to report offensive posts, which are then checked by Facebook employees against company "community standards." Decisions on especially thorny content issues that might require policy changes are made by top executives at the company. Candela told reporters that Facebook increasingly was using artificial intelligence to find offensive material. It is "an algorithm that detects nudity, violence, or any of the things that are not according to our policies," he said.

Comments

Just what we need.

[Joce640k]

Is this because people are being forced to sit and watch Facebook videos?

They're incapable of averting their own eyes?

Re:Just what we need.

[LifesABeach]

Max Headroom?

Re: Just what we need.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they are. Facebook is for gullible and stupid people. It needs a big brother AI to filter all the news and other items.

What they also need to do is disguise the race, gender, religious preference and political leanings of their lusers. That way it will become safe and cuddly for its true purpose - advertising shit.

That's why the fake news came about. The authors in Macedonia were raking in the bucks because stupid people on Facebook believed their fairy tales , clicked like and bingo! The money flowed in!

So, I'm trying to figure out on how to get in on the action. On a side note, Melina Trump and Hilary Clinton are having an affair. Malania is quoted as saying, "She's more of a man than Donald Ever was!"

Re:Just what we need.

[Xenographic]

Maybe they'll do like Google and try to suppress videos like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7zEibNcejA

Several accounts were punished for posting this before it hit the news, then Google relented.

Re: Just what we need.

[Jeremi]

Once you've seen the goatse, it's too late to avert your eyes. What is seen can never be unseen.

Re: Just what we need.

[tlambert]

Why doesn't facebook hire a couple of hundred people to do this job?

Because they are LIVE video streams.

Re:Just what we need.

[mjwx]

Is this because people are being forced to sit and watch Facebook videos?

They're incapable of averting their own eyes?

So you've never been fooled into seeing a Goatse claiming it was Natalie Portman naked with hot gritz?

Same thing happens with video.

Besides, who is forcing you to go to Facebook. Instead of whinging about it, why don't you just ignore what Facebook is doing.

Yep.

[thrasher thetic]

Facebook deciding what's offensive, thats exactly what I want.

Re:Yep.

[LifesABeach]

All this censorship from a person that took over 300 billion dollars out of the American economy, and holds it somewhere else? Ya, it makes all the sense in the world to me what going on here.

Re:Yep.

[ClickOnThis]

Facebook deciding what's offensive, thats exactly what I want.

Facebook is deciding what's offensive when it comes to material that appears on their site.

That seems reasonable to me.

Re:Yep.

[lgw]

Facebook is deciding what's offensive when it comes to material that appears on their site.

That seems reasonable to me.

Legal? Sure. Desirable? No.

Welcome to the daily /. "reasons not to use Facebook" story.

No one seems interested in running a site that moderates rude conversation, yet allows spirited political and religious debate. Someplace where you can say "I don't think American needs any more [insert group here]" as long as you don't pile personal abuse on other commenters. All our choices are "speech I disagree with is threats and hate speech" or "anything goes, until the FBI seizes the servers". Somewhere in between would be nice.

Slashdot moderation works great for this, BTW, because you can just ignore it. But less politics on Slashdot would be better. A political debate version of Slashdot could be neat.though.

Re:Yep.

[MightyMartian]

The problem is that no matter how much a political site tries to stay on course and keep posters behaving with a certain modicum of decency, when you're dealing with people who have deep emotional attachments to their ideology you will inevitably get flame wars. Throw in mischievous trolls looking to stir up the shit, I doubt many political sites would survive.

Besides, even Slashdot moderation gets criticized by the some posters due to what they claim is groupthink.

Re:Yep.

[ClickOnThis]

A baker deciding to not bake a wedding cake for a gay couple from their ovens.That seems reasonable to me.

Oh god, not this again.

At one time, it was legal for a baker to refuse to bake a cake for a black couple, because free speech. The Civil Rights Act put an end to that, because equal protection.

When two rights come into conflict, you have to decide which one wins. The rights of gays to equal protection are not uniformly in place, but they're catching up to those of non-gays.

Re:Yep.

[lgw]

The only way lgw can ever get what he wants is on a forum moderated by a single benevolent god administrator, and that works until the admin gets tired of everyone else's bullshit and turns on the brimstone spigot.

Actually, I've seen it work with a small cadre of mods picked by the site owner. Slashdot takes a different approach entirely, of not removing any (well, hardly any) posts, but letting you filter out the more trolly/offensive stuff if you want to. But perhaps that only works because Slashdot isn't a political site, and so you get mods from both sides of most issues here.

Re:Yep.

[Obfuscant]

but letting you filter out the more trolly/offensive stuff if you want to.

There is no system here to filter out what you think is "more trolly/offensive". You can only filter out what other people who have been given mod points have marked as "troll" or "offtopic" or a couple of other negatives. I don't recall "offensive" being one of them. In any case, you can filter out what other people don't want you to see, or select things that they do want you to see, which is different than filtering truly trolly or offensive material. Downmods are made for all kinds of reasons, as are upmods, not limited to the specified criteria.

But perhaps that only works because Slashdot isn't a political site,

It isn't supposed to be one.

and so you get mods from both sides of most issues here.

Once a post has been modded down so it is not seen except by those who go looking for such things it is unlikely to come back into view. This gives a big advantage, and a resulting bias in what you see, to the negative mod points in hiding comments.

Re:Yep.

[Anonymous Coward]

You do believe businesses should be able to ban people based on their speech.

Let bakers ban potential customers for stating that they are gay. Ban them for stating that they want a cake for a gay wedding. Simple.

Not banned for being gay. You can be gay all you want. You just cant say it.

Exactly the world you want to live in right?

Re:Yep.

[lgw]

Anything Slashdot mods find offensive, or even just disagree with at an emotional level, gets modded troll or flamebait. However, the ability to mod up usually keeps posts visisble on both sides of any political question, unless the post leans too far into personal attacks. It's not perfect, but it works OK as long as mods browse at -1.

Once a post has been modded down so it is not seen except by those who go looking for such things it is unlikely to come back into view.

Happens to my posts on political stories fairly often, actually. I'll see stuff drop quickly, then gradually come back up, often accumulating a dozen or so mod points as it becomes a point of mod contention. And offensive/abusive posts tend not to get any mods kicking them back up, so they tend to stay hidden. I just browse at -1 anyhow, since I got used to /. before karma, but like I said - the system tends to work OK.

Re:Yep.

[ClickOnThis]

Rights of Gays > Free Speech
Rights of Gays > Freedom of Religion

That is your post

Would you be comfortable with the following?

Rights of blacks < Free Speech?
Rights of blacks < Freedom of Religion?

You shit on people because they are Christians

I do no such thing. I consider Christianity to be a noble faith. I was raised in it.

What I do not tolerate is discrimination of others on the basis of sexual orientation. If you think that conflicts with your religions views, then fine, you can still hold those views, but you can't use them to justify discrimination. That argument has been settled for other factors such as race, creed, national origin, disability, and so on. The law is still evolving on this issue as it pertains to gays, but IMHO it is headed in the right direction.

This might make the site usable again

[MiniMike]

One question- can the AI be trained to be offended by cats?

Re:This might make the site usable again

[sims 2]

I bet it goes rogue and ends up offended by Facebook.

Re:This might make the site usable again

[LifesABeach]

One could make the AI allergic to cats. Most intelligence's that are allergic to cats are offended by them.

Re:This might make the site usable again

[gnick]

can the AI be trained to be offended by cats?

Only if they're naked or violent.

Yeah!

[no-body]

Big Brother knows what's good for you and always love you!

holy shit....

[TheCarp]

They have an AI so advanced it is capable of being offended? That is amazing.

Now if only they could develop one mature enough to be offended and yet remain objective enough to realize that it own opinion wasn't anything anyone asked for or cared about.

Re:holy shit....

[Archangel Michael]

Feelings are more important than facts. Facts are offensive to people, and offended people have feelings, therefore we MUST not ever be offended by anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:holy shit....

[ebvwfbw]

Offense is never given, it's always taken.

Thank you Facebook for protecting me . . .

[spamking]

Good grief. Can't people think for themselves? We don't need Facebook or any other social media platform censoring stuff for us.

Re:What Kind?

[LifesABeach]

So you're not offended by watching someone's ass while they prey?

Re:This is gonna be Yuuuuuuuge!

[LifesABeach]

Self censorshipt! I love it.

Just a thought, Zuck'

[LifesABeach]

Why not create a Personal Artificial Intelligence, "PAI", that for your FB User can use as a filter? Or are your H1B zombies to stupid for this task? Next time, hire American.

"offensive" is so innately subjective....

[mark-t]

... that the only way to keep everyone from being offended is to not have any content at all.

What one person thinks is offensive another will think is fine, and what the latter thinks is offensive the former may think is fine. There is no lowest common denominator here, any no one-size-fits-all solution can ever hope to work.

Re:"offensive" is so innately subjective....

[MightyMartian]

I think get ridding of the Nazis and trolls will do the job.

and when it flags the trump EMS message?

[Joe_Dragon]

and when it flags the trump EMS message?

A few hundred, or a few million?

[raymorris]

Every day people post on Facebook:
250 million photos
400 million status updates
around 40 million videos (guesttimate)

Suppose in an hour of work, in addition to bathroom breaks, meetings, etc, an employee can review:
50 photos
80 status updates
8 videos

Facebook would need about 750,000 employees reviewing those things. Then of course another team doing reviewing comments. (Obviously it also depends on how much holiday and sick time they get, and how much time they spend on various HR-mandated training.)

Re:A few hundred, or a few million?

[cayenne8]

More to the question....

Aside from things like child porn, and mutilated bodies...is there any speech or pictures that are so egregious that they will warp the minds and irreparably damage all the cupcakes and snowflakes out there?

Sheesh people..grow some skin.

Offensive speech and expression, and things controversial are exactly what needs to be allowed and protected...even by companies like this...if people actually depends on these sites for news and info (I still can't imagine this, but apparently so)...then you need to allow a full fun spigot flow of stuff to go through, just so people don't get complacent and thing the world is a warm and fuzzy place.

I think if more controversial stuff was disseminated you'd not see people freaking out so badly when something offensive-nature some how accidentally gets published or expressed.

Seeing a naked hoo-hoo, or hearing a deragatory term (honky, chink, nig-g-er, spic, etc) (NOTE: When did slashdot put in a lameness filter on words here like these??? Did I just seriously have to put symbols into a word, that's new!! The other ones are ok, but this one isn't?) , or an image of some religious figure....is NOT the end of the world and it won't destroy the world.

On the contrary, let it be said and expressed, and soon, it won't be perceived as such a big deal.

Its kinda like how kids in the US are kept so far away from a simple thing like alcohol thoughout child hood....its a "forbidden fruit"..and when they leave the house, they binge on it, etc.

Same thing with offensive expression....if you make it the forbidden fruit, well....people go apeshit over things that really shouldn't occupy ones attention for more than a passing glance.

Re:A few hundred, or a few million?

[UncleRage]

No mod points at the moment, so I'll offer a simple, "Well said."

Bad idea. Everything on facebook is offensive.

[Narcocide]

There is no more certain way to make an AI go mad and try to kill us all.

Every Fucking Day with this Shit

[clonehappy]

When the fuck did it become some kind of ingrained right to not have to experience anything "offensive"? Real life is offensive, this just tells me that the technocratic elite want to push these technologies on us in order to sterilize our existence (both literally and figuratively). There are only two kinds of speech, free speech and censored speech. Why ANYONE would choose the latter is beyond me.

Ever walk down the street in the city and a bum comes up to you begging? He can smell and look offensive. Should that be censored? Ever been on a farm and smell the pigs or the cow manure? That's offensive. Ever see guts at the scene of a car wreck? That's offensive. At least to me, but maybe not to you. See how it works? Not only is the entire thing so subjective as to be useless for anything other than propaganda-pushing, removing ALL offending content just flat-out means removing all content. Besides, this isn't just about using words that the special snowflakes don't like, it's about living in the real world. Using the useful idiot tools to squelch words and thoughts they don't like about other people is just the beginning.

All of this censorship ends up in one place; a sanitized, fabricated virtual reality existence where every message you see is approved, every thought you express is sanctioned, and every opinion you have is the correct one. And guess who's going to be controlling it? If you think Zuckerberg is bad, think again. He and his beast system are just a means to an end for the really evil elitists at the top. Just because they've created a "real world" that's so seemingly hopeless if you get sucked in by the news media and false reality doesn't mean you should by any means take solace in the safety of censorship.

Get off your ass, unplug, get out there into the real world and get offended! Trust me, it gets easier after the first few times. And you'll probably realized that being offended isn't anywhere near the worst thing that can possibly happen to you and get some perspective back into your life of what is and isn't really important in the big picture. Of course, tread lightly, as those at the top have tried their damnedest to make sure they get to stay in control of your mind and they don't tend to act rationally when faced with people calling their bluff.

Re:Every Fucking Day with this Shit

[ljw1004]

Real life is offensive... Ever walk down the street in the city and a bum comes up to you begging? ... Ever been on a farm and smell the pigs or the cow manure?

You sound like someone who's easily offended. My three year old daughter is less squeamish.

Re:Every Fucking Day with this Shit

[Tom]

Ever walk down the street in the city and a bum comes up to you begging? He can smell and look offensive. Should that be censored?

Yes. My purpose of being there is not to be a begging target, I didn't invite him to approach me, he is, in Internet terms, spamming me.

Ever been on a farm and smell the pigs or the cow manure? That's offensive.

But it is a necessary part of the operation of the farm. It is a direct consequence without which the farm could not function. In Internet terms, it's the annoying login dialog.

Ever see guts at the scene of a car wreck? That's offensive.

That is an unintended side-effect, not desired by anyone and not intentionally inflicted upon me by anyone. In Internet terms, it's lag or slow loading times.

You are comparing completely different things, not understanding that for some of them, there is no reason we should have to endure them (for the record: The proper solution is that the bum doesn't exist, our society is rich enough that every homeless person is a shame to us all)

Get off your ass, unplug, get out there into the real world and get offended! Trust me, it gets easier after the first few times. And you'll probably realized that being offended isn't anywhere near the worst thing that can possibly happen to you

I'm with you on that there's no right to not be offended.
However, I can absolutely want to protect myself from what I don't like. I keep my house clean because I don't like trash and smells. I keep my door closed because I want to decide who I invite in and who not. I don't hang disgusting pictures on my walls, etc.
I can filter my view of the world. You have a right to Free Speech, but not a right to force me to listen. Individual filters are a necessity or we would all drown in spam. What we need to prevent is centrally controlled filters.

Re:Every Fucking Day with this Shit

[clonehappy]

What we need to prevent is centrally controlled filters.

Which is exactly what Facebook and others propose.

Re:?WHY THE FUCK..

[Narcocide]

Obviously because they don't want people to know.

WTF is "Fake News"

[friesofdoom]

Can someone explain to me what the fuck "fake news" is? Is the Onion "fake news" ? Is BBC "fake news" most of the shit i see on there these days is opinionated nonsense that i wouldn't consider authentic news... WTF is the problem? Use your peanut, it will help you discern the real from the fake...

Re:WTF is "Fake News"

[clonehappy]

I can explain.

Here's what "fake news" is: any news not approved and sanctioned by the entrenched legacy newsmedia and their handlers.

This is happening because, rather than admit they dropped the ball on the entire 2016 election cycle (and admittedly probably have been dropping the ball on many fronts for the last decade or more), they are blaming social media/the internet and the ability of citizen and independent journalism to fill the void they left behind when they stopped showing any shred of integrity or equitability in their "news" coverage and became wholly bought and paid for mouthpieces of the establishment and elites.

Basically, when the petulant children were not satisfied just tilting the scales for the oligarchs, they decided to start completely fabricating news stories for most of the last year or more and now that it's painfully obvious they're doing what they do best: projecting their own failures onto those who were actually doing the work of real journalists by proclaiming them to be "fake" to try and regain control of the narrative. Essentially, doubling down on the bullshit and intelligent people are still seeing right through it.

Re:WTF is "Fake News"

[Anonymous Coward]

... work of real journalists by proclaiming them to be "fake" ...

You've got 2 definitions of 'fake' there. Your first definition is wrong: Fake news is not censorship, it's demanding people treat fiction as fact; better known as propaganda. Your second definition has recently been termed 'post-truth', where the truth is ignored (creationists, climate deniers, anti-vaxxers) or vilified (most SJW dialogues).

Your claim that the ruling elite are responsible for fake news may also be propaganda; there are plenty of little people who believe the ruling-class propaganda, such as capitalism (privatization) is better, small government is better, rich people will save you, corporations (should) have rights, national security overrides all laws. They will spout a suitable narrative to protect their own delusions, the ruling-class is not required.

Re:WTF is "Fake News"

[AHuxley]

Keeping the USA in Vietnam. Countering the Watergate reporting, countering The Pentagon Papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... The US in Iraq the first time around, getting the US in the Iraq the second time. Getting the US into Libya, pushing to get into Syria.
The US press who supported the one political party over another.
Once the wider public started reading what wikileaks and other whistleblowers had published the mainstream media had to push back. The US media missed a lot of what was in wikileaks due to a lack of reporters, a lack of skill, a lack of funds, their own party politics or the need to keep advertising funds.
So the trend of "fake news" was started to get people back to the US mainstream media and their pro war, pro big gov talking points.
Part of the push back it now to control links, discussion, comments, messages, terms, video clips that might totally bypass the traditional role of the US mainstream media.
To stop any further wider discussion you have teams of SJW ready to block links, the wider internet, words, comments, ban users, videos, sites, politicians, whistleblowers, public investigations and suggest only the mainstream media can be linked or supported.
The term the SJW teams like is "fake news" when they alter, remove, delete, ban or delist. i.e. censorship.
Part of that is removing links to or trending political video clips. Or political video clips that get shared with new user content at the beginning and end.
e.g. any political video will never make it to the site and the user will be banned after a SJW has noted a type of political content.
What was an open portal for political comment will be a global safe space.

Videos?

[rikkards]

I would prefer not seeing the same sales groups or suggested pages I keep unchecking first.

no, fake news is real, and a real problem

[Ionized]

Depending on where you draw the line, fake news is shit like 'Obama appoints sharia council' - online equivalents to the National Enquirer, where they literally just make things up to create juicy clickbait headlines that then spread like wildfire through all the idiots on FB. Or, it is stuff like Breitbart that may start with something kinda factual but present it in unbelievably biased or dishonest ways. There is a lot of grey area, but some sites are definitely well into the muck of what any reasonable person interested in objective reality would call 'fake news.'

I've developed my own app

[Rick Schumann]

A browser extension, really. When you try to access Facebook, it redirects you to a website reminding you of what a stupid, pointless waste of time Facebook is, and educates you in ways you can break the addiction to it. Then it locks you out of the Internet for an hour, so you can go find something productive to do instead.

Re:Janet Jackson

[k6mfw]

ah yes, I remember that particularly is I never noticed the wardrobe malfunction. I'm not into football but was with friends as they had a football party (was it a superbowl? I'm too lazy to look up the details). I remember about people discussing the lopsided team match, where one team seemed to have considerable skill over the other like the losing team was college kids going up against pro players. Then few days later comes this controversy, it took the FCC quite some time on how to deal with the matter. Janet Jackson took the fall but I always wondered why Justin Timberlake (who was the one that grabbed her costume) walked away untouched.

Re:How come

[AHuxley]

All the best and fun people are moving to US sites that embrace freedom of speech and freedom after speech.
The global brands that embrace SJW, censorship, theocracies, nation blasphemy laws will just become publishers of gov news and celebrity staff taking points.
Very boring. Very happy to ban or report users is not brand growth.
If users get banned for commenting on the news, a video clip that a SJW did not approve of users will seek better US sites. The interesting users will just move to much better sites that allow public discourse and political freedom.
People all over the USA are setting up new sites that allow freedom and discussion.
US sites that offer the world freedom grow and attract a wider global following as anyone can get censorship back in their own nations for free.
The part that set US global branding apart was US protected freedom. Take that away and much smarter, more fun US brands will grow.

I'm surprised no one has stated the obvious

[tlambert]

I'm surprised no one has stated the obvious:

This is why they've banned Prisma. If you use a Prisma filter and shoot an offensive video to upload to Facebook, the AI will likely be unable to flag the content as offensive. Humans, of course, will continue to find it offensive.

I for one, welcome...

[Tom]

Letting computers decide what is offensive and what is not. What could possibly go wrong?

AI deciding what is "offensive"

[ebvwfbw]

Hey, what could go wrong? 1984 is coming to take us all away.