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Facebook's Ex Security Boss: Asking Big Tech To Police Hate Speech is 'a Dangerous Path' (technologyreview.com)
Like many people, Alex Stamos, former Facebook chief security officer, thinks tech platforms like Facebook and Google have too much power. But he doesn't agree with the calls to break them up. And he argues that the very people who say Facebook and Google are too powerful are giving them more power by insisting they do more to control hate speech and propaganda. From a report: "That's a dangerous path," he warns. If democratic countries make tech firms impose limits on free speech, so will autocratic ones. Before long, the technology will enable "machine-speed, real-time moderation of everything we say online." In attempting to rein in Big Tech, we risk creating Big Brother. So what's the solution? I spoke to Stamos at his Stanford office to find out.
Technology Review: So is the disinformation/propaganda problem mostly solved?
Stamos: In a free society, you will never eliminate that problem. I think the most important thing [in the US] is the advertising transparency. With or without any foreign interference, the parties, the campaigns, the PACs [political action committees] here in the US are divvying up the electorate into tiny little buckets, and that is a bad thing. Transparency is a good start. The next step we need is federal legislation to put a limit on ad targeting. There are thousands of companies in the internet advertising ecosystem. Facebook, Google, and Twitter are the only ones that have done anything, because they have gotten the most press coverage and the most pressure from politicians. So without legislation we're just going to push all of the attackers into the long tail of advertising, to companies that don't have dedicated teams looking for Russian disinformation groups.
Technology Review: Facebook has been criticized over Russian political interference both in the US and in other countries, the genocide in Myanmar, and a lot of other things. Do you feel Facebook has fully grasped the extent of its influence and its responsibility?
Stamos: I think the company certainly understands its impact. The hard part is solving it. Ninety percent of Facebook users live outside the United States. Well over half live in either non-free countries or democracies without protection for speech. One of the problems is coming up with solutions in these countries that don't immediately go to a very dark place [i.e., censorship]. Another is figuring out what issues to put engineering resources behind. No matter how big a company is, there are only a certain number of problems you [can tackle]. One of the problems that companies have had is that they're in a firefighting mode where they jump from emergency to emergency. So as they staff up that gets better, but we also need a more informed external discussion about the things we want the companies to focus on -- what are the problems that absolutely have to be solved, and what aren't. You mentioned a bunch of a problems that are actually very different, but people blur them all together.
Technology Review: How do you regulate in a world in which tech is advancing so fast while regulation moves so slowly? How should a society set sensible limits on what tech companies do?
Stamos: But right now, society is not asking for limits on what they do. It's asking that tech companies do more. And I think that's a dangerous path. In all of the problems you mentioned -- Russian disinformation, Myanmar -- what you're telling these companies is, "We want you to have more power to control what other people say and do." That's very dangerous, especially with the rise of machine learning. Five or ten years from now, there could be machine-learning systems that understand human languages as well as humans. We could end up with machine-speed, real-time moderation of everything we say online. So the powers we grant the tech companies right now are the powers those machines are going to have in five years.
Technology Review: So is the disinformation/propaganda problem mostly solved?
Stamos: In a free society, you will never eliminate that problem. I think the most important thing [in the US] is the advertising transparency. With or without any foreign interference, the parties, the campaigns, the PACs [political action committees] here in the US are divvying up the electorate into tiny little buckets, and that is a bad thing. Transparency is a good start. The next step we need is federal legislation to put a limit on ad targeting. There are thousands of companies in the internet advertising ecosystem. Facebook, Google, and Twitter are the only ones that have done anything, because they have gotten the most press coverage and the most pressure from politicians. So without legislation we're just going to push all of the attackers into the long tail of advertising, to companies that don't have dedicated teams looking for Russian disinformation groups.
Technology Review: Facebook has been criticized over Russian political interference both in the US and in other countries, the genocide in Myanmar, and a lot of other things. Do you feel Facebook has fully grasped the extent of its influence and its responsibility?
Stamos: I think the company certainly understands its impact. The hard part is solving it. Ninety percent of Facebook users live outside the United States. Well over half live in either non-free countries or democracies without protection for speech. One of the problems is coming up with solutions in these countries that don't immediately go to a very dark place [i.e., censorship]. Another is figuring out what issues to put engineering resources behind. No matter how big a company is, there are only a certain number of problems you [can tackle]. One of the problems that companies have had is that they're in a firefighting mode where they jump from emergency to emergency. So as they staff up that gets better, but we also need a more informed external discussion about the things we want the companies to focus on -- what are the problems that absolutely have to be solved, and what aren't. You mentioned a bunch of a problems that are actually very different, but people blur them all together.
Technology Review: How do you regulate in a world in which tech is advancing so fast while regulation moves so slowly? How should a society set sensible limits on what tech companies do?
Stamos: But right now, society is not asking for limits on what they do. It's asking that tech companies do more. And I think that's a dangerous path. In all of the problems you mentioned -- Russian disinformation, Myanmar -- what you're telling these companies is, "We want you to have more power to control what other people say and do." That's very dangerous, especially with the rise of machine learning. Five or ten years from now, there could be machine-learning systems that understand human languages as well as humans. We could end up with machine-speed, real-time moderation of everything we say online. So the powers we grant the tech companies right now are the powers those machines are going to have in five years.
the technology will enable "machine-speed, real-time moderation of everything we say online."
XKCD #2015
Like the internet you have to accept the bad stuff with the good if you want freedom. Yes, personal attacks should be addressed but only if the attacked request it. I don't think we need social networks policing for us because this makes a group of people in charge of deciding what should and should not be published. The Alex Jones example is paramount in silencing people just because we do not like their message. Also many examples of others being given a pass while a Jones gets systematically erased. If your going to create a social podium for people, you have to allow to good and bad to come out. It should be expected and the users should decide whether it has any value, or simply ignore it as noise.
...someone wanting to have it both ways. 1) We just can't regulate what's posted on our platform because "censorship". 2) If you post about n*ggers, kikes, etc. (like too many comments here on /.) you'll be banned. C'mon, guys - you can't have it both ways. FTR, I come down on the side of any commercial company being able to have their own standards of acceptable speech. Don't like it? TFB. Either adhere to the rules going in or use a different platform for stuff you know will get you kicked off.
We shouldn't break them up no matter how big they get, but we shouldn't ask they do anything about misinformation that spreads through their vast information distribution monopolies.
Well, I can think of a way of fixing this: make them charge subscription fees.
Facebook has just over 2 billion users; it's important to realize users are not customers, they're the product being sold to advertisers. The net operating profit generated by selling those users is just under 16 billion. So conservatively, each subscribers is worth about $8/year in profit.
Suppose we say that social media companies have to charge users $1/month. Then each user is worth 50% more as a customer than he is as a product. Then, if you're not happy with the job Facebook does about keeping fake news down, even fake news delivered to your conspiracy nut uncle or SJW sister-in-law, you can vote with your pocketbook. This would require Facebook to figure out a way of managing information that was broadly acceptable to the majority of its users. No government monitoring of content would be required.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The problem is not that these sites should be policing hate speech. The problem is that they're a mass media platform where the people who use the platform are not the customers. As long as social media focuses on this business model, it will be a conduit for the worst people in society, because the only measure of success is clicks and eyeballs. Nobody is accountable for what is said. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from responsibility or consequences.
You can fix this a couple of ways: First, you could actually charge the users of the platform instead of the advertisers. Second, you could require a real identity to participate. You'd be surprised how people all of a sudden start behaving like human beings when they know other people will be able to recognize them doing so. Finally, you could absolutely ban bots. All bots. You want to participate in this social media platform? Then prove you're human. This isn't because bots are responsible for hate speech, but because they amplify it, to the gratification of the person (or group) who originally posted.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The dangerous path is the one where people form their opinions and ideals based almost entirely on Facebook or other social media.
I don't think anyone is asking for the government to step in and police hate speech.
Plenty of people are asking for this. In fact, this is exactly what TFA is talking about.
If YouTube or any other private entity wants to set their own standards, or ban people at the request of advertisers, that is their right. But when the government steps in and sets the standards, that is dangerous, and is the direction we are headed.
Freedom is tolerating people (and groups of people) you don't like. If you don't believe in freedom for your most hated, ultimately you don't believe in freedom for yourself.
Second, people who are trying to stop nazis will never be as bad as the nazis. It's an immutable truth.
No, the immutable truth is that the ends do not justify the means.
If you are a "political group" that promotes genocide,
Last I knew, having an unpopular opinion was not quite as bad as someone killing a person who has an unpopular opinion. Maybe you live in a different universe than those of us in the US do.
Do you not get it?
Sure, when they come for your enemies, you cheer. Or just sit still and let them crush your enemies,
And then they come for you. Because they come for everyone, sooner or later.
No, no, no, in the US at least we do not want the government to either decide what is hate speech and shut down those who they claim spew it, nor do we want the government to charge corporations with the responsibility and authority to do so. We're stuck with corporations deciding what they will or will not publish or permit, but if they exercise that control they are, perhaps, taking responsibility, and we can expect them to be responsible. Perhaps.
Ads are not the issue. Content, speech is the issue. Whatever the Daily Stormer is, or Infowars, or the others, they are being censored. If that's OK with you, do let us know which of your favorite sources would similarly be no great loss to you if it were silenced. Sooner or later, one will, if you will not defend the right.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If YouTube or any other private entity wants to set their own standards, or ban people at the request of advertisers, that is their right.
I agree that that is their right. It is also our right to criticize YouTube and every other private entity for their actions.
Remember, free speech goes all ways. It is not a unidirectional I-can-say-things-but-if-you-say-things-back-you-are-violating-my-rights thing.
First, Joe, Facebook banning The Daily Stormer has absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment. Not even in the most remote, tangential way. Nothing at all.
The SCOTUS has previously ruled that First Amendment protections apply to company property if access to that company property is needed to reach people. Company towns can't block access to people with a religious or political message to distribute.
Second, people who are trying to stop nazis will never be as bad as the nazis. It's an immutable truth.
The Communists killed 20x as many people as the Nazis. Objectively, Stalin was roughly 8 times as bad as the Nazis.
Also, there's something wrong with saying "We can do anything to $GROUP because nothing can be as bad as $GROUP". After all, that's exactly what Hitler said about the Jews.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
specifically who is asking the US Government to regulate speech on Facebook?
/. poster who is asking the government to regulate speech on Facebook.
Now, there are Senators who want to regulate Disclosure, but that's not speech. If the Russians want to run pro-Trump adverts let them. But they need to register as foreign agents.
So by all means, show me somebody more credible than a
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Now hold on. Who is proposing killing people with unpopular opinions?
You might not like it but "People advocating Genocide" are way worse, like, by a million orders of magnitude, than "People advocating privately owned public forums ban people who advocate genocide."
The statement made was not that "people advocating bans are never worse than nazis", it was "Second, people who are trying to stop nazis will never be as bad as the nazis. It's an immutable truth." "Never" and "immutable" are very strong words.
That is a statement that the ends justify the means. Pope's "Bear Jew" trying to kill someone who thinks Jews are bad is an example of exactly the opposite. Those means are not justified by the ends; to claim otherwise is to create a civilization of lynch mobs and murder, as we each justify our killing of our neighbor based on his personal beliefs.
If you can't provide a solid rebuttal counterargument to the position of "pedos, nazis, or communists" without resorting to censorship, then maybe your position isn't as valid as you think it is. Fix that first.
Promoting genocide is a little more than an "unpopular opinion".
Being a nazi doesn't mean you take actions to do illegal things. It means you have a political belief system that is unpopular in today's world, in most places. "Stopping nazis" doesn't limit itself to stopping illegal actions, it talks about that political belief system.
Society gets to defend itself from monsters.
Not by having "Bear Jew" go out and kill anyone he doesn't like.
Ask your parents.
I understand why you might want to use that ad hominem at this point, since you probably do ask your parents about all kinds of things. It is, after all, as simple for you as yelling up the stairs. Some of us, however, are grown ups and know how what limits society are supposed to have. And some of have lost our parents already, so see the patent insult in your attitude.
Progressives are after the 1st and the 2nd amendments. They are quite open about it, they do not hide it.
True, but we had to take the worse one (Stalin) on second.
The GP is right but doesn't take it far enough, it is possible to be anti-Nazi and be _worse_ than a Nazi.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Hate is newspeak for "right wing opinions," and when people call for censorship of 'hate' they basically want all right wing opinions to be censored. By labelling it 'hate' they can claim to be doing good, when in actual fact these pro-censorship individuals are the most dangerous and evil people in society.
Hate speech is anything that someone with pull doesn't want other people to think about.
It's not just right wing opinions, it's incorrect opinions of any kind or actual history.
Remember when Russia with Putin was going to be our besty ? When Hillary proclaimed the reset, and Obama told Medvedev he would have more room after the elections ?
Boom now it's back to Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia
YouTube enjoys protections under the communications decency act, on the basis they are a neutral conveyance for others.
Well they sure as hell aren't. Same goes Facebook. If they want to keep their privileged status they should actually have to be neutral, only censoring illegal content.
Justice Black explained it better than I do. The key reason the SCOTUS ruled that First Amendment protection extended to forcing a company to provide access (in Marsh v Alabama) was:
It is clear that, had the people of Chickasaw owned all the homes, and all the stores, and all the streets, and all the sidewalks, all those owners together could not have set up a municipal government with sufficient power to pass an ordinance completely barring the distribution of religious literature. Our question then narrows down to this: can those people who live in or come to Chickasaw be denied freedom of press and religion simply because a single company has legal title to all the town? For it is the State's contention that the mere fact that all the property interests in the town are held by a single company is enough to give that company power, enforceable by a state statute, to abridge these freedoms.
We do not agree that the corporation's property interests settle the question. ...
Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it. ... thus, the owners of privately held bridges, ferries, turnpikes and railroads may not operate them as freely as a farmer does his farm. Since these facilities are built and operated primarily to benefit the public, and since their operation is essentially a public function, it is subject to state regulation. And, though the issue is not directly analogous to the one before us, we do want to point out by way of illustration that such regulation may not result in an operation of these facilities, even by privately owned companies, which unconstitutionally interferes with and discriminates against interstate commerce.
Do you see the point the Justice is making in his opinion? If your business profits from public use of your property, you lose some control of that property. There's tons of precedent for this.
Because Facebook makes its money through providing a platform for members of the public to communicate with one another, it's a very close analogy. That's different from e.g. Amazon, which primarily provides access to buy from Amazon (a shopping mall is not bound by this ruling, see Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, because of this distinction)
Breitbart is fundamentally different because it's a publisher not a platform, that is, it's not a venue by which members of the public reach other members of the public, to a meaningful degree (it does have a comments section, but that's obviously not the primary use of the site).
If you build a bridge on your land, but allow the public to use it (perhaps for a toll), you can't ban people form the bridge for constitutionally-protected reasons, even though it's your bridge on your land.
The justice concluded:
When we balance the Constitutional rights of owners of property against those of the people to enjoy freedom of press and religion, as we must here, we remain mindful of the fact that the latter occupy a preferred position. As we have stated before, the right to exercise the liberties safeguarded by the First Amendment "lies at the foundation of free government by free men," and we must in all cases "weigh the circumstances and . . . appraise the . . . reasons . . . in support of the regulation . . . of the rights."
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I want names.
Stop the goalpost shifting. You said that NOBODY wanted speech regulated. I provided a survey with evidence that over A HUNDRED MILLION Americans think it should be. The specific names of those millions is irrelevant, and you know it.
Your own article says:
Keep reading. They think it will be hard to do, but a sizable minority think it should be done anyway. 40% think the government should have the power to silence people saying "Men are better at math than women".
Show me somebody who matters that wants to regulate hate speech through the government.
More goalpost shifting. First it was "nobody", then it was "nobody credible", then it was "nobody that can't be specifically named", now it is "nobody that matters".
Preferably someone on the left.
Why does that matter? Some progressives want to ban "hate speech". Even more conservatives want to ban disrespect to the flag. It is an infringement on free speech either way.
Anyway, since you asked, here are a few specific people that have advocated government regulation of online speech:
1. Larry Kudlow, advisor to Donald Trump
2. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce
3. Kevin Knight, former Facebook executive
4. Ro Khanna, California congressional representative
I now await your objection that these people "don't matter" or that I didn't list all 120 million.
The nature of this debate misses the point.
Firstly, there is always going to be some level of censorship on social networks. Otherwise there are just too many trolls who would think it utterly hilarious to find pages for children's party entertainers and flood with with niche-fetish pornography, plus there are a few types of material which anger people so greatly that there is no option but to ban it - the exact list depending upon country, and usually enforced by law. So the debate is not about if censorship should be permitted, but about the extent and about who gets to decide.
Nor is all censorship equivalent. There are many parties, many ways and many reasons. In the case of social networks, commercial concerns are a big factor - they exist to make money, and some sorts of material are just not profitable. If your posts offend a group of people, insult a religion, contain too much profanity, contain anything relating to sex or advocate criminal acts then advertisers are not going to want their adverts appearing next to it, which means the network is going to want to discourage the production of this material. They may not ban it, but they have other means - they can rank it lower in searches, or demonetise as youtube does.
On the political side, there is what could be seen as a tidy symmetry - left and right both call for censorship, but of different material, and both then accuse the other of supporting censorship. The left might get horrified at hate speech, but they can't beat the right when it comes to sensitivity to 'indecency' - a category that goes far beyond just pornography.
Personally, if I were drafting legislation, I'd focus on accountability. Allow social network operators to censor as they see fit - but every time they decide to pull a post, make sure they have a duty to notify the poster specifying the reason for the action, and a reference number allowing them to review the audit records for the decision. If you have to have censorship, do it right.
Would US big tech please return to US 1st Amendment freedoms and stop trying to curate the internet to conform with the internal politics of EU and Communist China.
Return to allowing the US freedom to have an open press able to report and publish.
For people to be able to comment and link.
Let people online comment on political news as part of using their own social media account.
They are posting links they found interesting. Adding comments, art, cartoons. Its their own creativity and content. Something social media invited users to do as an open platform to connect users and sell ads.
The freedom to assembly online and petition government policy.
The freedom to speak and not be banned after speech due to political comments.
Its the users who are doing the publishing, its their own words, thoughts and political content. Users who spent years posting their ideas, creative art and comments.
Their comments on politics, bad movie scripts, history, art, culture, news, international events. Something people in the USA have the freedom to do.
When social media becomes a full time "publisher" then it can set its own domestic party political and internal publishing standards for its own staff.
Your users are not your workers, they not your staff. They do not have to follow the bands set domestic party political agenda.
They have a right to comment, link, create, post, question, be political on any topic they want. Users got invited onto open social media for their content.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You're supposed to be a responsible, intelligent human being, who understands that every source will have some bias. You're supposed to be capable of, and interested in, checking multiple sources in order to try and get a balanced perspective which can better inform your opinion and lead to a more nuanced understanding of the subject.
That's not easy, though, so most people just end up isolating themselves in an ideological bubble which reinforces what they want to believe.
Claiming it might happen is not the same as advocating it.
I was following on from your logic, but yes: genocidal people are worse than people who try to stop genocidal people. I think that's a 100% reasonable statement to make. Perhaps not on Slashdot where we seem to be overridden by people who feel that Nazis get a bad rap, and anyway we shouldn't call Hitler a Nazi because don't you know that's why he became a Nazi because liberals and jews called him one checkmate, but in the real world, where real people live, yes, people who stop genocidal maniacs (and are defined as such) are better than people who are genocidal maniacs.
Pope's Bear Jew is a reference to a character in the Quentin Tarantino movie Inglorious Basterds, a character who literally kills genocidal Nazis. Is he a bad person? Maybe, maybe not. But is he worse than than the people he kills, whom he kills while they actively take part, at some level or other, in propping up and enabling the slaughter of millions of Jews while promoting one of the worst wars in recorded history?
I'd say he's not worse than them, no.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.