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Facebook Are 'Morally Bankrupt Liars' Says New Zealand's Privacy Commissioner (theguardian.com)
New Zealand's privacy commissioner has lashed out at social media giant Facebook in the wake of the Christchurch attacks, calling the company "morally bankrupt pathological liars." From a report: The commissioner used his personal Twitter page to lambast the social network, which has also drawn the ire of prime minister Jacinda Ardern for hosting a livestream of the attacks that left 50 dead, which was then copied and shared all over the internet. "Facebook cannot be trusted," wrote Edwards. "They are morally bankrupt pathological liars who enable genocide (Myanmar), facilitate foreign undermining of democratic institutions. [They] allow the live streaming of suicides, rapes, and murders, continue to host and publish the mosque attack video, allow advertisers to target 'Jew haters' and other hateful market segments, and refuse to accept any responsibility for any content or harm. "They #dontgiveazuck" wrote Edwards. He later deleted the tweets, saying they had prompted "toxic and misinformed traffic."
That excuse might have worked ten years ago. After a decade of this bullshit it doesn't fly now.
There are clear cases where FB and other services have aided and abetted terrorists. I don't understand how they get away with it, really.
Those are not mutually exclusive. I'm not sure there is a difference between being morally clueless and morally bankrupt.
Facebook and many other Internet companies create software to enable people to communicate. Many people are jerks or morally bankrupt. Unfortunate side effect of the Internet is it allows people you disagree with or even hate to communicate. If you want to solve the problem, find a way to get people to stop hating each other.
It's easy to attack and criticize. But he offers no solution. Seriously, how does this "privacy commissioner" *think* one would moderate platforms this large... particularly while negating the possibility of false positives?
I haven't seen the NZ shooter's stream in full. But the clips I've seen look like they could come from a FPS streaming on Twitch. Probably, that was because the news was sensationalizing the "just like a video game" element of the stream. But still... if a human can mistake the stream for a Twitch feed, than a machine certainly can. So automation is right out. You need humans monitoring content and more human monitoring those humans and even more humans monitoring those humans to both prevent things like that lifestream; but also prevent false positives (The innocent should never be punished along with the guilty. So false positives are unacceptable.). I can't even fathom the size of the moderation workforce that would be necessary, given the size of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and the like.
And if Facebook, Twitter, et al. ever DID manage to build that sort of moderation regime; how much do you want to bet that the we-hate-nerds outrage crowd would then be screeching "big brother" and "censorship"? It's especially ironic, considering that the screecher in this particular case IS a privacy commissioner... advocating for a level of surveillance that would eliminate anything even resembling privacy.
Imagine all the people...
While it is tempting to agree with the conclusion that FB is "morally bankrupt liars", the rationale offered is extremely faulty.
Of all people, privacy commissioner should understand that a system that could proactively prevent "live streaming of suicides, rapes, and murders" would be extremely hostile to concepts of both privacy and all forms of freedom of expression.
There is plenty of evidence that Facebook knows what it is doing, especially when it comes to selling data. They knew about companies violating their contracts with regard to user data and just ignored it until the world found out. Always profit before the users.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That's why she lost.
She didn't go after the right votes; she didn't hold press conferences; she hid her poor health; she insulted an enormous swath of the electorate; her slogan was narcissist and niche feminist.
Repeat it until you believe it: Trump won because he was a better candidate.
Stop visiting Baltimore, Detroit, and other shithole cities. Travel through the beautiful rural countryside where mainstream America lives.
It's not a free speech issue.
There is a privacy and human dignity issue with things like the NZ terrorist's video. People are being murdered in it, and in many countries the victims of crimes like that had a right to a certain amount of privacy and dignity even in death. I think it's different in the US, but for example in the UK they generally don't show people being murdered on TV unless it's very exceptional circumstances.
There are other privacy issues around the way that Facebook handles personal data of course, e.g. Cambridge Analytica.
There are also safety issues for children. If they want to be open to children they have additional responsibilities. If they don't they can raise the minimum age for having an account to 18. As an example we have film and game ratings because we understand that children don't have the psychological tools to process certain material without being harmed by it, but Facebook has nothing like that. In fact it promotes itself as a safe space, when in fact it is not.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You say that like it's somehow a bad thing. Getting the weirdos out of mainstream channels and into their own private echo-chambers means vulnerable people (teens, mentally challenged and unstable people, etc) aren't exposed to their weirdness and are far less likely to join them.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
If you are in New Zealand, you can get up to 10 years in jail just for having the shooter's manifesto in your possession:
Link Here
Ten Years. For having a hateful text document on your computer.
I would call that morally bankrupt.
No, I'm not implying anything - I'm stating outright that the market solutions are not meeting my desires as a responsible citizen who thinks violent civil war is something that should be a last resort to overthrow tyrants, rather than something to be actively fostered to settle policy disagreements between opposing sides who have been made into extremists by for-profit echo chambers.
"Market solutions" are only applicable to things that only affect customers. When the consequences of your purchasing decisions impact everyone else as well, then it becomes a government/regulatory issue.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It's funny he says they undermine democracy but then acts like censoring information isn't undermining democracy. You can't have it both ways. For free speech to work it must be absolute. The tyrants of NZ clearly don't see it that way though.
The "enabling genocide" and "facilitating foreign undermining of democratic institutions" was in part done by them selling people's data. They allowed hostile governments to mine Facebook data which was then used to facilitate genocide and interfere with democracy.
BTW the NZ Prime Minister is a woman. Perhaps you meant the Privacy Commissioner, who you actually quoted.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
He has every right to be pissed and the New Zealand government has egg all over it's face on this. Recently NZ has been updating it's Privacy Act and they yet again left it toothless with no power for the Privacy Commission to enforce compliance. But hey, that's what you get when the MP in charge of the Bill is also in charge of the GCSB. Well that, and a blanket exemption for the GCSB. This was before the Christchurch Shootings and look where we are now. It looks as though the Bill wasn't rewritten to so much to protect peoples privacy as it was to allow our economic compliance with the GDPR and gain more government exemptions. I doubt the Privacy Commissioner is as pissed at Facebook as he is at being left totally impotent by the New Zealand Government.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
For free speech to work it must be absolute.
Well then we'll have to do away with laws against death threats, copyright enforcement, doxxing/revenge porn, and privacy in general, not to mention any seditious libel/seditious conspiracy and hate speech laws of course.
The only jurisdiction that has "absolute" free speech is the ungoverned regions of Somalia.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Because I would definitely consider the latter both clueless and morally bankrupt. This whole social media problem has been going on for ~23-24 years now. Maybe longer. My sister started on it in her teens which was back in the late 1990s. That means the politicians have had over 20 years to analyze the impact of social media and consider the ramifications of it. And they haven't.
This is on them, not Facebook, Whatsapp, or anyone else. Companies today exist to make money hand over fist at the expense of all morals. That too is a problem that can be firmly placed on the lap of politicians as well. If they weren't a bunch of morally corrupt motherfuckers selling out their morals and compromising their ethics for political or financial gain, then the corporations would not be either because they would have brought them to heel decades ago. But instead we have this social, political, and economic death spiral where everyone is blaming the other guy.
Heh, captcha was 'maturity', as in 'They all lacked the maturity to act responsibly on their own.'
Someone tried to bury this. Highlighting it instead. This is a cornerstone principal of democracy.
"It's funny he says they undermine democracy but then acts like censoring information isn't undermining democracy. You can't have it both ways. For free speech to work it must be absolute. The tyrants of NZ clearly don't see it that way though."