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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."
Is more what they are than morally bankrupt...
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.
He mentioned that rain is wet and the sky is blue.
#DeleteChrome
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.
Surely you meant "Zuckmarine".
But yeah, that guy is an asshole. What will it take to shut down the whole company?
#DeleteFacebook
Left Facebook years ago and I'm not sorry at all. I don't need to find another Facebook friend so that I can get a cow for Farmville. I don't need to read another status of how someone just made a sandwich or likes butterflies. I don't need to do another survey of why I like Obama or Trump more. Facebook is just a time vampire and fake news outlet. Just leave Facebook. I guess some people do need those things apparently.
... from a lawyer working for a politician.
Justice Minister Judith Collins said at appointment "I am confident Mr Edwards will be highly credible in the role of the Commissioner and will be able to engage both the public and private sectors."
Well, Ms Collins was certainly right.
There seems to be some spine in NZ politicians and lawyers...
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.
Yep, that's Zuckerberg and Sandberg, for sure. The two of them should be buried up to their necks in a fire ant hill.
Technically they have broken no laws.
And right.
While it would feel good to agree with you, I would like first to see some proof that banning weirdos increases the risk of a mass killings. To me, such statement is too hyperbolic and black & white to likely be anywhere near true.
Shutting down Facebook would be an extremely unpopular move that would cost any politician the elections, and would pull their party down with them. You have to understand that Facebook is extremely popular in spite of all, and more and more sites require Facebook logins to allow access. Let's not mention games. No facebook? No play. Advertisement-wise, Facebook is unassailable. Big advertisers love Facebook, it's extremely cheap and incredibly effective. Beyond those advertisers are industries and industries have lobbyists. The man in the street checks Facebook several times a day and uses services that belong to Facebook. All politicians know that. Shutting down Facebook in their country means the end of their careers and the complete defeat of their party. Those are the hard facts. They may huff and puff but in the end, Zuckerberg wins.
You know, in communication, the two parties exchange information and everything in between is the communication channel. The wires, electricity, internet, facebook. If you blame one of them, blame all.
When you ban a weirdo, he gets drive to a smaller website of other banned weirdos, and they exist there in an echochamber of weirdness. They loose track of all reality until they decide that they must "do something" in the war against the "others", those evil infiltrators who are destroying all that is good.
The same thing also occurs in reverse: If your culture is to ban dissent, then you build a similar echochamber around yourself and your community. Compare /r/Libertarian with /r/Socialism; one invites debates, while the other disappears those who disagree. Gulags are built out of old banhammers.
A nice theory, however, it's not applicable to any media service that auto-screens content to improve your engagement by primarily showing you things you already agree with. That doesn't promote debate, it promotes extremism.
That's the difference between social media and real life conversations - real life conversations give you a semi-representative sample of what people believe, and you can have those productive debates (with the risk of physical violence encouraging most people to remain reasonably civil). Social media instead sorts people into groups that say things you "like", producing an echo-chamber to reinforce your pre-existing biases.
Of course people sort themselves in real life too, but if you go to the local skinhead bar, you're fully aware that you're going to a self-sorted establishment to hang out with a like-minded minority. You wouldn't expect the sort of disagreement you'd get voicing the same opinions in a sports bar. Social media though spans such a large population that it can easily provide the illusion that you're actually in the majority.
I would much rather see such auto-grouping abandoned than banning particular opinions - but that would severely impact profits, so I doubt it would happen.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I haven't seen the clips, nor have I any particular desire to see the clips. But since I'm ignorant of the content, I have to ask the question... How was it different from a CNN video feed?
Wars have provided countless video feeds of people being killed. Missiles hitting targets in the early dawn hours... Munitions being dropped on positions... Whole divisions of mechanized forces being buried in sand by bombs...
I get the not wanting to glorify terrorism argument, and I agree to a point that eliminating the recognition factor for nuts that kill a lot of people might reduce the chances that a very tiny percentage of them would do their heinous deeds, but where does the news line get drawn. Any news organization worth its salt would have broken into its broadcast events with a breaking news story and if they had video, so much the better in their opinion. We decry the news organizations as being biased, and want the news fresh from an unbiased source. Well, this is the flip side of that.
Wow, New Zealand's Privacy Commissioner is pretty slow on the uptake.
Where were all these people back when Facebook was still in the process of overtaking everyone?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I vote nukes.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's a matter of magnitude.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
But no one has the guts to stop it. Facebook needs to be smashed into 10,000 pieces along with Google.
Sorry Microsoft, you were 1990's evil.
Corporatism != Free Market
From orbit, I'm guessing?
#DeleteFacebook
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.
The Facebook service itself is largely a non-moral tool. Like a hammer. There is no way to block "horrible" live streams other than blocking all livestreams.
-In space, it is very hard to rig lights.
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.
Just use 'corporation'. It takes less keystrokes.
This is not really a problem. I expect corporations in which I have an ownership stake (shareholder) to operate up to the limits allowed by laws* to maximize profits. Nothing more, nothing less. Not wasting money or avoiding opportunities based on some unquantifiable touchy-feely nonsense.
*Whose laws? Facebook is a US corporation. The fact that an Australian, located in New Zealand chose to use it as a streaming platform isn't the fault of FB. And we have a culture of free speech and honesty here instead of covering up societies warts with some rose-colored glasses and censorship. Unlike some of the more totalitarian regimes that attempt to sweep their problems under the rug.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
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.
Nah, any old nuke would do, I ain't picky.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
by a billion or so users.
Yes. AI is being used to try to police/filter it quickly these days (because with a billion possible contributors, how else could you do it fast?) but the challenge for that AI to recognize really bad content (the only kind that should be filtered, right?) is very complex. Human moderators often can't even do it reliably.
So realistically, it has to be a system that relies partly on human users to flag bad content for immediate review. Then a large team of moderators needs to check and decide, which in some cases requires knowledge? Is that a deepfake first-person-shooter video game? Is it real? Is it a movie scence? Does our policy care about these distinctions?
That's what takes nearly an hour to get reliable blocking going.
We should not be surprised.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Put yourself in Zuckerberg's shoes and tell me with some technical detail how YOU would solve this problem. I'm not being sarcastic. Realistic ideas well described welcome here. Ideas with gaping holes in feasibility with current tech not useful though.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
What took them so long?
The web as a whole is event larger, and with only a tweak to search tech, an unmoderated "virtual, distributed" facebook-like browsing pattern could be supported.
So how are you going to police the whole web? And why would you even try?
I really think people need to get thicker skins, and accept that the full, ugly range of human behaviour exists. People who don't want to be able to see it all should start becoming patrons of some new filtered-search service that works FOR THEM, according to their own specified standards.
The onus should be on the viewer not to look.
And of course, posters of illegal material should also be identified and prosecuted.
Middleware is just middleware, a platform, and new ones can spring up like hydras heads in the Internet infrastructure as a whole. Middleware is not the problem. It's a mistake to focus on that. That leads to totalitarian censorship.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Did this goofball stop to think that every single thing he mentioned could have been accomplished with the plain-old-telephone system?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
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.'
That's pretty much their business model, isn't it?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Facebook is used as the universal login to literally millions of websites. Make it illegal for a company like Facebook to control universal login, and nobody would need a Facebook account any more. (Shouldn't universal login be open source, maybe even blockchain-based?) I deleted my Facebook account last year... which doesn't mean Facebook deleted any of my data.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I would suggest that Facebook employees, like their fearless and intrepid leader, are not morally bankrupt liars or anything of the sort. They are, at a median age of 28, simply young and unable to put their ideas into any context beyond utility and/or profit. Now they have all built a company with revenue streams dependent on questionable practices, and its not easy to choose any option that resembles "end our distasteful practices, and the revenue associated with them" and thereby keep all it's kids in their 7 figure Menlo Park, mountain View, or sick Palo Alto cribs.
For years, on this exact subject, I've been hearing, "Older people just don't get it!?"
They do, still, and they always did.
Do you have a specific example? And "left wing commie" is either vague or painting with overly wide brushes. "Communism" has been so overloaded by many that it lost most its meaning. The economic system and political system can be and are very different things. People often conflate them, diluting meaning.
Those who want more gov't control over economic issues may still prefer a democracy to make political decisions, and those who prefer capitalism may want an oligarchy who controls political decisions. Singapore is arguably an example of such oligarchic capitalism.
Table-ized A.I.
It's easy to get political points by bashing the current state of things. Offering realistic alternatives is rarely a full requirement by voters. The ACA ("Obamacare") is almost a perfect example of that. The GOP made huge gains in 2014 largely by emphasizing the heavy fees of ACA.
But, GOP never offered clear alternatives, just a bunch of vague or gimmicky talking points. That didn't matter, Democrats got bigly slaughtered in the election. Ugly politics "works". Logic and math be damned.
If you look at polls of what voters actually want in terms of healthcare, it's pretty contradictory: great but cheap service. But, voters on average did and do want some kind of gov't managed healthcare insurance; they are just confused about what the practical trade-offs are. Democrats did a poor job of discussing the trade-offs, instead choosing to deflect the topic, hoping voters would focus on something else. Wrong strategy. (Dems also flubbed the handling of Trump, focusing on his personality rather than policy. People already knew his personality because of the heavy news coverage he got.)
Table-ized A.I.
The users select who the content goes to.
Facebook does just shift bits and bytes they simply do it at a higher logical layer than ISPs. Given their monopoly over the medium they should be regulated as a common carrier.
How exactly do you think you'll get said proof if you tolerate the suppression of speech?
Well I am surprised, guy with enourmous bank balance running huge advertising website with 500 million targets...sorry, customers, oops, sorry, users....is a money grabbing scuzzbag with all the morals of a piece of pond scum. Who'd a thunk it, eh?!
Why would the NZ Privacy Commissioner try and police the 'whole web'? Why would he try? He has no jurisdiction. As for people getting thicker skins, etc.....maybe people should accept that the web is a public place and what you say in a public place has some restrictions. Look again at your 'ugly range of human behaviour comment'. It is currently the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide at which time New Zealand held the Presidency of the Security Council. Are you saying we should have ignored it as we accept the full ugly range of human behaviour exists?
Look, the whole problem exists because the NZ government refuses to do anything about it. That is it. The Privacy Commissioner is moaning because he has absolutely no other choice. It isn't middleware that is the problem, it is the New Zealand Governments failure to deal with a problem that has political consequences to them.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Facebook is certainly awful, but NZ is jailing people for hosting public domain videos and saying the wrong things. So yeah when they say "Facebook Bad", don't think for one second where they want to go is any good.
I did say that those who publish illegal material (that is, the poster onto the public network) should be held accountable.
Although it is currently unclear as to in which country's jurisdiction and standards - is it determined by:
a) where you post from (which could be random),
b) where the poster is a citizen of,
c) where the filmed act took place, or
d) where it was copied to by web browsers i.e. everywhere in the world?)
If you're going to hold middleware responsible, which of the above a) b) c) or d) should determine whether it should be filtered and who should pay what penalty, to which jurisdictional authority?
Is the principle, for example, that a citizen of any country, and publishing from anywhere (else), should be charged with an offensive/illegal material publication offense separately by each jurisdiction in which at least one user of the Internet / middleware was able to see the content? So charged in some countries and not others, according to different standards and laws? If we do it that way, the Internet itself would become a de-facto illegal concept, and would have to be divided into siloed national intranets instead.
If middleware is to be held accountable for user-posted content, what are the standards of reasonableness of response-time? Given that there is as yet no AI that can reliably diagnose the really bad stuff, and that a human complaint-then-review process takes time and imperfect and somewhat arbitrary, and jurisdiction-relative decision-making, what is reasonable there. Given that content is edited / morphed specifically to avoid detection while being replicated around the web or re-posted on the middleware platforms, to what degree should the middleware owner be held accountable for reliably keeping the essence of the content off their platform at all times?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
First context. I am 56 year old New Zealander. I don't like censorship in general and generally support free speech, both with common sense exceptions. I seldom use Facebook as life is too short to waste scrolling down a screen clicking like buttons. My usage of it would be about 2 hours a week max. Have to confess I'm a bit addicted to Slashdot however.
It is hard to express how deeply the event in Christchurch has affected the nation, it certainly has had exactly the opposite effect of what the to be nameless perpetrator intended.
As much as I would love to think AI could magically block such live streams I think that will never be practical. Disabling it for all would be overkill. I'm surprised it only 17 minutes to stop the live stream given how hard companies like Facebook work to block people from contacting a real live staff member. I think they could improve the communications channels between law enforcement and their staff. That said with modern technology you are never going to be effective at stopping bad stuff being streamed.
The repeated sharing of the content is a different story. Youtube is pretty good at automatically blocking reposts of stuff and this is an area where AIs can be effective. If Facebook can't effective block sharing of this video then they do have something to answer for.
People in senior government roles need to work hard to separate their person views from those of their role. Given it is hard to tell a person's personal views from official views of their roles it is probably best that when they take on such roles they stop personal social media post. In this case I think personal feelings of the commissioner got the better of him and he posted something not well thought through. Mind you if you look at the endless questionable tweets of the POTUS the I think the commissioner's tweet look pretty mild.
At the end of the day I think it is stupid of one government to try an apply its laws to the website in another country with the exception of servers physically hosted within their territory. That should not stop a government from making their views clear to website owners, they just shouldn't expect much as a result. In general I am proud of how our nation, government, politicians and people have handled themselves.
Just not using facebook?
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
I realize Facebook is an acceptable target, but what happens when someone live streams something appalling using a free, user supported service?
I mean, youtube/twitter/facebook are just apps.
They could be replaced by an open version (call it you-twit-face) and there wouldn't be any hobgoblin to be righteously angry at.
The NZ government did not just want to block to video. They have made the manifesto that the terrorist wrote (very) illegal to view in NZ.
That is of concern. We should have the right read his rantings if we really want to. And it is counter productive, because the manifesto itself is probably dibble, but censoring it is gives it a legitimate strength.
Far to much fuss is made about the video itself. Sure, it is tasteless. But it is not going to inspire a new generation of terrorists. It is not that more terrible than seeing bits of human anatomy on line. A bit nasty for the victim's family, but something that can be safely ignored.
We have seen plenty of other videos of people getting killed ruthlessly killed. That one of US soldiers firing on Iraqi civilians comes to mind. It would be very bad if they were censored.
As to Facebook ruthlessly mining data, along with Google, that is another matter. But in the modern age people have less expectation of privacy than traditionally. It comes with the territory -- increased communication directly leads to less privacy. I think the other side is that we tolerate digression's more. Once upon time a photo of a drunken naked girl would be life and career destroying, now it is just something she did.
In other news there's an overabundance of false Scotsmen
No. Go back to sleep.
Probably no more thousands to drop as you live out your socialist dystopia. ;)
The Founding Fathers put the electoral college in place, because they foresaw this situation. They knew they had to keep the Republic safe from the concentration of Unamericans.
False. The electoral system was put into place to keep the south in the union.
There were 2 proposed methods of election: Popular vote, and legislative appointment.
Popular vote was a non-starter because the north had more individual voters, on account of slavery in the south, and the fact that only wealthy landowners could vote in the south. James Madison came up with the idea for an elector system where states would be able to vote with the power of their population, not their actual enfranchised population, in essence, applying the 3/5ths compromise to the presidential vote.
But I do love hearing you guys peddle around that fiction, rewriting history to suit your narrative. Ya, you're the real americans alright.
Right over your head.
I'm not sure the AC has the right to define what a Scotsman, I mean American is.
I can define an American as not including him just as easily, which means it was in fact a No True Scotsman fallacy.
Congratulations on surviving to adulthood with that kind of ignorance.
The entire point of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc is that they decide what you see through their feed algorithms. Consider if you were a gun store owner and you had a big sign out front saying "our guns are great for killing cops!" The vast majority of your customers aren't going to kill cops with the guns they purchase from you. However, when one guy finally does shoot a cop with your gun, you better believe the police are going to be showing up at your door.
A shithole that everybody seems to want to immigrate to for some reason. Hmmm.
Everyone whos other options world require them crossing the pacific or atlantic you mean. You ain't the best, just the closest.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
There is nothing about my suggestion that prevents them from having filters, including filters that operate based on your "like" preferences. Those would just be an option and/or plugin you enable and that you tune with likes or a thumbs up/thumbs down. But FB staff wouldn't be deciding anything, users would, users select the potential streams of input and users tune the algorithm. No central mass censorship required except force enabled filters based on a good faith effort to comply with local law.
Users generate the content, users should be deciding what to generate and what content they want to see from who. Not FB. Control belongs with the users not the carrier. That doesn't mean they can't offer helpful filters the user might want to select.
On the flip side, as FB has already begun to discover it just isn't possible to reliably apply complex rules without fail across that many languages and jurisdictions anyway. The staff required is insane and expensive. This would actually provide users more control, guaranteed access, and would dramatically reduce costs for FB. This would also be diverting legal responsibility for content to those who generate it and those who choose to consume it. It's a win all around.
So your argument is that Trump was better than Hillary at following rules? The guy whose own lawyers refuse to let him take the stand because he can't help but implicate himself in crimes?