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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.
Is more what they are than morally bankrupt...
Hanlon would agree.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
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.
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.
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.
Post a mastectomy reconstruction photo with a female nipple showing on Facebook and see how quickly it gets taken down. Repeat the process a few times to see how quickly your account gets permanently banned.
After that, come back and tell us all about how Facebook has a strong bias toward free speech.
Yeah, we're such a shithole. Please don't ever come here and see it for yourself. We only have the largest economy on the planet, backed by the strongest military. And yeah, we've gotten into some stupid shit that we never should have. But maybe you should ask yourself, why does the US have the largest number of immigrants of any nation in the world, with people literally dying to get here? Stop paying attention to tabloid journalism, and look up how well the average American lives.
Just another day in Paradise
You can't show tits! Imagine, kids might see it! Tits ain't for kids!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I vote nukes.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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
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.
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.
They might get hungry...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
Over 80% of Americans live in urban areas. Less than 20% of the population doesn't define "mainstream".
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
What took them so long?
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.'
"in many countries the victims of crimes like that had a right to a certain amount of privacy and dignity even in death."
Is this the case in NZ? Or are you again stating what you want to be the case as a fact?
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."
I'm using stats from the US Census Bureau https://www.census.gov/newsroo... You can also review https://www.pewsocialtrends.or... The latter source also shows that a majority of Americans live in areas defined as "suburban", and the population of "urban" areas is double that of "rural".
Psychology is a pseudoscience not a science. Please discuss it with your chiropractor, reflexology specialist, and aromatherapy expert and leave it off here. Having some kind of study, peer reviewed or otherwise, does not make something science.
Even "legitimate" western medicine, while basing many things on medical science, is not itself science. Medical doctors are not engineers, their practice is not considered applied science.
Psychology is worse, and blends heavily with social science an area which has had virtually no replication of studies in decades. Mixing these things up causes people to conflate the well deserved confidence they have in hard physical sciences with extremely predictable and reliable results and thorough well proven mathematical frameworks with soft to pseudo sciences which should at best be considered a working hypothesis quickly set aside should it conflict too much with your personal observations.
Social science and psychology are blatantly laden with heavy confirmation bias. One only has to look to how rapidly they shift in response to changing and popular social norms to see it.
Did you know that the first Bill of Rights was the Bill of Rights of 1689?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That's argumentum ad absurdum.
Which is a valid logical argument, not a fallacy. You take an opponents words to their obvious conclusion.
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.
Really, and what country would that be? Again, you can't refute that America has the largest number of immigrants in the world, every single fucking year.
Well, it depends on how you measure. Most years, in absolute numbers, you're right though just quickly looking, for example in the 50's, Canada had higher absolute numbers and was very close in the early 20th century.
If you measure by percentage, then even Switzerland is ahead of the US and Canada lets in quite a larger percentage then the USA. It's a lot easier to have a million immigrants when you're population is close to 350 million, you end up getting the people who were refused in other countries such as Canada, which has been bringing in close to 300,000 a year with a population of 35 million. You'd have to triple your immigration to be comparable.
Why do you suppose that is?
Due to America having lots of good land and having a larger quota so people who can't have their first choice settle with America. Americans have also been running a powerful propaganda campaign for a long time. People actually believe that it is a country where hard work will mean advancement.
Sure, we had slavery, just like most all of the rest of the globe had back through 1800s
You had slavery much longer then most countries, though you did get rid of it before Brazil. Even in the late 18th century slavery was discouraged here with laws like children of slaves being freed at 21 years of age.
What other "refugees" are you claiming?
Well 50,000 Tories in the late 18th century due to their political believes. Lots of slaves ran here in the first half of the 19th century. Indian tribes would cross the border to escape the American Army who was out to kill them off and steal their land. More recently, lots of people who didn't want to be forced to go fight wars overseas, especially those avoiding going to Vietnam.
I didn't claim we're perfect...we've got a lot wrong with us. That doesn't make us the crapper that I frequently read about here, or in tabloid journalism. FWIW, I've been to ~50 countries (including living in two others for twelve years), and yet to see one that's got it any better.
You're not a bad country, it's just the attitude, the exceptionalism that turns people off. You're freedoms are different then other countries and if you want to own weapons, America is great. If you want to preach hatred, America is great. If you want to stop people from talking about sex, America has traditionally been great though the internet has changed that.
There are a lot of negative things about America along with the good. It wasn't that long ago that you officially had segregation, and those policies still echo. Your political system seems very corrupt. You have millions of people in jail, partially due to the war on drugs. The war on drugs is an example of Federal overreach and ignoring your Constitution. At that, with that wonderful Constitution, there's a lot of not following it along with a refusal to update it. Just think of the 2nd amendment for example.
When you claim to be so much better then others and your actions are not better, you get more then your fair share of hate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism