On Wednesday, two respected civil rights experts -- Laura Murphy and Megan Cacace -- hired by Facebook to review the company's practices issued a blistering final report. While acknowledging that Facebook had made progress in some areas, the report finds that Facebook's "approach to civil rights remains too reactive and piecemeal." It laments that Facebook's "vexing and heartbreaking decisions...represent significant setbacks for civil rights."
It seems it is a very anglo-centric report, which may fly well with the US authorities, but less with the European Commission. For example the content moderation of English content is well documented with all its pitfalls (very much thanks to your articles, Judd, and academics such as Sarah T. Roberts) but no one really knows how facebook moderates content written in smaller languages such as my mother tongue Czech. Do they employ live moderators for just a few million people, or are the moderators sitting in some farm in the Phillipines using Google Translate? We have some very bizzare experiences with moderation such as last year when anyone writing "Tommy Robinson" in any context, be it supportive or critical, got banned for 24 hours or more. I know it is not so juicy as the whole debate about tech giants in the US, but I thought about giving you some perspective about what might await for Facebook in the EU.
I sincerely wish many more of our Congress people knew much more about technology so that whenever Zuck would make an appearance before said legislators they wouldn’t look like such fools. Maybe then, some legislation could be passed to rein in and regulate his platform. Dare we dream?
The tasty assets as well as the serious hazards of Facebook, and of the Internet in general, arrive thanks to the novel confluence of three powerful streams and one elderly fisherman: global technology, globalized information, global mercantilism and a quaint but noble 18th-century sentiment born in some former British colonies—The First Amendment. The gentlemen of Enlightenment America assumed, correctly, that people would thrive under Freedom of Expression. But that assumption was and still is dependent on another—that those individual would also be well-educated and widely experienced. People without education and experience enjoy only Freedom of Regression. But Facebook need not care about that to make lots of money; the unenlightened are left to fish in dangerous, polluted waters.
Zuck deferring to Trump in many ways mirrors Trump deferring to Putin. In both cases the obvious submissiveness is in plain sight.
It seems it is a very anglo-centric report, which may fly well with the US authorities, but less with the European Commission. For example the content moderation of English content is well documented with all its pitfalls (very much thanks to your articles, Judd, and academics such as Sarah T. Roberts) but no one really knows how facebook moderates content written in smaller languages such as my mother tongue Czech. Do they employ live moderators for just a few million people, or are the moderators sitting in some farm in the Phillipines using Google Translate? We have some very bizzare experiences with moderation such as last year when anyone writing "Tommy Robinson" in any context, be it supportive or critical, got banned for 24 hours or more. I know it is not so juicy as the whole debate about tech giants in the US, but I thought about giving you some perspective about what might await for Facebook in the EU.
I sincerely wish many more of our Congress people knew much more about technology so that whenever Zuck would make an appearance before said legislators they wouldn’t look like such fools. Maybe then, some legislation could be passed to rein in and regulate his platform. Dare we dream?
Right, at least Facebook commissioned this review. Now let's see it act on the findings; that's where the proverbial rubber meets the road.
The tasty assets as well as the serious hazards of Facebook, and of the Internet in general, arrive thanks to the novel confluence of three powerful streams and one elderly fisherman: global technology, globalized information, global mercantilism and a quaint but noble 18th-century sentiment born in some former British colonies—The First Amendment. The gentlemen of Enlightenment America assumed, correctly, that people would thrive under Freedom of Expression. But that assumption was and still is dependent on another—that those individual would also be well-educated and widely experienced. People without education and experience enjoy only Freedom of Regression. But Facebook need not care about that to make lots of money; the unenlightened are left to fish in dangerous, polluted waters.