Marky-Mark
pfm Member
We're blue-pilling ourselves with this dystopian technology.
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Facebook vs World Governments
- Thread starter richardg
- Start date
The Far North
pfm Member
Interesting and scary piece about Pro and Anti Brexit closed Facebook groups accessed by the BBC Well, it scares me anyway. 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-49902321
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-49902321
Tony L
Administrator
Vile, but also a clear breach of Facebook’s Community Standards (their AUP). See both the ‘Violence & Incitement’ and ‘Hate Speech’ sections. Much of this stuff comes down to entirely inadequate detection and moderation. The correct policies are in place, they are just inadequately policed.
G
Guest432
Guest
It's a simple question, why are you incapable of answering it?
Are you now beginning to understand it's not all as simple as you want it to be?
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
The "correct policy" would be to allow a group to control who can post *but* allow anyone who chooses to *read* the postings! This way we wouldn't have to rely on bland assurances by FarceBook about things they miss or cannea be bothered to stop.
You run PFM on that basis that anyone can read it, but you need to join to post. That's the mechanism for ensuring responsibility and accountability of all concerned. You do it right. FarceBook does it wrong.
Tony L
Administrator
I largely agree. I don’t even like having the PM system here, but have to as I need to be able to invoice people for record sales, trade accounts etc, plus folk need it for the classifieds. It is limited to one to one though, which helps.
My view is Facebook took a wrong turn with the closed groups. They were reacting to the widespread criticisms of family group privacy etc (which I don’t think you considered in your post above, e.g. do you want random strangers ogling at footage of your young daughter’s gym class or whatever), but clearly went too far in the opposite direction and opened the door to everything right up to terrorist groups and I bet a lot of porn etc too). I’m a member of a few groups (Tannoys, Quad, TD-124, BBC Micro etc etc) and I think a few are closed just to keep the classified ads within the community. Obviously none are in anyway dodgy!
PS I do find it interesting watching the platform grow and seeing what it gets right and wrong. I expect this structure will change soon. There is a lot to be learned here.
richardg
Admonishtrator
I have seen worse comments on here than what the BBC quotes in that article.Interesting and scary piece about Pro and Anti Brexit closed Facebook groups accessed by the BBC Well, it scares me anyway.
Tony L
Administrator
I think you mean you’ve posted and had deleted worse!
richardg
Admonishtrator
Hang fire, casting the sturgeons! I am compiling evidence now...
richardg
Admonishtrator
The list is coming along nicely, I have made three categories.
Remainer bile
Brexiteer bile
Other bile
Nothing in the Brexiteer bile yet. The Remainer one is filling up nicely, though.
Here is one of yours, Tony, from June 2016:
'We need a petition demanding that Nigel Farage be torn apart by chimpanzees for starters.'
Megalolz...
Remainer bile
Brexiteer bile
Other bile
Nothing in the Brexiteer bile yet. The Remainer one is filling up nicely, though.
Here is one of yours, Tony, from June 2016:
'We need a petition demanding that Nigel Farage be torn apart by chimpanzees for starters.'
Megalolz...
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
I stick by everything I said and I'm not going to waste my time in pointless circular "discussion" with you.
Now what is it you do for a living again?... ah yes is it not the surveillance industry.....
richardg
Admonishtrator
I have to go back to work now, but in addition to your call to pull Farage apart by Chimpanzees, here is what else I have found.
Remainer Bile
And to be honest the best outcome possible now apart from him and Farage dropping dead.
Unless you can nobble millions of rabid Brexiteers, Farage’s lot will get the largest cadre of MEPs anyway.
I think that if BoJo is willing to suspend democracy it is OK to kill the ****er
Brexiteer Bile
Error Code 101Z- No Data Found
Other Bile
Sturgeon should be pulled apart by chimpanzees.
Actually I'd like to see him attend a Momentum meeting in the hope that they beat him to death!
I wish a slow painful death on those who pass these and similar laws.
Murder him with a ice pick to the head at least, surely?
Tony L
Administrator
FWIW you do actually have a point. Whilst the right vs left of this argument are clearly very different (e.g. the murder of Jo Cox, the kicking to death of the Polish immigrant, the bloke who drove a van into a Mosque, plus several other foiled terrorism attempts vs. absolutely nothing at all from remainers) I should really moderate a bit harder and certainly not stoop to such language myself.
PS You get a file not found for Brexiter bile as I remove it all due to the violence I highlight above. I simply won’t publish anything that gets even remotely near to the ‘Britain First’ mindset that murdered Jo Cox. I have removed a lot of it along with some posters!
PS You get a file not found for Brexiter bile as I remove it all due to the violence I highlight above. I simply won’t publish anything that gets even remotely near to the ‘Britain First’ mindset that murdered Jo Cox. I have removed a lot of it along with some posters!
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
That's why the net titans gave us email.
But, yes, anything can be abused. However that's not a reason for a big company to facilitate widespread misuse on a commercial basis or enable the corruption of open democracy in exchange for cash.
Althought TBH I assume that residents of the doughnut will have for some time been monitoring such 'closed' groups and filing away info in case it needs to be used.
G
Guest432
Guest
So just so it's clear you'd rather allow pedos, people smugglers and far right extremists go unchecked than see the Police and security services be helped in their roles.
Not a very socialist outlook, just goes to show that those on the extreme left are just as fundamentally selfish and dangerous as those on the extreme right.
No I don't work in the surveillance industry, I design Cisco networks for a living.
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
That's right yep and I want to see more granny's mugged as well... and that's as sensible an answer as your post deserves.
Tony L
Administrator
My suspicion is the growth has been so ridiculously exponential and the misuse by a percentage of fundamentally nasty users has put them well on the back foot and really they are largely reacting to emerging scenarios that were not planned for. My view from what I’ve seen is none of these tech companies are ‘evil’ as such, they are just working right at the forefront of an emerging technology and often failing to scale to customer abuse.
PS As stated upthread I do view CA very much as a hack/malware, what they did was 100% a breach of the Facebook’s terms and conditions, so again FB were just failing to protect against end-user misuse. I realise this is the highly dodgy ‘guns don’t kill, people do’ argument to some degree, which makes me uncomfortable, the difference being a communications platform was never intended to be dangerous. The whole internet obviously fits this category, and parallels can be made to say Usenet being abused to carry multi-part pirate warez or porn disc images etc back in the early ‘90s. As long as the internet has existed some people have been doing some dodgy stuff on it!
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
They aren't choosing to be 'evil'. Just too focussed on making money rather than on checking what they end up facilitating. If they won't allow open scrutiny then they must accept all the responsibility for any failures to scrutinise. Its quite clear that they simply wouldn't face this, and still resist. e.g. refusal to appear at HoC or to employ enough people *long ago* to really cover the scale of their activity.
So, sorry, they can't take the money and wash their hands of responsibility any more. Either they are responsible, or need to allow others to scrutinise.
Yes, usenet is wild west. But it is also open, and isn't a single company making money out of the behaviour of its users. People will do 'bad' things at times. But that doesn't excuse a company facilitating it for money, then shrugging off responsibility. They have by now had enough being alerted by others not to plead ignorance. Question is: Are they going to ensure the damage to democracy doesn't happen again, or must someone else do it for them? And if the UK does legislate wrt election material, would they comply, or even be able to left to themselves?
As before, on this scale I think there is no alternative except open scrutiny. The level required means they have to be a 'publisher' and accept the responsibility, transparency, etc.
Tony L
Administrator
Again I’d argue that if they had to appear in front of the HoC then logically they should also be forced to appear in brutal dictatorships like Saudi, Iran, Syria, Russia, China or wherever and be forced to hand over information that could end up with people we would consider perfectly innocent (LBGTs, atheists, journalists, political activists etc) being imprisoned or murdered. To be of real use a global communications medium needs to exist well above the petty jurisdiction of nation states.