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Once again, we are seeing very skilled PR from Facebook.

Problem: Media have painted Facebook as an enabler of propaganda

Reality: There is so much activity on Facebook it is impossible to manage, even with the best AI tools available. There is likely next to nothing they can actually do to stop coordinated exploitation by highly skilled and intelligent state actors.

Solution: Make a hollow yet visible action to take steps in the right direction and use it as cover to make a public statement of values knowing that this action is fundamentally inconsequential and that the media and public will be temporarily fooled since most people don’t understand the real situation.

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They're hiring 10,000 full time moderators this year to help police this stuff. It's a serious attempt, and the cost of this on their projected earnings is why the stock crashed.

That is not why their stock crashed. You’re spreading even more Facebook PR propaganda.

I'm pretty sure that's what analysts are saying. The biggest cause was the drop in earnings and projected earnings due to increasing spend on security. It's not all the moderators but it's all part of the same push.

And on features that have lower potential for monetization, but higher user engagement like stories.

This is certainly part of why their stock crashed, they explicitly mentioned in guidance that this would hurt their profitability in a major way.

It's absolutely why their stock crashed. Fb lowered their guidance for upcoming quarters mostly in expectation of slimmer gross margins. Since the top-line revenue isn't expected to change, the decrease in margins is by definition driven by increased costs. This increase is directly connected to Fb's efforts to (manually) police more content. Zuckerberg even explicitly warns of this occuring in one of last year's earnings calls.

Serious question: When does having 10,000 full time FB employee "moderators" to content expressed via their platform cross into the literal definition of Thought Police?

How far are we from when actual laws-with-consequences are passed and enforced via the continual monitoring and moderation of said FB's army of moderators?

When will be the first time a person is (if not having happened already) killed for their postings to FB?

https://www.ranker.com/list/the-13-craziest-deaths-caused-by...

> Serious question: When does having 10,000 full time FB employee "moderators" to content expressed via their platform cross into the literal definition of Thought Police?

When FB moderators can impose penalties outside the context of Facebook, like jailing people.

Other than that, Facebook's control of content on its own site may be a good or bad decision, but it's nothing like police power of any kind, “Thought Police" or otherwise.

> When will be the first time a person is (if not having happened already) killed for their postings to FB?

It has probably happened already, but not because of Facebook exerting moderation.

I don't think you're thinking out far enough... Zuck has already shown his cards with political aspirations... so - in ~10 years... yeah - I am imagining a much more dystopian take on FB

> When FB moderators can impose penalties outside the context of Facebook, like jailing people.

...or seeding the Internet outrage machine by manufacturing a digital lynch mob to harass the person, dox them, harass their employer and friends and family, and utterly destroy their lives? I mean, this happens on Twitter and Tumblr all the time just by itself; actually controlling the platform would make it so much easier!

Legitimate question downvoted because it is counter to OP's narrative. This is the current state of HN. Sad!

I'm with you on the analysis.

> There is likely next to nothing they can actually do to stop coordinated exploitation by highly skilled and intelligent state actors.

If they weren't so spineless, the solution is simple, at least in the time leading up to elections. Shut it down. Turn off ads. Disable non-profile pages. Allowing blatant manipulation of the platform deserves a blunt solution. Maybe let people think for themselves for once? Facebook is a convenience, not a necessity.

That makes zero business sense and will never happen. It isn't Facebook's responsibility to teach people how to identify advertisements or posts trying to sway their opinion.

I don't disagree, and it's not facebook's responsibility to teach people how to identify manipulative content, but that viewpoint is too narrow. People blindly trust facebook because it is positioned as a safe place on the internet. Users let their guard down and don't think about what they are seeing critically enough to not let themselves be manipulated. And that's exactly what facebook wants from an advertising revenue perspective. It is in their gross negligence of responsibility in keeping user data safe and out of the hands of bad actors that their complicity lies. If facebook wants to assume ownership over our data, then they are responsible for it, and by extension what others do with it.

That makes zero business sense and will never happen

Depends on the business model, doesn't it?

And blame it on an unidentified boogeyman / "bad actor" in the same breath as the Russian internet trolls.

FcBk's PR spin is based on a) the very real political influence it has and b) the current appetite for international cyber security theater.

It takes a sense of the magnitude of the potential threats to understand that banning 8 pages does not make for security, it makes the case for exploiting the signals detected by your antenna.

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