Facebook is autogenerating pages for white supremacists
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Similarly, much as I realise the imperative to earn maximum ad revenue by encouraging maximum engagement (or time on the platform), couldn't FB radically cut back its suggested content and its newsfeed inserts etc until they weren't the equivalent of leading people from the light and down into the dungeons? Newsgroups/usenet etc had all manner of dark corners, inhabited by all manner of bad agents, but they reflected the same interests as existed IRL. No one got stuff shoved in their face unless they looked for it.
I am sure that FB has the talent to do better than it is doing at the moment. Move fast and break things is a great slogan, but if what you are breaking is society, and in some cases lives, then maybe slow down a bit.
But as these prison sentences don't exist, ,,move fast and break things'' will stay the best strategy.
Autogenerating pages for white supremacists is wrong. Do we agree on that statement? Well, if it's wrong, then they shouldn't do it. Doesn't matter if they had a 'reason' to do it. That is maybe even worse. They still shouldn't be doing things like this.
Why would that be wrong? It isn't an endorsement, anymore than Wikipedia having an article on Adolf Hitler is an endorsement.
Edit: It's just making Facebook reflect reality.
Not really tbh. Is it wrong that Microsoft Word will do a mail merge for white supremacists? I would think that undesirables are bounced at the door, not on a feature by feature basis.
It's an automated action that you disagree with. I couldn't care less about some autogenerated page for baby-eating-hitler. I don't give a fuck about this outrage, tbh