Hacker News Reader

What if they just passively or inadvertently encouraged it? It’s entirely possible that the algorithms Facebook has used to prioritize content highlight inflammatory or violent content. Maybe in the process of maximizing attention they simultaneously optimized for showing violent or hateful content. YouTube has been shown to have done almost exactly that.

View on HN

If that's how low the bar is set then most of the US media would be legally liable for the war in Iraq.

For better or worse, passively encouraging genocide isn't illegal under US law.

I'm not so sure you're right about that... Speech has limits and Facebook has corporate responsibility. They do monitor speech in the USA and still the impact is big (see January 6th) this is what happens with zero monitoring.

They can claim discrimination and many other such claims. It seems there's a lot of evidence to support criminal negligence. If inaction led to deaths a civil suit can get a big payout.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com