10 Comments

You're right about the AI machine. It has a long way to go.

Expand full comment

Ah, the good ole "community standards" message. Yeah, I've gotten that one too. Though on mine they didn't tell me what exactly offended in my post. I tried to make a post on my personal feed praising Ghostbusters: Afterlife (on DVD), and apparently said something "offensive". I'd say their sensitivity sensors are set at 1,000.

Oh, by the way, good luck hearing back about your rebuttal. I did mine immediately after that and still haven't heard back about it

Expand full comment

Great article. Facebook “nuked” my main account - that I had had since 2008 - over a single sarcastic comment I made - criticizing Hitler - on 2/21/22. The thing is - I have to recourse.

Expand full comment

[said before... saying it again]

In the mid 90's a small group of us (webamins, engineers, researchers) established a basic format for communication, shared code publically and started chatrooms (the genesis of social media)

We dealt with issues as they arose, created WHISPER, BLOCK, private rooms, and tried to maked it workable for what became millions of users per site, in what seemed like 4-8 months.

People could complain if blocked, had recourse to a human, got resolution... BTW the sites were free.

I"m not saying GOVT regulation is an answer, but it puts places like faceplant and twaddle in the hot seat to create response times. Such a solution means:

-Vendor blocks/restricts... they issue a ticket number to you and the FEDS

-You can go to the FEDS like any other PUC, and challenge. DURING which your access is restored and case is reviewed.

---YOU BAD, your blocked for a duration based on condition

---VENDOR BAD, block cleared, action is notated and increased levels mean cumulative fines

Yes, it offers another 'agency' but it does incite the Vendors to establish a workable system to make it less painful for their business.

These are UTILITIES, its time CDA sect 230 stopped applying and a vast array of users have recourse to deal with issues

Expand full comment
author

I'm always skeptical of going to the government to regulate big private entities like this, because, barring a *major* and bipartisan level of outrage, the chance for regulatory capture is extremely high, and we'll end up with barriers to entry for potential competitors more than remedies for the perceived problems.

The Democrats are certainly *happy* with FB's ways, and barring a massive GOP takeover (including a supermajority in the Senate) that'd produce a 'witch hunt' level of political aggression against social media (itself not a good thing), we're not going to get a remedy.

Someone will put out a better mousetrap at some point.

Expand full comment

I join you in skepticism, I see govt intervention here as a stick vs carrot to motivate the monoliths out of their bolt-on/useless customer disservice and begrudgingly add a real customer service function for their monstrosities.

I guess I could say this is not what we intended when we built chat rooms …. But there were no assurances … clearly

Expand full comment
author

Things evolve as they will, and power is a very seductive lure for those with the drive and ego to build such platforms. The technocrat culture that spawns "we can use this power to do good" mostly guaranteed such biases would infiltrate these platforms.

I'd rather wait for the market to resolve it.

Expand full comment

Interesting thoughts, though A fertile field will always gather weeds.

The original work was not poisoned by those weeds only overtaken.

The market may offer eventual resolutions, but some change has to catalyze it, or this garbage and the deeper abuses of data need to run into a hard wall.

Expand full comment
author

Users are that change. All we should want from government is to stay out of it as much as it can, and that includes things that'd be barriers to entry. A heavy enough regulatory mechanism favors the large established players, not only because they helped create it but because compliance is usually expensive and budget busting for startups.

Expand full comment

Hmmm in older models I’d say yes, when the heavy lifting of infrastructure is removed entry to net services changes dramatically. But your big player point comes back around when Microsoft, Google, Amazon can prejudicially affect availability .

And it comes right back to regulatory recourse for the little folks to at least have some recourse, since you can crowdfund money for VMs. But not if the major utilities (and they have taken on that status) won’t sell you server space and bandwidth.

Voting with our feet and our dollars is the one powerful tool in Everymans arsenal, social media is reported to be seeing a marked decline from younger users, but I think we will differ on the need to have the lever (albeit lame) of a PUC recourse to at least initiate an exchange.

Thanks Peter.

Expand full comment