Which group is protected from hate speech? The correct answer: white men
June 28, 2017 6:09 AM   Subscribe

Julia Angwin at ProPublica reports on internal documents Facebook uses to train its thousands of human moderators. They contain broad rules for determining who is in a protected class and who is not.
White men are considered a group because both traits are protected, while female drivers and black children, like radicalized Muslims, are subsets, because one of their characteristics is not protected. (The exact rules are in the slide show below.)
posted by ignignokt (106 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is what happens when hate speech is defined by people who don't endure hate speech.
posted by R.F.Simpson at 6:18 AM on June 28, 2017 [59 favorites]


But Facebook says its goal is different — to apply consistent standards worldwide.

I believe them*. This is white supremacy and the patriarchy in action. When you live within those systems, you can't design a process and expect it to do anything other than reinforce them unless you are constantly vigilant and actively trying to prevent it.

*To the extent that I think they did not start from the explicit premise of "protect white men." But I have a really hard time believing that *no one* exposed them to the concept that to "apply consistent standards" is to ignore the huge and awful inconsistencies in our world.
posted by solotoro at 6:21 AM on June 28, 2017 [28 favorites]


Was never sure if Facebook had manuals as such. Apparently leaked slidedecks were sent to the Guardian, which used them for a series of articles called The Facebook Files.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:22 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


I guess it's at least broader than Twitter's policy of on protecting verified Nazis.
posted by Artw at 6:24 AM on June 28, 2017 [22 favorites]


I can't imagine the difficulties in crafting global moderation policies which span nations, religions, and cultures; or the stubbornness needed to continue doing so.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:24 AM on June 28, 2017 [5 favorites]


This is what happens when hate speech is defined by people who don't endure hate speech.

This may also be what happens when a company is trying to both be a common carrier (and thus, uncensored) and a content provider.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:27 AM on June 28, 2017 [15 favorites]


Wow. The matrix of rules is what I would expect from a precocious 15-year-old white suburban boy who believes he has solved fairness on the internet.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:28 AM on June 28, 2017 [71 favorites]


But Facebook says its goal is different — to apply consistent standards worldwide.

...unless it's Trump (whose posts were found to violate policy but were specifically exempted from the standards by Zuckerberg personally).

So not consistent at all.
posted by Dysk at 6:28 AM on June 28, 2017 [26 favorites]


I've long suspected that there was something odd going on behind Facebook's moderation. Having it confirmed, and finding out that it is the result of unanalytic, colorblind, horseshit is surprisingly not surprising.
posted by anansi at 6:30 AM on June 28, 2017 [7 favorites]


Yes, the consistency claim is a canard. As the article points out, Facebook (like MetaFilter) routinely deletes posts criticizing police, who are not a protected class. It's all just bullshit after-the-fact verbiage to excuse sucking up to the powerful. Trying to find any deeper logic is a fool's errand.
posted by enn at 6:37 AM on June 28, 2017 [20 favorites]


But, hey, at least all the good speech gets pushed up to the top by algorithms!
posted by Artw at 6:38 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


Headline is at least a little disingenuous. It seems to suggest that "white men" received some sort of special preference as a term. In this system "white men" is exactly as protected as "black women" or "Hispanic man" or "white women". Conversely, "white children" is not a protected group, nor are "black children" or "white protesters".
posted by FakeFreyja at 6:45 AM on June 28, 2017 [15 favorites]


I saw a news clip this morning where they exclaimed Facebook deleted 60,000 items (not sure if posts or comments) a week! 60,000 was emphasized. My immediate response was Is that all? because I know with absolute certainty that cortex deletes that many on a slow morning. -- Just Kidding. But given the size of fb, c'mon, that's not even a start. MeFi enjoys excellent, time-consuming moderation, but srsly, fb, you should be doing way more. Very generally, how many comments does MF delete?
posted by theora55 at 6:49 AM on June 28, 2017 [9 favorites]


Why am I not surprised.

Maybe it's because, back in 2014 when a misogynist killed six people and wounded 14 others in Isla Vista, California, there was an "Elliott Rodger is an American Hero" Facebook page, which had been set up to "pay tribute" to someone who "made the ultimate sacrifice in the struggle against feminazi ideology". One of the status updates on the page read, "Feminists, whether you like it or not, you are the cause of this incident. You have empowered women to essentially bully and reject people, and in this case it would seem that this happened to some poor kid with Autism. A generation of self important narcissistic cows have been raised rather than the nicer ladies of the previous generations. Who's fault is that? That's the feminist's fault." I wasn't cherry-picking either -- the whole page was like that. I reported it for hate speech twice, and both times Facebook claimed they examined the page for hate speech and decided it didn't violate community standards. It took a few hours of public outcry before it was removed. Unbelievable. They did the right thing because they were shamed and pressured into it, not because they had any understanding of why that page was unacceptable.

In 2013, it took months of public pressure to get Facebook to remove a page that essentially existed to call a teenage gang rape victim who later committed suicide a slut. By contrast, when I posted a picture of knitted elephant shorts for men (the junk, as you might expect, was in the trunk) to my knitting blog's Facebook page in early 2014, the photo was removed within a few hours and I was given a 12-hour time out to reconsider my community standard violating ways.
posted by orange swan at 6:57 AM on June 28, 2017 [103 favorites]


Headline is at least a little disingenuous. It seems to suggest that "white men" received some sort of special preference as a term. In this system "white men" is exactly as protected as "black women" or "Hispanic man" or "white women". Conversely, "white children" is not a protected group, nor are "black children" or "white protesters".

FTFA:
Behind this seemingly arcane distinction lies a broader philosophy. Unlike American law, which permits preferences such as affirmative action for racial minorities and women for the sake of diversity or redressing discrimination, Facebook’s algorithm is designed to defend all races and genders equally.

“Sadly,” the rules are “incorporating this color-blindness idea which is not in the spirit of why we have equal protection,” said Danielle Citron, a law professor and expert on information privacy at the University of Maryland. This approach, she added, will “protect the people who least need it and take it away from those who really need it.”
It's kind of the "I don't see color" or "I'm not a feminist I'm an egalitarian" of moderation, which in practice (in terms of power differentials, among other factors) still favors those groups who hold more power and control over discourse.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:57 AM on June 28, 2017 [52 favorites]


I remember reporting a post to FB where a guy had left a comment on a woman's obit for her teen daughter who'd been the victim of a hate crime. The comment talked about how the woman was lucky that they didn't rape the girl first, which is what the poster said he would have done if it was him.

Facebook wrote me back that the comment didn't break their guidelines.

That was the point I gave up on FB.
posted by dobbs at 6:58 AM on June 28, 2017 [29 favorites]


It's kind of the "I don't see color" or "I'm not a feminist I'm an egalitarian" of moderation, which in terms of power differentials (among other factors), which in practice still favors those groups who hold more power and control over discourse.

I'm having trouble imagining what the alternative would be. Since the article used the term, what would "affirmative action" look like in the context of moderation of hate speech in social media?
posted by FakeFreyja at 6:59 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


It seems to suggest that "white men" received some sort of special preference as a term. In this system "white men" is exactly as protected as "black women" or "Hispanic man" or "white women".

Not really - the headline is there to grab attention for the article. The FB question that the quote comes from is a real thing.

The point of the article is that applying blanket rules, where everything is either in category 'X' or not in category 'X', is an inane way to tackle hate speech. They're trying to boil down ethics to a set of simplistic code-like rules. In fact, I'd be very surprised if the rules weren't written at least in part by coders. There's no space in the algorithm for the notion of 'punching up' or 'punching down'.

Since the article used the term, what would "affirmative action" look like in the context of moderation of hate speech in social media?

That's Facebook's problem to solve. They have plenty of money to throw at the problem, so if this simplistic ANDing and ORing approach is the best they can come up with, one can only presume that they're taking a tokenistic approach.
posted by pipeski at 7:05 AM on June 28, 2017 [16 favorites]


I saw a news clip this morning where they exclaimed Facebook deleted 60,000 items (not sure if posts or comments) a week!

My high school graduating class alone produces that much hate speech every week. FB isn't even trying.
posted by Etrigan at 7:06 AM on June 28, 2017 [25 favorites]


what would "affirmative action" look like in the context of moderation of hate speech in social media?

You could start with more attention being paid to groups more frequently victimized by hate speech and complaints about hate speech directed at those groups.

I'm a white guy, I'm simply not the victim of hate speech. If you're directing resources (which are always limited) to policing your group trying to find people attacking me then you're wasting those resources.
posted by sotonohito at 7:08 AM on June 28, 2017 [24 favorites]


Australian writer and feminist Clementine Ford sometimes posts screencaps of the abusive comments or Facebook messages she receives, with her own critique of them, and Facebook often deletes them because the screencapped comment contains language that violates community policy and puts Ford on a time out. Meanwhile, the guy who sent her the original message or posted the comment is never disciplined in any way, because Facebook claims his activities don't violate community standards. You can't get a clearer illustration of Facebook's misogyny than that.
posted by orange swan at 7:08 AM on June 28, 2017 [133 favorites]


Look at gøre hate speech and protected categories are defined in countries that have laws about this shit, like the UK. Those laws are imperfect, yes, but they don't fucking posit white or men as protected categories for good fucking reason.
posted by Dysk at 7:10 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


The major issue is the idea of PC + PC == PROTECTED and PC + NPC == NOT PROTECTED. That results in "white men are racist" getting deleted but "black actors shouldn't be in films" not getting deleted based on the spurious argument that because actors aren't a protected class the statement as a whole is not delete-worthy, even though it very specifically denigrates an entire race.

This whole notion of unprotectable "sub-groups" is the very same argument I heard against the brown and black stripes on the Philly pride flag. Shit like this makes it hard to take any pride in technology, because engineer's disease is now a bona-fide epidemic.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:11 AM on June 28, 2017 [42 favorites]


I mean, it is a really difficult problem, and I don't think there are easy fixes. Part of the solution, I think, is going to be to stop looking for easy fixes, because it's hard to come up with strict rules that cover really complex cultural phenomena. But the stuff we're talking about here is such low-hanging fruit, is so self-evidently stupid, that it's hard to see how anyone could defend it. I get that some people really, really want to defend hate speech, but I think this isn't the hill you want to die on. The whole "it's ok to say hateful things about black children, because children are not a protected category" thing is beyond dumb. You can still defend hate without defending stupidity!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:19 AM on June 28, 2017 [4 favorites]


I think I see a way around this, create overly broad, but not all encompassing groups. Not "all white people are racist," but "all white people except for those living on 14th street between 5th and 6th avenues in New York City are racist." Or, to go with the fact that you can criticize black kids, "all white people over the age of 6 are racist."

This is of course absurd. But then again, any time you create rules like this, there are going to be absurd cases that technically follow the rules but violate the spirit. But I recommend that in the future any time you want to comment in such a way that criticize the establishment, make sure that you are clear that it does not apply to those who are twelve or under in that class.
posted by Hactar at 7:21 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


The major issue is the idea of PC + PC == PROTECTED and PC + NPC == NOT PROTECTED. That results in "white men are racist" getting deleted but "black actors shouldn't be in films" not getting deleted based on the spurious argument that because actors aren't a protected class the statement as a whole is not delete-worthy, even though it very specifically denigrates an entire race.

Yeah this whole concept is complete nonsense. "Women drivers" isn't protected because "drivers" isn't a protected class, and yet insults against women drivers are absolutely 100% because they are women. No-one is insulting women drivers because they hate motorists.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:22 AM on June 28, 2017 [41 favorites]


Mod note: A few comments deleted. Don't troll here, and if you're not trolling then I just don't know what to say.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:22 AM on June 28, 2017 [9 favorites]


This is of course absurd. But then again, any time you create rules like this, there are going to be absurd cases that technically follow the rules but violate the spirit.

It's almost like strict deterministic rules isn't the best solution!
posted by Dysk at 7:23 AM on June 28, 2017 [18 favorites]


This would explain why a particularly vile post I reported, suggesting among other things that men should backhand their wives into compliance, was deemed to not violate community standards. "Wives" is a subclass and therefore not protected according to Facebook.

I think I need to take a timeout from social media if these are the rules.
posted by parliboy at 7:31 AM on June 28, 2017 [6 favorites]


For an organization as big as Facebook to attempt any kind of content moderation, they clearly need consistent rules to guide that moderation.

But now that their rules are known, trolls and rules-lawyers will easily circumvent them. So (per their own rules) you shouldn't be able to get away with saying "white men shouldn't be allowed in movies" but you could say "ugly white men shouldn't be allowed in movies" (because appearance is not a protected class, and NPC + PC = NPC).

Have fun, Facebook.
posted by adamrice at 7:32 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


I did a little project a few years ago where I screenshotted every single Facebook comment I reported, and only reported the ones that were unambiguously hateful, to see what Facebook allowed.

Answer: Almost everything. Warning: Unambiguous hate.
posted by maxsparber at 7:38 AM on June 28, 2017 [23 favorites]


quitting facebook is always an option. take your business elsewhere.

strangely more difficult than it would seem for so many of us...
posted by danjo at 7:52 AM on June 28, 2017 [6 favorites]


First they came for the black children, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a black child.

Then they came for the female drivers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a female driver.

Then they called white men racists, and I directed my censors to banish them—
Because I was a white man and I could.
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 7:55 AM on June 28, 2017 [10 favorites]


quitting facebook is always an option. take your business elsewhere.

Except that no, it's not. If Facebook is your public face, and everyone you know is on it, then no, "quitting Facebook" is not an option. Which is why this is such a major issue.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:56 AM on June 28, 2017 [13 favorites]


Well, it *is*. Before there was Facebook, there was MySpace. Before MySpace, there was AIM, MSN messenger, ICQ. Before that, it was AOL. Before that, it was Prodigy and Compuserve and before that, it was the telephone.

You can talk to your friends somewhere else besides Facebook. All you have to do is agree to use something else. That's how sites lose their user base and eventually slip into obscurity.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:00 AM on June 28, 2017 [6 favorites]


YOU FORGOT FRIENDSTER
posted by thelonius at 8:01 AM on June 28, 2017 [14 favorites]


A friend who is a writer and activist and has a fairly high profile as such got her account suspended a few days ago because she posted a photo of herself and her wife at the Dyke March, with the caption "Dykes on Dyke Day!"

She got it unsuspended within a few hours because - thanks to her writing and activism - she knows someone at Facebook who was able to unfuck the SNAFU. She's pretty sure that the suspension happened because she was targeted by a few people she had blocked from her page (because they were being total assholes who decided her "In this thread, please don't [a couple simple rules]" request meant they should do those things a lot.

Another friend, a few days earlier, was trying to get a couple of pages taken down because they were called things like "N*gger Jigaboo N*gger Lovers" and similar, and kept getting "Thanks for letting us know, but these pages don't seem to violate our community standards" messages back from fb.
posted by rtha at 8:02 AM on June 28, 2017 [17 favorites]


For an organization as big as Facebook to attempt any kind of content moderation, they clearly need consistent rules to guide that moderation.

That's not the same as strict and deterministic, though.


Well, it *is*. Before there was Facebook, there was MySpace. Before MySpace, there was AIM, MSN messenger, ICQ. Before that, it was AOL. Before that, it was Prodigy and Compuserve and before that, it was the telephone.

None of those things were Facebook, and none of them had that position in society. All of those services put together had fewer users that Facebook does. The scale matters, makes this meaningfully different - quantity is a quality all of its own.
posted by Dysk at 8:07 AM on June 28, 2017 [13 favorites]


I had been avoiding Facebook for the longest time, always seeing the "see more by joining" message filling half the screen when I went to see something someone else had posted there. Then last week I decided "why not" and got a FB account. Haven't posted anything but have been barraged with twice-daily emails from the ZuckCo with lists of people I don't know to add as 'Facebook Friends'. I was seriously considering bailing before I saw this and pulled the plug immediately (but they're giving me 14 days to reconsider, good for them). I know I have a little too much of a relationship with Amazon, Google and Microsoft but I'm keeping them kinda under control (my never buying the hardware has kept me Apple-free). Facebook is the one Tech Juggernaut I can safely stay totally unconnected to, and I regret thinking briefly that I could deal with it a little.

Facebook recently announced they have reached 2 BILLION accounts. Well, make it 1,999,999,999 with me out.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:12 AM on June 28, 2017 [4 favorites]


You can talk to your friends somewhere else besides Facebook.

When you find yourself typing something so obvious that it is certain to be unhelpful to literally everyone in the conversation, feel free to reconsider.
posted by Etrigan at 8:14 AM on June 28, 2017 [43 favorites]


Except that no, it's not. If Facebook is your public face, and everyone you know is on it, then no, "quitting Facebook" is not an option. Which is why this is such a major issue.

Well, . . I quit. And am very happy as a result. Didn't feel iike giving them any more free content and labor. All the other awful practices of their profitable business just make me feel better as they appear in the news.
Social media, like drug abuse, is not something to be replaced. It's a very poor replacement for actually being social. I know no one wants to hear that, but there it is.
posted by rc3spencer at 8:15 AM on June 28, 2017 [13 favorites]


(I should perhaps clarify that I meant that all of thoseinternet services combined don't have the same users numbers. Pretty sure lots of people have telephone service. But phones are one-to-one and have no methodology for discovery at all, and simply do not fill the same functions as something like Facebook. They're all communication, yes, but suggesting replacing Facebook with the phone is like saying don't bother with newspapers, just read the Illiad.)
posted by Dysk at 8:16 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


Is there any large social media platform that isn't a moderation disaster? The tendency of large groups is to reproduce in miniature the cultures in which they are embedded. And, well, we live in a culture that just elected Trump.
posted by Pyry at 8:18 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


That is totally nonsensical. The fact that "white men" are protected is a bit of a red herring. The problem is that the default is that a non-protected category cancels out the protected category. I'm not familiar with any sensible interpretation of the law or reality of discrimination that would ever apply such a presumption.

BTW I have gotten Holocaust denial posts removed from Facebook before.
posted by yarly at 8:18 AM on June 28, 2017 [8 favorites]


The thing about "so just don't use Facebook" is that Facebook isn't just social at this point. It's been really important, for instance, in post-election political organizing, and it's proven to be a really potent tool for mobilizing middle-aged-and-older women, who are the backbone of the Indivisible movement and movements like it. It turns out that the same people who like to use Facebook to post cute pictures of their grandchildren will also use Facebook to post instructions for how to call your senator and explain your objections to the GOP healthcare bill. And that's amazing, but I'm increasingly worried about the degree to which we're dependent on Facebook. For one thing, we're losing access to people who aren't active on Facebook, and there are still some people who aren't. And for another thing, I'm not sure it's a good idea to be so dependent on this one commercial platform, which isn't accountable to anyone. I actually think this is something that Indivisible is going to have to wrestle with in the near future. But for the moment, I can't leave Facebook, because a lot of political stuff I'm involved in is organized through Facebook.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:24 AM on June 28, 2017 [27 favorites]


zombieflanders: "It's kind of the "I don't see color" or "I'm not a feminist I'm an egalitarian" of moderation, which in practice (in terms of power differentials, among other factors) still favors those groups who hold more power and control over discourse."

I've become more and more of a mind that there's a certain kind of person -- usually white or otherwise in a privileged position (but not always) and interestingly enough, as often liberal as conservative -- who is all for the trappings and accoutrements of equality but not the actual hard work of getting to equality. They would prefer to act as if everything were totally nice and fine and appear deeply, psychologically hurt when anything challenges that. These are basically the kind of people who say "Why is it that they can say that word but I can't? How is that fair?" but also "Why didn't he just comply with the officer's commands?". They're the ones saying "I don't see race," because lol why bother seeing race if racism doesn't exist any more? And probably they're the kind of people who wrote this policy.
posted by mhum at 8:32 AM on June 28, 2017 [10 favorites]


"It turns out that the same people who like to use Facebook to post cute pictures of their grandchildren will also use Facebook to post instructions for how to call your senator and explain your objections to the GOP healthcare bill. "

And as my mom found out when she joined Facebook, those who like to use Facebook to post cute pictures of their grandchildren also like to go on racist rants against Obama and indulge in violent fantasies against liberals.
posted by sutt at 8:41 AM on June 28, 2017 [8 favorites]


"But for the moment, I can't leave Facebook, because a lot of political stuff I'm involved in is organized through Facebook."

This, for the political movements themselves, is so short-sighted. It's akin to saying "we're going to use fax for all our communications." It's not that Facebook is antiquated (well, we could argue that point), but using it as a sole vector for communication when so many others exist (that are also open standards!) cuts off avenues to gain many potential supporters.
posted by sutt at 8:44 AM on June 28, 2017 [12 favorites]


Sooo "n-1 white men" should not qualify as protected then, right?
posted by auggy at 8:46 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


We're close to the point where not having Facebook is like not having a phone line of any kind at all - simply unimaginable. Usage is universal enough that it's hard to imagine life before it.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:47 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


I finally caved after the election and got a FB account. I don't use my real name and I don't post anything to my personal timeline. I use it just to join groups.

But I will never until my dying day understand their moderation policy. I flagged three openly racist death threats on a local BLM group's post (all by the same dude) and they all got returned as "not hate speech." If saying "I hope all you [black people] die violently" in three different ways isn't hate speech I really don't know what to say.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:52 AM on June 28, 2017 [15 favorites]


We're close to the point where not having Facebook is like not having a phone line of any kind at all - simply unimaginable. Usage is universal enough that it's hard to imagine life before it.

Maybe this is location-dependent, but I was just last night talking to some people who throw events in NYC and they were saying that so many people have either left facebook or quit regularly using it that event info disseminated only on facebook now leads to a noticeably lower attendance, which is a change over what was true a year or two ago.
posted by overhauser at 8:54 AM on June 28, 2017 [12 favorites]


Sooo "n-1 white men" should not qualify as protected then, right?

Yeah, should be. "Literally kill literally every single man on the planet (except my mate Jim)" is a-ok, but "men suck" is not.

Logical.
posted by Dysk at 9:10 AM on June 28, 2017 [7 favorites]


But Literally kill literally every single man on the planet is actually OK if you mean to leave the married ones alive.
posted by achrise at 9:15 AM on June 28, 2017 [7 favorites]


this reminds me of a paper i read back in uni by catherine mackinnon, which describes the way gender-blind anti-discrimination laws resulted in a bias in favour of fathers in custody disputes, because men tend to make more money, are more likely to own a home etc.. point being, formal equality is not the same as equity.

also, i recently discovered that you can deactivate your fb account, but keep messenger. it's been working pretty well for me!
posted by thedamnbees at 9:17 AM on June 28, 2017 [8 favorites]


You can talk to your friends somewhere else besides Facebook.

When you find yourself typing something so obvious that it is certain to be unhelpful to literally everyone in the conversation, feel free to reconsider.


I can't tell if this is admonishing Autumnheart, or the way most of Facebook works.
posted by rokusan at 9:18 AM on June 28, 2017 [4 favorites]


I have a Facebook account I log into once or twice a year to click DENY, DENY, DENY, DENY, DENY, DENY, ACCEPT, DENY, DENY, DENY. And I check to turn my privacy settings back on since they seem to magically revert to SHARE THE WORLD time Facebook does some sort of update.

Also I see a number of people I knew a decade ago got married or divorced or something. Then I log out again.

I don't know anyone who has quit Facebook and regrets it.
posted by rokusan at 9:19 AM on June 28, 2017 [7 favorites]


Maybe this is location-dependent, but I was just last night talking to some people who throw events in NYC and they were saying that so many people have either left facebook or quit regularly using it that event info disseminated only on facebook now leads to a noticeably lower attendance, which is a change over what was true a year or two ago.

I think it is location dependent, to a degree. Part of the issue is the lack of any decent alternatives outside of large cities. If I run a gig, I can poster and flier round town, but that's only going to reach people in my shitty little town. I can promote it on Facebook and all my friends in the county can see it (and those further afield, though they're less likely to turn up) and I can promote it to specific interest groups (UK queer punks, UK doom metal scene, whatever) and reach a huge audience. I cannot afford to flier and poster my own town, the next few towns over, and the two nearby cities, especially if I'm trying to cover all of Birmingham in posters to lure maybe five people to a Warwickshire town. There are no other goods ways to reach people - nobody under forty reads local papers (and I'd have to get ads in line ten different local papers to cover all the towns and cities in a thirty mile radius) and the only gig-listing services for around here are... On Facebook!
posted by Dysk at 9:19 AM on June 28, 2017 [4 favorites]


(And on top of that, have been offered gigs by random people I've never met with every band I'm in with a Facebook page. None for the band that has a bandcamp page and website but no Facebook.)
posted by Dysk at 9:22 AM on June 28, 2017


Metafilter is an anti-Facebook terrorist hate group!

No but seriously, my (new) Facebook account has a fake email, fake phone number, and no posts or likes of anything, because a pox on their algorithms. Feel free to poison the well with your own.
posted by saysthis at 9:26 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


I am so glad I quit Facebook and that they can't make money off me for their horrible data mining operation. I actively discourage people from joining, and I encourage folks to leave.

I hate their purpose: monetizing one of the most basic elements of the human experience--social interaction--to mine and sell data to the highest bidder. I detest their horrible moderation that allows conspiracy "news" to propagate, permits hate speech to thrive while protecting the least vulnerable from challenges to their fragility, and shuts down minority voices.

I loathe their goal of a walled-garden version of the internet where the corporation controls access to other parts of the internet in order to keep users engaged on their specific site to drive profit. It makes me want to scream that folks think this service is "free", when every bit of content and data you generate is the payment. Part of why I love MetaFilter is that I've paid for a service explicitly, with that money going towards site maintenance and community-guided moderation.

sutt: This, for the political movements themselves, is so short-sighted. It's akin to saying "we're going to use fax for all our communications." It's not that Facebook is antiquated (well, we could argue that point), but using it as a sole vector for communication when so many others exist (that are also open standards!) cuts off avenues to gain many potential supporters.

Right there with you. This phenomenon is one of the most concerning elements of the social media profusion. The most popular platforms are propriety data mining operations, with opaque content rules, and crucially, the overarching goal of increasing profit. Facebook, or any company engage in this sort of business, has very no incentive to allow political organizing, if it harms their bottom line. Depending on this one particular platform for our political organizing actions may backfire in a huge, huge way.

Okay, I'm about to spontaneously combust.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 9:29 AM on June 28, 2017 [17 favorites]


I am so glad I quit Facebook and that they can't make money off me for their horrible data mining operation. I actively discourage people from joining, and I encourage folks to leave.

People who love Facebook become such crashing bores about it, too. I haven't had a conversation with my mother or brother where they don't bring up Facebook in years now. Don't you think, if I gave a shit what someone said on Facebook, I'd make an account?
posted by thelonius at 9:33 AM on June 28, 2017 [9 favorites]


I quit Facebook a few years ago, because the few 'friends' I have there are just some old work colleagues and people I sort-of know. They're not my actual friends, and I could happily not hear about them, really.

But the moment you try to set up some sort of club, or community organisation, or cooperative, or protest, or whatever, then you basically HAVE TO have a Facebook account if you want any kind of online presence. When I set up a local sports club, the fact that we had an active Facebook group did more to recruit new members than all the legwork and flyers and articles in local media put together. And in terms of organising and communicating with our members, it's invaluable. So I'm back on Facebook.

On the plus side, by keeping your friends small in number, and ruthlessly unfollowing any who post things you don't like, you can pretty much prune away all of the objectionable stuff.
posted by pipeski at 9:41 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


If I quit Facebook, I would have to start actually talking to my mom again.

If I quit Facebook, I would lose the ability to keep in touch with many, many friends from whom I now live thousands of miles away.

If I quit Facebook, I would lose my professional network, which is national and extremely helpful.

If I quit Facebook, I would quit being exposed to some of the "leftbook" activists who are educating me on being a good ally.

I mean, I would really love to quit but personally and professionally, I benefit so much from it.

I really don't know how to reconcile all this with the amount of anger and sadness I feel over the policies which protect hate speech.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 9:52 AM on June 28, 2017 [13 favorites]


I quit facebook for almost a year, then got right back on after the election because it was where the Women's March and other more local resistance activities were being organized. I wish we could all walk away from it but we just don't have a replacement that has FB's organizing powers. And as much as I hate everything about the company, as long as they give me a megaphone I'm going to shout into it.

Now excuse me while I go post this article on FB with a link to my mastodon profile encouraging everyone to join.
posted by antinomia at 9:56 AM on June 28, 2017


Mod note: One comment deleted. If you want to talk about Metafilter deletions, that's fine but it needs to not happen in threads on the blue -- come to the contact form or take it to Metatalk.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:59 AM on June 28, 2017


Has anyone else ever considered tagging photos with fake names instead of real ones? Like "Groot"?
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:32 AM on June 28, 2017


Has anyone else ever considered tagging photos with fake names instead of real ones? Like "Groot"?

I wouldn't do this, Facebook takes violence against Disney's IP very seriously.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 10:39 AM on June 28, 2017 [6 favorites]


"On the plus side, by keeping your friends small in number, and ruthlessly unfollowing any who post things you don't like, you can pretty much prune away all of the objectionable stuff."

Of course, if you join FB solely for the groups, and don't "friend" anyone, your chances of getting into a moderated group are essentially nil.
posted by sutt at 10:44 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


Since age-based comments push things into non-protected classes, just talk about white adults, cis adults, Christian adults, male adults... dodge the double protected-class issue, and leave open the possibility that minors can learn to be mindful of their privileges and work to mitigate those effects.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:10 AM on June 28, 2017


One reason some people can't quit Facebook: it doesn't allow you to have a professional page unless you have a personal page. For instance, when I owned a record store, the store could not have a page without a human account being attached to it as a manager. When you delete the personal account, the business page closes as well.

Very difficult to have a brick and mortar store these days without social media.
posted by dobbs at 11:40 AM on June 28, 2017 [6 favorites]


Very difficult to have a brick and mortar store these days without social media.

This is very true, and I'm surprised there are independent web developers at all any more, considering how much their job has been reduced to building exceedingly simple vanity pages that point to FB and Twitter for any meaningful content.
posted by sutt at 11:44 AM on June 28, 2017


Since age-based comments push things into non-protected classes, just talk about white adults, cis adults, Christian adults, male adults... dodge the double protected-class issue, and leave open the possibility that minors can learn to be mindful of

"Men" refers to male adults, but is somehow protected anyway...
posted by Dysk at 11:52 AM on June 28, 2017 [5 favorites]


I loathe Facebook. I hate just about everything it stands for, and I particularly can't stand how it's normalized being a nosy, intrusive busybody running roughshod over other people's boundaries.

I'd love to see the company dissolved and the responsible parties held accountable for their actions. And I include "users who let Facebook run contact scrapers" among those responsible, although I'd probably just levy fines against people at that level of culpability, whereas Zuckerberg would spend the rest of his life in prison. Fuck Facebook.

With that said, it's pretty apparent that the example about white men as a protected class was chosen for being memorably counterintuitive. They chose it because it looks bad and it's designed to illustrate a general policy. It is designed specifically to cast Facebook as a discrete, unthinking but relentlessly logical entity and to make it appear that decisions are not being made by humans, but by a big, unaccountable, faceless corporation. I wish I could remember what this is called, but it's a recognized stage of growth for businesses, when they move to the point that they are perceived almost as a force of nature with its own agency and intents, where the humans, even at the top of the organization, are as much hapless victims of the corporation's unassailable policies as anyone else is.

It's not engineer's disease. Engineer's disease is, to use an earlier example, seeing the gay pride flag with the black and brown stripes and your immediate reaction being, "Those are different categories entirely! That's going to break something!" (and then, ideally, realizing that your objection is doing almost the same thing).

What they're doing is entirely intentional, and it's not an oversight. It's not intended to protect any white men except the ones responsible for Facebook. It obviously does, but that's collateral damage.
posted by ernielundquist at 12:31 PM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


Harvard dropout's disease?
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:59 PM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


Man, without Facebook, my ex-girlfriend DM wouldn't be able to wrangle all of us weirdos for our monthly online D&D session!
posted by Samizdata at 1:17 PM on June 28, 2017


So is "I hate protected-class with mustaches and I also hate protected-class without mustaches" protected or not?
posted by chortly at 1:21 PM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


As someone with a mustache, I am flagging that comment.
posted by Samizdata at 1:27 PM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


I would have almost zero social life without Facebook. I found out about the local trans support group there, which is where I met most of my IRL friends. We all communicate through FB messenger, both individually and in group chats. I belong to a number of trans groups and for a lot of folx, that is their only means of contact with other trans people. There is no LGBT center in their town, or if there is, they can't go to it because of parents or whatever.

Back to me. All parties, clubs, meetups, political rallies are all organized through Facebook. There's just no other viable alternative these days, especially when you're dealing with marginalized and splintered communities. Nothing else has the critical mass plus the privacy features (such as they are).

I rarely run into hate speech because I rarely look at the comments on public posts, and I almost never post anything publicly. But the few times I have had to report stuff, it's never been a violation. Not anti-semitic cartoons, not "Fuck off, I hope you get AIDS and die, faggot," nothing with the "n-word" in it, nothing at all. There seems to be no line. A prominent trans cartoonist, Sophie LaBelle, has been targeted repeatedly for bullying by 4chan types and as far as I know, FB has done nothing.
posted by AFABulous at 4:59 PM on June 28, 2017 [9 favorites]


"I hate protected-class with mustaches and I also hate protected-class without mustaches"

That's fine because it might mean that you actually like protected-class! Simpson's paradox!
posted by Ralston McTodd at 5:34 PM on June 28, 2017


This, for the political movements themselves, is so short-sighted. It's akin to saying "we're going to use fax for all our communications." It's not that Facebook is antiquated (well, we could argue that point), but using it as a sole vector for communication when so many others exist (that are also open standards!) cuts off avenues to gain many potential supporters.

Having other vectors which are "open standards" raises the barrier to entry. My local Indivisible group (as with my local PSN group) organized on Facebook not because the organizers are lazy but because most of them (most of us) had no idea what we were doing. Grassroots organizing happens on Facebook because it doesn't require people to understand much about the internet.

Top-down political movements almost certainly have better ways of advertising things. But if I want a local group, it's probably going to be on Facebook. And even if it isn't, the odds are that I've still found out about it on Facebook.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 8:14 PM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


I wish we could all walk away from it but we just don't have a replacement that has FB's organizing powers. -- Antinomia

But the moment you try to set up some sort of club, or community organisation, or cooperative, or protest, or whatever, then you basically HAVE TO have a Facebook account. -- pipeski

I would have almost zero social life without Facebook. I found out about the local trans support group there -- AFABulous


See, the thing that I find terrifying here is how much power this gives a future, more fascist Facebook.

What happens when you need to organize, protest or support something FF Facebook doesn't?
posted by rokusan at 1:09 AM on June 29, 2017


What happens when you need to organize, protest or support something FF Facebook doesn't?

You run into a problem. But a problem that's only as big as the one you make for yourself right now by just ditching the platform. So at that point, it's no longer difficult to ditch and find an alternative way of doing whatever, because Facebook is no longer useful. As long as it is useful however, it seems unnecessary to give up that utility simply because we might find ourselves in a context in the future where we'd want to do that.
posted by Dysk at 1:51 AM on June 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


I figure the context of that is they were trying to make a trick question, where an answer looks wrong at first glance, but according to the Objective CriteriaTM it's correct. But at some point they needed to consider this really means their Objective CriteriaTM are crap.

Like EndsOfInvention says above almost nobody is complaining about women drivers to contrast them with women pedestrians. And how many posts about black children are talking about them relative to black adults?
posted by RobotHero at 7:39 AM on June 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


That example is crap. Those white men could also be considered white adults, which would be a subset that's not protected, right? It doesn't make any sense.
posted by runcibleshaw at 10:37 AM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Everything but Metafilter (and it's spin offs): unanalytic, colorblind, horseshit
posted by infini at 5:07 AM on July 1, 2017


To everyone saying something to the tune of, "I would like to quit Facebook—and maybe I will someday—but..." this is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Yes, Wal*Mart sells brooms for 19 cents cheaper than the mom-and-pop shop but when Wal*Mart becomes a monopoly and destroys your community from the inside-out, you will have lost a whole lot more than a few pennies. There is nothing Facebook-related that you can't do on some other platform or in some other venue just as well except for be spied on by Facebook. The world existed just fine without it and will exist just fine without it. It's unfortunate that we will have to spend a few more cents on brooms but that is worth it for not wrecking the economy.
posted by koavf at 12:30 AM on July 4, 2017


There is nothing Facebook-related that you can't do on some other platform or in some other venue just as well

This is quite simply not true, and I invite you to read the thread here for a whole load of examples. It's great that your life works the same or better without Facebook, but the rest of us don't live your life. Comparing the ability to have a functioning music scene (which yeah, existed before Facebook, but didn't for example support a queer punk scene in a small Midlands market town, so might as well not have existed as far as I'm concerned) to saving nineteen cents on a broom is frankly insulting.
posted by Dysk at 4:03 AM on July 4, 2017 [8 favorites]


So how is it that a message board—which, again, existed before Facebook and still exists today—would not fit that bill? And you either misunderstood or misinterpreted what I wrote: I am comparing destroying a local economy with an inability to make online communities. And widespread economic ruination and the concentration of several tens of billions of dollars and regulatory capture in the hands of the Walton family is actually much worse than a lack of a punk scene in a particular market.
posted by koavf at 2:29 PM on July 5, 2017


There are dozens of reasons message boards simply do not have anything like the same reach. They are as they ever were, niche communities primarily composed of geeks (or [topic] wonks). The existence of Facebook has not in fact wiped them out, and they continue to be awesome for the things they were. Online communities continue to exist, and it is those Rhayader were never served well by traditional message boards that thrive on Facebook.
posted by Dysk at 4:54 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]


So how is it that a message board—which, again, existed before Facebook and still exists today—would not fit that bill?

Nobody is there. Everybody is on Facebook.

Believe me, my friends group tried to create an alternative social network platform a couple years ago, and it eventually died out and everyone went back to FB because that's where everyone IS. You can't get the same benefits anywhere else. I really wish that wasn't so, but it is.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 6:50 AM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


So how is it that a message board—which, again, existed before Facebook and still exists today—would not fit that bill?

Tried that. People won't sign up and/or won't check it. It used to be we could organise an amateur sports club (with 100-150 members) via email - those days are long gone. Kids these days just don't check their email. It's all done through Facebook because a) people are (mostly) already signed up, and b) people (mostly) check it once or twice a day.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 8:36 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


Everybody is on Facebook because everybody is on Facebook. The solution is don't be on Facebook.
posted by koavf at 9:03 AM on July 6, 2017


I admire your solution. It seems very effective to the problem of social organizing without a critical social mass of users. Except... oh dear, how do you convince a critical majority of your peers to follow you again? I believe I missed that slightly crucial part of your explanation the first time around, and you see, it's pretty central to the point that folks are making here.
posted by sciatrix at 9:18 AM on July 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


"irregardless" the fact remains that sooner rather than later, the biases in the algorithm are going to be more than just an amusing topic for a tech blogger to ponder over. Was just discussing with a WoC friend whose work relies on the same stuff being said above. Her concern for their safety was palpable. sitting ducks without an alternative
posted by infini at 10:38 AM on July 6, 2017


Social organizing happened before Facebook, it can still happen without it. As pointed out here, elsewhere, and just as a consequence of common sense, you shouldn't use it even if it is better in some respects than newsletters or student unions. The bad outweighs the good and the bad is really bad, so it shouldn't be used.
posted by koavf at 2:49 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


> So how is it that a message board—which, again, existed before Facebook and still exists today—would not fit that bill?

because

> Everybody is on Facebook because everybody is on Facebook

"Don't be on facebook" isn't really a plan for getting your friends, and their friends, and their friends etc. and the groups they're in to up and migrate elsewhere, a place that has facebook's utility but not its downsides. So what is that plan? Do you have one? It's not "better in some respects" than newsletters and so on - it's a different universe of useful than those in most of the respects that people find useful.
posted by rtha at 3:21 PM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


The bad outweighs the good and the bad is really bad, so it shouldn't be used.

You keep on telling people They're Doing It Wrong, but your insistence on 1) not offering any solutions, and 2) snarking about it is also the kind of bad that outweighs the good. Maybe you should take your own advice?
posted by zombieflanders at 3:32 PM on July 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


"Just leave Facebook" might work if you have a large group of friends and don't really care about expanding that. "Just leave Facebook" is not an option if you are a queer person without a large in-person network. How on earth would some queer kid in rural North Dakota find your message board? Even if he finds it, what happens when he joins this smallish, tight knit group? Via my Facebook friends, I'm several degrees removed from hundreds if not thousands of trans people. I can probably go anywhere in the country and have someone to feel safe with. That is not possible on your hypothetical message board. And yes it is a real human need, I daresay more urgent than the punk scene in Anytown. (No offense, punks.)

stuff I did or will do recently that I only found out about thru FB:

- ACLU presentation about police
-LGBTQ prison support group
- Senator Ron Johnson protest
- LGBT center social group
- LGBT chamber of commerce networking event
- beach party for trans people
- screening of trans film at LGBT center

There were several other events that were ORGANIZED through Facebook, but if my friends knew I wasn't on FB, they'd alert me some other way. Probably. Inertia is a thing. If I wasn't checking FB, but hadn't told them, I would have missed those events. So please tell me your solution to get all local LGBT folks on another platform, plus FUTURE LGBT folks (i.e., kids). I'm personally responsible for connecting a trans teenager to healthcare because he found me through a support group on Facebook.He probably would've figured it out eventually but Facebook made it easy.
posted by AFABulous at 8:28 PM on July 6, 2017 [6 favorites]


And yes it is a real human need, I daresay more urgent than the punk scene in Anytown. (No offense, punks.)

...which was actually just someone's way of dismissing my example of the local (to me) queer punk scene, which is important to me for exactly the same reasons you're describing in your post. Reducing it simply to "punk" omits rather a lot.
posted by Dysk at 3:40 AM on July 7, 2017 [1 favorite]



So how is it that a message board—which, again, existed before Facebook and still exists today—would not fit that bill? And you either misunderstood or misinterpreted what I wrote: I am comparing destroying a local economy with an inability to make online communities. And widespread economic ruination and the concentration of several tens of billions of dollars and regulatory capture in the hands of the Walton family is actually much worse than a lack of a punk scene in a particular market


Irony alert.
In my smaller rural area FB is the main way that local businesses in our local economy communicate with people. I'm pretty sure I could make an good argument that FB is one of the main vectors that helps local businesses compete with the big boys and their big budgets. It's not just about having a landing page that people go to for information it's about the two way communication the platform allows and the ability to share easily. A lot of the local business activity on FB is more personalized and community oriented. These are aspect of small business in this type of community that have always existed. They are now aspects that are key to some businesses surviving with big box and online sales competition. Social platforms have allowed business to amplify these aspects, which provides them with advantages that bigger competitors can only mimic.
posted by Jalliah at 5:35 AM on July 7, 2017 [2 favorites]



Message boards will not work because the vast majority of people will not regularly check them beyond maybe the most important one or two. It's a time thing. It's a quantity thing. Pre social media I was on multiple message boards and the number of boards was growing. I'm a computer nut and it was cumbersome. I'd have to go from this place, to that place and oh yeah this one and oh okay can't forget this. I mean it was great and so much interaction but it did take effort.

Gosh wouldn't it be fabulous if I could have these messages funnel into one or two places. Wow that would be easier.

And there you have one of the main reasons that FB has become so popular. It's built itself into a hub. It makes dealing with a wide variety of communication from a wide variety of people and places easy, relative to what it would be like if someone had to keep track of the same volume in decentralized spaces.
posted by Jalliah at 5:52 AM on July 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


Reducing it simply to "punk" omits rather a lot.

Sorry about that, my hackles were up and I read the response without thoroughly digesting your original comment. Some of my best friends are in the local queer punk scene! ;)
posted by AFABulous at 8:21 AM on July 7, 2017


  1. not offering any solutions
  2. snarking
  1. Fair. Facebook is made up of many things, which would have to be replaced by many other things. So e.g. messaging should be replaced with secure messaging apps. If you want to learn about news, you can subscribe to RSS feeds for things that are relevant. I also suggested message boards and student unions above. Similarly: labor unions, churches, existing non-profits who do social organizing, local newspapers, etc. If your criticism is that I haven't thought of some Facebook killer, then that's true but no one has nor will anyone. Trusting that all of these services which by your admission are important should be administered by a global surveillance network ad company is not a good idea.
  2. I didn't snark anywhere. I just simplified the argument. If every time you gave a dollar to end global hunger, ten cents went to a warlord, then you shouldn't donate to that agency trying to end hunger. Yes, ending hunger is very fine and well but even a small fraction of those resources funding war is not worth it (in no small part because wars cause hunger). In reality, a solid 95% of everything on Facebook is completely useless dross—at best, it is a click and a chuckle for fraction of a second and then move on to the next thing. For the small fraction of content which could be considered genuinely important or useful, it's worth migrating that somewhere else. My earlier analogy is germane in this respect: Facebook ostensibly helps us feel more connected but this is empirically untrue and Facebook usage is correlated with feelings of narcissism, superiority, depression, and loneliness. Not only does it not do the thing it is supposed to do at its best, it does the opposite—altho in some small percentage of cases, it may well be a platform that is very useful or helpful (to someone other than multi-billionaires who make money of off your personal data). I acknowledge that some uses of Facebook are probably very good as far as they go but they make up an extremely small percentage of the base of what Facebook is. I think all of us can agree that almost all of it is otherwise bad or completely trivial.
posted by koavf at 3:10 PM on July 7, 2017


Trusting that all of these services which by your admission are important should be administered by a global surveillance network ad company is not a good idea.

Except that all of "these" services you've just listed aren't Facebook, exist independently of Facebook, and are not administered by Facebook. Facebook existing has not made secure messaging apps, RSS feeds, or students' unions (what the fuck?) go away, nor has it taken any of those over. We are not surrendering any infrastructure to Facebook. As soon as Facebook becomes an actual rather than theoretical problem, we can switch to all of those frankly inferior alternatives. There is simply no need to do it now.
posted by Dysk at 1:06 AM on July 8, 2017


I think all of us can agree that almost all of it is otherwise bad or completely trivial.

Also no, we've been through this at length in this thread with loads of people detailing the many ways in which it quite simply isn't dross for many of us, and your continued dismissal of the experience of everyone but yourself is, again, frankly insulting.
posted by Dysk at 1:08 AM on July 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


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