Facebook takes down white nationalist and fake antifa accounts

[DaveCinzano]

I did submit a document to confirm my identity

Not a Pizza Express receipt surely

 

[NoXion]

Not just triple-A either. I'd never really thought about lootboxes, but I guess they could be a bit shady when the algorithm is a black box.

/tangent

It's part of a wider pattern of late capitalism becoming increasingly extractive. It's not a coincidence that mobile games, which only came into existence more recently, are with few exceptions filled with adverts, in-game purchases, and all sorts of shitty features that encourage players to spend more money, such as forcing players to wait hours, while also providing the means to circumvent waiting times with money.

Then there's ridiculous over-valuation of services like WeWork, as well as the general scramble by tech companies to generate revenue by harvesting user data. Real scraping the barrel kind of stuff.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I got back in. Everyone I know did (I think). I did submit a document to confirm my identity

I wonder if the purpose of locking accounts and then forcing you to provide information to it get it back is part of their business model. Is it a bug or is a feature?

 

[NoXion]

I wonder if the purpose of locking accounts and then forcing you to provide information to it get it back is part of their business model. Is it a bug or is a feature?

Definitely a feature. Facebook wants the kind of people who are willing to jump through hoops in order to ensure the profitability integrity of the data they collect on users.

 

[Nanker Phelge]

Definitely a feature. Facebook wants the kind of people who are willing to jump through hoops in order to ensure the profitability integrity of the data they collect on users.

Well, they've got mine

Proper, those documents, your honour. Best photoshop has to offer.

 

[gentlegreen]

I just had a meme declared a violation that I posted on my own channel last November - so I doubt anyone saw it apart from Facebook's crawler.
I appealed and they decided it was indeed a violation.

 

[two sheds]

but you can see why though.

 

[Nanker Phelge]

I got a 48 hr ban for being racist to a white fella last year. He was accusing two black women of being racist against whites and I'd just told him to pack up his fucking white troubles and go home. That was me out for 48. He actually called me a racist against white people. He might have a point. I'm not overly keen on most of them.

 

[NoXion]

but you can see why though.

I can't. I can see why an algorithm might have trouble with that, but that just proves the point I've been making all along that using algorithms for this kind of shit is a fucking stupid idea. An algorithm literally can't tell the difference between fascism and anti-fascism, so why the fuck is one being given executive power to censor things like that? Because Facebook is too greedy and lazy to hire real people for real wages to do a proper job. Fuck Facebook.

But if a human being did in fact lay eyes on that image, then there's still a problem. Either the Facebook moderating team are absolute drooling simpletons who are as dumb as the algorithms they work alongside, or the Facebook moderating team has a problem with fascist sympathisers in its ranks.

Of course what makes it harder to gauge which scenario is the case, is Facebook's utter lack of transparency in these matters. So we're left to guess or otherwise rely on the fruits of investigative journalism.

 

[two sheds]

I can't. I can see why an algorithm might have trouble with that, but that just proves the point I've been making all along that using algorithms for this kind of shit is a fucking stupid idea. An algorithm literally can't tell the difference between fascism and anti-fascism, so why the fuck is one being given executive power to censor things like that? Because Facebook is too greedy and lazy to hire real people for real wages to do a proper job. Fuck Facebook.

But if a human being did in fact lay eyes on that image, then there's still a problem. Either the Facebook moderating team are absolute drooling simpletons who are as dumb as the algorithms they work alongside, or the Facebook moderating team has a problem with fascist sympathisers in its ranks.

Of course what makes it harder to gauge which scenario is the case, is Facebook's utter lack of transparency in these matters. So we're left to guess or otherwise rely on the fruits of investigative journalism.

Yep I agree with all that. Doesn't make it right but I can still see why it was taken down - I'm assuming it was automatically done and the software doesn't have a sarcasm detector.

 

[Nanker Phelge]

Can I just state in response to the thread title, I am not affiliated with white nationalists or fake antifa. I have never claimed to be Mod, Skin, Soulie, Scooterist or suedehead, and I started my club nights on the proviso that we don't market to that strand of those scenes. Like The London International SKa Festival events, we don't dilly dally about with imagery that can be misinterpreted. We lived through the bomber jacket years when skins would target ska/punk gigs and just ram and batter everyone.

I was once contacted by police to say my then address was on a list to be petrol bombed by some Nazi cunts, the chief twat being the fucker who groomed London bomber David Copeland and fed him brain worms. I've taken a lot of hits off white pride pricks in my life, and landed a few back.

I felt sick being lumped in with those cunts.

There is something on the scenes that needs stamping out, and some of us already actively deny entry to those we know have form. We have right to refuse and we use it. We have agreed it is better to have 5 good people than 500 fuckheads on the dancefloor. I'd rather not play at all. That said, it is hard to choose an audience, so it's best if you just find one you can help shape. Like cutting the hedge.

We have been doing the two tone cruises on the Thames for two years now, and apart from a couple of kent cocks who verge of misbehaving, we have now got that crowd how we want it. It's very mixed, all ages, people from all over the world turn up, on the floor from 7pm til we dock..

 

[gentlegreen]

I suppose the human moderators might have thought the image was attacking Remembrance and calling it fascistic ...

 

[Nanker Phelge]

Yep I agree with all that. Doesn't make it right but I can still see why it was taken down - I'm assuming it was automatically done and the software doesn't have a sarcasm detector.

It shouldn't be used to control human content then.

 

[butchersapron]

I can't. I can see why an algorithm might have trouble with that, but that just proves the point I've been making all along that using algorithms for this kind of shit is a fucking stupid idea. An algorithm literally can't tell the difference between fascism and anti-fascism, so why the fuck is one being given executive power to censor things like that? Because Facebook is too greedy and lazy to hire real people for real wages to do a proper job. Fuck Facebook.

But if a human being did in fact lay eyes on that image, then there's still a problem. Either the Facebook moderating team are absolute drooling simpletons who are as dumb as the algorithms they work alongside, or the Facebook moderating team has a problem with fascist sympathisers in its ranks.

Of course what makes it harder to gauge which scenario is the case, is Facebook's utter lack of transparency in these matters. So we're left to guess or otherwise rely on the fruits of investigative journalism.

People may be interested in reading about Commercial Content Moderation as well. It's touched on in Nick Dyer-Witheford's highly recommended Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex. A sample:


In an office on the ‘second floor of a former elementary school at the end of a row of auto mechanics’ stalls in Bacoor, a gritty Filipino town 13 miles southwest of Manila, a woman is watching streams of violent and pornographic imagery pass across her computer screen (Chen 2014). She is working. As the hours of her shift clock down, she swiftly, repeatedly, marks each feed for deletion, acceptance, or further evaluation by the social media company that hires her. Her labour is contracted and insecure. In North America it might be paid $20 an hour, although it is also performed for less; in the Philippines it earns between $500 and $300 a month.

...

Some 100,000 people around the world perform such ‘Commercial Content Moderation’ (CCM) for social media and digital entertainment companies (Chen 2014). Until recently it was a relatively secret work, hidden by employers reluctant to reveal trade practices and disturb social media’s attractive appearance of direct, spontaneous interpersonal communication; CCM workers are frequently bound by non-disclosure agreements. Yet, as Sarah T. Roberts (2015) makes clear in her groundbreaking study of CCM, this form of digital labour is essential to its corporate employers, for without it their platforms would be deluged with user-generated content so shocking as to repel other users, and perhaps expose companies to litigation. As Roberts shows, CCM is performed in a variety of settings – in-house, outsourced to boutique third-party operators or mass call centres, or as piece-work microlabours. Conditions and wages vary. In general, however, the work is contracted, precarious, ‘low status and low wage’

_____
Sarah T Roberts excellent site is also here.

 

[two sheds]

I suppose the human moderators might have thought the image was attacking Remembrance and calling it fascistic ...

Yeh they'll have had a second at most to look at it if flagged by the software, and won't be as schooled as people on urban, nor have seen your other posts.

 

[two sheds]

It shouldn't be used to control human content then.

Yep I agree with that, too. See my last reply to gg though.

 

[gentlegreen]

Yeh they'll have had a second at most to look at it if flagged by the software, and won't be as schooled as people on urban, nor have seen your other posts.

Though it would be a stretch to look at my membership and posting on left-liberal-leaning Facebook groups as trolling ... I would be a very successful troll to have lasted so long there ...

 

[two sheds]

You've probably put up pictures of your house electronic projects which has just confused them

 

[gentlegreen]

Just had this flash up as a message.
It took me a while to realise it meant I am blocked from posting video straight from my phone's camera - thankfully something I have no interest in doing...
It seems a curiously delayed reaction... and surely implies human intervention...

 

[Doodler]

Re. ska enthusiast sites being taken down: hopefully people who want to self-publish about subjects they've a strong interest in will ditch Facebook and turn more to the old model of running their own websites. Don't know how realistic this is though.

 

[steeplejack]

It's not so much the self-publishing as the network you are turning your back on, though. What I really resent about facebook is that it is now very difficult to do any kind of creative event (in my case visual art things) without facebook or one of its zombie brands (i.e. instagram). People have got used to advertising to big audiences with a few clicks of a mouse and minimal content, and also we have become used to consuming culture in this way. We're relieved not to have to spend days and quite a lot of money designing, making and distributing flyers and building audiences the old fashioned way. Social media is so powerful as convenience and connectedness seems to trump data and privacy concerns for many.

The good news is that quite a few millennials / Gen Z-ers have turned their back on facebook in the last few years. I am seeing big drop offs in what people actually post on there, if they have remained. I hardly post at all on facebook now. This is very much a Western European / American perspective though; in huge parts of the emerging / developing world facebook is the internet, sadly.

Don't get me started on tik-tok, either, which in terms of it's data harvesting and multiple privacy violations makes facebook look like amateurs.

 

[editor]

Facebook has been a major contributor to the rise in hate crime. They don't do anything to stop it unless it starts to hit their profits. They're a filthy company.

 

[Doodler]

It's not so much the self-publishing as the network you are turning your back on, though. What I really resent about facebook is that it is now very difficult to do any kind of creative event (in my case visual art things) without facebook or one of its zombie brands (i.e. instagram). People have got used to advertising to big audiences with a few clicks of a mouse and minimal content, and also we have become used to consuming culture in this way. We're relieved not to have to spend days and quite a lot of money designing, making and distributing flyers and building audiences the old fashioned way. Social media is so powerful as convenience and connectedness seems to trump data and privacy concerns for many.

The good news is that quite a few millennials / Gen Z-ers have turned their back on facebook in the last few years. I am seeing big drop offs in what people actually post on there, if they have remained. I hardly post at all on facebook now. This is very much a Western European / American perspective though; in huge parts of the emerging / developing world facebook is the internet, sadly.

Don't get me started on tik-tok, either, which in terms of it's data harvesting and multiple privacy violations makes facebook look like amateurs.

Someone who worked in PR for a big charity once advised me that the best DIY method for promoting a website (or some other activity with an online side to it) was to build up a mailing list and put effort into a regular Mailchimp-type newsletter. He claimed this created much better long-term interest and loyalty than social media alone. But I guess you have to attract some attention in the first place so people join the mailing list.

 

[editor]

Someone who worked in PR for a big charity once advised me that the best DIY method for promoting a website (or some other activity with an online side to it) was to build up a mailing list and put effort into a regular Mailchimp-type newsletter. He claimed this created much better long-term interest and loyalty than social media alone. But I guess you have to attract some attention in the first place so people join the mailing list.

I've run mailing lists and don't agree. They may be good for certain business ventures, but a lot of younger people don't even use email these days. I gave up on my mailing lists years ago because of diminishing returns. Thank fuck I've got my own websites (and these boards) so I don't have to rely on Facebook to express an opinion.

 

[Doodler]

Also charities presumably, my better half is a member of a Wildlife Trust type outfit and they send regular email newsletters as well as a quarterly printed effort. But its membership is probably skewed towards older people. Would expect women of all ages to be a bit more likely to read an email newsletter than men, just because women seem to read more than men do on average.

 

[magneze]

Fucking bullshit, I'm not buying that for one nanosecond. Facebook is literally worth billions. Whoever told you that is either an idiot or is being deliberately dishonest. Facebook could easily afford to hire the necessary workforce to ensure that human eyes are laid on something at least once before it gets booted off the platform.

It's honestly disgusting when some of the most obscenely rich entities on the fucking planet plead poverty as an excuse not to do the right thing. It's the same when triple-AAA video game publishers claim that psychologically manipulative revenue-enhancing devices like lootboxes and microtransactions are necessary to in order to fund the development of modern games.

If it really is true that a business cannot properly operate without using shady, underhand and just plain shit practices, then that business should close down.



Which is still fucking stupid, because it's totally possible to "look" like one is extreme left or right while in actual fact being only mildly so, or apolitical. When this is combined with Facebook's undying hatred of properly communicating with its users, you get a whole bunch of perfectly innocent accounts getting banned, while the users concerned are left scratching their heads wondering what the fuck happened and why.

The other reason that algorithms are preferred is that it's a fairly horrific job for a person. I'll dig out an article on it. Wouldn't wish the job on anyone.

 

[magneze]

The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America

"I’m fucked up."

www.theverge.com

 

[Nanker Phelge]

I got banned again. I typed 'white people are idiots' and was blocked in seconds. It said three days and I told them to fuck off, and then got 7.

 

[krink]

I got jail for calling out a homophobe who was so shit he couldn't even spell faggot and my all-time favourite is when i got jailed for saying hitler was a nazi. I am on my last warning now for a ban, apparently.

 

[8ball]

Has Facebook not taken down real antifa accounts yet, or is that just Paypal so far?