As the fall-out from manipulated US presidential campaign and UK Brexit national referendum continues try at it might Facebook Inc just can't give a cursory apology for its part in these events and mover on - users and mainstream media won't cease scutiny of its business practices.
News.com.au, 27 July 2018:
Shares in Facebook plummeted 19 per cent to $US176.26 at the end of trading on Thursday, wiping out some $US120 billion ($A160 billion) — believed to be the worst single-day evaporation of market value for any company....
Founder Mark Zuckerberg, who has a 13 percent stake in Facebook, saw his fortune dropped by more than $US12 billion ($A16 billion) in less than 24 hours, to around $74 billion ($A100 billion).
The fall came after the social media giant revealed three million European users had closed their accounts since the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The record decline pushed the tech-heavy Nasdaq more than one per cent lower.
CNet, 27 July 2018:
It began Wednesday with Facebook, which announced that daily active user counts had fallen in Europe, to 279 million from 282 million earlier this year. Facebook also indicated it was no longer growing in the US and Canada, two of the most lucrative advertising markets. Just as Facebook was working through its second year of nearly nonstop scandals over unchecked political meddling and data misuse, it was becoming clear that the days of consistent and relatively easy growth were fading.
Reuters, 28 July 2018:
NEW YORK (Reuters) -
Facebook Inc (FB.O)
and its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg were sued on Friday in what could be
the first of many lawsuits over a disappointing earnings announcement by the
social media company that wiped out about $120 billion of shareholder wealth.
The complaint filed by
shareholder James Kacouris in Manhattan federal court accused Facebook,
Zuckerberg and Chief Financial Officer David Wehner of making misleading
statements about or failing to disclose slowing revenue growth, falling
operating margins, and declines in active users.
Chanel4.com, news release, 17 July 2018:
Dispatches
investigation reveals how Facebook moderates content
An undercover investigation by Firecrest Films for Channel 4 Dispatches
has revealed for the first time how Facebook decides what users can and can’t
see on the platform. (Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network, Channel 4 Dispatches, 9pm, 17 July).
Dispatches’ investigation reveals:
*Violent content such as graphic images and videos of assaults on children, remaining on the site, despite being
flagged by users as inappropriate and requests to have it removed.
· *Thousands of reported posts remained
unmoderated and on the site while we were filming, beyond Facebook’s stated aim
of a 24-hour turnaround, including potentially posts relating to suicide
threats and self-harm.
· * Moderators told not to take any
action if content shows a child who is visibly below Facebook’s 13-year-old age
limit, rather than report it as posted by underage users, even if the content
includes self-harming.
· *Allegations from an early Facebook
investor and mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, that Facebook’s business model benefits
from extreme content which engages viewers for longer, generating higher
advertising revenue.
· *Pages belonging to far-right groups,
with large numbers of followers, allowed to exceed deletion threshold, and
subject to different treatment in the same category as pages belonging to
governments and news organisations.
· * Policies allowing hate speech towards
ethnic and religious immigrants, and trainers instructing moderators to ignore
racist content in accordance with Facebook’s policies.
Dispatches sent an
undercover reporter to work as a content moderator in Facebook’s largest centre
for UK content moderation. The work is outsourced to a company called Cpl Resources plc in Dublin which has worked with Facebook since 2010. The
investigation reveals the training given to content moderators to demonstrate
how to decide whether content reported to them by users, such as graphic images and videos of child abuse, self-harming, and violence should be allowed to remain on the site or be deleted. Dispatches also films day-to-day moderation
of content on the site, revealing:
Violent content:
One of the most sensitive areas of Facebook’s content rulebook is about
graphic violence. When dealing with graphic violence content, moderators have
three options – ignore, delete, or mark as disturbing which places restrictions
on who can see the content.
Dispatches’ undercover reporter is seen moderating a video showing two
teenage schoolgirls fighting. Both girls are clearly identifiable and the video
has been shared more than a thousand times. He’s told that Facebook’s rules say
that because the video has been posted with a caption condemning the violence
and warning people to be careful about visiting the location where it was
filmed, it should not be deleted and instead should be left on the site and
marked as disturbing content. Dispatches speaks to the mother of the girl
involved who tells the programme the distress and impact the video had on her
daughter. She struggles to understand the decision to leave the video up on the
site. “To wake up the next day and find out that literally the whole world is
watching must have been horrifying. It was humiliating for her, it was
devastating for her. You see the images and it’s horrible, it’s disgusting.
That’s someone’s child fighting in the park. It’s not Facebook entertainment.”
Facebook told Dispatches that the child or parent of a child featured in
videos like this can ask them to be removed. Richard Allan, VP of Public Policy
at Facebook said, “Where people are highlighting an issue and condemning the
issue, even if the issue is painful, there are a lot of circumstances where
people will say to us, look Facebook, you should not interfere with my ability
to highlight a problem that’s occurred.
Online anti-child abuse campaigner Nicci Astin tells Dispatches about
another violent video which shows a man punching and stamping on a toddler. She
says she reported the video to Facebook in 2012 and received a message back
saying it didn’t violate its terms and conditions. The video is used during the
undercover reporter’s training period as an example of what would be left up on
the site, and marked as disturbing, unless posted with a celebratory caption.
The video is still up on the site, without a graphic warning, nearly six years
later. Facebook told Dispatches they do escalate these issues and contact law
enforcement, and the video should have been removed.
One moderator tells the Dispatches undercover reporter that “if you start censoring too much then people lose interest in the platform….
It’s all about making money at the end of the day.”
Venture Capitalist Roger McNamee was one of Facebook’s earliest
investors, a mentor to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the man who brought Sheryl
Sandberg to the company. He tells Dispatches that Facebook’s business model
relies on extreme content:
“From Facebook’s point of view this is, this is just essentially, you
know, the crack cocaine of their product right. It’s the really extreme, really
dangerous form of content that attracts the most highly engaged people on the
platform. Facebook understood that it was desirable to have people spend more
time on site if you’re going to have an advertising based business, you need
them to see the ads so you want them to spend more time on the site. Facebook
has learned that the people on the extremes are the really valuable ones
because one person on either extreme can often provoke 50 or 100 other people
and so they want as much extreme content as they can get.”
Richard Allan told Dispatches: Shocking content does not make us more
money, that’s just a misunderstanding of how the system works …. People come to
Facebook for a safe secure experience to share content with their family and
friends. The vast majority of those 2 billion people would never dream of
sharing content that, like that, to shock and offend people. And the vast
majority of people don’t want to see it. There is a minority who are prepared
to abuse our systems and other internet platforms to share the most offensive
kind of material. But I just don’t agree that that is the experience that most
people want and that’s not the experience we’re trying to deliver.
Underage users:
No child under 13 can have a Facebook account. However, a trainer tells
the undercover reporter not to proactively take any action regarding their age
if the report contains an image of a user who is visibly underage, unless the
user admits to being underage: “We have to have an admission that the person is
underage. If not, we just like pretend that we are blind and we don’t know what
underage looks like.” Even if the content contains images for self-harm for
example, and the image is of someone who looks underage the user is treated
like an adult and sent information about organisations which help with
self-harming issues, rather than being reported for being underage: “If this
person was a kid, like a 10-year-old kid we don’t care, we still action the
ticket as if they were an adult.” Facebook confirmed to Dispatches that its
policy is not to take action about content posted by users who appear to be
underage, unless the user admits to being underage.
Hate speech:
Hate speech:
Dispatches’ undercover reporter is told that, while content which
racially abuses protected ethnic or religious groups violates Facebook’s
guidelines, if the posts racially abuse immigrants from these groups, then the
content is permitted. Facebook’s training for moderators also includes a post
including a cartoon comment which describes drowning a girl if her first
boyfriend is a negro, as content which is permitted. Facebook confirmed to
Dispatches that the picture violates their hate speech standards and they are
reviewing what went wrong to prevent it from happening again.
“Shielded Review” – Popular pages kept up despite violations:
Our undercover reporter is told that if any page is found to have five or more pieces of content that violate Facebook’s rules, then the entire page should be taken down, in accordance with the company’s policies. But we have discovered that posts on Facebook’s most popular pages, with the highest numbers of followers, cannot be deleted by ordinary content moderators at Cpl. Instead, they are referred to the Shielded Review Queue where they can be directly assessed by Facebook rather than Cpl staff. These pages include those belonging to jailed former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson, who has over 900,000 followers, and who has been given the same protected status as Governments and news organisations. A moderator tells the undercover reporter that the far-right group Britain First’s pages were left up despite repeatedly featuring content that breached Facebook’s guidelines because, “they have a lot of followers so they’re generating a lot of revenue for Facebook. The Britain First Facebook page was finally deleted in March 2018 following the arrest of deputy leader Jayda Fransen.
Our undercover reporter is told that if any page is found to have five or more pieces of content that violate Facebook’s rules, then the entire page should be taken down, in accordance with the company’s policies. But we have discovered that posts on Facebook’s most popular pages, with the highest numbers of followers, cannot be deleted by ordinary content moderators at Cpl. Instead, they are referred to the Shielded Review Queue where they can be directly assessed by Facebook rather than Cpl staff. These pages include those belonging to jailed former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson, who has over 900,000 followers, and who has been given the same protected status as Governments and news organisations. A moderator tells the undercover reporter that the far-right group Britain First’s pages were left up despite repeatedly featuring content that breached Facebook’s guidelines because, “they have a lot of followers so they’re generating a lot of revenue for Facebook. The Britain First Facebook page was finally deleted in March 2018 following the arrest of deputy leader Jayda Fransen.
Facebook confirmed
to Dispatches that they do have special procedures for popular and high profile
pages, which includes Tommy Robinson and included Britain First.
They say Shielded
Review has been renamed ‘Cross Check’. Lord Allen told Dispatches: “if the
content is indeed violating it will go….I want to be clear this is not a
discussion about money, this is a discussion about political speech. People are
debating very sensitive issues on Facebook, including issues like immigration.
And that political debate can be entirely legitimate. I do think having extra
reviewers on that when the debate is taking place absolutely makes sense and I
think people would expect us to be careful and cautious before we take down
their political speech.”
Delays in moderating content:
Facebook’s publicly stated aim is to assess all reported content within
24 hours. However, during the period of the undercover filming, Dispatches
found a significant backlog. Moderators told the undercover reporter that due
to the volume of reports, or tickets, they are supposed to moderate, they are
unable to check up to 7,000 reported comments on a daily basis. At one point
there is a backlog of 15,000 reports which have not been assessed, with some
tickets are still waiting for moderation up to five days after being reported.
Facebook told Dispatches that the backlog filmed in the programme was cleared
by 6 April.
…/ends
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