The job of ad and content screening in general is a very low-end, undesirable job. I assume quite a bit of it is done outside the US by people who are not savvy to many things. Plenty of garbage gets through and takes a long time to get removed. For example, I was seeing Google running these “fuel filter” ads for over a month. I won’t like to the site but others were getting the same ads as well and there are a whole bunch of Redit threads on these.
They are obviously firearms suppressors. They are a FELONY to possess. The only way to legally own a suppressor in the US involves going through a specially licensed dealer, paying some fees and doing a bunch of paperwork and waiting several months.
Reddit is having discussion threads on these things and Google is still running them, while at the same time banning perfectly legal ads for ordinary firearms sold through licensed dealers.
The point is… these companies are terrible at fast and accurate content filtering because the nature of the job is that it’s a terrible job and gets done by people who are not savvy, have a high turnover, and I assume are often not familiar with Western cultures and laws. So things like suppressors sold as “fuel filters” get through and so does some white supremacist content that doesn’t have totally overt cues in it.
This isn’t because FB supports the message of those ads any more than Google wants people to buy illegal suppressors. It’s just… come up with some solution to this problem, like make these companies pay higher wages and hire more educated US-based workers for these jobs and maybe have them monitor content for 1 or 2 hours a day among other more normal duties. And spend a lot more money on it. That’s all I can really think of.
When ads get reported, they need to be reviewed with a prompt SLA.
Facebook and Google both have nearly a trillion dollars. They can pay people to review flagged ads.
Did you know you can’t even flag ads on youtube’s mobile app?
Very simple ways to fix this issue. It’s just not the absolutely most profitable way to do it. Since paid ads are the main revenue source, google and FB have no incentive to fix it.
We can fix it with regulation. Fairly easily. Just force them to do the right thing.
But Socrates, does the fact that Facebook is (currently) reflecting terrible portions of society mean that Facebook should continue to reflect terrible portions of society?
Facebook is not interested in scaling down, nor is it interested in spending more money on a cost centre than it has to. Any effective solution will likely be one that is thrust upon them in the form of regulation and civil suits. Making sure neither of those things happen is one of the few cost centres where Zuckerberg is suddenly willing to spend a tonne of money on highly trained American-based workers.
If you understand their business model these choices become obvious.
Facebook, (and nearly all other Silicon valley “startups”/companies) want to have fixed costs and profit that scales with their growth.
So reviewing individual posts/ads/anything, that is a cost that scales with growth and goes against their business model. (If the amount of users grows, there is more content to review and you need more humans for that, thus you incur more costs as you grow.)
Tackling this issue with automated filters doesn’t have that problem, neither does sinking a lot of money in lobbying so they can move responsibility for this issue elsewhere, so they prefer that kind of solution.
Looked at through that lens suddenly these kind of problems make a lot more sense to me, and it also becomes really clear why they are not about to fix it.
Exactly. That’s why I posted that, along with the example that Google was running ads for obviously illegal suppressors, and didn’t take them down for weeks, as hundreds or perhaps thousands of people must have ordered felonies in the mail. It’s not because they love it when people buy illegal suppressors or see white nationalist ads, and it’s not because they make fabulous profits from running such ads, it’s just because their content screening people are a cost they try to minimize.
If you watch the video about fuel filters you can see the gun crowd is having the same reaction as here about how Google could be so nuts to allow these ads, but they did. They understand immediately that it’s illegal, while Google’s content screeners just don’t know what they are looking at. Same with those white nationalist ads on FB.
I don’t really know the solution. I basically hate Big Tech in general and don’t want their business models to make sense (except Apple, which is selling a real product) so I’m not the guy to come up with really nice solutions for this.
That’s fair. I think I was reaching for which came first, and I think a bad society came before a bad Facebook. If we eliminate Facebook, we’ll still have a bad society, which we can demonstrate can be bad without Facebook. Eventually society will create another bad Facebook-like thing.
That’s fair. I think I was reaching for which came first, and I think a bad society came before a bad Facebook. If we eliminate Facebook, we’ll still have a bad society, which we can demonstrate can be bad without Facebook. Eventually society will create another bad Facebook-like thing.