Question: is there a legal prerogative for Facebook to proactively moderate content in the US?
Don't get me wrong: the article is incredibly hard to read. When humans become untethered from social mores, they are capable of shocking and evil behavior.
But...can't people mostly police this themselves? If I had a "friend" posting video of a dog being stabbed, I wouldn't be their friend for much longer. It seems that the result would be relatively small cesspools of highly antisocial behavior. Cesspools which will continue to exist regardless of any moderating effort.
Alternative to moderation: introduce "public content ratings" for the content users post publicly. Machines automatically assess content and rate the user based on the maturity level of their public discussion. I would be "teen-mature" because I sometimes say "shit" online and perhaps another user would be "highly mature - disturbing violence and sexual content". Their ratings would weight groups.
Then, it's up to me to decide who I associate with online.
Caveat: nothing is a panacea. We're all trying to figure out how to handle the fact that we gave every maniac a megaphone to the masses.
> If I had a "friend" posting video of a dog being stabbed, I wouldn't be their friend for much longer.
It's less about it being for you, and more about that it would be hard to sell ad space when it sits next to content of that type. Your friend might not post those materials, but what about Pages and Groups, which is where I'd say most FB users spend their time these days.
In my opinion, Facebook is trying to maintain the illusion that this kind of content isn't being posted at all, that they present a "safe" environment for their customers. If people started to see this kind of content, they might be motivated to stop using Facebook all together. It might also prevent de-friending; I strongly suspect that Facebook doesn't want people to "de-friend" each other. Note how many alternatives they provide to actually "de-friending" (i.e. the "snooze" option).
Question: is there a legal prerogative for Facebook to proactively moderate content in the US?
Not that I'm aware of, but there's a commercial one because advertisers don't want to be associated with certain kinds of content and FB is a public company. Usenet worked great as a distributed social communication protocol, but fell apart under commercial pressure, and it's not obvious how to compete with the huge infrastructural advantages of commercial platforms using voluntary protocols.
It seems that the result would be relatively small cesspools of highly antisocial behavior. Cesspools which will continue to exist regardless of any moderating effort.
One approach is to monitor the cesspools and discriminate against content matchable to those originating points.
Don't get me wrong: the article is incredibly hard to read. When humans become untethered from social mores, they are capable of shocking and evil behavior.
But...can't people mostly police this themselves? If I had a "friend" posting video of a dog being stabbed, I wouldn't be their friend for much longer. It seems that the result would be relatively small cesspools of highly antisocial behavior. Cesspools which will continue to exist regardless of any moderating effort.
Alternative to moderation: introduce "public content ratings" for the content users post publicly. Machines automatically assess content and rate the user based on the maturity level of their public discussion. I would be "teen-mature" because I sometimes say "shit" online and perhaps another user would be "highly mature - disturbing violence and sexual content". Their ratings would weight groups.
Then, it's up to me to decide who I associate with online.
Caveat: nothing is a panacea. We're all trying to figure out how to handle the fact that we gave every maniac a megaphone to the masses.