> You seem to be venting incoherently.

This breaks the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all—regardless of how bad another comment is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Seems perfectly coherent to me. He's saying that if your business can't afford to solve the problems it creates (and instead pushes the problems onto society at large and/or disposable workers), then he thinks that business should go under.

The prevalence of fake news and hate speech on Facebook is caused by problems in society itself, not by Facebook.

Facebook is a massive enabler for the spread of fake news/hate speech. I do not doubt that there are problems in society, but Facebook needs to be held accountable for its (in)action.

Should paper manufacturers be responsible for the content that’s printed? Should ink manufacturers be held liable for what people do with it? Should the post office be held liable for messages being mailed? Remember — Facebook is voluntary. Nobody is forced to be there and if there are uncomfortable messages to which you are being exposed, turn it off. Sign out. Quit using it.

You seem to have an almost hysterical reaction to this story. Why are you so sensitive? Did Nazis and violence and Red Brigade terrorists and Communists and racists and Islamic extremists not spread their messages effectively before Facebook? Has the rate of violence from these groups increased since Facebook?

I don’t have stats in front of me, but I would argue that violence, terrorism and hate has decreased since Facebook. Sure we hear more about it now, but that’s a result of media penetration and not an actual increase in incidents. I would invite data that suggests otherwise.

One might argue that awareness of hate groups has increased because of Facebook thus leading to increased marginalization of their ideas.

Blaming the medium for the message is fascinating. The disease of hate and totalitarianism spread quite effectively before Facebook. We might argue that Facebook has actually reduced such things because it provides a marketplace where ideas can be evaluated and either accepted or shunned much more efficiently.

Banning the communication of ideas doesn’t stop the communication of ideas. We learned that from Solzhenitsyn. We should encourage more openness, less censorship. Sunlight disinfects.

You make some good points. It's curious to see people attacking Facebook so vehemently, as if using it were somehow obligatory. I don't see much appeal in Facebook myself, but I don't feel the need to force my views on others. Is the Overton window shifting toward outright censorship? It's an interesting question.

Your comment was downvoted a lot though. Must've hit a nerve :-)

> Should paper manufacturers be responsible for the content that’s printed

No, but publishers should be, and they are. FB is a publisher, a distributor of content. They are not the creator of electrons or LED displays via which your content is distributed, which would be the closest analogy to your paper and ink manufacturer.

No, the real publisher is that dumbass Facebook friend of mine, who shared a "fake news" story. And that dumbass Facebook friend of yours who saw the post of my dumbass friend and reshared it further.

That's the writer, the publisher is the entity providing the means of distribution. That's FB.

I don't see how they can do that. There is little qualitative difference between what you probably mean by "fake news" and the stuff that mainstream news outlet put out. To stay safe, Facebook would either have to refuse allowing any news content on their site, or else turn into a world's leading intelligence agency / think tank to validate all of it.

The qualitative difference is that traditional news outlets are held accountable for their "fake news". The New York Times tries not to publish untrue claims, and if it does, it will retract them and issue a correction or apology. If it won't do that, there are libel laws and other legal remedies.

Fake news on social media is subject to none of these controls. Facebook is a multiplier of some of the worst tendencies of human beings, and it lacks the institutions that the rest of society has evolved over centuries to contain those tendencies.

Facebook is not a publisher like the New York Times is, and it's very disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

I don't think it matters really. If Facebook's current practices cause, enable, or magnify harm to society, then there are levers that should be pulled to minimize that harm.

Facebook is, in part, a tool for distributing misleading information on a massive scale. We control tools that cause harm even if those tools are inert or even beneficial if they're not used by malicious people. Facebook has no institutional or economic reason to reduce the harm it causes, and it's the role of government to reduce harm when the market has failed to do so.

I think the commenter is making the point that they have grown to a level unsustainable to deal with the issue of exposing it's users to fake, hateful, or abusive content.

No, the crazies finding each other and organizing is entire FB's fault.

Facebook is making this easier because it makes keeping with touch and finding people easier. But Facebook is only an incremental step forward here; the objection you're raising should be aimed at the entire Internet. It's the Internet that lets crazies find each other and organize; before Facebook, it was other sites, other services.

I'd go one step further - that's just consequence of better communication. You can't have one without the other. If you make life easier for everyone, you're also making life easier for the crazies, and for the bad guys. Personally, I'd still say it's worth it.

Are you being sarcastic? Sometimes it's hard to tell online.

Not really. I think this phenomenon is well documented at this point. How else would fake news spread so easily across social media? Everyone has a couple of crazies in their social circle, and they will broadcast false statements as facts. Due to a human cognitive quirk, we lend more credence to propositions we hear from multiple sources. The "crazies" that already believe in nonsense already do this on reflex. And so the crazy spreads, even to otherwise reasonable people.

That's not what you said. What you said was

> The crazies finding each other and organizing is entire FB's fault.

If it is entirely Facebook's fault, how come this phenomenon predates Facebook and exists outside of it?

People got sick before the great flu pandemic of 1912, therefore the flu was not responsible for the 1912 flu pandemic.

Do you see the problem with this argument? FB was rapidly accelerated the organization of these types of extreme positions. My original comment follows from my last comment. What do you think the crazies do when they've gotten all outraged at some false proposition or other?

> People got sick before the great flu pandemic of 1912, therefore the flu was not responsible for the 1912 flu pandemic.

That's not the right analogy. This is closer to what you said:

Human epidemics are entirely the fault of the great flu pandemic of 1912.

An even closer analogy to what you said is:

Human epidemics are entirely the fault of widespread transportation networks. Ergo we ought to abolish such networks.

Err, no. I never said crazies never found each other before, I said the pandemic of crazies finding each other and organizing now are the fault of FB (and other social media of course).

Then it is not "entirely" Facebook's fault, as you suggested. Such hyperbole obscures rather than illuminates truth.

Do you have any empirical evidence to back this "pandemic" claim of yours? Or is that just a feeling you have?

"That house was flammable all on its own, all I did was provide a match".

That analogy makes no sense to me. Can you clarify what you mean by this?

"all I did was being first to provide a match, in the town of Internet, where everyone is a distributor of matches."

That's not what the comment said. Here is the conversation:

Original comment: You can hire lots of humans to work at a normal pace and give them psychological counseling, and spend so much on their salaries that you'll go out of business, and even then they won't catch everything and will be frequently accused of bias.

Reply: Then you should not fucking be in the business at all! What FB does is externalizing the cost onto societies and skimming the profit!

I still fail to see how that is a coherent and relevant reply. It comes across as shouting and venting rather than substantive.

Are you a non-native English speaker? It is perhaps not a very elegant response, but it's perfectly coherent and relevant.

Consider the original comment to be the first clause in an 'if-then' sentence, i.e. "IF the cost of hiring lots of humans to work at a normal pace and giving them psychological counseling causes you to go out of business, THEN you should not fucking be in the business at all, BECAUSE otherwise you are externalizing the cost onto society and skimming the profit."

Basically, Facebook should be taxed for the externalities they create like fake news (just as manufacturing plants should be taxed for the externalities they create by polluting). They should also be required to provide a safe workplace.

So if it turns out that their moderation policy creates big problems for their employees and the world, thought should be forced to shoulder a financial burden in the form of taxes/workers comp.

Yes, these are problems you come across in a nanny state. Which is why in the US, most all speech is protected, even hate speech. And for the government to impose laws or rules to force a private company to regulate that speech runs counter to that. So I'm not really sure why this is a conversation in the first place.

there is a large set of rules that define what can't be said or shown on radio or TV

Only on TV that is publicly broadcast over the public airwaves. Anything private like cable or satellite can say anything they want.

> Basically, Facebook should be taxed for the externalities they create like fake news

All economic activity produces externalities, positive and negative. That doesn't mean we should increase taxes and subsidies on everything.

I think parent's point is that "fake news" is a negative externality of the same kind as pollution.

Which it isn't. Pollution is a well-defined term; you can identify particular offending substances or disposal methods by their impact on humans and their environment. There are precise things that can be taxed to discourage their use. "Fake news", on the other hand, is a pretty uniform spectrum, from the most blatant falsehoods to the stuff CNN and NYT write. It's hard to even agree on where to draw the line (personally, I'd draw the line at "journalism should begin and end at stating verifiable facts + opinions on those facts clearly marked as opinion", but that's an extreme/minority position), and there's no way to start quantifying impact.