I’m not sure if you actually read the article but it was written with the whistleblower who was literally a data scientist and kept pointing out how easy it was to clearly identify (and therefore stop) these cases in question. They weren’t sophisticated in any way. The problem here wasn’t that it was difficult, it’s because Facebook had no incentive to care

The quote “There is a lot of harm being done on Facebook that is not being responded to because it is not considered enough of a PR risk to Facebook,” kind of sums it up!

That's a textbook definition of institutional evil.

a data scientist fired for poor performance

Making an argument that even the person who was supposedly fired for poor performance was STILL able to find what she found with almost zero effort on her behalf isn’t the compelling argument you seem to imagine it to be.

Which can be used as an excuse to dismiss her without putting Facebook in trouble for discrimination or retribution.

A data scientist fired for poor performance because she didn't perform some perfunctory tasks while she dedicated herself to investigating and uncovering all these fake bots.

The incredible thing is Big Tech has convinced us the solution is "too expensive" when they are making hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.

Here's the truth - if you own a social media platform and you allow for microtargeting and psychological profiling, you have responsibility for what's mass shared throughout.

Good governance tends to get into money. It needn't be too expensive, but it definitely costs something.

Facebook, Google et al. are trying to run a billion-sized community with extremely tight budgets, because they do not want to sacrifice their profits or make their services paid instead of free.

Of course it does not work.

EXACTLY. Micro-Targeting must be regulated world-wide to not allow it for political ads etc.

Despite the fact the article makes it clear this problem is way to detect, it doesn’t matter. Facebook created the problem, they don’t get to just say, “it’s too hard” and throw their hands up. If they can’t fix it then they should scale back their operations until it’s a manageable size.

Imagine I’m out in a park firing guns into the air and you come up to me and say, “don’t you know those bullets might come down somewhere and hurt someone?” And I say, “do you know how hard it would be for me to calculate exactly where each bullet would land and where I can aim it safely?” Would you just walk away and say, “oh yeah, that’s too hard of a problem to solve, carry on”?

> the complexity of a problem like this, algorithmically, legally and ethically.

I disagree with the framing of this as "complexity" when it's really "Facebook's profits would be reduced/Facebook's business model would be compromised".

The complexity comes from Facebook's goal of maximising profits within the permitted algorithmic and legal space.