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Leaked Documents Show Facebook's 'Threshold' For Deleting Pages, Groups (vice.com) 94

Facebook has repeatedly referenced to lawmakers a "threshold" that must be reached before the platform decides to ban a particular page for violating the site's policies, but it hasn't discussed its guidelines publicly. Motherboard has obtained internal Facebook documents laying out what this threshold is for multiple types of different content, including some instances of hate speech. From the report: One Facebook moderator training document for hate speech says that for Pages -- Facebook's feature for sections dedicated to, say, a band, organization, public figure, or business -- the Page admin has to receive 5 "strikes" within 90 days for the Page itself to be deleted. Alternatively, Facebook moderators are told to remove a Page if at least 30 percent of the content posted by other people within 90 days violates Facebook's community standards. A similar 30 percent-or-over policy exists for Facebook Groups, according to the document.

In a similar vein, another hate speech document says that a profile should be taken down if there are 5 or more pieces of content from the user which indicate hate propaganda, photos of the user present with another identifiable leader, or other related violations. Although the documents obtained by Motherboard were created recently, Facebook's policies change regularly, so whether these exact parameters remain in force is unclear. Of course this still depends on moderators identifying and labeling posts as violating to reach that threshold. [...] Another document focused on sexual content says moderators should unpublish Pages and Groups under the basis of sexual solicitation if there are over 2 "elements," such as the Page description, title, photo, or pinned post, that include either explicit solicitation of nude imagery, or, if the page is more subtle, includes either a method of contact or a location. This slide again reiterates the over 30 percent and 5 admin posts rules found in the hate speech document.

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Leaked Documents Show Facebook's 'Threshold' For Deleting Pages, Groups

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  • by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @09:41PM (#56971756) Journal

    Hey everybody! Send me nudes!

    [*opens email...closes email*]

    Wait. Upon further reflection, it would be best if you didn't send me nudes.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Just write a bulletin board or blog script such that every time a person makes a post, 2.4 random posts worth of random nonsense is deposited somewhere out of the way. That way you'll always be under 30% objectionable content. You can be the 29% Racist Squad!

  • by Veretax ( 872660 ) on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @10:26PM (#56971864)
    So... how long before some malicious cyber advocate decides to go after certain pages to try to game and use this to try and get content off of Face Book? With this info known, I just wonder if that's a possibility. Thoughts?
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      4chan users have been doing this for a while. They have a network set up where they can direct members to mass report tweets and YouTube videos. I've seen some discussion of Facebook but it's not very popular with progressive/left leaning groups so there has been little activity so far.

      Maybe it's a demographic thing. Generally speaking the young tend to be more progressive and get more conservative as they age, and Facebook is mostly for old people at this point.

  • "hate" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @10:44PM (#56971912)

    >"5 or more pieces of content from the user which indicate hate propaganda,[...] Of course this still depends on moderators identifying and labeling posts as violating to reach that threshold."

    And the moderators' understanding and definition of "hate propaganda".

    • Re:"hate" (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @11:30PM (#56972028)

      Apparently a picture of Pepe the frog is considered hate by Facebook. We had several people, we think competitors, post pictures of Pepe to our company's page, and Facebook banned us.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Apparently a picture of Pepe the frog is considered hate by Facebook. We had several people, we think competitors, post pictures of Pepe to our company's page, and Facebook banned us.

        Remember that Clinton, the ADL, and the corporate media declared Pepe a hate symbol because the Trump campaign was using it. [knowyourmeme.com] And no political reporter has considered it a gaffe that Clinton called the most popular cartoon on the Internet a Nazi hate symbol.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        You say "apparently" like it's not well known as an extremely popular meme with three current crop of neo Nazis. Just like Roman salutes.

        • "apparently" the witches, heathens, and infidels need to be identified and dealt with accordingly.

          "apparently" good, upstanding and moral believers should use 'this one weird trick to spot neo-nazis'.

          • Good point! Mistakes have been made in the past therefore we can't criticize anyone ever for anything.

            I mean it's totally the same, persecuting someone who quietly wants to worship different god and not paying to provide a platform to someone advocating genocide. Absolutely the same yes.

            • Abortion has been a black/brown genocide! Look at the numbers, it is clear.

              • Wha ton earth are you talking about? Just trying to crapflood with bullshit so people don't notice the actual nazis really advocating real genocide?

            • Because we should be so grateful that a religious affiliated political organization like the ADL could become the supreme moral authority of all that is hateful , second only to the SPLC, and that the benevolent masters of our online public square increasingly defer to them. Such is the ADL's very nature that they could only ever be beyond reproach.

              We should even check with the ADL daily for their proclamations, since guilt by association is still guilt by Facebook's standards. Vigilance should be always

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        According to leaked Facebook docs [vice.com] they only consider Pepe to be a problem when linked to hateful messages or iconography.

        If you had managed the page properly and deleted those posts and banned those users you should not have run into any problems.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          As in 'deport illegal immigrants as mandated by the law'?

          Hate is misused to the point of being meaningless 'I don't like something, don't agree, it must be hate'.

        • If you had managed the page properly and deleted those posts and banned those users you should not have run into any problems.

          I wonder which more accurately sums this up:

          "Baby, why you gotta make me hit you?" or
          "Service guarantees citizenship!"

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Are you suggesting that it's Facebook's sole responsibility to moderate corporate pages on its network, for free?

            • I like how you completely sidestep the AC's issue of having the account banned as a result of Facebooks (or more precisely the ADL's) shifting goalposts for censorship, just in order to lay down the "free stuff" card.

              No I'm suggesting that the ADL, Facebook, and their apologists dress themselves in white robes and put on a face of good natured intent, while actually conducting capricious acts that will result in 'free speech' becoming a euphemism for 'goodthink or else'.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/07/18/putins-modest-proposal-on-interrogating-u-s-officials-explained/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.114c6d261cba

      Take a look at the recent waltz. 1) Putin claims Bill Browder stole $1.5 billion from Russia. Bill Browder = the fund manager who pushed for the Magnitsky act, named after the Russian anti-corruption lawyer Putin had killed. Russia demands to interview US State and Government officials.

      “Russian authorities yesterday named several Americans

      • Propaganda works because its subtle and delivered with a fake smile and plastic boops on Fox and Friends, your dose of morning treason.

        Of course the best propaganda comes layered in truths. The more the appeal to authority, the better, thus all the unrelated indictments that Mueller can muster must be the correlations that prove causation.

        Now with the obligatory repetition period for establishing the premise is over, so it becomes doctrine. All the better for accusing your political enemies as unpatriotic and traitors, as that never gets old, does it?

        an email then hacked by Russia and laundered through Wikileaks

        I think my favorite aspect to this is still the most Machiavellian one; which is that

  • by aberglas ( 991072 ) on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @11:12PM (#56971988)

    Once upon a time the the internet was distributed. Nobody owns email, "The Web", Usenet.

    But then something went wrong, and now Facebook owns almost all user content. There is no need for that. It should be possible for people to put up content on many different sites and still interoperate.

    What is needed is a good Open Social Media protocol. So the content is separate from the aggregation. Needs a bit of open user ids as well.

    It should not be up to any company's corporate policy to determine what may and may not be said on the web.

    If Goggle had done that, they might have been in a position to take on Facebook.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      A colorful GUI with ads over IRC, usenet, yahoo messenger like networks. All the great services existed before social media.
    • Once upon a time the the internet was distributed.

      This was NEVER the case, the internet was developed by the military and universities, aka big government and big business. The internet attracted attention once you could sell things on it and people began to entertain themselves via it. Once that happened there was a "market" aka people on the net that could be "monetized" so private sector moved in to establish monopolies on where people were spending their "attention" (read: ads, google, etc). Once search engines were good enough people started using

      • The reality is the average person on our planet is a fucking moron...

        This isn't a problem that can be fixed.

        • The reality is the average person on our planet is a fucking moron...

          This isn't a problem that can be fixed.

          But it's also the reason the internet became centralized - what most people care about is one stop shop for what they use the internet for, so of course the web consolidated. Since most people use the web for mostly banal things easy to centralize.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The protocol isn't the problem. There is stuff like Diaspora. The problem is that no-one uses it and there is no marketing budget. If you reject all the things that make Facebook evil then there is no revenue stream either, so no incentive to offer the infrastructure and software development needed to make it successful.

      The best thing would be to force Facebook to be interoperable. Shareholders would hire ninjas to assassinate you for even suggesting it but it would be in the public interest. Give people so

  • The cool kids have moved on. Facebook was OK when only Ivy Leaguers could get an account but now its mostly Grandmas posting pics of grandchildren. I am amazed by the amount of press given to it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by denzacar ( 181829 )

      That's because you're ignorant. Or forgetful.

      EVERYONE is on Facebook.
      Your dead relatives, five generations back, probably have a shadow profile that Facebook is using to finely tune all those ads from Russia [house.gov] they will show the people of your cultural background and heritage.

      It's like the Mafia. It keeps track of everyone you're related to back in the old country.
      So they could make you offers you can't refuse.

  • A TV researcher went undercover in the company to which FB outsources the deletions in Dublin and this is the result;

    https://www.channel4.com/progr... [channel4.com]

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Now if only we could get moderators to actually flag blatant hate speech that is reported to them. It's like they're paid by the post and just click "doesn't violate community standards" for every post instead of reading any of them. Or maybe they've just given up after seeing massive rates of false/inaccurate reporting. Or perhaps Facebook itself urges extreme caution since people who feel that they've been censored often make a massive deal out of it and spread lies, particularly lies about why they were

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