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Let's take it to the absurd. I am NOT shifting any blame from the perpetrator.

I am placing additional blame on a medium that isn't willing to exercise adequate restraint or control.

A bank undoubtedly has security measures in place to prevent robbery, if they don't bother, they won't last long. Nonetheless, there are regulations on what may and may not be done for public spaces, how crowded they may be to pass fire regulation and so forth. Neither a mosque nor bank should be closed for a circumstance that could not reasonably have been predicted.




> Neither a mosque nor bank should be closed for a circumstance that could not reasonably have been predicted.

How is this any different from Facebook? A bank has security measures in place to prevent robbery, but a robbery could still take place in one and is more likely to occur in one because it's a high value target. Facebook has human and AI moderation in place that automatically processes anything you upload. Users are also able to report content. However, just like sometimes banks are robbed, sometimes objectionable content slips through their filters. By your own logic Facebook shouldn't be closed down because mass shootings cannot be reasonably predicted. The basis for your argument is fundamentally flawed and if you extrapolate it to your own examples you'll quickly see how ridiculous and illogical it is.


> How is this any different from Facebook?

Primarily because we’ve been telling them they need to do a better job about this for years, so “could not reasonably have been predicted“ absolutely does not apply. They have literally been condemned by a United Nations investigator for what happened in Myanmar [1]. Multiple government have been unhappy with their attitude problem [2]. In this report, one of the problems is they “continue to host and publish the mosque attack video”, which they absolutely don’t have any excuse for not being aware of, not any more.

If this is the best that the state of the art can manage, then the state of the art is not good enough for Facebook to continue to exist. If Facebook were a human, it would have been fired for gross negligence.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/13/myanmar-u...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/31/uk-and-ca...


It isn't - if they were not providing a broadcast platform. The local bank branch broadcasts nada, if they do somehow broadcast your financial info they can be prosecuted for failing their duty of care, and you'll be eligible for compensation even without prosecution.

Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit have size and reach enough that turning a blind eye is no longer credible. We've seen countless issues crop up with regard to elections, election advertising, hate speech, and in this case broadcasting a slaughter. All of which serve to demonstrate they are unwilling to self-regulate taking them into territory where it's clear current regulation is not adequate.

Calling for adequate regulation to require moderation and oversight, and to require a duty of care to their users, viewers and listeners is not calling for them to be closed down. That comes if they prove unwilling to obey said regulation, as does any of the other measures brought to bear against habitual law breakers - fines, asset seizure, blocking etc. Regulation that will vary between different countries as they will choose differing limits.


Sometimes? I think the repeated uploads from the Christchurch video showed that their AI is not working.


We can apply the same argument to governments with their lack of censorship of bad words as people walk the streets. We don't because it's ridiculous on it's face, and we don't want a blatant surveillance society such as that.


adequate restraint or control is a subjective impression most users probably do not agree with.


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Which of those examples already have copyright infringement detection filters built in which should have been capable of preventing, e.g. re-uploading of the original livestream?

Do any of them boast about their natural language processing and engage in psychological experiments on their users to detect, e.g. suicidal tendencies?




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