Content Surveillance

Political activists have been moaning about Facebook, accusing them of not removing content on the platform that they find offensive. They also accuse the company of not doing enough to promote [insert your favourite cause here] or combat [insert the name of your best enemy here].

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pushed back, framing his company as a fighter for free expression. At a speech at Georgetown University last year, Zuckerberg said "I don't think it's right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy," he said.

UK-based tech blogger Ben Evans has a good take on these issues. I'm going to quote his recent tweets.

Harmful content generated by users, even fake users, is inherently scalable, not because it's harmful but because it's content. It's people plus the internet. Scanning, filtering and moderating harmful content is inherently unscalable and unrepeatable. The internet removes all gatekeepers, filters and moderating influences, and it lets any two people on Earth with the same idea find each other and tell themselves they're right. That's not a bug or a feature. It's what the internet is.

The stupid (and far too widespread) criticism of Facebook is that solving this is much easier than Facebook says. The worrying criticism is that it might be much harder than Facebook thinks. It's insane to imagine that one company in Menlo Park is even trying to be on top of every level of political discourse in every country on Earth.

The idea that you can solve this by beating up Facebook and with more moderation and more software is maybe like all those 19th century monarchies that thought they could fend off political change by closing a university every now and then and hiring more secret police."