They were repeatedly warned by local groups, international NGOs and the US State Department that the speech was inciting violence. They refused to do anything and it escalated into a pogrom.
Not defending FB here - it looks like they have acknowledged their faults in this issue specifically.
That said, this argument structure sounds a lot like "US leadership was warned about the attacks on Pearl Harbor". It looks like FB under reacted to these warnings, probably because they didn't realize how bad the outcome would be. How can info/escalations be presented so as to break out of the noise? (I'm assuming here that FB also has been warned of a lot of really bad things that never came to pass, which isn't something we can know - but it's an interesting thought experiment.)
What is the expectation in terms of separate the signal from the noise? How can the critical factors be identified ahead of time? Was it foreseeable that the targeted hate speech would turn into violence? What level of reaction is appropriate, given the uncertainty of hate speech -> violence?
Apologies for the brain dump - not expecting answers to all of them. And not defending FB here. I just think these types of questions are very interesting (plus I just read Superforecasters, which examines similar decision making w/r/t the decision to kill bin Laden).
edmundsauto|5 years ago
That said, this argument structure sounds a lot like "US leadership was warned about the attacks on Pearl Harbor". It looks like FB under reacted to these warnings, probably because they didn't realize how bad the outcome would be. How can info/escalations be presented so as to break out of the noise? (I'm assuming here that FB also has been warned of a lot of really bad things that never came to pass, which isn't something we can know - but it's an interesting thought experiment.)
What is the expectation in terms of separate the signal from the noise? How can the critical factors be identified ahead of time? Was it foreseeable that the targeted hate speech would turn into violence? What level of reaction is appropriate, given the uncertainty of hate speech -> violence?
Apologies for the brain dump - not expecting answers to all of them. And not defending FB here. I just think these types of questions are very interesting (plus I just read Superforecasters, which examines similar decision making w/r/t the decision to kill bin Laden).