Apple threatened Facebook ban over slavery posts on Instagram

[Areibman]

Human trafficking is rife on Facebook. It doesn't take very long to find some really disgusting stuff.

There are some NGOs like IJM who have teams of analysts that scout for trafficking victims on Facebook all day. It's largely a manual process that requires infiltrating public groups and connecting with suspicious profiles. Oftentimes, it's just strange dogwhistles to look out for like profiles of young women that say "Frycook at the Krusty Krab."

I helped build an app for an anti-human trafficking hackathon (we dubbed it "The Creeper Crawler") that scraped abusive profiles. I think ML could be a powerful tool for flagging these profiles, but this is a larger moderation problem I see no easy solution to.

[bashinator]

> Following an investigation prompted by an inquiry from the BBC, we conducted a proactive review of our platform.

That's pretty much the opposite of "proactive".

[jussij]

When big companies, institutes and political parties use the word 'proactive' it generally means find a way to limit the damage and then find a way to hide the problem.

[diab0lic]

> The paper also quoted a 2019 internal report from Facebook, suggesting that the social media giant knew about, and had been investigating, the online slave trade before the BBC got in contact.

The article seems to conflict itself on this subject.

[dylan604]

proactive in terms of legislation/gov't investigation. if some news platform asks about it and even publishes something about it, it means nothing to FB. it's not like their users are going to stop. if the gov't looks in, it could mean that a new toothless wrist slap fine could be coming.

[blunte]

This pressure should be applied to the very top - eliminating trade with countries where these behaviors are common.

And US companies should choose to not, and perhaps should be banned from, operating in countries where their services are used for human trafficing. FB and Google shareholders should demand this from their companies. Of course it will mean some reduced revenue, but I think most Americans regardless of political affiliation would agree that human trafficing is just unacceptable.

Additionally, Facebook and Google are very smart. They can connect dots (accounts). They know who is selling humans, and they could perma-ban these people. Essentially it should be possible to prevent these people from ever using any account on any of the major tech services.

[brightball]

An alternative perspective…should FB and Google continue to offer their services so that they can inform and assist international authorities with stopping it?

It just seems like platform bans do very little other than move the activity into more shadowy places.

[seanmcdirmid]

Even if Facebook and…Google (I assume you mean AdWord or YouTube accounts?) could reliably identify these people as you claim, is just perma banning them the right solution? It seems like it would be better to get the police involved and actually help whoever is being abused as well as arrest these people. Perma bans just pushes the problem elsewhere.

[kylehotchkiss]

A lot of the countries where this stuff happens don't have strong enough governments to stop it. It's easy to become accustomed to powerful western governments if you've grown up in one, but not good to expect the same level of law enforcement in the global south. That's even when those governments care about stopping the problem - it's not something you can just will away. Eliminating trade in these countries just makes life worse for the rest of the citizens there and doesn't make the human trafficking problem go away.

Beyond that... human trafficking happens in USA. A lot around super bowl time.

[smoldesu]

> And US companies should choose to not, and perhaps should be banned from, operating in countries where their services are used for human trafficing.

That's an insane ask. You'd be pulling Apple out of markets they have no intention of leaving, and you'd be forcing the entirety of FAANG to double down on their domestic authority if they want to survive (see: collude harder with the NSA). I'm all for striking when the iron's hot, but it would be awfully easy to dent our nation while we're this malleable.

[silexia]

Why just perma ban people who Google and Facebook and Apple know to be in the slave trade? Why not publish everything about their identities to allow them to be hunted down?

[swebs]

That seems like a nice way to avoid liability, but I don't see how that stops the modern slave trade in the middle east.

[ipaddr]

Today human traffic tomorrow posts critical of these top tech companies.

Let's Perma-ban as many people as possible so these sites look like a disney movie.

Let's perma-ban political figures I don't support.

Let's perma-ban all.. and move to free platforms.

[donatj]

Apple should see some of the horrendous things I’ve found in their own app, Safari. /s

In all seriousness I think Apple holding apps accountable for all content anyone on earth posts is just ludicrous.

[hugi]

Apple is not responsible for the web's content. Facebook is most definitely responsible for the content they store and provide on Instagram.

It's absurd how some people dislike Apple so much they're willing to defend Facebook's right to provide human trafficking services.

[amiga-workbench]

You joke, but if the web were invented today, browsers would never be allowed onto mobile app stores.

[kube-system]

Facebook has a moral, contractual, and sometimes a legal obligation to moderate Instagram.

[howinteresting]

The difference is that browser makers don't make money off the web, while Facebook makes money off of Instagram.

[snarf21]

That is not a reasonable criticism. However, Apple is far from the good guy. Look at all the pro China things they have done. People committing suicide after being forced to work endlessly. Agreeing to the Great Firewall rules to continue doing business in China. I'm sure it is similar in other countries too. We know the people who make nearly everything we buy are treated not much better than slaves. It is not just China, look at the Nabisco workers, look at the meat processing plants. And largely we don't care. There is no reason extreme pressure couldn't start to force changes at these companies but mostly we are just glad it isn't us. Our whole society has lost all sense of empathy and it is sad.

[3grdlurker]

Why stop at Apple? We understand that there is a government that is making companies liable for moderating their user-uploaded content, correct?

[kypro]

The only reasonable explanation is they never believed in this standard to begin with and just assumed they could get away with selective enforcing rules like this when it's convenient for them to do so. It would be hard to argue that the iPhone and iMessage isn't more useful than a relatively simple image sharing site like Instagram when it comes to facilitating slavery.

[user-the-name]

Apple is holding you responsible to effectively moderate content you distribute through your service.

This is completely reasonable.

[JumpCrisscross]

> In all seriousness I think Apple holding apps accountable for all content anyone on earth posts is just ludicrous

It’s radical views like this which taint the technical community’s ability to project on policy. If your principles are so hardline that they’re on the side of ads for slavery, maybe double check your priors?

[DrBenCarson]

Apple is holding Facebook accountable for the largely automated, but exclusively revenue-driven, decisions they make on whether to amplify or to suppress any given piece of information/content/advertising. It's insidious and goes beyond editorial control. They have the power to control the national dialogue.

Facebook signed up for this scrutiny when they decided that not all posts were equal. If all posts had an equal chance (i.e., were exclusively sorted chronologically) then I think this would be a very different conversation. But that's just not as profitable so `viva la sedition!`

[literallyaduck]

Maybe we should stop doing business with countries that allow slavery for any reason including punishment for a crime.

[erellsworth]

If we did that, we'd have to stop doing business with ourselves.

[AndyMcConachie]

USA has legalized slavery so long as the person has been convicted of a crime.

Want to hire some slaves for call center work?

https://unicor.gov/ContactCenterVideo.aspx

They've also got slaves fighting fires in CA.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/07/califor...

Want some slave milk?

https://unicor.gov/Product.aspx?idProduct=281

[ishjoh]

What would you propose we do with people who commit violent crimes and who are likely to commit them again?

[jussij]

Unfortunately money has always spoken louder than morals and given enough money almost anything can be justified.

[omegaBroom]

How is prisoners working for basically free any different?

[vorpalhex]

They could at least stop profiting from companies who openly engage in slavery and genocide.

[qwertyuiop_]

If it’s not Facebook it will be another home grown crud app. Slavery in Middle East is an open secret. All middle class families have a servant or worse a child trafficked from poor countries like Bangladesh, India as bonded labor.

[icestormsmoke]

The issue is that there won't be an international political, business and academic boycott of the Arab Gulf countries before we transition away from oil. Moving away from oil will also severely affect the income in these countries, effectively saving millions of young women from slavery.

Side note, this article shows how easy and perversely widespread this barbarity is, however these women also endure physical beatings, emotional abuse and sexual exploitation (rape).

[post_break]

I don't get it. You should see what gets posted on Twitter, Craigslist, Nextdoor, Instagram, Facebook. Should Apple pull all those too? Will they pull browsers that allow you to visit these websites next?

[schleck8]

Instagram is also actively used to sell hard drugs

It's fair to say that their moderation sucks

[ipaddr]

So is twitter,facebook, reddit and you can find it on here if you ask around.

Where people exist their problems follow them.

[PontifexMinimus]

Apple manufacture a lot of their phones etc in China. I wonder what proportion of Apple products have slave labour in them?

[vjancik]

It's like Facebook stopped developing it's content moderation technology 6 years ago despite their website growing in complexity (and range of use) to this day. Can't they outsource the moderation to an Amazon Turk-like system, if they aren't willing to employ sufficient moderators themselves?

A lot of groups and pages (like newspapers) that have to "self-moderate" due to hate / propaganda spam posts and comments would be willing to pay a monthly fee for a quota in a Turk-like system for moderation.

[vmception]

Facebook's various unofficial marketplaces like on Instagram and Whatsapp would be much safer if Facebook itself was involved and acting as escrow.

Safer for the buyers and sellers I mean, not the slaves.

Too many scammers out there, advertising slaves - in this context, but really any market - but are in fact without said goods.

[naomeux]

It's a good thing that they discovered the posts. It's a messed up world up here, and we still don't know how many of those slaves will be sold in other platforms that haven't been caught yet.

[stickfigure]

I am puzzled. The zeitgeist of HN is white hot outrage that this content can be found on Facebook/Google/etc, yet also to champion decentralized sharing systems which would make this sort of content uncensorable.

Can someone explain this to me? I ask this genuinely.

[balozi]

This is a serious issue but it still reminds me of Ricky Gervais' masterpiece of a joke about Apple's TV drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing.

[dwighttk]

I would have preferred they pull the plug until Facebook complied but that isn’t really how business is done (and that is easy for me to say because I don’t use the Facebook app.)

[pmontra]

I think that one year off Facebook is going to improve anyone's life. There are infinite other ways to communicate with the people we care no matter how far away they are.

[josh_today]

Is almost as if we need a group of elected officials to create laws for this new digital world so that for profit, multi national, corporations do not and should not have to take matters into their own hands