
Laws hold the porn industry accountable for dangerous content - whatthe91
https://onezero.medium.com/why-xhamster-is-so-much-better-at-content-moderation-than-facebook-ec318919b0e4
======
Kaveren
This is one of the worst articles I've read in a long time. The author is able
to weasel their way out of holding them accountable to their opinions when
they say that if porn can "thrive" with such extreme moderation, social media
can "thrive" with a lesser degree. The problem with this is that they don't
specify what in particular social media companies should do.

The inability to post content without it being moderated beforehand is treated
as if it's a good thing, suggesting it's something social media companies
should do but distancing themselves from the implication enough to maintain
plausible deniability.

Especially ironic is that many porn sites make much of their money through ads
that harvest personal data or prey on male insecurity.

There are strong arguments I disagree with in favor of regulating social
media. Those arguments are also prescriptive, not general "we should do
something". This is a very weak one.

Downvotes are the single best indicator of the problem with volunteer content
moderation. People don't just downvote for bad comments, they downvote for
comments they disagree with. Good luck getting edgy content through YouTube's
Volunteer Force, it'll hurt causes you may agree with.

------
planb
"We have had a legion of volunteers... who review uploads in exchange for in-
site rewards, as well as the health of the community."

...or in exchange to see the stuff they can't get to see anywhere else? I
wonder for how many of these "volunteers" this is the main motivation - is
this a quasi-legal way to see illegal content?

~~~
gambiting
That's a really weird assumption - if you're looking for dodgy videos it's
trivial to find them the dark web. Volunteers who do the same jobs for
companies like google or facebook frequently say they are traumatized by
content they see - it's not just sexual stuff, there's plenty of really
explicit gore and abuse videos that come through. And if you're the kind of
person who gets off on that stuff then like I said, it's not exactly difficult
to find on the dark web.

My point is - doing this like you said "quasi-legally" must be the worst way
of doing it, as you're giving the company all your real details to be employed
- the very second anyone suspects you're doing it for the thrills(maybe you
are the only employee who actually watches every video to the end?) you'd be
in deep trouble.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> the very second anyone suspects you're doing it for the thrills (maybe you
> are the only employee who actually watches every video to the end?)

This would be unlikely. Stipulating that ordinary xHamster users are watching
the ordinary videos for the thrills... how many of them watch every video to
the end?

~~~
gambiting
I mean - if you see an abuse video, a regular employee would flag it
immediately and stop watching. Someone doing it for the thrill would watch it
till the end and then flag it. It would be pretty obvious from the data I
think.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Someone doing it for the thrill would watch it till the end and then flag
> it.

Why do you believe this? It's not at all similar to how the regular user base
watches videos. Compare PornHub's in-video display of how popular various
timestamps are.

~~~
Dylan16807
You're getting hung up on the exact wording. Maybe not to the _end_ , but
they're not going to get any enjoyment if they close it five seconds after
they part they're seeking starts.

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dna_polymerase
While there might be some legal factors to it, I think the problem spaces are
a little different on these two websites (or generally speaking any porn site
compared to facebook).

Facebook revolves around user interaction, that is videos, photos and text (in
various forms, even links to external sources). Adult entertainment deals with
those too, but those sites are mostly used like YouTube with lower session
times.

Every minute "510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and
136,000 photos are uploaded"[0] on facebook, on Pornhub it is 22 video
comments and 122 messages[1]. Xhamster should be comparable to that. The
difference in volume is striking.

Now with lower volume it is easier to moderate. Scanning videos isn't easy but
AI should help, but AI these days fails for text, at least for anything else
than an easy classification task. Hate speech isn't just random insults, there
is more to it, and current AI systems can't possibly understand the whole
context to something.

Even if content wasn't released immediately on facebook, there aren't enough
people in the world to moderate the amount of content posted on facebook
everyday.

I really think the comparison of those sites doesn't make sense.

[0]: [https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-
statistics/](https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/)

[1]:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2018/12/11/pornhub...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2018/12/11/pornhub-2018-year-
in-review-insights-report/)

------
aurea
Of course porn websites will say they have advanced measures to moderate
content. The reality is that these platforms do host illegal content [1]. Even
beyond child pornography, they facilitate the sharing of revenge porn which
content-wise might not be considered illegal, so I don't see any way an
algorithm would remove it on its own (even a human would probably be unable to
do so without additional information). Once that is out, victims are unable to
do much about it. Perhaps the original video might be deleted but copies can
spread around, even on the same website and are not taken down.

[1]
[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/766b96c0-fdb0-11e9-8343-7...](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/766b96c0-fdb0-11e9-8343-786bb3fac9c1)

~~~
nostrebored
Beyond facilitation of child pornography distribution, there have been
lawsuits related to rape being filmed and distributed. During the course of
these lawsuits the videos typically remain up for streaming. There's also the
underlying human trafficking problem that makes consumption of any
pornography, even mainstream, a probabilistic endorsement and generation of
demand for trafficking.

~~~
JamesBarney
Would you mind linking to some resources? I've heard this before but could
never track down any good sources.

~~~
aurea
Recent case of mainstream pornographers being charged with sex trafficking
[1].

Also here's a [2012] article about the connection
[https://www.rescuefreedom.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/sla...](https://www.rescuefreedom.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/slave-and-the-porn-star.pdf)

[1] [https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/girlsdoporn-owners-
and-...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/girlsdoporn-owners-and-
employees-charged-sex-trafficking-conspiracy)

~~~
JamesBarney
Thanks, those describe some horrific scenarios. I'm also trying to find more
information on how common it is and policy options that would help.

------
anovikov
xHamster is Russian owned and controlled. I know all of their C-levels, they
are here in Cyprus. It is really a brilliant company and they perfectly know
what we are doing.

Quite unlike Facebook - there is a Russian company that makes and sells fake
Facebook accounts, and being used correctly, they can live for months and even
years without being banned (used to buy ads advertising dodgy stuff). Facebook
is really helpless to stop it.

------
matheusmoreira
The author is essentially arguing that it's okay to regulate the tech industry
because the porn industry survived regulation. It's fine to try to do good by
regulating an industry but it doesn't free us from the burden of evaluating
the value of each proposed law. Just because it's okay to regulate in general
doesn't mean every law is reasonable.

It sounds like a pretext for end-to-end encryption regulation.

------
sytelus
TLDR;

1\. They don't have to worry about latency due to review delays.

2\. They can use vision based detection algos for classification which are
much reliable than NLP based understanding.

3\. They recruit users to do reviews for in-site benefits.

Unsaid but I suspect they also don't have to worry about user driven random
virality for any content.

~~~
noselasd
Surely there's a volume difference too ? I would expect images, videos etc.
that people post to facebook outnumbers what people post to porn sites by many
orders of magnitudes.

~~~
novok
There is also the issue where a lot of data posted on FB is meant to be semi-
private, while content posted on these websites are meant to be public.

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jakestuart
This is the same strategy Google and Apple use with their app stores. This
level of moderation is definitely possible in the valley.

~~~
buboard
i absolutely don't want the web to end up like shitty walled gardens

~~~
K0balt
Facebook isn't the web, it's already a shitty walled garden.

~~~
buboard
the problem is that any regulation that affects FB will affect the web

------
mtgx
The answer has always been obvious. Facebook (and Google, etc) would rather
keep the tens of billions of dollars in profit they make each year and keep
growing that number, too.

They don't have need for "cost centers" such as customer support, moderation
teams, etc. Facebook doesn't even have a large enough support team for
_advertisers_ let alone anyone else that might have some real issues with
their accounts, which I think should probably be illegal. You can't offer a
service and then not respond to your customers issues/problems, especially if
they pay for it.

There definitely needs to be more regulation in tech regarding this aspect.
These companies have all the money they need to solve some of these issues,
and then some. They'd rather keep that money for themselves and try to enter
completely different markets so they can become an even bigger monopoly
instead, though (which is yet another good reason to put restrictions on this
stuff, because the goal should be to minimize the number of monopolies).

~~~
frereubu
I vouched for this comment, because I don’t see what was so objectionable
about it. It seems like a genuinely held opinion, expressed in a relatively
measured tone. If you disagree, reply with your reasons rather than trying to
get it removed.

~~~
icebraining
Nobody tried to get that comment removed.

~~~
altacc
Downvoting is effectively voting for a comment to removed.

~~~
scarface74
How so? Downvoted comments can still be seen.

------
dustinmoris
I have a Facebook account, but I've not logged in for many years now, I've
never had the app installed on any of my phones (last time I used Facebook the
chat app was still working in the mobile version of the web app) and recently
some kids seriously asked me what Facebook even is. As far as I'm concerned
it's dead and I wonder how they are still even making any money?

Is it really just some old people there now and a bunch of _influenza_ seeking
self confirmation through meaningless likes and then the majority which is
left is perhaps some bots and political activits to spam those few old people
with shit that nobody outside their bubble gives a damn? This is a serious
question, what's happening on Facebook nowadays that still keeps that domain
alive?

> If a porn site were the subject of an investigation that revealed it had
> been home to millions of images of child abuse content, its parent company
> probably wouldn’t remain in business for much longer. For Facebook, however,
> a Times piece that alleged an epidemic of child abuse on its platform was
> just a bad news day. That’s a stark difference in reaction to the same
> offense, and one that should give us all pause.

So true. How is Facebook not being penalised really badly for this? Facebook
distributing child absue through their unmoderated platform is the same as if
Facebook would have build a bunch of robots who would have handed out child
abuse magazines to millions of households. It is literally the same - a
machine, which allegedely can't _see_ \- publicising horrendous content to
millions of people. In the latter case Zuck would be locked into a prision
cell on Guantanamo Bay for the rest of his life, in the former he just shruggs
it off like nothing and keeps being one of the richest people on earth because
of it. Quite stark contrast.

~~~
partyboat1586
Facebook is still alive because it serves its primary purpose as a searchable
book of faces. Even if gen z kids are not signing up anymore millennials will
occasionally check in on their high school and college cohort and use it to
look new people up. Meanwhile boomers actively use it to stay connected with
family, especially if they have family abroad. It doesn't matter if everyone
is in a little bubble, that's what they want. FB can still happily serve them
ads. Twitter is for people with a global focus, it is where bubbles clash,
Facebook is for confirmation and support from friends and family. Different
people want different things.

~~~
scarface74
You do realize that the oldest “millennials” are now 38? But what I’ve found
is that the older people get (over 25) and start having busier lives and move
away from their family and friends, the more they use FB. If you are a
teenager in high school, you see your friends everyday.

~~~
partyboat1586
I'm saying millennials checking on their highschool and college cohort after
they graduated, like how did he or she do in the last 10 years? sort of thing.
I'm aware that all school age kids are gen Z by now.

