
Facebook’s internal rules of deletion - unicornporn
http://international.sueddeutsche.de/post/154543271930/facebooks-secret-rules-of-deletion
======
hug
Facebook's rules are necessary because of the nature of the beast: When a
company is large enough to have to begin to hire outsiders to moderate
content, the "moderation culture" (for want of a better term) is lost. In
order to communicate this, you need to codify it in a set of rules that outlay
exactly what actions take place when. The problem I see with this method is
that you lose the ability to have a "why". Why content is left in place
despite not meeting the rules, or why content is removed despite meeting them.

Community insiders promoted to moderate have usually demonstrated that their
opinions are in line with the culture that the moderators are attempting to
promote, which means the sort of rules that lay out exactly what is acceptable
versus what is unacceptable are not required.

There's definitely upsides to the moderator-community-gestalt method of
determining what content is unacceptable, the biggest of which is that it
denies trolls the ability to 'rules lawyer' their way into posting content
which is against the spirit of the rules, but not against the letter.

Which system is more elegant? I don't think Facebook's is, necessarily, but
even if it were I don't think it should (or needs to) apply to a community
like HN.

~~~
caf
The "rules lawyering" is probably why they don't make the details of these
rules public.

------
sfRattan
"We do not allow ranking private individuals on physical appearance or
personality." [1]

Exploiting that particular human proclivity is part of why Facebook exists....
[2]

[1]:
[http://68.media.tumblr.com/1b024b598c740a53f23f35f801251cc7/...](http://68.media.tumblr.com/1b024b598c740a53f23f35f801251cc7/tumblr_inline_oi9t4oUdZ31rzk8n5_500.jpg)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#Facemash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#Facemash)

~~~
fwn
...which doesn't mean it has to be part of their contemporary deletion rules.

------
lisper
"There are also sub-categories that enjoy extra protection...: Age – youth,
senior citizens, teenagers"

and then, just a few paragraphs later:

"[C]ombining a protected category with an unprotected category results in an
unprotected category. Irish teenagers are the example. While they are
protected under the national origin category, the term teenager does not enjoy
special protection"

Wat?

~~~
ohwello
The rule sounds absurd on its own, but makes perfect sense when you read the
example.

------
tyingq
Honestly surprised at how complex the rules are. There's rationale, for
example for why “Irish women are dumb" is not OK, but “Irish teenagers are
dumb” is OK.

~~~
mattkrause
I'm actually not sure how that follows, because it says this right below it:

> There are also sub-categories that enjoy extra

> protection. These are listed in the same chapter:

> Age – youth, senior citizens, teenagers

~~~
tyingq
Yes, that's confusing, but I didn't make up the example...it's in there:
[http://68.media.tumblr.com/c7058d6bf2e9bee1facb23098dda4b78/...](http://68.media.tumblr.com/c7058d6bf2e9bee1facb23098dda4b78/tumblr_inline_oi9t0rXF2i1rzk8n5_500.jpg)

~~~
shard972
Hm, maybe someone mixed up their slide? I would imagine with all the online
bullying issues facebook has that protecting teens would be a high priority.

~~~
tyingq
There's a whole different section of rules for bullying. For example, picture
of someone urinating in their pants == OK, unless there is a caption calling
it out in a derogatory fashion. Unless the person is a public figure (more
rules to define this), then the derogatory caption == OK.

------
tptacek
There are ways in which these policies are more coherent than the moderation
rules we have here; in particular, the rationale for disallowing speech
designed to target or intimidate minorities (for Facebook: because it's bad
for business, by making people hesitant to share; here: because it destroys
civility and the possibility of intellectual curiosity).

Every time I ask peers about what the best rule for HN would be with respect
to racism, anti-Semitism, ageism, homophobia and gender discrimination, I'm
met with the response "duh, just ban racism, anti-Semitism, ageism, homophobia
and gender discrimination". HN wants something more elegant than that kind of
ban, but the construction Facebook uses here seems plenty elegant.

But yes, you eventually get to the PC/NPC stuff, and "fucking Muslim" vs.
"fucking migrant", and it's off the rails.

The good parts of this, though, are worth considering!

~~~
striking
Is there any reason you chose to compare these rules to HN's rules? HN's
moderation is one of the best I've ever encountered, I'm not sure there's much
of a need to improve it.

~~~
tptacek
HN's moderation works only because Scott and Dan patrol threads flagging and
banning people who are (for instance) openly anti-Semitic on threads. It would
be better to have simple, coherent rules against these things, rather than
unstated rules that require enormous amounts of effort to enforce.

Again I want to be clear that most of these rules seem silly or even puerile.
Just the beginning of it made sense.

~~~
lisper
> HN's moderation works

Frankly I think it's starting to fray a little around the edges. Downvotes and
flags are supposed to be used to suppress non-constructive comments and
submissions but I see them being used more and more to express disagreement
(or, to be more precise, I see more and more comments being downvoted and
stories being flagged that seem to me to be constructive and respectful but
which express unpopular points of view.)

~~~
aaron695
> Downvotes and flags are supposed to be used to suppress non-constructive
> comments and submissions.

This is not actually true for downvotes. Or if it is true it's currently
ambiguous, it's not in the FAQ.

But I find it rare that an unpopular opinion will get downvoted if it's well
justified.

Where as I think upvoting of popular opinions is an issue.

~~~
duncanawoods
For the downvoters of the parent, here is the citation:

PG: "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement.
Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems
reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

~~~
lisper
He wrote that back when downvoted comments didn't get greyed out the way they
do today. Because of the grey-out, a downvote today is effectively a vote for,
"No one should read this." IMHO, disagreement should not have that effect.
There really ought to be a way to distinguish between "I disagree" and "This
comment is not constructive and should be suppressed" \-- and there is. If you
disagree, you can post a comment to that effect. But whether PG intended it or
not, a downvote today is suppression because of the way HN works.

~~~
aaron695
> This comment is not constructive and should be suppressed

I can't think of any comments 'Dead' because of disagreement.

I really think this is a non-existent issue.

If anything the grey-out attracts users to read it. I read these more than
middle comments.

~~~
grzm
_I can 't think of any comments 'Dead' because of disagreement._

I've seen feedback from users that they feel that this is exactly why a
comment was down-voted, whether it gets killed or not. I admit I don't have
any dead comments at hand, and I don't think the search API returns dead
comments. Granting the anecdatum, here's one that I came across:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190877)

~~~
aaron695
As an example of [dead] due lack of value to the conversation?

I think users blame downvotes on disagreement, but in reality it's often badly
formed written viewpoints lacking in value or OT.

But if it's a popular opinion people will be forgiving. Unpopular, not so
much.

~~~
grzm
_I think users blame downvotes on disagreement, but in reality it 's often
badly formed written viewpoints lacking in value or OT._

I think that's often (but not always) the case. That said, I don't know how to
convince those who think otherwise. One person's weakly argued comment might
be someone else's disagreement. Compare with the Political Detox Week
experiment: there was quite a bit of expressed disagreement as to what
"politics" means. Or what constitutes civility. Or what's off-topic. It's not
only whether the down votes are due to disagreement; it's also whether the
commenter perceives the down-votes as such (which is the case of the example I
provided).

Edit to add: There will always be some percentage of members who won't agree,
and they're more likely to be vocal. I'm not sure how to measure when the
optimum is reached (most users feel the system is working as expected).

------
dandare
I understand why private companies will not publicly subscribe to any specific
set of rules: they often need to, have to or want to break these rules. They
are a business and I am not judging them here. But I believe such rules should
be an open standard - for other companies to build on, non-profits or even
state sector. Navigating these rules should be even thought at elementary
school one day.

------
deathhand
Is criteria for shadow banning content? Or just content in general? Does FB
notify at all?

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cannyvalley
Can anyone confirm the authenticity of this document?

~~~
heisenbit
I can't but Süddeutsche Zeitung is on the level of the NYT in Germany so I
generally trust them to have done their homework.

------
asdfawef
This is a joke.

