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\u201cI am seeing a ton of coverage of our recent issues driven by stereotypes of our employees and attacks against fantasy, strawman tech cos\u201d wrote Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos on Saturday in a reeling tweetstorm<\/a>. He claims journalists misunderstand the complexity of attacking fake news, deride Facebook for thinking algorithms are neutral when the company knows they aren\u2019t, and encourages reporters to talk to engineers who actually deal with these problems and their consequences.<\/p>\n Nobody of substance at the big companies thinks of algorithms as neutral. Nobody is not aware of the risks.<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Yet this argument minimizes many of Facebook\u2019s troubles. The issue isn\u2019t that Facebook doesn\u2019t know algorithms can be biased or that people don\u2019t know these are tough problems, but that the company didn\u2019t anticipate abuses of the platform<\/a> and work harder to build algorithms or human moderation processes<\/a> that could block fake news and fraudulent ad buys before they impacted the 2016 U.S. presidential election, instead of now<\/a>. And his tweetstorm completely glosses over the fact that Facebook will fire employees that talk to the press without authorization.<\/p>\n [Update: 3:30pm PT) I commend Stamos for speaking so candidly to the public about an issue where more transparency is appreciated. But simultaneously, Facebook holds the information and context he says journalists and by extension the public lack, and the company is free to bring in reporters for the necessary briefings. I\u2019d certainly attend a \u201cWhiteboard\u201d session like Facebook has often held for reporters in the past on topics like News Feed sorting or privacy controls.]<\/p>\n Stamos\u2019 comments hold weight because he\u2019s leading Facebook\u2019s investigation<\/a> into Russian election tampering. He was the Chief Information Security Officer as Yahoo before taking the CSO role at Facebook in mid-2015.<\/p>\n The sprawling response to recent backlash comes right as Facebook starts making the changes<\/a> it should have implemented before the election. Today, Axios<\/a> reports that Facebook just emailed advertisers to inform them that ads targeted by \u201cpolitics, religion, ethnicity or social issues\u201d will have to be manually approved before they\u2019re sold and distributed.<\/p>\n And yesterday, Facebook updated an October 2nd blog post<\/a> about disclosing Russian-bought election interference ads to congress to note that \u201cOf the more than 3,000 ads that we have shared with Congress, 5% appeared on Instagram. About $6,700 was spent on these ads\u201d, implicating Facebook\u2019s photo-sharing acquisition in the scandal for the first time.<\/p>\n Stamos\u2019 tweetstorm was set off by Lawfare associate editor and Washington Post contributor\u00a0Quinta Jurecic, who commented that Facebook\u2019s shift towards human editors implies that saying\u00a0<\/a>\u201cthe algorithm is bad now, we\u2019re going to have people do this\u201d actually \u201cjust entrenches The Algorithm as a mythic entity beyond understanding rather than something that was designed poorly and irresponsibly and which could have been designed better.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s my tweet-by-tweet interpretation of Stamos\u2019 perspective:<\/p>\n I appreciate Quinta’s work (especially on Rational Security) but this thread demonstrates a real gap between academics\/journalists and SV. https:\/\/t.co\/CWulZrFaso<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n He starts by saying journalists and academics don\u2019t get what it\u2019s like to actually like to implement solutions to hard problems, yet clearly no one has the right answers yet.<\/p>\n I am seeing a ton of coverage of our recent issues driven by stereotypes of our employees and attacks against fantasy, strawman tech cos.<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Facebook\u2019s team has supposedly been pigeonholed as naive of real-life consequences or too technical to see the human impact of its platform, but the outcomes speak for themselves about the team\u2019s inadequacy to proactively protect against election abuse.<\/p>\n Nobody of substance at the big companies thinks of algorithms as neutral. Nobody is not aware of the risks.<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Facebook gets that people code their biases into algorithms, and works to stop that. But censorship that results from overzealous algorithms hasn\u2019t been the real problem. Algorithmic negligence of worst-case scenarios for malicious usage of Facebook products is.<\/p>\n In fact, an understanding of the risks of machine learning (ML) drives small-c conservatism in solving some issues.<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Understanding of the risks of algorithms is what\u2019s kept Facebook from over-aggressively implementing them in ways that could have led to censorship, which is responsible but doesn\u2019t solve the urgent problem of abuse at hand.<\/p>\n For example, lots of journalists have celebrated academics who have made wild claims of how easy it is to spot fake news and propaganda.<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Now Facebook\u2019s CSO is calling journalists\u2019 demands for better algorithms fake news, because these algorithms are hard to build without becoming a dragnet that attacks innocent content too.<\/p>\n Without considering the downside of training ML systems to classify something as fake based upon ideologically biased training data.<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n What is totally false might be somewhat easy to spot, but the polarizing, exaggerated, opinionated content many see as \u201cfake\u201d is tough to train AI to spot because of the nuance with which it\u2019s separated from legitimate news, which is a valid point.<\/p>\n A bunch of the public research really comes down to the feedback loop of “we believe this viewpoint is being pushed by bots” – ML<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Stamos says it\u2019s not as simple as fighting bots with algorithms because\u2026<\/p>\n So if you don’t worry about becoming the Ministry of Truth with ML systems trained on your personal biases, then it’s easy!<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n \u2026Facebok would end up becoming the truth police. That might lead to criticism from conservatives if their content is targeted for removal, which is why Facebook outsourced fact-checking<\/a> to third-party organizations and reportedly delayed News Feed changes to address clickbait before the election<\/a>.<\/p>\n Likewise all the stories about “The Algorithm”. In any situation where millions\/billions\/tens of Bs of items need to be sorted, need algos<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Even though Facebook prints money, some datasets are still too big to hire enough people to review manually, so Stamos believes algorithms are an unavoidable tool.<\/p>\n My suggestion for journalists is to try to talk to people who have actually had to solve these problems and live with the consequences.<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Sure, journalists should do more of their homework, but Facebook employees or those at other tech companies can be fired for discussing work with reporters if they don\u2019t have PR approval.<\/p>\n And to be careful of their own biases when making leaps of judgment between facts.<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n It\u2019s true that as journalists seek to fight for the public good, they may overstep the bounds of their knowledge. Though Facebook\u2019s best strategy here is likely being more thick-skinned to criticism while making progress on the necessary work rather than complaining about the company\u2019s treatment.<\/p>\n If your piece ties together bad guys abusing platforms, algorithms and the Manifestbro into one grand theory of SV, then you might be biased<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Journalists do sometimes tie everything up in a neat bow when they\u2019re really messier, but that doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re not at the start of a cultural shift about platform responsibility in Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n If your piece assumes that a problem hasn’t been addressed because everybody at these companies is a nerd, you are incorrect.<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Stamos says it\u2019s not a lack of empathy or understanding of the non-engineering elements to blame, though Facebook\u2019s idealistic leadership did certainly fail to anticipate how significantly its products could be abused to interfere with elections, hence all the reactive changes happening now.<\/p>\n If you call for less speech by the people you dislike but also complain when the people you like are censored, be careful. Really common.<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Another fair point, as we often want aggressive protection against views we disagree with while fearing censorship of our own perspective when those things go hand in hand. But no one is calling for Facebook to be haphazard with the creation of these algorithms. We\u2019re just saying it\u2019s an urgent problem.<\/p>\n If you call for some type of speech to be controlled, then think long and hard of how those rules\/systems can be abused both here and abroad<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n This is true, but so is the inverse. Facebook neded to think long and hard about how its systems could be abused if speech wasn\u2019t controlled in any way and fake news or ads were used to sway elections. Giving everyone a voice is a double-edged sword.<\/p>\n Likewise if your call for data to be protected from governments is based upon who the person being protected is.<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Yes, people should take a wholistic view of free speech and censorship, knowing both must fairly cross both sides of the aisle to have a coherent and enforceable policy.<\/p>\n A lot of people aren’t thinking hard about the world they are asking SV to build. When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.<\/p>\n\n
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