[Chapter-delegates] [Internet Policy] Mark Zuckerberg accused of abusing power after Facebook deletes 'napalm girl' post

[John Levine]

>My personal view is that FB should recognise "press" and apply no
>controls at all to their postings.  Neither editorial policy, nor taste
>or even legal (unless required to remove something after the fact by a
>specific court order). In return, FB should be guaranteed that it can
>claim "common carrier" type protection from criminal or civil
>proceedings derived from these press postings.

Welcome to today's Internet.  It would take about 15 minutes for this
to be gamed by spammers and scammers.  It's really really hard to
separate worthwhile content from junk, and anyone who hasn't done it
tends to underestimate the difficulty by orders of magnitude.

I'm not saying that Facebook is perfect or that there aren't concerns
about how they select the stuff they show their users, but I can
guarantee you that any simple solution won't work.  As others have
noted, it's hard to pick the one famous news picture out of a stream
of casual nude porn.  It's particularly hard when the picture is of
a child, since online child abuse material, the legal term for child
pornography, is a large and continuing issue.  The news picture clearly
is not pornographic in any way, but it's again really hard to write
filters that understand when to make exceptions.

In the US we have a law known as the CDA or 47 US 230 (the section of
the US Code where it's codified) that gives online providers broad
immunity against liability for material created by other parties.
It's not "common carrier" but it's pretty close, so I can also assure
you that's not what Facebook is worried about.

R's,
John