Facebook testing AI to stop fighting in its groups

[HiFlyer 9,358]

Fear the coming of the AI automods... (Maniacal mechanical laughter ensues)

Facebook is testing AI to get you to stop fighting in its groups

(CNN Business) Conversations can quickly spiral out of control online, so Facebook is hoping artificial intelligence can help keep things civil. The social network is testing the use of AI to spot fights in its many groups so group administrators can help calm things down.

The announcement came in a blog post Wednesday, in which Facebook rolled out a number of new software tools to assist the more than 70 million people who run and moderate groups on its platform. Facebook, which has 2.85 billion monthly users, said late last year that more than 1.8 billion people participate in groups each month, and that there are tens of millions of active groups on the social network.

Along with Facebook's new tools, AI will decide when to send out what the company calls "conflict alerts" to those who maintain groups. The alerts will be sent out to administrators if AI determines that a conversation in their group is "contentious or "unhealthy", the company said.

For years, tech platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have increasingly relied on AI to determine much of what you see online, from the tools that spot and remove hate speech on Facebook (FB) to the tweets Twitter (TWTR) surfaces on your timeline. This can be helpful in thwarting content that users don't want to see, and AI can help assist human moderators in cleaning up social networks that have grown too massive for people to monitor on their own.

But AI can fumble when it comes to understanding subtlety and context in online posts. The ways in which AI-based moderation systems work can also appear mysterious and hurtful to users.

A Facebook spokesman said the company's AI will use several signals from conversations to determine when to send a conflict alert, including comment reply times and the volume of comments on a post. He said some administrators already have keyword alerts set up that can spot topics that may lead to arguments, as well.

If an administrator receives a conflict alert, they might then take actions that Facebook said are aimed at slowing conversations down — presumably in hopes of calming users. These moves might include temporarily limiting how frequently some group members can post comments and determining how quickly comments can be made on individual posts.

Screen shots of a mock argument Facebook used to show how this could work feature a conversation gone off the rails in a group called "Other Peoples Puppies," where one user responds to another's post by writing, "Shut up you are soooo dumb. Stop talking about ORGANIC FOOD you word not allowed!!!"

"IDIOTS!" responds another user in the example. "If this nonsense keeps happening, I'm leaving the group!"

The conversation appears on a screen with the words "Moderation Alerts" at the top, beneath which several words appear in black type within gray bubbles. All the way to the right, the word "Conflict" appears in blue, in a blue bubble.

Another set of screen images illustrates how an administrator might respond to a heated conversation — not about politics, vaccinations or culture wars, but the merits of ranch dressing and mayonnaise — by limiting a member to posting, say, five comments on group posts for the next day.

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

word not allowed word not allowed word not allowed!!!!!!!

[birdguy 3,943]

'word not allowed' breaks up the continuity of a sentence.  It should be replace by something like '***' or '!!!'.  Then Ron would have had to add only three more '!'s and shortened his sentence by 6 words.

!!! !!! !!! or *** *** ***.

Noel  

[RichieFly 728]

Down with FB.

[birdguy 3,943]

51 minutes ago, RichieFly said:

Down with FB.

I  am not now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be a member of FB.  A friend of mine became a member and within a week he had over 50 'friends', 90% of whom he said he didn't know.  He disenrolled or did whatever you have to do to get out of FB.

Friends are linked by something they have in common.  Like flight simming here on AVSIM.  And by other subjects they like to talk about apart from flight simming.

Noel

[charliearon 3,024]

Facebook??  Waszat?? 🤡

[Mike A 338]

5 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Another set of screen images illustrates how an administrator might respond to a heated conversation — not about politics, vaccinations or culture wars, but the merits of ranch dressing and mayonnaise

“I’ll give you my Thousand Island salad dressing when you pry it from my cold dead hands!”

Mike A.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

3 hours ago, birdguy said:

A friend of mine became a member and within a week he had over 50 'friends', 90% of whom he said he didn't know.  He disenrolled or did whatever you have to do to get out of FB.

Sounds like you “friend” was just approving friend requests of people he didn’t know. Someone can’t just become a friend without you allowing it. You can also hid your profile to the outside world so that only people you really know can see your page and communicate with you.

That being said, for me and my distant friends and relatives it’s been a nice way for us to keep up with one another and see what everyone is up to, but my profile is locked so that random people can’t see me.

Facebook can be good for things like that but it depends on how you use it and what privacy levels you use. Some people are really careless with it and open themselves to trouble.

Its also a bit disconcerting not knowing what Facebook is doing with your informantion without you knowing or whistleblowers making it public information. I don’t post anything that I wouldn’t want anyone to know about me that could compromise my or my family/friends safety.

[n4gix 4,947]

I keep getting "Friend Requests" from women who's "avatar photos" make them appear as if they are 20 somethings. I never approve any of them of course, as at my age I've long ago lost any interest in the subject... 🤠

[Bob Scott 7,720]

I lie awake at night worried that those who designed Fakebook are busy designing something else...

[charliearon 3,024]

30 minutes ago, n4gix said:

I keep getting "Friend Requests" from women who's "avatar photos" make them appear as if they are 20 somethings. I never approve any of them of course, as at my age I've long ago lost any interest in the subject... 🤠

Send 'em my way, Bill!  I'm not on facebook, but they can knock on my door! 😄

[LHookins 3,103]

2 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

I don’t post anything that I wouldn’t want anyone to know about me that could compromise my or my family/friends safety.

Imagine, if you will, going in for a new house loan and getting turned down for no obvious reason, then later finding out the bank, rather than simply checking your references, subscribes to a service that scans your online presence.

Think hard about that one before you hit Submit anywhere, on Facebook or  even on Avsim.

Oh, and be sure to check your own references.

Hook

[Freo 83]

Never been a member of Farcebook, and never will be, or Twatter for that matter.

[Dominique_K 10,138]

A kind of scary Orwellian approach.

But it is a little easy to shoot the messenger. The social networks are just the mirror of what we are and, more dreadfully, what are the kids we raised.  Ain’t always pretty.

They can be a wonderful tool to learn  and exchange. I don’t do FB but love Twitter. I have a very selective list of people I follow in my domains of interest of sciences and art and it reminds me sometimes of a huge messy library.

But it is a bit like Aesop’s tongues.

They have given a public voice to all those who were never heard before... because they didn’t deserve it (hence the avalanche of eructations and nonsenses).  And that has been magnified by our collective renouncement to have our public school systems to educate children to behave.

Yes, the SN are us. So before scapegoating FB and Twitter and all the SN (including Avsim !) of our sins lets have a good look in the mirror.

Edited June 19, 2021 by Dominique_K

[W2DR 1,860]

Regarding Facebook - 

"Former vice president for user growth Chamath Palihapitiya said he feels tremendous guilt over the creation of the site, adding: "We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works".

He said social media was leaving users "vacant and empty".

Mr Palihapitiya, who was speaking at a Stanford Graduate School of Business event in November, urged people to take a "hard break from some of these tools".

The 41-year-old added: "The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we've created are destroying how society works.

"No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it's not an American problem - this is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem."

 

Belfast Telegraph - 19 June 2021

 

Edited June 19, 2021 by W2DR