Comments on: The Obama Assassination Poll — Another Story About Offensive, User-Generated Content

By: amjust sayin

amjust sayin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:33:06 +0000

i don’t know about regulating…
there has to be more responsible people than sick ones, out there, right? it is our responsibility to report this kind of stuff. i do not agree with obama in many many things but this should not be tolerated ever…

By: Facebook Polls - The Ugly Side of Public Polls | CloudAve

Facebook Polls - The Ugly Side of Public Polls | CloudAve — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:21:22 +0000

[...] Common sense obviously took a holiday here, and this just opens the door to all sorts of conversations about social networking. Beyond the obvious point of “why did someone do something so stupid” when everything seems to [...]

By: Sagar Jethani

Sagar Jethani — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:48:40 +0000

Fascinating piece! I used to manage content review at MySpace, and the question of application content proved to be a challenging one.

On the one hand, you have wildly popular apps whose developers feel that it is not their responsibility to screen the user content. After all, in many cases, the developer is a single person working in his basement, and has no ability to adequately review user content.

On the other hand, once an app goes viral, there tends to be a small fraction of users dedicated to putting inappropriate content into it. This probably stems from the belief that doing so will be more difficult to catch than content uploaded via native applications.

I like Patrick’s comment above. In the end, it is the community’s responsibility to regulate itself. It’s not a perfect mechanism, and you might still make the news owing to the lag-times involved. Also, your community might genuinely be split as to how to deal with questionable content. (Look at the Facebook Holocaust-denial groups, for example.) But it’s the best way I can think of to effectively regulate app-based content, given the massive scale involved.

It sounds like Jesse and Facebook did everything right here.

By: Patrick Nouhailler

Patrick Nouhailler — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:43:55 +0000

How user-generated content should be regulated online ? .
If we look at the Facebook Statistics more than 2 billion pieces of content are shared each week. So it’s … a lot. Yes user-generated content should be regulated online on specific occasion like this. As you mention Facebook already includes features where users can report offensive content. It’s just going to take sometime to create the right tools to do that automatically. Now what kind of content should be regulated ? base on what ?

Should Farmer be responsible for somehow blocking anyone who tries to create a poll about anything offensive?
It’s his application so he should be able to decide who can use it and who cannot , no ?

Should anyone else also be responsible for pre-screening all user-generated content?
For now responsibility belong to all of us. If we feel the need for a public service we can always vote and appoint a group, a company to pre-screen all user-generated content for specific platform. We can create “friendly user-generated content” certificate for any given platform… It look like Brave New World to me but as long as we feel free to think whatever we want why bother?

“despite your best efforts, you might find yourself in the middle of the news cycle.” People watching and commenting the news don’t take too many risk, being a small developer it’s a risky business nowadays, especially if the secret service is interested about you. The good news is: everybody is going to be a small developer soon, at least there is already 1 millions on Facebook!

By: Umstrittene Facebook-Umfrage zu Obamas Tod - MediaCluster News-Blog

Umstrittene Facebook-Umfrage zu Obamas Tod - MediaCluster News-Blog — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:25:07 +0000

[...] Soll Präsident Obama umgebracht werden? [...]

By: Karen

Karen — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:57:31 +0000

This is interesting – just last week – I had a FB ad show up on a FB page I was browsing that was selling bumper stickers saying “ObamaBinLyin” – when it was clicked it went to a site that started out saying the President is a “Liar” and went downhill from there. I think I got this ad because I am listed as a Republican in my profile – but I am a Republican FOR Obama – so they showed this ad to the WRONG person. I reported it to FB and they apologized and made it sound like the problem was my interpretation of the ad – but I am pretty sure they took it down. I have advertised with FB many times and it is not easy to get them to approve an ad – there can be NO doubt about the veracity of what you are claiming in your ad – unless their policy has changed.

By: Jesse Farmer

Jesse Farmer — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:53:43 +0000

I mixed up EST and PST on the phone, so everything happened 3 hours earlier. Apologies.

By: Eric Eldon

Eric Eldon — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:38:24 +0000

Okay, I must have misheard the sequence of events when we talked about it… updated the story.

By: Jesse Farmer

Jesse Farmer — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:34:41 +0000

One small correction: I wasn’t asleep when the poll was created, although it was created Sunday evening.

I wasn’t at the computer from about 6PM onward, though, which is approximately when the poll was created.