Facebook Rejects GRIS Launch Trailer For Being Sexually Suggestive When It Clearly Is Not
from the this-is-stupid dept
It should be well understood at this point that attempts by internet platforms to automagically do away with sexualized content on their sites via algorithms are... imperfect, if we want to be kind. The more accurate description is to say that these filters are so laughably horrible at actually filtering out objectionable content that they seem farcical. When, for instance, Tumblr can't tell the difference between porn and pictures of Super Mario villains, and when Facebook can't do likewise between porn and bronze statues or educational breast cancer images consisting of stick figures...well, it's easy to see that there's a problem.
Notably, some of the examples above, and many others, are years old. You might have thought that in the intervening years, the most prominent sites would have gotten their shit together. You would be decidedly wrong, as evidenced by Facebook's refusal to allow Devolver Digital, the publishers of the forthcoming video game GRIS, to publish this launch trailer for the game, due to its sexual content.
Did you spot the sexual content? I know you probably think you did. Or, you at least you think you know what confused the filters, and you probably think it had something to do with the close up on the female character's face.
Well, ha ha, jokes on all of us, because it was this image for...reasons?
Yes, the outline image of a crumbling sculpture is what set off Facebook's puritanical alarms. Now, Devolver Digital appealed this with Facebook, but, amazingly, that appeal was rejected by Facebook, which argued for some reason that it "doesn't allow nudity." Except, of course, there is no damned nudity in the trailer. In fact, there isn't anything even remotely close to nudity. This is about as clean as it gets.
Let's go to the folks at Devolver Digital for a reaction to the failed appeal.
A Devolver representative tells Kotaku “this is stupid”.
I could try to add something to that, but why bother? Facebook filters: this is stupid.
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Filed Under: content moderation, gris
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'Outline of a statue? Oh you better believe that's porn!'
If that is something a person considers 'explicit' I can only say that they are one seriously pent-up puritanical pinhead, and need to be removed from any job involving a judgement call on what is and is not 'explicit'.
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Re: 'Outline of a statue? Oh you better believe that's porn!'
They didn't say "explicit" they said "suggestive" which is another thing entirely—and inherently subjective, and I can kind of barely see that. I'm not nearly as certain as Timothy, either, that the person depicted is wearing clothes (I don't see any, so it could certainly suggest nudity).
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Re: Re: 'Outline of a statue? Oh you better believe that's porn!
The same way that characters in XKCD cartoons are naked, eh?
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Re: Re: Re: 'Outline of a statue? Oh you better believe that's p
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Underdeveloped
Look, it will work for music and videos and political commentary as well, whatever you want. Just give it enough data and it will sort out all we need to have sorted out. Just ask it.
/s
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Re: Underdeveloped
Or maybe this has already happened, and we've already reached the "rhesus monkey" stage.
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Re: Re: Underdeveloped
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Re: Underdeveloped
I see your sarcasm, but I'll bet the reason this came up is because they're doing exactly that, and some people have been trying to game the system by altering the colour scheme of the nudes they're posting to try and get through.
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Re: Underdeveloped
Except this time and every other time just like it (I'm certain there are millions). This time, the appeal resulted in the human also being as useless as the AI at determining there was no naked people in the images.
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Re: Re: Underdeveloped
Of course, there are millions of posts to Facebook every minute so even a tiny rounding error worth of false positives will reach millions in a short amount of time. That's the reason AI is being used in the first place, since it would be literally impossible to have humans do the work.
"This time, the appeal resulted in the human also being as useless as the AI"
Has it been confirmed that a human being has been involved at any point? The original appeal could also have been automated, sometimes these things don't reach a person until at least the second appeal.
You're not wrong if a human being did look and send the original rejection, but I'm not convinced that was the case.
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Underage
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Hmm. Looking at that picture... maybe Facebook's filters have a tentacle-porn related PTSD, so they're overreacting. The algorithmic equivalent of "I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going" meme. Has anyone tested how many octopus and squid pictures get blocked?
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https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/facebook-devolver-digital-gris-ad-follow-1203103067/
(Stil l dumb, of course)
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If you look at the image very small (like in the thumbnail of the RSS feed), it looks like a women leaning forward while sitting on a toilet.
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Re:
You mean like almost any picture of Rhodin's The Thinker taken from the right angle looks like a guy taking a dump? Double standards again...
In general, FB are run by a bunch of hypocritical assholes and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that they can't get their shit together as long as they can make a buck by exploiting their users info.
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Re: Re:
Expecting them to do a perfect job at moderating content at any scale is impossible.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Seems to me more like they're automating something that cannot be done by human beings due to the sheer volume of content, and getting occasionally tripped up by something that's totally subjective.
Do you have a better solution for them, accepting the fact that we still do not have the level of AI technology where something that's "obvious" to a human being may not be to a software algorithm?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
For this specific instance they blocked something that IS art although in a form that the mainstream art establishment probably wouldn't consider be art. If the same clip had been created by a famous artist I doubt FB would have blocked it and they would definitely have unblocked it on an appeal, ie double standards.
When the terror attack took place in Paris a while back FB added the option for all users to change their profile picture so they place the French flag on it, yet there is no such option added when terrorist blow up something in the Middle East, ie double standards.
They say their users privacy is important while at the same time they allow access to users private information to almost anyone without any oversight, ie double standards.
Users of religion A writes critical posts about religion B and gets blocked, but users of religion B that writes critical posts of religion A doesn't get blocked, ie double standards.
There are numerous instances where FB arbitrarily blocks users for posts where others go scot-free.
Appealing a moderation is crap shoot, it all depends which moderator looks at your appeal if it's turned down or not.
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Facebook = porn!
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Re: Facebook = porn!
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Computer Says No
(I can remember stories about the consequences of wrong decisions made by automated systems going back over 40 years ... back when it was considered science fiction.)
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Wanna see how *impossible* it is to make good filters???
(*) (*)
Oooh, you dirty-minded prude, that is a pair of nipples!
Whaddya mean those are footnote markers??
Ya can't have a computer saying something *is* or *is not* explicit without *context*.. and that is before we get into discussing whether that explicitness *is* or *is not* appropriate!
It just isn't gonna happen (looking at you, instagram) without more *human* involvement.
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"Facebook filters: this is stupid."
Erm, Tim, you seem to think that a human being was involved at some point in the communication here. This seems to be the kind of thing that's automated until the second or third complaint. The first time a human being was made aware was probably when Kotaku picked up the story.
On the flip side, this is a reverse Streisand effect situation. I wasn't aware of this game, now I am and I think it looks pretty cool. When it makes it to a platform I own, I'll definitely be interested in checking it out.
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Training matters
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Seriously?
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dear face book.
For anyone getting a woody by any of this, I would suggest they STOP watching Anime so much.. They might loose a part of their body for playing with it, so much..
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