How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village • Hacker News Board

Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village

#31

Post by gaius » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 5:01 AM UTC

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #8

gooddelta wrote: post #3

I know this is going to be an inconvenient reminder for many folks, but: if you play any part in bringing software (or technology in general) into the world, you have an obligation to consider the moral, ethical, and political ramifications of what you are building at every single step of the way. What happened in that village wasn't an accident – it was the result of careful "growth-hacking", design, product work, a…

What exactly is "growth hacking" in a chat app? There were no ads here, no algorithmic timeline, no perverse incentives, nothing that you could potentially consider as malicious. What should WhatsApp have done? Every single post about WhatsApp here has people pontificating about this and that but no one offers any suggestion of what should be done.

What exactly is "growth hacking" in a chat app?

WhatsApp is a fairly direct clone of BBM and BBM’s growth hack for want of a better term was to make its users feel like part of an exclusive in-group.

Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village

#32

Post by lxrbst » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 5:04 AM UTC

gooddelta wrote: post #27

stickfigure wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logical conclusion of this perspective is that human beings should not be allowed to freely communicate in groups. I'd rather not live in your world. Technology can't fix broken human beings. There is a moral failure here, but it isn't Facebook's. Blaming WhatsApp at best makes the real problem harder to fix, and at worst makes excuses for the actors in this horrorshow.

Speed and reach, my friend. Lynchings happened in the US a while ago, but they weren't a universal phenomenon. A platform with the speed and reach of WhatsApp makes disinformation more potent. Nowhere in my post did I suggest human beings shouldn't be allowed to freely communicate – what I'm suggesting is that maybe we haven't built the right tools to enable that safely , and instead, we're exacerbating the "broken h…

> we're exacerbating the "broken human beings" side of this issue.

There is no other side of this issue. This could and probably have happened with sms. This is 100% the mob's fault.

Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village

#33

Post by closeparen » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

gooddelta wrote: post #4

jasonlfunk wrote: post #2

This is terrible but blaming WhatsApp is misplaced. If it wasn't WhatsApp, it would have been another service. Either it will be easy to communicate or it won't be. If it is, it can be used as a force for good or a force for evil. The real problem is so much more difficult that it's easy to try to find something you can do, block the technology, so you feel like you are doing something even if it's completely ignorin…

That's the entire problem with this industry – we make the assumption that someone less ethical than us will come along and build the shitty product anyway, and use that as justification to do something we likely shouldn't. Blaming WhatsApp is misplaced, in some sense – the blame lies with startup culture, and with each of us that choose to make that excuse.

"The shitty product" is text chat. We "likely shouldn't" build text chat? Startup culture is morally defective because it built text chat, and we share in the moral capability by "making excuses" for text chat?

Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village

#34

Post by int_19h » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

"“Messages about child abductors sent over WhatsApp can be misleading and we request you to not fall for them,” it said in Marathi. “Anyone caught indulging in violence or spreading these messages will be arrested and prosecuted.”"

"... be warned: If you spread them, the police will arrest you!"

That sounds like an awfully good way to make sure that people believe in all that stuff without saying it out loud. After all, if it wasn't true, why are "they" trying to crack down on it? It's a very common line of thought, unfortunately.

Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village

#35

Post by eccbits » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

Why is this flagged? 1. negative about India 2. negative about Facebook 3. asks hard questioms sbout ethics & technology 4. all of the above

Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village

#36

Post by jhoh » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 5:12 AM UTC

lovelearning wrote: post #25

I wonder why this has been "flagged". It's relevant to this forum, it's about technological choices and their unintended consequences, and it's well written.

Maybe because it is Buzzfeed (News)?

Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village

#37

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 5:13 AM UTC

gooddelta wrote: post #4

jasonlfunk wrote: post #2

This is terrible but blaming WhatsApp is misplaced. If it wasn't WhatsApp, it would have been another service. Either it will be easy to communicate or it won't be. If it is, it can be used as a force for good or a force for evil. The real problem is so much more difficult that it's easy to try to find something you can do, block the technology, so you feel like you are doing something even if it's completely ignorin…

That's the entire problem with this industry – we make the assumption that someone less ethical than us will come along and build the shitty product anyway, and use that as justification to do something we likely shouldn't. Blaming WhatsApp is misplaced, in some sense – the blame lies with startup culture, and with each of us that choose to make that excuse.

[deleted]

Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village

#38

Post by praneshp » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 5:13 AM UTC

jhoh wrote: post #36

lovelearning wrote: post #25

I wonder why this has been "flagged". It's relevant to this forum, it's about technological choices and their unintended consequences, and it's well written.

Maybe because it is Buzzfeed (News)?

Buzzfeed news is excellent. If you aren't aware of some of them, it's your loss, IMO.

(It's different from buzzfeed.com)

Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village

#39

Post by silversmith » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 5:14 AM UTC

gooddelta wrote: post #6

rosege wrote: post #5

Its funny how sometimes you get a juxtaposition between 2 articles hitting the front page. This one reminded me of this article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17947264 and in particular the author's comment > do not underestimate the destructive power of lies This seems to be much more of an issue than the fact they used Whatsapp to spread lies.

The platform is what spread those lies – without the platform, those lies wouldn't have had the reach they did.

Because rumor mongering came about only with whatsapp, and gossiping with your neighbours is a phenomenon born straight from instant messaging.

People spread lies. Not platforms or machines. People. Via whatsapp, other IM services, email, printed leaflets, handwritten notes or voice. People do that.

Re: How WhatsApp Destroyed a Village

#40

Post by RLN » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 5:15 AM UTC

RyJones wrote: post #12

I was in Made, Netherlands, this summer and saw they had per-neighborhood/per-street signs for WhatsApp groups that the police monitored. I thought that was a little rich for such an isolated berg - the biggest crimes there probably deserve harsh looks and muttering. Next day, walking around Leverkusen, I saw the same thing. I asked around but my ability to ferret out who paid for these signs was exceeded by my desir…

They had a group for this when I was living in Hoofddorp. From memory they called it "Buurtpreventie" which I suppose translates into "Neighbourhood Watch" really. It's just a new evolution of what has existed for ages. It allows faster communication rather than Jan calling Sanne who calls Peter to inform that someone isn't taking their bins out on the correct day.