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Facebook's seized files published by MPs

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#401

Post by NeedMoreTea »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #308
hkt wrote: post #73

Sometimes, even amidst the Brexit madness, I love our Parliament. Publishing and seizing documents like this is a move that proves politicians have the spine to look after people's interests. Time to get serious, act on this, and break up Facebook forever.

Seizing documents for a valid inquiry is one thing. But does that follow that publishing them is OK too? From the outside, it looks like these politicians are frustrated that a foreign CEO ignored their demand to appear before them (because he has no legal obligation to do so), and have decided to retaliate by releasing embarrassing private internal documents obtained during an investigation in the hopes that Faceboo…

All Parliamentary committees publish online, whether evidence is written or oral.

You can ask for an exception for part of your evidence, if you fully explain why, which the committee considers. The usual reasons for discretion apply. It's almost unheard of for some evidence not to be published at all, though it has happened. 1980s I think was the last case.

No idea what dusty precedent or procedures apply when someone refuses to attend or documents are seized. That doesn't happen much.

Maybe no one asked. Maybe this is the redacted for sensitivity version as we have no idea the amount seized in the first place. I think we'd have to wait for the report to know.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#402

Post by NeedMoreTea »

manfredo wrote: post #364
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be the average price Economist readers would pay. I suspect it would be a lot lower for most users. That aside - FB never gave users that choice. Where many media services - including AOL, streaming media companies, and newspapers (and the Economist) survive by charging a subscription, FB has never attempted to use that business model. Why? Because FB has always been a data harvesting and user monitoring/p…

Facebook probably would charge users directly if it were acceptable to do so. Unfortunately (in my opinion) the optics around providing that choice would be even worse than not providing that choice at all. People would portray this as akin to racketeering, making users cough up the dough if they don't want to be tracked. Ironically, concern over Facebook's data collection inhibits their ability to explore direct mon…

I suspect that Facebook would continue to collect all the data, but just not show ads, if someone elected to pay a monthly subscription.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#403

Post by Tempest1981 »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #343
raverbashing wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's official, Mark Zuckerberg is the new Bill Gates. As in "we don't care about ethics"

This was known for a very long time. The "Dumb fucks" comments were brought to the public attention many years ago. The problem is that Silicon Valley gave Facebook a pass on all of the ethical transgressions for years (most likely since they minted many millionaires and billionaires in the valley)

Gave them a pass, yes, and also bought lots of FB stock, and shared in the spoils.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#404

Post by drewblaisdell »

mindslight wrote: post #391
drewblaisdell wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The onus was really on them to demonstrate that trusting third parties with our communications is a reasonable thing to do. In general, I agree, but the context here is dozens of HN commenters claiming that FB is a bad actor/net negative for the world. These commenters cite lists of gripes about the company, many legitimate, some illegitimate, but get hand-wavy when someone asks about the "net" in "net negative". I…

The metric of "net (negative)" is nonsensical on a multidimensional question, due to varying utility functions. Faceboot directly optimizes to increase time spent on their site, wasting human potential. Faceboot also provides an effortless way to check in with loved ones after a disaster, easing human suffering. Two people will look at both of these facts, value each one differently, and come up with a different "net…

I agree with much of what you wrote, but disagree that the question is nonsense. From a specific utilitarian perspective, "wasted human potential" only matters in so much as it impacts human suffering. If we want to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering, the units are still the same in both opposing points you mentioned - it is just really, really hard to measure.

In practical terms, coming up with qualitative points and weighting them in a good-faith-but-ultimately-arbitrary-manner is good enough, and something that everyone does constantly. For example, I suspect the average HNer weights "wasted human potential from FB" more than "benefit of disaster reporting from FB" (which I also agree with - however "benefit of disaster reporting" almost certainly outweighs "detriment from nebulous analytics firm scandal").

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#405

Post by cbkeller »

rhizome wrote: post #370
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #231

I worked at Facebook for 5 years on Workplace and Internal Tools. I am typically very critical of the company nowadays, but even so find the discussion here difficult to digest. People are complex. They are more complex than an action, or even a group of actions. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them for the sake of making…

If what people are taking away from their time working for FB is, "you know what? Napoleon was pretty cool!" then that really buttons things up tidily, though probably not in the way you intend. Too bad he had the sads about his partner though, I guess. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them for the sake of making the world…

I see Spinoza, I upvote :)

To give the benefit of the doubt I'm not sure if OP was objecting to the first step of placing a person or company along a good-bad continuum or the second step of reducing that continuum to a binary label.

In either case though, no amount of complexity makes it unreasonable to consider whether a company like Facebook is a net positive or negative force on society -- which is a binary decision that requires reduction.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#406

Post by 0db532a0 »

shawnz wrote: post #295
0db532a0 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please focus on material problems.

This kind of dismissal is basically the same as telling investors in the tech sector that they ought to be investing in curing cancer instead. Nobody is asking you to drop everything and make social justice the #1 priority in your life. It's just a small issue which is worth a small amount of consideration -- certainly not vehement denial, though.

It's not the same. There is a measurable difference between solving cancer and not solving cancer. Your issue is actually not an issue at all, and it isn't worth any consideration.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#407

Post by amelius »

nindalf wrote: post #400
amelius wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less culpable.

Thank you for making value judgements on our behalf.

Well, in this case "more culpable" doesn't make much sense, or do you think otherwise? Perhaps equally culpable would be an option.

Not sure what point you are trying to make, though.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#408

Post by manfredo »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #402
manfredo wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook probably would charge users directly if it were acceptable to do so. Unfortunately (in my opinion) the optics around providing that choice would be even worse than not providing that choice at all. People would portray this as akin to racketeering, making users cough up the dough if they don't want to be tracked. Ironically, concern over Facebook's data collection inhibits their ability to explore direct mon…

I suspect that Facebook would continue to collect all the data, but just not show ads, if someone elected to pay a monthly subscription.

True, this is what was proposed last year. Essentially analogous to YouTube Red.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#409

Post by mindslight »

drewblaisdell wrote: post #404
mindslight wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metric of "net (negative)" is nonsensical on a multidimensional question, due to varying utility functions. Faceboot directly optimizes to increase time spent on their site, wasting human potential. Faceboot also provides an effortless way to check in with loved ones after a disaster, easing human suffering. Two people will look at both of these facts, value each one differently, and come up with a different "net…

I agree with much of what you wrote, but disagree that the question is nonsense. From a specific utilitarian perspective, "wasted human potential" only matters in so much as it impacts human suffering. If we want to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering, the units are still the same in both opposing points you mentioned - it is just really, really hard to measure. In practical terms, coming up with qualitative poi…

> If we want to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering, the units are still the same in both opposing points you mentioned - it is just really, really hard to measure.

It's not hard - it's impossible. Even we fully agree on a specific metric, a situation still has to be weighed against possible alternatives and integrated on timescales longer than our lives. A very basic example of this is a company optimizing for "profits", but they're actually optimizing for short term profits at the expense of going out of business two years later. The future is unknowable in the same exact sense that every NP-hard problem is. Heuristics are the only way to tackle this.

> coming up with qualitative points and weighting them in a good-faith-but-ultimately-arbitrary-manner is good enough, and something that everyone does constantly

Of course, which is why I'm referring to "Faceboot" even while recognizing that people get utility out of it. I just think that focusing on arbitrary pairs of specific facets is already headed down the path of madness, which is why I stated my initial critique in terms of basic principles.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#410

Post by ColanR »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #231

I worked at Facebook for 5 years on Workplace and Internal Tools. I am typically very critical of the company nowadays, but even so find the discussion here difficult to digest. People are complex. They are more complex than an action, or even a group of actions. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them for the sake of making…

> if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough.

And then the organization becomes bad enough that it crumbles and dies.

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