361–370 of 414 posts
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I would be careful not to assume that your morality is the only morality. The world is a big place and there are diverse ideas and beliefs all around.
That's just nihilism, if there are "other moralities" that are just as valid and that I can freely choose, there might as well be none.
Facebook is big tobacco. Intelligent people generating profits that knowingly harms society (even if you do get some joy from a cigarette, that doesn't justify working for a tobacco company). I really hope the smart people at Facebook see the obvious parallel, and choose another career. History will judge you.
Not exactly. Tobacco has no benefits to society except possibly a dopamine hit for the user. Facebook has a lot of positives to go along with its negatives. For me, it's the only way I stay in touch with a lot of my friends from high school. And I know that it's only because of Facebook, because Facebook didn't exist for the first 10 years after I graduated, and most of my friends didn't get on it until about 15 year…
Rationalizing around individual experience buries the fact that the consumer well being is absolutely not necessary in a quarterly report: you individually gain something with FB or big tobacco; I individually loose something with FB or big tobacco. And vice-versa. In the end, the forces that matter are not tied to us as individual but to the company (or even, the industry) as a whole. Which is to say it is tied to performance, stake holders, legislation, and so on.
The only self-regulation that a company like FB (or Philip Morris) is willing to apply, is one that improve it's financial performance. Why would it do otherwise? Morality, good or bad, is a not a product of capitalism. The fact that you gain and I loose from these decisions is a happy accident, not an intentional result.
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I hope you are aware that the positive effect you describe also has a negative side. Those people who refuse to join Facebook (for good reasons as we were taught) are getting isolated. So who can tell what the net result is?
This is such a stupid argument. If 5 people do something that the 6th person doesn't want to ..doesn't mean the onus is on the 5 to stop doing it.
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In reality it's hard to get all of your friends and family to switch services, because all of their circles also have to change and most of them don't really care about the negatives of FB. In the end you end up with 10 different messengers. The big convenience about FB is that everyone is on it and you don't need their mobile phone number.
Not everyone is on FB and FB has been bleeding users to instagram, whatsapp and other internet services for a while now. I could say the same thing about WhatsApp really; everyone is on it so why switch to Facebook?
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"Zuckerberg's vision of Facebook as a good thing for the world was a lie" - That is such a broad generalization. In the developing world where I live Facebook gives me the opportunity to maintain contact with my family who live on the other side of the world, as I walk the streets of São Paulo, for free. There are hundreds of millions of others like me who keep in contact with their family because of Facebook (and th…
And yours is a broad generalization, too, about the impact Facebook has on society. You cheer all the good and mention none of the negative consequences of this model. Google also makes much about the internet less frustrating and easier for novices, but I also understand what is being given up in that compromise. I'm not even saying the "open" experience is not often without frustration. It absolutely is. Part of Fa…
Facebook did a lot of difficult things (if they weren't difficult others would have done them sooner) whose end result is that humans around the world get a lot of benefit. Focusing on whether Facebook's advances were "technological" is beside the point. (If anything packaging the technology in such a way that people can actually use it can easily be more of an "amazing advancement" than making the technology in the first place).
> nor is connecting the communication mechanisms of the world something that cannot be done without harvesting all of our personal data.
I'm not convinced. Making communication usable may well require an interface that adapts to the individual user. Again, ultimately, if it's so easy to do it better then why hasn't anyone else managed it?
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"Zuckerberg's vision of Facebook as a good thing for the world was a lie" - That is such a broad generalization. In the developing world where I live Facebook gives me the opportunity to maintain contact with my family who live on the other side of the world, as I walk the streets of São Paulo, for free. There are hundreds of millions of others like me who keep in contact with their family because of Facebook (and th…
> Facebook gives me the opportunity to maintain contact with my family who live on the other side of the world, as I walk the streets of São Paulo, for free. [...] The alternative (cel phone calls and sms) I use email to keep in contact with my family. CC everyone, then reply all. No Facebook required.
Also you missed my sister off the last reply, please re-add her and resend your message, again. But without me in the CC list.
I've known Chris Cox since freshman year of college and he was an informal advisor to my first startup. The NYT article referenced in hashberry's earlier comment includes a key quote: “For over a decade, I’ve been sharing the same message that Mark and I have always believed: Social media’s history is not yet written, and its effects are not neutral,” Mr. Cox said in a note to employees on Thursday. “As its builders…
"Zuckerberg's vision of Facebook as a good thing for the world was a lie" - That is such a broad generalization. In the developing world where I live Facebook gives me the opportunity to maintain contact with my family who live on the other side of the world, as I walk the streets of São Paulo, for free. There are hundreds of millions of others like me who keep in contact with their family because of Facebook (and th…
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Not everyone is on FB and FB has been bleeding users to instagram, whatsapp and other internet services for a while now. I could say the same thing about WhatsApp really; everyone is on it so why switch to Facebook?
To my mind the killer is event organisation. Put it this way: Meetup is apparently a viable business while charging money for a less-good version of something Facebook offers for free-at-point-of-use. No-one else really competes in that space at all (group chats aren't suitable because people who can't make a given event end up being spammed with all the details of it anyway, while people who join late miss out on de…
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Except smoke kills you
And addiction to Facebook causes depression and robs you of your abilityvto focus. Both measured and proven.
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It's not clear at all, you just picked a random example of grandma when the reality is billions of people have and connected to each other and there are many examples of people avoiding censorship, exposing crimes, finding loved ones, getting help, and spreading news that otherwise wouldn't have happened. The real issue is human nature. Social media is just a new medium that facilitates instant (and optionally public…
There is no magic solution to preventing people from being people, but it’s still a good thing to not build systems that allow any entity with an internet connection to find, connect, and share content instantly to anyone and everyone all over the world. Mark Zuckerberg has long held the belief that a more connected world is a better world - and 10 years ago, I was as optimistic as he was. Today, I know for a fact th…