‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially • Hacker News Board

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#151

Post by deminature » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 12:33 AM UTC

ciil wrote: post #46

Seenso wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This attitude of "we know what's good for you" is apparent in more and more modern tech products. I find it pretty gross... It's even grosser than that. The attitude here is really "we did what was good for us, but we think you're dumb enough to be convinced we did it because it was good for you."

I think at least some engineers genuinely believe they're doing what's best for the users and that it just so happens to also be either the best for their personal bottom line or the easiest route to go with their product.

It's possible some really drink the kool-aid, but most are just compensated too well to care. The only companies that will try to compete with Facebook on pay are financial institutions like Citadel.

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#152

Post by close04 » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 9:29 AM UTC

kd5bjo wrote: post #149

close04 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my experience, deciding not to do something is unlikely to be intentional. That's some weird experience. A decision is by definition intentional. It's literally "a conclusion or judgment reached after consideration". The moment a person with power of decision is made aware of an issue both action and inaction become conscious, deliberate decisions. > did you come to this conclusion based solely on your prior opi…

I was imprecise and overly snarky in my original reply, and for that I sincerely apologize. I’d still like an answer to the half of my question that you ignored, so let me try again in a more neutral tone: In my experience, most instances of someone (or a company) not doing something are not examples of conscious, intentional decisions but rather an unconscious process of the proposed thing not coming to mind. As a c…

> the idea simply never presented itself

But then you base your reasoning for the "unintentional mishap" on the assumption that Facebook leadership (engineering or management) simply never had the idea to do anything about these issues even after they happen repeatedly? How many times can you claim ignorance and an endless string of "we'll do better"s? [0] [1] [2] [.....]

They do it because they get away with it. They get away with it because people are encouraged to think that they're mistakes and "everyone makes mistakes". But every one of these mistakes costs you, and benefits them. There's no accountability and that's exactly what you are pushing for now.

> I consider it fundamentally unjust to judge any given incident solely based on behavior in other incidents

Not solely, there's also the matter that they benefit from every one of them. Zuck founded his business on collecting data without user approval. With your reasoning you can make the concept of precedent irrelevant. You just turn them into completely separate incidents with no prior knowledge and then use wishful thinking to assume they were all mishaps.

You can shoot someone once by mistake. But what if you do it 15 times? And even true mistakes cost. Yet these "mistakes" never cost Facebook anything. They just employ an army of posters to insist it was a mistake and downplay the whole thing.

There's no amount of wishful thinking and downplaying that can compensate for common sense and prior experience. There's no reasonable way in which, in good faith, you can assume all these are mishaps. There's a long string of incidents that benefit them that serve as evidence.

P.S. You name one incident in the history of the world that you think is indefensible and I will use your reasoning to completely dismiss your accusation ;). Really, if you stand by your reasoning that shouldn't be hard.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-apologie...

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-t...

[2] https://time.com/5505441/mark-zuckerberg-mentor-facebook-dow...

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#153

Post by ben_w » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 11:16 AM UTC

visarga wrote: post #141

ben_w wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is indeed a lot wrong in this world. What you describe is an additional problem. A normal person targeted by a blackmailer over their sexual history would be a closer model, although even then it would still not be close to the level of a state sponsored attack on you personally — that can include combining the drones with accurate information rather than whatever led to them hitting weddings, or it could be as…

Apparently being Zuck means you need to have an insane level of protection. But regular people also have things to lose when their privacy is thrown out the toilet. Thanks to z.

Yes, I absolutely agree. Worse, most people don’t grok what computers can do, so they are unaware of how much they have lost until this bites them.

Oh for the innocent bygone days of around 15 years ago.

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#154

Post by kd5bjo » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

close04 wrote: post #152

kd5bjo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was imprecise and overly snarky in my original reply, and for that I sincerely apologize. I’d still like an answer to the half of my question that you ignored, so let me try again in a more neutral tone: In my experience, most instances of someone (or a company) not doing something are not examples of conscious, intentional decisions but rather an unconscious process of the proposed thing not coming to mind. As a c…

> the idea simply never presented itself But then you base your reasoning for the "unintentional mishap" on the assumption that Facebook leadership (engineering or management) simply never had the idea to do anything about these issues even after they happen repeatedly? How many times can you claim ignorance and an endless string of "we'll do better"s? [0] [1] [2] [.....] They do it because they get away with it. The…

> You name one incident in the history of the world that you think is indefensible and I will use your reasoning to completely dismiss your accusation

This is, in fact, why I prefer seeking more context and understanding to making accusations.

Re: ‘People You May Know’ helped Facebook grow exponentially

#155

Post by rhizome » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

azernik wrote: post #76

rhizome wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see those as BIG pieces of information! The number of people that I "might know" because we've exchanged email with the same person is horrifying in this context. There's a dystopic story to be written (which often means it already has been) about law enforcement using this second-order conntection as Reasonable Suspicion, a "why did we find your business card in this bad guy's wallet?" connection.

This is not a dystopian fantasy; it's exactly how intelligence agencies map out terrorist groups' and foreign militaries' structures online. Israel is supposedly particularly good at this kind of analysis, but I'm sure other countries are doing it.

You have to wonder what kinds of non-employee access are a part of the Facebook web application. That is, perhaps Israel's edge is that they have an (made-up) Investigator version of FB when they log in.

I figure everything down the left aside on FB corresponds to a permissions bit for each entry, so maybe some classes of user get some really fun items over there.