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Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

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Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#971

Post by thejynxed »

toddmclaughlin wrote: post #755
kelnos wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't you want to learn about sale for new tech gadgets? Discounts for AWS? Good rent deals? No, not at all. Ads don't just inform about deals, they also incite you to buy . I don't want to buy just because some random company got the chance to put some psychological manipulation in front of my eyeballs. If I want or need something, I will specifically seek it out. If I don't specifically seek it out, then I probab…

> Ads don't just inform about deals, they also incite you to buy. I don't want to buy just because some random company got the chance to put some psychological manipulation in front of my eyeballs. I'm curious why you don't want to encounter these "manipulations". Is it because of the brainpower it uses to identify them as such? Are you particularly susceptible to giving in to them? Something else? I'm genuinely curi…

Not sure about him, but from my point of view ads mostly leave a slimy, oily, nauseating feel in my brain and make me want to gouge my eyes out.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#972

Post by knzhou »

dang wrote: post #780
knzhou wrote: post #457

The degree to which “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is in effect here is remarkable. If Facebook literally removes anything, then HN is outraged because it’s censorship, paternalism, all that. But if Facebook does not adopt an actively paternalistic attitude where it shows people content that they deem is “good for them” , then that’s outrageous too. Both complaints predictably rocket to the top of HN. Which…

Neither of the top two subthreads matches this description. (I meant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23315216 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23314507 )

That’s true, but it wasn’t when I posted my comment. It looks like comments just naturally get more reasonable over time... similarly, about half my comments get to negative score instantly, but most then slowly climb back up to positive over the next 24 hours.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#973

Post by matz1 »

seph-reed wrote: post #968
matz1 wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster doesn't defending Zuckerberg, merely trying to explain why Zuckerberg did what he did. >If you have power, you have responsibility: full fucking stop. No, if you have power you get to decide the rule. Same as drunk driving, the reason we are not allowing driving while drunk is because the people who are against drunk driving has more power than the people who are pro drunk driving. The side that has more p…

You're confusing legal responsibility with responsibility proper. Dictators are responsible for the death of millions, even if they make laws that say otherwise.

Responsibility proper is subjective.

>Dictators are responsible for the death of millions.

The Dictators very well may believe that their action is the proper responsibility (According to him).

My point is you can't simply ask them to stop by telling them they have responsibility. Both side may view responsibility differently.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#974

Post by thejynxed »

giardini wrote: post #809
egypturnash wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think the only way to make an ethical social network is to make a non-profit one. Fund it alongside other public goods like PBS, public education, highways, rail networks, healthcare, etc. And yes, I know: good luck getting THAT to happen in the US given how badly funded everything else in my list is. If you’re in another country that actually funds public goods maybe this is a thing you could talk to some…

The solution is to nationalize FaceBook (and any site that proves to be similar) and allow everyone free access to it w/o censorship. Give Zuckerberg a $1 for his time and effort. Meahwhile, Google must be split up: e.g., Alphabet can go do AI work as a private corporation but Google Search needs to be nationalized (or split into at least 3 entities - i prefer nationalization). Amazon must be broken up and parts nati…

A) These companies are American, and outside of certain, very specific, industries explicitly mentioned in the War Powers Act, the American government has no authority to nationalize them at any time for any reason.

B) Companies like Facebook in particular can never be nationalized due to the First & Fourth Amendments, and government being barred from competing with private entities in the private sector.

C) I do agree that Google and Amazon should be tried for anti-trust violations and that Google in particular should be split for violating anti-trust laws against vertical integration across markets.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#975

Post by bobthepanda »

pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #792
bobthepanda wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email exists. Wordpress has free site hosting. SMS is ad free. If people wanted to create a free webpage for friends and family to see there are loads of options. The problem is that, generally speaking, most people do not find the value proposition as a Facebook replacement compelling.

Where are you getting this idea of "Facebook replacement"? You introduce your own idea, then shoot it down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man Facebook does not provide software to set up small overlay networks. Nor is the business of Facebook to provide messaging or free web pages. That is just bait. The business of Facebook is providing a way to advertise to targeted audiences within the billions of people who…

> In 2020, it is still too difficult for everyone to set up their own website, so they settle for a page on someone else's [for] exchanging content with friends and family

This is patently not true. People were using email for this prior to Facebook's existence, which worked well enough ("Share photos via email! Share videos via email! Here's a funny story from grandma! RSVP to my birthday!") and was painless to set up; in fact, all the people who have Facebooks also have emails! But very few people are doing this anymore as their main mode of communication with friends and family; this kind of activity is now happening on Facebook, where people are happy with the ease that it facilitates. Small networks works fine, but nobody's interested, hence why Facebook is worth billions and billions of dollars and is a large website.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#976

Post by thejynxed »

banads wrote: post #955
ChrisLomont wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of how big systems work is embodied in large neural networks, and the detailed structure of how they make decisions is an open research problem. So it’s not silly for OP to state that at all; it’s empirical fact. It’s also not possible to audit the code for anything unusual without taking it all the way back through all tools source, all hardware, down through the chips, through the doping in the chips, and eve…

>It’s also not possible to audit the code for anything unusual without taking it all the way back through all tools source, all hardware, down through the chips, through the doping in the chips, and even lower. Are you implying that since we can't audit every single thing, auditing anything is useless?

The entire stack contains enough holes as to be swiss cheese, auditing the open code means nothing if and when something before that code in the stack manipulates the outcome of the code. This is one of the reasons those big security issues in Intel CPUs the last few years were such a big deal. The entire stack needs to be reworked at this point.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#977

Post by thejynxed »

int_19h wrote: post #774
anigbrowl wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not the answer as long as they don't have loads of people. The attraction of FB and the like is that almost everyone has a FB account, just like almost every public figure has a twitter account. The downside of things like Mastodon is how do you know what server you want to connect to? For a non-technical user it doesn't offer any more obvious utility than a FB group.

> The attraction of FB and the like is that almost everyone has a FB account This is exactly why FB should be forced to federate with other social networks, by law.

But in a way they already do, by going full Hoover over the social media floor and buying them outright.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#978

Post by dredmorbius »

srj wrote: post #867
Zandikar wrote: post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook having a "VP of Integrity" is laughable. They must have workshopped it and discovered "Minister of Truth" was a bit too on the nose.

Why is that laughable? If the company wants to be receptive to its critics isn't it reasonable for them to create such a role?

Fcebook's record to date is such that it has all but no credibility on this account. This gives it virtually no room for effective action.

Partners have walked from billions of dollars in shares, its former concience, Alex Stamos, quit after being repeatedly blocked, stymied, subverted, undermined, or backstabbed. And the very label "VP of Integrity" reads as so perfectly Orwellian and ironic that the position negates itself.

Without an ability to fully rope in Zuck directly it is every bit as toothless as it sounds.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#979

Post by ChrisLomont »

banads wrote: post #955
ChrisLomont wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of how big systems work is embodied in large neural networks, and the detailed structure of how they make decisions is an open research problem. So it’s not silly for OP to state that at all; it’s empirical fact. It’s also not possible to audit the code for anything unusual without taking it all the way back through all tools source, all hardware, down through the chips, through the doping in the chips, and eve…

>It’s also not possible to audit the code for anything unusual without taking it all the way back through all tools source, all hardware, down through the chips, through the doping in the chips, and even lower. Are you implying that since we can't audit every single thing, auditing anything is useless?

>Are you implying that since we can't audit every single thing, auditing anything is useless?

No, I am pointing out that your statement implying one can know if there's anything unusual in the code can be found by an audit. It cannot. And most of the activity by big companies is not in code, it's in data, and "auditing" it is currently beyond anything on the near horizon. Some of the behavior is un-auditable in the Halting Problem sense - i.e., the things you'd want to know are non-computable.

Re: Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive

#980

Post by ChrisLomont »

thejynxed wrote: post #976
banads wrote: post #955

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s also not possible to audit the code for anything unusual without taking it all the way back through all tools source, all hardware, down through the chips, through the doping in the chips, and even lower. Are you implying that since we can't audit every single thing, auditing anything is useless?

The entire stack contains enough holes as to be swiss cheese, auditing the open code means nothing if and when something before that code in the stack manipulates the outcome of the code. This is one of the reasons those big security issues in Intel CPUs the last few years were such a big deal. The entire stack needs to be reworked at this point.

There isn't a simple fix, or likely any "fix," for the issues you want to be knowable. Besides the economic impossibility of it, there are too many places to hide behavior that we cannot foresee due to quantum effects, complexity, etc. So reworking the entire stack is not reasonable or likely very beneficial.

It's better to incrementally address issues as they are found and weighted.

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