Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#91

Post by sacks2k » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:44 AM UTC

It will only 'heal divisions' if you are fair to everyone and do the right thing, instead of listening to demands of the mob.

As an example, saying you want to murder conservatives, white people, the president, and anyone not progressive should be banned from the platform.

At the moment, you say something that can even be interpreted as hate in an indirect way toward a minority group or person and it's an instant ban.

You can say you want to outright murder white people, cops, or even the president (I've seen all of these myself over the past few weeks) and it's not only allowed, but retweeted/shared and shared millions of times.

Until this changes, it's not healing. It's giving special treatment to a minority group and allowing them to bully, harass, and threaten their perceived enemies in the name of equality.

The mainstream news simultaneously tells us that it's only 'white people' that are the ones agitating, rioting, and looting and then also saying that 'rioting is the language of the unheard'.

I really don't want to live in a dystopian future like this and will do anything in my power to fight it.

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#92

Post by autokad » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:45 AM UTC

nvrspyx wrote: post #55

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of FB users use it for staying in touch with friends and family. The cynical framing we encounter on HN isn't actually representative of the experience of most FB users.

The average number of friends that a Facebook user has is 338. Out of those, I'm sure there's quite a few in every person's group of "friends" that posts some pretty inflammatory content. I, for example, have over 800 friends, despite the fact that I haven't posted anything in about 10 years, I don't go on the site more than once every three months or so, and the only thing I use my Facebook account for is messaging…

i generally use the unfollow button for people who post a lot of stuff I don't like. I got to the point where its really stable, I mostly see what I want, funny memes, pictures of my friends doing things, etc. I use to have 800 friends, went on several purges to get it to 250 - much more managable

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#93

Post by lewiscollard » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:46 AM UTC

boplicity wrote: post #21

> I believe our platforms can play a positive role in helping to heal the divisions in our society, Facebook systematically promotes and propogates the most inflammatory content posted on its platform. Why? Because it is the most engaging. This is part of the intentional design of Facebook, and is the fundamental reason there are so many problematic things happening on the platform. Mark's "thoughts" on the topic do…

You are entirely right.

I've long said that optimising for "engagement", with no regard to what kind of "engagement" that is, is a paperclip maximiser.[0] Rewarding the posts that get the most comments regardless of whether they are positive or negative or thoughtful or shitposting, and the posts that get the most reactions regardless of whether the reactors (?) have or have not given it a few seconds of thought, is destructive to understanding each other and destructive to democracy.

See, I would rather Facebook not de-platform Trump, or any of his fans, or anyone else I don't like, but let's not pretend that Zuckerberg gives a shit about peace, love, and understanding. They have taken conscious decisions to prioritise "engagement" over anything else, because that is what makes them money. I get it, that's business, that is what they have to do. Likewise, we should do what we have to do to protect ourselves and to protect democracy: Zuckerberg and anyone that works at or has worked at Facebook should, to borrow a phrase, be unto us as heathens and publicans.

(You can extend this to Twitter too. I know, they scored some imaginary Internet points with left-leaning crowds by "fact-checking" Trump, but the truth is, with the algorithmic timeline providing exactly the same rewards to shitposting as Facebook does, they are as much to blame for this too.)

[0] https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#94

Post by bryan_w » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:46 AM UTC

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #34

boplicity wrote: post #21

> I believe our platforms can play a positive role in helping to heal the divisions in our society, Facebook systematically promotes and propogates the most inflammatory content posted on its platform. Why? Because it is the most engaging. This is part of the intentional design of Facebook, and is the fundamental reason there are so many problematic things happening on the platform. Mark's "thoughts" on the topic do…

The vast majority of FB users use it for staying in touch with friends and family. The cynical framing we encounter on HN isn't actually representative of the experience of most FB users.

Most people who complain about FB on HN, "deleted FB years ago"

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#95

Post by koolba » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:47 AM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #52

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of FB users use it for staying in touch with friends and family. The cynical framing we encounter on HN isn't actually representative of the experience of most FB users.

The idea that being barraged by insane politics is separate from staying in touch with friends and family is contrary to most people’s experience of national and religious holidays.

Rather than shying from it, dreading Thanksgiving, or hiding behind an eggshell thin wall of group think, people should learn to grow a spine. Learn to defend your own opinions, stop getting overly agitated that someone has their own conflicting ones, and generally stop caring when people disagree with you.

I’m no doctor but I’m fairly certain you’ll live longer.

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#96

Post by danlugo92 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:49 AM UTC

boplicity wrote: post #40

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of FB users use it for staying in touch with friends and family. The cynical framing we encounter on HN isn't actually representative of the experience of most FB users.

That gets to the heart of the problem, actually. People use Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends, yet Facebook still systematically pushes inflammatory content on them, despite that not being the "reason" people are there. And, eventually, it gets a surprisingly high percentage of people to respond to that inflammatory content, thus furthering the cycle.

FWIW (and it might not be worth much much).

I'm from Venezuela and most of my contacts are too.

Most content that I would consider "bad" that comes up for people are just memes, and stupid top X/spammy-ish/clickbaity content or recipe videos.

Maybe a different algorithm or just network effects?

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#97

Post by runarberg » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:49 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #68

runarberg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most platforms do some kind of moderation, and when a platform is as pervasive as facebook, it becomes essential. We’ve already seen how a lack of moderation on facebook influenced the 2016 election. So it is not hard to argue that facebook’s negligence is already causing significant harm to our democracy.

This is how you moderate your feed on Facebook: if you don't like someone and what they have to say, unfriend them. Problem solved.

My personal feed is not the issue here. The issue is how reactionary material keeps popping up in the feed of people who are susceptible into rallying behind it. The target area is so vast the you are bound to influence a lot of people. And the nature of the material only belonging to personal feeds makes scrutinizing by third parties impossible. All of this culminates into a really dangerous propaganda machine, especially since the platform is used by people who only go there to keep in touch with friends and family.

Not moderating facebook is criminally negligent and is putting our democracy in a woeful danger.

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#98

Post by jacobush » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:50 AM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #25

Kiro wrote: post #14

I'm surprised that the general sentiment on HN right now seems to be that Facebook should act gatekeepers, something that traditionally has been one of the major fears.

The general fear is that it will lead to an authoritarian dystopia. Which may or may not be the case. We have however seen a glimpse of what happens when you don't do it and it's an authoritarian dystopia. So gate keeping is avoiding the more certain evil.

This situation happened because FB is complicit, not because they didn't do anything.

They optimize for ad revenue, not for decency or the human angle. FB is basically the Matrix and we are the ad revenue batteries powering it.

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#99

Post by zwily » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:51 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #68

runarberg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most platforms do some kind of moderation, and when a platform is as pervasive as facebook, it becomes essential. We’ve already seen how a lack of moderation on facebook influenced the 2016 election. So it is not hard to argue that facebook’s negligence is already causing significant harm to our democracy.

This is how you moderate your feed on Facebook: if you don't like someone and what they have to say, unfriend them. Problem solved.

I have used the “mute this person for 30 days” feature quite a lot lately. I wish Twitter had it.

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#100

Post by chrisco255 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:51 AM UTC

harikb wrote: post #90

chrisco255 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's how freedom of speech works. Listen, you don't police private conversations among friends. Not in America. One man's trash is another man's treasure. I'm sure I could comb over your personal beliefs and find all sorts of garbage, including what you're saying now Corporate regulation of speech is a losing proposition for society. Period.

My only ask is that you see the difference between free-speech as intended in the constitution vs free-speech under an unverifiable and easily forged online pseudonym. You may not even be defending free speech of an American citizen/resident

I believe free speech is a human right. Facebook itself is not built up around pseudonyms, that would be Twitter moreso. But the founding members of the U.S. regularly wrote in pseudonyms in the Federalist Papers. Ben Franklin also regularly wrote in pseudonyms.

I don't like social media, as it exists today. I think it's a toxic form of communication.

But I'd rather people just realize that and migrate off it and towards chat rooms, group chats, discussion forums, etc.

I'd be fine with forcing social media companies to regularly warn users of addiction and to provide built in and highly visible tools for tuning it out.