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

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

#121

Post by aspenmayer » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #39

Kapura wrote: post #17

He is clearly viewing this as another technical problem to solve. He's a highly technical person; this follows. But the issues he's being confronted with aren't technical issues of permissions and algorithm tuning; they're societal problems of power dynamics and information manipulation. These are human traits. They aren't problems that are "solved." They're issues that you have to take a stance on. Do you believe in…

>> He's a highly technical person; this follows. Is Zuckerberg even that technical? I’m aware he worked on the site originally, but never got the impression that he was highly talented (compared to, say, Google’s founders).

Did the Winklevoss twins ever talk about that in interviews? I think they wrote most of the source code for ConnectU, which Zuckerberg was at the very least aware of. I don’t recall if he or Facebook was ever found guilty of misusing ConnectU code in Facebook. In fact, the settlement that was reached between the relevant parties has had many court cases of its own since the settlement was reached, regarding lost value of agreed-upon stock value which had lessened relative to the value suggested by Facebook at settlement. The court cases may even be continuing to this day, but I couldn’t really tell from reading a few wiki pages and sources.

I don’t have an answer, sorry. But hopefully someone else can correct me and fill in the gaps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConnectU

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

#122

Post by malcolmgreaves » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

nemetroid wrote: post #104

DevX101 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...

Is this an argument against the parent post? If so, it's not clear what the argument is.

"Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) was a Rwandan radio station which broadcast from July 8, 1993 to July 31, 1994. It played a significant role in inciting the April–July 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi." ... "it is widely regarded by many Rwandan citizens (a view also shared and expressed by the UN war crimes tribunal) as having played a crucial role in creating the atmosphere of charged racial hostility that allowed the genocide to occur."

Real, verifiable proof that any publisher of information or platform that hosts information has a responsibility to ensure that they are not making society worse. This radio station fanned the flames of hatred and is responsible in part for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people.

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

#123

Post by rsynnott » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

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.

Facebook has _always_ moderated content. Fairly substantially, much more than Twitter, say. For instance, if you want to post a picture of yourself with no clothes on on Twitter, Twitter is basically okay with that; Facebook certainly isn’t. The current controversy is over whether public figures should be treated as entirely special, or just mostly special.

Look, Facebook is within its rights to ban the average person for whatever it feels like, while still letting important small-handed personages lie about elections. That’s perfectly legal. But people are certainly entitled to question their ethics over it.

Of course, even the arch-censors over at Twitter allow important small-handed lying; they just reserve the right to point out that it IS a lie, and very occasionally do so. I’m kind of amazed that people are so upset about them doing the bare decent minimum.

By the way, I’m not defending twitter in this; it would be better if they just applied their rules equally and deleted the accounts of important people, whatever their hand measurements, on the same basis that they delete normal accounts. But at least attaching disclaimers to lies and abominable speech is progress of a sort, I suppose.

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

#124

Post by toast0 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 1:27 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

Free speech under an unverifiavle and easily forged obline pseudonym is worth the cost of the speech. If reading my $0 speech incites you to do something stupid or illegal, bad on me, but good luck enforcing that; in the meantime you did something stupid or illegal and will have to live with the consequences.

If people continue to act on information without regard to its source or veracity, and we need to rely on the platforms to sort it out, we're in some deep shit. The telephone company never comes on the line and says 'Hey harikb, your friend is full of it, what your friend said is totally untrue' but somehow we expect that of today's communications platforms. If the telephone company was monitoring the content of your calls, you'd be rightfully pissed.

Of course, maybe these platforms could stop showing me random garbage from random people that aren't on my list, and weren't meaningfully interacted with by my list. (What gets shown on FB because someone I know liked a corporate page 5 years ago is like huh???)

Disclosure: I used to work at WhatsApp, including while it was part of Facebook; my opinions are my own.

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

#125

Post by lern_too_spel » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #5

Nothing is really being announced. He said they will discuss a few things but what will come out of these discussions is not guaranteed. Great way to say you're doing something without doing anything.

Remember when Facebook made a few blog posts about how they were going to investigate ways to reduce fake news?

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

#126

Post by aspenmayer » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 1:32 AM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #79

chrisco255 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, same goes for books. You know how many people have been indoctrinated and persuaded by books? Let's burn those while we're at it.

Books can be publicly scrutinized, facebook feed will only reach it’s targeted audience. I think a more apt comparison is pamphlets at a rally. And even a rally is absolutely scrutinized—or even stopped by the police—if they are found to distribute illegal, radicalizing, or dog whistling material.

In real life there’s a loophole to get around this kind of scrutiny: religion. It doesn’t matter which one really. But if it’s religious and you don’t discriminate against people in obvious ways, you have much wider latitude to say eyebrow-raising things in public.

Seems like that works online too, now that I mention it.

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

#127

Post by foogazi » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 1:42 AM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #97

chrisco255 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, espe…

> 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.

Wait, how do we know you are not susceptible to rallying behind the content in your feed?

Has the content in your feed been approved? Only cat videos and family pictures?

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

#128

Post by legolas2412 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 1:42 AM UTC

amachefe wrote: post #59

Kapura wrote: post #17

He is clearly viewing this as another technical problem to solve. He's a highly technical person; this follows. But the issues he's being confronted with aren't technical issues of permissions and algorithm tuning; they're societal problems of power dynamics and information manipulation. These are human traits. They aren't problems that are "solved." They're issues that you have to take a stance on. Do you believe in…

> He is failing every user and employee of Facebook. I wont agree on every . In fact, many FB employees prefer to avoid getting involved in the mud fight

I'm not a FB employee, and nor a trump supporter. But I'd argue that fighting censorship is also a moral obligation for free speech.

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

#129

Post by skytreader » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 1:43 AM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #109

skytreader wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except a bunch of people who matter to me are not as comfortable with technology as HN's readership and for them the easiest way to get hold of me (or anyone else) is via Facebook. > Anyone that matters will be able to figure out how to get a hold of you. I used to think like this in university and even a few years after but having grown my social circle beyond tech, I now find this line of thinking snobbish. On the…

It's not snobbish. Your way of thinking is insultingly infantilising. I'm sorry for the disparity between your post length and mine, but there isn't anything else to say. You view the people around you as fundamentally incapable. "How ever did those poor, stupid assholes figure out how to talk to each other before us technical people came along?"

I don't view the people around me as "fundamentally incapable". I am saying they are _unwilling_ to adopt a mode of communication other than Facebook because of Facebook's _ubiquity_. And I think it's a big mistake not to acknowledge how much this ubiquity factors into Facebook's grip in the social media market.

You are saying: "Delete Facebook. It's easy, you will be happier". And all I am pointing out is why this is such a gross oversimplification of the issue to the point that it does not really contribute a viable solution.

> "How ever did those poor, stupid assholes figure out how to talk to each other before us technical people came along?"

I don't see how my post comes across as something as condescending as this. You misread me greatly.

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

#130

Post by koolba » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

hsitz wrote: post #118

koolba wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You seem to live in a different world than mine. In mine, social media would be much less of a problem if people tended to shy away from online confrontation. The online/social media problem is in large part one of people defending their own opinions too aggressively.

> You seem to live in a different world than mine.

I liked the more inflammatory initial hot take of “What kind of world do you live in?” better. It goes better with my speak your mind and damn the consequences philosophy.

I wasn’t talking about online. I meant in person communication. It’s likely even hard for people these days but once you get used to the idea that it’s okay to offend people, you realize you’re never really offended either.

> In mine, social media would be much less of a problem if people tended to shy away from online confrontation. The online/social media problem is in large part one of people defending their own opinions too aggressively.

Having any sort of personal accountability for social media defeats the purpose. It should be an outlet for the id. Be the craziest you and assume everyone else is as well.