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Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists: FB’s practices ‘antithetical’ to mission

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Re: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists: FB’s practices ‘antithetical’ to mission

#41

Post by trickldwn8nxjf »

nv-vn wrote: post #38
rmrfstar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg net worth: ~$78b. Mean US neurosurgeon annual income: ~$600k So Zuckerberg is worth 130K neurosurgeon-years. Neurosurgeons are the highest compensated surgery specialty [1]. In the US there are a total of 50k surgeons of any type [2]. Does anyone think that Zuckerberg created, with his own hands, >=3x the annual economic output of all US surgeons? [1] https://medium.com/nomad-health/complete-list-of-averag…

When thinking about net worth in equity you have to consider how stocks are valued. He hasn't created the value of that many neurosurgeons, but the market believes that Facebook will create that value in all future earnings adjusted for risk/inflation.

When talking about the market we must also accept that the people involved in those decisions are ideologues not gods, manipulate their messaging for personal gain, and refuse to be held accountable

Kind of a trend in society

No stock traders opinions should mean all that much to a numerate and emotionally well adjusted person

They’re not in charge of anything but evangelism

Adam Smith only mentions markets in the context of a labor market. The whole idea is so far removed from what he defined initially, any concept of markets cannot be traced to him and is then just arbitrary rambling from a gut sense it will help one survive

Economics as an academic construct is internalized the same as a chase for piousness. It’s so abstracted away from real productivity so as to self sustain it’s mathematical correctness. It’s meaningless in that way to day to day folks

Re: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists: FB’s practices ‘antithetical’ to mission

#42

Post by ihm »

imgabe wrote: post #27
rmrfstar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg net worth: ~$78b. Mean US neurosurgeon annual income: ~$600k So Zuckerberg is worth 130K neurosurgeon-years. Neurosurgeons are the highest compensated surgery specialty [1]. In the US there are a total of 50k surgeons of any type [2]. Does anyone think that Zuckerberg created, with his own hands, >=3x the annual economic output of all US surgeons? [1] https://medium.com/nomad-health/complete-list-of-averag…

Neurosurgeons can only work on one patient at a time. Facebook serves over a billion people, so yes that is entirely possible.

Did Mark Zuckerberg make Facebook all by himself?

Re: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists: FB’s practices ‘antithetical’ to mission

#43

Post by 3131s »

im3w1l wrote: post #26
boplicity wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem doesn't have anything to do with policing speech. The problem is the intentional propagation and promotion of inflammatory speech. It is one thing to allow hate speech, it is another to increase it's prominence because it is "more engaging." Facebook does just that.

Do you have any evidence that "inflammatory" opinions are disproportionally prominent compared to the fraction of people who hold said opinions?

It would be nice to know the answer to these sort of questions. When using online services, and especially enormous ones like Facebook, it's always good to ask yourself "why am I seeing this?" or "how did I get here?".

Re: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists: FB’s practices ‘antithetical’ to mission

#44

Post by rmrfstar »

fastball wrote: post #37
rmrfstar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg net worth: ~$78b. Mean US neurosurgeon annual income: ~$600k So Zuckerberg is worth 130K neurosurgeon-years. Neurosurgeons are the highest compensated surgery specialty [1]. In the US there are a total of 50k surgeons of any type [2]. Does anyone think that Zuckerberg created, with his own hands, >=3x the annual economic output of all US surgeons? [1] https://medium.com/nomad-health/complete-list-of-averag…

Why are you comparing income with net worth?

I am expressing a dollar value in real economic units that people may have an intuition about.

I try to do as Feynman recommended and "approach the world from a new point of view." One way of doing that is transforming units.

A problem that is intractable in Cartesian coordinates may be trivial in spherical coordinates.

Re: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists: FB’s practices ‘antithetical’ to mission

#45

Post by imgabe »

ihm wrote: post #42
imgabe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neurosurgeons can only work on one patient at a time. Facebook serves over a billion people, so yes that is entirely possible.

Did Mark Zuckerberg make Facebook all by himself?

Nobody ever claimed he did. His net worth is, at the moment, ~11.6% of the total market cap of Facebook.

Do you think the other people who helped create Facebook worked for free? Do you think a neurosurgeon does a surgery all by himself?

Re: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists: FB’s practices ‘antithetical’ to mission

#46

Post by zitterbewegung »

rmrfstar wrote: post #24
RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #3

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's mission is to shelter most of Zuck's wealth from taxation while ensuring that he and his wife retain as much control over it as possible. Facebook's negative externalities are orthogonal to this mission.

Zuckerberg net worth: ~$78b. Mean US neurosurgeon annual income: ~$600k So Zuckerberg is worth 130K neurosurgeon-years. Neurosurgeons are the highest compensated surgery specialty [1]. In the US there are a total of 50k surgeons of any type [2]. Does anyone think that Zuckerberg created, with his own hands, >=3x the annual economic output of all US surgeons? [1] https://medium.com/nomad-health/complete-list-of-averag…

I worked at a Computational Population biology lab where we studied social networks. I had the idea once of how to value the amount of money a social network is worth. I also quit Facebook this month and I don't intend anything below to support any of their actions and also below is some quick calculations. The easy answer would be to say that the social network is worth whatever its net revenue is.

A lot of ways people can value social networks in general would be to first to value the network effect Facebook has.

"Metcalfe's law states the effect of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2). "[1]

The next issue would be to attempt to price the individual user. Applying Metcalf's law could give you some kind of metric.

One way to do that would be to look at Facebook's S-1 and see how much revenue they get per user. Their net income from the first quarter of 2020 is $4.9 Billion dollars. Also they had 2.6 monthly active users.

So doing the math is (2.6 billion) ^2 people / $4.9 billion dollars which is $1.38 per user[2] . Assuming everyone is connected to each other (which is unrealistic) we have an upper bound of $3.5 billion dollars.

I think someone did more analysis on how to actually apply this here. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3356098

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.38+*+2.6+billion+ [3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.38+*+2.6+billion+ [4] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3356098

Re: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists: FB’s practices ‘antithetical’ to mission

#47

Post by Barrin92 »

im3w1l wrote: post #26
boplicity wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem doesn't have anything to do with policing speech. The problem is the intentional propagation and promotion of inflammatory speech. It is one thing to allow hate speech, it is another to increase it's prominence because it is "more engaging." Facebook does just that.

Do you have any evidence that "inflammatory" opinions are disproportionally prominent compared to the fraction of people who hold said opinions?

Yes, we have that research from Facebook itself, which they promptly shelved.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-divisio...

"“Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” one slide from the presentation read. The group found that if this core element of its recommendation engine were left unchecked, it would continue to serve Facebook users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.” A separate internal report, crafted in 2016, said 64 percent of people who joined an extremist group on Facebook only did so because the company’s algorithm recommended it to them, the WSJ reports."

Re: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists: FB’s practices ‘antithetical’ to mission

#48

Post by whatshisface »

dannyr wrote: post #19
whatshisface wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The newspaper + money + printing costs system has done that for generations. If you want engaging information to stop being spread more than less-engaging information, then you're going to have to come up with a way to stop more engaging newspapers from printing more copies than less-engaging ones.

There is a big difference between a newspaper and Facebook (with over a billion users) spreading misinformation. This is like comparing a match stick to jet fuel.

The comparison is between Facebook and the entire system of market pressure acting on thousands of newspapers, not between Facebook and one newspaper.

Re: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists: FB’s practices ‘antithetical’ to mission

#49

Post by im3w1l »

Barrin92 wrote: post #47
im3w1l wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence that "inflammatory" opinions are disproportionally prominent compared to the fraction of people who hold said opinions?

Yes, we have that research from Facebook itself , which they promptly shelved. https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-divisio... "“Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” one slide from the presentation read. The group found that if this core element of its recommendation engine were left unchecked, it would continue to serve Facebook users “more and more divisive content i…

The Verge cites WSJ. WSJ mentions "a presentation" but doesn't include it. What little they cite is not very substantive. "more and more divisive content" this is vague and omnious, and not even very likely. These algorithms will reach an equilibrium.

WSJ further mentions that "some proposed changes would have disproportionately affected conservative users and publishers"

To me this is a sign that the presentation was made by a partisan inside of Facebook. All in all, I don't think this is very confidence inspiring.

We would really need some third party to do a better job of investigating this.

Re: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists: FB’s practices ‘antithetical’ to mission

#50

Post by Barrin92 »

im3w1l wrote: post #49
Barrin92 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we have that research from Facebook itself , which they promptly shelved. https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-divisio... "“Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” one slide from the presentation read. The group found that if this core element of its recommendation engine were left unchecked, it would continue to serve Facebook users “more and more divisive content i…

The Verge cites WSJ. WSJ mentions "a presentation" but doesn't include it. What little they cite is not very substantive. "more and more divisive content" this is vague and omnious, and not even very likely. These algorithms will reach an equilibrium. WSJ further mentions that "some proposed changes would have disproportionately affected conservative users and publishers" To me this is a sign that the presentation wa…

You gotta be kidding me. You know as well as I do that we're never going to get comprehensive third party access to Facebook data.

When even internal research suggests that their platform drives division your conclusion is they're overstating their case, people who are on facebooks payroll?

That's like Enron publishing internal research about corruption and someone going "well I guess these guys are partisan"

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