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A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

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Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#191

Post by 082349872349872 »

jfengel wrote: post #188
amadeuspagel wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I heard X, I heard Y, sounds to me like it could go either way." Still an improvement compared to "I heard X", which is the default with radio and books.

I'm not so sure it is, when there are so many well-funded, concerted efforts to deliberately induce ignorance in people. Radio and books have at least some bottleneck where you can at least try to cut off deliberate falsehoods. Obviously that doesn't always work, but social media makes it effectively impossible. Not only do you have official sources of propaganda, you live in a swamp of anecdotes that are impossible…

some ideas on changing minds (not by coherent, cogent argument, but by providing attractive alternatives to hate?): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24373042

also, the remedies chapter of: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxylK6fR81rckQxWi1hVFFRUDg...

still looking for more in this vein.

from HN, the discussions on https://theintercept.com/2016/09/07/google-program-to-deradi... suggest attempts to de-hate might not be uniformly well-received.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#192

Post by codingdave »

jacquesm wrote: post #175
codingdave wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their ability to buy up anything that even begins to compete with them... There is a key difference being being able to afford to buy anything, and actually being able to buy anything. The competing founders need to be willing to sell. If a competitor arises that is mission-driven, Facebook cannot buy them.

I'd like to see you stare that Billion Dollars in the eye and say 'no thank you, these are my principles'. Bonus points if you can do it with your spouse and children by your side.

I'm presuming you are talking about a generic "you", and not referring to me personally, because I've been working in (mostly) mission-driven companies for a decade. I do take a hit on my compensation and wealth for it, with my spouse and children by my side the whole time.

But granted, mission-driven people are less common. To the point that many people who are not fundamentally mission-driven truly do not comprehend that some of us are. We all have our own motivations.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#193

Post by the_snooze »

Nasrudith wrote: post #178
the_snooze wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, moderation at Facebook's scale isn't feasible. It's the scale itself that's the problem. They've focused so much on "making the world more open and connected " that they never stopped to think how that could be weaponized.

If you focus on how everything could be weaponized you are a short sighted paranoid a skip and a hop away from fascism. Even tyrants aren't stupid enough to ban all hammers. How about stopping the idiotic tool blaming and blaming the bad actors?

Where did I say they should focus on how it could be weaponized? I'm saying they never seemed to have even considered it. And that's a charitable take; they could very well have considered it and decided it wasn't worth their worry.

It's all in balance. Bad actors are responsible. But systems designers have a responsibility too. If you optimize a system for something (e.g., engagement), that's a reflection of your values. We're seeing the ugly consequences of Facebook's values.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#194

Post by entropea »

3gg wrote: post #106

Something I have always failed to understand is why there are people who still work for this company. She states “I know that I have blood on my hands by now”; doesn't everyone who works there? At this point, it is well known by everyone that this is a product flawed to the core. It is maintained by a company that insists is not a media company to evade all social responsibility, and insists that its AI will solve th…

A lot of people don't care about ethics and mortality in their work as long as they get paid and get to go home to a house/apartment at the end of the day.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#195

Post by anigbrowl »

rodonn wrote: post #172
anigbrowl wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a clever little bit of legal CYA. Coordinated inauthentic behavior' = fake accounts amplifying things. Actual extremists posting on main and organizing on FB? A-OK as long as they exercise a bare minimum of discretion and avoid discussing specific illegal activities.

I'm not sure I follow your logic. "fake" seems like a completely wrong word to use to describe actual extremists (but I completely agree they should do more to police extremist content). Coordinated inauthentic behavior describes exactly what it says on the tin. They try to limit coordinated inauthentic behavior even if the content is true and even if the users are "real" people (e.g. workers who are paid to click/pr…

I'm saying FB heavily emphasizes its efforts against coordinated inauthentic behavior as if that were the only significant problem on its platform.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#196

Post by anigbrowl »

Nasrudith wrote: post #184
anigbrowl wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a clever little bit of legal CYA. Coordinated inauthentic behavior' = fake accounts amplifying things. Actual extremists posting on main and organizing on FB? A-OK as long as they exercise a bare minimum of discretion and avoid discussing specific illegal activities.

Extremism itself is a vacuous term and normative. Anyone calling for the end of segregation, the end of aparthiad or for gay marriage was once "extremist". So yes it is perfectly A-OK for actual extremists operating under a bare minimium of discretion.

That's a very disingenuous take, but those seem to be the norm for you. People calling for an end to apartheid have not been historically labelled as extremist (other than by apartheid regimes themselves) because apartheid has not been a norm in recent decades, and because the causes you mention all involve the expansion rather than the abridgement of rights, upholding a long-established egalitarian norm.

But to make you happy, I'll qualify my statement, and say that Facebook has been A-Ok with violent and frequently genocidal extremists organizing on its platform.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#197

Post by amadeuspagel »

jfengel wrote: post #188
amadeuspagel wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I heard X, I heard Y, sounds to me like it could go either way." Still an improvement compared to "I heard X", which is the default with radio and books.

I'm not so sure it is, when there are so many well-funded, concerted efforts to deliberately induce ignorance in people. Radio and books have at least some bottleneck where you can at least try to cut off deliberate falsehoods. Obviously that doesn't always work, but social media makes it effectively impossible. Not only do you have official sources of propaganda, you live in a swamp of anecdotes that are impossible…

> I'm not so sure it is, when there are so many well-funded, concerted efforts to deliberately induce ignorance in people. Radio and books have at least some bottleneck where you can at least try to cut off deliberate falsehoods.

I don't see how you can believe these things at the same time. If these efforts to induce ignorance are indeed so well-funded and concerted, how can bottlenecks be an obstacle? Indeed why couldn't these well-funded, concerted efforts use those bottlenecks to cut off people disagreeing with them?

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#198

Post by SamBam »

icelancer wrote: post #91
hash872 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've long wondered is- would it really be that hard/expensive to build an open source social media alternative that does exactly that? Updates & photos from friends & family, in chronological order, and little else. Social media has been around for a while now, I have to imagine that most of the hard problems around a customized feed and so on have been solved. Probably some idealistic ex-FB and IG engineers wou…

I think you misunderstand. People want to be mad. They like it.

It's a serious problem.

I have two Twitter profiles. One follows only makers, tinkerers, artists and educators. I mark "do not want to see more posts like these" if anyone posts something political.

I have another one that follows people with strong political views and the latest outrage.

Guess which one makes me feel better when I view it?

Guess which one I find myself viewing more often?

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#199

Post by sizzle »

ISL wrote: post #173
codingdave wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their ability to buy up anything that even begins to compete with them... There is a key difference being being able to afford to buy anything, and actually being able to buy anything. The competing founders need to be willing to sell. If a competitor arises that is mission-driven, Facebook cannot buy them.

We haven't yet seen Facebook attempt to strangle a competitor that it cannot buy. If Facebook faces an existential threat, there is a lot of capital available to fund its defensive campaign. Buying is just cheaper. A direct threat to Facebook is unlikely to succeed. More likely is a competitor based in a niche where Facebook cannot enter for structural reasons that slowly out-competes Facebook on Facebook's turf. One…

Privacy focused non-profit (open source?) social media platform that is easy to join, maybe there is a tool that scrapes your facebook profile and imports it automatically.

Can anyone help me brainstorm what features would be compelling for a privacy focused social media/event planning/group discussion platform?

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#200

Post by jacquesm »

codingdave wrote: post #192
jacquesm wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see you stare that Billion Dollars in the eye and say 'no thank you, these are my principles'. Bonus points if you can do it with your spouse and children by your side.

I'm presuming you are talking about a generic "you", and not referring to me personally, because I've been working in (mostly) mission-driven companies for a decade. I do take a hit on my compensation and wealth for it, with my spouse and children by my side the whole time. But granted, mission-driven people are less common. To the point that many people who are not fundamentally mission-driven truly do not comprehen…

Props to you. I suspect there are more of 'you' (the literal you) than you think, but - and that's the trick - they don't go advertising it.
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