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Mark in the Middle

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Re: Mark in the Middle

#31

Post by Traster »

It's pretty wild to see the framing here. Employees want him to take a harder line? How many? His user base wants him to do the opposite? Do they? Mark is a centrist! Wow! That's quite a revelation!

>At another company, the CEO might have ignored such a question from his workforce or declined to take it at all.

A lesser CEO might have balked at the challenge! But our illustrious hero steeled himself for the task.

>With tens of thousands of employees and more than 3 billion constituents worldwide

Constituents? Why are we using euphamistic language? Is it because constituents sounds nice and fluffy whereas "User" would fit in a sentence "Donald Trump used facebook to threaten to shoot people, Facebook's CEO decided that this was an appropriate use of Facebook"

Sorry, as the article rightly points out, I'm biased, I oppose threats of violence. I'll leave true judgement to the enlightened centrists.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#32

Post by raverbashing »

ThomPete wrote: post #4

I will never understand the extreme intellectual fragility of cancel culture. A lot of kids must have grown up never facing and learning to to deal with disagreement or what is it that have created such a thin skinned generation of seemingly well educated people?

> A lot of kids must have grown up never facing and learning to to deal with disagreement

You mean the "anti-maskers" who throw a fit for wearing a face covering for 30min when they have to go to the supermarket?

Re: Mark in the Middle

#33

Post by m0ck »

jsiepkes wrote: post #3

> "The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base." If I had to pick one sentence of the article which sums up the entire issue it would be this one.

I would go even further in this argument - it's the small, altough very loud minority of FB (or other IT company) employees, living in their Twitter feeds and causing outrage totally disproportional to their group size. The "missing snacks" example in the article illustrates it beautifully. I would argue that it actually concerns more employees than content policy issues.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#34

Post by johnward »

joejohnson wrote: post #2

Interesting how they reiterate over and over how right-wing media proliferates on the platform but imply that centrist/liberal propaganda does not. Is there evidence of this?

I'm not sure where they get their data but this list is usually like %70 conservative media figures. https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10

Re: Mark in the Middle

#35

Post by loxs »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #21

He is Fucked if Biden wins - and I suspect the dual stock structure used to maintain control might get looked at by the SEC. The Board need to tell him " Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!"

As an outsider (from a different continent), it doesn't seem at all likely that there is a chance for Biden winning.

It probably looks the same from where Zuck is sitting.

We might, of course, both be wrong :)

Re: Mark in the Middle

#36

Post by henearkr »

m0ck wrote: post #25
henearkr wrote: post #18

This aligns with how I have always seen Facebook, in contrast to Google for example. In their business plan Google (now Alphabet) favors a "greater good" for society rather than purely revenue optimization, whereas Facebook centers on the revenue and does not shy away morally doubtful decisions (like selling user data without regard for their anonymity, which Google avoids by restricting sensitive access to closed-lo…

>In their business plan Google (now Alphabet) favors a "greater good" for society rather than purely revenue optimization I did not expect such display of naivety on HN of all places.

Google stopped several projects it had collaborating with Defense, retracted from the Chinese market, stopped mining Gmail data... all of that illustrate my point.

So, it is a point of view supported by evidence, not "naivety".

As I said, I am not personifying these companies, just stressing the leverage of different mechanisms as business plans, and the one favored by Google is to attract and retain its elite staff, and to do so they have to behave.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#37

Post by dx87 »

Miner49er wrote: post #13
joejohnson wrote: post #2

Interesting how they reiterate over and over how right-wing media proliferates on the platform but imply that centrist/liberal propaganda does not. Is there evidence of this?

Article about it, with some data backing it up: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/how-facebook-became-... They censor anti-racists: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-whil... AFAIK their new News tab has far-right publications like Breitbart, but no leftist publications.

Looks like that "anti-racist" is upset that she can't post racist and sexist things about white men. Not exactly the example I'd give to show that FB is censoring liberals.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#38

Post by mensetmanusman »

Premise:

Diversity is good.

Diversity means diversity of ideas.

Ergo, you will disagree vehemently with people, and this is a good thing under the framework of diversity.

Do not confuse disagreeing with someone as that person being morally sub-human, and if you are able to do this your life will be more pleasant.

Disagreement is a good thing, it is society’s mechanism for decision making in complex circumstances.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#39

Post by henearkr »

nabla9 wrote: post #30
henearkr wrote: post #18

This aligns with how I have always seen Facebook, in contrast to Google for example. In their business plan Google (now Alphabet) favors a "greater good" for society rather than purely revenue optimization, whereas Facebook centers on the revenue and does not shy away morally doubtful decisions (like selling user data without regard for their anonymity, which Google avoids by restricting sensitive access to closed-lo…

Personifying moral decisions is the wrong approach nine times out of ten. Incentives and structures are more important than the character of the people or business plans. Neither company (nor any big public company) chooses principles when it would lose them large sums of money. Both Google and Facebook sell adds but they do it differently. Facebook is in business where the gravity constantly pulls towards the type o…

I am not really personifying it besides the introductory line:

I am explaining that the mechanism is that Google cares foremost about attracting and retaining a somewhat socially and ecologically responsible (one could say as well leftwards as a synonym) staff.

The fact that elite scientists and engineers are leaning to the left is a demographics fact, not some opinion from me. And it can even been explained by how the education system endows its pupils with a set of values, meant to make them better citizens i.e. more responsible, and finally that means more on the left.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#40

Post by loxs »

ForHackernews wrote: post #8
trabant00 wrote: post #5

> Mark Zuckerberg has faced criticism that Facebook is bad for democracy. > Employees want him to take a harder line against the Trump Administration. They employees want to support democracy by taking a stand against the democratic chosen president. I have a hard time coming up with words to describe my disbelief. Guess it's time for companies to enforce "absolutely no politics at work" rules. And you can add religi…

C'mon, if the concept of "democracy" means anything it has to include the notion that the guy who won the last election doesn't get to just do whatever he wants (especially if what he wants is to undermine or tamper with the next election!) You're not a democracy because you hold one legitimate election -- you have to keep on having fair elections ! Good luck, America.

This is one of the many internal paradoxes of democracy that makes it extremely fragile (in the grand scheme of things) and unlikely to survive for a very long time.
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