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Mark in the Middle

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Re: Mark in the Middle

#271

Post by Covzire »

notional wrote: post #172
josefresco wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a bit more" lol See this link if you're wondering what "a bit more" looks like: https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10

Last 24hrs top-performing pages in the US, for anyone who can't click the link. 1. Dan Bongino 2. Dan Bongino 3. Breitbart 4. Fox News 5. Robert Reich 6. NPR 7. Ben Shapiro 8. Dan Bongino 9. Mark Levin 10. Bernie Sanders This is curated by https://twitter.com/kevinroose I had to look up most of those names but if you're wondering, looking back a couple weeks it's usually 9/10 or 10/10 right-wing talk hosts/sources. I…

Maybe people are a lot more conservative than CNN or NYT are willing to let people believe.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#272

Post by jedberg »

umvi wrote: post #180

If I had to guess it's because facebook has a larger portion of older conservative folks than other social media platforms? If you look at /r/politics on reddit you see the opposite problem (over-representation - nearly 100% - liberal news sources) which is probably because older conservatives don't use reddit? It can't be healthy for entire social media platforms to be completely dominated by one party or the other.

/r/politics used to be more balanced. Especially if you sorted by controversial. But reddit as a whole has become very unfriendly to conservative viewpoints and so it has driven the moderate conservatives either off the platform or into /r/conservative.

You can post the same comment on /r/politics and /r/conservative and one will be highly upvoted and one will be mercilessly downvoted.

But that is the system working as intended. The whole point of reddit is that each subreddit is a community of likeminded individuals. It was never really set up for debate of opposing viewpoints. One main way it differs from HN, which makes a huge difference, is that on HN you cannot downvote without some karma, and you can never downvote people who reply to you.

It would be cool if reddit added those as options for a subreddit moderator, actually.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#273

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

notacoward wrote: post #104
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Mark Zuckerberg have the final say on what Facebook algorithms show people?

Not really. Even the people who train the models and code the algorithms don't have a lot of control over how they respond to ever-changing inputs - and that's kind of the real problem IMO. There was a recent thing on Twitter, where someone discovered that it would consistently generate thumbnails focused on white faces when both white and black faces were present. At a gross level this is clearly because of inadequa…

Wow!

That's really an argument someone is prepared to make.

One role a CEO can play is to direct a company to act in particular ways.

The responsibility for anything Facebook does or doesn't do absolutely lands squarely on the companies leadership.

Saying something like: 'welp, it's too complicated to understand, but fuck me look at all this money and power...

Isn't going to convince me.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#274

Post by isoprophlex »

grawprog wrote: post #203

So, facebook employees are mad they're not allowed to censor things they disagree with that people post on facebook? I don't understand how facebook came to be responsible for policing political opinions anyway. In fact, I don't understand why employees at tech companies believe they have the right to police people's opinions period. I see it amongst commenters here too. What gives any of these people the right to po…

Some opinions are toxic due to their memetic power, their ability to rapidly spread amongst a population whilst evading critical reflection.

We're a global species. Technology made us become larger than the sum of our parts. It is our moral duty to police those opinions that are so polarizing, or so devoid of empathy, that they do harm.

"Policing" can be milder than all out censorship. Personalized feed algorithms can push us into filter bubbles, there's no reason why they can't police toxic views by injecting counter arguments or labeling (not censoring) rampant misinformation as such

Re: Mark in the Middle

#275

Post by lightgreen »

tyingq wrote: post #149

"Facebook had given its employees $1,000 bonuses and said it would give them all top marks on their first-half performance evaluations, no matter how they had actually performed." Giving everyone high performance evaluations isn't a perk. It's a disservice.

It simply means, they get their bonuses, nothing more.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#276

Post by ikiris »

dandersh wrote: post #187
mattacular wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever someone says "don't bring politics into X" it's a cop-out. Doubly so for anything related to Facebook. Politics is how we solve all problems between competing interests as a society. You can't operate a business in this country (or any) which is divorced from politics. It's absurd for Zuck to suggest that his business should be immune to political forces.

Yep. Also it can be (not saying that's the case here) used as a way to exclude undesirable politics while keeping desirable politics in place. For example the "don't bring politics into sports" that was bandied about during the kneeling controversy in the NFL a few years ago. The National Anthem is political. All of the "support the troops" events during games (paid for by the taxpayers!) is political.

The fact that this is downvoted says a lot about the bias emerging on hn.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#277

Post by fareesh »

zimpenfish wrote: post #48
mensetmanusman wrote: post #38

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.

> Do not confuse disagreeing with someone as that person being morally sub-human If your disagreement with that person is about whether someone else is considered less of a human than they are (by dint of race, wealth, sexuality, whatever), it's probably ok to consider them morally bankrupt on that basis.

Sure - but they can still participate in society. Why shouldn't they?

A klansman like Robert Byrd turned his life around. This is after Al Gore's father and he filibustered the civil rights act. Byrd went on to mentor Hillary Clinton, and I assume Al Gore's father was an influence on his son - the Vice President of the United States and the first lady, who went on to become a Senator from New York and then almost became President of the United States. You have a candidate right now who has a murky past when it comes to school segregation - as highlighted by his own running mate!

The funny thing is - the Facebook employees fighting with Zuckerberg most likely support all of these people politically, yet the people who espouse similar views today are suddenly irredeemable?

This idea that you can cancel the morally bankrupt out of existence is rooted in some kind of blind weakness. If people don't want to engage with them, that's fine, sit down and let the rest of us clean up. I'm not afraid of engaging with white supremacists, they always lose anyway. Their ideas are weak, dumb and not at all compelling, and the more we let them speak, the weaker their allure will be. History has already proved this. Facebook isn't magic - their ideas are still trash.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#278

Post by sequoia »

To be honest I wish Zuckerberg would say "We're not censoring political posts, and if you don't like it, --> there's the door. Who's leaving first?"

Facebook engineers may love to beat their chests about social justice, but when push comes to shove, they are not about to walk away from those gold plated salaries & stock grants. Most of them could leave FB and get another job paying somewhere in the ballpark of $200k (if not much more) within weeks, or a couple months. But no, 200k is not enough, they need 250k + equity + food etc. etc..

So to social justice oriented facebook employees sticking around facebook: spare us the performative gnashing of teeth. You know what facebook is, either admit the $$$ make it worth holding your nose, or put your money where your mouth is & go get a different job.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#279

Post by echelon »

shadowgovt wrote: post #213
grawprog wrote: post #203

So, facebook employees are mad they're not allowed to censor things they disagree with that people post on facebook? I don't understand how facebook came to be responsible for policing political opinions anyway. In fact, I don't understand why employees at tech companies believe they have the right to police people's opinions period. I see it amongst commenters here too. What gives any of these people the right to po…

I don't think it's "people these days;" I think it was the norm that has been disrupted by modern technology. Network broadcast television operates under standards and practices, where certain things are not allowed for broadcast. That includes the news---even news stories are subject to S&P constraint. Does network broadcast television "police political opinion" if it doesn't give a pedophile a half-hour of air time…

Very nuanced analysis! Fantastic.

In the past, the effects of freedom of speech were bounded by the cost of communication. Very few people could afford a soapbox with which to reach the world, so only certain messages were broadcast widely. Now everyone can send (and even amplify) messages quickly and easily.

Previously celebrities, politicians, the media, and advertisers had a wide channel. Now interest groups, state actors, echo chambers, and individuals with access to technology such as GPT-3 can do the same.

There's a lot of good, but also a lot of bad. We're now testing how humans respond to this deluge. It's fascinating (and somewhat worrying) to watch unfold.

My biggest fear is that state actors will inject information designed to polarize us, and that we'll respond exactly as they want.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#280

Post by wreath »

908B64B197 wrote: post #182
linuxftw wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young urbanites don't cook. They don't drive, how do they get groceries. They probably have a single frying pan. For these people, free food at work might be a large portion of their daily caloric intake, outside of the beer/booze.

I don't know why this is downvoted. Honestly, I bet a lot of employees were fine with living in apartments with minimal kitchens (most studios have the kitchen be a single long counter in a corridor of the apartment) since they would be getting their meals at the office anyways.

Yep - When I started cooking more meals and larger portions because I'm home most of the time and wanted to gain weight, I noticed that my kitchen is really suboptimal for this. Prepping breakfast and or a quick supper does the job, anything a bit more elaborate becomes a hot mess due to space and appliances.
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