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Mark in the Middle

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Re: Mark in the Middle

#301

Post by dvtrn »

ikiris wrote: post #276
dandersh wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Rather self-fulfilling - in a way, isn't it?

Re: Mark in the Middle

#302

Post by talcumx »

nec4b wrote: post #256
patmcc wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone has "moral foundations" that cause them to think that, for example, a particular race of people is not worthy of life, I will refuse to engage with them in reasonable debate. There's no midpoint between nazis and non-nazis; the nazis are wrong and should be handled by force. This may or may not be the case with ICE, the GOP, etc. but fundamentally there are some people who should not be engaged with in thi…

Where do you find all these nazis that want to debate you in real life?

Perhaps he was talking about "kill all white men" radlibs.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#303

Post by s1artibartfast »

dhruvrrp wrote: post #209
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 completely agree. Not everyone knows, or even wants to cook 3 meals a day (me included). For people who have gotten free food through their work, it is a big deal. Now they either have to make stuff themselves (which costs time) or source it from outside (which costs money).

I understand that this can be a point of dissatisfaction, but I think most people are reacting to the presumption that it is somehow the employers responsibility to address it.

For most of society, the answer is obvious: Figure it out, Snacks aren't in your contract.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#304

Post by TeaDrunk »

jamiequint wrote: post #157
zimpenfish wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No, it's actually not, because people have different moral foundations, and many people value loyalty/authority/sanctity over care/fairness. It doesn't mean they don't care about care/fairness, it just means they don't make it their moral priority. If you refuse to engage with these people and view them all as sub-human there's no path forward for society.

I'm so baffled by this comment. It's saying that there's no path forward when refusing to engage with people/viewing people as subhuman, as an argument for the benefit of people who view others as subhuman! WTF?

Re: Mark in the Middle

#305

Post by doopy-loopy2 »

dsbleia wrote: post #223

I think this actually made Zuck's leadership look solid. Of course it's a little naive to say "we aren't political", but he's probably just doing that because it's the calculated thing to say. Almost every other company says things like that, except for a few ideological ones in Silicon Valley. I don't know how anyone takes these employees at FB seriously. They are complaining about the lack of free snacks? Anyone co…

This.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#306

Post by supercanuck »

RobRivera wrote: post #248
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…

In my conversations, such employees don't believe they have the right, they believe their political positions are objectively morally superior and hold an 'ends justifies the means' opinion on influence.

[flagged]

Re: Mark in the Middle

#307

Post by doopy-loopy2 »

sequoia wrote: post #278

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…

This. It would also benefit to "drain the swamp" if you will of these toxic employees.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#308

Post by danudey »

notacoward wrote: post #81
coldcode wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing remarkable in a company that makes lawnmowers. Facebook is a company that uses its power to change what people think because so many view it as a source of truth. Doing it for money, or doing it for power, is essentially the same thing. If you are in position to manipulate the truth for benefits to you or your friends in high places you will, and he is. If I worked at Facebook and felt the CEO was twisting tr…

> Facebook is a company that uses its power to change what people think I don't think that's a helpful way to look at it. Facebook is a platform that other people use to change what people think, and that's dangerous enough. Without any ill intent whatsoever from Facebook itself, that still creates serious issues with unintentional bias (e.g. via algorithms trained with poor data sets) and manipulation. Those are the…

Except that Facebook's algorithms (like YouTube's, and I'm sure others as well) push people towards groups and sources with "high engagement", which often tend to be conspiracy theories and hate groups.

It's not that their algorithms are trained with poor data sets; it's that they're trained with good data sets, and those data sets show that this right-wing, radicalizing content has huge engagement numbers. Thus, since engagement and time-on-site are surely key KPIs for Facebook, promoting those groups exactly fits with Facebook's stated business goals.

Facebook needs to be political, because they're destroying society and democracy for profit; in the early days they could have been forgiven for not realizing this, but in the last five years I think it's become incredibly obvious that it's happening, and Zuck is doing everything he can to shirk the responsibility of not screwing everything up for everyone.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#309

Post by xeeeeeeeeeeenu »

dfxm12 wrote: post #299
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.

The most material difference between the two is that Reddit is based on user voting and Facebook is based on an opaque algorithm controlled by Facebook's executive board.

>Reddit is based on user voting

and heavy moderation

Re: Mark in the Middle

#310

Post by TeaDrunk »

yomly wrote: post #186
charlesu wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a lot of family who have views which would terrify liberals, but I know these people are also not evil but just have had their own life circumstances shape their views. Like what? What life experiences have shaped their views to make them terrifying to liberals? I'm genuinely curious because the people most likely to have actual lived experiences to support "views which would terrify liberals" are generally…

Growing up in very religious environments - like all of the Middle East? Growing up with a homophobic government and homophobic environment like Russia where it is the norm? Growing up in countries where there is a very hated "other" tribe like in Israel? Outside of the "developed" world a lot of non-liberal stances are very alive and practised. But should we condemn a vast fraction of these people who hold racist or…

But I would also argue that it's also ok to choose not to associate with people who find you abhorrent. Would you genuinely expose your gay friend to your homophobic relatives and expect the gay friend to be happy and fine with being a target of bigotry/hate?
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