Mark in the Middle
401–410 of 603 posts
Re: Mark in the Middle
#402So, 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.
Very true. Their positions are so righteous and so moral that the 46%-ish population of the US are deplorables, evil, far right, racists, xenophobia, being violent by being silent, or white supremacists.
Re: Mark in the Middle
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The big complaint is about lack of snacks! Free food , including meals. If Facebook is anything like Google, some single people were literally using that for every meal and snack 5/7 days per week. It's tasty, nutritious food, and you don't have to prepare it or do dishes. Sure, an adult should be able to take care of this on their own, but this is a major perk, not just a box of granola bars on a shelf. It might c…
From what I've seen, I don't think $5K per year is a big chunk of a Facebook engineer's compensation. In any case, the bigger issue is that this situation exposes how utterly dependent these engineers are on their employer, not just for money but for basic life functionality. Only a tiny number of companies in the world offer this level of "service" to employees. What happens if and when they no longer work at Facebo…
I think thats an unfair, and frankly agist extrapolation. I can cook for myself every day and there is plenty of inefficiency in that action. Its wasteful, the food isnt as good as a professional, I have to shop and waste gas, I have to pay retail pricing. Or I could use the shared resource thats done professionally and efficiently. We are engineers, are we not programmed to reduce complexity and waste. I dont think its fair yo assume they couldnt cook for themselves if they thought it was needed.
Re: Mark in the Middle
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it does seem like a college dorm. Sometimes it's even intentional, as in the design of the MPK campus. A lot of the perks serve the same purpose as a college dorm: eliminate the need (or even desire) to go off campus, maximizing time-on-task for the organizational purpose. That's not entirely a bad thing, though it does grate a bit for older employees such as myself (for two more days) sometimes. The "live on an…
"Living on an island" is an allusion to Randism.
Or even a Randian illusion.
Re: Mark in the Middle
#405I 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.
Can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? We already asked you this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24413379) - did you not see that one?
Re: Mark in the Middle
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, stat…
I think it's worth noting that the wave of fascism that swept the world during the early 20th century coincided with radio and television being widely deployed. This may be correlation that does not imply causation. But demagogues had, for the first time, a way to reach into people's homes directly with their messages all the time, if they had access to microphones, video cameras, and broadcast towers. And it was a m…
Going further back, the Protestant Reformation was enabled by the spread of the printing press. In its wake, the 30 Years War. Upon utter exhaustion of the parties involved, the Peace of Westphalia set the stage for the modern nation states.
Re: Mark in the Middle
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty simple, although it may not be obvious. There are 2 different views about "what freedom/democracy is" that are presently doing battle in america, at least among inteligentsia One, the worldview embedded into your comment, is that freedom is about the limits of discourse. Under this system, limiting discourse is inherently undemocratic, so if facebook "censor(s) things they disagree with" this is bad and w…
You're doing a poor job of explaining the first worldview. Which is okay, you've acknowledged that you have trouble understanding it. This worldview has been called the "liberal consensus". What it holds is that the power to determine a discourse is inherently against freedom is corrupting , and by allowing an authority to determine that, it will inevitably be used as a weapon. Goalposts will shift. We will, hmm, go…
I think you're mischaracterizing the classical liberal consensus. That was best represented by John Stuart Mill, and his main point was not that censorshop will be used as a weapon -- it's simply that censorship infringes on liberty, and that the best cure for bad speech is more speech.
And the idea that the "general consensus" is against all forms of censorship is quite false. In America it is, but in Europe and other countries censorship of hate speech (e.g. racism, Nazism, etc.) is quite accepted as part of the general consensus.
And even in the US, "yelling fire in a crowded movie theater" isn't protected either. And arguably, spreading blatant viral lies on social media close to an election is akin to yelling fire in a crowded movie theater, since the national consequences could be so dire.
There are many intelligent arguments to be made that censorship of speech that is either a) primarily hate-directed rather than information-directed, or b) outrageously false but capable of swinging an election, could be outlawed, and neither of these would be incompatible with modern-day political liberalism, which is more commonly called "social democracy" to distinguish it from the classical liberalism that Mill did so much to defend.
And the idea that this would somehow depend on an "oracle of truth" is nonsense. Courts judge things like libel and defamation cases all the time. Sure, there are gray cases that could go either way, but drawing lines in gray areas is what courts have done ever since they existed in the first place. Holding Facebook moderators ultimately responsible to judges, for example, isn't inherently difficult to do if we wanted to.
Re: Mark in the Middle
#408So, 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…
People criticizing censorship on this website make me laugh. Hackernews is the most heavily censored website I've ever encountered. The way this website treats unpopular opinions is like Mao's China.
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Re: Mark in the Middle
#409I don't like this framing of liberals trying to censor conservatives. That's not the root of the problem. The problem is that Facebook is full of misleading or outright false content (both right and left leaning) and it is polarizing America at an unbelievable pace. You could censor literally everything remotely conservative or liberal and it still wouldn't fix anything. The uncensored side would just radicalize even faster and the censored side would find some other platform to radicalize on.
I don't know how you fix this, but something needs to be done because civil discourse is just about dead and our society is ripping at the seams.
Fascist countries won't have to deal with this problem because they are intentionally polarized and there is a "correct" side to be taken by the social media companies.
Re: Mark in the Middle
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty simple, although it may not be obvious. There are 2 different views about "what freedom/democracy is" that are presently doing battle in america, at least among inteligentsia One, the worldview embedded into your comment, is that freedom is about the limits of discourse. Under this system, limiting discourse is inherently undemocratic, so if facebook "censor(s) things they disagree with" this is bad and w…
Your point of view is intrinsically liberal, and the latter point of view plays the victim and assumes people can't evolve to gain the intelligence needed to not fall for misinformation. You intrinsically think there are people who can't make decisions for themselves. Sounds like control
The absolute "freedom is simple, and restrictions are all bad" position is nonsense. Ignoring that there are people who would use their freedom to infringe on others is naive and childish.
If everyone has a gun, we aren't all safer, we're just all each at the mercy of whoever decides to pull the trigger first.