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Facebook under fire over secret teen research

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#81

Post by cybernautique »

ipaddr wrote: post #60
munk-a wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - nobody needs to get the money. You can decide to only work for ethical companies and by doing so you do contribute to the pressure from the labour pool for companies to act ethically. Yes - there are tons of developers, but a lot of senior devs won't nab offers from facebook due to their poor corporate profile and their hiring is, as a result, incredibly desperate at the senior level. Those folks who do consent…

I don't know what an Ethical company means to you or if it should matter. Would groupon be more Ethical then facebook? Apple? Pornhub? Sport betting sites? EA? Walmart? Amazon? Microsoft? Google? Well Fargo? Standard Oil? Starbucks? Blockbusters? Ancestry? Twitter? Reddit? The NBA? You could debate and compare all of these companies and they come out the same. NGOs are full of unethical practices hopefully with cover…

This is whatabouttery to a fine degree.

You start with "I don't know what an Ethical company means to you _or if it should matter_;" I'm a sincere egoist, so I declare: no! It shouldn't matter to you, or to anyone, what my or anyone else's notion of ethical is! Ethics isn't a universal, it's not endemic to the individual experience, and neither is ethics-having in the first place.

I contend that ethics-having is vital to the human experience like vitamins are vital.

Having said that, what would an ethical company look like _to me_? I have one simple test: whether a B2C company enforces that their product or service be used only in specific ways. Any company which fails this test is de facto unethical, and downright uncivil.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#82

Post by yzzytohr »

munk-a wrote: post #35
zffr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up the FAANG acronym. It’s a collection of companies that are supposedly the “best” to work for. Facebook is the F Edit: Here’s an example Reddit thread of what I mean: https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/mnl4u2/why_does_e...

FAANG is composed of large companies - not great companies. Those employers rarely make it onto genuine lists of best employers and if you want real pedigree on your resume you'll want to come out of a small but successful company. You can be asleep at the wheel for two years and leave a FAANG with neutral or positive reviews because you were sociable - if you helped grow a tiny company into a small company recruiter…

Have you actually work at one of these companies or did you form these notions based on others' perceptions of legacy companies like IBM and Oracle? None of the FAANG are known for good WLB outside of Google. Actually a common criticism of Amazon and FB is PIP culture so I'm not sure where you can fall asleep at the wheel for two years just because you were sociable.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#83

Post by sudosysgen »

renewiltord wrote: post #67
colinmhayes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHy is that good? Seems like it just leads to 13% of teenagers just wanting to kill themselves.

Their machinery is ridiculously effective. My Uber driver the other day was Afghan. He talked to his family fleeing their country via Messenger. Ubiquitous universal communication. It is the stuff of utopian sci fi.

Lol, you're talking as if it's unique to Facebook. Anyone with money and a modicum of technical expertise can make a messaging platform. The hard part is monetization.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#85

Post by Nasrudith »

huntermeyer wrote: post #9

We may have to come together as a society and deem these social media apps as being a harm to society, especially the youth. Perhaps even age restrict them like alcohol, gambling, etc.

Frankly I think we need to chill the hell out - this has all of the hallmarks of a moral panic. People here are seriously and unironically saying "think of the children" and "we need censorship for society".

Good god, did they all get amnesia a few decades ago to forget their youth, and how much of a dumb panic it was?

There is a 95% chance a retort will be "But this time is different!" despite the fact it never is.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#86

Post by vlovich123 »

cybernautique wrote: post #57
gilrain wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Not all of them are bad” isn’t a very strong argument against the general heuristic.

I have one caveat: people whose immigration to the USA was conditioned on their employment in Silicon Valley. Aside from that, I think _every single person_ that works at Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. (the uncivil technology corps) is morally bankrupt. Every last one of them is fundamentally compromised by their work.

How many people with prior experience at these companies have you worked with or know on a personal level that you're drawing this conclusion from?

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#87

Post by rozap »

_ktx2 wrote: post #74
rozap wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a useful tool for hiring though. I wouldn't be able to hire anyone who worked there. At least at my current job, a functioning moral compass is required due to the impact our clients (governments) have on the general population. It's part of our interview process to figure out if someone cares about how their work effects people. Not that the pay scales overlap much anyway.

Applying morality to jobs is a pretty piss poor strategy. I'm a big fan of privacy, how many companies have employees that I cannot morally hire with your perspective? How can a Libertarian ever hire anyone who has served in a war? How can a religious person sell goods to all people in the community they serve? The thing about morals is that they're written by the individual, and meant to guide the individual. They'r…

Yeah I agree. Though I don't mean morality in a general sense. All I'm saying is, it's important to figure out if someone will contribute to a product that is shown to be harmful. It has nothing to do with an individual's beliefs or feelings, only actions people take in the workplace.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#88

Post by cybernautique »

Nasrudith wrote: post #78
cybernautique wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in seeing which set of ethical values helps someone reconcile the two notions of "I'm not a bad person" and "I directly enable human rights abuses on a scale never-before-seen in human history;" or, otherwise, which perspective a person can take that doesn't commit them to the second notion (precluding fundamentally self-deceptive perspectives, such as willful ignorance).

Well for one a stance based upon human agency. "Enabling" is also a massive weasel word of propaganda to attribute all indirect actions and consequences to the target while ignoring the actual actors. The ones committing human rights violations. Limiting everyone to only non-toxic crayons short, dull, plastic knives that cannot even cut bread would reduce ability to inflict harm. To call blaming the tool childish is…

Facebook does not have any regard for human agency, neither the platform nor the corporation, anymore than fentanyl or its producers have.

I agree that the sense of which you speak is a nonsensical perspective; I'm not interested in laying blame on a tool for how the tool is utilized.

The Facebook employee isn't unethical because of their nebulous entanglement in nth-order externalities, whereby bad-person X did bad-thing Y therefore employee Z is guilty by association.

The Facebook employee is unethical because of their direct, active, engagement in developing the actual tools actually utilized by none other than their employer for the explicit purpose of making our world a more user-hostile place.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#89

Post by rozap »

quotemstr wrote: post #48
rozap wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a useful tool for hiring though. I wouldn't be able to hire anyone who worked there. At least at my current job, a functioning moral compass is required due to the impact our clients (governments) have on the general population. It's part of our interview process to figure out if someone cares about how their work effects people. Not that the pay scales overlap much anyway.

> I wouldn't be able to hire anyone who worked there > Not that the pay scales overlap much anyway Those grapes sure are sour.

I'm doing really well, thanks!

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#90

Post by jakequade »

jetrink wrote: post #66
apeace wrote: post #62

A parallel between Facebook and Big Tobacco had never occurred to me until I read this: > In a move straight out of big tobacco's playbook, Facebook downplayed the negative effects of its product and hid this research from the public and even from members of Congress who specifically asked for it What would our world be like if it were illegal to have a social media account until you were 21 years old? Interesting to…

I wonder if this happened, would teenagers would be upset or relieved? There's a This American Life episode[1] in which several teenage girls explain the complex etiquette of Instagram. It sounds stressful, it sounds exhausting, it sounds like a full time job. Right now, anyone who opts out also excludes themselves from a major aspect of school social life. 1. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/573/transcript

They would be upset. 100%. Many of them just don't care about the inner workings of the app.
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