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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

#111

Post by discordance »

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…

I thought FAANG criteria is more a measure of how much these places pay, otherwise Microsoft would be on the list (with a market cap 2.3tn).

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#112

Post by discordance »

strulovich wrote: post #102
williamtrask wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these things existed before facebook

Yes, but so did magazines and TV shows which also made teenage girls feel bad about their bodies. (Disclaimer: Facebook employee who thinks Facebook and social media is a net positive)

Moral relativism will only get you so far

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#113

Post by masterof0 »

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…

That's not the case at all. Unless you are one of the first few engineers of what will become an Amazon, Google, Uber, etc... coming from a small company gives very little leverage on negotiations with recruiters, visbility, etc... , the scale of problems you deal with at FAANG is 100x bigger and more impacting than at a random placeholder.io company. I'm not saying there are not many engineers working at small companies better than some of the devs at FAANG, that's a fact. Also a company success very often, have very little to do with their engineers. If you want real pedigree, start your own software company, and make it a success. Working for another person doesn't give you any pedigree. Is just a job, you work, they pay you, and that's pretty much it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishful_thinking

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#114

Post by discordance »

loeg wrote: post #95
sudosysgen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Anyone with money and a modicum of technical expertise can make a messaging platform. The hard part is monetization. Facebook has clearly cracked the monetization problem.

Whatsapp’s opex was $13.5m with a revenue of $15.9m before they were acquired. [0]

0: https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/28/whatsapp-revenue/

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#115

Post by ojbyrne »

cybernautique wrote: post #63
ghuin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or people don't share your views on ethics.

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).

Historically it’s a pretty straightforward to argue that pretty well any technology directly enabled human rights abuses on a scale never before seen in human history. Radio, telephones, railroads, you can basically go back as far as you want…wheels, bronze, iron, fire, etc.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#116

Post by modriano »

discobot wrote: post #65
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.

Why is anything good objectively? It is good for me because I can stay connected with my mom despite living in different country. Also facebook group for my town is nice and useful, and my wife enjoys posting in instagram from our trips. Now multiply this by several billions.

Text, email, zoom, etc. Facebook did not invent online communication. Facebook didn't invent the ability to share photos online.

As far as I can tell, Facebook's innovation is it's great at identifying people susceptible to extremist conspiracies and at connecting them. Per Facebook's own research: """Even before the teams’ 2017 creation, Facebook researchers had found signs of trouble. A 2016 presentation that names as author a Facebook researcher and sociologist, Monica Lee, found extremist content thriving in more than one-third of large German political groups on the platform. Swamped with racist, conspiracy-minded and pro-Russian content, the groups were disproportionately influenced by a subset of hyperactive users, the presentation notes. Most of them were private or secret.

The high number of extremist groups was concerning, the presentation says. Worse was Facebook’s realization that its algorithms were responsible for their growth.The 2016 presentation states that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms: “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”"" [0].

There were QAnon groups with millions of members. Facebook created these echo chambers and then ushered people in. And the only thing you can think of is they allowed you to communicate with your mother and share images?

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20201219115127/http://wsj.com/ar...

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#117

Post by will4274 »

xvector wrote: post #75
khc wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the alternative would not be that teenagers would not have social media accounts, but that they would all be on Tiktok (which probably is already the case)

TikTok is a much more positive platform than anything Facebook has come up with TBH. Almost all of the creators I follow are just... normal people, making normal jokes and doing normal things. They aren't heavily airbrushed or photo/videoshopped or whatever. The content itself is generally much more positive and much more focused around acceptance and (body-)positivity. As far as social media platforms go, TikTok is…

My SO has TikTok.

It seems like mostly staged videos and folks with barely informed political rants to me.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#118

Post by ndesaulniers »

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'm increasing worried more so for what kind of nonsense my older relatives are picking up on the platform.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#119

Post by lostmsu »

908B64B197 wrote: post #109
notyourwork wrote: post #3

Does anyone remember Cosmopolitan and other like magazines. Teenage body issues and associated anxiety are not new. What has happened is we gave everyone internet access so now they can look at pictures of unrealistic bodies all day everywhere they go. The result is body dysmorphia on steroids.

> so now they can look at pictures of unrealistic bodies all day everywhere they go In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [0] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [1]. Maybe our definition of "realistic" changed too. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hesta…

Doesn't is show that body shaming might actually work, because the growth means the cause is likely a lifestyle choice rather than something about nature.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#120

Post by xvector »

will4274 wrote: post #117
xvector wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok is a much more positive platform than anything Facebook has come up with TBH. Almost all of the creators I follow are just... normal people, making normal jokes and doing normal things. They aren't heavily airbrushed or photo/videoshopped or whatever. The content itself is generally much more positive and much more focused around acceptance and (body-)positivity. As far as social media platforms go, TikTok is…

My SO has TikTok. It seems like mostly staged videos and folks with barely informed political rants to me.

TikTok shows you precisely what you want to see, whether it's simple and funny staged videos or something more intellectually engaging.
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