Facebook under fire over secret teen research • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#221

Post by will4274 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 4:34 AM UTC

xvector wrote: post #120

will4274 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So if I want to see you naked, TikTok will show me it?

It's disappointing to see folks in hacker news regurgitate TikTok marketing material as fact credulously. No service could show you precisely what you want to see. TikTok does it's best - but e.g. if I want to see no staged video, TikTok can't enforce this, because TikTok doesn't know.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#222

Post by dr_dshiv » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #219

dr_dshiv wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you really don't like the advertisement and UX design industry, then! I mean, there is an endless stream of human experimentation... What should we do about it? I personally think it is better to run the experiments in public so we understand, but i can get why you might disagree. But i would like to know what you think the policy should be.

Yes I strongly dislike the advertising industry. UX designers I don't have a problem with - they often use informed consent ("check out our new design!"), and as far as I know they don't usually run intentionally harmful experiments. I'm not sure how they could, Facebook is in a somewhat unique position there as it's so embedded in some people's lives. I'm not sure there's really a policy solution, I think any law th…

UX design uses a large number of a/b tests. By their nature, no a/b test involves consent.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#223

Post by FiggyPudding » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

strulovich wrote: post #146

modriano wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you support that belief with any evidence or a coherent argument? What good does FB do that offsets the great amount of evil it does? What offsets FB's choices that connected millions of extremists and gave them protected spaces to radicalize each other? [0] What offsets FB's decision to rush into regions it can't moderate, leading to FB being used as the platform that spreads genocide-inciting misinformation? [1…

This warrants a long response, that I would love writing one day but don’t have the time. But I’ll leave a short one here to respect your comment. I believe social media empowers people, it makes my life better, it gives many people a voice where before it only belonged to a few. Those few also incited wars and genocides, and bred rage and mistrust (From NY Times supporting Iraq war to your local news stations to Fox…

"I think Facebook spends much more resources than TV channels and newspapers trying to address such issues."

Proportional to their extremely greater profit they better be.

"All of those nasty effects of social media existed before, they just moved to the most efficient media form."

Back in the day you could kill a few people with arrows and spears, then you had automatic rifles, now we have nuclear and chemical weapons. We actually try to regulate those...

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#224

Post by colinmhayes » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

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.

Nothing is objectively good, good and bad are just words we invented to describe our preferences. My preference is that people don't continue down the path of intense tribalism, but other people obviously can have different preferences.

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#225

Post by conductr » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

FiggyPudding wrote: post #220

conductr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along with a Surgeon General’s health warning banner on all UX

Government Warning: (1) According to the Surgeon General, people should not pursue "likes" as it may lead to mental health defects. (2) Consumption of social media impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery and may cause social problems.

(3) Just put your dang phone down!!!

Re: Facebook under fire over secret teen research

#226

Post by vlovich123 » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 11:55 PM UTC

cybernautique wrote: post #148

vlovich123 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is a good question! I've known only applicants to Google, never anyone that's worked at or meaningfully aspired to work at Facebook. I'm not making this judgment on a rational basis; my stance is based purely on my ethical values and ideological commitments. If you find this silly, or think that it invalidates my opinion then: power to you! I do not believe that my ethical values are universal statements, nor th…

I happened to have worked at Apple, Facebook and Google. I’ve found all the people there to be generally pretty morale people who try to positively influence decisions. Sometimes it’s a losing battle and decisions get made that you disagree with. However that’s broadly true of any group of people so saying all members of a group are morally compromised seems unhelpful. You could say the same about anyone working on the government or any business or even generally associating with people.

I disagree with the position taken that you can evaluate a person’s principles solely by their choice of employment or association. It’s only one factor and usually an unhelpfully reductive way to look at the world IMO.