Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#501

Post by htrp » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #498

AlbertCory wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest solution is the one FB will never accept, and yet the harm to the public would be virtually zero: Eliminate all news, politics, and other public policy groups and apps. Return to being just a way to connect with friends and family. No one needs to get their news from Facebook. There are plenty of other sites on the Web for that. Same for all these other "engagement" services. Of course, this would cut th…

Eliminate all news, politics, and other public policy groups and apps. Return to being just a way to connect with friends and family. Maybe this is just me being a late adopter of facebook (2012 or 2013 here), but... when was this magical time without politics and news? Was this in the time of game requests? Was there really no one sharing news stories back then? No groups discussing religion and philosophy and curre…

2004 or so .... Facebook was limited to updates about what your friend circle did in college.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#502

Post by intrasight » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

code_duck wrote: post #301

>Frances Haugen: So, you know, you have your phone. You might see only 100 pieces of content if you sit and scroll on for, you know, five minutes. But Facebook has thousands of options it could show you. >The algorithm picks from those options based on the kind of content you've engaged with the most in the past. This is the primary reason I stopped using Facebook. I did everything I could to signal I did not wish to…

>I did everything I could to signal

You don't want to "signal" - you want to "filter". So install FBP and filter out all the stuff you don't want. For me, it made FB like it was a decade ago and thus usable for it's original intent.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#503

Post by spywaregorilla » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

erlich wrote: post #418

code_duck wrote: post #301

>Frances Haugen: So, you know, you have your phone. You might see only 100 pieces of content if you sit and scroll on for, you know, five minutes. But Facebook has thousands of options it could show you. >The algorithm picks from those options based on the kind of content you've engaged with the most in the past. This is the primary reason I stopped using Facebook. I did everything I could to signal I did not wish to…

YouTube is exactly the same. You have to install a browser extension to block politics from your suggested videos. Twitter is great because they have “blocked words”. I maxed out my 200 words though and have to constantly swap them. It’s undoubtedly true that they make huge money from hate and divisiveness. This is not whistleblowing though. They are not breaking laws. And everyone already knows this. People can choo…

I used to criticize youtube for this, but its really pretty easy to tune out the politics by saying "not interested".

This is unfortunately not the same as a downvote, which is effectively saying "show me more of this, I want to hate its siblings too"

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#504

Post by tharne » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

erlich wrote: post #418

code_duck wrote: post #301

>Frances Haugen: So, you know, you have your phone. You might see only 100 pieces of content if you sit and scroll on for, you know, five minutes. But Facebook has thousands of options it could show you. >The algorithm picks from those options based on the kind of content you've engaged with the most in the past. This is the primary reason I stopped using Facebook. I did everything I could to signal I did not wish to…

YouTube is exactly the same. You have to install a browser extension to block politics from your suggested videos. Twitter is great because they have “blocked words”. I maxed out my 200 words though and have to constantly swap them. It’s undoubtedly true that they make huge money from hate and divisiveness. This is not whistleblowing though. They are not breaking laws. And everyone already knows this. People can choo…

Try invidious, it's basically a filter over youtube that protects your privacy and gets rid of the junk:

https://iteroni.com/feed/popular

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#505

Post by karmajunkie » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #498

AlbertCory wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest solution is the one FB will never accept, and yet the harm to the public would be virtually zero: Eliminate all news, politics, and other public policy groups and apps. Return to being just a way to connect with friends and family. No one needs to get their news from Facebook. There are plenty of other sites on the Web for that. Same for all these other "engagement" services. Of course, this would cut th…

Eliminate all news, politics, and other public policy groups and apps. Return to being just a way to connect with friends and family. Maybe this is just me being a late adopter of facebook (2012 or 2013 here), but... when was this magical time without politics and news? Was this in the time of game requests? Was there really no one sharing news stories back then? No groups discussing religion and philosophy and curre…

My first post was in 2004, and shortly thereafter my second was something railing on Bush. you’re right, facebook has always been inseparable from politics and current events.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#506

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

manquer wrote: post #254

matheusmoreira wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it will become an arms race It already is. > starting with technically ( operationally difficult) solutions like hosting ads first party Already happening. Those ads are still getting blocked. > There is simply too much money today in it for the industry to go away quietly. Agreed. We need to drive them out. > issue of ad's itself can sadly not be controlled with ad-blocking only Why?

> Why ? Because it is asymmetric battle. Content Platforms ( not only digital) already insert native advertising or do product placement, these are harder or impossible to block technically, and quite hard cognitively to differentiate as well. Also Google is removing web APIs and actively making its browser poorer and controlling the web standards that is making it increasingly technically difficult to block ads, it…

> native advertising or do product placement

I'm sure people will figure out a solution. Maybe some machine learning thing that identifies brands and just deletes them.

We already have extensions such as sponsor block.

> Google is removing web APIs and actively making its browser poorer

Yeah, that sucks. I've already switched to Firefox and I also keep Brave around. Google made it easy for me when it killed sync for custom Chromium builds.

> controlling the web standards that is making it increasingly technically difficult to block ads

What, really? Do you have examples of this? What web standards have they proposed that would make blocking ads harder?

> only Firefox supports an ad blocker at all and Mozilla generates 95% of its revenue from Google

I agree, that's a massive conflict of interest. I think Mozilla should work to solve that.

> We need better regulations

Agreed, but I still believe that technology is a potent and subversive weapon. The mere existence of ad blockers has forced these tech giants to change the way they operate. If we keep up the pressure, either we'll win and drive them out of the internet or they'll become ever more tyrannical in their attempts to maintain control, drawing more attention to themselves and hopefully inviting public condemnation and regulation.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#507

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

code_duck wrote: post #301

>Frances Haugen: So, you know, you have your phone. You might see only 100 pieces of content if you sit and scroll on for, you know, five minutes. But Facebook has thousands of options it could show you. >The algorithm picks from those options based on the kind of content you've engaged with the most in the past. This is the primary reason I stopped using Facebook. I did everything I could to signal I did not wish to…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#508

Post by ds206 » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

md_ wrote: post #485

mrxd wrote: post #104

I think misinformation and conspiracy theories on these platforms are a huge problem. A few years ago, some bad actors were successful in convincing Congress of a crazy conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The results were far-reaching. The US violated the UN charter and launched a disastrous war in Iraq where millions of Iraqis were killed, injured and displaced. They used a platfor…

The big question, of course, is not whether media--mainstream or social--have ever "gotten it wrong", but what steps we can take to make them better. The mainstream media very much got it wrong on Iraq. I agree with you. Yet the reality is more complex than your anti-elitist tirade suggests. It's inconceivable to me that a well-functioning democracy can exist without trustworthy--and trusted--institutions who (yes) h…

It's easy. They have to hold themselves accountable for their own (weekly?) mistakes. People would trust them again (imo) if they called themselves out and proactively fixed their mistakes.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#509

Post by jb1991 » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

scottious wrote: post #464

jb1991 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a full closure of my account. I have not received any emails in about 18 months, when I closed it. I'm scared to even attempt to login to verify that it is actually closed, for fear that FB will somehow interpret that as a desire for the account to reopen, and do so, despite that I did close it fully (and did not merely "deactivate" it or whatever they call the other option that does not really close it).

You're lucky. I deactivated back in January and I think I did a "log in with facebook" button once and now facebook seems to have re-activated my account implicitly. Also they send me click-baity emails like "John Doe has posted a status update!" Heck, they've even started TEXTING me to lure me back. I'm dreading having to log back in to try to figure out how to get them to stop trying to contact me.

You say “deactivate“ but Facebook does differentiate between deactivation and actual closing of an account. So if you merely deactivated it, then that would explain why your account was not actually deleted and it reactivated it for you.

> The biggest difference between deactivating and deleting a Facebook account is that deactivating your Facebook account gives you the flexibility to return whenever you wish, while deleting your account is a permanent action.

From what I remember, reactivation of a deactivated account merely requires logging back in. Which sounds like you did exactly that.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#510

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #314

roenxi wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weeeeeell... it isn't a secret, that is true. And technically speaking there is no problem here. But it is easy to imagine that this happened to be able to hoodwink someone with the "Zuckerburg only controls 10% of the shares!" style soundbites without being forced to point out that means control of the company. Realistically this practice should probably be banned on the basis that Facebook could achieve a similar o…

> But it is easy to imagine that this happened to be able to hoodwink someone with the "Zuckerburg only controls 10% of the shares!" style soundbites without being forced to point out that means control of the company. Does that hoodwinking matter, though? If you're unsophisticated enough to be tricked by this, you have 0% voting power. And at best you expected "someone other than zuckerburg, I guess, but I didn't lo…

> If you're unsophisticated enough to be tricked by this, you have 0% voting power.

Doesn't mean that tricking people should be allowed.