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

wsj.com

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

#521

Post by totetsu »

johnchristopher wrote: post #488
GekkePrutser wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook was actually pretty good when it just showed me my friends posts and nothing else. But when they moved to their 'timeline' and started fiddling with algorithms that try to decide what I want to see, they got it all wrong and it became a chore to wade through it all. I don't understand how they think an algorithm can decide better what I want to see than me myself (by adding friend and blocking the ones that…

Micro blogging was super cool. A random feed of micro blogging posts/status that is not random but heavily leans toward resharing led to outrage porn addiction.

For skim readers having troubles parsing the comment. It not about actual porn. Just things that are grotuitously outrageous.

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

#522

Post by Grieving »

rocqua wrote: post #264
Grieving wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Susan Rosenberg was part of a group of former Weather Underground members that bombed the U.S. capitol in 1983. She was pardoned by Clinton and became involved with the company bankrolling the largest BLM organization in the world. In what way is a group of proles walking around, taking selfies, and breaking some glass comparable?

In the sense that they were there to lynch the vice president for certifying a fair election result. In that sense, the capitol attack was comparable to your whataboutist example.

They weren't. You, I, and everyone else knows that hyperbolic, sometimes violent language is par for the course on both sides of the aisle. It's actually protected speech.

Whataboutism increasingly seems to be used as a thought-terminating buzzword by people who want double standards.

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

#523

Post by rmrfrmrf »

worldsayshi wrote: post #414
mszcz wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the mountains of odorless excrement I started seeing on facebook, this was the other reason I quit. It became unusable because once I scrolled past something it was next to impossible to find it again by either scrolling up or searching. Instead of seeing what people were up to I started seeing things they thought would keep me on the platform for as long as possible. Looking at it now, at least to me, it…

I'm curious if when most people say they "quit" Facebook they removed their account or if they just stopped using it. It feels like most people I know has stopped using it, except for messenger, but almost no-one has actually removed or closed down their account.

deactivating and/or closing your account just gives them more datapoints imo, and the number of people who do it is so small that it makes a great metric for fingerprinting.

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

#525

Post by tayistay »

What we as a society should do (in my view):

1. Break up Facebook into separate companies to reduce its power. Antitrust laws may have to change.

2. Ban communication technologies which the behavior is a black-box to the user. It should always be apparent to the user why they are seeing what they are, and in what order.

These restrictions should weaken this cancer of a business known as Facebook.

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

#526

Post by matheusmoreira »

sandworm101 wrote: post #239
matheusmoreira wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the power to affect corporate decision making was an important part of investing. Apparently not.

That power is still there. By selling their non-voting shares investors lower their price, which has knock-on impacts on the corporation. What is lost is the power to directly make corporate decisions.

> What is lost is the power to directly make corporate decisions.

That's what I meant.

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

#527

Post by Grieving »

ethanbond wrote: post #520
Grieving wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all watched protesters demonstrate in a public building, and yes, disrupt the transition of power. Peaceful disruption of the government is the quintessential act of protest. >call the press the “enemy of the free state.” Criticism of media is terrorism? >kidnap elected officials That group was comprised almost entirely of undercover agents along with a couple of mentally ill people. The FBI orchestrated the entir…

In a democracy, the results of a free and fair election are actually not a valid target of protest if your form of protest entails an attempt to overturn those results. Feel free to disrupt traffic and make a scene elsewhere.

In a democracy, people should be allowed to protest if they believe an election is not free and fair, no? If not, why? This is a strange line in the sand that to my knowledge has never existed before in American history. People have protested and contested elections numerous times.

> Feel free to disrupt traffic and make a scene elsewhere.

Yes, disrupt the worker bees, not the queen.

Edit: it does seem strange that you wouldn't include some sort of disclaimer in this convo about your employer's stake in "counter-terrorism".

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

#528

Post by tayistay »

LuisMondragon wrote: post #524

> Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they'll click on less ads, they'll make less money.

Which is why we need to ban the use of such black-box algorithms for social media.

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

#529

Post by conspiracist »

dang wrote: post #385
conspiracist wrote: post #138

I’m wary of an angle here where the individual was hired by FB to set them up for a much bigger gambit down the road. This individual can bring to light relatively trivial things and demonstrate that FB has put so-and-so measurements in place when they really go all in - think dissident/political enemy crackdown type of moves. Remember: the senate hearings are a farce because the senate is in bed with FB/NSA/CIA. But…

We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. (Also, please don't create single-purpose accounts.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thank you dang.

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

#530

Post by md_ »

tayistay wrote: post #525

What we as a society should do (in my view): 1. Break up Facebook into separate companies to reduce its power. Antitrust laws may have to change. 2. Ban communication technologies which the behavior is a black-box to the user. It should always be apparent to the user why they are seeing what they are, and in what order. These restrictions should weaken this cancer of a business known as Facebook.

> 2. Ban communication technologies which the underlying behavior is a black-box to the user. It should always be apparent to the user why they are seeing what they are, and in what order.

I don't understand elliptic curve cryptography, but I still use ECC TLS.

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