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

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

#531

Post by AlwaysRock »

fleddr wrote: post #495

I see this issue as an issue far greater than Facebook. With that I mean the mass production of content that is illegal, harmful, misinformation, divisive, stolen or down-right low quality. The internet is a crowded place now, people have a lot of screen time yet a low attention span. Hence, content creators have perfected the art of short form content that achieves maximum engagement. This won't change, not even in…

> With that I mean the mass production of content that is illegal, harmful, misinformation, divisive, stolen or down-right low quality.

100%. Look at the front page of most popular websites. It's mostly outrage in some form or another. Reddit r/popular is so bad now. It's mostly videos of public freakouts, idiots in cars, or someone yelling about something on tik tok with the occasional uplifting post. Outrage content makes websites more money.

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

#532

Post by dvh1990 »

amelius wrote: post #379
dvh1990 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is censorship the answer? People want to consume all types of content on social as much as possible. The answer is making all the data public and open sourcing the feed algo + allowing users to pick their preferred algo. That way, if your feed is not to your liking, pick a better one.

Pushing one type of information relative to others is also censorship. Few people will change their feed algorithm without some kind of ballot screen.

Then it's a UX problem. What if switching algo was like switching channels on your TV?

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

#533

Post by worldsayshi »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #463
worldsayshi wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can "disable" the account and only messenger will still work. I've done that since my parents only use messenger.

Hmm, interesting. Not sure of the upside of that though? I assume that it wouldn't make much difference in how Facebook handles my data.

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

#534

Post by mbesto »

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…

Follow @FacebooksTop10 and you'll see this in action:

https://twitter.com/facebookstop10?lang=en

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

#535

Post by jedimastert »

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…

It's really interesting to see this as a top comment here, then rage against youtube for trying to self-regulating.

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

#536

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

YouTube always lures you back to mainstream content. Pick an unusual genre of music and let it autoplay. Come back after a few hours and you will hear pop music. This has a self-reinforcing character as my views will make those videos even more popular. Youtube now also tagged me as liking pop music.

Pretty sure you could even call it distortion of competition. I doubt legislation can improve the net much but there is an economic significance for less known artists.

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

#537

Post by lambdasquirrel »

robertlagrant wrote: post #409
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if I’d be cynical in that particular way. Maybe the real cynicism is more banal. FB was and always will be “viral.” When Zuck was in college, this pretty much amounted to stalking all your classmates (for those who remember when it was university students only). Zuck is getting towards middle age now. “News” is the new viral. We want to believe that FB is a corporation and therefore must act with a certa…

> Drugging people with viral was always the main gig unto itself I don't think this is a useful way to summarise it. You could say any business' main gig is not making money if you want to (this bank isn't about making money; we just intrinsically love signing people up to financial services!) I don't know if it adds anything, and I think it does subtract.

There are some companies that are set up to make money. Most of the banks in existence exist to make money and they won’t hesitate to say so, and they will say that they want to make you money too.

Facebook was not created to make money. It came about from the era when people thought, just grow really big and figure out how to monetize later. It was not yet established that you could monetize something after making it big (which was a thing in the dot-com bust of 2001). It seems targeted advertising like a given today but back in 2011 (a decade ago, and not long after DoubleClick was bought by Google), this was still being established. It took a long, long time for FB to monetize.

To that end, you need to have been there in the thick of it. Back then it may have seen like it was fun and games. Playing silly “viral” “games” was a big chunk of how people were spending time, back in 2008.

But more than FB’s specific case, founder’s personas can be a bit unappreciated as the guiding hand in what happens with the company. We know that founder disagreements are a large percentage of startup failure. It really come down to the people, and their base impulses. Which is so trite and petty, but sometimes life just is.

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

#538

Post by TrackerFF »

mrjin wrote: post #448
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…

Have always been curious why people use Facebook. Personally I don't believe most of my life should ever concern most of my connections(to be clear, the people I know and know me too), so don't event mention those I've no idea who. I know quite a few people who will take pictures of what ever they are doing and share. They might think they are doing something fancy, I can get that. But, how does that concern other pe…

Why I use facebook.

- Hobby / niche groups.

- Hobby/niche and local buy/sell groups

- Alma mater groups

- Family and friends (obviously)

- Local / community groups

Everything else is pretty much noise to me - so I rarely bother to scroll the main feed.

It's been said for a while that facebook is pretty much dead for younger people - which I guess is true. But older people (my parents and grandparents generation) seem to be extremely invested and connected to FB. It seems like many of them use FB from pretty much everything.

And, as some have said, if you live in a smaller town or similar, chances are that the community is also very invested into facebook. In my small hometown (population 2500), facebook is pretty much used for everything.

edit: FWIW - what people use, seems to be very dependent on location. For example, I live in Norway, and I personally don't know a single person that uses WhatsApp - even though it's wildly popular in other countries.

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

#539

Post by steve76 »

So these are the people you chose to hire. People who are given everything only to take your money and refuse to work and end up betraying everyone. And I'm the evil one. I take it she never got hit with the code interview. If I was making money, and a product manager yipped up from the corner of the company about how bad everything was, they would be promptly force choked.

Dear Spoiled Moron: Everything kills you. Welcome to life.

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

#540

Post by ok123456 »

htrp wrote: post #501
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In a single textarea element. It was more like a graffiti wall where any of your friends could edit.
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