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

#541

Post by tayistay » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

md_ wrote: post #530

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.

Perhaps I should say, deterministic behavior to satisfy pedants?

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

#542

Post by mLuby » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

nobleach wrote: post #516

mLuby wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they think an algorithm can decide better what I want to see than me myself I agree with your points, except I believe there is a limited role for algorithms that help users discover new things they might like but not know about. I prefer Spotify's approach, where there's a specific area of the app (a "Discover Weekly" playlist) that gets refreshed but not so often that it becomes a dopamine lever. Although that ki…

I've never seen an algorithm better than Pandora's recommendations (back around 2011 when I used to listen daily). I found so much music that I still love to this day because of how "smart" that thing was/is.

Agreed. That's probably because of just how much manual work went into it:

"Each song [representative of other songs in its group] is analyzed by a musician in a process that takes 20 to 30 minutes per song. Ten percent of songs are analyzed by more than one musician to ensure conformity with the in-house standards and statistical reliability." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project

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

#543

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #431

taurath wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hit the nail on the head there. It’s impossible to actually get what was the damn promise of Facebook to begin with, and instead everyone gets practically drugged with crap because it makes Mark more money.

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…

> I don't understand how they think an algorithm can decide better what I want to see than me myself

Presumably, they don’t think they can decide what you want better than you can. But they think they can decide what will make you engage more, and they’re probably right. The damage is not accidental.

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

#544

Post by fleddr » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:19 PM UTC

AlwaysRock wrote: post #531

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 conten…

Very much so. I'd even extend the outrage phenomenon to real life and non-tech.

"I just had a perfectly reasonable conversation with my neighbor on a matter of no consequence"

Said nobody ever.

"Omg did you hear what that idiot down the block said this time?"

Said everybody, all the time. The very act of gossip is to dramatize something mildly unusual and escalate it into an ever juicer story as it passes around. We are Facebook.

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

#545

Post by raxxorrax » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:19 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…

They also basically told you fantasies about the Russians and many other bullshit and convenient stories that put superhero de jure in a good light.

Word clouds are silly and a bit out of fashion, but very useful to find common rhetoric. If there is a dissonance between reporting and common users, you might have found content that is more of a suggestive nature.

There was and is a lot of that. Maybe popular writers just have common groups for information interchange. That on its own can be detrimental because the number of perspectives shrinks.

Complexity isn't an excuse. Legislative frameworks have a tendency to get more complicated since they often lack mechanism to deprecate unfitting laws, but overall complexity didn't really increase. It is an excuse and rationalization for these kind of lies. Projection of hegemonial power and securing strategic resources isn't complicated.

Undermining trust has to be an existential threat of newspapers. Many people are slow learners but they learn.

The common journalists is a pretty poor slob and the economic situation of newspapers is pretty grim. It was also a "safe" option to lie on Iraq. But what can be just as a large problem is when journalists a easily impressionable.

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

#546

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:22 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…

> when was this magical time without politics and news?

Before occupy Wall Street, maybe? Or before the recession? When it was just a college thing, it was great. I distinctly remember facebook during college being the same content makeup I get today when actually talking to friends. Photos from the weekend, conversation, invitations to the beach, jokes, etc. And you got these big albums, so it wasn’t IG’s carefully curated perfect-life-looking shininess.

> Really??

Yeah.

> I'm gonna guess you simply didn't see it

I think you joined after the good years.

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

#547

Post by AlbertCory » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #219

snowwrestler wrote: post #87

Facebook is going to become a hollowed out shell of itself if they do not change. They’ll get hollowed out by litigation, legislation, investors, or all of the above. They need new leadership. The tactics that got them here will not carry them further. There are tons of examples of the positive impact of new leadership, on companies like Apple, Microsoft, Uber, Disney, Ford, etc. And there are certainly plenty of exa…

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…

If you're the ones complaining about "censorship" or how "people want it": sit right down.

No one is saying that other Web actors can't do all these things, or that people who want it can't find it; just Facebook. Because they're a monopoly and the usual rules don't apply to them. When you make the market, you can't defend yourself with free market principles.

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

#548

Post by mwhitfield347 » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

annadane wrote: post #281

mwhitfield347 wrote: post #125

I had an experience with Frances in 2018 while at a company prior to her joining Facebook. She was somewhat unprofessional with me by abruptly cancelling a meeting without a very good excuse or much followup. I believe the CTO had asked her to take a meeting with me but she mostly disregarded that request. I don't see much that is substantial coming out of this. She's brought hell upon herself while playing in a most…

The fact you made an account just to post this. lol.

My impression of her was that bad and I wouldn’t waste time on other social media getting my 2 cents in :)

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

#549

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

bagels wrote: post #298

k4lk wrote: post #230

It's an unfortunate but inevitable outcome of the attention economys race to the bottom. This area needs better regulation. The best approach is to stay out of technical implementation and focus on what principles companies should adhere to. As James Williams argue: it should be a civil right to have "freedom of chance". We already knew all too well what it does to our democracy that a large part of the public only g…

Many people are saying "regulation" What would that regulation actually require social media companies to do?

I’m starting to think section 230 protections (as I understand them) are a bad idea. The whole issue is these negative externalities. Facebook has to choose between money for them versus good things for others. It has misaligned incentives because it isn’t liable for the harm it imposes. So make it liable.

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

#550

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

lanevorockz wrote: post #411

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…

The reason the algorithm does this is simple, they want to trigger an obsessive compulsive behaviour. The irritating content provokes you to engage and that's how a lot of their profit is made.

[deleted]