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

#551

Post by ThrowMeXY » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

atraac wrote: post #423

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 recently had an issue with Facebook feed similar to yours. I've suddenly had my feed full of... Beatles fanpages. All kinds of 'old music' fanpages, Beatles, Queen, Nirvana etc. I don't even listen to them, I have never liked any of them, hell, I didn't even google anything like that. For last 2 months I've specifically marked every such suggestion as Not relevant. And it still shows me that stuff. Every, single da…

In my 40+ years I never cared for any type of football, but my feed is full of news regarding different European clubs, Munich, Paris, you name it. Disclaimer: I am from a home town where football is super popular.

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

#552

Post by raxxorrax » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

mountainb wrote: post #497

lukestevens wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a strange pattern [0]: [Sophie Zhang] joined Facebook in 2018 after the financial strain of living on part-time contract work in the Bay Area had worn her down. When she received Facebook’s offer, she was upfront with her recruiter: she didn’t think the company was making the world better, but she would join to help fix it. “They told me, ‘You’d be surprised how many people at Facebook say that,’” she remembers.…

It has to do with how the university educated are socialized. They believe it's gauche to admit to pecuniary interest when looking for a job. They have to make it like a quasi-religious mission for which they are incidentally paid. It's intensely stupid. Obviously Facebook invites it and has consciously adapted its recruiting message. Back in the 2000s before the financial crisis it was popular to portray the young a…

I think this is a convenient excuse and the money and reference was good. A convenient excuse, not a good one.

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

#553

Post by md_ » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

tayistay wrote: post #541

md_ wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Sorry. I'm not trying to be pedantic, but how do you define this kind of thing?

E.g. "deterministic?" A naive Bayes model that optimizes for inflammatory text keywords is deterministic. Is it what you want?

I think you're making the point that consumer comprehension of how a system works is important, but at what level is that comprehension needed?

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

#554

Post by Broken_Hippo » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #546

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…

> 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…

I think you joined after the good years.

Yeah, it always seemed like it wasn't worth it since I really didn't have many friends to speak of. I mostly joined to keep touch with family when moving overseas. I'm not sure about 'after the good years' since I've honestly met some wonderful folks and had always seen people act out the worst part of facebook in real life - racism, anti-gay, and anti-poor sentiments haven't been strangers to Indiana's small-to-medium towns. You know, making it hard to believe it wasn't on facebook too.

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

#555

Post by specialist » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

pmcp wrote: post #404

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…

You will have to define “news” first, or “politics”. As a former strategist for a big news room, I can tell you it’s not as easy as you make it out to be.

> As a former strategist for a big news room...

Would love to hear how you (and your cohort) would tackle these issues.

I just finished Jill Lepore's These Truths. Terrific. Tracks how our nation transformed from seekers of truth (for all our faults) to anti-truth.

The transition period from newspapers to mobile mediums as people's primary source of news is very interesting. Sure, everyone has been lamenting this ad nauseum. But somehow Lepore's explanation is just so tight and focused.

And yet. I haven't seen or heard any ideas or strategies for what's next.

Fills me with dread.

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

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Post by b3morales » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:51 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.

Pandora, if I'm remembering correctly, also has a feature that Spotify lacks, which is to say "I don't like this" for a piece that it chooses. Although I couldn't say how much that influenced its later choices, it feels better as a user to be able to convey it.

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

#557

Post by specialist » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #245

ageek123 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is always disclosed when a company files to go public. It's not secret. It's actually good for long term shareholder value in most cases.

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…

Andreessen participated in that "hoodwink", convincing investors to cede control.

> Realistically this practice should probably be banned...

Post Jobs, Larry and Serge were determined to not be ousted from their own creation. Others founders followed suit. And since returns were so good, investors played along.

Methinks that after Zuck and Neumann and others, investors have lost their appetite for being sidelined.

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

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Post by b3morales » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

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.

Even if we grant that the business's focus is completely on making the next dollar, someone, or some cluster of someones, is deciding how best to go about that. Their interests, knowledge, and blind spots will absolutely affect what they choose as the steps to take to get the money.

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

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Post by bagels » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

cblconfederate wrote: post #333

bagels wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Here is how i think of it: Put people in an fMRI machine while reading and interacting with the facebook feed of a celebrity, or person that they dont have personal connection with Then show people the feed of their friends or family Then force facebook to change its algorithms until the two fMRI readings show similar level of activation of key areas in limbic system The real power of facebook is that it exploits the…

Facebook is supposed to somehow make people not recognize celebrities as different from their own family? Sounds like a dangerous goal.

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

#560

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

yibg wrote: post #286

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…

You know, I would like to believe this is the case. That some combination of litagation, legislation etc will bring down FB. But outside of the HN bubble I'm unfortunately doubtful it'll actually happen. My friends and family outside of tech has no issues with what FB is doing. Wallstreet also seems to have no issues with what FB is doing. It really just seems to be the techies on HN that are yelling and screaming.

I don’t think it will kill Facebook. I do think there is a big risk that FB becomes a zombie company, with a leadership more concerned with fighting their critics, the government, and competitors than innovating for customers. Arguably they already had an innovation problem, which is why they bought Instagram and WhatsApp.

Microsoft lost a least a decade to this sort of thing. They did not really come out of their funk until they got wholly new leadership in Nadella, and let go of who they thought they were in the 90s.