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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

#561

Post by bnycum »

Socketier wrote: post #425
erlich wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 isn't really the same. I've found that I can watch the things I want to fine without seeing a single political video being suggested.

That's totally weird because I have never watched a political video on YouTube, yet my whole suggested feed is filled with it. Even in the first 3 suggested videos. All of it is very far right conservative. Never touch it. I login to see if anyone I'm interested in has posted anything new then get off the platform. Have no clue how to get out of it.

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

#562

Post by fidesomnes »

bjt wrote: post #140
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…

> 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 ... They used a platform called The New York Times to spread their lies. Citation needed that this was a knowing conspiracy as opposed to bad intelligence. Setting that aside, there's a big difference between an institution like the NY Times getting it wrong on occ…

the NY Times line is whatever the CIA wants it to be and it has been that way for decades. "Citation..." go back to reddit plebian.

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

#563

Post by snowwrestler »

otterley wrote: post #293
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-overpaid-ftc-fine... Any action that gets Zuckerberg into a deposition or courtroom, i.e., under oath, is potential trouble for Facebook. Testimony before Congress is not the same.

Lest we forget the Microsoft antitrust trial of the late 1990s, it’s not a foregone conclusion that deposing a powerful CEO leads to their downfall. “I don’t remember” is a frequent answer that deponents give that is both frustrating and incontrovertible.

Gates was deposed in summer 1998 and did a famously horrible job. He stepped down as CEO in January 2000. Microsoft struggled for relevance beyond Windows/Office for the next decade or so.

I think there are a lot of parallels.

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

#564

Post by fidesomnes »

3np wrote: post #399
theevilsharpie wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclaimer: IANAL) A "whistleblower" in the USA is a legal term of art used to describe someone who reports wrong-doing to the government. The conduct being disclosed doesn't necessarily have to be explicitly illegal, but in order to be considered a whistleblower under the law, the information has to be disclosed to the appropriate government agency (i.e., reporting wrong-doing to a private organization or going pub…

Ah. IMO "whistleblower", much like e.g. "refugee", is an attribute you can have regardless of if your status as such is protected by local law. You can be a whistleblower even if US or state regulation doesn't explicitly classify you as one.

you should really stop forming a priori opinions about legal concepts you have no experience with.

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

#565

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #554
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Presumably, you’re trying to imagine facebook 2021 without the shittiness, or facebook 2012 without the shittiness. Facebook 2005, however, was an entirely different product. Sure, people were shitty then. But the product didn’t bring it out. Maybe it’s a way of saying the virtual vs IRL behavior gap was really small back then, and each “product improvement” widens it.

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

#566

Post by code_duck »

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.

YouTube’s used to be really excellent. I discovered so much good music when it seemed to work by automatically cueing songs or videos that other people who enjoyed the current video had enjoyed as well. They seemed to make a change a couple years ago to cue items I had previously watched instead. So now, instead of fresh and interesting items relevant to my tastes, it just plays things I’m already familiar with.

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

#567

Post by caned »

TrackerFF wrote: post #538
mrjin wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

- Stalking old flames

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

#568

Post by AlbertCory »

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…

No, sorry, you're right. Some of my "friends & family" did insist on posting politics all the time. I muted or unfriended all of them. You'd be surprised how many people never do that stuff.

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

#569

Post by otterley »

snowwrestler wrote: post #563
otterley wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lest we forget the Microsoft antitrust trial of the late 1990s, it’s not a foregone conclusion that deposing a powerful CEO leads to their downfall. “I don’t remember” is a frequent answer that deponents give that is both frustrating and incontrovertible.

Gates was deposed in summer 1998 and did a famously horrible job. He stepped down as CEO in January 2000. Microsoft struggled for relevance beyond Windows/Office for the next decade or so. I think there are a lot of parallels.

> Microsoft struggled for relevance beyond Windows/Office for the next decade or so

On the contrary - XBox was a huge success!

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

#570

Post by rocqua »

Grieving wrote: post #522
rocqua wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fine
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