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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

#581

Post by md_ »

mrxd wrote: post #578
md_ wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nielsen TV and radio ratings are the functional equivalent of "an algorithm that rewards CTR", and that system rewards polarization and outrage in exactly the same way. "If it bleeds, it leads" is the longstanding mantra of TV news. IMO the problem of public trust in institutions has one answer: democratic accountability. In the US, the news media claims to be the watchdog of our society, and to act in the public int…

So what, in your mind, is a more “democratic” news media?

I don’t think most journalists would accept the view you attribute to them—that they are opponents of democracy—but the logic seems like it applies to any expert specialization. Is that your argument—that all experts are inherently opponents of democracy because they “tell us what to think?”

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

#582

Post by Dylan16807 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #510
Dylan16807 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Does that hoodwinking matter, though? If you're unsophisticated enough to be tricked by this, you have 0% voting power. And at best you expected "someone other than zuckerburg, I guess, but I didn't lo…

> If you're unsophisticated enough to be tricked by this, you have 0% voting power. Doesn't mean that tricking people should be allowed.

Not always, but tricking people is usually allowed. You have to have pretty specific harm before you get into fraud territory.

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

#583

Post by silexia »

wepple wrote: post #427
Socketier wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

+1 I find that YT actually badly overfits my history; it’s super predictable and narrow. Sure it’s preferable to falling off the bandwagon into conspiracy, but it doesn’t really “explore” a lot for me

I never see political videos. Only videos in my very narrow interest.

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

#584

Post by Dylan16807 »

roenxi wrote: post #452
Dylan16807 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Does that hoodwinking matter, though? If you're unsophisticated enough to be tricked by this, you have 0% voting power. And at best you expected "someone other than zuckerburg, I guess, but I didn't lo…

In principle, I have no argument. In practice, it leaves open the question of why anyone felt the need for 2 classes of shares. Why have 1 class A and 9 class B, instead of 100 shares for the company owner and 9 on the market? One of those is much simpler to work with. Maybe there is just some tax loophole that is being exploited here, but it looks like someone is getting scammed. Not the biggest crisis I've seen tod…

> Why have 1 class A and 9 class B, instead of 100 shares for the company owner and 9 on the market?

Because you want to sell more of the company without losing control. Changing that would be a lot more complicated than tidying up.

But consider a scenario where all shares have the same voting power, and class B shares have 100x the dividends and own 100x as many assets. With 100 class A and 9 class B.

In this scenario, the class A shares are much worse than class B shares. But the end result is the same: the founder can own 10% of the company value while having 90% of the votes.

Surely the founder isn't getting scammed here, despite their shares being so much weaker, right? And it would be strange to say the people with the superior class B shares are being scammed. But this is basically equivalent to having good class A and bad class B. So now what?

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

#585

Post by mrxd »

md_ wrote: post #581
mrxd wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nielsen TV and radio ratings are the functional equivalent of "an algorithm that rewards CTR", and that system rewards polarization and outrage in exactly the same way. "If it bleeds, it leads" is the longstanding mantra of TV news. IMO the problem of public trust in institutions has one answer: democratic accountability. In the US, the news media claims to be the watchdog of our society, and to act in the public int…

So what, in your mind, is a more “democratic” news media? I don’t think most journalists would accept the view you attribute to them—that they are opponents of democracy—but the logic seems like it applies to any expert specialization. Is that your argument—that all experts are inherently opponents of democracy because they “tell us what to think?”

> So what, in your mind, is a more “democratic” news media?

Assuming the problems of voter participation are solved, I would like to see publicly funded journalism and the position of editor-in-chief as an elected position.

My criticism of US journalism is that they lay claim to legitimacy by being above the rabble. That is why they are able to decide what's in the best interests of the country. That's a claim to 1) a political role based on 2) an anti-democratic premise. I don't know of any expert specialization which makes a similar claim.

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

#586

Post by riazrizvi »

curiousgal wrote: post #205
riazrizvi wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim lodged with the SEC is that Facebook Inc defrauded investors. Dodd Frank set up a whistleblower program for allegations of this kind.

I mean nothing gets corporations spooked like the SEC does! How could Facebook ever afford to pay those fines!

I do like a healthy slice of sarcasm.

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

#587

Post by CryptoPunk »

tayistay wrote: post #519
CryptoPunk wrote: post #514

She's no whistleblower. She wants Facebook to engage in more spying, censorship and control.

Says "CryptoPunk"

?? A CryptoPunk should want a class of regime agents to be annointed as censors of Facebook posts?

This is the kind censoring I've personally been subjected to:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28411734

Meanwhile on Twitter, the "fact-checkers" are now taking it upon themselves to try to discredit tweets that make the leading personalities of the political left look bad:

https://i.ibb.co/N7XYpkH/Screenshot-20211005-081040-Facebook...

This is abuse of the allegedly impartial fact-checking process for clearly ideological ends.

Like Glenn Greenwald said:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1434854149087182848

>>The entire "anti-disinformation"/"anti-extremism" industry is a gigantic fraud, funded by the same tiny handful of billionaires, governments and NGOs: a scam to control discourse while feigning neutral, non-ideological goals to battle "disinformation"

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

#588

Post by _3u10 »

manquer wrote: post #232
_3u10 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn’t turning down divisiveness require picking a unified POV? What if the unified POV is not the one she wants, would she still support it? People seemed pretty upset that FB was used to unify a majority for Trump, I mean that’s when all the complaints really started.

There is no need for any unified Point of View. From UX changes ( stop showing like/view counts) there are a ton of things a platform can do if they don't want to optimize for engagement, it will be financially damaging to do so, their revenue and stock price will drop no company will do it, but it not a hard problem technically. Optimizing for engagement inevitably leads to toxic and unhealthy ecosystem sooner or la…

The ecosystem seems pretty healthy... are users leaving?

It seems that there is a subset of the populace whose opinions you disagree with and want FB to stop serving those users. If female users didn't want to be rated, why would they post photos and encourage people to 'like' them? It seems FB/IG has found a set of users who want to rate photos and a set of users who want to upload photos to be rated. How is this 'toxic'?

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

#589

Post by kcplate »

rocketpastsix wrote: post #90
kcplate wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I am of the minority opinion, but I damn sure was never worried about a bunch of selfie-taking unarmed rednecks destroying the United States of America. My faith in this country goes a little deeper than that.

I wonder if your opinion would be different if those unarmed rednecks were able to get to Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer, Minority Leader McConnell or VP Pence? Those "unarmed rednecks" were able to do something not even the various armies of the Confederacy couldn't: get inside the capitol. People are not terrified enough, because this group of people saw they could do it and I have a strong feeling they will try ag…

Comparing this to the civil war is ridiculous. They were literally invited in by the capital police because it is a public building. The south is not at war with the north. The only shots that were fired were from the capital police. No one brandished a firearm in that capital except the police.

“But what if…” is a pointless exercise because the past has already proven that those things didn’t happen and is just a mechanism for a bunch of people who desire authoritarianism in this country to justify making a free people less free.

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

#590

Post by conductr »

Gunax wrote: post #457
conductr wrote: post #352

It’s sad to me that so many people just can’t see this as common sense. Why do you need an insider to tell you FB is bad? Look at it. Look all around. It reminds me of when I was a kid any every smoking adult around me was hacking their lungs up. I didn’t need the surgeon general or some fancy research published in a medical journal to draw the conclusion that smoking was bad. I suppose many may be too young to remem…

Well I don't see it. No one thought Facebook was evil until Trumpnwas elected. Funny how Facebook was hailed for being a paragon of access after Obama's win. Is anyone actually reading these leaked docs? No, they're just seeing the headline and assuming whatever pet issue they have is true. I don't see what's so evil about trying to be profitable. It's a corporation. They didn't start out trying to fix society of eve…

This seems purposely ignorant. The election part is just one thing that makes it bad. I didn’t even mention politics but I’ll bite, from what I believe I hold as a rather objective view.

1) I never heard any talks of Obama campaigns being “evil”. My knowledge is they were positive, spreading a message hope. It was more of the fact that at the time, FB was demographically skewed young and he did well with young voters. I never saw any accusations of external election tampering, fear mongering, international influence, hacking, etc. It was not conducted in a way that one would feel call “evil” unless you just don’t like Obama and feel he is personally evil and that’s your baggage not facebooks. I can’t recall exactly, but I don’t think FB even really had an advertising mechanism back then. The algorithm was not what it is today, although it was still unhealthy by my standards by witnessing the addictive qualities it had.

2) Plenty of evidence Trump behaved evil. Probably even more so those who sought to have him elected. Fake news, propaganda, fear mongering, election tampering, hacking, meddling, name calling, etc. Even the most objective person on earth has to admit it was just a dirty election of epic proportions. All enabled by Facebook.

This is unhealthy. I don’t use FB and this effected me. It’s second hand smoke and I’m stuck on this flight. The don’t have to solve single thing regarding society, but that doesn’t mean they should be able to harm society. That’s why there are calls for regulation. Them being profitable is not in question, their ability to make decisions that balance profits with the health of their user base is what’s at question.

There’s plenty of people, myself included, that have voiced concerns about the negative consequences of this social network. But, like it’s a bit like the people warning of an housing bubble leadinf up to 2008.

Edit: a lot of typos, not fixing, but you get the gist

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