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

#591

Post by kcplate » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 12:56 AM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #111

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.

People are much less concerned about the unarmed rednecks taking selfies than they’re concerned about the armed folks searching the grounds for certain representatives, the people planting pipe bombs around DC, and anti-government militias comprised heavily of former military and law enforcement. Oh yeah, said militia members stashed guns at a nearby hotel (according to their own testimony and video footage). This co…

Well, I am going to fixate on the selfies because there were a bunch of dimwits taking selfies.

“Armed” folks armed with what? Yeah, I’m pretty sure the most powerful nation ever to occupy the earth wasn’t going to fall to a bunch of pitchfork wielding social media posting hayseeds demanding to have Frankenstein’s monster handed over to them.

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

#592

Post by kcplate » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 1:10 AM UTC

llamaimperative wrote: post #440

Grieving wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about a small group of Oath Keepers in an otherwise peaceful protest. But I'm curious, why do you think Stewart Rhodes was never arrested? Would it make more sense given the context that the boogaloos behind the Whitmer kidnapping plot turned out to be FBI agents, as did the leaders of other right-wing groups including the Proud Boys and Atomwaffen Division? Who does the right-wing terrorism scare serv…

Right-wing terrorism scare? We all watched angry mobs attempt to disrupt the peaceful transition of power on live TV. These are the same people who proudly fly the flag of literal traitors to our country and call the press the “enemy of the free state.” If all it takes for your movement to attempt to kidnap elected officials or disrupt transfer of power is a few undercover agents nudging along, your movement is a hug…

> If all it takes for your movement to attempt to kidnap elected officials or disrupt transfer of power is a few undercover agents nudging along, your movement is a huge problem.

If it takes more agents then perpetrators to pull off your sting, and if the agents conceptualized, planned, financed, managed the operation, and participated in it…

Well, let’s just say I am going to be the wrong person to sit on your jury if you want a conviction.

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

#593

Post by manquer » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 1:31 AM UTC

_3u10 wrote: post #588

manquer wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 't…

healthy in the context emotionally/ mentally for the user.

It is toxic when said users are teenagers and pre-teens, that is the whole point of all the Instagram / Facebook public discourse recently .

At that age as a society we have decided they cannot take certain decisions on their own, which is why Sex, Alcohol, Marriage , Content with Rating PG/R, admission to certain venues, etc are all regulated.

Why should Social Media be different ?

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

#594

Post by manquer » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 1:38 AM UTC

krrrh wrote: post #436

manquer wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why ? Because it is asymmetric battle. Content Platforms ( not only digital) already insert native advertising or do product placement, these are harder or impossible to block technically, and quite hard cognitively to differentiate as well. Also Google is removing web APIs and actively making its browser poorer and controlling the web standards that is making it increasingly technically difficult to block ads, it…

Adblocking also works pretty well on Safari, even better since iOS 15 added extensions. It’s pretty easy to install apps like 1Blocker and NextDNS on an iPhone and eliminate nearly all ads. More importantly, the platform automatically prevents tracking [0] “across other companies apps and websites” without explicit opt-in since April, and Safari has already been blocking trackers for a couple of years (the above link…

Good to know to that Apple is investing in this recently, They also have the market share to counter to Google control of web market with Chrome and its derivatives to keep web developers in check.

Sadly while Apple is reasonable choice in the U.S. market, it is not affordable choice in most of the world. This effectively means only the rich get protection from ads.

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

#595

Post by ansh_nanda » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 1:41 AM UTC

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…

would you use Facebook if you could create custom feeds?

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

#596

Post by manquer » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 1:56 AM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #506

manquer wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why ? Because it is asymmetric battle. Content Platforms ( not only digital) already insert native advertising or do product placement, these are harder or impossible to block technically, and quite hard cognitively to differentiate as well. Also Google is removing web APIs and actively making its browser poorer and controlling the web standards that is making it increasingly technically difficult to block ads, it…

> native advertising or do product placement I'm sure people will figure out a solution. Maybe some machine learning thing that identifies brands and just deletes them. We already have extensions such as sponsor block. > Google is removing web APIs and actively making its browser poorer Yeah, that sucks. I've already switched to Firefox and I also keep Brave around. Google made it easy for me when it killed sync for…

Standards control has been never always direct since JScript days, the dominant players do what they please, and by the nature of dominance web app developers have to comply follow their tools, and standards get established de-facto.

Specifically, moves like changes in manifest V3 and removal of chrome.webRequest is aimed squarely at adblocking, Forcing DRM in HTML5 is a step in this direction as well and can become dangerous in conjunction with AV1 enhancements .

For example it may become feasible to dynamically mux content and ad streams without a separate network request if encoding is not as expensive as H264 today with AV1 . Coupled with DRM on HTMl5 it would be impossible for any plugin as streams will never be exposed available for "Piracy reasons". Even HDMI has support for DRM , the only analog/open/accessible format left will be the light stream to your eyes.

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

#597

Post by manquer » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 1:58 AM UTC

lokar wrote: post #513

manquer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily a straightforward connection, as none of the items being discussed have a direct revenue impact only indirect impact to brand value etc. Knowing it is unhealthy for teenagers does not have direct negative impact on advertising revenues per se . It is perhaps feasible to argue that keeping this information under wraps without a legal requirement to disclose is the optimum management fiduciary thing to…

It does not need to impact revenue, just share price.

Yes, but that is inverse here after all. Only If they disclose this report the share price is going to go down.

Without a leak we would have never needed or gotten to know this report, so logically keeping it hidden/buried was the best course of action with regards to shareholder value ?

A valid suit maybe about their poor security/ control processes for their Workplace tools that lead this leak.

Shareholders could perhaps sue saying they should not fund such research/ buried it well etc, not sure a court/judge would look nicely on a such a suit.

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

#598

Post by chaostheory » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 2:10 AM UTC

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #378

chaostheory wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless moderate, establishment politicians get replaced, this is unlikely to happen. Why? Because Facebook is very useful as an intelligence tool. It was funded by In-Q-Tel after all. Otherwise, there would need to be a lot more public uproar and I'm not seeing that from the general public.

But they have been getting replaced. On both the left and the right, but especially the right. And if Sanders had somehow been president in 2016, you bet that it would’ve been establishment Dems who’d have been retiring.

The far right is fine with Facebook.

I have my doubts about progressives taking most of the power base from establishment liberals. Establishment candidates tend to have better and more mainstream media coverage.

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

#599

Post by kcplate » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:39 AM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #115

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.

Marie Antoinette was similarly not worried about the visceral expressions of very real problems across the nation of France. It's not a problem until it's a problem.

So overthrowing the French monarchy was a mistake? That’s a pretty ironic metaphor you got there…

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

#600

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 8:05 AM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #565

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]