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Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

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Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#91

Post by mrfusion »

convexfunction wrote: post #57
mrfusion wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those sound too chilling. I’d propose banning algorithms for services with over one million users. Users must have complete control over what their feed shows. (And ability to filter)

I'd just love to see how the law operationalizes and the courts interpret something like "banning algorithms".

Obviously it wouldn’t be written into a bill like that. But Just like any other law. It would be something Congress authorizes an agency like the FTC or FCC to regulate.

If nothing else the feed algorithms would be public and regulators could provide feedback.

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#92

Post by mikepurvis »

Factorium wrote: post #56
fighterpilot wrote: post #12

The two best ideas I've heard: - Require age verification by law and ban kids from using it. We ban kids from alcohol we should ban them from this. - Require ID verification by law but allow people to use a fake name. Fixes the bots issue and the kid depression issue. The market isn't going to get there by itself because of competition. If insta implements this then they lose market share to snap. So there's a strong…

There's an even simpler solution: ban free social media. Require each platform to charge a minimum of $x/user/year. You remove kids by default (no credit card/bank card), and the focus of product managers is less on driving addictive browsing, and more on driving renewals (presumably through quality features, content, and fostering community). The customer is no longer the advertisers (or shady Governmental data scra…

Magazines (fashion, fitness, sport, etc) have this effect by virtue of advertisers not wanting to be seen in a "free" publication, but most of their revenue still comes from ads, which is why you continue to still receive new issues for months after you supposedly canceled, even though you nominally are paying for it, all the incentives are for them to pretend you're a paying customer when you in fact are not.

But I don't really know how you could reasonably make this work for online communities. Is reading a blog and commenting on it participating in a "social network"? What about reading a blog without comments? Viewing a sponsored Twitch stream?

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#93

Post by colinmhayes »

stickfigure wrote: post #76
shadowgovt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, people run so fast from the 1984 future where a big unfettered government decides their fate that they trip and fall right into the Snow Crash future where big unfettered corporations decide their fate. There's no simple answers here.

I will categorically say that I'll take unfettered corporations over unfettered government every single time . I can quit Facebook. Good luck quitting your government. These are not remotely equivalent things, and I bristle every time I hear someone suggest it.

I will categorically say the opposite. As long as there are free and fair elections the government is accountable to the people. Corporations are never accountable to anyone but the shareholders.

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#94

Post by stickfigure »

incahoots wrote: post #20
endisneigh wrote: post #7

What's the solution tho?

Dismantle social media entirely. Last few years have proven that we cannot function as a forward thinking society when memes are believed over proper sourced science. Warning labels are proof enough that folks cannot be left to their own devices.

> Dismantle social media entirely.

You mean, stop allowing people to communicate with each other?

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#95

Post by Factorium »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #81
Factorium wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an even simpler solution: ban free social media. Require each platform to charge a minimum of $x/user/year. You remove kids by default (no credit card/bank card), and the focus of product managers is less on driving addictive browsing, and more on driving renewals (presumably through quality features, content, and fostering community). The customer is no longer the advertisers (or shady Governmental data scra…

> You remove kids by default (no credit card/bank card Children have parents and many of them will shell out thousands of dollars a year so their kid can buy Fortnite skins. I don’t imagine a credit card requirement will keep kids off of social media. For the purposes of addressing some of the data privacy concerns, I think it would be even easier to just restrict the collection and/or sale of personal information. S…

The control is still with the parents. They can cut off access by controlling payment access. When the product is free, the control is with the corporation.

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#96

Post by [deleted] »

thepasswordis wrote: post #79
meowface wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I find it weird for a whistleblower to be so "lib", as the kids say. What do you mean? I don't follow the latest slang, but I would've assumed this would mean "liberal", except I don't see what that would have to do with the rest of what you said.

Whistleblowers are anti-authoritarian, which is typically a right wing/conservative position in contemporary politics. To the people downvoting me here: can you list some figures who have been protesting authoritarianism who are left-coded in contemporary American society? I'm thinking of wikileaks, edward snowden, glenn greenwald. These people have all been "accused" of being right wingers. The people protesting loc…

[deleted]

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#97

Post by photochemsyn »

jugg1es wrote: post #63

I hope that the conversation about this turns into a discussion about the business model of Facebook and most other social media sites that are designed around maximizing engagement for advertising revenue. I realize the difference between buying advertisements for extremely popular television (like the super bowl) and buying advertisements targeting specific demographics on facebook is very subtle. But there is a di…

It's not just product advertising, it's also political advertising which gets even creepier in my opinion. The two major outfits in 2016 (BlueLabs for Clinton, Cambridge Analytica for Trump) were spending hundreds of millions on these kind of targeted ad campaigns according to numerous disclosures.

For example, I imagine Team Trump would target the white supremacist crowd (a relatively small % of the public) with one set of ads, and target Rust Belt voters (the key demographic that flipped the election) with trade issues and 'bringing back manufacturing' ads, although the latter group would likely have been turned off by the white supremacist content.

Team Clinton's BlueLabs to be fair did the same thing and yet got much less media scrutiny than Cambridge Analytica. And that's not even counting the much-noted 'foreign influence' (hardly just Russia, Israel and Saudi Arabia have large targeted US-focused PR campaigns running all the time as well).

Creepy dystopian mass surveillance and manipulation in the name of profit maximization, that's what I think of whenever someone talks about Facebook.

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#98

Post by nyolfen »

anonymouswacker wrote: post #61
Mizza wrote: post #45

I find it weird for a whistleblower to be so "lib", as the kids say. She said she 'loves' Facebook, and wants to fix it, not harm it. I don't want Facebook fixed and I do want Facebook harmed. I don't want the government to meddle with what types of things people can say online, I want them to ban the business model of stalking people online and selling intimate details of their lives. If the problem is Facebook choo…

Strategically speaking, it may be wise for her career prospects & image to appear like she is still loyal to the Corp.

she was not a technical employee, and she will be set for life in ngo, media, or political career fields. facebook has many enemies. she has probably correctly calculated that she will not actually suffer any negative consequences for this; good for her

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#99

Post by hunterb123 »

epgui wrote: post #53

The comments section looks like a grade 11 class. Not everything is about “controlling” you, not everything is a “fake narrative”, the world isn’t out to censor you, and no, not every form of censorship is bad. Yes censorship is a slippery slope, but so is intellectual laziness.

[flagged]

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#100

Post by convexfunction »

btmiller wrote: post #33
convexfunction wrote: post #21

The clearest take I've seen on this: https://www.piratewires.com/p/bombshell The money quote, in my opinion: > The thing is, we’re not really asking for Facebook to control itself, we’re asking Facebook to control other people.

But they are the ones that have enabled the mass accessibility of many-to-many communication. That should come with great responsibility.

Maybe, and the author makes a similar point. I don't think the current discourse, based mainly on insinuations that FB/IG actually harms people on the basis of a small fraction of struggling kids reporting that they feel worse when they look at Instagram, actually gets us any closer to an implementation of greater responsibility with benefits that plausibly outweigh costs.
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