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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

#161

Post by vaxxedormasked »

Kuinox wrote: post #108
thepasswordis wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ahem what, anti-authoritarian mean "right wing" ? That's far from the truth. Left/right came from the French revolution, the left wanted the king death, king being the symbol of authority in the country.

That was centuries ago. Leftists today think you should take the jab or lose your job, because the government says so, even if the jab doesn't really work, and even if you still have to take other non pharmaceutical precautions. And the leader of the left today, President Biden, doesn't really care if he has the legal authority to issue the decrees he has issued, and has said as much, about the eviction ban he unilaterally levied in defiance of the Court

I can do this for idiots on the Right, too, by the way. Authoritarianism is at home everywhere on the political spectrum, because at least in the US the political divide is largely cultural, not ideological, despite all the rhetoric claiming the contrary

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

#162

Post by convexfunction »

AlexandrB wrote: post #85
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.

> The thing is, we’re not really asking for Facebook to control itself, we’re asking Facebook to control other people. But it already does. That's it's job. That's what advertising is for . I suppose "control" is a tad strong, but that's the dream of every advertiser - to deliver a message to exactly right person at the exactly right time so that they take a desired action (buy, vote, post, etc). Whenever this debate…

Not that you explicitly claimed otherwise, but the focal point of the moment's discourse seems to be a small fraction of teens who reported suicidal ideation citing content they see on Instagram as the first thing that triggers suicidal ideation for them, and I very, very strongly doubt that the relevant content is often ads, or even content that could be argued to result from the fact that the platform is ad-supported.

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

#163

Post by handrous »

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #109
handrous wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 choosing profits over public good, then cut off the profits. This is obvious. Bingo. Make stalking at scale the same as stalking by cree…

> Make stalking at scale the same as stalking by creeping in the bushes outside someone's house or following them around town. Tracking everything people do isn't a "business model"—it's a crime. But the government benefits from Facebook (and Google's) stalking ability. Another recent example from HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28747699

Oh, I know. Which is why it'll never happen, and why the "message" (as in McLuhan) of the medium of the Internet is authoritarianism.

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

#165

Post by dragonwriter »

thepasswordis wrote: post #139
lexapro wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't anti-authoritarian typically considered a leftist position? So the opposite of what you are saying?

It's considered a liberal position, not a leftist position. Traditionally leftist political philosophy is aligned with central authority (strong federal government, marxixm, communism, etc.) Whistle blowing is a lib position, but the conservatives have their own liberal movement as well with lib being the root of "libertarian", which in contemporary american political framing is right-aligned.

> It's considered a liberal position, not a leftist position.

“Liberal” and “left” are terms of slightly different origin for the same position, opposing the established narrow feudal/monarchist elite power in favor of popular sovereignty and the government based on the rights of the individual.

It’s true that subsequently they’ve diverged with the old enemy being irrelevant, with “liberal” including and “left” excluding defense of concentration of power in the now-established capitalist elite justified by appeal the preeminence of the capitalist understanding of property rights.

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

#166

Post by SavantIdiot »

trutannus wrote: post #22
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…

> Require ID verification I'll pass on putting my personal ID in the hands of an organization that sells data as a business . No matter how many flimsy laws they put in place to ban selling my PII, you'd have to be born yesterday to think that won't just delay the sale this new treasure-trove of information.

Your personal ID contains public information.

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

#167

Post by [deleted] »

dantheman wrote: post #140
lexapro wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't anti-authoritarian typically considered a leftist position? So the opposite of what you are saying?

The left is uber authoritarian; progressivism is an authoritarian philosophy about using state power to change the world and society.

[deleted]

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

#168

Post by epgui »

president wrote: post #151
epgui wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will take that under advisement, but will nonetheless exercise my right to an opinion.

Last piece of advice, step out of your bubble and try to understand why people hold viewpoints that aren't your own instead of trashing them right out the gate. Ironic that you're accusing others of "intellectual laziness" when you go straight to calling people's arguments "11th grade class" behavior and can't even go the length to make a proper counter-argument.

I remark that you have little way of knowing how familiar I am with these viewpoints you are referring to, or what my bubble consists of or what size it is. This criticism (or advice) is easy to dish out.

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

#169

Post by micromacrofoot »

yodsanklai wrote: post #159
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…

> I do want Facebook harmed So much hate... Has Facebook really caused that much suffering to you? Seriously, just don't use it if you don't like it. For most people, it's just a social network where they post innocuous stories and stay connected with their friends.

That's the dismissive rhetoric that got us here. At this point we know that Facebook intentionally manipulates people's moods and behavior... and it's impossible for the average person to be aware of how they're being manipulated, because it's proprietary Facebook data. The algorithm itself is likely so complex that no individual within Facebook understands the full impact of it. They hire researchers to study the output, make the adjustments that positively impact revenue, and generally disregard other harmful side-effects turned up.

Instagram today has apologized for pushing extreme dieting content to people with eating disorders (only after they were publicly called out on it). This has been going on for years.

Facebook is not a person to be harmed, it's a company that has optimized and automated profitability to the point that it knowingly disregards safety. It's grown to the size where they've admitted that it's impossible for them to moderate effectively... but despite this inability to moderate at scale they still model and display content based on recommendation algorithms that optimize profit.

At this point enough evidence has come to light that I'm entirely comfortable calling them an objectively unethical company.

There are other social companies that likely follow suit, but at the moment none even begin to approach the scale and reach of Facebook.

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

#170

Post by anm89 »

This whistleblowers whole shtick is to echo a sentiment that 99% of people already have. What whistle exactly is being blow here?

This is basically a bad news headline. One facebook employee has some bad stuff to say about facebook. It's only news because it's so much fun to pile on because everybody including congress is in 100% agreement.

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