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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

#331

Post by joelbluminator »

slg wrote: post #309
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…

Because the complaints she is making and that people find most offensive regarding Facebook are not its data collection. I know that is an unpopular opinion here, but many people don't care about data collection because they don't see how that negatively impacts their lives. There are sizable populations of people that think the Facebook apps record all audio they hear and serve ads based off what you say in front of…

Where does it end though? Probably Brad Pitt and Elon Musk and Justin Bieber make a lot of people feel bad about their lives. Should media just stop reporting about them?

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

#332

Post by tqi »

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…

This instinct to harm in the name of "punishment" is the reason the state of politics is so bad. No one is interested in changing minds or reforming people/companies/industries - they just want to inflict pain to those that they disagree with.

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

#333

Post by alasdair_ »

titzer wrote: post #130
nyolfen wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Most organizations do not like whistleblower types. No matter how right or noble you think you are/were, institutions hate accusations of malfeasance and scrutiny and will just pass on you. It's definitely a career-limiting move to go up against any big thing.

I've seen a few people who sued their employers in a public manner (with tech press following etc.) get snapped up by other employers that want to seem open and transparent. Such employees can give an organization an appearance of legitimately caring about such issues, even if they don't in practice.

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

#334

Post by sam0x17 »

ouid wrote: post #77
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.

libertarian, I believe, but if OC answers differently you can ignore this comment. There's some downvoting that I don't understand here. If the parent comment is referring to modern slang, lib is a ray on the political compass "lib/auth" "righ/left".

lib means liberal, in the "centrist / neo-liberal" sense. Also synonymous with "pro-capitalism boomer". Anything right of far left but left of right is lib. Used very commonly by online progressives, on twitch, by the kids, etc.

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

#335

Post by haswell »

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.

As a thought experiment, apply the same sentiment to big tobacco.

"Has big tobacco really caused that much suffering to you? Seriously, just don't smoke if you're worried about the resulting health problems."

> For most people, it's just a social network where they post innocuous stories and stay connected

This is where things go south. Rewind to the period of time before we understood just how bad cigarettes are for your health. Now in that period of time, your argument would have been applied as such:

"For most people, smoking is just something they do to relax, and it makes them feel good."

Except, now, we know that's not true.

And similarly, we're only just beginning to understand the true impact of social media.

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

#336

Post by jonny_eh »

ziddoap wrote: post #313
Permit wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want them to ban the business model of stalking people online and selling intimate details of their lives. When you say "selling intimate details of their lives" you are misleading your reader. I don't know if this is intentional on your behalf but it makes it really hard to discuss real problems when you obfuscate them behind quarter truths like "Facebook sells your data".

Can you explain what you believe the other 3/4 of the truth is? As far as I know, FB makes money by selling political and religious affiliation, location, age, gender, etc. to advertisers in the form of target markets. I consider most of those to be intimate details of my life.

That's why it's a 3/4 truth. They don't offer "pay us to see John Doe's religious affiliation", instead they offer "show your ad to Catholics". It's more similar to a Catholic TV station selling commercial slots. That said, it can be far more targeted and powerful than a TV commercial, e.g. "show your ad to 18 year old Catholics with post-secondary education in Flint, Michigan".

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

#337

Post by cwp »

JamesLeonis wrote: post #186

I think Facebook, as well as other social media, are a grand experiment of Karl Popper's "The Paradox of Tolerance." [0] In keeping a largely hands-off approach to moderation they functionally provided the preconditions for such an experiment. > Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to…

Policing thought crime never ends well. Intolerance toward intolerance sounds great until you get into the thorny questions of "what even is intolerance" and "who gets to decide what's intolerant"?

I mean, it's right there in the quote: the intolerant might not be willing to have a rational debate, so we should criminalize the expression of intolerance. Our enemies might choose violence instead of debate, so we should apply state violence to prevent debate.

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

#338

Post by dgb23 »

_ivvf wrote: post #184
ryandrake wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each "team" accuses the other of being authoritarian. So, when blue team is in charge, the reds think of themselves as anti-authoritarian. When red team is in charge, the blues think of themselves as anti-authoritarian. Basically, it's a rhetorical ploy to gain a few cheap points: When the side in charge does something you don't like, just call them "authoritarians," and your cause, whatever it is, becomes more appea…

Except what you are saying is not really true. Most conservatives want to reduce government power, not extend it. The left, on the other hand, universally wants to extend government reach. I would recommend reading "The Authoritarian Moment" which goes into detail as to how the left are basically winning: https://www.amazon.com/Authoritarian-Moment-Weaponized-Ameri... To quote from the book's introduction: "There are…

Politics is much more complex, varied and full of interesting and _important_ history and philosophy than some want you to believe.

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

#339

Post by CTmystery »

hunterb123 wrote: post #230
rajin444 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech is only a right as far as the constitution guarantees (which is limited). Personally I’d like US culture to fully embrace the value of free speech, but support for it generally depends on if your favorite political party is in power. If we truly valued free speech we would not have all this debate over censorship.

The Bill of Rights is a list of God given rights the government CANNOT take away from you, not something they give you.

In self rule, The goverment is us. We can take away any part of the bill of rights that we see fit, with a new amendment

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

#340

Post by mgraczyk »

tobltobs wrote: post #318
mgraczyk wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on the things you mentioned at Instagram, doing the tuning this-and-that for about a year on a few different surfaces including the home feed. You are right that for the most part, people look at metrics and make decisions about what to ship, and only the best engineers and data scientists spend time thinking about the actual product. However, you're wrong about what metrics are important. Since at least ear…

> The focus of many shipping conversations is how to address even unmeasured potential risks to these metrics. A huge number of experiments are run specifically targeted at improving these metrics. How do you run tests on unmeasured metrics?

How to "address", not "test". For example, you can add logging for specific cases or patterns that you expect to be problematic. You can spot check scores on individual ranked entities. You can do additional analysis or run experiments on certain subsets of the userbase to measure the impact on important groups of users.
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