Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by mywittyname » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

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…

I equate authoritarianism with police support. I'm sure others do as well, since the police are the enforcement arm of the government. Specifically support for their extra-judicial murders, civil asset forfeiture, creation of training protocols designed to encourage, or even mandate brutality against citizens, a culture that protects abusers, etc.

People protesting murders by police are almost always leftist. The people protesting CAF are largely leftist. The few politicians looking to rein in police abuses are largely leftist. And "Thin Blue Line" supporters are nearly all right wingers.

If you can't get the police to follow the law, then you're going to end up with an authoritarian society.

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

#372

Post by RandomLensman » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

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…

Blaming Facebook for societies' problems is far too easy. People manage(d) to get into civil wars, genocides, etc. without it quite well. Domestic US political issues will not be resolved by making Facebook disappear (why does it not seem to have similar impact everywhere?) - it might be an amplifier, but in the past folks have found all sorts of other ways to amplify or not even needed amplification because they could exercise power pretty much unchecked.

So what I am saying is, some of the root causes are old (as in already in the first democracies) and independently of what comes of Facebook, some other changes/things might be needed to achieve the hoped for societal effects in a lasting manner.

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

#373

Post by quotemstr » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

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…

And who should get to decide what's "intolerant"? You? Why? This "paradox of tolerance" thing is just a cudgel used to advocate for censorship, and people who bring it out (who I suspect have never read anything else Poppe wrote) seldom discuss the logical implications of the view they're espousing.

The "paradox of tolerance", in other words, is nothing more than a thought terminating cliche.

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

#374

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

gorwell wrote: post #357

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 had the same feeling that it doesn't quite add up. The use of the term `whistleblower` has been dubious from the start with little to no new information, she just admitted to only deciding to come forward after facebook dissolved her team, and it appears that she's being advised by a political firm. "Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee who has for the past 10 months fed internal documents to a top Wall Str…

And so ?

If you are going to be a "whistleblower" about something like this, and you want to be effective, are you really going to try and plan out your actions alone?

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

#375

Post by fbernier » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

dweekly wrote: post #281

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

> she was not a technical employee Frances has an electrical & computer engineering degree from Olin, was a PM at Google (requires passing a technical interview), was also separately a software engineer at Google, and was the CTO of a startup.

Apparently if you develop other skills than engineering and don't spend 100% of your time doing it you're not technical anymore.

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

#376

Post by whimsicalism » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #171

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…

How about, reset market valuation to something reasonable, instead of speculators pushing the stock price to insane levels of overvaluation, justifying every dirty trick in the book to justify said price speculation? Do we really need to dump hundreds of billions of dollars into a couple of chat and picture-sharing apps? Especially when said pile of junk spies on your every move, every preference, and ultimately, eve…

What is wrong with speculation?

The whole point of the equity market is to allocate more capital to companies that have promising futures so they can use that capital to grow.

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

#377

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

CheezeIt wrote: post #153

ouid wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, and not in the sense of classic liberal.

Actually, remarkably close to the sense of classic liberal.

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

#378

Post by LordHumungous » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

Nobody seems to care to look at the actual data she provided. It's weak imo. 15% of teens say FB makes their lives worse, 34% say it makes their lives better, and 51% say neither. This is an online poll. Among teens who are depressed, more say that FB/IG has a negative impact. Well ok, a more negative response is exactly what you'd expect from people who are reporting to be depressed.

Then there's the supposed impact of the algorithm on divisiveness. There's almost no data backing this conclusion up, just anecdotal complaints from some European political parties and oh yeah, media outlets like Buzzfeed.

Overall, this data is not compelling and the conclusions drawn from it appear highly sensationalized.

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

#379

Post by wffurr » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

tqi wrote: post #360

wolfram74 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recurring argument she makes is just that stop using algorithmic content discovery that optimizes engagement because it correlates so strongly with extremism. You could almost get rid of all moderation and just go to chronological and it would improve the public health dimension.

"stop using algorithmic content discovery that optimizes engagement because it correlates so strongly with extremism" Is there a meaningful difference between what Newsfeed is doing vs what the news director at say Fox News, MSNBC, et al?

Is there a meaningful difference between this one terrible thing and these other terrible things?

I would say both are bad and should stop.

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

#380

Post by shreyshnaccount » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

xeyownt wrote: post #209

yodsanklai wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It is not about the suffering that FB is causing to him, but more to people and democracy in general. You can be harmed even if you don't use FB. Safe harbor is acceptable for websites whose social interaction is not the core business or is just a passive add-on, but FB must be held responsible of all the consequences of hate speech and disinformation on their platform because their algorithms are promoting them.

this. it's never been about free speech or whatever, it's all about the algorithm which exposes you to radical/infuriating ideas with no care about the content of such ideas and with the goal of increasing engagement.