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Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

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441–450 of 719 posts

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

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the government benefits from Facebook (and Google's) stalking ability. That doesn’t make it ok

Who said it did? What this does mean is that it's highly unlikely the government is going to do what the OP suggested. Facebook et. al. are the honeypots of dreams for governments.

I don't understand why you're downvoted. The government does profit a lot from social networks, especially domestic ones. Just look at the US' handling of TikTok.

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

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for others, it radicalizes them to conspiracy theories. "Just don't use it" isn't nice advice when you're mom's become an antivaxxer because facebook kept telling her about it and made it seem like local common consensus.

I don't know if people become antivaxxer because of FB. Antivaxxers and science deniers didn't wait for FB to believe in their theories. It's like blaming the telephone because terrorists use it.

I think a lot of folks are conflating two issues:

1. The existence of social media

2. The application of carefully optimized algorithms that prioritize problematic content

To be a fair comparison, I think you need to reframe the telephone example: If the telephone system specifically prioritized communication related to terrorism, it would be fair to blame the telephone system and call for changes to how it operates.

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

#443
post #369
post #347

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>This is an incredibly disingenuous description of the situation. Facebook's own (non-public, now publicly leaked) research indicates that Facebook causes harm to teens mental health. The only "US narrative" here is the one backed up my the incredible amount of research supporting the growing issue of mental health in the US (and the world for that matter). This is disingenuous, that same data shows the majority of t…

This is news to me and frankly makes no sense. How does the data say that FB both improved mental health and harmed it? Can you share your source?

That seems pretty straightforward to me - there are a huge number of teenagers who use Facebook, some of whom say that it improved their mental health and a smaller group who say it made it worse. The media reporting only talked about the teens who said Facebook was harming their mental health rather than the broader picture. Which, if accurate, would mean that closing down Facebook would actually hurt teens' mental health overall but anyone getting their news from the mainstream media would falsely think it'd help. This kind of deception using facts that're technically true is really common in the mainstream media, and Facebook in particular has pissed off journalists by hitting their industry hard both in the pocketbook and in terms of the amount of power they hold in society.

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

#444
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooh! "Fake story", "mainstream US narratives", "discourse"! All the greatest hits. You forgot "alternative facts".

It has some of the earmarks of a something is up. You do not go from nobody to 60 min interviews that quick.

That "nobody" is a Harvard MBA with a degree in Computer Engineering that's worked at Google, Pinterest, and Facebook as a Data Science with high level access to key data and leaked over ten thousand internal documents who witnessed what she believes is a critical failure of one of the largest companies ever that controls a vast majority of how the world consumes information and communicates with one another. This is a bombshell of a leak and I'm glad the world is paying attention.

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

#445

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…

> We ban kids from alcohol

And it's worked out well! I, for one, never so much as tasted alcohol until I was 21, because it would have been illegal for me to have done otherwise.

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solid reply by taking what I said to the extreme. Phone, text, email, etc aren't social media...but you knew that already.

Is Whatsapp social media?

I believe it falls under that umbrella.

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it means she's biased and we should evaluate if she has another motive because she's connected to the party now interviewing her who want to censor Americans. I wonder if she'll be a professor or an ambassador for her service.

Wait now, are her motives obvious like in your first comment, or ulterior like in your second. Make up your mind please.

She clearly has a motive of pushing censorship. This comment is concerned with who she's doing it with.

The ulterior motive is obvious to me and others in this thread. But some, like you, seem to have difficulty seeing it.

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Facebook’s ad network sells and places ads in front of a person because they are gay, pregnant, devout, or disabled, you don’t consider those to be “intimate details of their lives”?

That is a mischaracterization of what Facebook is doing. Facebook has a giant ontology of subjects. Based on their "stalking" of you, subjects in this ontology are connected to the user profile; i.e., the FB user's "interests". Ad buyers are buying access to the ontology, not the individual users. They're not given a list of users to sift through and choose the user. They choose the subjects and FB's ad network shows…

because facebook meticulously tracks and categorizes us (the ontology), it’s possible to extricate personal data from facebook based simply on the ads you’re served. so fb still leaks data about you (to advertisers, researchers, governments, etc.) even if they don’t literally let people download the personal data. then there’s also the issue that the government can compel arbitrary disclosures secretly and without recourse.

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

#449
post #49

Honestly not sure that we learned too much 'new' from this: - People don't like it when others say (or provide a platform for) things they disagree with. - Teenagers are angsty and emotionally/physically insecure. But surely the above is something an unelected bureaucrat can fix if we only give them enough money.

What we learned is that Facebook knows it's platform is a huge conduit for spreading lies and disinformation and FB chooses to do nothing about that while raking in dump truck loads of cash.

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

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To the people downvoting me here: can you list some figures who have been protesting authoritarianism who are left-coded in contemporary American society? Martin Luther King.

He said contemporary American society. MLK died 53 years ago.

Are you intending to claim that the second half of the 20th century isn't contemporary?

I'm not a historian, but I've understood "contemporary" as a term that refers to events that have occurred in the lifetimes of active historians. Given that a decent chunk of the US's population was alive in 1968 and hasn't even retired yet, it probably fits neatly into that category.

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