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

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

#501

Post by NoGravitas » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

civilized wrote: post #225

sam0x17 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're involved in far-left movements on twitch and elsewhere, the kids definitely do say this and use liberal synonymously with centrist / to the right of the far left

Yep - the leftists started by disparaging neoliberals, but today they just say liberals. Even someone like Elizabeth Warren, who is generally recognized as very progressive, falls under this heading because of her basically positive disposition towards capitalism. And to the inevitable downvoters - go read leftist social media. I'm just stating easily verifiable facts here. I don't have a problem with leftists.

Don't know why you're being downvoted. As a too-online leftist, I can confirm that "lib" is short for liberal, and is applied to essentially any supporter of capitalism, even, or perhaps especially, those who position themselves as progressive. As indeed, it should be. /p

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

#502

Post by oarabbus_ » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

handrous wrote: post #432

xibalba wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tracking everything people do isn't a "business model"—it's a crime. Could you point me to a law that codifies this as crime? I have yet to see convincing proof of widespread or significant harm caused by tracking/retargeting. These arguments always seem to rely on hyperbole and redefining terms and norms. No, I don’t work at FB. No, I don’t work in digital advertising.

> Could you point me to a law that codifies this as crime? The other posts that I meant "should be" aren't entirely wrong, but "crime", like most words, has more than one meaning, so that interpretation isn't necessary for my use to be correct (and isn't what I intended). From Webster's 1913 for "Crime (n)": 2. Gross violation of human law, in distinction from a misdemeanor or trespass, or other slight offense. Hence…

>The other posts that I meant "should be" aren't entirely wrong, but "crime", like most words, has more than one meaning,

Crime has a very specific meaning when we're talking about a legislative body conducting a hearing. It's not open to interpretation. A crime is something that violates existing statutes of law, period.

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

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Post by r00fus » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

ouid wrote: post #160

CheezeIt wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lib means liberal, and not in the sense of classic liberal.

Not if you mean "as the kids say". Sorry.

I more commonly see "shitlib" which pretty concisely summarizes the corporatist, militarist, fake-center positions taken by these politicians.

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

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Post by handrous » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #263

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What the government wants to accomplish with the Facebook hearings, political grandstanding and blathering, is a harness, control to their political power benefit. They're playing a political game of conquest. There is no scenario where they're going to destroy it. As a rule, DC doesn't like power competition, and they absolutely do not tolerate it from the private sector. One of the dumbest things Bill Gates ever di…

> Zuckerberg is fighting them so adamantly, for now, because he still views Facebook as his.

He's doing it because he's new money. His children's children will be properly socialized to wield money and power without becoming a household name (personally—people might know your family name, from all the buildings it's on).

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

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Post by lostmsu » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

nyghtly wrote: post #494

roody15 wrote: post #31

To me this is a fake story being promoted as a way to further a political narrative. Nothing the whistleblower has revealed is shocking or previously unknown. Yes facebook tweaks an algorithm on your news feed to drive engagement and make money. Yes facebook allows some content that some would consider not to align with mainstream US narratives. My two cents this is an attempt to force facebook to kowtow to the US an…

The whistleblower part is internal Facebook research showing that the algorithm is known to be harmful (for example, politically polarizing and hate-mongering) in it's current form. In addition to that internal research, she also revealed during the 60 minutes interview that Facebook used a "weaker" version of the algorithm during the 2020 election cycle in order to prevent disinformation. The weaker version was repl…

Just clarifying. Why is political polarization harmful?

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

#506

Post by TameAntelope » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

m_ke wrote: post #490

TameAntelope wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if the analogy holds, considering most of the complaints around social media are that it's not accessible or open enough , and engagement with social media doesn't directly create value for Facebook. They derive that value from the associated ads, as opposed to the items you listed being a) costly for its users, and b) the actual product. Social media costs nothing.

Nobody is complaining about it not being open enough. Time on site and amount of content you view is the driver of most of their revenue. Their business is fundamentally constrained by the number of users they have and the waking hours of the ones that are on the platform. To grow they can either recruit more users or build an engaging enough product to get their user to pick it instead of youtube/netflix/tiktok/work…

A good article about how some groups are dealing with the fact that Facebook isn't open enough (for them):

https://restofworld.org/2021/homegrown-facebook-for-the-far-...

Everyone has their pet issue with Facebook. For some, it's lack of openness. For others, Facebook is too open. Everyone seems to have an opinion about which lines Facebook is and isn't allowed to cross, and for every group it's a slightly different set of lines, for a slightly different set of reasons.

My point is that nobody is correct -- Facebook isn't the cultural monolith it is because of its actions, but because of the actions of our global culture. If you want to be angry at someone, look in the (societal) mirror.

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

#507

Post by dntrkv » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #390

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…

I grew up on an internet community that railed against age restrictions for video games and content blockers for children. Bypassing school content blockers was a perennial favorite topic. I have to admit it’s surreal to see proposals like this on some of those same sites that advocated for freedom and deferring to parental choice: > Require age verification by law and ban kids from using it. We ban kids from alcohol…

I'm with you, though, I have a fairly controversial opinion on FB and social media in general.

I think Facebook is just the result you get when the general public participates in online discourse. I believe the algorithms may in some cases magnify certain discussions that many deem "dangerous," but mostly, it's just that people have zero empathy when conversing online.

If you've seen Parks and Rec, the scenes from the town hall meetings are basically Facebook. You have one person complaining about some inane thing nobody cares about, another complaining about undesirable people in their neighborhood, another spouting off conspiracies, etc.

Back in the early days of the internet, most of the people participating in online discussion were nerds. This fact alone made the discourse more manageable since most forums focused on discussions around specific topics.

Of course, there was always the "General Discussion" parts of any forum which suffered similar problems to what we see on FB. The difference was, the forums were heavily moderated. I'm sure many here have stories about some authoritarian mod that banned them just for having a different opinion.

Facebook on the other hand, isn't moderated much. If you start a flame war on FB, there is no one there to ban you. In the earlier days of the internet, you would get banned pretty quickly if you veered too far from the acceptable level of discourse.

Shit, look at forums with little moderation, they are 1000x worse than FB or any social media app. There is no algorithm that made 4chan the cesspit that it is (was?).

Personally, I think FB's approach has been pretty hands-off, and I think this is the correct choice for their platform.

It seems, what everyone wants (this "whistleblower" included) is for the ideas they don't like to be moderated. The internet has shown us what "the other side" really thinks, and we don't like it.

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

#508

Post by prancer_or_vix » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #465

m_ke wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they worked really hard to become indispensable and get people "hooked". You could make the same arguments about cigarettes, oxycontin or gambling.

I don't know if the analogy holds, considering most of the complaints around social media are that it's not accessible or open enough , and engagement with social media doesn't directly create value for Facebook. They derive that value from the associated ads, as opposed to the items you listed being a) costly for its users, and b) the actual product. Social media costs nothing.

> engagement with social media doesn't directly create value for Facebook.

Yes it absolutely does. They get value by showing ads. If you're staring at facebook for 4 hours a day, that's a lot more ads than if you log in for 2 minutes and then log back out.

The cigarette comparison is being used a lot, so it's more like if Philip Morris was paid for every drag someone takes. Getting folks hooked, smoking a pack a day or more, is going to generate more revenue than not getting folks hooked. If cigarettes weren't addictive, would P.M. make billions of dollars every year?

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

#509

Post by adolph » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #471

litesaber wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whistleblower is telling us that FB knows very well (with scientific studies) the harm they're causing, and decided not to do anything just because this would cut their profits. Do you have a link for the leaked research or the pointer to what we know FB knows? It's been difficult to figure out what exactly this is. The reporting on this has been terrible, what exactly has the whistle been blown over?

The papers are covered by WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039

I don't see a tarball or repo. Where is the data?

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

#510

Post by apeace » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

I don't think that Facebook can solve the harm to kids. They should stop lying about what they know, but I don't think the big-picture problem comes from something they are doing.

It seems like kids are commonly glued to screens from the age of 4-5. They play Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft. There are any number of virtual worlds they take part in for many hours a day. Some are even deemed educational. Very early on, they get accustomed to socializing digitally, and doing so almost non-stop.

When you start going through puberty and become concerned with your identity and self-image, and you've been addicted to non-stop digital socialization since age 4, of course that's going to be an important avenue for you to seek validation from. And of course that's not going to go well!

Plain and simple: we have a generation of kids who value digital life more than any other part of life. I don't know how to solve that problem, but I don't think that Facebook created it or can solve it.