161–170 of 734 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So who do you propose to bring in and testify against Facebook who does understand the bigger picture, shmatt? Are you arguing in good faith here?
At minimum it needs to be someone who is aware of the company strategy. She simply doesnt have any relevant knowledge. This is all politics.
"Oh, they're a General? They don't know what's actually in the trenches."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You just compared a social media company to a weapons manufacturer. Elsewhere, I see comparisons to cigarettes, oxycontin, gambling. It is easy to see how one might think Facebook to be evil if they are constantly bombarded with these false equivalencies.
How are they false? The similarities being talked about center around those companies specifically leveraging the mechanisms of addiction in order to make more money in spite of the fact that doing so harms people. I think a very good argument can be made that Facebook (among others) are doing this very thing.
With cigarettes, oxycontin, or weapons manufacturers, you can look directly at the physical harm they cause. We have statistics and studies that require little effort to interpret.
With social media, it is nearly impossible to connect physical or psychological harm to a platform over the course of someone's life. The papers that draw conclusions in this space are based on limited studies and polls that could be influenced by any number of external factors. We judge these things based on little more than feeling.
Now, I think it would be great to be able to make informed decisions based on diligently collected data (and maybe that's what we should be fighting for) but we don't have that right now. Why, in this case, do we seem eager to throw scientific rigor and frankly due process out the window?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is it , exactly?
There should be some laws about using addictive patterns imo. I'm sure that's fine and profitable and coca cola would continue to like putting cocaine into their drinks to make their customers want it all the more, but we have laws preventing that behavior in the meatspace and therefore we can have laws preventing this sort of evil behavior with technology companies too. Tie it into website accessibility laws that ar…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness_doctrine?wprov=sfla1
There is something that doesn't sit right with me about the whistleblower. Yes, she is a data scientist which gives her many many extra points. But, she was a PM for 2 years in FAANG. Her actual scope of the what was going on in FB as a huge org, as she's trying to comment on (the "I want to fix FB" quotes from 60 minutes) Everyone I know who works in FAANG, FB specifically, and PMs even more specifically, really hav…
The whole point of whistleblowing is so the average worker cna tattle on the unethical decisions made by leadership. The C-suite isn't going to volunteer for the guillotine.
I think a lot of people are choosing to ignore that a lot of companies have done things in the past that were not illegal at the time of action. However, those actions were later decided to be made illegal because the behavior was deemed to be antithetical to our values. For example, Standard Oil did not break any laws in its ruthless consolidation of the nascent oil industry. In fact, it exploited the law to allow i…
To clarify, can you specify exactly what law you would like made? What do you want to be done exactly ? I would rather take the stance of feed algorithms and moderation logs be PUBLICLY available. Transparency instead of censorship.
It looks like the recco algorithms will be carved out from the neutral platform protections they enjoy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To clarify, can you specify exactly what law you would like made? What do you want to be done exactly ? I would rather take the stance of feed algorithms and moderation logs be PUBLICLY available. Transparency instead of censorship.
If you get too big, you can't buy your competition (e.g. FB buying IG). Or if you get too big, you have to open your stuff up like email does. Or if you lie to congress, you get penalized. Or if you get too big, you have to make your algorithms publicly available.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uhm a cigarette you cannot change the base ingredient of, it's tobacco. A cig by definition burns the carcinogen tobacco. A site you can specify certain requirements like no doom scrolling or requirements like PUBLISH YOUR ALGORITHMS. Why go full California with another banner? People will ignore it and you will have done nothing of substance.
> Uhm a cigarette you cannot change the ingredients of, it's tobacco. You can soak the tobacco in solution which contains additives, such as more nicotine. Which is exactly what cigarette companies have done in the past (and not just the tobacco, the filters, and the paper as well). The parallel here is filling people's feeds with divisive political news and posts, even when they have tried to opt out.
A social media website does not need doom scrolling or private algorithms for the feed, you can change how it works instead of adding a useless banner.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Treat addictive social media companies like addictive cigarette companies. Lets see some huge warning labels about how mentally harmful it is to continue scrolling on facebook right on the first result where its unavoidable to see. Lets tax the hell out of social media companies to generate local revenue just like sin taxes. It won't be a huge change but it will be a great starting point and will come with revenue th…
Uhm a cigarette you cannot change the base ingredient of, it's tobacco. A cig by definition burns the carcinogen tobacco. A site you can specify certain requirements like no doom scrolling or requirements like PUBLISH YOUR ALGORITHMS. Why go full California with another banner? People will ignore it and you will have done nothing of substance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Treat addictive social media companies like addictive cigarette companies. Lets see some huge warning labels about how mentally harmful it is to continue scrolling on facebook right on the first result where its unavoidable to see. Lets tax the hell out of social media companies to generate local revenue just like sin taxes. It won't be a huge change but it will be a great starting point and will come with revenue th…
> Lets tax the hell out of social media companies to generate local revenue just like sin taxes. Very interesting idea, actually. There is evidence Social Media causes harm to some individuals' mental health (in a widespread manner causing some measurable societal harm), so a proposed tax on all social media companies with revenue going towards mental health programs seems worth exploring. Generally I'm not much in f…