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

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

#551

Post by NoGravitas » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

BoxOfRain wrote: post #431

_ivvf wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's entire schools of left-wing thought that are deeply anti-authoritarian, many types of anarchism for instance are deeply rooted in collectivist ideology. There's also all manner of socialist schools of thought that favour strong degrees of civil liberties. The kind of Enlightenment-era ideologies that many modern Western democracies build their very foundations on today would have been considered radical, unco…

You're right that two axes are not enough. Even within the two-dimensional model, authoritarian leftists regard authoritarianism as a means to an end (Marxism-Leninism endorses the eventual withering away of the state, even if it never got around to practicing it), whereas the authoritarian right regards authoritarianism as good in and of itself (the leadership principle).

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

#552

Post by DenisM » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #250

dogman144 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's indicative (to me) that you don't even understand the nature of the problem And this is spot on. It what makes me alternatively have head-exploding frustration or pretty dark nihilism, and check out of politics beyond keeping tabs on what tech regulations might impact the industry. 99% of the "what's next" commentary from leaders and systems with power outside of the tech industry totally miss the point. They…

Systemic problems get worse the more you pull on the levers that are normally used to correct things. That's why they're called systemic problems. Good, intelligent people in various symbiotic systems can act wisely and with good intent and intelligence and still things get worse. To use a recent HN headline, it's a meta-stable catastrophe. In fact, the greater the attempts to correct, the worse it gets. Intuition fa…

I can scarcely find any powerful entity interested in opposing social media. It clearly expands the reach of American influence in the world, so the state must be happy. It’s good for advertising, so pretty much all businesses are happy too. The public gets their high-sugar circuses.

Who has the interest in opposing social media? Apple?

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

#553

Post by NoGravitas » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

sreque wrote: post #455

BoxOfRain wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's entire schools of left-wing thought that are deeply anti-authoritarian, many types of anarchism for instance are deeply rooted in collectivist ideology. There's also all manner of socialist schools of thought that favour strong degrees of civil liberties. The kind of Enlightenment-era ideologies that many modern Western democracies build their very foundations on today would have been considered radical, unco…

So you sound like you are probably a lot more educated about politics than I am, so hopefully I can learn something from you, but I think one problem in practice is that collectivist views always seem to end in authoritarianism. Even in the U.S., the unions that resulted from collectivism became authoritarian and corrupt in their own right, the teacher's unions of America being a prime example of corruption and autho…

> Similarly, collectivist organizations always seem to result in top-down totalitarian regimes when they win the government.

Substantially, that's a matter of history rather than ideology. Collectivist organizations that aren't top-down organized tend to be unsuccessful in overthrowing states and remaining in power in the face of more authoritarian opposition. The fact that the Russian revolution led to Stalinism is more survivorship bias than anything else.

You may also be underestimating the authoritarianism of right-wing institutions in US society just because they seem natural and normal to you.

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

#554

Post by epgui » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

cheeseomlit wrote: post #468

epgui wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You fight misinformation with more information, not censorship. This is a flawed model. At some point, there is so much information that nobody can conceivably consume it all. A better mental model for this dynamic is that of pollution: can you fight pollution by making more "stuff", or at some point does it make sense to try and clean out the junk? > Unless you're saying other people are so stupid we need to contr…

>This might shock you, but no, and we don't need an "arbiter". Getting to the "truth" is to a large extent a decentralized process that should involve many people and communities. Right, a "decentralized process". Which is entirely at odds with having authority figures censoring all unpopular opinions and dissent. You say we don't need an arbiter yet you argue in favor of creating one, intentionally or not.

I'm saying there doesn't need to be a single arbiter centralized in one place, I'm not saying there shouldn't be a process to regulate obviously-wrong harmful nonsense.

It's a failure of the imagination to not see the difference.

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

#555

Post by handrous » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

xibalba wrote: post #248

handrous wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 choosing profits over public good, then cut off the profits. This is obvious. Bingo. Make stalking at scale the same as stalking by cree…

> 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.

> redefining terms and norms.

AKA rhetoric and persuasive language.

Likening something that looks an awful lot like a literally-against-the-law crime, to that same crime, is about as mild as that sort of thing can possibly be, and I don't think my post was particularly tricky or deceptive.

Your position also assumes terms and norms weren't already redefined to make this stuff not seem awful. I know in the 90s my co-workers would have been shocked by the suggestion we do a small fraction of what a place like FB does, to track people. It would have been considered, obviously, incredibly unethical. Some may even have assumed it was illegal under some law or another, in fact.

Accepting that terms and norms as currently defined are correct is just accepting the worldview of, and supporting the interests of, whoever redefined and shifted those last. This is not the same as saying that "nothing actually means anything", mind you, but rather a call to consider things on their own terms, not to accept another's framing. When I do that, well shit, it sure looks like a bunch of modern tech's business model is "being a gross, creepy stalker, at scale". Why would that be OK? It's not even close to the border of OK.

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

#556

Post by gretch » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #278

trutannus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Require ID verification I'll pass on putting my personal ID in the hands of an organization that sells data as a business . No matter how many flimsy laws they put in place to ban selling my PII, you'd have to be born yesterday to think that won't just delay the sale this new treasure-trove of information.

I think this just goes to show how useful some kind of digital identity verification service would be. Giving your ID to a third party isn't that risky (as I hand it over to grocery cashiers all the time) but we certainly have the tech to do better. It would be great to have a system with a municipal agency where you sign up for an account at the DMV and then they will sign low-info attestations of identity ("this pe…

We have a lot of evidence that local/municipal agencies are a huge attack vector for hackers. You have the resources and talent pool of a small city who now has to defend against attacks from all over the planet. Consider the ransomware attacks against the city of Baltimore: https://www.govtech.com/security/for-second-time-in-a-year-b...

I'd much rather my sensitive digital information be stored with FB (knowing how much they spend on cyber security) than the CA DMV.

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

#557

Post by epgui » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

hunterb123 wrote: post #438

epgui wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You fight misinformation with more information, not censorship. This is a flawed model. At some point, there is so much information that nobody can conceivably consume it all. A better mental model for this dynamic is that of pollution: can you fight pollution by making more "stuff", or at some point does it make sense to try and clean out the junk? > Unless you're saying other people are so stupid we need to contr…

> But yes, yes indeed. If people were smarter, propaganda would not work. Okay, so you think you know better and the government knows better. We're done here. You're the useful idiot (not an insult, a historical term) for the powers who want to censor. The propaganda is this event, you are the person they convinced. You are advocating censorship on their behalf for them. You are going against you and your people's in…

I hope the rest of your day is as pleasant as you are, sir.

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

#558

Post by wrycoder » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

NoGravitas wrote: post #547

wrycoder wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not respect the writer, but what he is saying is demonstrably correct. The takeover of the Democratic party is not so well known (it happened fifty years ago), but there is a contemporary account [0]: The election of 1972 has demonstrated that the “democratization” of the Democratic party under the guidance of such notions has only served to make it less representative of the interests and wishes of the major…

You're citing a right-wing (neoconservative) magazine as your source.

That doesn't mean they are incorrect. Personally, I read a wide range of sources.

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

#559

Post by epgui » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

hogFeast wrote: post #537

epgui wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I used the word "sense" was in relation to "rationality" and not "feelings". With that definition of "sense", it can certainly be said to be objective.

It isn't. Thinking that it is objective is an example of non-rational thinking.

This disagreement results from your inability to accept a definition to work from (ie.: the premise).

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

#560

Post by NoGravitas » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #275

marcusverus wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want an anti-authoritarian ideology, you're looking for classical liberalism / libertarianism. In the US, neither the left nor the right could be considered 'anti-authoritarian', as the left embraces broad government control of economic matters (a welfare state, environmental regulations, relatively high taxes), while the right embraces government control of social matters (regulating abortion, supporting 'tra…

> While both right-wing and left-wing governments can exist without crossing the line into authoritarianism, only the classical libertarian's ideal government is by definition anti-authoritarian, because its focus is on the consent of the individual, whereas others are satisfied with the consent of a majority. "Consent of the individual with sufficient capital," to be clear. "Freedom" is a cold comfort when it's your…

The law, in its majesty, forbids both the rich and the poor from sleeping under bridges.