Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 734 posts

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#191

Post by farcebook »

ozzythecat wrote: post #141

I don’t personally use FB and don’t have a very favorable view of their products. I would, however, like to see the same level scrutiny applied to the general American media, especially the news media. FB has come in and started eating their lunch. There’s a deeper problem here, and it feels more like the powers that he want to take down FB. I’m not denying any allegation made against FB, but why is it that Fox News,…

One, most of the mainstream news has at least basic editorial processes in place that do a rudimentary check on truthiness. Facebook, along with some of the sketchier news outlets, are the opposite: they profit off (and optimize for) disinformation.

Two, it's a matter of scale. Facebook reaches a far larger audience and has far more detail into their preferences and can nano-target personalized stories for them and corral them into groups, creating perfect echo chambers. The news companies are way too small and in some way irrelevant. Even if they all went bankrupt overnight, Facebook's algorithms will keep working, keep producing personalized truth bubbles. Is fake news a problem in general? Sure. But the news companies are tiny compared to Facebook, and not the immediate and persistent threat to democracy that Facebook is, just because they're much smaller. Even if you take the entirety of local news networks as a whole, they don't have the same saturation and engagement feedback loops that Facebook has.

The Powers That Be are typically reactionary forces, and has long battled the news industry over free speech and censorship etc. Facebook is a relatively new villain, different than the old ones, and way more powerful. Further regulating the news industry won't really deal the Facebook issue since they can keep on aggregating from anywhere and everywhere. It's a different beast altogether.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#192

Post by intended »

blahblah123456 wrote: post #155
aardvarkr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point here? This lady is a PRODUCT manger and heads up the entire product, in this case Civic Integrity, which was directly charged with tamping down hate on the platform related to civic engagement. She is not a PROJECT manager like what you deal with on your engineering team. She is by definition an expert on this segment of Facebook and you're dismissing her wrongly for being a "PM". She's a Harvard MB…

The PM people usually deal with on eng teams are product managers and people do call them PMs. Lots of junior people also have these educational credentials. Not saying she isn't senior, but these two things mean nothing.

This is simply forgetting the context.

Someone said she doesnt know firm strategy,

The response was that she is one of the best people to speak on this topic.

And then your response dismisses the value of her credentials.

In context, her credentials rebut the claim that she has no perspective. A Harvard MBA and Data Science degree give her unique perspective and valid perspective on what she is talking about.

Further I have watched the Whistleblower deposition and she has said things within the ambit of what she has said.

Additionally I personally have a position to know this particular space and she has repeated things that many already know.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#193

Post by keewee7 »

ozzythecat wrote: post #141

I don’t personally use FB and don’t have a very favorable view of their products. I would, however, like to see the same level scrutiny applied to the general American media, especially the news media. FB has come in and started eating their lunch. There’s a deeper problem here, and it feels more like the powers that he want to take down FB. I’m not denying any allegation made against FB, but why is it that Fox News,…

One thing that makes Facebook distinct from other big Internet companies is that they allow far-right speech on their platform.

That is probably why the Democrats and liberal media are targeting Facebook but not twitter, YouTube, reddit, Snap, TikTok etc.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#194

Post by alistairSH »

hunterb123 wrote: post #93
woeirua wrote: post #77

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.

What do you want to be done exactly?

Public algorithms, or at least some 3rd party review. Ban infinite-scroll on social media platforms. Require feeds to be configurable (users can set to "newest first" or "top picks" or whatever else). I'm sure I could come up with more, that's just off the top of my head.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#195

Post by kentonv »

I highly recommend watching the Senate hearing from today, and I'm a person who normally can't stand these things. This was totally different from any other hearing I've seen -- little grandstanding, no partisan bickering, no evading of questions. Most of the Senators seemed genuinely interested in what Frances had to say, and she gave meaningful insights backed by real data.

A lot of what she's saying is stuff that has been generally known in the tech industry for some time -- that algorithmic content ranking amplifies division and outrage. But the detail she gave about actual research quantifying it goes way deeper than I think most of us were aware of.

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2021/10/protecting%20kids%20...

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#196

Post by shkkmo »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #174
ncr100 wrote: post #142

As a technologist, to me this is technology being disruptive without sufficient control. In this case disruptive to human communication. And FB doesn't also have a comprehensive suite of human ethics sufficiently in their loop. Why did FB do this: She identified a disconnect between the FB Civic Engagement team recommendations and FB acting on those recommendations, in one of the 60 Minutes videos. She says people at…

I mean disbanding the civic integrity team after a huge civic event seems reasonable? It could have been the team was more of a task force and comes together when large events occur. We don't really have any/much insight into how they spun up a war room for the 2020 election. A related situation might be how Lyft/Uber have massive war rooms and special ops teams to handle Halloween and New Years (massive heavy traffi…

Unless that civic event had significant unresolved elements such as the failure of the sitting president to actually concede the election but rather to contest it.

And it's not like Facebook isn't a global company that deals with a more or less constant deluge of important elections in many countries.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#198

Post by jasondigitized »

gremIin wrote: post #188
jasondigitized wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I said that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762415

When you phrase your argument like that, it comes off as whataboutism. You are free to campaign against Fox News, CNN, and the like. I will even upvote and share those HN posts if you do.

I should have simply said "This is a good start"

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#199

Post by nostrademons »

phantom_oracle wrote: post #13

Firstly, it is sad to say that HN is becoming more negative like the rest of the internet. On the front page there are more articles devoted to the ever-evolving shit-show of American-focused news issues. There are far less links to things that I THINK HN is more suited for: like BGP protocol or building your own ham radio. That aside, my theory about whistleblowing is that it is a counter-intuitive exercise that res…

> That aside, my theory about whistleblowing is that it is a counter-intuitive exercise that results in very little at the expense of orgs tightening their security policies.

Oftentimes this is the point. An organization with tighter internal security policies and lower levels of trust internally is significantly less efficient. Over time, this leads to them being unable to respond to competitive pressures and then getting eclipsed in the marketplace. It's not that the whistleblower kills the organization, it's that the whistleblower triggers the organization into killing itself.

This was the explicit goal of Wikileaks and of Osama bin Laden. They knew they couldn't take down governments themselves, but they can make government so inefficient that their own citizens take them down.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#200

Post by asdff »

nradov wrote: post #163
asdff wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How could legislators draft such a law in a way that wouldn't be voided for vagueness? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness_doctrine?wprov=sfla1

Probably with the help of psychologists who can offer more concrete definitions of addictive behavior and dark patterns than you or I.
Post reply on HN