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Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

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

#231

Post by dillondoyle »

farcebook wrote: post #191
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 c…

I agree with holding all media accountable. But the problem with what you say is that for millions and millions 'news' is actually BS opinion shows. On both sides but from my perspective Fox & Murdoch's empire abroad has done far more harm than say Maddow preaching whatever riles that audience up.

The actual press, WaPo, NyTimes (which does great docs, so does Vice imho) have rigid editorial process. Yet I still on HN people say NyTimes is liberal which I don't belive either.

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

#232

Post by solveit »

RIMR wrote: post #120
hunterb123 wrote: post #93

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.

Freedom of speech also includes from being compelled to speak of things you don't want to, so forcing companies to make their recommendation and moderation systems publicly visible would be eve more of a free speech issue than expecting companies to moderate violent, hateful, or deliberately misleading content.

I absolutely disagree but I'm upvoting anyway because it's an argument I haven't seen before with regards to making algorithms public and god knows the discourse could use some variety.

That being said. No. This is no more a free speech issue than forcing food manufacturers to make their ingredients public.

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

#233

Post by slongfield »

nradov wrote: post #147

The title here doesn't match the article headline. The documents make Facebook look bad but so far I haven't seen anything incriminating , in the sense of violating a US Federal criminal statute. Are there credible allegations of something like securities fraud or wire fraud here? Note that there is no generally no law against disseminating incorrect or "harmful" information.

The section at the end -- "Haugen contacted state officials and the SEC" talks about the parts of the whistleblower documents that show that Facebook was misleading investors. That is criminal under current US law.

I think people are more mad about the other things in the documents--most people are more sympathetic to harm done to kids' mental health than to investors' bottom line, but lying to investors is the one that's illegal.

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

#234

Post by madengr »

echelon wrote: post #99
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…

> while not illegal While not currently illegal. Call your representatives and tell them you find this reprehensible. Let's make it illegal. We live in a representative democracy.

No, we live in a constitutional republic.

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

#235

Post by axguscbklp »

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…

>There should be no question, that what FB is doing here, while not illegal, is highly dubious ethically.

Why, what exactly are they doing that is ethically dubious? So far based on what I have read of this whistleblower's revelations, I do not have a problem with Facebook doing any of it.

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

#236

Post by elliekelly »

nradov wrote: post #147

The title here doesn't match the article headline. The documents make Facebook look bad but so far I haven't seen anything incriminating , in the sense of violating a US Federal criminal statute. Are there credible allegations of something like securities fraud or wire fraud here? Note that there is no generally no law against disseminating incorrect or "harmful" information.

They’ve lied to the public and (if the lies were material to investors) that’s securities fraud.

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

#238

Post by phendrenad2 »

mdoms wrote: post #223
farcebook wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

> One, most of the mainstream news has at least basic editorial processes in place that do a rudimentary check on truthiness. Come on, man. There are just so many counter examples, from the "paper of record" NYT (1619 Project) to MSNBC (Russia nonsense) to Fox News (literally everything) to Rolling Stone (A Rape on Campus) I could sit here all day listing outright lies and untruths published in the pages of mainstrea…

Both are true. Both the news and social media optimize for clickbait, which bad actors use to slip in misinformation. What's funny is, people use the exact language about the news. They'll say that CNN is just being used by the far left to promote far-left views, or that Fox News is being used by the far-right to promote far-right views. Yet when the medium is Facebook instead of the media, suddenly it's a problem that must be solved with more laws.

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

#239

Post by intended »

A frustration is how often these discussions are America centric, and the whistleblower herself pointed out how little integrity work is done on most other languages - that integrity software is not even pushed to those regions. The specific example discussed was Ethiopia where facebook has integrity teams(?) for 2 out of 5 languages.

However, its remiss to say this is just a FB thing. Want to work on hate detection in any complex region. The ease with which you can do hate speech detection in English (with all its caveats) pales in comparison to working on commonly shared content in other regions.

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

#240

Post by shmatt »

OldHand2018 wrote: post #201
shmatt wrote: post #36

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…

Let me ask you something: How much of the "bigger picture" did Snowden have? Because, you know, one person is male and the other is female, and I'd really like to believe that gender has nothing to do with it.

They're pretty much seem the same to me

Same with Snowden. The person who needs to answer the question is 10 levels above him

She is showing us "evil stuff happened"

The question we're asking is "Did evil stuff happen on purpose, and who directed it"

Both Snowden and Her can't honestly answer than question (Snowden wasn't really an official employee IIRC)

My issue is her portrayal not by herself but mostly by the media like she can prove the latter

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