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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

#241

Post by asdff »

mcguire wrote: post #228
asdff wrote: post #115

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…

I'm not sure this would have the effect you want. You tax Facebook but allow it to operate however it wants. Facebook is then incentivized to double down on its algorithms---like tobacco companies using chemical and biological techniques to make cigarettes more addictive---in order to regain the lost profits.

Then you can double down on the taxes you levy against them if they begin harming more people, no? The idea is the cost of doing bad business will eventually be too much to make it worth doing that sort of bad business. Same idea with carbon taxes where the costs scale to damage and incentivize shifting to good behavior rather than doubling down on bad behavior. And even with cigarette companies doubling down, far fewer people smoke today and die of lung cancer than 50 years ago, so this stuff works on the whole.

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

#242

Post by downandout »

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…

Not everyone has the same moral compass. It isn’t even clear that the whistleblower herself was guided by concern for society: she first went to the SEC with these complaints. That’s a weird place to go with concerns about social media’s impact on society. I wonder why? Perhaps…just maybe…it was because the SEC will give her 10-30% of any fines levied against Facebook, leading to a potential windfall of $1 billion or more to her personally.

It takes truly egregious behavior for society to agree that new laws must be passed to outlaw it. The current state of social media says much more about human behavior than Facebook’s behavior. Everyone here would also almost certainly reject the kinds of laws that would be required to make Facebook/IG a healthier place. They would likely involve serious privacy violations, just for starters. So given that legislation in this area has almost no chance of passing, it is unclear what the point of this is, other than a huge payday for the whistleblower.

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

#243

Post by mpalczewski »

hunterb123 wrote: post #189
VikingCoder wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for being pedantic, but you can absolutely change the ingredients of a cigarette. There's a ton besides the tobacco. And you can breed different strains of tobacco to have more or less of some chemical.

My point was a cig always causes cancer because it burns tobacco, so you need a banner to warn users. A social media behemoth does not need to use doom scrolling or private algorithms to be a social media site.

Smoking was happening in the 1800's. Lung Cancer rates didn't shoot up until the 1900's, it was rather rare. This is around the same time that tobacco companies figured out they could soak tobacco in ammonia. This allowed for inhalation into the lungs (e.g. it sucks to inflate a cigar deep into your lungs). It also made the cigarettes much more addicting, so people smoked way more and inhaled into the lungs. That's about when lung cancer stopped being so rare.

Yes, cig's cause cancer, but to say that it's because it burns tobacco is missing a big part of the story.

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

#244

Post by solveit »

shkkmo wrote: post #178
mikestew wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, she doesn’t work in tech now. Her work will now involve television interviews and book-signing tours. From that jumping off point, she’ll be able to do what she likes.

I think that underestimates her abilities. I think it is more likely she will found or at least join a policy focused non-profit that will further her social goals while making use of her existing technical and management skills.

Also overestimates her abilities in a different direction. Becoming a media personality is hard, and takes an entirely different skillset. It just seems easy to people who have an axe to grind against the currently successful crop of personalities.

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

#245

Post by woeirua »

axguscbklp wrote: post #235
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.

Really? You don’t have a problem with an app that causes 1% of teens that use it to develop suicidal thoughts? By the way, according to the leaked study these teens directly attributed their suicidal ideation to Instagram.

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

#246

Post by mdoms »

Graffur wrote: post #227
mdoms wrote: post #204

Am I the only one who found the Facebook Files reporting very overwrought and stretched? There were some issues and red flags in there, but mostly it seemed... not that bad?

How do you see the files?

"Facebook Files" was the project name Wall Street Journal gave to their flagship reporting on this story. I haven't seen the files unfortunately.

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

#247

Post by MikusR »

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…

Facebook has more rudimentary checks on truthiness than any of mainstream news organizations.

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

#248

Post by 8note »

JohnFen wrote: post #83
flandish wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is how this is different than Nike making shoes with child labor overseas in the "global south", etc. That harms children, for profit. Facebook is a for profit organization. This is the rule with organizations like this. If given enough time, size, and lack of shielding, any corporation will eventually cause harm in some way. We seem to have less focus on "Nike whistleblowers" or similar, you…

Nike has received (and continues to receive) a lot of attention about that sort of thing for decades. But, on a larger level, I see several comments that seem to be implying that talking about the wrongdoing of one company isn't valid unless we talk about the wrongdoing of all companies at the same time. I think that argument is faulty. If the argument were good, then it wouldn't be possible to talk about any company…

I don't think the focus on Nike has resulted in the whole industry being fixed.

Companies are case studies of a problem, any single one is insufficient information for coming up with solutions.

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

#249

Post by axguscbklp »

asdff wrote: post #138
beaner wrote: post #106

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…

I disagree - I think that it should be completely legal to sell cocaine drinks as long as you inform the customers that the drinks have cocaine in them and I think that is should be legal to use even the most psychologically manipulative marketing techniques imaginable. I would rather that it be the responsibility of consumers to avoid getting addicted than to use government power to ban things. Similarly, for example I think that it should be legal to sell skateboards even though people sometimes injure themselves while riding them.

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

#250

Post by crooked-v »

koheripbal wrote: post #131
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 issue is that her experience at Facebook did not put her in a position know the company strategy.

The company strategy seems pretty self-explanatory from the documents that she released.
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