Time to talk about Section 230 again?
Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
291–300 of 734 posts
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What part of Gmail is open?
Email, not Gmail. I can email people from my provider even if they use other providers, including people who self host. And I can get email from them too.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What part of Gmail is open?
I think GP is referring to the fact that email overall is a system that is based on public standards and open to new entrants. You can start Hmail.com if you want, and plug into the existing email eco-system as a new competitor very easily.
The social media ecosystems aren't like that. You can't be a chat provider and plug into FB Messenger; you can't plug into Twitter, etc.
There is an open social media eco-system called the fediverse (for its federated nature), in which Mastodon is the best-known player. But it's gotten very limited traction, because of the network effect that keeps people on FB and Twitter. No such effect keeps people on Gmail.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#294I 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…
Standard oil reduces the cost of oil, delighted customers, and had already a massive decline in market share by the time the antitrust stuff happened. It was driven by people who couldn't compete.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#295I 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,…
The elephant in the room here is the First Amendment. The government, legally, cannot do anything to censor "hate speech" or "misinformation" on CNN or Fox News. They also can't do anything to censor "hate speech" or "misinformation" on Facebook, but they can certainly harass Facebook into doing it for them.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a poem (or book) makes 10% of its readers more likely to become geniuses and contribute to solving world problems such as cancer, but 0.1% of its readers are more likely to commit suicide, should that book be banned by law? Today's online society is based on posts created by content creators around the world, where algorithms can barely scratch the surface at interpreting their content, humans don't scale in revie…
Looks like you are willfully ignoring Facebook’s own findings. They know that polarizing content is more engaging yet harmful… and they choose to amplify it anyway. The same old argument that it’s hard therefore let’s not do anything is not applicable. Facebook is not a neutral platform that just shows all posts from your friends in a chronological order. They are actively manipulating the stream and are fully respon…
Walmart is "manipulating" the placement of products on the shelf so that it's more likely for you to engage in bulk buying when you visit their stores.
Both Facebook and Walmart have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to create value for them.
The difference is that, with user generated content, the idea of black and white "bounds" of the law is no longer applicable and you have to devise a system of checks and balances based on probabilities.
You can consider 10'000 posts for offline analysis: give them to some human raters and decide retrospectively what engagement and thoughts (positive/negative) are they generating in teens, which should enable you to draw some statistics about the expected average outcome. This doesn't mean it's either scalable or economically feasible to do so in real time for every post (so you cannot take decisions based on something that doesn't exist at the individual post level).
You can have multiple algorithms, send all of them to human raters and get for each algorithm some aggregated behaviour, but then we're back to the book question above -- what ratio of positive vs negative outcome in outliers is acceptable, and how do you define a "legal"/"allowed" algorithm?
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#297Earlier 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…
> sin taxes How about we don't let the state decide what I get to do with my body (and mind)?
It is the responsibility of the state to inform citizens on the facts and dangers of activities. And yes, sometimes to incentivize healthy behavior.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#298I 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…
Law is always lagging behind social norms, for many reasons.
Because of that, I don't think laws can change the world, this is the opposite, laws are merely acknowledging the common rules of the majority.
Technology also change the world and we need time to figure out new rules to adapt, in the case of Facebook and other giants, some changes are clearly in need, at least it seems to be a growing consensus.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
She is taking a risk, and I salute her for it. But at the end of the day, it is likely her career will have a huge boost from this. And Facebook would probably be very foolish to go after her.
umm if this hearing results in some kind of monetary settlement she will be entitled to some of it
I can't see how a monetary settlement would be the result of this.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#300I 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…
It's astounding to me that too little censorship is characterized as "antithetical to our values", "highly dubious ethically", and worthy of potential legal sanction in the top-ranked comment on HN.