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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

#411

Post by parineum »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #176
parineum wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sin taxes How about we don't let the state decide what I get to do with my body (and mind)?

You are are able to consume both tobacco and alcohol (let's not tangent into a drug legalization discussion). Tobacco and alcohol cause measurable societal harm and measurable costs to the state - are you implying it's unreasonable for states to tax these goods for those reasons? Generally speaking I'd rather reduce taxes but I fail to see what's wrong with e.g. an alcohol excise tax going towards rehabilitation and/…

> Tobacco and alcohol cause measurable societal harm

And if I choose to smoke in the privacy of my own home (or yard)? What societal harm am I causing?

As for alcohol, the societal harm caused is a laundry list of already illegal behaviors that are illegal regardless of alcohol's involvement with the exception of sin tax avoidance.

Why not outlaw the societal harm instead?

> e.g. an alcohol excise tax going towards rehabilitation and/or highway safety programs

Both of those seem like good things regardless don't they? Why do we need a special tax on alcohol for things that are generally good? It's not like only people who consume alcohol are the only ones who need rehab or they're the only problem with highway safety.

Does the tobacco tax go toward lung cancer patients? It actually goes towards funding campaigns that overstate (ie, lie) about the dangers of smoking to the point that people vastly overestimate the dangers of smoking [1].

> Sin tax" is just a colloquial name for an excise tax, which a state has every right to enact.

Of course it's legal, it's just garbage policy. Sin taxes come from the pairing politicians wanting more money and pearl clutching interest groups pleading to think about the children.

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... > 99.5% of respondents overestimated absolute risk, only about 0.3% estimated it correctly (by giving an answer of 30), and 0.2% underestimated it (by giving an answer less than 30).

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

#412

Post by [deleted] »

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,…

[deleted]

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

#413

Post by giantrobot »

jasondigitized wrote: post #149
afavour wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on, they’re not comparable. If you turn on CNN or Fox News right now I know exactly what you’ll see. Because it’s exactly what I’d see if did the same. What’s on your Facebook feed right now? No clue. How are different types of content weighted? No way of knowing. Facebook holds a lot more secrets than any traditional media company about what they’re showing their users. Leaks from FB are much more valuable.

What will you see? 24-7, Emotionally charged "Breaking News" which is simply a different fruit from the same horrible tree. CNN and Fox News are just using different methods based on the data they have available which comes from focus groups, Nielsen, and a whole cottage industry that most people are unaware of.

You're doubling down on your whataboutism and deflection. The key difference between Facebook's "news" feed any mainstream television and print news is visibility.

If I record every minute of cable news and subscribe to a bunch of newspapers I can tell you the exact contents of each. If any of them wants to espouse a narrative it's pretty easy to see just by looking at what they've aired/printed.

That's not possible to do with Facebook, unless you are Facebook. Every users' "news" feed is slightly different based on their behavior/relationships tracked on Facebook and through their massive advertising network (off Facebook).

I put "news" in quotes because Facebook tunes the contents of their feeds for monitization rather than any semblance of truth or accuracy. Facebook is awash in literal fake news, as in completely made up "news" articles, because they peak in some engagement metric.

An actual news program on cable or non-opinion news article in a paper can't get away with outright lies. They also would be liable for outright defamation.

For all the ills and failings of cable news and newspapers they are nowhere near as toxic or fundamentally broken as Facebook's "news" feeds. They're not even in the same ballpark which makes your whataboutism really puzzling. Do you honestly not see the difference?

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

#414

Post by parineum »

elliekelly wrote: post #211
parineum wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sin taxes How about we don't let the state decide what I get to do with my body (and mind)?

It’s not the state “deciding” it’s the state requiring compensation for the negative externalities created by the product. You’re more than welcome to smoke cigarettes if you so chose. But that decision isn’t made in a vacuum and it impacts the rest of us in the form of increased public health burden, insurance costs, secondhand smoke, etc. A “sin tax” serves not only to discourage the asocial behavior (we’d have a b…

> state requiring compensation

So, advertising company hurts me and the state gets compensated?

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

#415

Post by cratermoon »

asdff wrote: post #335
cratermoon wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is evidence Social Media causes harm to some individuals' mental health (in a widespread manner causing some measurable societal harm) And they do so by exploiting human weaknesses using the same psychological techniques used by casinos and other forms of gambling.

Yes, and we have regulations and taxes and laws around these industries, but evidently facebook gets off scott free.

That's because, so far, they've managed to deflect, deny, and discredit research and critics pointing out exactly how social media uses things like variable rewards in the same way as slot machines use them to keep gamblers pulling the lever. They do this using tactics developed by the tobacco companies to fight findings that smoking causes cancer and other harms and refined by the fossil fuel industry to prevent action on global warming.

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

#416

Post by dionidium »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #325
philwelch wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it too little censorship or rather amplifying problematic things and suppressing heathier things because of perverse incentives? FB and Instagram timelines are not raw feeds from ones friends/follows. They are tuned by human calibrated algorithms. Kids need to eat vegetables and lean protein sources. But if school districts instead optimize for profit they may end up feeding the kids borderline poison like sodas a…

What people choose to "amplify" is none of the government's business. People are allowed to be wrong. Yes, even if you think it's about something really important.

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

#417

Post by prancer_or_vix »

hunterb123 wrote: post #168
RajT88 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uhm a cigarette you cannot change the ingredients of, it's tobacco. You can soak the tobacco in solution which contains additives, such as more nicotine. Which is exactly what cigarette companies have done in the past (and not just the tobacco, the filters, and the paper as well). The parallel here is filling people's feeds with divisive political news and posts, even when they have tried to opt out.

The point is tobacco itself is a carcinogen, you cannot make a cig not cause cancer because it needs to burn tobacco at least. A social media website does not need doom scrolling or private algorithms for the feed, you can change how it works instead of adding a useless banner.

2 questions:

1) What would you expect be implemented to reduce/eradicate doom scrolling?

2) What would making the algorithm public do for us? I'm not an ML engineer, but presumably their algorithm isn't just an algebraic equation where x is how toxic the post is and y is how inflammatory it is and y is the number of kids who will think harder about suicide because of the post.

Maybe I'm just super naive and that _is_ how Facebook made their algorithm, but my understanding is that the algorithm is a little more of a black-box and is a little abstract. How is a lay-person supposed to evaluate something like that?

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

#418

Post by philwelch »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #325
philwelch wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it too little censorship or rather amplifying problematic things and suppressing heathier things because of perverse incentives? FB and Instagram timelines are not raw feeds from ones friends/follows. They are tuned by human calibrated algorithms. Kids need to eat vegetables and lean protein sources. But if school districts instead optimize for profit they may end up feeding the kids borderline poison like sodas a…

> Kids need to eat vegetables and lean protein sources. But if school districts instead optimize for profit they may end up feeding the kids borderline poison like sodas and candy. When companies come to dominate a public space, like huge parts of digital comms, then maybe it's OK to demand more responsible behavior of them.

Adults are not children and social media sites are not school districts.

The school district analogy also doesn't really hold up on its own terms unless you're talking about boarding schools, which you probably aren't given the term "school district". When I was a kid, I ate at least 2 out of 3 meals at home, and more often than not, I brought a sack lunch. I know that poorer kids rely on school lunches a lot more than I did, but that's still just one meal a day. My high school actually did have a Coca-Cola machine, but I think that's old enough for kids to start making some of their own life decisions, like whether or not to have a Coke with their lunch. I mean, high school is around the same time that students start planning for their future career and/or higher education, so if you can be trusted to decide between taking vocational classes and fulfilling college admissions requirements, I think you can also be trusted to decide whether or not to drink a Coke. 14 isn't that far off from 13, which is the legal minimum age to get a social media account.

Also, unlike going to school, nobody is forced by the government to spend multiple hours a day using social media. Of course we regulate schools. We also regulate prisons to make sure that prisoners are humanely treated, or at least we're supposed to. The better analogy isn't school districts but convenience stores, in an alternate universe where children under the age of 13 were prohibited from entering convenience stores and some people were complaining that still wasn't enough.

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

#419

Post by parineum »

asdff wrote: post #187
parineum wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sin taxes How about we don't let the state decide what I get to do with my body (and mind)?

Curious, do you not wear seatbelts too? Opt for asbestos insulation since its better than anything on the market today? Plumb your home with lead since its more durable and flexible? Use leaded gas because its better for your older engine? The state acts on the collective when the public is not making good decisions for themselves and causing net harm onto themselves, usually with the public paying the price. Sometim…

> Curious, do you not wear seatbelts too?

I wear my seatbelt, I don't smoke, I don't drink and I'm vaccinated.

Everyone keeps talking about these "negative externalities" without being specific. Why not just make the societal harm illegal and let people hurt themselves without buying permission from the government?

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

#420

Post by softwarebeware »

Let's assume Facebook does invest into policing their platform to the extent necessary for it to not result in political consequences ("misinformation and disinformation"). There's still the rest of the internet. There's still all the open-source tools available that can be used for good or ill. The problem is much larger than Facebook.
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