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Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

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Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#121

Post by adolph »

mbesto wrote: post #47

> If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place? > If we wanted to hide our results, why would we have established an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting on what we're doing? This is HILARIOUSLY out of touch with reality. You don't call someone a whistleblower if the reports they leaked were TRANSP…

What “does his majority control over Facebook” have to do with the accusations about Facebook’s behavior? Would the behavior be ok if it were majority controlled by mutual funds?

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#122

Post by ch4s3 »

pier25 wrote: post #42
ch4s3 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did anyone edit or proof this beyond maybe spelling an grammar? It comes across as incredibly sophomoric and petty. Moreover it reads like the nervous retort of someone who isn’t used to being questioned or contradicted. This seems like exactly the wrong tone at the moment. Honestly as a tech person, I’m concerned that he really makes the rest of us look like shit.

Honestly, it sounds like he is completely disconnected from reality.

Not just that, it sounds child-like. I have trouble imagining someone who went to Harvard writing that way, even if they did drop out.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#123

Post by SeanAppleby »

dannykwells wrote: post #77
jedberg wrote: post #68

I'm having a hard time reconciling all this right now. On the one hand, from the outside, I can see the actions that Facebook takes and they seem awfully guilty of what they are accused of. But on the other hand, I personally know and have previously worked with some of the people who work on trust and safety, specifically for kids. Good people who have kids of their own and who care about protecting people, especial…

This is called the Banality of Evil. Look up Hannah Arendt. It is a well established idea.

Eichmann in Jerusalem is the book that coined the phrase for anyone passing through, and it's a pretty wild story.

It's essentially Arendt, a Jewish exile from Berlin who fled the holocaust, wrestling with her realization that Eichmann, who reported to Hitler and organized major portions of the holocaust, wasn't a psychopath, but a completely mundane and thoughtless career focused bureaucrat who was trying to rise in government and believed in doing what you are told, who then organized one of the most evil acts in human history without reflecting on what he was doing.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#124

Post by m4rtink »

fedbook wrote: post #52
hokumguru wrote: post #18

Honestly am I the only one that doesn’t think that Facebook is that bad? Some of those points that he makes really should make you stop and think.

They do a lot of good bringing people together, but it’s a double edged sword with massive potential for abuse. It’s not up for debate that Facebook causes harm. The only question is how much is too much? At what point do we step in, tell them their mitigations are ineffective, and break up or regulate their systems?

The question is how many alternative systems and services people could use to keep touch with their loved ones Facebook steamrolledby network effect and questionable business practices.

Services that might not require you to expose your real identity to the whole internet, that might not exfiltrate your full contact list from your phone or would not apply questionable morals and censorship on the content you exchange with your loved ones.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#125

Post by jimkleiber »

wpietri wrote: post #80
jimkleiber wrote: post #50

For me, it's the almost complete lack of guilt or awareness that his company has caused pain and even death. Yes, FB and its acquisitions have brought many many good things to my life and to the lives of others. They have also brought a lot of pain to me and to others as well. No service only provides good. He doesn't seem to say this. Instead of him trying to remind us "we do good things" I wish he would also say "a…

For me there's a useful distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt is where you fall short of your own standards and seek to rectify it. Shame is where you feel bad about falling short in the eyes of others. Large corporations often perform shame, but they rarely behave as if key actors experience guilt. So they'll make reforms only as long as there's significant pushback. If Zuckerberg actually cared, he would be wr…

I really appreciate this distinction. I've noticed that when I feel ashamed, I tend to hide from someone, whereas when I feel guilty I tend to feel driven to open up to apologize to them.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#127

Post by zestyping »

jedberg wrote: post #68

I'm having a hard time reconciling all this right now. On the one hand, from the outside, I can see the actions that Facebook takes and they seem awfully guilty of what they are accused of. But on the other hand, I personally know and have previously worked with some of the people who work on trust and safety, specifically for kids. Good people who have kids of their own and who care about protecting people, especial…

This is exactly the point Frances Haugen is making, and it's why this is so different and so much more significant than the other Facebook scandals and leaks in the past.

Haugen repeated over and over again her testimony today that Facebook is full of smart, thoughtful, kind, well-intentioned people, and that she has great empathy for them, even Mark Zuckerberg. Her point is that they have created a system of incentives that are inexorably leading to harmful outcomes. It is not about good and evil people, it is about the incentives. It's exactly as you are saying.

That's why she is not advocating to punish Facebook for being evil, but rather to force Facebook to reveal and permit research so we can understand the system and fix it, because Facebook is too deeply trapped in its own tangle of incentives to fix itself. In this I think she is absolutely correct.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#128

Post by ramraj07 »

jedberg wrote: post #68

I'm having a hard time reconciling all this right now. On the one hand, from the outside, I can see the actions that Facebook takes and they seem awfully guilty of what they are accused of. But on the other hand, I personally know and have previously worked with some of the people who work on trust and safety, specifically for kids. Good people who have kids of their own and who care about protecting people, especial…

It’s like saying that the people working in the slaughter houses are actually kind folk who do like animals and care deeply for their well being. That can be absolutely true, but they still work for a slaughter house. Your care and trust doesn’t matter a bit because the fundamental nature of the organization is that it profits from cruelty. I understand it pays well, and that maybe they are trying to be nice and all, but yeah there’s only so much purity of heart you can insist while still working for the slaughter house that is Facebook.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#129

Post by jsemrau »

skissane wrote: post #73

> And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world? That's a point I've made myself before, and I think there is some truth to it. Social media can't explain the high and increasing degree of US political polarisation, beca…

I'd argue that Brexit might not have gotten the same amount of traction and neither the Catalan Independence Movement

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#130

Post by imilk »

axguscbklp wrote: post #118

Very calm in tone. In Zuckerberg's place, I would have been tempted to instead write something like this: "Hi, censorious ninnies. In the 50s you would have been blaming godlessness for hurting children, in the 90s you would have been blaming video games for hurting children, now you blame Facebook. Please take your desire to police content on Facebook even more than we already police it and shove it up your own ass.…

Well you've demonstrated pretty clearly why you don't write public statements for large companies.
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