Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

Just remember Rationality is Bounded, ie there are problems chimps with 6 inch brains cant solve. Its the classic Jurassic Park story, where man says he can control anything. And then realizes he cant. By which time its too late.

This is why the road to hell is paved by "good people who have kids" with their good intentions.

FBs issues did not appear yday.

Like the endless war the issues where there right from the start. So why are we talking about it today? Cuz lots of good people didnt do anything, not because they arent good or skilled, because the problem is too complex for them.

This is where Bounded Rationality helps resolve issues. If the problem is too complex, pick a simpler problem.

This is hard for some chimps to do for various reason. So entertaining them is a recipe for disaster. Their narrative will always be- "people are good. People experienced World War 1. They know whats at stake. They lost family, friends, body parts. Many are great Heroes. Trust them. They know what they are doing". And still we got World War 2.

Why? Cause rationality, skill and experince doesnt matter for some problems. All the "good germans" from politicians, to religious leaders, to military and intelligence leaders knew Hitler had to go long before any notion of war entered the minds. Every coup and assassination they ploted they second guessed themselves. All of them ended up dead.

In the context of the whistleblower:

One of the popular methods of manipulation is to use "harmful to children" as a basis for making an argument. We have seen this countless times in the past on a variety of issues. This is no different. The "harms" that are being highlighted here are equally, if not more, applicable to adults. Children are at a stage in their lives where good parenting can easily offset any potential harm by consuming content on Instagram or Facebook.

One can recognize that this particular topic, like many contemporary topics, is a subset of the overarching libertarianism versus authoritarianism debate, and opinions often cleanly fall on political lines depending on the complaint. In this case the whistleblower has left-of-center politics, so they have a grievance with "disinformation" and "not enough control". There have been previous whistleblowers who have had right-of-center politics, who have cited "censorship" and "biased control" as their grievance. There is ample evidence for the company being guilty of both, with regard to specific instances.

As such there will always be complaints from opposing points of view as to whether the company is doing "enough" to police content, or whether the policing has become biased. Amusingly, you see the reverse of this debate when you look at actual policing in the USA, where the opposite side argues bias in policing and the other side argues for harsher control and punishment.

Those who fall on either side of the spectrum tend to paint with a broad brush some kind of systemic evil conspiratorial agenda at the company, as a consequence of voicing their respective frustrations.

Overall Facebook is a net positive for the world. There are likely activists within the company trying to push agendas, some of whom may be prevailing over others. This is evident by just taking a walk around campus and reading the political messaging that adorns the various shared spaces. These are also largely irrelevant in the long term because if and when it reaches any sort of extreme, eventually the pendulum will swing too far.

A few high-level folks arrived whose perfection in smooth talking was rivaled only by their enjoyment of wreaking havoc on teams & relationships. They brought in their friends, paranoia and rumors spread, culture went off a cliff, CEO was confused what happened. Mass exodus followed.