Facebook seems to have some complicity in the Rohingya genocide. This may be the most damning fact unearthed today.
Statement from Mark Zuckerberg
391–400 of 699 posts
Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg
#392Honestly 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.
Agreed. Facebook is a mirror to society.
Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
This happened at a company I was at. Hyper-growth startup, huge aura around it. 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.
How do you filter against hiring these types given their talking and schmoozing get them over the HR guard as well as director and above interviewers?
You don't just filter to hire, you also unfilter employee concerns. Most people think that CEO's, founders, owners, "management" are not going to back them, and they're generally right. Therefore most problems never skip the chain, and end up being suppressed by their own supervisors.
Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's an emergent property, I think it's a by-product of the constraints. It's all well and good that they want to make Facebook safe and healthy, and I honestly believe plenty of people working there are trying to do just that. However, they are operating under the constraint that they cannot move backwards on profits, and therefore engagement. Imagine if you were trying to fix climate change, but under…
> Imagine if you were trying to fix climate change, but under the condition that you weren't allowed to burn fewer fossil fuels. You may try very hard, and very sincerely, but it's fool's errand. I like this. This helps me. Thanks.
> Imagine if you were trying to fix climate change, but under the condition that you weren't allowed to burn fewer fossil fuels. You may try very hard, and very sincerely, but it's fool's errand.
This also happens to be the literal policy towards climate change of China. They announced the pause of funds for external coal plants, doubled down on their internal ones.
Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg
#395I'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…
The human element is not a variable we define in code. There are things that, by the nature of how they're used, become harmful. Intent does not matter. Good people can intend that their new free anonymous file sharing service will be amazing. Until it's used by bad actors. The concept is good, the intent is good, but in practice it doesn't work that way. There's also another concept, the reality that people do not a…
> The human element is not a variable we define in code. There are things that, by the nature of how they're used, become harmful
Agree, but I think we should look at guns first then. Invented to kill, and yet we let people mass buy them for fun
Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the kind of conspiratorial thinking that makes me think we're in a moral panic here.
>conspiratorial thinking I wasn't aware there was any question that foreign groups (state supported or otherwise) actively coordinate on Facebook to influence US political campaigns.
There's evidence for limited activities, no evidence that foreign action is responsible for the macro trend of partisanship im the US
Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really since facebook revenue is much more directly tied to engagnement than GDP ia to fossile fuel consumption. To extens the metaphor, Facebook's "alternative energy" is non-advertising based revenue. I see zero efforts from facebook to move away from ad based revenue so there is zero chance that Facebook is going to make meaningful progress in changing.
> I see zero efforts from facebook to move away from ad based revenue Portal hardware. Oculus + Game Store. Facebook Gaming. Lots of projects, no stable hits.
Maybe they realized internally they are as hopelessly addicted to fossil fuels (ad revenue) as most advanced economies were in the 20th century.
Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been framing this whole thing as a universal property of human society and it seems to fit pretty well for me. Outrage attracts attention in all group interactions. I can't think of a single large scale group forum where this isn't true. It's integral to an absurd degree in our news cycle. Howard Stern exploited this property in his rise to fame. It's a core element in state propaganda, well documented throughou…
We used to solve this problem by teaching people to have thicker skin so that we control the outrage regardless of the forum in which it occurs. However for the last 10 years or so grievance culture has taken root and not only excused outrage, its proponents have actively encouraged it. It makes me think of that scene in Star Wars where palpating is like “good, good. Let the hate flow through you”, expect we now have…
I think this is an important point indeed. A piece of this puzzle, in my opinion, is that people are not taught this at home anymore. Most familes have both parents working full time and they're exhausted after work. Their kids are raised in daycare and neglected. And so many are raised in divorced/broken/separated/single parent households that compound the problem much more.
Furthermore, most of the US isn't religious anymore. These values and maxims mentioned above are not taught to people anymore, at least not to the degree that they were in the past.
A piece of this should be better training in the home for kids on how to understand the internet. To avoid being hateful and to question things. But so many kids are left to their own devices without parental oversight on this subject. I've even heard the call recently that parents want high schools and colleges to start teaching courses on how to avoid harmful content and misinformation online.
In what feels like ancient history, this used to be the parent's job, before both spouses were working full time.
Our kids and the younger generation suffer from lacking parental instruction on this.
Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg
#399> Now that today's testimony is over, I wanted to reflect on the public debate we're in. I'm sure many of you have found the recent coverage hard to read because it just doesn't reflect the company we know. Yeah, we know you don't know, because you're looking at it from on top of a mountain of 100 billion dollars, Mark. There isn't a single damned thing that can change your picture of it being the absolute greatest t…
> I'm sick of billionaires with megaphones blaring their virtues As a society, the US has shifted its values from intellectually sound principles, to what ever rich people shout out. I vomit in my mouth when I see videos of people showing currency, of people talking to you about "doing the hustle", etc etc. US has fallen into an abyss of moral decline, where the value of your words are directly proportional to the am…
I appreciate what you’re saying and agree with you, but I’m not confident that the US was ever not “whatever rich people shout out”.
Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg
#400I'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 ridiculous to think a platform that most of humanity uses can be controlled to the liking of the left, the right, the upside down and etc ... cause all those groups make up humanity and we all do not nor will ever think exactly the same and we all have different motives and biases.
Misinformation that's been around forever... ever play the telephone game in school .. you tell one person a story they tell the next and the next and the next soon that story is no longer factual. Stir all that in with bias and things get even murkier!