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Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

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Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#451

Post by luckydata »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #433
wpietri wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who mentions the banality of evil, dannykwells, has an excellent point. But there's more at play here. I briefly worked on Twitter's anti-abuse engineering. Many of the people on that team cared a lot about protecting people. I sure did. But we didn't have the necessary power to actually solve the problem. The people who did have that power were senior execs. They might say that they cared. In their heart…

> I presume the same was true about the senior execs. They were aware Twitter was causing harm to people. If they wanted to know the details, we had plenty of research and they could have ordered more. Did they care? Impossible to know. But what they focused on was growth and revenue. Abuse was a big deal internally only as long as it was a big deal in the press. Could this just be an issue of too many problems to ca…

I worked at FB (not for very long) but you can trace everything back to the awful performance process they have (the infamous PSC). At the end of the day, hard to measure stuff doesn't get you promoted while tangibly moving metrics does. If you incentivize people that way, it doesn't take anyone WILLINGLY doing anything evil to end up with a pretty evil thing on your hand.

If you optimize for profits and only that, you always end up selling crack cause it's the best business in the world, and that's why it's illegal.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#452

Post by fulafel »

megablast wrote: post #447
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…

Good people work for oil companies and car companies.

At this point of the climate disaster those are getting very rare especially in oul. Maybe those, if they exist, who are working hardest at stopping most oil production and enacting cap and trade.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#453

Post by 3np »

marton78 wrote: post #438
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…

The premise of this argument is false. In Germany, where I live, polarization has increased dramatically, especially since COVID. I don't know about Facebook, but the tone on Twitter is harsh, the hate is palpable. The difference is maybe that unlike in the States it's not a 50:50 split, but maybe 80:20.

I'd also like to see references on which these countries with declining polarization and high FB/IG-usage would be. It's not a trivial or uncontroversial thing to quantify but hey, MZ brought it up.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#454

Post by 88913527 »

mc32 wrote: post #335
throwaway-19283 wrote: post #270

Earlier 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?

Assess for technical skill and raw tactical ability. This would have the downside of filtering genuinely good leaders who've been too far removed from technology (and thus are pure people leaders) for too long. People that were once technologists, but no longer are, have a way of speaking that's easily clear to pick out. Also, some people move up but keep their technical chops along the way. An executive that can microscope on parts of the org, as needed, with a technical mindset, can provide material value.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#455

Post by luckydata »

zestyping wrote: post #127
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 incenti…

By the way let's give a name to that system, it's called "PSC". Google it. It's the most absurd and ineffective performance management system I've ever witnessed.

It creates a Hunger Games mentality within teams and makes doing anything that actually matters virtually impossible, generating an infinite sequence of half assed 6 months projects that get systematically abandoned as soon as the people responsible manage to get promoted or switch teams.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#456

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

This thing has turned into a crusade over a moral panic. What I want to know is why Facebook is being singled out. Twitter is infested with people that have hammer/sickle symbols in their bios. Reddit has a history of tolerating child pornography. What makes Facebook special?

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#457

Post by oezi »

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…

Obviously it depends on the actors on social media what level on harm social media can cause. If there weren't political forces, foreign governments and troll media such as Fox and friends then social media could be much less harmful.

It requires considerable expertise and resources to spin up a disinformation campaigns continuously. The US leads here because of the size of its market and determination of its adversaries.

Mark tries to spin the responsibility away in the quoted sentence.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#458

Post by Ansil849 »

asdff wrote: post #435
Ansil849 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a society, the US has shifted its values from intellectually sound principles, to what ever rich people shout out. When has this not been the case? Politicians in America are traditionally wealthy people.

Most of the presidents from the last century were not born into wealth.

> Most of the presidents from the last century were not born into wealth.

Whether or not they were born into wealth is irrelevant to my claim, which is:

> Politicians in America are traditionally wealthy people.

Of the 17 presidents from the last century, only three (and just nine total) are listed as having a net worth of less than one million: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Unit...

America is a country ruled by the wealthy. Both by wealthy politicians and wealthy corporations.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#459

Post by whakim »

wpietri wrote: post #138
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…

The person who mentions the banality of evil, dannykwells, has an excellent point. But there's more at play here. I briefly worked on Twitter's anti-abuse engineering. Many of the people on that team cared a lot about protecting people. I sure did. But we didn't have the necessary power to actually solve the problem. The people who did have that power were senior execs. They might say that they cared. In their heart…

I think this hits the nail on the head. It's not that Facebook or the many people who work there don't care about kids or a deleterious political climate. They do care. It's just about what happens when those concerns conflict with other concerns, such as maximizing user engagement. In my opinion Haugen's testimony and Zuckerberg's response simply confirm this: Haugen talks a lot about the research that was done and how that research was ignored; Zuckerberg points out a lot of (somewhat lacking in context) facts about the size of Facebook's investments in trust and integrity or openness to regulation.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#460

Post by IncRnd »

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…

> So maybe Zuck is telling the truth here, that they are trying to fix all this. But no one can see the forrest from the trees.

Don't fall for words!

Frances Haugen was able to see the big picture. The documents she presented had Facebook employees mentioning it. Facebook didn't act on what was known. It is not that it wasn't known.

To paraphrase John Roberts - the only way not to do a thing is not to do that thing.

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