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Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

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Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#551

Post by _hu6p »

"The research actually demonstrated that many teens we heard from feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced. In fact, in 11 of 12 areas on the slide referenced by the Journal -- including serious areas like loneliness, anxiety, sadness and eating issues -- more teenage girls who said they struggled with that issue also said Instagram made those difficult times better rather than worse."

Does this translate as "Instagram is good for kids" though? I mean, as a kid/teenager/young-adult I'd tell you chocolate and burgers are great sustenance and that there's nothing wrong with playing video games 16hours a day sitting down, etc...

I'm genuinely curious if that research is based entirely on feedback from the target audience, if so on instinct, I disbelieve it.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#552

Post by streamofdigits »

If the business model is fundamentally wrong no amount of good will, governance or resources can turn things around. The only way (I can think of) for private, for-profit, social media to "trully care" (actually, just care a tiny bit more) is if their users (rather than advertisers / other third parties) were to become the paying clients.

This is about as feasible as a brain transplant. People have been conditioned that social media are "free", the gigantic valuations are based on personal data based adtech revenue, their true clients don't seem to give a damn about what kind of society and economy they engineered, and "markets" just cheer on.

So thats where we are.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#553

Post by Cthulhu_ »

I'm seeing a lot of deflecting without addressing the core issues. Yeah we know they have a lot of people and spend a lot of time on content moderation, but one major issue is that they gave a lot of people exceptional treatment. It took years of Trump's reign and that of 'fake news' / misinformation before they even started to flag these things, and I'm convinced flagging content works as reinforcement for a lot of people - "look, the MSM is trying to suppress the Truth!"

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#556

Post by manquer »

cornel_io wrote: post #352
nickloewen wrote: post #56

With the caveat that I don’t know much about Facebook’s research projects… the question “If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place?” sets alarm bells ringing for me—because I can imagine a cigarette company saying the same thing about the scientists they hired to argue that smoking isn’t so bad after all, or an oil…

Google handled this in the right way: fire researchers who are clearly pursuing anti-company agendas, always. It's worse to pretend to support research (or "research", which TBH is what most of the anti-AI shite at Google was, bad actors working with external groups to "take down" big tech, funnel docs to DSA, etc) that hurts you than it is to just stop pretending you care what a bunch of hard-left extremist assholes…

he can step down from active management, he doesn't really need to run it anyway. FB is only big tech company that is still founder run (largely because it's younger ) .

They could Split /diversify /dilute the brand /products the way google has done making it harder to associate with the bad things directly.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#558

Post by sixstringtheory »

SamBam wrote: post #338
astronautjones wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

end algorithmic recommendations

Ah yes. Get rid of Pandora and GoodReads because what they're doing has basically the outcome.

Very different outcomes I'd say. Are friends and family getting torn apart on those platforms? Do they need armies of moderators to remove abuse material or fact-check posts? (I'm sure there's some, but not on the same scale as Facebook.) This is the first I've ever heard such a thing suggested, and certainly haven't observed it personally.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#559

Post by ricardobeat »

> 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

I wonder what countries he is looking at. Polarization is definitely happening all over the world, including the heaviest social media users of all (Brazil, India, etc).

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#560

Post by hansel_der »

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

yea, maybe.. they _are_ cashing in billions in the meanwhile

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