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Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

economist.com

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Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#471

Post by cwkoss »

arvinsim wrote: post #37
bhupy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, it seems like Twitter is a much more malevolent cultural force Completely agreed, it's quite impressive that they've managed to remain unscathed in all of this. Every single criticism that one can level against Facebook applies to Twitter ten times over. At least with Facebook's properties, the core use case is still keeping in touch with friends and family. Twitter's only real use-case is providing a s…

My guess is that vested interests likes Twitter because they can use it as a tool to direct the mob. Not so much with FB since FB has their own agenda.

I think its simpler than that - journalists get a lot of positive reinforcement and attention from twitter, so they just like it more.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#472

Post by shadowgovt »

hunterb123 wrote: post #425
shadowgovt wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conversely, the Democrat party as a whole is currently and successfully crafting a censorship campaign. Can you support the claim that Frances Haugen is a "fake whistleblower" created as part of a Democrat party censorship campaign with evidence?

They would provide no evidence, sorry, I can only offer you common sense. She's a long time liberal activist and the Democrats had this whole shit show ready to go at the same time she came out. There is evidence that they are doing a censorship campaign, by their calls for censorship.

I don't think that's enough signal to disambiguate "coordinate use of a 'fake whistleblower' against Facebook" from simple fortune. Some members of the Democratic party want to rein in Facebook and other big-tech companies; of that I have no doubt. But "big tech" in general has been shedding whistle-blowers for years now as individuals find their consciences no longer let them play the game... My 'common sense' tells me if it weren't Frances Haugen, it'd have been someone else.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#473

Post by chuniversity »

initplus wrote: post #452
breadzeppelin__ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To go a bit further MSM's ad revenue is being hollowed out by Facebook et al. Why would anyone pay to advertise in Economist when they can advertise to "people interested in economics, earning over 150k, last thought about cigarettes three weeks ago" etc. Similarly, if you were an advertising exec at pfizer, would you choose to pay millions of dollars to advertise your meds to a continuously shrinking audience on som…

I have a couple of friends who are much more politically engaged and insightful than myself. But all I see them post on facebook are low effort gotcha memes. Facebook has a problem in that it seems to frown on "intelligent" content. Long form journalism, in depth analysis, professional content (industry journals, tech blogs etc.), none of this content really exists on facebook. I have friends that read hackernews, we…

Low-effort memes with cheap wit get more likes, which in turn bumps your content higher in the feed which in turn invites more likes, cascading into dozens or scores of your friends liking and validating your post.

Long-form content with more depth gets fewer initial likes, resulting in being hidden from most of your ancillary friends altogether.

This has behavioral impact on all of its users. Do you want to post content that only gets 5 likes versus what gets 50 likes?

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#474

Post by aeturnum »

KaiserPro wrote: post #466
aeturnum wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every company "lies" but Facebook lies. What OP cited had nothing to do with PR or public statements. They are all regulatory representations that were later found to be false. That's different. It's pretty rare that companies make known material misstatements to regulators. Instead, they figure out what they want to do and they do make the least revealing statement that isn't a lie. You mentioned that we should leve…

> They are all regulatory representations that were later found to be false. Just look at finance, the entire market is based on telling mistruths to regulators. Apple are currently piling industrial amounts of bullshit to a number of regulators. The irish, dutch and british tax authorities are constantly being fed lies about where "sales" happen. Google have lied to both austrialian and french regulators. The reason…

> Just look at finance, the entire market is based on telling mistruths to regulators.

There are of course liars in the finance market, but my impression is that most financial companies actually follow regulations quite closely (and happily, their employees often wrote the regs).

> Apple are currently piling industrial amounts of bullshit to a number of regulators. The irish, dutch and british tax authorities are constantly being fed lies about where "sales" happen.

I think we are using language differently. My sense is that Apple is using a legal fiction to minimize taxes through Irish subsidiaries, but that they are (as far as I know) quite detailed and truthful about the details of that legal fiction. It's quite silly to say Apple Ireland is making all the sales in all of Europe, but such an arrangement is legal and I suspect quite airtight as far as the relevant legal standards go. To me this is "lying" - representing the companies actions in a way that's to their advantage and is strictly in line with legal realities. If you could look at every document inside Apple you would probably find no different between their public and private opinions on legal specifics of the arrangement. Like...Apple Ireland doesn't "make" anything, but I'm sure all the money actually flows through the company.

Facebook, on the other hand, has repeatedly been found to choose to say things to regulators (or psudo-regulators like their "oversight board") that are, at the moment they say them, directly at odds with internal understanding. They aren't accurately describing an advantageous legal fiction - they're just making claims about things that no one inside the company believes. This would be like Apple claiming all money flows through Apple Ireland, but checking their bank records shows that the company has never received or sent any money.

The difference seems important to me, though I understand why someone might disagree.

> Google have lied to both austrialian and french regulators.

I googled around and couldn't find an instance of google lying to french regulators (I did not check aus ones). Could you point to the instance you're thinking of?

> The reason I brought up apple is because they are doing to to defuse the fact that they are alone amongst FAANG for enabling child abuse.

I am not sure I understand what you mean here - I would imagine that all of FAANG (aside from netflix probably) provide services used by abusers.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#475

Post by throwaway00010 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56
shoto_io wrote: post #3

No. That’s what people like us and all the main stream media hope for. But: most people I know don’t have the slightest clue that Insta and WhatsApp belong to the FB group. And even worse: most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB. They just want to send messages and share pictures through those apps.

> most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB This is close to a straw man argument. Nobody claims users will abandon Facebook. The article posits, instead, strengthening headwinds. Headwinds in hiring (there is already a double-digit premium Facebook must pay for talent). From recurring whistleblowing, and its impact on morale and productivity. Headwinds in projects and partnerships, like Libre/Diem be…

I used to work at Facebook and I agree with this. Some anecdotal notes on motivation headwinds:

- Talking to more senior friends, both within the company and with offers to join— few people want to join product, and those who do would usually rather join Oculus and not one of the apps. Lots more interest in infra. Working to raise engagement metrics and the news cycle are always factors behind this.

- I know plenty of people who just straight up don't like to work at Facebook. They "like their job" because they love the pay, the people and talking about the perks but dislike their projects and dread Mondays. Some are coasting while they can, some are figuring out their departure, and others are tortured week-to-week blaming themselves for their lack of motivation and trying to salvage some productivity.

- To some degree it feels like the more you care about something, the harder time you'll have, and the more your motivation will be hit. A lot of the battles are uphill battles, because a lot of the things people who care want to do are not considered impactful (or have negative impact).

Of course, there's plenty of people that don't feel this way at Facebook and a lot of pros to working there, but I did notice these patterns after working there, especially towards the end. Either I was paying more attention or they did seem more common than at other places I've worked at before.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#476

Post by [deleted] »

shoto_io wrote: post #3

No. That’s what people like us and all the main stream media hope for. But: most people I know don’t have the slightest clue that Insta and WhatsApp belong to the FB group. And even worse: most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB. They just want to send messages and share pictures through those apps.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#477

Post by hairofadog »

bhupy wrote: post #31
tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #22

I still have a FB account because my family is on there, and even then I check it maybe once a month, if that. It's just not in my life anymore. When I do go on there, I have a hard time imagining how anyone could get sucked into it. Sometimes I feel like FB is a kind of scapegoat for social critique. Maybe because it's the largest, but not sure. Personally, it seems like Twitter is a much more malevolent cultural fo…

> Personally, it seems like Twitter is a much more malevolent cultural force Completely agreed, it's quite impressive that they've managed to remain unscathed in all of this. Every single criticism that one can level against Facebook applies to Twitter ten times over. At least with Facebook's properties, the core use case is still keeping in touch with friends and family. Twitter's only real use-case is providing a s…

> Every single criticism that one can level against Facebook applies to Twitter ten times over

Eh, I disagree. Sure, Facebook and Twitter can both be used to spread disinformation, to foment divisiveness, to addict their users to low-quality scrolling. Facebook, however, allows secret distribution of misinformation at scale, does a much better job of censoring at scale (i.e. they censor leftist views for users on the right and vice-versa), seems much more interested in the elimination of privacy as a concept, and seems much more interested in connecting me with people I don't want to connect with.

On twitter I can curate my feed so it's high signal-to-noise ratio. On Facebook I have to put up with the nonsensical political opinions of people I'm related to, used to go to school with, and used to work with. I left my hometown for good reasons.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#478

Post by ethbr0 »

JohnBooty wrote: post #437
ethbr0 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone old enough to remember and have used Livejournal, the Facebook experience is very different.

LJ was "peak internet" for me. I had a smallish network of friends on there and we read and commented on each others' stuff. You could be as personal or as detached and anonymous as you wanted. You didn't have normies and family and stuff on there; felt like you could actually express yourself. Tumblr was its spiritual successor, I guess, in ways. But it wasn't the same. People actually wrote things on LJ. Maybe it w…

Livejournal, to me, was a fusion of three things: a simple HTML editor (aka posts) + a time-sorted view and access controls + discoverability through your network.

The things that made it different than Facebook were (1) that they didn't screw around with your feed (it was your friends' posts, sorted by date), (2) that discoverability and networking was user intentional and exploratory (pull, rather than suggested / push), & (3) access controls were simple, understandable, and obeyed user intent.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#479

Post by ubu7737 »

yibg wrote: post #411
kreeben wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> And it's free! Free, how? As in freedom/beer/something else? Money, you know, is not the only currency there is.

Free in the sense most people use the word free. As in no money required.

I guess you don't care that your use of a free thing causes harm to balance out your free use of it?

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#480

Post by mkr-hn »

whatshisface wrote: post #248
mkr-hn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been so long since a company reached Facebook's heights and fell that a whole generation doesn't know what it looks like. AOL was the Facebook of its time: a joke to system admins, a default ban on small game servers and IRC channels. Meanwhile, most people had no idea anyone had a problem with AOL. Like with Facebook, there were people reporting on its follies like Observers.net[0], but it mostly went unremarke…

Everyone keeps leaving Instagram out of the discussion. I wonder why?

AOL had lots of well-liked properties, too. The same shifts that knocked AOL down also took those down.
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