551–560 of 609 posts
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.
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> 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 o…
The biggest component missing from Silicon Valley's discussion of Facebook is its pathological lying. They lied to the FTC [1]. They lied to WhatsApp and the EU [2]. They created an Oversight Board and then lied to it [3]. (These just off the top of my head.) The culture is perceived to be dishonest from the top down. That is why they get bludgeoned more than Twitter, or even Tik Tok. That is what its surrogates miss…
I'm on the outside looking in, (and this might be an unpopular opinion in this crowd) but that's the reputation of tech in Silicon Valley, no? The mentality is often "we'll be too small to prosecute until we're too big". That's how you end up with these seemingly superlegal entities like Uber, Google, hell even Crunchyroll. Theranos was the peak example of how tech companies are encouraged to misrepresent fact to bot…
I think there's a tendency in SV startup culture to play up things whereas in Michigan there's almost a tendency to downplay things. So people there seemed to exaggerate how great something was that they did and I would tend to say something wasn't as great as it seemed to be. The stereotypically "I'm crushing it" "it was epic" etc.
I think there are challenges with both. With the overselling of how great something is, I think it can slip into just straight up lying when bad things happen. On the other side, underselling may also fall into lying but often about the good things that are happening.
So I read Zuckerberg's letter and much of his communication as so blatantly overselling that it bleeds into lies, which is illegal to do to some organizations. While many people oversell, I think as someone else mentioned, companies and CEOs are typically quite careful not to go too hard on overselling when in the court of law, and some either don't know how to turn it off or don't care or don't believe they should, or, as I've seen with some friends, don't seem to believe they are even doing it.
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> But ditching my FB account entirely means I'd lose access to dozens of people I wouldn't have a great way of contacting otherwise. That used to be a fear of mine, but after deleting my account I’ve found it to be a core feature. It forces me to be intentional with my relationships; if I want to stay in touch with someone I have to make the effort. Otherwise, the relationship is likely more parasocial than actively…
Yeah, I haven't deleted my account, but I don't log in anymore (and blocked all FB-related domains on my Pi-Hole). I still keep in touch with a lot of people, but it's definitely challenging. I've just totally lost contact with TONS of people, ones who I'd love to keep talking with here and there. I accept the "loss" and do what I can to regain contact with people. Drag them kicking & screaming to stuff like Signal,…
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Depends what you mean by "us." If it means any engineer, engineers build everything shitty in tech. If a larger percentage of "us" are repulsed by facebook, it just means that they have to pay more. There's always hundreds of "us" willing to do anything for anybody; I'm sure somebody is helping some Syrian warlord with the spreadsheet keeping track of the books for his open air slave market, and designing a distribut…
Exactly. Plenty of engineers work on making military equipment better at killing people too. Some of them are software engineers. Facebook might seem like a moral blackhole to some but they are barely grey or neutral on the world stage of evil empires. An blind and bumbling giant perhaps, but not a purposefully evil one. Algorithms is where the attention needs to go. The regulation probably needs to target the techni…
I don't really know much about US politics, but could this recent attack on Facebook be a political move and a power grab? Attack FB so they block certain groups / certain topics and promote what the regulators want? I listened to the whistle-blower's testimony and I didn't hear any reasonable solutions (in my opinion at least; I am a software developer myself). Also, it seems there might be some regulations imposed.…
Glenn Greenwald wrote an article arguing that yes, it is a power grab. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-...
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook...
https://www.cbsnews.com/media/russian-ads-on-facebook-a-gall...
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.
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…
This got me thinking: if I spent $1000 a month on Facebook / Google I'd probably get ten times the response and uptake / sales than with a banner ad.
These companies will eventually hoover up all advertising dollars.
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No one has called for bans of discussions of the lab leak theory (or no one mainstream). It was simply obvious that early harping about it from Tucker Carlson was a useless distraction in the early time of the pandemic, when the rest of the world was focusing on how to respond to the pandemic instead of beating the shit out of Asians and calling Coronavirus "Wuhan flu" to enrage the libs. No one has "banned" discussi…
> discredited hitpieces the Hunter story was anything but discredited. It was just suppressed for no reason other than helping the dems. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/09/21/dou... > There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020 There was also no evidence of Russia collusion either, but that didn't stop a very long investigation from the FBI that was being advertised on all news channels…
Re: Hunter, that is new info worth looking. Good thing it's not censored like the OP claims to say.
Some thoughts:
The democratic legislative agenda, and more broadly, the issues facing this country such as a pandemic, job uncertainty, healthcare and infrastructure should be a lot more important than the family drama of the Bidens. Republicans don't have any solutions to income inequality, healthcare access, homelessness or climate. Instead of coming up with a competing idea to the Democratic agenda, the Republicans only stand against ideas, rather than for any.
And, to appease your sensibilities: I would totally support a bill that banned family members of federally elected or appointed officials from serving on the boards of foreign companies.
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And yet, the one person I know who actually works there is the most liberal, Bernie Democrat, socially progressive, perfect-family moral beacon of all my San Francisco peeps. Except for the part about working for Zuck. Sample size of one, but I often wonder if I should just imagine what half a million bucks a year looks like and extrapolate from there. Probably lots of people “wouldn’t” work for FB except that they a…
> the most liberal, Bernie Democrat, socially progressive, perfect-family moral beacon of all my San Francisco peeps. Except for the part about working for Zuck This would just indicate to me that he's a fraud and all his political posturing is just cheap words compared to the real action of being a part of such a toxic entity. (And no, there's no fighting for reform from within in a place like FB.)
The first is that giant companies like Facebook are so vastly giant and you have no idea what he does for them. If he was on the React team at Facebook, would that be acceptable to you? Just like governments, giant companies have good and bad parts.
The second is that you don't know anyone's situation. This employee could really need the money. Sometimes people get caught in situations where they have to support their parents or siblings or cousins. Voting still matters as well as encouraging others to vote. Who gets to decide what the real action is?
Most people in any case don't view themselves as responsible for what decisions are made at the C-level. It would be more helpful to encourage employees to do what they can and blow the whistle if necessary than to demonize them. Most people invested in the stock market are holding some Facebook, probably as part of some index fund. Maybe we should encourage people to invest in privacy rights focused ETFs.