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Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

wsj.com

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Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#621

Post by erlich »

nsajko wrote: post #435
p49k wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the opposite; YouTube is on a constant mission to pull me into the world of right-wing videos with angry titles and antivax propaganda. If you browse YouTube with cookies disabled or within a cookie fence, you can see that such manipulation is the default behavior. For a significant percentage of videos, the very first set of suggestions is manipulative. For the others, perhaps the first set of suggestions is…

You're mostly correct, but I'm guessing you don't use the feature of marking videos as not interesting - it really helps, to the degree that I don't get suggested almost any right-wing videos of the disgusting kind even when I listen to music popular in those circles, as evidenced in the comments sections (I prevailingly use YT for music). Now, if only there was an option to filter out the nationalistic comments (ins…

I just found out a trick where you can get rid of YouTube Shorts by marking all of them as not interesting.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#622

Post by erlich »

Maarten88 wrote: post #424
erlich wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is exactly the same. You have to install a browser extension to block politics from your suggested videos. Twitter is great because they have “blocked words”. I maxed out my 200 words though and have to constantly swap them. It’s undoubtedly true that they make huge money from hate and divisiveness. This is not whistleblowing though. They are not breaking laws. And everyone already knows this. People can choo…

> If things should be changed, the public should vote to regulate. How can the public form an opinion if the information they get about it is skewed by the affected companies? What if their politicians get “donations” from the companies that need regulation, to influence them into not doing so? Catch-22

> How can the public form an opinion if the information they get about it is skewed by the affected companies?

When Trump was in power, you had the right wanting to regulate Reddit/Twitter, and the left wanting to regulate Facebook.

I don't think the companies are successfully skewing people in their favor of not being regulated.

Big tech are a necessary evil for most people. Philip Morris' customers don't talk about it being a great company, they just need its product.

People blame big tech a lot though, but what if they did give people visibility and control of their algorithms in terms of what content they want...and if we had more competition...would there be less extremism, or would people just up their own dosage?

In the end it will come down to personal responsibility and education.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#623

Post by erlich »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #503
erlich wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is exactly the same. You have to install a browser extension to block politics from your suggested videos. Twitter is great because they have “blocked words”. I maxed out my 200 words though and have to constantly swap them. It’s undoubtedly true that they make huge money from hate and divisiveness. This is not whistleblowing though. They are not breaking laws. And everyone already knows this. People can choo…

I used to criticize youtube for this, but its really pretty easy to tune out the politics by saying "not interested". This is unfortunately not the same as a downvote, which is effectively saying "show me more of this, I want to hate its siblings too"

The problem is that if you watch a news clip for informational purposes, say you want to know information about lockdown restrictions easing, you will get sucked into the most addictive news content. It takes a lot of self-restraint not to click on some of the accompanying recommended videos, they are all carefully designed to make you click.

And people's ability to self-restrain varies with mood. They are ready to catch you when your mood dips, or you are in an extremely boring situation.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#624

Post by worldsayshi »

jb1991 wrote: post #509
scottious wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're lucky. I deactivated back in January and I think I did a "log in with facebook" button once and now facebook seems to have re-activated my account implicitly. Also they send me click-baity emails like "John Doe has posted a status update!" Heck, they've even started TEXTING me to lure me back. I'm dreading having to log back in to try to figure out how to get them to stop trying to contact me.

You say “deactivate“ but Facebook does differentiate between deactivation and actual closing of an account. So if you merely deactivated it, then that would explain why your account was not actually deleted and it reactivated it for you. > The biggest difference between deactivating and deleting a Facebook account is that deactivating your Facebook account gives you the flexibility to return whenever you wish, while…

I wonder if deactivating, deleting etc means different things depending on local laws. Like I would expect them to have to allow full deletion in EU?

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#625

Post by swayson »

i_like_apis wrote: post #316
swayson wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. From what I heard Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, completely disallowed their kids to use of smartphones until they were much older and independent. When there is no skin-in-the-game, one must ask why, do they do this?

The ages of their children doesn't match up to this. But it is probably good advise.

Good point

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#626

Post by jb1991 »

worldsayshi wrote: post #624
jb1991 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say “deactivate“ but Facebook does differentiate between deactivation and actual closing of an account. So if you merely deactivated it, then that would explain why your account was not actually deleted and it reactivated it for you. > The biggest difference between deactivating and deleting a Facebook account is that deactivating your Facebook account gives you the flexibility to return whenever you wish, while…

I wonder if deactivating, deleting etc means different things depending on local laws. Like I would expect them to have to allow full deletion in EU?

They do allow full deletion everywhere. But you must explicitly select it. If you choose to “deactivate” that is not actually closing the account. It is a dark pattern.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#627

Post by endtime »

DevKoala wrote: post #370
endtime wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a SWE at a different FAANG, my understanding is I'd probably get a 20-30% comp increase if I went to FB, though I'm also told people work longer hours there. To answer your question more directly, http://levels.fyi tracks it.

Considering stock appreciation/stagnation and vesting schedules I don’t think FB has a significant edge over those two, Google and MS.

Past results are not an indicator of future performance, of course. :) But yes, you're right that heavily RSU-based comp means you have to try to take that into account. That said, I usually just assume it will trade sideways and so my comp is based on a four year moving average of my grant value. If it goes up, great.
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