Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

alecmuffett.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 269 posts

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#71

Post by tboyd47 »

lowkey_ wrote: post #7
yodsanklai wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is a bit schizophrenic on this topic. On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. Hopefully these aren't the same people expressing these contradictory points of view. I'd be curious to know what both side think the ideal social network should look like.

> On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. I don't think these are conflicting views: (1) Less monitoring on private messages (2) More monitoring on public posts

This is probably what would have naturally happened if the CDA were never passed. Instead, we've turned internet companies into geese that lay golden eggs for the government.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#72

Post by bostonsre »

boringg wrote: post #59
bostonsre wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done. It is a massive country with many opposing viewpoints. We have massive conflicts of interest and some tech companies have shown over and over that greed trumps morals in many…

I think one of the big sticking points of the problem is the challenge of power represents innately. It is very difficult to have an exceptional steward of power over long time periods. The government has done a poor job, individuals have done a poor job, crowdsourcing responsibility has done a poor job, corporations have done a poor job. I am not trying to throw my hands up in defeat but pointing to an intransigent…

Yes, democratic governments have many drawbacks around regulation but aren't they the least bad choice we have in a situation like facebook?

There is no governance beyond zuckerberg currently and he has proven that he is aligned with zuckerberg and not society. Continuing with the status quo and doing nothing does not seem like a good idea to me.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#73

Post by Tainnor »

ghaff wrote: post #36
junon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be curious to know what both side think the ideal social network should look like. I'd rather they didn't exist, honestly.

How do you define social networks? Should email mailing lists not exist either because those are absolutely social networks in a way as were BBS systems?

Not OP, but IMHO, the danger comes from the algorithms which lead to "engaging" content being pushed aggressively to everyone. "Engaging" can mean cat videos or "incredible looking food", but it means divisive, partisan, insincere and outright dangerous more often than not.

Inasmuch as a "social network" is just people signing up to talk about certain topics and that's it, I don't have a problem with it. Internet forums of the 2000s weren't a problem necessarily. And while HN does have some "virality" mechanisms built in due to upvoting and while it is sometimes a "problem" on very divisive topics, it's not nearly on the scale of Facebook, Twitter and Co.

So if it were up to me, Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok etc. should either disappear or they should at least have to revise their algorithms and open them up to public scrutiny. Or, you know, if they went back to their original purpose of just being about connecting with friends and family. But I guess you can't make money out of that.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#74

Post by WillPostForFood »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Less monitoring on private messages The Facebook leaker is explicitly arguing against this though. She cites Facebook’s push for end-to-end encryption of private messages as a problem.

> Facebook leaker is explicitly arguing against this though. She cites Facebook’s push for end-to-end encryption of private messages as a problem. One doesn’t have to agree 100% with an ally.

Nor do you have to support an ally you agree with a majority of the time if they get some big things wrong.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#75

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

ghaff wrote: post #36
junon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be curious to know what both side think the ideal social network should look like. I'd rather they didn't exist, honestly.

How do you define social networks? Should email mailing lists not exist either because those are absolutely social networks in a way as were BBS systems?

While I agree that it's a sticky problem, I think we can find a middle ground between "email mailing list" and "site dedicated to maximizing engagement by both encouraging the spread of rage baiting misinformation and deliberately maximizing the number of people who see it".

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#76

Post by capableweb »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #47
capableweb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some of her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all I agree in general with your comment, but what I don't like is anyone (Haugen, you or anyone else) speaking for "the tech community". We all have different opinions, and you can't generalize with that. For example, plenty of people I know including myself would be strongly against less encryption, but strongly for more government…

> For example, plenty of people I know including myself would be strongly against less encryption, but strongly for more government control of tech companies (not via less encryption but via other means). But that’s not what Haughen is lobbying for. She’s explicitly saying that end-to-end encryption is bad because it doesn’t allow Facebook to monitor private communications enough. I’d be surprised if you could find m…

I understand that, that's why I expressed that I don't like them expressing it as something the "tech community" wants...

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#77

Post by colordrops »

kop316 wrote: post #11
yodsanklai wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is a bit schizophrenic on this topic. On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. Hopefully these aren't the same people expressing these contradictory points of view. I'd be curious to know what both side think the ideal social network should look like.

I would argue "HN" is not schizophrenic, "HN" is a bunch of users who have different passions and will comment/vote on different things.

We should coin this the "hive mind fallacy". Though there probably already exists a name for this.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#78

Post by ineedasername »

The impact of speech is still not the same as that of sticks and stones, and guns, knives, or fists must still be wielded by people, not Youtube videos.

That somewhat sidesteps the fact that it's speech that can get people riled up enough to invite violence. Acknowledging this fact is not advocacy for censorship. It's recognizing that there are plenty of things short of "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre" that can be the cause of quite a bit of harm, and we should try to avoid and discourage that.

How we go about that task is another matter. I don't like or want censorship, and similar to Muffet I don't see a whole lot of options on the table. But we certainly can't blind ourselves on the issue by not acknowledging that plenty of awful things are enabled & possible because of speech.

Otherwise his sentiment amounts to "guns don't kill people, people kill people". Which is trivially true while ignoring the significant role that both have in an act of violence. Not much different than saying "guns don't kill people, bullets kill people." It's all a single system and there are multiple essential components.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#79

Post by paisawalla »

helen___keller wrote: post #46
fareesh wrote: post #6

On the popularity of Haugen: I find it amusing how your government treats a whistleblower who is promoting government control over social media, vs the way your government treats a whistleblower who leaks evidence of government spying and abuse. The fact that Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are treated the way they are (and the earlier treatment of Manning) gives the US government zero credibility on press freedom,…

> Furthermore according to the FBI it's ok for Hillary Clinton to keep government communication explicitly marked classified in her basement server because no harm is intended, whereas others have been prosecuted in the absence of intended harm What exactly does this have to do with the topic? Your first paragraphs are talking about treatment of whistleblowers and Hillary Clinton is (obviously) not a whistleblower. A…

He's anticipating the objection re Snowden. You have to be angry about the fact that the information he released makes the govt look bad, and not just the fact of improper process, a la Clinton. Therefore, the treatment of whistleblowers really does depend on who's hand they're strengthening -- the govt or someone else's -- and not a generalized respect for the truth.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#80

Post by WillPostForFood »

abrahamepton wrote: post #37
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

As cited in this article, Frances Haugen is arguing against allowing Facebook to use end-to-end encryption because she suggests Facebook should have more surveillance of private communications: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1452309133928054799?s... A lot of people jumped to the defense of the Facebook leaker because the media so successfully framed it as a “whistleblower” situation, but that’s not really wha…

I don’t understand why it matters what Haugen believes - whether in “no encryption” or space fairies or whatever - instead of what she proved, which is the profoundly amoral and dishonest nature of the company.

She isn’t just a neutral presenter of data, she is a spokesperson and advocate. She is positioning herself to be a decision maker, or help decision makers.
Post reply on HN