This has a real Silicon Valley (show) tethics vide to it.
I came wading through the comments specifically for this, totally agree.
Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute
81–90 of 186 posts
Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is part of the problem with talking with Facebook engineers. Most of society is against spyware. It's not a controversial topic- spyware is pretty frowned upon. Spying on people does, to most people, show a lack of integrity. So does much of the other actions Facebook has taken and which are now coming out in these leaks. If you bring this up with Facebook engineers it turns into a "linguistic" issue. You're tol…
I’m sorry if my tone is not coming across as I intended. I think there’s plenty of arguments to be made against Facebook’s integrity effort, and plenty of that work happened on Guy Rosen’s shift. But your feedback is not nuanced and seems to be avoiding a lot of the context on purpose. It seems to be about getting people enraged through an implied accusation in your first comment. In reality there’s some things you s…
IIRC, FB “cross-sold” the Onavo app through the main app without any mention that it was not a third-party app, and without mentioning that data was collected. That’s problematic to most people.
Multiple agencies in multiple countries have had the same concerns: “ "The ACCC alleges that, between 1 February 2016 to October 2017, Facebook and its subsidiaries Facebook Israel Ltd and Onavo, Inc. misled Australian consumers by representing that the Onavo Protect app would keep users' personal activity data private, protected and secret, and that the data would not be used for any purpose other than providing Onavo Protect's products," the ACCC said on Wednesday.”
I’m sure you think Guy is an upstanding individual, but then it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
The person created spyware for profit- something that clearly lacks of integrity. The fact that this is even a question shows why no one who worked at Facebook should be in charge of any integrity project.
So it’s a linguistic issue. You’re lumping integrity as “do people abuse our system” with “does person A follow the same morals as me”. Specifically, looks like your morals are that products that are free in exchange for anonymously analyzing your data are immoral. (Remember: Onavo gave free VPN to users) It’s a reasonable position to take, but it’s unclear it’s necessarily true and that everyone who doesn’t agree wi…
And here we have an actual real-life example of when that Upton Sinclair quote can be used in a non-snarky way. Because, yeah, it's just a semantical argument.
Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute
#84Oh hi! That’s me! (And a bunch of other folks). Happy to answer any questions. I also really like this founders note that we wrote. It’s in our own words, etc: https://integrityinstitute.org/founders-letter We are recruiting new members! If you work on integrity / trust and safety / antispam / content quality / etc, let’s talk.
What’s the agenda here?
(Fit the description, but am very skeptical of your motives :))
Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute
#85Oh hi! That’s me! (And a bunch of other folks). Happy to answer any questions. I also really like this founders note that we wrote. It’s in our own words, etc: https://integrityinstitute.org/founders-letter We are recruiting new members! If you work on integrity / trust and safety / antispam / content quality / etc, let’s talk.
What are the institute's thoughts, if you've formed them, on end-to-end encryption, especially as it applies to social media where the line between group and group-text blurs? I feel it's an incredibly nuanced topic that's become incredibly polarizing in recent days with some of Haugen's comments.
On the one hand, in favor of E2EE, companies can and will use the content of messages, if they have access to them, to micro-target suggested content to users, and this can lead to increased levels of misinformation being promoted to people who have engaged with misinformation. And of course there's the government surveillance angle, which is an entirely separate story!
But if you remove the signals in that content by encrypting in a way that is opaque to the platform, do you substantially reduce the ability to microtarget? Very possibly not, given the amount of graph data the social media company has anyways about group members independent from the content itself. And encryption gives the social media company the ability to wash its hands of any responsibility or awareness of content.
Assuming it were easy to technically achieve (which is a huge leap, to be fair!) do you think it better serves the definition of integrity you've adopted, that a social media platform have the majority of its content end-to-end encrypted, or not?
Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute
#86That sounds a bit like "former Enron staffers launch Ethical Business Institute". I mean I'm sure some nice people worked for Enron too, but...
Also I can't point at the exact place but it definitely has a whiff of "how we get DNC/government to control all major information platforms without them explicitly controlling all major information platforms". I mean, I have nothing against banning troll farms and such, but when I read about platforms' "integrity teams" banning people that are definitely not troll farms but somebody who dares to say something contradicting the Currently Approved Truth (TM) - and it's not one or two cases, but dozens going into hundreds - I start doubting "integrity" has anything to do with it.
Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute
#87Oh hi! That’s me! (And a bunch of other folks). Happy to answer any questions. I also really like this founders note that we wrote. It’s in our own words, etc: https://integrityinstitute.org/founders-letter We are recruiting new members! If you work on integrity / trust and safety / antispam / content quality / etc, let’s talk.
How do you ensure that "integrity" does not morph into "ban everything our groupthink says is wrong"? How do you ensure you're not coopted into an ideological or partisan propaganda/speech control efforts - a trap that so many "fact checkers" gladly fallen into?
Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute
#88Oh hi! That’s me! (And a bunch of other folks). Happy to answer any questions. I also really like this founders note that we wrote. It’s in our own words, etc: https://integrityinstitute.org/founders-letter We are recruiting new members! If you work on integrity / trust and safety / antispam / content quality / etc, let’s talk.
How do you define integrity in this context. (you, personally)
This is a great question! I'm still trying to find a top-down definition instead of a "I know it when I see it" one.
To me it's probably something like this: we can think about an information ecosystem or social platform as a system. "Normal" hacking of the system happens through finding loopholes code. (That's cybersecurity). "Integrity-related" hacking of the system happens through finding loopholes in design and rules.
For some easy examples, that covers things like realizing you can post to 1000 groups in an hour. Or using sockpuppets to give artificial boosts to posts. The attackers aren't hacking code, but are hacking a system of rules, norms, and defaults on that system. (And often, finding the holes between where one part of the system was soldered onto the other).
That's the technical part. Integrity also has a sort of ethical component. I think that's meaningful too.
Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute
#89Anyone who was actually willing to join facebook is by definition unqualified to work on an integrity project.
I'm not so eager to jump to that kind of conclusion, because it's too facile. You might personally decide that anyone who worked for FB has no integrity, but I don't think it makes for a good discussion on HN.
What may be interesting to discuss is if one can regain the integrity that was perceived to be lost in the first place? I have done things I am not proud of. Sometimes it was due to ignorance, greed, selfishness or indifference. For those that condemn Facebook employees as being unethical, is there a path forward?
Regarding Facebook, I would like all employees to quit. I will also hire former Facebook employees. I know we are capable of remorse and can change for the better.
Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute
#90Oh hi! That’s me! (And a bunch of other folks). Happy to answer any questions. I also really like this founders note that we wrote. It’s in our own words, etc: https://integrityinstitute.org/founders-letter We are recruiting new members! If you work on integrity / trust and safety / antispam / content quality / etc, let’s talk.
What’s the agenda here? (Fit the description, but am very skeptical of your motives :))
I think this should answer your question: https://integrityinstitute.org/founders-letter
But also, our values: https://integrityinstitute.org/our-values
Also, succinctly -- this is a real, grassroots thing. We gathered a bunch of friends and coworkers for this big idea of "what if we had best practices and a professional association for integrity work, just like we do for cybersecurity" and then worked for 10 months to do it.
We've tried hard to put all kinds of pieces into place. We're making it a place that is both independent of companies and also safe for current employees of those companies to join.
It's also cool that we can draw on this community to give expert advice to stakeholders (policymakers, journalists, companies, academics, etc). Mad that congress doesn't understand how Instagram works, or whatever? We can explain things -- as people whose training was in looking at the total information ecosystem of a platform.
A goal is to have integrity work be at least as prestigious, valued, and essential as cybersecurity, or software engineering is. A thing where quality matters, and if you do shoddy work you will be called out on it.
Does that help?