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Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

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Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#121

Post by shug2k »

dogman144 wrote: post #68
sayhar wrote: post #2

Oh 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.

Many PMs and engineers and laymen knew FB was a rotten product for a long time. I also assume a lot of people at this institute didn’t take the Alex Stamos (ex, short term FB CISO) U-turn either. So… How is this effort not a virtue signaling by people that made their fortune on the back of this generation’s cigarettes, and now hoping to get traction on being listened to for fixing the mess they created?

Integrity folks across the industry work on solving these problems, not creating them. It is more of a balance of whether to tackle the problems inside the organization, or outside - depending on which is more effective.

What is not in question is that we should be spending time on tackling these problems.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#122

Post by shug2k »

smsm42 wrote: post #87
sayhar wrote: post #2

Oh 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?

Transparency goes a long way towards addressing this concern. This is one area we are focused on - asking companies to be more transparent, both in their overall metrics and samples of public content, so we can have those debates as a society rather than behind closed doors.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#123

Post by camgunz »

colpabar wrote: post #55
camgunz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really disagree that there's way, way too much bad stuff on Facebook and it's had a hugely harmful impact on our society? Or, do you just think we shouldn't do anything about it?

I don't think the comment was about "too much bad stuff on facebook" at all, rather it was about how an actual facebook employee, who now works for the dnc, is forming a group that will advocate for policy that will affect facebook. When this happens in the banking industry, we call it regulatory capture. When it happens in the insurance/healthcare industry, we call it regulatory capture. When a board member of an oi…

What are you talking about, he went to the DNC. No government relation and no regulatory power.

Also I work in politics, and people move between the private, political, and public sector all the time. The GOP hires data scientists from tech whenever they can, because they're sought after professionals.

My point was if former social media staffers can't work against this stuff, what should they do.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#124

Post by hpoe »

shug2k wrote: post #119
smsm42 wrote: post #86

That 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…

If a bunch of Enron staffers left Enron due to frustration with the company and built an Ethical Business Institute to improve industry practices, I would be interested to see what they had to say. In any industry, it's a difficult balance between expertise and bias - but we have tackled these problems and understand the nuances in detail. We also have folks from a mix of political backgrounds.

What do you mean by mix of political backgrounds? Do you have people that are registered Republicans, are any of them in leadership positions? Or registered libertarians for that matter?

Anyone that has similar involvement in politics like working directly for a major political party?

EDIT: Checked out the site and darn, I'll give them credit they do have a Republican and someone who worked with the RNC, so that is something. So I'll give you that one, I'm still suspicious but can't knock you for being completely lacking in diversity.

I mean I still don't love the idea, and don't think it won't be used to ensure that "misinformation" is stamped out, but I'll give credit where credit is due.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#125

Post by camgunz »

baumy wrote: post #51
camgunz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really disagree that there's way, way too much bad stuff on Facebook and it's had a hugely harmful impact on our society? Or, do you just think we shouldn't do anything about it?

Yes, I disagree with that. Even if I agreed, I'd still think we shouldn't do anything about it. How much bad stuff is "too much?" Which stuff is "bad"? Who gets to decide? Why should I trust them? Who and what else is influencing them? What happens when the people making those decisions change? Why should I cede the authority to decide which "stuff" I get to see to anyone other than myself? There are no good answers…

I don't think we need to get that philosophical about it. Can't use bots, can't pay people to astroturf. Ez.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#126

Post by edmundsauto »

tedivm wrote: post #44
strulovich wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> Most of society is against spyware

Part of this is because "spyware" connotes "malware". To steelman the other: would people willingly make the trade-off* if they knew how the data was used, in exchange for this free service? (AFAICT, the data was used in aggregate, to inform competitive intelligence - not for ad targeting or doxxing or parallel construction).

* (To be clear, there are consent issues that have been covered well in this thread.)

I looked up the poll results after Snowden's revelations because I was curious. Thought others might find the data interesting. (This is not exhaustive - I literally just did a quick search.)

In 2015, "A majority of Americans (54%) disapprove of the U.S. government’s collection of telephone and internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts, while 42% approve of the program. Democrats are divided on the program, while Republicans and independents are more likely to disapprove than approve." [0]

"Also in 2015, 64% of Americans who had heard of Snowden viewed him unfavorably" [1].

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/04/21/edward-snowd...

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americ...

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#127

Post by shug2k »

hpoe wrote: post #124
shug2k wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a bunch of Enron staffers left Enron due to frustration with the company and built an Ethical Business Institute to improve industry practices, I would be interested to see what they had to say. In any industry, it's a difficult balance between expertise and bias - but we have tackled these problems and understand the nuances in detail. We also have folks from a mix of political backgrounds.

What do you mean by mix of political backgrounds? Do you have people that are registered Republicans, are any of them in leadership positions? Or registered libertarians for that matter? Anyone that has similar involvement in politics like working directly for a major political party? EDIT: Checked out the site and darn, I'll give them credit they do have a Republican and someone who worked with the RNC, so that is s…

Short answer is yes to the first - check the website for more info.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#128

Post by SrslyJosh »

shug2k wrote: post #121
dogman144 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many PMs and engineers and laymen knew FB was a rotten product for a long time. I also assume a lot of people at this institute didn’t take the Alex Stamos (ex, short term FB CISO) U-turn either. So… How is this effort not a virtue signaling by people that made their fortune on the back of this generation’s cigarettes, and now hoping to get traction on being listened to for fixing the mess they created?

Integrity folks across the industry work on solving these problems, not creating them. It is more of a balance of whether to tackle the problems inside the organization, or outside - depending on which is more effective. What is not in question is that we should be spending time on tackling these problems.

> It is more of a balance of whether to tackle the problems inside the organization, or outside - depending on which is more effective.

I think you answered your own question already.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#129

Post by AlbertCory »

rexpop wrote: post #120
AlbertCory wrote: post #15

Long before the Internet, you could go through an airport and be unable to avoid the Moonies & the followers of Lyndon LaRouche. You could find the book "None Dare Call It Treason" and lots of people did. "The Daily Worker" (newspaper of the US Communist Party) was readily available. Any of those groups could take out ads in the newspaper, or hold demonstrations (like the Nazi Party in Skokie, IL). There were UHF sta…

Democracy has absolutely collapsed. Our days are governed for eight hours by autocratic bosses and for eight hours by autocratic "products" and "services." We have no say about how our work is conducted, nor about what poisons hit the shelves. It's astonishing to me that anyone thinks we have "democracy" under Capitalism, where plutocracy masquerades as meritocracy – which isn't democracy, anyway! > They can decide f…

Okey, dokey, Noam. Have fun when you move to Caracas.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#130

Post by SrslyJosh »

zestyping wrote: post #61
sayhar wrote: post #2

Oh 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.

I have a hypothesis. It goes like this. Today all the major text-based social platforms work in about the same way: we type text into an empty little box that's threaded under another box. There are variations in ranking and flagging, but the basic mechanism is unchanged. It is striking to me that, in all these years, we have explored only a tiny little corner of the design space. There are no mechanisms to lower the…

> There are no mechanisms to lower the temperature when arguments get intense, for example.

This is a second, third, or fourth-tier concern after stuff like white supremacists using platforms for organizing/harassment, governments using them to facilitate genocide, scammers using them to profit off of the pandemic, etc., etc.

"When arguments get intense" completely ignores the incredibly low-hanging fruit: banning networks of bad actors. (They have the data to do this, they just don't want to.)

> Do you know of anyone working on healthy engagement?

Twitter is trying to warn users about "intense" conversations. Unsurprisingly, they suck at it:

https://twitter.com/angryblacklady/status/144754672404668416... https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1446879163307028481

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