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Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

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Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#131

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#132

Post by labster »

neural_thing wrote: post #99
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.

It's understandable that people go to work for Sauron to get paid big money. But starting a "human-orc ethics think tank" because you have relevant experience in the field is a bit rich.

We need to be able to forgive those who have done evil, if they truly repent. If they’re trying to do good now, we shouldn’t hold it against them that they worked for a monopoly spreading lies that incited violence, created online addicts, and took the pieces of silver happily. No, it only matters do good now.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#133

Post by dogman144 »

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.

Of course.

Regarding internal solutions: it’s impossible to overlook the significantly misaligned incentives facing integrity teams. They try to solve problems inherently created by the profit model of the company and what also pays their salary. The parallels to the internal scientist teams at Phillip Morris are uncanny.

As I said, this paradox, and the company kicking the can down the road, has been obvious for years externally and also seemed internally per the Slack (or w/e) leaks post 1/6.

So, for these teams, if they’re staying longer than a quick in and out once realities trumped ones idealism at “going where the problem is” (look, I really do get that impulse), continuing to claim the moral high ground in the way this Institute is so tone deaf. Sorry buddy - I’m on levels.FYI as well, we all know what you got paid to (increasingly ineffectually) support this product. Like there’s been leaks for years of PMs discussing Myanmar genocide inflammation via FB/WA for a few years now. Was that not enough to leave?

This is inescapably how a lot of tech is going to judge this period/company. It went on for too long to claim ignorance otherwise.

Edit: You know what, no it's not at all about an external vs. internal balance, that very much misses the point. It's likely that a meaningful change which preserves what FB (and related) intrinsically is will have to come from an internally-driven fix. The technical abstractions are just too much of a problem for outsiders to grok, then suggest a fix for, and etc. etc. ("Senator, we sell ads...").

It's about understanding where the moral and character capital that leadership, especially transformational leadership, comes from, and understanding how the founders of this have none of it. People that have stayed at FB and profited immensely from the experience, integrity team or not, stayed silent about it, and then start coming out with this publicly now vs. years ago (see: Alex Stamos' example), don't have that capital. And it's so distasteful to see them think that they do via efforts like this. That's the problem.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#134

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

labster wrote: post #132
neural_thing wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's understandable that people go to work for Sauron to get paid big money. But starting a "human-orc ethics think tank" because you have relevant experience in the field is a bit rich.

We need to be able to forgive those who have done evil, if they truly repent. If they’re trying to do good now, we shouldn’t hold it against them that they worked for a monopoly spreading lies that incited violence, created online addicts, and took the pieces of silver happily. No, it only matters do good now.

I wholeheartedly agree. But, to be frank, I really don't see any amount of contrition in the Founders' Letter here, https://integrityinstitute.org/founders-letter. Primarily, I don't see anything here that says "You know what, we're sorry, because we were part of the problem, despite working on 'the inside' trying to improve things." I'm not asking for the founders to fall on a proverbial sword, but I don't see any acknowledgement of how the entire Facebook "machine", which causes all the problems they point out in their letter, is only possible because legions of really smart people choose to work there.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#135

Post by dogman144 »

labster wrote: post #132
neural_thing wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's understandable that people go to work for Sauron to get paid big money. But starting a "human-orc ethics think tank" because you have relevant experience in the field is a bit rich.

We need to be able to forgive those who have done evil, if they truly repent. If they’re trying to do good now, we shouldn’t hold it against them that they worked for a monopoly spreading lies that incited violence, created online addicts, and took the pieces of silver happily. No, it only matters do good now.

We can forgive them but not listen to their thought leadership on solving the post-Sauron world.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#136

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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.

> Integrity folks across the industry work on solving these problems, not creating them.

Solving these problems is pretty trivially simple. Get rid of the news feed, or perhaps make it just friends, reverse chronological order. All of these "integrity teams" only exist because Facebook isn't content just making boatloads of money, it needs to make 10x boatloads of money by getting people to scroll infinitely.

People try to pretend this is some hard, difficult problem, when it's only a problem because Facebook is just as addicted to their users' mindless scrolling as their users are.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#137

Post by Nevermark »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #80
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not working on integrity (I have a feeling that the integrity offices of many companies have brooms and buckets in them), but I do write software that Serves a constituency that has a very vested interest in the matter, and wish you well. I also have a personal code of ethics, and hold myself to a very high standard of Personal Integrity. In my experience, talking about that in the tech community does not end we…

Corporate departments you do NOT want to be in: Innovation, Ethics, Trust… unless of course it’s corporate doublespeak and the department is doing the exact opposite of what its name implies.

Exactly. If "Innovation, Ethics, Trust" are being addressed by a department:

1. They have no profit and loss, so are going to get sidelined by the higher impact (in any short or medium term) concerns of every department that does.

2. They have no direct control over serious corporate activities, so are going to be considered a distraction at best, interference at worst, by others under their own pressures. If they are noticed at all.

It isn't an accident when universal values are silo'd into departments from the rest of the company. It means leadership doesn't want the rest of the company to waste time or focus on them. But feel like the values need token recognition.

--

It gets even worse if these were governmental departments.

Department of Innovation: enforces acceptable methods and subjects of innovation, i.e. anti-innovation.

Department of Ethics: Reinforces the governments views by justifying them as ethical, and demands lip service to those fictional high ethics.

Department of Trust: You must trust us.

Worst one of all: Department of Truth. Here it is. Don't look elsewhere.

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#138

Post by goatsi »

RNCTX wrote: post #105

The whole PR discourse around these issues mentioned in the article is broken. > Namely, three years after the 2016 election, troll farms in Kosovo and Macedonia were continuing to operate vast networks of Facebook pages filled with mostly plagiarized content targeting Black Americans and Christian Americans on Facebook. I have yet to see a mainstream press article mention that people in other countries are not nefar…

>The only reason people in Kosovo and Macedonia are making Facebook pages aimed at American politics is because some American PAC paid them to do so. If it were cheaper to hire people in Detroit or Chicago to do it, they'd be in Detroit or Chicago instead.

The pages weren't even being run for a political purpose, it was all about the adsense dollars. Pro Trump stories just pulled the maximum amount of traffic from Facebook.

>Trump groups seemed to have hundreds of thousands more members than Clinton groups, which made it simpler to propel an article into virality. (For a week in July, he experimented with fake news extolling Bernie Sanders. “Bernie Sanders supporters are among the smartest people I’ve seen,” he says. “They don’t believe anything. The post must have proof for them to believe it.”)

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/

Re: Former Facebook staffers launch Integrity Institute

#139

Post by refurb »

debacle wrote: post #6

> Allen left Facebook soon after that for a data scientist job at the Democratic National Committee. So the guy on the election integrity team then takes a job with the DNC. This is called a revolving door. And now, curiously, he is part of the effort to push for more censorship of Facebook. This concerted effort to cow Facebook into censoring their platform more is coming from the RNC, DNC, Congress, and the mainstr…

That’s exactly what this and all the efforts to control Facebook are - a power grab.

Slap some “feel good” language around protecting democracy (ha!) and they can nicely make sure it’s their message that’s approved (of course! They are protecting democracy) and not their opponents (they are harming democracy!).

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