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Re: Meta

#61
post #41

Personally, I'm less bullish on FB/Meta now. Half of me believes if someone can turn it around it would be Zuck, and the other half believes that FB's culture has optimized the wrong the thing for the past 5 years. Consider this, and call me out if I'm wrong, for the past 5 years we were led to believe by FB/YouTube that algorithmically generated could only have negative consequences as it moved people to more and mo…

> betting against a company with such a huge war chest is like trying to catch a falling knife. Indeed. My biggest fear is that succeed. I happen to prefer PCs (and there is no reason to argue for or against that). Apple has been incredibly successful at capturing market share and their devices are now mandatory at my new job. I might not like it, but it's not the end of the world: Apple behaves ethically. Now imagin…

if you can believe Apple behaves ethically you can convince yourself Meta is ethical too if you try

Re: Meta

#62
post #6

>The fact that Facebook is uniquely held responsible for the societal problems engendered by the Internet does, I suspect, stem from the fact that Zuckerberg is an obvious target. How many people concerned about anti-vax rhetoric, for example, can even name the person in charge of YouTube, a far more potent vector? This article makes a very cogent point: Zuckerberg has too much baggage with the general public and Met…

> The fact that Facebook is uniquely held responsible for the societal problems engendered by the Internet does, I suspect, stem from the fact that Zuckerberg is an obvious target

Interestingly, the most vocal opponents of Facebook are... traditional medias. The same medias that are competing (and losing!) against Facebook for add revenue.

Keep in mind that before Facebook, for a story to get any traction it had to be approved by the "editorial board" of a legacy news outlet. What do you think happened if the owner of the TV station or newspaper didn't want a story to hit the front page?

Re: Meta

#63

Article doesn't mention but Zuck wanted to acquire Unity because he thought Unity will be future VR/AR engine/platform and Facebook wants to own it and not be at the mercy of Apple and Google. I don't know why he didn't pursue it if he is so sure in Metaverse VR/AR thing.

It’s unreal.

Fortnite seems to have the virtual event model working pretty well. Movies and concerts with friends and random annoying people jumping around.. but it does work,

Re: Meta

#65
post #41

Personally, I'm less bullish on FB/Meta now. Half of me believes if someone can turn it around it would be Zuck, and the other half believes that FB's culture has optimized the wrong the thing for the past 5 years. Consider this, and call me out if I'm wrong, for the past 5 years we were led to believe by FB/YouTube that algorithmically generated could only have negative consequences as it moved people to more and mo…

> betting against a company with such a huge war chest is like trying to catch a falling knife. Indeed. My biggest fear is that succeed. I happen to prefer PCs (and there is no reason to argue for or against that). Apple has been incredibly successful at capturing market share and their devices are now mandatory at my new job. I might not like it, but it's not the end of the world: Apple behaves ethically. Now imagin…

Don't forget to put on your Meta Smartwatch with front-facing camera

edit: for reference https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-28/leaked-ph...

Re: Meta

#66

Personally, I'm less bullish on FB/Meta now. Half of me believes if someone can turn it around it would be Zuck, and the other half believes that FB's culture has optimized the wrong the thing for the past 5 years. Consider this, and call me out if I'm wrong, for the past 5 years we were led to believe by FB/YouTube that algorithmically generated could only have negative consequences as it moved people to more and mo…

I don't think I've gotten an actual misinformation / hate speech / etc. recommendation from Youtube, Facebook, or Tiktok. On Facebook, I see potentially divisive posts from friends with very different political views. The difference with TikTok is that those friends don't post content. I think if you explicitly seek out problematic content you can end in a rabbit hole on any large algorithmic app.

I get far-right, anti-vaxxer, conspiracy, misinformation recommendations from Youtube at least a few times a week. And it's been like this for years despite me asking them not to show this type of content again.

Anyone who thinks these issues are somehow unique or exclusive to Facebook is simply being dishonest. They are a byproduct of the anonymous, unfettered free speech we get from the internet not something intrinsic to recommendation algorithms.

Re: Meta

#67
We used to call "reactionary" content sensationalism, and that type of content has always been predicated on fallacious arguments, but especially appeals to emotion.

Facebook's algorithms seems very good at dectecting and pushing content that makes users have an emotional response.

They now have developed a feature where is someone or a page posts a comment to a page or group that I am not subscribed to, Facebook will push that content on to my feed.

It is just about the most annoying thing ever. I am profoundly not interested in people who I follow on what they post on Ted Cruz's Facebook page. Why is Facebook pushing Ted Cruz on to my feed if I am not subscribed to him? I want to see my friends posts, but not their responses to Ted.

Facebook sucks ass now, and I am going to convert over to mastidon or something.

Re: Meta

#68

Personally, I'm less bullish on FB/Meta now. Half of me believes if someone can turn it around it would be Zuck, and the other half believes that FB's culture has optimized the wrong the thing for the past 5 years. Consider this, and call me out if I'm wrong, for the past 5 years we were led to believe by FB/YouTube that algorithmically generated could only have negative consequences as it moved people to more and mo…

I don't think I've gotten an actual misinformation / hate speech / etc. recommendation from Youtube, Facebook, or Tiktok. On Facebook, I see potentially divisive posts from friends with very different political views. The difference with TikTok is that those friends don't post content. I think if you explicitly seek out problematic content you can end in a rabbit hole on any large algorithmic app.

You must be really good at only reading content you already agree with.

The moment you watch a few seconds of a polarizing video, out of curiosity, they will start recommending more of the same. This is how people fall into more radicalized bubbles.

Re: Meta

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've gotten an actual misinformation / hate speech / etc. recommendation from Youtube, Facebook, or Tiktok. On Facebook, I see potentially divisive posts from friends with very different political views. The difference with TikTok is that those friends don't post content. I think if you explicitly seek out problematic content you can end in a rabbit hole on any large algorithmic app.

I get far-right, anti-vaxxer, conspiracy, misinformation recommendations from Youtube at least a few times a week. And it's been like this for years despite me asking them not to show this type of content again. Anyone who thinks these issues are somehow unique or exclusive to Facebook is simply being dishonest. They are a byproduct of the anonymous, unfettered free speech we get from the internet not something intri…

We had free speech before social networks and this wasn’t an issue. The problem is when you encourage all the 5000 lunatics who think the earth is pizza-shaped to congregate and consume each other’s content.

Re: Meta

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Microsoft, who did it a few times in the past.

But not always successfully. It helps to have a big warchest so you can try more than once or keep a money-losing business running while you figure it out (XBox, Bing).

XBox and Bing are profitable, ironically. Bing is a 7B business[0]

Phone/ARM tablets were not.

[0] https://news.scott.services/microsoft-bing-usage-and-revenue...

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