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Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

theguardian.com

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Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#141

Post by windexh8er »

consensus1 wrote: post #119
SoftTalker wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only out of convenience. There are many alternatives, and search engines will find them. And (although it won't happen) if Facebook were ordered to shut down, hundreds of entrepreneurs would offer alternatives for "small business web presence"

So millions of small business owners would have to pay for something they get now for free

And just like they found Facebook they can, and will, find something else. And maybe they learn something about trust in that type of service the next time around.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#142

Post by gtowey »

windexh8er wrote: post #134
voakbasda wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fun part is their internal communication might be relatively exculpatory, but a good prosecutor can find the crumb or two to hang them. "Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find something in them to hang him." — Cardinal Richelieu (Armand Jean du Plessis)

> The fun part is their internal communication might be relatively exculpatory, but a good prosecutor can find the crumb or two to hang them. To the first part of that sentence: maybe , but I highly doubt it and these would be the last people on earth to give the benefit of the doubt to. Zuckerberg, and his peers, are operating in an "us vs them" mentality and we should also prosecute them in the exact same manner. T…

Indeed. Especially since we know that they know that they reserve the worst of it for face to face conversation and nothing gets recorded and it's all for the sake of maintaining plausible deniability. When asked about their private conversations they can and do lie.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#143

Post by [deleted] »

yodon wrote: post #91
koolala wrote: post #23

This HHHH strategy phrase is made up by these lawyers. It's not like the Microsoft version their mimicking where Microsoft actually said it. It makes the headline misleading like it alleges they said it internally as their strategy.

>Microsoft actually said it Not quite https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400754

[deleted]

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#144

Post by Aurornis »

deaux wrote: post #123
Aurornis wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America has a profound problem. It defines companies as legal persons with all the same rights. Corporate personhood does not mean a company have all the same legal rights as a person. Did you notice that companies can’t vote in elections or plead the fifth amendment like a person can? Corporations only get some rights. Corporate personhood is common across the globe. If you thought it was an American idea that’s c…

The inability to personally jail megacorp CEOs who cause untold amounts of societal damage is not common "everywhere" ("many places", maybe). And that is the actual thing the person you're responding to cares about, and rightly so.

The countries who jail CEOs who due “societal damage” as a fuzzy cultural concept, as opposed to jailing CEOs according to the law, are not legal systems you want to imitate.

The US does jail CEOs who commit crimes. Social media just has a short memory for topics like Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, or even recent topics like Theranos and FTX.

You may also have your personal list of “societal damages” that you believe should result in people being jailed despite not having committed crimes, but I guarantee your list doesn’t match everyone else’s list. You wouldn’t be happy when the list of “societal damages” started extending to things like using a VPN or trying to be anonymous on the internet, but for many people who get to government positions it most definitely would!

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#145

Post by jdejean »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #93
jdejean wrote: post #8

I hate when people say things like “Google did this” or “Meta did that.” There are actual named humans making these decisions. I want them found and held accountable. As of late these people have more power than ever. A single contributor at a company like Meta can make a change that impacts 0.025% of users (potentially hundreds of thousands of people) with zero notice or oversight, for their own individual gain. Not…

The actual named humans making these decisions are very frequently not people who you would consider accountable. If Meta announced that they're firing hundreds of engineers and PMs for optimizing addiction-correlated metrics, even if there was a clear memo instructing them not to do that, nobody would be satisfied and everyone would see it as a deflection of responsibility by the executives. I know this because it's…

I agree with that, the other side of that coin is executives creating incentive structures that encourage contributors to do risky things, while using the ambiguity to make it seem like nobody is really responsible.

Though I kind of doubt the Wells Fargo executives would’ve considered fake accounts a valid way to grow revenue. It seems Meta is happy to turn the blind eye, because addictive mechanics do in fact grow their revenue

My point isn’t that Zuck’s not responsible, but rather the system he’s created is fucked and a bandaid is to name all of those responsible

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#146

Post by sumeno »

Aurornis wrote: post #58

In the opening sentence: > according to a lawyer who is prosecuting the world’s largest social media company. The headline makes it sound like something internal at Meta got revealed. The catchy four-H phrase is the clever hook the lawyer came up with to try to hold the jury’s mind through the case. If you’re unfamiliar with how these trials work, the lawyers are trying to create a compelling narrative to support the…

“alleged” in the headline makes it pretty clear that it’s what they are being accused of

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#147

Post by upboundspiral »

Aurornis wrote: post #144
deaux wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inability to personally jail megacorp CEOs who cause untold amounts of societal damage is not common "everywhere" ("many places", maybe). And that is the actual thing the person you're responding to cares about, and rightly so.

The countries who jail CEOs who due “societal damage” as a fuzzy cultural concept, as opposed to jailing CEOs according to the law, are not legal systems you want to imitate. The US does jail CEOs who commit crimes. Social media just has a short memory for topics like Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, or even recent topics like Theranos and FTX. You may also have your personal list of “societal damages” that you believe should…

Executives mostly get jailed when there is large media attention + the executive was foolish enough to leave evidence pointing straight at them. For every case where an executive is jailed, there are 100 other cases where they aren't. And that is just in the overt "breaking the law cases".

Even more incredible damage has been in us losing the laws that protect us in the first place. For nigh on 40 years thanks to neoliberal economists influencing policy we have been relaxing corporate and monetary regulation.

This has already provided great gifts to the world, such as enabling the fraud that led to the 2008 housing crisis (who was jailed again?).

When as a country you decide that punishing bad corporate behaviour is a non starter, you get the predictable consequences of increasing, not decreasing bad corporate behaviour.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#148

Post by upboundspiral »

TFNA wrote: post #137
toast0 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If WhatsApp went down without a long transition process first The transition mechanism is that your contacts are in your phone address book, and you can call or text them or find them on other platforms indexed by phone number. Although, not for username contacts. Would it be disruptive? Yes. Would it be world ending? No.

That is all well and good for individuals chatting with family, friends or small groups. But alot of small businesses all over the world are using WhatsApp for Business with features and data storage that cannot be immediately moved to another platform. If it disappeared tomorrow, you would see business failures and immediate economic impact in developing-world regions that can hardly afford such a hit.

This is trivial to solve.

Launch two parallel cases. One against Meta top execs for criminal behavior, the other one as antitrust against Meta for abusing their market position. Two cases at once gives you negotiating power and clearly signals that you're serious about curtailing their influence.

Ideally this results in jail time for Meta execs, but at a minimum divesting them of Whatsapp should be achievable. By the end you should be able to get Meta's businesses operating independently under new leadership.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#149

Post by Aurornis »

upboundspiral wrote: post #147
Aurornis wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The countries who jail CEOs who due “societal damage” as a fuzzy cultural concept, as opposed to jailing CEOs according to the law, are not legal systems you want to imitate. The US does jail CEOs who commit crimes. Social media just has a short memory for topics like Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, or even recent topics like Theranos and FTX. You may also have your personal list of “societal damages” that you believe should…

Executives mostly get jailed when there is large media attention + the executive was foolish enough to leave evidence pointing straight at them. For every case where an executive is jailed, there are 100 other cases where they aren't. And that is just in the overt "breaking the law cases". Even more incredible damage has been in us losing the laws that protect us in the first place. For nigh on 40 years thanks to neo…

This is turning into a gish gallop.

What specific laws would cause Mark Zuckerberg to go to jail?

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#150

Post by SoftTalker »

TFNA wrote: post #136
SoftTalker wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only out of convenience. There are many alternatives, and search engines will find them. And (although it won't happen) if Facebook were ordered to shut down, hundreds of entrepreneurs would offer alternatives for "small business web presence"

Small businesses have complained about being buried in search results for long years. In some industries like restaurants, scammers create a higher-ranking website that looks like the real thing, in order to skim revenue. Not everyone has SEO-fu, and hiring a contractor is an additional cost for small businesses. At least on Facebook one normally finds what one is looking for.

There is nothing technical that says this is how it has to be. A "business directory" that is vetted and paid for (like the old "Yellow Pages" used to be) could be trustworthy.

Angie's List started out this way but I think it has been corrupted since the merger with HomeAdvisor. I could be wrong about that.

Establishing trust would be the tricky part. People are so used to 80% of the internet being scams and clickbait. But that certainly goes for Facebook pages as well.

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