Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 224 posts

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#111

Post by ciarannolan »

lallysingh wrote: post #106
tehjoker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just saying, only ~1/3 of the population votes. These elections are already illegitimate if you believe that they're supposed to express some kind of will of the majority. Additionally, the only areas of real contestation are suburban areas filled with reactionaries and relatively wealthy people. Dems have a lock on cities, Rs have a lock on rural areas. EDIT: Those of you downvoting, I think it's amusing that you th…

Why does low voter participation de-legitimize the election? Separately, if you're in a city, and are a D, why vote? Similarly in rural for an R?

> [...] if you're in a city, and are a D, why vote?

Good point. No reason voting in CA, NY, or other states since your vote is basically meaningless.

> Similarly in rural for an R?

Same as above.

Maybe the electoral college isn't really that democratic if millions more people end up voting for the "loser" of an election.

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#112

Post by kgraves »

ktrl wrote: post #95

I have been wondering why Facebook has become the only platform that tolerates right-wing speech. The other platforms took the convenient route and kicked out right-wing voices. Why exactly is Facebook risking both bad press and a revolt from its overwhelmingly progressive employees?

Twitter still has right wing folks on there.

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#113

Post by paulgb »

ciarannolan wrote: post #98
paulgb wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This long article doesnt address the most critical point. > If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? The article opens with a story of someone who quit.

It took him 9 years of collecting a fat paycheck and enabling Facebook to find his moral compass. Is it wrong to be skeptical of these millionaire developers who ride off into the sunset to retire but leave a final "oh btw, lots of problematic stuff at my former employer" message?

It's not wrong to be skeptical. I do think there's a sort of boiling frog effect, though. Internal company culture never matches public perception, and you're always able to tell yourself a story that the public misunderstands what drives the company. After all, you hang out with your colleagues and you know they aren't bad people. But then some big controversy snaps you out of it and you realize that the company's internal collective fiction is no more accurate than the public perception, and perhaps you are the baddies after all.

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#115

Post by ry4nolson »

nailer wrote: post #94

> a post from President Donald Trump that seemingly called for violence against people protesting the police killing of George Floyd. This seems very unlikely, and there's no link or screenshot of the actual post to support the statement. Twitter has previously taken statements that laws will be enforced as 'calls to violence' so it wouldn't be surprising if the same thing is occurring here.

The screenshot is there further down the article.

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#116

Post by hodgesrm »

iamacyborg wrote: post #48
creato wrote: post #7

I feel like all of this debate is painfully missing the point. The problem is not some content moderation policy, the problem is that social media has changed social conversations from small local interactions into monstrous virtual fight clubs between millions of people simultaneously, and where the most extreme opinions are rewarded with the most attention. Boring level headed opinions used to at least have a chanc…

> where the most extreme opinions are rewarded with the most attention Which is amusing given that even here we have to deal with an upvote mechanism that boosts posts from strong extreme opinions.

It seems to me HN rewards views that are "interesting" but the most highly rated comments seem to be pretty mainstream nerd stuff. Do you see evidence to the contrary?

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#117

Post by orhmeh09 »

sowellecho wrote: post #103

"If a man is not a Socialist at 20 be has no heart, but if he remains one at 30 he has no head." I don't know who said this, but this is a great example of how our minds mature. The probably unintentional ageism in tech has a major, quite literally civilization changing consequence. We are creating power centers which have too many young people who haven't really thought a lot of things through, certainly not the uni…

That’s a crass dismissal of the people involved here and socialism. You think that the problem really is that everyone at Facebook is too young and is thus more inclined toward recklessness (somehow involving socialism)?

PS: Would you be shocked to learn that some become socialists after age 30?

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#118

Post by [deleted] »

SaltyLemonZest wrote: post #43
1234letshaveatw wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the editors are "our guys" and not any of "their guys"

On the contrary, I regularly read articles and watch videos edited by "their guys". I don't have much interest in listening to people scream on social media, but I'm genuinely happy to learn the perspectives of people who don't think the same way as me.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#119

Post by jfengel »

tomrod wrote: post #8
creaghpatr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is extremely predictable though, because a sizable segment of Facebook users did not trust the outcome of the 2016 election. Why would it be any different in 2020?

People trust the outcome generally, whether they like it or hate it. The folks aren't trusting the inputs. 2020 is not 2016. Polling is suggesting a large shift. That may cause distrust in the outcome itself if the outcome doesn't align to polling due to voter suppression efforts and other possible issues.

Is the polling really all that different from this point in 2016? As I recall, in 2016, the eventual winner was way down in the polls right up until election day.
Post reply on HN