FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord • Hacker News Board

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#121

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #113

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's reasonable for someone working on, say, scaling the photo storage service to say that their work is apolitical and these debates aren't relevant to them. The performance characteristics of Facebook photos aren't going to incite a genocide or contribute to the global rise of authoritarianism.

I don’t want to go all Godwin’s law, but the “I was just scaling capacity for processing census punch cards” argument doesn’t pan out very well, historically.

I don't think this comparison works at all except through Godwin's law. Nobody argues that, say, Walmart store clerks bear personal moral responsibility for their company's decisions.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#122

Post by zapita » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

dntrkv wrote: post #105

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's algorithms exploit the brain's attractiveness to decisiveness. They've know this and have chosen not to take action, except for small amounts so Mark can tell congress they are improving things. Source https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-di... So besides straight up changing the algorithms to promote non-decisive content, these are a couple things I think could help: - Limit the sprea…

Facebook doesn't profit from divisiveness, they profit from engagement. The fact that divisive posts encourage more engagement tells me more about people in general, rather than Facebook's business model. > Limit the spread of information in general in favor of content created by the people you follow I don't think that's what people want from their social networks nowadays. FB, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, et…

> Facebook doesn't profit from divisiveness, they profit from engagement. The fact that divisive posts encourage more engagement tells me more about people in general, rather than Facebook's business model.

"Crack dealers don't profit from drug addiction, they profit from the pleasurable effects of consuming crack. The fact that very addictive drugs are pleasurable to consume tells me more about people in general, rather than crack dealer's business model."

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#123

Post by dntrkv » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #117

nindalf wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen this question asked many times on such threads but have never seen a workable solution. Usually the response is something like "I'd shut the whole website down" or "I'd employ millions of moderators" or "I'd allow people to only post once a month" or "I would remove sharing links, only baby pictures allowed". Nothing practical. If you respond to any of these with examples of positive speech that would be…

What is "impractical" about "shut the whole website down"? When it was discovered that tetraethyl lead was widespread in the environment and caused neurological damage, it was banned. Yes, that materially harmed several chemical companies whose livelihood was based on producing tetraethyl lead. So what? If your business model harms people, I don't care if stopping harming people eliminates your business. People matte…

Banning a harmful substance, and banning a platform for communication are not comparable.

There is no shortage of sites that will take Facebook's place.

What is the legislation you propose to prevent Facebook, or the millions of other existing or soon-to-be existing apps, from doing harm to people?

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#124

Post by munificent » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #27

patorjk wrote: post #5

At 3 paragraphs (131 words), that was a really short article. However, I agree with the subheading: "Mark Zuckerberg says employees shouldn’t have to confront social issues in their day-to-day work unless they want to" That sounds good to me. I've never had to talk about these kind of things at work. Are there work places where this is unavoidable?

It's interesting to watch companies rediscover the old rule about leaving politics and religion at the door.

If a business wants its employees to leave politics at the door, the business should too. If Facebook is going to have departments for government affairs, public policy, and lobbying, then it is entirely reasonable for employees to be politically active too.

Otherwise, you're basically saying corporations should participate in the political process but individuals should not. And that's exactly how we got the Earth into the increasingly shitty state it is currently in.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#125

Post by throwaway423342 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

satya71 wrote: post #8

How about bringing the same rules to the wider FB? I just want to look at baby pictures and connect with friends. I don't want to be part of a machinery that spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories.

It would hurt engagement.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#126

Post by r00fus » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

xamuel wrote: post #93

fgrtr3terwy wrote: post #85

Facebook wants their employees to stop talking about politics, even though Facebook by its nature takes stances on deeply political topics. How exactly do you avoid political discussion when you're asking what constitutes hate speech, whether a US president should be allowed to violate Facebook's content guidelines, or to what extent governments can spread misinformation in other countries? If you work at Facebook, y…

>Facebook by its nature takes stances on deeply political topics. Why is that "by its nature"? I don't think that's "by its nature" at all. Phone companies and ISPs facilitate communication between people, but that doesn't necessitate they take political stances on what communication to allow. Why should Facebook? If certain language should be restricted, then laws should be written restricting said language and Face…

Neither an ISP nor phone company has a feed algorithm or spam prevention* as a central part of its operations.

These are key to the usability of any social network. And they are inherently biased. Any such organization also has to take money, so ads are also key to their operations, and they have taken political stands on ads too.

The attempted comparison to utility companies is not compelling.

* arguably they do now by limiting "scam calls"

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#127

Post by wmichelin » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

patorjk wrote: post #5

At 3 paragraphs (131 words), that was a really short article. However, I agree with the subheading: "Mark Zuckerberg says employees shouldn’t have to confront social issues in their day-to-day work unless they want to" That sounds good to me. I've never had to talk about these kind of things at work. Are there work places where this is unavoidable?

Facebook is not your average workplace. If your platform is profiting off of active political misinformation, you have an obligation to not only discuss these issues, but solve them. If you determine that you can't solve them, it's time to stop accepting the money.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#128

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #99

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Curb" here doesn't seem to mean "ban". What Facebook wants is for employees to avoid the totalizing view of politics you're describing, where political discussion needs to occur in all places at all times and declaring a "no politics zone" constitutes taking a side.

And that's an entirely reasonable stance for management to take at most companies. But not facebook. They've deliberately tailored the platform to be a monetized political outrage machine. Its like ESPN announcing they plan to "curb" sports talk in the office.

If Yankees and Red Sox fans regularly got into shouting matches on the ESPN software development mailing lists, I expect they'd be told to knock it off, and I wouldn't see that as a contradiction of the idea that sports is important.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#129

Post by mensetmanusman » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

Interesting to see young companies fall into line. There is a reason it is against norms to talk about these things in most companies, because it causes undo conflict usually far outside of the context of what is being worked on.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#130

Post by munificent » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

dntrkv wrote: post #123

munificent wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "impractical" about "shut the whole website down"? When it was discovered that tetraethyl lead was widespread in the environment and caused neurological damage, it was banned. Yes, that materially harmed several chemical companies whose livelihood was based on producing tetraethyl lead. So what? If your business model harms people, I don't care if stopping harming people eliminates your business. People matte…

Banning a harmful substance, and banning a platform for communication are not comparable. There is no shortage of sites that will take Facebook's place. What is the legislation you propose to prevent Facebook, or the millions of other existing or soon-to-be existing apps, from doing harm to people?

> Banning a harmful substance, and banning a platform for communication are not comparable.

OK, consider gambling. That is simply a kind of software that enables people to engage in behavior that turns out to be harmful for a large number of them. And, because of that fact, it is heavily regulated.

> What is the legislation you propose to prevent Facebook, or the millions of other existing or soon-to-be existing apps, from doing harm to people?

I don't know if we know what sort of regulations would help yet. But I do know that if we assume a priori that corporations cannot be forced to change their behavior because it might hurt the poor corporation, then we will never figure out the answer.