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Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#121

Post by CrzyLngPwd »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #43
CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always been this way, though. From tall tales of hunting or combat, the town crier spread propaganda from the lords to the public.

Just like apples/fruit from medieval times were tart and sour and full of seeds, and through generations of selective breeding are now super sweet and not necessarily still good for you. The old town crier is very removed from todays social media. Yes, a newspaper from 1800's was pretty biased. But does that justify todays hyper targeted algorithms as a-ok? That something happened in the past is not a good argument t…

I never said it was okay; it's just not new.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#122

Post by Dylan16807 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #76
Larrikin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black men are usually punished no matter how much money they have. Rich Women have a lower threshold than rich white men, if their crimes hurt or have the potential to hurt rich people. Holmes was punished for defrauding the investors, not the people who took her fake blood tests.

But you haven't engaged with two of the four examples in the comment you're responding to. I don't think developing just-so stories for why some rich and famous people were prosecuted and ignoring others to whom the stories don't apply will be helpful for your understanding.

Well one of them originally got a year and a half which is barely anything for the crimes.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#123

Post by InitialLastName »

delichon wrote: post #79
InitialLastName wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that their argument isn't "Mark Zuckerberg perjured himself and needs to be jailed for it" because he said something strictly and knowingly false. It's "we shouldn't trust Mark Zuckerberg's testimony because he (and Meta more widely) have a long (long, long) history of being knowingly deceptive about the harms of their product".

If they had said that instead of "lied to congress" they would have lost less credibility with this reader. But then they wouldn't have gotten the click.

The word "lied" has a lot of layers[0] other than "knowingly said an outright falsehood". He may not have told an outright, provable falsehood (although some of these examples are close). He certainly has a long history of statements to Congress that are baldly misleading or belied by Meta's own internal records.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie#Types_and_associated_terms

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#124

Post by charles_f »

One thing that I would recommend is to avoid weaving the actual lies with statements that are subject to judgement. For example, the first two rows are about the level of investment in protection tools, and are claimed as lies because of the ineffectiveness of these tools. Both sides can be true simultaneously. You can invest a lot and produce no results.

When I read that, I thought they were grasping at straws. Then carried on reading and found real, unchallengeable lies, nevertheless had a little alarm in my head that these might be interpretations more than facts.

It would probably be good to either remove those borderline "understatements" or "distortion of the truth" ; or present them as things we can't trust given all the other lies.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#125

Post by salemh »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #13

Remember when lying could get you in trouble? Lying has become normalized to such an extent that reality is unknowable. Just listen to any regime press conference on any day. Just pick any random day and listen. The hyperreal is here.

[dead]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#126

Post by xg15 »

Aurornis wrote: post #15

> The only way to outlaw Meta’s dangerous and egregious behavior is to pass legislation, like the Kids Online Safety Act Just last week there was uproar because Discord was going to require age verification to join adult themed servers and bypass content filters. This is how people are getting baited into inviting these restrictions and regulations into their services: By believing it’s necessary to hurt their enemie…

So then, what should be done instead?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#127

Post by close04 »

charles_f wrote: post #124

One thing that I would recommend is to avoid weaving the actual lies with statements that are subject to judgement. For example, the first two rows are about the level of investment in protection tools, and are claimed as lies because of the ineffectiveness of these tools. Both sides can be true simultaneously. You can invest a lot and produce no results. When I read that, I thought they were grasping at straws. Then…

> Both sides can be true simultaneously. You can invest a lot and produce no results.

Evidence show that Meta can be very effective at achieving the results that drive profits. It's already suspicious when they fail exactly at the ones that would lower profits. Even more when you consider the rest of the evidence which shows intention to hide the "failure". That breaks trust and you're just choosing to believe that the lie that they got caught with must have been the only one.

Short of universal laws almost anything can go both ways. But when one is overwhelmingly more likely you can make a concession and agree Zuck was lying a lot in there.

You're bending over backwards to muddy the waters with vague "it could go both ways" statements.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#128

Post by gjsman-1000 »

safety1st wrote: post #113
bronco21016 wrote: post #39

I haven't paid a lot of attention to this issue but after reading some of the statements in the article I can't help but agree with Tech Oversight's conclusions. It's just anecdotal but recently, when mindlessly scrolling reels, (yes, bad enough already) I came across a reel that was unquestionably sexually explicit (in USA, I think policy varies on locale). I reported the account and reel because after clicking on t…

When you pick apart what's actually going on in Meta's revenue pipeline it's hideous. Think about this and compare it to what the world was like say 30 years ago: * There are literally thousands of IG profiles that are essentially softcore porn which serves as a lead gen device for an OnlyFans account. Meta promotes these profiles to its users heavily because sex sells. Meta profits from the engagement with the profi…

I’m here before some pedantic person replies “correlation without causation.”

People repeat that phrase constantly forgetting that the lack of proof of correlation is not proof of no causation. It means it could go either way, not that it’s been debunked.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#129

Post by xg15 »

rkangel wrote: post #55
jacobsimon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook causes harm, disproportionately so for younger people I think I disagree with this step. Facebook causes a kind of indirect harm here, and is used willingly by teens and parents, who could simply choose not to use it. That's different from, say, a factory polluting a river with toxic chemicals, which needs government regulation. Basically "negative externalities".

> who could simply choose not to use it There is an inherently addicting aspect to it though - carefully evolved over the years by optimising for "engagement". One (imperfect) analogy is gambling - anyone can in theory choose not to gamble, but for some people addiction gets in the way and they don't make the choice that can be good for them. So (in the UK) the gambling industry is regulated in terms of how it advert…

I like how everyone on this thread is up in arms about Zuckerberg - until the moment where regulation is mentioned. Then it's suddenly "oh well, they could just, like, not use it, couldn't they?"

There is also peer pressure/FOMO. "Choosing not to use it" is not exactly easy if everyone else in your social group uses it - especially for teens.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#130

Post by zo1 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #48
bronco21016 wrote: post #39

I haven't paid a lot of attention to this issue but after reading some of the statements in the article I can't help but agree with Tech Oversight's conclusions. It's just anecdotal but recently, when mindlessly scrolling reels, (yes, bad enough already) I came across a reel that was unquestionably sexually explicit (in USA, I think policy varies on locale). I reported the account and reel because after clicking on t…

I know exactly what you’re talking about and it has been driving me nuts for years. They constantly go up there and say “it’s cool we totally have these amazing algorithms that solve the problem,” then when they don’t solve the problem they just shrug and go “well we’re just so big you can’t actually expect us to do what we said we would. We’re doing decent enough!” YouTube is another great example of this. Fine, be…

The additional problem to this is that they guided the industry and their own platforms to actively generate that much content. No effort was made to naturally or organically slow the creation or even perform any sort of de-duplication. So whatever argument they use for "we're too big, their is just too much content" is directly on them.

Social media is a slot-machine essentially, and in order to do that they had to mobilize and incentivize entire industries to revolve around generating millenias-worth of content.

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