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Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

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131–140 of 174 posts

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#131
As much of a shit show FB tends to be, it's still a personal choice to create an account and/or use the one you have. Put simply, don't use it. (I know, easier said than done, especially for the people that rely on FB to stay in contact with family and friends.)

We can live without FB as difficult as it may seem for some. We did just fine prior to the social media paradigm and can certainly do without the hate and vitriol promulgated through social media platforms, especially FB. Let the down votes begin!

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this an argument against the parent post? If so, it's not clear what the argument is.

The radio station mentioned was the inciting element in a genocide. Surely it does not take a large amount of analysis to understand that the underlying mechanism, dissemminating lies or propoganda on a widely used, easily accessed medium, applies directly to OP...

The link is just an example of how some speech is bad.

The point of the original comment was that badness should be determined by laws, and not by the moderation policies of private companies. I don’t see how the linked article forms an argument for or against that position.

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this an argument against the parent post? If so, it's not clear what the argument is.

"Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) was a Rwandan radio station which broadcast from July 8, 1993 to July 31, 1994. It played a significant role in inciting the April–July 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi." ... "it is widely regarded by many Rwandan citizens (a view also shared and expressed by the UN war crimes tribunal) as having played a crucial role in creating the atmosphere of charged racial hostil…

It can equally well be used as an example of why hate speech should be outlawed rather than moderated.

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#134

Unless something is illegal, Facebook or any website should allow the content. There will always be people who don't like a person or a viewpoint. It's a slippery slope to start moderating content that is not illegal.

Most platforms do some kind of moderation, and when a platform is as pervasive as facebook, it becomes essential. We’ve already seen how a lack of moderation on facebook influenced the 2016 election. So it is not hard to argue that facebook’s negligence is already causing significant harm to our democracy.

I'm still not 100% clear on how the 2016 election was influenced on facebook. Both American parties say the Russians interfered in order to help the other side. Liberal FB employees are upset about Trump, while conservatives think they are being censored on the platform.

Can you point me to any clear, neutral, unequivocal research that illustrates the effect, including impact? Did it swing the election to Trump, or try to steal it from him? How does this compare to traditional political media advertisements?

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of FB users use it for staying in touch with friends and family. The cynical framing we encounter on HN isn't actually representative of the experience of most FB users.

That gets to the heart of the problem, actually. People use Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends, yet Facebook still systematically pushes inflammatory content on them, despite that not being the "reason" people are there. And, eventually, it gets a surprisingly high percentage of people to respond to that inflammatory content, thus furthering the cycle.

Yeah they should just stop hosting public profiles and figures.

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#137
post #22
post #17

He is clearly viewing this as another technical problem to solve. He's a highly technical person; this follows. But the issues he's being confronted with aren't technical issues of permissions and algorithm tuning; they're societal problems of power dynamics and information manipulation. These are human traits. They aren't problems that are "solved." They're issues that you have to take a stance on. Do you believe in…

> He is clearly viewing this as another technical problem to solve I think you misspelled PR. Facebook has repeatedly followed variants of this script. Do what Zuckerberg and Sandberg want, and if it blows up, find a way to finesse it or at least block and tackle until humanity is distracted by the next outrage. They lie, distract and keep doing whatever they want.

You mean how after the Cambridge Analytica scandal when he testified in front of Congress? And how literally nothing came from that?

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most platforms do some kind of moderation, and when a platform is as pervasive as facebook, it becomes essential. We’ve already seen how a lack of moderation on facebook influenced the 2016 election. So it is not hard to argue that facebook’s negligence is already causing significant harm to our democracy.

I'm still not 100% clear on how the 2016 election was influenced on facebook. Both American parties say the Russians interfered in order to help the other side. Liberal FB employees are upset about Trump, while conservatives think they are being censored on the platform. Can you point me to any clear, neutral, unequivocal research that illustrates the effect, including impact? Did it swing the election to Trump, or t…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

Re: Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees

#140
Facebook is a dying platform, and due to its enormous size and momentum it may be a decade before its downward trajectory is fully appreciated. Facebook will also fight like all hell to remain relevant, and the cheapest way is making empty pronouncement like they can help "heal the divisions in our society". Helps that they can never be made accountable for it.

Why do I think its dying? Generative youth culture has long left it for other social media platforms. In the US even the middle aged suburban demographic is getting tired of the Karens and Boomers spewing their hatred or turning what could be valuable online community spaces into their culture war battle ground. Facebook is very good at driving engagement in people that are susceptible to conspiracy theories, extremist views on any spectrum and generally excels at turning people into assholes that would not be tolerated in civil society. Just because its statistically easier to get high engagement metrics from people that are susceptible to fear tactics and have low critical thinking ability, their algorithm hyper focused on feeding them exploitative content. To be honest Fox News perfected this on an older medium. Facebook claims ignorance and plausible deniability: all they are doing is maximizing the daily-average-user analytics.

Its no wonder that it was the birth platform for Zenga and genre of games that exploits dopamine reward system. The games industry was too obvious about it and now cultural opinion turned them. They'll never go away, much like slots and casinos. Facebook is going with the same playbook but substituting shiny coin rewards with confirmation bias newsfeeds and viral factoids.

Only sadder is that most of the executive team has no idea what their critics are talking about because they have largely no social acumen, empathy or wisdom. Really good at convention keynotes:"But look, we're also doing VR and AI! We can't wait to see what you do with it, our free developers!"... They can point to numbers going up in fancy real time dashboard, they get praise for shareholders and bosses. They don't understand the what kind of people they snare up to make their number work. People quitting their platform is a lagging indicator, at least by years, that they built nothing of lasting human value, but exploited flaws in human psychology. I could be wrong of course, cigarette companies are still going strong.

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