151–160 of 300 posts
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Are you suggesting that only Google employees can hate and distrust Facebook?
It is weird that Facebook always get bashed for privacy and Google (who is even worse in that aspect) always get a free pass, just saying.
>But by making Safety Check a default expectation Facebook flips the norms of societal behavior and suddenly no one can feel safe unless everyone has manually checked the Facebook box marked “safe”. I'm not buying this statement. Where is the evidence of this? The article features two tweets from nondescript people stating they think the feature spreads unnecessary fear, but features no tweets from people who actuall…
It's not speculation, in my opinion, because the "Safety Check" feature gives the impression that every human being potentially affected by a terrorist attack/natural disaster/unfortunate circumstance is completely and totally unsafe (killed, raped, beaten, burned, and so on) lest they broadcast their safeness to Facebook. It's one thing to scream "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, but is it not equally damaging to imply…
I lived through a major natural disaster that left me an evacuee for months. Facebook's safety check is the only reason I haven't killed my account and I've said this before in prior comments here on Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14412146 Thank god the author hasn't lived through an event where everybody you know is affected by the event. The ability to say "I'm okay", say it once, and have everyb…
About 500 people were directly endangered by this incident. The Safety Check alert seems to extend well beyond Greater London, so at least 9 million people. That gives us an approximate false positive rate of 99.995%. Is that reasonable or proportionate? Does it actually provide useful information? Is it likely to quell unfounded fears and provide genuine reassurance? As tragic as this incident was, it affected a sin…
This article is cynical clickbait nonsense, right down to assuming that it's impossible for Facebook to implement something for any reason but engagement. I'm no fan of Facebook but the idea that, to a man, they're faceless stock price maximizers is just stupid and frankly insulting.
I know plenty of people who immediately think of (and often call) family/friends in an affected area when a disaster happens. Depending on how far away it is, it can even be at the level of a city.
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About 500 people were directly endangered by this incident. The Safety Check alert seems to extend well beyond Greater London, so at least 9 million people. That gives us an approximate false positive rate of 99.995%. Is that reasonable or proportionate? Does it actually provide useful information? Is it likely to quell unfounded fears and provide genuine reassurance? As tragic as this incident was, it affected a sin…
I have to disagree. "Not safe" became the default as soon as the concept of social media hit; if there's the slightest chance you may have been affected by an incident, anyone who would check your social postings to see if there was any "word from you" would assume the worst in the absence of such a posting. The human mind is evolved for both empathy and "what-if" scenarios, but not for probability; it will snap to "…
FWIW, this wasn't the case in my (very large) extended family my entire childhood. Depending on how widespread coverage of the event was, a family member get calls or texts asking if I was okay whenever something dangerous happened
Ok, I had to make a throwaway for this because apparently its a heated debate. Why does everything Facebook do have to be so heavily criticized? Safety Check is a wonderful feature. If I remember correctly, it started off as an internal hackathon project that got turned into a full feature. They get shit if they turn it on (here), and if they don't turn it on (past tragedies where they failed to turn it on). Why does…
Facebook's history and business model are selling data to advertisers to make money. Locking your data in. Depriving you of ownership of your content.
When the sole source of income for a company depends on duping people into providing free data and content that they can monetize through unbelievably shitty ads, you can bet your ass that there will be some false evil positives. Because why wouldn't they?
Is there anything Facebook wouldn't do to make a buck? I think the answer is no. They have no morals, no ethics, and no values that I can discern. When someone says Facebook is listening to your computer microphone, I think, "Well duh. Of course they would. Anything for another advertising buck." And when I find out they weren't, I think, "Well, it's a good idea for them. They are probably working on it."
Can you name one single thing that Facebook has refused to do in the search for ad revenue? I've never worked there, so I can't possibly know the answer to that question. But based on what I've seen Facebook actually do (false reports not included), I'm pretty sure that no one ever says no to anything if there's a chance at making more money.
Add to that the fact that the company is explicitly against the norms and standards of an open web, and you have a good portion of your answer.
We hate Facebook because it takes advantage of people who don't know any better and subverts the open nature of the internet. And because there is seemingly nothing it will not do, no matter how unethical or awful, to further its own ends above.
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That's not an unreasonable stance. I lean the other way. I think, that there is an opportunity, if not a requirement, for fine grained tuning. FB knows a lot about it's users, and can do a better job of predicting who needs the i'm safe button. Clearly there's a geographic component. Someone in the area, around the time, or in the area regularly. There's probably a fancy combination of, how bad the event was, how wid…
Part of the problem is that peoples' worries depend not on what Facebook knows, but what those people know: I, for example, know several people in London, but have no idea where in London exactly they life. Now I didn't actually worry because that just didn't make sense considering the numbers involved, but it seems like a very understandable, human mistake to still get alarmed. That could mean displaying people safe…
Yeah, it's a human mistake, but technology should be moving people away from animalistic fears and desires, not pushing them towards it. The easier thing to do would be to realize those odds and realize you can't control these things instead of relying on a social network as a crutch.
That may be cynical, but Facebook isn't doing this because they care about you, they're doing it because it's yet another way to get people attached so Facebook can make advertising dollars. That's cynical.
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I agree with you up until the mic comment. I ran a few tests with friends. We talked about very obscure topics repeatedly (and nothing else) that we would otherwise would have never messaged, and after scrolling 2 mins, targeted ads appeared for those topics. Happened for multiple topics.
It embarrasses me to see such conspiratorial nonsense on this website. There are many reasons why such things happen: coincidence, someone google the topic from the same router IP address, ad tracking on Googled websites, etc etc The idea that one of the worlds largest companies would risk their entire business by secretly recording their users for ad revenue is absurd on almost every level. Yet some people on Hacker…
I'm with you on the skepticism, but they are one of the largest companies in the world because of ad revenue. It's not putting their business at risk, it is their business.
I noticed this last night as well. Someone I knew checked in to say they were ok. I looked at the news and saw that it was a building that housed 500 people, in one of the largest cities in the world. It was the same recently when we had a storm in New Zealand, and they activated safety check for the entire country. I don't think it even ended up raining where I was at the time.
Do you have friends/family in remote countries? New Zealand is smaller than California and when crap goes down in Southern California I still have people asking me about it even though I live in Silicon Valley. I can see the reasoning to just turn it on for all of New Zealand when it's something as big as a hurricane.
So you are definitely on to something.
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I agree with you up until the mic comment. I ran a few tests with friends. We talked about very obscure topics repeatedly (and nothing else) that we would otherwise would have never messaged, and after scrolling 2 mins, targeted ads appeared for those topics. Happened for multiple topics.
It embarrasses me to see such conspiratorial nonsense on this website. There are many reasons why such things happen: coincidence, someone google the topic from the same router IP address, ad tracking on Googled websites, etc etc The idea that one of the worlds largest companies would risk their entire business by secretly recording their users for ad revenue is absurd on almost every level. Yet some people on Hacker…