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Facebook chooses profits over people

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Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#151

Post by cortexio »

Facebook again? Why is there always negative news about facebook? What about google & twitter? They do the exact same evil stuff. I swear, at this point it seems like facebook is being targetted by some propaganda group. Not saying facebook is good, but this is suspicious.

As for the "whistleblower"... she told nothing, absolutely nothing. Everything she told was already known. It was like a show for the media.

Also, "showing that whenever there was a conflict between the interests of the company and the public good, the social media giant would choose its own interests"

That's good. That's how it should be. What shouldnt be is when u use your company to hurt the public. And in my opinion, that is what all these giant companies do. These companies decide which opinions are right and which are wrong. That is wrong. It's playing dictator. It's not their job. It's mis-use of power.

Whether FB wants to show ads for Trump or Biden, it shouldnt matter. These companies should not be allowed to decide which information you should be allowed to see and which not. If they do, which they do, it's called interference aka. meddling with elections aka. bias'd system.

I hope fb, google, twitter disappear one day. The world would be better off.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#152

Post by indigochill »

Grustaf wrote: post #81
barney54 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we are talking about the UK, as Adam Smith said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.“

I don't know if Adam Smith meant it in the sense that present day libertarians and other naive people take it, but I am sure nobody would want to shop from a psychopathic butcher that only cares about profits.

But what would that look like in Adam Smith's time?

Suppose there was a butcher known to be a psychopath who people would really rather not buy from. Given the relatively low barrier to entry of being an 18th-century butcher (relative to many of our large industries today), someone could enter the market and just not be a psychopath and take all that guy's business because people would prefer shopping there.

Knowing this, then from a purely game-theoretical perspective, the psychopathic butcher would realize that if he wanted to be competitive in his village, he should probably dial the psychopathy back. An alternative would be to outright attack competition, but before the industrial revolution he probably wouldn't have enough of a leg up on challengers to afford that.

Arguably that has changed since, where incumbents benefiting from economies of scale have much greater advantage over new competitors and therefore have less to fear from bad behavior (see basically the history of labor post-industrial revolution). Incumbents do still get disrupted, but for some reason virtually never on ethical differentiation.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#153

Post by pixelgeek »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44

These headlines naïvely miss the point. The problem isn’t Facebook, a private company, seeking profits. The problem is its deeply-entrenched psychopathy and pathological record of lying [1]. And it really appears to be a Facebook problem. Instagram for Kids wasn’t the fever dream of a deranged Instagrammer. It was pushed by a Facebook implant [2]. I don’t know if being in proximity to Facebook’s leadership corrupts p…

> The problem is its deeply-entrenched psychopathy and pathological record of lying [1].

I think it is sociopathy. They know what they are doing is wrong but do it anyways.

Which is worse really

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#154

Post by ballenf »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #135
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44

These headlines naïvely miss the point. The problem isn’t Facebook, a private company, seeking profits. The problem is its deeply-entrenched psychopathy and pathological record of lying [1]. And it really appears to be a Facebook problem. Instagram for Kids wasn’t the fever dream of a deranged Instagrammer. It was pushed by a Facebook implant [2]. I don’t know if being in proximity to Facebook’s leadership corrupts p…

I would even say it's simpler, and the problem is Mark Zuckerberg specifically. He's deeply immoral, and continues to do what Facebook does for power and money. I understand, on some level, the excitement - he's a computer nerd who came to control an organization that is more powerful than the majority of the world's countries. Zuckerberg controls the platform that is the primary means of communication for hundreds o…

The combination of amorality, intelligence and power are enough to let anyone turn into that. I don't think there's anything particularly novel about Zuckerberg, other than the stars all aligned on a few mundane conditions.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#155

Post by ajuc »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44

These headlines naïvely miss the point. The problem isn’t Facebook, a private company, seeking profits. The problem is its deeply-entrenched psychopathy and pathological record of lying [1]. And it really appears to be a Facebook problem. Instagram for Kids wasn’t the fever dream of a deranged Instagrammer. It was pushed by a Facebook implant [2]. I don’t know if being in proximity to Facebook’s leadership corrupts p…

> The problem isn’t Facebook, a private company, seeking profits.

Very often in modern world this is exactly the problem. Stuff you'd be ostracized for if you did it as individual is perfectly natural for a company and in fact expected. It was designed this way, too - the limited liability is there for a reason.

So no wonder the entities that let you get away with almost anything are ruled by psychopaths. Firing one guy won't change it. The system must be changed.

You can hire an honest person that balances morality, law and profits.

Or you can hire a person that optimizes profits over anything else, and if (s)he gets caught - you just hire someone else.

It's a no-brainer, really.

It was a mistake to let people legally limit responsibility for their behavior in this way. And if companies are legal entities they should go to prison or be executed when they fuck up.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#157

Post by q1w2 »

FabHK wrote: post #101
dghughes wrote: post #38

That's any for profit company no matter what anyone believes. Any company its only purpose is profit. It's the same with company HR it's there to protect the company. It's not personnel anymore it's called human resources for a reason you're just company inventory. And "corporate culture" there is none they are not your family there is no culture they'll fire you in a heartbeat.

> That's any for profit company no matter what anyone believes. Any company its only purpose is profit. That's a myth. See for example 1. this aptly titled article: Corporations Don’t Have to Maximize Profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... 2. Tim Cook at Apple: > The shareholder asked Cook about the company’s renewable energy efforts and told him that Apple should only undertake such…

Tim Cook was pushing some clever PR there. The reality is that if a company deviated significantly from it's primary goal of attaining profits for shareholders, the shareholders could easily sue to take control away from the CEO - and this indeed happens.

The example of a small feature here or there is a deflection since, like any do-good public effort, it's just good PR to do them when they're relatively low cost.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#159

Post by joconde »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #135
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44

These headlines naïvely miss the point. The problem isn’t Facebook, a private company, seeking profits. The problem is its deeply-entrenched psychopathy and pathological record of lying [1]. And it really appears to be a Facebook problem. Instagram for Kids wasn’t the fever dream of a deranged Instagrammer. It was pushed by a Facebook implant [2]. I don’t know if being in proximity to Facebook’s leadership corrupts p…

I would even say it's simpler, and the problem is Mark Zuckerberg specifically. He's deeply immoral, and continues to do what Facebook does for power and money. I understand, on some level, the excitement - he's a computer nerd who came to control an organization that is more powerful than the majority of the world's countries. Zuckerberg controls the platform that is the primary means of communication for hundreds o…

> an organization that is more powerful than the majority of the world's countries. Zuckerberg controls the platform that is the primary means of communication for hundreds of millions of people, and in terms of power he's almost on the level of G7 leaders, just not accountable to anyone.

Let's add a header to Facebook's homepage insulting some country's leader, and see how fast they get beaten into removing it by a court.

The guy heads a communication company. This is nothing close to the power of a national government. A lone US senator might have less influence, but the president of any country has more authority than MZ, except maybe over Facebook, depending on how protective that country's law is.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#160

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

nbzso wrote: post #113
FabHK wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's any for profit company no matter what anyone believes. Any company its only purpose is profit. That's a myth. See for example 1. this aptly titled article: Corporations Don’t Have to Maximize Profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... 2. Tim Cook at Apple: > The shareholder asked Cook about the company’s renewable energy efforts and told him that Apple should only undertake such…

> Tim Cook at Apple. Please, don't. Pushing CSAM, and removing apps for oppressive governments. We as collective consciousness must stop idolizing corporations. Corporations are for profit. The lack of regulations and effective legislation is the problem. The biggest problem is that a lot of legislative mechanics are affected by shares ownership and lobbing. And we find this "a normal behaviour".

Tim Cook is not a saint. Apple makes some poor ethical choices. That said, I’d still prefer that Cook rather than Zuckerberg ran Facebook.
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