Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#191

Post by seneca » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #153

seneca wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The steel-man argument is that the President's statements practically amount to an indirect call for violence. There's no other way for the state to enforce laws except to use the messy apparatus of the police, which may result in collateral damage/violence. Which would mean that literally any discussion of government policy which could result in law enforcement is a call for violence. While I don't particularly di…

I actually don't think there's that much wrong with what the President tweeted/posted, but I do think it's inaccurate to compare what he said to just any old discussion of government policy. He wasn't just discussing government policy, he was talking about enforcing it in a very particular way ("the shooting starts"). There is definitely a qualitative difference between: "Deadbeat fathers should have to pay child sup…

Oh, absolutely. I am just following that argument to its logical conclusion and was intentionally pointing out that it doesn't make a lot of sense.

I think you were pretty close in your summary down-thread:

> The issue is whether advocating for the legal use of force constitutes "inciting violence" ...

> The central debate is: should the ToS disallow incitements of violence, even if it's actually legal?

In reality, most of these arguments are working backwards to justify the conclusions they want. Would anyone argue that it should be against the terms of service to say "A woman should be able to fight to defend herself against a would-be sexual-assailant"? Unlikely, because almost anyone is going to think that that is justified (I hope). That is inciting a legal use of violence.

People arguing against the President Trump's statements just don't like what he had to say, whether it's legal or not has nothing to do with their opinions. It's simply that they don't think it's justified, and that's fine. It's just more difficult to get something censored on the grounds of "I disagree with this and don't like it".

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#192

Post by foofoo4u » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

rainyMammoth wrote: post #66

creato wrote: post #7

I feel like all of this debate is painfully missing the point. The problem is not some content moderation policy, the problem is that social media has changed social conversations from small local interactions into monstrous virtual fight clubs between millions of people simultaneously, and where the most extreme opinions are rewarded with the most attention. Boring level headed opinions used to at least have a chanc…

This is exactly the point I'm trying to explain to my friends that are outraged that Facebook didn't censor Trump's post. I think Facebook is one of the worst companies out there, but for other reasons. The issue with Facebook is not about censoring the post that we don't like, it's about removing that polarization that comes with a platform that wants to get you hooked so they can sell you more ads. Facebook and oth…

I do agree that the ad-based business model is designed to have us hate each other because that is what drives engagement. So I'd like to get your thoughts on this thought experiment. What if it was illegal for social media platforms to base their revenue stream on advertising? Instead, it is mandated by law that their primary revenue is based on a subscription model? "Want to use Facebook? You'll need to pay $4 a month to use it." What do you suppose the nature of Facebook would be like then and, to an extent, its impact to society at large? Perhaps better? It has been my impression so far that services that require paid subscriptions over free usage tend to respect privacy better, have higher quality content, and are less addicting in usage.

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#193

Post by foofoo4u » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

There seems to be a growing consensus here on HN that Facebook's ad-based revenue model is a source issue for why extremity, polarization, toxicity, and usage addition is occurring on the platform. All of these elements drive up engagement. The more engagement you have, the more profit the company makes. It's a feedback loop that's helping the company and shareholders, but at the cost of the stability of society at large. So here's one idea to address the problem that I'd like to get other's thoughts on. What if we declare ad-based revenue streams for social media platforms a form of market failure? What if we made it the law that social networks must charge a premium, a subscription-model if you will, to use their services. "Want to use Facebook? You'll need to subscribe for $2/month". What do you think the experience of using Facebook would be like then and, to an extent, society at large? It has been my experience that services I must subscribe to do a better job of respecting my data, privacy, are less toxic, have higher quality content, and are less addicting. What I am suggesting here is that the desired behavior can be directed through proper incentives.

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#194

Post by foofoo4u » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

room505 wrote: post #185

I used to have a Facebook account and deleted it in 2009-2010. This is just me brainstorming, but would it make sense to have to submit a photocopy of your ID card to create a real name account for such a huge company, for the sake of creating something of a safe online forum/community? I would think people would be more responsible with what they post. I had done so for OfferUp, which to me, makes sense because peop…

Years ago, Facebook for some reason thought I was a bot and disabled my account. They required that I upload a government issued ID to verify I am a real person. I was finding Facebook to be detrimental to my health at that time, so I felt it a perfect opportunity to leave the platform all together. Plus I didn't exactly feel comfortable giving them that kind of information.

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#195

Post by Lammy » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

mherdeg wrote: post #51

Facebook's famously tight-knit and tight-lipped engineering organization has become increasingly leaky in the past couple of years, as posts and data make it to the press with surprising regularity. What changed? Is it morale? Or something that happens at scale? Does the rate of leaks say anything about the health of the company?

> What changed?

They shut down the only internal tool employees had to discuss sensitive topics in a safe way: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/facebook-shut-down-anonym...

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#196

Post by dingaling » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #166

notacoward wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do so many people forget that they control their feed ? Maybe less than some of us would like, but I carefully curate my feed and use mute and so on and my feed has very little junk in it. Mostly family stuff and jokes/memes, with some ads for stuff that actually does interest me. It's not hard. Most of us here solve harder problems every day.

I did that until my feed was mostly empty and uninteresting, so I deleted my account.

But that assumes that the feed is the primary value of FB. For me the value is in the social graph. I don't even follow the posts of people.

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#197

Post by maps7 » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 11:13 PM UTC

floatrock wrote: post #109

maps7 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am developing a site where the landing page only shows news about topics from sources you have chosen to see. There will be some limited interaction with those news stories. On a shared page, everything is brought together and you'll see what news sources other people are reading. I am hoping this allows people to get the news they want, interact with it and see what news other people are interacting with... withou…

sounds like Reddit. Or Digg before that. Or RSS feeds before that.

Yeah, not too different. No user submitted links though and no comment system (at least when I first make it live). To be honest, I'll probably be the only user!

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#198

Post by acdha » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 11:24 PM UTC

pandaman wrote: post #181

acdha wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There were plenty of other technologies that could've been used to organize large-scale virtual fight clubs (forums, BBSes, chatrooms, maybe even the telephone) but this didn't happen because nobody actually wanted to foster such toxic behavior. “Nobody” is leaving out some pretty notorious sources of toxicity (e.g. 4chan). I think a key difference is that these huge platforms dramatically increase the reach of tho…

You could say that some topics discussed on 4chan are "toxic" but is the discussion in general also toxic? There are no cliques, no friends and foes, no flame wars, just a background level of ad-hominem (i.e. very formalized and short phrases used to express disagreement with the message in the form of ad-hominem). There is no point in slinging insults at other users and no "honor" to protect - everyone is anonymous,…

Not every message is terrible, yes, but it’s not without cause that it has such a bad reputation. The idealized version you describe is far from representative.

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#199

Post by bhupy » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 11:28 PM UTC

seneca wrote: post #191

bhupy wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't think there's that much wrong with what the President tweeted/posted, but I do think it's inaccurate to compare what he said to just any old discussion of government policy. He wasn't just discussing government policy, he was talking about enforcing it in a very particular way ("the shooting starts"). There is definitely a qualitative difference between: "Deadbeat fathers should have to pay child sup…

Oh, absolutely. I am just following that argument to its logical conclusion and was intentionally pointing out that it doesn't make a lot of sense. I think you were pretty close in your summary down-thread: > The issue is whether advocating for the legal use of force constitutes "inciting violence" ... > The central debate is: should the ToS disallow incitements of violence, even if it's actually legal? In reality, m…

It's true that the people arguing against the President's statements aren't necessarily arguing from a principled stance, but that's true of any group that uses the levers of regulation. The Terms of Service, to a company, is sort of like laws to a state. Laws are important because they are instruments that can be used by everyone, and the government in theory ought to consistently apply them.

Take anti-discrimination laws, for example: they were passed in the 60's to combat what was then rampant discrimination against Black Americans by private establishments, however because the rules are generally pretty unambiguous, they can be used today by white people if they are being institutionally discriminated against, for whatever reason. But the group of people that would have utilized the levers of that law to combat discrimination against Black Americans will mostly not be the same group of people that might use the same law to combat any discrimination that might occur against white Americans — Black Americans might even accept discrimination against white Americans and vice versa (we see this happen today). To the law, it doesn't matter — Black Americans can utilize it for their own ends, and so too can white Americans — and as a result we ideally have NO discrimination against ANYONE. It doesn't matter what each group's motivations are.

That's how Terms of Services should (ideally) work, also. Just because the reality today is that one group is using the ToS and working backwards to justify some conclusion, the same levers exist for all other possible groups, and we hopefully reach an equilibrium where the Terms of Services are consistently applied. Unfortunately that appears to be blind idealism because — as we are seeing — companies don't necessarily apply their ToS consistently.

Re: Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

#200

Post by drak0n1c » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 11:50 PM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #101

nailer wrote: post #94

> a post from President Donald Trump that seemingly called for violence against people protesting the police killing of George Floyd. This seems very unlikely, and there's no link or screenshot of the actual post to support the statement. Twitter has previously taken statements that laws will be enforced as 'calls to violence' so it wouldn't be surprising if the same thing is occurring here.

The steel-man argument is that the President's statements practically amount to an indirect call for violence. There's no other way for the state to enforce laws except to use the messy apparatus of the police, which may result in collateral damage/violence.

The truly steel-man assessment of the President's statement of "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" is that he meant it empirically, not normatively -- describing what inevitably occurs in an environment of sustained looting (shootings committed by people guarding property, looters, and law enforcement).

If you want to be extra charitable, he possibly made that statement empirically to describe a tragic situation he wanted to prevent entirely by dispersing protests early. Such a justification and reasoning would be very authoritarian and is arguably wrong in efficacy, but that interpretation does not involve an indirect or direct threat of shooting.

My grandmother (an English teacher) once castigated email and predicted it would condition people at all levels to not be precise in language, and warned of how communications and ideas would degrade as a result. As a young nerd I thought that was absurd and the opposite would be true, but now seeing Twitter I have changed my mind.