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Facebook chooses profits over people

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Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#211

Post by rglullis »

elvischidera wrote: post #201
bitofhope wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breaking up Facebook sounds fine to me. I've got an even better one, though: make their business model practically illegal. I'd love the US to implement something broadly similar to the GDPR and actually enforce it (and while at it, I'd like the EU countries to step up the enforcement game). The tech monopoly giants of today are mostly Adtech companies, and as far as I'm concerned their very business model is anathem…

What alternatives to ads do you suggest? I don't see donations or paid services as a viable alternative (especially for people in emerging markets -- will companies still have any incentives to chase these markets?).

The problem is not ads, the problem is with Ad Tech. The tracking, user data collection and exploitation in secondary markets. There are ethical ways to have a business that uses ads a source of income and does not require "ad tech".

This is one of the reasons that I like the Brave/BAT model so much. It shows that you can have an "ad-based" economy without having to have Surveillance Capitalism. People could take part of the rewards they receive from the ad network and use to pay for their social media service. That was one of my ideas behind communick. [0]

And anyway, even if we wanted to get rid of "ads" altogether: WhatsApp was a profitable, sustainable business just by charging $1/year from part of its userbase. Facebook bought them because they knew it could become a threat to their business model.

[0] https://communick.com

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#212

Post by rglullis »

amelius wrote: post #210
elvischidera wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether they are separate issues or not depends on the company. I don't understand this. At the end of the day they are separate things, probably you are saying a profit-seeking company is more likely to be unethical? The fact that two things are usually correlated doesn't make them the same, right?

I said: we should not trust profit-seeking companies to be ethical. Somehow, this was translated into: profit-seeking companies are unethical. Which is not what I said.

The issue is with your qualifier. Your implication is that what makes them unethical is the "profit-seeking", when is at best redundant (all companies are profit-seeking) and at worst misguided (boo-hoo, profit is bad)

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#213

Post by rizky05 »

aceazzameen wrote: post #32
jamesandthewolf wrote: post #4

I'm not a fan of Facebook and starting to see linkedin heading the same way, I just don't get the look at my one it's bigger then yours I don't understand this so don't join in the game. I personally feel like Facebook and lots of social media is more a fashion statement or cheap thrill. I kind of am liking it here as it's more meaningful and feels like more of an education then a show off session. Facebook's ideas s…

You made me think, is it even possible to create a social media network geared towards education (sharing skills and ideas) for the masses? I suppose YouTube is somewhat there. But it's blended with so much crap.

Your crap is gold for someone.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#214

Post by zentropia »

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…

I suspect something more complicated. Zuckerberg doesn't want to loose users so they give users what they want. Any social networks has to compite against other social networks so they go for users engagement and profit first.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#215

Post by thethethethe »

> think of a situation involving a caregiver and a baby. The caregiver is found to be feeding the baby poison. When questioned, they respond that they continued to feed this to the baby because initially, the infant seemed to respond favorably to the taste. The caregiver claims the final result isn’t their fault, because it’s what the baby continued to go for. The caregiver is aware of the dangers of the toxin, but they seemingly ignore this as the baby keeps coming back for more. The caregiver is only concerned with the fact that the baby is eating their food, rather than what the baby is consuming. That bleak analogy isn’t far off from Facebook’s dealings.

A great example of how the mainstream center-left in America views the unwashed masses. Talk about paternalism. No wonder the vitriol peddled by right wing media hits home for so many people. This doesn't seem like a great strategy for American liberals going forward. Not a great way to build a coalition with the people they are supposedly trying to help

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#216

Post by michaelt »

q1w2 wrote: post #157
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 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.

Nah, successful shareholder lawsuits are exceptionally rare, except in tiny family companies. Almost any waste of money can be justified as an attempt to support some intangible, immeasurable goal.

I mean, CEOs are allowed to do spend money in ways that improve the company's image. They're allowed to perform experiments that may not bear fruit, and gambles that may not pay off. They're allowed to do things that improve employee morale and retention.

CEOs can spend shareholders' money on buying other companies the CEO owns ("I thought it would be a good investment"), outfit themselves with a super-luxury office ("We need it for meetings"), even have the shareholders buy them a private jet ("I'm paid so much, the time savings are worth it") - with the right fig leaf, it's all legal.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#217

Post by joconde »

michaelt wrote: post #190
joconde wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> the president of any country has more authority than MZ, except maybe over Facebook Well, it depends how you measure. Joe Biden has the power to start wars, to pardon people for US crimes, to have anyone disappeared and tortured indefinitely - but he doesn't have the power to create a database listing all American citizens, let alone the citizens of foreign countries.

> he doesn't have the power to create a database listing all American citizens, let alone the citizens of foreign countries

It's my understanding that the NSA did just that under Bush and Obama though. I might have only one side of the story, but in all countries where some part of the state surveillance apparatus was exposed, the law seems to be carefully crafted to look like it forbids mass surveillance while actually allowing the executive to implement it.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#218

Post by adminscoffee »

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 kinda saw the whole dilemma of instagram for kids as a competitors way of thwarting their competition indirectly. for one, youtube for kids exist, how is instagram for kids any different?

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#219

Post by ravitation »

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…

The first link is discussing whether directors have a legal duty to maximize profit, which, as the article describes, they do not (their duties are open to much broader interpretation, which the article also describes). But, of course, there are numerous nonlegal forces that incentivize profit maximization, some of which are noted in the aforementioned article, and these forces are so strong and ubiquitous that their result - profit maximization - should be taken to be the default, which is what GP was saying.

Second, a random statement from Tim Cook, which itself is the subject of numerous forces and incentives, is hardly a strong case against the argument that, almost universally, corporations act to maximize profits (which, we as Americans, also often pretend is a universally pro-social motivator).

I'll also note that both of your sources focus on short-term profiteering (e.g. ignoring long-term benefits of renewable energy in favor of short-term profits), but are actually supportive of long-term investments, which are, of course, made with the purpose of increasing future profits (e.g. " it is [...] not corporate law [...] that [drives] so many of today’s public companies to myopically focus on short-term earnings; cut back on investment and innovation [...]" and "thinking in terms of long-term profit and returns is an important way of putting society’s resources to their best uses"). Focusing on long-term investments, in both cases, is obviously also motivated by profit (with the second arguing that long-term profits are actually a social good, which is the case only when compared with short-term profits).

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#220

Post by thrashh »

TchoBeer wrote: post #209
michaelt wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the president of any country has more authority than MZ, except maybe over Facebook Well, it depends how you measure. Joe Biden has the power to start wars, to pardon people for US crimes, to have anyone disappeared and tortured indefinitely - but he doesn't have the power to create a database listing all American citizens, let alone the citizens of foreign countries.

Does he not have that power, or does he not have the ability? Imo I think he has both.

It’s soft power vs. hard power. Everyone has an amount of measurable soft power and a measurable amount of hard power in different spheres. Soft power is how much everyone wants to agree with you, while hard power is how much everyone has to agree to you. Think of it as respect vs. on paper.

To lead effectively, you need both. It’s rare that leaders have both. Biden does not have the soft power to do such a thing.

Soft power vs hard power also is a part of every relationship, even with your grandma or friend.

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