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Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

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Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#221

Post by psadauskas »

netsharc wrote: post #98
wisty wrote: post #45

> A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism Has anyone ever seen Facebbok as idealistic? As far as I can tell, they've always been basically Amazon (the borg that will win at all costs) but a little more trivial, cool and Web2.0, they were never the "don't be evil" Google, the idealistic Twitter, I can't think of many less ideal driven companies. Facebook beat MySpace IMO because it tricked people into usi…

> Facebook also had a tool that would let you give them your username and password for other sites, and would scrape contacts for you. I remember FB recommending me a contact, I thought "Why does that distinctive name sound familar?". I looked through my e-mails and I had sent a few emails back and forth with the person because of an eBay transaction. I know I never told FB to scrape my email account, but I'm guessin…

Several years ago (~2016), I was working on writing a facebook integration for the company I was working for at the time. I'd deleted my personal facebook account years before that, so I created a new facebook profile to test with. I faked all the information (My actual first name, but the company I worked at for last name, used my company email, made up a birthdate, etc.) I was using a different computer than I'd ever logged in to facebook before, and I was on the company network.

On the first page after signing up, it wanted me to "Add some Friends", and suggested a bunch of people I knew. Including my cousin with a different last name, and who lived several states away.

I've always been fairly privacy conscious, always using an adblocker, but that was downright creepy.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#222

Post by dep_b »

alex1138 wrote: post #60
dep_b wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably true if you look at all big tech companies, but before Windows, MacOS, Oracle Databases or IBM computers did not have the responsibility of dealing with the communication and shaping of world view of billions of people world wide. It's the same as owning a large share of news papers or TV channels. You own the public discourse. If Larry Ellison is a greedy immoral bastard I switch to MS SQL Server, o…

I know your comment isn't about Elon specifically and I have my own reservations about some of what he does, but it's important to point out (and maybe this depends on what you call "misinformation", it shapes all future discussion) that Twitter absolutely was censoring for partisan reasons (before he bought it; I know some have complained Musk does indeed ban his critics) including silencing covid dissent, real doct…

I don't think Twitter was great before Elon either, but it's definitely worse than before. But I also don't see how Susan Wojcicki was abusing it's leverage like Musk does.

But the US simply stopped fighting against tech monopolies at a given point. And started mocking the EU for doing what was common for the US until recently.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#225

Post by insane_dreamer »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #165
wisty wrote: post #45

> A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism Has anyone ever seen Facebbok as idealistic? As far as I can tell, they've always been basically Amazon (the borg that will win at all costs) but a little more trivial, cool and Web2.0, they were never the "don't be evil" Google, the idealistic Twitter, I can't think of many less ideal driven companies. Facebook beat MySpace IMO because it tricked people into usi…

>the idealistic Twitter Never saw Twitter as idealistic. Seems to just want to show you celebrity gossip. Substantially worse product than Facebook from the start, and really pioneered the attempts at trying to continuously grab people's attention as opposed to just being a tool. Not really a defense of Zuck's products as a whole as Instagram seems to be the same. >Facebook beat MySpace IMO because it tricked people…

> Never saw Twitter as idealistic. Seems to just want to show you celebrity gossip. Substantially worse product ...

That may have been late stage Twitter, but early stage twitter was _not_ that. It became _the_ (only) way to be able to get near real-time information on some unfolding event, usually by the people actually involved, and very useful in that regard. It facilitated realtime communications in a way that FB did not.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#226

Post by alex1138 »

dep_b wrote: post #222
alex1138 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know your comment isn't about Elon specifically and I have my own reservations about some of what he does, but it's important to point out (and maybe this depends on what you call "misinformation", it shapes all future discussion) that Twitter absolutely was censoring for partisan reasons (before he bought it; I know some have complained Musk does indeed ban his critics) including silencing covid dissent, real doct…

I don't think Twitter was great before Elon either, but it's definitely worse than before. But I also don't see how Susan Wojcicki was abusing it's leverage like Musk does. But the US simply stopped fighting against tech monopolies at a given point. And started mocking the EU for doing what was common for the US until recently.

Susan made a personal pledge to tackle "misinformation". Like these people https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a-second-opinion.html (you actually can find the shortened version on Youtube, but all of those people with real credentials have had their videos pulled at one time or another)

That's not her role. You should be policing the obvious stuff but not that, especially when none of it turns out to be misinformation. She absolutely abrogated her responsibility as CEO or even just being a decent person

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#227

Post by alex1138 »

Hikikomori wrote: post #144
alex1138 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know your comment isn't about Elon specifically and I have my own reservations about some of what he does, but it's important to point out (and maybe this depends on what you call "misinformation", it shapes all future discussion) that Twitter absolutely was censoring for partisan reasons (before he bought it; I know some have complained Musk does indeed ban his critics) including silencing covid dissent, real doct…

The twittefiles nothingburger?

I really hope you don't actually work in tech and are putting your thumb on the scale of decisions

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#228

Post by netsharc »

Cwizard wrote: post #154
alterom wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is routinely suggesting me contacts that I have met and interacted with offline, the only link to them being an entry in my phone book. Which, I'm guessing, I allowed Messenger to have access to at some point. Other than that, it's inference from GPS/location data, which Meta, as far as I know, didn't deny doing.

Were you ever connected to the same Wifi network? You can probably use that for tracking too.

I find it "amusing" that FB (or well, a lot of phone apps) can see how your relationship with people ebb and flow.

E.g. for a dating situation: new WhatsApp contact, growing frequency of texts, growing frequency of WhatsApp calls, culminating in a night where both phones were connected to the same SSID / locatable in one geo-location throughout the whole night, without their users checking them.

When that happens it'd be time to show them ads with the text "Your new love interest is highly interested in these products"...

It'd also be "amusing" to big-data the whole thing and get the computer to spit out the answer to the question "Where is this relationship going?"

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#229

Post by ForHackernews »

latexr wrote: post #202
ForHackernews wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Zuckerberg's Law: The amount each person shares double each year. Anecdotally, this is almost certainly false. I (and most people I know) are posting ("sharing") less and less. Faced with a surveillance panopticon, I think many normal people are opting out. Peer-to-peer networks are withering. The internet is reverting to the format of traditional media, with two distinct classes of broadcasters ('influencers') and…

> Anecdotally, this is almost certainly false. That law exists at least since 2008, over a decade and a half ago. It’s plausible it was true and born from observation at the time. The first Snowden documents were published half a decade later, in 2013.

Yeah, so a decade-old now-dead trend isn't a "law" or we could be talk about the "Iron Law of jQuery: All sites will expand until they include at least three incompatible versions of jQuery".

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#230

Post by bboozzoo »

KingMob wrote: post #126
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #64

Hahahahahaha, sore over losing in Ticket to Ride and Catan. Those aren’t even “serious” games.

In addition to it all, Zuck's taste in board games is basic. Though he's still ahead of Elon, who was busted for boosting his Path of Exile 2 account.

> In addition to it all, Zuck's taste in board games is basic.

FWIW, Ticket to Ride and Catan are decent, worth playing, euro games. That's miles better than Monopoly or Risk which the casual folk immediately think of in the context of board games.

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