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Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#261

Post by malfist »

dantillberg wrote: post #178
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, strongly agree. For those that don’t read the article, here are some of the more concerning ones imo - Mark said “We don't allow sexually explicit content on the service for people of any age.” But they had a 17-strike policy, and 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. :(. Edit: the 79% claim is overstated. If you read the linked report[1], it is actually “65% of child sex traffick…

"sexually explicit content" and "child sex trafficking" are rather different things. Connected? Maybe? If you want to claim that Mark was lying, you've got to demonstrate the connection as part of the claim. Otherwise, it's a non sequitur.

Are you making the argument that child sex trafficking is not sexually explicit?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#262

Post by flipgimble »

'Another internal email reads: “One of the things we need to optimize for is sneaking a look at your phone under your desk in the middle of Chemistry :)”'

As a parent this makes my blood boil. This is how a drug dealer talks. Fuck Meta for optimizing their own profit with their massively automated attack against human psychology and attention.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#263

Post by watwut »

noslenwerdna wrote: post #246
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, strongly agree. For those that don’t read the article, here are some of the more concerning ones imo - Mark said “We don't allow sexually explicit content on the service for people of any age.” But they had a 17-strike policy, and 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. :(. Edit: the 79% claim is overstated. If you read the linked report[1], it is actually “65% of child sex traffick…

"But internal study found users who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for a week showed lower rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness." This isn't causal though. The users who quit were not randomly selected. Maybe they were receiving some kind of mental health treatment, and as part of that they stopped. Then the recovery could have been from the treatment or it could have been from stopping.

Internal study does mot have access to people who left because of unknown mental health treatment. They would had no way to evaluate them.

There is no reason to make imaginary issues of studies just to defend companies.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#264

Post by Aurornis »

I think a lot of HNers are letting their guard down for sensationalized news stories like this one because it invokes Mark Zuckerberg in the headline.

Scrolling through the claims I thought the "79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms" claim sounded odd, given what I know from a friend who worked in prosecution of sex trafficking crimes. So I clicked the link to their source, which says this:

> 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. In 2019, the National Society For The Prevention of Cruelty to Children found that Instagram was the leading platform for child grooming in the U.K. The 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report found that 65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram

The study they're quoting isn't about all sex trafficking, it's specifically about sex trafficking victims who were recruited on social media. The statistics are basically a breakdown of the popularity of social media platforms in the UK at the time the study was done.

In other words, they're lying. They're hoping you don't look at the claims too closely.

It's really sad to see so many HN comments from people calling for regulation and taking this all at face value, when just last week everyone was upset that Discord might require some accounts to present ID to remove content filters. Sensationalized reports like this are how we end up with those requirements.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#265

Post by [deleted] »

malfist wrote: post #257
noslenwerdna wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But internal study found users who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for a week showed lower rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness." This isn't causal though. The users who quit were not randomly selected. Maybe they were receiving some kind of mental health treatment, and as part of that they stopped. Then the recovery could have been from the treatment or it could have been from stopping.

So this argument you've made, you've just constructed a strawman. > The users who quit were not randomly selected. Maybe they were receiving some kind of mental health treatment You don't know that? You don't know anything about the selection process since facebook did not share their research. Your whole argument pins on the selection process you have no idea what happened. I'd find it very difficult to believe that…

[deleted]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#266

Post by Aurornis »

nickdothutton wrote: post #141

>79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. This sounded very high, and I was interested to know how they understood what the total (100%) figure was, given the presumed underground nature of the activity. Clicked on the link for the source. The statement is false. By all means hold these companies to account but sensationalism isn't going to help. Full disclosure: I have never had a Faceb…

I caught the same thing. Clicking on the link gives this text:

> 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. In 2019, the National Society For The Prevention of Cruelty to Children found that Instagram was the leading platform for child grooming in the U.K. The 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report found that 65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram

The study was only looking at sex trafficking victims in the UK in 2020 who were recruited on social media platforms.

So 100% of the victims in the study were recruited on social media platforms. The breakdown is basically a map of which social media platforms were popular in the UK in 2020.

It's a blatant lie to claim that this number represents all sex trafficking victims.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#267

Post by noslenwerdna »

malfist wrote: post #257
noslenwerdna wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But internal study found users who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for a week showed lower rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness." This isn't causal though. The users who quit were not randomly selected. Maybe they were receiving some kind of mental health treatment, and as part of that they stopped. Then the recovery could have been from the treatment or it could have been from stopping.

So this argument you've made, you've just constructed a strawman. > The users who quit were not randomly selected. Maybe they were receiving some kind of mental health treatment You don't know that? You don't know anything about the selection process since facebook did not share their research. Your whole argument pins on the selection process you have no idea what happened. I'd find it very difficult to believe that…

I don't know that, which is why I said "maybe."

Facebook does not typically do academic level research - they do quick studies to verify product direction.

From what I have seen, the actual academic studies on this are mixed. It is hard to say one way or the other, and it can affect different teens differently depending on how they use it.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#268

Post by tracker1 »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #131
charles_f wrote: post #124

One thing that I would recommend is to avoid weaving the actual lies with statements that are subject to judgement. For example, the first two rows are about the level of investment in protection tools, and are claimed as lies because of the ineffectiveness of these tools. Both sides can be true simultaneously. You can invest a lot and produce no results. When I read that, I thought they were grasping at straws. Then…

Ya, strongly agree. For those that don’t read the article, here are some of the more concerning ones imo - Mark said “We don't allow sexually explicit content on the service for people of any age.” But they had a 17-strike policy, and 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. :(. Edit: the 79% claim is overstated. If you read the linked report[1], it is actually “65% of child sex traffick…

There have definitely been a lot of sexually explicit ads on the platform. If you're a straight, middle-aged male, I'm pretty sure many have seen them.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#269

Post by flawn »

BurningFrog wrote: post #193
charles_f wrote: post #124

One thing that I would recommend is to avoid weaving the actual lies with statements that are subject to judgement. For example, the first two rows are about the level of investment in protection tools, and are claimed as lies because of the ineffectiveness of these tools. Both sides can be true simultaneously. You can invest a lot and produce no results. When I read that, I thought they were grasping at straws. Then…

There are a lot of vocal angry people and bots around who hate everything billionaires say, do, or wear. Tuning out that noise while still noticing genuine bad things billionaires do is really hard.

There are enough verifiable actions by Zuckerberg that proxy for some sort of behaviour unaligned with the wellbeing of society/humanity. You don't need to cut out the noise here, if there's even any on e.g. HN

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

#270

Post by noslenwerdna »

watwut wrote: post #263
noslenwerdna wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But internal study found users who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for a week showed lower rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness." This isn't causal though. The users who quit were not randomly selected. Maybe they were receiving some kind of mental health treatment, and as part of that they stopped. Then the recovery could have been from the treatment or it could have been from stopping.

Internal study does mot have access to people who left because of unknown mental health treatment. They would had no way to evaluate them. There is no reason to make imaginary issues of studies just to defend companies.

My point is if the people in the study were not randomly selected, there are any number of confounding factors that could influence why their anxiety changed.
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