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Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

theguardian.com

31–40 of 204 posts

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#31

I hope people can see Meta is funding the other side in order to get Child Safety laws passed so they can have an out when children use their parent's device and Meta spies on them. Child Safety laws are just mass surveillance in disguise which has always been Meta's game plan since day one.

Dissolve the company. Jail the C levels. End of story.

If this ends in another fine to put into a ledger book I'll scream. The fine ends up back in their pockets in months in the form of loans and grants and tax avoidances and so on.

The world no longer needs Facebook and its leaders. It does not need its technology. It does not need the ideas of the people that are there. If you are still working there, you are complicit in acting in a company that is actively seeking to control a populous.

I understand it's hard not to work for "big tech" and not work for a company trying to control populous.

So yes. I agree. Stop letting them play games with the rules we spent generations putting in place to protect our citizenship.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#32
post #8

I hate when people say things like “Google did this” or “Meta did that.” There are actual named humans making these decisions. I want them found and held accountable. As of late these people have more power than ever. A single contributor at a company like Meta can make a change that impacts 0.025% of users (potentially hundreds of thousands of people) with zero notice or oversight, for their own individual gain. Not…

On one hand I totally see your point. It's just disgusting that someone on high position is fully aware that Facebook is about making people addicted to slop and serve them exploitative ads. On the other hand, it is an organizational failure, because in a correctly working organization a single person wouldn't be able to throw shit with such a blast radius.

> because in a correctly working organization a single person wouldn't be able to throw shit with such a blast radius.

I generally agree with you, however this makes an assumption about what "correctly" means. In this case, Meta could be working correctly and take it's orders directly from the Zuck commander's intent. In which case he would be a single person that would have a massive impact on the outcome. Therefore, should be appropriately accountable.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#33
post #11

$META has everything it needs: the best distribution channels on the internet, a massive user base, GPU infrastructure, and an amazing, talented young team. I think $META will succeed.

Not that anyone is asking the question that you’re answering, but what’s amazing about their talented young team?

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#34
post #22

Sounds like the lawyer's spinning what any successful business does with trying to acquire customers and serve their needs as though they were dealing drugs (granted, the line can be blurry between things that are simply enjoyable versus that which is more strongly addictive - some people get "addicted" to eating, but we can't really ban food, for example)

Perhaps, then, it's a matter of degree like most things. And perhaps, again, "what most businesses do" is not really a good defense to hide behind? I'm so tired of the whatabouts and the normalization and the pretending like this billion trillion whatever company has does anything but take advantage of its power to defend itself with slants and lies that any normal person or small group could never get away with. You…

>And perhaps, again, "what most businesses do" is not really a good defense to hide behind?

If you're doing what every one else is doing, but only you are being prosecuted, that's reeks of political motivated prosecution.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#35
Side note: what the everliving fuxxorz is up with their cookie banner. It seems wildly illegal.

Enough that I'm not gonna read their shit ever again if they stick with THAT.

The only two options are "accept all" and "reject all and subscribe".

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#36
post #11

$META has everything it needs: the best distribution channels on the internet, a massive user base, GPU infrastructure, and an amazing, talented young team. I think $META will succeed.

Not that anyone is asking the question that you’re answering, but what’s amazing about their talented young team?

[flagged]

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#37
post #14

In my opinion at least, any attempt to intentionally engineer addiction is morally wrong and should be at the very least civilly if not criminally actionable (if it can be proven). It's mind control. That phrase is often associated with woo woo conspiracy theory, but I don't think that's hyperbolic. If you are engineering addiction, what you're doing is attempting to run a black hat security attack against the human…

By your definition, almost any ad is mind control and should be forbidden. At least any effective ad. And I don't disagree at that conclusion. There's a difference between telling people you have a product and making people want to have your product

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#38
post #8

I hate when people say things like “Google did this” or “Meta did that.” There are actual named humans making these decisions. I want them found and held accountable. As of late these people have more power than ever. A single contributor at a company like Meta can make a change that impacts 0.025% of users (potentially hundreds of thousands of people) with zero notice or oversight, for their own individual gain. Not…

As someone else noted "Hook, hold, harvest and hide" is the framing from the plaintiffs. There likely wasn't some twirly mustached executive giving a presentation with those words on the slide deck. Instead the "decisions" made are far more banal. Shareholders wants growing revenues and users, executives tell their subordinates to implement those objectives, and it eventually hits the ICs where they're tweaking the color of the buttons to be maximally engaging. All these tweaks cumulatively makes the product addicting, but it's not like making meth or cigarettes where it's addicting from day 1.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#39
post #22

Sounds like the lawyer's spinning what any successful business does with trying to acquire customers and serve their needs as though they were dealing drugs (granted, the line can be blurry between things that are simply enjoyable versus that which is more strongly addictive - some people get "addicted" to eating, but we can't really ban food, for example)

Yeah, that doesn't fly with most Americans. Sounds a lot like the Sacklers - welp, can't ban pain meds, so might as well just addict as many as we can to opiods and take as much money as we can before they die

I wouldn't be surprised if Zuckerburg and Sackler were 4th or 5th cousins, they act so similar

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#40

I hope people can see Meta is funding the other side in order to get Child Safety laws passed so they can have an out when children use their parent's device and Meta spies on them. Child Safety laws are just mass surveillance in disguise which has always been Meta's game plan since day one.

I seriously doubt that the FaceMash guy was planning mass surveillance from day one. The people who propped him up might have, though.

FaceMash is a very primitive example of mass surveillance and data gathering: use people's pictures without their consent, collect the social rankings in a database somewhere.
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