Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy • Hacker News Board

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#361

Post by coliveira » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

joelbluminator wrote: post #331

slg wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the complaints she is making and that people find most offensive regarding Facebook are not its data collection. I know that is an unpopular opinion here, but many people don't care about data collection because they don't see how that negatively impacts their lives. There are sizable populations of people that think the Facebook apps record all audio they hear and serve ads based off what you say in front of…

Where does it end though? Probably Brad Pitt and Elon Musk and Justin Bieber make a lot of people feel bad about their lives. Should media just stop reporting about them?

There is a big difference here. The whistleblower is telling us that FB knows very well (with scientific studies) the harm they're causing, and decided not to do anything just because this would cut their profits. This is the main issue.

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

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Post by whimsicalism » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

hunterb123 wrote: post #230

rajin444 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech is only a right as far as the constitution guarantees (which is limited). Personally I’d like US culture to fully embrace the value of free speech, but support for it generally depends on if your favorite political party is in power. If we truly valued free speech we would not have all this debate over censorship.

The Bill of Rights is a list of God given rights the government CANNOT take away from you, not something they give you.

Fascinating how God did not appear to intervene in the preceding 100 centuries of government taking away exactly those rights.

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#363

Post by hammock » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #293

hammock wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP likely means it's disingenuous- the true intentions are hidden- it's part of a lobbying effort for greater control and consolidation of power.

Whose true intentions are hidden, and who is trying to lobby? The person who posted this on HN and all of the people who upvoted it here and all the comments critical of FB here and twitter and twitter users and bloggers and redditors and, yes, traditional news? It seems like the assertion is that this isn't newsworthy... despite the fact that huge amounts of people clearly care, but that this is only really making n…

The general idea is that Facebook will assent to more censorship of undesirable content if and only if the same standard is applied to their competitors. This is achieved via legislation of new regulations. And legislation typically needs some semblance of popular support to pass, hence a ginned up/accelerated/forced narrative. The net effect of new regulations would be to shore up Facebook's market share and dominance of social media, since they are the biggest and can most efficiently execute on any new regulations.

A similar thing happened in the tobacco industry. For decades tobacco was happy to sell cigs relatively freely. But there was a turning point where they acknowledged their unhealthiness, At this point Big Tobacco actually campaigned for greater regulation, and the net result was a consolidation of the entire industry.

There are plenty of other examples as well. Monopoly power is made and preserved by regulation.

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

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Post by chrononaut » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

trutannus wrote: post #22

fighterpilot wrote: post #12

The two best ideas I've heard: - Require age verification by law and ban kids from using it. We ban kids from alcohol we should ban them from this. - Require ID verification by law but allow people to use a fake name. Fixes the bots issue and the kid depression issue. The market isn't going to get there by itself because of competition. If insta implements this then they lose market share to snap. So there's a strong…

> Require ID verification I'll pass on putting my personal ID in the hands of an organization that sells data as a business . No matter how many flimsy laws they put in place to ban selling my PII, you'd have to be born yesterday to think that won't just delay the sale this new treasure-trove of information.

Perhaps there are ways to do it indirectly?

Require a credit card associated with the account that matches the name of the account? (IIRC, you need to be 18+ to get a credit card)

(I recognize this goes outside the scope of GP, and this example may not be viable as I'm sure I am forgetting something here.)

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

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Post by wffurr » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

This is important stuff and I hope something actually comes out of it. This area is ripe for some thoughtful regulation and consumer rejection.

But the HN threads on the topic are uniformly terrible. There's certain topics that just bring all the axe-grinders out of the woodwork and demolish any chance of reasonable discussion.

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#366

Post by spywaregorilla » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #300

spywaregorilla wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe everyone shouldn't use it... because its harmful

Maybe you can’t tell ‘everyone’ what they should do or shouldn’t do. Maybe try telling your mom first and let us know how that went down..

> Maybe you can’t tell ‘everyone’ what they should do or shouldn’t do.

Those are called "laws"

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

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Post by ziddoap » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

jonny_eh wrote: post #336

ziddoap wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what you believe the other 3/4 of the truth is? As far as I know, FB makes money by selling political and religious affiliation, location, age, gender, etc. to advertisers in the form of target markets. I consider most of those to be intimate details of my life.

That's why it's a 3/4 truth. They don't offer "pay us to see John Doe's religious affiliation", instead they offer "show your ad to Catholics". It's more similar to a Catholic TV station selling commercial slots. That said, it can be far more targeted and powerful than a TV commercial, e.g. "show your ad to 18 year old Catholics with post-secondary education in Flint, Michigan".

Thanks for replying and not simply downvoting and moving on. I can see what you (or the parent) was getting at and somewhat agree that it's not a "full" truth, and there is some nuance at play.

Although, with just a few of those variables (age/gender/poltiics/religion/geography) you can likely narrow down your target audience to a few tens of people, making those people identifiable. I recall a few years ago a report along these lines (identifying people through FB's extremely granular targeting) in either Ars or a similar publication. Somewhat analogous would be the IMDB de-anonymization paper. And in these cases, the line is a lot more blurred. All that said, I'm not sure if FB has backed off on the available granularity that allowed such narrow target markets.

Not to mention, if FB can target the market they obviously know each person in the market -- even when not directly giving that information to marketers, I think it's still part of the conversation.

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

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Post by the_af » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

teawrecks wrote: post #299

flavius29663 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything was legal until the lawmakers made it a crime, even stalking from bushes. As the society evolves, we introduce more and more laws to govern it, just as some laws are retired.

So the original claim should have been "nothing is a business model, everything is a crime"?

Do you think that's the most charitable interpretation of the original claim?

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#369

Post by mbesto » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

camdat wrote: post #347

mbesto wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing the whistleblower has revealed is shocking or previously unknown. Yes facebook tweaks an algorithm on your news feed to drive engagement and make money. Known and verified are two very distinct things. Does the public know that Facebook does this? Yes. Do they know it's harmful? Yes. Does Facebook also know this? Yes. Did they tell congress that they know this? No, in fact they told them the opposite. The w…

>This is an incredibly disingenuous description of the situation. Facebook's own (non-public, now publicly leaked) research indicates that Facebook causes harm to teens mental health. The only "US narrative" here is the one backed up my the incredible amount of research supporting the growing issue of mental health in the US (and the world for that matter). This is disingenuous, that same data shows the majority of t…

This is news to me and frankly makes no sense. How does the data say that FB both improved mental health and harmed it?

Can you share your source?

Re: Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

#370

Post by whimsicalism » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #26

fighterpilot wrote: post #12

The two best ideas I've heard: - Require age verification by law and ban kids from using it. We ban kids from alcohol we should ban them from this. - Require ID verification by law but allow people to use a fake name. Fixes the bots issue and the kid depression issue. The market isn't going to get there by itself because of competition. If insta implements this then they lose market share to snap. So there's a strong…

Those sound too chilling. I’d propose banning algorithms for services with over one million users. Users must have complete control over what their feed shows. (And ability to filter)

"banning algorithms"

yeah uh good luck with that one