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Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

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Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#371

Post by owlbite »

ravi-delia wrote: post #117
nickloewen wrote: post #56

With the caveat that I don’t know much about Facebook’s research projects… the question “If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place?” sets alarm bells ringing for me—because I can imagine a cigarette company saying the same thing about the scientists they hired to argue that smoking isn’t so bad after all, or an oil…

I think that the point here is that all the controversy is because of a study from Facebook's own research. If a cigarette company came out with a study showing cigarettes were dangerous, perhaps it would be a different story. Of course, I wouldn't say that being aware of the problems your product causes makes you less culpable; just the opposite.

Sure, but if a cigarette company commission a whole load of research, sat on the "bad" results and publicized the "good" ones, and then a whistleblower came forwards and showed the world the bad ones they had sat on...

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#372

Post by imgabe »

djabatt wrote: post #333
angelzen wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Facebook has created a system of incentives that are inexorably leading to harmful outcomes" Exactly right. The solution baffles me. "Force Facebook to reveal and permit research so we understand the system and fix it" Basically keep the harmful system in place, but pass the reins to an unspecified cabal hiding under the innocuous word "we". Hard pass.

The "lean in" people and incentives have made society suffer for profit. Perhaps we can define a better set of incentives that reward companies of people building products.

We can. It's called pay directly for the services you use. It is a time-honored system where you give providers money in exchange for goods and services. In response, their incentive is to keep you happy and healthy and prosperous so you can continue to give them money.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#373

Post by wpietri »

burnished wrote: post #234
wpietri wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So maybe Zuck is telling the truth here, that they are trying to fix all this. But no one can see the forest from the trees. Ah, this is what I think of as Schrodinger's Accountability. Zuckerberg and Facebook's senior execs are simultaneously: A) so brilliant for running Facebook that they deserve to be incredibly rich, and B) so normal that they can't possibly be expected to understand the consequences of their a…

You may be missing the point if you think your point is orthogonal to theirs. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have to be painted as a reptiloid in order for his actions to be bad, or for those actions to cause harm. More than blaming shit needs to get fixed right? We can still hold people culpable, but we don't need to do that, don't need to indict anyone before trying to fix a problem that is self perpetuating due to indivi…

The senior execs are the ones who set up the incentive systems there. They are the ones who are richly paid to provide oversight. So either this is exactly what they want or they're hopelessly incompetent.

And yes, I think we should change the incentives. We should change them such that executives face direct personal punishment for negligent or intentional harm. We should have learned that lesson during the 2008 financial crisis, but instead nobody did time. The worst that happened was that some very rich people were forced to give back a modest percentage of their gains.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#374

Post by tehjoker »

fallingknife wrote: post #367
tehjoker wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe subject algorithmic feeds to public oversight.

It is subject to public oversight. It's designed to give the public exactly what they want.

That's like saying a slot machine is regulated by the gambling addict.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#375

Post by mst »

wrycoder wrote: post #328
timClicks wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that a 2 party system means that both parties attempt to occupy the center, because there are so few swing voters.

This. The result is what I call the democratic (small d) wobble. Each party gives just enough to win (in their judgement) and the independents choose. The result is a wobble left for awhile, then a wobble right.

A bunch of models I've seen suggest that from 2016 onwards negative polarisation means that it's turnout of each side's base, not independents, that's deciding elections now.

However the resulting wobbling isn't much different in practice outcome-wise so far because turnout tends to depend on level of outrage which depends on how long the other side's been in power, it's had much more significant of an effect on how elections need to be fought.

(much information about this can be found by googling 'negative partisanship' or 'rachel bitecofer' +/- the word 'model', I'm not including specific links because which outlets/articles/etc. will be preferable to a given reader will likely vary so providing a guide to finding a range to select from seems more useful than my trying to select on others' behalf)

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#376

Post by nonfamous »

spoonjim wrote: post #278
wpietri wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who mentions the banality of evil, dannykwells, has an excellent point. But there's more at play here. I briefly worked on Twitter's anti-abuse engineering. Many of the people on that team cared a lot about protecting people. I sure did. But we didn't have the necessary power to actually solve the problem. The people who did have that power were senior execs. They might say that they cared. In their heart…

This is a place where the founder-CEO-demigod like Zuck should able to make better decisions than a professional team like Twitter. The long term profit maximization strategy was to maximize profits only up to the point where you risk getting regulated by government. With all the fawning praise of him as a kid I don’t think Zuck envisioned that one day both Democrats and Republicans would be united in their desire to…

Zuck is desperate to be regulated: he asks for Congress to step in every time he’s asked.

Regulation would be awesome for Facebook: not only would it be a fig leaf for all their social problems (“hey, it’s not our problem anymore”), it would also stifle any potential competitors out of their market. The costs of regulation are regressive: much more easily absorbed by BigCos than any startup.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#378

Post by mst »

mpd wrote: post #22
pshc wrote: post #9

Three minutes of my life I'm never going to get back. You can stop reading by paragraph two at "We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health." All Facebook cares about is engagement.

I stopped reading about two seconds in, when it popped up some dumb thing trying to get me to log in / sign up.

I did think the fact that his "we're not actually pure amoral engagement maximisers" article was gated behind first signing up and logging in was just perfect under the circumstances.

Honestly seemed to be quite sufficient of a summary of whatever the text was, to a great extent.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#379

Post by throwaway09223 »

angelzen wrote: post #281
throwaway09223 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been framing this whole thing as a universal property of human society and it seems to fit pretty well for me. Outrage attracts attention in all group interactions. I can't think of a single large scale group forum where this isn't true. It's integral to an absurd degree in our news cycle. Howard Stern exploited this property in his rise to fame. It's a core element in state propaganda, well documented throughou…

> Communications on Facebook aren't worse than what was on the internet two decades ago. Let's not underestimate the degree to which 'likes' (social affirmation ersatz) are eliciting the worst in people.

My point is that Facebook likes are simply a manifestation of a ubiquitous social characteristic.

We all get likes. Sometimes they're called upvotes. Sometimes they're called replies. Sometimes they're cumulatively seen as our status in the social pecking order.

Facebook doesn't add anything truly new or transformative here. These problems and patterns are ancient.

Re: Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

#380

Post by LudvigVanHassen »

hollerith wrote: post #343
BobbyJo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's an emergent property, I think it's a by-product of the constraints. It's all well and good that they want to make Facebook safe and healthy, and I honestly believe plenty of people working there are trying to do just that. However, they are operating under the constraint that they cannot move backwards on profits, and therefore engagement. Imagine if you were trying to fix climate change, but under…

I think a more apt analogy has advertising as Facebook's fossil-fuel burning, but then I expect severely curtailing fossil-fuel use will severely reduce GDP, which I am guessing is not a common belief around here. (I'm guessing that many around here think that it is essentially just the stubbornness of those in power that keeps fossil-fuel use high, and that even if we force the whole world economy to transition to 1…

The hypothetical "most people" in this statement would be dreadfully, dreadfully wrong if they think it would all turn out fine. They are vastly under estimating how much the modern world, in literally almost any aspect you can imagine, is reliant on fossil fuels.
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