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FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

wsj.com

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Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#461

Post by kelnos »

baby wrote: post #278
ciarannolan wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also there for the world to see. I just think on balance Facebook is a force for social destruction and individual harm on a scale never even imagined. I looked at your blog; you seem like a talented, driven person. Why not apply those gifts to something meaningful? Why spend your limited working years building tools for this horrible company?

Well from my comments it should be obvious that we don’t agree :)

The problem is that we can't take your agreement or disagreement at face value. The OP that prompted this entire thread admitted, front and center, that their $400k total comp number was very seductive. People do and believe all sorts of things when their fat salary incentivizes them to do so, even if they don't consciously realize it.

What's that Upton Sinclair quote? Ah, yes: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

I recognize that it might not seem fair to take this position, but understand that it's an easy one to take when I look at FB's negative effects not just on the world, but on the lives of actual people I know. It seems unlikely to me that a disinterested party could truly weigh FB's positives and negatives and think the balance is positive. But you are far from unbiased, and I hope you can at least realize that.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#462

Post by kelnos »

throwitawayfb wrote: post #168

I've just been given an offer from Facebook and I have a few days to decide to take the job or not. The ethical implications of what I'm doing are intense. On one hand, a near 400k total comp package is very nice, but on the other hand I don't want to make the world worse off. I think if I could make that kind of money working from home for another company it'd be an easier decision. Unfortunately, I have to play the…

> Unfortunately, I have to play the hand I'm dealt.

Usually you see someone say something like this when they're presented with truly awful options. Seeing it used to refer to a $400k comp package is a bit jarring.

And if you've made it through FB's hiring process and they've given you an attractive offer, I find it hard to believe you don't have other options that don't involve a big ethical quandary, or wouldn't if you interviewed around more.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#463

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

monocasa wrote: post #343
hartator wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is not about stopping the post of fb anymore but arresting these people. Yes a judge should make that decision.

The state of Burma allowed the massacres though. You can't trust a judge to shut it down.

After that episode Facebook should have been subject to an immediate inquiry and then US courts should have ordered FB to not operate in Burma/Myanmar until further notice.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#464

Post by kelnos »

greencabs wrote: post #397
jyrkesh wrote: post #382

> Ctrl+F -> "quit.", "quit " I see so much debate about what's right to do within FB, "how will people change the structure from the inside with this rule?", etc. QUIT. Just quit. Seriously. Make it public why you quit. Quit en masse. FB is not a good company. Your talents are useful in many other places. Yes, I'm privileged in saying this. No, I wouldn't feel comfortable quitting my job right now. But if you believe…

They will, in fact, just hire somebody else. American companies have access to an unlimited supply of labor. Better to stick around and try to unionize. It may not happen in your lifetime, but the other fact is the United States is a corporate hellworld. Workers have no say in anything. Until that changes, the corporations won’t.

> They will, in fact, just hire somebody else.

That's fine, let them. "If I don't do it, someone else will" is a poor justification for anything.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#465

Post by kelnos »

nindalf wrote: post #165
munificent wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Banning a harmful substance, and banning a platform for communication are not comparable. OK, consider gambling. That is simply a kind of software that enables people to engage in behavior that turns out to be harmful for a large number of them. And, because of that fact, it is heavily regulated. > What is the legislation you propose to prevent Facebook, or the millions of other existing or soon-to-be existing apps…

Well that's all I'm asking for here. A practical proposal. Removing tetraethyl lead was certainly doable. Removing every car from the road was not. One was a targeted change that improved the industry, while the latter was so impractical that they never considered it. Here's a thought - you assume a priori that shutting down social media would be a net win. How did you come to that conclusion? Did you spare a thought…

> Did you spare a thought for the people who's social lives revolve around spending time with friends online?

I don't agree that banning social networks would be productive or even possible, but this argument doesn't make sense. People had social lives before social networking. People had friends online before social networking. Social networking is not required for these things.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#466

Post by kelnos »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #389
claudeganon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you have to shut down Facebook. Just shut down targeted advertising, algorithmic filtering of content, and a lot of their surveillance practices (e.g. shadow profiles).

Should Google's targeted advertising also be prohibited? Should Google's algorithmic filtering of content also be prohibited? Should Doubleclick/Google's surveillance practices (which almost certainly include some kind of "shadow" profile) be prohibited? Also, people have been talking about shadow profiles for at least a decade now, and yet no disgruntled FB employee has revealed all. Why do you think that is?

Yes, Google's similar practices should also be prohibited. You ask as if it's obvious that someone would say no and show themselves to be a hypocrite, which is weird.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#467

Post by kelnos »

thu2111 wrote: post #426
paganel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> claiming that their baby was immune to covid Some people are indeed immune to covid, babies too, most probably. I've personally heard of numerous cases of persons not getting the virus at all while their spouse was in intensive therapy or worse.

It's hilarious that in a thread about misinformation the idea that children are immune is being treated as not true. Death rates for COVID for people under 20 are ~zero. Babies are in fact immune, perhaps due to relatively lower levels of ACE2 expression compared to adults. HN readers seem to have totally lost it w.r.t. COVID and misinformation. It's practically guaranteed that in any thread about misinformation/FB/T…

First off, you're moving the goalposts a bit here. No one claimed that the death rate for people under 20 was anywhere near that of older age groups.

Your assertion that "babies are in fact immune" is demonstrably false: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-... shows 20 deaths for children under 1 year old. Presumably many more than that were infected but survived (unfortunately covid.cdc.gov is timing out for me right now and a quick search didn't give me infection rates for that age group).

Yes, the number is small compared to cases in older people. But "babies in fact are immune" is in fact the same kind of misinformation you're railing against.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#468

Post by kelnos »

drchopchop wrote: post #19
satya71 wrote: post #8

How about bringing the same rules to the wider FB? I just want to look at baby pictures and connect with friends. I don't want to be part of a machinery that spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories.

I can't see how that is even possible at this point. You'd have to remove groups, pages, public profiles, and sharing, which would wreck the advertising and revenue ecosystem. Or, come up with magical AI which could detect politics/memes/disinformation and remove it instantly after it's been posted.

I don't think you need to do that. I think just making the timeline a reverse-chronological firehose, and not filtering any posts out or making any posts more prominent, would do wonders. That's how Facebook used to present the feed.

Giving people tools to make sub-lists of certain friends/groups/etc. in order to organize their experience better (on their terms, not at FB's whim) would be great, too.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#469

Post by kelnos »

Thorentis wrote: post #318
freehunter wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It makes sense for Facebook to show people content they want to see. The problem is, Facebook doesn’t show people content that they want to see. They show people content that they will engage with. That’s a very important distinction. HN algorithm/moderators actually explicitly do the opposite: if a thread gets too many comments too quickly, it’s ranked downward. The assumption is too many comments too quickly indic…

My point is that this what happens in real life. People will continue to engage in stuff that they want to engage in. Facebook doesn't force people to engage in anything. I think it is far worse to attempt to condition people by showing them things *they wouldn't otherwise engage with". What is scarier, showing somebody something they want to engage in based on their past behaviour, or showing somebody something they…

> I think it is far worse to attempt to condition people by showing them things they wouldn't otherwise engage with". What is scarier, showing somebody something they want to engage in based on their past behaviour, or showing somebody something they wouldn't have otherwise seen if you hadn't gone out of your way to shove it down their throat?*

I don't think that makes sense, and I don't think that's what anyone's advocating for.

If you friend someone, or follow a page, or whatever, you are explicitly saying "I want to hear what this person/group has to say". They aren't saying "I want FB to carefully curate what this person/group says in order to increase my engagement of FB". FB shouldn't promote, hide, or reorder anything coming from someone who I've explicitly chosen to follow. It should just show me all of it, and let me decide what I do and don't want to see.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#470

Post by kelnos »

triceratops wrote: post #376
Talanes wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot say something into one end of the telephone, and depending on the content of my message, not have it delivered on the other end. That's the difference.

If the phone company finds out you're running an illegal/scammy robocalling operation from their phone line, they absolutely will cut you off.

Cutting you off entirely is not the same thing as chopping up what you're saying and selectively passing through parts of it and not others.
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