Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 719 posts

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

#471

Post by coliveira »

litesaber wrote: post #452
coliveira wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Do you have a link for the leaked research or the pointer to what we know FB knows? It's been difficult to figure out what exactly this is. The reporting on this has been terrible, what exactly has the whistle been blown over?

The papers are covered by WSJ.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039

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

#472

Post by RandomLensman »

runawaybottle wrote: post #437
joelbluminator wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not against I am just saying there is no legal base to make an example out of Facebook when our entire culture operates the same way.

It’s hard to find the proper analogy since the phenomenon is so new. On a legal basis, it was actually hard to build a case against the Mafia until racketeering laws were passed. It was difficult to prove that it was ‘organized’ crime before then (where before the criminals could say these are all unrelated events, and there is no larger organization, there is no boss, there are no lieutenants, you are imagining conn…

At least in case of the Nazis it was not so effective. The Nazis did not come to power by propaganda. In elections they did not exceed about 1/3 of the votes. The got to power by having another party voting the power to them. Afterwards they actually used plain old violence and economics to achieve their objectives (i.e. it paid to "come along").

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

#473

Post by prancer_or_vix »

mgraczyk wrote: post #255
runawaybottle wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to your point, there’s not a soul in tech that ever went ‘I wonder if the results of this A/B test are ethical?’. Our industry is just not built with this sensibility, the same way Finance is not self-aware of greed . If it makes money in Finance and meets regulatory guidelines, all is fair. If it’s the optimal solution in tech, and doesn’t break laws or cause a noticeable usage drop-off, all is fair. When the…

This isn't even close to being true. For example, when we ran A/B tests at Instagram, we would often dig into the results with breakdowns by important protected demographics. Engineers and data scientists who cared about justice would go out of their way to build tools and spend time ensuring that "good" changes didn't adversely affect small groups which were hard to measure. I personally ran analysis like this to de…

> I personally ran analysis like this to detect high and unexpected latency on people with cheaper cell phones (disproportionately minorities in the US). The results of my analysis led to changes that reduced this disparity

Something tells me that "the poors" not having access to the problematic content/software isn't the the ethical dilemma that's being discussed.

That's like saying "I ran the analysis that determined that powder cocaine being expensive was causing a disparity in access, so I helped invent crack cocaine so that even minorities could experience cocaine addiction".

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

#474

Post by joelbluminator »

runawaybottle wrote: post #437
joelbluminator wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not against I am just saying there is no legal base to make an example out of Facebook when our entire culture operates the same way.

It’s hard to find the proper analogy since the phenomenon is so new. On a legal basis, it was actually hard to build a case against the Mafia until racketeering laws were passed. It was difficult to prove that it was ‘organized’ crime before then (where before the criminals could say these are all unrelated events, and there is no larger organization, there is no boss, there are no lieutenants, you are imagining conn…

Some people think Fox News spews insiduous propaganda. I think Facebook is merely a symptom of a very complicated problem.

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

#475

Post by ricw »

mgraczyk wrote: post #239
calrueb wrote: post #143

I like to imagine there are a bunch of Facebook Homefeed engineers out there who ran dozens experiments, tuning this-and-that, and found the ones that boosted revenue, and user engagement by X%. No one thought too deeply at _why_ some experiments were successful. Perhaps it was chalked up as "our new ML model is matching users to content they care about more efficiently". Then they shipped it, and everyone celebrated…

I worked on the things you mentioned at Instagram, doing the tuning this-and-that for about a year on a few different surfaces including the home feed. You are right that for the most part, people look at metrics and make decisions about what to ship, and only the best engineers and data scientists spend time thinking about the actual product. However, you're wrong about what metrics are important. Since at least ear…

Can you then explain why, as the whistleblower alleges, all the programs to keep the newsfeed "clean" for the 2020 election campaign were turned off a month or two after the election? This would have certainly lead to a degradation of all the non-engagement metrics. It seems inconsistent with what is being leaked right now from within FB.

In my opinion, what you describe is what facebook wants people to believe, but actively undermines and internally prevents from happening. In other words, tracking wellbeing / non-engagement metrics and everything around it is PR that seemingly even employees are made to believe.

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

#476

Post by bingohbangoh »

Something is very fishy here.

The whistleblower here is incredibly liberal. She's working with a law firm with a long history of liberal bias including relations to the Trump impeachment. She has raised bias concerns with past employers.

Similarly, there was a 60min documentary lined up within 24 hours after her whistle blowing.

Now we have a congressional meeting only 72hr later.

So far as I can tell, her solution to all this is "make Facebook punish bad people" by which her definition is "opposes mask and vaccine mandates."

Facebook is no angel and is absolutely guilty of some bad things. *However*, people voicing on an open platform has been a net positive on humanity. We have avoided endless wars in this social media era; there are too many eyes on issues for us to fall into more wars. The scrutiny on the Biden administration's controversial pull-out of Afghanistan is evidence of this.

Why is her solution here to limit how much of this sort of scrutiny can go on as opposed to allowing for more of it? Why are so many institutions now lining up behind her?

It just feels very very off to me.

Edit: a lot more further weirdness includes claiming her team would've prevented the January 6th riots. What?

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

#477

Post by slg »

joelbluminator wrote: post #355
nullityrofl wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a lot of people advocating for the death of the cult of celebrity and the narcissism it breeds in society, so maybe yes?

I am not against I am just saying there is no legal base to make an example out of Facebook when our entire culture operates the same way.

To be clear I was not making a legal argument. IANAL and have no idea the legal ramifications of all these issues. I was explaining why people are more receptive to this line of complaint against Facebook.

And honestly I think the legal argument is kind of moot. She is testifying in Congress, the body that creates the laws. If society doesn't like what Facebook is doing, we can create new laws that would give a legal basis to step in.

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

#478

Post by danny_taco »

quotemstr wrote: post #424
streamofdigits wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be convincing proof according to your standards? The complete implosion of democracy? The visible persecution of some minority? Tracing everything back via a proper legalistic paper trail to the actions of a single corporate entity? That's not how the road to hell is usually paved. Who redefined "Terms and norms"? Who declared that privacy is dead? The problem really is that people have normalized a practi…

Yes, FB or anyone else should be punished only after violating a law written down for everyone to see in advance of the action that supposedly violated that law. The road to hell is built by ignoring the rule of law to go after whoever is "bad" in the moment. There's an ancient legal principle called "nulla poena sina legal", which means "no punishment without a law". It's the foundation of all justice. Here's a clas…

I agree, and the harm is already done. What we can do is legislate new laws to combat these insidious practices from facebook. Which is unlikely to occur, so the problem will persist until something breaks. And that is how it's done, not by skirting the law, but by not adjusting it to our times.

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

#480

Post by spywaregorilla »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #406
spywaregorilla wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe you can’t tell ‘everyone’ what they should do or shouldn’t do. Those are called "laws"

Define ‘law’. Thank you.

You should know about laws, friend!
Post reply on HN