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Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd give that about 10 minutes before someone started claiming that their baby was immune to covid, and then you're right back where you started.
But isn't that only happening because of FB allowing disinformation to spread so easily?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd give that about 10 minutes before someone started claiming that their baby was immune to covid, and then you're right back where you started.
But isn't that only happening because of FB allowing disinformation to spread so easily?
Generally I try and shy away from being too alarmist, but I am so disillusioned with the kind of tech worker HN's userbase seems to represent. I think it's a feckless attitude to think that working in one of the best-paid, global, most influential professions in the world right now means that your only obligation is to clock in on time, code whatever you're told to code, take no ownership of the effect your work may…
It's unfortunately very much in the interest of Facebook's leadership team to discourage it, however, as a clock in clock out, see and hear no evil labor culture is good for the leaders' personal wealth, so ethics be damned, number go up.
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.
Or they could just not show posts to groups you're not in and from pages and public profiles you don't follow! Allowing something to interject into your newsfeed should be opt-in, but right now it isn't even opt-out, except for not logging on at all. It would also be cool if there were a way to opt-out from seeing shared posts selectively for people on your friends list, e.g. I want to see things that Overly Political Relative posts themselves, but not things that they share from other places.
That being said, I deactivated my Facebook account a couple years ago, so I'm no longer a user whose opinion they should theoretically care about anymore.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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’m sure they could develop a classifier that would catch most (~90%) of political content, and make it opt-in - if people want to see it they can, but it could be hidden by default. This would be my preferred approach, so that I can use it for connecting with people but avoid listening to everyone’s political outrage.
Eh, I don't really like that idea. For one, it only really addresses the problem of being exposed to content you find unenjoyable.
Honestly, sometimes I do wonder if consumer-level broadcast technology is the psychic equivalent of doing something like letting everyone fly planes without any training. It might be better to adopt communication technologies with a little more friction.
If we were to discuss politics at work at any length we would be at immediate risk of losing valuable people. We all pretty much know where we stand on politics, and it is not together. And many of us feel very strongly about our irreconcilable positions. But by carefully not talking about them (or engaging when someone less in tune starts) we get along just fine. That's not official policy but it is a good one.
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.
At 3 paragraphs (131 words), that was a really short article. However, I agree with the subheading: "Mark Zuckerberg says employees shouldn’t have to confront social issues in their day-to-day work unless they want to" That sounds good to me. I've never had to talk about these kind of things at work. Are there work places where this is unavoidable?
If you work for a large social network with huge social responsibilities, discussions about ethics ought to be unavoidable, in my opinion. If you're writing accounting software for paper suppliers or something equally banal with few ethical implications, then sure, there's no need (and less reason) to have water cooler conversations about pro-genocide agitprop or whatever. EDIT to add that of course not all departmen…
The company's products are in no way social media platforms.
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'd give that about 10 minutes before someone started claiming that their baby was immune to covid, and then you're right back where you started.
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.
Why would they give up control of the world by doing something silly like that? Think about how much political influence Twitter has based solely on which tweets they show the President and corporate press. Consider how much untraced in-kind donations these companies can make by tweaking which news stories you see. The crazy thing about it is these things can be tweaked by humans, but it's largely controlled by AI now, which no one person will completely understand what's happening in any of these systems. We're in the early stages of AI controlling the global political future and it will tend to create whatever kind of future generates the most clicks. It's kind of like the game Universal Paperclips, except with clicks/rage/ads.