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Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#61

Post by drak0n1c »

louwrentius wrote: post #25
glial wrote: post #2

Personally I've been off of Facebook since 2008 but...don't hate the player, hate the game. Facebook makes big money serving ultra-targeted ads for their customers. But, it's not the only one: see Twitter, Google, etc. Penalizing Facebook without also changing the incentive structure (personalized advertising) is a short-term, short-sighted fix.

What kind of moral values do you hold (if any) if your whole plan was to just create a page on which you can 'rate women'? How can anyone justify working at facebook, knowing perfectly well what they do. It just shows more that money seems to quiet a lot of consciences. And look at all that amazing tech you could work on! Werner von Braun worked also on awesome rocket tech back in the day...

Nearly every immature teenager of both sexes has stack-ranked their sexual interest in peers when gossiping with friends. Yes, a teenager hacking together a website that does such publicly is worse because of how it magnifies the behavior and its consequences at scale. But is that so beyond the pale that the individual is deemed incapable of ever holding favorable moral values?

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#62

Post by chrisco255 »

binxbolling wrote: post #48
luckylion wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Cancel culture seems to be primarily on Twitter, which is also more in line with their ideology than FB. FB feels more "normal people outraged about dog being abandoned".

Cancel culture is not primarily anywhere. For as long as humans have existed we have wanted to persuade our peers to avoid some things and embrace others; we have wanted some voices amplified and some quieted; we have wanted people to face the consequences of their actions and to reap what they've sown. That's all cancel culture is at its root. It's been rebranded in America's asinine culture wars so we can pretend t…

Clearly a difference in magnitude can be a difference in kind altogether. The ability for disparately frustrated individuals to all echo chamber their way into a fever pitch that affects the news cycle and the political cycle is quite new.

Twenty years ago, an insensitive (and probably intoxicated) comment at a bar would be forgotten about the next day. Today, someone says the wrong thing on the internet and a pitchfork mob is ready to cancel their humanity forever.

Has this sort of witch hunting occurred in human history? Yes, but we typically taught these lessons as cautionary tales of the hysterical past, not blueprints for the 21st century.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#63

Post by smitty1e »

burlesona wrote: post #18

Money quote at the end: > Like industrial-age steel companies dumping poisonous waste into waterways, Facebook pumps paranoia and disinformation into the body politic, the toxic byproduct of its relentless drive for profit. We eventually cleaned up the waste. It’s an open question whether we can clean up after Facebook.

Source of 1619 project says what?

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#64

Post by unishark »

ponker wrote: post #19

I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a “good” guy. When you think about connecting the world it sounded great at the time, what could be better than more contact with more people? Especially when you can make billions of dollars doing it. Then it turns out that people are horrible and that over-connecting them can be fatally destructive. To deal with his cognitive dissonance at building something of nuclear-weap…

I thought he started out as a shark that ripped off his classmates business idea.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#65

Post by beagle3 »

egypturnash wrote: post #36
sollewitt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much exacy are you willing to pay per Google search?

I started to think about this and now I find myself wondering if “internet search” is one of those things that should be a public good, funded by everyone’s taxes. Like libraries - their mission is pretty much the same as Google’s stated mission “make all the world’s information accessible”. Just take it out of the realm of commerce entirely.

I don't remember where I saw this idea, but it seems right:

If public libraries did not exist in this day and age, and someone floated the idea, they would be laughed at and/or fought in the courts of law and public opinion. "It would cause authors to starve! It's socialist/communist! There is no reason I should fund your perverse taste in books!" etc.

It is considered axiomatic in Europe, but in the US even things like public schools and public fire brigades are not controversial to some segments of the population.

Internet search should be a public good, as should internet service, and email service , much like public schools and the postal service; but it won't happen any time soon just because it makes sense.

I think the reason it will happen in some form, sooner or later, is the fact the US is the de-facto hegemon of the internet by being the jurisdiction of Google, Facebook, Amazon/AWS and Microsoft. The NSA+FBI+CIA are able, by decree through NSLs, to read and rewrite the personal communication of probably 90% of the world population, as well as shape their search results. FB has already shown they can affect mood of population at large (in an experiment they did without consent and of which they were proud at the time!) - and they will surely cooperate with governments if "asked" (In the "speak softly and carry a large gun" sense of asking, but likely even without it).

At some point, likely after being burned by this (but possibly before), governments will likely setup a local hegemony if only to deleverage the US. Russia and China already did.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#66

Post by saeranv »

BrandonM wrote: post #29

I've recently been thinking about the parallels between social media and the Tower of Babel. Maybe ancient societies were onto something when they warned us of the dangers of everyone communicating with one another. Perhaps there's something more robust about a dispersed humanity where a message can't be distributed to everyone.

That's an interesting thought. Instant communication seems to pair badly with our inherent bias towards novelty and bigotry. In the past, we had gatekeepers (i.e media) that were educated enough to edit and contextualize communication to control that bias. Increasing the ability for everyone to communicate with one another has really unleased the worst of humanity.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#67

Post by saeranv »

ponker wrote: post #19

I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a “good” guy. When you think about connecting the world it sounded great at the time, what could be better than more contact with more people? Especially when you can make billions of dollars doing it. Then it turns out that people are horrible and that over-connecting them can be fatally destructive. To deal with his cognitive dissonance at building something of nuclear-weap…

I kind of agree with you. I am still impressed with his commitment to donate his wealth to charity. Facebook may not have started with the best of intentions, or with complete integrity - but that doesn't equal the scale of evil (i.e actual genocide) that Facebook is now responsible for. He just made the same mistake a lot of us also would have made: underestimating humanity's capacity for evil.

That being said, at some point it seems clear that FB internally recognized that FB was being used to support violent authoritarian politics - and the Zuckerberg/Sandberg/Kaplan crowd should be held responsible for that. It is shocking to me how badly they seemed to have acted (and are continuing to act) in response to bad faith political actors, and how much they have torched their own reputation as a result.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#68

Post by cafard »

AlexandrB wrote: post #27

This conversation has been had on HN a few dozen times now, so let me predict posts we'll see: > Framing of Facebook as just the next stage in the evolution of mass media. > Personal story about how Facebook helped someone find help or companionship in a tough time. > Admonitions about how Facebook's benefits are not worth the societal cost. > A call for regulation. > A call for a free-market solution. > A post from…

Shoot, I haven't used Facebook, not just since 1914, but since Frederick the Great marched into Silesia. (You can see that I, too, date stuff by the Hohenzollerns.)

I do wonder whether we'd be having this conversation if Clinton had won Florida and Michigan in 2016.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#69

Post by fluffernutter »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #35
AlexandrB wrote: post #27

This conversation has been had on HN a few dozen times now, so let me predict posts we'll see: > Framing of Facebook as just the next stage in the evolution of mass media. > Personal story about how Facebook helped someone find help or companionship in a tough time. > Admonitions about how Facebook's benefits are not worth the societal cost. > A call for regulation. > A call for a free-market solution. > A post from…

Facebook is being targeted by cancel culture because of their refusal to entirely ban republicans off their platform.

There is no such thing as cancel culture, just like there is no such thing as the Q behind Qanon. The reason why is because these concepts are memes held in the collective consciousness of humans (and now AI because we trained them on our crap).

No one person or organization exists to "cancel" things. It's a thing that happens, like nuns all meowing together at the same time. It's a phenomenon of nature, or mind, but not at an individual organization or at a personal belief level.

In other words, people may be "for" "cancel culture", but the growth and life of the phenomenon itself is empty of meaning in the individualist sense. Also, because things like Facebook enable these memes to form, your statement could easily be rewritten:

> Facebook is being targeted by mass thinking on their platform because of their refusal to entirely ban republicans off their platform.

Now we see the truth of the matter, which is that Republicans support the Tragedy of the Commons for their own gain.

Re: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

#70

Post by mtalantikite »

AnonC wrote: post #52
mtalantikite wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you not be able to stay in touch with them without Facebook? I deleted Facebook a number of years ago and still seem to be in touch with family and friends. Personally I think facebook, instagram, and WhatsApp should be broken apart.

I’m completely against Facebook and agree with the sentiment to break up the company, but the fact that you’re in touch with family and friends without Facebook says more about those people...it may not be the same for the GP or many other people where the people in their lives have a lot going on and prefer these platforms for convenience because “everybody is there”. We can’t achieve change at a rapid pace by dismi…

I mean it’s not like I’m handwriting letters over here (although I do do that from time to time). Between FaceTime, email, signal groups, and regular calls/text messages I’ve kept the close people close in my life. I understand people are sort of lazy and want to be where everyone else is out of convenience, but if that place is actively ruining the world I think we should expend a bit of personal effort to not let that happen.
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