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Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

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Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#661

Post by raxxorrax »

mullingitover wrote: post #569
hunterb123 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify, can you specify exactly what law you would like made? What do you want to be done exactly ? I would rather take the stance of feed algorithms and moderation logs be PUBLICLY available. Transparency instead of censorship.

> I would rather take the stance of feed algorithms and moderation logs be PUBLICLY available. Transparency instead of censorship. I think that removing CDA Sec 230 protections for algorithmically-curated feeds is the answer. It's one thing to have a basic FIFO feed, it's another to hide or reveal content based on your own internal engagement/revenue targets. At the point where you're crafting bespoke engagement-maxi…

I agree. Especially since political ambition won't be to curb misinformation, it will be to get control about which misinformation will be spread. Harm to users will be an excuse and like misinformation it will be quite difficult to quantify.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#663

Post by raxxorrax »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #547
woeirua wrote: post #77

I think a lot of people are choosing to ignore that a lot of companies have done things in the past that were not illegal at the time of action. However, those actions were later decided to be made illegal because the behavior was deemed to be antithetical to our values. For example, Standard Oil did not break any laws in its ruthless consolidation of the nascent oil industry. In fact, it exploited the law to allow i…

"In response, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 which subsequently prevented the actions that Standard Oil had used to conslidate the market." This tech company employee (aka the "Facebook Whistleblower") is refusing to share the documents she stole with the FTC. Although she did share them with several state attorneys general. It appears she does not support antitrust inquiries. Heavy consolidation o…

I think she didn't really blew the whistle on anything yet. Since tech and Washington are close, I would expect access to said document anyway and they aren't available to the public. So blind trust is required, not a good recommendation if we talk about misinformation.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#664

Post by raxxorrax »

asabjorn wrote: post #640
woeirua wrote: post #77

I think a lot of people are choosing to ignore that a lot of companies have done things in the past that were not illegal at the time of action. However, those actions were later decided to be made illegal because the behavior was deemed to be antithetical to our values. For example, Standard Oil did not break any laws in its ruthless consolidation of the nascent oil industry. In fact, it exploited the law to allow i…

Illegality is dangerous to define and enforce when it comes to speech. Especially if Glenn Greenwald[1] is right that this is not an attempt to weaken facebook, but to commandeer its power to censor. Directory of Policy Communications for Facebook Lena Pietch just called for "standard rules" for the whole internet, increasing the danger because whomever would get that power could widely censor unwanted popular dissen…

This is much more concise reporting on what is happening here and makes much more sense.

I disagree that hiring a lawyer must mean there is a political connection, but the way media frames the issue is again predictable and I personally would frame this as misinformation.

We also have seen no documents. Blindly believing media isn't good advice if the problem is allegedly misinformation.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#665

Post by asdff »

danrocks wrote: post #657

I am very conflicted about this situation. On one hand, I recognize that Facebook may be a sort of anger multiplier when people scroll only through content that reconfirms their biases and buries said people deeper into their "truth bubbles". I get it. On the other hand, the two main pillars of this story: "won't somebody think of the children?" and "the democracy at risk" have been used to justify authoritarian meas…

It goes far beyond electing people you don't like and to leave it at that is either brutally ignorant or willfully ignorant. thanks to facebook you have people refusing vaccinations and injesting horse dewormer. in the before times that sort of behavior would be relegated to those crazy few who would read tabloid rags, now we have police and fire departments who are unable to convince their first responders to get vaccinated.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#666

Post by specialist »

quotemstr wrote: post #583
mullingitover wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would rather take the stance of feed algorithms and moderation logs be PUBLICLY available. Transparency instead of censorship. I think that removing CDA Sec 230 protections for algorithmically-curated feeds is the answer. It's one thing to have a basic FIFO feed, it's another to hide or reveal content based on your own internal engagement/revenue targets. At the point where you're crafting bespoke engagement-maxi…

Your proposal would make HN-style comment ranking illegal. Do you really want to live in the world you propose?

HN's rankings are not personalized, so no filter bubbles.

HN is fully moderated, FB is barely moderated.

HN nerfs their algos. FB weaponizes theirs.

HN applies their rules fairly, evenly. FB does not.

FB has ads. HN does not.

FB weaponizes PII. HN does not.

Etc.

Comparing HN to FB is like bicycle vs freight train, firecracker vs nukes, nice bath vs a hurricane.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#667

Post by Valakas_ »

khazhoux wrote: post #586

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that all successful online sites are damaging to mental health, and have destroyed our collective attention spans, if nothing else. What sets FB apart is simply that it holds the top spot. Cut off FB's dopamine dispenser, and people will just rush to the next one over. And so on and so forth. Even Hacker News... I refresh front page several times a day, looking for another ho…

Our brain was not made for the current world we live in. And companies are ruthless in exploiting it. We were made to feel this dopamine of approval from our few tribe members, who we would spend all our lives with until we would die in battle, or hunting or from some disease. We live in such a farfetched environment, most people don't realise how much this affects us.

We're striving for the same things that in a hunter-gatherer context would make us happy. Now they don't. We are not meant to be surrounded by strangers, we're not meant to have approval dopamine hits from them and from thousands of them. Our brain must even have trouble understanding what that is. We're not meant to go to some magical device to find a partner to spend the rest of the life with while in the process discarding other strangers, (...)

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#668

Post by RubberMullet »

travoc wrote: post #42
prvc wrote: post #29

What concrete information has been revealed that implicates Facebook in illegal behavior? How does the "whistleblower"'s stated desires wrt goverment-mandated moderation standards differ from those articulated by representatives of the company itself? Such a framework would shift liability away from the company, possibly reduce their moderation load, and create a significant barrier for entry for potential competitor…

The whistleblower is taking a huge legal risk here. I wonder if the Wall Street Journal has really explained the consequences to the leaker.

Not like Snowden, Kiriakou, or Binney. This whole thing has been carefully orchestrated. She probably has a position at the Brookings Institute waiting for her but not before she completes her podcast/talk show book tour.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#669

Post by smsm42 »

dillondoyle wrote: post #607
smsm42 wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't believe NYT is liberal, you're just refusing to recognize the reality. You may love NYT, you may agree with what they say 100 times out of 100, which is fine, but it doesn't change the fact they are a liberal media outlet and have been since forever. If you ignore that, you're just voluntarily skewing your picture of reality. Maybe you think "liberal" means "bad" (which would be weird as I suspect your o…

Do you have examples of importantly not opinion pieces which you consider liberal? to me their reporting is very flat and caged in a good way.

First of all, I don't see why opinion pieces should be excluded. If a newspaper only publishes liberal opinions, it's a liberal newspaper. And we all know one can be fired from NYT for allowing a non-liberal opinion to be published.

Second, just looking at today's politics page, we can see criticizing McConnell, promoting Biden's "infrastructure" spending, criticizing Kirsten Sinema, lamenting Democratic loss of votes, attacking Arizona for removing mask mandates, pushing the angle that parents objecting to teaching CRT are "domestic terrorists", reporting Democrat talking points on budget issue while not even bothering with representing the other side. This would be very weird for a balanced media, but completely as expected for a liberal one. To be sure, I'd of course except the same behavior (with a different accent, of course) from a conservative newspaper - criticizing Biden and not McConnell, opposing Biden bills and not supporting them, etc. etc. The point is there's clear ideological position which can be identified very easily. If you take a random article from NYT and show it to somebody without telling where it's from and ask if it's from a liberal or conservative newspaper, I'm sure you get very high percentage of correct answers. It's rather obvious - and if you look it up, NYT people aren't exactly hiding it.

And that happens every day, day to day. Of course, compared to some antifa twitter, they're probably "caged" and "flat". They are a respectable, mainstream, run-of-the-mill liberal newspaper.

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