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New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

reuters.com

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Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#71

Post by jaabe »

temp1928384 wrote: post #63

Anyone else working in tech for the past few years having more frequent existential crises about what they have enabled? I have never worked at FB, but I've worked at a few well known yet somewhat controversial companies (in fintech, marketplaces, etc.) that I sometimes feel uneasy about.

I work in the public sector, so we never do evil things like that. I do often wonder if we’re digitizing too much.

Like I pay for public transportation (I’m Danish, we have great public transportation) with an App, which is nice and all, but the user experience is actually worse than when it was just a piece of paper.

We’ve saved the public billions by making some processes easier, but we’ve also digitised a lot of stuff because there was (is) this general idea that digitisation is always better, and it’s just not. Especially not from a user perspective, if you’re a social worker you now have to know how to use 5-10 complicated and error prone IT systems, on top of your regular job, and we just keep on adding more. I mean,those 5-10 systems are linked to their work on top of that there are another 5-10 adiministrative systems and maybe 50 different digital forms.

None of these systems are necessary mind you, 30 years ago, almost none of them existed and our social workers performed better for less money back then.

Overall digitisation has been a benefit though. We’ve managed to eliminate a lot of repetition, we’ve made the total public sector cheaper and we’ve increased the overall quality of our services, but from a user perspective things have mostly deteriorated.

I have no idea how to fix it either.

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#72

Post by jaabe »

chmaynard wrote: post #13

Ever wonder why Facebook is giving everyone on earth so much free software and processing power? They seem to be making money, how do they do it? [10 minutes of deep thought] Ok, we get it. If someone offers you something of value for free, politely say "no thanks" and run the other way. Edit: If a for-profit company offers you something of value at no cost, you or someone else will end up paying for it later. Advert…

I may be the minority, but I don’t mind the advertising aspect as much. Actually I kind of like that it brings me relevant advertising for kickstarters of board games.

What I dislike is all the other evil stuff they do. All the anti-democracy bullshit, the social experiments, the enablement of genocides, anti-vaxxers, the government bot armies and the total disregard for truth.

It may be because I’m European, but I actually think platforms should be held responsible for all the evil they enable.

I didn’t always, but after a decade of Facebook I don’t think anyone should be able to escape responsibility for having supplied a platform it’s users used for genocide.

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#73

Post by zelphirkalt »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #19
jniedrauer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone offers you something of value for free, politely say "no thanks" and run the other way. Where does free software fit in this?

Incidentally, a lot of people do say "no thanks" and run the other way when presented with free (as in freedom) software

I think they are too inexperienced or shortsighted to see the long term implications of opting in to proprietary software and depending on it. They will later suffer for it, until they learn. And some never learn.

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#74

Post by zelphirkalt »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #51
rock_hard wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most everything on the internet is free...so are you saying we should just stop using it?

This is a shortsighted viewpoint of how value, money, and the concept of 'free' works. Someone had to put in effort to put up the websites you use for free. Someone is paying or motivating those developers to keep doing that so you don't have to. The problem is all free software comes at the cost of either being made by someone who is doing it out of kindness or someone who is pawning your data. You cannot know which…

Yes shortsighted, but also uninformed. In an informed sense of the the word group "free software" there are ethical standards connected to it and those are about not "pawning data" as well.

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#75

Post by Dahoon »

jaabe wrote: post #71
temp1928384 wrote: post #63

Anyone else working in tech for the past few years having more frequent existential crises about what they have enabled? I have never worked at FB, but I've worked at a few well known yet somewhat controversial companies (in fintech, marketplaces, etc.) that I sometimes feel uneasy about.

I work in the public sector, so we never do evil things like that. I do often wonder if we’re digitizing too much. Like I pay for public transportation (I’m Danish, we have great public transportation) with an App, which is nice and all, but the user experience is actually worse than when it was just a piece of paper. We’ve saved the public billions by making some processes easier, but we’ve also digitised a lot of s…

I'm not sure I agree that the public sector doesn't do what you call evil things. Like right now in Denmark there are the whole watching every move everyone make via logging phones even though the EU says it is illegal. There's also the thing with forcing children to answer questionnaires that will likely be in the system for... ever basically.

Lots of public sector sites also use Facebook and have Google analytics on their site, so they partake in what Facebook does. Maybe not evil but not good either.

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#76

Post by zelphirkalt »

vageli wrote: post #48
rock_hard wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most everything on the internet is free...so are you saying we should just stop using it?

> Most everything on the internet is free...so are you saying we should just stop using it? Free in what sense? We need to stop constraining the notion of "free" to monetary value.

Yes indeed, thank you!

Even here on HN so many people do not know what they are talking about when they say "free software".

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#77

Post by frereubu »

asark wrote: post #64
temp1928384 wrote: post #63

Anyone else working in tech for the past few years having more frequent existential crises about what they have enabled? I have never worked at FB, but I've worked at a few well known yet somewhat controversial companies (in fintech, marketplaces, etc.) that I sometimes feel uneasy about.

Took me several years past school just to get used to the ordinary level of dishonesty and scumminess that's common to pretty much all business, let alone the worse stuff. Sometimes I think my parents (and, to be fair, children's media) messed up by giving me such a keen sense of right and wrong. Enough otherwise-decent people (like, almost all of them) seem to just look at you like there's something wrong with you w…

It's difficult to tell from your comment how old you are, but I'm in my late 40s and it took me until well into my 30s to find the balance that works for me. It's difficult when so much work seems to require being unquestioning / amoral at best and immoral at worst. The only fixed ideas I had in my head were not working for defence or advertising companies (thanks, Bill Hicks). I now make a nice living running a digital agency that builds websites almost exclusively for third-sector clients (education, non-profit, government etc.) but it took me quite a while to build the skills that would allow me to do that. I can highly recommend starting your own business, no matter how humble, once you've gained enough skills to make what you do valuable to the kind of people you want to work with. The added benefit of working in the third sector is that I'm generally working with nicer people. I think this is partially just the kind of people the sector attracts, but also because the people who work in it aren't so conflicted about the value of what they're doing. So many people I've worked with in corporate environments get fixated on things like status and money, and it just seems to make them bitter and miserable. Along the way I remember one guy in HR in particular who got incredibly excited about me building a link between their HR system and their website so a job that was posted on their HR system automatically turned up on their website. I couldn't believe how small his world had become.

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#78

Post by AlexMuir »

temp1928384 wrote: post #63

Anyone else working in tech for the past few years having more frequent existential crises about what they have enabled? I have never worked at FB, but I've worked at a few well known yet somewhat controversial companies (in fintech, marketplaces, etc.) that I sometimes feel uneasy about.

A lot of stuff that I worked on looked like a net-positive at first, but ended up as a zero sum game.

Now I'm producing an affordable, detailed video course that teaches ordinary people auto engineering. It's the most satisfying project I ever worked on but I'm very dependent on companies and products that I don't love: Google, YouTube, Facebook. I don't enjoy dealing with things like Instagram and that directly costs me a lot of money.

I think my Youtube stuff is amongst the best out there but I refuse to put yellow text, red circles, and my own grinning face on the thumbnails. I don't waste 30 seconds at the end of every video begging people to subscribe, ring the bell, support me on Patreon, comment, hit the thumbs up. I'd prefer to tell people what they need to know and send them on their way - that's directly at odds with YouTube who want to keep them from actually going out to the garage at all costs.

Unfortunately, even producing quality stuff you still end up taking a daily swim in a dirty sea filled with everyone else's floating bullshit.

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#79

Post by sizzle »

temp1928384 wrote: post #63

Anyone else working in tech for the past few years having more frequent existential crises about what they have enabled? I have never worked at FB, but I've worked at a few well known yet somewhat controversial companies (in fintech, marketplaces, etc.) that I sometimes feel uneasy about.

I work on GIS systems that enable organizations to be able to use the maps to spatially visualize their own data so their employees can do their jobs more effectively in the field everyday e.g. firefighters having all firehydrant locations on a ruggedized tablet when fighting fires, 911 dispatch operators use GIS, public utilities use it, government agencies uses it, non profits such as ecological conservation orgs use it. CDC to visualize epidemiology data, and scientists and universities use it to map data for studies and research.

It's very humbling tech with an amazing potential to do good and very developer friendly (they have been writing the code since the 60's) and my dev colleagues have been in this field for decades.

I just joined actually, any GIS nerds on HN care to share their experience and what they love/hate about GIS community/tech? Thanks!

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#80

Post by antpls »

jaabe wrote: post #71
temp1928384 wrote: post #63

Anyone else working in tech for the past few years having more frequent existential crises about what they have enabled? I have never worked at FB, but I've worked at a few well known yet somewhat controversial companies (in fintech, marketplaces, etc.) that I sometimes feel uneasy about.

I work in the public sector, so we never do evil things like that. I do often wonder if we’re digitizing too much. Like I pay for public transportation (I’m Danish, we have great public transportation) with an App, which is nice and all, but the user experience is actually worse than when it was just a piece of paper. We’ve saved the public billions by making some processes easier, but we’ve also digitised a lot of s…

> Especially not from a user perspective, if you’re a social worker you now have to know how to use 5-10 complicated and error prone IT systems, on top of your regular job, and we just keep on adding more. I mean,those 5-10 systems are linked to their work on top of that there are another 5-10 adiministrative systems and maybe 50 different digital forms.

The workers are users of those IT systems, but not the end-users of the social services. Those workers' jobs shifted in nature. Their new work is to interact with numerous different IT systems to provide a social service. In the long term, all those workers are currently gathering data that will help to build a new digital social service which won't have those inefficiencies. They work toward the transition to a "better" digital world for the end-users of the social service.

> None of these systems are necessary mind you, 30 years ago, almost none of them existed and our social workers performed better for less money back then.

"better for less money" : According to what sources? What indicators?

> but from a user perspective things have mostly deteriorated.

Same questions, from the end-users perspective of the social services. What indicators are you using?

We could imagine providing a social service without human social workers at all, enabled by digitization, like in all other sectors.

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