71–80 of 211 posts
> Still, she did not believe that the failures she observed during her two and a half years at the company were the result of bad intent by Facebook’s employees or leadership. It was a lack of resources, Zhang wrote, and the company’s tendency to focus on global activity that posed public relations risks, as opposed to electoral or civic harm. > “Facebook projects an image of strength and competence to the outside wo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This needs to be more understood by the population. Our world-destroying-AI paperclip maximizer is here. It's called a "news feed". The thing that gets the most clicks is outrage, as the AI has discovered. We're setting people against each-other in a more and more efficient fashion. The result has been clear since the Arab Spring. Good things don't come from helping people hate each-other in the most efficient way po…
We are, but the blame has to be shared, too. In many cases the algorithm is being reinforced by your and everyone's actions. It may not even necessarily be specifically trying to prioritize polarizing content: that just might be the content you engage with the most, and the algorithm blindly follows your whims and preference. I've used YouTube for many hours per day for several years. I've almost never seen a single…
And IME, it doesn’t even have to be videos watched by most of the people, but a subset of “power users” who binge certain kind of videos are over represented on the recommendation engine.
What is the public interest in publishing her name after she has expressed concerns about her safety? Shame on Buzzfeed. "In her post, Zhang said she did not want it to go public for fear of disrupting Facebook’s efforts to prevent problems around the upcoming 2020 US presidential election, and due to concerns about her own safety. BuzzFeed News is publishing parts of her memo that are clearly in the public interest.…
It’s journalism 101. You provide the identity of your source to help the reader evaluate his credibility. Anonymous sources are supposed to be used only in extreme circumstances. But these days that gets abused all the time. The New York Times has published its rules for making a source anonymous, and they’re pretty good, IMO.
None of this would be important if social media gave us what they originally sold us: See updates from your friends, family, and people you want to see updates from, in chronological order, rather than based upon weird engagement algorithms and privacy-destroying ad networks.
But they hid the name of the software engineer that spoke on her credibility? Something seems a little off, either on the source's side or on the distributor's side.
The pattern of hiring young, passionate, ambitious workers, then telling them their job is of critical importance to the company (and, in this case, society at large) while simultaneously underfunding their team and providing them with completely inadequate leadership is REALLY common in Silicon Valley companies. These same companies will actively stigmatize saying "it's not my job," and so you have very green employ…
The pattern of hiring young, passionate, ambitious workers, then telling them their job is of critical importance to the company (and, in this case, society at large) while simultaneously underfunding their team and providing them with completely inadequate leadership is REALLY common in Silicon Valley companies. These same companies will actively stigmatize saying "it's not my job," and so you have very green employ…
"“I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I’ve lost count,” she wrote." The scale of how the platform's being used for political manipulation in every country is enormous, and it's clear that if a junior data scientist is having to independently make these decisions, that there's little intere…
But if random FB engineers actually can affect global political power, it is 100% certain that the intelligence services of the world are putting serious efforts into placing their own people in these positions!
"“I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I’ve lost count,” she wrote." The scale of how the platform's being used for political manipulation in every country is enormous, and it's clear that if a junior data scientist is having to independently make these decisions, that there's little intere…
This is pretty frustrating, clearly she said that she wanted her privacy respected, they even acknowledge that in the article, why did they publish her full name and a short description of her linkedin just to make it even easier to find her? What motivation did they have to do this? But they hid the name of the software engineer that spoke on her credibility? Something seems a little off, either on the source's side…