Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook chooses profits over people

peoplesworld.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 253 posts

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#71

Post by rightbyte »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44

These headlines naïvely miss the point. The problem isn’t Facebook, a private company, seeking profits. The problem is its deeply-entrenched psychopathy and pathological record of lying [1]. And it really appears to be a Facebook problem. Instagram for Kids wasn’t the fever dream of a deranged Instagrammer. It was pushed by a Facebook implant [2]. I don’t know if being in proximity to Facebook’s leadership corrupts p…

> I don’t know if being in proximity to Facebook’s leadership corrupts people.

I guess you need to be a bad person from the get-go to be able to keep a smiling face in that place. I mean, it is not even that Facebook employees are forced be necessity to work there. They have plenty of options. It is just that honest work, like say a weapon manufacturer, pays so much less than ratting out your friends and family to Zuckerberg.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#72

Post by chmod775 »

> When it debuted on the internet in 2004, Facebook seemed like a revolutionary innovation. A way for millions of people to engage with one another on a central virtual platform.

That's quite a load of revisionist history right there. Facebook was neither the first, nor the first large platform or what we today call social network to enable that.

It's differentiating factors were that it was web-based, easy to use, and managed to stick around.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#73

Post by Coolerbythelake »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #41

The US already has a couple billionaires doing space stuff and one trying to eradicate things like polio so if this were a Civilization video game tech tree choice it would be amazing to pick the next billionaire (i.e. FB's Zuckerberg) to fully fund non-profit mental health centers across the country.

Breakup FB. It's a mind control piggie bank. Sick.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#74

Post by jamesandthewolf »

christophilus wrote: post #60
aceazzameen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made me think, is it even possible to create a social media network geared towards education (sharing skills and ideas) for the masses? I suppose YouTube is somewhat there. But it's blended with so much crap.

Anything “for the masses” has to compete to win over the average and below average intellects. From what I can tell, that means that you have to get more and more sensationalistic to keep market share. You’re competing with a lot of addictive content out there, and educational content generally doesn’t fare well in that regard. Remember all of those educational video games in the past? Math blasters? They sucked. The…

Is life and being alive not already the game that achieves this unless I'm mistaken it's the ultimate education platform, so maybe the answers are in finding a new way to address it.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#75

Post by Grustaf »

dghughes wrote: post #38

That's any for profit company no matter what anyone believes. Any company its only purpose is profit. It's the same with company HR it's there to protect the company. It's not personnel anymore it's called human resources for a reason you're just company inventory. And "corporate culture" there is none they are not your family there is no culture they'll fire you in a heartbeat.

> Any company its only purpose is profit.

This isn't true for any company, not even investment banks. When people start companies, money is seldom a major reason, and as they grow they get a life of their own. Even large companies are run by people, people with feelings, insecurities, ambitions.

An incredibly wealthy leader of a large corporation is not really motivated by money, he wants more status, he want to look cool, he wants to indulge his fantasies.

Saying companies only exist to make money is just silly.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#77

Post by Grustaf »

dan-robertson wrote: post #33
iechoz6H wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the UK, certainly takes some convincing.

Lots of people love to complain about the U.K. weather and it is true that we have particularly rainy parts (eg the north west) but people also feel the cultural need to make such complaints in parts of the south east where it is generally warm or temperate and infrequently wet or windy and bitingly cold. I’ve personally become a bit of a weather contrarian, especially when talking to Americans who have heard about B…

In other words, even people from the UK behave like humans?

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#78

Post by smt88 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44

These headlines naïvely miss the point. The problem isn’t Facebook, a private company, seeking profits. The problem is its deeply-entrenched psychopathy and pathological record of lying [1]. And it really appears to be a Facebook problem. Instagram for Kids wasn’t the fever dream of a deranged Instagrammer. It was pushed by a Facebook implant [2]. I don’t know if being in proximity to Facebook’s leadership corrupts p…

> The problem isn’t Facebook, a private company, seeking profits.

Because of the last few decades of weak law enforcement, lying and breaking the law is seeking profits.

Most large companies make very calculated decisions to break the law while weighing the risk of getting caught. In many cases, the fines are tolerable when considering much larger profit.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#79

Post by amznbyebyebye »

As long as you don’t break the laws and..

You have some “values” which allow you to ignore anything else that may compromise your profits for the sake of them

And as long as you have a free market (gasp) and investors that only care about EPS and other profit related metrics..

Under these constraints you get companies that promote these toxic environments under the slogans of “bring communities closer together” etc etc

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#80

Post by lbriner »

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #69

Does anyone genuinely believe any for profit company gives two shits about its customers? They care as far as the customer spends money (or watches ads blah) but as long as people keep coming, no one really cares for the customers. Who believes that Ronald mcdonald is here to help the customers make the best choice for the customer? This is just the way, friends and family care for each other.

Of course they do, it's just they don't care as much as they do about profit. This isn't as bad as it sounds. If you don't look after your profit, you don't stay in business.

That doesn't mean you have to make obscene profits (compared to their burn rate) but most organisations don't, just a few headliners.

Post reply on HN