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An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor

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Re: An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor

#81

Post by fucking_tragedy »

wonder_er wrote: post #75
jerf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What is there to be done ?" A $0.01 tax per ad impression. Such a thing would not destroy the advertising industry, but it would do wonders for making it much less worthwhile to deploy massive surveillance technology to make .03 cents more per user per day, and leave only very high-value advertising behind. It would probably anti-decimate it or more, though (leave only 10% behind instead of destroying 10%). $0.10 pe…

It's almost as if websites had to pay for the bandwidth they sent to the browser would change the economics of blasting out ads everywhere. :thinkingface:

It's almost as if networks themselves would start injecting ads, which has been going on for years[1].

[1] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2016/12/comcast-s...

Re: An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor

#82

Post by moosey »

AlexB138 wrote: post #62
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #33

These large dominating companies are monopolies in every sense of the word and need to be broken up. The Bell System was broken up and didn't have a tenth of the tracking and control of people's lives that Google and Facebook do. Ma Bell didn't actively harm its users and cause depression. Ma Bell didn't collude with Russia to influence a presidential election and install a puppet president. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

> [Facebook colluded] with Russia to influence a presidential election and install a puppet president. This is a conspiracy theory, and really diminishes the level of the conversation here.

A US company took money from a foreign government and used it to spread foreign propaganda, while calling it advertising.

Money is pooled into massive organizations called 'PACs' that are used to fund campaigns that get folks into government, then offer them sweet high paying jobs afterwards as long as they do their bidding while they work there. It's not corruption, that's lobbying.

It gets tiresome calling things what they are when there are dozens of definitions that the corrupt use to alter the nature of what they do with language. Corruption and propaganda are rampant, but once they can all be called 'marketing', or whatever the people with the power to influence via the media want to call them, that's the language that we use, and truly harmful things become easy to defend.

Re: An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor

#83

Post by cheeseomlit »

r00fus wrote: post #69
bedhead wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right had Obama birth certificate conspiracies, the left has Russian election hacking conspiracies. Different sides of the same idiotic coin for stupid people.

Except it's not just the left, and there are open indictments against many of the President's team.

All of which are for process crimes committed after the investigation started, or for completely unrelated white collar crimes from years ago

Re: An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor

#84

Post by pixl97 »

mycorrhizal wrote: post #74
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #33

These large dominating companies are monopolies in every sense of the word and need to be broken up. The Bell System was broken up and didn't have a tenth of the tracking and control of people's lives that Google and Facebook do. Ma Bell didn't actively harm its users and cause depression. Ma Bell didn't collude with Russia to influence a presidential election and install a puppet president. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

I definitely don't contest the amount of tracking these companies do. I wouldn't even be surprised if it goes beyond what I can even imagine. But when it comes to control can we at least attempt to quantify it or at least make it a bit more exact. For example I'm positive these companies have influence over what brand of headphones I buy next, but I'm even more positive, at least on a personal level, that these compa…

> because I don't think it pertains to the big decisions that I really care about.

Because you dont want to think that, or because you've studied this and know it is the case?

With companies like FB being directly involved in the study of emotional manipulation of their users by altering their news and friends feed, I really think you are off base on the potential power they could have over a large number of individuals. Maybe you are somehow immune to their propaganda, but that is not a risk I want to take at society scale.

Re: An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor

#85

Post by drugme »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #77
drugme wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Facebook colluded] I'm not sure what source you're quoting, or what the original text was that you're attempting to simplify. EDIT: missed the quote when reading the message above somehow - sorry.

> Ma Bell didn't collude with Russia to influence a presidential election and install a puppet president. In the context of an argument about why Facebook is a more dangerous monopoly than Ma Bell, this implies that Facebook did collude with Russia.

OK, agreed - that was definitely unjustified hyperbole. By all accounts, they did not intentionally "collude" with the Russians.

But what looms larger in my mind is the fact that FB was egregiously negligent in allowing the manipulation of their platform to take place to the extent that it did --- both in the context of that fiasco, and in much worse situations, e.g. in regard to the genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar.

Re: An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor

#86

Post by aylmao »

x3tm wrote: post #52
pesenti wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I joined a year ago to lead the AI team (Yann is part of it but I am not answering for him here). It's a choice as I don't have to work any longer. Why am I there? - I believe Facebook's products are good for the world. They have had an extremely positive impact on my family in particular. - It is the one place where AI can have a really positive impact on the world. - It's is the most talented set of people I have e…

Thanks for your clear reply. There's only one thing though from what you mentioned that is not vague or subjective: > It is the one place where AI can have a really positive impact on the world. Can you develop on this please? Why do you think a social network (however efficient it may be with e.g. targeted ads) will have a bigger impact on its members versus e.g. AI in healthcare? or finance? or education? which wil…

Not OP, and I don't agree with "the one place", but I think I might see his point from a content moderation perspective.

The possible effect of AI in other fields I think is overstated, or worries me because it might take jobs. I'm skeptical about AI in education and don't really see how it could fit. I think the negatives in education come from a broken system and not necessarily a lack of "an efficient way to extract information from data".

Dropping more automation in finance will just help extract value more efficiently, not necessarily create it, which if anything I think is a negative impact on the world.

Content moderation sounds like a big positive though. It is necessary, but not really a job many people have or many people "should" have-- there's a lot of violent, gory, traumatic things those people have to sift through.

I do think healthcare can be augmented by AI and doctors working together in a way that doesn't cut jobs and increases the effectivity of treatment. Wether that will happen or this will be an excuse to cut staff is a worry, though the implications if effectivity of diagnosis and/or treatment increases are not to be understated-- quite literally life-changing.

Re: An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor

#87

Post by pixl97 »

paulsutter wrote: post #58
opmac wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about threats, but I've seen plenty of fake news, conspiracies, etc; many of which have been tied to Russian disinformation groups (or other malignant foreign interests). See the Nation in Distress group; https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/11/faceboo... .

You saw these in your own feed? Do share

Sounds like you're caught up in your own FB reality tunnel.

Re: An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor

#89

Post by aylmao »

lumberjack wrote: post #31
smacktoward wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair )

It is not just that. Some people in this field just have questionable ethics, unfortunately. Some are just childish and have this close minded ignorant macho attitude that though men, as they style themselves, should not care about ethics. Then there others who just don't care either way as long as they get paid to play with their toys.

+1. I'm a foreigner from Mexico-- back there all engineering majors study ethics in school as part of the requirements. I studied abroad in the US, and was surprised at how not only there was no ethics requirement, but many engineering majors actually shunned anything having to do with the humanities in a very "us vs. them", "we do real work", "this is not important" manner.

It's hard to measure what impact a couple of classes could have and it would certainly vary from person to person, but it would at least set the stage for conversation and be an acknowledgement to the importance of ethics in engineering.

Re: An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor

#90

Post by aylmao »

matz1 wrote: post #7
x3tm wrote: post #2

What I struggle to understand is how could esteemed AI researchers like LeCun and many others work for such a company to give it even more powers and edge? How can they justify this as scientists? The huge influx of money into research (here AI, but could be anything in the future) combined with the disfunctions of academia is very troubling.

Simple, not everyone share the same concern regarding privacy or those sjw stuff, moreover fb has vast amount of data and also funding, it's very suitable for AI research. Even if he refuse to work with fb, pretty sure a lot of other people will be happy to replace.

> Even if he refuse to work with fb, pretty sure a lot of other people will be happy to replace.

I think this applies to some level to entry positions. I know plenty of people coming out of school who need the money, especially considering how aggressive the economic system in the US is to young people (student debt, impossible housing, tough job market to beginners, the responsibility of saving for an uncertain future due to the lack of safety nets, etc). It is also the case there's many people who could replace you: entry-level projects will be done, regardless of wether you do them or not.

Nonetheless, there's a point at which you're set. You could take another job without worries, and in fact you're in demand. Moreover, you're effective at what you do, and have started contributing with decision-making or really bringing efficiency into projects. At this point, other people will be happy to replace sure, but they won't be the same. There's more responsibility on you.

And lastly, you reach the point at which some of these top researchers are. They're beyond fine both economically and career wise-- they don't "need this job". They're also crucial. In their projects it's either them or no one. They are very responsible for their work.

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