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

A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 211 posts

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#81

Post by thundergolfer »

brundolf wrote: post #27

> 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…

“A lack of resources” is not a thing a 500+ billion dollar company gets to lean on, and Sophia does acknowledge that.

This is the old “don’t tell me what you care about, show me your balance sheet and I’ll tell you what you care about”.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#82

Post by falseAss »

hash872 wrote: post #59
cabaalis wrote: post #37

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.

What I've long wondered is- would it really be that hard/expensive to build an open source social media alternative that does exactly that? Updates & photos from friends & family, in chronological order, and little else. Social media has been around for a while now, I have to imagine that most of the hard problems around a customized feed and so on have been solved. Probably some idealistic ex-FB and IG engineers wou…

also check out https://joinmastodon.org/

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#83

Post by 37ruudueuej »

catsarebetter wrote: post #75

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…

The simplest answer is that journalism relies heavily on credibility and BuzzFeed's brand has almost none of that as far as the public is concerned. If this was the WaPo or NYT they could probably get away with the usual "We'd tell you but that would be unprofessional."

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#84

Post by CGamesPlay »

catsarebetter wrote: post #75

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…

It sounds like she published an internal memo, somebody else leaked it, and the personal information was a fourth party's.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#85

Post by toeget »

cabaalis wrote: post #37

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.

This is exactly what I'm getting from twitter. My feed are the latest updates shared by the people I follow. I don't see clickbait, I don't see outrage, I have a curated feed aligned with my interests. It's true that about once in a couple of months Twitter decides to switch the order of tweets from the latest to the most recommended, but that's easily fixed in two clicks. The moment twitter removes the option to see the feed in chronological order is the moment I delete twitter.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#86

Post by young_unixer »

37ruudueuej wrote: post #83
catsarebetter wrote: post #75

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…

The simplest answer is that journalism relies heavily on credibility and BuzzFeed's brand has almost none of that as far as the public is concerned. If this was the WaPo or NYT they could probably get away with the usual "We'd tell you but that would be unprofessional."

Yet NYT still threatened to doxx Slate Star Codex.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#87

Post by coffeefirst »

meowface wrote: post #63
throwaway13337 wrote: post #57

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…

No, it’s being driven by the lowest common denominator for engagement, which is distinct from personal preferences.

For a self-contained example, spam in large Facebook groups always rises to the top, because many people comment asking it to be deleted, causing the algorithm to show it to more people, some of which comment, until a moderator finally kills the post.

These kinds of side effects do not happen in a voting based system or a straight chronological feed.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#88

Post by catsarebetter »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #84
catsarebetter wrote: post #75

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…

It sounds like she published an internal memo, somebody else leaked it, and the personal information was a fourth party's.

I hope that person that leaked her memo had a ridiculous amount of social capital built up with her, though I seriously doubt it.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#89

Post by catsarebetter »

nerdponx wrote: post #80
catsarebetter wrote: post #75

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…

Maybe the same reason why a journalist tried to dox Slate Star Codex. Which is to say, who knows but it probably isn't good.

It's really uncomfortable reading the part where they say that they aren't publishing personal information from the memo as if they're doing something to protect her privacy when they've given the internet way too much information on this person already. Things like the state of her mental health, some signal into her economic status, etc. Things that even non-devs on the internet could pick up on, it's so tone-deaf.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#90

Post by [deleted] »

young_unixer wrote: post #86
37ruudueuej wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest answer is that journalism relies heavily on credibility and BuzzFeed's brand has almost none of that as far as the public is concerned. If this was the WaPo or NYT they could probably get away with the usual "We'd tell you but that would be unprofessional."

Yet NYT still threatened to doxx Slate Star Codex.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN