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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

#91

Post by mycorrhizal »

pixl97 wrote: post #84
mycorrhizal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 individu…

Right, so I was speaking personally there and I can confidently say among the priority of things I care about my relationship with my wife, how I manage my budget and my overarching career goals all of the decisions related to these things are done with a great deal of deliberation and research. So I'm not saying I'm somehow special and immune to propaganda, but I think when practically anyone takes the time to research and deliberate on big decisions and asking people they trust for advice these companies have a marginal effect.

I can specifically point to times where these companies have and have not influenced my decisions. For example my wife and I decided we could afford a 3k vacation this budget was informed by looking at our incomes, expenses, savings and job security. But social media definitely influenced where we chose to go and what we did once we got there. I'm much more concerned with the first decision (I can afford to blow 3k) than the second (where we ended up going).

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

#92

Post by aldous »

tossaccount123 wrote: post #18
androidgirl wrote: post #10

I understand this is a manifesto, but really the dialogue around Facebook and social media has truly become unhinged. Facebook is just a symptom, it seems What is there to be _done_? Pandora's box is open, so to speak. If Facebook disappeared overnight, are we really going to assume the problems they're in are going to go away? Everyone is potentially connected to everyone, everywhere, on the entire planet. There has…

>Were we ready for it? No, our brains evolved for millions of years to operate in groups of less than 100. Social media is basically high fructose corn syrup for our dopamine system. Within a span of roughly 20 years the way we live our lives and communicate with other humans changed massively All the MSM hate for Facebook though is simply because they are butthurt that they've lost their spot in society in terms of…

You make an interesting point about expanding social spheres and influence, nice. However, do you really believe in this concept of a conspiratorial all powerful MSM, that spans the political spectrum and co-ordinates efforts to refute viewpoints they disagree with!? How would such a cabal work? With respect, it sounds a bit infowars/trumpian to me.

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

#93

Post by stallmanite »

aylmao wrote: post #89
lumberjack wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To add an anecdote to the pile, I went to school in the US and had to pass an ethics in engineering course to complete degree requirements for Computer Science in the late 90s.

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

#94

Post by bedhead »

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.

The difference between the two is that even the majority of the right dismissed the birthers as idiotic nutjobs, while today the Russian election conspiracies are basically mainstream among the left. It's crazy

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

#95

Post by moosey »

jkingsbery wrote: post #76
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…

According to https://blog.adstage.io/google-display-ads-cpm-cpc-ctr-bench... , advertisers spend around $2.80 for a thousand impressions in display advertising. You're proposing a tax that is 3.5 times as much as the thing itself costs. That would have pretty steep ramifications on the industry. Also, when one thinks about high-value advertising, it doesn't always correlate with high-value to society, but rather thin…

Web advertising shouldn't just be considered advertising, but also data collection. Data collection should not be cheap.

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

#96

Post by tossaccount123 »

aldous wrote: post #92
tossaccount123 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Were we ready for it? No, our brains evolved for millions of years to operate in groups of less than 100. Social media is basically high fructose corn syrup for our dopamine system. Within a span of roughly 20 years the way we live our lives and communicate with other humans changed massively All the MSM hate for Facebook though is simply because they are butthurt that they've lost their spot in society in terms of…

You make an interesting point about expanding social spheres and influence, nice. However, do you really believe in this concept of a conspiratorial all powerful MSM, that spans the political spectrum and co-ordinates efforts to refute viewpoints they disagree with!? How would such a cabal work? With respect, it sounds a bit infowars/trumpian to me.

>However, do you really believe in this concept of a conspiratorial all powerful MSM, that spans the political spectrum and co-ordinates efforts to refute viewpoints

Pretty much all the media we see is controlled by a handful of corporations with varying degrees of connection

https://assets.rbl.ms/18622935/980x.jpg

It's worse now than the image above because AT&T is purchasing Time Warner

With relation to Facebook it's pretty obvious that everybody in the traditional media industry would like to see them lose influence because it costs them money. Instead of watching the news or buying newspaper subscriptions people get the info from Facebook. There really doesn't need to be coordination because it's in their self-interest to pile on Facebook.

Go back 20 years before social media and if the news and the newspapers didn't cover it, it basically didn't happen. The MSM has lost a massive amount of influence due to social media because they can't completely control what information is spread around.

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

#97

Post by agumonkey »

androidgirl wrote: post #10

I understand this is a manifesto, but really the dialogue around Facebook and social media has truly become unhinged. Facebook is just a symptom, it seems What is there to be _done_? Pandora's box is open, so to speak. If Facebook disappeared overnight, are we really going to assume the problems they're in are going to go away? Everyone is potentially connected to everyone, everywhere, on the entire planet. There has…

I agree that facebook is just the most visible dimple. Internet causes a lot of stresses at the personal and social level. We could wipe it out, we could learn how to deal with it.. let it fly so future generation adapt to it for better or worse.

Personally I have my scissors ready.

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

#98

Post by m0zg »

moosey wrote: post #82
AlexB138 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [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 w…

Disclaimer: I'm Russian-American. I do not believe Russian "siloviki" are competent enough to pull off anything like what you're implying.

Russia spent $100k on FB in total, and they ran ads on controversial issues from both sides, not just Trump (and also organized "resist" protests after Trump won). For comparison, Trump's campaign alone spent $100 _million_. I don't know off the top of my head how much the Clinton campaign spent, but it did have 2x the money advantage, so it probably spent twice as much. If we assume the total FB spend of $300M for both campaigns, Russian money represented 0.033% of ad spend, and they likely used far less sophisticated targeting than the campaigns, and riled up both sides.

Tell me again how this could have altered the outcome.

Their goal seemed to be to sow discord, not to elect a particular candidate. I believe that's still their goal, and you, HN poster, is a great help to that end. They could not imagine a better outcome than Trump (or Clinton) getting mired in controversy and partisan gridlock, and unable to do anything about anything.

If you're going to talk about foreign influence, there are countries that are much more influential in US politics than Russia. No US president can even win a primary without pledging allegiance to Israel, for example. Clinton Global Initiative accepted millions from all over the world (donations dropped massively once Hillary lost, suggesting influence peddling). When it comes to hacking, China hacks the US far more than Russia ever will.

I don't quite get this raging hard-on for Russia that the mainstream media has manufactured. If it's outrage you want, there are far better targets.

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

#99

Post by stevenicr »

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…

Any idea how many people are using fbook that do not have the same level of education that you have? and how much time is spent on the fbk by this group of people?

How many people are using the fbk that do not have the same familiarity with tech and apps? Same eye sight, finger dexterity?

Did you miss the recent stories about the thousands of people bilked out of thousands of dollars via sneaky game app purchases? Certainly some of that hurt some people's IRAs.

Funny you mention divorce. This is an anecdotal 1 data point out of millions.. but in the past year I watched a friend go through the struggles of considering separation and divorce for about 6 months. As I often rail against the use of fbk, she confided in me that the ad tech did indeed influence her on this decision.

For some time when she used the fbk system she saw ads saying she could sell her wedding ring for cash quick and easy.

This coming at a time of emotional distress, when searching for options for places to go, with the need of funding to do these things...

I'm glad you do not find yourself in a position to care to about these issues. I myself worry more about the influence of the less tech savvy, whether they can vote or not, have IRAs or marriages or not, these things affect people around us, and not always in a "lets connect the world to make it better and have a kumbaya party with fresh goat and laser beams" kind of ways.

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