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As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

theguardian.com

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Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#91
Pro tip: there’s people other than Mark Zuckerberg who own those super-voting shares in Facebook, who keep his power unchecked. One of them is considered a darling investor in Silicon Valley and pretends to be a voice of social justice (and funds a lot of that sort of stuff).

When your politicians put random employees and other paid shills in front of committees as proof that they’re being “tough on Facebook,” understand that it’s a giant charade. It’s only when they call the super-voting shareholders and the board that something serious is going on. These are the people who think you’re all too stupid to know how the game works.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#92

Simple: Facebook will be stopped when people decide to stop using it or reduce their time on the platform. All the information about their privacy abuses are quite public and people still choose to use the product. I am well aware and I use that information to use it in an informed way (limited usage only on desktop, Firefox container, and more). Yes yes, inside the HN bubble it does seem to be popular. But in the no…

> the information about their privacy abuses are quite public and people still choose to use the product I don't. I'm still tracked. Also negatively affected by its effects. People are free to smoke cigarettes, but we will pass measures to limit its damage, particularly to innocent bystanders.

How are you Negatively affected by it?

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#93
post #6

Facebook is primarily a propaganda organization. It's main objective is to influence, manipulate and subvert the user's judgment and convince them to buy something --- be it physical product or ideology. To further this objective, it has developed an incredibly detailed psychological profile of each individual user using deeply personal info willing surrendered by the user themselves. It's skill at doing this is what…

This is a shockingly concise, accurate and readily digestible by the common person description of what Facebook actually is. If you don’t mind, I’m going to save this for the future.

Be my guest.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe there is no such thing as a lie? I don’t want to trust Facebook as an arbiter of anything because their motivations do not align with anything other than personal profit, but people do completely fabricate things and present them as true.

There's such a thing as a lie, but "misinformation" isn't a synonym for "lie". Efforts to fight misinformation are almost always understood to encompass misleading information - that is, information that's literally true but is used to advance an argument the misinformation checker doesn't think is valid.

The problem still remains as to who gets to determine what constitutes "misleading".

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#95

Simple: Facebook will be stopped when people decide to stop using it or reduce their time on the platform. All the information about their privacy abuses are quite public and people still choose to use the product. I am well aware and I use that information to use it in an informed way (limited usage only on desktop, Firefox container, and more). Yes yes, inside the HN bubble it does seem to be popular. But in the no…

Imagine in 1980, saying: Philip Morris will be stopped when people decide to stop smoking. All the information about the cancer their products cause is quite public and people still chose to use the product.

While the US didn't outlaw cigarettes, it did take a number of steps to reduce the usage because of the externalities they cause. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't treat Facebook the same way. Add taxes that go towards funding programs to warn of the dangers of anti-vax and other extremist content, keep kids under 13 off of their products, etc.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#97

Facebook is primarily a propaganda organization. It's main objective is to influence, manipulate and subvert the user's judgment and convince them to buy something --- be it physical product or ideology. To further this objective, it has developed an incredibly detailed psychological profile of each individual user using deeply personal info willing surrendered by the user themselves. It's skill at doing this is what…

It's a serious issue and not one that should be taken lightly, but I think it warrants taking a small step back and thinking a bit more about it. The claim in this comment is that Facebook's business is to sell ads, but facebook users actually the thing being sold, rather than the customers. This has caused Facebook to become evil and do evil things. However, if you think about it, almost any social "product" follows…

Consider Bars and Clubs.

Bars earn all their income from serving individual patrons. Facebook earns nothing from their individual patrons. All their income is earned serving those seeking to manipulate and take advantage of their patrons.

It's easy to see where the allegiance lies in either case --- just follow the money.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook thinks it's the company to "fight election meddling"? Is this the same Facebook that meddled in the 2020 US presidential election by suppressing the distribution of a factual news story because the facts were embarrassing to the Biden campaign? What next, is Bill Cosby going to tell us that he's an activist for women's rights?

I like how you don't mention the specifics, so that folks outside of your echo chamber won't know what you're talking about. Clearly the specifics don't even matter, just the general truthiness of your tone. This is perfect Colbert.

I would guess they’re talking about the Hunter Biden laptop thing and how it was recently “confirmed” by I think politico. I’m not going to bother googling it for you, just for the edification of everyone else reading your comment and GPS comment.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#99
Unless and until we come up with a different economic model for social media, we'll always have Facebook (or Twitter, or whatever successor toxic social media site comes next).

Plenty of people here on HN have argued that the real problem is centralization, and I agree. Take whatever specific issue one might have with FB -- let's say disinformation, for instance. We have all these debates about censorship vs free speech vs accountability etc. But in fact, if FB wasn't the behemoth it is, much of this would be moot. In a world where there were _only_ smaller, more niche social media sites, fears around things like online radicalization would be much less, and any well-founded suspicions of actual criminal conspiracies would lend themselves to much more targeted warrant-backed investigations rather than privacy-destroying giant electronic dragnets. And if this example doesn't work for you, pick another one and think through how a world of smaller, less influential sites would change what you see as the problem with social media.

But you can't brute force your way to that world -- that's pushing against a very strong current. So long as the economic model is to create a large, targetable advertising market, you're going to have very strong incentives for centralization and invasion of privacy.

Contrast this with non-digital social hubs -- say, a pub. People come for the socialization, but the actual product being sold is food and drink. Social space becomes a side effect, one that complements and enhances the business model (a pub with a reputation as a good place to meet friends gets more business), but the business model isn't data-mining your audience.

I think a social media network that focused on extending offline hubs into social spaces, where the economic model is attracting an audience to gather and chat and then _selling them something_, would mitigate the incentives to centralization and invasion of privacy. We need to tie social media to the selling of actual products; users need to be customers, not the actual product.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook thinks it's the company to "fight election meddling"? Is this the same Facebook that meddled in the 2020 US presidential election by suppressing the distribution of a factual news story because the facts were embarrassing to the Biden campaign? What next, is Bill Cosby going to tell us that he's an activist for women's rights?

Here is an alternative take on Bill Cosby’s culpability, it may revert your opinion: https://youtu.be/QQXZ6752EiY

The talk of 'red-pilling' and 'those women knew what they were getting into' in the comments give me heebie-jeebies.

Care to summarize the main points for me?

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