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I recently saw a very astute analogy between Facebook and cigarette companies. I suspect that in some years there will be testimony about what Facebook knew, an

I recently saw a very astute analogy between Facebook and cigarette companies. I suspect that in some years there will be testimony about what Facebook knew, and when, with respect to the addictiveness of its product and its links to mental health problems. I'm quite sure they know how harmful their product is and that's probably behind a lot of this absurd "we're going to save the world" rhetoric. This whole fight elevates Facebook, so they'll try their best to keep people talking about it. In the sphere of journalism, it's very hard to say what is cause and effect. Facebook aside, and even money aside, some journalists will say that good journalism isn't widely read, and that readers have driven the shift to shallow, celebrity-driven coverage. Facebook can make the same argument—this is what people want, who are we to question them? I agree with the others that point to Journalism's business model as the problem. It's a public good to bring hidden facts related to the public interest into the light. We as a society should subsidize these efforts the way we do other sources of public good that aren't viable as profitable businesses: let them become non-profit organizations and support them with donations and tax incentives. This protects their independence and also removes the regressive paywalls that signal to poor people that knowledge of the day's events is not for them. Facebook, in general, needs to ask much more fundamental questions than how it affects the news. What is the product for? What does it actually do? Is its responsibility to earn profit in conflict with the interests of its users? Is it being candid with the public about how its product affects its users? Or is it just reacting to PR crises as they happen without actually taking responsibility for its place in the world?

thr0waway1239 10y ago
Remember Steve Jobs' quote about A players hiring A players? There is a similar pattern at play here where the D-level folks (in terms of ethics) hire E and F-level folks and on it goes. You only need one ethically compromised individual at the top - e.g. Zuck, and soon the org is infested with replicas of similarly compromised folks. >>respect to the addictiveness of its product You forgot to mention that this addictiveness is not even a natural thing - it has been refined and A/B tested with 1% improvement week over week until the user base has been turned into the 21st century version of Pavlov's dogs - that image is exactly what I see when I look at people who get anxiety over a lack of instant messages for a WHOLE 15 MINUTES.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  I like your observation on ethics. Is that original to you? I've been seeing Gresham's Law dynamics in a tremendous number of places. Ethical races to the bottom are one instance of this.
toufka 10y ago
The information age seems to want for clarification of the 'old rules' of society immemorial. Addiction, theft, privacy, economic theory, etc. We don't seem to yet have clear articulation about how those rules should be newly applied. A curious thought is that as facebook controls more and more information content it could become a kind of monopoly on the 'marketplace of ideas'. If the dreams of this manifesto were to come to pass, the marketplace of ideas would lack its own market forces and instead facts and ideas would be doled out by a single (corporate) directive force. Many of the principles of our democracy rely on that open marketplace of ideas, and would no longer function as we intend if that marketplace is not open. Can an object/company be too large/controlling within the marketplace of ideas that it becomes a governmental/societal obligation to break it up, as it does when a single player becomes a monopoly in an economic market?
Ygg2 10y ago
Except filter bubble is nothing unique to Facebook. Google has it, Amazon has it. Anything showing "recommended" is creating a filter bubble.
spopejoy 10y ago
> Is its responsibility to earn profit in conflict with the interests of its users? Yes. I'm amazed honestly that people even read/watch this loser's output. Zuck is the classic example of somebody who got lucky once and now all of us have to put up with his towering mediocrity, forever. No wonder he's looking at national politics, always a last refuge for over-successful lightweights.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
It'll never happen. It hasn't happened for casinos, and we've known about the health effects of those for a long time. Smoking went big because of second hand smoking and because of family members in hospitals on ventilators. There's no equivalent for Facebook or Casinos. No acute trauma to stir the public indignation. Just quiet mental deaths stretched out over years.

thr0waway1239 10y ago

Remember Steve Jobs' quote about A players hiring A players? There is a similar pattern at play here where the D-level folks (in terms of ethics) hire E and F-level folks and on it goes. You only need one ethically compromised individual at the top - e.g. Zuck, and soon the org is infested with replicas of similarly compromised folks. >>respect to the addictiveness of its product You forgot to mention that this addictiveness is not even a natural thing - it has been refined and A/B tested with 1% improvement week over week until the user base has been turned into the 21st century version of Pavlov's dogs - that image is exactly what I see when I look at people who get anxiety over a lack of instant messages for a WHOLE 15 MINUTES.

dredmorbius 10y ago
I like your observation on ethics. Is that original to you? I've been seeing Gresham's Law dynamics in a tremendous number of places. Ethical races to the bottom are one instance of this.

toufka 10y ago

The information age seems to want for clarification of the 'old rules' of society immemorial. Addiction, theft, privacy, economic theory, etc. We don't seem to yet have clear articulation about how those rules should be newly applied. A curious thought is that as facebook controls more and more information content it could become a kind of monopoly on the 'marketplace of ideas'. If the dreams of this manifesto were to come to pass, the marketplace of ideas would lack its own market forces and instead facts and ideas would be doled out by a single (corporate) directive force. Many of the principles of our democracy rely on that open marketplace of ideas, and would no longer function as we intend if that marketplace is not open. Can an object/company be too large/controlling within the marketplace of ideas that it becomes a governmental/societal obligation to break it up, as it does when a single player becomes a monopoly in an economic market?

Ygg2 10y ago

Except filter bubble is nothing unique to Facebook. Google has it, Amazon has it. Anything showing "recommended" is creating a filter bubble.

spopejoy 10y ago

> Is its responsibility to earn profit in conflict with the interests of its users? Yes. I'm amazed honestly that people even read/watch this loser's output. Zuck is the classic example of somebody who got lucky once and now all of us have to put up with his towering mediocrity, forever. No wonder he's looking at national politics, always a last refuge for over-successful lightweights.

erikpukinskis 10y ago

It'll never happen. It hasn't happened for casinos, and we've known about the health effects of those for a long time. Smoking went big because of second hand smoking and because of family members in hospitals on ventilators. There's no equivalent for Facebook or Casinos. No acute trauma to stir the public indignation. Just quiet mental deaths stretched out over years.