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Facebook wants your children's mind
- noir_lord 9y agoFrom their point of view why wouldn't they, children become eyeballs, sorry adults with money to spend. I've given up expecting corporations to be nice, I haven't quite given up on expecting them to obey the law, the bits they haven't written themselves anyway.
- tzahola 9y agoB-but they had that rainbow flag avatar thingy for LGBTQA folk! They can’t be the bad guys!
- hyperdunc 9y agoVirtue signalling is profitable.
- Fice 9y agoThe sole purpose of existence of a corporation is to make money, and it would be strange to expect them to be nice and not use every opportunity for profit. Thus, enforcing ethics is a consumer responsibility: if you believe that something is bad, don't use it.
- Pulcinella 9y agoThe sole purpose of getting a job is to make money and yet we expect our fellow citizens to have stronger morals than just greed.
- RepressedEmu 9y agoPeople get lots of different jobs for lots of different reasons, some of which include money. I think your fellow citizens deserve a stronger consideration for their morals, choices, and concerns than that of a faceless, sociopathic megacorp like Facebook.
- trophycase 9y agoExcept real people work at these places and make decisions to do shitty things.
- Spivak 9y agoSure, but all you've proven is that people respond to incentives and that money is a strong one. Trying to assign moral value to the actions of a project manager who is under pressure for Q3 ad revenue is a fools errand.
- crpatino 9y agoFrom a mugger's point of view you are a walking wallet, why would he not take yor money? You'd say it is illegal to steal, but if you expected even one out of ten neighbours to be a thief, just like you expect every corporation to be corrupt, there would be not enough police officers and courts to handle all the crime. Hell, if society had gone down to that, you'd have to worry more about being robbed by a cop than by some random neighbour!!! Laws are minimal expectations of compliance to morals. Successful societies are those where a significant percentage of the population hold themselves (and their neighbours) to much higher standards. You are doing a profound disservice to yourself and your peers by giving a free pass to jerk corporations just because they seem (or pretend) to follow the letter of the law most of the time.
- maximumkek 9y agoPlease stop with the fake news consipracy theories. Faceebook just want to make the world a more connected place - it's clear from their mission statement.
- gfiorav 9y agoJeez I quit Facebook like 6 years ago and never looked back. What’s the real need here? Old buddies you barely know of? Let them go. Just drop FB, it’s not that important, and 70% of people are clearly (by reading all the “I quit Facebook drama posts”) over attached to it.
- acover 9y agoIt is a red flag to not have social media
- R_haterade 9y agoMaybe in clownworld.
- deschainz 9y agoYeah dude... what? How is it a red flag?
- satori99 9y agoIt is? I have no social media accounts at all and never have. I thought the very idea of facebook was creepy when it launched and I've not changed my mind since. Who will I be flagged by?
- acover 9y agoIt's just been my experience. I'm probably wrong. 9 of 10 people my age have it [1]. Facebook provides a public log of years of your posts. A quick way to get to know someone. To figure out if you should trust them. It's far from perfect but neither are social security numbers. Services like Airbnb's use your account to verify you aren't a spammer. I have heard of landlords and employers asking for it as well. If you don't have it you are undefined. [1] - http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/ http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-20...
- gehwartzen 9y ago
- cdancette 9y agoThe advertisement on TV is heavily regulated, I hope we'll get the same thing on the internet before it's too late and a whole generation has lost its attention capacity. Governments have a huge work to do in order to analyze what could be harmful and what is ok, and pass law about it.
- SN76477 9y agoA company like Facebook need massive regulations. They are a pandoras box in my opinion.
- deschainz 9y agoI dislike Zuckerberg more and more everyday. What a piece of work that guy is, hiding the reality of FB behind his self-righteous mission of connecting the world while selling you to advertisers and fragmenting your attention and happiness potential.
- smt88 9y agoI hardly think he's hiding it. He's just succeeded in creating a product so addictive that people are willing to sacrifice a lot in order to use it.
- userbinator 9y agoIndeed, he doesn't really hide it; as his famous quote goes, "They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."
- deschainz 9y agoTrue, I just meant that he doesn't really acknowledge the harm that it does. Oh well, at least people are becoming more aware of it.
- chiefofgxbxl 9y agoI guess it's sort of like a fast-food restaurant owner telling the customers that the food isn't healthy. What's the point? Everyone probably already knows that, and they'll eat it anyway (for various reasons). Facebook (and other social media sites) is like the digital version of a fast-food restaurant. And luckily for them they have 2 billion users eating it, so there is a lot of peer pressure on others who'd rather not eat to go there anyway because their friends are there.
- dr1337 9y agoI guess a drug dealer also can justify their line of work by saying that they are merely providing the means for a customer to obtain something that they like.
- vm 9y agoPart of me thinks the the anti-Facebook media sentiment is because Facebook replaced newspapers/magazines as the highly profitable media aggregator. Old media struggles for relevance and lashes out at Facebook, the new winner. Facebook makes fantastic communications tool and gives them away for a whopping $0. I love staying aware of what's going on with my grandparents, old classmates, friends, and family, AND not having to directly pay money for this. I would love to hear other perspectives. EDIT: Downvote away, but my point is that people pick on Facebook for privacy concerns but we all know it's an advertising company (probably the best the world has ever seen). It also operates the best communications tools the world has ever seen and it doesn't get enough credit for that. In 2006, the News Feed was publicly bemoaned because of privacy issues and it's now the core product. Facebook has built great tools over time, even when people didn't initially agree. Not trying to incite anger, just pushing toward a debate.
- 659087 9y ago> I would love to hear other perspectives. You are hearing other perspectives. You've just chosen to write them off as "the evil media being angry that Facebook is replacing them and lashing out".
- tspike 9y agoHis replies are all embracing the points of view offered in reply. This is unnecessarily hostile.
- eveningcoffee 9y agoFacebook wants to be in the middle of every communication. Giving a single entity such power is simply too much.
- brian-armstrong 9y agoThis post is akin to calling Malboro 'the greatest supplements company ever created' in 1970
- vm 9y ago
- smt88 9y agoAll advertising is (intended to be) mind control. It wants to get you to take an action you weren't previously inclined to take. It follows that any product that's successful at controlling people can sell that control. If you consider the implications of Facebook-as-mass-mind-control, then Russian election-meddling, viral suicides, and all of Facebook's other facets make a lot of sense. It also makes sense that Facebook wants to get better at controlling you by learning more about what motivates you, leveraging social pressure, and taking over more of your attention. (That said, I still enjoy and use Facebook. I'm just worried about how powerful it is.)
- kruczek 9y ago> All advertising is (intended to be) mind control. It wants to get you to take an action you weren't previously inclined to take. That is one reason for advertising, but not the only one. Advertising is also meant to simply notify people of the existence of a certain product. In that sense, it isn't supposed to force people to buy something they don't need, but it is supposed to make them choose advertised brand, once they need such product.
- smt88 9y agoIn your example, it's still modifying behavior to produce a specific result. It also introduces thoughts that may arise subconsciously, like thinking "Kleenex" when my nose is running. That fits the definition of "mind control", as I was using it. Your definition might differ from mine.
- 659087 9y agoTargeted brainwashing as a service
- rhizome 9y agoI have to call what they're doing "the open garden" model. They simply want to be as much of the online context of peoples' lives as possible. It's really no different than the closed garden, except that people do more online now and what would have previously gone to LiveJournal and Flickr and any number of separate sites now all goes into FB, raising the switching costs to the level of closed gardens. It can't take more than a year or two of MBA to be able to fall back on this strategy. Beats working for a living.
- quickthrower2 9y agoEvery big fat corporation yearning for even more growth wants your child's mind.
- kristofferR 9y agoNRK (Norways largest media corp) har a great story yesterday about the how the highly addictive snapstreaks feature in Snapchat are controlling teen's lives: https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av-snap-1.13811834 https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av-snap-1.13811834
- placeholderNam 9y agoI've been lurking HN for months now, just created an account to thank you for sharing this link! Google Translate worked well enough. The presentation of this article was really interesting. Despite being a teenager myself, I'm glad I don't use any (non-anon) social networks. This is really scary.
- alexanderdmitri 9y agoAs a parent and someone who has always found social media unpalatable, I think this isn't new or specific just to FB. The competition to control your children's mind begins early and never stops when it comes to any institutionalized power mechanism, that's how power is reinforced and retained over generations. This is just another thing you'll need to teach your children about as you do your best to ready them for the world and help them become independent thinkers.
- colordrops 9y agoThe article speaks of using powerful algorithms and AI to scour Facebook's dark corners of pedophilia, terrorism, suicide, etc. This led me to a somewhat scary conclusion. Taking the following premises: * Community management, AI, and algorithms in general will eventually be powerful enough to do completely eradicate anything considering double plus ungood by Facebook. * Life on Facebook is a slice of human social life, although admittedly poorly curated. * Sensor and mobile technology will before long be good enough to have a full annotated and indexed high definition 3D recording of every person's existence at all moments. With these taken together, it's not hard to imagine a Facebook that becomes the perfect law enforcer and social control mechanism far beyond anything thought up by Orwell or Demolition Man, definitely leaning more toward the Matrix.
- ben_jones 9y agoWorst still AI will be used to eliminate any activity which is unprofitable for the parent entity. Imagine reddit shadowbanning users who hurt ad revenue, imagine telecoms throttling users based on network activity (oh wait), etc.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- username223 9y agoZuck: > My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age. According to Wikipedia, Zuck has two children. Let's see their public profiles!
- jansho 9y agoHis philosophy? That’s a well-known fact to anyone working in education and child development. What irony that his products are actually hijacking those crucial early years; lower attention span, need for instant gratification, potentially unsafe materials, device reliance, overstimulation ... seriously this is cruel.
- 659087 9y agoIf you replace "education" with "indoctrination" in that statement, you end up with what he actually means.
- tzs 9y agoFacebook has a big advantage over other ways to keep in contact with your social circles: it's not full of people constantly talking about how they have quit Facebook.
- zeep 9y agodidn't children already move to something else? Amazon and Google also wants your children...
- 000000000000001 9y agoDon't trust facebook. There are so many reasons to not use it, but this imho is the greatest. Of all the productive and happy people I have known, none use facebook. Of all the miserable and lost people I know, most of them do.
- philonoist 9y agoMy question after reading all the comments here is, is there any alternative? or is there really a choice? If I have to build a social networking site, say - FriendBook, what features would you like in it? So is the case with WhatsApp. Privacy, if not now, will be unsustainable part of business model later. Look at Apple Ping[0]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping
- MikkoFinell 9y agoWhy do you presume an alternative is even needed? We did fine before facebook (some would argue better) and we will do fine after it.
- egypturnash 9y agoWhat if we declared Facebook to be a monopoly and broke it up like we did Ma Bell in the 70s? I dunno. Feels like it's too big, too ubiquitous, and is too much oriented towards encouraging behaviors that are much better for their pockets than for anyone using it. Hell, look at this story: Facebook already has (according to a quick google search, [citation needed]) about 58% of the US' entire adult population, or 3/4 of all adult Americans who use the Internet. (which is about 81%). Their user growth rate is going flat, because they're running out of people willing and able to be online. But they need to keep acquiring new users no matter what, so now they're turning their eyes to the people who they are legally barred from giving accounts to. Gotta find more eyeballs to show ads to.
- 0942v8653 9y agoSocial media is one of those things which by nature is difficult to break up. I'd say it's as hard to really fix as any natural monopoly. Facebook is not near as bad as Google is in terms of quiet influence, at least among the younger generation.
- Chaebixi 9y ago> Social media is one of those things which by nature is difficult to break up. I'd say it's as hard to really fix as any natural monopoly. No. Right now, social networking right is sort of like email in the AOL/Compuserv days. Email is a kind of social network, but they key difference between it and service like Facebook is that it's implemented using open standards. There's no reason open standards for a "Facebook feed" could be designed and mandated during a break-up.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y agoBetter to create a better desirable alternative instead of breaking up something useful to most people.
- tempodox 9y agoCorporations have always been trying to rule the world by selling hot air and "caveat emptor" has been a thing since markets exist. The Internet just gives you access to all the dumb people in the world at once. How will you control that from one country?