6 ms·

Facebook: Connecting people is good, even if we help some killers along the way.

by blattimwind 9y ago

thaumasiotes 9y ago
Would you disagree with that? It's basically the same thing we say about roads.
- confounded 9y ago
  Most roads are generally a public good, which are not used to generate profit to enrich a small number of people. It's also clear where they lead and how they work. Facebook on the other hand have put themselves in a position where they make a profit my offering proprietary mediation (via content selection algorithms and censorship) on top of UGC, as an ad-revenue optimization engine. Once you're in the optimized-mediation business, you're faced with lots of choices, and many of them will pitch people's lives against your profits (not just ad-revenues, but how many people to hire, and where to invest them).
- r00fus 9y ago
  Who profits off the roads? Because that's what's at issue here.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    So deaths are OK as long as nobody profits from them?
  - lotu 9y ago
    People who own the roads and collect tolls?
- notacoward 9y ago
  About roads, and mobile phones, and the internet. Looking further afield, confidentiality in finance is generally considered a good thing but has enabled many of the world's worst dictators. The US government has installed or propped up many of those dictators in the name of principles that were (at least by some) considered good at the time. Some people think unlimited access to guns is a good thing, but there have been some debates recently about the consequences of that. Killers use many services. So do police. Blanket assertions about whether the provider of a given service is good or bad are worth a lot less than analyses of what they might do - or be allowed to do - that would have shifted the balance.
- fakescience 9y ago
  yes, and just like we would want people to design roads in ways that limit driver deaths, we should insist that people design facebook in ways that limit negative consequences inherent to social networks. the problem is that facebook (a) is opaque about these decisions and (b) has shown that it cares more about maximizing profit than it cares about safety and security. the only way to change the infrastructure is to gain control over it. hard to do when power is entirely held by Facebook. Regulation is one way to exercise control, but I'd rather see some kind of mass boycott / unionization among social network users to force Facebook to be more transparent and secure about user data (for what it's worth, I've tried to set something up here [1] and here [2]). [1] https://medium.com/@oddbert2000/call-for-a-facebook-users-strike-on-may-1st-49733f3c7631 https://medium.com/@oddbert2000/call-for-a-facebook-users-st... [2] https://www.facebook.com/pg/Internet-Users-Union-1283196705113225/community/ https://www.facebook.com/pg/Internet-Users-Union-12831967051...
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    > just like we would want people to design roads in ways that limit driver deaths This isn't a response. We don't design roads so they're less convenient for murderers than for other people.
- thomble 9y ago
  Roads are public, and everything around roads and transportation is highly regulated and engineered with actual PUBLIC HEALTH and SAFETY at its core.
thomble 9y ago
"Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe it facilitates genocide."
- zaroth 9y ago
  Could say the same thing about iPhone encryption...
  - aylmao 9y ago
    Why is this getting downvoted? Phones have been used as tools by bad actors and criminals too, that's a fact.
- aylmao 9y ago
  I find it funny how everyone focuses on this line because out of context it sounds "evil", even though it's far from the focus or what's shady about the memo itself. That line just implies that "the tool" can be used for bad stuff, but then there's also: "Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide." And, just like postal mail, phones, SMS, newspapers, word of mouth, radio, etc. "the tool" can be (and is probably most often) used for good. What's surprising about this? What's actually shady about the memo is not how the tool can be used because of course it can be used for both bad and good things just like any other tool (you can kill a man with a baby bottle if you know what you're doing). What's shady is that it's claiming the ultimate goal, above anything else, is to put the tool in as many's people's hands as possible. And they'll do anything that's possible to do so, even questionable stuff. This memo is about their shady growth practices, not what the platform is used for.
_greim_ 9y ago
Actually, I think this whole "connect people at all costs" meme is pushing the wrong narrative. Facebook's failure isn't that it connected too many people, it's that it only made certain kinds of connections, while failing to make others. In other words, they've done the easy work of strengthening existing weak social graphs—and gotten rich doing so—without doing the hard work of building actual new connections between people.
- oblio 9y ago
  Can anyone do that? That’s literally strong AI territory... They do offer forums, instant messaging, voice chat, video chat, as far as tech goes they offer everything that is available today. But they can’t make me a buddy with Shaq, it’s not their job :)
  - _greim_ 9y ago
    > Can anyone do that? That’s literally strong AI territory... Why wouldn't it be tractable with current AI? I'm assuming they have the brightest minds and some fairly hefty AI software constantly analyzing and running A/B experiments, the result being that the FB experience is gratifying, sticky or even addictive. Now, why not re-purpose some of those resources so that it becomes gratifying for people to expand out of their bubbles? The hardest thing about it is presumably that it doesn't contribute directly to the bottom line.
  - ashelmire 9y ago
    > But they can’t make me a buddy with Shaq, it’s not their job :) This is what Facebook has always failed at, but where MySpace succeeded. On MySpace, I became friends with and met some minor celebs; no such thing has ever happened on Facebook (except maybe in its very earliest days). Facebook has never been about new connections, or even reaching a new audience; it was designed start to finish as a way to broadcast to a network that you already have. Unless, of course, you're an advertiser.
debt 9y ago
Andrew Bosworth has got ta go.

Facebook: Connecting people is good, even if we help some killers along the way.

thaumasiotes 9y ago

Would you disagree with that? It's basically the same thing we say about roads.

confounded 9y ago
Most roads are generally a public good, which are not used to generate profit to enrich a small number of people. It's also clear where they lead and how they work. Facebook on the other hand have put themselves in a position where they make a profit my offering proprietary mediation (via content selection algorithms and censorship) on top of UGC, as an ad-revenue optimization engine. Once you're in the optimized-mediation business, you're faced with lots of choices, and many of them will pitch people's lives against your profits (not just ad-revenues, but how many people to hire, and where to invest them).
r00fus 9y ago
Who profits off the roads? Because that's what's at issue here.
- icebraining 9y ago
  So deaths are OK as long as nobody profits from them?
- lotu 9y ago
  People who own the roads and collect tolls?
notacoward 9y ago
About roads, and mobile phones, and the internet. Looking further afield, confidentiality in finance is generally considered a good thing but has enabled many of the world's worst dictators. The US government has installed or propped up many of those dictators in the name of principles that were (at least by some) considered good at the time. Some people think unlimited access to guns is a good thing, but there have been some debates recently about the consequences of that. Killers use many services. So do police. Blanket assertions about whether the provider of a given service is good or bad are worth a lot less than analyses of what they might do - or be allowed to do - that would have shifted the balance.
fakescience 9y ago
yes, and just like we would want people to design roads in ways that limit driver deaths, we should insist that people design facebook in ways that limit negative consequences inherent to social networks. the problem is that facebook (a) is opaque about these decisions and (b) has shown that it cares more about maximizing profit than it cares about safety and security. the only way to change the infrastructure is to gain control over it. hard to do when power is entirely held by Facebook. Regulation is one way to exercise control, but I'd rather see some kind of mass boycott / unionization among social network users to force Facebook to be more transparent and secure about user data (for what it's worth, I've tried to set something up here [1] and here [2]). [1] https://medium.com/@oddbert2000/call-for-a-facebook-users-strike-on-may-1st-49733f3c7631 https://medium.com/@oddbert2000/call-for-a-facebook-users-st... [2] https://www.facebook.com/pg/Internet-Users-Union-1283196705113225/community/ https://www.facebook.com/pg/Internet-Users-Union-12831967051...
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  > just like we would want people to design roads in ways that limit driver deaths This isn't a response. We don't design roads so they're less convenient for murderers than for other people.
thomble 9y ago
Roads are public, and everything around roads and transportation is highly regulated and engineered with actual PUBLIC HEALTH and SAFETY at its core.

thomble 9y ago

"Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe it facilitates genocide."

zaroth 9y ago
Could say the same thing about iPhone encryption...
- aylmao 9y ago
  Why is this getting downvoted? Phones have been used as tools by bad actors and criminals too, that's a fact.
aylmao 9y ago
I find it funny how everyone focuses on this line because out of context it sounds "evil", even though it's far from the focus or what's shady about the memo itself. That line just implies that "the tool" can be used for bad stuff, but then there's also: "Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide." And, just like postal mail, phones, SMS, newspapers, word of mouth, radio, etc. "the tool" can be (and is probably most often) used for good. What's surprising about this? What's actually shady about the memo is not how the tool can be used because of course it can be used for both bad and good things just like any other tool (you can kill a man with a baby bottle if you know what you're doing). What's shady is that it's claiming the ultimate goal, above anything else, is to put the tool in as many's people's hands as possible. And they'll do anything that's possible to do so, even questionable stuff. This memo is about their shady growth practices, not what the platform is used for.

_greim_ 9y ago

Actually, I think this whole "connect people at all costs" meme is pushing the wrong narrative. Facebook's failure isn't that it connected too many people, it's that it only made certain kinds of connections, while failing to make others. In other words, they've done the easy work of strengthening existing weak social graphs—and gotten rich doing so—without doing the hard work of building actual new connections between people.

oblio 9y ago
Can anyone do that? That’s literally strong AI territory... They do offer forums, instant messaging, voice chat, video chat, as far as tech goes they offer everything that is available today. But they can’t make me a buddy with Shaq, it’s not their job :)
- _greim_ 9y ago
  > Can anyone do that? That’s literally strong AI territory... Why wouldn't it be tractable with current AI? I'm assuming they have the brightest minds and some fairly hefty AI software constantly analyzing and running A/B experiments, the result being that the FB experience is gratifying, sticky or even addictive. Now, why not re-purpose some of those resources so that it becomes gratifying for people to expand out of their bubbles? The hardest thing about it is presumably that it doesn't contribute directly to the bottom line.
- ashelmire 9y ago
  > But they can’t make me a buddy with Shaq, it’s not their job :) This is what Facebook has always failed at, but where MySpace succeeded. On MySpace, I became friends with and met some minor celebs; no such thing has ever happened on Facebook (except maybe in its very earliest days). Facebook has never been about new connections, or even reaching a new audience; it was designed start to finish as a way to broadcast to a network that you already have. Unless, of course, you're an advertiser.

debt 9y ago

Andrew Bosworth has got ta go.