6 ms·

Facebook’s top execs ‘make tobacco executives look like Mr. Rogers’

whatshisface 8y ago
I wish other companies could get the same kind of scrutiny as Facebook. For some reason while most scandals are pushed down and quickly forgotten, Facebook is being dragged around for all its worth. Maybe they weren't planting enough stories.
- dijit 8y ago
  I feel quite the opposite. Outside of hackernews there is almost no scrutiny as far as I see. (In the eu anyway)
- mockindignant 8y ago
  Which companies do you refer? I am fine with other companies facing public backlash for their actions just like Facebook is now if they are doing things as shady as Facebook.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Google.
  - Puer 8y ago
    Google with YouTube and Twitter? Even though most congressional hearings are a farce, Google didn't even show up to speak with congress. The amount of racist, nazi propaganda I'm exposed to on Twitter every day far outnumbers what I've ever seen on Facebook.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    Another commenter mentioned Equifax, which I agree is a good example. They have done a lot more to damage me than Facebook could hope to. (I don't have a choice about being in Equifax's database, but at least I can block the little informants on websites I visit.)
- radicalbyte 8y ago
  It's probably a deliberate strategy by the carbon industry to distract attention away from them. Facebook et al all deserve the attention, mind, especially in mobile. The amount of information mining done via apps (and especially by pre-installed apps which you cannot uninstall) is a scandal.
- existencebox 8y ago
  I feel the same way. It regularly frustrates me to see the magnitude of corporate misdeeds that just go unmentioned. Equifax resulted in little to no real action despite, what is in my mind, a far more powerful and privacy-sensitive position. (nearly-mandatory access to my spending habits will tell you MUCH more about my life than a social site or tracking cookie that I can realistically avoid.) And this not even mentioning the passing fancies we get for everything from medical billing abuses to undischargable student debt without showing nearly the level of tenacity we do with FB. Hell, just comparing them to what the tobacco execs did in terms of physical harm and outright mortality-causing misdirection for almost half a century shows how skewed the comparison is to my eyes. It's like the talking heads on the news who compared <hot button topic> to Hitler. Sure it may be a bad thing but you've just lost all sense of relativism. Additionally, the complaint that facebook is somehow the threat to democracy (and to our credit, other topics have come and gone to question "how'd we get here" but FB is really the recurring theme) has always sounded to me far too much like a "let's find a scapegoat for an outcome we don't want to blame ourselves for" (Trump) especially given that when many articles have risen to the top showing how _our own executive_ may be taking part in truly criminal action (far beyond just "we're slimy corporate executives") this doesn't even make the front page, but we'll beat the dead horse of FB all day long.
SirLJ 8y ago
Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Open Society Foundation, just saying, “The notion that your company at your direction actively engaged in the same behavior to try to discredit people exercising their First Amendment rights to protest Facebook’s role in disseminating vile propaganda is frankly astonishing to me. It’s disappointing to see how you have failed to monitor hate and misinformation on Facebook’s platform to now learning that you are active in promoting this distortion is beyond the pale.”
cryoshon 8y ago
perhaps this is an incendiary comment, but i really do wonder what all of the HN facebook employees are telling themselves to deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by this latest scandal wherein facebook paid for smear campaigns to distract from their own dirty laundry. every time i have encountered these people on HN, they've portrayed a cultlike naivety regarding their organization's actions. they always allude to the outside world "not knowing the whole story" or something similar. in other words, they've made excuses. but i really do want to see what the excuses are this time. i imagine they will be particularly entertaining. more seriously, it's time for facebook to wrap it up. we've known for years that they were abusing the public trust. while i doubt we will see any leadership from congress regarding breaking up the company or degrading their capabilities to hurt the public interest, the intense amount of flak that FB has been getting lately is immensely promising. plenty of people are leaving FB. while it is true that many of these people are leaving for instagram, it's a critically different product. i think instagram has a much more limited ability to negatively impact the public good via propaganda etc mostly because it isn't as participatory as facebook.
- smt88 8y ago
  I wondered about this too. I'm someone who won't work in any adtech at all for ethical reasons. I asked my friend who works at FB, and he said, "I don't know about all that. I just want to work on cool tech." I think that's how most humans feel about their role in orgs like Facebook, so I don't judge him at all.
  - SirLJ 8y ago
    “I was just following orders”...
- emtel 8y ago
  Speaking as a former employee (who left for personal reasons), stories like this which compare facebook to a product that literally causes cancer make it much _easier_ to ignore criticism of the company. Once you see your umpteenth story about how facebook is the biggest force for evil in history its pretty easy to tune everything out.
fatjokes 8y ago
Are you f-ing kidding me? Until 90%+ of FB users start dropping dead because of lung cancer then that statement is complete garbage. EDIT: a lot of people are taking my statement as meaning not to criticize Facebook. That is not it at all! It just means not to lose perspective. At least I still consider tobacco to be far worse, directly causing ~7M deaths annually with no visible benefit. EDIT 2: Genuine question: has anyone studied the rise of fascism post-FB vs. pre-FB? It's not like dictatorships and far-right governments didn't get elected pre-FB. Obviously I am one of those who doubt FB's direct responsibility vs. it being simply a media narrative against a business threat. [1] http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco
- smt88 8y ago
  What if 90% of democracies start dropping dead?
  - fatjokes 8y ago
    Then maybe people should ask why democracy is so fragile.
    - ggggtez 8y ago
      Democracy has always been fragile and built on the blood of patriots willing to fight against tyranny. A look at WW2 should remind everyone how quickly dictators can erase that if we are not prepared.
    - smt88 8y ago
      They do. That doesn't make them less fragile.
- _iyig 8y ago
  I see what you're saying, but it's also true that cigarettes didn't fundamentally weaken the structure of democratic societies. The long-term consequences of that (heck, even short-term) could be much more severe.
TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
Clickbait. I think the actual story was already posted a few days back. I'm pretty sure tabbaco has killed a few more people than Facebook, so this is a ridiculous comparison. Facebook does a lot for which it should be criticized, but it feels like we're just beating on a dead horse. It's also hilarious that someone would be so critical of Facebook all while including their share button in the same article. Apparently they're evil, but not evil enough to stop using their service. I think that says a lot about the author.
- crunchlibrarian 8y ago
  It's a link to a commentary podcast, not sure which "actual story" you're referencing but there have been several negative stories about Facebook which they talk through and that's kind of the point of the podcast.
- smt88 8y ago
  Tobacco has killed more people so far. Facebook accepted a lot of money to help Trump win, so if he were to start a war or something, I think the blood would also be on Facebook's hands. Climate change is a whole other issue with him, though less direct. Also, I understand the headline to be a comparison of tactics, not of harm. And as for the share button, writers don't make their site's templates.
  - dontreact 8y ago
    Facebook accepted more money from the Clinton campaign though right?
    - smt88 8y ago
      If she had won, people gave her FB strategy (and Russia) credit for her victory, and she started a war, I'd say the same thing about her. Helping a politician who ends up killing people is arguably helping to kill those people, whether you're a voter or an ad firm or IBM in the 40s.
      - 8y ago
dontreact 8y ago
I think this makes light of the fact that lung cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Every year millions of people die. Millions. And this is just one way cigarettes have negative impact. I’ve heard doctors say that we would need far fewer hospitals in the U.S if it wasn’t for all the negative effects of smoking.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  Implying lung cancer can happen because of smoking. In fact air pollution and a bunch of other things cause lung cancer too.
  - Puer 8y ago
    > Implying lung cancer can happen because of smoking. In fact air pollution and a bunch of other things cause lung cancer too. This is one of the most disingenuous comments I've ever read on HN.
  - dontreact 8y ago
    In the US, 75% of those who die of lung cancer are smokers. This is exactly the toe of misinformation promoted by the tobacco execs were talking about. The link between lung cancer and smoking is extremely well established.
  - ishi 8y ago
    There is no doubt that smoking can cause lung cancer. "Smoking is by far the biggest preventable cause of cancer. Thanks to years of research, the links between smoking and cancer are now very clear. Smoking accounts for more than 1 in 4 UK cancer deaths, and 3 in 20 cancer cases." https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/smoking-and-cancer/how-smoking-causes-cancer https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-canc...
- austenallred 8y ago
  It’s an absurd comparison by any measure
- 8y ago
perseusprime11 8y ago
How much of these narrative/stories are coming from a hidden agenda of newspaper companies that are struggling to survive from the onslaught of aggregation platforms like Facebook and Google. There seems to be a sudden spike in these stories. Got to be coming/funding from somewhere. Anybody agree/disagree?
- dontreact 8y ago
  I agree with this. At the same time these large platforms have played a huge factor in the death of many local newspapers. Local journalism is pretty much no longer a viable career. And so no one is reporting on the actions of most state legislatures which is a big problem. The platforms have not really stepped in to fill this void. In the long term journalism as a whole may be at risk, leaving even larger and more important voids.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    The internet has made the world a smaller place, I’m not sure local newscasts would have survived longer anyways just like local ironsmiths and cobblers disappeared in a world with a global supply chain.
    - dontreact 8y ago
      My point is that the platforms haven’t replaced something important that the newspapers were doing, which came not from a profit motive but from a motive of journalistic duty. There is not much money to be made in raising awareness of how local government works. But it’s important for society. Your examples are cases where global brands met the need exactly because the free market works well in those cases. Just because there isn’t a lot market demand for information about local state legislatures doesn’t mean that this information is not important or valuable to collect and report. It’s pretty important to keep local government accountable.
      - chillacy 8y ago
        Yea fair point I agree. The market will optimize for things which may be worse in the long run.
brentm 8y ago
The FB media onslaught is getting a bit overdone at this point. They aren't the worst company in the world. They probably have figured out that connecting everyone doesn't necessarily make the world a better place immediately but I applaud the effort and I think long term it will make a difference. So they make money selling ads which they display by algorithmically sifting through metadata. Around here I know it's not a popular practice but for the vast majority of FB's 1.5B DAUs I think it matters a lot less than the media would like it to. All ads are annoying but I personally prefer the targeted ads of today to the random banners ads of the late 90s early 2000s. I know they aren't a perfect company but who is? I think the media just smells easy traffic here.
- Puer 8y ago
  HN has always been super negative towards FB and their products (with perhaps the exception of Whatsapp) because HN has never been FB's target market. It's a lot easier to criticize a product that's never provided any utility to you personally. You don't really hear about the spread of racist, divisive, Russian sponsored content on YouTube or Twitter nearly as much here, and when you do you also don't get comments sections filled with moral grandstanding on how if you work at FB you're human garbage that should burn in hell.
liftbigweights 8y ago
Another "facebook is the devil" propaganda hit piece. This is getting to be so freaking exhausting and so obvious. You know what's becoming worse than facebook and their execs? The news industry and their editors.
ajcodez 8y ago
I see some parallels with “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Facebook doesn’t share awful hate speech, people share awful hate speech. Half of us will be like “not enough, take away Facebook” and the other half will be like “some people suck, but I should have Facebook”. I think the answer is to tag content using ML and then allow users to apply filters. It could be a “protect me” button in settings. I’m assuming most hate speech is in image and video format with text in the image but Facebook can probably figure that out with less than $1B worth of dev hours. It’s easy to delay sharing into “protect me” enabled news feeds until after processing and tagging.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Very few people are against hate speech, most people are only against hate speech that targets groups they feel alligned with. As a result you would see many people turn the switch on only to go and write a diatrabe against a group that they feel is a fair target.
  - ajcodez 8y ago
    I certainly don’t want hateful media in my news feed. In my proposed solution nothing stops you from posting hate speech but it’s one button to filter all hate speech on the receiving end. I would suspect that hate speech gets fantastic engagement and wider audience than required.
justapassenger 8y ago
“Oh, my God. Using an Android phone is like paying for dinner with a Discover card. It’s like saying, “Don’t have sex with me.” It’s the ultimate prophylactic that says “I should be ...” Oh, Scott. Once again. ”I should be screened out of the gene pool.” If you use an Android phone or have a Discover card, your family tree should come to an end.” Stopped reading after this.

I wish other companies could get the same kind of scrutiny as Facebook. For some reason while most scandals are pushed down and quickly forgotten, Facebook is being dragged around for all its worth. Maybe they weren't planting enough stories.

dijit 8y ago
I feel quite the opposite. Outside of hackernews there is almost no scrutiny as far as I see. (In the eu anyway)
mockindignant 8y ago
Which companies do you refer? I am fine with other companies facing public backlash for their actions just like Facebook is now if they are doing things as shady as Facebook.
- busterarm 8y ago
  Google.
- Puer 8y ago
  Google with YouTube and Twitter? Even though most congressional hearings are a farce, Google didn't even show up to speak with congress. The amount of racist, nazi propaganda I'm exposed to on Twitter every day far outnumbers what I've ever seen on Facebook.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Another commenter mentioned Equifax, which I agree is a good example. They have done a lot more to damage me than Facebook could hope to. (I don't have a choice about being in Equifax's database, but at least I can block the little informants on websites I visit.)
radicalbyte 8y ago
It's probably a deliberate strategy by the carbon industry to distract attention away from them. Facebook et al all deserve the attention, mind, especially in mobile. The amount of information mining done via apps (and especially by pre-installed apps which you cannot uninstall) is a scandal.
existencebox 8y ago
I feel the same way. It regularly frustrates me to see the magnitude of corporate misdeeds that just go unmentioned. Equifax resulted in little to no real action despite, what is in my mind, a far more powerful and privacy-sensitive position. (nearly-mandatory access to my spending habits will tell you MUCH more about my life than a social site or tracking cookie that I can realistically avoid.) And this not even mentioning the passing fancies we get for everything from medical billing abuses to undischargable student debt without showing nearly the level of tenacity we do with FB. Hell, just comparing them to what the tobacco execs did in terms of physical harm and outright mortality-causing misdirection for almost half a century shows how skewed the comparison is to my eyes. It's like the talking heads on the news who compared <hot button topic> to Hitler. Sure it may be a bad thing but you've just lost all sense of relativism. Additionally, the complaint that facebook is somehow the threat to democracy (and to our credit, other topics have come and gone to question "how'd we get here" but FB is really the recurring theme) has always sounded to me far too much like a "let's find a scapegoat for an outcome we don't want to blame ourselves for" (Trump) especially given that when many articles have risen to the top showing how _our own executive_ may be taking part in truly criminal action (far beyond just "we're slimy corporate executives") this doesn't even make the front page, but we'll beat the dead horse of FB all day long.

SirLJ 8y ago

Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Open Society Foundation, just saying, “The notion that your company at your direction actively engaged in the same behavior to try to discredit people exercising their First Amendment rights to protest Facebook’s role in disseminating vile propaganda is frankly astonishing to me. It’s disappointing to see how you have failed to monitor hate and misinformation on Facebook’s platform to now learning that you are active in promoting this distortion is beyond the pale.”

cryoshon 8y ago

perhaps this is an incendiary comment, but i really do wonder what all of the HN facebook employees are telling themselves to deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by this latest scandal wherein facebook paid for smear campaigns to distract from their own dirty laundry. every time i have encountered these people on HN, they've portrayed a cultlike naivety regarding their organization's actions. they always allude to the outside world "not knowing the whole story" or something similar. in other words, they've made excuses. but i really do want to see what the excuses are this time. i imagine they will be particularly entertaining. more seriously, it's time for facebook to wrap it up. we've known for years that they were abusing the public trust. while i doubt we will see any leadership from congress regarding breaking up the company or degrading their capabilities to hurt the public interest, the intense amount of flak that FB has been getting lately is immensely promising. plenty of people are leaving FB. while it is true that many of these people are leaving for instagram, it's a critically different product. i think instagram has a much more limited ability to negatively impact the public good via propaganda etc mostly because it isn't as participatory as facebook.

smt88 8y ago
I wondered about this too. I'm someone who won't work in any adtech at all for ethical reasons. I asked my friend who works at FB, and he said, "I don't know about all that. I just want to work on cool tech." I think that's how most humans feel about their role in orgs like Facebook, so I don't judge him at all.
- SirLJ 8y ago
  “I was just following orders”...
emtel 8y ago
Speaking as a former employee (who left for personal reasons), stories like this which compare facebook to a product that literally causes cancer make it much _easier_ to ignore criticism of the company. Once you see your umpteenth story about how facebook is the biggest force for evil in history its pretty easy to tune everything out.

fatjokes 8y ago

Are you f-ing kidding me? Until 90%+ of FB users start dropping dead because of lung cancer then that statement is complete garbage. EDIT: a lot of people are taking my statement as meaning not to criticize Facebook. That is not it at all! It just means not to lose perspective. At least I still consider tobacco to be far worse, directly causing ~7M deaths annually with no visible benefit. EDIT 2: Genuine question: has anyone studied the rise of fascism post-FB vs. pre-FB? It's not like dictatorships and far-right governments didn't get elected pre-FB. Obviously I am one of those who doubt FB's direct responsibility vs. it being simply a media narrative against a business threat. [1] http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco

smt88 8y ago
What if 90% of democracies start dropping dead?
- fatjokes 8y ago
  Then maybe people should ask why democracy is so fragile.
  - ggggtez 8y ago
    Democracy has always been fragile and built on the blood of patriots willing to fight against tyranny. A look at WW2 should remind everyone how quickly dictators can erase that if we are not prepared.
  - smt88 8y ago
    They do. That doesn't make them less fragile.
_iyig 8y ago
I see what you're saying, but it's also true that cigarettes didn't fundamentally weaken the structure of democratic societies. The long-term consequences of that (heck, even short-term) could be much more severe.

TheAceOfHearts 8y ago

Clickbait. I think the actual story was already posted a few days back. I'm pretty sure tabbaco has killed a few more people than Facebook, so this is a ridiculous comparison. Facebook does a lot for which it should be criticized, but it feels like we're just beating on a dead horse. It's also hilarious that someone would be so critical of Facebook all while including their share button in the same article. Apparently they're evil, but not evil enough to stop using their service. I think that says a lot about the author.

crunchlibrarian 8y ago
It's a link to a commentary podcast, not sure which "actual story" you're referencing but there have been several negative stories about Facebook which they talk through and that's kind of the point of the podcast.
smt88 8y ago
Tobacco has killed more people so far. Facebook accepted a lot of money to help Trump win, so if he were to start a war or something, I think the blood would also be on Facebook's hands. Climate change is a whole other issue with him, though less direct. Also, I understand the headline to be a comparison of tactics, not of harm. And as for the share button, writers don't make their site's templates.
- dontreact 8y ago
  Facebook accepted more money from the Clinton campaign though right?
  - smt88 8y ago
    If she had won, people gave her FB strategy (and Russia) credit for her victory, and she started a war, I'd say the same thing about her. Helping a politician who ends up killing people is arguably helping to kill those people, whether you're a voter or an ad firm or IBM in the 40s.
    - 8y ago

dontreact 8y ago

I think this makes light of the fact that lung cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Every year millions of people die. Millions. And this is just one way cigarettes have negative impact. I’ve heard doctors say that we would need far fewer hospitals in the U.S if it wasn’t for all the negative effects of smoking.

StreamBright 8y ago
Implying lung cancer can happen because of smoking. In fact air pollution and a bunch of other things cause lung cancer too.
- Puer 8y ago
  > Implying lung cancer can happen because of smoking. In fact air pollution and a bunch of other things cause lung cancer too. This is one of the most disingenuous comments I've ever read on HN.
- dontreact 8y ago
  In the US, 75% of those who die of lung cancer are smokers. This is exactly the toe of misinformation promoted by the tobacco execs were talking about. The link between lung cancer and smoking is extremely well established.
- ishi 8y ago
  There is no doubt that smoking can cause lung cancer. "Smoking is by far the biggest preventable cause of cancer. Thanks to years of research, the links between smoking and cancer are now very clear. Smoking accounts for more than 1 in 4 UK cancer deaths, and 3 in 20 cancer cases." https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/smoking-and-cancer/how-smoking-causes-cancer https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-canc...
austenallred 8y ago
It’s an absurd comparison by any measure
8y ago

perseusprime11 8y ago

How much of these narrative/stories are coming from a hidden agenda of newspaper companies that are struggling to survive from the onslaught of aggregation platforms like Facebook and Google. There seems to be a sudden spike in these stories. Got to be coming/funding from somewhere. Anybody agree/disagree?

dontreact 8y ago
I agree with this. At the same time these large platforms have played a huge factor in the death of many local newspapers. Local journalism is pretty much no longer a viable career. And so no one is reporting on the actions of most state legislatures which is a big problem. The platforms have not really stepped in to fill this void. In the long term journalism as a whole may be at risk, leaving even larger and more important voids.
- chillacy 8y ago
  The internet has made the world a smaller place, I’m not sure local newscasts would have survived longer anyways just like local ironsmiths and cobblers disappeared in a world with a global supply chain.
  - dontreact 8y ago
    My point is that the platforms haven’t replaced something important that the newspapers were doing, which came not from a profit motive but from a motive of journalistic duty. There is not much money to be made in raising awareness of how local government works. But it’s important for society. Your examples are cases where global brands met the need exactly because the free market works well in those cases. Just because there isn’t a lot market demand for information about local state legislatures doesn’t mean that this information is not important or valuable to collect and report. It’s pretty important to keep local government accountable.
    - chillacy 8y ago
      Yea fair point I agree. The market will optimize for things which may be worse in the long run.

brentm 8y ago

The FB media onslaught is getting a bit overdone at this point. They aren't the worst company in the world. They probably have figured out that connecting everyone doesn't necessarily make the world a better place immediately but I applaud the effort and I think long term it will make a difference. So they make money selling ads which they display by algorithmically sifting through metadata. Around here I know it's not a popular practice but for the vast majority of FB's 1.5B DAUs I think it matters a lot less than the media would like it to. All ads are annoying but I personally prefer the targeted ads of today to the random banners ads of the late 90s early 2000s. I know they aren't a perfect company but who is? I think the media just smells easy traffic here.

Puer 8y ago
HN has always been super negative towards FB and their products (with perhaps the exception of Whatsapp) because HN has never been FB's target market. It's a lot easier to criticize a product that's never provided any utility to you personally. You don't really hear about the spread of racist, divisive, Russian sponsored content on YouTube or Twitter nearly as much here, and when you do you also don't get comments sections filled with moral grandstanding on how if you work at FB you're human garbage that should burn in hell.

liftbigweights 8y ago

Another "facebook is the devil" propaganda hit piece. This is getting to be so freaking exhausting and so obvious. You know what's becoming worse than facebook and their execs? The news industry and their editors.

ajcodez 8y ago

I see some parallels with “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Facebook doesn’t share awful hate speech, people share awful hate speech. Half of us will be like “not enough, take away Facebook” and the other half will be like “some people suck, but I should have Facebook”. I think the answer is to tag content using ML and then allow users to apply filters. It could be a “protect me” button in settings. I’m assuming most hate speech is in image and video format with text in the image but Facebook can probably figure that out with less than $1B worth of dev hours. It’s easy to delay sharing into “protect me” enabled news feeds until after processing and tagging.

whatshisface 8y ago
Very few people are against hate speech, most people are only against hate speech that targets groups they feel alligned with. As a result you would see many people turn the switch on only to go and write a diatrabe against a group that they feel is a fair target.
- ajcodez 8y ago
  I certainly don’t want hateful media in my news feed. In my proposed solution nothing stops you from posting hate speech but it’s one button to filter all hate speech on the receiving end. I would suspect that hate speech gets fantastic engagement and wider audience than required.

justapassenger 8y ago

“Oh, my God. Using an Android phone is like paying for dinner with a Discover card. It’s like saying, “Don’t have sex with me.” It’s the ultimate prophylactic that says “I should be ...” Oh, Scott. Once again. ”I should be screened out of the gene pool.” If you use an Android phone or have a Discover card, your family tree should come to an end.” Stopped reading after this.