4 ms·

Disclaimer: I work for a competitor of FB. Opinions are my own, etc. There is an aspect of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wi

by sxp 8y ago

Disclaimer: I work for a competitor of FB. Opinions are my own, etc. There is an aspect of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect when hearing stories about FB. I've heard similar stories about various tech companies from major press outlets and the facts & opinions in the stories directly contradict my own first hand knowledge. Given this data, why should I trust press articles about FB when they're written by the same journalists who are focused on maximizing revenue for their own companies? Most articles I see are ~10% cited sources and ~90% speculation. Two examples of press stories that most technical people know are false are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Dorian_Nakamoto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Dorian_Nakamo... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermicro#Allegations_of_compromised_hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermicro#Allegations_of_comp... . People with technical knowledge can evaluate those stories and realize that they're incorrect, but others without technical knowledge probably believe the newspapers. Similarly, people at FB with insider knowledge probably realize that most of the press articles about FB are 90% incorrect and that FB is in the same moral league as all the other major tech companies.

untog 8y ago
> they're written by the same journalists who are focused on maximizing revenue for their own companies? That's a pretty huge accusation to casually throw out. Where is the actual evidence that a journalist writing an article critical of Facebook is doing so because they are focused on maximising revenue for their own company? Most journalists have nothing to do with the business side of their company, and this feels like a way to shut down absolutely any critical article without further analysis. Further to that, the two articles you cite have nothing to do with Facebook. I'd be interested to know what technical knowledge disproves the stories about Cambridge Analytica or genocide in Myanmar: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-diagram https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/f... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... I find the genocide case particularly interesting to talk about because it doesn't really require much technical knowledge to understand at all - the military set up fake FB profiles in order to push propaganda and promote ethnic cleansing. It's a question of Facebook's role in society and how proactive they should or should not be about moderating the content transmitted through their platform. I don't think there's a simple right or wrong answer, and it feels like a shame to dismiss the idea entirely because the article was written by a newspaper that technically competes with Facebook for ad impressions, or to dismiss it because of an assumption that the story is false because other false stories exist in the world.
- ydnaclementine 8y ago
  >Where is the actual evidence that a journalist writing an article critical of COMPANY is doing so because they are focused on maximising revenue for their own company? recent example is bloomberg and their china chip hacking (did that ever turn out to be true?) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h... where the writers get compensated if their story moves stock prices https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...
  - untog 8y ago
    Well, you removed the word "Facebook" from the quote there, and the Business Insider article itself states that the practice is extremely unusual in the industry. I'll agree that if Bloomberg was the sole reporter of a controversial story about Facebook that couldn't be proven I'd be very suspicious. But as far as I can tell, that hasn't happened.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    First, I don't think moving the price of an OTCBB stock counts. Second, there is still the issue of accuracy, and that is even mentioned in the BI article. Bloomberg is not going to reward reporters for publishing bullshit, because it hurts the credibility of the terminal as a news source. Third, while I wasn't in news while I was there I'm not aware of such a policy existing, and can't find anything more recent than that 2013 article.
- SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
  The majority of people I've talked to about Cambridge Analytica think that Facebook just sent out a big pile of user data without asking anyone's permission. Which is a natural and reasonable interpretation of summaries like the one Vox provides in that article: > Facebook exposed data on up to 87 million Facebook users to a researcher who worked at Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign. What actually happened is that Facebook allowed a researcher to ask individual users to volunteer their data, and that researcher gave the data to Cambridge Analytica even though he promised he'd only use it for his research. There are ways Facebook could have prevented this, and I agree they should have - the UX implied a level of trust that Facebook wasn't properly vetting. But the popular narrative is almost entirely false.
drngdds 8y ago
This seems like really flimsy reasoning. Sometimes news stories are wrong, therefore 90% of what you hear about Facebook is false?
- basch 8y ago
  More like "the explicit fact laid out in the article is true, but its context, meaning, effect on the world, and interpretation are so sensationalized that the original fact becomes irrelevant to the narrative." EG back in the day when the entire world lost its shit over the permissions an android app was asking for, not really understanding how a permission system for access to api's work. They seem to think they are legal permissions not technical ones.
  - BRAlNlAC 8y ago
    >They seem to think they are legal permissions not technical ones. There has to be either oversight or trust for legal permission to be distinct from technical permission. I think most people feel there is little of either in tech, and I can't blame them. Trust is given out as a social favor, tech companies have systematically abused this social favor by extracting extreme levels of data from every interaction. When I talk to someone face to face, I don't expect them to whip out a video camera and start recording our interaction, and if they did that I wouldn't approach them with so much trust. If a tech company Hoovers up my personal data, I likely won't know it. The abuse of trust is the over-collection of data and that particular abuse is what funds the internet. If you are arguing that there is oversight on the internet, consider that Facebook still won't let you really delete your data.

by sxp 8y ago

untog 8y ago

> they're written by the same journalists who are focused on maximizing revenue for their own companies? That's a pretty huge accusation to casually throw out. Where is the actual evidence that a journalist writing an article critical of Facebook is doing so because they are focused on maximising revenue for their own company? Most journalists have nothing to do with the business side of their company, and this feels like a way to shut down absolutely any critical article without further analysis. Further to that, the two articles you cite have nothing to do with Facebook. I'd be interested to know what technical knowledge disproves the stories about Cambridge Analytica or genocide in Myanmar: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-diagram https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/f... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... I find the genocide case particularly interesting to talk about because it doesn't really require much technical knowledge to understand at all - the military set up fake FB profiles in order to push propaganda and promote ethnic cleansing. It's a question of Facebook's role in society and how proactive they should or should not be about moderating the content transmitted through their platform. I don't think there's a simple right or wrong answer, and it feels like a shame to dismiss the idea entirely because the article was written by a newspaper that technically competes with Facebook for ad impressions, or to dismiss it because of an assumption that the story is false because other false stories exist in the world.

ydnaclementine 8y ago
>Where is the actual evidence that a journalist writing an article critical of COMPANY is doing so because they are focused on maximising revenue for their own company? recent example is bloomberg and their china chip hacking (did that ever turn out to be true?) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h... where the writers get compensated if their story moves stock prices https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...
- untog 8y ago
  Well, you removed the word "Facebook" from the quote there, and the Business Insider article itself states that the practice is extremely unusual in the industry. I'll agree that if Bloomberg was the sole reporter of a controversial story about Facebook that couldn't be proven I'd be very suspicious. But as far as I can tell, that hasn't happened.
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  First, I don't think moving the price of an OTCBB stock counts. Second, there is still the issue of accuracy, and that is even mentioned in the BI article. Bloomberg is not going to reward reporters for publishing bullshit, because it hurts the credibility of the terminal as a news source. Third, while I wasn't in news while I was there I'm not aware of such a policy existing, and can't find anything more recent than that 2013 article.
SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
The majority of people I've talked to about Cambridge Analytica think that Facebook just sent out a big pile of user data without asking anyone's permission. Which is a natural and reasonable interpretation of summaries like the one Vox provides in that article: > Facebook exposed data on up to 87 million Facebook users to a researcher who worked at Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign. What actually happened is that Facebook allowed a researcher to ask individual users to volunteer their data, and that researcher gave the data to Cambridge Analytica even though he promised he'd only use it for his research. There are ways Facebook could have prevented this, and I agree they should have - the UX implied a level of trust that Facebook wasn't properly vetting. But the popular narrative is almost entirely false.

drngdds 8y ago

This seems like really flimsy reasoning. Sometimes news stories are wrong, therefore 90% of what you hear about Facebook is false?

basch 8y ago
More like "the explicit fact laid out in the article is true, but its context, meaning, effect on the world, and interpretation are so sensationalized that the original fact becomes irrelevant to the narrative." EG back in the day when the entire world lost its shit over the permissions an android app was asking for, not really understanding how a permission system for access to api's work. They seem to think they are legal permissions not technical ones.
- BRAlNlAC 8y ago
  >They seem to think they are legal permissions not technical ones. There has to be either oversight or trust for legal permission to be distinct from technical permission. I think most people feel there is little of either in tech, and I can't blame them. Trust is given out as a social favor, tech companies have systematically abused this social favor by extracting extreme levels of data from every interaction. When I talk to someone face to face, I don't expect them to whip out a video camera and start recording our interaction, and if they did that I wouldn't approach them with so much trust. If a tech company Hoovers up my personal data, I likely won't know it. The abuse of trust is the over-collection of data and that particular abuse is what funds the internet. If you are arguing that there is oversight on the internet, consider that Facebook still won't let you really delete your data.