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I'm ashamed to say that up until now, when I saw Facebook (or similar) acting evil I thought about the quote, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequatel

I'm ashamed to say that up until now, when I saw Facebook (or similar) acting evil I thought about the quote, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Well, fuck that and fuck me, those people are not idiots, they're criminals.

mnm1 8y ago
Except the quote is generally wrong when it comes to issues of profit. It's simply backwards. People are fucking evil when it comes to money, profits, power, status, pleasure, and generally getting ahead of others. Considering those are the main motivators for almost all human actions, Hanlon's razor is clearly a bunch of bullshit that people spread around to end actual debate and discussions they don't like.
- ALittleLight 8y ago
  I don't think the quote is wrong, it's just that some things aren't well explained by stupidity. "Oops, we accidentally stole your data and used it" isn't explainable by stupidity but is explainable by malice. In other words, Hanlon's Razer doesn't say that there is no such thing as malice just that you shouldn't default to assuming malice.
  - mnm1 8y ago
    Yes. I'm saying that you should default to assuming malice because in most human endeavors and motives it's the primary factor. Even stupid people can and are evil. The motives I list above cover probably over 90% of human actions. Although that's just my own guess as to percentage, that means hanlon's razor is useful only ten percent of the time.
quickben 8y ago
That gets me every time I read in the media about a 'bug' that enabled some complex data transfer. People, somebody has to decide, plan, code, test and deploy the behaviour, and make sure it works. And yet, people accept the explanation it seems without much thought.
- kurtisc 8y ago
  The email contacts feature already existed but was disabled in the past, so it just needed to be a Boolean switch. Like anyone who uses Messenger, I can believe they could introduce a regression and never fix it.
cmurf 8y ago
Sorry but I think you're being too hard on yourself, while also being inappropriately diplomatic toward Facebook. I mean, crimes happen all the time. I'm a criminal, I speed sometimes, I often jaywalk. I would say they are malicious, and have forfeited whatever position as a trustee of data that people have ever granted them. What do you do with a trustee who puts their interest before the beneficiary? Of course, you fire them. But indeed who is the beneficiary? At least in their public vernacular it's the user, even though more well read individuals know the beneficiary is the trustee, one in the same. Facebook is perhaps not out of the ordinary really, it's just another of a variety of businesses who have come to realize they hate having users. They just need their data. Vampires don't want human friends either, they just need their blood.
impostir 8y ago
I always took that quote is the default, to be disproven by significant evidence to the contrary, or Mark Zuckerberg in other words.
scotchmi_st 8y ago
Not to contradict your overall sentiment, but people often focus on intention with these issues. I think that's wrong. Like, if someone treads dog poo into my house on their shoes, it doesn't really matter if they did it by mistake, or spent ages walking around town trying to find some dog poo to step in before coming to my house; the effect is that there is now dog poo on my carpet. We need to be more dispassionate when discussing these issues because otherwise threads like this descend into analysis of whether Zuckerberg/Bezos/whoever is a moral person. Which is a)probably unknowable and b)besides the point. There is a problem here with a very big company that has more power than it knows how to handle, which can probably only be mitigated by breaking it up. That's all there is to it, really. [edit] Just as an addendum, that's not to say that if the company has done something illegal, the people responsible shouldn't be prosecuted- they should.
- slg 8y ago
  Words like malice and evil require intent. If we don't want the conversation to be about intent, we should use words like amoral. Facebook isn't actively trying to harm their customers, they simply don't care about them. That is amoral not evil.
  - tkxxx7 8y ago
    > Facebook isn't actively trying to harm their customers, they simply don't care about them. That is amoral not evil. Don't bend yourself out of shape. Actively, happily ignoring the evil you have caused and continue to cause is evil.
    - slg 8y ago
      That isn't evil. You wouldn't call a hurricane or a fire evil. You wouldn't call a person who kills someone in a no fault car accident evil. Evil isn't about results. It is about intent and motive. You can call Facebook a number of things from amoral to negligent or even criminal, but once you start talking about evilness you have to start judging their intentions and motives.
TheTruth1234 8y ago
Conclusion of the year. Kudos.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
smokeyj 8y ago
Come on, you knew facebook was evil. Most people know facebook is evil. We choose to ignore it because otherwise we would feel obligated to change. Change would come at the expense of "likes" and other modes of social validation. People are realizing that social validation is becoming less validated by social media. (Lets remove the likes on IG!!). The people coming around now are sheep looking for the next wave of validation.
_cs2017_ 8y ago
Maybe I misread, but none of the articles linked above suggest any malicious intent. Could you clarify what specifically you're referring to?
- wavefunction 8y ago
  Making money off "mistakes" that keep happening, darn it!
  - _cs2017_ 8y ago
    I don't think they can make money off plain text passwords? They can only lose money from that, if it's discovered and they are fined and lose some users. They can make money from contact lists, but IIUC the article said they didn't use the contact lists. Also, given that it only affected a couple million users (like 0.1% of their user base), the damage to their reputation would far outweigh any benefits of actually using those contact lists. On the last item, the collection of email passwords, the only benefit would be if they actually use those passwords to get information, so the above point covers it. Let me know if I'm missing something.
    - wavefunction 8y ago
      how about extracting a user's contacts with their plaintext passwords that would usually be hashed into a database (at least in my professional experience) and thus unusable by facebook?
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - _cs2017_ 8y ago
        You can do many evil things with passwords. But, according to the articles, that's not what happened. They did download contact lists, even though they never used the plaintext passwords they stored in the logs. The users involved in the two incidents were different.
pdonis 8y ago
> "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" My response to that quote is, to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke: "Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."
kerng 8y ago
I think that is the perception that needs to change, some actions certainly can't be explained with "move fast and break things". Some actions move into the criminal areas, like tricking users for passwords and phone number to then use that for other purposes to further their own agenda. That could indeed be seen as criminal I think. And someone has to be held accountable.
antt 8y ago
>Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity I find that the people who use that quote are most often both.
simonh 8y ago
I’d prefer to say negligence than stupidity. Being stupid isn’t something you can avoid, but being negligent is something within their power to avoid and is a legitimate target of legal sanction.

mnm1 8y ago

Except the quote is generally wrong when it comes to issues of profit. It's simply backwards. People are fucking evil when it comes to money, profits, power, status, pleasure, and generally getting ahead of others. Considering those are the main motivators for almost all human actions, Hanlon's razor is clearly a bunch of bullshit that people spread around to end actual debate and discussions they don't like.

ALittleLight 8y ago
I don't think the quote is wrong, it's just that some things aren't well explained by stupidity. "Oops, we accidentally stole your data and used it" isn't explainable by stupidity but is explainable by malice. In other words, Hanlon's Razer doesn't say that there is no such thing as malice just that you shouldn't default to assuming malice.
- mnm1 8y ago
  Yes. I'm saying that you should default to assuming malice because in most human endeavors and motives it's the primary factor. Even stupid people can and are evil. The motives I list above cover probably over 90% of human actions. Although that's just my own guess as to percentage, that means hanlon's razor is useful only ten percent of the time.

quickben 8y ago

That gets me every time I read in the media about a 'bug' that enabled some complex data transfer. People, somebody has to decide, plan, code, test and deploy the behaviour, and make sure it works. And yet, people accept the explanation it seems without much thought.

kurtisc 8y ago
The email contacts feature already existed but was disabled in the past, so it just needed to be a Boolean switch. Like anyone who uses Messenger, I can believe they could introduce a regression and never fix it.

cmurf 8y ago

Sorry but I think you're being too hard on yourself, while also being inappropriately diplomatic toward Facebook. I mean, crimes happen all the time. I'm a criminal, I speed sometimes, I often jaywalk. I would say they are malicious, and have forfeited whatever position as a trustee of data that people have ever granted them. What do you do with a trustee who puts their interest before the beneficiary? Of course, you fire them. But indeed who is the beneficiary? At least in their public vernacular it's the user, even though more well read individuals know the beneficiary is the trustee, one in the same. Facebook is perhaps not out of the ordinary really, it's just another of a variety of businesses who have come to realize they hate having users. They just need their data. Vampires don't want human friends either, they just need their blood.

impostir 8y ago

I always took that quote is the default, to be disproven by significant evidence to the contrary, or Mark Zuckerberg in other words.

scotchmi_st 8y ago

Not to contradict your overall sentiment, but people often focus on intention with these issues. I think that's wrong. Like, if someone treads dog poo into my house on their shoes, it doesn't really matter if they did it by mistake, or spent ages walking around town trying to find some dog poo to step in before coming to my house; the effect is that there is now dog poo on my carpet. We need to be more dispassionate when discussing these issues because otherwise threads like this descend into analysis of whether Zuckerberg/Bezos/whoever is a moral person. Which is a)probably unknowable and b)besides the point. There is a problem here with a very big company that has more power than it knows how to handle, which can probably only be mitigated by breaking it up. That's all there is to it, really. [edit] Just as an addendum, that's not to say that if the company has done something illegal, the people responsible shouldn't be prosecuted- they should.

slg 8y ago
Words like malice and evil require intent. If we don't want the conversation to be about intent, we should use words like amoral. Facebook isn't actively trying to harm their customers, they simply don't care about them. That is amoral not evil.
- tkxxx7 8y ago
  > Facebook isn't actively trying to harm their customers, they simply don't care about them. That is amoral not evil. Don't bend yourself out of shape. Actively, happily ignoring the evil you have caused and continue to cause is evil.
  - slg 8y ago
    That isn't evil. You wouldn't call a hurricane or a fire evil. You wouldn't call a person who kills someone in a no fault car accident evil. Evil isn't about results. It is about intent and motive. You can call Facebook a number of things from amoral to negligent or even criminal, but once you start talking about evilness you have to start judging their intentions and motives.

TheTruth1234 8y ago

Conclusion of the year. Kudos.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

smokeyj 8y ago

Come on, you knew facebook was evil. Most people know facebook is evil. We choose to ignore it because otherwise we would feel obligated to change. Change would come at the expense of "likes" and other modes of social validation. People are realizing that social validation is becoming less validated by social media. (Lets remove the likes on IG!!). The people coming around now are sheep looking for the next wave of validation.

_cs2017_ 8y ago

Maybe I misread, but none of the articles linked above suggest any malicious intent. Could you clarify what specifically you're referring to?

wavefunction 8y ago
Making money off "mistakes" that keep happening, darn it!
- _cs2017_ 8y ago
  I don't think they can make money off plain text passwords? They can only lose money from that, if it's discovered and they are fined and lose some users. They can make money from contact lists, but IIUC the article said they didn't use the contact lists. Also, given that it only affected a couple million users (like 0.1% of their user base), the damage to their reputation would far outweigh any benefits of actually using those contact lists. On the last item, the collection of email passwords, the only benefit would be if they actually use those passwords to get information, so the above point covers it. Let me know if I'm missing something.
  - wavefunction 8y ago
    how about extracting a user's contacts with their plaintext passwords that would usually be hashed into a database (at least in my professional experience) and thus unusable by facebook?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - _cs2017_ 8y ago
      You can do many evil things with passwords. But, according to the articles, that's not what happened. They did download contact lists, even though they never used the plaintext passwords they stored in the logs. The users involved in the two incidents were different.

pdonis 8y ago

> "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" My response to that quote is, to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke: "Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."

kerng 8y ago

I think that is the perception that needs to change, some actions certainly can't be explained with "move fast and break things". Some actions move into the criminal areas, like tricking users for passwords and phone number to then use that for other purposes to further their own agenda. That could indeed be seen as criminal I think. And someone has to be held accountable.

antt 8y ago

>Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity I find that the people who use that quote are most often both.

simonh 8y ago

I’d prefer to say negligence than stupidity. Being stupid isn’t something you can avoid, but being negligent is something within their power to avoid and is a legitimate target of legal sanction.