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I love tech. It pains me to come to the conclusion that in Facebook, we have created something that should not exist: an addicative worldwide mob where peddlers

I love tech. It pains me to come to the conclusion that in Facebook, we have created something that should not exist: an addicative worldwide mob where peddlers can sell emotionally manipulative ideas to the people least able to handle them, whether it's clicking cows all day long or believing Elvis is still alive. In defense, I don't think anybody that was on-board at the beginning realized this. I do, however, feel that anybody in the last decade working at FB should have been smart enough to figure out what was going on. They just didn't care.

baryphonic 7y ago
I love tech, too. This is why I have divested myself from Facebook, beyond messaging tools (FB Messenger and WhatsApp). If tech is building new edifices to the capabilities of tech, then Facebook is certainly tech, and the nightmare Facebook has become is inevitable. (Though I agree with other commenters that FB probably matters much less than we with in-built pro-tech biases are willing to believe.) Otherwise, if tech is "doing more with less," then Facebook is extremely hard to justify as tech.
throwaway8291 7y ago
Investors care about making money, period. Whether you burn coal until the planet is inhabitable or John Doe data is sold and packaged up for the next couple of decades without him knowing does not matter at all. It's a strange world for sure, and one that I am virtually certain will come to a crashing halt in this century. Nobody is required to buy facebook stocks. If you do not want this company to continue it's operations, just get rid of it (if you owned it in the first place).
dfraser992 7y ago
Zuckerberg's major in college was psychology, not CS. A Skinner Box [1] is Psych 101 - I am certain Mark knew exactly what he was building. And how is the like button nothing but building on the theory of social psychology? Facebook, IMO (I minored in psych) is entirely built on a solid understanding of human psychology and how to control it. Add in ads and profit! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
seppin 7y ago
> They just didn't care. They do care, the piles of money make them care less.
alexis_fr 7y ago
I view it the opposite way: We underestimated as a society how many people were feeling bad. Addictions to alcohol is horrible, but their harm doesn’t scale. With social networks, we suddenly see what we chose to ignore before: The swathes of MGTOWs, Incels, doubters, we also see the swathes of “scientific studies” which were provably wrong, the lies of the medias when you compare the scientific study and how the articles spin them. We should rather treat it as a brand new society with new balances, like after Gutemberg’s invention of the printer, which enabled communication and gave birth to Martin Luther, the accession of Bible translation to masses, the accession of The Encyclopedia, and more generally, the Humanists. And maybe, just maybe, we should have taken better care of so many people we’ve put in such horrible situations that content binging becomes better than their life. Rather than assuming they were just crybabies.
- RichieAHB 7y ago
  This is a difficult hypothesis to prove by virtue of the fact that if we didn't think people were feeling in certain ways this pre-FB, then it was presumably because we didn't have accurate data. It follows that if we didn't have the data then it's difficult to say whether FB et al tapped in to something that had yet to manifest itself in a subset of people, or had yet to become visible to society. Nevertheless, it's an interesting point that I hadn't really heard put this way before so thanks.
- TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
  > we should have taken better care of so many people we’ve put in such horrible situations... Rather than assuming they were just crybabies. It may seemed callused, but they _are_ just crybabies. Just because social media facilitates the formation of certain identity groups now does not mean that the cultures formed from those identities are good or productive. Just look at the increase in suicides, depression, school shootings, and general extremism since the spread of social media. Those are not mentalities that we should foster and support IMO.
  - Loughla 7y ago
    >we should have taken better care of so many people >Those are not mentalities that we should foster and support IMO. Those are not the same thing. The first says to connect people to services that can help stem the negative and unproductive mentalities. Yours says to help them grow that negativity. These are not the same things.
KorematsuFred 7y ago
I disagree. FB has enriched my life at many ways, when my father was on deathbed I realized how much he used fb to just keep track of me every single time he remembered me. We spoke daily but I did not know he used facebook to "be with me". I do understand your criticism but it is in the same line as how christian priests opposed education for peasants. They argued that if the ordinary massed could read it would mean they will read stuff they are not supposed to read. I am pretty sure similar criticism has be forced on TV, Cellphones, Comic books and what not. I would say relax, this too shall will pass and even bigger distraction would take over our lives.
- stiray 7y ago
  (Just to the guy bellow: yes it does. Fb kills our pristin human interaction and replaces it with their ads.)
  - randallsquared 7y ago
    I'm not sure if you misunderstood GP's statement or you're just taking it in the most uncharitable way, but I don't think what was written supports your reading.
- harikb 7y ago
  > I am pretty sure similar criticism has be forced on TV, Cellphones, Comic books and what not. No, there is a shit load of difference. It is far more costly to spread misinformation through those other channels. Sure nation-states and tv/cable-companies with agenda will still exist, but ordinary citizen like me, with an agenda, won’t be able to anonymously spread conspiracy theories for $100 ~ $1000
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    So the problem is that it isn't restricted to special interests? That sounds like the same logical flaw as cash bail models. If they are going to be a flight risk or going to go out and murder someone them having money available doesn't change if they are going to be a bad actor or not.
ekianjo 7y ago
> It pains me to come to the conclusion that in Facebook, we have created something that should not exist: an addicative worldwide mob where peddlers can sell emotionally manipulative ideas to the people least able to handle them, Or maybe, alternate world view, it does not even matter as much as you think it does.
- authoritarian 7y ago
  People dying of starvation and homelessness doesn't matter to many people but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a negative impact on society or shouldn't be solved
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    How is that comment related To Facebook ?
- DanielBMarkham 7y ago
  It doesn't really matter. At scale, 3% is huge. We keep having these discussions about the impact of social media as if the relationship was directly causal, ie Zuck pushes a button and robot people do his bidding. Wish the problem were so easy. It's at scale, dealing with fractions of percentages over thousands of randomly subsegmented markets, nobody knows what the hell is going on. It's incomprehensible by any human. What we know is that people pay billions of dollars to advertise there. We know that most of the world's population (!) has signed up. We know that people who quit feel better. We can observe people doing and saying things with other people at a scale never seen before. In fact, that's one of the selling points. We know that more and more studies are showing addictive and maladaptive behavior from people who spend a lot of time there. We're not trying to convict FB in a court of law or inventing some new science. The preponderance of all the available evidence says that there's a major social change at work worldwide that has at least some deleterious effects. Works for me. Any small number times a billion is a big number. That's the entire business model of social media. You logically can't deny the way social media works in order to make a defense of social media.
- Dumblydorr 7y ago

baryphonic 7y ago

I love tech, too. This is why I have divested myself from Facebook, beyond messaging tools (FB Messenger and WhatsApp). If tech is building new edifices to the capabilities of tech, then Facebook is certainly tech, and the nightmare Facebook has become is inevitable. (Though I agree with other commenters that FB probably matters much less than we with in-built pro-tech biases are willing to believe.) Otherwise, if tech is "doing more with less," then Facebook is extremely hard to justify as tech.

throwaway8291 7y ago

Investors care about making money, period. Whether you burn coal until the planet is inhabitable or John Doe data is sold and packaged up for the next couple of decades without him knowing does not matter at all. It's a strange world for sure, and one that I am virtually certain will come to a crashing halt in this century. Nobody is required to buy facebook stocks. If you do not want this company to continue it's operations, just get rid of it (if you owned it in the first place).

dfraser992 7y ago

Zuckerberg's major in college was psychology, not CS. A Skinner Box [1] is Psych 101 - I am certain Mark knew exactly what he was building. And how is the like button nothing but building on the theory of social psychology? Facebook, IMO (I minored in psych) is entirely built on a solid understanding of human psychology and how to control it. Add in ads and profit! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

seppin 7y ago

> They just didn't care. They do care, the piles of money make them care less.

alexis_fr 7y ago

I view it the opposite way: We underestimated as a society how many people were feeling bad. Addictions to alcohol is horrible, but their harm doesn’t scale. With social networks, we suddenly see what we chose to ignore before: The swathes of MGTOWs, Incels, doubters, we also see the swathes of “scientific studies” which were provably wrong, the lies of the medias when you compare the scientific study and how the articles spin them. We should rather treat it as a brand new society with new balances, like after Gutemberg’s invention of the printer, which enabled communication and gave birth to Martin Luther, the accession of Bible translation to masses, the accession of The Encyclopedia, and more generally, the Humanists. And maybe, just maybe, we should have taken better care of so many people we’ve put in such horrible situations that content binging becomes better than their life. Rather than assuming they were just crybabies.

RichieAHB 7y ago
This is a difficult hypothesis to prove by virtue of the fact that if we didn't think people were feeling in certain ways this pre-FB, then it was presumably because we didn't have accurate data. It follows that if we didn't have the data then it's difficult to say whether FB et al tapped in to something that had yet to manifest itself in a subset of people, or had yet to become visible to society. Nevertheless, it's an interesting point that I hadn't really heard put this way before so thanks.
TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
> we should have taken better care of so many people we’ve put in such horrible situations... Rather than assuming they were just crybabies. It may seemed callused, but they _are_ just crybabies. Just because social media facilitates the formation of certain identity groups now does not mean that the cultures formed from those identities are good or productive. Just look at the increase in suicides, depression, school shootings, and general extremism since the spread of social media. Those are not mentalities that we should foster and support IMO.
- Loughla 7y ago
  >we should have taken better care of so many people >Those are not mentalities that we should foster and support IMO. Those are not the same thing. The first says to connect people to services that can help stem the negative and unproductive mentalities. Yours says to help them grow that negativity. These are not the same things.

KorematsuFred 7y ago

I disagree. FB has enriched my life at many ways, when my father was on deathbed I realized how much he used fb to just keep track of me every single time he remembered me. We spoke daily but I did not know he used facebook to "be with me". I do understand your criticism but it is in the same line as how christian priests opposed education for peasants. They argued that if the ordinary massed could read it would mean they will read stuff they are not supposed to read. I am pretty sure similar criticism has be forced on TV, Cellphones, Comic books and what not. I would say relax, this too shall will pass and even bigger distraction would take over our lives.

stiray 7y ago
(Just to the guy bellow: yes it does. Fb kills our pristin human interaction and replaces it with their ads.)
- randallsquared 7y ago
  I'm not sure if you misunderstood GP's statement or you're just taking it in the most uncharitable way, but I don't think what was written supports your reading.
harikb 7y ago
> I am pretty sure similar criticism has be forced on TV, Cellphones, Comic books and what not. No, there is a shit load of difference. It is far more costly to spread misinformation through those other channels. Sure nation-states and tv/cable-companies with agenda will still exist, but ordinary citizen like me, with an agenda, won’t be able to anonymously spread conspiracy theories for $100 ~ $1000
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  So the problem is that it isn't restricted to special interests? That sounds like the same logical flaw as cash bail models. If they are going to be a flight risk or going to go out and murder someone them having money available doesn't change if they are going to be a bad actor or not.

ekianjo 7y ago

> It pains me to come to the conclusion that in Facebook, we have created something that should not exist: an addicative worldwide mob where peddlers can sell emotionally manipulative ideas to the people least able to handle them, Or maybe, alternate world view, it does not even matter as much as you think it does.

authoritarian 7y ago
People dying of starvation and homelessness doesn't matter to many people but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a negative impact on society or shouldn't be solved
- ekianjo 7y ago
  How is that comment related To Facebook ?
DanielBMarkham 7y ago
It doesn't really matter. At scale, 3% is huge. We keep having these discussions about the impact of social media as if the relationship was directly causal, ie Zuck pushes a button and robot people do his bidding. Wish the problem were so easy. It's at scale, dealing with fractions of percentages over thousands of randomly subsegmented markets, nobody knows what the hell is going on. It's incomprehensible by any human. What we know is that people pay billions of dollars to advertise there. We know that most of the world's population (!) has signed up. We know that people who quit feel better. We can observe people doing and saying things with other people at a scale never seen before. In fact, that's one of the selling points. We know that more and more studies are showing addictive and maladaptive behavior from people who spend a lot of time there. We're not trying to convict FB in a court of law or inventing some new science. The preponderance of all the available evidence says that there's a major social change at work worldwide that has at least some deleterious effects. Works for me. Any small number times a billion is a big number. That's the entire business model of social media. You logically can't deny the way social media works in order to make a defense of social media.
Dumblydorr 7y ago