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I am surprised this segment (admittedly picked from Ars's secondary writeup) hasn't made a splash: "It's why I've seen priorities of escalations shoot up when

by bostik 6y ago

I am surprised this segment (admittedly picked from Ars's secondary writeup) hasn't made a splash: "It's why I've seen priorities of escalations shoot up when others start threatening to go to the press, and why I was informed by a leader in my organization that my civic work was not impactful under the rationale that if the problems were meaningful they would have attracted attention, became a press fire, and convinced the company to devote more attention to the space," Zhang wrote. That is a damage control role. Perhaps more tellingly, it highlights the entire organisation's priorities: if it isn't drawing press attention, ignore it. Of course that's not the phrase FB would use in a press release. They'd deploy a convenient euphemism, such as "dedicate the resources elsewhere".

catsarebetter 6y ago
I do think that's a poor way to handle the situation. Playing Devil's Advocate here, but is there a better way for that organization, in their fragile political position and immense power in the world, to handle situations like that? The sheer amount of bandwidth to moderate and manage every piece of data responsibly is so vast, there has to be a way of ranking content and trends and to allocate resources to them. It's not morally sound to have an organization optimize for public image, but they are THE public image platform. Optimizing for social good would be so much better but that's really hard to track and quantify and it can be so divisive on some topics. Esp. now that trends marked "social good" are so quickly developed and redeveloped as other things.
- bostik 6y ago
  Simple: devote more resources. People, money, teams, management support. Even if the rational reason for being slapdash is lack of resources and lack of focus, that means the company is not investing enough on addressing the underlying problems. Things happen, and sometimes you need to jump to put out a fire - but if putting out fires is a routine mode of work, it's a symptom of a much wider problem. I am under no illusion that trying to protect against disinformation and propaganda would be easy. As you said, the volume is so vast that it's going to require a lot of effort and immense focus. Constant firefighting shifts the efforts, and deprives focus. Whether that's intentional or an emerging property, the end result is the same.
  - catsarebetter 6y ago
    I absolutely agree that the person in the article lacked a significant amount of management support, that was a complete failure of her team
  - indigochill 6y ago
    Suppose you have enough resources to try to do it "right". How do you moderate in a way that's globally fair? There is disinformation (which should be moderated), but there are also legitimate disagreements (which should not). Even facts themselves are often open to interpretation, and people don't argue in objective terms. The degree of nuance leads me to believe it's just impossible to do at commercial/global scale (though I would agree it could be done better than it currently is).
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      That isn't what's being discussed here. This is the case of artificial amplification of opinion. One person : one opinion seems a fair goal. Posting all day about something as yourself is very different than running a network of accounts.
- nullc 6y ago
  Facebook trying to "optimize" the world for "social good" is probably one of the most frightening ideas I've seen mentioned this week. If they are managing to do so much harm through indifference and greed just imagine what they could do if they were explicitly trying to manipulate the world for "good"? Powerful groups who try to optimize the world have a pretty poor track record compared to those who just try to do their own stuff right and let the world sort itself out.
- totetsu 6y ago
  well if you want vast profits that come from taking on that role.. why not be expected to do it responsibly.. it's not like we couldn't and didn't get along just fine without facebook...
- david_draco 6y ago
  They could allow a NGO/consortium in each country to do the moderation. No reason it has to be done centralized by Americans, based on American values.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    > No reason it has to be done centralized by Americans, based on American values. So let's handle moderation in... let's say Saudi-Arabia, by having them silence LGBT and women's rights advocates? And who is responsible for Saudi-Arabian citizens in exile? Saudi-Arabia? The country where they live in? The country where they are currently on vacation?
    - pjc50 6y ago
      This is one of those "only winning move is not to play the game" situations; if you're marketing a product - almost any product - into a repressive regime it'll end up being associated with repressive acts. Hence the boycott of South Africa. There was a brief window in which Twitter was allowed to spread dissent pretty freely in the Arab world. I've no idea what that looks like now.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Here's a link to the Ars article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/sweeping-internal-facebook-memo-i-have-blood-on-my-hands/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/sweeping-interna...
pjc50 6y ago
Pretty much every organisation behaves like that for things that don't threaten the organisation itself. After all, if someone gets killed by a Facebook mob, all that happens to Facebook is the user engagement numbers go down by one.
Thorrez 6y ago
Wow, that creates a really weird incentive for him. He'll get paid more and promoted if he secretly becomes a whistleblower.
- nicothieb 6y ago
  I believe Sophie Zhang is a woman.
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    Oops :[
jacquesm 6y ago
Facebook is rotten from the core because it is rotten at the head. It is a very sad state of affairs that the one company that would have been able to be a force for good in all this ended up being run by someone who is so morally disconnected. At this point in time it will take an act of God to fix it, the lock-in is very strong and their ability to buy up anything that even begins to compete with them serves to cement that lock-in to the point where I don't see a way of ever dislodging it.
- codingdave 6y ago
  > their ability to buy up anything that even begins to compete with them... There is a key difference being being able to afford to buy anything, and actually being able to buy anything. The competing founders need to be willing to sell. If a competitor arises that is mission-driven, Facebook cannot buy them.
  - ISL 6y ago
    We haven't yet seen Facebook attempt to strangle a competitor that it cannot buy. If Facebook faces an existential threat, there is a lot of capital available to fund its defensive campaign. Buying is just cheaper. A direct threat to Facebook is unlikely to succeed. More likely is a competitor based in a niche where Facebook cannot enter for structural reasons that slowly out-competes Facebook on Facebook's turf. One possible niche is the privacy-focused community. Facebook can't flip all of those users, ever. If something privacy-focused emerges that has low-maintenance utility for the broader world, Facebook's days are numbered.
    - sizzle 6y ago
      Privacy focused non-profit (open source?) social media platform that is easy to join, maybe there is a tool that scrapes your facebook profile and imports it automatically. Can anyone help me brainstorm what features would be compelling for a privacy focused social media/event planning/group discussion platform?
      - 6y ago

by bostik 6y ago

catsarebetter 6y ago

I do think that's a poor way to handle the situation. Playing Devil's Advocate here, but is there a better way for that organization, in their fragile political position and immense power in the world, to handle situations like that? The sheer amount of bandwidth to moderate and manage every piece of data responsibly is so vast, there has to be a way of ranking content and trends and to allocate resources to them. It's not morally sound to have an organization optimize for public image, but they are THE public image platform. Optimizing for social good would be so much better but that's really hard to track and quantify and it can be so divisive on some topics. Esp. now that trends marked "social good" are so quickly developed and redeveloped as other things.

bostik 6y ago
Simple: devote more resources. People, money, teams, management support. Even if the rational reason for being slapdash is lack of resources and lack of focus, that means the company is not investing enough on addressing the underlying problems. Things happen, and sometimes you need to jump to put out a fire - but if putting out fires is a routine mode of work, it's a symptom of a much wider problem. I am under no illusion that trying to protect against disinformation and propaganda would be easy. As you said, the volume is so vast that it's going to require a lot of effort and immense focus. Constant firefighting shifts the efforts, and deprives focus. Whether that's intentional or an emerging property, the end result is the same.
- catsarebetter 6y ago
  I absolutely agree that the person in the article lacked a significant amount of management support, that was a complete failure of her team
- indigochill 6y ago
  Suppose you have enough resources to try to do it "right". How do you moderate in a way that's globally fair? There is disinformation (which should be moderated), but there are also legitimate disagreements (which should not). Even facts themselves are often open to interpretation, and people don't argue in objective terms. The degree of nuance leads me to believe it's just impossible to do at commercial/global scale (though I would agree it could be done better than it currently is).
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    That isn't what's being discussed here. This is the case of artificial amplification of opinion. One person : one opinion seems a fair goal. Posting all day about something as yourself is very different than running a network of accounts.
nullc 6y ago
Facebook trying to "optimize" the world for "social good" is probably one of the most frightening ideas I've seen mentioned this week. If they are managing to do so much harm through indifference and greed just imagine what they could do if they were explicitly trying to manipulate the world for "good"? Powerful groups who try to optimize the world have a pretty poor track record compared to those who just try to do their own stuff right and let the world sort itself out.
totetsu 6y ago
well if you want vast profits that come from taking on that role.. why not be expected to do it responsibly.. it's not like we couldn't and didn't get along just fine without facebook...
david_draco 6y ago
They could allow a NGO/consortium in each country to do the moderation. No reason it has to be done centralized by Americans, based on American values.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > No reason it has to be done centralized by Americans, based on American values. So let's handle moderation in... let's say Saudi-Arabia, by having them silence LGBT and women's rights advocates? And who is responsible for Saudi-Arabian citizens in exile? Saudi-Arabia? The country where they live in? The country where they are currently on vacation?
  - pjc50 6y ago
    This is one of those "only winning move is not to play the game" situations; if you're marketing a product - almost any product - into a repressive regime it'll end up being associated with repressive acts. Hence the boycott of South Africa. There was a brief window in which Twitter was allowed to spread dissent pretty freely in the Arab world. I've no idea what that looks like now.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

Here's a link to the Ars article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/sweeping-internal-facebook-memo-i-have-blood-on-my-hands/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/sweeping-interna...

pjc50 6y ago

Pretty much every organisation behaves like that for things that don't threaten the organisation itself. After all, if someone gets killed by a Facebook mob, all that happens to Facebook is the user engagement numbers go down by one.

Thorrez 6y ago

Wow, that creates a really weird incentive for him. He'll get paid more and promoted if he secretly becomes a whistleblower.

nicothieb 6y ago
I believe Sophie Zhang is a woman.
- Thorrez 6y ago
  Oops :[

jacquesm 6y ago

Facebook is rotten from the core because it is rotten at the head. It is a very sad state of affairs that the one company that would have been able to be a force for good in all this ended up being run by someone who is so morally disconnected. At this point in time it will take an act of God to fix it, the lock-in is very strong and their ability to buy up anything that even begins to compete with them serves to cement that lock-in to the point where I don't see a way of ever dislodging it.

codingdave 6y ago
> their ability to buy up anything that even begins to compete with them... There is a key difference being being able to afford to buy anything, and actually being able to buy anything. The competing founders need to be willing to sell. If a competitor arises that is mission-driven, Facebook cannot buy them.
- ISL 6y ago
  We haven't yet seen Facebook attempt to strangle a competitor that it cannot buy. If Facebook faces an existential threat, there is a lot of capital available to fund its defensive campaign. Buying is just cheaper. A direct threat to Facebook is unlikely to succeed. More likely is a competitor based in a niche where Facebook cannot enter for structural reasons that slowly out-competes Facebook on Facebook's turf. One possible niche is the privacy-focused community. Facebook can't flip all of those users, ever. If something privacy-focused emerges that has low-maintenance utility for the broader world, Facebook's days are numbered.
  - sizzle 6y ago
    Privacy focused non-profit (open source?) social media platform that is easy to join, maybe there is a tool that scrapes your facebook profile and imports it automatically. Can anyone help me brainstorm what features would be compelling for a privacy focused social media/event planning/group discussion platform?
    - 6y ago