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How would anyone ever know that Facebook hasn't designed it's algorithms for spreading misinformation and disinformation? How would anyone ever know that Apple

How would anyone ever know that Facebook hasn't designed it's algorithms for spreading misinformation and disinformation? How would anyone ever know that Apple doesn't use your photos to train an AI? How would anyone ever know that the Amazon doesn't peek into your RDS database? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/youtube-radical.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/yo... >> Several current and former YouTube employees, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they had signed confidentiality agreements, said company leaders were obsessed with increasing engagement during those years. >> One problem, according to several of the current and former YouTube employees, is that the A.I. tended to pigeonhole users into specific niches, recommending videos that were similar to ones they had already watched. There are real human beings working on those systems. That's how everyone would know if Google does as it says

ForHackernews 6y ago
If you're truly paranoid, you can certainly encrypt data in RDS with keys that you have and Amazon doesn't. But yes, the rest they expect us to take on faith. Or trust some boilerplate in their ToS (written by their lawyers, to absolve them of liability).
- billiam 6y ago
  The encrypted traffic will be the traffic Amazon will be most interested in, since you took the trouble; they won't peek into the DB but they will be able to infer lots about what's going on if they want. It's the Tor Paradox.
  - smt1 6y ago
    Yup, it's a classic paradox in information theory and telecommunication theory about entropy and power/energy flows. Do you want to save energy or privacy? Which is stronger hypothesis P=NP? The continuum hypothesis? The fact that physics can't fundamentally integrate relativity or quantum field theory? The ergodic hypothesis? In the spirit of both physics, CS, and math, we are valued by the trust networks who we trust and inform. The failure to integrate means in physical terms we can still create new huge blobs of semantic meaningful value and save energy at the same time by using free distributed cloud v-compute spacetime. You can theorize from any cloud provider Amazon MS Google if they shared info they legally shouldn't have inferred for data privacy reasons. Reason over complexity classes. Personally I live near Washington DC, so with a government change, I will have to reassess what side of the issue ethically I should be reasoning in. Save energy? Encourage monopoly? Join government? Join big tech? Seek rents from big tech? I'm just meditating and creating deferred decision trees for myself postmarked for myself using the "well known" schwartz–zippel lemma and noether's theorem so i have self-determination.
- imheretolearn 6y ago
  Yes, and you could do anything else that you want with your app. However, if your application is hosted on their servers you are just a traditional user from their perspective. And as the old adage goes, if you own the server, you own the user. There is an implicit assumption, that the code that you push is actually the same one that is being run on the VM, in your statement. This brings me back to the point I was trying to make in the parent comment.
Polylactic_acid 6y ago
This is a pretty good point. I spoke to a developer from facebook once and they said essentially that there is nothing super secretive happening behind the curtains. Yes they may be evil and doing all this bad stuff, but we pretty much know all the evil stuff they are doing publicly.
- cpeterso 6y ago
  Or that Facebook developer just doesn't know about the super secretive happenings behind the curtains. If they did, they probably wouldn't talk about them. :)
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Why would "a developer" have access to every company secret? Does "a developer" know Facebook's long-term goals, its interim strategies, or details of its relationships with operations like Cambridge Analytica?
munk-a 6y ago
I understand the line of reasoning above and would normally follow it - but Facebook, Apple and Google have all shown that they will do really shady things if they can get away with it. The reaction to Project Dragonfly was pretty nice to see, but you really have to wonder how many things like that make it through without any public outcry - I know real human beings and most of them are pretty awesome, some of them are sociopaths who'd do anything to make a buck though... we're gambling that some moral ones get into the decision making process and, tbh, if the sociopaths have their way the moral ones will remain blissfully ignorant of the shady stuff.
tclancy 6y ago
Hang on, you think there are individuals who can reason about how complex systems work with perfect certainty?
- to11mtm 6y ago
  Heck, Thinking there are individuals who actually understand such a large system are complex. Even at organizations orders of magnitude smaller than Facebook, it's pretty easy to have a few systems that are large enough you can only keep so many in your head at a time. You'd probably need a few dozen of the right people together to begin to understand the complexity of their systems.
faeyanpiraat 6y ago
If something fishy indeed goes on in a large company, it must be on a need-to-know basis. But the higher access you get, higher the penalties of sharing company secrets go. Snowdens come into the picture every once in a while, but most average programmer Joes wouldn’t risk being internationally manhunted for whistleblowing questionable business practices. So I do not think your argument is valid.
- _alex_ 6y ago
  Snowden is running from the government, not from a corporation.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I'm not saying Google would do this, but people that leaked such corporate secrets have met suspect deaths before.
    - maroonblazer 6y ago
      Your comment is irresponsible. You're saying "I'm not saying it could happen here, but it could happen here" Conversely, a corporate whistleblower at the level we're discussing is in for a payday from media/book deals, etc.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        My statement isn't irresponsible. Corporations are universally amoral. If it was in Google's interests to do it, they would. But I think that, right now, those interests don't exist. That being said, someone that is in that situation, if the stakes are high enough, might be dissuaded just knowing that such things happen.
        ethbr0 6y ago
        People make decisions. At some point, all corporate decisions go through people. Would you (reader) want to bet your life against a conference room full of people with $1M+ worth of stock options you're about to negatively impact? Where a bad outcome for you only requires their silence? There are many people in the world who value morals over money. There are a few who value morals over lots of money. But that's not a bet I'd take.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
shard972 6y ago
Then I guess the Edward Snowden leaks aren't real because real human beings would of otherwise told us? What is a conspiracy theory one day can suddenly turn into reality with just a little bit of transparency, just because large companies hire alot of people who they would never bring into said conspiracies doesn't discount the point.
zepto 6y ago
Facebook has designed its algorithms for spreading misinformation and disinformation, because emotion drives engagement.
- imheretolearn 6y ago
  >> Facebook has designed its algorithms for spreading misinformation and disinformation, because emotion drives engagement. If emotion drives engagement, then this should apply to positive emotions as well. All emotional posts, positive or negative, will be treated equally by the algorithm according to your logic. Hence it follows, that facebook hasn't explicitly designed it's algorithms to spread only misinformation and disinformation, acc to your logic. I would like to see some proof that would back up your statement.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Two points: 1. It doesn’t matter what the valence of the emotions are - positive or negative valence feedback loops will spread misinformation and disinformation. Positive emotion is not correlated with truth. 2. If you haven’t heard about this idea before, here is a starting point: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/digital-technology-brain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/digital-technolog...
    - imheretolearn 6y ago
      >> Positive emotion is not correlated with truth. I assumed from your previous comment(below) that you are correlating negative emotion with misinformation and disinformation. If that's not what you meant, then I guess I misunderstood what you meant by your previous comment >> Facebook has designed its algorithms for spreading misinformation and disinformation, because emotion drives engagement
      - zepto 6y ago
        I don’t see how that assumption is implied by anything I said in what you quoted. There is no reference to the valence of the emotion.

ForHackernews 6y ago

If you're truly paranoid, you can certainly encrypt data in RDS with keys that you have and Amazon doesn't. But yes, the rest they expect us to take on faith. Or trust some boilerplate in their ToS (written by their lawyers, to absolve them of liability).

billiam 6y ago
The encrypted traffic will be the traffic Amazon will be most interested in, since you took the trouble; they won't peek into the DB but they will be able to infer lots about what's going on if they want. It's the Tor Paradox.
- smt1 6y ago
  Yup, it's a classic paradox in information theory and telecommunication theory about entropy and power/energy flows. Do you want to save energy or privacy? Which is stronger hypothesis P=NP? The continuum hypothesis? The fact that physics can't fundamentally integrate relativity or quantum field theory? The ergodic hypothesis? In the spirit of both physics, CS, and math, we are valued by the trust networks who we trust and inform. The failure to integrate means in physical terms we can still create new huge blobs of semantic meaningful value and save energy at the same time by using free distributed cloud v-compute spacetime. You can theorize from any cloud provider Amazon MS Google if they shared info they legally shouldn't have inferred for data privacy reasons. Reason over complexity classes. Personally I live near Washington DC, so with a government change, I will have to reassess what side of the issue ethically I should be reasoning in. Save energy? Encourage monopoly? Join government? Join big tech? Seek rents from big tech? I'm just meditating and creating deferred decision trees for myself postmarked for myself using the "well known" schwartz–zippel lemma and noether's theorem so i have self-determination.
imheretolearn 6y ago
Yes, and you could do anything else that you want with your app. However, if your application is hosted on their servers you are just a traditional user from their perspective. And as the old adage goes, if you own the server, you own the user. There is an implicit assumption, that the code that you push is actually the same one that is being run on the VM, in your statement. This brings me back to the point I was trying to make in the parent comment.

Polylactic_acid 6y ago

This is a pretty good point. I spoke to a developer from facebook once and they said essentially that there is nothing super secretive happening behind the curtains. Yes they may be evil and doing all this bad stuff, but we pretty much know all the evil stuff they are doing publicly.

cpeterso 6y ago
Or that Facebook developer just doesn't know about the super secretive happenings behind the curtains. If they did, they probably wouldn't talk about them. :)
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Why would "a developer" have access to every company secret? Does "a developer" know Facebook's long-term goals, its interim strategies, or details of its relationships with operations like Cambridge Analytica?

munk-a 6y ago

I understand the line of reasoning above and would normally follow it - but Facebook, Apple and Google have all shown that they will do really shady things if they can get away with it. The reaction to Project Dragonfly was pretty nice to see, but you really have to wonder how many things like that make it through without any public outcry - I know real human beings and most of them are pretty awesome, some of them are sociopaths who'd do anything to make a buck though... we're gambling that some moral ones get into the decision making process and, tbh, if the sociopaths have their way the moral ones will remain blissfully ignorant of the shady stuff.

tclancy 6y ago

Hang on, you think there are individuals who can reason about how complex systems work with perfect certainty?

to11mtm 6y ago
Heck, Thinking there are individuals who actually understand such a large system are complex. Even at organizations orders of magnitude smaller than Facebook, it's pretty easy to have a few systems that are large enough you can only keep so many in your head at a time. You'd probably need a few dozen of the right people together to begin to understand the complexity of their systems.

faeyanpiraat 6y ago

If something fishy indeed goes on in a large company, it must be on a need-to-know basis. But the higher access you get, higher the penalties of sharing company secrets go. Snowdens come into the picture every once in a while, but most average programmer Joes wouldn’t risk being internationally manhunted for whistleblowing questionable business practices. So I do not think your argument is valid.

_alex_ 6y ago
Snowden is running from the government, not from a corporation.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  I'm not saying Google would do this, but people that leaked such corporate secrets have met suspect deaths before.
  - maroonblazer 6y ago
    Your comment is irresponsible. You're saying "I'm not saying it could happen here, but it could happen here" Conversely, a corporate whistleblower at the level we're discussing is in for a payday from media/book deals, etc.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      My statement isn't irresponsible. Corporations are universally amoral. If it was in Google's interests to do it, they would. But I think that, right now, those interests don't exist. That being said, someone that is in that situation, if the stakes are high enough, might be dissuaded just knowing that such things happen.
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        People make decisions. At some point, all corporate decisions go through people. Would you (reader) want to bet your life against a conference room full of people with $1M+ worth of stock options you're about to negatively impact? Where a bad outcome for you only requires their silence? There are many people in the world who value morals over money. There are a few who value morals over lots of money. But that's not a bet I'd take.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

shard972 6y ago

Then I guess the Edward Snowden leaks aren't real because real human beings would of otherwise told us? What is a conspiracy theory one day can suddenly turn into reality with just a little bit of transparency, just because large companies hire alot of people who they would never bring into said conspiracies doesn't discount the point.

zepto 6y ago

Facebook has designed its algorithms for spreading misinformation and disinformation, because emotion drives engagement.

imheretolearn 6y ago
>> Facebook has designed its algorithms for spreading misinformation and disinformation, because emotion drives engagement. If emotion drives engagement, then this should apply to positive emotions as well. All emotional posts, positive or negative, will be treated equally by the algorithm according to your logic. Hence it follows, that facebook hasn't explicitly designed it's algorithms to spread only misinformation and disinformation, acc to your logic. I would like to see some proof that would back up your statement.
- zepto 6y ago
  Two points: 1. It doesn’t matter what the valence of the emotions are - positive or negative valence feedback loops will spread misinformation and disinformation. Positive emotion is not correlated with truth. 2. If you haven’t heard about this idea before, here is a starting point: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/digital-technology-brain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/digital-technolog...
  - imheretolearn 6y ago
    >> Positive emotion is not correlated with truth. I assumed from your previous comment(below) that you are correlating negative emotion with misinformation and disinformation. If that's not what you meant, then I guess I misunderstood what you meant by your previous comment >> Facebook has designed its algorithms for spreading misinformation and disinformation, because emotion drives engagement
    - zepto 6y ago
      I don’t see how that assumption is implied by anything I said in what you quoted. There is no reference to the valence of the emotion.