14 ms·

Employees are leaving Facebook and torching the company in departure notes

144 points by minimaxir 6y ago

marijnz 6y ago
So, key person*?
rjeli 6y ago
tldr: Four employees leave fb and claim it’s for ethical reasons. Journo believes them, calls them “key people” for a more clickbait headline.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  That's BuzzFeed for you.
vxNsr 6y ago
This just further highlights the delusion that everyone is living in right now, 50% of Americans think the other 50% is out to kill them and take away their basic rights. This is true of both sides, they each truly believe the other side is a real danger. And both sides will say the other side is the real problem and I’m both siding something that is obviously one sided. I cross the divide and have emphatically, honestly, without any irony been called an evil socialist by one and nazi authoritarian by the other.
- zepto 6y ago
  The problem is - both could be right!
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    Well again as someone who talks to both extremes very often, they’re honestly not. They both just be left alone but have been led to believe by their media consumption that if they don’t do something the other side will, a kind of reverse prisoners dilemma.
    - zepto 6y ago
      I don’t know - it seems to me that the left would ban guns if they could, and the right would ban abortion if they could. Neither side is wrong to be afraid of the other doing these things.
- fred_is_fred 6y ago
  Let's not fall into the "whataboutism". Only one "side" has the President of the United States and other key leaders actively advocating for violence.
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    Lol. I have the other side telling me that this all misunderstood and then they’ll point you to the AOCs, Sanders talking about “make lists, lock them up”. They’ll say one side is only talking, but look at Portland, Seattle, DC, etc. there was actual violence. Then the other side will point to Kenosha, which the Trump side will point to as well as proof for them. And they’ll tack on Portland. The truth is very much in the middle.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
      Do you have a reference to the make lists/lock them up?
      - vxNsr 6y ago
        I think this is what they’re referring to: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078 https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078 I don’t know though, this was in a WhatsApp group, I remember seeing the conversation about something she said but idk if this was it
        omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
        That sounds like take screenshots so we can call them out later, not make lists/lock them up.
    - B-Con 6y ago
      I'll second this. Neither side really instances the other side and many buy into the headline narrative that the other half aee basically all extremist nutjobs.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  I think the real truth of the matter is the majority of Americans know the sky isn't falling. Profit motivated media is blowing the political divide way out of the water, fear mongering to sell eyeballs to advertisers. I've got a few friends who are utterly convinced America is on the cusp of a civil war, but that's only a few. They're the ones who watch too much Fox News or CNN I think.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    Still waiting for the "inevitable civil war Trump supporters will instigate, because they have guns", as mentioned to me by one of my friends.
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      I think the overwhelming majority of people who make claims like that are just full of hot air. If the shooting ever started, they'd be hiding indoors with the rest of us. This is one of the reasons I think the scenarios they propose is unlikely. This is nothing new of course, there have always been people willing to talk about extreme grandiose nonsense they'll never do. These people aren't hard to find if you go looking, making it easy for the media to broadcast their prattling to scare everybody else shitless. Scared, people stay tuned during the commercial break to hear the latest up to date news about what horrible things are surely imminent. A few months ago I had a few friends of either political persuasion telling me there would be a revolution or coup the day after the election. That didn't happen, and I think most are starting to realize it won't happen. By this time next year, when Biden's presidency is well underway, I think many of the people feeling very concerned today will feel foolish in retrospect.
  - ritchiea 6y ago
    For the majority of Americans on HN or employed in tech or finance or some other salaried office work, the sky isn’t falling, we’re doing well. but we’re also a minority of Americans. Walk through towns & small cities in Indiana, Kansas, Florida, Alabama. In a lot of these places the sky is falling, there are few jobs & high rates of opiate abuse. There isn’t much of a social safety net. Unfortunately many of these people vote against their own financial interests, and honestly the democrats also aren’t addressing the roots of inequality sufficiently. The United States is basically divided between those of us who are doing well and those of us for whom the sky is at least looking brittle. That’s the issue putting pressure on society today.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  Granted, I haven't seen the data the people leaving FB are using to make their arguments, but at least they are saying that misinformation and posts arguing for assault or killing of individuals are much more prevalent among "conservative" groups: > We have a very good idea which actors in the US drive the largest volumes of this kind of content. In the last 14 days, the 10 pages responsible for the largest concentrated volume of likely violating Hate Speech comments have been: Breitbart Fox News The Daily Caller USA Patriots for Donald Trump Donald Trump for President Donald J. Trump Ben Shapiro Conservative Tribune by WJ US Chronicle The Western Journal These pages, and a few perennial others that didn’t happen to make the top 10 in the last two weeks, but that you can find by browsing the dashboard, are filling our platform with violent and hateful content at a rate and concentration that is simply overwhelming…
- idrios 6y ago
  Disappointed you're being downvoted. Everybody seems to have taken an "if you're not with us you're against us" approach. The left appeals to your sense of morality ("you're evil if you support this president") and the right appeals to your sense of intelligence ("you're an idiot if you support socialism"). My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment?
  - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
    Both seem giddy about abridging individual rights and liberal values. Invite debate, look for commonality and move forward.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    People don't seem to want to defend their positions anymore. They want to say what they feel and face no challenge or debate. Even this "key" data scientist won't talk to the media, won't be identified. Sorry then, I don't give his opinion a lot of weight. It's easy to throw stones from inside a safe space.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    >My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment? I've heard this argument often. What I'm about to say is not directed at you personally but your argument. Maybe you, general you, are the one who needs to grow. It's possible that your knowledge of the subject is dated, judgement clouded by any number of things, that you underestimate the severity of the problem, that you're conflating a dislike of a person, movement, idea with groups of people, or other things. I say this because most of the time when people make this comment they follow it up or precede it with some very questionable statements. Generally these inappropriate statements are rooted in ignorance of the topic though sometimes your argument is used in bad faith to justify hateful or discriminatory ideals, speech, and action. Again, I'm not suggesting anything against you idrios, merely adding my experience with this argument.
    - 6y ago
- citilife 6y ago
  Honest question, why do the liberals feel in danger? I personally don't attribute myself to either side, nor did I vote for either. However... I've seen rioting (been caught up in one and feared for my safety), noticed stuff being blocked by the left (1st amendment), going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment), and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives. What exactly are the conservatives doing? I don't see anything necessarily being blocked / attacked? Am I missing something?
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    Michigan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl... https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/01/849017021/protestors-swarm-michigan-capitol-amid-showdown-over-governors-emergency-powers https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... Literally armed people swarming government buildings to protest masks, bomb threats and plans, kidnapping. https://www.reddit.com/r/InsaneParler/ https://www.reddit.com/r/InsaneParler/ gives more insights. Washington? You have Matt Shea, an elected Republican: "In late October 2018, Shea acknowledged that he had distributed a document described as a "four-page manifesto" titled Biblical Basis for War that listed strategies that a "Holy Army" could employ. The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", which within stated that the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"." "In April 2019, The Guardian published records from a right-wing chat group of four people that Shea participated in, where Shea used an alias of ‘True Warrior’ in Latin. Other members in the chat group discussed carrying out surveillance, intimidation and violent attacks on political enemies, including Antifa activists and "communists." Shea himself volunteered to conduct background checks on residents of Spokane, resulting in Shea naming three individuals. One of the chat group's members forwarded the information to The Guardian, while another confirmed the existence of the chats and acknowledged the discussion on conducting surveillance on "Antifa" people." "An investigation commissioned by Washington House of Representatives reported, on December 1, 2019, that Shea had planned and participated in domestic terrorism on at least three occasions. This included his participation, organizing, planning, and promotion of the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada, the 2015 armed standoff in Priest River, Idaho, and the 2016 armed seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. Shea led a delegation of right-wing legislators from Oregon, Washington and Idaho that met with law enforcement on January 9, 2016, in Burns, Oregon and were appraised of confidential intended law enforcement strategies for dealing with the refuge occupiers. Shea then disclosed those details to Bundy, according to the report."
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I take your broader point, but I don't think it's 50/50 as much as it is a vocal 10% on either side with the majority remaining pretty moderate and reasonable. I don't personally cross the divide, I'm a political liberal (earning me the 'socialist' brand from the right) but I don't dabble in the tribalism and try to be charitable toward those I disagree with (thus I'm a nazi to the 10% on the far left) but there's still a huge swath of people in the middle.
  - BLKNSLVR 6y ago
    Very interesting that the text of your entirely non-aggressive, non-partisan point of view was "more grey than black". Keep up the charitable liberalism I say.
    - Yeroc 6y ago
      I think one of the issues (beyond media's propensity towards sensationalism to draw attention) is that the extremes at either end of a debate are very black and white. Black and white can be explained in a single sentence many times but everything in between is nuanced (or grey as you called it). The problem with nuanced positions is it requires more than a 280 character payload to explain...
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        I think the bigger problem is that nuanced positions don't sell as well as sensationalism. Outrage is a powerful drug and the media has us hooked on it.
- patjenk 6y ago
  Is it necessary to name the problem if we know a driver of it?
- adamsea 6y ago
  I disagree that there is an equivalence. For example, I actually think that anyone who doesn't believe that the election was legitimate - i.e. that no meaningful fraud occurred - should be banned from the HN community. Their "arguments" are full of shit and are a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-analytical, pseudo-objective cant. Their "evidence" is literally disinformation / propaganda. They're uninterested and in fact dismissive of real, actual evidence and facts as examined in multiple court cases - and they refuse to accept the validity of the outcomes of those cases. They wish to overturn the legitimate outcome of the Presidential election. Full stop. They act exactly like those crypto-racists who know that their true belief would be deemed unpalatable or unacceptable by the community so they'll blow as much smoke around as possible without ever stepping out to say what they're actually driving towards. I don't see anything remotely equivalent to this happening on the other side of the fence at this time. I've never seen anything like this in the United States and enough is enough. It's clearly dangerous to allow these views the shroud of legitimacy by giving them space in the public square, because it's gone so far that anything other than a total rejection ends up functioning as an implicit legitimization because the claims are so untrue, shocking, and destructive. By allowing the lie of election fraud to be presented as just another thing to be discussed on HN, HN is enabling those people and their cause, which is to overturn the results of a legitimate election. And I think it's unfortunate and wrong that I probably have a better chance of being banned from HN for this comment, than someone who is obviously attempting to undermine people's belief in the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election, which is to say, undermine small-d democracy in the U.S. and advocate for an authoritarian, one-party state. Which is literally what they're doing. And no, the Democrats or anyone else on the Left are not doing anything remotely equivalent to that right now.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  So one side is trying to stage a coup using the SCOTUS as a weapon, thereby defying the will of the citizenry, and the best you an come up with is "Both Sides"?
  - airb 6y ago
    One side believes the last 4 years has seen multiple attempts to remove their elected president. Not to mention the Justice kavanaugh confirmation madness.
    - loopz 6y ago
      Correction: Elected criminal lying president.
      - vxNsr 6y ago
        Lol. I love when someone like you comments this without any irony. You truly believe this nonsense like it’s gospel.
        loopz 6y ago
        What Trump has going for him, is picking up issues that need to be addressed, that have gone been neglected in a fast-evolving world, leading to unfairness. However, how these issues are treated and how people are treated, is important in a democracy. https://theconversation.com/why-hard-core-trump-supporters-ignore-his-lies-144650 https://theconversation.com/why-hard-core-trump-supporters-i... If he's such a great leader and not just an opportunist populist, why do he need to instill a fear-culture where everybody who doesn't lick his boots get fired. People appointed by the same leader dare not speak up their own opinions. This isn't democracy. What type of leader do this? Hint: Communist leaders like Stalin, and fascist leaders like Mussolini. If you're unable to spot a liar yourself, it is not too hard to form your own opinion on this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trump... https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-so-far-atrocities-1-1-004 https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-so-... https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+lies+list https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+lies+list Fortunately, a majority of the population see right through the lack of leadership and lies for what they truly are. The means are as important as the ends, and the ends are often obscured and full of misdirection, more like PR campaigns than anything of real and lasting value.
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  Except that only 50% is actually out to do it.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    Most of the republicans I know are disappointed, but not so severely that they want to go killing people. That sort of extremism is very fringe. Also, even if you count the mellow majority, they're far from 50%.
    - jfrunyon 6y ago
      > and take away their basic rights
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        Well I have some good news for you, they lost the election. A few of them may not like to admit that, but they lost nevertheless and any scenario where Biden or Harris isn't president a year from now is a delusion.
        jfrunyon 6y ago
        Well I have some bad news for you, they don't believe they lost the election.
        bigbubba 6y ago
        Well the good news is that doesn't matter. They're sore losers but it won't amount to anything more than hot air, so take a deep breath and relax. Hit a blunt or something.
        jfrunyon 6y ago
        Do you really think that losing the election is going to make the Republicans go "huh, maybe we should stop trying to take away rights from millions of Americans? maybe we should stop treating millions of voters like trash?" It's not.
- jaredklewis 6y ago
  You seem reasonable, so please help me understand the other side. I’m a big fan of conservative thinkers like Milton Friedman and George Will. I’m against the left’s attack on free speech and find their obsession with identity, at best, perplexing. I prefer isolationist foreign policy and less military involvement from the US. I’m originally from a conservative area and have many conservative relatives I know to be good people. And yet I cannot conceive of how anyone could support Trump or the boot licking republicans who enable him. He is incapable of telling the truth. He does not seem to believe in reality, science, or expertise of any kind. He does not believe in rule of law. He is an authoritarian and egomaniac. Even before the election he challenged the idea of a peaceful transition of power. How is this supportable? Edit: And to be clear I get that we live in a two-party country and that a vote for a candidate is not a wholesale endorsement. You look at the options you have and choose the "lesser of the evils," as it were. Hell, I would vote for Trump if the other candidate was Stalin. Edit Edit: I know it’s bad form to make political rants like this on HN. I had a moment of weakness :/
  - umvi 6y ago
    A lot of my conservative relatives are too old to even know what Twitter is, so they completely ignore Trump on that front. They like that Trump doesn't kowtow to the media and they like his judge picks, his foreign policy, and executive orders. The media would zing Romney with little zingers and he would get all hang dog and apologize, but Trump punched back instead and his voter base loved that they finally had a candidate that would stand up to the media. Trump also tried very hard to make good on his campaign promises. Can you imagine opening an embassy in Jerusalem under Hillary? I can't, and my conservative relatives love that he did that and that he stands up to China and acknowledged Taiwan's president. They also love that he fights back against identity politics (removing requirement for forced diversity trainings, etc). In short, from their perspective he goes to bat on a lot of their grievances. So yeah, his Twitter is a dumpster fire, but half his voter base doesn't even see it because they don't use twitter.
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    Look I’ve had conversations like this a lot, it comes down to exactly what you said. Two parties ends up being the lesser of two evils, and trump to most conservatives absolutely was the lesser of two evils. As other commentators said, he fulfilled many of his campaign promises. He pushed foreign policy in a direction the whole world needed but didn’t want. He’s been drawing down foreign troops since his first day in office, so much so that apparently his generals were lying to him about how many ppl they had out there. It’s perplexing to me that if what you say you believe is what you believe why a politician being a liar is a problem for you. All politicians lie, none as brazenly as Trump sure; but every single one of them has been caught lying in the last 9 months, many have been pretty brazen in their hypocrisy. My many conservative friends will point to 1000s of small white lies and 100s of big ones that Biden told, as proof that the other side is just as complicit.
brink 6y ago
It's weird how normalized censorship has become in just one year. Yeah, yeah, I know Facebook is a "private entity, and they can do what they want with their platform", spare me. Facebook is a social media monopoly. We need to protect free speech on these "private" monolith social media platforms before it's too late.
- thegrim33 6y ago
  It's even stranger to me that the censorship is applauded and cheered on because people believe it's "for a good reason". But that doesn't change the fact that it's still just blatant political censorship on a massive level. Every evil regime in history has done evil things under the guise of convincing the citizens that it's OK because it's "for a good reason" or directed against "bad people", but that doesn't change the fact that it's still evil. No matter how much political propaganda they push about why the censorship is good, it's still massively partisan censorship and suppression.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    And yet you can go to Parler, and they will happily censor pro-left / Democrat / liberal posts and positions. And openly do so. And have the people there stating it as their right (which it is). So these right leaning people absolutely do have a platform. Is it as popular? No. Maybe that's because their perspective is less popular. You don't have the right to an audience to your speech and it's not suppression to choose not to use my [or Facebook] resources to amplify your words, nor is it my problem that your platform doesn't have the same audience and reach.
  - jfrunyon 6y ago
    > it's still just blatant political censorship on a massive level Uhhh... no, banning lies and hate speech is not "political censorship". That implies that lies and hate speech are legitimate political views.
- Quarrelsome 6y ago
  > It's weird how normalized censorship has become in just one year. I feel like its people trying to deal with the discord of this new breed of politicians that brazenly lie so often that its impossible to know what's real anymore. Politicians used to be masters of selective information and leaving key information out while still not technically lying. Now they say whatever the fuck they want with scant attention to reality and facts. That's what's causing this IMO because the amount of attention they receive means that they strongly impact the narrative. As a non-US example; Boris Johnson yesterday stated that it was "very likely" that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, despite coming to power on an election campaign where he stated he had "an oven ready deal with the EU". If you were taking the British government's word at faith then yesterday's statement would have been a massive shock to you because for four years no government minister has stated that this outcome will happen.
muglug 6y ago
"Key people" is maybe taking poetic license. A small number of data scientists discovering a sense of morality (after cashing a few very large paychecks) doesn't feel like the tidal wave of employee dissent that many people are waiting for.
- actuator 6y ago
  Well, it is not like the old media/old media style companies love FB, that they would not spin it this way. Ironically, they are guilty of some of the same things they accuse FB of.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  Buzzfeed runs a story about some former employees wanting FB to be more vigilant and X or Y, and uses a hyperbolic deceptive headline for that story.
echelon 6y ago
Accelerate it! Put a 5 year hiring freeze on any Facebook engineers that still work there after 2021. If you're willing to sacrifice your ethics to work for a company that cheats and spies on folks, you can't be trusted with our company's product or culture. It doesn't even have to be strict or real. You can say you waive it for candidates that publicly renounce Facebook's practices. You don't really need to check, just send a message that you don't tolerate Facebook's behavior. Reverse Brian Armstrong. edit: flagged? I think this is seriously worth discussing. We choose the world we build and live in.
bigbubba 6y ago
'Torching the company' implies they're figuratively burning the place down, which seems like an exaggeration. A more appropriate fire idiom might be 'flaming the company', or you could say they're 'spitting fire.'
- draw_down 6y ago
  You cannot be serious with this. Come on.
ohazi 6y ago
Maybe enough of my friends have already left, but facebook has seemed like an empty husk for at least the last year, and the ratio of ads (which ublock origin doesn't seem to filter) to content seems higher there than any other website I frequent by at least a factor of 3 or 4. It's so unpleasant to read anything on there that I usually just check notifications and bail as quickly as possible. Also, the ads they show are terrible. The last useful thing I can recall seeing was a day-after-thanksgiving virtual friends meetup invitation. Events are the only reason I haven't bailed completely, and it seems the reason that this feature remains sticky is that lots of people don't want to bother to maintain email address books anymore.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  This is doubtlessly why Facebook likes to buy their potential competitors. Any particular social media platform might be a transient fad, but the company itself can remain relevant by buying all the new fads.
- FabHK 6y ago
  I've recently looked at Instagram, and the ratio of ads is shockingly high. WhatsApp is still ad free, let's hope it stays that way (and if not, that people migrate away).
  - yakireev 6y ago
    Honestly, I'd prefer if Whatsapp had some monetization. Because the current way of them making money is "belong to Facebook, give them all the data", and I don't like it.
xhkkffbf 6y ago
One out of 1000 posts is hate? Gosh, I don't spend much time on Facebook, but I easily scroll through 500-1000 posts every few days. I haven't seen one I would truly call hate. Oh sure, there are a few friends who say nasty things about the politician they dislike, but it doesn't strike me has hate speech. Now I'm not denying that they're out there. They must be. But 1/1000 seems like a pretty high estimate. There are sooo many pictures of cats and grandkids and that cake someone just made.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  The metric likely includes private group posts and networks you're not in. You could also be oblivious to some hate.
  - xhkkffbf 6y ago
    Yes, but those would need to be really big groups because as far as I can tell there are lots and lots and lots of groups specializing in cats and discussions of high school. It just seems like a pretty puffed up stat compared to my experience. I'm not saying it's zero. I'm just saying that there is plenty of inoffensive stuff too and it tends to drown out the ratio.
draw_down 6y ago
I'd work there, because of what I view as their pioneering of some important UI paradigms. I think it would be interesting to be immersed in the eng org where that came from. The "hate speech" thing I think is really poorly defined; at the end of the day I think they're mad about Trump supporters and other deplorables having the audacity to say certain things. There's plenty of what they would refer to as "hate speech" on Twitter, but none of them seem to think Twitter is embarrassing to work for because it put a little "i" icon on Trump's tweets. All of this just seems farcical to me.
botwriter 6y ago
This is why you don't hire woke cultists... Facebook is a useless time sink in the west its essential for shopping and socialising when you're in third world countries though.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
Sometimes you can judge a company by the enemies it makes. It seems Facebook is making enemies of the people that think political censorship is a good thing, that do not value free speech as a principle, and that are appalled that people have different values and beliefs. Now as is brought up every time there is a complaint that tech companies are violating the first amendment, these are private companies and can control what is posted and what it shows. So, if Facebook decides they want to allow these posts in the name of free speech, it is their right as a private company. Frankly, I am glad that people who believe that we should have more censorship are leaving their positions of influence at Facebook.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/LHKKy https://archive.is/LHKKy
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
duxup 6y ago
I'd be curious what really crossed the line for some of these folks. Facebook's anything goes type behavior and litany of various bad choices has been there for a long long time. I'm kinda wondering what exactly pushed these folks to quit?
- pvarangot 6y ago
  > I'd be curious what really crossed the line for some of these folks. At the risk of sounding sarcastic, but with some anecdotal insider information for some of this cases, what crossed the line is they became independently wealthy or got a competing offer from a rival company. It's easier to "wake up" if you are waking up in a cozy bed to a nice breakfast.
  - r00fus 6y ago
    It's a bit dismissive of a response. The job market isn't horrible in tech and FB is a highly desired resume entry. A nice cozy breakfast is table stakes. I want to make a difference in a good way; I'm sure these folks leaving are no different.
k33n 6y ago
And then everyone clapped
throwaway201103 6y ago
They build a huge mirror on society and then are shocked, shocked to find that it reflects all the ugly parts as well as the good.
Animats 6y ago
If 1 in 1000 posts contain hate speech, Facebook has a big problem. They didn't create that problem. Hate speech is mainstream now. Maybe they need to double down on "real names". To post to more than your personal friends, you need a Real ID or your national equivalent.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  Facebook already does this. You need a real cell phone number to make an account. They'll frequently require users to upload pictures of their id's to unlock their accounts after they detect suspicious activity.
wombatmobile 6y ago
I stopped using FB 6 months ago, not by cancelling or suspending my account, just by not going there. I'm happier. I have more time. I have less adversarial interactions and stress in my thoughts. At first I wondered how I could do this, since it would mean losing contact with friends. But a surprising number of friends contacted me via messenger to ask how I'm doing, and now we just interact one to one, like in the old days. I find the interaction I get on HN far more satisfying and challenging than FB. The HN guidelines make it so. It's not rocket science. > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. With guidelines like these, and a community mod system that works, there is no need for sisyphean AI or data scientists. What concerns me for the future is that HN is dependent for its discussions on the existence of independent journalism to provide the articles on which the HN community comments. If the economic and political trends that gave FB its power continue, what will HN readers have left to discuss? Tech news? That might not be enough. I understand why HN excludes political discussion, and that makes sense in isolation. But outside of HN, this article about FB highlights that quality civics requires informed, civil discourse. How is that going to happen?
- r00fus 6y ago
  I don't come to HN to read details in articles unless they actually contain new information, it's the commentary that's engaging. Comments that highlight or put into context information that's usually on dozens of news sites. Twitter is rife with highly timely good content. As you mentioned the rules and moderation is key to civil discussion. HN has it, FB does not.
  - gralx 6y ago
    I read HN comments before visiting a submitted link maybe 99% of the time. After that I would visit the link less than 10% of the time. Eternal September[1] hasn't hit us here, and I also attribute that to HN's moderation policy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
gigatexal 6y ago
Let’s see FB burn. I’m here for it with popcorn in hand.
Yhippa 6y ago
Offtopic, but who in their right mind would let a Facebook Portal device into their home?
- vxNsr 6y ago
  I ask this about alexa, google home, etc, but people are apparently using them in droves.
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    I have Amazon Alexa devices in my house. The reason I'm ok with this is because my relationship with Amazon is very straight forward: they sell me stuff, which I purchase with money. They give me nothing for "free". It's also very easy for me to not use Amazon or their services in any way, and they know this which makes me far more comfortable. Google and Facebook on the other hand... Completely different relationship where services are exchanged for the sale of my personal details.
ravenstine 6y ago
The downvotes in this thread pretty much tell you all you need to know about this idea that every American political issue is a 50/50 split.
sto_hristo 6y ago
So why is everyone expecting Facebook to "correct" human behavior? They're just the platform, not the generator. If we're going to be fair, ISPs should be FIRST held accountable for the hate speech their users generate, because if we remove Facebook, someone else will provide a textarea and submit button, but will still use the same cable and internet subscription. In the mean time, media reigns free into radicalizing the population into different-opinion camps, psychopath televangelists can zombify millions and get good profit from the ads. But no, Facebook alone is a threat to democracy.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  You're using the slippery slope fallacy and conflating disparate issues. Shut down Facebook if they can't stop violent organizations from flourishing on their platform. Tax church's and find a way to make these psychotic televangelists illegal, maybe the irs can get them for tax evasion? All these problems boil down to money. If Facebook acts against these radical groups without a court order their Republican investors and shareholders will flee en masse. A federal order is unlikely due to Trump's appointments and lack of precedent or law. A new law is unlikely because Mitch McConnell would sooner die of covid19 then let the democrats score a win, or make Republican social media wetwork harder in the future. McConnell is a founding father of the modern problems with money in Congress and he's been boosting about it for decades. So, to sum it up. Mark is choosing to not do anything and keep profiting off of this shit because he has the legal cover to do so from Trump down. Trump just wants to kill platforms that aren't for him, just like he wants all democrat votes shredded..
  - sto_hristo 6y ago
    Or how about the government step up and do its job looking into persecuting these groups? Facebook is not a government, they can't and should not police/persecute people. Are you going to shutdown car manufacturers because a psycho used his car to plow though bystanders on a bus stop? Everything facebook has been asked to do is utterly futile. Sure, they can remove a post or two but the person making those posts still runs free. Fabeook is a victim of their popularity. Because of their size they're easy to blame for pre-existing problems government neglected for too long. Government just doesn't want to deal with any of that for real and so will just throw an angry finger at FB and shift blame.
esja 6y ago
Part of their problem is that they don't seem to have a clear definition for hate speech... or at least not one that is public and that their entire user base can understand and accept. And for the same reasons, it's impossible to police using AI. If they really believe they need to censor wrong-think globally, they'll need to hire and train hundreds of thousands of people (at least). And even then they will fail to solve the problem in a way that keeps everyone happy.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  The goal should not be to keep people happy but to deplatform the dangerously hateful.
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  From what a friend (who is one of those "third party content moderators") says, they don't have a clear definition for anything, even for their own moderators.
broberts01 6y ago
Deleted my FB years ago and have never regretted it. It isn't even hard to stay connected to the people that you actually care about.
dmantis 6y ago
They were fine when FB created the biggest private espionage system in the world with their "shadow profiles" and mass targeting, but not fine when it fails to make soviet-style censorship on its platform? What a time be alive.
yodsanklai 6y ago
I may sound naive, but I think FB is just facing an incredibly hard problem: Finding the right balance between enabling free speech and avoiding harmful content (and at the same time make a profit from their platform). First, people constantly disagree on what this balance should be. And even in countries where free speech is legislated, it can be hard to assess whether laws were broken or not. I just don't see how they can find a solution that will please everyone. This issue seems inherent to any social platform operating at the scale of FB.
- titanomachy 6y ago
  I agree that it's a hard problem. And they need to find a way to solve it. They have made unbelievable profits by creating an incredible and unprecedented tool that connects and amplifies people. The value created by those connections is real. Facebook has also caused major social consequences, since the tool also amplifies ideas that are spurious, hateful, andnd harmful. Facebook the near-trillion-dollar company doesn't get to keep raking in massive profits and pass off the social costs as someone else's problem. They should view solving it as integral to the viability of their business model. Society should hold them accountable for the lies that are spread on their platform, and for the hate crimes that wouldn't have been committed in a world without Facebook (e.g. the murder of Samuel Paty).
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  It's not a balance between "enabling free speech and avoiding harmful content", it's a balance between keeping their customers and investors happy, and avoiding legal liability.
underseacables 6y ago
What has always bothered me about Facebook and hate speech is the arbitrary way it’s imposed. To me it definitely has a bias against conservative speakers while giving maximum leeway to those on the left. All hate speech should be taken down, regardless of who it’s about, against, or who is posting it.

144 points by minimaxir 6y ago

So, key person*?

tldr: Four employees leave fb and claim it’s for ethical reasons. Journo believes them, calls them “key people” for a more clickbait headline.

CodeGlitch 6y ago
That's BuzzFeed for you.

vxNsr 6y ago

This just further highlights the delusion that everyone is living in right now, 50% of Americans think the other 50% is out to kill them and take away their basic rights. This is true of both sides, they each truly believe the other side is a real danger. And both sides will say the other side is the real problem and I’m both siding something that is obviously one sided. I cross the divide and have emphatically, honestly, without any irony been called an evil socialist by one and nazi authoritarian by the other.

zepto 6y ago
The problem is - both could be right!
- vxNsr 6y ago
  Well again as someone who talks to both extremes very often, they’re honestly not. They both just be left alone but have been led to believe by their media consumption that if they don’t do something the other side will, a kind of reverse prisoners dilemma.
  - zepto 6y ago
    I don’t know - it seems to me that the left would ban guns if they could, and the right would ban abortion if they could. Neither side is wrong to be afraid of the other doing these things.
fred_is_fred 6y ago
Let's not fall into the "whataboutism". Only one "side" has the President of the United States and other key leaders actively advocating for violence.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  Lol. I have the other side telling me that this all misunderstood and then they’ll point you to the AOCs, Sanders talking about “make lists, lock them up”. They’ll say one side is only talking, but look at Portland, Seattle, DC, etc. there was actual violence. Then the other side will point to Kenosha, which the Trump side will point to as well as proof for them. And they’ll tack on Portland. The truth is very much in the middle.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
    Do you have a reference to the make lists/lock them up?
    - vxNsr 6y ago
      I think this is what they’re referring to: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078 https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324807776510595078 I don’t know though, this was in a WhatsApp group, I remember seeing the conversation about something she said but idk if this was it
      - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
        That sounds like take screenshots so we can call them out later, not make lists/lock them up.
  - B-Con 6y ago
    I'll second this. Neither side really instances the other side and many buy into the headline narrative that the other half aee basically all extremist nutjobs.
bigbubba 6y ago
I think the real truth of the matter is the majority of Americans know the sky isn't falling. Profit motivated media is blowing the political divide way out of the water, fear mongering to sell eyeballs to advertisers. I've got a few friends who are utterly convinced America is on the cusp of a civil war, but that's only a few. They're the ones who watch too much Fox News or CNN I think.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Still waiting for the "inevitable civil war Trump supporters will instigate, because they have guns", as mentioned to me by one of my friends.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    I think the overwhelming majority of people who make claims like that are just full of hot air. If the shooting ever started, they'd be hiding indoors with the rest of us. This is one of the reasons I think the scenarios they propose is unlikely. This is nothing new of course, there have always been people willing to talk about extreme grandiose nonsense they'll never do. These people aren't hard to find if you go looking, making it easy for the media to broadcast their prattling to scare everybody else shitless. Scared, people stay tuned during the commercial break to hear the latest up to date news about what horrible things are surely imminent. A few months ago I had a few friends of either political persuasion telling me there would be a revolution or coup the day after the election. That didn't happen, and I think most are starting to realize it won't happen. By this time next year, when Biden's presidency is well underway, I think many of the people feeling very concerned today will feel foolish in retrospect.
- ritchiea 6y ago
  For the majority of Americans on HN or employed in tech or finance or some other salaried office work, the sky isn’t falling, we’re doing well. but we’re also a minority of Americans. Walk through towns & small cities in Indiana, Kansas, Florida, Alabama. In a lot of these places the sky is falling, there are few jobs & high rates of opiate abuse. There isn’t much of a social safety net. Unfortunately many of these people vote against their own financial interests, and honestly the democrats also aren’t addressing the roots of inequality sufficiently. The United States is basically divided between those of us who are doing well and those of us for whom the sky is at least looking brittle. That’s the issue putting pressure on society today.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Granted, I haven't seen the data the people leaving FB are using to make their arguments, but at least they are saying that misinformation and posts arguing for assault or killing of individuals are much more prevalent among "conservative" groups: > We have a very good idea which actors in the US drive the largest volumes of this kind of content. In the last 14 days, the 10 pages responsible for the largest concentrated volume of likely violating Hate Speech comments have been: Breitbart Fox News The Daily Caller USA Patriots for Donald Trump Donald Trump for President Donald J. Trump Ben Shapiro Conservative Tribune by WJ US Chronicle The Western Journal These pages, and a few perennial others that didn’t happen to make the top 10 in the last two weeks, but that you can find by browsing the dashboard, are filling our platform with violent and hateful content at a rate and concentration that is simply overwhelming…
idrios 6y ago
Disappointed you're being downvoted. Everybody seems to have taken an "if you're not with us you're against us" approach. The left appeals to your sense of morality ("you're evil if you support this president") and the right appeals to your sense of intelligence ("you're an idiot if you support socialism"). My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment?
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  Both seem giddy about abridging individual rights and liberal values. Invite debate, look for commonality and move forward.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  People don't seem to want to defend their positions anymore. They want to say what they feel and face no challenge or debate. Even this "key" data scientist won't talk to the media, won't be identified. Sorry then, I don't give his opinion a lot of weight. It's easy to throw stones from inside a safe space.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  >My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment? I've heard this argument often. What I'm about to say is not directed at you personally but your argument. Maybe you, general you, are the one who needs to grow. It's possible that your knowledge of the subject is dated, judgement clouded by any number of things, that you underestimate the severity of the problem, that you're conflating a dislike of a person, movement, idea with groups of people, or other things. I say this because most of the time when people make this comment they follow it up or precede it with some very questionable statements. Generally these inappropriate statements are rooted in ignorance of the topic though sometimes your argument is used in bad faith to justify hateful or discriminatory ideals, speech, and action. Again, I'm not suggesting anything against you idrios, merely adding my experience with this argument.
  - 6y ago
citilife 6y ago
Honest question, why do the liberals feel in danger? I personally don't attribute myself to either side, nor did I vote for either. However... I've seen rioting (been caught up in one and feared for my safety), noticed stuff being blocked by the left (1st amendment), going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment), and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives. What exactly are the conservatives doing? I don't see anything necessarily being blocked / attacked? Am I missing something?
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  Michigan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl... https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/01/849017021/protestors-swarm-michigan-capitol-amid-showdown-over-governors-emergency-powers https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... Literally armed people swarming government buildings to protest masks, bomb threats and plans, kidnapping. https://www.reddit.com/r/InsaneParler/ https://www.reddit.com/r/InsaneParler/ gives more insights. Washington? You have Matt Shea, an elected Republican: "In late October 2018, Shea acknowledged that he had distributed a document described as a "four-page manifesto" titled Biblical Basis for War that listed strategies that a "Holy Army" could employ. The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", which within stated that the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"." "In April 2019, The Guardian published records from a right-wing chat group of four people that Shea participated in, where Shea used an alias of ‘True Warrior’ in Latin. Other members in the chat group discussed carrying out surveillance, intimidation and violent attacks on political enemies, including Antifa activists and "communists." Shea himself volunteered to conduct background checks on residents of Spokane, resulting in Shea naming three individuals. One of the chat group's members forwarded the information to The Guardian, while another confirmed the existence of the chats and acknowledged the discussion on conducting surveillance on "Antifa" people." "An investigation commissioned by Washington House of Representatives reported, on December 1, 2019, that Shea had planned and participated in domestic terrorism on at least three occasions. This included his participation, organizing, planning, and promotion of the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada, the 2015 armed standoff in Priest River, Idaho, and the 2016 armed seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. Shea led a delegation of right-wing legislators from Oregon, Washington and Idaho that met with law enforcement on January 9, 2016, in Burns, Oregon and were appraised of confidential intended law enforcement strategies for dealing with the refuge occupiers. Shea then disclosed those details to Bundy, according to the report."
throwaway894345 6y ago
I take your broader point, but I don't think it's 50/50 as much as it is a vocal 10% on either side with the majority remaining pretty moderate and reasonable. I don't personally cross the divide, I'm a political liberal (earning me the 'socialist' brand from the right) but I don't dabble in the tribalism and try to be charitable toward those I disagree with (thus I'm a nazi to the 10% on the far left) but there's still a huge swath of people in the middle.
- BLKNSLVR 6y ago
  Very interesting that the text of your entirely non-aggressive, non-partisan point of view was "more grey than black". Keep up the charitable liberalism I say.
  - Yeroc 6y ago
    I think one of the issues (beyond media's propensity towards sensationalism to draw attention) is that the extremes at either end of a debate are very black and white. Black and white can be explained in a single sentence many times but everything in between is nuanced (or grey as you called it). The problem with nuanced positions is it requires more than a 280 character payload to explain...
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      I think the bigger problem is that nuanced positions don't sell as well as sensationalism. Outrage is a powerful drug and the media has us hooked on it.
patjenk 6y ago
Is it necessary to name the problem if we know a driver of it?
adamsea 6y ago
I disagree that there is an equivalence. For example, I actually think that anyone who doesn't believe that the election was legitimate - i.e. that no meaningful fraud occurred - should be banned from the HN community. Their "arguments" are full of shit and are a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-analytical, pseudo-objective cant. Their "evidence" is literally disinformation / propaganda. They're uninterested and in fact dismissive of real, actual evidence and facts as examined in multiple court cases - and they refuse to accept the validity of the outcomes of those cases. They wish to overturn the legitimate outcome of the Presidential election. Full stop. They act exactly like those crypto-racists who know that their true belief would be deemed unpalatable or unacceptable by the community so they'll blow as much smoke around as possible without ever stepping out to say what they're actually driving towards. I don't see anything remotely equivalent to this happening on the other side of the fence at this time. I've never seen anything like this in the United States and enough is enough. It's clearly dangerous to allow these views the shroud of legitimacy by giving them space in the public square, because it's gone so far that anything other than a total rejection ends up functioning as an implicit legitimization because the claims are so untrue, shocking, and destructive. By allowing the lie of election fraud to be presented as just another thing to be discussed on HN, HN is enabling those people and their cause, which is to overturn the results of a legitimate election. And I think it's unfortunate and wrong that I probably have a better chance of being banned from HN for this comment, than someone who is obviously attempting to undermine people's belief in the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election, which is to say, undermine small-d democracy in the U.S. and advocate for an authoritarian, one-party state. Which is literally what they're doing. And no, the Democrats or anyone else on the Left are not doing anything remotely equivalent to that right now.
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
So one side is trying to stage a coup using the SCOTUS as a weapon, thereby defying the will of the citizenry, and the best you an come up with is "Both Sides"?
- airb 6y ago
  One side believes the last 4 years has seen multiple attempts to remove their elected president. Not to mention the Justice kavanaugh confirmation madness.
  - loopz 6y ago
    Correction: Elected criminal lying president.
    - vxNsr 6y ago
      Lol. I love when someone like you comments this without any irony. You truly believe this nonsense like it’s gospel.
      - loopz 6y ago
        What Trump has going for him, is picking up issues that need to be addressed, that have gone been neglected in a fast-evolving world, leading to unfairness. However, how these issues are treated and how people are treated, is important in a democracy. https://theconversation.com/why-hard-core-trump-supporters-ignore-his-lies-144650 https://theconversation.com/why-hard-core-trump-supporters-i... If he's such a great leader and not just an opportunist populist, why do he need to instill a fear-culture where everybody who doesn't lick his boots get fired. People appointed by the same leader dare not speak up their own opinions. This isn't democracy. What type of leader do this? Hint: Communist leaders like Stalin, and fascist leaders like Mussolini. If you're unable to spot a liar yourself, it is not too hard to form your own opinion on this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trump... https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-so-far-atrocities-1-1-004 https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-so-... https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+lies+list https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+lies+list Fortunately, a majority of the population see right through the lack of leadership and lies for what they truly are. The means are as important as the ends, and the ends are often obscured and full of misdirection, more like PR campaigns than anything of real and lasting value.
jfrunyon 6y ago
Except that only 50% is actually out to do it.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Most of the republicans I know are disappointed, but not so severely that they want to go killing people. That sort of extremism is very fringe. Also, even if you count the mellow majority, they're far from 50%.
  - jfrunyon 6y ago
    > and take away their basic rights
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      Well I have some good news for you, they lost the election. A few of them may not like to admit that, but they lost nevertheless and any scenario where Biden or Harris isn't president a year from now is a delusion.
      - jfrunyon 6y ago
        Well I have some bad news for you, they don't believe they lost the election.
        bigbubba 6y ago
        Well the good news is that doesn't matter. They're sore losers but it won't amount to anything more than hot air, so take a deep breath and relax. Hit a blunt or something.
        jfrunyon 6y ago
        Do you really think that losing the election is going to make the Republicans go "huh, maybe we should stop trying to take away rights from millions of Americans? maybe we should stop treating millions of voters like trash?" It's not.
jaredklewis 6y ago
You seem reasonable, so please help me understand the other side. I’m a big fan of conservative thinkers like Milton Friedman and George Will. I’m against the left’s attack on free speech and find their obsession with identity, at best, perplexing. I prefer isolationist foreign policy and less military involvement from the US. I’m originally from a conservative area and have many conservative relatives I know to be good people. And yet I cannot conceive of how anyone could support Trump or the boot licking republicans who enable him. He is incapable of telling the truth. He does not seem to believe in reality, science, or expertise of any kind. He does not believe in rule of law. He is an authoritarian and egomaniac. Even before the election he challenged the idea of a peaceful transition of power. How is this supportable? Edit: And to be clear I get that we live in a two-party country and that a vote for a candidate is not a wholesale endorsement. You look at the options you have and choose the "lesser of the evils," as it were. Hell, I would vote for Trump if the other candidate was Stalin. Edit Edit: I know it’s bad form to make political rants like this on HN. I had a moment of weakness :/
- umvi 6y ago
  A lot of my conservative relatives are too old to even know what Twitter is, so they completely ignore Trump on that front. They like that Trump doesn't kowtow to the media and they like his judge picks, his foreign policy, and executive orders. The media would zing Romney with little zingers and he would get all hang dog and apologize, but Trump punched back instead and his voter base loved that they finally had a candidate that would stand up to the media. Trump also tried very hard to make good on his campaign promises. Can you imagine opening an embassy in Jerusalem under Hillary? I can't, and my conservative relatives love that he did that and that he stands up to China and acknowledged Taiwan's president. They also love that he fights back against identity politics (removing requirement for forced diversity trainings, etc). In short, from their perspective he goes to bat on a lot of their grievances. So yeah, his Twitter is a dumpster fire, but half his voter base doesn't even see it because they don't use twitter.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  Look I’ve had conversations like this a lot, it comes down to exactly what you said. Two parties ends up being the lesser of two evils, and trump to most conservatives absolutely was the lesser of two evils. As other commentators said, he fulfilled many of his campaign promises. He pushed foreign policy in a direction the whole world needed but didn’t want. He’s been drawing down foreign troops since his first day in office, so much so that apparently his generals were lying to him about how many ppl they had out there. It’s perplexing to me that if what you say you believe is what you believe why a politician being a liar is a problem for you. All politicians lie, none as brazenly as Trump sure; but every single one of them has been caught lying in the last 9 months, many have been pretty brazen in their hypocrisy. My many conservative friends will point to 1000s of small white lies and 100s of big ones that Biden told, as proof that the other side is just as complicit.

brink 6y ago

It's weird how normalized censorship has become in just one year. Yeah, yeah, I know Facebook is a "private entity, and they can do what they want with their platform", spare me. Facebook is a social media monopoly. We need to protect free speech on these "private" monolith social media platforms before it's too late.

thegrim33 6y ago
It's even stranger to me that the censorship is applauded and cheered on because people believe it's "for a good reason". But that doesn't change the fact that it's still just blatant political censorship on a massive level. Every evil regime in history has done evil things under the guise of convincing the citizens that it's OK because it's "for a good reason" or directed against "bad people", but that doesn't change the fact that it's still evil. No matter how much political propaganda they push about why the censorship is good, it's still massively partisan censorship and suppression.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  And yet you can go to Parler, and they will happily censor pro-left / Democrat / liberal posts and positions. And openly do so. And have the people there stating it as their right (which it is). So these right leaning people absolutely do have a platform. Is it as popular? No. Maybe that's because their perspective is less popular. You don't have the right to an audience to your speech and it's not suppression to choose not to use my [or Facebook] resources to amplify your words, nor is it my problem that your platform doesn't have the same audience and reach.
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  > it's still just blatant political censorship on a massive level Uhhh... no, banning lies and hate speech is not "political censorship". That implies that lies and hate speech are legitimate political views.
Quarrelsome 6y ago
> It's weird how normalized censorship has become in just one year. I feel like its people trying to deal with the discord of this new breed of politicians that brazenly lie so often that its impossible to know what's real anymore. Politicians used to be masters of selective information and leaving key information out while still not technically lying. Now they say whatever the fuck they want with scant attention to reality and facts. That's what's causing this IMO because the amount of attention they receive means that they strongly impact the narrative. As a non-US example; Boris Johnson yesterday stated that it was "very likely" that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, despite coming to power on an election campaign where he stated he had "an oven ready deal with the EU". If you were taking the British government's word at faith then yesterday's statement would have been a massive shock to you because for four years no government minister has stated that this outcome will happen.

muglug 6y ago

"Key people" is maybe taking poetic license. A small number of data scientists discovering a sense of morality (after cashing a few very large paychecks) doesn't feel like the tidal wave of employee dissent that many people are waiting for.

actuator 6y ago
Well, it is not like the old media/old media style companies love FB, that they would not spin it this way. Ironically, they are guilty of some of the same things they accuse FB of.
chiefalchemist 6y ago
Buzzfeed runs a story about some former employees wanting FB to be more vigilant and X or Y, and uses a hyperbolic deceptive headline for that story.

echelon 6y ago

Accelerate it! Put a 5 year hiring freeze on any Facebook engineers that still work there after 2021. If you're willing to sacrifice your ethics to work for a company that cheats and spies on folks, you can't be trusted with our company's product or culture. It doesn't even have to be strict or real. You can say you waive it for candidates that publicly renounce Facebook's practices. You don't really need to check, just send a message that you don't tolerate Facebook's behavior. Reverse Brian Armstrong. edit: flagged? I think this is seriously worth discussing. We choose the world we build and live in.

bigbubba 6y ago

'Torching the company' implies they're figuratively burning the place down, which seems like an exaggeration. A more appropriate fire idiom might be 'flaming the company', or you could say they're 'spitting fire.'

draw_down 6y ago
You cannot be serious with this. Come on.

ohazi 6y ago

Maybe enough of my friends have already left, but facebook has seemed like an empty husk for at least the last year, and the ratio of ads (which ublock origin doesn't seem to filter) to content seems higher there than any other website I frequent by at least a factor of 3 or 4. It's so unpleasant to read anything on there that I usually just check notifications and bail as quickly as possible. Also, the ads they show are terrible. The last useful thing I can recall seeing was a day-after-thanksgiving virtual friends meetup invitation. Events are the only reason I haven't bailed completely, and it seems the reason that this feature remains sticky is that lots of people don't want to bother to maintain email address books anymore.

bigbubba 6y ago
This is doubtlessly why Facebook likes to buy their potential competitors. Any particular social media platform might be a transient fad, but the company itself can remain relevant by buying all the new fads.
FabHK 6y ago
I've recently looked at Instagram, and the ratio of ads is shockingly high. WhatsApp is still ad free, let's hope it stays that way (and if not, that people migrate away).
- yakireev 6y ago
  Honestly, I'd prefer if Whatsapp had some monetization. Because the current way of them making money is "belong to Facebook, give them all the data", and I don't like it.

xhkkffbf 6y ago

One out of 1000 posts is hate? Gosh, I don't spend much time on Facebook, but I easily scroll through 500-1000 posts every few days. I haven't seen one I would truly call hate. Oh sure, there are a few friends who say nasty things about the politician they dislike, but it doesn't strike me has hate speech. Now I'm not denying that they're out there. They must be. But 1/1000 seems like a pretty high estimate. There are sooo many pictures of cats and grandkids and that cake someone just made.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
The metric likely includes private group posts and networks you're not in. You could also be oblivious to some hate.
- xhkkffbf 6y ago
  Yes, but those would need to be really big groups because as far as I can tell there are lots and lots and lots of groups specializing in cats and discussions of high school. It just seems like a pretty puffed up stat compared to my experience. I'm not saying it's zero. I'm just saying that there is plenty of inoffensive stuff too and it tends to drown out the ratio.

draw_down 6y ago

I'd work there, because of what I view as their pioneering of some important UI paradigms. I think it would be interesting to be immersed in the eng org where that came from. The "hate speech" thing I think is really poorly defined; at the end of the day I think they're mad about Trump supporters and other deplorables having the audacity to say certain things. There's plenty of what they would refer to as "hate speech" on Twitter, but none of them seem to think Twitter is embarrassing to work for because it put a little "i" icon on Trump's tweets. All of this just seems farcical to me.

botwriter 6y ago

This is why you don't hire woke cultists... Facebook is a useless time sink in the west its essential for shopping and socialising when you're in third world countries though.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

Sometimes you can judge a company by the enemies it makes. It seems Facebook is making enemies of the people that think political censorship is a good thing, that do not value free speech as a principle, and that are appalled that people have different values and beliefs. Now as is brought up every time there is a complaint that tech companies are violating the first amendment, these are private companies and can control what is posted and what it shows. So, if Facebook decides they want to allow these posts in the name of free speech, it is their right as a private company. Frankly, I am glad that people who believe that we should have more censorship are leaving their positions of influence at Facebook.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/LHKKy https://archive.is/LHKKy

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

duxup 6y ago

I'd be curious what really crossed the line for some of these folks. Facebook's anything goes type behavior and litany of various bad choices has been there for a long long time. I'm kinda wondering what exactly pushed these folks to quit?

pvarangot 6y ago
> I'd be curious what really crossed the line for some of these folks. At the risk of sounding sarcastic, but with some anecdotal insider information for some of this cases, what crossed the line is they became independently wealthy or got a competing offer from a rival company. It's easier to "wake up" if you are waking up in a cozy bed to a nice breakfast.
- r00fus 6y ago
  It's a bit dismissive of a response. The job market isn't horrible in tech and FB is a highly desired resume entry. A nice cozy breakfast is table stakes. I want to make a difference in a good way; I'm sure these folks leaving are no different.

k33n 6y ago

And then everyone clapped

throwaway201103 6y ago

They build a huge mirror on society and then are shocked, shocked to find that it reflects all the ugly parts as well as the good.

Animats 6y ago

If 1 in 1000 posts contain hate speech, Facebook has a big problem. They didn't create that problem. Hate speech is mainstream now. Maybe they need to double down on "real names". To post to more than your personal friends, you need a Real ID or your national equivalent.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
Facebook already does this. You need a real cell phone number to make an account. They'll frequently require users to upload pictures of their id's to unlock their accounts after they detect suspicious activity.

wombatmobile 6y ago

I stopped using FB 6 months ago, not by cancelling or suspending my account, just by not going there. I'm happier. I have more time. I have less adversarial interactions and stress in my thoughts. At first I wondered how I could do this, since it would mean losing contact with friends. But a surprising number of friends contacted me via messenger to ask how I'm doing, and now we just interact one to one, like in the old days. I find the interaction I get on HN far more satisfying and challenging than FB. The HN guidelines make it so. It's not rocket science. > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. With guidelines like these, and a community mod system that works, there is no need for sisyphean AI or data scientists. What concerns me for the future is that HN is dependent for its discussions on the existence of independent journalism to provide the articles on which the HN community comments. If the economic and political trends that gave FB its power continue, what will HN readers have left to discuss? Tech news? That might not be enough. I understand why HN excludes political discussion, and that makes sense in isolation. But outside of HN, this article about FB highlights that quality civics requires informed, civil discourse. How is that going to happen?

r00fus 6y ago
I don't come to HN to read details in articles unless they actually contain new information, it's the commentary that's engaging. Comments that highlight or put into context information that's usually on dozens of news sites. Twitter is rife with highly timely good content. As you mentioned the rules and moderation is key to civil discussion. HN has it, FB does not.
- gralx 6y ago
  I read HN comments before visiting a submitted link maybe 99% of the time. After that I would visit the link less than 10% of the time. Eternal September[1] hasn't hit us here, and I also attribute that to HN's moderation policy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

gigatexal 6y ago

Let’s see FB burn. I’m here for it with popcorn in hand.

Yhippa 6y ago

Offtopic, but who in their right mind would let a Facebook Portal device into their home?

vxNsr 6y ago
I ask this about alexa, google home, etc, but people are apparently using them in droves.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  I have Amazon Alexa devices in my house. The reason I'm ok with this is because my relationship with Amazon is very straight forward: they sell me stuff, which I purchase with money. They give me nothing for "free". It's also very easy for me to not use Amazon or their services in any way, and they know this which makes me far more comfortable. Google and Facebook on the other hand... Completely different relationship where services are exchanged for the sale of my personal details.

ravenstine 6y ago

The downvotes in this thread pretty much tell you all you need to know about this idea that every American political issue is a 50/50 split.

sto_hristo 6y ago

So why is everyone expecting Facebook to "correct" human behavior? They're just the platform, not the generator. If we're going to be fair, ISPs should be FIRST held accountable for the hate speech their users generate, because if we remove Facebook, someone else will provide a textarea and submit button, but will still use the same cable and internet subscription. In the mean time, media reigns free into radicalizing the population into different-opinion camps, psychopath televangelists can zombify millions and get good profit from the ads. But no, Facebook alone is a threat to democracy.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
You're using the slippery slope fallacy and conflating disparate issues. Shut down Facebook if they can't stop violent organizations from flourishing on their platform. Tax church's and find a way to make these psychotic televangelists illegal, maybe the irs can get them for tax evasion? All these problems boil down to money. If Facebook acts against these radical groups without a court order their Republican investors and shareholders will flee en masse. A federal order is unlikely due to Trump's appointments and lack of precedent or law. A new law is unlikely because Mitch McConnell would sooner die of covid19 then let the democrats score a win, or make Republican social media wetwork harder in the future. McConnell is a founding father of the modern problems with money in Congress and he's been boosting about it for decades. So, to sum it up. Mark is choosing to not do anything and keep profiting off of this shit because he has the legal cover to do so from Trump down. Trump just wants to kill platforms that aren't for him, just like he wants all democrat votes shredded..
- sto_hristo 6y ago
  Or how about the government step up and do its job looking into persecuting these groups? Facebook is not a government, they can't and should not police/persecute people. Are you going to shutdown car manufacturers because a psycho used his car to plow though bystanders on a bus stop? Everything facebook has been asked to do is utterly futile. Sure, they can remove a post or two but the person making those posts still runs free. Fabeook is a victim of their popularity. Because of their size they're easy to blame for pre-existing problems government neglected for too long. Government just doesn't want to deal with any of that for real and so will just throw an angry finger at FB and shift blame.

esja 6y ago

Part of their problem is that they don't seem to have a clear definition for hate speech... or at least not one that is public and that their entire user base can understand and accept. And for the same reasons, it's impossible to police using AI. If they really believe they need to censor wrong-think globally, they'll need to hire and train hundreds of thousands of people (at least). And even then they will fail to solve the problem in a way that keeps everyone happy.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
The goal should not be to keep people happy but to deplatform the dangerously hateful.
jfrunyon 6y ago
From what a friend (who is one of those "third party content moderators") says, they don't have a clear definition for anything, even for their own moderators.

broberts01 6y ago

Deleted my FB years ago and have never regretted it. It isn't even hard to stay connected to the people that you actually care about.

dmantis 6y ago

They were fine when FB created the biggest private espionage system in the world with their "shadow profiles" and mass targeting, but not fine when it fails to make soviet-style censorship on its platform? What a time be alive.

yodsanklai 6y ago

I may sound naive, but I think FB is just facing an incredibly hard problem: Finding the right balance between enabling free speech and avoiding harmful content (and at the same time make a profit from their platform). First, people constantly disagree on what this balance should be. And even in countries where free speech is legislated, it can be hard to assess whether laws were broken or not. I just don't see how they can find a solution that will please everyone. This issue seems inherent to any social platform operating at the scale of FB.

titanomachy 6y ago
I agree that it's a hard problem. And they need to find a way to solve it. They have made unbelievable profits by creating an incredible and unprecedented tool that connects and amplifies people. The value created by those connections is real. Facebook has also caused major social consequences, since the tool also amplifies ideas that are spurious, hateful, andnd harmful. Facebook the near-trillion-dollar company doesn't get to keep raking in massive profits and pass off the social costs as someone else's problem. They should view solving it as integral to the viability of their business model. Society should hold them accountable for the lies that are spread on their platform, and for the hate crimes that wouldn't have been committed in a world without Facebook (e.g. the murder of Samuel Paty).
jfrunyon 6y ago
It's not a balance between "enabling free speech and avoiding harmful content", it's a balance between keeping their customers and investors happy, and avoiding legal liability.

underseacables 6y ago

What has always bothered me about Facebook and hate speech is the arbitrary way it’s imposed. To me it definitely has a bias against conservative speakers while giving maximum leeway to those on the left. All hate speech should be taken down, regardless of who it’s about, against, or who is posting it.