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I feel like the obvious answer is pretty substantial amounts of $$$. But in seriousness I think it is naive to say that Facebook has only downsides. Their tools

by bb123 6y ago

I feel like the obvious answer is pretty substantial amounts of $$$. But in seriousness I think it is naive to say that Facebook has only downsides. Their tools do offer many benefits to many people, and I expect most of the engineers who on on those tools do so with that goal in mind.

prezjordan 6y ago
Anecdata but "substantial amounts of $$$" can be found at a number of companies that are not Facebook. Source: https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/
zepto 6y ago
Is there anything unique to the tools that Facebook provides? It seems like most of the stuff they do has been provided by competitors at one time or another, or could be done better outside of the constraints of facebook’s ‘engagement’ model.
- nineplay 6y ago
  The network effect is unique to Facebook. No competitor is going to beat it until they get the same number of users.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Sure, but we aren’t talking about ‘beating’ Facebook. We’re talking about why people work there. Perhaps some of the things Facebook does can be done better by other companies. They don’t need to ‘beat’ Facebook as a whole, and if the engineers motivations are the features they work on, perhaps they can get more satisfaction elsewhere.
  - matlag 6y ago
    Most people have no issue going through FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc on a regular basis. But when you say we should start using alternative tools in parallel to FB so that we contribute to grow these networks and reduce our dependence, then it's suddenly a huge cumbersome task. Let's admit that the vast majority of users is actually ok with what FB does with their data. Showing concerns about privacy without actually doing anything is a cheap way of looking good.
kill-procrustes 6y ago
I'm no fan of Facebook, and I think they've made a lot of unethical decisions, but I also feel like they're becoming this massive scapegoat for the social discomfort caused by the giant mirror that information technology has held up to human nature. Yes, the algorithms have had some horrifying effects, and yes, they have intentionally engineered their products to be addictive, and they deserve to be criticized and punished for those behaviors, but we also need to take a hard look at ourselves and admit that some of this is a consequence of the darker corners of the human heart. It's not like we didn't have holy wars and genocide before Facebook. To some degree we are all complicit in this problem. I'm not trying to be a defeatist and say that we shouldn't try to improve things, but if we adopt this attitude of "let's just abolish the tech giants and everything will be great," we're letting ourselves off the hook and I believe that our unwillingness to face the deeper problem will prevent it from being solved.
- zepto 6y ago
  The counterpoint to this is that ‘human nature’ never had to deal with the addictive algorithms designed to keep people viewing Ads. Obviously this applies to Youtube and others too. It doesn’t take a long hard look at ourselves to acknowledge that we are quite vulnerable to manipulation or addiction. Those vulnerabilities are not going anywhere. I suggest that there is no value in somehow blaming ourselves for them and that what we need to do is make good decisions about how we shape our world to support humans as we are rather than to maximize exploitation of our weaknesses. It’s quite straightforward to acknowledge that things like holy wars based on ideology have been with us for a long time. It’s a straw man to suggest that anyone is saying “let’s abolish the tech giants and everything will be great”. You say: “I believe that our unwillingness to face the deeper problem will prevent it from being solved.” Can you articulate what this deeper problem actually is?
  - kill-procrustes 6y ago
    I'm not suggesting "blaming" ourselves, per se. Sitting around and wallowing in our own guilt won't accomplish anything. But I do think we should accept that our own nature is part of what has led to this and be honest about the problem. I couldn't have put it better than you did: we should think about how to support humans as they are. I'm not sure what I said is a straw man. I was being a little flip, but I think it's a normal human impulse to blame "that thing" or "those people" and to feel that a problem can be fixed by just eliminating whatever that is. Maybe nobody is explicitly saying "if we eliminate Facebook the problem will go away," but I do think some people implicitly feel that way. The deeper problem, in my view, is that network technologies encourage our tendencies toward runaway group think and villainization due to their effect of disinhibition (making us react to something more quickly than we can rationally think about it).

by bb123 6y ago

prezjordan 6y ago

Anecdata but "substantial amounts of $$$" can be found at a number of companies that are not Facebook. Source: https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/

zepto 6y ago

Is there anything unique to the tools that Facebook provides? It seems like most of the stuff they do has been provided by competitors at one time or another, or could be done better outside of the constraints of facebook’s ‘engagement’ model.

nineplay 6y ago
The network effect is unique to Facebook. No competitor is going to beat it until they get the same number of users.
- zepto 6y ago
  Sure, but we aren’t talking about ‘beating’ Facebook. We’re talking about why people work there. Perhaps some of the things Facebook does can be done better by other companies. They don’t need to ‘beat’ Facebook as a whole, and if the engineers motivations are the features they work on, perhaps they can get more satisfaction elsewhere.
- matlag 6y ago
  Most people have no issue going through FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc on a regular basis. But when you say we should start using alternative tools in parallel to FB so that we contribute to grow these networks and reduce our dependence, then it's suddenly a huge cumbersome task. Let's admit that the vast majority of users is actually ok with what FB does with their data. Showing concerns about privacy without actually doing anything is a cheap way of looking good.

kill-procrustes 6y ago

I'm no fan of Facebook, and I think they've made a lot of unethical decisions, but I also feel like they're becoming this massive scapegoat for the social discomfort caused by the giant mirror that information technology has held up to human nature. Yes, the algorithms have had some horrifying effects, and yes, they have intentionally engineered their products to be addictive, and they deserve to be criticized and punished for those behaviors, but we also need to take a hard look at ourselves and admit that some of this is a consequence of the darker corners of the human heart. It's not like we didn't have holy wars and genocide before Facebook. To some degree we are all complicit in this problem. I'm not trying to be a defeatist and say that we shouldn't try to improve things, but if we adopt this attitude of "let's just abolish the tech giants and everything will be great," we're letting ourselves off the hook and I believe that our unwillingness to face the deeper problem will prevent it from being solved.

zepto 6y ago
The counterpoint to this is that ‘human nature’ never had to deal with the addictive algorithms designed to keep people viewing Ads. Obviously this applies to Youtube and others too. It doesn’t take a long hard look at ourselves to acknowledge that we are quite vulnerable to manipulation or addiction. Those vulnerabilities are not going anywhere. I suggest that there is no value in somehow blaming ourselves for them and that what we need to do is make good decisions about how we shape our world to support humans as we are rather than to maximize exploitation of our weaknesses. It’s quite straightforward to acknowledge that things like holy wars based on ideology have been with us for a long time. It’s a straw man to suggest that anyone is saying “let’s abolish the tech giants and everything will be great”. You say: “I believe that our unwillingness to face the deeper problem will prevent it from being solved.” Can you articulate what this deeper problem actually is?
- kill-procrustes 6y ago
  I'm not suggesting "blaming" ourselves, per se. Sitting around and wallowing in our own guilt won't accomplish anything. But I do think we should accept that our own nature is part of what has led to this and be honest about the problem. I couldn't have put it better than you did: we should think about how to support humans as they are. I'm not sure what I said is a straw man. I was being a little flip, but I think it's a normal human impulse to blame "that thing" or "those people" and to feel that a problem can be fixed by just eliminating whatever that is. Maybe nobody is explicitly saying "if we eliminate Facebook the problem will go away," but I do think some people implicitly feel that way. The deeper problem, in my view, is that network technologies encourage our tendencies toward runaway group think and villainization due to their effect of disinhibition (making us react to something more quickly than we can rationally think about it).