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As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, but the company is finding it very difficult to

by cs702 6y ago

As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, but the company is finding it very difficult to do The Right Thing, because it would reduce future revenue growth, shrink long-term profitability, and hurt the company's competitive standing against the many other companies that are trying to eat Facebook's lunch every day. In the extreme, Facebook's choices appear to be: (a) act in the best interest of society and get f#cked by competitors; or (b) remain a dominant force in the market, but as a side effect, f#ck everybody. All options for Facebook appear to be a mix of those two horrible choices.

rossdavidh 6y ago
I see you're getting some downvotes, but I agree with you. Put another way, though: the problem is not Zuckerberg per se, it's the business model of advertising-supported, general-purpose social networks. If you took everybody out of Facebook and replaced them all with other equally qualified people, they would behave the same, as an organization. The problem is not Who, it's What. You can't "fix" Facebook, because the problem is pretty fundamental to what they are.
- soupson 6y ago
  Yes. This is surveillance capitalism taken to its extreme. Facebook didn’t invent it, they’re just doing it in a way that makes the consequences more difficult to ignore than Google, which has been able to largely sidestep the blowback by being mission critical to so many people and also having massive goodwill projects that don’t directly point to being profit driven. It’s up to citizens of the US and EU to reign this in. We can hate the player but we gotta hate the game even more.
  - SCHiM 6y ago
    I mean, GDPR is a step in the direction. Many websites, and by extension, people seem to think that you comply by 'gdpr' by putting up a stupid cookie banner. But the real compliance is not storing PII, then you don't even need a cookie bar!
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      When the law defines 32 but numbers (IP addresses) as PII, it’s not terribly surprising to me that “real compliance” is not eagerly adopted.
      - oblio 6y ago
        GDPR doesn't define IPs as PII, unless you use them as such. If you have a legitimate use for IPs, then you're fine.
    - soupson 6y ago
      Asking companies not to retain PII is like asking a crack addict to please ignore the crack pipe and torch while you step out for an hour. The only solution is to make PII radioactive. Tax it. Burn companies that abuse it or leak it to the ground. HIPAA is a fucking nightmare but companies still figure it out:
      - Nextgrid 6y ago
        GDPR is mostly that; the penalties for data breaches are essentially a tax on PII. GDPR also restricts how you can process data and the user should always be informed and has the right to object. The problem is that the GDPR is not being enforced seriously.
  - annadane 6y ago
    I would argue they basically invented it. A lot of the dirty tactics in play today are because companies feel the need to catch up to Facebook, who set the ecosystem as it is by continually being dishonest and predatory
  - boraoztunc 6y ago
    > Facebook didn’t invent it. Didn't Google invent this model? [1] >Surveillance capitalism was invented around 2001 as the solution to financial emergency in the teeth of the dotcom bust when the fledgling company faced the loss of investor confidence. As investor pressure mounted, Google’s leaders abandoned their declared antipathy toward advertising. Instead they decided to boost ad revenue by using their exclusive access to user data logs (once known as “data exhaust”) in combination with their already substantial analytical capabilities and computational power, to generate predictions of user click-through rates, taken as a signal of an ad’s relevance. >Operationally this meant that Google would both repurpose its growing cache of behavioural data, now put to work as a behavioural data surplus, and develop methods to aggressively seek new sources of this surplus. >The company developed new methods of secret surplus capture that could uncover data that users intentionally opted to keep private, as well as to infer extensive personal information that users did not or would not provide. And this surplus would then be analysed for hidden meanings that could predict click-through behaviour. The surplus data became the basis for new predictions markets called targeted advertising. >Here was the origin of surveillance capitalism in an unprecedented and lucrative brew: behavioural surplus, data science, material infrastructure, computational power, algorithmic systems, and automated platforms. As click-through rates skyrocketed, advertising quickly became as important as search. Eventually it became the cornerstone of a new kind of commerce that depended upon online surveillance at scale. >The success of these new mechanisms only became visible when Google went public in 2004. That’s when it finally revealed that between 2001 and its 2004 IPO, revenues increased by 3,590%. >Surveillance capitalism is no more limited to advertising than mass production was limited to the fabrication of the Ford Model T. It quickly became the default model for capital accumulation in Silicon Valley, embraced by nearly every startup and app. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-...
    - yuhong 6y ago
      This is not accurate. DoubleClick invented it and then got bought by Google in 2007-2008 (against the wishes of Larry and Sergey). See my Wikipedia article on this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Effects_of_the_2007-2008_financial_crisis_on_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Effects_of_the_2007-2008...
- EarthIsHome 6y ago
  I think you're on the right track, but it's not just because it's an "advertising-supported" business model. It's the fundamental laws that govern our society: profit. Replace Zuckerberg, Bezos, et al. with anyone else, and the new CEOs' decisions will be bound by the same constraints.
  - smt88 6y ago
    Reddit isn't perfect, but it is run totally differently from Facebook, including: offering paid subscriptions, having an open API, and not trying to justify widespread surveillance as an ad-targeting tool.
  - sollewitt 6y ago
    Thought experiment: Cory Doctorow becomes CEO of Facebook with Zuckerberg's entire stock allocation and equivalent voting control. Do you stand by your assertion that nothing changes?
    - rossdavidh 6y ago
      One of two things happens: 1) Cory Doctorow gradually morphs into Zuckerberg 2) Another social network, run more like Facebook is currently, replaces the one that Cory Doctorow is running. The reason Facebook didn't go the way of Friendster, Livejournal, and MySpace, is that he figured out how to play the game (as it currently exists) better than anyone else. Cory Doctorow would be like someone trying to win the Tour de France when everyone else was doping. In this analogy, Zuckerberg is Lance Armstrong, playing the existing game the way you need to play it to win that game.
- 0xB31B1B 6y ago
  strong disagree that a Facebook staffed with different folks would behave the same. Zuckerberg has a majority of the votes due to his super voting shares. Leadership matters, individual actions matter. Twitter, for all its faults, has a leader who is leading the company down a different path than the pure money chasing and dominance, and i can imagine a differently lead Twitter being making more money and being worse for society. Zuckerberg is motivated by dominance, nothing else, and he has the ability to change course. Their actions are constrained along a set of possible outcomes but the leaders of both companies are choosing where in that set they want to land.
  - the-dude 6y ago
    Twitter even worse for society? How?
    - nacs 6y ago
      Note parent post says if it were under a different leader for that.
- cs702 6y ago
  Exactly, except that we don't have to imagine anything. If Facebook were to disappear today, there already exist many companies with similar business models willing to take its place. Some more willing to cross the line than Facebook.
  - roydivision 6y ago
    Legislation is the key here, not simply destroying the company.
  - giobox 6y ago
    This is the critical point virtually all criticism of Facebook often fails to address. Sure, you could regulate to death/kill Facebook tomorrow with legislation in country X. All that happens is a clone launches immediately overnight from a country with less onerous regulation, one that anglosphere legal systems will have even less direct control over than the Facebook we have today. FB, for all its flaws, is at least still based in a democratic nation and operates within a (_relatively speaking_) fair legal system. That the FEC is able to demand (and force implementation of!) regulation already at FB is evidence this works, at least a little. Better the devil you know as they say... We can't remove the natural human desire to connect to one another on the internet (and associated problems). For me personally, the cat is out of the bag - you can't rewind time and uninvent the underlying communication infrastructure. If people want a social network, the internet will make it for them again and again and host from whatever polity/region allows.
    - 13415 6y ago
      Regulations are never for particular companies, that would be legally untenable. Whatever regulation a country comes up with for Facebook will also affect any other company trying to get into their footsteps. Regulation is the only way to prevent companies from abusing their positions of power. The idea is illusory that they would do it voluntarily even if they could make a profit. Some of them might under some leadership, but not in general and not all of them.
- bostonsre 6y ago
  Zuckerberg holds 90% of class b shares which have 10x the voting rights of normal shares and gives him 4 billion votes. There are -2.4 billion class A shares. He has stacked the board with loyalist yes men. It is a dictatorship bent on maximizing profit. The business model and how they operate is defined by Zuckerberg. It seems to me that he should hold the majority of the blame.
purplecats 6y ago
based on your own set of possibilities it sounds like they chose b and "f#ck everyone else" contradicts "Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhSX7IzHkrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhSX7IzHkrE
ForHackernews 6y ago
Facebook could use its wealth and influence to lobby for government regulation that would rein in bad behaviour while ensuring a level playing field so less-ethical competitors would be penalized.
gonzo41 6y ago
Isn't there really no choice? Doesn't the corporate responsibility force them to only consider the greatest financial gain, regardless of the downsides for society?
_Understated_ 6y ago
> As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large Sorry, that's a hard disagree from me and I think you couldn't be further off the mark. Facebook's entire raison d'etre from day 1 is to take as much data from as many sources as possible, then use the most powerful computers, programmed by the brightest minds, to use that data to maximise their profit with no regard for what damage that may do to you or society at large - look at what Jonathan Haidt talks about wrt to mental health problems and social media. They use the dirtiest psychological tactics to ensure that you never put down your phone and to ensure that you only see what they deem to have maximum engagement (whatever the f that means) and only put their hands up to any nefarious shit when a spotlight is on them for it. I can understand Facebook wanting to clean up their image from a PR perspective but it's nothing to do with altruism or wanting to serve the public better... if they can make more money from looking like a decent bunch, they'll do it.
- cs702 6y ago
  My point is that Facebook can improve its behavior only by putting its business at risk. If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk, they would do it in a heartbeat. But it appears they can't. Their efforts are thus sincere but highly constrained: They will never voluntarily do anything that would put the business -- their life's work -- at risk. If I may use an imperfect analogy: Facebook is a "polluter of society" that can't afford to stop polluting until all its competitors are forced to stop polluting society too.
  - tome 6y ago
    I'm finding these two sentences hard to reconcile. > If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk, they would do it in a heartbeat. But it appears they can't. > Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large
    - cs702 6y ago
      Imagine yourself as the CEO of a manufacturer that pollutes rivers, and you sincerely want to stop polluting, but if you stop polluting, the company's costs would increase to the point it would no longer be able to compete against all the other companies that continue polluting -- and they're trying to eat your lunch you every day. So, if you stop polluting you would quickly lose relevance, be forced to shut down plants, be forced to fire lots of decent people, and eventually go out of business. Moreover, when the company was started, no one anywhere realized that polluting rivers was so bad for everyone. No one knew back then; no one thought of it as a problem. Your choices are: (a) act in the best interest of society and get f#cked by competitors; or (b) remain a dominant force in the market, but as a side effect, f#ck everybody. All your options appear to be a mix of those two horrible choices. What would you do?
bird_monster 6y ago
> As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, The nuance is that they're not - they're trying to improve their _image_.
na85 6y ago
>Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large I am utterly, completely bewildered at how one could look at Facebook's behavior and come to this conclusion.
- Triv888 6y ago
  He must be a Facebook employee that ate the pudding.
bogomipz 6y ago
>"As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, ..." Could you provide some examples how "FB truly seems to be trying improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large"? Just using one very recent example - how do you reconcile that outlook with FB threats against the Ad Observatory[1]? [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-demands-nyu-ad-observatory-stop-collecting-data-on-sites-political-ads-says-wsj/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-demands-nyu-ad-observ...
3gg 6y ago
> As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large. No, it's not. Their social network is engineered entirely and unsurprisingly in support of their bottom line. A social network does not need to be a centralized, free-for-all like Facebook is, but Facebook is that way because that is what works best for their ad revenue. The rapid proliferation of disinformation and hate speech is a consequence of this broken system, but the company has always treated those very real problems as a necessary evil, a nuisance to be patched up with the least effort/cost as possible to keep the ball rolling. This does not benefit anybody but them.
- guantanamo_bob 6y ago
  Exactly. You’re a fool if you believe what Facebook’s marketing that tells you they care. They position themselves as caring to hide the known effects of their platform, and they signal that they’re a progressive company because people associate that with being ineffective (how could they be a monopolistic cancer on society if they’re caring liberals!?). You’re an even bigger fool if you work there and believe it.
TomSwirly 6y ago
> As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, Like how? > All options for Facebook appear to be a mix of those two horrible choices. If they can't avoid destroying society and still be profitable, then they deserve to go bankrupt.
nr2x 6y ago
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks
coldtea 6y ago
>As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large Based on what? Lip service? Empty gestures? Those are worth as much as Google's "Don't be evil" motto and Apple's and Nike's social justice campaigns...
spanktheuser 6y ago
It's almost as if capitalism requires outcomes which are exploitative. Whether that is the labor force, the environment, minority populations, civil society, population health. Too bad no one has written a book or three looking into this. I'd read it.
- quonn 6y ago
  What‘s needed is regulation. A lot of regulation that is not questioned based on some free market fundamentalism. That‘s all. Given that, capitalism works fine.
rubyn00bie 6y ago
You’re apologizing for a company that makes hand over fist money. Has a single competitor in its space (online advertising), and that’s Google. There is no “getting fucked” when it’s a monopoly controlling its market. Right now, legislation is helping Facebook by increasing the barrier to entry to compete with them. So what you’re saying is Facebook created this entire situation but would not have if you know it didn’t have to. The only thing is we are only as shitty as we let ourselves be. Stop accepting shitty behavior from people and trying to justify for no reason.
13415 6y ago
I'll be honest, judging from my experience with Facebook's ads system, I'd wager they have accumulated some technical debt and their content evaluation (aka censorship) systems don't really work or don't scale. There are numerous reports of incorrect flagging of business accounts and ads managers and insanely long review processes (which, by the way, never result in an apology) on forums outside Facebook. Advertisers were moving to other platforms because Facebook became unpredictable and ads costs were skyrocketing just before the US elections. It's a bit better now but they still seem to have problems identifying objectionable content. If the system doesn't work for ads, it won't work for orders of magnitude more user posts either.
freebuju 6y ago
Your first argument gave me quite a good chuckle.
kerng 6y ago
If you don't want to be a shitty company, don't build your business on top of a business model that harms people and society.
ratsmack 6y ago
As a corporation with a huge amount of investment money involved, they will bend every rule and law to maximize the ROI for those investors. Also, these companies will extract every bit of data from their customers (product) that they can, in obscurity, to accomplish their goal.

by cs702 6y ago

rossdavidh 6y ago

I see you're getting some downvotes, but I agree with you. Put another way, though: the problem is not Zuckerberg per se, it's the business model of advertising-supported, general-purpose social networks. If you took everybody out of Facebook and replaced them all with other equally qualified people, they would behave the same, as an organization. The problem is not Who, it's What. You can't "fix" Facebook, because the problem is pretty fundamental to what they are.

soupson 6y ago
Yes. This is surveillance capitalism taken to its extreme. Facebook didn’t invent it, they’re just doing it in a way that makes the consequences more difficult to ignore than Google, which has been able to largely sidestep the blowback by being mission critical to so many people and also having massive goodwill projects that don’t directly point to being profit driven. It’s up to citizens of the US and EU to reign this in. We can hate the player but we gotta hate the game even more.
- SCHiM 6y ago
  I mean, GDPR is a step in the direction. Many websites, and by extension, people seem to think that you comply by 'gdpr' by putting up a stupid cookie banner. But the real compliance is not storing PII, then you don't even need a cookie bar!
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    When the law defines 32 but numbers (IP addresses) as PII, it’s not terribly surprising to me that “real compliance” is not eagerly adopted.
    - oblio 6y ago
      GDPR doesn't define IPs as PII, unless you use them as such. If you have a legitimate use for IPs, then you're fine.
  - soupson 6y ago
    Asking companies not to retain PII is like asking a crack addict to please ignore the crack pipe and torch while you step out for an hour. The only solution is to make PII radioactive. Tax it. Burn companies that abuse it or leak it to the ground. HIPAA is a fucking nightmare but companies still figure it out:
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      GDPR is mostly that; the penalties for data breaches are essentially a tax on PII. GDPR also restricts how you can process data and the user should always be informed and has the right to object. The problem is that the GDPR is not being enforced seriously.
- annadane 6y ago
  I would argue they basically invented it. A lot of the dirty tactics in play today are because companies feel the need to catch up to Facebook, who set the ecosystem as it is by continually being dishonest and predatory
- boraoztunc 6y ago
  > Facebook didn’t invent it. Didn't Google invent this model? [1] >Surveillance capitalism was invented around 2001 as the solution to financial emergency in the teeth of the dotcom bust when the fledgling company faced the loss of investor confidence. As investor pressure mounted, Google’s leaders abandoned their declared antipathy toward advertising. Instead they decided to boost ad revenue by using their exclusive access to user data logs (once known as “data exhaust”) in combination with their already substantial analytical capabilities and computational power, to generate predictions of user click-through rates, taken as a signal of an ad’s relevance. >Operationally this meant that Google would both repurpose its growing cache of behavioural data, now put to work as a behavioural data surplus, and develop methods to aggressively seek new sources of this surplus. >The company developed new methods of secret surplus capture that could uncover data that users intentionally opted to keep private, as well as to infer extensive personal information that users did not or would not provide. And this surplus would then be analysed for hidden meanings that could predict click-through behaviour. The surplus data became the basis for new predictions markets called targeted advertising. >Here was the origin of surveillance capitalism in an unprecedented and lucrative brew: behavioural surplus, data science, material infrastructure, computational power, algorithmic systems, and automated platforms. As click-through rates skyrocketed, advertising quickly became as important as search. Eventually it became the cornerstone of a new kind of commerce that depended upon online surveillance at scale. >The success of these new mechanisms only became visible when Google went public in 2004. That’s when it finally revealed that between 2001 and its 2004 IPO, revenues increased by 3,590%. >Surveillance capitalism is no more limited to advertising than mass production was limited to the fabrication of the Ford Model T. It quickly became the default model for capital accumulation in Silicon Valley, embraced by nearly every startup and app. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-...
  - yuhong 6y ago
    This is not accurate. DoubleClick invented it and then got bought by Google in 2007-2008 (against the wishes of Larry and Sergey). See my Wikipedia article on this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Effects_of_the_2007-2008_financial_crisis_on_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Effects_of_the_2007-2008...
EarthIsHome 6y ago
I think you're on the right track, but it's not just because it's an "advertising-supported" business model. It's the fundamental laws that govern our society: profit. Replace Zuckerberg, Bezos, et al. with anyone else, and the new CEOs' decisions will be bound by the same constraints.
- smt88 6y ago
  Reddit isn't perfect, but it is run totally differently from Facebook, including: offering paid subscriptions, having an open API, and not trying to justify widespread surveillance as an ad-targeting tool.
- sollewitt 6y ago
  Thought experiment: Cory Doctorow becomes CEO of Facebook with Zuckerberg's entire stock allocation and equivalent voting control. Do you stand by your assertion that nothing changes?
  - rossdavidh 6y ago
    One of two things happens: 1) Cory Doctorow gradually morphs into Zuckerberg 2) Another social network, run more like Facebook is currently, replaces the one that Cory Doctorow is running. The reason Facebook didn't go the way of Friendster, Livejournal, and MySpace, is that he figured out how to play the game (as it currently exists) better than anyone else. Cory Doctorow would be like someone trying to win the Tour de France when everyone else was doping. In this analogy, Zuckerberg is Lance Armstrong, playing the existing game the way you need to play it to win that game.
0xB31B1B 6y ago
strong disagree that a Facebook staffed with different folks would behave the same. Zuckerberg has a majority of the votes due to his super voting shares. Leadership matters, individual actions matter. Twitter, for all its faults, has a leader who is leading the company down a different path than the pure money chasing and dominance, and i can imagine a differently lead Twitter being making more money and being worse for society. Zuckerberg is motivated by dominance, nothing else, and he has the ability to change course. Their actions are constrained along a set of possible outcomes but the leaders of both companies are choosing where in that set they want to land.
- the-dude 6y ago
  Twitter even worse for society? How?
  - nacs 6y ago
    Note parent post says if it were under a different leader for that.
cs702 6y ago
Exactly, except that we don't have to imagine anything. If Facebook were to disappear today, there already exist many companies with similar business models willing to take its place. Some more willing to cross the line than Facebook.
- roydivision 6y ago
  Legislation is the key here, not simply destroying the company.
- giobox 6y ago
  This is the critical point virtually all criticism of Facebook often fails to address. Sure, you could regulate to death/kill Facebook tomorrow with legislation in country X. All that happens is a clone launches immediately overnight from a country with less onerous regulation, one that anglosphere legal systems will have even less direct control over than the Facebook we have today. FB, for all its flaws, is at least still based in a democratic nation and operates within a (_relatively speaking_) fair legal system. That the FEC is able to demand (and force implementation of!) regulation already at FB is evidence this works, at least a little. Better the devil you know as they say... We can't remove the natural human desire to connect to one another on the internet (and associated problems). For me personally, the cat is out of the bag - you can't rewind time and uninvent the underlying communication infrastructure. If people want a social network, the internet will make it for them again and again and host from whatever polity/region allows.
  - 13415 6y ago
    Regulations are never for particular companies, that would be legally untenable. Whatever regulation a country comes up with for Facebook will also affect any other company trying to get into their footsteps. Regulation is the only way to prevent companies from abusing their positions of power. The idea is illusory that they would do it voluntarily even if they could make a profit. Some of them might under some leadership, but not in general and not all of them.
bostonsre 6y ago
Zuckerberg holds 90% of class b shares which have 10x the voting rights of normal shares and gives him 4 billion votes. There are -2.4 billion class A shares. He has stacked the board with loyalist yes men. It is a dictatorship bent on maximizing profit. The business model and how they operate is defined by Zuckerberg. It seems to me that he should hold the majority of the blame.

purplecats 6y ago

based on your own set of possibilities it sounds like they chose b and "f#ck everyone else" contradicts "Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhSX7IzHkrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhSX7IzHkrE

ForHackernews 6y ago

Facebook could use its wealth and influence to lobby for government regulation that would rein in bad behaviour while ensuring a level playing field so less-ethical competitors would be penalized.

gonzo41 6y ago

Isn't there really no choice? Doesn't the corporate responsibility force them to only consider the greatest financial gain, regardless of the downsides for society?

_Understated_ 6y ago

> As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large Sorry, that's a hard disagree from me and I think you couldn't be further off the mark. Facebook's entire raison d'etre from day 1 is to take as much data from as many sources as possible, then use the most powerful computers, programmed by the brightest minds, to use that data to maximise their profit with no regard for what damage that may do to you or society at large - look at what Jonathan Haidt talks about wrt to mental health problems and social media. They use the dirtiest psychological tactics to ensure that you never put down your phone and to ensure that you only see what they deem to have maximum engagement (whatever the f that means) and only put their hands up to any nefarious shit when a spotlight is on them for it. I can understand Facebook wanting to clean up their image from a PR perspective but it's nothing to do with altruism or wanting to serve the public better... if they can make more money from looking like a decent bunch, they'll do it.

cs702 6y ago
My point is that Facebook can improve its behavior only by putting its business at risk. If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk, they would do it in a heartbeat. But it appears they can't. Their efforts are thus sincere but highly constrained: They will never voluntarily do anything that would put the business -- their life's work -- at risk. If I may use an imperfect analogy: Facebook is a "polluter of society" that can't afford to stop polluting until all its competitors are forced to stop polluting society too.
- tome 6y ago
  I'm finding these two sentences hard to reconcile. > If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk, they would do it in a heartbeat. But it appears they can't. > Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large
  - cs702 6y ago
    Imagine yourself as the CEO of a manufacturer that pollutes rivers, and you sincerely want to stop polluting, but if you stop polluting, the company's costs would increase to the point it would no longer be able to compete against all the other companies that continue polluting -- and they're trying to eat your lunch you every day. So, if you stop polluting you would quickly lose relevance, be forced to shut down plants, be forced to fire lots of decent people, and eventually go out of business. Moreover, when the company was started, no one anywhere realized that polluting rivers was so bad for everyone. No one knew back then; no one thought of it as a problem. Your choices are: (a) act in the best interest of society and get f#cked by competitors; or (b) remain a dominant force in the market, but as a side effect, f#ck everybody. All your options appear to be a mix of those two horrible choices. What would you do?

bird_monster 6y ago

> As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, The nuance is that they're not - they're trying to improve their _image_.

na85 6y ago

>Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large I am utterly, completely bewildered at how one could look at Facebook's behavior and come to this conclusion.

Triv888 6y ago
He must be a Facebook employee that ate the pudding.

bogomipz 6y ago

>"As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, ..." Could you provide some examples how "FB truly seems to be trying improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large"? Just using one very recent example - how do you reconcile that outlook with FB threats against the Ad Observatory[1]? [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-demands-nyu-ad-observatory-stop-collecting-data-on-sites-political-ads-says-wsj/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-demands-nyu-ad-observ...

3gg 6y ago

> As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large. No, it's not. Their social network is engineered entirely and unsurprisingly in support of their bottom line. A social network does not need to be a centralized, free-for-all like Facebook is, but Facebook is that way because that is what works best for their ad revenue. The rapid proliferation of disinformation and hate speech is a consequence of this broken system, but the company has always treated those very real problems as a necessary evil, a nuisance to be patched up with the least effort/cost as possible to keep the ball rolling. This does not benefit anybody but them.

guantanamo_bob 6y ago
Exactly. You’re a fool if you believe what Facebook’s marketing that tells you they care. They position themselves as caring to hide the known effects of their platform, and they signal that they’re a progressive company because people associate that with being ineffective (how could they be a monopolistic cancer on society if they’re caring liberals!?). You’re an even bigger fool if you work there and believe it.

TomSwirly 6y ago

> As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large, Like how? > All options for Facebook appear to be a mix of those two horrible choices. If they can't avoid destroying society and still be profitable, then they deserve to go bankrupt.

nr2x 6y ago

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks

coldtea 6y ago

>As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large Based on what? Lip service? Empty gestures? Those are worth as much as Google's "Don't be evil" motto and Apple's and Nike's social justice campaigns...

spanktheuser 6y ago

It's almost as if capitalism requires outcomes which are exploitative. Whether that is the labor force, the environment, minority populations, civil society, population health. Too bad no one has written a book or three looking into this. I'd read it.

quonn 6y ago
What‘s needed is regulation. A lot of regulation that is not questioned based on some free market fundamentalism. That‘s all. Given that, capitalism works fine.

rubyn00bie 6y ago

You’re apologizing for a company that makes hand over fist money. Has a single competitor in its space (online advertising), and that’s Google. There is no “getting fucked” when it’s a monopoly controlling its market. Right now, legislation is helping Facebook by increasing the barrier to entry to compete with them. So what you’re saying is Facebook created this entire situation but would not have if you know it didn’t have to. The only thing is we are only as shitty as we let ourselves be. Stop accepting shitty behavior from people and trying to justify for no reason.

13415 6y ago

I'll be honest, judging from my experience with Facebook's ads system, I'd wager they have accumulated some technical debt and their content evaluation (aka censorship) systems don't really work or don't scale. There are numerous reports of incorrect flagging of business accounts and ads managers and insanely long review processes (which, by the way, never result in an apology) on forums outside Facebook. Advertisers were moving to other platforms because Facebook became unpredictable and ads costs were skyrocketing just before the US elections. It's a bit better now but they still seem to have problems identifying objectionable content. If the system doesn't work for ads, it won't work for orders of magnitude more user posts either.

freebuju 6y ago

Your first argument gave me quite a good chuckle.

kerng 6y ago

If you don't want to be a shitty company, don't build your business on top of a business model that harms people and society.

ratsmack 6y ago

As a corporation with a huge amount of investment money involved, they will bend every rule and law to maximize the ROI for those investors. Also, these companies will extract every bit of data from their customers (product) that they can, in obscurity, to accomplish their goal.