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Here's an honest answer * spread of misinformation on the platform/genocide in Myanmar/election integrity - this to me is the scariest thing about FB, but also

Here's an honest answer * spread of misinformation on the platform/genocide in Myanmar/election integrity - this to me is the scariest thing about FB, but also something the company is dealing with and working on and trying to get right. It's not an easy problem to solve either. * Targeted ads - This really doesn't bother me. Tracking user interests/behavior and using it to serve ads they are way more likely to engage with, is creepy true, but also quite innovative and effective and the reason the company makes billions of dollars. It's hard for me to get worked up about showing users more effective ads. There are some interesting nuances around whether this should be opt in or opt out and giving users control over how their data is used. Some of this will be determined by laws which seems better to me then having it fall on individual companies. FB does give users control btw. * Too much/not enough censorship - this topic is a complete shit show and no one agrees anyway on how much is or isn't enough. FB's stance is basically to remove hate speech and calls to violence and allowing anything else. I'm fine with that. * buying out competitors like IG and What's App - it's normal for companies to do this and for the government to step in when it's too much * Other misc. shady things - there's other things that come up from time to time. I agree that some of it is shady, but imo is standard for what you find in American capitalism: ruthless competition and cutting corners to get ahead as opposed to evil maliciousness towards users and subverting the law. * Leetcode style interview questions - I have no problem with this whatsoever. The goal is not to ask difficult questions that trick candidates. It's to ask medium difficulty questions and hire people who can quickly and effectively solve them. Not everyone who fails the interview is bad, but the people who pass should be decent. * Users getting addicted to FB and IG/it makes them unhappy - I don't have a strong opinion about this topic. I don't really use the products since they don't appeal to me. They do appeal to (a growing) many and I think it's a bit presumptuous to point to those people and say "but really it makes you unhappy." I'm open to studies and scholarship that say otherwise. I'm not sure if I covered everything the OP had in mind, since they were not specific. Probably there are some other objectionable things I missed.

rglullis 6y ago
To your last point: the issue here is that Facebook is not interested in making users happy. They are interested in keeping them engaged so that they can sell ads. No studies are needed to show that if users' happiness or well-being gets them in the way of selling more ads, fuck the users. It is no different than Big Tobacco putting all kinds of additives and carcigenic substances on cigarettes to get people more addicted to it.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  No company on earth is interested in making their users happy, they're just interested in making money. This is some silly moral purity test where a company has to have pure intentions in order to do good. Our society works because people have the space & incentive to do good regardless of their intentions, and many Facebook users seem happy to use the service and find value in it regardless of whatever sinister intentions you might speculate of Facebook.
  - rglullis 6y ago
    Though not direct, there should be alignment between what a business creates and offers and consumers' (society's) satisfaction. "Users seem happy", the same can be said about smokers and tobacco. The issue is not even with the smoking per se. If tobacco companies were simply processing the plant and giving users what people have done for hundreds (thousands?) of years, it would be fine by me. The problem of Big Tobacco is in developing the mechanisms where they stopped satisfying consumer demand and artificially creating it. Facebook (not just them, you can include actually all of Big Media) is doing the same thing to people. I'd be ashamed to work on FB, or Fox or CNN just the same way I would if I were working on Philip & Morris
    - themacguffinman 6y ago
      I have to disagree that they're the same. You're right in saying that "user's seem happy" is not the only metric, but it's quite a stretch to go from "Facebook doesn't optimize for holistic well-being" to "Facebook is as addictive & harmful as Big Tobacco". It's certainly something I believe reasonable people can disagree on and I don't think it's appropriate to shame people for working at Facebook. It's a little off-topic but honestly the idea that Facebook is somehow the the cause of all these modern problems is pretty tenuous to me. Most Facebook users don't go crazy & belligerent from use, the effects are not at all like the consistent & universal harm of nicotine and cigarette smoke. It suggests to me that Facebook might exacerbate existing problems, but it is not the straightforwardly harmful product that people claim it is.

rglullis 6y ago

To your last point: the issue here is that Facebook is not interested in making users happy. They are interested in keeping them engaged so that they can sell ads. No studies are needed to show that if users' happiness or well-being gets them in the way of selling more ads, fuck the users. It is no different than Big Tobacco putting all kinds of additives and carcigenic substances on cigarettes to get people more addicted to it.

themacguffinman 6y ago
No company on earth is interested in making their users happy, they're just interested in making money. This is some silly moral purity test where a company has to have pure intentions in order to do good. Our society works because people have the space & incentive to do good regardless of their intentions, and many Facebook users seem happy to use the service and find value in it regardless of whatever sinister intentions you might speculate of Facebook.
- rglullis 6y ago
  Though not direct, there should be alignment between what a business creates and offers and consumers' (society's) satisfaction. "Users seem happy", the same can be said about smokers and tobacco. The issue is not even with the smoking per se. If tobacco companies were simply processing the plant and giving users what people have done for hundreds (thousands?) of years, it would be fine by me. The problem of Big Tobacco is in developing the mechanisms where they stopped satisfying consumer demand and artificially creating it. Facebook (not just them, you can include actually all of Big Media) is doing the same thing to people. I'd be ashamed to work on FB, or Fox or CNN just the same way I would if I were working on Philip & Morris
  - themacguffinman 6y ago
    I have to disagree that they're the same. You're right in saying that "user's seem happy" is not the only metric, but it's quite a stretch to go from "Facebook doesn't optimize for holistic well-being" to "Facebook is as addictive & harmful as Big Tobacco". It's certainly something I believe reasonable people can disagree on and I don't think it's appropriate to shame people for working at Facebook. It's a little off-topic but honestly the idea that Facebook is somehow the the cause of all these modern problems is pretty tenuous to me. Most Facebook users don't go crazy & belligerent from use, the effects are not at all like the consistent & universal harm of nicotine and cigarette smoke. It suggests to me that Facebook might exacerbate existing problems, but it is not the straightforwardly harmful product that people claim it is.