10 ms·

I will quote him directly: > "The mismatch between what they say and what they really do is growing," Cornet said. "The thicker the gap is, the easier it is to

by Loic 5y ago

I will quote him directly: > "The mismatch between what they say and what they really do is growing," Cornet said. "The thicker the gap is, the easier it is to point out that hypocrisy." Maybe Twitter internally completely recognize the bad side of the platform and work accordingly. I personally make a big chunk of my money from oil & gas, I recognize that oil & gas for transportation should die, but I know we need oil & gas for materials at the moment (but should reduce, reduce and reduce the use as fast as possible). Sometimes part of your work is not all unicorns, pink and friendly, having the honesty to deal with it and not being hypocrite about it is really important.

galacticaactual 5y ago
So your logic is as long as we are honest and authentic about our work destroying humanity, it’s all good? What drivel.
- echelon 5y ago
  > What drivel. Sagan says we're just a mote of dust. Jesus says throw no stones. Hate cannot drive out hate, MLK. Humans evolved as carnivores, killing to survive. Bleaker still, the universe doesn't care when the tiny speck we live on boils away. And here we are but for a brief moment. A tiny kindness goes a long way. The parent poster was being pragmatic. They're going to die, just like the two of us. Work to end the perceived problem instead of talking about it sanctimoniously. Because mimetic vitriol creates interference waves and drives us into factions. It accomplishes nothing and amplifies hate.
  - zelphirkalt 5y ago
    If no one or to few talk about the problem, the problem will not be solved either. So both is needed, the talk and the doing. That means the talk is legitimate as well.
- roenxi 5y ago
  A person could reasonably believe it won't destroy humanity. Or that expensive energy could also destroy humanity. Humanity is delicate. There are a lot of risks, and trade-offs in how to address them.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Sanctimony doesn't work that well. Incentives do. Shaming someone into feeling like a robber baron may sting, but behind them may be a family to support, a sick partner, a struggling child, a gender transition and associated medications and surgeries, and more. The world is a complicated place and reducing it by wagging a finger can only get you so far. Changing systems and incentives is key.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- 9dev 5y ago
  I hate to use such a dire trope, but sometimes it’s better to have someone thoughtful in a bad place than leaving it to the others all by themselves. I think the point OP was trying to make was, change has to start somewhere, and it won’t happen all at once.
- KMag 5y ago
  The OP is explicitly talking about an honest assessment of shortcomings. They're saying it's necessary. They said nothing about it being sufficient. Presumably, the implicit message the OP tried to get across is to also work within the system to improve it.
quicklime 5y ago
That doesn't really make sense to me. Isn't it better to be a hypocrite and be evil only some of the time, rather than be consistently evil all of the time? I don't believe that Twitter has worked out how to act accordingly to the bad side of their platform. There's still a ton of misinformation, it's still incredibly polarizing, and IMO it has a worse overall impact than Google.
- NotEvil 5y ago
  It's better than the alternatives. Loke koo, parler, e.t.c.. at least they try to point out when a politician is spreading misinfo.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I think one of the main factors of it being polarizing is that big tech tried to kill misinformation on the internet. 10 years ago people would have laughed at the mere suggestion that everything on the net is true. There will always be misinformation, but this dogma that this is somehow even an issue is completely festered by now but still ridiculous in my opinion. Of course these rules against misinformation are not enforced equally, so people get angry at the unfairness and dig in. Not really surprising. Solution: Sit back an relax and let there be misinformation. Even 5 year olds can handle this easily...
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    That solution seems less practical in an era where the misinformation coupled with rapid spread via digital media can result in attempted coups.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      Let them vent their frustrations on Twitter instead of taking it to government institutions then. Are you referring to the Viking?
    - pydry 5y ago
      Playing censorship whack a mole on social media was one of the things that drove recruits into ISIS's arms. It didnt potential recruits from seeing the propaganda but it did quell incipient doubts in their minds that they might be the bad guys. Censorship is good at that. Censorship can work but only if you lock EVERYTHING down, north korea/china style. The more failed censorship governments engage in the more attractive this route becomes.
dojiav 5y ago
Yup pointing at hypocrisy and contradictions is much simpler than resolving them. The more complex problems get, the less likely anyone in the room is going to solve them any time soon(Bounded Rationality) . So beyond a point laughing at that reality becomes counter productivs. It just gets people to spend more time and energy reacting, defending, justifying and hiding things. Bottom line - if you want to do something about a very complex problem, pick a small sub problem within it to work on. That approach has better odds of producing outcomes than poking fun at people who have bit off more than they can chew.
Zababa 5y ago
> I personally make a big chunk of my money from oil & gas, I recognize that oil & gas for transportation should die, but I know we need oil & gas for materials at the moment (but should reduce, reduce and reduce the use as fast as possible). I've been thinking about that recently, and was wondering if not accepting a job in """bad""" industries (bad is a gross oversimplification here covering things like oil, gas, tobacco, weapons, these kind of things) is in fact running away from your duty. If you don't take a job in these industries, other people will, and these people may be worse than you. Maybe the best moral option is to in fact try as hard as you can to get an influencial position in the industry to promote energy transition, reduce harm from smoking, etc. I apologize again for the oversimplification of grouping together these different industries, my point here is to group what people think usually as "morally bad", not to pass judgment on people who work in those industries.
- hugosbaseball 5y ago
  > I've been thinking about that recently, and was wondering if not accepting a job in """bad""" industries (bad is a gross oversimplification here covering things like oil, gas, tobacco, weapons, these kind of things) is in fact running away from your duty. If you don't take a job in these industries, other people will, and these people may be worse than you One employee can not have even the slightest influence over the world's largest tech firm, even ignoring that it's publicly traded thus institutional investors are the only people steering the ship. Or ignoring that Brin and Page's research was heavily funded by the CIA and NSA as part of a program specifically designed to encourage silicon valley to develop technology and services to make it easier for them to track social connections between people. This is a bit like going to work at an oil refinery because you think it'll help climate change. Or working for Marlboro's marketing department thinking you'll help them stop marketing to children. Even top corporate leadership doesn't really get to steer the ship. It's investors - in publicly traded companies, typically institutional investors, mostly funds. Any sort of corporate "listen to the employees" initiatives are just window dressing; a tap at the bottom of the tank of "employee rabble-rousing." Just to finish driving home how little impact any worker could have on companies of this size: do you know how Walmart reacts to a store that looks like it's about to successfully unionize despite their union-busting efforts? They turn off the lights and leave. Now consider that Walmart's goal is to undercut all the small businesses in a community, driving them into the ground. Shutting down an established store leaves a huge vacuum. Walmart is capable of destroying communities at the multi-county level and they do not care.
akudha 5y ago
We can't quit oil & gas overnight, the world will come to a standstill. But if Twitter were to disappear overnight, it would have zero effect on humanity, isn't it? In other words, he could have joined any number of good companies making good products, he chose to join Twitter. That is interesting to note.
- genghizkhan 5y ago
  That's unfair. Twitter does have a huge impact on a lot of people. Twitter banning Donald Trump was a huge deal, for example. He has a smaller platform now and (imo) the world is a better place for it. The Earth wouldn't stop rotating on its axis if Twitter were to shut down, I'll give you that, but business as usual would change for a lot of people.
- realusername 5y ago
  I would not say "zero effects" since quite a lot of news agency relies on it but that's safe to say that the platform would be replaced by something else in less than a month.
- leesec 5y ago
  I think Twitter is a good company making a good product.
- Dangeranger 5y ago
  Twitter is not important to me personally, but has been instrumental in organizing public protests within oppressive and authoritarian countries for over a decade. I would say that has had a materially positive impact on humanity, and could continue to do so in the future, despite all the downsides of the platform.
ksec 5y ago
> Sometimes part of your work is not all unicorns, pink and friendly, having the honesty to deal with it and not being hypocrite about it is really important. Which is something sorely missing from the current discourse and media, no one is saint. But I guess the media or most public don't care, "The public aren't interested in affairs. All they want to know is who are the goodies and who are the baddies." - Sir Humphrey Appleby >"The mismatch between what they say and what they really do is growing," Cornet said. "The thicker the gap is, the easier it is to point out that hypocrisy." I mean it has been there since Day one. The first time I read about "Do No Evil" in the early 2000s was when my hypocrisy radar on red alert. And the insane amount of PR shit / submarine articles [1] that came in the next few years before they IPO. They were so righteous to the point everything that was in their way was evil. Indeed, Most evil are created by those who think themselves as so righteous. They stopped talking about it from early 2010s and stopped using the tagline in 2015. But the "Do No Evil" disease or ideology still managed to spread across Silicon Valley and Tech Industry. These PR shit managed to dialled to a whole new level, Uber, Snapchat and even Apple once Steve Jobs' RDF was no longer there to shield them. ( And became more apparent once Katie Cotton retired ) I sometimes wonder if those PR people managed to jump from one company to another. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Quequau 5y ago
I once met a man who worked in oil & gas who was a pretty vocal (and frankly, unpleasant) "young Earth creationist". As he was in a relationship with someone in my professional social-circle at the time I wound up coming across him on a regular basis for a couple of years. I don't believe I have had a more uncomfortable, baffling, and frustrating conversation in my sixty years of existence than the one I had with him at social gathering where after him bringing it up, I asked him how he balanced his work and religion.
- TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  > I asked him how he balanced his work and religion. When I see personally-baffling worldviews in other people, I try to remind myself that there are 7+ billion people on the earth. Someone, somewhere, believes anything you can think of. And now the internet and social media helps them get together and reinforce their beliefs.
- taneq 5y ago
  God put the oil into the ground for us, right next to those novelty dinosaur bones that He put there for us to find.

by Loic 5y ago

galacticaactual 5y ago

So your logic is as long as we are honest and authentic about our work destroying humanity, it’s all good? What drivel.

echelon 5y ago
> What drivel. Sagan says we're just a mote of dust. Jesus says throw no stones. Hate cannot drive out hate, MLK. Humans evolved as carnivores, killing to survive. Bleaker still, the universe doesn't care when the tiny speck we live on boils away. And here we are but for a brief moment. A tiny kindness goes a long way. The parent poster was being pragmatic. They're going to die, just like the two of us. Work to end the perceived problem instead of talking about it sanctimoniously. Because mimetic vitriol creates interference waves and drives us into factions. It accomplishes nothing and amplifies hate.
- zelphirkalt 5y ago
  If no one or to few talk about the problem, the problem will not be solved either. So both is needed, the talk and the doing. That means the talk is legitimate as well.
roenxi 5y ago
A person could reasonably believe it won't destroy humanity. Or that expensive energy could also destroy humanity. Humanity is delicate. There are a lot of risks, and trade-offs in how to address them.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Sanctimony doesn't work that well. Incentives do. Shaming someone into feeling like a robber baron may sting, but behind them may be a family to support, a sick partner, a struggling child, a gender transition and associated medications and surgeries, and more. The world is a complicated place and reducing it by wagging a finger can only get you so far. Changing systems and incentives is key.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
9dev 5y ago
I hate to use such a dire trope, but sometimes it’s better to have someone thoughtful in a bad place than leaving it to the others all by themselves. I think the point OP was trying to make was, change has to start somewhere, and it won’t happen all at once.
KMag 5y ago
The OP is explicitly talking about an honest assessment of shortcomings. They're saying it's necessary. They said nothing about it being sufficient. Presumably, the implicit message the OP tried to get across is to also work within the system to improve it.

quicklime 5y ago

That doesn't really make sense to me. Isn't it better to be a hypocrite and be evil only some of the time, rather than be consistently evil all of the time? I don't believe that Twitter has worked out how to act accordingly to the bad side of their platform. There's still a ton of misinformation, it's still incredibly polarizing, and IMO it has a worse overall impact than Google.

NotEvil 5y ago
It's better than the alternatives. Loke koo, parler, e.t.c.. at least they try to point out when a politician is spreading misinfo.
raxxorrax 5y ago
I think one of the main factors of it being polarizing is that big tech tried to kill misinformation on the internet. 10 years ago people would have laughed at the mere suggestion that everything on the net is true. There will always be misinformation, but this dogma that this is somehow even an issue is completely festered by now but still ridiculous in my opinion. Of course these rules against misinformation are not enforced equally, so people get angry at the unfairness and dig in. Not really surprising. Solution: Sit back an relax and let there be misinformation. Even 5 year olds can handle this easily...
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  That solution seems less practical in an era where the misinformation coupled with rapid spread via digital media can result in attempted coups.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Let them vent their frustrations on Twitter instead of taking it to government institutions then. Are you referring to the Viking?
  - pydry 5y ago
    Playing censorship whack a mole on social media was one of the things that drove recruits into ISIS's arms. It didnt potential recruits from seeing the propaganda but it did quell incipient doubts in their minds that they might be the bad guys. Censorship is good at that. Censorship can work but only if you lock EVERYTHING down, north korea/china style. The more failed censorship governments engage in the more attractive this route becomes.

dojiav 5y ago

Yup pointing at hypocrisy and contradictions is much simpler than resolving them. The more complex problems get, the less likely anyone in the room is going to solve them any time soon(Bounded Rationality) . So beyond a point laughing at that reality becomes counter productivs. It just gets people to spend more time and energy reacting, defending, justifying and hiding things. Bottom line - if you want to do something about a very complex problem, pick a small sub problem within it to work on. That approach has better odds of producing outcomes than poking fun at people who have bit off more than they can chew.

Zababa 5y ago

> I personally make a big chunk of my money from oil & gas, I recognize that oil & gas for transportation should die, but I know we need oil & gas for materials at the moment (but should reduce, reduce and reduce the use as fast as possible). I've been thinking about that recently, and was wondering if not accepting a job in """bad""" industries (bad is a gross oversimplification here covering things like oil, gas, tobacco, weapons, these kind of things) is in fact running away from your duty. If you don't take a job in these industries, other people will, and these people may be worse than you. Maybe the best moral option is to in fact try as hard as you can to get an influencial position in the industry to promote energy transition, reduce harm from smoking, etc. I apologize again for the oversimplification of grouping together these different industries, my point here is to group what people think usually as "morally bad", not to pass judgment on people who work in those industries.

hugosbaseball 5y ago
> I've been thinking about that recently, and was wondering if not accepting a job in """bad""" industries (bad is a gross oversimplification here covering things like oil, gas, tobacco, weapons, these kind of things) is in fact running away from your duty. If you don't take a job in these industries, other people will, and these people may be worse than you One employee can not have even the slightest influence over the world's largest tech firm, even ignoring that it's publicly traded thus institutional investors are the only people steering the ship. Or ignoring that Brin and Page's research was heavily funded by the CIA and NSA as part of a program specifically designed to encourage silicon valley to develop technology and services to make it easier for them to track social connections between people. This is a bit like going to work at an oil refinery because you think it'll help climate change. Or working for Marlboro's marketing department thinking you'll help them stop marketing to children. Even top corporate leadership doesn't really get to steer the ship. It's investors - in publicly traded companies, typically institutional investors, mostly funds. Any sort of corporate "listen to the employees" initiatives are just window dressing; a tap at the bottom of the tank of "employee rabble-rousing." Just to finish driving home how little impact any worker could have on companies of this size: do you know how Walmart reacts to a store that looks like it's about to successfully unionize despite their union-busting efforts? They turn off the lights and leave. Now consider that Walmart's goal is to undercut all the small businesses in a community, driving them into the ground. Shutting down an established store leaves a huge vacuum. Walmart is capable of destroying communities at the multi-county level and they do not care.

akudha 5y ago

We can't quit oil & gas overnight, the world will come to a standstill. But if Twitter were to disappear overnight, it would have zero effect on humanity, isn't it? In other words, he could have joined any number of good companies making good products, he chose to join Twitter. That is interesting to note.

genghizkhan 5y ago
That's unfair. Twitter does have a huge impact on a lot of people. Twitter banning Donald Trump was a huge deal, for example. He has a smaller platform now and (imo) the world is a better place for it. The Earth wouldn't stop rotating on its axis if Twitter were to shut down, I'll give you that, but business as usual would change for a lot of people.
realusername 5y ago
I would not say "zero effects" since quite a lot of news agency relies on it but that's safe to say that the platform would be replaced by something else in less than a month.
leesec 5y ago
I think Twitter is a good company making a good product.
Dangeranger 5y ago
Twitter is not important to me personally, but has been instrumental in organizing public protests within oppressive and authoritarian countries for over a decade. I would say that has had a materially positive impact on humanity, and could continue to do so in the future, despite all the downsides of the platform.

ksec 5y ago

> Sometimes part of your work is not all unicorns, pink and friendly, having the honesty to deal with it and not being hypocrite about it is really important. Which is something sorely missing from the current discourse and media, no one is saint. But I guess the media or most public don't care, "The public aren't interested in affairs. All they want to know is who are the goodies and who are the baddies." - Sir Humphrey Appleby >"The mismatch between what they say and what they really do is growing," Cornet said. "The thicker the gap is, the easier it is to point out that hypocrisy." I mean it has been there since Day one. The first time I read about "Do No Evil" in the early 2000s was when my hypocrisy radar on red alert. And the insane amount of PR shit / submarine articles [1] that came in the next few years before they IPO. They were so righteous to the point everything that was in their way was evil. Indeed, Most evil are created by those who think themselves as so righteous. They stopped talking about it from early 2010s and stopped using the tagline in 2015. But the "Do No Evil" disease or ideology still managed to spread across Silicon Valley and Tech Industry. These PR shit managed to dialled to a whole new level, Uber, Snapchat and even Apple once Steve Jobs' RDF was no longer there to shield them. ( And became more apparent once Katie Cotton retired ) I sometimes wonder if those PR people managed to jump from one company to another. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Quequau 5y ago

I once met a man who worked in oil & gas who was a pretty vocal (and frankly, unpleasant) "young Earth creationist". As he was in a relationship with someone in my professional social-circle at the time I wound up coming across him on a regular basis for a couple of years. I don't believe I have had a more uncomfortable, baffling, and frustrating conversation in my sixty years of existence than the one I had with him at social gathering where after him bringing it up, I asked him how he balanced his work and religion.

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
> I asked him how he balanced his work and religion. When I see personally-baffling worldviews in other people, I try to remind myself that there are 7+ billion people on the earth. Someone, somewhere, believes anything you can think of. And now the internet and social media helps them get together and reinforce their beliefs.
taneq 5y ago
God put the oil into the ground for us, right next to those novelty dinosaur bones that He put there for us to find.