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We should all be concerned about what’s going on here. A company such as facebook, who’s entire existence is built around vacuuming up as much information abou
by toofy 5y ago
We should all be concerned about what’s going on here. A company such as facebook, who’s entire existence is built around vacuuming up as much information about us that it can manage.
A company who’s ethics tell itself this is totally OK flies into a panic when researchers collect a relatively tiny amount of data on how facebook’s massive ocean of information might be manipulated by malicious outside actors to steer wider societal behaviors.
If they fly into a panic about this, it means they understand very well how dangerous or impactful even a small amount of information collection can be.
They get very upset and put together entire projects condemning companies like Apple for daring to limit their access to our devices.
I’d like to know why they believe we (society) should trust them at all if they’re not at all willing to be transparent in return.
Their data collecting has always been troubling, but I think their reaction to outside studying is very concerning and combined with their past behaviors should raise our concern levels by a lot.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoSousveillance. They track us so we should track them as well. They can't handle it when we do to them the same thing they do to us...
- dylan604 5y agoIsn't that the basics of gaslighting?
- mpalmer 5y agoNot really, gaslighting is convincing someone to question reality.
- dylan604 5y agoWhat's good for the goose isn't good for the gander? Of course it is when you're the goose. Telling someone that what they are doing is bad even though you're the one doing it is gaslighting too
- cycomanic 5y agoI think the previous poster (and myself as well) misunderstood your post. I understood you meant that the call for surveillance of Facebook was gaslighting, but from this post I see you meant Facebooks behaviour is gaslighting. I agree that's a valid interpretation of gaslighting.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mpalmer 5y agoBut there's a perfectly good word for that already: hypocrisy. Gaslighting describes something completely different.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoI don't see how sousveillance and gaslighting are related.
- dylan604 5y agoi didn't say they were. Facebook telling people to stop hoovering data about them while hoovering data about everyone else on the planet is.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoI misunderstood then. I agree with you.
- aardvarkr 5y agoThere was a great investigation from the NY Times that dived deep into this exact topic. Facebook execs freaked out that their search engine for ad marketers was being used to identify the Top 10 most popular posts of the day. No surprise but all of the most shared posts were all from Fox News or similar far right leaning authors, and that made the executives freak out. The old guard of the company was fighting for transparency but they lost the fight. The overwhelming consensus was letting researchers have access to their data would only cause negative PR and had to be stopped. Great article and definitely worth a read. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data....
- papito 5y agoThis is a recurring theme there. A bunch of employees find something utterly disturbing, sound the alarm bells, and then nothing. Changing the platform in ways that affects the bottom line is a no-go. These problems won't even be surfaced to Zuckerberg and Sandberg - and will be promptly ignored if they are. Facebook can be a better place. They changed the feed algo right after the 2020 U.S. election, and for a month even the insiders called it the "nice feed" (or something like that). But that didn't last long because calm users don't rage-click. When these problems get out of control, you get the standard line of "we are giving people new ways to connect". The concern that some people "connect" to gather at the Capitol to hang the Vice President is rather secondary.