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Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens

blinding-streak 5y ago
https://archive.ph/6J3Db https://archive.ph/6J3Db
hkaly 5y ago
Irony is Facebook will not attract the talent it needs to work constructively on these unsolvable problems. It will attract thd clueless and the most ambitious. People who are ready to defend it for their own profit. Its a trap where the hole they are in just keeps growing deeper.
- jareklupinski 5y ago
  Engineers used to be offered an "Iron Ring" (or other similar token) to symbolize their responsibility to human welfare, even at the cost of personal achievement/merit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring Maybe we have to teach some of these upstarts about Therac-25 and depress another generation just to keep the harm from spreading :(
  - mmckeen 5y ago
    This still happens in Canada I believe
    - __turbobrew__ 5y ago
      Yes, it does
    - dogorman 5y ago
      I know an American civil engineer who has one of these rings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring Wikipedia says the oath that goes with it is: I am an Engineer. In my profession I take deep pride. To it I owe solemn obligations. As an engineer, I, (full name), pledge to practice Integrity and Fair Dealing, Tolerance, and Respect, and to uphold devotion to the standards and dignity of my profession, conscious always that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making best use of the Earth's precious wealth. As an engineer, I shall participate in none but honest enterprises. When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given without reservation for the public good. In the performance of duty, and in fidelity to my profession, I shall give the utmost. --- I get the impression this ring is not for "software engineers". I really dislike that term, I call myself a computer programmer to anybody who asks, regardless of the title my employer flatters me with. I think "software engineer" is leaching off the social prestige real engineers have earned for their professions. Prestige the software industry in general does not yet deserve. Programmers take jobs making shitty socially harmful products then deflect all blame to their employers, denying their own responsibility to society that oath describes. I am sure there are some programmers who deserve it, but by in large, the term is used by companies to flatter code monkeys making gambling apps, spyware, social media skinner boxes, etc. I am not without sin here, so I refuse to call myself an engineer.
      - tdeck 5y ago
        Those other engineering professions some harmful things too. Didn't engineers design prisons, casinos, nuclear weapons, land mines, plants that manufacture harmful chemicals, etc..? The only way to believe that these oaths make a difference is to ignore all those things. Anyway, at my university (CS/computer eng. major) everyone in the engineering school goes through the same induction ceremony that I think had a similar oath. I still have the Wash. U. Engineer's Creed card in my wallet. I vaguely remember that Tau Beta Pi had a similar thing. Honestly, I appreciate the ideals, but I don't think the oath made folks from my program any more ethical than those from other schools.
        m0zg 5y ago
        All of the things you've listed aren't universally bad. Prisons keep bad people out of society (and yes, I'm aware that some folks shouldn't be in prison, and I wish that'd change, but majority are in the clink for violent crime). Nuclear weapons ensure superpowers can't attack each other - that's why we haven't had a world war in the past 76 years in spite of some pretty crazy tensions. Land mines make land invasions difficult and protect those who installed them. Harmful chemicals usually are not made just for the harm - they have their own useful functions. So I'd draw the line much further than that: somewhere near biological and chemical weapons which have no useful function at all, and do not help with maintaining peace.
        vasco 5y ago
        The fact you can justify land mines says it all about the ability of some oath to ensure anything about the behaviour of large groups of people.
        m0zg 5y ago
        Yes, soldiers on the battlefield are very thankful for the land mines, assuming they're the ones who installed them. With any luck a dude from the other side might not be able to cross the field and slit their throats in the dead of the night. Just as pilots are thankful for fighter jets not crapping out in mid-air, and nuclear submarine sailors are thankful for the engineering that went into the hull, and a gunner is thankful for the shells which don't explode in the barrel of a howitzer. War is hell, but if you're going to win it (or even deter it), you'll need engineers who know how to design weapons. And this is not the kind of game that you can just decline to participate in unless you'd like to learn a foreign language in a concentration camp.
  - MikeTheGreat 5y ago
    It's possible that United States engineers still do this... but software "engineering" is famously (and self-deprecating-ly) not really "real engineering". I say this as someone who programs, teaches programming/computer science, and has worked professionally as a software development engineer - the comment isn't made to denigrate anyone, but because software "engineering" doesn't have any certification / professional credentialing that "real" engineering (e.g., civil engineering) apparently does have. Also - I'm curious about how effective it is to tell the engineers to do the right thing (even at the expense of personal gain). It seems like the people most responsible for making decisions that build harmful products aren't the ones who are actually tasked with building the harmful products. Does anyone have any information about how effective such training / indoctrination is in preventing bad situations from happening?
    - jareklupinski 5y ago
      one thing that I found works: religion. ask the engineer about to enter the arena what they would like to do with the money they hope to achieve, their end-goals, etc. then follow-up with whether they would feel morally/spiritually at peace with their choices and methods after the fact (do your ends justify your means?) in my experience, the people with the IQ to earn a yacht responsibly end up settling for a speedboat anyway.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      It certainly does, just not in US. https://www.ordemengenheiros.pt/pt/a-ordem/colegios-e-especialidades/informatica/ https://www.ordemengenheiros.pt/pt/a-ordem/colegios-e-especi... No Portuguese university is allowed to call their computing degrees engineering without their approval, and in certain kinds of state related projects, the one putting their signature into the legal contracts has to have the professional title acknowledged. Germany and Switzerland have a similar process for those carrying engineering on their title. Either that or you have done it via a trade school, and people on the job have to have a kind of teaching certification for the school to approve the company as teaching place.
      - hahajk 5y ago
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Maybe we have to teach some of these upstarts about Therac-25 and depress another generation just to keep the harm from spreading :( IIRC, they do, and it doesn't work. The "Californian Ideology" has a strong hold on the tech world and it's incompatible with that kind duty,
- danjac 5y ago
  Sadly there's always enough smart sociopaths willing to work for a fat pay cheque or to learn "interesting" tech. "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,"says Wernher von Braun."
- tjpnz 5y ago
  >Irony is Facebook will not attract the talent it needs to work constructively on these unsolvable problems. At some point the brand will become so toxic that engineers who've worked there could find themselves persona non grata in many tech roles.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Unfortunately I think other companies would still be happy hiring ex FB developers. They still are ex FAANG, and they showed to give moral and principle the rear seat when it comes to revenue and business. Why wouldn't these folks be hireable?
    - 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
      Personally, when I see FB on a resume, it’s a factor. I want people who will help push the company in a healthy direction. There’s always pressure to make changes to the app that increase addictiveness without adding actual value to the client, and I’m proud to work somewhere where colleagues push back on that kind of thing. Working at FB is a (relatively weak) signal that they won’t be that kind of colleague. It will come up in the interview. If they can convince me that they stayed there in a ‘change it from within’ capacity, great. Otherwise, yeah it’s a negative signal.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    > At some point the brand will become so toxic that engineers who've worked there could find themselves persona non grata in many tech roles. The majority of startups is still "growth and engagement" as opposed to producing real products/services that people pay for, so ex-Facebook is the perfect match.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  Investment banking has no problem attracting smart people. Smart people know that you gain nothing by sacrificing yourself for society. Even if you cared enough to say no, all that would happen is that Facebook would pay somebody else to work for them.
  - ahartmetz 5y ago
    Smart is not the same as cynical. Being cynical doesn't require that much intelligence.
  - jobigoud 5y ago
    > Smart people know that you gain nothing by sacrificing yourself for society. Even if you cared enough to say no, all that would happen is that Facebook would pay somebody else to work for them. Nothing? Not even a clear conscience? The "but someone else will do it" argument is used to justify so many wrong doings… We hear it all the time about fighting climate change, building unethical weapons, etc. You also have the choice to not personally actively contribute to whatever unethical thing is being discussed. It's a circular game theory problem, that "other person that will do it anyway" might also be justifying it because they think you would do it if they didn't.
  - lowkey_ 5y ago
    > Investment banking has no problem attracting smart people. I've worked in banking and my ex worked for Facebook, and I genuinely don't see the comparison beyond rather inaccurate tropes. Bankers aren't tearing apart society and sowing division like Facebook is.
    - ryan93 5y ago
      Trump lost his second term. I think society was actually torn apart during the civil war.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
    > Even if you cared enough to say no, all that would happen is that Facebook would pay somebody else to work for them. Serious question: Do you vote? Because this argument seems like people who say “my vote doesn’t matter, it’s just one vote out of millions.” It’s true that at the individual level, one vote basically never makes the difference, but elections are won and lost. In the same way, if one person says no, maybe it will barely make a difference, but teams are made of more than one person.
- DrBazza 5y ago
  I've been approached by FB recruiters 3 times and turned them down 3 times. I've removed FB from all my devices except one. The only thing keeping me on the platform is that my sports clubs use it to organise matches and runs. I check FB once a day. All notifications are off. I really don't want anything to do with them. I'd still work for a military software developer. But not Facebook. Frankly, I was also surprised recently, though I shouldn't be, that there are (or were) some quite 'famous' developers / comp-sci researchers working there.
  - amelius 5y ago
    > I really don't want anything to do with them. I'd still work for a military software developer. But not Facebook. Would you use open source packages developed by them?
    - DrBazza 5y ago
      Interesting. I probably would. Though I haven’t knowingly done so, so far.
- tubby12345 5y ago
  The idea that FB will become a radioactive brand is wishful thinking that people indulge in with every new FB "scandal". Recruiting (yes even from "target" schools) hasn't slowed one bit. And regarding eg FAIR: The ones that have started murmuring about jumping ship are not the ones that are excellent but the ones that have outsized ideas of themselves as do-gooders.
jiscariot 5y ago
Another great investigative piece from the NYT on one of their direct competitors for revenue. At this point it feels like FB's problem is they let the "rabble" in instead of charging $40/mo cover to affluent Westerners. Cynical take yes, but the volume of NYT has me thinking of the boy who cried wolf.
- numair 5y ago
  You’re aware that the NYT collects millions from Facebook in an invite-only revenue deal[1], right? The fact of the matter is, they’re so arrogant that these sort of articles don’t bother them at all. The whole faux-outrage thing and the song-and-dance with regulators is just seen as part of the process. Smart people need to stop working at Facebook. Wait a few years, and all of our problems will be solved. 1: https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2021/is-facebook-buying-off-the-new-york-times/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2021/is-f...
  - DSingularity 5y ago
    Smart people want money and prestige. There is always a perspective to justify anything. They will sleep fine at night.
    - jevgeni 5y ago
      That’s about as much prestige as working for a tobacco company.
      - nielsbot 5y ago
        Money, then
    - aogaili 5y ago
      "Smart people want money and prestige." I'd question your definition of the word smart in this context.
ub 5y ago
Good thread here that provides a counter-balance. https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21 https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Good thread here that provides a counter-balance. https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21 https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21 By the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Eyal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Eyal: > In 2014 Eyal published his first book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, which became a Wall Street Journal best seller.[12][13] The title reflects Eyal's idea of the "hooked model", which aims to "build products that create habit-forming behavior in users via a looping cycle that consists of trigger, an action, a variable reward, and continued investment."[14]... > Eyal has spoken out against proposals to regulate habit-forming technologies, arguing that it is an individual user's responsibility to control their own use of such products.[2] Somehow I'm not surprised someone like that would be writing desperate yet underwhelming apologia for Facebook.
  - mgraczyk 5y ago
    Is there something specific about Eyals take that you disagree with?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - croes 5y ago
      Yep "my advice to parents is only give kids access to tech they're ready for" There is no metric to check if the kids a re ready for, I doubt that most adults are ready for the psychological effects of social media. This is too easy a way to offload the entire responsibility onto the parents, while the companies that make billions from it are off the hook. It's like blaming smokers because tobacco companies use addictive additives.
  - 5y ago
tablespoon 5y ago
> Facebook annotated the reports, appearing to downplay the results. Next to one slide in the research that said “teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse,” the company added that the headline was imprecise. Instead, it wrote, “The headline should be clarified to be: ‘Teens who have lower life satisfaction more likely to say Instagram makes their mental health or the way they feel about themselves worse than teens who are satisfied with their lives.’” I suppose "teens who are satisfied with their lives" exist, but I didn't know many as a teenager.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  I know that angst you teen is a trope but where I was most teens were quite happy. School ends early, plenty of time and zero responsibilities. You can just spend most of time loitering. Also hangover passes super quickly so you don’t waste a whole day after a party.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > but where I was most teens were quite happy. School ends early, plenty of time and zero responsibilities. That's the kind of thing that seems happy in retrospect, though. Kids don't appreciate many of the benefits of youth until they've lost it, and until then, small dramas and angst can often have an exaggerated significance.
    - XorNot 5y ago
      There's been some fMRI work done on this[1]: if you pose various moral dilemmas to adults and teens under fMRI, they'll give you similar answers. But: teens have dramatically higher frontal cortex activation then adults do while giving the answer. Frontal cortex is associated with high level reasoning: the interpretation is that while teenagers are able to resolve the same sorts of issues as adults, they're spending a lot more mental effort to do so - it's taxing. Hence the phenomenon of teenagers tending to oscillate between "mature and capable" and "complete breakdown" when the stress gets dialed up (not that this doesn't happen to adults, but relatively we handle more better). Not unsurprisingly, the frontal cortex is also one of the last regions of the brain to undergo maturation: the neural remodel you get at the onset of puberty starts from the back of the brain and moves forward. In short: adults take an observation of adult-like behavior at face value and presume it implies adult-experiential reasoning, then get surprised and angry when the environmental stresses suddenly collapse the entire facade. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2788780/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2788780/
matheusmoreira 5y ago
Good. Facebook should not be able to "quell" anything. It should suffer the full consequences of its actions every single time.
- FDSGSG 5y ago
  How do you define "full consequences"?
  - sekh60 5y ago
    Corporate death penalty plus prison time for relevant people. How wide to cast the net would have to be worked out.
    - spectramax 5y ago
      I thought we, the liberals, are mostly aligned that non-violent climes should not be punishable by prison time.
      - 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
        I have never seen a stat or survey that suggests that.
        spectramax 5y ago
        That's been my general observation. I see the following hypocrisy: Murderers and violent crimes should require rehabilitation, better lives in the prison and discussion here tends to be more around pro-forgiveness ideology; whilst I also see liberals suggesting that politicians and corporate leaders should be punished by prison terms. Apart from my own observation, non-punishment of non-violent crimes is a cornerstone of liberal criminal justice reform (Prop 57, 20, etc.).
        sekh60 5y ago
        I am sorry I wasn't more clear. When I suggest prison time I mean in a rehabilitative facility. And that should be for all crimes that we demand prison time for. I am not for retributive justice.
bob229 5y ago
Delete. Your. Social. Media. Now.
vadfa 5y ago
Quell uproar? What uproar? Has the usage of instagram taken a dive? Or is this just the usual fake outrage pushed by the media that hates Facebook?
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  Last couple days ~ many articles related to an ex- Top Mind @ Facebook who asserted that they 1) knew effects of insta on young children's minds, 2) used these incantations for profit, 3) tried to hide it, and 4) downplayed the relevance of the previous 3 in order to pursue their yotta-growth strategy at the expense of human civilization. On the back of the findings from a couple of weeks ago that most human trafficking (measured by active sex trafficking cases) is happening over Facebook neo-forums, and Whatsapp chats, as well as Instagram [1] - the "uproar" you are questioning is the small little uptick in stories that are (IMO) correctly attributing the growth of facebook with the decline of Western values and democracy on the whole. [1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-sex-trafficking-online-recruitment-report/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-sex-trafficking-online...
  - vadfa 5y ago
    Isn't it extremely ironic that the media, which almost always has a liberal slant, would complain about "the decline of Western values"? If they want teens to stop killing themselves maybe they should also consider stopping pushing all kinds of degeneracy to them. Also, the average Joe doesn't care about this. People won't stop using Instagram. All of these stories are nothing but masturbation for intellectuals. Thus this "uproar" is fabricated. It's not based on what people feel, but on what the media elites want them to feel.
    - arthurcolle 5y ago
      I was being a little facetious with the 'decline' rhetoric but like actually. Media is shaping people's minds more rapidly and with self-reinforcing mechanisms that have never occurred before - I just think on a societal level we need to have a frank conversation about expectations and responsibilities. The world was a lot smaller 75 years ago. But now it's a massive echo chamber. Resonance is causing crazy flare ups of niche parts of social discourse. You can consider SJW movements an example of that, as well as the far-right or incel movements. Large niche populations identifying as new self-identified groups. Social change, or self-reinforcing propaganda (social contagion) manifesting in novel ways after 25% of your life spent in front of a computer? And because people are disconnected, the real world actions are implicitly given less weight because most actors have spent near a majority of their lives on a machine simulated interaction with someone else instead of with subtler cues that you would get in a true "village" Not trying to wax poetic, I just really think things are getting weird because of the new hyper-dynamism.
cblconfederate 5y ago
We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that instagram has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager of your family to see the values that are being taught through it. Is this how you want the next generation to be? Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company, and it has always been, and it's just sad to see the support it gets among technologists. Zuck doesn't strike me as particularly deep thinker (judging from his podcasts) to be able to steer his behavioral experiment to good, nor does he seem particularly well educated tbh. Even people who think they are doing good by being in the company (Clegg, Lecun) they are not helping, they re legitimizing a train wreck . I just hope people get bored and leave the behavioral treadmill before it s too late.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company I don't want to defend Facebook, but this is not specific to Facebook. We have legitimized the modern concept of targeted advertising and Facebook just happens to play the game perfectly. Facebook is not 100% fault here (in fact there are others in this space). The fault is that we don't have regulation against something that is clearly detrimental to society. Change that, and Facebook will become better (or be replaced by something better). Edit: to be clear, I do not want to defend Facebook. I don't use it, I hate it and its effects on society, and its monopoly on social media online is a constant problem for me. However, I don't believe killing Facebook by itself will solve the problem as it will merely allow an equally-scummy competitor to take its place. Outlawing the underlying business model or making it unprofitable (such as by attaching liability to ads, stronger privacy protections, revoking Section 230, etc) would be a better long-term solution.
  - atonse 5y ago
    Facebook is 100% at fault for what Facebook does though. Not to say others aren’t. I’m not interested in giving them an inch. They’ve probably caused more psychological harm and manipulation (intentionally, via “engagement” algorithms) than just about any human propaganda movement in history. I still don’t understand how people with any ethics still work for them. I guess 500k a year is enough to look away from anything.
LatteLazy 5y ago
I have no strong feelings on Instagram. That said, i find it interesting how suddenly people care about teen mental health when it aligns with their opinions on big tech. And how little they care about (say) school shooting drills or advertising or education funding or a dozen other issues that affect mental health in kids...
- lowkey_ 5y ago
  Considering this is a tech-focused website, my guess is it's less that it confirms our pre-existing biases, and more so that the community feels strongly about tech and its impact. Similarly, if there were a website on gun control, I'm sure they would be more focused on how school shooting drills impact mental health than how Instagram impacts mental health.
- hef19898 5y ago
  From what I see, from the other side of the big pond, there is a party that cares about that stuff to some degree at least. At least for those, caring about Instagram and teen mental health is just a logical consequence.
shadowgovt 5y ago
The discussion in this thread is indicative as to why companies don't do research like this in the open.
- NelsonMinar 5y ago
  Facebook doesn't do much research like this in the open either. The WSJ articles are largely based on leaked internal private reports. Their employees are leaking them because they're tired of being ignored.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Correct, and the reason is clear. There is no incentive to do research like this in the open. Even asking the question is grounds for being pilloried in the court of public opinion.
jokoon 5y ago
I followed up a 6 months entrepreneurship training, and we had a zoom with a facebook employee teaching us how to make instagram stories (changing the font color, using the boomrang effects etc).
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"One Facebook researcher said a colleague was contacted by the legal team in the past week and was asked about a research report that he published more than two years ago. The legal team appeared to be hunting for any potentially incriminating research that might be shared with reporters, he said. His manager had advised him not to run any queries searching for specific terms on his old work or do anything that could appear suspicious, he said. Now, he said he was told, was a good time to take a vacation."
- numair 5y ago
  Yeah, what this article doesn’t talk about is the pretend-FBI that Facebook employs as its security team. They go out of their way to intimidate employees and make them think that Facebook is some quasi-governmental institution where leaks will have you end up in a situation similar to Julian Assange. (Feel free to say hi to those losers, because they’re definitely reading this thread.)
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    While I agree with a lot of what you’re saying you seem to be a former disgruntled employee and so you don’t seem to be bias free here. You’re also doing a lot of insinuating throughout this thread that were supposed to not question and take your word for.
    - numair 5y ago
      I thank myself every day that I was never an employee of Facebook. I remember being in boarding school and having kids point to others and say, “he thinks he’s so cool but we all know where his family made their money,” and I never wanted to leave future generations with that baggage. As for the rest, well... Unfortunately Thiel-Gawker means you’ll never get reporters to give you the factual run-down you need, because they’re scared of being sued. So, until there’s a court record, which will inevitably happen at some point, you’re stuck with insinuations for which you should do your own homework.
fortran77 5y ago
I don't like Facebook or Instagram either. (I have a Facebook account that's used for one thing -- college and high-school reunion information. I have added no friends that aren't part of these groups. I'm 58 years old.) But when I see this: > , including teenage girls saying that Instagram made them feel worse about themselves. ...I wonder if we really can blame Instagram for this. It's like the old joke "Doctor -- it hurts when I do this." And I'll even go further to say sometimes a little "competition" is healthy. Maybe seeing a friend who is more athletic or fit than you, or has a better sense of style will inspire you to up your game. If your reaction is to "feel bad about yourself" may its your problem. Are we blaming Instagram for bad parenting? (I do think an Instagram service specifically for children is a terrible idea.)
mrwww 5y ago
Now would be a great time for facebook employees to leak everything.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Now would be a great time for facebook employees to leak everything. They're working on stopping that: > Facebook has also moved to stem future leaks. > One Facebook researcher said a colleague was contacted by the legal team in the past week and was asked about a research report that he published more than two years ago. The legal team appeared to be hunting for any potentially incriminating research that might be shared with reporters, he said. > His manager had advised him not to run any queries searching for specific terms on his old work or do anything that could appear suspicious, he said. > Now, he said he was told, was a good time to take a vacation.
NelsonMinar 5y ago
'Facebook data scientists and researchers discussed how they were being “embarrassed” by their own employer.' Boy that's a mistake; we know as much as we do because Facebook employees are tired of being ignored by their executive team. Do you work inside Facebook? Consider leaking what you know to a reporter or research group you trust. Jeff Horwitz of the WSJ may be a good option, he has contact info in his twitter bio https://twitter.com/JeffHorwitz https://twitter.com/JeffHorwitz If you're involved in something you fear is illegal you may want to talk to a personal lawyer. And keep written records at home in a secure place.
effingwewt 5y ago
I always wonder how companies get away with blatantly manipulating children and young adults, then I come see the comments here all over the place defending fb/insta. My fucking gods.

https://archive.ph/6J3Db https://archive.ph/6J3Db

Irony is Facebook will not attract the talent it needs to work constructively on these unsolvable problems. It will attract thd clueless and the most ambitious. People who are ready to defend it for their own profit. Its a trap where the hole they are in just keeps growing deeper.

jareklupinski 5y ago
Engineers used to be offered an "Iron Ring" (or other similar token) to symbolize their responsibility to human welfare, even at the cost of personal achievement/merit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring Maybe we have to teach some of these upstarts about Therac-25 and depress another generation just to keep the harm from spreading :(
- mmckeen 5y ago
  This still happens in Canada I believe
  - __turbobrew__ 5y ago
    Yes, it does
  - dogorman 5y ago
    I know an American civil engineer who has one of these rings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring Wikipedia says the oath that goes with it is: I am an Engineer. In my profession I take deep pride. To it I owe solemn obligations. As an engineer, I, (full name), pledge to practice Integrity and Fair Dealing, Tolerance, and Respect, and to uphold devotion to the standards and dignity of my profession, conscious always that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making best use of the Earth's precious wealth. As an engineer, I shall participate in none but honest enterprises. When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given without reservation for the public good. In the performance of duty, and in fidelity to my profession, I shall give the utmost. --- I get the impression this ring is not for "software engineers". I really dislike that term, I call myself a computer programmer to anybody who asks, regardless of the title my employer flatters me with. I think "software engineer" is leaching off the social prestige real engineers have earned for their professions. Prestige the software industry in general does not yet deserve. Programmers take jobs making shitty socially harmful products then deflect all blame to their employers, denying their own responsibility to society that oath describes. I am sure there are some programmers who deserve it, but by in large, the term is used by companies to flatter code monkeys making gambling apps, spyware, social media skinner boxes, etc. I am not without sin here, so I refuse to call myself an engineer.
    - tdeck 5y ago
      Those other engineering professions some harmful things too. Didn't engineers design prisons, casinos, nuclear weapons, land mines, plants that manufacture harmful chemicals, etc..? The only way to believe that these oaths make a difference is to ignore all those things. Anyway, at my university (CS/computer eng. major) everyone in the engineering school goes through the same induction ceremony that I think had a similar oath. I still have the Wash. U. Engineer's Creed card in my wallet. I vaguely remember that Tau Beta Pi had a similar thing. Honestly, I appreciate the ideals, but I don't think the oath made folks from my program any more ethical than those from other schools.
      - m0zg 5y ago
        All of the things you've listed aren't universally bad. Prisons keep bad people out of society (and yes, I'm aware that some folks shouldn't be in prison, and I wish that'd change, but majority are in the clink for violent crime). Nuclear weapons ensure superpowers can't attack each other - that's why we haven't had a world war in the past 76 years in spite of some pretty crazy tensions. Land mines make land invasions difficult and protect those who installed them. Harmful chemicals usually are not made just for the harm - they have their own useful functions. So I'd draw the line much further than that: somewhere near biological and chemical weapons which have no useful function at all, and do not help with maintaining peace.
        vasco 5y ago
        The fact you can justify land mines says it all about the ability of some oath to ensure anything about the behaviour of large groups of people.
        m0zg 5y ago
        Yes, soldiers on the battlefield are very thankful for the land mines, assuming they're the ones who installed them. With any luck a dude from the other side might not be able to cross the field and slit their throats in the dead of the night. Just as pilots are thankful for fighter jets not crapping out in mid-air, and nuclear submarine sailors are thankful for the engineering that went into the hull, and a gunner is thankful for the shells which don't explode in the barrel of a howitzer. War is hell, but if you're going to win it (or even deter it), you'll need engineers who know how to design weapons. And this is not the kind of game that you can just decline to participate in unless you'd like to learn a foreign language in a concentration camp.
- MikeTheGreat 5y ago
  It's possible that United States engineers still do this... but software "engineering" is famously (and self-deprecating-ly) not really "real engineering". I say this as someone who programs, teaches programming/computer science, and has worked professionally as a software development engineer - the comment isn't made to denigrate anyone, but because software "engineering" doesn't have any certification / professional credentialing that "real" engineering (e.g., civil engineering) apparently does have. Also - I'm curious about how effective it is to tell the engineers to do the right thing (even at the expense of personal gain). It seems like the people most responsible for making decisions that build harmful products aren't the ones who are actually tasked with building the harmful products. Does anyone have any information about how effective such training / indoctrination is in preventing bad situations from happening?
  - jareklupinski 5y ago
    one thing that I found works: religion. ask the engineer about to enter the arena what they would like to do with the money they hope to achieve, their end-goals, etc. then follow-up with whether they would feel morally/spiritually at peace with their choices and methods after the fact (do your ends justify your means?) in my experience, the people with the IQ to earn a yacht responsibly end up settling for a speedboat anyway.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    It certainly does, just not in US. https://www.ordemengenheiros.pt/pt/a-ordem/colegios-e-especialidades/informatica/ https://www.ordemengenheiros.pt/pt/a-ordem/colegios-e-especi... No Portuguese university is allowed to call their computing degrees engineering without their approval, and in certain kinds of state related projects, the one putting their signature into the legal contracts has to have the professional title acknowledged. Germany and Switzerland have a similar process for those carrying engineering on their title. Either that or you have done it via a trade school, and people on the job have to have a kind of teaching certification for the school to approve the company as teaching place.
    - hahajk 5y ago
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Maybe we have to teach some of these upstarts about Therac-25 and depress another generation just to keep the harm from spreading :( IIRC, they do, and it doesn't work. The "Californian Ideology" has a strong hold on the tech world and it's incompatible with that kind duty,
danjac 5y ago
Sadly there's always enough smart sociopaths willing to work for a fat pay cheque or to learn "interesting" tech. "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,"says Wernher von Braun."
tjpnz 5y ago
>Irony is Facebook will not attract the talent it needs to work constructively on these unsolvable problems. At some point the brand will become so toxic that engineers who've worked there could find themselves persona non grata in many tech roles.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Unfortunately I think other companies would still be happy hiring ex FB developers. They still are ex FAANG, and they showed to give moral and principle the rear seat when it comes to revenue and business. Why wouldn't these folks be hireable?
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
    Personally, when I see FB on a resume, it’s a factor. I want people who will help push the company in a healthy direction. There’s always pressure to make changes to the app that increase addictiveness without adding actual value to the client, and I’m proud to work somewhere where colleagues push back on that kind of thing. Working at FB is a (relatively weak) signal that they won’t be that kind of colleague. It will come up in the interview. If they can convince me that they stayed there in a ‘change it from within’ capacity, great. Otherwise, yeah it’s a negative signal.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > At some point the brand will become so toxic that engineers who've worked there could find themselves persona non grata in many tech roles. The majority of startups is still "growth and engagement" as opposed to producing real products/services that people pay for, so ex-Facebook is the perfect match.
tomjen3 5y ago
Investment banking has no problem attracting smart people. Smart people know that you gain nothing by sacrificing yourself for society. Even if you cared enough to say no, all that would happen is that Facebook would pay somebody else to work for them.
- ahartmetz 5y ago
  Smart is not the same as cynical. Being cynical doesn't require that much intelligence.
- jobigoud 5y ago
  > Smart people know that you gain nothing by sacrificing yourself for society. Even if you cared enough to say no, all that would happen is that Facebook would pay somebody else to work for them. Nothing? Not even a clear conscience? The "but someone else will do it" argument is used to justify so many wrong doings… We hear it all the time about fighting climate change, building unethical weapons, etc. You also have the choice to not personally actively contribute to whatever unethical thing is being discussed. It's a circular game theory problem, that "other person that will do it anyway" might also be justifying it because they think you would do it if they didn't.
- lowkey_ 5y ago
  > Investment banking has no problem attracting smart people. I've worked in banking and my ex worked for Facebook, and I genuinely don't see the comparison beyond rather inaccurate tropes. Bankers aren't tearing apart society and sowing division like Facebook is.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    Trump lost his second term. I think society was actually torn apart during the civil war.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  > Even if you cared enough to say no, all that would happen is that Facebook would pay somebody else to work for them. Serious question: Do you vote? Because this argument seems like people who say “my vote doesn’t matter, it’s just one vote out of millions.” It’s true that at the individual level, one vote basically never makes the difference, but elections are won and lost. In the same way, if one person says no, maybe it will barely make a difference, but teams are made of more than one person.
DrBazza 5y ago
I've been approached by FB recruiters 3 times and turned them down 3 times. I've removed FB from all my devices except one. The only thing keeping me on the platform is that my sports clubs use it to organise matches and runs. I check FB once a day. All notifications are off. I really don't want anything to do with them. I'd still work for a military software developer. But not Facebook. Frankly, I was also surprised recently, though I shouldn't be, that there are (or were) some quite 'famous' developers / comp-sci researchers working there.
- amelius 5y ago
  > I really don't want anything to do with them. I'd still work for a military software developer. But not Facebook. Would you use open source packages developed by them?
  - DrBazza 5y ago
    Interesting. I probably would. Though I haven’t knowingly done so, so far.
tubby12345 5y ago
The idea that FB will become a radioactive brand is wishful thinking that people indulge in with every new FB "scandal". Recruiting (yes even from "target" schools) hasn't slowed one bit. And regarding eg FAIR: The ones that have started murmuring about jumping ship are not the ones that are excellent but the ones that have outsized ideas of themselves as do-gooders.

jiscariot 5y ago

Another great investigative piece from the NYT on one of their direct competitors for revenue. At this point it feels like FB's problem is they let the "rabble" in instead of charging $40/mo cover to affluent Westerners. Cynical take yes, but the volume of NYT has me thinking of the boy who cried wolf.

numair 5y ago
You’re aware that the NYT collects millions from Facebook in an invite-only revenue deal[1], right? The fact of the matter is, they’re so arrogant that these sort of articles don’t bother them at all. The whole faux-outrage thing and the song-and-dance with regulators is just seen as part of the process. Smart people need to stop working at Facebook. Wait a few years, and all of our problems will be solved. 1: https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2021/is-facebook-buying-off-the-new-york-times/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2021/is-f...
- DSingularity 5y ago
  Smart people want money and prestige. There is always a perspective to justify anything. They will sleep fine at night.
  - jevgeni 5y ago
    That’s about as much prestige as working for a tobacco company.
    - nielsbot 5y ago
      Money, then
  - aogaili 5y ago
    "Smart people want money and prestige." I'd question your definition of the word smart in this context.

ub 5y ago

Good thread here that provides a counter-balance. https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21 https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21

tablespoon 5y ago
> Good thread here that provides a counter-balance. https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21 https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21 By the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Eyal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Eyal: > In 2014 Eyal published his first book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, which became a Wall Street Journal best seller.[12][13] The title reflects Eyal's idea of the "hooked model", which aims to "build products that create habit-forming behavior in users via a looping cycle that consists of trigger, an action, a variable reward, and continued investment."[14]... > Eyal has spoken out against proposals to regulate habit-forming technologies, arguing that it is an individual user's responsibility to control their own use of such products.[2] Somehow I'm not surprised someone like that would be writing desperate yet underwhelming apologia for Facebook.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  Is there something specific about Eyals take that you disagree with?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - croes 5y ago
    Yep "my advice to parents is only give kids access to tech they're ready for" There is no metric to check if the kids a re ready for, I doubt that most adults are ready for the psychological effects of social media. This is too easy a way to offload the entire responsibility onto the parents, while the companies that make billions from it are off the hook. It's like blaming smokers because tobacco companies use addictive additives.
- 5y ago

tablespoon 5y ago

> Facebook annotated the reports, appearing to downplay the results. Next to one slide in the research that said “teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse,” the company added that the headline was imprecise. Instead, it wrote, “The headline should be clarified to be: ‘Teens who have lower life satisfaction more likely to say Instagram makes their mental health or the way they feel about themselves worse than teens who are satisfied with their lives.’” I suppose "teens who are satisfied with their lives" exist, but I didn't know many as a teenager.

yoz-y 5y ago
I know that angst you teen is a trope but where I was most teens were quite happy. School ends early, plenty of time and zero responsibilities. You can just spend most of time loitering. Also hangover passes super quickly so you don’t waste a whole day after a party.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > but where I was most teens were quite happy. School ends early, plenty of time and zero responsibilities. That's the kind of thing that seems happy in retrospect, though. Kids don't appreciate many of the benefits of youth until they've lost it, and until then, small dramas and angst can often have an exaggerated significance.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    There's been some fMRI work done on this[1]: if you pose various moral dilemmas to adults and teens under fMRI, they'll give you similar answers. But: teens have dramatically higher frontal cortex activation then adults do while giving the answer. Frontal cortex is associated with high level reasoning: the interpretation is that while teenagers are able to resolve the same sorts of issues as adults, they're spending a lot more mental effort to do so - it's taxing. Hence the phenomenon of teenagers tending to oscillate between "mature and capable" and "complete breakdown" when the stress gets dialed up (not that this doesn't happen to adults, but relatively we handle more better). Not unsurprisingly, the frontal cortex is also one of the last regions of the brain to undergo maturation: the neural remodel you get at the onset of puberty starts from the back of the brain and moves forward. In short: adults take an observation of adult-like behavior at face value and presume it implies adult-experiential reasoning, then get surprised and angry when the environmental stresses suddenly collapse the entire facade. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2788780/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2788780/

matheusmoreira 5y ago

Good. Facebook should not be able to "quell" anything. It should suffer the full consequences of its actions every single time.

FDSGSG 5y ago
How do you define "full consequences"?
- sekh60 5y ago
  Corporate death penalty plus prison time for relevant people. How wide to cast the net would have to be worked out.
  - spectramax 5y ago
    I thought we, the liberals, are mostly aligned that non-violent climes should not be punishable by prison time.
    - 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
      I have never seen a stat or survey that suggests that.
      - spectramax 5y ago
        That's been my general observation. I see the following hypocrisy: Murderers and violent crimes should require rehabilitation, better lives in the prison and discussion here tends to be more around pro-forgiveness ideology; whilst I also see liberals suggesting that politicians and corporate leaders should be punished by prison terms. Apart from my own observation, non-punishment of non-violent crimes is a cornerstone of liberal criminal justice reform (Prop 57, 20, etc.).
        sekh60 5y ago
        I am sorry I wasn't more clear. When I suggest prison time I mean in a rehabilitative facility. And that should be for all crimes that we demand prison time for. I am not for retributive justice.

bob229 5y ago

Delete. Your. Social. Media. Now.

vadfa 5y ago

Quell uproar? What uproar? Has the usage of instagram taken a dive? Or is this just the usual fake outrage pushed by the media that hates Facebook?

arthurcolle 5y ago
Last couple days ~ many articles related to an ex- Top Mind @ Facebook who asserted that they 1) knew effects of insta on young children's minds, 2) used these incantations for profit, 3) tried to hide it, and 4) downplayed the relevance of the previous 3 in order to pursue their yotta-growth strategy at the expense of human civilization. On the back of the findings from a couple of weeks ago that most human trafficking (measured by active sex trafficking cases) is happening over Facebook neo-forums, and Whatsapp chats, as well as Instagram [1] - the "uproar" you are questioning is the small little uptick in stories that are (IMO) correctly attributing the growth of facebook with the decline of Western values and democracy on the whole. [1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-sex-trafficking-online-recruitment-report/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-sex-trafficking-online...
- vadfa 5y ago
  Isn't it extremely ironic that the media, which almost always has a liberal slant, would complain about "the decline of Western values"? If they want teens to stop killing themselves maybe they should also consider stopping pushing all kinds of degeneracy to them. Also, the average Joe doesn't care about this. People won't stop using Instagram. All of these stories are nothing but masturbation for intellectuals. Thus this "uproar" is fabricated. It's not based on what people feel, but on what the media elites want them to feel.
  - arthurcolle 5y ago
    I was being a little facetious with the 'decline' rhetoric but like actually. Media is shaping people's minds more rapidly and with self-reinforcing mechanisms that have never occurred before - I just think on a societal level we need to have a frank conversation about expectations and responsibilities. The world was a lot smaller 75 years ago. But now it's a massive echo chamber. Resonance is causing crazy flare ups of niche parts of social discourse. You can consider SJW movements an example of that, as well as the far-right or incel movements. Large niche populations identifying as new self-identified groups. Social change, or self-reinforcing propaganda (social contagion) manifesting in novel ways after 25% of your life spent in front of a computer? And because people are disconnected, the real world actions are implicitly given less weight because most actors have spent near a majority of their lives on a machine simulated interaction with someone else instead of with subtler cues that you would get in a true "village" Not trying to wax poetic, I just really think things are getting weird because of the new hyper-dynamism.

cblconfederate 5y ago

We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that instagram has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager of your family to see the values that are being taught through it. Is this how you want the next generation to be? Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company, and it has always been, and it's just sad to see the support it gets among technologists. Zuck doesn't strike me as particularly deep thinker (judging from his podcasts) to be able to steer his behavioral experiment to good, nor does he seem particularly well educated tbh. Even people who think they are doing good by being in the company (Clegg, Lecun) they are not helping, they re legitimizing a train wreck . I just hope people get bored and leave the behavioral treadmill before it s too late.

Nextgrid 5y ago
> Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company I don't want to defend Facebook, but this is not specific to Facebook. We have legitimized the modern concept of targeted advertising and Facebook just happens to play the game perfectly. Facebook is not 100% fault here (in fact there are others in this space). The fault is that we don't have regulation against something that is clearly detrimental to society. Change that, and Facebook will become better (or be replaced by something better). Edit: to be clear, I do not want to defend Facebook. I don't use it, I hate it and its effects on society, and its monopoly on social media online is a constant problem for me. However, I don't believe killing Facebook by itself will solve the problem as it will merely allow an equally-scummy competitor to take its place. Outlawing the underlying business model or making it unprofitable (such as by attaching liability to ads, stronger privacy protections, revoking Section 230, etc) would be a better long-term solution.
- atonse 5y ago
  Facebook is 100% at fault for what Facebook does though. Not to say others aren’t. I’m not interested in giving them an inch. They’ve probably caused more psychological harm and manipulation (intentionally, via “engagement” algorithms) than just about any human propaganda movement in history. I still don’t understand how people with any ethics still work for them. I guess 500k a year is enough to look away from anything.

LatteLazy 5y ago

I have no strong feelings on Instagram. That said, i find it interesting how suddenly people care about teen mental health when it aligns with their opinions on big tech. And how little they care about (say) school shooting drills or advertising or education funding or a dozen other issues that affect mental health in kids...

lowkey_ 5y ago
Considering this is a tech-focused website, my guess is it's less that it confirms our pre-existing biases, and more so that the community feels strongly about tech and its impact. Similarly, if there were a website on gun control, I'm sure they would be more focused on how school shooting drills impact mental health than how Instagram impacts mental health.
hef19898 5y ago
From what I see, from the other side of the big pond, there is a party that cares about that stuff to some degree at least. At least for those, caring about Instagram and teen mental health is just a logical consequence.

shadowgovt 5y ago

The discussion in this thread is indicative as to why companies don't do research like this in the open.

NelsonMinar 5y ago
Facebook doesn't do much research like this in the open either. The WSJ articles are largely based on leaked internal private reports. Their employees are leaking them because they're tired of being ignored.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Correct, and the reason is clear. There is no incentive to do research like this in the open. Even asking the question is grounds for being pilloried in the court of public opinion.

jokoon 5y ago

I followed up a 6 months entrepreneurship training, and we had a zoom with a facebook employee teaching us how to make instagram stories (changing the font color, using the boomrang effects etc).

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"One Facebook researcher said a colleague was contacted by the legal team in the past week and was asked about a research report that he published more than two years ago. The legal team appeared to be hunting for any potentially incriminating research that might be shared with reporters, he said. His manager had advised him not to run any queries searching for specific terms on his old work or do anything that could appear suspicious, he said. Now, he said he was told, was a good time to take a vacation."

numair 5y ago
Yeah, what this article doesn’t talk about is the pretend-FBI that Facebook employs as its security team. They go out of their way to intimidate employees and make them think that Facebook is some quasi-governmental institution where leaks will have you end up in a situation similar to Julian Assange. (Feel free to say hi to those losers, because they’re definitely reading this thread.)
- edgyquant 5y ago
  While I agree with a lot of what you’re saying you seem to be a former disgruntled employee and so you don’t seem to be bias free here. You’re also doing a lot of insinuating throughout this thread that were supposed to not question and take your word for.
  - numair 5y ago
    I thank myself every day that I was never an employee of Facebook. I remember being in boarding school and having kids point to others and say, “he thinks he’s so cool but we all know where his family made their money,” and I never wanted to leave future generations with that baggage. As for the rest, well... Unfortunately Thiel-Gawker means you’ll never get reporters to give you the factual run-down you need, because they’re scared of being sued. So, until there’s a court record, which will inevitably happen at some point, you’re stuck with insinuations for which you should do your own homework.

fortran77 5y ago

I don't like Facebook or Instagram either. (I have a Facebook account that's used for one thing -- college and high-school reunion information. I have added no friends that aren't part of these groups. I'm 58 years old.) But when I see this: > , including teenage girls saying that Instagram made them feel worse about themselves. ...I wonder if we really can blame Instagram for this. It's like the old joke "Doctor -- it hurts when I do this." And I'll even go further to say sometimes a little "competition" is healthy. Maybe seeing a friend who is more athletic or fit than you, or has a better sense of style will inspire you to up your game. If your reaction is to "feel bad about yourself" may its your problem. Are we blaming Instagram for bad parenting? (I do think an Instagram service specifically for children is a terrible idea.)

mrwww 5y ago

Now would be a great time for facebook employees to leak everything.

tablespoon 5y ago
> Now would be a great time for facebook employees to leak everything. They're working on stopping that: > Facebook has also moved to stem future leaks. > One Facebook researcher said a colleague was contacted by the legal team in the past week and was asked about a research report that he published more than two years ago. The legal team appeared to be hunting for any potentially incriminating research that might be shared with reporters, he said. > His manager had advised him not to run any queries searching for specific terms on his old work or do anything that could appear suspicious, he said. > Now, he said he was told, was a good time to take a vacation.

NelsonMinar 5y ago

'Facebook data scientists and researchers discussed how they were being “embarrassed” by their own employer.' Boy that's a mistake; we know as much as we do because Facebook employees are tired of being ignored by their executive team. Do you work inside Facebook? Consider leaking what you know to a reporter or research group you trust. Jeff Horwitz of the WSJ may be a good option, he has contact info in his twitter bio https://twitter.com/JeffHorwitz https://twitter.com/JeffHorwitz If you're involved in something you fear is illegal you may want to talk to a personal lawyer. And keep written records at home in a secure place.

effingwewt 5y ago

I always wonder how companies get away with blatantly manipulating children and young adults, then I come see the comments here all over the place defending fb/insta. My fucking gods.