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Whistleblower to Congress: Facebook products harm kids and democracy
- say_it_as_it_is 5y agoFirst-world notions of harm really need to be reigned in
- frashelaw 5y ago"Democracy" LOL! America is a democracy in name only. In reality it is a corporate oligarchy.
- EricE 5y agoSome "whistleblower" - seems to think big tech doesn't do enough censorship :p Talk about a wolf in sheeps clothing.
- option 5y agothis isn’t about censorship. It is about newsfeed algorithms which optimize “engagement”. As it turns out negative, controversial and divisive stuff is more engaging.
- deft 5y agoIt is about censorship. The Biden admin has repeatedly made it obvious they don't think FB etc are deleting enough and the feds will have to step in soon.
- option 5y agoI agree that Biden admin is all about censorship. But, after watching her interview, it doesn’t look to me that this whistleblower is.
- hunterb123 5y agoIt seemed like that to me, that's why she spit out everything from harming girls self esteem to ethnic cleansing accusations. She's not a "whistleblower", she's a planted pawn. Facebook hosts user content, they should just come out and say they want to censor user content. If this teenager study is so damning and sound, why aren't we asking ALL social media services to disallow children/teens? Why only focus on the content? (because it's not about the children)
- shadowgovt 5y agoPlanted pawn for whom? No need to assume conspiracy when simple variety in human opinion will do. I don't personally see any reason to believe she isn't what she seems to be: someone who got a job at Facebook, was deeply horrified by what the company considers perfectly acceptable, and decided to expose it because she expects it will horrify others.
- hunterb123 5y agoThe people who get to censor Americans now, your government overlords! The same people who are now interviewing her only 2 days later! Almost as if they were ready to go! Children won't be protected out of this, it's for censorship.
- kelseyfrog 5y agoIt's about the negative externalities of engagement optimization.
- AzzieElbab 5y agoyou realize that most controversial, negative and divisive stuff is pushed by corporate media 24/7, right?
- jokowueu 5y agoBoth are a problem
- AzzieElbab 5y agoIt is a recursive problem when you take into account how much power journalists have in shaping and vetting content on social media. As an example, this is why half of you in the US think that COVID has 50% hospitalization rate, while the other half thinks masks are entirely useless.
- deegles 5y agothere will always be something to "what about"
- AzzieElbab 5y agoYou misunderstood. I am saying fb mirrors and amplifies external trends
- vernie 5y agoYoU Do ReaLIZE
- inshadows 5y agoPrecisely. This "whistleblower" is just crying to government for more censorship. Thank you very much.
- quadrangle 5y agoI heard her argue against algorithmic curation, and that seems a distinct point. What do you hear her saying about censorship?
- shadowgovt 5y agoIt is entirely possible that big tech doesn't do enough censorship. Compared to the broadcast media that preceded it, there's nothing even remotely approaching the obscene, indecent, and profane content restrictions the FCC imposes. I'm not personally convinced FCC-level restrictions are necessary, but the question is a fair one to ask (and will be asked, again and again, forever... Such is the nature of media and society).
- jayd16 5y agoFacebook already controls the feed algorithm. Suggesting a change does not imply more or less censorship than what we currently have.
- wolfram74 5y agoThe recurring argument she makes is just that stop using algorithmic content discovery that optimizes engagement because it correlates so strongly with extremism. You could almost get rid of all moderation and just go to chronological and it would improve the public health dimension.
- suzzer99 5y agoI wish there was an option to make my Facebook feed chronological like there is with twitter.
- quadrangle 5y agoThere used to be that option. First it was default, then they switched it to opt-in, then they switched it to opt-in-repeatedly (every visit would default back to algorithm-curated), then they finally killed the chronological option.
- tqi 5y ago"stop using algorithmic content discovery that optimizes engagement because it correlates so strongly with extremism" Is there a meaningful difference between what Newsfeed is doing vs what the news director at say Fox News, MSNBC, et al?
- wffurr 5y agoIs there a meaningful difference between this one terrible thing and these other terrible things? I would say both are bad and should stop.
- wolfram74 5y agowhataboutism aside, the ehrlich quote "To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer". is salient, the news channels do eventually get okayed by human editors. Another salient point is how personalized the content can get with algorithms at the helm, everybody has a button that will set them off. Mass broad cast media is going to be further from the mark than something machine learning found. [0] https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=280241 https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=280241
- commandlinefan 5y ago> seems to think big tech doesn't do enough censorship It's worse than that. The "whistleblower" thinks that world governments don't mandate enough censorship of big tech - i.e. they're not doing their part to enable the regulatory capture that entrenches the established players.
- mmastrac 5y agoAlternative livefeed from nytimes: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/05/technology/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/05/technology/facebook-...
- rjsw 5y agoThere is a livefeed in the Guardian too [1] that isn't paywalled. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2021/oct/05/facebook-hearing-whistleblower-frances-haugen-testifies-us-senate-latest-news https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2021/oct/05/face...
- Joker_vD 5y agoWow, what a headline, "can someone please think of the children?" and "we must protect our democracy!" combined into one. Well, I guess it's a good tactics to say something like that to the Congress to kinda force them to do something.
- hunterb123 5y agoShould have heard the "whistleblower" on 60 minutes. Facebook is causing ethnic cleansing she said, lol. I didn't realize Facebook was so popular in China, that's the only place I know of ethnic cleansing being carried out. This is clearly orchestrated to get FB to censor more. Twitter has already fallen in line completely, that's why they are off the radar even though they are 1000% more toxic and teenagers are more likely to be on Twitter than FB nowadays.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoSo, you missed the news about Myanmar? Or the stories about the First Nation children being found in graves outside of schools (and this is recent, not something from 100 years ago)? Or children being taken from their parents at the US border and 'losing' the records in order to reunite them? I'm sure there are more, but these were the examples I could think of from the top of my head.
- hunterb123 5y agoFB is not the cause of the issues though, and they could simply shut it down in that region but are other social media companies operating there? Do we have the same outrage with the Taliban and other terrorists using Twitter? Yes, terrorists and failed states shouldn't be allowed to use these services, let's not muddy that with censorship issues though. Let's ban the terrorists, not content from Americans.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoWasn’t the genocide in Myanmar primarily spread and encouraged on Facebook?
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- endisneigh 5y agoWhat's the solution tho?
- wayoutthere 5y agoI’m starting to think that a Balkanized Internet isn’t necessarily the worst thing. Different countries have different standards of censorship and right now we have the worst of both worlds where actual meaningful speech is still suppressed while empowering people who just like to stir the pot (err, “drive engagement”).
- mc32 5y agoTurn off the algos and do chronology with proximity (geographic and social graph) instead of oh, we see you clicked on an article about Bernie Sanders, have a look at this article about taxing rich people 95%!! Or you read about hotdogs, here’s an article about additives in foods and their impact on mental health!!
- dylan604 5y agoSometimes algo browsing can be interesting, so maybe a "I'm feeling lucky" type of option with a "Would you like to know more?" button
- incahoots 5y agoDismantle social media entirely. Last few years have proven that we cannot function as a forward thinking society when memes are believed over proper sourced science. Warning labels are proof enough that folks cannot be left to their own devices.
- ueueshitashita 5y ago> "Believe" "The Science" Last few years have proven that most people have a fundamental misunderstanding of basic concepts.
- stickfigure 5y ago> Dismantle social media entirely. You mean, stop allowing people to communicate with each other?
- camillerr 5y agoWelcome in 2015. No kids use facebook anymore
- p49k 5y agoTitle references "Facebook products" which includes Instagram.
- orev 5y agoAs was made abundantly clear yesterday, Facebook’s apps also include Instagram and What’s App, which are very much in-scope for this topic.
- hmfrh 5y ago> She leaked a trove of internal research and communications showing the company was aware of the ills of its platforms, including the toxic risks of Instagram to some teenage girls' mental health and the prevalence of drug cartels and human traffickers on its apps. Please read the article next time.
- fighterpilot 5y agoThe two best ideas I've heard: - Require age verification by law and ban kids from using it. We ban kids from alcohol we should ban them from this. - Require ID verification by law but allow people to use a fake name. Fixes the bots issue and the kid depression issue. The market isn't going to get there by itself because of competition. If insta implements this then they lose market share to snap. So there's a strong incentive to attract as many kids as possible. Need a govt intervention. This also isn't negative for free speech as a value, since people can still post under a fake name. It just kills the bots. And without the bot assisted fake news, there will be less pressure and need to censor, so it's actually a win for free speech.
- mrfusion 5y agoI keep saying this but it is so bizarre to me that our knee jerk reaction it to regulate and blame users. Let’s try regulating the problem corporation first.
- endisneigh 5y agoHow would you prevent kids from just going on some other, new site? What's the distinction between the internet and social media? Ignoring whether or not what you're describing is technically feasible (I don't think it is) - ultimately as long as children can use the internet the issues at hand will exist. Furthermore, why give social media entities more data in the form of government backed authentication?
- fighterpilot 5y ago"news site" Because social media is a status and looks competition between peers which is where the depression comes from. If they're just reading news and commenting that's fine. The internet itself isn't the problem, it's specifically social media. "Furthermore, why give social media entities more data in the form of government backed authentication?" Part of the law could be to require an outsourced solution, with a Chinese Wall between them. The solution is only able to relay to the company that the person is a real person and over the age of X. Or a government solution, where the government provides a unique token to each valid person which can be used once per registration, so no ID needs to be given to the companies. Whatever it is, I'm sure a solution can be thought of.
- nsonha 5y agoLet's not kid ourselves if anything corporate America learns from this, it will be not to conduct research to look into potential harm to society Such research will always shows something and will be used against them.
- convexfunction 5y agoThe clearest take I've seen on this: https://www.piratewires.com/p/bombshell https://www.piratewires.com/p/bombshell The money quote, in my opinion: > The thing is, we’re not really asking for Facebook to control itself, we’re asking Facebook to control other people.
- btmiller 5y agoBut they are the ones that have enabled the mass accessibility of many-to-many communication. That should come with great responsibility.
- buitreVirtual 5y agoAnd the ones who profit by exacerbating toxicity.
- cheeseomlit 5y agoWith great responsibility comes great power
- convexfunction 5y agoMaybe, and the author makes a similar point. I don't think the current discourse, based mainly on insinuations that FB/IG actually harms people on the basis of a small fraction of struggling kids reporting that they feel worse when they look at Instagram, actually gets us any closer to an implementation of greater responsibility with benefits that plausibly outweigh costs.
- AlexandrB 5y ago> The thing is, we’re not really asking for Facebook to control itself, we’re asking Facebook to control other people. But it already does. That's it's job. That's what advertising is for. I suppose "control" is a tad strong, but that's the dream of every advertiser - to deliver a message to exactly right person at the exactly right time so that they take a desired action (buy, vote, post, etc). Whenever this debate comes up I can't help but wonder what a non-commercial (non-profit?) version of Facebook would look like. I'm sure people would still post stuff for likes, but would it still be a career path for "influencers" where they use their popularity to push products of dubious value with little disclosure? Would there be an "algorithmic feed" whose contents you have little control over? Would posts by your friends be drowned out by "high engagement content"? Advertising fundamentally alters the medium that carries it. It happened with cable TV (remember cliffhangers before commercial breaks?), and it has happened to the internet. Let's not pretend Facebook's shitty products are somehow the natural state of things. Better social media ("prestige" social media?) might be possible.
- theodpHN 5y agoGoogle Sought Patent on Facebook Whistleblower's Monetizing Polarization Scheme https://slashdot.org/submission/14712823/google-sought-patent-on-facebook-whistleblowers-monetizing-polarization-scheme https://slashdot.org/submission/14712823/google-sought-paten...
- mimikatz 5y agoWait till they hear about the values in the Grand Theft Auto games that kids are playing.
- roody15 5y agoTo me this is a fake story being promoted as a way to further a political narrative. Nothing the whistleblower has revealed is shocking or previously unknown. Yes facebook tweaks an algorithm on your news feed to drive engagement and make money. Yes facebook allows some content that some would consider not to align with mainstream US narratives. My two cents this is an attempt to force facebook to kowtow to the US and follow googles lead in stopping “unapproved” discourse on topics dealing with covid among others.
- chmsky00 5y agoIt’s not “unknown” to technologists. How it all works is very unknown to the average parent. This thread seems to think the government needs to function with the logic of this thread in mind. Pretty entitled to believe you’re the only perspective worth listening to. Any individual is just “one of seven billion.” Shut the computers off and what perspective do you have that puts you above anyone else?
- InsomniacL 5y agoI found your post hard to follow overall. For example, who does this apply to and why? > Pretty entitled to believe you’re the only perspective worth listening to.
- arbitrage 5y agoI mean it's fairly well laid out of a topic. Which part specifically are you having trouble with?
- InsomniacL 5y agoare you a bot? I gave a specific example in the post you're replying to.
- arbitrage 5y agoi don't think i'm a bot. what makes you say that?
- Mizza 5y agoI find it weird for a whistleblower to be so "lib", as the kids say. She said she 'loves' Facebook, and wants to fix it, not harm it. I don't want Facebook fixed and I do want Facebook harmed. I don't want the government to meddle with what types of things people can say online, I want them to ban the business model of stalking people online and selling intimate details of their lives. If the problem is Facebook choosing profits over public good, then cut off the profits. This is obvious.
- sharklazer 5y agoShe's not a whistleblower, persay. She's a FB insider who is a political operative pushing for greater government intervention on FB. Exactly what everyone needs--truth handed down from on high. /s
- AndrewBissell 5y agoComparing the fate and level of media attention paid to this whistleblower versus e.g. the Vault 7 leaker is a good little hint about just how bothered the powers she's supposedly speaking truth to really are.
- wefarrell 5y agoAgree 100%. The problem is not that people can say anything on the internet. The problem is that the product they are selling is the attention of entire populations and the business model is damaging the consciousness of those populations. The solution is not to regulate speech - the solution is to regulate the business model of selling human attention.
- barumrho 5y agoDon't you think some form of Facebook on the Internet is inevitable? A social network that is free to use and ad-supported. It seems that the question is if there is a version of Facebook that does not lead to misinformation and other harms, or at least outweighed by benefits of having a communication channel like Facebook.
- newsclues 5y agoYou are saying the quiet part out loud.
- variant 5y agoHonestly not sure that we learned too much 'new' from this: - People don't like it when others say (or provide a platform for) things they disagree with. - Teenagers are angsty and emotionally/physically insecure. But surely the above is something an unelected bureaucrat can fix if we only give them enough money.
- paparush 5y agoWhat we learned is that Facebook knows it's platform is a huge conduit for spreading lies and disinformation and FB chooses to do nothing about that while raking in dump truck loads of cash.
- epgui 5y agoThe comments section looks like a grade 11 class. Not everything is about “controlling” you, not everything is a “fake narrative”, the world isn’t out to censor you, and no, not every form of censorship is bad. Yes censorship is a slippery slope, but so is intellectual laziness.
- shadowgovt 5y agoSometimes, people run so fast from the 1984 future where a big unfettered government decides their fate that they trip and fall right into the Snow Crash future where big unfettered corporations decide their fate. There's no simple answers here.
- stickfigure 5y agoI will categorically say that I'll take unfettered corporations over unfettered government every single time. I can quit Facebook. Good luck quitting your government. These are not remotely equivalent things, and I bristle every time I hear someone suggest it.
- colinmhayes 5y agoI will categorically say the opposite. As long as there are free and fair elections the government is accountable to the people. Corporations are never accountable to anyone but the shareholders.
- epgui 5y agoGovernment moves slower and works for the commons (at least it is supposed to). Corporations cannot solve every kind of problem, and some form of government is inevitable, necessary and desirable.
- lapetitejort 5y agoI cannot "quit" Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, and Facebook collecting info about me.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
- jugg1es 5y agoI hope that the conversation about this turns into a discussion about the business model of Facebook and most other social media sites that are designed around maximizing engagement for advertising revenue. I realize the difference between buying advertisements for extremely popular television (like the super bowl) and buying advertisements targeting specific demographics on facebook is very subtle. But there is a difference between having the ability to target very specific demographics with ads that no one else sees and buying airtime during popular programs with ads that everyone sees.
- photochemsyn 5y agoIt's not just product advertising, it's also political advertising which gets even creepier in my opinion. The two major outfits in 2016 (BlueLabs for Clinton, Cambridge Analytica for Trump) were spending hundreds of millions on these kind of targeted ad campaigns according to numerous disclosures. For example, I imagine Team Trump would target the white supremacist crowd (a relatively small % of the public) with one set of ads, and target Rust Belt voters (the key demographic that flipped the election) with trade issues and 'bringing back manufacturing' ads, although the latter group would likely have been turned off by the white supremacist content. Team Clinton's BlueLabs to be fair did the same thing and yet got much less media scrutiny than Cambridge Analytica. And that's not even counting the much-noted 'foreign influence' (hardly just Russia, Israel and Saudi Arabia have large targeted US-focused PR campaigns running all the time as well). Creepy dystopian mass surveillance and manipulation in the name of profit maximization, that's what I think of whenever someone talks about Facebook.
- hunterb123 5y agoAnd I'm sure someone targeted you with ads and false stories accusing Trump of being a white supremacist, which is why you believe crap like that.
- whimsicalism 5y agoI mean, there are numerous first hand reports of Trump saying pretty racist stuff that seem premised on the idea of white supremacy. "Only black people could live like that" when describing Chicago, for instance.
- thepasswordis 5y agoSomething about this just feels really "off" to me. This is a "whistleblower" who is blowing the whistle on facebook not doing enough to control how you think. I don't want facebook or twitter or reddit or anybody else deciding what it's okay for me to talk about or think about. I gather that this woman does, but the framing that she is just "whistleblowing" is absurd to me. It's also extremely weird to me that she's now testifying in front of congress like 2 days after her "whistleblowing".
- Rapzid 5y agoSeems like the point is that Facebook already "controls" how people think, and that their incentives are miss-aligned in a way that this is leading to public harm. EDIT: Or at least miss-aligned so that they are perpetuating the harm-causing aspects of the system and not addressing them(if they can even be addressed at all).
- papito 5y agoFacebook already controls what you think about. Just clicking on some Republican politician's profile will hurl you into the world of anti-vaxxers and sedition trutherism.
- thepasswordis 5y agoOkay I want to test this. Which politician's profile should I click on to start seeing what you're talking about? I started out by clicking on Marjorie Tayler Green, Matt Gaetz, and Ron Desantis (I think these are some of the most inflammatory at least). SO far I am still just seeing...ads for baby stuff, pictures of my friends going on vacation, and a foodies group in my city talking about where to get the best tacos or coffee. Maybe that stuff could be coded right wing? For the food and travel, nobody is wearing any masks or doing any quarantining or anything at this point? Is that what you're talking about? That's what my feed looks like all the time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jelliclesfarm 5y agoNothing screams first world problems than this…parents have completely lost the plot and have outsourced child rearing to public schools, social media and can’t control their children anymore. That’s where the rot begins. No one has any personality anymore. Everyone is a public school clone. The need to conform and belong begins early. The need for validation and FOMO kicks in later. This wasnt started by social media but at schools. This problem was seeded twenty -twenty five years ago. Children should be treated as children and adults should be in charge. First steps first..shut down all public schools except for those who cannot afford it. Secondly, cut out all wasteful spending and ask the govt to govern according to voters. While we are at it, let’s establish local governance and not regional and national control. Everyone should be able to form like minded communities and live free. Maybe then we will all live in unique communities with true diversity. That’s when targeting masses to sell becomes tricky. ‘Masses’..get it? We have become masses ..herds even..of consumers. Finally..if people have children, then they should parent. It’s a full time job. Stop shifting blame. No..it doesn’t take a village to raise the fruit of your loins. Just takes parents who feel accountable. I blame feminism. The end.
- prudhvis 5y agoI hope the outcome of this is a resounding no to more censorship.
- convexfunction 5y agoThe current discourse seems to be based mainly on insinuations that FB/IG actually harms people on the basis of a small fraction of struggling kids reporting that they feel worse when they look at Instagram. But, would anyone have predicted otherwise? That literally no teen who reports suicidal ideation would attribute their issues in part to what they see on social media? Or perhaps that's a strawman -- would we not have bothered with this discourse if the reported fraction of teens reporting suicidal ideation who cited Instagram were 2% instead of 6%? 1%? Given how many and how much young people use Instagram, what fraction there would represent "no effect size", where you can't get away with insinuating that Instagram has any causal impact on mood compared to any other activity that kids could be doing? It's probably not 0, right?
- sp332 5y agoFacebook funded research into how their products affect people's well-being. The studies showed a negative impact, so FB decided to bury the reports and then when they leaked, they argued that the research wasn't very good. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/16/facebook-files-internal-research-harms/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/16/faceboo... https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.fb.com%2Fnews%2F2021%2F09%2Fresearch-teen-well-being-and-instagram%2F https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.f...
- convexfunction 5y agoDid the studies show a negative impact in any meaningful sense, though? "Some teens report that Instagram contributes to or triggers to mental health issues" is my understanding of the most supposedly-damning finding; I understand why this can be turned into a high-engagement news story with (at best) genuine ignorance on the part of journalist and editor about how hard it is to defensibly turn survey results into interesting causal psychological claims or (at worst) mild deception, but I really don't think it tells us much about whether a world with any plausibly different Instagram or no Instagram at all would have less extreme or less frequent mental health issues in teens overall, or even in many of the specific people who report these problems. I don't think declining to publicize the results of an internal study that will be predictably grossly over-interpreted by media and therefore by the public is actually wrong, and I read the FB response you posted an archive link to as saying "this research has been grossly and selectively over-interpreted", not "this research isn't very good".
- robertofmoria 5y agoCongress/courts need to enforce the laws which already exists. Facebook, Google, etc are making mountains of profit through other peoples information. It is time that those companies be required to pay their users a fee for using their(our) information. Also, these companies are clearly not following section 230 and should not have immunity to civil lawsuits.
- calrueb 5y agoI like to imagine there are a bunch of Facebook Homefeed engineers out there who ran dozens experiments, tuning this-and-that, and found the ones that boosted revenue, and user engagement by X%. No one thought too deeply at _why_ some experiments were successful. Perhaps it was chalked up as "our new ML model is matching users to content they care about more efficiently". Then they shipped it, and everyone celebrated their success. My theory is that experiment dashboards, data visualizations, and "metrics" allow employees to almost fully disassociate from their product, and the end users. Engineers at large companies don't need to use, or even be familiar with the products they spend all day building. Yes, leadership and small pockets (researchers) can see the full picture. Everyone else stays willfully in the dark, doesn't look too closely, and clocks out at 5 happy because their dashboards look good.
- pradn 5y agoThere's also the element of stock comprising 30-50% of total compensation. Don't rock the boat too much.
- reilly3000 5y agoAbsolutely. Aggregates are the enemy of insights in many many cases.
- runawaybottle 5y agoTo add to your point, there’s not a soul in tech that ever went ‘I wonder if the results of this A/B test are ethical?’. Our industry is just not built with this sensibility, the same way Finance is not self-aware of greed. If it makes money in Finance and meets regulatory guidelines, all is fair. If it’s the optimal solution in tech, and doesn’t break laws or cause a noticeable usage drop-off, all is fair. When the FB algos drop engagement, we’ll see quasi-ethics from the company (perceptively to us, to them, it’ll just be an optimization).
- mgraczyk 5y agoThis isn't even close to being true. For example, when we ran A/B tests at Instagram, we would often dig into the results with breakdowns by important protected demographics. Engineers and data scientists who cared about justice would go out of their way to build tools and spend time ensuring that "good" changes didn't adversely affect small groups which were hard to measure. I personally ran analysis like this to detect high and unexpected latency on people with cheaper cell phones (disproportionately minorities in the US). The results of my analysis led to changes that reduced this disparity (although the changes were minor and helpful for other reasons).
- h2odragon 5y agoThe unity of coverage from every corner on this is disconcerting. Words like "Orchestrated" and "kabuki" keep battering at me as i look through the headlines. Today: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/04/facebook-whistleblower-testify-us-senate https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/04/facebook-... https://on.ft.com/2YldSxc https://on.ft.com/2YldSxc https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/05/technology/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/05/technology/facebook-... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2021/oct/05/facebook-hearing-whistleblower-frances-haugen-testifies-us-senate-latest-news https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2021/oct/05/face... https://www.npr.org/2021/10/05/1043207218/whistleblower-to-congress-facebook-products-harm-children-and-weaken-democracy https://www.npr.org/2021/10/05/1043207218/whistleblower-to-c... Yesterday: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-says-she-wants-to-fix-the-company-not-harm-it-11633304122 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-whistleblower-frances-... https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/3/22707860/facebook-whistleblower-leaked-documents-files-regulation https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/3/22707860/facebook-whistle... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/technology/whistle-blower-facebook-frances-haugen.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/technology/whistle-blower... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-misinformation-public-60-minutes-2021-10-03/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-misinfor... https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/frances-haugen-facebook-instagram https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/frances-haugen-facebook-i... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/04/facebook-whistleblower-reveals-identity-ahead-of-60-minutes-interview.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/04/facebook-whistleblower-revea... https://thenextweb.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen https://thenextweb.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-h... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-misinformation-public-60-minutes-2021-10-03/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-... https://gizmodo.com/9-horrifying-facts-from-the-facebook-whistleblowers-new-1847791184 https://gizmodo.com/9-horrifying-facts-from-the-facebook-whi... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/technology/facebook-files.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/technology/facebook-files... ...I'm not even trying to be comprehensive or anything. If Jesus, John Lennon, and Richard Nixon performed a public gangbang in Times Square to announce the existence of an afterlife, it would probably not get this kind of press coverage. This is propaganda of the first water.
- smashah 5y agoWhatsApp needs to be taken away from WhatsApp. It is more important to worldwide communication than SMS
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoSo, what happens when we replace "Facebook" with Rock n Roll, DnD, Witchcraft, "Free Love"
- sreque 5y agoThis whistleblower may be saying some true and pertinent things, but overall it seems very apparent she is a leftist activist with a clear political agenda: https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftist-activist-lawyer-ukraine-impeachment https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftis...
- mandmandam 5y agoYou say that like it's a bad thing, rather than something she has every right to be.
- hunterb123 5y agoNo it means she's biased and we should evaluate if she has another motive because she's connected to the party now interviewing her who want to censor Americans. I wonder if she'll be a professor or an ambassador for her service.
- mandmandam 5y agoWait now, are her motives obvious like in your first comment, or ulterior like in your second. Make up your mind please.
- hunterb123 5y agoShe clearly has a motive of pushing censorship. This comment is concerned with who she's doing it with. The ulterior motive is obvious to me and others in this thread. But some, like you, seem to have difficulty seeing it.
- anm89 5y agoThis whistleblowers whole shtick is to echo a sentiment that 99% of people already have. What whistle exactly is being blow here? This is basically a bad news headline. One facebook employee has some bad stuff to say about facebook. It's only news because it's so much fun to pile on because everybody including congress is in 100% agreement.
- JamesLeonis 5y agoI think Facebook, as well as other social media, are a grand experiment of Karl Popper's "The Paradox of Tolerance." [0] In keeping a largely hands-off approach to moderation they functionally provided the preconditions for such an experiment. > Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. > But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. > We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- cwp 5y agoPolicing thought crime never ends well. Intolerance toward intolerance sounds great until you get into the thorny questions of "what even is intolerance" and "who gets to decide what's intolerant"? I mean, it's right there in the quote: the intolerant might not be willing to have a rational debate, so we should criminalize the expression of intolerance. Our enemies might choose violence instead of debate, so we should apply state violence to prevent debate.
- quotemstr 5y agoAnd who should get to decide what's "intolerant"? You? Why? This "paradox of tolerance" thing is just a cudgel used to advocate for censorship, and people who bring it out (who I suspect have never read anything else Poppe wrote) seldom discuss the logical implications of the view they're espousing. The "paradox of tolerance", in other words, is nothing more than a thought terminating cliche.
- SavantIdiot 5y agoThe problem is that this issue has now become politicized, which means if you belong to one tribe, you must prevent anything bad from happening to billionaires and trillion-dollar corrupt corporations at all costs.
- whimsicalism 5y agoSorry, which side is pro-FB?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SavantIdiot 5y agoBingo!
- BashiBazouk 5y agoFree speech is ugly. 4Chan is toxic, the now defunct Craigslist Rants and raves was a huge directory of toxic ugliness. Both with minimal moderation and no recommended feed. I don't think the toxic is going to magically disappear but what effect does the algorithm on your news feed have for making the problem worse? Would these people find each other anyway in any sort of functionally large numbers without the feed? Or is the feed really the problem? And the larger question: how responsible do we want to hold companies for their algorithms when they have undesired effects?
- InsomniacL 5y agoPersonally I believe this all boils down to 'Platform Lock-in'. I have to use Facebook because everybody I know uses Facebook. Just like when I was younger I preferred Playstation but had to buy an Xbox because all my friends had Xbox. Nowa days we have CrossPlay across platforms. If I could use a social media platform which has an approach to Privacy I prefer, while still being able to view my friends social integrations (who care less about Privacy but prefer more customised content) on another platform, that would solve these issues. Legal agreements could prevent the processing of data by platform owners by other platforms or even some sort of E2EE with metadata tags.
- lolsal 5y ago> I have to use Facebook because everybody I know uses Facebook. Just like when I was younger I preferred Playstation but had to buy an Xbox because all my friends had Xbox. This speaks more about lack of self-control than anything else.
- InsomniacL 5y agoNot at all. I preferred Playstation but not over playing xbox online with friends. I have to use Facebook over another platform because other platforms don't have my friends and families content on it. Feel like you intentionally missed the point for a quip to sound superior.
- jarlab 5y agoAll this will result in nothing.
- hogFeast 5y agoGreat, the solution is for government to take control over social media...what could go wrong? Some of the whistleblowing stuff about FB's numbers being fake was interesting. Quite why the whistleblower is making statements about democracy is unclear to me. It seems like democracy has been harmed far more by removing popular politicians from social media, and throwing them down the memory hole...democracy is inherently about differing opinions and conflict, that is how it works (when political pamphleteering started in the late 16th century, there wasn't lots of political analysis...it was salacious gossip about whether a certain well-known public figure was a secret Catholic or possibly having sex with the Devil). I see more politicians who believe their opponents are bad and should be silenced than actual concern for democracy.
- Nelkins 5y ago> Haugen will urge lawmakers to take action to rein in Facebook, because, she says, it won't do so on its own. "The company's leadership knows ways to make Facebook and Instagram safer and won't make the necessary changes because they have put their immense profits before people," she will say. Very curious to hear what those necessary changes are.
- commandlinefan 5y agoNot hard to guess, just take a look at Reddit.
- lettergram 5y agoThis woman literally joined Facebook to help "combat conspiracy theories". She is clearly political. https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1445185217510187013?s=20 https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1445185217510187013?... It appears, from the 60 min interview, reason she came forward was that conservatives were allowed to communicate and organize. Frankly, I suspect her whole goal here is more censorship and only for one party.
- conspiracynutz 5y agoAre you claiming she fabricated the information she’s presenting? I don’t think there’s any proof of that. Especially not some radically right-wing conspiracy tweets.
- dnndev 5y agoSoda, vaping and cigarettes are also harmful to kids and some could argue all media outlets are harmful to democracy with bias. Not defending facebook just calling out the hypocrisy. Parents: If you think facebook is harmful discipline your kids. Easier said than done but nobody said parenting is easy. Adults: Use common sense, facebook is not free, they sell your data. I have a feeling if yo use FB you dont care or you are ok with it. Government: Protect your citizens by calling out and informing them of dangers but let them make the decision. if its no facebook it will be someone else. some people dont care and will use whatever you put in front of them. You cant fix the world.
- wffurr 5y agoOK everyone, go home. Problem solved. That was really simple, thanks for explaining, dnndev.
- tacobelllover99 5y agoPsyop and you don't need a tinfoil hat to see it.
- new_realist 5y agoFacebook is an amplification chamber for freak ideas, and this kind of group-think mind-control is tearing the world apart. It's a technology to manufacture mini-cults at scale.
- subhro 5y agoHonest question: Does stuff said in these Congress testimonies have any values/consequences? For example, like a testimony in court, do you get into any real trouble if you lie about something?
- coliveira 5y agoThe best course of action is to split FB into separate companies. It is already neatly divided between instagram, WU and legacy facebook. That would be the best for the government to avoid disruptions.
- yawaworht1978 5y agoEvery single non technical person I have spoken to has not the slightest idea about the data collection or even the business model. When told about it, the concern is minimal. The only ones who got infuriated were the ones where someone else logged into their accounts. Even showed some real data from breaches, like mobile numbers, still no concern, they'd typically say "well i gave them my number". The issue is so profound, there is no easy fix here, I am afraid. Hilariously, they do sometimes ask me "what is this?" When an add pops up or they accidentally click on one. They also ask why they get this and that email. I have also seen highly educated people buying into misleading propaganda or even straight up conspiracy theories seen on Facebook. The only benefit these users have is to watch other people's images and upload some themselves.
- whimsicalism 5y agoHighly educated is not the same as smart or thoughtful.
- wffurr 5y agoThis is important stuff and I hope something actually comes out of it. This area is ripe for some thoughtful regulation and consumer rejection. But the HN threads on the topic are uniformly terrible. There's certain topics that just bring all the axe-grinders out of the woodwork and demolish any chance of reasonable discussion.
- LordHumungous 5y agoNobody seems to care to look at the actual data she provided. It's weak imo. 15% of teens say FB makes their lives worse, 34% say it makes their lives better, and 51% say neither. This is an online poll. Among teens who are depressed, more say that FB/IG has a negative impact. Well ok, a more negative response is exactly what you'd expect from people who are reporting to be depressed. Then there's the supposed impact of the algorithm on divisiveness. There's almost no data backing this conclusion up, just anecdotal complaints from some European political parties and oh yeah, media outlets like Buzzfeed. Overall, this data is not compelling and the conclusions drawn from it appear highly sensationalized.
- wellthisishn 5y agoIt has made my life worse. And I know of people who agree.. Maybe you don't use it? It's highly political, divisiveness is obvious. Maybe you simply don't use or analyze it, so obvious things about it aren't obvious to you
- LordHumungous 5y agoI don't see any divisiveness nor politics on my feed. It's all baby pictures and vacation photos. Anecdotes are not data.
- therealdrag0 5y agoTotally agree. Also before Insta it was teen magazines that were raged about. How is it news? Also one statement by FB said one of the studies (I haven't followed how many or which is which) was a poll of 40 people.... FOURTY PEOPLE. That's beyond meaningless.
- rajup 5y agoPardon a perhaps naive comment: I thought whatever is being “whistleblown” was already known. Is it that now we have someone from within the company confirming what we already know?
- TameAntelope 5y agoI fundamentally do not understand how we've gotten to a point where social media has become anything other than a completely optional indulgence that we engage with in our free time to gain not-critical ephemeral pleasure out of. This cultural addiction to social media has caused us to throw our beliefs and convictions right out the window. People on HN are talking about breaking up Facebook, passing new "social media use" laws, and every other imaginable way of ignoring the reality that none of this is important. You can log out of Facebook/Twitter/HN/Reddit/TikTok/Instagram and be completely rid of their influence on you. You could do that right now if you wanted. You could start an alternative social media company that solves these problems "the right way" and force these companies via competition to address these issues. There are a million ways any person in the world could completely solve this problem for themselves, but we'd rather discuss forcing a privately owned corporation into doing things that aren't profitable or wise for itself? I know the mob has decided it's entitled to the services offered by Facebook (e.g. WhatsApp), but that doesn't mean you actually are entitled to those services, regardless of how ubiquitous they are. Your complacency is not Facebook's fault or problem.
- m_ke 5y agoBecause they worked really hard to become indispensable and get people "hooked". You could make the same arguments about cigarettes, oxycontin or gambling.
- TameAntelope 5y agoI don't know if the analogy holds, considering most of the complaints around social media are that it's not accessible or open enough, and engagement with social media doesn't directly create value for Facebook. They derive that value from the associated ads, as opposed to the items you listed being a) costly for its users, and b) the actual product. Social media costs nothing.
- m_ke 5y agoNobody is complaining about it not being open enough. Time on site and amount of content you view is the driver of most of their revenue. Their business is fundamentally constrained by the number of users they have and the waking hours of the ones that are on the platform. To grow they can either recruit more users or build an engaging enough product to get their user to pick it instead of youtube/netflix/tiktok/work/family. As you mentioned, their customers are advertisers, "users" are there to serve them. EDIT: before you make the same argument as you made in your reply to another comment, I don't use any Facebook related products and deleted my facebook account over 10 years ago. I'd also suggest you look into some writing on the attention economy and whales in gaming. All ad supported media is in a race to the bottom to compete for your time. There's a reason why news look like reality shows now.
- samuelizdat 5y ago"The supreme luxury of the society of technical necessity will be to grant the bonus of Useless Revolt and of an acquiescent smile." - Jacques Ellul
- WriterGuy2021 5y agoEver since I read Boorstin's book "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America," everything looks like a pseudo-event to me. Clearly Facebook is being thrown under the bus. Any one of us could say the things she is saying, but congress and the press wouldn't have made any fuss. I agree with what she's saying, but I'm tired of being manipulated by the media circus.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- coliveira 5y agoThe way I see this is that MZ is a gun for hire. He'll do anything using his algorithms and infrastructure to the highest bidder. It is very clear that he can work to grab political power, as it happened in 2016 in the US and more recently in Brazil and other countries. He needs to be stopped for what he's doing.
- bingohbangoh 5y agoSomething is very fishy here. The whistleblower here is incredibly liberal. She's working with a law firm with a long history of liberal bias including relations to the Trump impeachment. She has raised bias concerns with past employers. Similarly, there was a 60min documentary lined up within 24 hours after her whistle blowing. Now we have a congressional meeting only 72hr later. So far as I can tell, her solution to all this is "make Facebook punish bad people" by which her definition is "opposes mask and vaccine mandates." Facebook is no angel and is absolutely guilty of some bad things. *However*, people voicing on an open platform has been a net positive on humanity. We have avoided endless wars in this social media era; there are too many eyes on issues for us to fall into more wars. The scrutiny on the Biden administration's controversial pull-out of Afghanistan is evidence of this. Why is her solution here to limit how much of this sort of scrutiny can go on as opposed to allowing for more of it? Why are so many institutions now lining up behind her? It just feels very very off to me. Edit: a lot more further weirdness includes claiming her team would've prevented the January 6th riots. What?
- bingohbangoh 5y agoPeople really don't like to hear that Facebook might actually be positive in some very important respects.
- apeace 5y agoI don't think that Facebook can solve the harm to kids. They should stop lying about what they know, but I don't think the big-picture problem comes from something they are doing. It seems like kids are commonly glued to screens from the age of 4-5. They play Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft. There are any number of virtual worlds they take part in for many hours a day. Some are even deemed educational. Very early on, they get accustomed to socializing digitally, and doing so almost non-stop. When you start going through puberty and become concerned with your identity and self-image, and you've been addicted to non-stop digital socialization since age 4, of course that's going to be an important avenue for you to seek validation from. And of course that's not going to go well! Plain and simple: we have a generation of kids who value digital life more than any other part of life. I don't know how to solve that problem, but I don't think that Facebook created it or can solve it.
- bob229 5y agoNo shit
- ODILON_SATER 5y agoThey always bring the kids when they want to control the flow of information. Don't fall for it. She is clearly planted, voluntarily or involuntarily.
- atlgator 5y agoThis sounds like the social media equivalent of Apple's CSAM feature. Use children and teens as the straw man argument for censoring social media so you can use it later to squash political descent.
- reddog 5y agoI don’t like the Facebook business model either. So I don’t use Facebook.
- chrismcb 5y agoHow does fb harm democracy? Is FB actively shutting down voting sites? Bribing politicians? It is it simply disseminating information?