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To 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.

To 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 ago
It’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 ago
  I 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 ago
    I mean it's fairly well laid out of a topic. Which part specifically are you having trouble with?
    - InsomniacL 5y ago
      are you a bot? I gave a specific example in the post you're replying to.
      - arbitrage 5y ago
        i don't think i'm a bot. what makes you say that?
- jtdev 5y ago
  Your perspective disregards the likelihood that this whistleblowers input will be used to censor political speech rather than actually protect children and teens online.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  > It’s not “unknown” to technologists. I think the odd bit is that if this information isn't unknown to anyone in technology, even those not working on similar systems, then how is this "whistleblowing". It's like calling informing people about marginal tax rates "whistleblowing" because so many people don't understand how they work.
  - anon9001 5y ago
    > It's like calling informing people about marginal tax rates "whistleblowing" because so many people don't understand how they work. You mean like these? * https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tech-mogul-peter-thiel-turned-a-retirement-account-for-the-middle-class-into-a-5-billion-dollar-tax-free-piggy-bank https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tec... * https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...
    - xboxnolifes 5y ago
      No, neither of those have anything meaningful to do with understanding marginal tax rates.
  - aeturnum 5y ago
    It's whistleblowing, in this instance, because Frances Haugen released a bunch of internal documents showing what everyone has been saying. Generally the term is applied to someone who releases information from inside a company or organization showing that their public statements have been deceptive or are out of sync with the internal point of view.
  - _hlgc 5y ago
    In this case it's a specific term related to SEC whistleblowing protections. The context is not about whistleblowing for some semblance of public protection, but whistleblowing for protection of investors who may have been misled.
- ladyattis 5y ago
  >How it all works is very unknown to the average parent. No one complains about not knowing how proximity sensors work in their car. They're just happy that they work and there is in theory someone who keeps the manufacturers responsible. And I think that's the real issue here. Software for years has been treated outside of some very small instances as a value added affair and thus not worthy of investigation or oversight beyond those who fund such development. So all software companies outside of specific situations have been allowed to do what they will so long as it works well enough. Now it seems the situation has gotten more complicated because of the impact of software on non-software conditions/situations. But giving it over to Congress who currently is dominated by the Silent Generation and Boomers who aren't largely as tech savvy or educated to write legislation that will likely benefit Facebook and destroy the Internet as we know it (probably returning to a version of AOL and the like) is in my opinion the worse possible option. I'm not for laissez faire policies but I'm certainly skeptical of Congress not intentionally making claims that their laws will protect privacy all the while they open the Facebook surveillance machine to law enforcement to spy on me and my own in violation of the 4th amendment. And knowing how this SCOTUS who's been virulently anti-privacy especially among the conservative justices then this will be much worse.
- roody15 5y ago
  “ Pretty entitled to believe you’re the only perspective worth listening to.” Odd statement. I just stated my opinion on the matter. I encourage others getting lots of perspectives and making up their own minds.
scop 5y ago
Let's also remember that Facebook has decimated traditional media. Traditional media seems awfully excited by this "whistleblower"!
- gitfan86 5y ago
  There is certainly some of that. Cosmopolitan magazine wishes they were the ones making money off of teenage girls insecurities instead of FB. I see this as more of a consumer protection transparency issue. Facebook is saying that they are selling a product that makes the world better, but that isn't true. They are selling a product that prioritizes engagement over happiness. Maybe the same thing is true for Cosmopolitan magazine, but at least Cosmopolitan magazine isn't pretending that it is saving the world.
- bryan_w 5y ago
  Exactly, "Facebook is manipulating us into thinking bad things" from expert manipulators, The Guardian and NYT
tboyd47 5y ago
I totally agree. If Congress really had a problem with the lack of accountability, then they can repeal the CDA. Presto, now not just Facebook but all tech companies are accountable. If it were really about the children then why don't they go after TikTok? For someone who has only had a 4-year long career in technology and no experience in the public eye, Ms. Haugen seems unusually confident.
colinmhayes 5y ago
This was absolutely unknown to probably at least 90% of the people who use facebook. People on HN largely don't use facebook from what I can tell because they've seen all this stuff that facebook does.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Yea, I like to think of my [becoming elderly] parents. They didn't know any of this stuff. I've tried to explain the harms of social media to them but it's tough to do that without deep-diving into algorithm tech-talk, and without the recently divulged evidence you sound like a raving conspiracy theorist. Now, it's being explained in plain language in front of Congress, and on "60 Minutes" which targets their generation directly, and, although I haven't talked to them since, I guarantee they get it now. Remember how long it took to mainstream the idea that cigarettes were bad for you? "We all knew it" for a long time, but it didn't become genuine shared cultural knowledge until long after it was well known.
papito 5y ago
Ooh! "Fake story", "mainstream US narratives", "discourse"! All the greatest hits. You forgot "alternative facts".
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  It has some of the earmarks of a something is up. You do not go from nobody to 60 min interviews that quick.
  - ogaitnas 5y ago
    Oh please, is it that hard to believe she was just repulsed at what she saw while working there? Pretty cynical to believe she has a hidden agenda.
    - Leparamour 5y ago
      >Pretty cynical to believe she has a hidden agenda. She openly calls for more censorship, at least that agenda isn't even hidden.
      - sp332 5y ago
        It's a live program, so I missed that part. What content does she want censored?
  - aardvarkr 5y ago
    That "nobody" is a Harvard MBA with a degree in Computer Engineering that's worked at Google, Pinterest, and Facebook as a Data Science with high level access to key data and leaked over ten thousand internal documents who witnessed what she believes is a critical failure of one of the largest companies ever that controls a vast majority of how the world consumes information and communicates with one another. This is a bombshell of a leak and I'm glad the world is paying attention.
ctvo 5y ago
> 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. Can you provide a citation here? People have suspected these things externally. Facebook has always denied. The news here is that an insider has provided documentation that Facebook knew. And I'm not talking strictly about the algorithm, but the harm to teenagers, and the other bits.
- therealdrag0 5y ago
  My partner and I rolled our eyes at the 'harm to teenagers' bits when we heard NPR talking about it forever. How can anyone be surprised at this? Before instagram everyone bitched about teen-magazines harming teens, is this really surprising or that different? And IIRC the % was incredibly small. It's not like Instagram is leading teenagers off a cliff, it's unhealthy for teenagers who are already unhealthy. SHOCKER!
  - igornadj 5y ago
    The difference between engagement algorithms and magazines when it comes to potential risk is in the orders of magnitude. It's well known that engagement algorithms create a feedback loop to trigger negative emotions as they are the easiest way to increase engagement. This is possible with traditional media, but nowhere near the immediacy or effect of an engagement algorithm.
moksly 5y ago
Well yes, but there is also a rather big difference between knowing something and having evidence and testimonies of something. We also “knew” that a lot of the rich families in Denmark were hiding money in tax-havens. We couldn’t act on that knowledge until the Panama papers were leaked to give us evidence or what we knew. You’re certainly right that certain parts of the political leadership are going to use these leaks to further their agenda, but that’s how politics work in a democracy. You use what you get.
jayd16 5y ago
Its a fake story but we've known its true for a long time? Wah?
ogaitnas 5y ago
What is so fake about this story?
- Leparamour 5y ago
  When was the last time that a 'whistleblower' was interviewed on prime time TV?
  - ogaitnas 5y ago
    Snowden has been interviewed a number of times, is he not a whistleblower? Not sure why that makes it suspicious.
  - sp332 5y ago
    60 minutes interviewed Rick Bright in May last year.
  - infamouscow 5y ago
    Governments like corporate whistleblowers because they stand to gain legitimacy and earn trust. Government whistleblowers have the opposite effect.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
In what way could this be possibly be “a fake story?” Do you not believe that it happened? Or is she making stuff up? Or do you just mean that people don’t really actually care about the topic? Or because it’s not previously unknown, it’s too late and public interest is supposed to move on to other topics now? The initial bombshell was around instagram’s affect on teen girls mental health, so calling it an attempt to force FB to kowtow to the US on covid seems like some deep 4D chess conspiracy idea. And calling it fake is ridiculous rhetoric.
- hammock 5y ago
  OP likely means it's disingenuous- the true intentions are hidden- it's part of a lobbying effort for greater control and consolidation of power.
  - ogaitnas 5y ago
    Lobbying efforts by who exactly? And are these efforts trumping Facebook's lobbying?
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
    Whose true intentions are hidden, and who is trying to lobby? The person who posted this on HN and all of the people who upvoted it here and all the comments critical of FB here and twitter and twitter users and bloggers and redditors and, yes, traditional news? It seems like the assertion is that this isn't newsworthy... despite the fact that huge amounts of people clearly care, but that this is only really making news for a reason totally separate from the fact that there is new leaked data and people clearly care.
    - hammock 5y ago
      The general idea is that Facebook will assent to more censorship of undesirable content if and only if the same standard is applied to their competitors. This is achieved via legislation of new regulations. And legislation typically needs some semblance of popular support to pass, hence a ginned up/accelerated/forced narrative. The net effect of new regulations would be to shore up Facebook's market share and dominance of social media, since they are the biggest and can most efficiently execute on any new regulations. A similar thing happened in the tobacco industry. For decades tobacco was happy to sell cigs relatively freely. But there was a turning point where they acknowledged their unhealthiness, At this point Big Tobacco actually campaigned for greater regulation, and the net result was a consolidation of the entire industry. There are plenty of other examples as well. Monopoly power is made and preserved by regulation.
mbesto 5y ago
> 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. Known and verified are two very distinct things. Does the public know that Facebook does this? Yes. Do they know it's harmful? Yes. Does Facebook also know this? Yes. Did they tell congress that they know this? No, in fact they told them the opposite. The whistleblower is simply proving that unverified known - that Facebook has done research in its harm and knows they exist. Facebook would say "so what, we're doing stuff to fix it". The most important part is the following: Facebook believes that its implementation for corrective actions of its harm is solely its responsibility. IMO, this is what is so dangerous and revealing. There is no one auditing other than taking "Facebook's word for it". > Yes facebook allows some content that some would consider not to align with mainstream US narratives. This is an incredibly disingenuous description of the situation. Facebook's own (non-public, now publicly leaked) research indicates that Facebook causes harm to teens mental health. The only "US narrative" here is the one backed up my the incredible amount of research supporting the growing issue of mental health in the US (and the world for that matter). EDIT: To further my point and give you a comparison - when a similar thing happened with Tobacco the government was able to control behaviors by (1) forcing tobacco companies to put labels on their products and (2) tax tobacco such that it dissuaded customers to buy. Imagine if William Morris said "we know tobacco causes cancer so we've actively decided to sell 10 million less cartons of tobacco this year". No, they ended selling X million less cartons because of those two measures (among others).
- camdat 5y ago
  >This is an incredibly disingenuous description of the situation. Facebook's own (non-public, now publicly leaked) research indicates that Facebook causes harm to teens mental health. The only "US narrative" here is the one backed up my the incredible amount of research supporting the growing issue of mental health in the US (and the world for that matter). This is disingenuous, that same data shows the majority of the teens surveyed said FB improved their mental health.
  - mbesto 5y ago
    This is news to me and frankly makes no sense. How does the data say that FB both improved mental health and harmed it? Can you share your source?
nyghtly 5y ago
The whistleblower part is internal Facebook research showing that the algorithm is known to be harmful (for example, politically polarizing and hate-mongering) in it's current form. In addition to that internal research, she also revealed during the 60 minutes interview that Facebook used a "weaker" version of the algorithm during the 2020 election cycle in order to prevent disinformation. The weaker version was replaced with the high-engagement strategy after the election. Notably, the Jan 6 insurrection occurred when the high-engagement algorithm was being used. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-misinformation-public-60-minutes-2021-10-03/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-...
- lostmsu 5y ago
  Just clarifying. Why is political polarization harmful?
  - adolph 5y ago
    I'm not certain but in considering your question I came to: Political polarization is a network of cognitive biases which decreases mental models' connection to the reality that people agree on more things than disagree.
    - lostmsu 5y ago
      > Political polarization is the extent to which opinions on an issue are opposed, and the process by which this opposition increases over time. From wiki. Seems obvious. Where did you get, that is has anything to do with cognitive biases?
  - _3wrh 5y ago
    "This 2019 internal report obtained by Haugen says that the parties feel strongly that the change to the algorithm has forced them to skew negative in their communications on Facebook ... leading them into more extreme policy positions." (8:07) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-misinformation-public-60-minutes-2021-10-03/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-... Although the above statement is from a group of European politicians, it's not hard to see the same story playing out in the United States. Take the Covid-19 pandemic, for example. The impact of partisanship on this issue is as clear as day: "There's A Stark Red-Blue Divide When It Comes To States' Vaccination Rates" https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004430257/theres-a-stark-red-blue-divide-when-it-comes-to-states-vaccination-rates https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004430257/theres-a-stark-red... "Ron DeSantis isn't anti-vaccine. But he has started standing shoulder-to-shoulder with those who are." https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/09/15/desantis-flirts-with-the-anti-vaccine-crowd-1391038 https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/09/15/des...
e12e 5y ago
It may be propaganda - but how is "a false story" if it is true?

chmsky00 5y ago

It’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 ago
I 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 ago
  I mean it's fairly well laid out of a topic. Which part specifically are you having trouble with?
  - InsomniacL 5y ago
    are you a bot? I gave a specific example in the post you're replying to.
    - arbitrage 5y ago
      i don't think i'm a bot. what makes you say that?
jtdev 5y ago
Your perspective disregards the likelihood that this whistleblowers input will be used to censor political speech rather than actually protect children and teens online.
xboxnolifes 5y ago
> It’s not “unknown” to technologists. I think the odd bit is that if this information isn't unknown to anyone in technology, even those not working on similar systems, then how is this "whistleblowing". It's like calling informing people about marginal tax rates "whistleblowing" because so many people don't understand how they work.
- anon9001 5y ago
  > It's like calling informing people about marginal tax rates "whistleblowing" because so many people don't understand how they work. You mean like these? * https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tech-mogul-peter-thiel-turned-a-retirement-account-for-the-middle-class-into-a-5-billion-dollar-tax-free-piggy-bank https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tec... * https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    No, neither of those have anything meaningful to do with understanding marginal tax rates.
- aeturnum 5y ago
  It's whistleblowing, in this instance, because Frances Haugen released a bunch of internal documents showing what everyone has been saying. Generally the term is applied to someone who releases information from inside a company or organization showing that their public statements have been deceptive or are out of sync with the internal point of view.
- _hlgc 5y ago
  In this case it's a specific term related to SEC whistleblowing protections. The context is not about whistleblowing for some semblance of public protection, but whistleblowing for protection of investors who may have been misled.
ladyattis 5y ago
>How it all works is very unknown to the average parent. No one complains about not knowing how proximity sensors work in their car. They're just happy that they work and there is in theory someone who keeps the manufacturers responsible. And I think that's the real issue here. Software for years has been treated outside of some very small instances as a value added affair and thus not worthy of investigation or oversight beyond those who fund such development. So all software companies outside of specific situations have been allowed to do what they will so long as it works well enough. Now it seems the situation has gotten more complicated because of the impact of software on non-software conditions/situations. But giving it over to Congress who currently is dominated by the Silent Generation and Boomers who aren't largely as tech savvy or educated to write legislation that will likely benefit Facebook and destroy the Internet as we know it (probably returning to a version of AOL and the like) is in my opinion the worse possible option. I'm not for laissez faire policies but I'm certainly skeptical of Congress not intentionally making claims that their laws will protect privacy all the while they open the Facebook surveillance machine to law enforcement to spy on me and my own in violation of the 4th amendment. And knowing how this SCOTUS who's been virulently anti-privacy especially among the conservative justices then this will be much worse.
roody15 5y ago
“ Pretty entitled to believe you’re the only perspective worth listening to.” Odd statement. I just stated my opinion on the matter. I encourage others getting lots of perspectives and making up their own minds.

scop 5y ago

Let's also remember that Facebook has decimated traditional media. Traditional media seems awfully excited by this "whistleblower"!

gitfan86 5y ago
There is certainly some of that. Cosmopolitan magazine wishes they were the ones making money off of teenage girls insecurities instead of FB. I see this as more of a consumer protection transparency issue. Facebook is saying that they are selling a product that makes the world better, but that isn't true. They are selling a product that prioritizes engagement over happiness. Maybe the same thing is true for Cosmopolitan magazine, but at least Cosmopolitan magazine isn't pretending that it is saving the world.
bryan_w 5y ago
Exactly, "Facebook is manipulating us into thinking bad things" from expert manipulators, The Guardian and NYT

tboyd47 5y ago

I totally agree. If Congress really had a problem with the lack of accountability, then they can repeal the CDA. Presto, now not just Facebook but all tech companies are accountable. If it were really about the children then why don't they go after TikTok? For someone who has only had a 4-year long career in technology and no experience in the public eye, Ms. Haugen seems unusually confident.

colinmhayes 5y ago

This was absolutely unknown to probably at least 90% of the people who use facebook. People on HN largely don't use facebook from what I can tell because they've seen all this stuff that facebook does.

ryandrake 5y ago
Yea, I like to think of my [becoming elderly] parents. They didn't know any of this stuff. I've tried to explain the harms of social media to them but it's tough to do that without deep-diving into algorithm tech-talk, and without the recently divulged evidence you sound like a raving conspiracy theorist. Now, it's being explained in plain language in front of Congress, and on "60 Minutes" which targets their generation directly, and, although I haven't talked to them since, I guarantee they get it now. Remember how long it took to mainstream the idea that cigarettes were bad for you? "We all knew it" for a long time, but it didn't become genuine shared cultural knowledge until long after it was well known.

papito 5y ago

Ooh! "Fake story", "mainstream US narratives", "discourse"! All the greatest hits. You forgot "alternative facts".

sumtechguy 5y ago
It has some of the earmarks of a something is up. You do not go from nobody to 60 min interviews that quick.
- ogaitnas 5y ago
  Oh please, is it that hard to believe she was just repulsed at what she saw while working there? Pretty cynical to believe she has a hidden agenda.
  - Leparamour 5y ago
    >Pretty cynical to believe she has a hidden agenda. She openly calls for more censorship, at least that agenda isn't even hidden.
    - sp332 5y ago
      It's a live program, so I missed that part. What content does she want censored?
- aardvarkr 5y ago
  That "nobody" is a Harvard MBA with a degree in Computer Engineering that's worked at Google, Pinterest, and Facebook as a Data Science with high level access to key data and leaked over ten thousand internal documents who witnessed what she believes is a critical failure of one of the largest companies ever that controls a vast majority of how the world consumes information and communicates with one another. This is a bombshell of a leak and I'm glad the world is paying attention.

ctvo 5y ago

> 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. Can you provide a citation here? People have suspected these things externally. Facebook has always denied. The news here is that an insider has provided documentation that Facebook knew. And I'm not talking strictly about the algorithm, but the harm to teenagers, and the other bits.

therealdrag0 5y ago
My partner and I rolled our eyes at the 'harm to teenagers' bits when we heard NPR talking about it forever. How can anyone be surprised at this? Before instagram everyone bitched about teen-magazines harming teens, is this really surprising or that different? And IIRC the % was incredibly small. It's not like Instagram is leading teenagers off a cliff, it's unhealthy for teenagers who are already unhealthy. SHOCKER!
- igornadj 5y ago
  The difference between engagement algorithms and magazines when it comes to potential risk is in the orders of magnitude. It's well known that engagement algorithms create a feedback loop to trigger negative emotions as they are the easiest way to increase engagement. This is possible with traditional media, but nowhere near the immediacy or effect of an engagement algorithm.

moksly 5y ago

Well yes, but there is also a rather big difference between knowing something and having evidence and testimonies of something. We also “knew” that a lot of the rich families in Denmark were hiding money in tax-havens. We couldn’t act on that knowledge until the Panama papers were leaked to give us evidence or what we knew. You’re certainly right that certain parts of the political leadership are going to use these leaks to further their agenda, but that’s how politics work in a democracy. You use what you get.

jayd16 5y ago

Its a fake story but we've known its true for a long time? Wah?

ogaitnas 5y ago

What is so fake about this story?

Leparamour 5y ago
When was the last time that a 'whistleblower' was interviewed on prime time TV?
- ogaitnas 5y ago
  Snowden has been interviewed a number of times, is he not a whistleblower? Not sure why that makes it suspicious.
- sp332 5y ago
  60 minutes interviewed Rick Bright in May last year.
- infamouscow 5y ago
  Governments like corporate whistleblowers because they stand to gain legitimacy and earn trust. Government whistleblowers have the opposite effect.

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago

In what way could this be possibly be “a fake story?” Do you not believe that it happened? Or is she making stuff up? Or do you just mean that people don’t really actually care about the topic? Or because it’s not previously unknown, it’s too late and public interest is supposed to move on to other topics now? The initial bombshell was around instagram’s affect on teen girls mental health, so calling it an attempt to force FB to kowtow to the US on covid seems like some deep 4D chess conspiracy idea. And calling it fake is ridiculous rhetoric.

hammock 5y ago
OP likely means it's disingenuous- the true intentions are hidden- it's part of a lobbying effort for greater control and consolidation of power.
- ogaitnas 5y ago
  Lobbying efforts by who exactly? And are these efforts trumping Facebook's lobbying?
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  Whose true intentions are hidden, and who is trying to lobby? The person who posted this on HN and all of the people who upvoted it here and all the comments critical of FB here and twitter and twitter users and bloggers and redditors and, yes, traditional news? It seems like the assertion is that this isn't newsworthy... despite the fact that huge amounts of people clearly care, but that this is only really making news for a reason totally separate from the fact that there is new leaked data and people clearly care.
  - hammock 5y ago
    The general idea is that Facebook will assent to more censorship of undesirable content if and only if the same standard is applied to their competitors. This is achieved via legislation of new regulations. And legislation typically needs some semblance of popular support to pass, hence a ginned up/accelerated/forced narrative. The net effect of new regulations would be to shore up Facebook's market share and dominance of social media, since they are the biggest and can most efficiently execute on any new regulations. A similar thing happened in the tobacco industry. For decades tobacco was happy to sell cigs relatively freely. But there was a turning point where they acknowledged their unhealthiness, At this point Big Tobacco actually campaigned for greater regulation, and the net result was a consolidation of the entire industry. There are plenty of other examples as well. Monopoly power is made and preserved by regulation.

mbesto 5y ago

> 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. Known and verified are two very distinct things. Does the public know that Facebook does this? Yes. Do they know it's harmful? Yes. Does Facebook also know this? Yes. Did they tell congress that they know this? No, in fact they told them the opposite. The whistleblower is simply proving that unverified known - that Facebook has done research in its harm and knows they exist. Facebook would say "so what, we're doing stuff to fix it". The most important part is the following: Facebook believes that its implementation for corrective actions of its harm is solely its responsibility. IMO, this is what is so dangerous and revealing. There is no one auditing other than taking "Facebook's word for it". > Yes facebook allows some content that some would consider not to align with mainstream US narratives. This is an incredibly disingenuous description of the situation. Facebook's own (non-public, now publicly leaked) research indicates that Facebook causes harm to teens mental health. The only "US narrative" here is the one backed up my the incredible amount of research supporting the growing issue of mental health in the US (and the world for that matter). EDIT: To further my point and give you a comparison - when a similar thing happened with Tobacco the government was able to control behaviors by (1) forcing tobacco companies to put labels on their products and (2) tax tobacco such that it dissuaded customers to buy. Imagine if William Morris said "we know tobacco causes cancer so we've actively decided to sell 10 million less cartons of tobacco this year". No, they ended selling X million less cartons because of those two measures (among others).

camdat 5y ago
>This is an incredibly disingenuous description of the situation. Facebook's own (non-public, now publicly leaked) research indicates that Facebook causes harm to teens mental health. The only "US narrative" here is the one backed up my the incredible amount of research supporting the growing issue of mental health in the US (and the world for that matter). This is disingenuous, that same data shows the majority of the teens surveyed said FB improved their mental health.
- mbesto 5y ago
  This is news to me and frankly makes no sense. How does the data say that FB both improved mental health and harmed it? Can you share your source?

nyghtly 5y ago

The whistleblower part is internal Facebook research showing that the algorithm is known to be harmful (for example, politically polarizing and hate-mongering) in it's current form. In addition to that internal research, she also revealed during the 60 minutes interview that Facebook used a "weaker" version of the algorithm during the 2020 election cycle in order to prevent disinformation. The weaker version was replaced with the high-engagement strategy after the election. Notably, the Jan 6 insurrection occurred when the high-engagement algorithm was being used. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-misinformation-public-60-minutes-2021-10-03/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-...

lostmsu 5y ago
Just clarifying. Why is political polarization harmful?
- adolph 5y ago
  I'm not certain but in considering your question I came to: Political polarization is a network of cognitive biases which decreases mental models' connection to the reality that people agree on more things than disagree.
  - lostmsu 5y ago
    > Political polarization is the extent to which opinions on an issue are opposed, and the process by which this opposition increases over time. From wiki. Seems obvious. Where did you get, that is has anything to do with cognitive biases?
- _3wrh 5y ago
  "This 2019 internal report obtained by Haugen says that the parties feel strongly that the change to the algorithm has forced them to skew negative in their communications on Facebook ... leading them into more extreme policy positions." (8:07) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-misinformation-public-60-minutes-2021-10-03/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-... Although the above statement is from a group of European politicians, it's not hard to see the same story playing out in the United States. Take the Covid-19 pandemic, for example. The impact of partisanship on this issue is as clear as day: "There's A Stark Red-Blue Divide When It Comes To States' Vaccination Rates" https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004430257/theres-a-stark-red-blue-divide-when-it-comes-to-states-vaccination-rates https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004430257/theres-a-stark-red... "Ron DeSantis isn't anti-vaccine. But he has started standing shoulder-to-shoulder with those who are." https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/09/15/desantis-flirts-with-the-anti-vaccine-crowd-1391038 https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/09/15/des...

e12e 5y ago

It may be propaganda - but how is "a false story" if it is true?