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> Nothing the whistleblower has revealed is shocking or previously unknown. Yes facebook tweaks an algorithm on your news feed to drive engagement and make mone
by 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 agoThis 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?
- makomk 5y agoThat seems pretty straightforward to me - there are a huge number of teenagers who use Facebook, some of whom say that it improved their mental health and a smaller group who say it made it worse. The media reporting only talked about the teens who said Facebook was harming their mental health rather than the broader picture. Which, if accurate, would mean that closing down Facebook would actually hurt teens' mental health overall but anyone getting their news from the mainstream media would falsely think it'd help. This kind of deception using facts that're technically true is really common in the mainstream media, and Facebook in particular has pissed off journalists by hitting their industry hard both in the pocketbook and in terms of the amount of power they hold in society.
- mbesto 5y agoI just double checked and we don't have access to the Facebook study (only excerpts and interpretations from WSJ - i was originally referring to external studies). So let's just state the obvious, if the conclusion of the study was that Facebook has an overall net benefit to mental health then why wouldn't Facebook be forthcoming with the report? Congress has explicitly asked them for it, so why wouldn't they produce. That's what I'm confused about.
- camdat 5y agoSorry about the delay getting back here. They have been forthcoming with this data. See here: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/research-teen-well-being-and-instagram/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/research-teen-well-being-a... I will correct myself and say the majority surveyed believe Instagram has a neutral or better impact.
- 5y ago