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Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

• pupppet 5y ago
  >If we didn't care about fighting harmful content, then why would we employ so many more people dedicated to this than any other company in our space -- even ones larger than us? And yet I have family who are absolutely convinced there are nanobots in the vaccine.
• hlau 5y ago
  Am I the only one who’s annoyed that the message is gated and that FB somehow needs to track everyone who has seen what I imagine amounts to a mea culpa for their clusterfuck of a week. It’s so weird reading about Web3 and the focus presumably on digital sovereignty and privacy and to see a platform moving backwards and away from any semblance of an open internet.
• elihu 5y ago
  > "The deeper concern with an outage like this isn't how many people switch to competitive services or how much money we lose, but what it means for the people who rely on our services to communicate with loved ones, run their businesses, or support their communities." ...and the deeper concern from the rest of us outside of Facebook is how the DNS servers can become overloaded with requests when a big system like this goes down.
• iandanforth 5y ago
  Has anyone trained a language model to generate these content-free apology / explanation blurbs from Zuck?
  • ad5dbbe57ccd 5y ago
    No, but I have an excellent compression algorithm that is completely lossless in the semantic domain.
    • outworlder 5y ago
      Is this algorithm called '/dev/null'?
  • Spooky23 5y ago
    I think Zuck writes them himself and nobody has the cojones to edit. Facebook has had a really consistent, weird, “true believer” voice over the years. I can’t believe they can keep indoctrinated PR folks around that long. It’s pretty scary. The dude is too rich and powerful.
  • spython 5y ago
    No, but I have generated the look at Mark Zuckerberg's face as he was writing it: https://rybakov.com/images/hiq/sadmark4.jpg https://rybakov.com/images/hiq/sadmark4.jpg
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• pluc 5y ago
  You must log in to continue.
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• kelt 5y ago
  Mmm, requires login, can anyone share the post? Thanks in advance!
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  • sxg 5y ago
    Odd. Doesn’t seem to require log in for me. The post just loads without having to click anything.
    • nkozyra 5y ago
      Same. Which is very unusual for fb.
    • kevingadd 5y ago
      Login required here too, I bet it has something to do with cookies or adblock.
      • privacyking 5y ago
        Do you use a VPN? I do and it requires login, but not if disabled.
    • wrycoder 5y ago
      I got a popup with Zuckerberg's face and an opportunity to sign up. At the bottom of the dialog, click on "Not Now".
    • kelt 5y ago
      I do have adblock, maybe huh!
  • redindian75 5y ago
    I wanted to share a note I wrote to everyone at our company. --- Hey everyone: it's been quite a week, and I wanted to share some thoughts with all of you. First, the SEV that took down all our services yesterday was the worst outage we've had in years. We've spent the past 24 hours debriefing how we can strengthen our systems against this kind of failure. This was also a reminder of how much our work matters to people. The deeper concern with an outage like this isn't how many people switch to competitive services or how much money we lose, but what it means for the people who rely on our services to communicate with loved ones, run their businesses, or support their communities. Second, now that today's testimony is over, I wanted to reflect on the public debate we're in. I'm sure many of you have found the recent coverage hard to read because it just doesn't reflect the company we know. We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health. It's difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives. At the most basic level, I think most of us just don't recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted. Many of the claims don't make any sense. If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place? If we didn't care about fighting harmful content, then why would we employ so many more people dedicated to this than any other company in our space -- even ones larger than us? If we wanted to hide our results, why would we have established an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting on what we're doing? And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world? At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being. That's just not true. For example, one move that has been called into question is when we introduced the Meaningful Social Interactions change to News Feed. This change showed fewer viral videos and more content from friends and family -- which we did knowing it would mean people spent less time on Facebook, but that research suggested it was the right thing for people's well-being. Is that something a company focused on profits over people would do? The argument that we deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit is deeply illogical. We make money from ads, and advertisers consistently tell us they don't want their ads next to harmful or angry content. And I don't know any tech company that sets out to build products that make people angry or depressed. The moral, business and product incentives all point in the opposite direction. But of everything published, I'm particularly focused on the questions raised about our work with kids. I've spent a lot of time reflecting on the kinds of experiences I want my kids and others to have online, and it's very important to me that everything we build is safe and good for kids. The reality is that young people use technology. Think about how many school-age kids have phones. Rather than ignoring this, technology companies should build experiences that meet their needs while also keeping them safe. We're deeply committed to doing industry-leading work in this area. A good example of this work is Messenger Kids, which is widely recognized as better and safer than alternatives. We've also worked on bringing this kind of age-appropriate experience with parental controls for Instagram too. But given all the questions about whether this would actually be better for kids, we've paused that project to take more time to engage with experts and make sure anything we do would be helpful. Like many of you, I found it difficult to read the mischaracterization of the research into how Instagram affects young people. As we wrote in our Newsroom post explaining this: "The research actually demonstrated that many teens we heard from feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced. In fact, in 11 of 12 areas on the slide referenced by the Journal -- including serious areas like loneliness, anxiety, sadness and eating issues -- more teenage girls who said they struggled with that issue also said Instagram made those difficult times better rather than worse." But when it comes to young people's health or well-being, every negative experience matters. It is incredibly sad to think of a young person in a moment of distress who, instead of being comforted, has their experience made worse. We have worked for years on industry-leading efforts to help people in these moments and I'm proud of the work we've done. We constantly use our research to improve this work further. Similar to balancing other social issues, I don't believe private companies should make all of the decisions on their own. That's why we have advocated for updated internet regulations for several years now. I have testified in Congress multiple times and asked them to update these regulations. I've written op-eds outlining the areas of regulation we think are most important related to elections, harmful content, privacy, and competition. We're committed to doing the best work we can, but at some level the right body to assess tradeoffs between social equities is our democratically elected Congress. For example, what is the right age for teens to be able to use internet services? How should internet services verify people's ages? And how should companies balance teens' privacy while giving parents visibility into their activity? If we're going to have an informed conversation about the effects of social media on young people, it's important to start with a full picture. We're committed to doing more research ourselves and making more research publicly available. That said, I'm worried about the incentives that are being set here. We have an industry-leading research program so that we can identify important issues and work on them. It's disheartening to see that work taken out of context and used to construct a false narrative that we don't care. If we attack organizations making an effort to study their impact on the world, we're effectively sending the message that it's safer not to look at all, in case you find something that could be held against you. That's the conclusion other companies seem to have reached, and I think that leads to a place that would be far worse for society. Even though it might be easier for us to follow that path, we're going to keep doing research because it's the right thing to do. I know it's frustrating to see the good work we do get mischaracterized, especially for those of you who are making important contributions across safety, integrity, research and product. But I believe that over the long term if we keep trying to do what's right and delivering experiences that improve people's lives, it will be better for our community and our business. I've asked leaders across the company to do deep dives on our work across many areas over the next few days so you can see everything that we're doing to get there. When I reflect on our work, I think about the real impact we have on the world -- the people who can now stay in touch with their loved ones, create opportunities to support themselves, and find community. This is why billions of people love our products. I'm proud of everything we do to keep building the best social products in the world and grateful to all of you for the work you do here every day.
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• pshc 5y ago
  Three minutes of my life I'm never going to get back. You can stop reading by paragraph two at "We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health." All Facebook cares about is engagement.
  • quadrangle 5y ago
    I have NO doubt that if you asked Mark to push a button in which all the engagement were healthy, he'd do it after being assured the engagement amount wouldn't change. He probably does care about safety, well-being and mental health" (though not about serial commas apparently). He cares about them in the same way that the vaping companies care about lung health (they exist to reduce cigarette smoking, right?)
  • andregumieri 5y ago
    and money, don't forget that
  • mpd 5y ago
    I stopped reading about two seconds in, when it popped up some dumb thing trying to get me to log in / sign up.
    • mst 5y ago
      I did think the fact that his "we're not actually pure amoral engagement maximisers" article was gated behind first signing up and logging in was just perfect under the circumstances. Honestly seemed to be quite sufficient of a summary of whatever the text was, to a great extent.
  • gordon_freeman 5y ago
    Same sentiment after reading this. He is basically saying "we have industry leading research team so even if we don't make decisions align to their recommendations, we care deeply about their work?"
  • sfblah 5y ago
    Yeah. The second paragraph honestly just made me dislike him and want to close my account.
• lowbloodsugar 5y ago
  This guy is great at this. There might be no greater sophist.
• myfartsarefoul 5y ago
  Here’s my statement: Fuck off.
• josh_today 5y ago
  This was my favorite: “If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place”
  • lmkg 5y ago
    "The best way to predict the future is to create it."
  • decebalus1 5y ago
    He should ask the tobacco industry or the oil industry. History rhymes.
  • cratermoon 5y ago
    Same reason the tobacco industry created research programs to look at the health effects of smoking. Neither their nor Facebook's research could ever be mistaken of "industry-leading", though.
    • umvi 5y ago
      Yeah but in Big Tobacco's case they made sure the research reflected their products favorably. Why would Facebook create research programs that have outcomes unfavorable to their core product?
      • cratermoon 5y ago
        They didn't. That's my point.
      • monocasa 5y ago
        Big tobacco's _published_ research reflected their product favorably. Maybe a better example is oil, where because of legal issues we were able to peer into unpublished research as the public. They indisputably knew about anthropomorphic climate change back in at least the early 80s and continued to push policies to the contrary because otherwise was against their bottom line. They just used their research in order to understand what was coming and create propaganda ahead of the curve.
• sayonaraman 5y ago
  These are words by great CEO, fight these baseless accusations in court like you would fight any slander. These witch hunts must stop.
  • cracell 5y ago
    Ok... First off there's no way Zuckerberg wrote this. Might've been involved but these are the words of a marketing team working with a legal team. Secondly why do you see Zuckerberg as a great CEO?
    • sayonaraman 5y ago
      so many CEOs would come back with tail tucked between their legs when there is an aggressive PR attack, it's so refreshing to see someone unapologetic for a change, standing their ground against blatant lies and angry mobs with pitchforks. This gives hope in the American future.
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      • Aritch89 5y ago
        Hey, can you help me understand why you consider the comments and media around this statement a blatant lie? Im absolutely in support of people speaking their mind, especially in today’s culture but Im not sure why the public opinion of there being legitimate effects from social media on people, specifically Facebook, would be a blatant lie in your eyes?
        • sayonaraman 5y ago
          what they call "divisive and extremist actions" that need to be censored is basically anything which doesn't agree with their political ideology. It's a direct attack on free speech.
          • 5y ago
• ulrashida 5y ago
  Hah. Loading the page then results in a giant picture of Zuck blocking the content inviting me to "See more of Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook" by logging in. No thanks Mark, I've seen enough.
• DaveSchmindel 5y ago
  > ...industry-leading... This self-proclaimed adjective was thrown in the mix five separate times within this note in an effort to explain how great the work that FB delivers is (and likely, to imply that the negativity applied to FB in the public eye is unfair). Saying Facebook is "industry-leading" with respect to social media and technology is like saying Priscilla is your favorite wife, dude. Put your money where your mouth is, or you'll likely continue to lose it as various outlets reported this week.
  • throwaway09223 5y ago
    I think you're missing some key nuance. Zuck mentions the research as industry leading because the research has uncovered something deeply embarrassing for Facebook. It's relevant that this is "industry leading" because no one else has done this work. The implication is that the same patterns at Facebook are likely true with other forms of media.
    • isignal 5y ago
      Other researchers don’t have free access to the same data, so their own research is industry leading by default :) Anyway, the term is intended to be used as PR to appeal to the media, I assume, than to be really accurate.
• hokumguru 5y ago
  Honestly am I the only one that doesn’t think that Facebook is that bad? Some of those points that he makes really should make you stop and think.
  • smolder 5y ago
    No, you're not the only one. There are other people who are ignorant of how bad Facebook is.
  • eclipxe 5y ago
    Agreed. Facebook is a mirror to society.
  • spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Which points made you stop and think
    • anomaloustho 5y ago
      I think Facebook is “that bad”, but one point I thought was believable was about major advertisers not wanting to be associated with hate mongering posts in the first place. I’m prone to believe that, but also not sure that is has anything to do with the other issues at hand.
      • rumblerock 5y ago
        I'm not convinced that this is a real concern for most advertisers. Facebook and its properties are so big that they're a potential revenue source you can't ignore. Also, it's different than your ads programmatically appearing on some extremist website for the world to openly make the association. Everyone lives in their own little bubble, and they know the ads have little to do with the content they're seeing, and more with what they engage with or are more likely to buy.
    • ahahahahah 5y ago
      For example: > In fact, in 11 of 12 areas on the slide referenced by the Journal -- including serious areas like loneliness, anxiety, sadness and eating issues -- more teenage girls who said they struggled with that issue also said Instagram made those difficult times better rather than worse. All the reporting has been about how the research found that Instagram was so terrible for teenage girls, but that seems to be a total mischaracterization. Honestly, it seems like if you ask teenage girls about anything (clothing stores, schools, television) there's going to be a mix of positive and negative experiences. Is the bar we are holding facebook to that no matter how much good they do that any negative experiences outweigh that? Is that a bar we would hold anything else to?
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• chevman 5y ago
  This is the type of corporate thinking characteristic of people who've been in their roles too long - over invested, myopic, and out of touch. The real question is, what is the end game for Zuckerberg and who takes over FB next? This may be the inflection point on the curve.
  • istorical 5y ago
    Zuckerberg IS facebook. He controls it. Who's to say even if the main FB app and IG app and WhatsApp apps all lost their entire userbases and revenues went to 0.05% of what they are now, that he wouldn't just run the 500 person skeleton of what they currently are and just focus on his latest pet project, whether it be VR or something else. Honestly that's what I'd do if I was a billionaire with a passion for technology and a failing company but with millions in cash reserves.
• igotshadowband 5y ago
  Here’s my statement: Fuck off.
  • bamboozled 5y ago
    Love the Dirty Harry vibes of this comment.
• titzer 5y ago
  > Now that today's testimony is over, I wanted to reflect on the public debate we're in. I'm sure many of you have found the recent coverage hard to read because it just doesn't reflect the company we know. Yeah, we know you don't know, because you're looking at it from on top of a mountain of 100 billion dollars, Mark. There isn't a single damned thing that can change your picture of it being the absolute greatest thing ever. > We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health. What you care about, and what you say you care about, are nothing compared to your actions. > It's difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives. We don't know your motives, other than the obvious ones. We know your actions. > At the most basic level, I think most of us just don't recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted. That's because you live in a big dumb bubble where chat apps are somehow world-changing innovations and creepy stalker behavior is completely fine to you. You are out of touch and people are screaming it at you. You think you are entitled to encroach on everyone's private lives, intermediate on every interaction and mine it for vulnerabilities to auction off to advertisers. Your entire model of the world is broken, Mark. No wonder nothing makes sense. Stopped reading after this point. I'm sick of billionaires with megaphones blaring their virtues.
  • kumarvvr 5y ago
    > I'm sick of billionaires with megaphones blaring their virtues As a society, the US has shifted its values from intellectually sound principles, to what ever rich people shout out. I vomit in my mouth when I see videos of people showing currency, of people talking to you about "doing the hustle", etc etc. US has fallen into an abyss of moral decline, where the value of your words are directly proportional to the amount of wealth you have managed to gather, no matter the means.
    • saulpw 5y ago
      Worthington's Law in action. More Money == Better Than.
    • Ansil849 5y ago
      > As a society, the US has shifted its values from intellectually sound principles, to what ever rich people shout out. When has this not been the case? Politicians in America are traditionally wealthy people.
• awinter-py 5y ago
  non-paywalled link?
  • andrewxdiamond 5y ago
    There is a "Not now" button to bypass login
    • 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
      You made me go back and check. I don’t have a ‘not now’ button to bypass login. Weird.
• seneca 5y ago
  Facebook is an awful environment, but this political witch hunt is many times more dangerous than anything social media can do. It's a charade, parading out the typical "threat to children" and "dangerous to society" rhetoric politicians always use when they want to grab power. The entire goal is to make a pretense to control speech online. Stop using Facebook, and stop falling for authoritarian claptrap.
  • colinmhayes 5y ago
    > stop falling for authoritarian claptrap If only it were so easy.
• cheesecake_luvr 5y ago
  Ban Facebook 1 month before an election.
• tkinom 5y ago
  Commander BGP (aka DATA) entered the "sleep" command. The faceborgs found they can't enter building, connect to the collectives or take over the Galaxy.
• rvz 5y ago
  Translation and TL;DR: It’s business as usual and your privacy is going to pay for it. Now login back into Facebook and keep on scrolling!
• mbesto 5y ago
  > If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place? > If we wanted to hide our results, why would we have established an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting on what we're doing? This is HILARIOUSLY out of touch with reality. You don't call someone a whistleblower if the reports they leaked were TRANSPARENT and PUBLIC. Seriously what is wrong with this man? Does he have any clue whatsoever what impact that his majority control over Facebook has over the behavior of the world?
  • slg 5y ago
    >If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place? I wonder why tobacco companies studied lung cancer and oil companies studied climate change. Was it because those industries thought those issues were more important than profit?
    • ausudhz 5y ago
      Indeed. Was important for them to show a different narrative that let people think that tobacco was good and oil was not affecting the environment that much. So same for Facebook I guess, they want to show us that they care and that they're not the evil here. There are plenty of unbiased independent research that show the opposite of what they keep claiming
    • philistine 5y ago
      I'm so baffled by Mr. Zuckerberg's response here: the core complaint is that research was sidelined and deemphasized, not that it didn't happen at all. We can both be satisfied Facebook is seriously researching its impact on society, and also appalled that it has been too slow to act on the results of serious internal research. Our complaints with Facebook are complex; Mr. Zuckerberg is giving such a naive response.
    • mbesto 5y ago
      > Was it because those industries thought those issues were more important than profit? I take a more cynical view - they wanted to get ahead of the narrative before the public did. It meant a better PR angle, a more well thought out strategy to thwart external pressure, and a better forecast on how long you could milk the cow.
• jimkleiber 5y ago
  For me, it's the almost complete lack of guilt or awareness that his company has caused pain and even death. Yes, FB and its acquisitions have brought many many good things to my life and to the lives of others. They have also brought a lot of pain to me and to others as well. No service only provides good. He doesn't seem to say this. Instead of him trying to remind us "we do good things" I wish he would also say "and with any platform so large, we are going to make decisions that will hurt people. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our culture that we may not be aware of the pain we're causing to others and, while the research can help, sometimes we still miss it. Judging by the backlash of many people here, while many feel very grateful for FB, some may feel a lot of pain when thinking of our services and we want to do better and we need your help." Something that expresses some hint of awareness that many people are being hurt and a desire to take the lead to try to fix it.
  • wpietri 5y ago
    For me there's a useful distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt is where you fall short of your own standards and seek to rectify it. Shame is where you feel bad about falling short in the eyes of others. Large corporations often perform shame, but they rarely behave as if key actors experience guilt. So they'll make reforms only as long as there's significant pushback. If Zuckerberg actually cared, he would be writing letters like this even when the heat is off. He and they would have sincerely worked to fix these problems from early on.
    • jimkleiber 5y ago
      I really appreciate this distinction. I've noticed that when I feel ashamed, I tend to hide from someone, whereas when I feel guilty I tend to feel driven to open up to apologize to them.
  • marstall 5y ago
    Well phrased. He needs to take the complaints of harm at face value and acknowledge their reality.
• kgraves 5y ago
  I think at this point, if you are currently employed at Facebook, the best way to make an impact is to outright leave. Period.
  • meowtimemania 5y ago
    Is there a social media that's actually "better" than Facebook? It's still not clear to me why Facebook is so much worse than Twitter, youtube, reddit, tik tok, etc. I think any social media, with significant adoption will have the same issues that we observe with facebook right?
• nickloewen 5y ago
  With the caveat that I don’t know much about Facebook’s research projects… the question “If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place?” sets alarm bells ringing for me—because I can imagine a cigarette company saying the same thing about the scientists they hired to argue that smoking isn’t so bad after all, or an oil company saying the same thing about the scientists they hired to argue that it’s too soon to act on climate change (especially since they’re “leading the charge” on renewable energy research). (I’m influenced here by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s work in “Merchants of Doubt.”)
  • ravi-delia 5y ago
    I think that the point here is that all the controversy is because of a study from Facebook's own research. If a cigarette company came out with a study showing cigarettes were dangerous, perhaps it would be a different story. Of course, I wouldn't say that being aware of the problems your product causes makes you less culpable; just the opposite.
    • nickloewen 5y ago
      Yes those are fair points! At the same time, I think that when it comes to assessing whether the company is acting in good faith or not, it is important to consider not just what research they do or don’t do, but also which findings they choose to promote and which they choose to keep internal… (Part of the fiasco with tobacco or climate is that those companies knew the risks associated with their products well enough, but didn’t publicize the findings that might cast them in a bad light in the same way that they publicized the findings that supported a “let’s wait and see” approach to policy. See for example https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...)
    • panaffa 5y ago
      Its no different from exxon realizing climate change is real and hiding itm A scandal that shows no morales, but not illegal.
• flomk 5y ago
  Does anyone else remember when facebook got rid of the friends only feed ~2014/2015? That's when I stopped using facebook so I'm not sure if it's been brought back since then, but I'm assuming they haven't. To me getting rid of that feed is in direct conflict with "Meaningful Social Interactions". I'm not sure if anyone else feels the same, but a lot of this post feels very gaslighty to me.
  • vanilla_nut 5y ago
    Agreed. That was a moment for me when I decided to remove the Facebook app and eventually delete my account. A social network that forces you to look at garbage other than friends’ posts is not really a “social network”.
• subhuman445 5y ago
  Marc Benioff was right. Facebook is the new cigarettes. The internet has transformed our lives and societies in dramatic ways. Some of them for the better, many of them for the worse. At the heart of the damage being done today, you will find none other than social media, and in particular, Facebook.
• mjirv 5y ago
  > If we didn't care about fighting harmful content, then why would we employ so many more people dedicated to this than any other company in our space -- even ones larger than us? Maybe I am missing something obvious, but who is he talking about here?
  • thewarrior 5y ago
    Google - YouTube
• tinyhouse 5y ago
  He is right about polarization in the US. The people are the problems not FB.
• jedberg 5y ago
  I'm having a hard time reconciling all this right now. On the one hand, from the outside, I can see the actions that Facebook takes and they seem awfully guilty of what they are accused of. But on the other hand, I personally know and have previously worked with some of the people who work on trust and safety, specifically for kids. Good people who have kids of their own and who care about protecting people, especially children. The best I can come up with is that Facebook is so big that the "evil" is an emergent property of all the different things that are happening. It's so big no one can comprehend the big picture of it all, so while the individuals involved have good intentions with what they are working on, the sum total of all employees' intentions ends up broken. So maybe Zuck is telling the truth here, that they are trying to fix all this. But no one can see the forrest from the trees. I can't reconcile it any other way.
  • rhaksw 5y ago
    They're in a tough spot by design. Much of Facebook is private. How can they possibly be transparent enough to satisfy critics about what actions they take? Share too much and another Cambridge Analytica situation pops up. Share too little and researchers decry coverup over lack of access.
  • btown 5y ago
    If a company desired to be able to sow doubt if its impacts on society ever came under a microscope... one gambit (and an effective one, based on your reaction) would be to hire people who genuinely and passionately research and work on trust and safety, then systematically under-resource their teams and gaslight them into thinking there are fundamental reasons their recommendations must be ignored. For instance, contrast Zuckerberg's statement here: > And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world? With such severe under-resourcing and deprioritization that one person had the literal weight of worldwide election integrity on her shoulders, as revealed more than a year ago: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook... > The memo is a damning account of Facebook’s failures. It’s the story of Facebook abdicating responsibility for malign activities on its platform that could affect the political fate of nations outside the United States or Western Europe. It's also the story of a junior employee wielding extraordinary moderation powers that affected millions of people without any real institutional support, and the personal torment that followed. Haugen echoes the same in https://archive.is/tQwE9 https://archive.is/tQwE9 : > She soon grew skeptical that her team could make an impact, she said. Her team had few resources, she said, and she felt the company put growth and user engagement ahead of what it knew through its own research about its platforms’ ill effects. The fact of the matter is that if Zuckerberg were to say "I'm going to pour our profits into trust and safety and abuse avoidance in order to ensure that our position as a trusted brand is sustainable for generations to come," his high levels of voting control and clear defense to any allegations that this was against long-term shareholder interest would fully make that possible. The fact that quite the opposite has happened should be considered with much more weight than his words in a reactive press statement.
• tinyhouse 5y ago
  He is right about polarization in the US. The people are the problem more than FB or any other social network.
  • outworlder 5y ago
    Not when Facebook act as a polarizing echo chamber.
• baby 5y ago
  > If we attack organizations making an effort to study their impact on the world, we're effectively sending the message that it's safer not to look at all, in case you find something that could be held against you. Someone on HN actually linked to the slides, and it does seem like there's a lot of FUD being created. This reminds me of moxie talking about damaging research focusing on Signal: > To me, this article reads as a better example of the problems with the security industry and the way security research is done today, because I think the lesson to anyone watching is clear: don't build security into your products, because that makes you a target for researchers, even if you make the right decisions, and regardless of whether their research is practically important or not. It's much more effective to be Telegram: just leave cryptography out of everything, except for your marketing. source: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=moxie&next=16117487 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=moxie&next=16117487
• keeglin 5y ago
  This is one of those moments to remind everyone that computers and computer algorithms do not, and can not, replace human empathy.
• apausa 5y ago
  Taleb is going to love this one.
• skissane 5y ago
  > And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world? That's a point I've made myself before, and I think there is some truth to it. Social media can't explain the high and increasing degree of US political polarisation, because other countries (including other English-speaking countries) consume social media about as much and yet have less polarisation, and don't show the same degree of increase in it either. The real explanation must lie in other aspects of US culture, or the US political system
  • downWidOutaFite 5y ago
    Is it true that polarization has not increased in other countries? Is there published data on it? Would be interesting to see which countries are experiencing historically high levels of polarization.
    • skissane 5y ago
      NBER have a working paper on this question: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26669/w26669.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26669/w266... Their main results are on the page numbered 20 (page 21 of the PDF) – their data shows political polarisation has grown (over the period 1980-2020) in six OECD countries and declined in six OECD countries. The six countries where it is has grown (in order from greatest to smallest growth) are the US, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Canada, and New Zealand. The six countries where it has declined (in order from greatest to smallest decline) are (West) Germany, Sweden, Norway, Britain, Australia and Japan. They don't have any direct measures of social media use in their source data; the closest things they have are Internet penetration and consumption of online news, but they found no statistically significant correlation between those and polarisation. The only clearly statistically significant correlation they could find was a positive correlation between polarisation of societal elites and that of the general population (p=0.011). They also found a positive correlation between increasing racial diversity and political polarisation which was of borderline statistical significance (p=0.052).
• mtc010170 5y ago
  > This is why billions of people love of products. There aren’t billions of people who love your products, Mark. Use maybe.. but I wouldn’t count on it staying that way at this rate.
• aaomidi 5y ago
  Gonna be honest. This isn't a level playing field. It's not like Zuckerberg sat there and wrote this. They have the money to find the best psychologists etc etc to write a response in such a way that resonates more with people vs a whistleblower that's taking on goliath, is stressed, etc. What really should happen is calling a few random employees based on an organizational chart in and making them testify under oath what they're doing. No NDA, no right to fire the employees afterwards for at least a few years.
  • imilk 5y ago
    Well for all the money & resources they have, it's a pretty tone deaf message. No remorse or even the slightest admission that they could be doing better. Pretty much asking everyone to not believe what we've all been experiencing for the last few years.
    • hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
      Apparently the lack of remorse is part of Zuck's new "no more apologies" PR strategy, as reported in the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-facebook-project-amplify.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-fac... (archive link: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-facebook-project-amplify.html https://archive.is/newest/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21... )
      • jimkleiber 5y ago
        I don't remember him communicating with much remorse ever since Facebook started. His communication style seems very similar to how I think it's been over the years. Does it seem different to you?
        • hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
          Yes, it does seem different to me. I remember him often publicly apologizing after big controversies caused by Facebook's actions. If you search the web for "timeline of zuckerberg apologies" you'll find articles enumerating his public apologies over the years.
• smoldesu 5y ago
  > That's why we have advocated for updated internet regulations for several years now. I have testified in Congress multiple times and asked them to update these regulations. Who's this supposed to benefit? Facebook is inveritably a part of PRISM, so it's not like these bills are going to be drafted in favor of the American people (much less those who use Facebook internationally). If anything, I'm expecting a "Curbing Online Terrorism/Child Harassment/Hate Speech Act of 2022" to be right around the corner, granting our great and benevolent government even more unfettered insight into our lives. It's not very surprising though, I don't take Zuckerberg for a strong-willed man. I believe that he'd sooner plunge our nation into a surveillance state than giving up his mansions and yacht.
• karaterobot 5y ago
  When Facebook was down yesterday, I was surprised to see so many people on HN posting about it with what looked like the nervous energy of people in low-level withdrawal, because there is so much antipathy about it in threads like this one. It's possible that there's totally non-overlapping sets of HN users in both cases, but realistically I think most people just have a complex relationship with it: when Facebook is offline, it's a major event in their lives, but when it's back up, it's worthy of nothing but overt contempt. What most people (here, and everywhere) can't seem to do is just minimize the footprint of Facebook in their lives.
• anon84827820 5y ago
  the reality is that people would stop using facebook if they really hated it that much, and yet it still has 2.5 billion MAUs. there's a very loud minority of people who keep screaming "facebook bad!" because the NYT told them to (because facebook is eating their lunch). facebook doesn't inject your brain with foreign chemicals, it doesn't hold a gun to your head and force you to scroll through your timeline. don't like using facebook? close your fucking web browser.
  • alphabettsy 5y ago
    I don’t like to use Facebook, but extended family events are often planned on Facebook, local businesses sometime only use Facebook and Marketplace has become a popular alternative to Craigslist. As usual, it’s not that simple. It should be ok to complain about Facebook and ask it to be better.
    • anon84827820 5y ago
      it's okay to complain about facebook and ask it to be better, but look at the situation we're in. people are claiming zuckerberg is responsible for the capitol insurrection and the genocide in Myanmar. we've reached full-on hysteria at this point, facebook derangement syndrome is real.
  • Aritch89 5y ago
    I think a lot of people don’t have the self awareness to realize the impacts on their own personal life. Many people aren’t able to be introspective or even fathom the possibility of potential defects of the internet or social media. It’s one thing to say the thing itself is bad. It’s another to say what’s it’s doing to them is bad and they need to initiate change for themselves. People get addicted to habits/ mindsets and that’s just as powerful as drugs.Understand your audience. That being said, a large number of people are also pleased and are either able to use it without being affected by the negative effects or being ok with them/ not believing they are being harmed. I believe technology and the ability to connect can be a powerful and positive force when used in a healthy way.
  • reducesuffering 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
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• shamino 5y ago
  > Similar to balancing other social issues, I don't believe private companies should make all of the decisions on their own. Then give up majority control. This article needs a listen in compassion. It's all, "no we're not", instead of, "we understand why people feel this way and this is what we need to do"
• Ansil849 5y ago
  > If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place? I mean...precisely to be able to control that research. Exactly like companies in other sectors (tobacco|oil|pharma|AI). It's asinine that this is presented as a rhetorical question [1]. For those (myself, as well) comparing portions of this response to tobacco, oil, and pharma companies controlling (and manipulating/suppressing) research, an example to keep in mind that's much closer to home would be Google censuring negative AI research [2]. [1] See for example, The Influence of Industry Sponsorship on the Research Agenda: A Scoping Review https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6187765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6187765/. [2] 'Google told its scientists to 'strike a positive tone' in AI research - documents' https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-research-focus/google-told-its-scientists-to-strike-a-positive-tone-in-ai-research-documents-idUSKBN28X1CB https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-research-...
• axguscbklp 5y ago
  Very calm in tone. In Zuckerberg's place, I would have been tempted to instead write something like this: "Hi, censorious ninnies. In the 50s you would have been blaming godlessness for hurting children, in the 90s you would have been blaming video games for hurting children, now you blame Facebook. Please take your desire to police content on Facebook even more than we already police it and shove it up your own ass." I have no love for Facebook, but my problem with it is not that I think they police content too little, it is that I think they police content too much. No, I do not want to police content on Facebook to save children. Similarly, I do not want to ban controversial books, I do not want to ban extreme sports, I do not want to ban fast food, and I do not want to ban many other things that sometimes hurt people. If I have to choose between, on the one hand, Facebook with all of its shadiness and, on the other, puritanical moral busybodies who want to control what people see "for their own good" - well, I choose Facebook.
  • imilk 5y ago
    Well you've demonstrated pretty clearly why you don't write public statements for large companies.
• deleted 5y ago
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• annadane 5y ago
  It's a good statement, I just wish he'd spend more time on 'yes, I stole the original Facebook, and I tricked the Whatsapp founders into giving up their company to me, and I've routinely lied in the past, but moving forward...'
• jefb 5y ago
  Yesterday free speech was so important that platforms must syndicate all topics equally and fairly. Today these platforms are so extremely dangerous to society that they should be shut down entirely. I’m not a fb apologist by any means, but maybe we should stop blaming these websites for everything and invest in education instead.
  • bogwog 5y ago
    > I’m not a fb apologist by any means, but maybe we should stop blaming these websites for everything and invest in education instead. Even educated people are susceptible to content that is specifically designed to incite outrage and divide us. Facebook (and other sites) optimize for that type of content because it maximizes engagement. Teenage girls developing body image issues also apparently maximizes engagement. If there's any framing here that absolves Facebook of culpability, it's that everyone else is doing it too, and that there are no laws/regulations in place to prevent it... But even then, it's still obviously immoral to anyone paying attention, and the employees responsible for it at Facebook have no excuse for not realizing that. They chose to act immorally.
• jwmoz 5y ago
  Can't read it, don't have an account to log in with :D
• mooreed 5y ago
  Honestly I have been so happy with the unreasonable effectiveness of RSS readers. It’s just incredibly delightful, and wish it weren’t as niche. However, perhaps I should revel in its ability to fly just off the radar.
• behindai 5y ago
  "At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being. That's just not true."... SERIOUSLY?
• deleted 5y ago
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• idworks1 5y ago
  Seriously, as someone who does not use Facebook because I think it is harmful, I think we should put ourselves in his shoes for a second. There is no right way to answer Facebook scale questions, seriously. What would you do?
• getpost 5y ago
  "You must log in to continue." Is this posted elsewhere with no login requirement?
• jbschirtzs 5y ago
  Billionaire says company that made him billions good. Evidence: all the billions he has spent on making the world better...
• mr_pots 5y ago
  I don't ever ( except this ) post here and don't use Facebook and trying my very best to get all my contacts to at least try something different other than whatsapp. I've not read the statement but I'm pretty much sure I know the gist of it. The easiest thing I/You can control is what apps are installed on your phone and I choose to not have them. I find Facebook and Instagram is incredibly toxic walled garden even just a lurker like me.It is fair to say that most people have Facebook/Instagram for fear of missing out on some event of some kind. I suppose why I posting is that no matter how much bad Media/press Facebook gets people will be people and just continue on. I even think mark Zuckerberg could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still people would use Facebook. Anyway rant over.
• normac2 5y ago
  Some of this highlights an issue that I think about a lot (and it's obviously not just me): the duty of corporations to maximize profit of shareholders (as represented by the majority vote of the board, as I understand it) over all other concerns. Zuckerberg writes this: > At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being. That's just not true. Last I heard, he owned the voting shares of the company by a razor thin margin (~ 53%). If he owned even 0.1% less than half of the company, wouldn't this sentence be confessing to unlawful activity? Unless, of course, we take a legalistic reading that he really means they maximize profit in the short term, but make it up in the long term by good publicity and such. But that's hardly the natural reading of what he wrote. It seems to me like he's ~ 3% of an ownership stake away from a situation where he'd be confessing to violating shareholder rights even by writing that--let alone being responsible to run the company in a way that actually does prioritize profit over safety and well-being. All of this to me seems like a flaw in the American system of financial law.
• TedShiller 5y ago
  FB made the world a better place during the outage
• gordon_freeman 5y ago
  Zuck's post reminded me of this quote I read somewhere: "watch what they do, not what they say."
• zw123456 5y ago
  Lots of ink will be spilled over this. Heck, here's my 2 cents worth. All this recalls the "corporations are not people" vs. "corporations are people". OK, corporations are organizations made up of people, and share certain characteristics of people. Strengths and weaknesses. People often make rationalizations for something they know is wrong but may benefit them.
• sul_tasto 5y ago
  Zuck said nothing about the violations of privacy and the tracking of users across the internet without consent.
• monistowl 5y ago
  For just a fleeting moment yesterday, wondered if he had the capacity & cojones to cease operations unilaterally. Shame. A billion couldn't buy that cred.
• spothedog1 5y ago
  The quality of this comment section is like Facebook or Reddit level. Practically no deep discussion of the actual topic at hand just dunks on Zuck.
  • quadrangle 5y ago
    I appreciate both you pointing this out AND the dunks on Zuck both here and on his post at FB. I'm surprised they didn't set up a custom algorithm to bury the most critical responses at his post. Anyway, here's an attempt at some thoughtful nuance: There's lots of wisdom readily available out there that describes how to most responsibly deal with critical feedback. For example Rapoport's Rules (via Dan Dennett). First you express the other's position so they can say "yes, that's exactly how I feel". Then, you describe where you agree and what you've learned. Finally, you can go into where you disagree. Another framing is to ask "what is true in the feedback?" with the presumption that there is truth to be found. This and other approaches are all about maximizing what to actually learn from feedback. By contrast, Mark's post is a textbook-worthy demonstration of how to be politely defensive, even being candid about your emotional vulnerabilities, recognizing your frustrations, not lashing out in anger… all while admitting absolutely ZERO about anything in the criticism having any merit or opening any questions to really grapple with. At its best, his letter says "I'm really saddened about how my work is misunderstood, and I don't want to blame the critics, but I'll work to get past my reactive feelings and go back to continuing my wonderful work that has been so unfairly maligned". I'll grant that this is more mature than a tantrum that attacks the critics and spreads rumors and lies about them. Zuckerberg is a more thoughtful and nicer person than Donald Trump.
    • timmytokyo 5y ago
      > I'll grant that this is more mature than a tantrum that attacks the critics and spreads rumors and lies about them. Zuckerberg is a more thoughtful and nicer person than Donald Trump. I wouldn't conclude anything about Zuckerberg's character from this letter. There is absolutely no way he wrote it. I'm sure he signed off on it, but he didn't write it. Some PR crew filled with lawyers and communication specialists wrote it.
• busymom0 5y ago
  They Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-want-to https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-...
• dogman144 5y ago
  Good riddance. Like any tech company, the topic has nuance. FB provides utility, no doubt about it. It's also a massive double-edged sword with nasty trade-offs. What is finally coming to light through this is the anger that's existed forever with individuals who want to opt out, but can't. Individuals who do not want this moralizing, tone-deaf inevitability projected by Zuck/Sandberg/supporters. Every parent that's had to fight their PTA, citizen that's fought their community group, or parent even countering own parents about wanting to participate in those critical aspects of civic life, but not doing it on Facebook - "no, you can't post a picture of my kid on there." This is putting aside the Q, the DJT, the absurd Hurricane Maria VR tour Zuck took, the "Lean In" paired with insta body shaming....the everything of the last 4+ years. FB is not some corner of the internet, it's not like privacy/encryption/crypto types you can sort of ignore and leave it at that. It wormed its way into so many aspects of life, and the only way to live a "normal" life and avoid it is to be sort of an abrasive a-hole to people you love. I'm so glad this anger is finally getting a voice. If this turns south, the company has what's coming to it.
• boringg 5y ago
  This message is written for everyone but certainly to shore up employees.
• j_d_b 5y ago
  Facebook seems to have some complicity in the Rohingya genocide. This may be the most damning fact unearthed today.
• mbreese 5y ago
  I’m saddened by the fact that I have to login to Facebook to see the statement, but I think that says a lot.
• panaffa 5y ago
  Not surprised to see Mark get all defensive. It is very simple to analyze this objectively. They want to make huge profits and they want people to use FB as much as possible. Fine. That's their right. They are neither evil nor saints. Similarly, use of the service has toxic effects on many many of its users especially young ones (no matter what Mark and their team says). That's obviously not good but also must be recognised as a voluntary choice to engage in a platform that causes mental health issues. If we look at it straight, my opinion is that the solution isn't really regulation but merely that more of us need to stop using social media and parents should not allow kids to have an account until they are adults.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• fighterpilot 5y ago
  I don't get why Twitter always gets a free pass on the harms from misinformation. I have seen so much fake news around vaccines, election integrity on there not to mention that it's the nexus of woke cancellation mobs. I think it's because Twitter is seen as doing more (banning Trump, putting notifications on posts), but is that actually the case relative to what FB is doing?
  • dudul 5y ago
    Isn't twitter just some sort of tiny echo chamber? Don't we regularly see these studies claimg that only 2%of the users generate 99% of the content? Twitter is only harmful to businesses who hire marketing firms who think twitter is representative of the general population.
    • fighterpilot 5y ago
      My anecdotal impression is that YouTube and Twitter played a big role in spreading election misinformation. The main basis of the Kraken conspiracy theory came from a YouTube video which was spread on Twitter and I remember numerous election integrity fake news tweets getting hundreds of thousands of retweets from a large right-wing echo chamber. It may have been worse on FB but I do think the asymmetry of attention and scrutiny is far out of whack. I'm going to guess the reason is that congresspeople and journalists see Twitter as their domain of control now and benefit from the privileges of a blue check mark and the other side being kicked off. Probably Zuckerberg's lack of charisma and physical appearance isn't helping either, however unfair that may be. Another reason might be that the FB newsfeed lacks transparency unlike Twitter which contributes to distrust.
  • throw_m239339 5y ago
    > I don't get why Twitter always gets a free pass on the harms from misinformation. Twitter is where all main stream journalists are. They are not going to bite the hand that "feed" them. Facebook on the other hand has still some amount of non political correctness on their platform so that's something main stream media who wants to control speech online cannot stand. > I think it's because Twitter is seen as doing more (banning Trump, putting notifications on posts), but is that actually the case relative to what FB is doing? Twitter certainly has a tighter moderation when it comes to "moderating" alleged conservative speech, yes, which is what matters to the former camp.
• itoocode 5y ago
  Value of data owned by FB is precious today and this still growing in value. The problem is as a user you are taken for granted. You have no information as a user on what research studies your data is used or will be used in the future. I do not think FB realizes the ethical responsibility of holding such valuable data.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• intricatedetail 5y ago
  So much gaslighting, it's hard to read. This evil company should be closed!
• kordlessagain 5y ago
  > you must login to continue No, I don't.
• Bellamy 5y ago
  Good timing with the posting. Maybe the get the attention elsewhere from https://www.npr.org/2021/10/04/1042921981/facebook-whistleblower-renewing-scrutiny-of-social-media-giant https://www.npr.org/2021/10/04/1042921981/facebook-whistlebl... ?
• barsonme 5y ago
  Is there a way to read the statement without a Facebook account?
• amin 5y ago
  Why is Zuck's user id "4"? Why isn't he "1"?
• elSidCampeador 5y ago
  > then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries I wanna see some numbers on this - cause from where I'm sat all I see is countries get more and more polarised, _not less_.
• mandeepj 5y ago
  > And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world? History is literally repeating itself. Just like 2016 US elections, he’s denying FB’s role again
• oriettaxx 5y ago
  Would Ethiopia be in war now without nowadays radicalization web 'social' platforms? Its government shut down the Internet several times: officially to save lifes, while oppositors says it's just to perpetuate violence. We are facing big challenges here, where the danger to arm kids is just a small part.
  • oriettaxx 5y ago
    I am so glad to see this issue with Ethiopia is coming out! https://www.theguardian.com./technology/2021/oct/07/facebooks-role-in-myanmar-and-ethiopia-under-new-scrutiny https://www.theguardian.com./technology/2021/oct/07/facebook...
• astronautjones 5y ago
  > You must log in to continue. they can't be serious
• throw_m239339 5y ago
  Mark, you hired, just like Google and other IT companies did in the midst of the Trump presidency, political activists and now you are surprised these political hires are compromising your business secrets and betraying you? Read their manifesto, they are here is subvert and destroy, not get you good easy PR. The Silicon Valley can't have it both ways and it's a situation they certainly created, by trying to pander to political activists just for PR reasons but now they acting all surprised when political activists are doing exactly what they say they would do in public or social media? subvert and destroy your business if you don't submit to their need for censorship? well, prepare yourself for a bunch of heavy regulations as a result, and it will affect ALL STARTUPS as a result.
• nixpulvis 5y ago
  > We're committed to doing the best work we can, but at some level the right body to assess tradeoffs between social equities is our democratically elected Congress. For example, what is the right age for teens to be able to use internet services? How should internet services verify people's ages? And how should companies balance teens' privacy while giving parents visibility into their activity? Oh fuck, here we go. This asshole is going to be the death of so many good things if we're not careful. Let's flip the questions a bit. How should internet services verify people are teaching their children how to be adults properly? Try that one on for size Mr. Zuckerburg.
• rudyfink 5y ago
  A Facebook login is required to read an explanation to the public? I get a login/password screen... There is probably a good quip there about the psychology involved in placing a response on a private forum, but the effect for Facebook is I will not see their response.
• gverrilla 5y ago
  fake news machine.
• TedShiller 5y ago
  > If ... then why would we ...? Because acknowledging the truth is not an option.
• thoughty 5y ago
  Why do i need to have an Facebook account to read a statement from Zuck?
• numair 5y ago
  Yeah, okay, whatever. Facebook was co-founded by a guy who willfully engaged sexually predatory behavior with underaged girls (source: I watched him do it). They were founded on a culture that didn’t care about young women — they were seen as something of which to take advantage. Don’t bother debating me on this. Ask Facebook to sue me for defamation if they want to fight this claim. And then ask yourself why they won’t. (I am sure this comment will be downvoted because there’s so many Facebook employees and apologists here. It’ll be fun to come back and look at this after a few years.)
• javajosh 5y ago
  Without money behind it, the full-blown assault on knowledge and erudition would go quiet on all fronts, not just on Facebook. So, the solution is simple: we to ban paid-for speech. If you can staunch the flow of money into social media by way of troll-farms and political ads, I think this would help a lot. Even better if you could ban so-called "news" organizations that are little more than for-profit PR firms. At the very least, we need spend real money to expose and eliminate troll farms, including attacking such organizations in their home countries.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• russellbeattie 5y ago
  Facebook needs to kill the cash cow: the Open Graph enhanced optimized news feed. When FB was used for sharing pics of your kids or seeing what your friends were up to at school, there wasn't any major issues with sedition that I remember. Then they added the news feed. Questions: 1. Why can't users turn off the news feed permanently and only see user-created posts? 2. Why can't users organize/sort their news feed how they like rather than being "optimized"? 3. Why isn't Facebook making sure to include articles from respected news sources (NPR, NYT, WSJ, Axios, etc.) in everyone's feed? Why doesn't FB do any of these obvious solutions to bring everyone out of their silos and set a baseline of truth again? Because all those "kind and thoughtful" people working there would lose millions. That's way more important than the future of the country. Edit: Also, every media outlet in the country are hypocrites as well. They shouldn't allow sharing on Facebook until they clean up their act, or at the minimum, stop using Open Graph on their web pages, making the share a simple URL.
• joeblau 5y ago
  Is there a non-Facebook link to this please?
• newbie2020 5y ago
  Zuck sounding like Trump
• campground 5y ago
  Every argument of the form "why would we piss off advertisers" or "why would we make our users unhappy" is void, because they are a monopoly. The mechanism that would make them responsive to customers is completely absent. Everyone hates Facebook, because it sucks. And everyone uses it, because it's a product with the most powerful network effect conceivable. There is a way to have competition, and that is to create a standard for interoperability between competing social media platforms. In theory, the US government could legislate something like that, but in practice that's unthinkable. So it has to come from Facebook itself. That's the only thing that could convince me that Facebook gives a shit about it's users. If you really think people are with Facebook because they like it, prove it. Let them leave. Give them the choice.
• hedgehog 5y ago
  Above link didn't appear to work without a login but mirror of the post is here: https://archive.is/h0mYK https://archive.is/h0mYK
• sgpl 5y ago
  The statement for that those that don't have fb accounts or don't want to login: "I wanted to share a note I wrote to everyone at our company. --- Hey everyone: it's been quite a week, and I wanted to share some thoughts with all of you. First, the SEV that took down all our services yesterday was the worst outage we've had in years. We've spent the past 24 hours debriefing how we can strengthen our systems against this kind of failure. This was also a reminder of how much our work matters to people. The deeper concern with an outage like this isn't how many people switch to competitive services or how much money we lose, but what it means for the people who rely on our services to communicate with loved ones, run their businesses, or support their communities. Second, now that today's testimony is over, I wanted to reflect on the public debate we're in. I'm sure many of you have found the recent coverage hard to read because it just doesn't reflect the company we know. We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health. It's difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives. At the most basic level, I think most of us just don't recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted. Many of the claims don't make any sense. If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place? If we didn't care about fighting harmful content, then why would we employ so many more people dedicated to this than any other company in our space -- even ones larger than us? If we wanted to hide our results, why would we have established an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting on what we're doing? And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world? At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being. That's just not true. For example, one move that has been called into question is when we introduced the Meaningful Social Interactions change to News Feed. This change showed fewer viral videos and more content from friends and family -- which we did knowing it would mean people spent less time on Facebook, but that research suggested it was the right thing for people's well-being. Is that something a company focused on profits over people would do? The argument that we deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit is deeply illogical. We make money from ads, and advertisers consistently tell us they don't want their ads next to harmful or angry content. And I don't know any tech company that sets out to build products that make people angry or depressed. The moral, business and product incentives all point in the opposite direction. But of everything published, I'm particularly focused on the questions raised about our work with kids. I've spent a lot of time reflecting on the kinds of experiences I want my kids and others to have online, and it's very important to me that everything we build is safe and good for kids. The reality is that young people use technology. Think about how many school-age kids have phones. Rather than ignoring this, technology companies should build experiences that meet their needs while also keeping them safe. We're deeply committed to doing industry-leading work in this area. A good example of this work is Messenger Kids, which is widely recognized as better and safer than alternatives. We've also worked on bringing this kind of age-appropriate experience with parental controls for Instagram too. But given all the questions about whether this would actually be better for kids, we've paused that project to take more time to engage with experts and make sure anything we do would be helpful. Like many of you, I found it difficult to read the mischaracterization of the research into how Instagram affects young people. As we wrote in our Newsroom post explaining this: "The research actually demonstrated that many teens we heard from feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced. In fact, in 11 of 12 areas on the slide referenced by the Journal -- including serious areas like loneliness, anxiety, sadness and eating issues -- more teenage girls who said they struggled with that issue also said Instagram made those difficult times better rather than worse." But when it comes to young people's health or well-being, every negative experience matters. It is incredibly sad to think of a young person in a moment of distress who, instead of being comforted, has their experience made worse. We have worked for years on industry-leading efforts to help people in these moments and I'm proud of the work we've done. We constantly use our research to improve this work further. Similar to balancing other social issues, I don't believe private companies should make all of the decisions on their own. That's why we have advocated for updated internet regulations for several years now. I have testified in Congress multiple times and asked them to update these regulations. I've written op-eds outlining the areas of regulation we think are most important related to elections, harmful content, privacy, and competition. We're committed to doing the best work we can, but at some level the right body to assess tradeoffs between social equities is our democratically elected Congress. For example, what is the right age for teens to be able to use internet services? How should internet services verify people's ages? And how should companies balance teens' privacy while giving parents visibility into their activity? If we're going to have an informed conversation about the effects of social media on young people, it's important to start with a full picture. We're committed to doing more research ourselves and making more research publicly available. That said, I'm worried about the incentives that are being set here. We have an industry-leading research program so that we can identify important issues and work on them. It's disheartening to see that work taken out of context and used to construct a false narrative that we don't care. If we attack organizations making an effort to study their impact on the world, we're effectively sending the message that it's safer not to look at all, in case you find something that could be held against you. That's the conclusion other companies seem to have reached, and I think that leads to a place that would be far worse for society. Even though it might be easier for us to follow that path, we're going to keep doing research because it's the right thing to do. I know it's frustrating to see the good work we do get mischaracterized, especially for those of you who are making important contributions across safety, integrity, research and product. But I believe that over the long term if we keep trying to do what's right and delivering experiences that improve people's lives, it will be better for our community and our business. I've asked leaders across the company to do deep dives on our work across many areas over the next few days so you can see everything that we're doing to get there. When I reflect on our work, I think about the real impact we have on the world -- the people who can now stay in touch with their loved ones, create opportunities to support themselves, and find community. This is why billions of people love our products. I'm proud of everything we do to keep building the best social products in the world and grateful to all of you for the work you do here every day."
• ChuckMcM 5y ago
  Oh the comments on that post are priceless. While I would agree the truth lies somewhere between pure evil and evil as a side effect[1] the comments Mark makes don't give me any indication that he appreciates that if someone thinks you're evil, they aren't wrong in their thinking, as CEO it is your job to figure out how they got there and see how many other people think that way. So whether or not Facebook is actually evil, this perception appears to be wide spread enough to result in material harm to the company through overt regulation of their actions and choices. Mark's job includes "owning the problem." It is not his job to argue persuasively that it isn't really a problem. While it was perhaps not as effective as Bill Gates would like, the "We have to fix security" memo was a response to Bill owning the problem of the perception of security of Windows. It actually acknowledges the perception, and identifies what is going to be done to change that perception. Mark would do well to study that event in history as this seems like a repeat. [1] Note that I accept that you can have really good things in the middle of a bunch of evil things, so for me (and I accept that this may be a unique and nonsensical statement to some) there is a balance of evil things and good things and if the evil is 50.1% then your a little bit evil with a lot of non-evil stuff. And if you're 80% evil you're mostly evil with a bit of non-evil stuff.
• KKKKkkkk1 5y ago
  This thing has turned into a crusade over a moral panic. What I want to know is why Facebook is being singled out. Twitter is infested with people that have hammer/sickle symbols in their bios. Reddit has a history of tolerating child pornography. What makes Facebook special?
  • 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
    FB is special right now because of an internal whistleblower with data right now. That’s all.
• mgmgmgmgmg 5y ago
  I can't read this because I'm not logged in.
• wellthisisgreat 5y ago
  Think of the systems!
• thisappear 5y ago
  The links require FB login to view the post. Please provide an alternative.
• rStar 5y ago
  “At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being. That's just not true.“ yeah mz, whatever. just goose my stock options good this year for the holidays and we’re cool.
• beermonster 5y ago
  "You must log in to continue." Oh well, doubt he has much to say anyway.
  • imperialdrive 5y ago
    Yeah, I miss an update or two per month due to that msg, but a couple seconds later it's a forgotten thought.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• nobody0 5y ago
  Just clicked but got this > You must log in to continue.
• cdreke 5y ago
  The vast majority of ads are dishonest. If you wrap your business around an ad-based model, you are placing dishonesty at the core of your business.
• fmajid 5y ago
  Quite arrogant in assuming everyone has a Facebook account.
• antisol 5y ago
  "You must log in to continue." Seems like a weird thing for a CEO to come out and say.
• ElonMuskrat 5y ago
  I have not read the statement. Unless where legally compelled to disclose precise information, corporate statements should be ignored.
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  The real problem from Facebook's point of view is the fallen nature of humanity; as soon as goodness and light are met with more engagement Facebook will turn to promoting those qualities.
• m4tthumphrey 5y ago
  I'm not sure who I loathe more right now, Boris or Zuck.
• ClawsOnPaws 5y ago
  I'm not trying to defend Mark here, but it does bother me slightly that people continuously bring up that really old quote of his from many years ago. People change. I've said some disagreeable things on chat many years ago as well. Maybe as a joke, maybe I was frustrated, but I do regret them and I've since grown as a person. I would hate it if someone kept rehashing something I said ages ago to further their narrative of me. Would it not make sense to judge a person by what they're doing now rather than what they did in college? What about you? Have you never made dumb comments that you really wish you hadn't? What if those kept getting brought up against you now rather than who you've become since then? Just a thought.
• jhugo 5y ago
  > The deeper concern with an outage like this isn't how many people switch to competitive services or how much money we lose, but what it means for the people who rely on our services to communicate with loved ones, run their businesses, or support their communities. The messaging between Facebook and media outlets here is so consistent (Facebook's services are critical communications infrastructure, people get hurt when they can't use them) that I wonder whether Facebook was actively pushing that message during the outage to get media to focus on the impact on people's lives (such focus being overall positive for Facebook, by showing how important their services are to people) rather than the failure. I just don't buy it at all though. In terms of person-to-person communication, the friction of replacing Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram is insignificant. Where I live, Messenger and WhatsApp are the most popular chat apps by far, and are used for everything from personal communications to ordering food to business negotiations. During the outage, people didn't wring their hands and despair at not being able to communicate. They just used a different app.
• cute_boi 5y ago
  "We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health" As always these people seems to prevaricate we all know he means "We care deeply about profits and any issue that can impede our growth." "Many of the claims don't make any sense. If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place?: C'mon you allowed the research in a hope that if they produce fruitful result you can show off to the world. And as you were trying to roll instagram for kids such research were essential. And you hide those research from public which means you don't care about child safety or whatever. I guess I am now tired of reading Zuck fantasies.
• _hu6p 5y ago
  "The research actually demonstrated that many teens we heard from feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced. In fact, in 11 of 12 areas on the slide referenced by the Journal -- including serious areas like loneliness, anxiety, sadness and eating issues -- more teenage girls who said they struggled with that issue also said Instagram made those difficult times better rather than worse." Does this translate as "Instagram is good for kids" though? I mean, as a kid/teenager/young-adult I'd tell you chocolate and burgers are great sustenance and that there's nothing wrong with playing video games 16hours a day sitting down, etc... I'm genuinely curious if that research is based entirely on feedback from the target audience, if so on instinct, I disbelieve it.
• Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I'm seeing a lot of deflecting without addressing the core issues. Yeah we know they have a lot of people and spend a lot of time on content moderation, but one major issue is that they gave a lot of people exceptional treatment. It took years of Trump's reign and that of 'fake news' / misinformation before they even started to flag these things, and I'm convinced flagging content works as reinforcement for a lot of people - "look, the MSM is trying to suppress the Truth!"
• streamofdigits 5y ago
  If the business model is fundamentally wrong no amount of good will, governance or resources can turn things around. The only way (I can think of) for private, for-profit, social media to "trully care" (actually, just care a tiny bit more) is if their users (rather than advertisers / other third parties) were to become the paying clients. This is about as feasible as a brain transplant. People have been conditioned that social media are "free", the gigantic valuations are based on personal data based adtech revenue, their true clients don't seem to give a damn about what kind of society and economy they engineered, and "markets" just cheer on. So thats where we are.
• benwad 5y ago
  Does anyone have a mirror of this announcement that doesn't require me to log in to FB?
• Vaderv 5y ago
  What a prick
• xtat 5y ago
  Here's a reminder that it's illegal for this man to say anything that would hurt Facebook's profitability. Don't expect anything but propaganda here.
• ricardobeat 5y ago
  > if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world I wonder what countries he is looking at. Polarization is definitely happening all over the world, including the heaviest social media users of all (Brazil, India, etc).
• hansel_der 5y ago
  billionaires should not be a allowed to play the "but we tried" card.
• hansel_der 5y ago
  billionaires should not be allowed to play the "but we tried" card
• watertom 5y ago
  Maximizing profit and shareholder value is the only thing that matters to the executives, and BOD of Facebook. Just like tobacco companies, just like Exxon, just like every other company. I’m baffled by the population’s belief that ANY company will act in any way but it’s own best interest. Governments are supposed to protect their citizens, but instead have been co-opted by large companies over the threat of job loss, and the population agrees. Every company will be as absolutely evil as the population allows, and it seems the population of most countries are completely OK with almost any behavior. Facebook absolutely knows that hacking groups and nation states are using their platform as a mechanism to wage a disinformation war against targeted audiences. You person standing on a box spewing nonsense amounts to nothing. A person standing on a box spewing nonsense with a crowd garners some attention. A person standing on a box spewing nonsense with a huge crowd garners more attention. Facebook allows for the virtual creation of a person standing on a box with the appearance of millions and millions of people crowded around. Most people don’t understand the abstract nature of technology and assuming the virtual person is real, and the virtual crowd is real, and since humans are pack animals they just fall in with the virtual pack. Facebook knows all of this, and they know how to stop it, but stopping it would damage their revenue and profits, and expose them as frauds which would ultimately destroy the company. Not wanting to destroy profits they hand wave, and release statements, but they know full well their platform is nothing but a profit and propaganda machine. Nothing more, nothing less, and the population doesn’t understand, or care. Apparently the masses need their opiates where they can find them.
  • Traster 5y ago
    I think you're dead wrong on this. Mark Zuckerburg is actually in an almost unique position that he has full control of facebook, so he can do literally anything he wants. He doesn't have to prioritize profit or shareholder value, he could sit in his board meeting just continually insulting his board's family members. He really does believe in what he's doing. The problem is that sitting in your basement coding in PHP isn't going to give you the right grounding in psychology, sociology, and politics that runninng a social network will need. Being a billionaire at the age of 23 also doesn't give you a great lesson in how to learn from mistakes, and take criticism. All the way through his management of facebook Mark has been getting dragged through lessons about life that only a teenage boy in his bedroom needed to learn because he never got a life to learn them.
• stormcode 5y ago
  I got to the fifth insurance of'industry leading' and had to stop reading. The general sentiment recorded makes sense but the language used at various points reads as if it were run through a PR ML bot.
• jpster 5y ago
  I haven’t seen any counterarguments to these two points he has raised. > And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the US while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world? > Similar to balancing other social issues, I don't believe private companies should make all of the decisions on their own. That's why we have advocated for updated internet regulations for several years now. I have testified in Congress multiple times and asked them to update these regulations. I've written op-eds outlining the areas of regulation we think are most important related to elections, harmful content, privacy, and competition.
• LZ_Khan 5y ago
  This is the same thing as "Billionaire who donates 1% of his net worth to charity claims he isn't greedy."
• lgsilver 5y ago
  The irony that you have to log into Facebook to read the statement is not lost...
• LZ_Khan 5y ago
  I think we should all give Facebook some credit. The thing that really impressed me is how skilled an AI is at writing PR statements.
• kraf 5y ago
  > Facebook and subsequently Instagram thrive on interaction. The company is only profitable if it keeps you on its platform and it will do anything to keep you there, even at the cost of your own health.
• mikewarot 5y ago
  One way to turn down the grief is to use a traditional reverse chronological feed, which can be accessed with this url https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr This gives you the people you follow, without an algorithm pushing spurious content.