4 ms·

Zuckerberg is making an almost entirely emotional appeal in his statement. Most of his claims are not backed up / buttressed with facts, numbers, and specifics.

Zuckerberg is making an almost entirely emotional appeal in his statement. Most of his claims are not backed up / buttressed with facts, numbers, and specifics. The statement is designed to make a reader feel bad for Facebook as if Facebook was a friend, and not a corporation with billions of dollars in quarterly profits. Though the statement seems well-meaning, etc., it is weaselly and manipulative. It also conveniently doesn't address some of deeper issues from Frances Haugen's testimony. For example, Haugen focused on the fact that Zuckerberg has created a relatively flat organization, where if decisions help the core metric they must be good, and vice versa. Haugen testified that Zuckerberg was made aware that instituting a newsfeed tweak would entail a) small ding to the core engagement metrics and b) would decrease violence in Ethiopia... He chose the metric over the decreased violence. There comes a point where blindly pursuing metrics -- be it money or engagement -- without regard to the effects on society are hard if not impossible to distinguish from sociopathic behavior. Also, let's not forget that researchers and renown statisticians employed by / sponsored by Big Tobacco (e.g. R.A. Fisher) convinced themselves that smoking didn't cause cancer. [0] [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2000852/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2000852/

garbagecoder 5y ago
Roger McNamee warned us.
senojretep356 5y ago
"Ethiopia violence: Facebook to blame, says runner Gebrselassie" This is the headline from BBC in 2019. It makes me so angry and upset. If facebook was run ethically how much smaller would it really be? 10%? 20%? I can't help think that although they would lose some customers they would also gain others.
native_samples 5y ago
How so? He asserted several apparently factual claims that would basically undermine or make irrelevant most of the commentary in this thread, for example: - Social media can't cause "polarization" because the measurements of that are going down in most of the world, except the USA. But social media is heavily used everywhere. - It makes no sense to claim an organization doesn't care about X when it heavily funds research into X. - If you react to a company researching the harms of its products by leaking everything and publicly accusing the company of being evil, other companies will simply not do research into the harms of its own products. The second two are just logic. The first would benefit from a citation but I'll take his word for it.
- YossarianFrPrez 5y ago
  Ah, great question. The pattern I'm pointing to is a little subtle. I think at this point it pays to be extremely sceptical of Zuckerberg. (Quoting from Zuckerberg's original post) > "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?" This certainly needs a citation. Ethnic conflict in Ethiopia, division in Britain around Brexit, and US polarization would seem to be obvious counter examples. It should certainly be said that correlation is not causation. Also, note that the claim that 'social media doesn't cause polarization anywhere / everywhere in the world' is a subtle bait and switch from "Facebook causes polarization in certain areas" or "Facebook's lack of robust, well-staffed safety mechanisms allow it to be exploited to cause polarization in certain areas." > "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?" There is more than one way to care about a research program, but absolute amount of budget spent on X is not the same thing as relative budget priority. For a company that made 54 billion in profit last quarter, it'd be more surprising if they had no research program. Zuckerberg does not present any specifics here -- what percentage of gross revenue is the research program? How many people are employed to fight content, and how does this compare to how many people are employed to encourage growth? And what's the point of research if the results are not acted upon? The whistleblower was pretty clear that the research doesn't matter even if suggested fixes will cause a <1% point hit to the core engagement metrics. Does Zuckerberg have any specific facts about how many times civic integrity / safety based suggestions was prioritized over the core metrics, other than the one example he cites (Meaningful Social Interactions)? Speaking of Meaningful Social Interactions (MSI), the whistleblower specifically said that there is a foundational problem with how MSI is defined, because it includes the number of comments a post receives. Even without intending it, it is easy to see that controversial posts will attract more attention. Zuckerberg cites no evidence about the relative percentage of comments that are angry vs other emotions, and how this has changed. > "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." Zuckerberg is complaining about incentive problems? The whistleblower has said that Facebook's very policies make it "not care" even if individuals do. This is also what comes across in the WSJ articles. In other words: the narrative isn't false, and this has been documented. His point about the specific incentive problem of leaked research is interesting, but it's a case of an abstract concern (for other company's research) vs. very real and well documented harm Facebook is a) doing now, and b) per the whistleblower, is unequipped to solve alone. Also, at one point in Zuckerberg's missive, he shifts the locus of responsibility from Facebook to Congress: "..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?" Deciding what the "right" age is can take several forms. A panel of seasoned jurists, child psychologists, policy experts, etc., can spend a long time debating what the "right" age is in the universal sense. Or, Facebook could take stand, err on the side of caution, and say that 17 is a better age than 13, and detail why they think so.

garbagecoder 5y ago

Roger McNamee warned us.

senojretep356 5y ago

"Ethiopia violence: Facebook to blame, says runner Gebrselassie" This is the headline from BBC in 2019. It makes me so angry and upset. If facebook was run ethically how much smaller would it really be? 10%? 20%? I can't help think that although they would lose some customers they would also gain others.

native_samples 5y ago

How so? He asserted several apparently factual claims that would basically undermine or make irrelevant most of the commentary in this thread, for example: - Social media can't cause "polarization" because the measurements of that are going down in most of the world, except the USA. But social media is heavily used everywhere. - It makes no sense to claim an organization doesn't care about X when it heavily funds research into X. - If you react to a company researching the harms of its products by leaking everything and publicly accusing the company of being evil, other companies will simply not do research into the harms of its own products. The second two are just logic. The first would benefit from a citation but I'll take his word for it.

YossarianFrPrez 5y ago
Ah, great question. The pattern I'm pointing to is a little subtle. I think at this point it pays to be extremely sceptical of Zuckerberg. (Quoting from Zuckerberg's original post) > "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?" This certainly needs a citation. Ethnic conflict in Ethiopia, division in Britain around Brexit, and US polarization would seem to be obvious counter examples. It should certainly be said that correlation is not causation. Also, note that the claim that 'social media doesn't cause polarization anywhere / everywhere in the world' is a subtle bait and switch from "Facebook causes polarization in certain areas" or "Facebook's lack of robust, well-staffed safety mechanisms allow it to be exploited to cause polarization in certain areas." > "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?" There is more than one way to care about a research program, but absolute amount of budget spent on X is not the same thing as relative budget priority. For a company that made 54 billion in profit last quarter, it'd be more surprising if they had no research program. Zuckerberg does not present any specifics here -- what percentage of gross revenue is the research program? How many people are employed to fight content, and how does this compare to how many people are employed to encourage growth? And what's the point of research if the results are not acted upon? The whistleblower was pretty clear that the research doesn't matter even if suggested fixes will cause a <1% point hit to the core engagement metrics. Does Zuckerberg have any specific facts about how many times civic integrity / safety based suggestions was prioritized over the core metrics, other than the one example he cites (Meaningful Social Interactions)? Speaking of Meaningful Social Interactions (MSI), the whistleblower specifically said that there is a foundational problem with how MSI is defined, because it includes the number of comments a post receives. Even without intending it, it is easy to see that controversial posts will attract more attention. Zuckerberg cites no evidence about the relative percentage of comments that are angry vs other emotions, and how this has changed. > "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." Zuckerberg is complaining about incentive problems? The whistleblower has said that Facebook's very policies make it "not care" even if individuals do. This is also what comes across in the WSJ articles. In other words: the narrative isn't false, and this has been documented. His point about the specific incentive problem of leaked research is interesting, but it's a case of an abstract concern (for other company's research) vs. very real and well documented harm Facebook is a) doing now, and b) per the whistleblower, is unequipped to solve alone. Also, at one point in Zuckerberg's missive, he shifts the locus of responsibility from Facebook to Congress: "..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?" Deciding what the "right" age is can take several forms. A panel of seasoned jurists, child psychologists, policy experts, etc., can spend a long time debating what the "right" age is in the universal sense. Or, Facebook could take stand, err on the side of caution, and say that 17 is a better age than 13, and detail why they think so.