6 ms·

Facebook harms its users because that’s where its profits are

137 points by rblion 5y ago

ffggvv 5y ago
notice people don’t actually want to limit the power of fb, they just want to co-opt that power for the government
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
And because the users let it. Most of the people on HN shared the issues about Facebook with relatives, only to get a polite smile at best. People don't care. They are OK with it. They are consenting victims.
- chii 5y ago
  They can't be a victim if they are consenting (aka, knowingly accept the harm because they figured the trade-off is worth it).
m0zg 5y ago
And Jacobin harms its readers for the exact same reason. Now what?
rwmj 5y ago
To save anyone reading what is a very poorly argued article, their solution is to take Facebook under public ownership or treat it like a utility company. You don't have to think very hard to understand there are problems with this: - You're giving the government (more specifically the party in power at the time) control over a highly effective form of propaganda, which won't have a good outcome. - The US government would only regulate FB as it relates to US citizens, leaving FB free to operate as now in the rest of the world. - In Japan where a similar addictive product aimed at minors (tobacco) is mostly under public ownership, the Japanese government has dragged its feet at regulation to reduce harm from cigarettes - eg it only banned smoking in bars last year. In the Japanese case they don't want to imperil the profits from JTI (Japan Tobacco).
- darkerside 5y ago
  PBS and NPR provide a good counterpoint. They are relatively civilized media, and while some might argue they are propagandistic, I tend to think they are much more centrist than the Fox News and MSNBCs of the world. Just because we offer a utility doesn't mean that we need to shut down what's already out there. FWIW, we dragged our feet for a very long time banning tobacco from many public places, probably in large part because of lobbying. What do you think is the mechanism by which Japanese legislators would be incentivized to systematically slow down tobacco legislation?
  - fineIllregister 5y ago
    PBS and NPR are not government owned or controlled. A more apt comparison would probably be Voice of America.
    - darkerside 5y ago
      PBS was a bad example, as I thought it was more similar to NPR. NPR is not a perfect example, but was founded through an act of Congress and is operated by public institutions. BBC is probably a better example. I'm thinking of domestic media.
  - m0zg 5y ago
    I turn on NPR from time to time out of curiosity, and immediately regret it. It _used to be_ balanced, but now it's full-on hard left. It used to be that there actually was some diversity of opinion on NPR. Nowadays you don't even need to guess what points of view you will hear about hot button issues - it's hard left without fail. IOW they have obviated the need for themselves by making it possible to foresee what they will say without tuning in. That said, that's how it is with most media nowadays not just NPR, including this very site. It has become socially unacceptable to surface dissent.
    - bradknowles 5y ago
      With respect, no. What has happened is that everyone else has shifted hard right. NPR has stayed exactly where it was.
mrkramer 5y ago
I don't think this is true because depressed users are less willing to click on ads and buy products and services. Depressed person can only harm himself or herself, he or she will probably not click any ads or buy anything at all.
porlune 5y ago
>>> Of course, there are many practical matters that would have to be ironed out. For one, Facebook might be a US company, but its utility-like services are delivered to the entire globe, so there are real questions about what a publicly owned or regulated Facebook would actually look like — questions like “Which public?” or “Regulated by whom?” >>>Avoiding mass censorship efforts doesn’t mean we’re powerless to do anything. There are clear changes that can be made to Facebook’s algorithms, design, central mission, and resourcing that would bring it closer to the true public service it claims to be than the nihilistic, profit-making juggernaut it operates like, and none of them would threaten our right to speak freely or mess with our ability to stay in touch with loved ones, organize events, or such platforms’ other useful features. The author makes a couple of attempts to characterize Facebook as a "utility", and even provides a link [1] to eff.org as proof of that claim as though being a public service is enough to constitute being declared a utility in need of direct regulation. The author also claims that Facebook is "deliberately designed to be addictive", which I concede is true. I'd like to further point out that HN is also addictive, and seems to have been designed with absolutely no interest in making it addictive. And lastly, I'd like to mention that the US government recently relaxed its laws concerning government funded propaganda[2]. So I have a couple of questions: 1. If government wants a social media utility, then why doesn't it attempt to buy or build one that it can more easily regulate/understand? 2. Is social media itself an addictive element in our lives? 3. Is the level of addiction similar in harm to that of television, YouTube, or news aggregation sites? How would you rate it? 4. How do you justify asking government to offer (potentially) addictive services as public utilities? 5. With respect to the deregulation of propaganda, should Facebook be held to a higher standard than our government? [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/utilities-governed-empires https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/utilities-governed-emp... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2013#Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Modernization_Act_of_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...
mysterydip 5y ago
At a generic level, isn't most advertisement psychologically harmful? The goal is to convince you your life is incomplete unless you buy the thing.
- mypastself 5y ago
  Might as well describe desire itself as being psychologically harmful, then. Most people don’t subscribe to the Buddhist point of view, though.
  - afshin 5y ago
    You take two leaps here that don't follow: OP proposed that advertising is psychologically manipulating people into believing their lives are incomplete and asked whether that is a harm. You conflated this manipulation with built-in desires; it is not that. By analogy, it is as though OP argued that deliberately withholding food from prisoners to cause them distress from hunger is a harm and you are countering that OP may as well describe hunger itself as harmful. > Most people don’t subscribe to the Buddhist point of view, though. Buddhism does not consider desires an inherently harmful. Being captured by desires and constantly craving can be, but that's not the same as the mere existence of desires that can arise.
    - mypastself 5y ago
      Does categorizing something as harmful depend on the agent? Shouldn’t the harm exist quite apart from whether or not someone deliberately inflicted it, and regardless of their motivations? Perhaps you’re reading more into the original comment than I am, but what I took exception with was the notion that the type of emotions aroused by most ads are harmful. I don’t think it’s comparable with withholding food, in either the level of control or the magnitude.
  - beardyw 5y ago
    Yes, you are right that desire is harmful. Not only Buddhism but most world religions address the harm of desire. But the argument about advertising is that it plays on our desires, for commercial gain. And then FB marshals other issues we face to feed us advertising, for their commercial gain. It's just a matter of following the money.
ceilingcorner 5y ago
I find it amusing that Facebook is currently under attack by the media (broadly defined) for manipulating people, influencing elections, increasing polarization, harming its users etc. Yet that is exactly what the media has done for centuries. Where are the congressional sessions for the CEOs of CNN, Fox, and other legacy media brands? It looks to me like an old industry is scared of the new one eating its lunch. The medium is the message and in this case, the medium is the mainstream media.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  I saw you being downvoted but I think you're onto something. There is an element of jealousy from the old media contributing to the fray. And one of the main ulterior motives is that traditional media used to live from ads that they are now losing, or have already almost completely lost, to Facebook. I still don't like Facebook, but its conflict with other media companies isn't a morally pure drama.
- ampgt 5y ago
  It’s always more convenient to blame the messenger. There is a serious lack of responsibility placed on the users of Facebook. Maybe the world would be a better place if everyone had to read the Allegory of the Cave.
rybosworld 5y ago
This "Facebook == bad" story is tired.
- Chazprime 5y ago
  Perhaps you should lay down before you get too tuckered out.
altacc 5y ago
The Jacobin is a socialist magazine, so guaranteed to annoy many in this forum but even from my leftist point of view the argument for Facebook being a utility in need of public ownership is flawed. But equally, it is correct that this is not a problem market forces alone will solve and the improvements & policies in-acted or suggested thus far do not seem to solve the problem either and have mostly served to allow Facebook to say they are trying without actually affecting their business model & profits.
- ahevia 5y ago
  Yeah not sure where Jacobin was going with this argument. I normally enjoy their stuff, but not sure if I feel comfortable with the state having a platform like Facebook. It’s a good enough propaganda machine without state control More regulation & policy targeting FB? Sure. Public utility? No thank you
8bitsrule 5y ago
"the company is driven to do bad things by its thirst for profit, not by a handful of mistaken ideas." As true for most companies as it is for most people. "If we place healthy and unhealthy desire on a spectrum, at one end we have the motivations that lead to some of the worst and most horrific things people do. But at the other end, desire expresses some of the most beautiful and noble aspects of human life." [https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/the-spectrum-of-desire/ https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/the-s...]
scottmcleod 5y ago
Blah blah blah. This is a pretty poor take.

137 points by rblion 5y ago

notice people don’t actually want to limit the power of fb, they just want to co-opt that power for the government

And because the users let it. Most of the people on HN shared the issues about Facebook with relatives, only to get a polite smile at best. People don't care. They are OK with it. They are consenting victims.

chii 5y ago
They can't be a victim if they are consenting (aka, knowingly accept the harm because they figured the trade-off is worth it).

m0zg 5y ago

And Jacobin harms its readers for the exact same reason. Now what?

rwmj 5y ago

To save anyone reading what is a very poorly argued article, their solution is to take Facebook under public ownership or treat it like a utility company. You don't have to think very hard to understand there are problems with this: - You're giving the government (more specifically the party in power at the time) control over a highly effective form of propaganda, which won't have a good outcome. - The US government would only regulate FB as it relates to US citizens, leaving FB free to operate as now in the rest of the world. - In Japan where a similar addictive product aimed at minors (tobacco) is mostly under public ownership, the Japanese government has dragged its feet at regulation to reduce harm from cigarettes - eg it only banned smoking in bars last year. In the Japanese case they don't want to imperil the profits from JTI (Japan Tobacco).

darkerside 5y ago
PBS and NPR provide a good counterpoint. They are relatively civilized media, and while some might argue they are propagandistic, I tend to think they are much more centrist than the Fox News and MSNBCs of the world. Just because we offer a utility doesn't mean that we need to shut down what's already out there. FWIW, we dragged our feet for a very long time banning tobacco from many public places, probably in large part because of lobbying. What do you think is the mechanism by which Japanese legislators would be incentivized to systematically slow down tobacco legislation?
- fineIllregister 5y ago
  PBS and NPR are not government owned or controlled. A more apt comparison would probably be Voice of America.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    PBS was a bad example, as I thought it was more similar to NPR. NPR is not a perfect example, but was founded through an act of Congress and is operated by public institutions. BBC is probably a better example. I'm thinking of domestic media.
- m0zg 5y ago
  I turn on NPR from time to time out of curiosity, and immediately regret it. It _used to be_ balanced, but now it's full-on hard left. It used to be that there actually was some diversity of opinion on NPR. Nowadays you don't even need to guess what points of view you will hear about hot button issues - it's hard left without fail. IOW they have obviated the need for themselves by making it possible to foresee what they will say without tuning in. That said, that's how it is with most media nowadays not just NPR, including this very site. It has become socially unacceptable to surface dissent.
  - bradknowles 5y ago
    With respect, no. What has happened is that everyone else has shifted hard right. NPR has stayed exactly where it was.

mrkramer 5y ago

I don't think this is true because depressed users are less willing to click on ads and buy products and services. Depressed person can only harm himself or herself, he or she will probably not click any ads or buy anything at all.

porlune 5y ago

>>> Of course, there are many practical matters that would have to be ironed out. For one, Facebook might be a US company, but its utility-like services are delivered to the entire globe, so there are real questions about what a publicly owned or regulated Facebook would actually look like — questions like “Which public?” or “Regulated by whom?” >>>Avoiding mass censorship efforts doesn’t mean we’re powerless to do anything. There are clear changes that can be made to Facebook’s algorithms, design, central mission, and resourcing that would bring it closer to the true public service it claims to be than the nihilistic, profit-making juggernaut it operates like, and none of them would threaten our right to speak freely or mess with our ability to stay in touch with loved ones, organize events, or such platforms’ other useful features. The author makes a couple of attempts to characterize Facebook as a "utility", and even provides a link [1] to eff.org as proof of that claim as though being a public service is enough to constitute being declared a utility in need of direct regulation. The author also claims that Facebook is "deliberately designed to be addictive", which I concede is true. I'd like to further point out that HN is also addictive, and seems to have been designed with absolutely no interest in making it addictive. And lastly, I'd like to mention that the US government recently relaxed its laws concerning government funded propaganda[2]. So I have a couple of questions: 1. If government wants a social media utility, then why doesn't it attempt to buy or build one that it can more easily regulate/understand? 2. Is social media itself an addictive element in our lives? 3. Is the level of addiction similar in harm to that of television, YouTube, or news aggregation sites? How would you rate it? 4. How do you justify asking government to offer (potentially) addictive services as public utilities? 5. With respect to the deregulation of propaganda, should Facebook be held to a higher standard than our government? [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/utilities-governed-empires https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/utilities-governed-emp... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2013#Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Modernization_Act_of_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...

mysterydip 5y ago

At a generic level, isn't most advertisement psychologically harmful? The goal is to convince you your life is incomplete unless you buy the thing.

mypastself 5y ago
Might as well describe desire itself as being psychologically harmful, then. Most people don’t subscribe to the Buddhist point of view, though.
- afshin 5y ago
  You take two leaps here that don't follow: OP proposed that advertising is psychologically manipulating people into believing their lives are incomplete and asked whether that is a harm. You conflated this manipulation with built-in desires; it is not that. By analogy, it is as though OP argued that deliberately withholding food from prisoners to cause them distress from hunger is a harm and you are countering that OP may as well describe hunger itself as harmful. > Most people don’t subscribe to the Buddhist point of view, though. Buddhism does not consider desires an inherently harmful. Being captured by desires and constantly craving can be, but that's not the same as the mere existence of desires that can arise.
  - mypastself 5y ago
    Does categorizing something as harmful depend on the agent? Shouldn’t the harm exist quite apart from whether or not someone deliberately inflicted it, and regardless of their motivations? Perhaps you’re reading more into the original comment than I am, but what I took exception with was the notion that the type of emotions aroused by most ads are harmful. I don’t think it’s comparable with withholding food, in either the level of control or the magnitude.
- beardyw 5y ago
  Yes, you are right that desire is harmful. Not only Buddhism but most world religions address the harm of desire. But the argument about advertising is that it plays on our desires, for commercial gain. And then FB marshals other issues we face to feed us advertising, for their commercial gain. It's just a matter of following the money.

ceilingcorner 5y ago

I find it amusing that Facebook is currently under attack by the media (broadly defined) for manipulating people, influencing elections, increasing polarization, harming its users etc. Yet that is exactly what the media has done for centuries. Where are the congressional sessions for the CEOs of CNN, Fox, and other legacy media brands? It looks to me like an old industry is scared of the new one eating its lunch. The medium is the message and in this case, the medium is the mainstream media.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
inglor_cz 5y ago
I saw you being downvoted but I think you're onto something. There is an element of jealousy from the old media contributing to the fray. And one of the main ulterior motives is that traditional media used to live from ads that they are now losing, or have already almost completely lost, to Facebook. I still don't like Facebook, but its conflict with other media companies isn't a morally pure drama.
ampgt 5y ago
It’s always more convenient to blame the messenger. There is a serious lack of responsibility placed on the users of Facebook. Maybe the world would be a better place if everyone had to read the Allegory of the Cave.

rybosworld 5y ago

This "Facebook == bad" story is tired.

Chazprime 5y ago
Perhaps you should lay down before you get too tuckered out.

altacc 5y ago

The Jacobin is a socialist magazine, so guaranteed to annoy many in this forum but even from my leftist point of view the argument for Facebook being a utility in need of public ownership is flawed. But equally, it is correct that this is not a problem market forces alone will solve and the improvements & policies in-acted or suggested thus far do not seem to solve the problem either and have mostly served to allow Facebook to say they are trying without actually affecting their business model & profits.

ahevia 5y ago
Yeah not sure where Jacobin was going with this argument. I normally enjoy their stuff, but not sure if I feel comfortable with the state having a platform like Facebook. It’s a good enough propaganda machine without state control More regulation & policy targeting FB? Sure. Public utility? No thank you

8bitsrule 5y ago

"the company is driven to do bad things by its thirst for profit, not by a handful of mistaken ideas." As true for most companies as it is for most people. "If we place healthy and unhealthy desire on a spectrum, at one end we have the motivations that lead to some of the worst and most horrific things people do. But at the other end, desire expresses some of the most beautiful and noble aspects of human life." [https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/the-spectrum-of-desire/ https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/the-s...]

scottmcleod 5y ago

Blah blah blah. This is a pretty poor take.