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Facebook chooses profits over people
- cyberpsybin 5y agoSo does Google or Apple or Amazon. Along with Facebook these make 4 horsemen of worse internet.
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoIt's a company, companies work for profit. Free market should deal with that, but with what is basically a monopoly (atleast in userbase), regulators should do their job.
- rspoerri 5y agoThat companies optimize for profit is afaik a pretty modern (1900+) phenomena. VC didnt do any good in that process. Companies should hold a responsibility for it's owners, it's employees, it's customers and theyr envrionment (socially and environmentally) in equal parts. Unfortunately thats wishful thinking, especially with the multinational industries.
- nverno 5y agoCompanies/merchants have sought profit forever. It really doesn't seem much different at all in ancient Rome, for example [1], except everything was smaller scale - they sought capital investment and contracts for mining operations with the goal of squeezing as much profit out as efficiently as possible. 1. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m2kVDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA274&lpg=PA274&dq=roman%20mining%20companies&source=bl&ots=3J5rO4gRfZ&sig=lH9irjj3vCvsWlstbcxOz1RbA2w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjsyoT3197MAhViK8AKHWVoDGMQ6AEIbjAP#v=onepage&q=roman%20mining%20companies&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m2kVDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA274&lp...
- hnbad 5y agoShould, sure, but it's a competitive disadvantage so if you want the free market as the fitness function, you'll end up with companies choosing profit over externalities like that.
- marcos100 5y agoYes, free market is not free-so-I-can-do-anything. It must have some regulations, or else all the corporations will become evil.
- felipellrocha 5y agoIn other news, the sky appears to be blue.
- 123pie123 5y agoI'm surprised that there are people out there that do not realise this
- iechoz6H 5y agoI live in the UK, certainly takes some convincing.
- kybernetyk 5y agoLooks like those bullshit PR feelgood ads really do work on some people. I don't know how naive you would have to be to believe that $CORP really cares about you.
- Dudeman112 5y agoPretty sure on average the sky isn't blue on the UK, specially during winter months. Source: live in Yorkshire.
- bn-usd-mistake 5y agoPretty sure that gp made a joke about the weather in UK
- barney54 5y agoSince we are talking about the UK, as Adam Smith said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.“
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- jamesandthewolf 5y agoI'm not a fan of Facebook and starting to see linkedin heading the same way, I just don't get the look at my one it's bigger then yours I don't understand this so don't join in the game. I personally feel like Facebook and lots of social media is more a fashion statement or cheap thrill. I kind of am liking it here as it's more meaningful and feels like more of an education then a show off session. Facebook's ideas seam more on how do we make more money, then how can we leave the world in a better place. We should protect privacy not profit off and take advantage of the legal flaws around this area. I also feel that Facebook manipulate others when I did use it everyone was always happy always a nice story but reality is never this way life is ups and downs and sometimes it's nice to keep those ups and downs private and not share them for humanity to expose and profit off.
- aceazzameen 5y agoYou made me think, is it even possible to create a social media network geared towards education (sharing skills and ideas) for the masses? I suppose YouTube is somewhat there. But it's blended with so much crap.
- MaysonL 5y agoOfficeHours.global is working on it…
- jamesandthewolf 5y agoMaybe it's possible, however you would need like a law to allow freedoms but not hinder on others freedoms, maybe like a art platform where you can only discuss via symbols and signs, original artwork or images that are approved but then you enter a kind of dictatorship platform it's a fine line.
- christophilus 5y agoAnything “for the masses” has to compete to win over the average and below average intellects. From what I can tell, that means that you have to get more and more sensationalistic to keep market share. You’re competing with a lot of addictive content out there, and educational content generally doesn’t fare well in that regard. Remember all of those educational video games in the past? Math blasters? They sucked. There’s no way they could compete with Mario and Zelda. This is the same phenomenon.
- rvz 5y agoNo shit. Small and large companies are always on the side of profit and companies like Facebook are certainly not your friends. It is naive to think that they will ever change. It is only going to get worse.
- FabHK 5y ago> It is naive to think that they will ever change. It is only going to get worse. Why? Exploitative monopolies have been dismantled in the past, robber barons have been held to account. It takes further innovation combined with collective action, political will, and forceful regulation.
- Proven 5y ago[dead]
- amne 5y agoIsn't it illegal for a CEO to lead the company away from profit?
- agent327 5y agoNo, absolutely not. And I find it very sad that apparently Big Finance has managed to convince people that it would be.
- dogleash 5y agoNo. Go read Ford v. Dodge. It’s about not actively and deliberately screwing shareholders.
- amne 5y ago"The Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford could not lower consumer prices and raise employee salaries." Doesn't this just prove my point? I oversimplified my statement but would it be legal for lord Zuck to come out tomorrow and say "we are reducing ads by 90% on the platform and here's a checkbox that will disable all tracking and remove all data we have about you that you didn't explicitly upload yourself" with no alternative revenue source presented which inevitably leads to lower revenue for FB which then inevitably means reduced dividends etc. note: I understand the users are not the "customers" and the actual equivalent would be for Zuck to say to advertisers that the cost to display ads has dropped by 90% which would be even worse for users. My point is the outcome of "lower dividends" being evidently caused by a decision made by the CEO (to now show ads anymore, to not track users behind their backs anymore, etc.) as being in the end illegal.
- jamesandthewolf 5y agoProfit does not just need to be money based, it can also be defined on mental health and well being no?
- archerx 5y agoBless your heart.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jagged-chisel 5y agos/Tech giant/Corporations/ ftfy
- DeathArrow 5y agoI wonder if someone genuinely thought that Facebook cares about him or her.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- AlexAltea 5y agoAs long as paying customers are advertisers instead of users, why would they care? Why is this even news?
- klelatti 5y agoMaybe, just maybe, Zuck isn't the best person to lead a large, mature, highly politically sensitive corporation with a view to generating long term value for shareholders. But then shareholders can't remove him.
- throwawayswede 5y agoWhy the fuck should it!?! Like as if any other business in the world ever does!??
- Traubenfuchs 5y agoI am also a bit lost about people being bamboozled by this reality of life.
- corobo 5y agoPeople do this too to be fair. The most notable people in the world are people who hoard wealth. We put all our points into commercialism, of course people would sell their own grandma for a few quid. We wanted this apparently.
- jamesandthewolf 5y agoIf I hoard a billion news papers clippings I'm a mad man but if I hoard billions of dollars I'm a hero this seams like a bit of a paradox in itself no?
- techbio 5y agoSo do both?
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> if I hoard billions of dollars If you literally "hoard," as in store it up and hide it away [1], yes, that would be crazy. But nobody does that. Those billions are invested and working. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hoard https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hoard
- corobo 5y agoWell as long as it's technically not hoarding, problem solved! Nobody is hungry anymore :) Come on mate you know what we mean.. I'm not even calling to get shot of billionaires, I just want them to pay their damn taxes
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> Come on mate you know what we mean I know what you mean, and I agree with you. But OP was literally calling for a wealth cap [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28956273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28956273
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- dghughes 5y agoThat's any for profit company no matter what anyone believes. Any company its only purpose is profit. It's the same with company HR it's there to protect the company. It's not personnel anymore it's called human resources for a reason you're just company inventory. And "corporate culture" there is none they are not your family there is no culture they'll fire you in a heartbeat.
- mach1ne 5y agoI beg to differ. The purpose of the company is what those in power of the company decide it to be. While in the absolute majority of cases it is profit, there _are_ exceptions. Most notable exception would be SpaceX, which has its sights set on Mars transportation, with profits mainly serving as the stepping stones.
- e-clinton 5y agoSeems they have a fantastic PR department
- _Algernon_ 5y agolol. Must be fun having your tongue so far up Musk's ass.
- dang 5y agoPosting like this will get you banned on HN, regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- grsmvg 5y agoThat works because the purpose — at least currently — doesn't actually cannibalise on the profits.
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- wombatmobile 5y agotl;dr > Lastly, it is also important to be critical of the capitalist system that allows information to be bought and sold for profit. The perverse notion that we—in the form of our attention and information—should be ok with becoming products to be sold by companies, in exchange for efficient forms of communication and human connection, should be rebuked.
- mattbrewsbytes 5y agoThe US already has a couple billionaires doing space stuff and one trying to eradicate things like polio so if this were a Civilization video game tech tree choice it would be amazing to pick the next billionaire (i.e. FB's Zuckerberg) to fully fund non-profit mental health centers across the country.
- Coolerbythelake 5y agoBreakup FB. It's a mind control piggie bank. Sick.
- etiam 5y ago'We value your privacy [, at about 30¢].'
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoThese headlines naïvely miss the point. The problem isn’t Facebook, a private company, seeking profits. The problem is its deeply-entrenched psychopathy and pathological record of lying [1]. And it really appears to be a Facebook problem. Instagram for Kids wasn’t the fever dream of a deranged Instagrammer. It was pushed by a Facebook implant [2]. I don’t know if being in proximity to Facebook’s leadership corrupts people. Or if they select broken folks to start with. But it’s a top down effect, and the main reason I lobby for breaking up the company. [1] They lied to the FTC [a]. They lied to WhatsApp and the EU [B]. They created an Oversight Board and then, wait for it, lied to it [c]. —[a] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_facebook_complaint_filed_7-24-19.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_fa... —[b] https://euobserver.com/digital/137953 https://euobserver.com/digital/137953 —[c] https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-oversight-board-says-company-wasnt-fully-forthcoming-on-treatment-of-high-profile-users-11634817601 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-oversight-board-says-... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Mosseri https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Mosseri
- imgabe 5y agoThis is overly reductionist. “Those people are just intrinsically evil and do bad things for the pure joy they get from being evil” is pretty much never the case. Yes, it makes you feel good and righteous to proclaim that, but real people and real life are more complex.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> Those people are just intrinsically evil and do bad things for the pure joy they get from being evil Nobody said that. The assertion is that Facebook's culture either attracts or breeds people unbound by conventional morality. They lie. They break laws. They do things nobody else would find conscionable that makes them a single-stop shop for pen testing the limits of the world's regulatory and legal systems. (The latter not being generally bad, though it is in the specific cases involving Facebook, e.g. Instagram for Kids.)
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- nisegami 5y agoTraditional companies may have been kept in line by having to keep their customers happy. But in Facebook's case, that's advertisers.
- nikkinana 5y agoI got a secret for you, that's everywhere, including here on shit news. That's why I'm shadow banned.
- known 5y ago"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it” --Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
- ed_elliott_asc 5y agoDoes anyone genuinely believe any for profit company gives two shits about its customers? They care as far as the customer spends money (or watches ads blah) but as long as people keep coming, no one really cares for the customers. Who believes that Ronald mcdonald is here to help the customers make the best choice for the customer? This is just the way, friends and family care for each other.
- 0x4d464d48 5y ago"Does anyone genuinely believe any for profit company gives two shits about its customers?" Yes. I've worked for them and with people who were very concerned about their customers. Some of us actually care about value being delivered to a customer and the public. Were not all a bunch of greasy mountebanks gaming people to maximize returns.
- lbriner 5y agoOf course they do, it's just they don't care as much as they do about profit. This isn't as bad as it sounds. If you don't look after your profit, you don't stay in business. That doesn't mean you have to make obscene profits (compared to their burn rate) but most organisations don't, just a few headliners.
- chmod775 5y ago> When it debuted on the internet in 2004, Facebook seemed like a revolutionary innovation. A way for millions of people to engage with one another on a central virtual platform. That's quite a load of revisionist history right there. Facebook was neither the first, nor the first large platform or what we today call social network to enable that. It's differentiating factors were that it was web-based, easy to use, and managed to stick around.
- inciampati 5y agoIt is very revisionist. But it was certainly not special in being web based or easy to use. MySpace, for instance, was far more web based than Facebook has ever been. The major differentiating feature was the marketing model that drove it's initial rollout. It was progressively released to a handful of elite US universities. This led to demand and excitement as it was further expanded. What's striking is that this specific plan was stolen. Without this marketing trick, I sincerely doubt that thefacebook.com would have survived and grown into it's current form.
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- yosito 5y agoMy reaction to this headline is, if you want someone to care about you, call your mother. Most of the world doesn't care about you, and it's not a scandal, it's just how reality works. The whole problem with Facebook is that we somehow ever trusted that it was not motivated by profit, and shared the most intimate details of our lives with it. Stupid fucks, us.
- iforgetti 5y agoI’m not sure if your language was intentional but this was literally Mark’s attitude from day one. [1] 1. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiatoday.in/amp/technology/news/story/mark-zuckerberg-called-early-facebook-users-dumb-f-s-for-sharing-data-giving-up-privacy-1195396-2018-03-22 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiatoday.in/amp/technolog...
- justbored123 5y agoThis article that you are sharing is the dumbest thing I have read today. It literally says: "the company has built a culture where privacy and user data aren't all that important." It's Facebook, the whole point is no privacy and the entire product is user data, what do you mean "aren't that important"??? It's like going to the street naked and complaining that someone took pictures of you.
- dang 5y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamewar comments. That's not what HN is for, regardless of what color the flames are. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- q1w2 5y agoAgreed. If there is a gap between how we expect an industry treats customers, and how customers are treated in (like social media), then the answer is government regulation - not some moral shouting in the media. A healthy capitalist society is one with efficient regulations. I feel like these pieces often try to discredit all of capitalism just because a regulation is needed somewhere. I don't want to live in a theocracy dictated by whoever screeches the loudest in the media or on social media.
- amznbyebyebye 5y agoAs long as you don’t break the laws and.. You have some “values” which allow you to ignore anything else that may compromise your profits for the sake of them And as long as you have a free market (gasp) and investors that only care about EPS and other profit related metrics.. Under these constraints you get companies that promote these toxic environments under the slogans of “bring communities closer together” etc etc
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> As long as you don’t break the laws Facebook getting fined for breaking laws may as well be a weekly column at this point.
- FabHK 5y ago... getting fined and sincerely apologising.
- xiaodai 5y agoWater is wet, not dry!
- bjt2n3904 5y agoThis is precisely what I tell people whenever they think they can harness Facebooks algorithm and censorship powers for good. "But we can use it to amplify 'the right' stories, and bury 'hateful' ones!" No, you can't. And the more and more power you give Facebook to shape morality, the more you'll find that society's morality is guided by what companies consider profitable.
- Ensorceled 5y agoThe problem is that the road to hell is paved with gold. It's not that Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, et. al are choosing a little extra profit over people, it's a LOT of extra profit over people. That's why this needs legislation. You don't get to be the CEO of a Tech giant without being, at a minimum, ruthless; asking ruthless people to "do the right thing" and give up a lot of money for the good of "other people" is never going to work. To be clear though, Facebook is the worst and I believe that Zuck is a sociopath who would happily ruin people's lives for another nickle.
- nodex-alex 5y agowhy is this even news? This is just obvious by their actions of the last ten or so years!
- elzbardico 5y agoFacebook as a corporation is merely an extension of Mark's values (or lack of them, thereof) and priorities. Why is this surprising?
- alistairSH 5y agoIt's not. And expecting FB/Mark to correct poor behavior is a losing strategy. The only way to rein them in is through regulation.
- whitepaint 5y agoFB would absolutely love imposed regulation.
- dr-detroit 5y agoIf you're STILL?????? on facebook you deserve the brainscramble for being such a self selecting corporate tool.
- coolgoose 5y agoEverybody seems to be surprised on how capitalism works, forgetting that capitalism without some sort of proper market regulation and real proper heavy fines means jack shit.
- npteljes 5y agoPR is working wonders. People tend to forget anyways, and now they're supplied with an alternative narrative as well.
- comeonseriously 5y agoFundamentally, it is many times easier to be negative than to be positive. Any (general) social media platform will (eventually) skew heavily towards the negative. Facebook just had a head start is all because of Zuck.
- raptor99 5y agoJust in: [Company Name] doesn't care about you: [Company name] always chooses profits over people
- randomdata 5y agoAll companies choose people. The people they choose may not be you, however.
- marcodiego 5y agoJuding only by the headline: where's the news?
- oldie 5y agoHow many people bemoaning Facebook's evils on HN still have Facebook accounts? Do what you know you ought to do. Stop feeding the beast. Set a better example. Close your account and don't look back. And, when people ask you why you left, tell them.
- sAbakumoff 5y ago* Amazon doesn’t care about you: Tech giant always chooses profits over people * Apple doesn’t care about you: Tech giant always chooses profits over people * Microsoft doesn’t care about you: Tech giant always chooses profits over people * Google doesn’t care about you: Tech giant always chooses profits over people They are all the same. It's how capitalism works and no amount of hysterical TYT shows can change that.
- Clubber 5y ago>The documents I have provided to Congress prove that Facebook has repeatedly misled the public about what its own research reveals about the safety of children, the efficacy of its artificial intelligence systems, and its role in spreading divisive and extreme messages. Here's the red flag: for the children. Anytime that is brought up, it's something bad for the population. See drug war, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria (Aleppo), vape pressure (to keep people smoking cigarettes for state settlement money), etc. I'm afraid the ultimate plan is to get rid of section 230, which would of course give a monopoly of political discourse back to the corporations: Viacom News, Comcast News, Fox News, Warner News, Microsoft News. Of course controlling that is a lot of power and allows business as usual in our governments with little to no pushback. https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/dear-congress-platform-accountability-should-not-threaten-online-expression/ https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/dear-congress-platform...
- vages 5y ago“People’s World, Continuing The Daily Worker”. I never thought I would see a Marxist newspaper at the top of Hacker News: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_World https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_World At least Marxists by definition have been at it longer than anyone else when it comes to criticising capitalism.
- cortexio 5y agoFacebook again? Why is there always negative news about facebook? What about google & twitter? They do the exact same evil stuff. I swear, at this point it seems like facebook is being targetted by some propaganda group. Not saying facebook is good, but this is suspicious. As for the "whistleblower"... she told nothing, absolutely nothing. Everything she told was already known. It was like a show for the media. Also, "showing that whenever there was a conflict between the interests of the company and the public good, the social media giant would choose its own interests" That's good. That's how it should be. What shouldnt be is when u use your company to hurt the public. And in my opinion, that is what all these giant companies do. These companies decide which opinions are right and which are wrong. That is wrong. It's playing dictator. It's not their job. It's mis-use of power. Whether FB wants to show ads for Trump or Biden, it shouldnt matter. These companies should not be allowed to decide which information you should be allowed to see and which not. If they do, which they do, it's called interference aka. meddling with elections aka. bias'd system. I hope fb, google, twitter disappear one day. The world would be better off.
- DeathArrow 5y agoNow that I've learned that Facebook doesn't care about me, I am pretty disappointed. I what kind of a world do we live in? I thought that guy Zuck was a nice person.
- fortran77 5y agoDo you think "Y Combinator" cares about you?
- trentnix 5y agoWait until you figure out that government always chooses power over people.
- seaourfreed 5y agoNon-intuitive insight here: * The claim is that Facebook should censor "fake news" more * Facebook/Twitter /YouTube have employees with control of these sensor tools. * A sub-set (not all) of them chose to use these tools to censor when the Republicans / Libertarians make their political points. * Rand Paul had a YouTube channel. YouTube employee leftists censored him by removing (censoring) his ENTIRE YouTube channel. * John Stossel is a high integrity guy. Facebook's censor tools put "PolitiFact: This post (his) is NOT TRUE". Censor-type tools were used against views of the libertarians. * The current majority thought is that COVID originated from the Lab. Across 2020 people posting various facts that were pointing this direction had those posts censored. We all hate real lies. However, the above list of valid political content from the political right is being censored. The list is long. Free speech & free debate is the fuel of democracy, and we need to protect it.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y agoIsn't it how every company operates? Does Coca Cola think about people or about maximizing profit (by adding more sugar?
- zarkov99 5y agoThis is myopic nonsense at best and most likely a cynical hit job driven by some dark agenda. Facebook is the natural result of a regulatory and cultural environment that has not yet caught on to the fact that as a species, culturally and biologically, we are not built to be interacting directly with millions of people in real time. We, as in the human race, need to take this challenge very seriously, and work to understand and modulate the astronomical imbalance between our individual data processing capability and the amount of information and disinformation that is now easily accessible.
- thethethethe 5y ago> think of a situation involving a caregiver and a baby. The caregiver is found to be feeding the baby poison. When questioned, they respond that they continued to feed this to the baby because initially, the infant seemed to respond favorably to the taste. The caregiver claims the final result isn’t their fault, because it’s what the baby continued to go for. The caregiver is aware of the dangers of the toxin, but they seemingly ignore this as the baby keeps coming back for more. The caregiver is only concerned with the fact that the baby is eating their food, rather than what the baby is consuming. That bleak analogy isn’t far off from Facebook’s dealings. A great example of how the mainstream center-left in America views the unwashed masses. Talk about paternalism. No wonder the vitriol peddled by right wing media hits home for so many people. This doesn't seem like a great strategy for American liberals going forward. Not a great way to build a coalition with the people they are supposedly trying to help
- osianmight 5y agoOsian