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We live in a world where all of our major journalists release fun, high-five-everybody-look-at-how-shit-this-thing-is mockery pieces for every new mistake by a
by istorical 5y ago
We live in a world where all of our major journalists release fun, high-five-everybody-look-at-how-shit-this-thing-is mockery pieces for every new mistake by a tech company but where are the front page Vice pieces, Washington Post articles, or NYT exposés when Johnson and Johnson sells 33,000 bottles of baby power with asbestos in them? Why wasn't Johnson and Johnson's CEO dragged in front of congress, why don't we hear constant calls to break up Johnson and Johnson? This is just one example, but it's hilarious to see the outrage, the snide articles and nose-turned-up comments, while we conveniently ignore the worst industries that are destroying our planet, the slave labor that goes into all of our physical products, the poison that often finds its way into them, or the destruction they are wreaking on nature.
As a site dominated by tech industry employees, it's time that people working in tech stop simply nodding their heads when people shift the cultural spotlight on corporate malfeasance onto tech's bully target of the year/decade, over and over and over again. We get it, social media is fucked up. Great. Now, where are the Frances Haugen's of BigChemical or BigCPG? Why aren't they household names? Why aren't we collectively outraged they aren't at congressional hearings?
This piece by Vice absolutely embodies the snide tone, the absolute derision with which we decided it's OK to paint Facebook. That's well and good, Facebook isn't great, but doing so while turning a blind eye to far greater crimes is a crime that itself ought to be castigated. A journalists mission is in part to embody the Fourth Estate - to be a watchdog. When all journalism does is stand around the classroom and pat each other on the back and point at the dunce-hat wearing stooge of the decade making obvious mistakes in an echo chamber while ignoring the subtle crimes of the popular kid, it's worthy of the same snide comments itself.
- jl6 5y agoIncreasingly, media consumers don’t know anything about chemistry, or industry, or manufacturing, or have any contacts in that world, which, to be fair, is increasingly outsourced, subcontracted, offshored, and inaccessible. But they do spend a lot of time on Facebook, so media spends more time writing about Facebook because they know their audience will understand it (and click on it).
- supercanuck 5y agoJ&J poisoning babies doesn't make Facebook less bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- mysecretaccount 5y agoThe term "whataboutism" is often used (like in this case) to shield against legitimate criticism. The above poster is not claiming that FB is not bad or should not be criticized - he is saying that he thinks the media treatment of contemporary moral issues is not weighted properly. Maybe you still disagree with him, but simply calling "whataboutism" muddies the water. Here is a great episode of Citations Needed about the term "whataboutism": https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-66-whataboutism-the-medias-favorite-rhetorical-shield-against-criticism-of-us-policy https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-66-whatabouti...
- isoskeles 5y agoThank you for the link. Kind of awesome there's an hour long podcast on this concept.
- supercanuck 5y agoThis thread went Meta and we are no longer talking about Facebook. You just did the same thing.
- lapetitejort 5y agoWe live in a world where two or more bad things can be talked about at the same time. > but where are the front page Vice pieces, Washington Post articles, or NYT exposés when Johnson and Johnson sells 33,000 bottles of baby power with asbestos in them? https://www.vice.com/en/article/433jdg/johnson-and-johnson-lawsuits-morcellator-vaginal-mesh-baby-powder https://www.vice.com/en/article/433jdg/johnson-and-johnson-l...
- istorical 5y agoI have no doubt these crimes do get written about, but they're third-rate beats, rarely front-page material. They don't lead to mass condemnation, they don't lead to boycotts, they don't result in congressional hearings.
- hacksnewer 5y agoYou ever heard of confirmation bias? Hey, they claim to have 1.8 billion users. If an entity is that large they naturally require more scrutiny. Give me a break. You act like they're getting bullied up on.
- mherdeg 5y agoHmm like https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-subcommittee-s-year-long-investigation-leads-to-johnson-johnson https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-su... or https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-talc-congress/jj-ceo-spurns-u-s-congressional-hearing-on-carcinogens-in-talc-products-idUSKBN1YD2CA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-talc-cong... ?
- ashwoods 5y agoI remember reading about the talc issue in Spain, and a quick search led me to congressional action on talc: https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/chairman-krishnamoorthi-requests-information-from-johnson-johnson-on-talc https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/chairman-kri... I’m afraid the bias might be elsewhere.
- lapetitejort 5y ago
- papito 5y agoCan you blame journalists for hating big tech, when they are destroying their profession? Journalists are forced to bang out 20 clickables a day to keep up, because you've got to get those PAGE VIEWS. The only injection of adrenaline into the veins of investigative journalism were the four years of shockingly incompetent, corrupt, and vile Trump administration. Investigative journalism requires resources and talent, and this arena is bleeding both. And when they do dig into something, they suddenly become "main stream narratives" and "fake news". Charlie Sykes actually had a devastating episode on the Bulwark podcast about this yesterday. Gutting of local news is leading to rampant corruption on the local level, because no one is watching. And the "small government" crowd, you know, the misguided libertarians on this very site, clamor for less oversight. Because that's what it's all about.
- vanattab 5y agoYou see the Trump years as some sort of revitalization of journalism? I have a very different take away from those years.
- hacksnewer 5y agoThey were ranting about the 4th estate...it is their job to cover stuff like this.
- cityzen 5y agoHonest question, did you read the article?
- cbtacy 5y agomicdrop
- roca 5y agoWhat Facebook is doing to humanity is far worse than selling baby powder with possible asbestos contamination. Maybe J&J made a mistake, maybe they didn't, but it's not core to their business model like Philip Morris selling cigarettes or Facebook amplifying evil.
- grecy 5y ago> where are the front page Vice pieces, Washington Post articles, or NYT exposés when Johnson and Johnson sells 33,000 bottles of baby power with asbestos in them? No, no, no. J&J is a good American company. Family values. Takes care of it's employees like family. Good for the economy. Ma & Pa Values. They're nothing like free-and-footloose wild Facebook. /s Of course, that's the image they want everyone to believe, and old money companies work very, very hard to continue that.
- iamstupidsimple 5y agoThis is the crux of the debate in my opinion - it's old money (finance, journalism, entertainment) vs new money (tech) that threatens to eat all their businesses alive. This is nothing more than a power struggle between the ownership classes.
- JetSpiegel 5y agoHow is J&J threatened by Facebook? Will this Third Life be so addictive, people will let their children shit themselves and use no baby powder?
- iamstupidsimple 5y agoI mean technology in a general sense. But for J&J specifically, there's always the chance that a fast moving biotechnology startup will outcompete them.
- zahma 5y agoYou’re correct that there isn’t enough diversification of wrongdoing covered by the press. However, it’s not enough to just conclude the chapter on social media. This is a watershed moment that has been utterly necessary ever since Facebook was implicated in the elections and Cambridge Analytica. The reality is most people don’t care to understand how social media is at the heart of everything, even journalism. The news sites you mentioned above are prominent sources and participants on Twitter. What does not get traction there, doesn’t make money for them, and so we are stuck in this feedback loop in which something trends and we get clickbait headlines while the world burns. It’s actually surprising news media can step back and see who their real publishers and modern day printing presses are. Perhaps they can appreciate how tangled up they are in the feedback cycle of getting clicks because fewer and fewer people actually subscribe and passively read via social media, which nets … Meta … more money than the journal. That is the tragedy of news media today. It’s the death of the local journal and consolidation of large media operations which are increasingly at the whim of Twitter trends and ad revenue. So let’s keep talking about social media until we can prise control, regulate, and have healthy discussions about things other than lifestyle choices and top 10 lists.