7 ms·

Oh please. Every major tech company does all the same shit Facebook does, the rest are just lucky that FB takes most of the heat. Tell me, what exactly has Fa

by dntrkv 5y ago

Oh please. Every major tech company does all the same shit Facebook does, the rest are just lucky that FB takes most of the heat. Tell me, what exactly has Facebook done that is so bad compared to Google, Amazon, or Microsoft?

thehappypm 5y ago
Facebook's entire business model is creating people addicted to chaos. It has radicalized people, led to suicides, and caused a huge rift in many countries' political ecosystems. That is their business model, it's the only way they make money. Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc have flaws but their business models don't depend on creating conflict.
- hermitwriter 5y ago
  Source on those claims? Not "the media" but actual sources that haven't been debunked?
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    The New York Times article here has many linked sources, and their reporting on the situation has been stellar. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/technology/whistle-blower-facebook-frances-haugen.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/technology/whistle-blower...
    - hermitwriter 5y ago
      Most of her claims make a gigantic leap to conclusions. I'm asking for a source that shows, for example, a suicide that was _because_ of Facebook. Radicalization trends as another example have been on the rise in the US long before FB or social media, and there are many other countries where FB exists but radicalization is on the decline. There is plenty wrong with FB, but this all seems like trying to pin a root cause to something b/c we need something to blame. Maybe correlation, but I don't see the causation.
      - thehappypm 5y ago
        "Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show Its own in-depth research shows a significant teen mental-health issue that Facebook plays down in public" https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739?mod=article_inline https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-tox... Their own research shows they know the negative impacts of their platform.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        hermitwriter 5y ago
        In said study, Facebook acknowledges problems with the study itself as do other researchers without a dog in the fight. Let's see an independent study show the same thing.
        theduder99 5y ago
        an independent study with access to insider information..k
        hermitwriter 5y ago
        An independent study of the effects of Social Media (instagram, FB, TikTok, whatever) needs no insider information. We're studying the effect, not the company. Hypothesis: Instagram causes teenage girls to have a lower opinion of their bodies than they would otherwise have without Instagram. Study: Have 2 cohorts of teenage girls rate their appearance or happiness with their bodies. The two cohorts are separated by those who use Instagram and those who don't. Run independently, of course. This study is incredibly flawed (like the original) b/c it is self-reported happiness (incredibly subjective, ephemeral, and prone to bias) and subject to the same issues as all qualitative research. The only way to get any semblance of reliable data is with a _large_ set in each cohort. Even then, the data raises more questions than answers it provides. But, you could say after this study whether 'it seems Instagram may be harmful.' It is also flawed for other reasons but you get the point. You don't need insider info to study the effect of something.
    - sabas123 5y ago
      I agree with hermitwriter here. Currently I'm not at all convinced somebody can claim that all of these negative effects wouldn't have existed if we had a morally correct social media platform instead.
  - takeda 5y ago
    I'm assuming you have been in comma in the past few years?
    - hermitwriter 5y ago
      Nope. I just don't believe hyped up spin; especially when the deliverers of the content are biased. I like research, and facts.
- nickthegreek 5y ago
  It’s not the only way they can make money, it’s how they are choosing to maximize profits.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    That's probably the most damning thing. They know they could promote more positive content and kill doom scrolling with the flip of a switch. But that would probably reduce their session length and reduce the number of ad impressions to sell.
    - goatlover 5y ago
      And the media could do the same thing, but they know bad news sells. Why is FB fundamentally different from the rest of media?
      - genewitch 5y ago
        CNN isn't spying on my browsing habits. If I don't want to watch ABC I don't have to. Back in the days of AOL you could use Juno or whatever to send and receive email from AOL users if you weren't interested in the platform. FB, Google, cloudflare, and a few others control way too much information flow, globally. CNN only gets like 2 million viewers on a good day.
        goatlover 5y ago
        And what is the combined viewership for CNN, Fox News, NBC, AM Talk Radio, NY Times, Sky News, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, etc?
      - thehappypm 5y ago
        Media is held to journalistic standards. Uncle Abe from Scranton is not.
        goatlover 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- james_in_the_uk 5y ago
  I think that’s a little unfair. As an idea FB genuinely revolutionised person to person communications, not all for the worse. Remember what it was like before to stay connected with family and friends remotely. Swapping email addresses, posting your holiday snaps on your shared hosting server space running some cr*p Perl or PHP scripts. And that was progress. My thoughts towards Facebook are complicated. They certainly have some issues but I am not sure that makes their core mission inherently evil.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    I think Facebook has done a lot of good, like being able to talk to my distant relatives. I think the news feed concept is super entertaining and a great way to keep in touch with friends. Facebook intentionally tuned their algorithm to maximize revenue. Not happiness or customer satisfaction. Just money. At great societal cost.
dralley 5y ago
> Every major tech company does all the same shit Facebook does, the rest are just lucky that FB takes most of the heat. > Tell me, what exactly has Facebook done that is so bad compared to Google, Amazon, or Microsoft? You're angling to absolve Facebook here, but I'll flip that in the other direction. They all deserve a healthy serving of contempt, and frankly it's the reason why I never respond when Amazon and Google recruiters come calling 3 times a week. https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1450000616202248193 https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1450000616202248193 But what separates Facebook from the others is the utter lack of shame about what they're doing, and the fact that Zuckerberg has no accountability due to the arrangement of voting shares. That makes them uniquely dangerous.
- ojbyrne 5y ago
  Uniquely? GOOG invented the dual class share structure, and the founders still control over 50% of shares by votes.
- nighthawk454 5y ago
  That's a bit illogical. They're not trying to 'absolve' them, as if somehow Facebook isn't bad because others are also bad. They're all similar (ly bad). What separate's Facebook is their namesake product is too close to the source of controversy. Google's "public facing" products are things like search, YouTube, gmail, google docs. Amazon has 2-day shipping and prime video and such. When people think of Amazon/Google they think of that first. Sure, they're doing all the same controversial with their products. But in my experience, the average non-tech person has more buffer for that, when there's a bit of separation between the brand identity and the bad behavior. A lot of non-tech people aren't even aware that FB (Meta?) owns Instagram and WhatsApp - that's the kind of tolerance buffer that the other FAANG has for _all_ of their main products. In this sense, the rebrand to "Meta" might actually work a bit.
Barrin92 5y ago
Most of them do plenty of bad shit but at least for a company like Amazon you can make the case that their logistics and infrastructure delivers real value and moves material goods around the world and creates quite harsh but at least reasonably paying blue collar jobs whereas Facebook and other 'social media' giants' drive political discourse to ruins, teenagers mad, and employ hordes of underpaid gig workers to sift through child abuse content and other horrid crap. And that aside you're not forced to work for FAANG. Plenty of small companies around who do good work in healthcare or what have you, or national security, the defense sector and other public sectors desperately looking for engineers. Plenty of work to do that is more meaningful than getting kids to click on ads.
- culopatin 5y ago
  Where do they post these gig jobs you’re talking about? Do you have an example?
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo... here's a pretty extensive article about it, no idea where they advertise these.
- wikidani 5y ago
  >reasonably paying blue collar jobs As a disclaimer, I'm not from the US and my sources might be entirely biased but I thought a big chunk of amazon employees were ill paid and on foodstamps?
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    They pay a starting wage of about 18 - 22 bucks an hour depending on the location for warehouse workers. For comparison, that's somewhat more than twice the federal minimum wage or what you make as a cashier, say. https://www.reuters.com/business/amazon-hire-125000-workers-pay-hourly-wages-18-2021-09-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/amazon-hire-125000-workers-...
programzeta 5y ago
It's not what Facebook does that the others don't, in my opinion, it's that Facebook does not have services for businesses. They have scant little utility to businesses outside of advertising services to temper their outrages with, so they're given even less of a benefit of the doubt than other tech companies.
throwawayboise 5y ago
Isn't this the "Stalin was just as bad as Hitler" argument?
- missedthecue 5y ago
  No, because modern society heavily criticizes both Hitler and Stalin.
math-dev 5y ago
Exactly! Add Apple to the bunch too. (Good) Regulation is required now

by dntrkv 5y ago

thehappypm 5y ago

Facebook's entire business model is creating people addicted to chaos. It has radicalized people, led to suicides, and caused a huge rift in many countries' political ecosystems. That is their business model, it's the only way they make money. Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc have flaws but their business models don't depend on creating conflict.

hermitwriter 5y ago
Source on those claims? Not "the media" but actual sources that haven't been debunked?
- thehappypm 5y ago
  The New York Times article here has many linked sources, and their reporting on the situation has been stellar. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/technology/whistle-blower-facebook-frances-haugen.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/technology/whistle-blower...
  - hermitwriter 5y ago
    Most of her claims make a gigantic leap to conclusions. I'm asking for a source that shows, for example, a suicide that was _because_ of Facebook. Radicalization trends as another example have been on the rise in the US long before FB or social media, and there are many other countries where FB exists but radicalization is on the decline. There is plenty wrong with FB, but this all seems like trying to pin a root cause to something b/c we need something to blame. Maybe correlation, but I don't see the causation.
    - thehappypm 5y ago
      "Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show Its own in-depth research shows a significant teen mental-health issue that Facebook plays down in public" https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739?mod=article_inline https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-tox... Their own research shows they know the negative impacts of their platform.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - hermitwriter 5y ago
        In said study, Facebook acknowledges problems with the study itself as do other researchers without a dog in the fight. Let's see an independent study show the same thing.
        theduder99 5y ago
        an independent study with access to insider information..k
        hermitwriter 5y ago
        An independent study of the effects of Social Media (instagram, FB, TikTok, whatever) needs no insider information. We're studying the effect, not the company. Hypothesis: Instagram causes teenage girls to have a lower opinion of their bodies than they would otherwise have without Instagram. Study: Have 2 cohorts of teenage girls rate their appearance or happiness with their bodies. The two cohorts are separated by those who use Instagram and those who don't. Run independently, of course. This study is incredibly flawed (like the original) b/c it is self-reported happiness (incredibly subjective, ephemeral, and prone to bias) and subject to the same issues as all qualitative research. The only way to get any semblance of reliable data is with a _large_ set in each cohort. Even then, the data raises more questions than answers it provides. But, you could say after this study whether 'it seems Instagram may be harmful.' It is also flawed for other reasons but you get the point. You don't need insider info to study the effect of something.
  - sabas123 5y ago
    I agree with hermitwriter here. Currently I'm not at all convinced somebody can claim that all of these negative effects wouldn't have existed if we had a morally correct social media platform instead.
- takeda 5y ago
  I'm assuming you have been in comma in the past few years?
  - hermitwriter 5y ago
    Nope. I just don't believe hyped up spin; especially when the deliverers of the content are biased. I like research, and facts.
nickthegreek 5y ago
It’s not the only way they can make money, it’s how they are choosing to maximize profits.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  That's probably the most damning thing. They know they could promote more positive content and kill doom scrolling with the flip of a switch. But that would probably reduce their session length and reduce the number of ad impressions to sell.
  - goatlover 5y ago
    And the media could do the same thing, but they know bad news sells. Why is FB fundamentally different from the rest of media?
    - genewitch 5y ago
      CNN isn't spying on my browsing habits. If I don't want to watch ABC I don't have to. Back in the days of AOL you could use Juno or whatever to send and receive email from AOL users if you weren't interested in the platform. FB, Google, cloudflare, and a few others control way too much information flow, globally. CNN only gets like 2 million viewers on a good day.
      - goatlover 5y ago
        And what is the combined viewership for CNN, Fox News, NBC, AM Talk Radio, NY Times, Sky News, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, etc?
    - thehappypm 5y ago
      Media is held to journalistic standards. Uncle Abe from Scranton is not.
      - goatlover 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
james_in_the_uk 5y ago
I think that’s a little unfair. As an idea FB genuinely revolutionised person to person communications, not all for the worse. Remember what it was like before to stay connected with family and friends remotely. Swapping email addresses, posting your holiday snaps on your shared hosting server space running some cr*p Perl or PHP scripts. And that was progress. My thoughts towards Facebook are complicated. They certainly have some issues but I am not sure that makes their core mission inherently evil.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  I think Facebook has done a lot of good, like being able to talk to my distant relatives. I think the news feed concept is super entertaining and a great way to keep in touch with friends. Facebook intentionally tuned their algorithm to maximize revenue. Not happiness or customer satisfaction. Just money. At great societal cost.

dralley 5y ago

> Every major tech company does all the same shit Facebook does, the rest are just lucky that FB takes most of the heat. > Tell me, what exactly has Facebook done that is so bad compared to Google, Amazon, or Microsoft? You're angling to absolve Facebook here, but I'll flip that in the other direction. They all deserve a healthy serving of contempt, and frankly it's the reason why I never respond when Amazon and Google recruiters come calling 3 times a week. https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1450000616202248193 https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1450000616202248193 But what separates Facebook from the others is the utter lack of shame about what they're doing, and the fact that Zuckerberg has no accountability due to the arrangement of voting shares. That makes them uniquely dangerous.

ojbyrne 5y ago
Uniquely? GOOG invented the dual class share structure, and the founders still control over 50% of shares by votes.
nighthawk454 5y ago
That's a bit illogical. They're not trying to 'absolve' them, as if somehow Facebook isn't bad because others are also bad. They're all similar (ly bad). What separate's Facebook is their namesake product is too close to the source of controversy. Google's "public facing" products are things like search, YouTube, gmail, google docs. Amazon has 2-day shipping and prime video and such. When people think of Amazon/Google they think of that first. Sure, they're doing all the same controversial with their products. But in my experience, the average non-tech person has more buffer for that, when there's a bit of separation between the brand identity and the bad behavior. A lot of non-tech people aren't even aware that FB (Meta?) owns Instagram and WhatsApp - that's the kind of tolerance buffer that the other FAANG has for _all_ of their main products. In this sense, the rebrand to "Meta" might actually work a bit.

Barrin92 5y ago

Most of them do plenty of bad shit but at least for a company like Amazon you can make the case that their logistics and infrastructure delivers real value and moves material goods around the world and creates quite harsh but at least reasonably paying blue collar jobs whereas Facebook and other 'social media' giants' drive political discourse to ruins, teenagers mad, and employ hordes of underpaid gig workers to sift through child abuse content and other horrid crap. And that aside you're not forced to work for FAANG. Plenty of small companies around who do good work in healthcare or what have you, or national security, the defense sector and other public sectors desperately looking for engineers. Plenty of work to do that is more meaningful than getting kids to click on ads.

culopatin 5y ago
Where do they post these gig jobs you’re talking about? Do you have an example?
- Barrin92 5y ago
  https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo... here's a pretty extensive article about it, no idea where they advertise these.
wikidani 5y ago
>reasonably paying blue collar jobs As a disclaimer, I'm not from the US and my sources might be entirely biased but I thought a big chunk of amazon employees were ill paid and on foodstamps?
- Barrin92 5y ago
  They pay a starting wage of about 18 - 22 bucks an hour depending on the location for warehouse workers. For comparison, that's somewhat more than twice the federal minimum wage or what you make as a cashier, say. https://www.reuters.com/business/amazon-hire-125000-workers-pay-hourly-wages-18-2021-09-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/amazon-hire-125000-workers-...

programzeta 5y ago

It's not what Facebook does that the others don't, in my opinion, it's that Facebook does not have services for businesses. They have scant little utility to businesses outside of advertising services to temper their outrages with, so they're given even less of a benefit of the doubt than other tech companies.

throwawayboise 5y ago

Isn't this the "Stalin was just as bad as Hitler" argument?

missedthecue 5y ago
No, because modern society heavily criticizes both Hitler and Stalin.

math-dev 5y ago

Exactly! Add Apple to the bunch too. (Good) Regulation is required now