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We can't be critical of a company that makes people miserable? That weakens democracy? That enables violence and hate? Just because they make a lot of money we
by ohashi 5y ago
We can't be critical of a company that makes people miserable? That weakens democracy? That enables violence and hate? Just because they make a lot of money we should be cheering?
Oh wow, they made $11! Let's forget everything else.
- bot41 5y agoWhy post emotive comments on a financial post?
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y agoFinancial loss can be pretty emotional.
- brokencode 5y agoSure, but try being critical about something that they can actually be faulted for rather than their incredible earnings. The OP was just pointing out that a lot of the criticism here made no sense.
- stu2b50 5y agoThere’s a difference between hating Meta for its ethics and hating Meta as a money making machine. People are doing the latter and that’s pretty silly. Meta is, however unethically, a good entity at the goal of making money.
- pebble 5y agoThey do the latter by compromising on the former.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bko 5y agoBe critical all you want, just don't try to gaslight by saying they're on the verge of collapse and everyone hates them. They're extremely popular and billions log in every day because they apparently get some kind of value out of the product
- pm90 5y agoEveryone that knows the extent to which they're complicit in destroying societies does hate them. As for their popularity, yeah I guess you could call a monopoly "popular" but that's just because there isn't effective competition... because of Facebook's anti-competitive practices.
- moonshinefe 5y agoLiterally nobody was arguing this, though. The OP's outburst about the "vitriol" on this topic also seems pretty overly dramatic, tbh, and has done wonders to derail things because it hurls personal insults.
- lnxg33k1 5y agoI agree with you on almost everything but we can't blame meta for weak democracy, underpaid teachers, private schools, lack of social programs, absent social services et al are weakening democracy
- benlivengood 5y agoIf democracy can't survive Facebook then it probably was doomed already. Similarly with trying to live in civil society when there are already fellow citizens full of violence and hatred; FB might give voice to what is already there and already broken but isn't really the cause.
- agalunar 5y agoAlthough that's sort of like saying "if an ant can't survive being scorched by a magnifying glass, it was probably doomed to burn in the sun anyway". What you're saying may be true – I've no idea. But I'm not sure we can yet dismiss the idea that social technology like Facebook, used as it is, might push us over a line we wouldn't otherwise cross.
- actaeon169 5y agoThe trouble with democracy is, and always was, the demos
- aierou 5y agoWhat, does public opinion shield you from the burden of proof? These are outrageous claims. I pray for legislation to put this all to rest.
- ohashi 5y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/14/facebook-aware-instagram-harmful-effect-teenage-girls-leak-reveals https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/14/facebook-... https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/white-supremacist-groups-are-thriving-on-facebook https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/white-supre... https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-facebook-russia/facebook-says-russian-influence-campaign-targeted-left-wing-voters-in-u-s-uk-idUSKBN25S5UC https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-facebook-russia... So outrageous it's easy to find evidence for all of them?
- aierou 5y agoEvidence is a horribly abused term. Do you really believe any of this would admissible in a court of law?
- ohashi 5y agoSo it went from 'these claims are outrageous' to they wouldn't hold up in a court of law? You're a facebook shill and you're embarrassing yourself. You're not fighting misinformation, you are the disinformation campaign.
- aierou 5y agoMy intentions were clear in my first post - legislation will be the deciding factor. This back and forth is meaningless.
- lhorie 5y agoI mean, if you don't have a stock position, why parrot the same tired narrative? It's not adding any insight and it's not like their stock never had downswing before. At one point the crowd here was like oh fb ipo so embarrassing, to oh fb eng so hot much react, to oh fb so evil now, crash and burn pls. Such fickleness. Surely we can do better than that.
- zepto 5y agoFacebook is a machine that makes people parrot tired narratives that are devoid of insight.
- aierou 5y agoApparently so is HN
- ohashi 5y agoSo do you work for facebook or is your only purpose on HN to try to defend the company?
- zepto 5y agoTheir purpose is to defend the company against humorous comments.
- aierou 5y agoI am interested in the virtual reality space, and started posting because I was frustrated by the spread of misinformation/propaganda. Ironically, there is a lot of misinformation about Facebook. I'm sure my contributions are mostly meaningless, but it has at least been interesting to follow discussions.
- zepto 5y agoReally? What do you think of as misinformation about Facebook?
- noslenwerdna 5y agoIt doesn't weaken democracy any more than other social media. And if facebook goes down it's just going to be replaced with tiktok or something worse.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into tedious flamewars. Those have nothing to do with intellectual curiosity, and are therefore off topic here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html