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I'm sorry, but honestly fuck Meta. Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent, and enabling psyops from organizations like Cambridge Analytic

by Leires 4y ago

I'm sorry, but honestly fuck Meta. Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent, and enabling psyops from organizations like Cambridge Analytica, is enough for me to never use their services. I hope they implode as a company. I happily said no when people from meta approached me on LinkedIn.

blobbers 4y ago
Take my downvote. "Psychological experiments" on users is what every company; user and market research. Enabling "psyops" is simply building a platform; this isn't the first platform that his been misused or scraped for other purposes. You get spam robo dialers? It wasn't from meta... etc. etc. etc.
throwawaymeta4 4y ago
Its much much worse than just psychological experiments. Meta currently stands accused as an enabler of a genocide in Myanmar [1], and provides a platform to spread massive hate against Muslims in India and elsewhere [2,3,4,5]. For folks trying to do bothsidesism here and bring out how great they've been, I am sorry but there is no excuse for enablers of Fascism. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... 2. https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-hate-speech-india-politics-muslim-hindu-modi-zuckerberg-11597423346 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-hate-speech-india-... 3. https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-services-are-used-to-spread-religious-hatred-in-india-internal-documents-show-11635016354 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-services-are-used-to-s... 4. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/08/985143101/stop-lying-muslim-rights-group-sues-facebook-over-claims-it-removes-hate-groups https://www.npr.org/2021/04/08/985143101/stop-lying-muslim-r... 5. https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-muslims-islamophobia/ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg...
Slava_Propanei 4y ago
dang 4y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33534643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33534643.
camdat 4y ago
> Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent Link pls
- WoahNoun 4y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-emotion-study-breached-ethical-guidelines-researchers-say https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-... https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1416405111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1416405111
  - camdat 4y ago
    Anything from newer than 10 years ago?
    - worik 4y ago
      That is when it happened.
cloutchaser 4y ago
- uluyol 4y ago
  Link? This is upsetting if true.
- WoahNoun 4y ago
  Yes, however, Obama campaign was very different from CA. >The Obama campaign collected data with its own campaign app, complied with Facebook’s terms of service and, most important in my view, received permission from users before using the data. https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/clarence-page/ct-perspec-page-facebook-zuckerberg-obama-20180323-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/clarence-page/ct-pers... CA lied to users and violated FB's ToS. >And numerous other developers, including the makers of such games as FarmVille and the dating app Tinder, also used the same Facebook developer tool that Cambridge Analytica used. >Like all app developers, Kogan requested and gained access to information from people after they chose to download his app. His app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists.” Approximately 270,000 people downloaded the app. In so doing, they gave their consent for Kogan to access information such as the city they set on their profile, or content they had liked, as well as more limited information about friends who had their privacy settings set to allow it. >Although Kogan gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels that governed all developers on Facebook at that time, he did not subsequently abide by our rules. By passing information on to a third party, including SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, he violated our platform policies. When we learned of this violation in 2015, we removed his app from Facebook and demanded certifications from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed. Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie all certified to us that they destroyed the data. https://about.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-analytica/ https://about.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-analy...
- Dangeranger 4y ago
  This statement is a false equivalency.[0] The Obama 2012 campaign did not violate the Facebook TOS, and received permission to acess the data from users. Please stop trying to use what-aboutism to fuel a partisan divide. [0] https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/obama-campaign-advisers-say-they-used-facebook-data-properly https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/obama-campaign-advisers...
gfd 4y ago
Not saying it makes it okay, but every company in existence does this to some extent. Everyone does A/B testing with the intent to alter user behavior (aka psychology) to increase their profits.
- Lutger 4y ago
  I doubt that the mentioned 'psychological experiments' are just A/B testing. There is a very strong case to be made that Trump and Brexit would not have happened without Facebook, and those are just two examples.
- zeruch 4y ago
  A/B testing (which is getting users to respond/react to a UX event, and choosing which outcome is more suited to the business) is considerably different from "can we manipulate users up front, to perceive or react to things assertively and programmatically, even if against their interests?"
- bigbacaloa 4y ago
  Not every company consciously does unethical things, no.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  And without A/B testing, every product you use would be worse. Not only would it be less profitable, but it would also be harder to use, less useful, and less productive. A/B testing isn't a new thing - I'm sure the inventor of the wheel experimented with different shapes, and the buyer of the hexagonal wheel probably didn't have the best user experience. Multiply that by the number of people in the world and the number of products people use, and A/B testing is really up there as possibly one of the most beneficial ideas ever. I really don't understand those who claim it should be banned - I see no way that testing two different versions of a website with people who desire to use that website can bring sufficient harm to outweigh those massive benefits.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    The specific test that did it for me, is that Facebook ran this experiment where they logged users out and then wouldn't let them log them back in despite the correct password, just to toy with them to see how long/hard they would keep trying to login, in order to see how addicted they were to Facebook. I was in the "B" group, and felt so humiliated at how many times I tried to reset my password to get into Facebook.
j0hnyl 4y ago
It's naive of you to think that this is a Meta problem. Just by surfing the internet you're subject to all the same psyops by organizations that are arguably even worse than CA.
- smodo 4y ago
  It doesn't say that's what they think. About Meta though, we know. 'Others are worse' is not a convincing argument.
  - mgraczyk 4y ago
    But hating everything makes your ideology prima facie bad
dr_dshiv 4y ago
That is such a poor reason to not like Meta, among many, many reasons. All meta did was publish their results. The backlash ensured that no other companies shared results—but AB testing is bigger than ever across the industry. Now if you had said “fuck meta because my feed is filled with an unintelligible mix of baby photos and political screeds,” I’d totally follow.
- ShamelessC 4y ago
  There's always this, as well - "On 6 December 2021, approximately a hundred Rohingya refugees launched a $150 billion lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that it did not do enough to prevent the proliferation of anti-Rohingya hate speech because it was interested in prioritizing engagement." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_content_management_controversies#Incitement_of_human_rights_abuses_in_Myanmar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_content_management_co...
heavyset_go 4y ago
Don't forget that the company profited from being a platform used to organize a genocide[1]. [1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
PKop 4y ago
either they charge for social media or they attempt to grow by ad targeting, or social media is maybe banned through regulation to stop what you describe. I think maybe your beef is with the nature of technology today and/or our current culture that enables/glorifies it's mass use. What's the solution?
concordDance 4y ago
Do you just fundamentally hate the concept of an A/B test? Or do you just hate the idea of letting people outside the company know the results?
headhasthoughts 4y ago
What's wrong about conducting psychological experiments on users? Everyone who signed up for Facebook agreed to the ToS.
carimura 4y ago
Billions of people use the service for "free". As long as everyone knows they are what's for sale, the rest makes sense. Any company of this size is going to sway discourse so it's time to accept that. I for one do not and thus deleted our family accounts long ago.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > I for one do not and thus deleted our family accounts long ago. I have seen many people brainwashed by highly targeted ads and conspiracies that found them on facebook. Those people vote, break into congress, etc. deleting your individual account doesn't change that
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    "deleting your individual account doesn't change that " It shows, that a life without FB is possible. The more people do it, the easier it gets. Until the network effect is overcome.
jrm4 4y ago
I'm sorry, but the "A/B" responses to this sentiment are some of the worst euphemistic cope I've ever seen. You all really need to get out of your "tech" shells and take seriously this idea that "running nonconsensual psych experiments on humans" is a fundamentally evil thing to do.
- alasdair_ 4y ago
  >"running nonconsensual psych experiments on humans" is a fundamentally evil thing to do. If a store owner puts two different candy bars at the register to see which one sells more, is that an evil thing?
  - joehendrey 4y ago
    That's not a psychological experiment - it's barely even an experiment. If someone chooses one over the other, what have they learnt? Are they controlling or even measuring any other variables? It's also not non-consensual. If you go to a store you expect to have options of things to buy - that's the entire point of a store. It's not even an A/B test! Everyone sees both options and makes an informed choice.
- concordDance 4y ago
  Ignore the phrasal connotations and focus on the actual reality. What traits make nonconsensual experiments evil? Do they apply in this case? When someone tries out a different way of greeting strangers at a party, are they being evil? What if they write down the results?
- jahsome 4y ago
  I am interested in this line of logic, but I'm not sure I would go so far. I feel engaging in commerce in any way at all is impossible without being "evil" under this definition. Aren't advertisements at their core unconsented psychological manipulation? What about retail store design? Is providing customer service altogether just manipulation? I think I take issue with the word "evil." It seems to imply a certain malice or intent to harm, which just isn't logical, given the context.
leesec 4y ago
>Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent This is a really malicious way to describe showing two users the same button but in different locations
- vippy 4y ago
  Yeah, because that's definitely what folks are concerned with. A/B testing of button locations, and not feed algorithms designed to manipulate users.
- prezjordan 4y ago
  This is not what happened https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...
- metalliqaz 4y ago
  Oh come on, you know that's not what he is talking about. He is talking about algorithmic engagement-keeping.
smsm42 4y ago
So, Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has been used as a source of electioneering data for years before that. See for example Eitan Hersh's testimony. In fact, I've read articles bragging about how inventive the political technology using social networking profiles is, for a couple of electoral cycles before that - they may still be somewhere in HN archives even. And of course, selling the very same data to advertisers, maybe repackaged a bit differently but the same source and same data set, is the whole business model of Facebook. And it somehow never bothered anyone until Cambridge Analytica. Why is that?
- treeman79 4y ago
  Bigger concern is Facebook actively blocking stories the government doesn’t like.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    Yet bigger concern is the government blatantly violating the constitution by instructing Facebook to do that, and nobody stopping them. At least Facebook's bad behavior is within the law. The supreme law of the land explicitly prohibits the government from restricting the speech based on their politics. They do it anyway, and no consequences whatsoever. I think it's concerning.
- artificial 4y ago
  Most don't have a problem uploading address books and contacts into these platforms. I think it depends which team it is. Companies? Cool! Political Party you agree with, sure! They mined the social graph and Zuck reached out to them and said they're on the same team and didn't restrict access while they mined 50 million people. Don't forget Zygna!
adamsb6 4y ago
Starting around 2016 the New York Times decided that coverage had to be negative: https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192 https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192 Consider how this may have helped you to develop your opinion.
- richbell 4y ago
  They gave specific examples of negative things that Facebook has done. This is a pretty shallow dismissal of their criticism, even if their comment is a bit heavy-handed.
  - adamsb6 4y ago
    I won't rehash the A/B discussion, there's plenty of other people talking about it. The Cambridge Analytica thing probably didn't have a meaningful impact on the elections. Facebook was dumb to allow partner apps access to so much data and rely on those partners to follow Facebook's policies, but they recognized the mistake and probably overcorrected. All the other coverage probably serves to reinforce and amplify negative sentiments about Facebook, and a ton of it wasn't deserved. People cite the Rohingya, I remember also a news cycle about Facebook profiting from hate speech. Those things happened, but Facebook had also built probably the most expensive and effective hate speech filtering operation in the world. That it be 100% effective is not a reasonable goal. With billions of pieces of content even 99.999% effectiveness will result in examples that the press can point to reinforce a narrative about Facebook profiting from hate speech. I doubt there ever was any profit in serving hate speech. The ad revenue from filter misses would not have been big enough to pay for the filtering operation itself.
    - richbell 4y ago
      > The Cambridge Analytica thing probably didn't have a meaningful impact on the elections. That's a pretty big claim to make without evidence. At the very least I think we can agree that political parties wouldn't be investing so much money into social media campaigns (analytics, marketing, etc.) if they didn't think it was impactful.
rossjudson 4y ago
You seem very sure of what you know, and very confident about how the people working at Meta think and act. Do you have any direct experience? Or know anyone who works there?
- sweezyjeezy 4y ago
  I think they were making a statement about the company not the staff.
- jjav 4y ago
  Not OP but the things OP is saying are well covered in the press, no need to know anyone there.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  Those are just facts that have been reported credibly. There’s worse they didn’t mention. Why are you being so reactionary?
  - rossjudson 4y ago
    I never stop being amused by lazy oversimplification. I never stop being amazed by the level of trust some have in lazily oversimplified media. Meta is a city, not a person.
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      whatever dude
jahsome 4y ago
I understand the sentiment. I agree there should be accountability. With that in mind, I'd like to point out root merely expressed an anecdote about above and beyond humane treatment of employees from the CEO. Parent described the hacker-friendly culture. Those appear to be first hand accounts. How does your comment relate contribute to that discussion? Further, how does over the top and genericized outrage and harm wishing on a cohort of innocent people advance society in any meaningful ways?
- zaptheimpaler 4y ago
  Your argument is essentially that the company treated its employees well, so who cares what it did to users. Who gave you the right to decide the discussion is framed around how Meta treats employees rather than what it does for the entire world?
  - jahsome 4y ago
    I made no such argument. It is counter productive and disengenous state otherwise. I asked a question, no conclusions drawn. If I had a point, it's that the comment was off topic with regard to the comment it replied to, and warrants its own tree of discussion. It was a rant; There wasn't even an attempt at a segue or good faith effort to provide contrast. What "gives me the right to decide how the discussion is framed" are the hn guidelines (which you violated yourself by presenting a strawman).
  - aussiesnack 4y ago
    But is it compulsory to be so Manichaean? Have you really never seen someone (or group of people, or company) behave well in one context, and badly in another?
    - zaptheimpaler 4y ago
      I understand perfectly well that they are both depending on context. All I'm saying is that the harm they inflict on billions of people outside the company outweighs the good they do for thousands inside. Just because there's both good and bad doesn't mean the degree of each cannot be weighed at all.
Siira 4y ago
Conducting “psychological” experiments without “consent” is the only way to do science. Perhaps in this instance the knowledge gained is used in the ad industry and not benefiting society, but the nature of the research is to be admired and replicated.
andirk 4y ago
Remember that Facebook "whistleblower" revealed that Facebook "put profits over people"? That will never not be funny.
aussiesnack 4y ago
I'll cede no ground to anyone on loathing the corporate world, to the extent that I've all but abandoned work and the cash economy (at the cost of considerable personal privation). But humans are complex beings, and it's just realistic to view us all with some nuance rather than casually tossing everyone into good/evil baskets. The gp outlined an example of decent behaviour, and it remains just that regardless of our attitudes on other grounds towards Zuckersnuffles and/or Meta. Even murderers can be kind and decent people given in some contexts (witnessed at first hand).
godelski 4y ago
We can condone the good behaviors and condemn the bad ones. It is important to do both because if all we do is condemn then there is no pressure to do the right thing. If all you can do is evil then you'll only ever be evil and criticism will fall upon deaf ears. A lot of people here agree with you about Meta's faults, even me. But that doesn't mean we can't appreciate the good they've done. Even if it isn't much and even if it is vastly outweighed by the bad. We should still use positive reinforcement to pressure companies to do the right thing.
- murat124 4y ago
  Hear hear.
- NoPicklez 4y ago
  Hear hear.
- raleighm 4y ago
  Well said.
- digitaltrees 4y ago
  I agree. Thanks for bringing that to the discussion. The risk is that it creates a false equilibrium where the perception is the good equals, outweighs or justifies the bad. But you are totally right. We must celebrate with he good in others and life or our critical observations lose all merit.
  - godelski 4y ago
    Yeah I think we just have to recognize that complexity exists in the world around us. I think a lot of problems we face today are directly related to this issue. We're sold simple solutions which fall short. Our brains weren't designed to think in complicated manners and we want simplicity. But as a species we need to move beyond this. After all, one of the unique qualities of humans is being able to override our instinctual behavior (easier said than done).
- dheera 4y ago

by Leires 4y ago

blobbers 4y ago

Take my downvote. "Psychological experiments" on users is what every company; user and market research. Enabling "psyops" is simply building a platform; this isn't the first platform that his been misused or scraped for other purposes. You get spam robo dialers? It wasn't from meta... etc. etc. etc.

throwawaymeta4 4y ago

Its much much worse than just psychological experiments. Meta currently stands accused as an enabler of a genocide in Myanmar [1], and provides a platform to spread massive hate against Muslims in India and elsewhere [2,3,4,5]. For folks trying to do bothsidesism here and bring out how great they've been, I am sorry but there is no excuse for enablers of Fascism. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... 2. https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-hate-speech-india-politics-muslim-hindu-modi-zuckerberg-11597423346 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-hate-speech-india-... 3. https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-services-are-used-to-spread-religious-hatred-in-india-internal-documents-show-11635016354 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-services-are-used-to-s... 4. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/08/985143101/stop-lying-muslim-rights-group-sues-facebook-over-claims-it-removes-hate-groups https://www.npr.org/2021/04/08/985143101/stop-lying-muslim-r... 5. https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-muslims-islamophobia/ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg...

Slava_Propanei 4y ago

dang 4y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33534643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33534643.

camdat 4y ago

> Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent Link pls

WoahNoun 4y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-emotion-study-breached-ethical-guidelines-researchers-say https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-... https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1416405111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1416405111
- camdat 4y ago
  Anything from newer than 10 years ago?
  - worik 4y ago
    That is when it happened.

cloutchaser 4y ago

uluyol 4y ago
Link? This is upsetting if true.
WoahNoun 4y ago
Yes, however, Obama campaign was very different from CA. >The Obama campaign collected data with its own campaign app, complied with Facebook’s terms of service and, most important in my view, received permission from users before using the data. https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/clarence-page/ct-perspec-page-facebook-zuckerberg-obama-20180323-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/clarence-page/ct-pers... CA lied to users and violated FB's ToS. >And numerous other developers, including the makers of such games as FarmVille and the dating app Tinder, also used the same Facebook developer tool that Cambridge Analytica used. >Like all app developers, Kogan requested and gained access to information from people after they chose to download his app. His app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists.” Approximately 270,000 people downloaded the app. In so doing, they gave their consent for Kogan to access information such as the city they set on their profile, or content they had liked, as well as more limited information about friends who had their privacy settings set to allow it. >Although Kogan gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels that governed all developers on Facebook at that time, he did not subsequently abide by our rules. By passing information on to a third party, including SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, he violated our platform policies. When we learned of this violation in 2015, we removed his app from Facebook and demanded certifications from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed. Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie all certified to us that they destroyed the data. https://about.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-analytica/ https://about.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-analy...
Dangeranger 4y ago
This statement is a false equivalency.[0] The Obama 2012 campaign did not violate the Facebook TOS, and received permission to acess the data from users. Please stop trying to use what-aboutism to fuel a partisan divide. [0] https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/obama-campaign-advisers-say-they-used-facebook-data-properly https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/obama-campaign-advisers...

gfd 4y ago

Not saying it makes it okay, but every company in existence does this to some extent. Everyone does A/B testing with the intent to alter user behavior (aka psychology) to increase their profits.

Lutger 4y ago
I doubt that the mentioned 'psychological experiments' are just A/B testing. There is a very strong case to be made that Trump and Brexit would not have happened without Facebook, and those are just two examples.
zeruch 4y ago
A/B testing (which is getting users to respond/react to a UX event, and choosing which outcome is more suited to the business) is considerably different from "can we manipulate users up front, to perceive or react to things assertively and programmatically, even if against their interests?"
bigbacaloa 4y ago
Not every company consciously does unethical things, no.
londons_explore 4y ago
And without A/B testing, every product you use would be worse. Not only would it be less profitable, but it would also be harder to use, less useful, and less productive. A/B testing isn't a new thing - I'm sure the inventor of the wheel experimented with different shapes, and the buyer of the hexagonal wheel probably didn't have the best user experience. Multiply that by the number of people in the world and the number of products people use, and A/B testing is really up there as possibly one of the most beneficial ideas ever. I really don't understand those who claim it should be banned - I see no way that testing two different versions of a website with people who desire to use that website can bring sufficient harm to outweigh those massive benefits.
- fragmede 4y ago
  The specific test that did it for me, is that Facebook ran this experiment where they logged users out and then wouldn't let them log them back in despite the correct password, just to toy with them to see how long/hard they would keep trying to login, in order to see how addicted they were to Facebook. I was in the "B" group, and felt so humiliated at how many times I tried to reset my password to get into Facebook.

j0hnyl 4y ago

It's naive of you to think that this is a Meta problem. Just by surfing the internet you're subject to all the same psyops by organizations that are arguably even worse than CA.

smodo 4y ago
It doesn't say that's what they think. About Meta though, we know. 'Others are worse' is not a convincing argument.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  But hating everything makes your ideology prima facie bad

dr_dshiv 4y ago

That is such a poor reason to not like Meta, among many, many reasons. All meta did was publish their results. The backlash ensured that no other companies shared results—but AB testing is bigger than ever across the industry. Now if you had said “fuck meta because my feed is filled with an unintelligible mix of baby photos and political screeds,” I’d totally follow.

ShamelessC 4y ago
There's always this, as well - "On 6 December 2021, approximately a hundred Rohingya refugees launched a $150 billion lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that it did not do enough to prevent the proliferation of anti-Rohingya hate speech because it was interested in prioritizing engagement." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_content_management_controversies#Incitement_of_human_rights_abuses_in_Myanmar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_content_management_co...

heavyset_go 4y ago

Don't forget that the company profited from being a platform used to organize a genocide[1]. [1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

PKop 4y ago

either they charge for social media or they attempt to grow by ad targeting, or social media is maybe banned through regulation to stop what you describe. I think maybe your beef is with the nature of technology today and/or our current culture that enables/glorifies it's mass use. What's the solution?

concordDance 4y ago

Do you just fundamentally hate the concept of an A/B test? Or do you just hate the idea of letting people outside the company know the results?

headhasthoughts 4y ago

What's wrong about conducting psychological experiments on users? Everyone who signed up for Facebook agreed to the ToS.

carimura 4y ago

Billions of people use the service for "free". As long as everyone knows they are what's for sale, the rest makes sense. Any company of this size is going to sway discourse so it's time to accept that. I for one do not and thus deleted our family accounts long ago.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> I for one do not and thus deleted our family accounts long ago. I have seen many people brainwashed by highly targeted ads and conspiracies that found them on facebook. Those people vote, break into congress, etc. deleting your individual account doesn't change that
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "deleting your individual account doesn't change that " It shows, that a life without FB is possible. The more people do it, the easier it gets. Until the network effect is overcome.

jrm4 4y ago

I'm sorry, but the "A/B" responses to this sentiment are some of the worst euphemistic cope I've ever seen. You all really need to get out of your "tech" shells and take seriously this idea that "running nonconsensual psych experiments on humans" is a fundamentally evil thing to do.

alasdair_ 4y ago
>"running nonconsensual psych experiments on humans" is a fundamentally evil thing to do. If a store owner puts two different candy bars at the register to see which one sells more, is that an evil thing?
- joehendrey 4y ago
  That's not a psychological experiment - it's barely even an experiment. If someone chooses one over the other, what have they learnt? Are they controlling or even measuring any other variables? It's also not non-consensual. If you go to a store you expect to have options of things to buy - that's the entire point of a store. It's not even an A/B test! Everyone sees both options and makes an informed choice.
concordDance 4y ago
Ignore the phrasal connotations and focus on the actual reality. What traits make nonconsensual experiments evil? Do they apply in this case? When someone tries out a different way of greeting strangers at a party, are they being evil? What if they write down the results?
jahsome 4y ago
I am interested in this line of logic, but I'm not sure I would go so far. I feel engaging in commerce in any way at all is impossible without being "evil" under this definition. Aren't advertisements at their core unconsented psychological manipulation? What about retail store design? Is providing customer service altogether just manipulation? I think I take issue with the word "evil." It seems to imply a certain malice or intent to harm, which just isn't logical, given the context.

leesec 4y ago

>Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent This is a really malicious way to describe showing two users the same button but in different locations

vippy 4y ago
Yeah, because that's definitely what folks are concerned with. A/B testing of button locations, and not feed algorithms designed to manipulate users.
prezjordan 4y ago
This is not what happened https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...
metalliqaz 4y ago
Oh come on, you know that's not what he is talking about. He is talking about algorithmic engagement-keeping.

smsm42 4y ago

So, Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has been used as a source of electioneering data for years before that. See for example Eitan Hersh's testimony. In fact, I've read articles bragging about how inventive the political technology using social networking profiles is, for a couple of electoral cycles before that - they may still be somewhere in HN archives even. And of course, selling the very same data to advertisers, maybe repackaged a bit differently but the same source and same data set, is the whole business model of Facebook. And it somehow never bothered anyone until Cambridge Analytica. Why is that?

treeman79 4y ago
Bigger concern is Facebook actively blocking stories the government doesn’t like.
- smsm42 4y ago
  Yet bigger concern is the government blatantly violating the constitution by instructing Facebook to do that, and nobody stopping them. At least Facebook's bad behavior is within the law. The supreme law of the land explicitly prohibits the government from restricting the speech based on their politics. They do it anyway, and no consequences whatsoever. I think it's concerning.
artificial 4y ago
Most don't have a problem uploading address books and contacts into these platforms. I think it depends which team it is. Companies? Cool! Political Party you agree with, sure! They mined the social graph and Zuck reached out to them and said they're on the same team and didn't restrict access while they mined 50 million people. Don't forget Zygna!

adamsb6 4y ago

Starting around 2016 the New York Times decided that coverage had to be negative: https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192 https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192 Consider how this may have helped you to develop your opinion.

richbell 4y ago
They gave specific examples of negative things that Facebook has done. This is a pretty shallow dismissal of their criticism, even if their comment is a bit heavy-handed.
- adamsb6 4y ago
  I won't rehash the A/B discussion, there's plenty of other people talking about it. The Cambridge Analytica thing probably didn't have a meaningful impact on the elections. Facebook was dumb to allow partner apps access to so much data and rely on those partners to follow Facebook's policies, but they recognized the mistake and probably overcorrected. All the other coverage probably serves to reinforce and amplify negative sentiments about Facebook, and a ton of it wasn't deserved. People cite the Rohingya, I remember also a news cycle about Facebook profiting from hate speech. Those things happened, but Facebook had also built probably the most expensive and effective hate speech filtering operation in the world. That it be 100% effective is not a reasonable goal. With billions of pieces of content even 99.999% effectiveness will result in examples that the press can point to reinforce a narrative about Facebook profiting from hate speech. I doubt there ever was any profit in serving hate speech. The ad revenue from filter misses would not have been big enough to pay for the filtering operation itself.
  - richbell 4y ago
    > The Cambridge Analytica thing probably didn't have a meaningful impact on the elections. That's a pretty big claim to make without evidence. At the very least I think we can agree that political parties wouldn't be investing so much money into social media campaigns (analytics, marketing, etc.) if they didn't think it was impactful.

rossjudson 4y ago

You seem very sure of what you know, and very confident about how the people working at Meta think and act. Do you have any direct experience? Or know anyone who works there?

sweezyjeezy 4y ago
I think they were making a statement about the company not the staff.
jjav 4y ago
Not OP but the things OP is saying are well covered in the press, no need to know anyone there.
wahnfrieden 4y ago
Those are just facts that have been reported credibly. There’s worse they didn’t mention. Why are you being so reactionary?
- rossjudson 4y ago
  I never stop being amused by lazy oversimplification. I never stop being amazed by the level of trust some have in lazily oversimplified media. Meta is a city, not a person.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    whatever dude

jahsome 4y ago

I understand the sentiment. I agree there should be accountability. With that in mind, I'd like to point out root merely expressed an anecdote about above and beyond humane treatment of employees from the CEO. Parent described the hacker-friendly culture. Those appear to be first hand accounts. How does your comment relate contribute to that discussion? Further, how does over the top and genericized outrage and harm wishing on a cohort of innocent people advance society in any meaningful ways?

zaptheimpaler 4y ago
Your argument is essentially that the company treated its employees well, so who cares what it did to users. Who gave you the right to decide the discussion is framed around how Meta treats employees rather than what it does for the entire world?
- jahsome 4y ago
  I made no such argument. It is counter productive and disengenous state otherwise. I asked a question, no conclusions drawn. If I had a point, it's that the comment was off topic with regard to the comment it replied to, and warrants its own tree of discussion. It was a rant; There wasn't even an attempt at a segue or good faith effort to provide contrast. What "gives me the right to decide how the discussion is framed" are the hn guidelines (which you violated yourself by presenting a strawman).
- aussiesnack 4y ago
  But is it compulsory to be so Manichaean? Have you really never seen someone (or group of people, or company) behave well in one context, and badly in another?
  - zaptheimpaler 4y ago
    I understand perfectly well that they are both depending on context. All I'm saying is that the harm they inflict on billions of people outside the company outweighs the good they do for thousands inside. Just because there's both good and bad doesn't mean the degree of each cannot be weighed at all.

Siira 4y ago

Conducting “psychological” experiments without “consent” is the only way to do science. Perhaps in this instance the knowledge gained is used in the ad industry and not benefiting society, but the nature of the research is to be admired and replicated.

andirk 4y ago

Remember that Facebook "whistleblower" revealed that Facebook "put profits over people"? That will never not be funny.

aussiesnack 4y ago

I'll cede no ground to anyone on loathing the corporate world, to the extent that I've all but abandoned work and the cash economy (at the cost of considerable personal privation). But humans are complex beings, and it's just realistic to view us all with some nuance rather than casually tossing everyone into good/evil baskets. The gp outlined an example of decent behaviour, and it remains just that regardless of our attitudes on other grounds towards Zuckersnuffles and/or Meta. Even murderers can be kind and decent people given in some contexts (witnessed at first hand).

godelski 4y ago

We can condone the good behaviors and condemn the bad ones. It is important to do both because if all we do is condemn then there is no pressure to do the right thing. If all you can do is evil then you'll only ever be evil and criticism will fall upon deaf ears. A lot of people here agree with you about Meta's faults, even me. But that doesn't mean we can't appreciate the good they've done. Even if it isn't much and even if it is vastly outweighed by the bad. We should still use positive reinforcement to pressure companies to do the right thing.

murat124 4y ago
Hear hear.
NoPicklez 4y ago
Hear hear.
raleighm 4y ago
Well said.
digitaltrees 4y ago
I agree. Thanks for bringing that to the discussion. The risk is that it creates a false equilibrium where the perception is the good equals, outweighs or justifies the bad. But you are totally right. We must celebrate with he good in others and life or our critical observations lose all merit.
- godelski 4y ago
  Yeah I think we just have to recognize that complexity exists in the world around us. I think a lot of problems we face today are directly related to this issue. We're sold simple solutions which fall short. Our brains weren't designed to think in complicated manners and we want simplicity. But as a species we need to move beyond this. After all, one of the unique qualities of humans is being able to override our instinctual behavior (easier said than done).
dheera 4y ago