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They're not afraid of the idea of programming people. When I worked there every week there would be a different flyer on the inside of the bathroom stall door

They're not afraid of the idea of programming people. When I worked there every week there would be a different flyer on the inside of the bathroom stall door to try to get the word out about things that really mattered to the company. One week the flyer was about how a feed video needed to hook the user in the first 0.2 seconds. The flyer promised that if this was done, the result would in essence have a scientifically measurable addictive effect, a brain-hack. The flyer was to try to make sure this message reached as many advertisers as possible. It seemed to me quite clear at that moment that the users were prey. The company didn't even care what was being sold to their users with this brain-reprogramming-style tactic. Our goal was to sell the advertisers on the fact that we were scientifically sure that we had the tools to reprogram our users brains.

Atlas667 9mo ago
To me this is simply a consequence of the capitalist mode of production.
- jerf 9mo ago
  Yes, because governments are so restrained in their use of propaganda. What it is is the consequence of the power existing. 200 years ago nobody was arguing about how to hook people in the first 0.2 seconds of video, but it's not because nobody would have refused the power it represents if offered. They just couldn't have it. It's humans. People want this power over you. All of them.
  - ffsm8 9mo ago
    Well adjusted people so not want that power over other people It's sociopaths and narcissists which want it. And as Atlas667 pointed out, it's also a direct consequence from a capitalistic world view, where it has replaced your morals. This is not in relationship to state propaganda. Multiple things can cause abhorrent behavior, and just because we've identified something as problematic doesn't inherently imply that other unrelated examples are any better.
    - jerf 9mo ago
      We've always had sociopaths and narcissists, and if you're looking to "capitalism" as the reason why they exist, you're in out-and-out category error territory, not-even-wrong territory. Now that this power exists to be had, human beings are racing to acquire it. If you think you can fix that by "fixing capitalism" you are completely wasting your efforts.
      - dwallin 9mo ago
        Given that these tendencies are not evenly distributed throughout the population, you can have structures that leverage the large mean to mitigate the worst tendencies of the extreme tails. Given that the natural state of things is that power begets more power, these are harder to build and maintain, but it can be done. In particular, Democracies and Republics are major historical examples of this.
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      - shermantanktop 9mo ago
        So if that’s not the answer, what is? Should we just throw our hands in the air and say that technology has defeated our monkey brains, and there’s no going back?
    - testdummy13 9mo ago
      "Well adjusted people so not want that power over other people" There are certainly well adjusted people that would like to fix things they feel are inefficiencies or issues in their government, especially when those issues are directly related to their areas of expertise. Thinking well adjusted people wouldn't want to be in a position of power is exactly how you ensure that only bad people end up with power.
      - riversflow 9mo ago
        Power seekers acquire power, not knowledge seekers. This is from Plato’s The Republic so about as old as it gets.
  - _factor 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - afpx 9mo ago
      History contains abundant, well-documented cases of ordinary people participating in atrocities without coercion. Most people will act decently in low-pressure environments and will act badly under certain incentives, authority structures, or group dynamics. There is no way to know what a person's threshold is until it's tested, but it can be assumed that most people have a low threshold.
      - _factor 9mo ago
        Parent was implying “all” humans crave this power over others. This is patently false. “Most” people won’t act badly to attain this power, “some” will. Being placed into a position and choosing harm is not the same as pursuing it.
        afpx 9mo ago
        That is absolutely against the evidence, but yes people do like to think they are naturally righteous and good.
        klaff 9mo ago
        What evidence is there that ALL humans crave power over other humans?
        afpx 9mo ago
        We're literally animals, evolved for dominance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dominance_hierarchy_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dominance_hierarchy_sp... One could try to argue that some of us are special exceptions. But, there's no evidence for that. (The delightfully ironic humor of it is that people who presumably have your same point of view are down-voting me into negative)
  - pstuart 9mo ago
    > All of them. At least an unhealthy amount of them. I have no desire to have power over people, except I would like it if my kids actually listened to me...
  - pluralmonad 9mo ago
    To be fair, it is basically one and the same. I doubt most people railing against capitalism are actually against private property. They probably dislike corporatism which only exists as an extension of the government. Very very few of us voluntarily gave up our right to hold people personally responsible for their actions, but this is forced on everyone on behalf of business interests. The corporate vale is materialized from government alone.
    - Levitz 9mo ago
      > I doubt most people railing against capitalism are actually against private property. They probably dislike corporatism which only exists as an extension of the government. I really don't know. In my experience, it can about private property when talking about housing, it is about markets when talking salaries and work conditions, and it's just about having no idea of what capitalism even is and just vaguely pointing at economics the vast majority of the time. "Capitalism" can be safely replaced with "the illuminati" or "Chem trails" in the vast majority of complaints I hear and read and the message would ultimately make as much sense. There's not a lot of how or why capitalism doesn't work, but by God there sure is a lot of what it seemingly does wrong.
      - Atlas667 9mo ago
        You are displaying your ignorance with pride. Just because you don't know what capitalism is, doesn't mean other people do not know. Just because you only read sources from capitalist media platforms doesn't mean there isn't a lot of "how" or "why" capitalism doesn't work. My main message was about the profit motive incentivizing the creation of addictions for the profit of tech companies. The invisible hand may expand the development of tech, but the visible hand needs to make people addicted and unhappy. Think a little before you speak, please. Or read a little more.
        AlexandrB 9mo ago
        As bad as things are, the excesses of capitalism pale in comparison to the excesses of communism or fascism. If you have a better system, please present it to the class.
  - anonymars 9mo ago
    Who said anything about government? I thought it was humans and people?
  - Atlas667 9mo ago
    You didn't say anything. People do have this power right now, they are called capitalists, they are a part of the tech/info/policing industry. You don't have this control, I don't have this control. It's not humans in general, it's literally the capitalists. Right now, today. Try and "timelessly universalize" that. It's the people who make money from this who want it. I would rather that no one particular person or group of people have that much power, and I would rather help organize society to collectively and democratically decide what goes on with this tech but I guess that proudly makes me a communist.
  - measurablefunc 9mo ago
    The system incentivizes seeking power by consolidating financial wealth. It doesn't have to be that way & this will eventually become obvious to everyone.
- pmontra 9mo ago
  Capitalism or consumerism, a never ending offer and demand for goods, material or immaterial?
- seberino 9mo ago
  That may be true but I think the unspoken assumption in your comment is that somehow, without capitalism, greed magically melts away. How do you explain the constant extreme rampant corruption in communist and socialist countries over 100 years if not from GREED?
  - conartist6 9mo ago
    I know that it doesn't. Greed will be ever-present, yes, but that doesn't mean that it's a one-way ratchet. It's something we have to keep fighting against all the time. Greed starts out as a driver of progress, then eventually becomes an impediment to progress. The other constant there is progress! No dam will block a river forever.
  - Atlas667 9mo ago
    The definition of capitalism is the private ownership of production and its use to generate profits. I think a coerced assumption you may have of capitalism is that corruption is an unintended side effect, but it actually follows from its principles. How is a society to maintain unmarred democratic institutions when its elements are fundamentally unequal? Put more clearly: How can people have the same amount of political power when one class (capitalist) OWNS the production of what the other class (workers) need? The mythology of capitalist society paints both them as equals and the state as neutral. This is a tactic to preserve the appearance of a democratic backbone. They afford this mythology because capitalists own the air waves and they have, and can have, the most influence in the state. In fact, due to this fundamental inequality capitalists are, for all practical purposes, capitalists are the state. Capitalist societies put political power up for auction; Corruption has its highest manifestation within capitalist societies. Now to your point. Greed will never "magically melt away". Greed can only be controlled through democratic control of what permits greed in the first place. Communism/socialism isn't about magically doing or undoing anything, it's the science of creating firm and unalienable working class power. It must start with democratic control of production and local peoples councils. Greed will not magically melt away, greed must be constantly cut out by everyone by everyone HAVING the political power to cut it out. This means peoples councils will be convened at the neighborhood level, peoples courts will be manned, not by professional judges, but by rotating locally elected citizens. Council delegates will be bound by law to only, and exclusively, be messengers at higher level councils, etc. This is just a small picture of what democracy is. It is not me to say specifically how, of course, but communism does not involve blindly and powerlessly trusting political candidates, like capitalist society requires. There is a reason communism is demonized by the people who control our society.
bodge5000 9mo ago
I haven't worked at FAANG so maybe I'm out the loop, but flyers on bathroom stalls seems bizarre, like almost less of a corporate action and more of a personal one (like you might get for unionisation), but with all the messaging of corporate, like something you'd see in a company memo. Like I say, maybe everyone else is accustomed to this idea, but if you have any pictures of them I think a lot of people would be interested in seeing it, unless I'm misunderstand what it is
- 3vidence 9mo ago
  I can say at Google we usually just had engineering tip posters in the washrooms they were usually very insightful and just written by other engineers at the company. Stuff like how to reduce nesting logic, how to restructure APIs for better testing, etc. People usually like them. I can't say I've seen what the parent post described so I imagine it's "the other" FAANG mentioned here.
  - cmrdporcupine 9mo ago
    Yep, I frankly thought Testing On The Toilet was pretty great. That and nice washing toilets.
- conartist6 9mo ago
  You're right that it was just other employees who decided what to print there. But I don't think that absolves the company (Facebook) really... Everything a company does is just things that its people do! Nothing about the flyer was outside the parameters of the job of its maker. Their job was to make the company money by helping advertisers maximize ad revenue, and that's exactly what they were doing.
- toast0 9mo ago
  Facebook had a serious internal propaganda arm when I was there. Couldn't manage to get floor length stall walls in most of the bathrooms, but every stall had a weekly newsletter about whatever product stuff. Every high traffic flat space on the wall would be covered with a poster, most of them with designs lifted from US WWII propaganda, many hard to tell if satire or not. I was surprised there was never one about carpooling with der füher.
RegW 9mo ago
Did you take a copy of that flyer? I would be interested to see it.
- conartist6 9mo ago
  I looked and I do not have a photo
cm2012 9mo ago
Another way of describing this - they find people lose interest almost immediately, and so if you want to actually show a consumer something new, you have to get to the point with your ad.
- WarmWash 9mo ago
  ...which has been known for at least a century
  - daveguy 9mo ago
    And only recently could be optimized in real time, individually, for each target. I remember when there was a big moral scare about "subliminal advertising". People were appalled that an ad on TV could manipulate you without your awareness. That is 100% the business model of modern social media advertising. It's not embedded in a specific ad, but the entire operation of the promotion algorithms.
  - RRWagner 9mo ago
    Here is an important difference. A century ago, the predator (seller) and the prey (buyer) were on equal evolutionary terms. Each generation of humans on either side of the transaction came into the world, learned to convince, learned to resist, then passed, and some balance was maintained. In this century, corporations and algorithms don't die, but the targets do. This means that the non-human seller is continuously, even immortally, learning, adapting and perfecting how to manipulate. The target, be it adult, adolescent, or child, is, and will be ever increasingly, at a severe disadvantage.
    - SR2Z 9mo ago
      Right, because we know that parents never pass down useful skills or life tips to their children, like skepticism of propaganda and advertising, and instead send their children into the world like sheep into a lion's den. There might come a day when advertising is too flawless for a human mind to resist it, but we're not there yet.
chasemp 9mo ago
Users as prey is a terrifying but not unrealistic narrative. Thanks for sharing.
- doron 9mo ago
  The only business that call customers "users" are software development and drug dealers :)
  - InitialLastName 9mo ago
    Many of the software developers whose end users are their revenue source return to calling them customers.
Gud 9mo ago
Don’t be evil
webdoodle 9mo ago
The public got a peek at it with Cambridge Analytica creating hundreds of thousands of personality profiles, they then used to create Trump's MAGA army of flying monkeys. The Democrats could have done something about it, and made it illegal, but instead they just decided to build there own armies of flying monkeys. Why? Because both sides are bought and paid for by the same rich parasites trying to reprogram us.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  did democrats create flying monkey armies? I haven't seen anywhere near as much Democrat propaganda as Republican, which is probably why they keep losing. Only recently, once Republican policies came into effect and people experienced their consequences, did Republican votes decline.
shevy-java 9mo ago
Alright. I may object to the wording, but ... isn't what you described also a good website? I am aware of how much propaganda Google uses too, e. g. "engage the user" - you see that on youtube "leave a like". They are begging people to vote. Not for the vote, but to engage him. I saw this not long ago on Magic Arena by Wizards of the coast. They claim "your feedback is valuable" but you can only vote up or vote down. That's not feedback - that is lying to the user to try to get the user to make a reaction and tell others about it. I just don't really see the difference. You describe it that they manipulate people, but ANY ad-department of a company uses propaganda and manipulates people. Look in a grocery, how many colours are used in the packaging. Isn't ALL of this also manipulative?
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  Google doesn't beg you for likes. Channels beg you for likes because it's one of the metrics they are stack–ranked by. Someone will lose, and they don't want it to be them.
- 6510 9mo ago
  > isn't what you described also a good website? No, good software is and feels empowering. It should scream the developer understood what YOU want to do at that specific point. Most notable, the faster the job is DONE the better. Putting up flyers in the toilet isn't to enhance your toilet experience. It is the opposite, if we want to enhance the flyer engagement the easiest way is by de-optimizing all parts of the toilet UX. Say we remove all but one toilet rolls and make the side a bit wet. If some of the locks don't work we could dramatically enhance the number of walls and doors people look at. Ideal would be to lock everyone in the stall until the next prey arrives. Should release them just early enough that they don't inform the next victim.
- intended 9mo ago
  There is an entire agency that focuses on Food and Drugs in America, and its similar around the world. We have many rules on food. Food is actually a great place to think about social media, because there was a time where the FDA didnt exist. Its need was felt after cities grew larger and the food supply chain became longer. At that point food could be adultered and the old systems which people relied on to know the provenance of their food failed. Some of the things that changed this was when people started doing indepedent testing and finding out exactly how much adultery was actually taking place. Eventually we got rules about what was to be done, which we don't consider anymore since its part of daily life.
1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
Facebook employees may be the easiest "prey" to program If something as crude as flyers in bathroom stalls is effective
- dylan604 9mo ago
  It also says a lot if that's the most effective way vs normal ways of disseminating the info.
  - conartist6 9mo ago
    Honestly 95% of the time it was about technical stuff and I loved it. I've never worked at another company so active in shaping its own culture. Problems other companies had conditioned me to expect could never be fixed would often be gone in a few months because someone had made it their mission to fix. That was part of something else I loved about their culture: there was room for anyone to move up if they could show they were creating value for the company. Other companies felt like everyone was competing for the same two promotions, but Facebook did not. In retrospect though this also kind of looks like an unaccountability machine. If each employee must take independent action to justify their own paycheck in terms of their value to the company, most ethically questionable outcomes are the result of cumulative choices made by rank and file employees who know which side their bread is buttered on.
- danny_codes 9mo ago
  FB uses its addict money to pay those employees. I assume the pay is what’s effective. Actually a good business model. Pay employees to improve how addictive your drug is, get more money from addicts, and use that to pay your employees more money, completing the loop. But then drugs being profitable isn’t really news
  - dsf3dd 9mo ago
    No its not even that. The people who work at these firms were losers in life to begin with. Misery loves company. Give them some cash and some feeling of power on working on stuff billions of people use... and there you have it. No one with any morals would choose to work there. You simply wouldnt. Youd be working elsewhere, knowing full well you are choosing not to contribute in lining the pockets of people like Zuck. Apple is the only somewhat respectable large tech firm.
SpaceManNabs 9mo ago
> feed video needed to hook the user in the first 0.2 seconds Is this even possible??? It takes me *at least* 2 seconds to see if a video game clip is interesting to me. That is kinda crazy.
ludicrousdispla 9mo ago
>> on the inside of the bathroom stall door to try to get the word out I wonder if anyone considered the bias of this communication channel towards women, or did they also post them above the urinals?
- QuercusMax 9mo ago
  If this was Google, Testing on the Toilet and similar flyers were both above urinals and in bathroom stalls.
crystal_revenge 9mo ago
I'm always a bit surprised by the degree that non-tech people don't understand how much they're being openly and transparently manipulated in various ways. Most of my work has been statistical/quantitative in nature from complex A/B testing setups to dynamic pricing algorithms. Yet so many of the most benign parts of my work in the past unnerve some people. Measuring human behavior and exploiting it for some hope at profit has been an obvious part of my job description for many years. Yet I've had friends and acquaintances that are shocked when they accidentally realize they're part of an A/B test "Wait, Amazon doesn't show the same thing to everyone!?" I've seen reddit conversations where people are horrified at the idea of custom pricing models (something so mundane it could easily be an interview question). I had a friend once claim a basic statement about what I did at work was a "conspiracy theory" because clearly companies don't really have that much control. To your point, at work the fact that we're manipulating people algorithmically isn't remotely a secret. Nobody in the room at any of my past jobs has felt a modicum of shame about optimization. The worst part is I have drawn a line multiple times at past jobs (typically to my own detriment), so there are things that even someone as comfortable with this as I am finds go to far. Ironically, I've found it's hard to get non-technical people to care about these because you have to understand the larger context to see just how dangerous they are. I have ultimately decided to avoid working in the D2C space because inevitably you realize you aren't providing any real value to your user (despite internal sloganeering to the contrary) and very often causing real harm. In the B2B space you're working with customers who you have a real business relationship with, so crass manipulation to move the needle for one month isn't worth the long term harm.
- upboundspiral 9mo ago
  I'm always a bit surprised that people that work in tech can be so passive in regards to their civic duty. Instead of going to lawmakers and legislators and trying to stop their employers from destroying society they just quietly watch from the sidelines. And if laqmakers are silent, then publicising, collecting, and sharing this knowledge to all ends of the earth through mainstream and independent journalism, paying a few hundred dollars out of their Silicon Valley salaries to put up billboards shining a light on the misdeeds of tech companies towards their own customers and society. Per your examples, when the average person is made aware of the injustice, stalking, and tracking of them, they are not in any way happy with it, and want things to change.
derangedHorse 9mo ago
I think you’re misremembering. Research shows it’s 2 seconds not .2 seconds.

Atlas667 9mo ago

To me this is simply a consequence of the capitalist mode of production.

jerf 9mo ago
Yes, because governments are so restrained in their use of propaganda. What it is is the consequence of the power existing. 200 years ago nobody was arguing about how to hook people in the first 0.2 seconds of video, but it's not because nobody would have refused the power it represents if offered. They just couldn't have it. It's humans. People want this power over you. All of them.
- ffsm8 9mo ago
  Well adjusted people so not want that power over other people It's sociopaths and narcissists which want it. And as Atlas667 pointed out, it's also a direct consequence from a capitalistic world view, where it has replaced your morals. This is not in relationship to state propaganda. Multiple things can cause abhorrent behavior, and just because we've identified something as problematic doesn't inherently imply that other unrelated examples are any better.
  - jerf 9mo ago
    We've always had sociopaths and narcissists, and if you're looking to "capitalism" as the reason why they exist, you're in out-and-out category error territory, not-even-wrong territory. Now that this power exists to be had, human beings are racing to acquire it. If you think you can fix that by "fixing capitalism" you are completely wasting your efforts.
    - dwallin 9mo ago
      Given that these tendencies are not evenly distributed throughout the population, you can have structures that leverage the large mean to mitigate the worst tendencies of the extreme tails. Given that the natural state of things is that power begets more power, these are harder to build and maintain, but it can be done. In particular, Democracies and Republics are major historical examples of this.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - shermantanktop 9mo ago
      So if that’s not the answer, what is? Should we just throw our hands in the air and say that technology has defeated our monkey brains, and there’s no going back?
  - testdummy13 9mo ago
    "Well adjusted people so not want that power over other people" There are certainly well adjusted people that would like to fix things they feel are inefficiencies or issues in their government, especially when those issues are directly related to their areas of expertise. Thinking well adjusted people wouldn't want to be in a position of power is exactly how you ensure that only bad people end up with power.
    - riversflow 9mo ago
      Power seekers acquire power, not knowledge seekers. This is from Plato’s The Republic so about as old as it gets.
- _factor 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - afpx 9mo ago
    History contains abundant, well-documented cases of ordinary people participating in atrocities without coercion. Most people will act decently in low-pressure environments and will act badly under certain incentives, authority structures, or group dynamics. There is no way to know what a person's threshold is until it's tested, but it can be assumed that most people have a low threshold.
    - _factor 9mo ago
      Parent was implying “all” humans crave this power over others. This is patently false. “Most” people won’t act badly to attain this power, “some” will. Being placed into a position and choosing harm is not the same as pursuing it.
      - afpx 9mo ago
        That is absolutely against the evidence, but yes people do like to think they are naturally righteous and good.
        klaff 9mo ago
        What evidence is there that ALL humans crave power over other humans?
        afpx 9mo ago
        We're literally animals, evolved for dominance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dominance_hierarchy_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dominance_hierarchy_sp... One could try to argue that some of us are special exceptions. But, there's no evidence for that. (The delightfully ironic humor of it is that people who presumably have your same point of view are down-voting me into negative)
- pstuart 9mo ago
  > All of them. At least an unhealthy amount of them. I have no desire to have power over people, except I would like it if my kids actually listened to me...
- pluralmonad 9mo ago
  To be fair, it is basically one and the same. I doubt most people railing against capitalism are actually against private property. They probably dislike corporatism which only exists as an extension of the government. Very very few of us voluntarily gave up our right to hold people personally responsible for their actions, but this is forced on everyone on behalf of business interests. The corporate vale is materialized from government alone.
  - Levitz 9mo ago
    > I doubt most people railing against capitalism are actually against private property. They probably dislike corporatism which only exists as an extension of the government. I really don't know. In my experience, it can about private property when talking about housing, it is about markets when talking salaries and work conditions, and it's just about having no idea of what capitalism even is and just vaguely pointing at economics the vast majority of the time. "Capitalism" can be safely replaced with "the illuminati" or "Chem trails" in the vast majority of complaints I hear and read and the message would ultimately make as much sense. There's not a lot of how or why capitalism doesn't work, but by God there sure is a lot of what it seemingly does wrong.
    - Atlas667 9mo ago
      You are displaying your ignorance with pride. Just because you don't know what capitalism is, doesn't mean other people do not know. Just because you only read sources from capitalist media platforms doesn't mean there isn't a lot of "how" or "why" capitalism doesn't work. My main message was about the profit motive incentivizing the creation of addictions for the profit of tech companies. The invisible hand may expand the development of tech, but the visible hand needs to make people addicted and unhappy. Think a little before you speak, please. Or read a little more.
      - AlexandrB 9mo ago
        As bad as things are, the excesses of capitalism pale in comparison to the excesses of communism or fascism. If you have a better system, please present it to the class.
- anonymars 9mo ago
  Who said anything about government? I thought it was humans and people?
- Atlas667 9mo ago
  You didn't say anything. People do have this power right now, they are called capitalists, they are a part of the tech/info/policing industry. You don't have this control, I don't have this control. It's not humans in general, it's literally the capitalists. Right now, today. Try and "timelessly universalize" that. It's the people who make money from this who want it. I would rather that no one particular person or group of people have that much power, and I would rather help organize society to collectively and democratically decide what goes on with this tech but I guess that proudly makes me a communist.
- measurablefunc 9mo ago
  The system incentivizes seeking power by consolidating financial wealth. It doesn't have to be that way & this will eventually become obvious to everyone.
pmontra 9mo ago
Capitalism or consumerism, a never ending offer and demand for goods, material or immaterial?
seberino 9mo ago
That may be true but I think the unspoken assumption in your comment is that somehow, without capitalism, greed magically melts away. How do you explain the constant extreme rampant corruption in communist and socialist countries over 100 years if not from GREED?
- conartist6 9mo ago
  I know that it doesn't. Greed will be ever-present, yes, but that doesn't mean that it's a one-way ratchet. It's something we have to keep fighting against all the time. Greed starts out as a driver of progress, then eventually becomes an impediment to progress. The other constant there is progress! No dam will block a river forever.
- Atlas667 9mo ago
  The definition of capitalism is the private ownership of production and its use to generate profits. I think a coerced assumption you may have of capitalism is that corruption is an unintended side effect, but it actually follows from its principles. How is a society to maintain unmarred democratic institutions when its elements are fundamentally unequal? Put more clearly: How can people have the same amount of political power when one class (capitalist) OWNS the production of what the other class (workers) need? The mythology of capitalist society paints both them as equals and the state as neutral. This is a tactic to preserve the appearance of a democratic backbone. They afford this mythology because capitalists own the air waves and they have, and can have, the most influence in the state. In fact, due to this fundamental inequality capitalists are, for all practical purposes, capitalists are the state. Capitalist societies put political power up for auction; Corruption has its highest manifestation within capitalist societies. Now to your point. Greed will never "magically melt away". Greed can only be controlled through democratic control of what permits greed in the first place. Communism/socialism isn't about magically doing or undoing anything, it's the science of creating firm and unalienable working class power. It must start with democratic control of production and local peoples councils. Greed will not magically melt away, greed must be constantly cut out by everyone by everyone HAVING the political power to cut it out. This means peoples councils will be convened at the neighborhood level, peoples courts will be manned, not by professional judges, but by rotating locally elected citizens. Council delegates will be bound by law to only, and exclusively, be messengers at higher level councils, etc. This is just a small picture of what democracy is. It is not me to say specifically how, of course, but communism does not involve blindly and powerlessly trusting political candidates, like capitalist society requires. There is a reason communism is demonized by the people who control our society.

bodge5000 9mo ago

I haven't worked at FAANG so maybe I'm out the loop, but flyers on bathroom stalls seems bizarre, like almost less of a corporate action and more of a personal one (like you might get for unionisation), but with all the messaging of corporate, like something you'd see in a company memo. Like I say, maybe everyone else is accustomed to this idea, but if you have any pictures of them I think a lot of people would be interested in seeing it, unless I'm misunderstand what it is

3vidence 9mo ago
I can say at Google we usually just had engineering tip posters in the washrooms they were usually very insightful and just written by other engineers at the company. Stuff like how to reduce nesting logic, how to restructure APIs for better testing, etc. People usually like them. I can't say I've seen what the parent post described so I imagine it's "the other" FAANG mentioned here.
- cmrdporcupine 9mo ago
  Yep, I frankly thought Testing On The Toilet was pretty great. That and nice washing toilets.
conartist6 9mo ago
You're right that it was just other employees who decided what to print there. But I don't think that absolves the company (Facebook) really... Everything a company does is just things that its people do! Nothing about the flyer was outside the parameters of the job of its maker. Their job was to make the company money by helping advertisers maximize ad revenue, and that's exactly what they were doing.
toast0 9mo ago
Facebook had a serious internal propaganda arm when I was there. Couldn't manage to get floor length stall walls in most of the bathrooms, but every stall had a weekly newsletter about whatever product stuff. Every high traffic flat space on the wall would be covered with a poster, most of them with designs lifted from US WWII propaganda, many hard to tell if satire or not. I was surprised there was never one about carpooling with der füher.

RegW 9mo ago

Did you take a copy of that flyer? I would be interested to see it.

conartist6 9mo ago
I looked and I do not have a photo

cm2012 9mo ago

Another way of describing this - they find people lose interest almost immediately, and so if you want to actually show a consumer something new, you have to get to the point with your ad.

WarmWash 9mo ago
...which has been known for at least a century
- daveguy 9mo ago
  And only recently could be optimized in real time, individually, for each target. I remember when there was a big moral scare about "subliminal advertising". People were appalled that an ad on TV could manipulate you without your awareness. That is 100% the business model of modern social media advertising. It's not embedded in a specific ad, but the entire operation of the promotion algorithms.
- RRWagner 9mo ago
  Here is an important difference. A century ago, the predator (seller) and the prey (buyer) were on equal evolutionary terms. Each generation of humans on either side of the transaction came into the world, learned to convince, learned to resist, then passed, and some balance was maintained. In this century, corporations and algorithms don't die, but the targets do. This means that the non-human seller is continuously, even immortally, learning, adapting and perfecting how to manipulate. The target, be it adult, adolescent, or child, is, and will be ever increasingly, at a severe disadvantage.
  - SR2Z 9mo ago
    Right, because we know that parents never pass down useful skills or life tips to their children, like skepticism of propaganda and advertising, and instead send their children into the world like sheep into a lion's den. There might come a day when advertising is too flawless for a human mind to resist it, but we're not there yet.

chasemp 9mo ago

Users as prey is a terrifying but not unrealistic narrative. Thanks for sharing.

doron 9mo ago
The only business that call customers "users" are software development and drug dealers :)
- InitialLastName 9mo ago
  Many of the software developers whose end users are their revenue source return to calling them customers.

Gud 9mo ago

Don’t be evil

webdoodle 9mo ago

The public got a peek at it with Cambridge Analytica creating hundreds of thousands of personality profiles, they then used to create Trump's MAGA army of flying monkeys. The Democrats could have done something about it, and made it illegal, but instead they just decided to build there own armies of flying monkeys. Why? Because both sides are bought and paid for by the same rich parasites trying to reprogram us.

direwolf20 9mo ago
did democrats create flying monkey armies? I haven't seen anywhere near as much Democrat propaganda as Republican, which is probably why they keep losing. Only recently, once Republican policies came into effect and people experienced their consequences, did Republican votes decline.

shevy-java 9mo ago

Alright. I may object to the wording, but ... isn't what you described also a good website? I am aware of how much propaganda Google uses too, e. g. "engage the user" - you see that on youtube "leave a like". They are begging people to vote. Not for the vote, but to engage him. I saw this not long ago on Magic Arena by Wizards of the coast. They claim "your feedback is valuable" but you can only vote up or vote down. That's not feedback - that is lying to the user to try to get the user to make a reaction and tell others about it. I just don't really see the difference. You describe it that they manipulate people, but ANY ad-department of a company uses propaganda and manipulates people. Look in a grocery, how many colours are used in the packaging. Isn't ALL of this also manipulative?

direwolf20 9mo ago
Google doesn't beg you for likes. Channels beg you for likes because it's one of the metrics they are stack–ranked by. Someone will lose, and they don't want it to be them.
6510 9mo ago
> isn't what you described also a good website? No, good software is and feels empowering. It should scream the developer understood what YOU want to do at that specific point. Most notable, the faster the job is DONE the better. Putting up flyers in the toilet isn't to enhance your toilet experience. It is the opposite, if we want to enhance the flyer engagement the easiest way is by de-optimizing all parts of the toilet UX. Say we remove all but one toilet rolls and make the side a bit wet. If some of the locks don't work we could dramatically enhance the number of walls and doors people look at. Ideal would be to lock everyone in the stall until the next prey arrives. Should release them just early enough that they don't inform the next victim.
intended 9mo ago
There is an entire agency that focuses on Food and Drugs in America, and its similar around the world. We have many rules on food. Food is actually a great place to think about social media, because there was a time where the FDA didnt exist. Its need was felt after cities grew larger and the food supply chain became longer. At that point food could be adultered and the old systems which people relied on to know the provenance of their food failed. Some of the things that changed this was when people started doing indepedent testing and finding out exactly how much adultery was actually taking place. Eventually we got rules about what was to be done, which we don't consider anymore since its part of daily life.

1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago

Facebook employees may be the easiest "prey" to program If something as crude as flyers in bathroom stalls is effective

dylan604 9mo ago
It also says a lot if that's the most effective way vs normal ways of disseminating the info.
- conartist6 9mo ago
  Honestly 95% of the time it was about technical stuff and I loved it. I've never worked at another company so active in shaping its own culture. Problems other companies had conditioned me to expect could never be fixed would often be gone in a few months because someone had made it their mission to fix. That was part of something else I loved about their culture: there was room for anyone to move up if they could show they were creating value for the company. Other companies felt like everyone was competing for the same two promotions, but Facebook did not. In retrospect though this also kind of looks like an unaccountability machine. If each employee must take independent action to justify their own paycheck in terms of their value to the company, most ethically questionable outcomes are the result of cumulative choices made by rank and file employees who know which side their bread is buttered on.
danny_codes 9mo ago
FB uses its addict money to pay those employees. I assume the pay is what’s effective. Actually a good business model. Pay employees to improve how addictive your drug is, get more money from addicts, and use that to pay your employees more money, completing the loop. But then drugs being profitable isn’t really news
- dsf3dd 9mo ago
  No its not even that. The people who work at these firms were losers in life to begin with. Misery loves company. Give them some cash and some feeling of power on working on stuff billions of people use... and there you have it. No one with any morals would choose to work there. You simply wouldnt. Youd be working elsewhere, knowing full well you are choosing not to contribute in lining the pockets of people like Zuck. Apple is the only somewhat respectable large tech firm.

SpaceManNabs 9mo ago

> feed video needed to hook the user in the first 0.2 seconds Is this even possible??? It takes me *at least* 2 seconds to see if a video game clip is interesting to me. That is kinda crazy.

ludicrousdispla 9mo ago

>> on the inside of the bathroom stall door to try to get the word out I wonder if anyone considered the bias of this communication channel towards women, or did they also post them above the urinals?

QuercusMax 9mo ago
If this was Google, Testing on the Toilet and similar flyers were both above urinals and in bathroom stalls.

crystal_revenge 9mo ago

I'm always a bit surprised by the degree that non-tech people don't understand how much they're being openly and transparently manipulated in various ways. Most of my work has been statistical/quantitative in nature from complex A/B testing setups to dynamic pricing algorithms. Yet so many of the most benign parts of my work in the past unnerve some people. Measuring human behavior and exploiting it for some hope at profit has been an obvious part of my job description for many years. Yet I've had friends and acquaintances that are shocked when they accidentally realize they're part of an A/B test "Wait, Amazon doesn't show the same thing to everyone!?" I've seen reddit conversations where people are horrified at the idea of custom pricing models (something so mundane it could easily be an interview question). I had a friend once claim a basic statement about what I did at work was a "conspiracy theory" because clearly companies don't really have that much control. To your point, at work the fact that we're manipulating people algorithmically isn't remotely a secret. Nobody in the room at any of my past jobs has felt a modicum of shame about optimization. The worst part is I have drawn a line multiple times at past jobs (typically to my own detriment), so there are things that even someone as comfortable with this as I am finds go to far. Ironically, I've found it's hard to get non-technical people to care about these because you have to understand the larger context to see just how dangerous they are. I have ultimately decided to avoid working in the D2C space because inevitably you realize you aren't providing any real value to your user (despite internal sloganeering to the contrary) and very often causing real harm. In the B2B space you're working with customers who you have a real business relationship with, so crass manipulation to move the needle for one month isn't worth the long term harm.

upboundspiral 9mo ago
I'm always a bit surprised that people that work in tech can be so passive in regards to their civic duty. Instead of going to lawmakers and legislators and trying to stop their employers from destroying society they just quietly watch from the sidelines. And if laqmakers are silent, then publicising, collecting, and sharing this knowledge to all ends of the earth through mainstream and independent journalism, paying a few hundred dollars out of their Silicon Valley salaries to put up billboards shining a light on the misdeeds of tech companies towards their own customers and society. Per your examples, when the average person is made aware of the injustice, stalking, and tracking of them, they are not in any way happy with it, and want things to change.

derangedHorse 9mo ago

I think you’re misremembering. Research shows it’s 2 seconds not .2 seconds.