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I lament the comments saying this in any way redeems Meta (the company). The researchers releasing this stuff have almost nothing to do with Meta other than be
by avaer 2mo ago
I lament the comments saying this in any way redeems Meta (the company).
The researchers releasing this stuff have almost nothing to do with Meta other than being bankrolled by the slaughterhouse.
You aren't the customer, you are the pawn in big tech's game of thrones. Your good will is a commodity to be traded, almost literally. It will be used against you the moment it's convenient. This is open weights because Meta couldn't monetize it in any other way than to cloud developer's judgement of their reputation.
But I guess most people just don't care.
I'm glad it's open. It does not make me think any better of Meta.
- darig 2mo ago[dead]
- captainbland 2mo agoTo be honest the main issue with meta has never been around open/closed software. They've also done react, Cassandra and some other bits. But this, like their open weights is like a feather pressing down on the scale compared to things like promoting genocide in Myanmar, enabling Cambridge analytica, creating a huge closed ecosystem which dominate(s/d) local community communication, mandating doxxed communication, trying to replace actual community communication with algorithmic nonsense etc.
- larodi 2mo agoMeta and its products, as a whole, is a threat to your kids, your mental health, your community's health and the planet as a whole. It is just sad and very repulsive everyone fell so easily addicted to their social drug. Yes - it is a drug, and it is hard to get off from. Nothing redeems them at this point of time, they are doing exactly ZERO to redeem. Tossing open weight models (not opensource!!) is not a basis for redemption, and does not constitute remorse in any way. Trying to portray it as such is complicity to META's crimes against humanity.
- Grombobulous 2mo agoI think it’s also worth pointing out that that there are numerous less evil options to choose from. Perhaps none of the AI companies are shining examples of high ethics, but basically all of them have ethical high ground over Meta. At least Anthropic isn’t sending private videos from pervert glasses to contract workers in Africa. It’s a low bar but it’s a bar nonetheless.
- monster_truck 2mo agoThey're still using Elon's servers, though. Not like their models are any good anyways
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- dannyw 2mo agoI personally don’t like, and wouldn’t work for Meta; but it’s an Apache 2.0 model. I’m liking it, and I don’t see a personal moral contradiction here. Do you use React for frontend for example? I also wish this HN post is a bit more focused on the release, and less noise around Meta.
- Grombobulous 2mo agoThere’s no moral contradiction, but there is a moral decision. I don’t use React for front end nor do I willingly use any Meta product. I would like to focus on the release of the Volkswagen Beetle and hear less noise about Adolf Hitler.
- foobar_______ 2mo agoSocial media, often owned and perpetuated by Meta, has poisoned the world. It is not redeemable at this point.
- commoner 2mo agoMuse Glimmer doesn't redeem Meta, but it's a contribution to the commons and the Apache 2.0 licensing is an improvement from the restricted licenses attached to Llama. If even Meta can use a permissive license for its model weights, so can any other company.
- mirekrusin 2mo agoThere is literally not a single comment like this, the only off topic comment like this is yours.
- keybored 2mo agoAny retort to do this like “but why would they just openly release this”[1] pretty much answers itself. Public relations. If a company can spend money to redeem itself then, well, it can (game theoretically or whatever) do whatever it wants in the future and then spend money to wipe the slate clean. [1] By which I mean: the very act of being prompted to ask such a question, of planting a seed like hmm, Meta might have some aspects which are good for us. You don’t have to be convinced of it. Just the seed itself can pay for itself.
- monster_truck 2mo agoMeta can never be redeemed, but it's still valid to admit that FB at one point had a very badass engineering culture. They're one of 2 companies I would absolutely never work for (weapons etc aside). FB's recruiters hounded me so often I requested that they blackball me. The day they became Meta, I learned this by checking my email to see that they started trying to reach out again. I once again requested that they blackball me. This by extention taints OAI, the other company I'll never work for. After a few hours with Glimmer I'm pretty impressed. It's better than the benchmark scores seem to indicate compared to Qwen 3.6 27B. I'm very excited for 3.8
- swiftcoder 2mo ago> FB at one point had a very badass engineering culture Perpetually kneecapped by one of the worst management cultures I've ever seen
- MengerSponge 2mo agoWould you say those badass engineers were/are managed by Careless People?
- swiftcoder 2mo agoMy impression is that they had created a system where management cared very deeply about "number go up", and very little about "which number?"
- MengerSponge 2mo agoThe book title is a reference to The Great Gatsby: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
- fidotron 2mo agoI'm going there: Bosworth is the problem. He should never have got near being CTO.
- skinfaxi 2mo agoHow is this non-sequitor the top comment?
- simianwords 2mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- blackoil 2mo agoCertain topics bring out the hidden Reddit inside.
- Der_Einzige 2mo agoThis is par for the course, HN is far worse than reddit on balance, especially involving upvoting/downvoting decorum. Go vibecode something to auto upvote all downvoted posts, call it "Antiechochamber.HN" or something, and if enough people used it this website might improve a bit.
- Larrikin 2mo agoLol at Internet points decorum.
- bgilroy26 2mo agoThomas Bayes would say that the population of people who hate Facebook is really big and the population of people who are scrupulous about whether or not their comments are specific to the matter at hand is relatively small
- hn_submit 2mo agoI can't take any Big Tech company that still uses PHP seriously. Sorry.
- armchairhacker 2mo agoYou can say the same about planet Earth.
- tonyhart7 2mo agowhat makes Meta so bad ???? they just your average billion dollar company
- jjice 2mo agoI'd also argue this is the case for any company releasing open weights. They're not righteous, they're marketing. That's not necessarily a bad thing! They're releasing some great stuff for free and we benefit from that. Every company doing this has a motivation to not release these for free. Alibaba, Google, Moonshot, Thinking Machines, etc are not releasing their models for free because they love to. They want to grab market share. I'll take it. I still will not use a hosted Meta product, but damn this model looks solid.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- behnamoh 2mo agoThis model doesn’t look solid at all. It comes months after the Qwen model, and in almost half the benchmarks, it performs worse than that. Plus, the next Qwen 3.8 is going to be announced this week. So, this model is DOA.
- dofm 2mo agoI don't really care that much about benchmarks, but having tested it on one of my puzzle prompts I can tell you that it solves it well, writes clearly, isn't noticeably slower than Qwen 3.6 27B and is much more terse in its reasoning (which will help with preserve-reasoning). It also has a knowledge cutoff inside this year. The main limitation is the smaller maximum recommended context.
- ericmay 2mo agoIt’s rather amusing to me to read comments like this, and then simultaneously whenever a Chinese company or team releases open-weight models or whatever there is a giant round of applause, America is so behind, and there’s nothing but positive things to say about the intelligent, creative, and well-intentioned Chinese engineers (which is true, America certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on great people). Don’t you know? Only China can release good, open weight models and American companies can’t compete. Oh by the way all the spend is for nothing because China alone can release open-weight models thus destroying American AI. When an American company does anything? Doom. And. Gloom. The engineers? Taken to the slaughterhouse! America? Behind! The public? Bamboozeled! > This is open weights because Meta couldn't monetize it in any other way than to cloud developer's judgement of their reputation. I’ve been told over and over this doesn’t matter. Just needs to be cheap and open. Or maybe that’s only when Chyna is involved? Sorry this post is a bit snarky but it really is something to behold. And certainly I don’t know the OP’s opinions on Chinese open weight models. Perhaps they agree with me.
- fwipsy 2mo agoGood points, I personally believe that if/when China takes the lead, they will immediately stop releasing model weights. It only makes sense as a strategy to counterbalance (current) American labs' monopoly on frontier models. Holding both those positions would be hypocritical all right, but are you sure it's the same people commenting/voting in both cases? I don't think there's a strong consensus on Hacker News. Even something like the time of day an article is posted might get different engagement depending on who is active in which time zones.
- ericmay 2mo ago> I don't think there's a strong consensus on Hacker News. Even something like the time of day an article is posted might get different engagement depending on who is active in which time zones. Based on my own experience and reading, I do think there's a general consensus on this site but I could certainly be wrong about that. I'm less concerned about hypocrisy per se, it's more that the arguments that are used, even if by a minority, seem to apply in only circumstances in which China releases open-weight models. I am aligned with your viewpoint as well. And I've repeatedly argued it. If China were to take the lead the US can then just release open-weight models. Folks say having the lead doesn't matter because China releases cheaper open-weight models. We can just let them take the lead and then do it back to them.
- drob518 2mo agoIf it’s open, do you care so much that it’s from Meta? At least it should be able to give you an honest answer about Tiananmen Square.
- root-parent 2mo agohttps://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/ https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/
- mliker 2mo agoYou’re conflating the release of a local dense model that can benefit the ecosystem with the adverse effects of a digital ad system.
- cobertos 2mo agoThe latter bankrolled and continues to bankroll the former. It is not incorrect to conflate them.
- HardCodedBias 2mo agoThis is Apache 2.0, which is quite permissive. Just accept the gift. These kind of responses are hilarious. Someone gives something for free (and indeed this is entirely free) and the top comment is pure complaint.
- fabrice_d 2mo agoAll models come with some bias. Given Meta's track record, I would not touch anything from them with a 10 feet pole.
- tjwebbnorfolk 2mo agoMore meta derangement syndrome on HN, what a surprise. We all benefit when companies invest their resources in producing open models. No one thinks this absolves anyone of being terrible elsewhere. But we can still be happy about it.
- exceptione 2mo ago> being bankrolled by the slaughterhouse. Thanks, that was a very loud LOL.
- younglunaman 2mo agoCrazy idea, maybe people can be happy a new open model got released, and still have nuanced ideas on meta as a whole. A company is a big thing there's a lot of moving pieces, why do we have to evaluate it as a whole instead of just seeing it as it is?
- bahmboo 2mo agoYour lamentations and opinions are noted. Do you have anything to say about the model? Something useful or substantive? Or is this just a place for you to let us all know what you are thinking these days?