This is a point that I have raised loudly before I joined. A point that I have raised internally in a fashion that I can only describe as scathing (making a very direct connection with a project that Mark praised and government-funded education). I was later told by people who cared to move the needle on tax that my anger was unhelpful and delayed their own effort. Facebook does it because of its environment (big international American corporation who misinterpret fiduciary duties to their investors) and should be the first company to break that mold (mainly because Mark genuinely doesn’t care about money). I was explained why it’s so slow (Basically, Americans hate government and think that it is inefficient; truth is: they are right, US civil servants are terrible. Countries where civil servants are competent don’t have that issue, and you can expect to get senior leadership to change their opinion on that topic if more non-Americans reach senior positions. Paying tax when you think private foundations are more efficient seems unethical. I don’t like it, but the point makes sense.) I would be happy to vote for anyone (presumably at the European parliament) willing to make it legally impossible for them not to pay proper tax.
> what about political censorship in kashmir
I’m not familiar with that process, but I’m happy to admit with the people who manage that team that they are overwhelmed by their responsibilities and are trying to find a solution to help with political interference. Solutions at scale include a combination of political science, machine learning and clever product design that I wouldn’t trust anyone but Facebook with.
> or maybe political censorship of the kurds
Same: accusations like that are constant. They often come from biased media, which make them quite ironic to process -- but doesn’t make it less important. I don’t think it is a simple process and I don’t think that the company is neglecting it. They are just trying to address it with a hard-to-explain multi-layered approach, using a lot more technology than journalists imagine.
> or religious and political censorship in pakistan
Same. You are basically starting to blame Facebook for the existence of conflict in places where… I mean, censorship didn’t started there. I would not be surprised if Facebook got punked by local authorities. If you want to help, I am sure that the company is hiring political wonks to help explain what is really happening, how to address it.
> what about the censorship of the rohingya trying to tell the world about their persecution
I think that you either over-estimate my ability to travel, or my trust in the objectivity of The Guardian and Al Jazeera. I have no doubt that those places face horrible hardships. I have no doubt that Facebook should, and does, care. I wouldn’t be surprised if their take was more nuanced than what you can get from reading one article on the topic, and I would be even less surprised to see that The Guardian both believes that Facebook should not interfere and have a moral duty to fix the problem.
Facebook is now a meaningful player in the political arena. They are growing to that realisation and hiring people who can help, thinking about what they role can and should be. If you think about them strongly and want the right to tell to Mark, to his face and repeatedly that he’s wrong and misinformed, my recommendation is that you join the company. Disent is not very helpful without the full context, but you absolutely can influence and make things better from the inside. (You can fuck things up too: God knows I did. I didn’t even mention the Growth team constant over-reach; privacy groups simplifications… So many things where data was telling that my instinct was wrong.)
> at what point do you take responsibility for your actions in the context of facebook as a company?
Ten years before I joined; literally before Facebook was started. I made myself responsibly for explaining my PhD to friends who work for the anti-trust authority in Europe. I failed so far: there are no meaningful enforcement of social-media based monopolies.
> i understand that companies are often unethical in tiny steps until they're a monster,
I don’t think that’s true -- and I’ve worked for pretty much any type of (civilian) “bad” company you can think of: Exxon Mobile, TelCos, etc.
Companies have hard choices to make. They get blamed for the ones you see; no one realise that the choice was actually very easy, very impactful either way when they get big. Sometimes the outcome is murky, but the decisions are rarely hard, and very rarely made in the name of greed, or pure evil. There often is a greater good to defend. They just choose to shut up about it because of people like you, who will attack them rabidly even if they tried to save children’s lives.
The best example of that kind of discussion that I could find was actually in the pilot of The West Wing, and pretty much the staple resolution of every episode of TV show:
> PS: exhibiting restraint in this post was . . . difficult.
That’s fairly obvious, so is the fact that you suffer of it, on many levels; and your hatred is not rational. If you realise that, and you want to change, try to ask people who defend Facebook, including pretty much every employee. Don’t tell them that they are wrong. Ask what they are doing. They won’t because the company takes confidentiality very seriously but you’ll be able to tell that they are doing it to defend something bigger than themselves, something that they know is incredibly positive.
There’s not much I can do about your anger, other than to point at it, and tell you: I’m more than familiar with legitimate criticism of that company. The recent scandal is not it. If you want to address real issues, start by making sense of what they are trying to do, what they bring, why they are so successful and influential. Why people expect to find reliable political information there -- and why they expect others to find it too.
That should help you understand what many in the company are still missing: lack of international sensitivity, how to behaviourally engage users to care, lack of clear communication; and what they certainly are not over-looking but still need to do a lot more of: fighting spammers, abuse and government over-reach.
FB isn't going to comply with it in places where it isn't law. they prefer to spy on people. it’s their business model.
> I was flabbergasted by the spin that Facebook could be “deleting evidence”
none of this justifies barging into their office.
enforcing a contract is calling your lawyer, not barging into an office.
there is nothing "hostile" about media coverage sounding an alarm that FB people hit up CA before a warrant could be written. it is an alarming incident because it is outside the law.
> but I think that the foaming-at-the-mouth hatred that so many people display here is unhelpful and actually helping the company evade necessary challenges.
as we can see, strong criticisms repeated often tend to stick around, especially when they're substantiated. if the company doesn't deal with them, the burden is not on the critics to ease up. Characterizing exhaustively documented legitimate criticism as “foaming at the mouth” is a bit misplaced.
Sure, I’m foaming. But I’m always foaming, and the evidence speaks for itself without hyperbole.
Anyhow, your comments avoiding the problem of surveilling non-users are disappointing and pretty irrelevant tbh.
It really is not that complicated: don’t surveil people who have not consented. It doesn’t matter if other companies do the wrong thing too.
> I don’t think you want Facebook to act as if they are above the law and refuse to obey a judge?
Your company issues a report on the number of government information requests it handles. It has happened for years already. This goes way beyond just law enforcement. They obey judges, but also offer much, much more without any warrants. https://www.yahoo.com/news/google-facebook-cooperated-nsa-pr...
>I don’t think the harm in that context was large: it was, literally, barely enough to be measured
The size of the effect is utterly irrelevant.
It is not ethical to experiment on people’s emotions without their consent.
your other comments are also not relevant to the issue of FB experimenting with manipulating people’s emotional states without their consent.
I can’t underline this enough: FB harmed their users directly.
This was not getting people to click ads. It was not an A/B test to optimize conversion. This was emotional manipulation for the very purpose of seeing whether it was possible to inflict emotional manipulation on unsuspecting people. this is completely and utterly inexcusable under any kind of study consent dynamic. If this were a psychology study performed with an institutional review board it would have NEVER been approved.
And you’re okay with that so long as you work there – and in fact, y
ou’re willing to defend it. You’re defending non-consensual experimentation on people. which harms them. Think about that for a minute.
>That’s speculative.
No, it isn’t. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/technology/facebook-censo.... There are other sources for that same story. The intent was to do evil. If you take issue with the language there, think for a minute about what they were really volunteering to do.
>this is open science and I find that very interesting –
current understanding is that using FB is bad for your emotions. This understanding gains weight every day.
>Evidence doesn’t come into Galaxy and, like anyone reasonable, I know that new technology and new service have positive and negative sides and I work on separating them to keep the best.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2014&q=facebook+em...
there’s more than 10 pages of scholarly papers. The ones relating to emotion are exclusively unfavorable.
>comments dismissing the sourced instances of facebook censoring various groups
I guess you’re saying that “it can’t be proven” but the whole point of the sources that I linked is that it’s all proven. FB cooperates with the Turkish govt to suppress the kurds, same with the pakis, etc.
Here is the thing: complicity in censorship is utterly unacceptable.
It is totally unethical. There is no weaseling away from it: facebook is helping to suppress minorities in these countries. It’s wrong.
>Facebook is now a meaningful player in the political arena.
Yes, much to our detriment, as is obliteratingly self-evident.
>If you think about them strongly and want the right to tell to Mark, to his face and repeatedly that he’s wrong and misinformed, my recommendation is that you join the company. Disent is not very helpful without the full context, but you absolutely can influence and make things better from the inside.
I don’t even know what to say to this.
Here is a proposition: pay me, and I’ll do my best to destroy the company from within should it confirm my prejudices once I have the “full context”.
Does that work for you guys?
>and I’ve worked for pretty much any type of (civilian) “bad” company you can think of: Exxon Mobile, TelCos, etc
hey, it’s bad to work for unethical companies.
>There often is a greater good to defend.
What, you mean like the shareholders?
>They just choose to shut up about it because of people like you, who will attack them rabidly even if they tried to save children’s lives.
This isn’t how PR works, especially for big companies. Their horn is getting tooted at every opportunity, always. Lack of tooting means lack of favorable things for the public to hear. No company plays the unsung hero because it isn’t profitable.
> try to ask people who defend Facebook, including pretty much every employee
I’ve cited extensive amounts of evidence; you have cited none.
The problem with asking employees about what they do is that they only do one small thing. They’re just one tiny cog in the machine. They don’t accept responsibility for the machine’s smooth functioning because they know it could work without them.
But they’re still complicit, just like all the other cogs. And people love to rationalize, especially when their paycheck depends on it. It’s only human to be self-deceptive – but that does not mean that you have to abide by it when other people are doing it.
Indoctrinated people respond to a few things, in my experience.
The most effective thing is being hit with the sledgehammer of facts until they break – it’s academic and obnoxious, but most people can’t fight reality for long.
I’ve already addressed which of those I think are legitimate criticism and which miss the point.
It’s increasingly clear that you are not willing to understand why intelligent, moral people are willing to defend (and criticise) Facebook. Whether you are wrong on part or the whole, you fiercely refuse to see a contradicting argument. You openly prefer to demonise: the only way someone could disagree with you is if they are either delusional, stupid of deprived of ethics. That’s also why you won’t acknowledge that I did agree with you on several points.
You are welcome to think that I’m morally repugnant.
We both know that insulting people is a bad way to convince them, so you won’t be surprised that --sledgehammer of opinion pieces from the Guardian or not-- you have not really told me anything to move me. Most critics are like you, actually.
My take is that, if you write the way you did, you will come of as dangerous and misinformed to anyone who is able to and trying to address the problem. A majority of them work for or used to work for the company; few people are in academia; I can name a couple of elected officials but not many more. I regret that it’s so unbalanced.
I believe that you are making your cause seem worst off, because you can’t separate your prejudice from issues that have a solution. I’m very sorry that I couldn’t help you.
What will happen (what has already started) is that Facebook will leverage some of that anger to actually consolidate its power. One examples: with the CA scandal, the first reaction from the company was “Partner apps could abuse our users’ data, we have not exerted enough control -- very sorry.” justifying invasive audits. Good if it prevents another CA scandal, but that doesn’t make Facebook any less influential.
The more you go after Facebook for making the wrong political decisions, the more the company will gain legitimacy in making those calls, against empowering democratic or international institutions. Facebook might lend that legitimacy to some democratic or civil groups, like they did with Snopes, Wikipedia and CJI on false news, but, with every additional complaint, they will keep the authority to pick and choose it and only ever let it go for so long.
If you think the people at the helm are morally bankrupt, that should terrify you; I hope that you see how this is judo-ing your own anger. I think that Mark & his team are trying to do well, but that they are increasingly in over their heads and need informed support and more intelligent control -- neither of which they are getting in enough supply, so they learn as they go. I think they are doing well, not repeating many mistakes, acting fast, being increasingly careful and considerate. But the end result is scary in a different way.
>I’ve already addressed which of those I think are legitimate criticism and which miss the point.
and yet i've substantiated everything that i've written. it's all legitimate criticism. notice how i haven't bothered to say that zuck looks like an alien? that's because it isn't legitimate criticism.
>you are not willing to understand why intelligent, moral people are willing to defend (and criticise) Facebook.
i'm willing to understand incentives and rationalization. sophistry is another matter.
>you fiercely refuse to see a contradicting argument. You openly prefer to demonise: the only way someone could disagree with you is if they are either delusional, stupid of deprived of ethics. That’s also why you won’t acknowledge that I did agree with you on several points.
there isn't any contradicting argument is the thing, there's just rationalization, whitewashing, diversion, glossing over, and apologia.
provide counterfactual evidence to the things i posted to make a contradicting argument.
merely stating that criticisms are illegitimate or that your opponent won't see things your way doesn't prove your point or defend your point whatsoever. likewise, claiming that i think you're stupid/delusional/whatever really isn't relevant. the arguments are what is relevant -- address those more substantially.
as far as demonization goes, i guess the ball is in FB's court to clean house and try to remove the stains from their reputation. honestly it's very hard to demonize companies that don't have an extensive rap sheet like FB does.
you agreed with me on a few points, but so what? the substantial issue of FB's systemic and unrepentant abuse of their users (and non users) is still just as alive as before.
>My take is that, if you write the way you did, you will come of as dangerous and misinformed to anyone who is able to and trying to address the problem. A majority of them work for or used to work for the company; few people are in academia; I can name a couple of elected officials but not many more. I regret that it’s so unbalanced.
hm, it's weird that i have provided so much evidence yet i'm still somehow "misinformed". i think the problem is in your court to defend against the serious criticisms that i've leveled. furthermore, the sensation of danger is good. it means that my criticisms are touching a tender spot -- a spot that is an actual vulnerability rather than something superficial. the next step is for legislators to apply an abundance of pressure to the tender spots, of course. i think we need more dangerous criticism to facilitate that.
>I believe that you are making your cause seem worst off, because you can’t separate your prejudice from issues that have a solution.
here's the thing: the solution is extensive privacy laws which gut FB's profitability as a consequence. note that i said consequence rather than feature. facebook is just one problem company among many others.
you guys don't want to hear that or accept it either way. i guess a lot of people object that companies shouldn't ever be subject to laws that undermine their profitability. but frankly, there are higher values than profit -- a lesson that facebook has never known.
>If you think the people at the helm are morally bankrupt, that should terrify you; I hope that you see how this is judo-ing your own anger. I think that Mark & his team are trying to do well, but that they are increasingly in over their heads and need informed support and more intelligent control -- neither of which they are getting in enough supply, so they learn as they go. I think they are doing well, not repeating many mistakes, acting fast, being increasingly careful and considerate. But the end result is scary in a different way.
this isn't judo-ing my anger. judo implies that the angry one ends up on the floor. the way things are going currently it is FB who will end up on the floor. their political power has been identified, and now the focus is on gutting it.
i personally don't care if mark is "trying to do well". i care about results, and i care that he dodged most of the questions congress asked him because it's dishonest and harms the public good. that isn't careful, nor is it considerate. it really worries me that you are serious about these "sillicon valley" style tropes -- it's not a good look to drink the kool aid, and i've heard that FB is similar to a cult internalyl, which you are substantiating. not that that's relevant to the larger discussion here.
>you have not really told me anything to move me
this part is never true, when someone states it explicitly after engaging in a lengthy series of replies. the truly unmoved don't bother to reply in the first place.
in conclusion: now that i've extensively researched the problems with FB, heard your responses, and examined further, my opinions are both fortified and more nuanced along an even more radical vector than before we spoke. i wasn't about to call for FB's dissolution as a company before, but i'd consider it now that i can see there will be absolutely no positive change coming from inside the company.
> what about tax evasion
This is a point that I have raised loudly before I joined. A point that I have raised internally in a fashion that I can only describe as scathing (making a very direct connection with a project that Mark praised and government-funded education). I was later told by people who cared to move the needle on tax that my anger was unhelpful and delayed their own effort. Facebook does it because of its environment (big international American corporation who misinterpret fiduciary duties to their investors) and should be the first company to break that mold (mainly because Mark genuinely doesn’t care about money). I was explained why it’s so slow (Basically, Americans hate government and think that it is inefficient; truth is: they are right, US civil servants are terrible. Countries where civil servants are competent don’t have that issue, and you can expect to get senior leadership to change their opinion on that topic if more non-Americans reach senior positions. Paying tax when you think private foundations are more efficient seems unethical. I don’t like it, but the point makes sense.) I would be happy to vote for anyone (presumably at the European parliament) willing to make it legally impossible for them not to pay proper tax.
> what about political censorship in kashmir
I’m not familiar with that process, but I’m happy to admit with the people who manage that team that they are overwhelmed by their responsibilities and are trying to find a solution to help with political interference. Solutions at scale include a combination of political science, machine learning and clever product design that I wouldn’t trust anyone but Facebook with.
> or maybe political censorship of the kurds
Same: accusations like that are constant. They often come from biased media, which make them quite ironic to process -- but doesn’t make it less important. I don’t think it is a simple process and I don’t think that the company is neglecting it. They are just trying to address it with a hard-to-explain multi-layered approach, using a lot more technology than journalists imagine.
> or religious and political censorship in pakistan
Same. You are basically starting to blame Facebook for the existence of conflict in places where… I mean, censorship didn’t started there. I would not be surprised if Facebook got punked by local authorities. If you want to help, I am sure that the company is hiring political wonks to help explain what is really happening, how to address it.
> what about the censorship of the rohingya trying to tell the world about their persecution
I think that you either over-estimate my ability to travel, or my trust in the objectivity of The Guardian and Al Jazeera. I have no doubt that those places face horrible hardships. I have no doubt that Facebook should, and does, care. I wouldn’t be surprised if their take was more nuanced than what you can get from reading one article on the topic, and I would be even less surprised to see that The Guardian both believes that Facebook should not interfere and have a moral duty to fix the problem.
Facebook is now a meaningful player in the political arena. They are growing to that realisation and hiring people who can help, thinking about what they role can and should be. If you think about them strongly and want the right to tell to Mark, to his face and repeatedly that he’s wrong and misinformed, my recommendation is that you join the company. Disent is not very helpful without the full context, but you absolutely can influence and make things better from the inside. (You can fuck things up too: God knows I did. I didn’t even mention the Growth team constant over-reach; privacy groups simplifications… So many things where data was telling that my instinct was wrong.)
> at what point do you take responsibility for your actions in the context of facebook as a company?
Ten years before I joined; literally before Facebook was started. I made myself responsibly for explaining my PhD to friends who work for the anti-trust authority in Europe. I failed so far: there are no meaningful enforcement of social-media based monopolies.
> i understand that companies are often unethical in tiny steps until they're a monster,
I don’t think that’s true -- and I’ve worked for pretty much any type of (civilian) “bad” company you can think of: Exxon Mobile, TelCos, etc.
Companies have hard choices to make. They get blamed for the ones you see; no one realise that the choice was actually very easy, very impactful either way when they get big. Sometimes the outcome is murky, but the decisions are rarely hard, and very rarely made in the name of greed, or pure evil. There often is a greater good to defend. They just choose to shut up about it because of people like you, who will attack them rabidly even if they tried to save children’s lives.
The best example of that kind of discussion that I could find was actually in the pilot of The West Wing, and pretty much the staple resolution of every episode of TV show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4h0_bz2Qew
> PS: exhibiting restraint in this post was . . . difficult.
That’s fairly obvious, so is the fact that you suffer of it, on many levels; and your hatred is not rational. If you realise that, and you want to change, try to ask people who defend Facebook, including pretty much every employee. Don’t tell them that they are wrong. Ask what they are doing. They won’t because the company takes confidentiality very seriously but you’ll be able to tell that they are doing it to defend something bigger than themselves, something that they know is incredibly positive.
There’s not much I can do about your anger, other than to point at it, and tell you: I’m more than familiar with legitimate criticism of that company. The recent scandal is not it. If you want to address real issues, start by making sense of what they are trying to do, what they bring, why they are so successful and influential. Why people expect to find reliable political information there -- and why they expect others to find it too.
That should help you understand what many in the company are still missing: lack of international sensitivity, how to behaviourally engage users to care, lack of clear communication; and what they certainly are not over-looking but still need to do a lot more of: fighting spammers, abuse and government over-reach.