Former Facebook exec says social media is ripping apart society

Historically, the problem with indefinite liability has been government abuse and degradation of evidence (witnesses age and forget, documents are purged as part of regular scheduled maintenance, etc) which work together to create an unfair environment for the victim or perpetrator depending on the specifics of the case. Statutory limits "clear the docket" of potential cases, so to speak, which prevents the government from using an infinitely growing list of crimes and violations combined with selective enforcement to target "undesirable" or opposition elements within the populace.

I do believe that indefinite liability for felonies and fiduciary responsibilities is very desirable in a fair justice system (balanced with a case by case evaluation of future criminal potential so that people who have reformed without prison aren't too heavily punished) but I'm afraid it will require a massive societal change. A system as complex and noisy as the justice system cannot both be an underfunded afterthought and fair. Kind of like healthcare makes up almost 20% of US GDP, so too should the justice system if we are ever to properly align the incentives of management and the public. With the seemingly unstoppable pervasiveness of data collection and surveillance, it might even be practical in the future to prosecute very old crimes in a fair way as long as enough resources are dedicated to enforcement and oversight.

Unfortunately, the people who decide these things are extremely disincentivized from implementing the kind of sweeping changes we'd need.

That being said I think the financial incentive immediately takes over here and as a result those innocent ideals are trampled by analytics and pure psychological nudging.

It might be a little counter intuitive but in terms of jobs it is always good to exercise some counterfactual thinking: What would happen if I didn‘t take the job? Another dev without a strong moral code would likely simply do what they are told without thinking about consequences and long-term impact. Having loud voices within FB itself (hopefully in important positions) might have a big impact! Imagine Zuckerberg getting the low-down for all of his probably well-intentioned but horribly excetued ideas BEFORE they are rolled out...

Agreed with this. It's not only nothing keeping you from it, the society would probably push you towards accepting it. It's a big popular brand so not only would you get a high salary but it would most likely include a high social status. Friends and family would think you've gone insane not accepting a good offer from Facebook and it would most likely be good career choice as well. It must be easier to get other job offers after having worked at Facebook or somewhere similar.

Deep down I think everyone knows this, you will gain economically and socially in every way and the only thing you will need to suppress is the possibility of you feeling you contribute to something less good for society. Easy choice.

Yes, it would change peoples priorities: If this was the case (and the definition of "externalities" was broad enough to encompass "No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth") literally nothing of consequence would ever happen.

The those tropes in computer engineering about suits never getting fired for buying IBM, about legal departments wrapping everything in red tape, about bosses insisting on processes, reports and cover sheets? They are on the hook for vague 'externalities', so they cover their asses. Only when we collectively accept a certain degree of risk can progress happen.

Running for the nearest torch and pitchfork shed is not how an open, liberal society deals with adversity.

I don't think it would be practical to enforce, nor necessarily very fair. Would we want to, say, drag the coal miner into court over his personal contribution to global warming? The world is a tangled web of externalities and none of us would be in a moral position the throw the first stone.

That being said, there is definitely a void of responsibility in social media.

Traditional media is a useful frame of reference. Let's say that some journalist invented a totally bogus story involving a pizza restaurant, a child-sex ring, and a number of named persons. I think this journalist would be hard pressed to get this past his editor and into print, and with good reason, because the editor is responsible for the validity of the newspaper, and so is the newspaper itself. The most likely outcome would be a lawsuit which they'd lose big time.

Back to social media. Let's have a look at Facebook. This is a tech company, not a media company, so they are not really responsible for their content. The users are kind of responsible but a lot of users are fake anyway so no responsibility there either. Behind it all are The Algorithms, and The Algorithms are not really responsible either, it's just convoluted AI type stuff which no one really understands. But let's rewind a bit. Is Facebook a tech company or a media company? Being a tech company is really convenient in terms of washing their hands but should we let them get away with it? Or should we redefine them as a media company and let them own the responsibility of the content which brings in users and ad money? Could the buck land in any other place when you think about it? Sure, it would be a hassle for them, they'd have to employ a lot more people to monitor and moderate content, they'd need to put mechanisms in place for better validation of identities, and they'd be less profitable. But that would be their problem to deal with. Free passes are not always forever.

And they rarely put their money where their mouth is, meaning they don't use that accumulated wealth to try and solve the issue they've helped create. Talk is cheap.

Because that is where he decided to work. I imagine he could find a role elsewhere focused on the areas you mentioned if he wished with those qualifications.

I don't doubt for a second that VCs fund a shedload of shite and that the social media world has pernicious effects that we are only just starting to understand, but in your example I don't think the tech industry can be blamed for your friend wasting his life building widgets.

Although I like to update the quote to:

"I saw the best minds of our generation writing Snapchat filters."

It is an unfortunate outcome, but how would you change the systems (e.g. capitalism) that produced this outcome?

The market is going to buy a warp-drive when someone makes it.

The previous decades were all cool, and the system keeps optimizing for fun innovation but there are other issues right now

To pretend this is isolated to SV is ignorant. This is what you get in capitalism

Are single-player games tearing society apart? Is a deck of cards wasted on solitaire? Must all bicycles be tandem?

I now see frequent posts on /r/relationships about porn problems on various level.

I see this said a lot but it's never described in what ways porn changes this, other than men suffering from sexual disfunction.

Herin lies the problem with moral crusading. I feel awesome after watching internet porn. Keep your opinions from bleeding into others' rights.

I'll be amazed if people are dating in 5 years at this rate.

I'm raised with internet porn and I don't believe I have a problem. Why should I be banned from watching something I enjoy?

I don't buy the crap about porn changing people. Sure you can say that for yourself if you got addicted but you can't just throw that out as a general truth. Porn has been around for a long time now and I don't really see people behaving different today.

Take the other side of the issue. Anonymity means people can discuss controversial views without concern for what other people might think of them for holding such views. So for instance, consider Nazi Germany. The Nazis were never actually particularly popular in Germany [1] but managed to obtain a stranglehold in power largely because they made people afraid to say otherwise. It was difficult for people to speak against the Nazi party when all it took was saying such things to the wrong person to end up getting 'disappeared.' Without the ability to completely suppress free speech, the Nazis likely would not have managed to obtain power - and certainly not to maintain it.

And the above is something that is a constantly recurring theme in history. Those that would do bad things enable their actions by making people scared or otherwise unable to speak against said actions. This should sound familiar given recent events. It's increasingly seeming that sexual abuse is something that is completely systemic in Hollywood. But the powers that be were protected by the fact that their victims were unable to speak out. For instance Weinstein managed to kill a New York Times article that was being written about his abuse, 13 years ago. And in the past accusers of people like him would be putting much more than "just" their livelihood in jeopardy. But the internet allows these people to come together, have a much larger voice, and indirectly protect themselves and also substantiate their claims. A few isolated claims can be explained away - dozens, if not hundreds, of claims cannot.

I would argue that what we're seeing is an evolution of society, with some growing pains. Ultimately being upset about what somebody says on the internet is pretty pointless. I mean really we all should be seeing things that we disagree with, fundamentally and vehemently. If people were honest in real life - this would also be the case. I do not think that people censoring themselves, or making themselves somebody they are not, for the sake of social conformity is a positive trait. Yes it spares peoples feelings and helps things get along, but a social consensus (which defines our state of society) built on falsehoods and invisible pressure is no consensus at all. The reason the civil rights movement succeeded is because it happened long before the civil rights movement, as we know it, actually happened. The masses had long since changed their views, but social pressures prevented discussion of such.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15841818

I would argue we simply live in a world where many people are frustrated, scared, unhappy or just bored. To change how they behave online we don‘t just have to police online better but affect social change in our physical realities. Change the dogma for what it means to be successful. Move from for-profit to for-positive-impact. Teach the benefits of cooperation + friendly competition over battle royale. Such change will carry over to the net. Imagine FB moving away from advertising and for-profit motives to a for-positive-impact poly-centric community governed network for communities, I bet people would behave differently there...

like most graffiti in real life really. words usually don't materialize

By tying the things you say to you, and your reputation among your actual peers, you're more likely to think twice before posting something needlessly hurtful or provocative.

The ability to act anonymously online is obviously important in many contexts, such as seeking mental health advise or indulging in strange yet benign hobbies. But for political speech, communities requiring real names would seem preferable.

If you come to this conclusion, you are living in a deep filter bubble in your real life. I often say to people (in Germany): Just go to work by tram at a later time (when hardly any people use the tram to go to work) and you will see how large amounts of "ordinary" people really are/look like.

"NEW FORCE IN MEDIA

...

Whether you’re searching for what’s happening in politics, what’s streaming this weekend, where to find size-inclusive clothing, ways to give back, or how much coffee to put in your coffee, we’re here to help you explore every topic that interests you."

From http://www.bustle.com/about

6 Education

3 "Frontier"

13 Healthcare

That seems like a pretty healthy mix. By only providing select points of the complete picture, aren't you contributing to the problem he's describing?

If you listen to the talk he says many times "Get the Money" then focus on the real problems

The key here is you have to get the money first, then you have the power and resources to make social change and fix the real problems

So his mix of investments does not have to 100% "real problems" like climate change, his (stated) goal is to get capital from those other projects and use that to fund other companies that focus on "Real Problems"

Oh well.

Boy they would send me emails with one-liner teasers of my friends posts hoping I would go back. They even sent me an email with one-click to immediately activate my account. So I simply filtered these emails to the trash.

They have texted me twice so far but I simply ignored it.

Been few months and it’s much better now.

However, what makes you decide to espouse this one rather than the one where he was younger and more naive, worked at the sausage factory for a while, and eventually realized the magnitude and dishonesty of what he was overseeing?

Both seem equally probable.

Beyond the very basic fact that people sometimes communicated with each other over BBSes, there is absolutely no comparison between them and what is happening right now.

Facebook is different. It is a scaffold built around your existing relationships. Like a scaffold, it appears to support that fundamental structure.

But unlike a scaffold, it tries to shape the underlying structure. Unlike a BBS, whose constraint was enabling people to access, it is optimized to maximize consumption of itself.

Facebook can be a community, and used to be more community like, but it’s designed to be something entirely different.

On consumption side, even if someone creates a long and thoughtful well-balanced post, on Facebook it's likely to be hidden with a "see more" link after the first sentence or two, so long and thoughtful doesn't get as heavy of distribution as short, witty and too often simplistic.

On creation side, the single-line text-field does not encourage a long and thoughtful point-by-point debate either, it's designed for "omg, lol, this sucks" type of feedback.

When the entirety of a platform is created with the intent to addict you, and ever color, line, word, behavior is designed with that intent, you have to be particularly strong-willed to resist it, much less even to notice it. Subtlety is the key, and these systems are getting very very good at making you believe you are willingly participating when really, you just can't make yourself stop.

Facebook has a place, and the way you've described your use of it is a great example. I try very hard to use it in much the same way.

But for most people, there's a great line I loved from Stargate SG-1 all those years ago that describes the path they must take to having a healthy life where social media is concerned:

"The only way to win is to deny it battle."

IME, many intelligent, successful people are merely manipulated in a different way, by appealing to their egos. They don't believe they are vulnerable to manipulation; they believe that they can detect if someone is lying and that if something is persuasive to them then it meets a high standard.

I've known salespeople who sell to the wealthy and successful; it's just a different sales pitch, AFAICT.

I've tried this a few times, but discoverability on Twitter is impossible. I don't know who's an authority, digging through someone's past posts is hard, following a discussion is really difficult. It feels like I'm tasked with digging through a SMS chat log looking for content. Am I just doing it wrong? I can't keep up with twitter. I follow 20-30 accounts and inevitably every time I open up the app and there's 600+ unread posts. I couldn't imagine following any more than that.

If you create a product that is both an echo chamber for reinforcing your beliefs, while also tricking you into believing fake news, and a huge percent of the population is negatively effected by that - can you really keep blaming the people instead of the product?

Rock and roll was mostly deviating from the mainstream and going against some religiously motivated moral ideas, which is an idiotic reason to be afraid of something. TV absolutely did and still does rot people's brains, so to speak, because that is actually the goal of some of the actors behind it, and similarly for the antisocial networks of today.

4chan is like a pub without regulars. You can't go there to meet specific people.

The third one believes both those two belief systems suck.

According to voting data, the third system has more believers than the others.

The problem is the idea of a "social platform".

We need social technology, not social platforms. We need technology that allows people to communicate and share, but we don't need a middleman that is semantically involved in any of this. Telephone networks don't care about the content of your calls, they simply allow you to talk to people. Parks and pubs don't have people who monitor what you are talking about, they simply provide you with a place to meet.

That is what the internet and technology building on it should provide.

Isn't that impostor syndrome (something I've read about here like 100 times)?

I too struggle with knowledge that I am bright, but that I may not be quite bright enough to be what I really want. Its a frustrating and lonely thought many of us in this field share. Expressing it though - even writing it in a public forum - is often an invite to the social monsters that prowl around here to say "then you obviously aren't that bright". Don't listen. Walk your path.

Just do your best and understand that luck and good timing means more than hard work and brilliance (ask any lotto winner). To say anything else is a like a banner ad for survivorship bias. None of us matter much in the scheme of things and all radical ideas are seen as trash to those "in the know" at some point.