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Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

Of course they're picking sides, that's the whole point. The problem is that right now they aren't picking sides based on morality - in a failed attempt to be impartial they're picking a side based on policy or technical issues, and ignoring the morality of the side that decision puts them on.

If they keep trying not to pick sides, they're going to continue to accidentaly pick the wrong side sometimes. "we have to be willing to pick sides" is not the same thing as "we have to start picking sides"

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> they're picking a side based on policy or technical issues

Let's be realistic. They're picking a side based on commercial motivations.

Well to be specific, when it comes to how content gets distributed across a billion Facebook newsfeeds...

The big problem is not that Facebook the company is picking sides, the big problem is that Facebook the company built a machine to pick sides, and told the machine to base its decisions solely on how much reaction content gets from people. So of course it over-prioritizes the worst, most shocking, most manipulative, most extreme content--because that's what gets the biggest reactions.

And the really big problem is that Facebook either doesn't understand, or wants to pretend it doesn't understand, why that is bad.

Understanding, accepting the implications, and doing something--that's what Facebook needs to do.

from a long enough view, every decision a business makes is commercially motivated, so simplifying a decision down to picking a side based on commercial motivations isn't really helpful. Optimizing for immediate growth, long term growth, good PR, capital outlay, or maintaining a relationship with a valuable customer are all "commercial motivations" but usually in conflict with each other.

it's pretty hard to find a business decision that can be reduced down to "should we make money, or not make money?"

Is Facebook in danger of not making money? I think the decision is a bit easier: should we make as much money as we possibly can, or should we forgo some profit to mitigate the assault on privacy and democracy that is the by-product of our business model.

My point was that "should we make as much money as we possibly can" is simplifying the question beyond the point of usefulness. Yes, facebook wants to make as much money as they possibly can. But it's not obvious that selling political ads to russians is the best money-making scheme.

You can't simplify the issue down to there being one action that is more profitable and one that is less so. the world is more complicated than that. Forgoing some profit in the short term in order to gain some trust from the userbase may be more profitable in the long run. Or maybe it won't be. It's a decision that facebook's leadership has to make, and it's not as simple as "we'll take the option that makes more money".

Burning down my house would net me a nice payout from the insurance company, but it's probably not a good financial decision in the longer term. when looking at corporate motivations, it's easy to say they're going to pick the most evil choice if it's the profitable one, but business leaders aren't all stupid, and picking the evil choice is often stupid.

from a long enough view, every decision a business makes is commercially motivated

Sure, but Facebook doesn’t look any further into the future than “the next click”.

while money is not null if make money getdata(users) getmoney(data) else getdata(users) getdata(money) set make money

Right. What they're really struggling with (or not facing) is what their values are.

Every "side" has their own morality. And believes that they are good and the other "side" is evil. This is just a fact of life.

It is very noble to attempt to adjudicate based on impartial rules rather than picking one of the many possible moralities and enforcing it with an iron fist.

Despite not being a fan of Facebook as a product, I'm impressed that they've been principled enough to not go the route of petite totalitarians like Twitter.

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As a general rule, I'd expect companies to deliver morality in line with how much the consumer can tell they're actually buying morally, and also actually cares.

So, with infinitely long supply chains and very complicated products of unclear provenance, and people who care more about looking moral than being it… not well.

Information asymmetry is not a problem well handled by default in a standard free market, I think. But all you need is certification! If only companies that don't make things in sweatshops are allowed to brand with Not Made In A Sweatshop stickers, the consumer can naturally prefer those. Of course if anyone can make up their own certification and stick it on a product, consumers get confused and can't tell what's legit.

As an example, consider the success of nutrition labelling (nutrition facts). It's much harder to make and sell food that only LOOKS healthy, calorie-wise, when anyone can check pretty easily.

I'm not sure I'd hold up nutrition labeling as a success. Feel free to correct if I'm missing some great shift that it caused (I mean this honestly, I haven't been paying much attention) but the biggest impact I see of nutritional labels is e.g. "Non GMO" on like, a can of soda, and "Gluten Free" on a steak. For me as a consumer, nutritional advertising has been diluted into nothing more than yet another set of stickers to be gamed.

(Disclaimer, the actual Nutritional Facts on the back are more useful, but as the endless debate about "what is actually good vs not good" might indicate, it's far from a Source Of Truth, and in many cases can likely be gamed as well. Similarly to how even if a news article lists all their funding sources, an average person probably doesn't care/might still not get much information from it/might still be mislead by crafting of that fact. I don't say this to encourage gatekeepers, but to call out that I'm not sure the current approaches are effectual)

Post-factum-edit: To the downvoters, before this post disappears, at least tell me where I'm wrong. US Obesity rate is through the roof[0]; and while this absolutely has socioeconomic roots, that's the crux of my statement: we're not addressing root causes, and are thus lacking many of the outcomes we'd want.

[0]https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db288.pdf

I actually did mean the nutrition facts on the back. Edited my post if that was unclear.

>It's much harder to make and sell food that only LOOKS healthy, calorie-wise, when anyone can check pretty easily.

Have you read the back of a package recently? This is directly from some nuttella in the pantry:

"Energy 332KJ Daily Intake 4%"

in one point font gray on white "Per 15 gram serve."

Average adult diet of 8700KJ.

On other side of the package: 220g net.

So the actual energy in the package is 4869KJ. This is by far not the worst. I have seen chocolates where the "serving size" was two squares.

You can count on any regulation that is bad for business to be subverted to the point of uselessness.

I have a box of microwavable popcorn I bought recently that's the best example I've ever seen of this. It reads:

> Serving Size: 2 Tbsp unpopped (makes about 4.5 cups popped)

> Servings Per Bag: about 2.5

> Calories (2 Tbsp unpopped): 170

> Calories (1 Cup popped): 35

How many calories per bag?

The worst thing is, it fooled me. I wouldn't've bought it if I'd realized the answer was about 400.

PR and branding exists to make the consumer think that the product is aligned to the consumer in some way, and can even drive product design (think of the "healthy choices" now available at McDonalds). Projecting some morality in your brand isn't too much different, is it?

Generally through regulation

Hewlett and Packard said it would be better not to make a single dime of profit than to ship a defective product. That’s how it used to work.

Is it not moral to have an economic system where transactions are mutually agreed upon?

Can you name a more moral economic system than that?

That's an incredibly narrow view of morality you have there.

You didn’t answer the question at all. I think that says more than your comment.

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