Comment by nyxxie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nyxxie | Hacker News Reader

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I felt immense pity for the mother in this scenario, and after reading the article I agreed that FB aught to have some sort of way to indicate that such advertisements are offensive and should not be shown to the user. Ideally, I'd like to see a paid tier that gets rid of advertising altogether.

Then I read some of the comments here and on other sites. To put it bluntly, I don't understand the tone of entitlement people have when they demand FB/Twitter/etc fix their individual problems. I mean, I obviously understand it - such services are very popular and play a big part of peoples' social circles and lives. What I don't understand is why they think they have a right to demand that a platform they aren't even paying for should cater to them.

If everyone who disagreed with Facebook's revenue model were to leave Facebook, another platform would inevitably pop up that would cater to that new market niche. This seems to be the most fair solution to all parties, but instead it seems like people demand that someone compel FB to change based on their wants. I disagree with this not onlt because it's immoral and unfair, but also because it just means that those future FB competitors will have all sorts of obscure and unique regulatory hoops to jump through.

Am I the only one who thinks this way?

I don't think the OP is asking for regulation.

I think the OP is begging for consideration.

As a user, we have every right to state our opinions.

It's not "immoral" or "unfair" to say, "You're making money off of me, I'd really like you to change your behavior."

I don't know why or how you jumped all the way to "regulatory hoops."

Have you seen people advocating laws in this discussion? I haven't.

Yeah, and I found asking for that consideration to be personally enlightening. I'd never thought about a case like hers before, and it seems excruciating.

Facebook and Google would garner a lot more goodwill with me if they just offered some sort of option to subscribe out of ads on their networks.

Consideration from whom?

Some advertisers have bought the right to display their ads to people the platform has probably identified as “women having babies soon”.

Does the OP want consideration from the platform or the advertisers?

I feel the OP is venting the feeling that they’ve had a huge personal tragedy yet the world has just kept on going like nothing happened.

If an advertiser saw this and were horrified, I'm sure they'd be asking the platform to try to do something about it.

If the platform saw this and were horrified, I bet advertisers would appreciate or at least not mind, if they fixed situations like this.

If you and I saw this and were horrified, we might amplify her voice.

What if the ads for baby products were on advertising outside (or inside) the hospital. Should there be NO advertising for baby products because 1% of pregnancies end in stillbirth?

I'm pretty sure OP is saying, "Hey, tech companies, if you're going to mine my data to figure out I'm pregnant, maybe you should give me some way to tell you that the pregnancy ended in sorrow, and I don't want to see any ads about baby needs."

It's not calling for a ban on baby product ads.

It's saying that force-feeding ads on baby products to someone who has lost their child is awful, and it doesn't seem like a big stretch to let a user say, "I don't have a baby!" in a way that tech companies / advertisers can use, to be more sensitive.

> To put it bluntly, I don't understand the tone of entitlement people have when they demand FB/Twitter/etc fix their individual problems.

Individual problems caused by the platform. If something or someone is causing a problem for me one method to rectify it is to simply ask them to help. It's a pretty standard thing in society.

> What I don't understand is why they think they have a right to demand that a platform they aren't even paying for should cater to them.

For the most part, they do have a right to demand the platform do whatever they want. And depending upon the request, the platform has the right to say "no" to those. The users then have the right to continue using the platform or not.

> If something or someone is causing a problem for me one method to rectify it is to simply ask them to help.

I'd go further, as someone who makes products used by people I'd be thrilled if a user shared their experience with my product in such a fashion! Even if the experience is bad, at least I'd know about and have the chance to fix it. Worst case is people having bad experiences with my product and me being clueless.

I understand that in this case this particular issue is probably known and ignored, but still, inferring "entitlement" from people who share feedback seems like a step in the wrong direction.

> What I don't understand is why they think they have a right to demand that a platform they aren't even paying for should cater to them.

Because those platforms consistently and repeatedly lie to their users: they claim that they are here to serve you, or to help connect you, or help you find things you love.

If all you ever hear is "we're here to help you!", is it any wonder people expect help with their issues?

Maybe if they changed their tagline to something like "Facebook: Here to sell you to advertisers" then people's expectations would be different.

Individual "entitlement" multiplied by enough people becomes a market signal for the company to adjust their product. While it's stupid to expect a platform to change just because you complained, the act of complaining is a proper, kosher way of influencing a company - even if rarely effective, for the same reason that people just packing up and leaving for a different provider is a rare occurrence.

What I don't understand is why they think they have a right to demand that a platform they aren't even paying for should cater to them.

They're providing content that they're not even being paid for. Stop assuming that the person who own the hardware is automatically the rightful owner of the ecosystem there. Property relations are imaginary and arbitrary and can be rewritten.

I don't demand that anyone fix my individual problems when it comes to advertisements, I simply use an ad blocker and call it done. I don't need that intrusion into my life.

No, I felt the same way. The platforms are just doing what they are programmed to do, its not meant to be offensive. The fact that it is offensive is not something a computer could detect, exactly, so in my mind the platforms have done nothing wrong.

No, with power comes responsibility. If I make an automated car that runs over pedestrians but otherwise runs great. I can’t ethically write it off as “well, it’s just doing what it was programmed to do. There aren’t many pedestrians compared to cars anyways.” These ad companies that presume too much deserve the backlash when they get it wrong. They are responsible for their creations actions good and bad.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18665504

But at the end of the day, humans are still in charge, not algorithms. If they can't adequately control the algorithms, perhaps they're not ready to be deployed.

To see this a little more clearly, if a military deployed autonomous killer robots that kept accidentally killing civilian children, would you then argue the military isn't responsible?

false equivalency, no thank you.

Ummm, you're the one whose position makes them equivalent. Either humans are responsible for the algorithms they deploy, or they're not. To argue unintended effects can be ignored in one case but not the other is inconsistent.

"It's not meant to be offensive" ≠ "It's not offensive".

No one (afaik) is saying Facebook should be boycotted or punished over this issue specifically, so intent is irrelevant. A woman was offended—unintentionally—and is expressing her feelings, in the hope the companies will make an intentional change.

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