Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

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Not exactly. Tobacco has no benefits to society except possibly a dopamine hit for the user.

Facebook has a lot of positives to go along with its negatives. For me, it's the only way I stay in touch with a lot of my friends from high school. And I know that it's only because of Facebook, because Facebook didn't exist for the first 10 years after I graduated, and most of my friends didn't get on it until about 15 years after graduation. It was great finally reconnecting them with them all.

They are people whose company I enjoyed, but we just didn't have the time to have individual conversations every week with the 50 people we knew from school. Having a way for them to broadcast updates has been super helpful.

Also, the Portal is great. I got a pair when they came out, and it's easy enough that my four year old will call her grandparents regularly without my help. It's the only platform that we've found that is easy enough for both the four year old and my parents.

I use messenger and WhatsApp to keep in touch with friends in other countries. They are easy to find because we're friends on Facebook.

So yeah, Facebook still has a lot of positives for society. I don't judge someone who works there just for working there. I hope that they are working to enhance the positives and minimize the negatives. From what I've seen with the folks I've talked to, that is always the case.

> Facebook has a lot of positives to go along with its negatives. For me, it's the only way I stay in touch with a lot of my friends from high school.

Ask a reluctant smoker why they won't quit, beyond the addiction it's

1. Social. People talk during smoke breaks. They form bonds over smoke breaks. A 5 minute smoke break per hour means you spend 40 minutes around a friend, co worker, in relative private.

It's even a top way strangers meet each other, bumming a cigarette or smoking together.

I worked with a smoker, the best way for me to get his time so that I could get my questions answered was on his smoke break.

Of all the people who smoke never once have I heard the social argument as you describe it. I'm not trying to comment on the subject of the analogy, but just on the fact that I trying to apply the analogy to this space is a bit of a stretch.

I've heard the argument of "I don't care what it does to me", or "I'm gonna die anyway, what gives if I shed a few years at the end", but never "I won't be able to connect to other people if I quit smoking" (in fact, I know people who quit smoking due to social reasons).

I know people who think they look cool when they smoke, or who get thoughtful when they smoke, but I've never heard of tobacco as a "social" activity like drinking alcohol is, for example.

I was a non habitual smoker for years and did it for the social connection. I also smoked habitually for a year and stopped. I'll likely continue to smoke with a friend or stranger under the right circumstances, but I don't want it to be every day or even once a week.

I'm not advocating others smoke, nor am I saying this is a reason most other smokers do. The GP's claim was simply familiar and valid, which is why I'm sharing.

"I smoke when I drink" - you never heard that? Social smoking is absolutely a thing.

Facebook is a cancer and executives will jump ship while they can to claim ignorance.

None of the statements you shared are reasons to smoke, they are things people tell people when people tell them that smoking is harmful.

I hope you are aware that the positive effect you describe also has a negative side. Those people who refuse to join Facebook (for good reasons as we were taught) are getting isolated. So who can tell what the net result is?

This is such a stupid argument. If 5 people do something that the 6th person doesn't want to ..doesn't mean the onus is on the 5 to stop doing it.

Surely that depends what the thing is?

Facebook is not that thing for sure. There is someone comparing it to Tobacco in some other comment. HN really is too much sometimes and often in its own bubble. The same arguments can be made against the Internet as a whole.

So just hope you will never be the one against the five when five people want to give you a beating...

Yes exaggerate the claim to be completely different from the real situation. If you think Facebook has it's demerits then be consistent and say the same about all of the Internet. Because your Grandparents aren't on HN, HN should be banned as well.

Big tobacco had "benefits to society" w/r/t the number of jobs it created, and the aggregated money that it re-invested in other businesses.

Rationalizing around individual experience buries the fact that the consumer well being is absolutely not necessary in a quarterly report: you individually gain something with FB or big tobacco; I individually loose something with FB or big tobacco. And vice-versa. In the end, the forces that matter are not tied to us as individual but to the company (or even, the industry) as a whole. Which is to say it is tied to performance, stake holders, legislation, and so on.

The only self-regulation that a company like FB (or Philip Morris) is willing to apply, is one that improve it's financial performance. Why would it do otherwise? Morality, good or bad, is a not a product of capitalism. The fact that you gain and I loose from these decisions is a happy accident, not an intentional result.

I hear this quite a lot from the people who have worked at "damaging" companies (facebook, reddit, twitter, uber) but I still have to wonder if the personal benefits these platforms bring are really worth the societal cost, and if people are just using the idea that they can "change things from inside" as a justification for taking money to damage the world.

Don't get me wrong, I think that communication is great. It's fantastic that grandchildren can talk to their grandparents without their parents having to get off the couch and help. But is it worth people literally dying[1][2]? Is being able to post funny memes worth giving violent communities a place to thrive[4]?

At the end of the day people have to make their own decisions about things, but I think that tech workers as a whole are way to eager to wash their hands of the matter, take a paycheck, and blame others while ignoring that these companies could not function without them.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-facebook-neverending...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

[3] https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/facebook-un-myanmar-geno...

[4] https://www.fastcompany.com/90244757/the-inside-story-of-red...

It’s sounds like you’re arguing we should shut down the Internet.

What kind of company do you work for?

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