Comment by morley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by morley | Hacker News Reader

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I really dislike comments like these, and I find it dismaying that they've gained currency on HN recently. Almost every article about Facebook or Google has some variation of this comment.

> It's almost comic villainy - like, everything they say, do, propose, etc. is always evil in some way.

The problem I have with it is that you can replace the meaning of "they", and have this comment "work" for any number of biased echo chambers. Go ahead and replace "they" with Facebook, Google, Obama, Trump, Exxon-Mobil, scientists, billionaires, politicians, Internet trolls, the media, ad nauseam.

If this sentence can work for any of these scenarios, verbatim, then what's the point of uttering it?

To bring this back to the issue at hand: is there anything Zuckerberg could say that would make you not respond this way? And if you can't come up with anything, are you sure you aren't completely biased against Facebook such that nothing they can do will ameliorate you?

I agree with your premise, not just from the ethical sense of wanting to treat others as human beings, but I think when I manage that I make a more compelling argument.

That said, let me try to answer why you're seeing this pattern.

Facebook has a business model that works for certain strategic choices, and doesn't work for others. A big one is they don't charge a subscription fee to users. That puts hard constraints on how they generate revenue.

> is there anything Zuckerberg could say that would make you not respond this way?

That's why it's nigh impossible that Zuckerberg will come along and announce, "we've ended our policy of treating users as the product."

Personally, this was one of the reasons I've been happy to work at firms that sell specific products and services. It doesn't guarantee they'll behave well, but the fact that customers can take their money elsewhere does tend to keep them grounded in the long run.

I think most social media, for that reason and others, has a bad business model. I'd like those businesses to fail to clear out space for alternatives to be built. (And they're not villains working there, so I'd also hope they all land on their feet and find new jobs.)

> I'd like those businesses to fail to clear out space

There's practically zero chance that will happen - either that the existing companies will "clear out" or that the same role would be filled by anything with a different business model. In the real world where Facebook will continue to exist, is there anything that the company or its employees could do that would meet with your approval?

> There's practically zero chance that will happen - either that the existing companies will "clear out" or that the same role would be filled by anything with a different business model.

Are you going to justify that claim? It's been made repeatedly about prior companies that were too big to fail, especially tech giants, and they all fall or become obsolete.

> In the real world where Facebook will continue to exist, is there anything that the company or its employees could do that would meet with your approval?

I gave an example: "we've ended our policy of treating users as the product." You're repeating this rhetorical question without addressing any of the points I made or adding anything new.

> they all fall or become obsolete.

I was in this industry through all of that. It takes a long time for a company to fall that far. Yes, given enough time anything can happen, but I'm not interested in tautologies. In any time span relevant to this conversation, it's not going to happen. If you want to claim otherwise, that's your burden not mine.

> "we've ended our policy of treating users as the product."

OK, so I guess there is that one unrealistic possibility. Even if Facebook moved to a subscription model, "treating users as the product" is not a phrase they'd use for what came before. So you still haven't indicated that you'd be satisfied by anything that could actually happen.

> You're repeating this rhetorical question

It's not a rhetorical question if there are multiple valid answers, and repeating a question is still better than repeating statements based on counterfactual assumptions. If you want to play "high school debate champion" you'll have to try harder.

> In any time span relevant to this conversation, it's not going to happen.

If they made that promise to investors, they could go to prison.

> OK, so I guess there is that one unrealistic possibility.

You're demanding that everyone else has to show that they're ready to abandon their principles, lest you judge them instransigent and unreasonable. What changes have you made to your worldview, without seeing something significant change?

Probably never: your views are shaped by observations of concrete realities and reflections on the consequences of those. And unless those realities change or you get new information, you couldn't come up with a coherent set of new views if you wanted to.

> It's not a rhetorical question if there are multiple valid answers

It's still a question intended for rhetorical effect. I wasn't saying that makes it invalid, it's just annoying if you're repeating it while dismissing the answer given.

So let’s not talk about anything at all then, since everything can surely be mad-libbed. It seems the one working on vague generalities is your statements, not his.

To use the parlance of our time, a lot of people are becoming “woke” to just how morally bankrupt our society has become. And while these sorts of companies have always existed, what’s new is this layer of “saving the world” morality that allows people to feel good about it.

It’s like being a henchman, only you’ve managed to convince yourself it’s honest work. And maybe now it actually is.

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