Mark Zuckerberg still doesn't get it | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg still doesn't get it

newyorker.com

44 pointsbookofjoe86 comments

"Free speech is good" is not a "blithe techno-utopian narrative".

The internet makes people uncomfortable because it lives somewhere in between the realm of public discourse (heavily regulated) and private discourse (mostly unregulated). On the internet, these realms mix, and people (especially in the press) have a hard time sorting out which is which.

I don't know if "free speech is good" or if it "leads inexorably to truth and progress". I doubt it. But I do think that any cure will be worse than the disease. Democracy may not not "lead inexorably to progress" either, but does that mean we should nix it?

I think your comment and Zuckerberg’s framing of the issue hides the ball in a way that appears dishonest, though I do not think that is your intent.

For instance, what do you mean by this?:

> But I do think that any cure will be worse than the disease

Because it all depends on what "cure" and "disease" mean, right? Free speech is good is blithe and techno-utopian in the sense that it makes a blanket statement that refuses to get into the details and have opinions. Facebook used for ethnic cleansing? Well, free speech is good and Facebook is all bout free speech; the problem has to lie elsewhere. Guess we should fix that ethnic cleansing problem somewhere else.

Sticking to a high-level generality implies that, because your basic aim is good we must frame solutions or restrictions in a different way. We must remedy the damage done with speech using ideas and methods that aren't related to speech, somehow.

I don't know what is in Zuckerberg’s heart, but it strikes me that this position is extremely kind to Facebook's business model. As long as everyone is committed to unmoderated speech being central to digital spaces, they can avoid expensive moderation. They can also distance themselves from the consequences of the use of the platform they designed and provide. We should not let them do either one of those things.

Edit:

To use a non-speech example: This seems to me like someone claiming that we can't do anything about drunk driving because "people need to drive to work." Of course, the statement is true and people do need to drive to work. It simply glosses over all of the many changes we can make to how we let people drive that can crack down on drunk driving. It refuses to engage with the issue by asserting a general principle that, actually, does not present any obstacle to regulation and is unresponsive to the critique.

How could you possibly ever accuse a website of being “used for ethnic cleansing”?

Have we so forgotten the lessons of the past that we think communications mediums cannot aid in genocide? Look up the role of Joseph Goebbels and the then-nascent radio on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

To answer your question directly: if groups engage in ethnic cleansing use a website to plan, coordinate or communicate about how and where to carry out their actions, they are using a website for ethnic cleansing.

I encourage you to look into the situation in Myanmar: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

Facebook used for ethnic cleansing?

I'm not sure you should criticise others for hiding the ball or being dishonest when phrasing it like that.

Facebook is a website, a pretty trivial one at that. It isn't attached to flying weapons platforms, it doesn't command an army. It cannot be used for ethnic cleansing in any sensible use of English, no more than paper and ink or radio can be "used for ethnic cleansing".

So yes - your sarcastic statement is correct. If some African warlord goes nuts and starts mass killing his ethnic rivals, Facebook has sweet FA to do that with that, even if lots of his supporters are posting on Facebook. The problem lies with the people pulling the trigger, the people command them to pull the trigger. Don't try and spread it to Zuckerberg because unlike most genocidal ethnic cleansers, he happens to be a meek American you think you can influence.

We must remedy the damage done with speech using ideas and methods that aren't related to speech, somehow.

Yes, exactly. Speech doesn't damage things. People damage things. The conflation of speech with physical violence is exactly how you legitimise thuggery on campus, where crazed students are engaging in actual physical violence against people who are just presenting their opinion. And it's never, never, never acceptable to shoot someone who is merely presenting their opinion.

This seems to me like someone claiming that we can't do anything about drunk driving because "people need to drive to work."

This is a strawman argument nobody ever makes. Drunk driving is a precisely definable and measurable condition with precisely understood outcomes and is trivially avoided. "Bad speech" has no definition at all and thus can't be trivially avoided, as the ever-expanding horizon of what counts as offensive so neatly demonstrates.

> Facebook is a website, a pretty trivial one at that.

I mean this is so objectively false that I hardly know where to start. Facebook in its very early stages may have been “trivial”, but it isn’t know. Not even close.

I suppose I could respond in a point-by-point way, but I think that we're engaging from very different frames and so it might help to establish some shared ground.

What sources of knowledge do you generally trust for finding methods to approach problems that you don't know how to solve?

Do you believe that "harm reduction" approaches (i.e. making bad outcomes less likely though still possible) are useful?

>I'm not sure you should criticise others for hiding the ball or being dishonest when phrasing it like that.

I did not say anyone was being dishonest and if you think I am being dishonest I would appreciate you pointing out how I am being so.

I suppose I do want to say that paper and ink and radio have all been used for ethnic cleansing and the US treats the sale of military radio equipment as the sale of weapons[0]. There is a lot of history of sanctioning those who provide groups engaged in immoral acts with mundane equipment. If a warlord is using Facebook to help execute a genocide I do think it's a good idea to pressure Facebook to kick them off Facebook. I'm kind of surprised you think it isn't? Though I could be misreading what you've said. If that is the case I apologize.

[0] https://www.nknews.org/2017/03/what-the-glocom-scandal-tells...

> Facebook is a website, a pretty trivial one at that. It isn't attached to flying weapons platforms, it doesn't command an army. It cannot be used for ethnic cleansing in any sensible use of English, no more than paper and ink or radio can be "used for ethnic cleansing".

This is logic that can be used to exculpate any accessory to a crime. Facebook may have known people were using its website to incite violence, but people are the ones who damage things. IBM was aware Nazis were using their technology to identify people to murder in the Holocaust, but they can sleep easy — it’s not like punchcards can be “used for ethnic cleansing”!

This logic only works, of course, if you completely ignore the capability of technology to amplify human capabilities.

As with the sibling commenter, if you don’t believe communication mediums can be used as tools of genocide, I encourage you to learn about Joseph Goebbels and the radio’s impact on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

Free speech is the cornerstone to a free society. You can't have freedom without free speech. Free speech is good, and everyone should strive to keep speech free.

But isn't a fair compromise to honor take down requests when the content is demobstrably false?

Oh I think he does get it. Facebook is a tool uniquely designed to influence behavior. Before you had to advertise to a generic stereotype of a person whereas now -- thanks to facebook's treasure trove of user data -- you can target just the perfect audience to get your ideas spreading organically.

Facebook sells the ability to do this to anybody who will pay. This is the core of how they make money. After a period of pretending to search for a solution, Zuckerberg has finally ducked behind the notion of 'free speech' as his excuse for doing nothing. He knows that the only way to stop it would be to stop selling this ability to influence. And he's actually right that it shouldn't be him deciding what are the good and bad uses of this powerful tool.

The blind faith that increased connectivity is a net benefit is what got us here. Seeing how social media is actually increasing depression makes me think the opposite. The sad truth is that most people are too vulnerable to misinformation and the older centralized distribution of information is probably the best for stability.

free speech is different than amplified speech. what people are allowed to say on a platform shouldnt equal what people can pay to have amplified and targeted towards peoples attention.

But I agree with you, that "he gets it" in the sense that as a leader and figurehead his job is to inspire confidence. It may not be working for you, but his mantra for a long time now has been to extol the virtues of what is possible if people dream and focus on the benefits. Unlike much of the userbase here, he chooses to project the public personification of his self as a glass half full person, where optimism, hard work, engineering, and money are put towards a better future. He knows that if he relaxes and steps back from that ruse, charade, or whatever you want to call it, that it leads to a crumbling house of cards. Not unlike a president, confidence in the system starts with the top of the house. Don''t forget, his job is also to keep his stock prices up for his shareholders, who are primarily himself. And despite what the fifth estate and a subset of techies want to believe, facebook and its suite of products are as popular as ever. Sure, growth has slowed, but thats bound to happen once you count 1/3rd of the words population as those that your tool serves.

> The sad truth is that most people are too vulnerable to misinformation and the older centralized distribution of information is probably the best for stability.

So information can be dangerous and should be controlled for the sake of an orderly society? There's a rising superpower that shares your view: China. But at the rate support for socialism is rising around the world, I'm pretty sure that America will be there too in about 40 years.

I actually subjected myself the the entire 30 minute video of his speech and there’s little else I can say other than that it was embarrassing, bordering on disgusting in its western chauvinism. And I don’t just mean castigation of Chinese government policy: he quite literally said it’s in the worlds best interest for Americans to continue controlling the censorship policies for the entire internet.

1) the GDPR is European and has a huge effect in changing policies for internet giants

2) are you defending the government currently imprisoning millions of people in indoctrination camps just because they believe in something?

1) and that’s a great thing. watch the video and you’ll see it begins with the claim that “no one wants to live in a world where tech companies control what you can say” and ends with “but we should keep doing exactly what we’re doing”. GDPR would never pass here partially because interests like Zuck’s don’t want it to.

2) quite explicitly I am NOT saying that. What I’m saying is that neither the government that disappears protestors NOR the government running concentration camps in the open NOR the government outright banning climate protests should be deciding what qualifies as dangerous to say.

EDIT on 2) just because I’m critical of the claim that the west and America specifically has any moral high ground here doesn’t mean in any way that I condone human rights violations by China. I think that’s an unreasonable implication.

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, so they're not in a position to lecture any other country about freedom.

This is what-about-ism and it's dishonest. The US's incarceration rate has little to do with concentration camps where people are put because they're a ethnicity the government doesn't like. They can both be problems worth pointing out.

I actually can't tell if you're talking about China or the US. This is currently happening on the US' southern border.

Pretty sure people aren't put there for their racial or religious characteristics, but their nationality and/or legal status. Yes, there's a difference.

We are, at best, making the same leap of faith but in opposite directions. The people who are there observably share a nationality but they also happen to be a pretty small group of ethnicities. You’re choosing to believe that’s not ultimately why they’ve been out there and that the state is trustworthy. I’m choosing to disbelieve the state.

In any case, if were gonna both accept the premise that there are concentration camps on the southern border for immigrants I’m really not that interested in splitting hairs about why.

Zuck gets it just fine, he's following the money. If you think a guy running a multi-billion dollar company doesn't understand something basic it is more than likely that you are simply not understanding him.

What else is he going to do? Do the right thing and shut Facebook down starting a year before any election?

I think Zuck "gets it" much more than the reporter does: being evasive and dishonest can be extremely lucrative in today's world if you do it exactly right. Zuck has always seemed to possess a natural talent in this regard, and now has become a true master of the craft. That's why he travels in a private jet while reporters fly coach.

> I think Zuck "gets it" much more than the reporter does… This assumes the reporter is honest in his writing. Then, of course, it is apparent that Zuckerberg gets something the reporter doesn't understand, in the way you describe it.

But what if, not only is Zuckerberg "evasive and dishonest", but the reporter as well? Is it not to the profit of the reporter to pretend in his writing to not get what Zuckerberg is doing?

It very well is! That way the reporter gets to criticise Zuckerberg on the grounds of his actions. That is a case much easier to defend. The reporter may very well discern a form of pretending on the side of Zuckerberg, but how do you prove this? Very hard to do so and risky. It is better writing to be 'dishonest' and call Zuckerberg out on the surface level of his actions.

OTOH, it could very well be that the reporter is naive and doesn't discern the true motivations of Zuckerberg's actions. But how can we know?

Facebook was used in 2016 by the Kremlin for disinformation warfare with the express purpose of swaying the results of our presidential election. Facebook recently adopted an official policy that they will not remove political ads which are blatantly, demonstrably false. This policy was drafted by Katie Harbath, Facebook's Public Policy Director of Global Elections, who was previously Chief Digital Strategist for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Freedom of speech is a straw man. It only applies to government interference in the free speech of individuals. Facebook is a private platform, with no obligation to protect the free speech of its users. They are using it as an excuse to protect the spread of disinformation.

Yet another reason that Facebook is toxic.

Are you not beginning to struggle with the contradictions of your political ideas? You want a central authority to ban the spread of "blatantly false" ideas that you fear may cause plebians to vote the wrong way, yet you support affording plebians with the full right to vote? Would it not be simpler to bans plebians from voting, and therefore remove your worry entirely that they may vote the wrong way when hearing "blatantly false" ideas?

It doesn't have to be the same authority. You could have an independent ombudsman.

This is laughable; as well say "you could have an independent ruler".

Factcheck.net.fact.org/really-real is not that. I don't get why people can just take their own responsibility for themselves? Give users the tools to filter out the nonsense that floods most of the internet. There's no need for moral arbiters to decide for us what's "true" and "false". We've existed long enough without them, I think we can make it a little longer still.

We are being attacked with foreign propaganda by our long-term enemies. They are succeeding in destroying our position on the world stage. It's not something that can be turned a blind eye to under the guise of free speech (which it isn't).

All governments push propaganda. Russia's miniscule ad spend on FB had no measurable effect (please provide proof if you think this is wrong).

Clinton and Trump spent many order of magnitude more on political advertising than any foreign nation and even that didn't assure their win. People aren't mindless robots, they vote for who they want to vote for.

The funniest thing is, no one talks about this, but if the "goal" was to sew discord... My goodness someone "in the Kremlin" should be getting a promotion for their exceptionally well done job. I mean how many YEARS and millions of dollars has the US wasted chasing after this ghost of Russian interference? If you want to calculate the ROI from a few thousand dollars to how much hysteria followed suit, it's insane. The only question I have is, can anyone seriously take credit for it in Russia with a straight face. "No comrade, I only made meme of Hillary... The whole Mueller thing was the US all on its own."

Correct, this never had anything to do with Russia and it has everything to do with Trump. The political and media establishment couldn't handle an outsider winning the presidency so it was they that have gone full blast on propaganda for the past 3 years.

That is a naively optimistic statement. If marketing didn’t work then billions wouldn’t be spent on it.

Yet it was Clinton who spent far more than anyone on marketing and Russia spent pretty much nothing. Only here we are talking about the impact "Russia" had and ignoring that the tens of millions Clinton spent didn't accomplish her goal.

And this somehow isn’t evidence of the effectiveness of undisclosed campaigns based around lies presented as truth? All Clinton did wrong was not involve foreign governments to operate guerrilla smear campaigns.

Oh wait. That isn’t wrong. What are you arguing in favor of again?

Clinton not winning the election isn’t proof of Russian interference.

It isn’t not proof either. It seems rather strange to posit that dollars spent is the only factor dictating the effectiveness of marketing.

Your position is unfalsifiable. If there had been Russian advertising at scale, it's proof of foreign interference. If there's basically no spend at all, that's still proof of foreign interference because dollar spend doesn't matter.

Look, the whole Russia angle is a hoax. When put under enormous external and internal political pressure (remember Twitter/FB are filled with Trump haters), all they could come up with was a tiny number of ads labelled "Russian" that appeared to support nobody in particular. Hardly anyone saw them, so they can't have had much impact. And was that some plot directed by Putin or just ads by people who happened to be Russian? It's never made clear.

Back when Obama was in power and there was Citizen's United, he said words to the effect of "we must consider changing the constitution to limit political spending" and the Clinton wing of politics was spitting bullets about how in future Republicans would just buy elections outright.

Then Trump came along and beat Clinton, despite being outspent 2:1. Clinton's campaign steamrollered Trump's financially yet still lost. The whole theory of elections that had been pushed until that point, that marketing spend determines victory, it was just completely invalidated overnight. Democrats who couldn't psychologically explain voter disagreement via policy arguments could no longer explain rejection as a function of ad spend either, so had to come up something new - hence, this spectre of "foreign interference", as if Putin has some kind of mind control rays.

Billions are spent on it, which makes it silly to say that the millions spent by Russia were a significant factor.

Either Russian ad spend is magically hundreds of times more effective than domestic, or it didn't matter.

"No measurable effect" is a weak argument - especially considering we're talking about it, and it massively influenced the narrative - amplified by the mainstream media, just like Trump used effectively.

"They vote for who they want to vote for" - you understand manipulation is a thing, right? And that people will believe lies, and that people are often irrational - and therefore when they "decide" who to vote for it might not be logical and based on whatever manipulative messaging, propaganda, they've heard over and over again?

If someone wants to claim that Russia made a measurable impact on the 2016 election with $100k ad spend, then they're going to have to provide proof.

I just pointed to proof - the fact that you're ignoring or dismissing it doesn't change that.

I must have missed your link to proof? I don't see it in your comment.

First how about you define what you mean by measurable, then we can see how you're gatekeeping the use of that term. Then define what you mean by impact to see how you're gatekeeping that quantification. Then maybe there can be a conversation.

It's actually on the people claiming that Russia had a measurable impact on the election to provide some sort of proof of that claim.

You're running in circles to avoid answering.

Avoid answering what? I asked you for proof and you didn't provide any.

We're talking about it - that's a measurable impact.

If you want to argue it didn't have a substantial impact then please provide proof that the media amplifying the Russia (and related narrative) as it has - distracting us from the real, underlying issues - wasn't substantial. Please prove that Russia's actions, including brigading Reddit and other communities via their propaganda farms, didn't provide talking points to the media to distract the majority of us from the important, underlying issues.

Perhaps you're trying to gate keep by limiting the scope by saying Russia's efforts didn't directly have a substantial impact? But then you're ignoring the full picture in order for your argument to be "more right" but still not correct; Russia's direct actions don't exist in a silo - likewise Trump would be nothing if mainstream media didn't amplify every insane word coming out of him.

As POTUS candidate Andrew Yang is pointing out to us: it's automation, not immigrants, that have been taking jobs leading to Americans suffering and lead to the symptom of Trump; as Noam Chomsky also rightfully pointed out, Netanyahu of Israel greatly interfered - directly - with American politics.

The mainstream media is directly and indirectly part of the dis-ease, and has allowed such dis-ease progression. Trump, a tyrant wannabe-never-will-be, understands this mechanism of mainstream media (reach, the attention economy, manipulation) - in general called marketing, Trump being a charlatan or false prophet vs. a genuine entrepreneur with true compassion - an ideal example being Yang to contrast Trump to, regardless of what you think about his policies, how he holds himself, his character.

Curious what your thoughts are, what your response will be.

As I've repeatedly said. It's on those who claim something happened to provide proof that it did. You haven't provided a single link of evidence to support your argument. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and you haven't provided any. Certainly you've seen some data to back up your assertion? I know I haven't but I'm willing to look at anything anyone finds.

Re: Yang. I think he's a very interesting candidate! He's innovative and providing a fresh perspective. That doesn't have anything to do with the Russian "hacking" myth the media has been pushing full-blast though. $100k of Facebook ads is nothing. I'm 100% sure the media isn't pushing this to help Yang, but instead traditional mainstream politicians like Clinton.

It isn't just "100k of Facebook ads" as you're trying to gate keep the proof point to being.

Respond to every point I make even re: Trump leveraging mainstream media to his advantage.

It's odd, interesting to me, that you're expecting concrete quantitative data, yet trying to use qualitative proof points - while not accepting qualitative proof points that I'm outlining for you.

What Trump does with the mainstream media has absolutely nothing to do with so called Russian interference in the election.

My comment was the "link." You're still avoiding engaging with what I'm presenting to you in order to maintain your narrative.

I can't tell if you're just spouting rhetoric or genuinely you aren't able to connect the ideas I'm presenting: do you not believe that mainstream media amplifies whatever news there is? Did you see no "Russia" news? Is that what you're arguing?

I'm arguing that the mainstream media made up the Russian story. Not one person has been able to provide any demonstration that the 100k in FB ads that were purchased from Russia (maybe by the government, maybe not) had any impact whatsoever. As someone who's worked in online ads for > 15 years, I will tell you that 100k in ads will not have a national impact. Especially when both other parties are paying hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing.

you understand manipulation is a thing, right?

Of course. But you're arguing here that Trump won because of massive scale manipulation to the extent that millions of voters don't have free will at all, which is just conspiracy theory thinking.

By the way, what makes you think that Clinton voters weren't the manipulated ones? The press came out in full force for her, and they're the most obvious source of information manipulation. The press have been trying to stack the electoral deck since forever, and they worked overtime that year to get Clinton in power. Still lost. I'm not seeing any evidence that voters are so easily manipulated as you think.

Trump rallied people claiming immigrants were taking jobs, and that he was going to bring the manufacturing jobs back - as POTUS candidate Andrew Yang explains however it's automation that took the jobs - and those jobs lost aren't coming back. People believed Trump's words because he was rallying people emotionally yet didn't present any actual evidence or data.

Do you consider that manipulation or not? Maybe you'll argue "Trump just didn't know any better" - and that's not a form of manipulation, lying to people?

I didn't argue that it was one or the other set of voters who were manipulated. And yes, the two-party system has been very bad for democracy - why POTUS candidate Andrew Yang will implement Democracy Dollars among other policy to breakup the two-party system; https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/

Do you think immigrants don't compete in the labour pool against American workers? I mean, you're very quick to label Andrew Yang's rhetoric as explanation and Trump's as manipulation, but if you think cheap immigrant and foreign labour had no effect on American workers at all I'm not sure what to say to you. Robots just aren't that powerful. Look at what happened when Tesla tried to use too much automation: Musk retreated licking his wounds.

Also, isn't Andrew Yang the man who is telling people "vote for me and everyone will get free money". This is economically illiterate in a way that makes Trumponomics look like the work of Greek philosophers; I'm not American and have no dog in that race but I think you'd have a hard time arguing that Trump is manipulative for talking about jobs but Yang isn't for promising voters free money.

At any rate the original comparison was Trump v Clinton, not Trump v Yang. Clinton certainly engaged in a lot of emotional and manipulative rhetoric herself. The part where she adopted a policy of starting a war with Russia over Syria, but obfuscated it by claiming it wouldn't be a war because Russia would immediately surrender? That's what I remember the most.

You sound like the Chinese government.

Are they really a long time enemy? They were a core ally in the 40s. We operate a space station together. Did they really “attack” us by purchasing a few ads supporting the candidate most of us (outside California) voted for? It’s an extremely difficult argument that Russia had an impact on election.

The points you’ve made are cherry-picked. The USSR was an ally in the early 40s during WWII, but for the next half century we were staunch enemies who waged numerous proxy wars. We operate the ISS together, along with Japan, Canada and Europe. “Most of us” voted for Trump if you selectively ignore over 10% of the votes cast.

I'd suggest studying up on the Cold War, as you're not giving it nearly the weight it is due. The world almost ended several times over it; that's a lot more meaningful than operating a token space station together.

And WWII was more of an "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of situation. We put up with each other because we needed each other to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan, but the second the war ended we turned on each other as main enemies. In truth, Russia has not been friendly to the west since the Communist revolution that occurred during the first World War.

Are you not beginning to struggle with the contradictions of yours? Laws against defamation are exactly intended to prevent the spread of false ideas. Why not remove them, and let the plebeians figure things out themselves?

No, defamation laws are to protect someone who is defamed (unjustly harms their reputation, and usually constitutes a tort or a crime). They are not intended to protect you from false ideas. Can you sue for defamation if I publish an essay saying there are aliens on Pluto? Is it false? Yes. Has it defamed anyone? No.

Yes, any suit must be brought on behalf of someone who was damaged. “Defamation” is the word for someone being damaged by false ideas.

> They are using it as an excuse to protect the spread of disinformation.

I really don't think so. They want usage, period. They don't want to actively spread disinformation. They probably find that editorializing and censoring information annoys users. There's been no proof whatsoever that Russia had any impact via FB on the 2016 election. Most people know this and reject larger narratives that push centralized manipulation of freely publishable information.

> There's been no proof whatsoever that Russia had any impact via FB on the 2016 election.

This is false. Facebook themselves announced that Russia spent $100,000 on ads aimed at U.S. voters. Posts from six Russian propaganda accounts were shared hundreds of millions of times. [1]

Effort doesn't equal impact, I suppose, but there's no way of proving the latter and the former is still extremely disturbing.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-...

I don't find $100k ad spend on FB disturbing at all, that's not even minuscule. As we both said, there was no measurable impact. To put things in perspective Clinton raised $1.2B for her campaign. I find that much more disturbing than $100k spent on memes.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...

You are framing my words as if I'm saying that the impact of Russian advertising was so small as to be immeasurable, when I'm saying the opposite: it's not measurable so we don't know how large it is. And we're just going to skip over the Russian propaganda that wasn't use paid advertising?

Just by way of example, operation Ajax cost "$100,000 to $20 million." Surely this is not a lot of money compared to what Iran could have spent against it, but it was effective nonetheless. The point being that precision spending is more effective comparatively. You're stuck on the dollar amount while ignoring its precision and network effect.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9...

>Facebook was used in 2016 by the Kremlin for disinformation warfare with the express purpose of swaying the results of our presidential election

As if a $100k ad buy [1] will sway voters. $100K is insignificant for social media ad spend and won't influence anything and marketers knows this, but the masses do not. Both candidates spent $81 Million on facebook ads [3] and $100K is a joke representing 0.05 of ad-spend.

The media and democratic party knows people are clueless about advertising and has made this "russia hacked elections using FB", a talking point that helps their narrative. FB ads are not that effective.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-russi...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/

If Russia was really able to have significant influence with $100k vs $81M the techniques they used could be studied and duplicated. Every startup would love to have marketing that effective.

The truth is it had no measurable effect exactly as you’d expect.

this is not a popular opinion with people who's heard their political party and media outlets constantly repeat the same thing over and over for years.

You’re repeating the same thing in multiple threads. The fact is Russian interference had an effect on the election.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/08/biparti...

That article does not measure the influence any of this had on the 2016 election. Creating feminist, Christian and pro-African American FB and Instagram accounts sounds more comical than effective. If it was that easy, why doesn't everyone do it?

Somewhat ironic that Zuck mentions free expression about a hundred times and yet:

1. took no questions from reporters

2. Facebook Live chat was scrubbed of any critical comments by algorithmic filters

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ma...

It’s pretty well debated throughout history that society is ultimately free to put whatever constraints on behaviors that it decides are infecting it’s organic agency. John Stuart Mill is the first name that comes to mind. Paulo Freire discusses being forced to “import” a model of culture as authoritarian in nature.

I don’t owe billionaires my emotional & political deference to some notion of “in an objective vacuum”.

You can point at a method for counting that you agree with. I can still tell you to get fucked.

That this is even a question of being within the purview of a society to mitigate spooky action at a distance potential for telling the species “what’s real” if you have the $$ to buy enough ads is absurd.

The tech scene is acting like the Boomers. Entitled to control of our work and the problems we align to.

That’s not a politically defensible position. That’s exactly what religion does. What a shock a culture with deeply puritanical origins continues to feel we’re just a flock to be is emotionally curated. So much for objective views of reality.

If one wanted to make a news company that owned and ran both FOX News and MSNBC, it’d be Facebook.

I still think it’s the critics who don’t get it. The technology was always going to obviously move in this direction. The critics confoundingly both complain about the power of tech behemoths AND that they should be arbiting freedom on their platforms.

> I have become convinced that, if our Silicon Valley overlords are to help solve the informational crisis they’ve created, the first thing they’ll need to lose is their blind faith that they can go on releasing new products, and profiting from them, and the net result will surely, in the long run, tend toward the good. This has always been a convenient self-justification. There has never been any solid reason to believe it.

This is an interesting point. I haven't been exposed to much advice on when and how to start thinking about the broader impacts of a startup. Is that just because I haven't looked hard enough or is there a general belief in the invisible hands of the market being the best guide for how a business should operate?

“Whatever Mark says, Sheryl is inclined to agree”

Polarization and misinformation are inherent flaws of free speech, the advents of cable TVs and internet only amplified them.

But you don't need to act like the Politburo of the Communist Party to fix them. There may be solutions without fundamentally underming the value.

How about teaching kids critical thinking and how to differentiate misinformation in schools? https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/how-finland-is-fighti...

The New Yorker slamming the printing press and the idea of the inevitable march of progress was a bit of a surprise. Who's the "neo-reactionary" now?

Zuckerberg has successfully shifted the discourse to a discussion about free speech, but I don't think that free speech is under attack here.

I don't care if Trump and pro-Trump supporters or organizations want to post lies on their own feed. But if Facebook is getting PAID for political ADVERTISING, that gives them a moral responsibility to regulate that content. If they want to abdicate that responsibility, then I think the government has an interest in preventing the corruption or the appearance of corruption in our elections, so reasonable restrictions/regulations on political advertising on social networks should be considered.

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