Edit: Apparently someone downvoted this comment within 60 seconds...this seems contrary to HN's ethos. I asked a general question with a specific example; is someone triggered by the words "Donald Trump"? This is pushing a legitimate question about FB's effect on the world down into the gray...is that a good thing?
It doesn't mean I believe everything that's done on our products is good for the world, but I do believe the good outweighs the bad by a wide margin. A big part of my job is to make sure that this margin increases.
How do we weight and balance the damage done by FB to our social discourse and elections, vs the benefits your family and many others have enjoyed?
HN commentary: Is anything I'm writing downvote worthy? Do you think my original comment (or this one) is incendiary or doesn't make the dialogue more nuanced and developed?
- Disrupt democracy all over the world,creating divisive political lines between us.
- Destroys the mental health of millions of teenagers that spend hours on Instagram comparing their lives with the fake lives of other people. An epidemic of mental health is directly linked to Instagram/Facebook
- Make us lose Billions of hours scrolling through a feed of nonsense just to display some ads.
Facebook is a huge net negative to the world. The only justification that I can see working for them is selfish money. Call it what it is, don't come up with some nonsense Koolaid around the product being a positive to the world.
Mainstream media has done more to disrupt democracy than Facebook. Whether it's:
- Lying about Iraq WMDs that eventually lead to tens of thousands of casualties (New York Times)
- Lying about Russian hacks of critical US infrastructure (Washington Post)
- Lying about the standards of immigration facilities (AP)
- Lying about innocent victims of assault during the riots (NPR)
- Threatening to ruin someones life through doxxing over political GIFs (CNN).
- log on
- see pics of niece/family
- message their buddy about that thing this weekend
- see funny cat video
- log off
To that person, FB provided a lot of value with none of the downsides you're talking about. I don't think I'm friends with a single person who even follows DT's page, so this whole ordeal means nothing to them.
Could people communicate via other websites? Sure, but it's easy enough to just use FB.
"The average US adult spends 38 minutes per day on Facebook. 16-24-year-olds spend a median of 3 hours a day on social media. Internet users spend an average of 2 hours and 22 minutes per day on social networking in 2019.May 19, 2020"
Source: https://review42.com/how-much-time-do-people-spend-on-social....