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Comment by pyrrhotech | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is the most unconscionably bad company in tech, and it's a shame Zuck and friends try to pretend they are on this grand mission to make the world better. Come on, just admit it's all about the money and we'd have a little more respect for you. All FB does is lead to time-wasting, fake news, bigotry, envy etc. I'm glad I've signed out from desktop

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Facebook also serves as a birthday reminder service

I love privacy policies that say stuff like

"We collect your date of birth, for example to remind you of your birthday!"

(also to murder you Logan, when you turn 25)

I wonder if Zuckerberg or the Facebook leadership really believes they're doing something good for the world and that the current problems caused by it are only a result of Facebook either not having enough data or not being present enough in our daily lives.

For example, disallowed/undesirable content on Facebook wouldn't be an issue if Facebook knew everyone's thoughts and prevented them from posting even before they wrote a single word. Ad fraud wouldn't be an issue if the only money that mattered was a Facebook coin (Libra?) and can be recalled or made invalid remotely. Election interference wouldn't be an issue if the only government you can elect is a Facebook-sponsored one. Etc.

It's an insane idea, but maybe not that insane if you look at it from the aforementioned sociopaths' points of view?

Psychology has found almost everyone has rationalized their beliefs & behaviors in some form or another, even if it's fairly transparent such as "The best thing for everyone is if I'm in charge"

Watched Star Wars 3 yesterday and it's exactly this. I wasn't convinced anyone would ever act like this though, seemed too fake to me (maybe the acting was the issue?).

> All FB does is lead to time-wasting, fake news, bigotry, envy etc. I'm glad I've signed out from desktop

This was good for a chuckle.

If you believe those things, why do you still have an account?

Which company ISN'T performing a greedy money grab? Certainly not Google, or Apple or Microsoft.

The difference is the tenets the companies adhere to in their quests for profits.

Values matter.

Values are quite often a consequence of profits, in that companies develop values that align with how they make profits. Ben Thompson once coined this "strategy credit".

Show me a company which has values contrary to its profitability and then I'll be impressed (because that company will be at a competitive disadvantage).

Not necessarily. Amazon's Leadership Principles, and the tenets of all the startups I worked at (e.g. Karma/Drive/Tribe/Focus at Segment), were developed long before any of them made any profits.

Such as?

> Certainly not Google, or Apple or Microsoft.

I hope this is sarcasm.

It's not, it's double negative. "Which company is performing...certainly google..."

Or that's how I see grandparent statement. Also can be interpreted as sarcasm if you want. I find English weird in that.

I was going to type the sentence differently, but then had a brain fart. Sorry about that :)

Google is well on its way in its mission of installing toll booths on the internet, and shredding any notion of privacy we had on the internet. Apple's busy robbing 30% of sales of small businesses via its App Store, and robbing you via the extended warranty program while choking the repair industry. Microsoft is continuing to further lock you into their eco-system and keeping you running on their subscription treadmill.

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