Facebook’s Push to Defend Its Image
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I use FB to communicate with friends & family. That's it. Most of them post very, very seldom, and the really chatty ones, I just mute. Most of these people, I'd never hear from and they'd never hear from me, except for FB.
Whenever I read about FB's treatment of news, politics, and vax (mis)information, I think "why are you going to FB for that? There are a zillion better places on the Web."
Twitter is better for getting the political Zeitgeist. RSS is not dead, contrary to what you might have heard, and Feedly is thus better for almost every kind of news. This site, Stack Exchange, and Quora are better for more intelligent commentary. Why would I even try to use FB for any of that?
My cousin Ray had been (I thought) permanently estranged from his family, and he finally reconciled with them. I wouldn't have found out about that without FB. That's what it's good for. It also would not make Zuckerjerk nearly as rich.
Platform size matters here, Because when 40% of the population of a under-developed country are one social platform and use as a gateway for Internet it becomes a viable genocide aiding tool, Because when 70% of the population of a developed country use one platform it becomes a viable election interference tool.
When a private entity has accumulated such power, then it goes against the ethos of democracy.
People made noise about FB being used to commit genocide and it is now proactively blocking friend lists in countries where there could be targeted violence, Agencies investigated FB's role in election interference and now it's taking proactive approach to vet political ads.
Constant vigil over such powerful private entities and calling it out is the last option left to defend the well-being of the society at large.
I'm not gainsaying anything you said, but it would be better as a top-level comment. It has nothing to do with what I said.
Lately I've visisted Quora only to find a series of inane replies and silly questions dominating the website.
If by "a few years" you mean "a decade", then yes. Quora went down the drain between 2012-2013.
This is why intangible things that don't directly show up on a profit and loss statement- like 'consumer trust'- are so valuable. The difficulty that Facebook faces now is that when you lose trust with key stakeholders- politicians, regulators, the media, etc., it is really hard to get it back. Microsoft did, eventually, but it took ~15 years and two changes of CEO. If Zuckerberg wants to stay the CEO it might prove impossible to build trust, because people have state and it's really hard to reset that state.
[1]: One of the things that the Trump administration showed is that American journalists are very good at ferreting out secrets, but if you openly declare that you are doing something, they react with much less interest. But, as the article documents, Facebook has decided to be more controlling of their data, and curate what they release much more carefully. The fiasco where they decided to kill some reporting, then held off for a month on their own reports because it would have shown that Covid vaccine FUD was the most popular article on Facebook is exactly the sort of behavior that journalists salivate over and can make careers. Just releasing the data was a minor irritant every day, but Facebook managed to turn it into a much greater embarrassment that destroyed trust with the media and academics.
Even this article, which claims to be sourced to multiple fairly senior executives who disagreed enough to leak this to the NYTimes is a clear sign of the massive problems facing Facebook.
That's what the linked image is designed to do. That it says "from Facebook" is beside the point, and the article even says they would say it was from Facebook: "People essentially see posts with a Facebook logo that link to stories and websites published by the company and from third-party local news sites."
The fact is that they're purposely injecting fluff pieces into news feeds to try to get people to forget negative news about the platform. The only thing the linked tweet does is confirm what's reported in the article.
Edit: Previous tweets in that chain from Joe also don't lend themselves to trust. First, the comment about how they didn't quote him for saying, "There is zero change to News Feed ranking," which the article never said would be modified - there's no reason to quote him on that if that's not the claim they're making. They only said that more puff pieces would appear, not that their ranking for where they are placed relative to other content would be adjusted. All they said was that you'd see more, and according to Joe's confirmation of it's existence, that's true.
Second, his comment about how the meeting never happened. The article cites six current and former employees as having discussed that meeting. All he offers as proof that it didn't happen is that the article doesn't name the attendees or the sources.
I'm sorry, but that entire thread holds almost no water.
> Edit: Previous tweets in that chain from Joe also don't lend themselves to trust.
That tweet is from @joeosborne "a @Facebook spokesperson." Not someone who I'd trust to accurately and fully characterize Facebook's actions. Given their prior history, I'd expect something misleading that attempts to portray them in the absolute best light.
He also seems to think journalists should take statements from company spokesmen as the absolute truth. That's not true, and especially not true for a company as untrustworthy as Facebook.
I know anti-FB sentiment is strong on hackernews. But seriously look at that screenshot and tell me what's wrong with that? How's that different from promotions by Apple on ios/app store, Microsoft on windows, twitter, google, youtube, etc. etc. They are just promoting their company on their own platform. When did your Facebook newsfeed become this untouchable sacred place where nothing beside chronological posts from your friends is allowed?
I want to hate facebook as much as anyone else but I really don't see news here.
edit: When it comes to censoring content by political opinion, then I'm more towards the unethical side, but I think it's a step to far to expect any company to allow it's platform to be used to spread attack pieces against itself.
The NYT is a news outlet. They publish what they believe is newsworthy, interpreted with whatever biases they might have. They don't just take random things that other people have published (or want to publish) and publish them.
FB is a social media site. They don't "publish" things; they provide a platform for their users to share things that interest them (and a platform for advertisers, but that's not really relevant here). If a user shares something that praises FB and another user shares something critical of FB (let's assume for the moment that both the praise and criticism are accurate, to preempt the "misinformation" argument), it is absolutely unethical for FB to over-promote the praise and bury the criticism. That's pretty much the textbook definition of unethical.
Once they are revealed to be acting like a media company, it's a house of cards. Regulation presumably would follow.
It's also not done transparently, it would be one thing if FB turned around and outright said "this is inconvenient to our business, so we won't allow you to post it", but in this case they silently downrank the content behind the scenes.
Facebook isn't journalism; it's not comparable. The NYT does publish results of internal investigations into flaws, as do many other businesses, including much of the IT industry (all those open after action reports, for example).
Openness and transparency are necessary antidotes to concentrated power.
Probably most of the people who don’t feel comfortable with facebook’s role in society have already selected themselves out of the employee pool. If you’re the sort of engineer Facebook wants to hire, and you have a strong sense of ethics, there’s no shortage of well paid work you could do instead.
The people who end up at FB are the people who don’t see a problem or don’t care.
People with a history of unethical behavior for which they are unapologetic and never faced other consequences should face additional scrutiny.
At least on the engineering, product management, etc. side of things, if you can get an offer at FB, it's highly unlikely you can't get offers elsewhere.
Of course, there are only so many companies that can offer FB level compensation. Which, if we're being honest, is why FB continues to be an employer of choice for so many people despite its atrocious ethics track record.
There was a point pre-IPO where you could think that you were actually trying to do something cool, interesting, and overall were helping people stay connected with each other. Then there was a point where you could tell yourself that you were working on some big and interesting problems and if you didn't do your job well or nail some very tricky problems then it would have a negative impact on people's lives (or even get people killed if you messed up security/privacy and revealed info about some people.)
Then one day you wake up and realize you are a prostitute working in Zuck's brothel, but unlike a real sex worker your actions are ending up fucking millions of people a day. If you don't leave at this point you are as unethical as the people around you.
As a matter of fact I do.
> Isn’t this also incredibly hypocritical given that you admit to working at FB yourself in the past
It is. I excuse myself by saying that it was creepy but not overtly evil at the point where I left. To be honest, I think I got out at just the right time to have a small shred of morality left, but of course I would say that and others may differ. I am sure lots of people do not care, and the fact that my work at FB in its early days gets me interviews shows this to be a widespread opinion, but I have been inside the factory and have seen how the sausage is made. I have a date I keep in my head, and if you were at FB after that point you would be a 'no hire' for me.
"Mr. Schultz argued that Facebook should publish its own information about the site’s most popular content rather than supply access to tools like CrowdTangle, two people said. So in June, the company compiled a report on Facebook’s most-viewed posts for the first three months of 2021.
...
A day before the report’s publication, Mr. Schultz was part of a group that voted to shelve the document, according to the emails."
They're craven and untrustworthy from the top down. They have been since they started, and continue to prove it nearly every single month.
The parent's 'expectation' that businesses (or individuals) only act in their own immediate interests, and not in the interests of their communities, is an odd contemporary idea that humanity's worst instincts are the 'true' and necessary ones, while humanity has many instincts, good and bad, and it's our free will to choose. It also ignores even 'enlightened self interest': Our society is falling apart, and social media plays a major role; you don't sh-t where you eat.
It's "an informational unit clearly marked as coming from Facebook". It's similar to the units that facebook has for vaccine information or voting information.
I don't think Twitter censors anti-Twitter sentiment.
He literally wrote: "So to be clear: Project Amplify, in this iteration, does not involve any algorithm changes to news feed (which we don't say in the story). But it still involves Facebook pushing pro-FB content into News Feeds in a pre-determined fashion to boost its reputation."
The feed ranking wasn't change, but the News feed is being manipulated by adding pro-FB content to it and he stands behind what he wrote. The article never said the News feed algorithm was changed.
Talk about trying to confuse on a technicality.
Spying on users, UX dark patterns, engagement tactics, monopolistic practices, all sorts of other abuses, but you wanna call them on this?
They have a lot worse things they do that I'd call them over.
I helped my mother fix her access to facebook and it's one of my biggest regrets in life. She leaned hard into the covid misinformation that facebook spreads, turned into a delusional anti-vaxxer, and I can't help thinking that my innocently helping her fix her account is ultimately going to lead to her death.
"But at least one of the decisions was driven by Mr. Zuckerberg, and all were approved by him, three of the people said."
"Mr. Zuckerberg, who had become intertwined with policy issues including the 2020 election, also wanted to recast himself as an innovator, the people said. In January, the communications team circulated a document with a strategy for distancing Mr. Zuckerberg from scandals, partly by focusing his Facebook posts and media appearances on new products, they said."
I think the amount of vaccine misinformation propagated by facebook will be the source of numerous reviews and studies in the future. It's overwhelmingly sad to see so many people die because they did not get vaccinated, presumably after being influenced by fb misinformation and cable news pundits.
As a side note, the content warnings of fb posts are almost laughable, as most include this blurb: "According to the World Heath Organization" ... as though the WHO is reputable in the eyes of those brainwashed by anti-vaccine propaganda.
Don't forget for a moment that Mark Zuckerberg is a monster. From the start he only cared about one thing: getting your data.
Never thought of it this way. So spot on. The fact is Facebook really is its own isolated and bastardized "Internet," and it's so very AOL.
Here's to the "all new" AOL!
No, "anti-vaxxer" is the whole term. It means "person who is against vaccination".
"-er" does not dehumanize, it characterizes. Your own example demonstrates this: "baller".
If you don't like a group of people and you want to get other people on board with hating them, just put some word_er and label them as such. it makes it much easier to garner hate for said group.
This isnt a debate, this is a known known.
Because if you are willing to work for Facebook, the best case is that it means you are amoral. But how likely is it that you are probably immoral yourself?
You are working on a platform that is directly responsible for propagating misinformation, often with deadly consequences. And don't get me even started on January 6th.
The founder of the company started Facebook as a site to just put up pictures of women so they could then 'rate' them.
The fish starts to rot at the head, and if that's the kind of 'moral compass' of the CEO, you know things are bad.
If you read this and you work for facebook. I urge you to quit today.
Please: today.
What about those in third-world countries that could only get in a on a Visa and FB was the one that hired them, could we fault them for choosing to leave a much riskier life to live the life of a FAANNG developer?
Are people beyond redemption because of one bad decision, what about people that see the world differently?
What about
Whataboutism
You are not redeemed because you were poor and FB gave you a ticket out of poverty. Because working for FB made you do things that made the lives of other people miserable.
This is not how ethics and morality works at all.
However, excepting these employees alone, I do agree with you: Facebook employees are not good people.
I can see why 'poor' people would jump at the opportunity, but that doesn't really excuse them from the basic morality/ethics.
Holding people from poorer countries to lower moral and ethical standards smells like a kind of latent racism to me too but maybe I should give you the benefit of the doubt.
It's not so much that I hold these people to lower moral or ethical standards; it's moreso that my morals and ethics are entirely arbitrary, based on nothing more than what values I choose to hold. My standards are the same for everyone and everything, which is that my standard will be whatever it is at the moment I choose to query what my position is. Is this wildly inconsistent? Yes. Is it universalizable? No. But it's the best I've got, and it's what commits me the least.
It's very reasonable to judge someone by who they choose to work for, specifically if there are repeating negative patterns.
If someone builds a career out of violating human rights, working on egregiously anti-privacy tech at several companies, there's a negative pattern there. It provides substantial insight into who they are and what immoral things they're willing to do to other people for the right price.
So Zuck rated girls in college. I’ve used such sites and behaved badly when I was younger as well. Nobodies hands are spotless. That one thing certainly does not define him.
All of that said, I would not work at Facebook. They wouldn’t hire me anyway.
The similarity towards religion in that regard doesn't go unnoticed, although I do admit that this is really out-of-scope.
The benefit that Facebook brings to its users does not offset the significant harm it does to others.
Facebook kills.
And that boys-will-be-boys argument is really telling about your own ethics/morality. Because I would not even dream about building a site, to which I would upload pictures of women in my University, to let other men rate them.
That is so profoundly unethical, if you don't understand that, you have a lot to learn about morality and ethics.
> And that boys-will-be-boys argument is really telling about your own ethics/morality
Yikes, you are incredibly judgemental about people you know nothing about. Not sure what sort of discussion you think this sort of behavior is going to spur, but I can pretty much guarantee it'll be unproductive.
Sure, one thing doesn't define someone. But in the instance of Zuckerberg, you've got "rating girls in college" followed by every other user-hostile thing his company has done since, so...
This follows the article on HN yesterday about Peter Thiel's take no prisoners, apologize for nothing approach he taught to his protege Mark Zuckerberg. It's also very Trumpy. We're seeing a new generation of trillion dollar companies flexing their muscles in broad daylight, rather than behind the scenes.
I do tend to agree that FB gets more flack than seems reasonable, it's hard to expect any company with a profit incentive in this space doing much better. Though IMO Twitter is an example of better handling of misinformation, propaganda, toxic interactions, and more.
As for the Wikipedia link, 90% of that stuff falls under my initial comment of people using the platform in ways other people wish they wouldn't, so I don't find it to be FB's fault. The privacy stuff I think is real, but it's so standard internet these days that it hardly justifies the vitriol.
The easiest one is just that Twitter might have more competent developers and product managers working on that problem than FB does.
The more sinister option is that FB knows that the kinds of things that end up being misinformation often drive engagement, so maybe they don't try as hard.
(Agreed, though, that it's not clear that Twitter handles this better than FB.)
That’s crap. Facebook could easily choose to prioritise the long term health of society over their advertising profits today. Everyone with a seat at the table (and all the engineers on down) live somewhere between comfortably wealthy to obnoxiously wealthy. Zuckerberg and all the engineers involved are making active choices, every day, to line their pockets instead of cleaning up their act.
It's just not that common for executives at a company to forego revenue in service of the common good. Especially at companies like FB, where exploiting the commons is what makes them money in the first place.
This isn't an essential problem with capitalism, any more than food poisoning is an essential problem with restraunts. The problem comes from how some people run their companies. Money gives you the power to do what you want. Whether or not they realise it, people in high up positions at FB, Uber and elsewhere are powerful. They have the capacity to choose what their companies do. Claiming their unethical behaviour is "the fault of capitalism" is like a plumber blaming weak building standards for their own shoddy work.
Do better.
And don't place the blame for unethical behaviour amongst our community on capitalism. People chose to build and maintain all of these system. And people continue to choose to keep those systems running long after knowing the harm they cause.
Or just realize that after a while, feeling like crap after using FB will crash their product. But short term gain > long term stability/health.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo
One of the people who co-founded this spyware company, Guy Rosen, is quoted in the article as "Facebook's vice president of integrity".
That is on you. The simple fact of the matter is that they can do better, they should do better and because they are not doing better they must be punished until they do. That is how you deal with a beast that is actively malicious (it does wrong and it knows it is doing wrong, it does not care).
* Their own internal research shows that Instagram harms 1 in 3 users who are teenaged girls * Lying to companies that paid to advertise on FB about the reach of their ads * Letting advertisers discriminate based on FB users' race and disability status * Letting Russian accounts pay for election ads in 2016 IN RUBLES
1. https://archive.is/egPlc 2. https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/18/facebook-knew-for-years-ad... 3. https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-advertisers... 4. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/358102-franken-blasts-...
Facebook's algorithms absolutely were responsible: they amplified the propaganda that led to deaths. And their money-first-research-second approach at censorship is part of the reason.
Rather than turning off the service, they let it run wild.
FB is to blame for aiding and abetting.
Calling them "evil" can be useful to mobilise people, but it clearly makes the conversation a lot less nuanced than it needs to be, and it's unfortunate that people often use that type of language.
Facebook is like the "book club" that is really a front for gossiping and drinking. You probably know the people you're talking to personally and it's more a conversation with them (that other people might be able to see).
Reddit is like a community message board. You don't know these people personally, so you get an inbuilt skepticism to what they say. It's mainly about sharing links to somewhere else and you can interact with it without reading anyone's comments.
Social media as an umbrella term really doesn't work because Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, etc all have different ways you interact with them. It would be like saying network TV, the newspaper, the community message board and a guy with a megaphone on the corner are all the same.
I'd be interested to see the ratio of lurkers to posters. Reddit is a link aggregator, it's primary utility is unrelated to the comments. This isn't the case with Facebook.
That all being said, that still doesn't make Facebook good, or not evil. It's perhaps the worst offender of the lot
Their platform has toxic and negative effects, from teenagers to adults participating in elections. And they know they are bad, and cover up and lie about how much they know and when they knew it.
You are of course encouraged to start reading the news if you have a voracious appetite for learning. In short though, they take everything they can from you and sell it to everyone willing to buy. This gives them an incentive to have you "engage" with content, of which some is actively harmful (but ostensibly encouraged because Facebook wants the effects that such content has).
I don't think that's true. Most of us here see Facebook as a drunk 16 year-old with a set of car keys and Daddy's credit card. Not evil, just hopelessly reckless and lacking in self awareness and self control.