Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens

nytimes.com

Good thread here that provides a counter-balance. https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21

> Good thread here that provides a counter-balance. https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21

By the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Eyal:

> In 2014 Eyal published his first book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, which became a Wall Street Journal best seller.[12][13] The title reflects Eyal's idea of the "hooked model", which aims to "build products that create habit-forming behavior in users via a looping cycle that consists of trigger, an action, a variable reward, and continued investment."[14]...

> Eyal has spoken out against proposals to regulate habit-forming technologies, arguing that it is an individual user's responsibility to control their own use of such products.[2]

Somehow I'm not surprised someone like that would be writing desperate yet underwhelming apologia for Facebook.

Is there something specific about Eyals take that you disagree with?

Yep "my advice to parents is only give kids access to tech they're ready for" There is no metric to check if the kids a re ready for, I doubt that most adults are ready for the psychological effects of social media. This is too easy a way to offload the entire responsibility onto the parents, while the companies that make billions from it are off the hook. It's like blaming smokers because tobacco companies use addictive additives.

Someone actually including links to the raw information (transcripts, slides, etc) is to me the more trustworthy source. I've been misled a hundred times by mainstream media orgs when they don't actually include the raw data (links to studies, transcripts, links to a place the person they are writing about could respond) even if they definitely could, I've been mislead maybe twice by individuals who actually cite their sources in a manner I can look up.

Edit: and indeed it seems that a media organisation has mislead me yet again, declining to mention things like the 11 other metrics which Instagram was said to improve.

The person writes a book about hijacking human psychology for more clicks and then goes on to state how it’s our responsibility to control our use.

What does he want us to do, re-wire our brains on demand?

Any given platform in Big Social has millions it can throw on tuning its GUI and algorithms to increase engagement—and they do, seeing as that directly translates into advertising revenue. Then, each user has to face all of this machinery alone, often exhausted and/or sleepy, at home, defences lowered. I think it’s wishful thinking to expect majority of users to be able to stay vigilant at all times.

Neither do I think we should “regulate habit-forming technologies”, though. That really smells of addressing a symptom and of government micro-management. Sure, we can try regulating those behemoths into acting altruistically, pass laws, fund departments dedicated to monitoring of habit-forming technology usage—but inevitably lawmakers will be lobbied by big tech, departments will be understaffed, regulations wouldn’t keep up with the new tech, loopholes will be found and exploited, corruption will occur, and this all will drag on… while the business model would find its way.

Which I think is the root cause: the business model. It should never have been possible at such scale. Any platform this size that survives off advertisement money either exploits its users, loses to the next competitor that does, or—in what’s possibly the worst outcome—becomes a strongly government-regulated (and by implication government-approved) almost-monopoly. The stark misalignment of the interests, unique to this industry, effectively makes the purported service provider (can it even be called that if the service is free, though?) an adversary from end user’s frame of reference.

This is like saying some person can not quit eating sugar because it "hijack human psychology". Or anything similar. So I suppose ban sugar. A "re wired brain" can still stop using it, it only takes more willpower.

> What does he want us to do, re-wire our brains on demand?

He wants us to get hooked on his deliberately addictive products, but blame ourselves for it instead of him.

In this case it'd be "blame the parents", according to his tweets -- he said the parents "only give kids access to tech they're ready for".

But how are the parents going to know how Instagram affects their kids.

I know from experience that it's not that easy also for highly educated and well meaning parents to know that much about how their kids feel and precisely what causes those feelings (Instagram or something else?)

He also wrote Indistractible, a book about how to create healthy habits and not get Hooked on all the stuff he talked about in his first book.

Ultimately you’re responsible for your own life. The government isn’t going to save you.

Of course, government wants you to think they’re going to save you, and they’ll happily take all the power over your life that you care to give them.

Good context, but it would be better if you could refute his take instead of attack his past.

There is no apologia, there are many other habit-forming products we can use, television, sugar, others are used by children in many places and they self regulate.

How is this not the first comment

> Facebook annotated the reports, appearing to downplay the results. Next to one slide in the research that said “teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse,” the company added that the headline was imprecise. Instead, it wrote, “The headline should be clarified to be: ‘Teens who have lower life satisfaction more likely to say Instagram makes their mental health or the way they feel about themselves worse than teens who are satisfied with their lives.’”

I suppose "teens who are satisfied with their lives" exist, but I didn't know many as a teenager.

I know that angst you teen is a trope but where I was most teens were quite happy. School ends early, plenty of time and zero responsibilities. You can just spend most of time loitering. Also hangover passes super quickly so you don’t waste a whole day after a party.

> but where I was most teens were quite happy. School ends early, plenty of time and zero responsibilities.

That's the kind of thing that seems happy in retrospect, though. Kids don't appreciate many of the benefits of youth until they've lost it, and until then, small dramas and angst can often have an exaggerated significance.

There's been some fMRI work done on this[1]: if you pose various moral dilemmas to adults and teens under fMRI, they'll give you similar answers. But: teens have dramatically higher frontal cortex activation then adults do while giving the answer.

Frontal cortex is associated with high level reasoning: the interpretation is that while teenagers are able to resolve the same sorts of issues as adults, they're spending a lot more mental effort to do so - it's taxing. Hence the phenomenon of teenagers tending to oscillate between "mature and capable" and "complete breakdown" when the stress gets dialed up (not that this doesn't happen to adults, but relatively we handle more better).

Not unsurprisingly, the frontal cortex is also one of the last regions of the brain to undergo maturation: the neural remodel you get at the onset of puberty starts from the back of the brain and moves forward.

In short: adults take an observation of adult-like behavior at face value and presume it implies adult-experiential reasoning, then get surprised and angry when the environmental stresses suddenly collapse the entire facade.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2788780/

I got severe hangovers anytime I drank when I was 16-22. I avoided alcohol for years and was surprised when I tried it again around 32 that I have to drink truly excessive amounts of alcohol to experience a hangover, and even then, it seems to be mainly dehydration.

I’m not so sure about the “zero responsibilities” statement, either. If I didn’t do my homework for certain classes I would be punished with something similar to solitary confinement.

> You can just spend most of time loitering. Also hangover passes super quickly so you don’t waste a whole day after a party.

I started work at 15, so no responsibility-less loitering for me. And those hangovers can only happen if you save up enough cash after paying for school lunch and car insurance, which the 6-month cost was about the same as the price of my car $1000.

My guess is that the "happy" sample size came from the Kardashian/Jenner family. Given that they have a lot to lose here, I would think, as well.

And yes, I technically got "free" lunch, but do you want to be in THAT line? I mean, the cool kids are in the subway and burger line for a bargain of $6 a lunch... So why wouldn't I do that, too?

Thank goodness I didn't have an incessant window into all their lives outside of school, while I was working 30-40 hour weeks at 7/hr.

Hence the “where I lived qualification”, which was btw 90’s in Eastern Europe. People around usually had two working parents and no need to have jobs themselves. Of course nobody except a fiend who regularly “borrowed” their parents’ car had one (since you can drive only at 18 here).

I can definitely see that if you hoist adult responsibilities on kids it’s super stressful, but that is not normal everywhere.

I work since grade 6... last free years were in elemntary school. No money or time for drinking, advanced classes take extra time and work the rest plus some school clubs for building resume to get better college entrances. Teens years are not always without responsibility and with free time, children have been working since millenia past, idea that children must be carefree is a new thing and not true.

Holy shit this is some spin. The sentence takes up a bigger chunk of working memory, has multiple possible interpretations (of which only the worst interpretation correctly matches with the previous condensed statement), and no longer ends on a memorable or high impact phrase. every part of this statement has been mangled to grab less attention as a headline.

'Teens who have lower life satisfaction' sounds like a euphemism for 'teens with low self esteem'.

Someone had to really mince those words for a while to make them sound like something different.

'Facebook data scientists and researchers discussed how they were being “embarrassed” by their own employer.' Boy that's a mistake; we know as much as we do because Facebook employees are tired of being ignored by their executive team.

Do you work inside Facebook? Consider leaking what you know to a reporter or research group you trust. Jeff Horwitz of the WSJ may be a good option, he has contact info in his twitter bio https://twitter.com/JeffHorwitz

If you're involved in something you fear is illegal you may want to talk to a personal lawyer. And keep written records at home in a secure place.

Irony is Facebook will not attract the talent it needs to work constructively on these unsolvable problems.

It will attract thd clueless and the most ambitious. People who are ready to defend it for their own profit.

Its a trap where the hole they are in just keeps growing deeper.

Engineers used to be offered an "Iron Ring" (or other similar token) to symbolize their responsibility to human welfare, even at the cost of personal achievement/merit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring

Maybe we have to teach some of these upstarts about Therac-25 and depress another generation just to keep the harm from spreading :(

This still happens in Canada I believe

Yes, it does

I know an American civil engineer who has one of these rings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring

Wikipedia says the oath that goes with it is:

I am an Engineer.

In my profession I take deep pride. To it I owe solemn obligations.

As an engineer, I, (full name), pledge to practice Integrity and Fair Dealing, Tolerance, and Respect, and to uphold devotion to the standards and dignity of my profession, conscious always that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making best use of the Earth's precious wealth.

As an engineer, I shall participate in none but honest enterprises. When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given without reservation for the public good.

In the performance of duty, and in fidelity to my profession, I shall give the utmost.

---

I get the impression this ring is not for "software engineers". I really dislike that term, I call myself a computer programmer to anybody who asks, regardless of the title my employer flatters me with. I think "software engineer" is leaching off the social prestige real engineers have earned for their professions. Prestige the software industry in general does not yet deserve. Programmers take jobs making shitty socially harmful products then deflect all blame to their employers, denying their own responsibility to society that oath describes.

I am sure there are some programmers who deserve it, but by in large, the term is used by companies to flatter code monkeys making gambling apps, spyware, social media skinner boxes, etc. I am not without sin here, so I refuse to call myself an engineer.

Those other engineering professions some harmful things too. Didn't engineers design prisons, casinos, nuclear weapons, land mines, plants that manufacture harmful chemicals, etc..? The only way to believe that these oaths make a difference is to ignore all those things.

Anyway, at my university (CS/computer eng. major) everyone in the engineering school goes through the same induction ceremony that I think had a similar oath. I still have the Wash. U. Engineer's Creed card in my wallet. I vaguely remember that Tau Beta Pi had a similar thing. Honestly, I appreciate the ideals, but I don't think the oath made folks from my program any more ethical than those from other schools.

All of the things you've listed aren't universally bad. Prisons keep bad people out of society (and yes, I'm aware that some folks shouldn't be in prison, and I wish that'd change, but majority are in the clink for violent crime). Nuclear weapons ensure superpowers can't attack each other - that's why we haven't had a world war in the past 76 years in spite of some pretty crazy tensions. Land mines make land invasions difficult and protect those who installed them. Harmful chemicals usually are not made just for the harm - they have their own useful functions. So I'd draw the line much further than that: somewhere near biological and chemical weapons which have no useful function at all, and do not help with maintaining peace.

The fact you can justify land mines says it all about the ability of some oath to ensure anything about the behaviour of large groups of people.

Yes, soldiers on the battlefield are very thankful for the land mines, assuming they're the ones who installed them. With any luck a dude from the other side might not be able to cross the field and slit their throats in the dead of the night. Just as pilots are thankful for fighter jets not crapping out in mid-air, and nuclear submarine sailors are thankful for the engineering that went into the hull, and a gunner is thankful for the shells which don't explode in the barrel of a howitzer. War is hell, but if you're going to win it (or even deter it), you'll need engineers who know how to design weapons. And this is not the kind of game that you can just decline to participate in unless you'd like to learn a foreign language in a concentration camp.

The big problem with landmines is they are not generally cleaned up after the war, leaving them around for innocents to trigger and get hurt, maimed, or killed.

Yes. They can be deployed irresponsibly, but that's hardly the engineer's fault.

> we haven't had a world war in the past 76 years

This is of little comfort to the many victims of US foreign policy over that same period

Believe me, things would be _a lot_ worse if there were no nukes and superpowers could go at one another. We're talking 100x the casualties. Most of the violent deaths in the 20th century were the fault of the governments, one way or another. The only reason they don't do that anymore is it'd be self-destructive.

Our faculty (Masaryk University Faculty of Informatics) definitely has such an oath & everyone has to take it - here in Czech: Section 33 (5): https://is.muni.cz/do/mu/Uredni_deska/Predpisy_MU/Fakulta_in...

Machine translated to English (FI MUNI is heavy into NLP anyway ;-) ) it looks like this:

a) at the bachelor's degree: “I solemnly promise to dedicate my life to the service of humanity; I will keep Masaryk University, where I obtained a bachelor's degree, and its teacher in the memory and respect that belong to them; I will be faithful to my profession and I will be fair and accommodating to his colleagues; I will develop the projects I participate in to the best of my ability so as to serve man; I will not tolerate evil, bad practices or bribery; I will not allow that issues of religion, nationality, race, party politics or social status my professional decisions; I will not abuse my professional knowledge and skills even under duress. So I promise to my honor, freely and of my own free will. "

b) at the master's degree: “I solemnly promise to dedicate my life to the service of humanity; I will maintain my love and gratitude for Masaryk University, where I obtained a master's degree; I will responsibly perform all my professional duties and consider the ethical implications of my professional activity; I will not allow my activity to be in conflict with the rights of individuals, groups or organizations to respect their privacy and integrity and will not allow their knowledge to be misused and the ability to enable their violation; I will not abuse the properties of the processing systems information or knowledge of them for their personal benefit; I will be in my professional career to act with awareness of the limits of my professional competence and the field in which I work; I will help deepening awareness of the nature and possibilities of their discipline in society. So I promise myself honor, freely and of one's own free will. "

c) at the doctoral degree “I solemnly promise to dedicate my life to the service of humanity; I will preserve love and gratitude to Masaryk University, where I obtained a doctorate; I will carry out all their professional duties responsibly and consider the ethical implications of their actions in their profession and scientific field; I will expand and develop knowledge in my discipline; I will work in this direction to deepen / deepen the awareness of ethical responsibility for the consequences application and use of procedures and knowledge of informatics in society; I will respect protection intellectual property rights and to weigh it responsibly in relation to the free flow of the open scientific knowledge in international public ownership. So I promise to my honor, freely and of their own free will. "

I strive to respect this oath but I'm not sure if all the other absolvents do or even remember taking it. :P

Nothing inherently wrong with prisons. They're necessary. Even the most egalitarian societies will have at least one person who is relentlessly violent and needs to be forcefully confined.

It's possible that United States engineers still do this... but software "engineering" is famously (and self-deprecating-ly) not really "real engineering".

I say this as someone who programs, teaches programming/computer science, and has worked professionally as a software development engineer - the comment isn't made to denigrate anyone, but because software "engineering" doesn't have any certification / professional credentialing that "real" engineering (e.g., civil engineering) apparently does have.

Also - I'm curious about how effective it is to tell the engineers to do the right thing (even at the expense of personal gain). It seems like the people most responsible for making decisions that build harmful products aren't the ones who are actually tasked with building the harmful products. Does anyone have any information about how effective such training / indoctrination is in preventing bad situations from happening?

one thing that I found works: religion. ask the engineer about to enter the arena what they would like to do with the money they hope to achieve, their end-goals, etc.

then follow-up with whether they would feel morally/spiritually at peace with their choices and methods after the fact (do your ends justify your means?)

in my experience, the people with the IQ to earn a yacht responsibly end up settling for a speedboat anyway.

It certainly does, just not in US.

https://www.ordemengenheiros.pt/pt/a-ordem/colegios-e-especi...

No Portuguese university is allowed to call their computing degrees engineering without their approval, and in certain kinds of state related projects, the one putting their signature into the legal contracts has to have the professional title acknowledged.

Germany and Switzerland have a similar process for those carrying engineering on their title.

Either that or you have done it via a trade school, and people on the job have to have a kind of teaching certification for the school to approve the company as teaching place.

Even in the US computer engineering degrees require licensing and are different than “software engineering”, which is actually a specialty within computer science.

Except everyone calls themselves "engineer" after a 6 weeks bootcamp, is is rediculous.

I went to bootcamp and outperform people with master's degrees that don't even understand why a hashmap is amortized O(1) every day. You got ripped off paying for school so take your degree and shove it.

State pays for our degrees, and ensures that are actually market worthy.

Also not everyone and their dog gets in unless they prove their skills.

Most private university are seen as scams.

You should start by shooting down all the university scams in US to start with.

Yes, I thought your comment was about university regulations. Does Portugal make it illegal to list “software engineer” on your business card? (or does Portugal have a software engineering licensing system?)

Yes to both questions.

If you happen to be someone like our former prime minister, or being lucky that no one bothers to sue because of how long everything takes.

However, depending on the company, it might be a matter to lose the job.

Where it definitely matters is signing legal binding contracts.

I agree that 99% of software developers are not engineers, not because software engineering isn't engineering, but because they are not doing software engineering. You can, and should, apply the principles of engineering to your development process, but hardly anyone does. Generous planning and foresight, objective measures of performance, an intimate understanding of the system you're deploying, etc.

A software developer glues together 400 node modules they don't understand and ships to Other People's Computers, then hands them their debit card when the load goes up. A software engineer knows that every line of code is accounted for, because they've actually done the accounting, and knew the scale requirements in advance (with error bars) and provisioned the infrastructure accordingly - with a budget.

Engineering isn’t about building the perfect widget. (Otherwise, the Juicero would have done better.) It’s about building things that meet requirements, given a set of inputs. A credit card is certainly one of those inputs, and perfectly precise scaling may not be one of those requirements.

You don't need perfect, but some actual planning and application of the scientific method is called for.

> software "engineering" doesn't have any certification / professional credentialing that "real" engineering (e.g., civil engineering) apparently does have

Yeah and I hope it stays that way. Imagine needing a license to write software. It would mean the end of free and open source software as we know it.

> Does anyone have any information about how effective such training / indoctrination is in preventing bad situations from happening?

It's not about training or indoctrination. It's about legal responsibility and liability. Make professional programmers directly responsible for the code they get paid to write. If society finds they're causing harm, it will hold them accountable for it.

We must increase the risk associated with building unethical technology. Programmers need to think twice before they build the next surveillance capitalism nightmare.

> If society finds they're causing harm, it will hold them accountable for it.

Our society does a really bad job at holding people accountable for the harm they do. What makes you think it would be any different for software?

It seems to work with doctors.

> Imagine needing a license to write software. It would mean the end of free and open source software as we know it.

i don't think so because as you said:

> It's about legal responsibility and liability. Make professional programmers directly responsible for the code they get paid to write.

we urgently need liability for for-profit software in order to stop softwares race to the bottom.

My company has liability insurance.

I'm indirectly liable, in that I can lose my job, however.

If I were a contractor, I would also buy liability insurance.

this!

software quality is not some kind of "force of nature" or "accident" but a direct result of cutting corners/costs.

insurance for beeing lazy will not help.

> I'm indirectly liable, in that I can lose my job

If an engineer negligently (note: not knowingly) signs off on a bridge that collapses, they face fines, expulsion from their profession and jail time. At this point, every developer at Facebook should know the harm they’re causing. The most they face is job loss. That’s the problematic asymmetry.

>we urgently need liability for for-profit software in order to stop software's race to the bottom.

If we're going to do that, there's no good reason to give a special exclusion for not-for-profit software.

Of course there is. A programmer writing free software in their bedroom is completely different from a professional writing softwafe for corporations and making 6-7 figures. Society expects a lot more from the latter.

That doesn't make any sense. The reason regulation is suggested is effect on society, and the effect is the same regardless of the engineer's personal status. An engineer designing bridges is liable regardless of his salary, and same must apply to a programmer.

Besides, it's trivial to launder everything if you give such an out. The regulation can apply equally to everyone, or don't expect it to go anywhere at all.

> The reason regulation is suggested is effect on society, and the effect is the same regardless of the engineer's personal status.

Amateur programmers are not professional engineers. A profession is an activity people are compensated for. If you're not being compensated, it's not professional work. If it's not professional, you should not be held liable for it.

Someone publishing a personal project should not be held liable for anything. A professional software engineer deciding to use that project at work without thoroughly reviewing it and causing a security breach due to vulnerabilities in that software should absolutely be held liable for negligence.

> An engineer designing bridges is liable regardless of his salary, and same must apply to a programmer.

I'm not an engineer but I can draw up a bridge right now. Would it stand or collapse? Who knows. I think it looks nice though so I post it online. Then an actual engineer sees my drawing and makes an actual bridge out of it. The bridge collapses and kills thousands.

Who's liable? Me, a random guy who drew a bridge? The engineer who should have known better?

> Besides, it's trivial to launder everything if you give such an out.

That would require companies to not only refuse to compensate their programmers for their labor but to also open source their source code. Doesn't seem trivial to me.

>I'm not an engineer but I can draw up a bridge right now. Would it stand or collapse? Who knows. I think it looks nice though so I post it online. Then an actual engineer sees my drawing and makes an actual bridge out of it.

Right, it's not the publishing but the use which is proscribed - same applies for engineering. But that would apply regardless of whether the software you're using is open-source or not, and regardless of how much you're paid.

A social-media site operated by an amateur in the bedroom being paid nothing and using only open-source software would still be liable under any sensible and realistic regulation.

>>Besides, it's trivial to launder everything if you give such an out. >That would require companies to not only refuse to compensate their programmers for their labor but to also open source their source code. Doesn't seem trivial to me.

You can compensate for code with this regulation, it's not difficult. e.g. create a non-profit, and pay the non-profit which pays the programmer. So long as the programmer is one step removed from you it's fine.

Open source isn't much of an impediment either, just have a suitably restricted licence. Or don't, it's not an impediment for many types of businesses.

> it's not the publishing but the use which is proscribed - same applies for engineering

Exactly.

I think there should be an exception for free and open source software though. We have lots of free software designed to be used by people. I don't think these programmers should be held liable. Many of them are amateurs and volunteers. The chilling effect would simply be too great.

I'm reminded of Greg Kroah-Hartman's talk about kernel contributors.

https://youtu.be/fMeH7wqOwXA&t=326s

> My goal, of me, as a developer and to make Linux succeed, is to help [amateurs, unknown individuals] out.

> If you're hired to do this stuff, you're on your own and you better know what you're doing.

I think he's right. At the time, roughly 20% of the kernel was done by individuals. That work is extremely valuable yet it is different from professional work. It should be treated differently. with a lot more compassion and understanding. On the other hand, it is fine to expect professionals to be disciplined.

> A social-media site operated by an amateur in the bedroom being paid nothing and using only open-source software would still be liable under any sensible and realistic regulation.

Yeah, I agree. That's not just software anymore, that's a service.

> e.g. create a non-profit, and pay the non-profit which pays the programmer. So long as the programmer is one step removed from you it's fine.

It doesn't matter how indirect it is. The important fact is the programmer is getting paid for their work. That makes it professional work.

>It doesn't matter how indirect it is. The important fact is the programmer is getting paid for their work. That makes it professional work.

Do kernel contributions getting paid by the Linux foundation count? What if the offending company is donating to the Linux foundation?

>I think there should be an exception for free and open source software though. We have lots of free software designed to be used by people... The chilling effect would simply be too great.

I understand distinguishing between publishing and use. But we're talking about use here. The person responsible for the use of the bad program is usually not the contributor. So there's no chilling effect here?

You don't need licenses and gatekeeping to do that. All you need is a signed commit message. It's trivial for a corporation to require something like this.

In Europe protected software engineering titles definitely exist as a sibling comment already pointed out. This only means you can't call yourself that, it doesn't mean you can't do that kind of work. From that perspective it might differ from civil engineering, but the distinction is likely not clear cut there either. Maybe only the guy signing off on the bridge's technical capabilities has to have the degree while the rest of the group that does the work doesn't need the degree.

> Maybe we have to teach some of these upstarts about Therac-25 and depress another generation just to keep the harm from spreading :(

IIRC, they do, and it doesn't work. The "Californian Ideology" has a strong hold on the tech world and it's incompatible with that kind duty,

Sadly there's always enough smart sociopaths willing to work for a fat pay cheque or to learn "interesting" tech.

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,"says Wernher von Braun."

>Irony is Facebook will not attract the talent it needs to work constructively on these unsolvable problems.

At some point the brand will become so toxic that engineers who've worked there could find themselves persona non grata in many tech roles.

Unfortunately I think other companies would still be happy hiring ex FB developers. They still are ex FAANG, and they showed to give moral and principle the rear seat when it comes to revenue and business. Why wouldn't these folks be hireable?

Personally, when I see FB on a resume, it’s a factor. I want people who will help push the company in a healthy direction. There’s always pressure to make changes to the app that increase addictiveness without adding actual value to the client, and I’m proud to work somewhere where colleagues push back on that kind of thing. Working at FB is a (relatively weak) signal that they won’t be that kind of colleague. It will come up in the interview.

If they can convince me that they stayed there in a ‘change it from within’ capacity, great. Otherwise, yeah it’s a negative signal.

> At some point the brand will become so toxic that engineers who've worked there could find themselves persona non grata in many tech roles.

The majority of startups is still "growth and engagement" as opposed to producing real products/services that people pay for, so ex-Facebook is the perfect match.

Investment banking has no problem attracting smart people.

Smart people know that you gain nothing by sacrificing yourself for society. Even if you cared enough to say no, all that would happen is that Facebook would pay somebody else to work for them.

Smart is not the same as cynical. Being cynical doesn't require that much intelligence.

> Smart people know that you gain nothing by sacrificing yourself for society. Even if you cared enough to say no, all that would happen is that Facebook would pay somebody else to work for them.

Nothing? Not even a clear conscience?

The "but someone else will do it" argument is used to justify so many wrong doings… We hear it all the time about fighting climate change, building unethical weapons, etc.

You also have the choice to not personally actively contribute to whatever unethical thing is being discussed. It's a circular game theory problem, that "other person that will do it anyway" might also be justifying it because they think you would do it if they didn't.

> Investment banking has no problem attracting smart people.

I've worked in banking and my ex worked for Facebook, and I genuinely don't see the comparison beyond rather inaccurate tropes. Bankers aren't tearing apart society and sowing division like Facebook is.

Trump lost his second term. I think society was actually torn apart during the civil war.

> Even if you cared enough to say no, all that would happen is that Facebook would pay somebody else to work for them.

Serious question: Do you vote? Because this argument seems like people who say “my vote doesn’t matter, it’s just one vote out of millions.”

It’s true that at the individual level, one vote basically never makes the difference, but elections are won and lost. In the same way, if one person says no, maybe it will barely make a difference, but teams are made of more than one person.

Fair question. I do vote, but I know it is fundamentally irrational.

I've been approached by FB recruiters 3 times and turned them down 3 times. I've removed FB from all my devices except one. The only thing keeping me on the platform is that my sports clubs use it to organise matches and runs. I check FB once a day. All notifications are off.

I really don't want anything to do with them. I'd still work for a military software developer. But not Facebook.

Frankly, I was also surprised recently, though I shouldn't be, that there are (or were) some quite 'famous' developers / comp-sci researchers working there.

> I really don't want anything to do with them. I'd still work for a military software developer. But not Facebook.

Would you use open source packages developed by them?

Interesting. I probably would. Though I haven’t knowingly done so, so far.

The idea that FB will become a radioactive brand is wishful thinking that people indulge in with every new FB "scandal". Recruiting (yes even from "target" schools) hasn't slowed one bit. And regarding eg FAIR: The ones that have started murmuring about jumping ship are not the ones that are excellent but the ones that have outsized ideas of themselves as do-gooders.

We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that instagram has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager of your family to see the values that are being taught through it. Is this how you want the next generation to be?

Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company, and it has always been, and it's just sad to see the support it gets among technologists. Zuck doesn't strike me as particularly deep thinker (judging from his podcasts) to be able to steer his behavioral experiment to good, nor does he seem particularly well educated tbh. Even people who think they are doing good by being in the company (Clegg, Lecun) they are not helping, they re legitimizing a train wreck . I just hope people get bored and leave the behavioral treadmill before it s too late.

> Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company

I don't want to defend Facebook, but this is not specific to Facebook. We have legitimized the modern concept of targeted advertising and Facebook just happens to play the game perfectly.

Facebook is not 100% fault here (in fact there are others in this space). The fault is that we don't have regulation against something that is clearly detrimental to society. Change that, and Facebook will become better (or be replaced by something better).

Edit: to be clear, I do not want to defend Facebook. I don't use it, I hate it and its effects on society, and its monopoly on social media online is a constant problem for me. However, I don't believe killing Facebook by itself will solve the problem as it will merely allow an equally-scummy competitor to take its place.

Outlawing the underlying business model or making it unprofitable (such as by attaching liability to ads, stronger privacy protections, revoking Section 230, etc) would be a better long-term solution.

Facebook is 100% at fault for what Facebook does though. Not to say others aren’t.

I’m not interested in giving them an inch. They’ve probably caused more psychological harm and manipulation (intentionally, via “engagement” algorithms) than just about any human propaganda movement in history.

I still don’t understand how people with any ethics still work for them. I guess 500k a year is enough to look away from anything.

I ask this sincerely: what makes you an expert on the motives and culture of Facebook, where you feel you can authoritatively state that their problems are “not specific” to them? Because, as someone who has spent time with the founders and early executives, I think you’re flat-out wrong.

These are people who were way more obsessed with manipulating people and society than any other group of people I’ve encountered — including “professional” trolls on the dark web — and they remain exactly like this to this day. Manipulating young women and putting them in unhealthy/uncomfortable positions is part of the founding DNA of the company. Can you really say that about any other large corporation in Silicon Valley?

If you want to defend Facebook, please provide context — and any conflicts of interest.

I was approaching the problem from the financial/business angle of it. Facebook and similar businesses work on the basis of "engagement" - the more you get people to "engage", the more they look at ads and the more money you make, so your incentive is to maximize this engagement by any legal means possible. This isn't specific to Facebook.

Whether there are more sociopaths in Facebook than a typical social media company is another question on which I don't have an answer, but if you look at it purely from a financial angle the problem would apply to any social media company.

> If you want to defend Facebook, please provide context — and any conflicts of interest.

My intent is not to defend Facebook and I don't have any conflicts of interest, but I just wanted to set the record straight because I believe the proper way to solve the Facebook problem is to outlaw/make unprofitable the underlying business model, otherwise if you kill Facebook something similarly scummy will simply take its place and you're back at square one.

Yeah, you can’t just sort of observe things from a distance and make hand-wavy statements regarding regulation.

You’re not the only one to do this, of course — it’s actually one of the Facebook’s preferred talking points for journalists and politicians, as it turns their specific problems into an “industry-wide problem” — but your position is not accurate given the specific context of the company, its strategy, its executives, and its super-voting-shareholders.

What you’re saying is a bit like, “we need stronger regulations on knives or we are just going to keep having a serial killer problem.” If you don’t know the specifics of the situation — which, sorry you don’t, and simply being a user of these products or working in tech doesn’t give you any deep insight — you should try to avoid making claims that imply expertise.

It’s a bit like defending the Catholic Church because you’ve read the Bible — there’s no correlation, my friend (and I didn’t choose that example randomly). You’re all over this thread defending people you don’t know, about situations about which you don’t have knowledge. A lot of people seem to do this, this playing defense for free thing, for companies once they become big ... It’s a bit weird.

> it turns their specific problems into an “industry-wide problem”

Facebook says this to escape liability. I say this so that we nuke the entire industry.

> What you’re saying is a bit like, “we need stronger regulations on knives or we are just going to keep having a serial killer problem.”

The knife analogy doesn't really work. Knives have tons of legitimate usage, and are easy enough to manufacture that even if knives can no longer be obtained retail it will not be that hard for a serial killer to acquire one so regulation wouldn't work.

Non-consensual data collection & unregulated advertising? That's not something ordinary customers benefit from and better regulation there could help curtail the toxic effects of social media platforms by making their pursuit of "engagement" unprofitable and making them convert to a paid service (where there is no longer incentive to generate engagement).

> If you don’t know the specifics of the situation — which, sorry you don’t, and simply being a user of these products or working in tech doesn’t give you any deep insight — you should try to avoid making claims that imply expertise.

You're welcome to enlighten me then. Let's say what you say is right and Facebook (as opposed to the current regulatory framework) is the problem and it gets killed off. What happens next? My worry is that a competitor takes over that will in time (if not right away) become equally scummy in their pursuit of profit (as the current regulatory framework allows this). Worse, that competitor could be based outside of our jurisdiction and/or have even less laws/morals to keep them in check and/or have an ulterior motive beyond just profit (TikTok?).

> It’s a bit like defending [...]

I am not defending anything here. I just think that solving the symptom of a disease does not cure the disease itself.

Exactly , people are treating this as a Facebook problem when it’s really an industry problem. The elimination of Facebook does not fix the root cause of why all of this has happened and doesn’t stop a competitor from coming in and doing the Exact.Same.Thing.

I dont get the framing of facebook as master manipulators of women. Kids feel bad on instagram because they can compare themselves to other.

Let’s start at the beginning:

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creat...

You can work your way forward from there.

Im aware of facemash. I just dont get why kids feeling bad is somehow facebook's fault. Fucking absurd to think you couldnt survey any groups of kids at anytime in history and not find some who contemplate suicide or feel inadequate.

> Facebook is not 100% fault here (in fact there are others in this space). The fault is that we don't have regulation against something that is clearly detrimental to society. Change that, and Facebook will become better (or be replaced by something better).

Treating Facebook employees and executives like some kind of force of nature that isn't responsible for its actions is really a bit weird. The people working at Facebook very much make these decisions and work with intent, which means they are at fault. They can be 100% at fault and we can still criticize the fact that we don't have enough regulations in place to protect society from companies like Facebook. Those two aspects are in no way mutually exclusive.

Facebook's terribleness runs much deeper than targeted advertising. It's been hostile and condescending to its users from day one.

I don't disagree - but being user-hostile aligns perfectly with their business model. The problem isn't a given implementation, it's the business model itself.

IMO it should be outlawed to profit off intentionally wasting people's time and promoting inflammatory content for the sake of "engagement", but drafting a law that would effectively cover this would be a major challenge (you could argue that the people doom-scrolling Instagram want the engagement-generating inflammatory content they are being fed), so my next alternative is to simply strengthen privacy regulations to make this kind of business unprofitable.

afaik no other company tries so hard to manipulate people using their base feelings of social competition/envy/jealousy. at least not among the major ones.

The only thing close is Big Tobacco's manipulation of the product specifically to tweak the addictiveness of the product. It's one thing for the product to naturally be addictive, but by hiring people to study ways to make the product even more addictive, then to hire people to implement those ways into the product goes towards showing intent on creating a harmful product.

Facebook doesn't just play the game, they are the game.

There is no other ad delivery platform as influential to teens and young adults. Full stop.

> There is no other ad delivery platform as influential to teens and young adults. Full stop.

But as soon as you kill Facebook those people will just move on to the next competitor such as Snapchat or TikTok - you haven't actually solved the underlying problem.

I don’t understand HN’s obsessive love for TikTok. It’s almost universally praised here.

Exactly , it’s extremely disingenuous to say Facebook is the game. No, they just really fucking good at the game. Removing them does not stop the game from being played.

Teens and young adults are just as likely to be on TikTok or Snapchat as IG. The hyperfocus on Facebook (the company, kids really don't use Facebook the app) seems misguided.

> Just observe a teenager of your family to see the values that are being taught through it. Is this how you want the next generation to be?

To be fair, isn't this how every generation looks down on the next generation?

> We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that instagram has a bad effect on teens.

Sorry, we can't leave this to armchair psychologists.

> To be fair, isn't this how every generation looks down on the next generation?

Values are always subjective. However, I would not classify their comment as an example of my-generation-good bias. Any form of media that inspires obsessive behavior is bad. In the previous generation, people didn't listen to warnings against obsessive gaming. No wonder it's leading to suicides nowadays.

https://www.thebridgechronicle.com/lifestyle/world-suicide-p...

"An emerging connection" doesn't mean "leads to suicide". It's at best a claim of correlation (maybe depressed people are more likely to socially isolate, and games are something fun to do while doing that?).

i m not talking about looking down, this isnt teenagers being edgy. Narcissism is something most people can easily recognize and it s generally considered unhealthy. Parents usually dont feed their children unhealthy stuff, addictive drugs or habits. Same way maybe they should stop being dazzled by technology and reconsider what is happening. If you suggest that compulsive narcissism is a harmless thing, maybe it is, but what s the definition of harm here.

I also dont think that "doesn't cause her to kill herself" is the criterion that people use to decide what's appropriate for their kids. Unless you think that parenting is reduntant

I think the primary point of the parent comment is that saying "Heck, just look at your own kids" may be fine for your own family, but, as we love to say, anecdotes are not data.

If the internet has proven anything it's that you can always find someone with "proof" of something based on their own personal experience ("My kid got a lot of vaccines, now my kid has autism, ergo..."). The reason we have scientists that do research studies is so we can examine these issues systematically.

these generalizations are a little extreme. what's the purpose of instagram for a kid exactly? its 'destructive' effects are not marginal side effects, they're the main purpose of the app

>To be fair, isn't this how every generation looks down on the next generation?

If we're talking about music, movies, fashion styles, etc, I'd say yes. However, no previous generation has had the juggernuat that is FB to compare to. FB has had more (at least potential) than any other source of influence on the younger generations especially those that are young enough to never know life without FB.

I'd say tv and radio were both comparable.

Fortunately TV and radio weren’t broadcasting what my peers/colleagues were doing in that very moment, so I wasn’t comparing myself to my school colleagues and I knew by definition that I wasn’t as cool as Kurt Cobain or Dr Alban (that’s what I saw on MTV back at that time). Not comparing myself with my peers almost each and every moment was a very good thing for adolescent me.

tv and radio were unregulated?

You didn't use the radio or TV in bed or in between classes, on the bus (ok maybe you used radio on the bus).

I would say FB's reaches deeper into our lives than previous media did.

>You didn't use the radio or TV in bed

This might be a cultural thing, but it is not uncommon to have radios/TVs in the bedroom.

Not only that, but tv and radio have done more than their fair share of damage. I remember 'heroine chic' a la Ally McBeal, had a sister deal with it anorexia over it.

They have been evil.

Facebook and Instagram have been so much worse it would have been inconceivable to me had I not seen it with my own eyes.

Youtube has done its share too, with exploitative kids videos and every kid wanting to become a youtuber.

We need regulation on all of this shit 20 years ago.

Not comparable. FB and Instagram are different in that you see how much attention your friends get, but you don't, and that can damage a child's self esteem.

There're no likes and comments and self and peer generated content on TV.

> However, no previous generation has had the juggernuat that is...

Every single generation for all of time has said this.

they have said this, but please, provide an example of prior generation's FB level juggernaut of manipulation

Every generation thought their next generation's innovation was a juggernaut of manipulation.

People thought rock and roll was the end of the world.

https://www.usi.edu/news/releases/2017/02/rock-n-roll-and-mo...

It was the end of the world, the pre-rock & roll cultural landscape doesn't exist anymore.

I mean sure, the music was just one manifestation of the cultural shifts through the late 60s and 70s, but those people complaining about it were broadly right in that it was a real threat to their way of life, if wrong about their most dire and hyperbolic predictions of the consequences.

That sounds like admitting Instagram is just a new culture that's different to yours, rather than an actual problem then.

Personally I think there's tons that's very positive about Instagram, but even if I didn't, it's not for me to dictate how the next generation chooses to communicate and enjoy themselves.

I'm not 'admitting' anything, just making an observation. Cultural changes can be positive or negative, or a mix of both, or neither.

I do sympathise with the libertarian take on this, if people like and enjoy Instagram that's up to them, but these social media platforms are not neutral channels. They tailor their feeds individually, to users who have limited control of their feed. The platform is in control and they manipulate the feed to serve their own interests.

I'm not going to say therefore we should do this or that thing, I don't know what the right thing is to do.

Would you accept that in principle the level of control platforms have over their feeds, and the incentives they have to do so, potentially opens them up to some level of responsibility for the consequences?

But we still have music that is being considered "the downfall of humanity" PLUS the shenannigans of FB as the cheery on top

How many teenagers committed suicide because of rock and roll?

The issue isn't a changing of culture, it's an issue of mental health. Previous generations "looked down" on things like music because it was a cultural phenomenon they didn't understand or care for. I don't recall any previous generation that was facing massive mental health issues as a result of their cultural changes.

I still think some of the new music being produced is garbage and some is good. I think it's hilarious to see 20-somtehing girls wearing baggy clothing that looks like it's straight out of the early 90s. None of those things have me concerned for their mental well-being. Sanity perhaps*.

*joking

People thought the Beatles' music was making women mentally ill.

It's the same record on repeat.

You aren't even engaging with the ideas in this thread. Do you think everything is hunky dory with the kids today?

‘The kids’ seem better informed, more self-aware, more socially conscious, more creative, than ever. Young people I meet today always amaze me with what they know and think and are trying to achieve. Much better than I was at their age!

Yeah and each successive generation since the introduction of mass media has become more deranged.

I'm not sure, I haven't seen that many millennials advocating for mandatory setbacks and parking spaces at city planning meetings

@GongOfFour it's not about kids getting deranged.

It's about getting damaged self esteem and feelings of worthlessness

That's a different dimension

No generation ever has had this, full-stop. The only thing that comes close is cigarettes and they were fucking awful for people.

A 24/7 lie machine producing and creating lies around them with the people they know as the stars of the lies. It's a constant bombardment of imagery using people they know this has never been seen before because it has literally been impossible. There is no walking away or shutting it off, it happens outside of school and inside school.

I think your eagerness to dismiss this as a non-threat is a luxury of your age, privilege, and your likely enjoyment of the platform. I find it truly incredible you think other generations have experienced this... because it's quite plain none have.

> No generation ever has had this, full-stop

This is a totally different statement. Every generation said the kids are being corrupted. It may be the case that this time the kids really are being corrupted.

The whole point of the thread is that armchair psychology says the same thing it always does: the kids are being corrupted. Actual research says: the kids are being corrupted and that IG is different.

The point is that we need the research.

This is not kids being corrupted. That's the wrong comparison.

It's their self esteem that can get damaged.

Computer gaming addiction, and worrying about likes on FB and elsewhere, and feeling worthless, are in a different dimension than "corrupted clothes" and music.

It's more comparable to getting bullied maybe, than music and fashion.

at one point for a brief moment that was MySpace's claim

In the hot flash of a moment of MySpace's dominance, did it manipulate its users to the extent FB does? My recollection of MySpace was just "holy shit this thing caught on. how do we keep it from falling down?" vs "we own the everybodies, let's see how we can make them feel today"

Yes, and it’s partially true... can you imagine anyone today producing something like Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations? People with smartphones and 24/7 access to news and communications are simply unable to achieve the kind of isolation and downtime required for reflective thought.

We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that [radio, movies, magazines, TV, video games, the internet, cell phones] has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager

Every generation has complained about the impact of some technology on kids. I don't really see a causitive link between teenager happiness and Instagram. It's an easy target to blame for sure. Especially compared with the stark increase in economic insecurity and academic pressure placed on teens these days.

What a lazy argument. I suppose nothing then can have a bad effect on teenagers.

Did you even read my post? I cited two things that I think have a bad effect on teenagers.

Well, radio and cinema paved the way for modern mass propaganda. Sure, as a society we figured mass media out. The experiments involved a world war so. Sometimes I think that we will learn to handle social media, sometimes I worry about the damage social media, either directly or indirectly, do until we learned our lessons.

>Sure, as a society we figured mass media out.

Are you saying this as in mass media is "safe" from manipulation? I would 100% disagree with that. Stating that it only took a world war to figure out mass media seems very odd as a qualifier. Along those same terms, social is leading us to world wide civil wars.

Ah no, quite the opposite. It is simply that we figured out mass media, and the ways it is manipulated and used for manipulation. We have not yet reached that with social media.

Have we though? As an example Fox/CNN/etc all have opinion shows advertised as "news" programming. People listen to these opinions as news. So have we really figured out mass media?

Would it be OK to settle for "we have mass media figured out better than social media"?

Again, I don't think we do. Manipulation of the masses via information is a very easy thing to do. You put someone in a positon of "authority", and people will just fall in line with their views. The vast percentage of people do not want to think about certain things and will just believe what the person in a position of authority says, especially if it is already in the direction of some of their other core beliefs.

Sounds reasonable, I think.

> We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that [radio, movies, magazines, TV, video games, the internet, cell phones] has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager

I hate this absolute relativist stance, "something was supposed to be bad once but is now accepted hence anything that comes to exist must be good".

> Every generation has complained about the impact of some technology on kids.

Don't you think the tech used by people increases at a way faster pace nowadays ?

Do you genuinely think that the invention of books is comparable to giving a 13 years old kid a smartphone with intagram ?

Just look at what's trending on instagram, they're catering to the lowest common denominator. It's the fast food, if not crack cocaine, of entertainment, literal "content" to fill up the "containers" we are.

Again, you can substitute any of the things I mentioned for Instagram in your post and find contemporary people making the same complaint. And yes, I'm sure there were pointing at Luther to decry the evils of the printing press.

Maybe this time all the naysayers are right and Instagram type sites make us worse off. But I doubt it.

>> We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that instagram has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager of your family to see the values that are being taught through it

I wonder why Snapchat is never included in any discussion regarding behavioral experiments.

Facebook/Instagram to Snapchat stories is like Time/Vogue Magazine to tabloids. (This is not to defend FB)

I’m just curious why Snapchat and its stories is never mentioned.

it’s because snapchat is a fraction of the size of facebook, a rounding error by comparison

it happens to be one that i m familiar with, and i see the narcissistic behavior that it encourages. it s also more public afaik

I use both products daily and while Snap is not immune from similar effects it seems to be designed to reduce the problems that IG is facing (body issues, viral misinformation). No one can see how popular you are or aren't unless you choose to reveal it and there's less focus on every post being 'perfect'. It's closer to iMessage on the communications apps spectrum.

the only thing that separates SC from other messaging apps is that SC wanted to make it a social platform with accepting "followers" from any random person rather than people you know. Their use of the snap codes etc to help promote yourself is another example.

> Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company

$X is such a terrible human manipulation $enterprise.

Let's not be naive about the nature of prominent elements in our society. To take action against FB, one would establish precedent to curtail many types of widely-accepted manipulation and exploitation, not to mention corporate machiavellianism. (Machiavelli seems thoroughly benign these days.)

"Social media" is a delivery mechanism for propaganda and surveillance, with a smaller element of actual sociability and collaboration. I am opposed to what we see in social-media business, and I certainly don't think children should be encouraged to use it.

> Is this how you want the next generation to be?

One looks upon the current generations without much admiration.

Maybe, maybe not. We took action against the cigarette companies and it didn't establish that precedent.

Interesting discussion.

The tobacco settlement was a settlement. It didn't put the poisoners out of business. Their poison is still sold in our society. People -- including young people -- are still smoking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...

FB isn't some harmful drug like thalidomide, nor does it cause concussions or cancer. It's going to be a subtle battle to wage, and must take into consideration that all the rotten and stupid behaviours of FB/social-media users -- as well as pathological behaviours -- were observable and demonstrable both outside of and long before social-media business.

It's the implicit rule in our society that children should be protected, but foolish adults can be maximally abused.

Maximally-abused adults are not going to do much for progress or for children. For example, children and young adults are still encouraged to play concussion sports, despite the evidence.

> FB isn't some harmful drug like thalidomide

All addictions go through the same systems in our brain, the same regions releasing the same neurotransmitters. Thus if i'm OK with social addiction then it should be OK to give mild drugs and gambling to kids as well , if we want to be fair. Behavioral studies need to research more the long-term effects of SM use, now that control groups still exist.

I also don't think those behaviors were so frequently observed in the past, we used to call such people sociopaths, nowadays everyone is incentivized to become a sociopath and this is normal?

i didnt speak about taking legal action but at least creating some societal resistance to its manipulative nature. FB is primarily a manipulation tool because it shapes and gamifies the way any kind of information is delivered, from baby pics to shopping and politics. Its social mechanics is a form of drug, yet people normally dont give drugs to their kids, and they prevent them from many addictive behaviors. In any case, kids will grow up and look back to that treadmill as silly. But i keep wondering what do all those people who work for facebook think they are doing

>Let's not be naive about the nature of prominent elements in our society

This is different from what we have seen before.

This is an Emergent system operating at population scale, at speeds we haven't experienced before, where no one can tell you, including FB, what might emerge out the system tomorrow morning.

This is very different from political corrruption or big oil/mil complex/wall st etc playing games. Their games dont run this fast.

> nor does he seem particularly well educated tbh

He did drop out of university in his sophomore year, after all, and has working virtually non-stop on his company since then. Very little time to catch up on reading the classics.

I know there is a whole contingent of people who think it is good enough just to be admitted into a place like Harvard—that the name matters more than the experience—and surely it's Zuckerber's raw talent that has allowed him to build Facebook into what it is today, not anything he learned in school that he couldn't have just taught himself.

But if he had actually completed his education, how might the world be different today? Might just that little bit of wisdom and perspective that we hope a liberal arts education will transmit to its recipients have made him think twice about implementing any of the strategies that Facebook has pursued over the years? Might have some of the horrific societal consequences been anticipated and avoided?

Perhaps. But if Zuckerberg had cared enough about his education not to drop out of school, the Facebook of today probably would never have come to exist at all. A world with a Mark Zuckerberg that completed his education is likely not a world with Facebook in it.

I have no strong feelings on Instagram. That said, i find it interesting how suddenly people care about teen mental health when it aligns with their opinions on big tech. And how little they care about (say) school shooting drills or advertising or education funding or a dozen other issues that affect mental health in kids...

Considering this is a tech-focused website, my guess is it's less that it confirms our pre-existing biases, and more so that the community feels strongly about tech and its impact.

Similarly, if there were a website on gun control, I'm sure they would be more focused on how school shooting drills impact mental health than how Instagram impacts mental health.

From what I see, from the other side of the big pond, there is a party that cares about that stuff to some degree at least. At least for those, caring about Instagram and teen mental health is just a logical consequence.

"One Facebook researcher said a colleague was contacted by the legal team in the past week and was asked about a research report that he published more than two years ago. The legal team appeared to be hunting for any potentially incriminating research that might be shared with reporters, he said.

His manager had advised him not to run any queries searching for specific terms on his old work or do anything that could appear suspicious, he said.

Now, he said he was told, was a good time to take a vacation."

Yeah, what this article doesn’t talk about is the pretend-FBI that Facebook employs as its security team. They go out of their way to intimidate employees and make them think that Facebook is some quasi-governmental institution where leaks will have you end up in a situation similar to Julian Assange.

(Feel free to say hi to those losers, because they’re definitely reading this thread.)

While I agree with a lot of what you’re saying you seem to be a former disgruntled employee and so you don’t seem to be bias free here. You’re also doing a lot of insinuating throughout this thread that were supposed to not question and take your word for.

I thank myself every day that I was never an employee of Facebook. I remember being in boarding school and having kids point to others and say, “he thinks he’s so cool but we all know where his family made their money,” and I never wanted to leave future generations with that baggage.

As for the rest, well... Unfortunately Thiel-Gawker means you’ll never get reporters to give you the factual run-down you need, because they’re scared of being sued. So, until there’s a court record, which will inevitably happen at some point, you’re stuck with insinuations for which you should do your own homework.

https://archive.ph/6J3Db

Quell uproar? What uproar? Has the usage of instagram taken a dive? Or is this just the usual fake outrage pushed by the media that hates Facebook?

Last couple days ~ many articles related to an ex- Top Mind @ Facebook who asserted that they 1) knew effects of insta on young children's minds, 2) used these incantations for profit, 3) tried to hide it, and 4) downplayed the relevance of the previous 3 in order to pursue their yotta-growth strategy at the expense of human civilization.

On the back of the findings from a couple of weeks ago that most human trafficking (measured by active sex trafficking cases) is happening over Facebook neo-forums, and Whatsapp chats, as well as Instagram [1] - the "uproar" you are questioning is the small little uptick in stories that are (IMO) correctly attributing the growth of facebook with the decline of Western values and democracy on the whole.

[1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-sex-trafficking-online...

Isn't it extremely ironic that the media, which almost always has a liberal slant, would complain about "the decline of Western values"? If they want teens to stop killing themselves maybe they should also consider stopping pushing all kinds of degeneracy to them.

Also, the average Joe doesn't care about this. People won't stop using Instagram. All of these stories are nothing but masturbation for intellectuals. Thus this "uproar" is fabricated. It's not based on what people feel, but on what the media elites want them to feel.

I was being a little facetious with the 'decline' rhetoric but like actually. Media is shaping people's minds more rapidly and with self-reinforcing mechanisms that have never occurred before - I just think on a societal level we need to have a frank conversation about expectations and responsibilities.

The world was a lot smaller 75 years ago. But now it's a massive echo chamber. Resonance is causing crazy flare ups of niche parts of social discourse. You can consider SJW movements an example of that, as well as the far-right or incel movements. Large niche populations identifying as new self-identified groups. Social change, or self-reinforcing propaganda (social contagion) manifesting in novel ways after 25% of your life spent in front of a computer?

And because people are disconnected, the real world actions are implicitly given less weight because most actors have spent near a majority of their lives on a machine simulated interaction with someone else instead of with subtler cues that you would get in a true "village"

Not trying to wax poetic, I just really think things are getting weird because of the new hyper-dynamism.

I think CSAM & human trafficking is happening on every platform possible, the only reason may be Facebook might be at the top because they are actively working with law enforcement. But saying crimes are happening because of facebook is dishonest.

As far as I know the only social media company that didn't have any political leanings is Facebook. I think that's the only reason it is getting targeted repeatedly in the political circles and in the media. For me every rich tech/social media companies are same including Google, Apple & Facebook. At least Facebook didn't collude with other companies to suppress salaries of their employees. Open up every company and they would be caught doing same thing as Facebook.

> I think CSAM & human trafficking is happening on every platform possible

Sorry, but that is ridiculous. Only a fraction of platforms allow uploading and sharing of media. Someone wise on HN said they would handle such stuff like toxic waste. Facebook (like others) considers the risks worthwhile. There will be no solution until that changes.

As for your second argument, look up "straw man'.

Perhaps you missed the news about the US Senate hearing on Thursday? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/technology/facebook-senat...

(archive links: https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/... / https://archive.is/newest/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30...)

Good. Facebook should not be able to "quell" anything. It should suffer the full consequences of its actions every single time.

How do you define "full consequences"?

Corporate death penalty plus prison time for relevant people. How wide to cast the net would have to be worked out.

I thought we, the liberals, are mostly aligned that non-violent climes should not be punishable by prison time.

I have never seen a stat or survey that suggests that.

That's been my general observation. I see the following hypocrisy: Murderers and violent crimes should require rehabilitation, better lives in the prison and discussion here tends to be more around pro-forgiveness ideology; whilst I also see liberals suggesting that politicians and corporate leaders should be punished by prison terms.

Apart from my own observation, non-punishment of non-violent crimes is a cornerstone of liberal criminal justice reform (Prop 57, 20, etc.).

I am sorry I wasn't more clear. When I suggest prison time I mean in a rehabilitative facility. And that should be for all crimes that we demand prison time for. I am not for retributive justice.

Which crimes do you think the "relevant people" should be imprisoned for?

I don't think or laws currently have a crime for it, maybe negligence causing harm?

Are you sure that such an offence wouldn't be so absurdly unspecific that almost anyone could end up being tried under it?

Whatever would have happened had their PR department not intervened.

But since it's natural to react in such a way, who's to say that what you're suggesting wouldn't be more than the full consequences?

Just as we have lawyers in court, why shouldn't facebook get to say their side? Artificially limiting their ability to justify their actions doesn't seem reasonable.

The discussion in this thread is indicative as to why companies don't do research like this in the open.

Facebook doesn't do much research like this in the open either. The WSJ articles are largely based on leaked internal private reports. Their employees are leaking them because they're tired of being ignored.

Correct, and the reason is clear. There is no incentive to do research like this in the open. Even asking the question is grounds for being pilloried in the court of public opinion.

I don't like Facebook or Instagram either. (I have a Facebook account that's used for one thing -- college and high-school reunion information. I have added no friends that aren't part of these groups. I'm 58 years old.)

But when I see this:

> , including teenage girls saying that Instagram made them feel worse about themselves.

...I wonder if we really can blame Instagram for this. It's like the old joke "Doctor -- it hurts when I do this."

And I'll even go further to say sometimes a little "competition" is healthy. Maybe seeing a friend who is more athletic or fit than you, or has a better sense of style will inspire you to up your game. If your reaction is to "feel bad about yourself" may its your problem. Are we blaming Instagram for bad parenting?

(I do think an Instagram service specifically for children is a terrible idea.)

Now would be a great time for facebook employees to leak everything.

> Now would be a great time for facebook employees to leak everything.

They're working on stopping that:

> Facebook has also moved to stem future leaks.

> One Facebook researcher said a colleague was contacted by the legal team in the past week and was asked about a research report that he published more than two years ago. The legal team appeared to be hunting for any potentially incriminating research that might be shared with reporters, he said.

> His manager had advised him not to run any queries searching for specific terms on his old work or do anything that could appear suspicious, he said.

> Now, he said he was told, was a good time to take a vacation.

I followed up a 6 months entrepreneurship training, and we had a zoom with a facebook employee teaching us how to make instagram stories (changing the font color, using the boomrang effects etc).

Delete. Your. Social. Media. Now.

Another great investigative piece from the NYT on one of their direct competitors for revenue. At this point it feels like FB's problem is they let the "rabble" in instead of charging $40/mo cover to affluent Westerners.

Cynical take yes, but the volume of NYT has me thinking of the boy who cried wolf.

You’re aware that the NYT collects millions from Facebook in an invite-only revenue deal[1], right? The fact of the matter is, they’re so arrogant that these sort of articles don’t bother them at all. The whole faux-outrage thing and the song-and-dance with regulators is just seen as part of the process.

Smart people need to stop working at Facebook. Wait a few years, and all of our problems will be solved.

1: https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2021/is-f...

Smart people want money and prestige. There is always a perspective to justify anything. They will sleep fine at night.

That’s about as much prestige as working for a tobacco company.

Money, then

"Smart people want money and prestige."

I'd question your definition of the word smart in this context.

Facebook is fine with this weaker definition.

What do you think all those new CS professors want after earning their PhD? What about the PhDs that join the big-tech research labs? Why do you think they joined big tech?

I personally think that people motives are multi factorial. It is simplistic to project societal values on a group of people, especially the CS professors and PhDs, many of which are introverted and lead a quiet and simple lives. They engage in those programs because it is more aligned with their temperaments and personalities, as why joining big-tech research, because that is where the cutting-edge research is being done.

Sure the prestige and money might follow, but for some it is more of a pleasant side effect than the ultimate goal. As an anecdote, I had a math university who was riding the public transport daily beside me, he was so simple and approachable that looking at him and his lifestyle you will never think he makes money or teaching at uni, yet his brain was sharp and his passion to mathematics was clear once he starts teaching. He is too "smart" to occupy his mind with status and vanities of life beyond his basic needs.

Note that I'm not dismissing that many do those things for status and money but I tend to believe that a lot of the leaders in those areas do it because they can.

Not all smart people want money and prestige. Of course, in Silicon Valley, a lot of people assume that if you have money and a network, you must be smart.

When I first arrived in the Valley, a colleague told me:

> One of the reasons so many people stay here and put up with all of the BS is that somewhere along the line, you'll work with somebody incompetent or even stupid and years later, you'll see that they're very, very successful. Which will lead you to believe if somebody that stupid can become that rich, anybody can get rich here if they stick with the game long enough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com