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Comment by jasondigitized | Hacker News Reader

Now do the same for CNN, Fox News and every other sophisticated media company who have all created Skinner boxes to get more eyeballs. The entire system needs a hard examination.

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This is straight-up deflection. It makes sense to start somewhere, so why not the biggest player in town? That would be Facebook, with billions of active users. None of those cable channels are even close to 100s of millions of viewers.

I mean, I think this should be an 'and' thing, not an 'or' thing. Don't deflect from FB. But when FB's dirty laundry is aired, air these other groups' too.

Easier to set a precedent against one org and use that to enforce good behavior towards other orgs in the future. It's how we've always gone after corrupted industries in this country. If you go after every bad egg at once you aren't going to win.

I don't think we're disagreeing.

Main stream media and social media are recursive.

Social media shares main stream media stories.

Main stream media stories use social media as sources.

Social media shares social media source as story.

But which of the those two have made doing the harmful amplification for profit a business model?

The main stream media of course. FB makes money on ads.

FB's media is organic from users. The MSM is orchestrated.

And how do they make money on ads?

Considering the claim that FB committed securities fraud based on the evidence we've seen so far is pretty laughable, it appears her testimony is designed to encourage new laws and regulations for (social in particular) media companies. As such a conversation about the industry at large and its practices makes sense.

None of those cable channels are even close to 100s of millions of viewers. That is not fair at all. TV networks are local, there are only 330M ppl in the US. Also, you are not counting how many viewers TV networks and their employees reach via FB/Twitter.

No, calling out more fundamental and broker problem is the first step to address the root problem.

Otherwise, you are just whacking moles, and pretending that one day there would be no more moles...

Or rather, you indeed are OK with a constant number of moles indefinitely. That's OK. But the premise of the parent is obviously that the moles are growing too numerous and are not staying constant at all...

Oh come on, they’re not comparable.

If you turn on CNN or Fox News right now I know exactly what you’ll see. Because it’s exactly what I’d see if did the same.

What’s on your Facebook feed right now? No clue. How are different types of content weighted? No way of knowing.

Facebook holds a lot more secrets than any traditional media company about what they’re showing their users. Leaks from FB are much more valuable.

What will you see? 24-7, Emotionally charged "Breaking News" which is simply a different fruit from the same horrible tree. CNN and Fox News are just using different methods based on the data they have available which comes from focus groups, Nielsen, and a whole cottage industry that most people are unaware of.

> What will you see? 24-7, Emotionally charged "Breaking News" which is simply a different fruit from the same horrible tree.

Right, but we know what they are showing people. We have no idea what Facebook is showing people. There's no equivalence there. Yes, both are bad, but in the context of these leaks equating Facebook to CNN is delusional deflection.

It’s not deflection. You are pointing out magnification. It’s the same concept. Facebook just has far greater granularity in their ability to target and deliver personalized content. CNN and Fox News is still segmenting content and targeting users. That’s why they can both coexist. I am not arguing that Facebook isn’t far more sophisticated. Newspapers < CNN < CNN.com < Facebook.

You're doubling down on your whataboutism and deflection. The key difference between Facebook's "news" feed any mainstream television and print news is visibility.

If I record every minute of cable news and subscribe to a bunch of newspapers I can tell you the exact contents of each. If any of them wants to espouse a narrative it's pretty easy to see just by looking at what they've aired/printed.

That's not possible to do with Facebook, unless you are Facebook. Every users' "news" feed is slightly different based on their behavior/relationships tracked on Facebook and through their massive advertising network (off Facebook).

I put "news" in quotes because Facebook tunes the contents of their feeds for monitization rather than any semblance of truth or accuracy. Facebook is awash in literal fake news, as in completely made up "news" articles, because they peak in some engagement metric.

An actual news program on cable or non-opinion news article in a paper can't get away with outright lies. They also would be liable for outright defamation.

For all the ills and failings of cable news and newspapers they are nowhere near as toxic or fundamentally broken as Facebook's "news" feeds. They're not even in the same ballpark which makes your whataboutism really puzzling. Do you honestly not see the difference?

You are pointing out scale and impact which I agree with. I am pointing out economics. Both have incentives which are driving outcomes that are undermining civility and cooperation.

The scale and impact are an important distinction which you're ignoring in order to conflate two unlike things.

A cable news network has very little ability to perform dog wagging. While they can use incendiary lead-ins for stories or hire divisive commentators (not news people) to get viewers to stick around while they run ads, they can't really drive anyone to buy a Chevy truck or shop at Target. Cable news also has to toe a line of legality with respect to defamation, see for instance Dominion's cases against Newsmax and OANN. For as bad as you think cable news networks or newspapers are, they do have some accountability.

Facebook on the other hand has little to no accountability for "news" they push. These leaks show they literally know that peddling falsehoods and divisive content is harmful but choose to do it because it makes more money. They also have the ability to wag the dog because their algorithms stick people in echo chambers that just reenforce negativity. They can and do drive people to radicalize because incendiary content drives "engagement" which makes Facebook more money.

Suggesting Facebook and cable news (or newspapers) are somehow comparable in their toxicity is a bit ridiculous. You're also doing so in a thread about a Facebook whistleblower. When a CNN or Fox News whistleblower leaks a bunch of documents saying they knowingly aired false or defamatory content to make more money, you can tell about them all you want.

I suspect the reaction from a lot of companies is going to be to lock down internal documents under a need-to-know security model.

Easier said than done though. My wife works for a massive company that now makes you classify every email as external, internal, or confidential and after numerous emails, training and constantly calling people out on things, nobody can still figure out the difference (and thus marks everything far less secure than it is), despite it being trivial.

That's pretty much what happened after Snowden, everything is much more locked down, access is tightly controlled and employees are more closely monitored.

That's why I'm glad he released as much as he did, any followup whistle-blower leak is bound to be much much harder.

That also happened somewhat under Sabanes-Oxley and HIPAA. Documents that might have once sat in an unlocked filing cabinet are now locked in vaults.

Well if the precedent from this is any employee can leak whatever they want, violating their NDA and claim the company is committing securities fraud by having secrets why wouldn't they?

And greatly reduce their efficiency

That helps the public good too.

My tinfoil theory about the outage yesterday is that it was done on purpose, as a way to create an opportunity to "hide" as many internal documents as possible without anyone noticing.

First reaction: That really is tinfoil, if you don't include how the outage would help in that process..

Second reaction: Huh, employees were locked out of their offices, VPN was surely down, yeah if there was someone inside the data centre deleting files off their Intranet no one from outside the data centre would be able to notice, due to the lack of connectivity.

But it would have to be a very good scrubbing and people would notice things missing anyway, "Hey wasn't there used to be a PDF here..?". Hah, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole

Man, you could delete random 200 documents I worked on at least 3 months ago and I would only notice if I followed a broken link...

whataboutism...

those deserve their own attention on their own merits.

But not directly relevant to this discussion, particularly if it defers or interferes with the FB discussion specifically.

The system's imploding.

i disagree

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