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Comment by ricksunny | Hacker News Reader

And this is where it gets fun - Joe/Jill tech-worker wants to live in Menlo Park. So she works at Facebook. To pay his/her mortgage (or mortgage market-correlated rent), (s)he has to build selective sharing algorithms that emphasize anger but maximize 'engagement' and make lots of revenue for the company. Even though friends & family tell him/her (s)he's being detrimental to the world - it's paying his/her salary, and so the mortgage/rent.

In-group vs. out-group baiting, mayhem, & loss-of-life ensue. (h/t Frances Haugen)

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It is not Facebook's fault human nature engages with outrage. Facebook didn't change anyone. Facebook doesn't make a good person into a bad person.

"In-group vs. out-group baiting, mayhem, & loss-of-life " existed throughout all of human history (and in much larger quantities!) before the age of Facebook. They will continue to exist long after Facebook displays its last newsfeed item.

The longer we try to blame a technology for humanities issues, the longer it will take to address the issues.

> The longer we try to blame a technology for humanity’s issues, the longer it will take to address the issues.

I think it is the people at Facebook are being blamed in the comment above, and not the technology, no?

> Facebook didn’t change anyone.

You’re right that human nature is not Facebook’s fault, however, you cannot logically use that to conclude that Facebook bears no responsibility. Facebook is changing people, and there’s evidence of it. You don’t get to claim human nature when feeding drugs or alcohol to an addict, or when being a bookie for illegal fights, or when pimping. Advertisers don’t get to claim human nature when advertising cigarettes to teenagers. There are plenty of laws on the books to prevent companies from trying to leverage the negative sides of human nature, and there are plenty of companies that are currently using our worst impulses to goad us into spending our time and money with them.

Facebook intends to normalize incredulity at all times, in order to maximize their own profit, and because of the scale of Facebook, it’s causing a net negative in human behavior. Fewer people would be choosing outrage, and less often, if Facebook wasn’t pimping it. Allowing people to form companies with this intention should be illegal, no? Or if you see this as purely human nature and think Facebook is not complicit, how are you suggesting we address the issues?

I should have genericized the company name - I wanted to highlight the housing motivation for tech-workers to do ill. the company-formerly-known-as-fb just provides one very familiar example of this.

We're all constantly tempted to engage in sociopathic but well-remunerating work. (No doubt there is plenty of pro-social well-remunerating work - i.e. I'm not painting that as a zero-sum choice)

The question becomes, 1 - what choice does each of us individually make when faced with such a role, and 2 - more importantly, how easily can a company identify & recruit a sufficiently-qualified-yet-sufficiently-desperate individual for the same role who will go ahead and make such a moral compromise.

>You don’t get to claim human nature when feeding drugs or alcohol to an addict, or when being a bookie for illegal fights, or when pimping.

I think Facebook usage is fundamentally different from drugs/alcohol. A heroin addict can understand heroin is destroying their life, but be physically unable to prevent themselves from shooting up. I am not aware of instances (at any scale, I'm certain examples exist but exceptions don't disprove the rule) where people are aware that Facebook usage is ruining their lives but are incapable of discontinuing their use.

I noticed I wasn't getting anything out of Facebook years ago and decided to stop using it. Similarly, Instagram was fun and engaging until it was not and then I stopped using that too. My experience mirrors that of many people I know. Still more continue to use Facebook and Instagram, and while I personally don't understand how someone could enjoy using either at this point, they are autonomous adults who can choose to use/waste their time with whatever method they prefer. If there emerges a substantive quantity of people who begin to think using Facebook has a negative impact on their lives but who find themselves incapable of putting it down, I think a conversation about the broad approaches society could take to help people detach from these technologies would be appropriate.

>Facebook intends to normalize incredulity at all times, in order to maximize their own profit, and because of the scale of Facebook, it’s causing a net negative in human behavior. Fewer people would be choosing outrage, and less often, if Facebook wasn’t pimping it. Allowing people to form companies with this intention should be illegal, no?

I'm not completely averse to the idea of making something illegal if a majority of people find it to be a net negative. We just have so many aspects of society (broadly in many cases, but I can only speak specifically to American society) where profits supersede general welfare that it comes off insanely hypocritical to point to Facebook specifically while not addressing any of the others.

If you're an advocate of making Facebook illegal because it intends to maximize incredulity/outrage for profit then you would also need to make news programs (both national and local) illegal. You would need to make Twitter illegal. You would need to make YouTube illegal. Most (all?) large scale internet platforms depend on milking outrage for profit. News programs do the same. I'd be interested in having conversations about making all of them illegal. I would not be interested in a conversation about making one of them illegal.

But if we are going to be honest about why Facebook is becoming the public whipping boy, it's because Boomers who voted for Donald Trump used Facebook to talk loudly about why they like Donald Trump.

> I am not aware of instances (at any scale, I'm certain examples exist but exceptions don't disprove the rule) where people are aware that Facebook usage is ruining their lives but are incapable of discontinuing their use.

"Ruining their lives" is likely a bit too strong of language, but the potential negative influence of Facebook and complete lack of privacy is certainly becoming something of common knowledge, and yet people continue to use it. As a society you can make a pretty strong argument that it's been a net negative, and yet we're apparently unable to do anything about it. The whole enterprise of maximizing engagement positions some of the smartest minds in tech to maximize qualities of addiction.

In other words, there seem legitimate parallels to draw.

> But if we are going to be honest about why Facebook is becoming the public whipping boy, it's because Boomers who voted for Donald Trump used Facebook to talk loudly about why they like Donald Trump.

This seems a dishonest oversimplification. You can point to the 2016 election as a tipping point perhaps in how we view Facebook, but it was not because boomers were talking about why they liked Trump, it was because we began to realize at scale just how powerful manipulation (by state actors) on these platforms can be.

>the potential negative influence of Facebook and complete lack of privacy is certainly becoming something of common knowledge, and yet people continue to use it

People using something that you think has a bad influence on them does not mean it's an addiction. They are simply making a different choice than you have made.

You can't (or, shouldn't, I suppose) make something illegal purely because you don't like that people use it.

Having watched a large number of interviews with addicts I am starting to realise that they know exactly what they are doing and choose to continue doing it. To avoid feeling what they otherwise would be feeling. Addicts who have been clean for months relapse because of a boyfriend walking out etc.

I recently deleted facebook. I hadn't actively used the platform in years, but actually deleting it was a difficult decision because there's some people I interact with using Facebook (but don't care enough about to connect through other means). I get invited to parties through facebook. I invite people to parties through facebook.

The network effect is part of the drug. I know it's bad for me. I know it's bad for society. That provided the push for me to delete it, but it didn't make it less painful.

I still have instagram, for similar reasons as to why I had facebook. It's going to be difficult to delete that for the same reason, especially since I still somewhat actively use the product itself.

Like drugs, it's easier for some people to quit than others. You shouldn't lessen other people's experiences and assume that everyone can quit as easily as you.

Most people aren't advocating for Facebook to be illegal, but want some of their practices to be illegal. Yes, this should also apply to Youtube, Twitter, etc. My feeling is that the recommendation systems should be removed, and that they should only be allowed to show you content you've explicitly subscribed to.

Facebook is the whipping boy because they've expanded knowing they're doing harm, having internal research that shows they're doing harm, and ignoring the consequences. Twitter is as much to blame for Trump as Facebook. Youtube is as to blame for QAnon as Facebook. All of them have algorithms that make people more politically extreme.

> Facebook didn't change anyone.

It certainly does. Humans are as much a function of the environment as they are of their genes. Different generations have clearly different value systems.

If what you said were true, parents wouldn't try so hard to put their children in healthy environments, because an environment "doesn't make a good person into a bad person."

> The longer we try to blame a technology for humanities issues...

Again, by this logic, parents should not ever restrict how much screen time their children have. Nor never blink an eye no matter what websites their children spend lots of time on.

Children do not have fully formed brains. Society has decided the best way to mitigate the negative consequences stemming from decisions made by children with brains which have not fully developed is to allow parents the authority to make decisions for them.

If an adult wants to spend all day in front of a computer screen, they can choose to do so. If an adult wants to spend all day on Facebook, they can choose to do so.

If you believe Facebook would turn you into a bad person, you are well within your right to not use Facebook.

I don't use Facebook, but that's because it's an unenjoyable experience. Not because I think it's some evil hypnosis device.

Think about inflation increasing at 3% annually on average, with no accompanying deflation, and with no accompanying increases in wages for most of the population.

A dollar is presently worth half as much as in 1990. A 100,000 a year job in 1990 is equivalent to a 50,000 a year nowdays.

Every year the noose gets slightly tighter, the slack is slightly reduced, the competition is slightly increased, society become slightly more cutthroat, people are forced to do slightly crazier and crazier things to make ends meet and sacrifice their morals just a little bit more, work just a few more hours to make the same money.

Then new generations are born into a world that's much more competitive than their parents world 20 years previous, and start out thinking this level of competitiveness and craziness is normal.

And the water in the frog pot inter-generationally continues to get hotter.

We're literally on a slow unstoppable pathway to a third world country and no one even realizes it.

Or possibly creating the conditions for war.

I came to the same conclusion after going back to a middle class country with my parents in early high school. On the salary of two public school teachers which is middle class though above average, life was not so different from in Canada on the salary from the same profession. Better in some ways, worse in others, overall only slightly worse.

That would have been insane a few decades earlier, and it's not just because of improving third world countries, but also because as you said the noose tightened - everything became more expensive, especially rent, working hours increased, two salaries became necessary, etc..

> with no accompanying increases in wages for most of the population

Take a look at the median US household income over the last 40 years.

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

Median wage and median household income are two separate things.

Median household income can mean two parents are working...

Take a look at inflation adjusted wage growth for a singular person over time.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2...

Fair enough, household income is not the same as wages, but the data that you link to shows wages have kept the pace with inflation, contrary to what you were saying.

Good point. I stand corrected. I grabbed the first legit looking domain on Google (pew) for a reference thinking it matched something else I read and proved myself wrong.

Good catch.

So apparently the fed allowing inflation rates to increase is also paralleled by wage increases somehow? I'm guessing due to the stimulation of the economy by the inflation?

Inflation is an increase in the price level and wages are a price too. This means, in principle, we should expect wages to increase at the same rate as other prices, all else equal. In practice wages will not always move with inflation perfectly, because again wages are prices and prices are influenced by demand and supply, in addition to changes in the price level.

THEN this person has to hide/digest the guilt of their actions, knowing that they are immoral but still required by society. By hiding that guilt, this person becomes disgusted by people who don't commit immoral acts to pay their mortgages, since every good action reminds them of what they're doing wrong.

Haha, dude. I hate Facebook too, but you’re kidding yourself if anyone there thinks they’re evil. The employees just focus on how easy it is for non tech savvy people to share vacation and kid photos across the globe with each other through their service, and go to bed in their $1.2M condos with a smile every night

yeah thats why there isn't a string of leaks and whistleblowers, and even former upper management decrying what is going on at fb. oh wait..

It's not about being "evil". People are very adept at making convenient self-serving justifications on-the-fly.

For example the very same liberal parents who chastise conservatives for promoting racial inequality will cry murder when there are attempts to racially desegregate the school their child attends by changing admissions, and they'll come up with the perfect rational for this contradiction after the fact. They will put their child first, regardless of the fact that their child is already far ahead because of socio-economic advantages, and that the disadvantaged kid even with the better education is still going to be disadvantaged compared to their kid.

It's even worse in a culture and economic system where selfishness is deemed a virtue.

Here on HN, you can see such heavily self-serving bias in discussions like this, where the emphasis is entirely on the positive aspects and negative concerns are shot down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28924751.

Amen

I'd say it's fair to call the process by which people justify doing bad things as "evil". I just wanted to correct the notion that Facebook employees think of themselves as villains.

Facebook is connecting people with each other.

Amazon/Microsoft/Google are collecting usage data to improve their products. Amazon and Microsoft think it's such a benign thing to do that there's no need at all to allow people to see or opt out of this collection. Google thinks that providing visibility into what they're doing is more than enough to make up for it. Apple thinks that making it explicitly opt-in is enough to justify it.

Defense contractors are keeping Americans safe and making the world a safer place.

High-frequency trading firms are providing liquidity.

Landlords are "housing providers"

Etc etc

But whether or not you call it "evil", it is a moral failure, and deep down most people, including Facebook employees, know what they're doing is wrong. They look the other way, or shrug and say Everyone else is doing it, why should I lose out?, etc. Likewise most Google employees aren't proud that their high salaries are paid by advertising and the personal data collection for it -- deep down they know its a deal with the devil.

Where do you draw the line? You could probably feed a bunch of people in Africa if you worked at a nonprofit, lived a spartan lifestyle, and donated most of your salary to charity. Is it evil that you aren't doing that?

Where you draw the line defines what kind of person you are, your values and your commitment to them.

The reason shows like Squid Games is popular is that it's all about where people draw lines.

Morality is all about choices, and your true morality isn't what you say, but what you do.

The interesting things is that the people who are most committed, who are unwilling to compromise their values even if it means sacrifice*, are often invisible. They don't make waves. They just do the right thing quietly. There are very smart people who don't make a lot of money, who choose to become teachers, or find some other uncompromised occupation. Other people see them as crazy, or naive idealists. Our culture really tends to look down on those people, since material wealth is how everyone is measured.

btw, I left my career in the tech industry and my high salary nine years ago, to work on social justice, to write, and to work with children. There are costs that don't bother me at all, like my ultra simple life living in a run-down rental. There are costs that hurt, but those have to do with living in a society where eschewing the benefits of capitalism isn't popular. Some analogies I've used: Imagine being a white person having 2021 views of race and racism, but you suddenly wake up in 1850, where even Abraham Lincoln is a white supremacist (he was!). People will shun you for voicing your 2021 views. You will be an outcast in the dominant white world. You might be able to find a home among black people, except they are slaves and will be afraid to associate with you. Or here's perhaps an easier analogy: Imagine that you one day wake up and feel deeply you can't eat meat anymore. It's your conscience. You deeply feel it is wrong. So you become vegan. Now imagine this was 50 years ago before veganism started to gain any traction. Again you would be isolated. People will look at you weird.

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