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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

HN has a very clear anti-Facebook bias. It doesn’t matter what the news story is - If it has Facebook in the headline the comment section will be half low-effort comments from people bragging about quitting Facebook years ago or snide remarks about Zuckerberg. They rarely last long on the front page because they seem to trigger HN’s quality filters very quickly.

So why would any Facebook employees volunteer to be part of that? If you say anything neutral or even positive about Facebook as a non-employee your comment will attract rapid downvotes here. Imagine commenting as an employee on the inside of the company.

FWIW, I know several people at FB who also comment on HN. They have no interest in discussing FB on HN because we all know exactly how the discussion will go regardless of the veracity of any claims or content.

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Three quarters of adults believe FB is making society worse[1]. Maybe a moral panic has taken hold of the world, or maybe the world has recognized that FB is the business equivalent of the Paperclip Maximizer, optimizing growth metrics with zero regard for actual human happiness and societal well-being. In any case, FB--er, Meta-- doesn't have a HN problem, Meta has a national public opinion problem.

1. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/10/business/cnn-poll-facebook/in...

Now do the same polls in the same questions for TikTok, Twitter, and the like, you'll have same results.

Clearly the campaign against FB is to get Zuck to censor more, the media lackeys at CNN are on the case!

> zero regard for actual human happiness and societal well-being.

You said nothing actionable. "Actual human happiness." Lol. "Societal well-being" Whoa.

Have you compared their happiness output levels to other social media companies?

Where's the study that the societal well-being meters for Twitter are better than FB?

Form a clear criticism of what you want FB to do. I assume it has something to do with censoring dissent?

-- edit --

Cute, you linked a Wikipedia article about whataboutism. Linking to it doesn't make it relate to this though.

Please expand on your criticisms so we can debate them, everything you said is subjective and obscure so I'm trying to figure out what exactly you are taking issue with, hence the other social media services offered as a comparison. Do they do that too in your opinion? Is it Facebook only? Did you see them sacrificing babies? Do you want them to censor more?

Comparisons are how you find contradictions.

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

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

(look I can do that too!)

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

-- edit --

Them: Facebook is bad You: What about Twitter and TikTok ?

I'm pointing out that you are not refuting their point while still defending Facebook.

It seems you believe social medias are the way they are because that's all they can be.

It shows a lack of imagination and understanding of how they influence each others rather than compete to the benefit of users and society.

I commented this on an HN post about FB 2 years ago in response to a comment much like yours. Pasting it here:

I don't understand accusations of whataboutism. They oftentimes seem hypocritical: accusing someone of whataboutism is as relevant (and therefore, by its own logic, as rhetorically valid) as the thing it seeks to criticize.

Why is exposing double standards and hypocrisies via a relevant example not a valid form of argumentation?

They have no point to refute. What specific point are you talking about? I've been trying to pull it out.

I believe social media behemoths have been biased in their moderation / censorship and they should make their mod logs public.

That's a specific criticism and suggestion. What is your specific criticism and suggestion?

Crying whataboutism is a cop-out, you only replied to my comparisons. I said much more, including questions trying to drill their point out of them.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

> HN has a very clear anti-Facebook bias.

Is it a bias if it is a representative sample of coverage of the company from around the web?

Are there positive stories about the company being posted that somehow don’t make it to HN? I never, ever come across anything positive about the company - HN or elsewhere.

What’s the positive angle that we are missing?

I think it is biased, because generally HN is more rational and level headed than media coverage and popular opinion.

For example, in the US >20% of people are unwilling to take a covid vaccine, citing reasons ranging from fear of unknown side effects, to intentional government orchestrated mass steralization, to nanobots controlling their minds. I doubt more than 5% of the HN crowd is anti-vaccine, and those that are probably stick to the more realistic objections (side effects).

On the other hand, rationality is basically thrown out the window during discussions about FB (and to a lesser extent other big companies). All of a sudden, large conspiracies with thousands of people keeping silent for years are possible, impossibly sophisticated mind control technology exists, pure-evil or amoral actors pull on hidden strings to control society, etc.

By all means, if there are stories about the positive impacts of FB on society, please post them! I don’t think HN would downvote those the same way that it would download Anti-vax articles. I think pro-FB articles aren’t posted because they don’t exist because FB is legitimately a bad actor with no moral compass. No conspiracy needed.

You're right they would not, because it's not possible to downvote posts on HN :P

In reality, people aren't interested in those posts, so nobody upvotes them and they die. Also most content like that would be created by FB itself, and even I don't want to read self-aggrandizing crap.

> For example, in the US >20% of people are unwilling to take a covid vaccine, citing reasons ranging from fear of unknown side effects

Somewhat related: I remember seeing some stats where ~25% of Americans thought there's a 10% change you die if you get Covid...

> It doesn’t matter what the news story is

Alternatively, news about FB is overwhelmingly negative, possibly because they actually are that bad.

If you go down the to stories: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=facebook

it's virtually all either FB doing something unethical or someone taking action against FB (because they're unethical).

I find it funny that Tiktok which is basically equally toxic, but universally praised on HN. Most people don't even know who the founder is for a social media company on-par with Facebook and working on massive scale.

The love of tik tok is odd to me. Seems to be the exact same. And the ads I see on Twitter for it basically amount to sex appeal for a lot of it. Not unlike Hollywood it general show business.

For this thread, though, I'm not sure the negative slant is enough to explain it. There is a ton of negative on most every topic.

I don’t know about everyone else but in my eyes, FB is more of a concern because they are much more massive and are more strongly viewed by the voting public.

Privacy, algorithmization of feeds, etc. are important to me but I’m much more afraid of opinions being seeded now, which get turned into votes, which determines the people we elect, which in turns determines the type of policies we enact, which then plays out in 5-20 years, when I’m still alive and also the people who come after me.

For example, we have to deal with the TSA now because of a series of many unfortunate events that transpired since WW1. You can’t go back and undo certain mistakes.

Facebook is unfortunately where a lot of people seem to get their news and that is scary. Primary sources should be people’s news sources.

But... I'm not sure why tik tok can't do the same things? It is almost certainly being used by the same organizations for recruitment and general reach.

If not, why not?

I get a general fear of social media. And I am not trying to give anyone a pass. I don't see a distinction, though.

I never find my TikTok stream to be negative or divisive. I only find my FB feed to be negative and divisive. That’s the difference in my mind.

> Through that one powerful signal, TikTok can learn your most hidden interests and emotions, and drive users of any age deep into rabbit holes of content—in which feeds are heavily dominated by videos about a specific topic or theme. It’s an experience that other social-media companies like YouTube have struggled to stop.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-algorithm-sex-drugs-mino...

NYTimes would never do a serious negative story about Tiktok because it goes against their political bias. It matches exactly with HN's bias. Here is a praise-worthy Tiktok story that boggles the mind: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/10/arts/TIK-TOK....

It is all partisan and not very objective. I think all social media is terrible for the society.

did you mean "anti-Meta bias"?

> HN has a very clear anti-Facebook bias. So why would any Facebook employees volunteer to be part of that?

I mean... refusing to look at things you don't like or don't fit your narrative/content bubble is pretty much the reason Facebook exists. Stands to reason it applies to HN too.

I view being a contrarian as a positive thing for the society. Casting it in the light of FB's toxic culture feels like an insidious, contemptful and oppressive stance to take. Facebook/Twitter/Tiktok culture has nothing to do with "not fitting in the narrative". If you want the society fit in the narrative, you'll find that well exercised in oppressive regimes such as North Korea.

For the most part, HN does a great job of criticism and opposing viewpoints when it comes to technical topics. But for political viewpoints, it is a cohesive, tightly bound and impenetrable monoculture primarily echoing Silicon Valley zeitgeist.

Could you please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments? You've unfortunately done it a lot and we're trying for something else here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough. It wasn't meant to come across as flamebaity but I can see how it might. Apologies.

I don't know if this was reason it existed, but last I have been on Facebook, I got to see mostly content I do not like nor want to see, between suggested dumb videos to ads for product I don't need... a pretty different experience than the one I have on HN

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