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Comment by numair | Hacker News Reader

In case you think this is some esoteric issue involving kids’ stuff — keep in mind that the founder of TikTok was one of the most balanced voices within China, who argued that the country needed to engage with the West in a healthier manner. Zuckerberg et al and their incessant lobbying for that TikTok ban basically vaporized that guy’s pull within China, which eliminated a super-valuable asset for the West.

So, yeah, Facebook continues to be the single greatest threat to Western society outside of Russia. These are serious issues with serious consequences.

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I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I think it's probably overstating the impact. We've seen China exert a huge amount of influence in Chinese tech space and really clamp down loosened controls. Maybe this was the excuse Chinese press gave, but I think this would have likely happened anyways given the power and direction Xi is moving China in. See their moves in the tutoring, construction, crypto, and e-commerce spaces too

> Facebook continues to be the single greatest threat to Western society outside of Russia.

this statement is both hyperbolic and naive at the same time.

Why is it hyperbolic and why is it naive?

It was a tool used to influence elections in the United States, I can't think of any other entity that has had a larger negative impact on our society recently (maybe coronavirus?).

> It was a tool used to influence elections in the United States

Are you talking about fake Russian accounts buying $100k worth of facebook ads in 2016? That constitutes 0.00625% of total spending (1.6 bn) on the 2016 election. Or are you talking about something else?

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/facebook-sold-100000-ads-fak...

The IRA Russian troll farm had 1000 employees in 2015. They used Facebook as a tool to influence elections in the United States.

This is very well documented https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

And I don’t know why the sister comment about Facebook being used to commit genocide in Myanmar was flagged and killed. This is also well documented by eg the NYT and the UN. It was also admitted by Facebook itself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...

It swings in every direction. Not just what they allow in terms of ads but what gets suppressed, promoted, shown/reshown. Visibility and not.

Nothing in Russia is in any sense a "great threat to Western society".

They have recently threatened to murder all of western society with nuclear weapons should it choose to intercede to prevent the mass murder they are presently perpetrating upon the old folks women and children of one of their neighbors while discussing the possibility of perpetrating further mass murders against its other neighbors.

The only saving grace is that this is probably but not certainly a bluff.

I don't think anyone on my TV really believes that nuclear war is a thing that can happen? If they thought it could happen, surely they wouldn't constantly argue for escalating conflict? Surely they don't really want to melt everyone's children? That seems very antisocial?!

Ukraine is not part of "western society". Numerous Western politicians have had off-mic moments in which they admitted that dangling NATO membership was only ever meant to bait Ukraine and Russia into a ruinous proxy war. Which has now occurred.

> Numerous Western politicians have had off-mic moments in which they admitted that dangling NATO membership was only ever meant to bait Ukraine and Russia into a ruinous proxy war. Which has now occurred.

Please don't spread conspiracy theories.

Just because Zelensky said it, don't assume it's a "conspiracy theory". [0] Or, for that matter, that theories about conspiracies aren't true. Power-hungry bastards do conspire, regularly.

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-puti...

Arguably Facebooks help in spreading misinformation is to a large degree behind the Republican success in 2016. Tipping an unpopular president from too unpopular to win the popular vote to one which could at least win the electoral college.

This ultimately led to gross mismanagement of the pandemic when it was most vital leading to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

In order to have a larger negative effect on society each and every Facebook engineer would have to personally conduct a mass shooting.

Edit: In support of this position consider that the 2016 election was arguably lost entirely based on 78,000 votes in the rust belt. Basically based on 1/20th of 1% of voter turn out.

Some sources put the number of unnecessary covid deaths in 2020 at around 200k deaths.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/lancet-study-40-...

Other sources put the number of software engineers at around 8850

https://www.daxx.com/blog/development-trends/number-software...

The number of unnecessary covid deaths per Facebook software engineer is ergo about 23.

Looking at stats from the FBI from 2000 - 2018 884 were killed in 277 incidents meaning the average shooter only managed to kill about 3 people.

https://www.fbi.gov/about/partnerships/office-of-partner-eng...

Nearly every nut bar I know personally who is radicalized was first radicalized on facebook before sometimes moving on to other platforms.

Facebook engineers by the numbers are actually far more effective at killing folks than the average shooter. Your choice of employment isn't moral nor is it morally neutral to just write code. Individuals in high demand who could work nearly anywhere ought to consider working somewhere more ethical.

Hyperbolic for sure but I do not think it is naive at all. Facebook has proven many times over they are basically the Mafia of Silicon Valley and nothing they say should be trusted or taken at face value.

That being said there are many other threats to western society and while many or most of those will exploit Facebook as much as they can for influence they will continue to exist should Facebook fall.

The Engineering wage raises during 2010-2014 are a huge part due to Facebook back then entering a biding war for talent, which google had to counter which raised comps for everyone. Also, after 2015 you had more companies hitting the fray (Uber, Airbnb, etc). If it wasn't for Facebook, the compensation industry wise would look something like MSFT's comp (pretty low in general).

So, for one thing, Meta / Facebook has been great at raising the comps for engineering in SV.

You seem to be conflating Western society with engineering wages in SV. They are not the same, and what's good for one can very much be bad for the other!

I guess you were getting at the Mafia analogue in GP. Perhaps that was an unfortunate analogue, but GP's points were valid, not native.

I think the reason people hate on Facebook here is that they do things like spread misinformation and lies about elected officials and current events, damaging democracy. It is annoying that Apple and Google underpaid already-well-paid people, but not a huge issue for society in general.

I was not commenting on that - more on Facebook's business practices in general.

As for Silicon Valley collusion re: wages in my opinion the agreement that George Lucas / Steve Jobs / Ed Catmull / Others made in the late 90s / early 2000s to screw over tech workers and specifically VFX workers (they were afraid of a VFX union) was worse and flys under the radar way more than it should. VFX workers to this day continue to get screwed by this totally illegal collusion (and there was a large settlement of "unknown amount" at one point).

edit: After looking into the above lawsuit we may actually be talking about the same thing - although it did dramatically screw the VFX industry more than tech. And I refuse to credit Facebook with helping with that - it was the exposure of that collusion that ended it.

That does not mean Google gets a pass and I don't think my original comment implies that at all

I’m still blown away how true this is, especially given how overwhelmingly vital VFX is to film & TV revenue now - Star Wars, MCU.

It was a combination of both the lawsuit and Facebook. Had the lawsuit happened without Facebook bidding for top talent, it would've taken decades for compensation to rise to the rate they are now because there was no other company able or willing to attract top talent away from Google, Apple, etc.

Right now, the same thing is happening thanks to Amazon. They're having a hard time hiring SWE's due to the terrible reputation, so they've increased their compensation sharply to attract talent. Facebook followed suit since they are also finding it difficult due to its horrible public perception right now.

The result is that other major tech players are upping their compensation to continue to compete for top talent. It's wonderful.

Uh society is more important than SV engineering wages, full stop. You’re looking at a single tree and ignoring the forest of manipulation FB has done to society.

Regardless of what people think about Facebook or Tiktok, this kind of behaviour is anti competitive.

If Facebook did this to Tiktok, you can bet it tried similar tactics against Snapchat.

LOL. The single greatest threat to Western society is Western society itself. Declining fertility, mass immigration at the border but brutally hard immigration for high skill workers, civil wars over pointless culture war issues, and the destruction of the social norms that once held us together. But go blame Facebook if you want.

Facebook is a major contributor to the pointless cultural war obsession and the erosion of pro-social norms though.

So are the telephone and families getting together for the holidays.

Surely you realize how much of a stretch that is. If you wanted to say broadcast television or radio you might have a point but analogizing an algorithmic feed tuned to stoke outrage to families spending time together is just a farcically bad faith approach.

Your telephone company doesn't choose to filter a selection of incoming callers including not only friends but friends of friends of friends in order to expose you to the folks who will keep you on the phone the longest which accidentally turns out to be the folks that play on your existing deep seated anxieties and deficiencies.

Declining fertility is probably one part bad health and one part inequality. It has zero parts to do with too many brown folks coming to live in our nation.

It is a logical absurdity to suppose that folks coming to America are a threat to the integrity of western civilization while those who descended from immigrants are part of it. We are all of us who grew up in the west and who have chosen to come live here a part of western civilization. There is no them we are all us.

> one of the most balanced voices within China

Except TikTok, like Facebook, is not available in China. The 抖音 platform cannot see posts from tiktok.

They're talking about the founder. You'd know this if your reading comprehension skills were up to par with your knowledge of what country TikTok isn't in. Otherwise, that tidbit is tangential at best, and doesn't provide any evidence to the contrary of the quoted claim.

> Facebook continues to be the single greatest threat to Western society outside of Russia.

No it’s not. The greatest threat to any society is its own ineptitude.

Doesn't facebook make it a lot easier for inept viewpoints and thoughts to gain traction and impact society more easily? Facebook is the gun, not the trigger man.

Facebook is just a public square

More like a public pyramid where the people with the most divisive opinions are pushed to the top and given the largest megaphones

Facebook is a propaganda and mind control ( that is what marketing is ) machine. Its far more than a public square.

For many Chinese, the US has showed its true face in the past couple of years. Unfortunately this digs a lot deeper than Facebook.

Facebook is guilty of poor management; involving themselves in partisan politics in order to get a competitor banned is an incredible stupid risk to take.

The US hasn't changed - it's always been a country of crazy people and smart people and zealots and honest, hard working folks. There's no such thing as our "true face" - American was populated by the radicals and risk-takers from other, older societies. We've always been a nation of slightly insane people.

Absurd, of course there is a "true face." Whether the country has stayed the same or not has nothing to do with it, this is a discussion about how the US is perceived internationally. We have been flooding the rest of the world with its messaging and cultural exports for decades. In many places, China included, people genuinely looked up to the US. That has changed meaningfully across the globe.

Respectfully, Americans don't care at all what other countries think of America.

China had their chance to challenge America in the 21st Century, but they threw it away the moment Xi became too obsessed with his own power and ambitions. The focus on building a Han ethnostate is costing them dearly, both in the eyes of the world and in terms of population growth. Without immigration, China's demographic window is closing rapidly and they will grow old before they grow rich.

"Facebook continues to be the single greatest threat to Western society outside of Russia"

This is ridiculous hyperbole.

And TikTok, as a Chinese company whereupon they can be compelled to do the bidding of the CCP at any time, in whatever terms, remains problematic.

It doesn't matter what the 'founder' thinks.

Do you apply this logic to all companies not in the US? Do you worry that the American Honda Motor Company is a sleeper cell for Japanese state interests?

oh my. are we equating Japan with China?

Is it bizarre to compare countries with other countries generally, or only when one is on the official enemies list?

There's nothing wrong with comparing countries, but it's ridiculous to compare countries which have systems of de facto central control, vs systems that do not.

Xi (and the CCP) don't interfere directly very often, but he can and will do so as he chooses. He's an Emperor. Nobody has that kind of power in Japan.

Any government can and will control any present company if "national" interests are in question.

Again this is unhelpful rhetorical relativism, because the circumstances of 'national interest' are defined completely differently.

Yes, if someone is pointing Nuclear Weapons at Japan, they will force Yahoo.jp to fork over data on the spot, but otherwise, no.

In China, a random person making a comment about someone in government could be suppressed as a matter of 'national interest'.

It's pointless to make rhetorical analogies. Even if one could argue they are 'different in extent and not in character' (though I would disagree), the 'extent of difference' is sufficient to make them different in character.

A random person walking down the street has little to fear in either country, but that line can be crossed quickly and arbitrarily in authoritarian regimes.

The CCP has very specific influence on companies in China, that has no parrallel elsewhere. Specifically they require companies to hire CCP members that have internal positions with oversight, the CCP will remove leaders as they see fit, require arbitrary censoring as they see fit.

This is obviously much more of a concern for companies in the information domain such as social media or finance, than others such as manufacturing.

Donald Trump for example, could not remove the Google founders by any means.

I won't pretend to know all of the details but this comes off as kind of conspiracy-theory.

Why is Zuckerberg the boogieman? He just wants to run his company well and get as many eyeballs on paid advertisements as possible... right? Why is there some notion that he wants to push either a liberal or conservative agenda internationally?

It's near impossible to moderate a billion people posting crap on a social media platform well enough to the point where you keep everybody happy. How does this make him "the single greatest threat to Western society outside of Russia"?

Conspiracy theory? He did everything in his power to get liberals into political power.

Yes he is a very large threat to Western society, the United States of America and world peace. The current state of affairs should be the proof anyone needs.

Well there we go... Last one turn out the lights, this guy has solved it.

> He just wants to run his company well and get as many eyeballs on paid advertisements as possible... right?

Yes, I would definitely agree that this is the case and I think that is a large part of the problem. The Machiavellian ends justifying the means equates to him not caring about the negative impacts that he has on society while trying to attract the most eyeballs possible.

Aren't those negative impacts on society a matter for government? Basically any company will 'try it on' until it's stopped. And 'stopping' is what governments are about, I used to think. It doesn't seem to happen and it's not surprising that some have written darkly about the marriage of huge corporations with government and its dire consequences.

Yes, I think the government should be responsible for preventing bad actors, but I also don't think Facebook operating without morality is good or acceptable. Government is slow, facebook is using this to their advantage and moving fast and breaking things (society) and I don't think they should be let off the hook because our government hasn't caught up with the blatantly bad stuff that they are up to. If outrage and bad PR can curb some of their negative tendencies, I am all for exposing their actions.

Facebook has consistently disappointed anyone working on any of these issues, from Islamic State recruitment to Myanmar's ethnic violence. Because young people in tech are generally thought to be smart and happy, i. e. Democrats, these failing have been interpreted as growing pains and various lapses in skill or judgement.

The idea has, however, been catching on that Zuckerberg may just be a Greenwald-Democrat, i. e. someone going through a process of alienation in increasingly schizophrenic episodes.

Combine bad faith with the power of Facebook and it's possible to consider that dangerous. The superlative feels strange indeed, but can you think of any other credible alternative, especially outside of (party) politics?

I believe Zuckerberg never made it past the "I don't know why these dumb fucks trust me" phase of his psychological development. He's never fully grasped that the fact that people did in fact trust him means he has a responsibility rather than a mandate. Unfortunately every time Zuckerberg has abused his power, he never faces a single consequence, so he just keeps learning the wrong lesson again and again.

> smart and happy, i. e. Democrats

> these failing have been interpreted as growing pains and various lapses in skill or judgement.

"[...]have been interpreted[...]" are wikipedia "weasel words" here; this is really what centrist party Democrats feel. They interpret the acts of "smart and happy" middle-class people through the lens of "people trying to do good badly" rather than "people doing what they want to do, consistently with what they've always done."

These are the only people that need to rationalize their associations with Facebook, and this is how they do it. Republicans and libertarian-types don't actually think these are issues that Facebook should be concerned about, and lefties don't need to to rehabilitate Facebook.

> the single greatest threat to Western society outside of Russia

I can't help but roll my eyes whenever I come across such statements. Which one is it now guys? Russia or China or Iran or Muslims or Liberals or etc.?

The single greatest threat to Western society is itself.

Trump (and Pompeo) destroys the liberal oriented ideology in China much more effectively than whatever Xi did.

Please explain?

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