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Comment by ArtTimeInvestor | Hacker News Reader

    The CEO is the throughline in a history
    of billion-dollar blunders

Since the IPO, he created an annual ROI of 21% for his investors. Taking risks means blunders are part of the way I would say.

For comparison:

He outperformed the Nasdaq 100 which made 18% (plus dividends) in the same time.

And he way outperformed Warren Buffet who made 14% in the same time.

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At what price, tho? He harms children, he hijacked the attention of billions and helped the rise of facism and hate, which if not addressed will lead into very dark times again, all for a measly 3% out perform?

There's also the allegation that a) Facebook greatly overcounted (on purpose) the impressions from autoplaying videos and b) their ads target more people in an area than physically exist

"Value" is a tough thing to translate. Market cap, and whatever. Considering the fact so many people express difficulty in deleting their accounts - it won't let you, or it gets reactivated later - I'm just going to state the quiet part out loud here; Facebook's valuation is mostly or entirely fraud

If the rise of fascism and hate is due to people being able to talk to each other on Facebook with insufficient censorship, it seems your actual problem is the system of governance that gives everyone a right to vote, even if they do it based on some nonsense they read online.

You are romantizising what Facebook and Instagram have become. The problem is not that people talk to each other. The problem is, that they created algos that optimize for maximal engagement and they get that by triggering the basic human feelings that create the biggest reaction: fear and anger. They literally hacked the human brain chemistry. And they don't stop when they detect that the human is struggling and getting darker and darker thoughts, but they keep pushing to extract even the last second of precision engagement.

"How long and often" people engage with content is a perfectly reasonable metric to optimize and a very close correlate of interest. There are, in fact, plenty of things going on in the world people should get mad about, or that they should worry about. Some people think that's climate change, some people think that's migration, some people think that's rising fascism, some people think that's Mamdami opening grocery stores. The fundamental problem people have is when other people get mad about stuff they like. That's the "fear", "anger", "hate." People who get mad about the things I like are obviously just irrational, emotionally driven puppets of The Algorithm whereas I am Englightened, Rational, and came to my opinions only through Reason and Logic.

What people don't like is huge masses of people coming together and having opinions that counter our modern mainstream elite consensus. Because elites are generally pretty smart that means a lot of these opinions are, frankly, dumb. Some of them simply represent different values (pro vs anti immigration, as one example.) Both are considered intolerable.

It is also perfectly true that people spend lots of time on non-politicized content. Baby videos, cat videos, feel-good human interest stories, all sorts of positive stuff is also massively popular on these platforms. That gets ignored in favor of inveighing for tight control over the political discourse because social media spreads crimethink.

The Western democratic ideal is that you have to convince the masses you're right - a disturbingly large portion of the movers and shakers have decided that instead, we should control what the masses are allowed to say and know, so we don't have to fight those battles.

None of that addresses whether Facebook is intentionally trying to sow discord and make people depressed and anxious for profit.

OK, so, in the vein of the original thread, can you explain how Facebook would be "sowing discord" or "making people depressed and anxious" in some specific way that isn't just spreading other people's speech (ideally, in a way that is based on some objective metrics like engagement) that is Very Bad and shouldn't be allowed?

For example, are you suggesting that Facebook begin censoring information about the climate emergency because it makes people depressed and anxious? Should Facebook make sure that people don't see content they disagree with, because that promotes discord? Or is it the other way around - they shouldn't see content they agree with, because that creates an echo chamber which increases discord when they do encounter other views?

There was an experiment (granted its TikTok, but it's basically the same) where they register a new account, pretending to be a teenager and than start scrolling without liking anything. [1] The amount of extremist content that is shown is really worrying.

To answer your question, yes they should be highly regulated and forced to moderate what they show to users. Maybe even be liable since it is their decision what they show and not the users. And if their business model is then not working anymore, because it's to expensive to moderate the content, then tough luck.

[1] - https://dietagespresse.com/selbstversuch-so-radikalisiert-ti...

It's in German but you can watch the feeds.

OK, well, I support liberal democracy and all that entails. So we’re kind of fundamentally at odds here and probably won’t be able to find common ground.

Democracy does not imply that people should be allowed intentionally make people depressed and anxious for profit. There's no reason that must be allowed for a healthy democracy to work.

Liberal democracy does not mean that the government and other authorities hide information and opinions from people for fear it might make them “anxious and depressed.” I gave you a specific example: should they stop letting people see content relating to the climate emergency because it makes many people anxious and depressed?

That is the view of paternalistic authoritarian states whose primary concern is public harmony, not liberalism.

Content that speaks the truth, like content about the climate emergency is not the problem, even if people don't want that to be true. The content that are just blatant lies, nowadays even published by elected officials, that they just publish because it is in their own personal and financial interest is.

Right. So instead, a central authority determines what is true or not and therefore what is allowed to be published. Easy - there’s clearly a neutral arbiter of truth we can all depend on! So the problem was never that the algorithm let people see content that was depressing and anxiety-inducing - that’s okay - but when it does so and it’s not true. How the goalposts move.

You’re right back to what authoritarian states say and do, and diametrically opposed to what underpins liberal democracy: the idea that the demos decides what is true and good. That idea has lots of very obvious problems but we decided it was preferable to the other systems, one of which you are now advocating for. In a liberal democracy we all are responsible for persuading the people that lies are lies, not censoring them.

If you believe that the Algorithm is just too powerful and you can’t compete in the marketplace of ideas against people lying - well, you don’t believe in liberal democracy. You believe in an ideologically authoritarian state that tells you what’s true or not, and where people are not allowed to make free, (un)informed decisions.

We're not talking about the government and authorities, we're talking about Facebook. The government showing people information that makes them anxious and depressed isn't the same as a for-profit entity intentionally tailoring individual feeds to maximize people's specific anxieties and depression because they discovered it generates billions of dollars, allowing their executives to live in opulent luxury floating on mega yachts. That whole thing isn't a part of liberal democracy.

OK, so who is deciding what information makes people “anxious and depressed” and therefore what Facebook is allowed to republish in feeds? Would it be reasonable for Facebook to censor all information about the climate emergency to protect people from feelings of anxiety and depression, even if they engage with it?

That's ok. Thank you for the discussion. But I do wonder, should Russia and China be allowed to use these tools to sow distrust against our Democracy? For me the tolerance paradox formulated by Karl Popper comes to mind and it is a clear no.

Why is it this line of reasoning never goes into questioning just who the forces endlessly propagandizing about the need to censor social media are? Is this not sowing distrust in democracy itself? (If you can’t trust your electorate not to believe Chinese propaganda, what does that say about your attitude towards democracy as a system?) Who is doing this and why? That would seem to be very salient since much of the reporting on bot campaigns has since been discredited, with whole organizations confabulating these stories then laundering them through the media to push their desired political outcome. (C.f “new knowledge.”)

Foreign propaganda in democracies is as old as democracies themselves. It is by no means anything new; foreign influence campaigns spent enormous sums and labor trying to sway democracies from the very beginning - often very successfully. I don’t see why it’s any different for it to be published on Facebook instead of laundered through print media and rumor mills. At the end of the day you either recognize these problems and appreciate that trusting your electorate/having a liberal democracy is the best option we have compared with the alternatives…or you don’t.

> At the end of the day you either recognize these problems and appreciate that trusting your electorate/having a liberal democracy is the best option we have compared with the alternatives…or you don’t.

Many of those democracies are trending illiberal thanks to the useless yet arrogant liberal decrying of “there’s simply nothing else we can do” and championing a rotting status quo.

They are trending illiberal because of the tension between elites who think ignoring and censoring the popular will on various issues is wise and the voters who see that and think the only solution is a drastic one.

Several western countries could kill their more extreme parties overnight simply by enacting a few reforms with immigration and/or affordability.

That price is paid by us, not Zuck and his shareholders, so it was at no cost to him. Such is the problem with capitalism. Actually the rise of fascism has been great for Zuck and his shareholders, they'd like to see more of it.

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