8 ms·

An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor

122 points by smharris65 8y ago

x3tm 8y ago
What I struggle to understand is how could esteemed AI researchers like LeCun and many others work for such a company to give it even more powers and edge? How can they justify this as scientists? The huge influx of money into research (here AI, but could be anything in the future) combined with the disfunctions of academia is very troubling.
- jrbuhl 8y ago
  Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department
  - sjcsjc 8y ago
    https://genius.com/Tom-lehrer-wernher-von-braun-lyrics https://genius.com/Tom-lehrer-wernher-von-braun-lyrics ... for the uninitiated
- modzu 8y ago
  im not justifying it, but its easier to do research at a place like FB than in a university these days
  - stevenicr 8y ago
    This scares me. It's easier because.. FB has access to millions of people that universities do not? Because fbook can manipulate the minds, emotions and money and politics of highly targeted groups without anyone knowing and the universities could never do that, or would never do that? Is it because fbook has less ethics / laws / rules in place? Because universities need to answer to the community they are in and have the fear of pitchforks and loss of funding / donors / non-monopoly and need to think of their future and reputation and fbook does not? What other reasons could there be? This is something that indeed, unfortunately, we probably should have had regulators talking about long ago.
    - vageli 8y ago
      > This scares me. > It's easier because.. FB has access to millions of people that universities do not? Because fbook can manipulate the minds, emotions and money and politics of highly targeted groups without anyone knowing and the universities could never do that, or would never do that? > Is it because fbook has less ethics / laws / rules in place? Because universities need to answer to the community they are in and have the fear of pitchforks and loss of funding / donors / non-monopoly and need to think of their future and reputation and fbook does not? > What other reasons could there be? Money. Lots and lots of money, a scarce resource at most universities.
  - x3tm 8y ago
    Well this is true only if your research is well aligned with fb's interests. Not the case in universitiew where academic freedom, albeit not perfect, still exists to a large extent.
- spamizbad 8y ago
  We need an Operation Paperclip for Facebook talent.
  - vibrolax 8y ago
    Well we eventually got two things out of that operation....ICBM's and the Saturn V.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  What's the alternative? Google? Baidu?
  - x3tm 8y ago
    How about universities?
    - throwaway991133 8y ago
      Ha! Let me explain to you how the sausage is made at [American] universities. You're a fresh-faced researcher with a brand new PhD and you got super, super lucky and landed one of the very few tenure-track positions at a research university available each year. On your first day of orientation, your department head hands you a piece of paper with a number written on it. The number varies every year based on the university and the economy. Maybe this year it's $500,000, maybe a few years from now it's $1M. That number is how much money in research grants you need to bring in to the university over the next 6 years. If you bring that money in, congratulations, you get tenure; now you get a chance to work on whatever interests you for the rest of your life. But if you fall short of that goal, you're denied tenue; GTFO. You might think being a really good teacher will save you; it won't. You might think that volunteering for some annoying university committee will save you; it won't. You may think writing some really impactful papers (that nevertheless fail to bring in research grant money) will save you; it won't, unless you're really, really, really close to your monetary goal. So how do you get across the hump? In your first year or two, you think that ethical projects can totally work for you. You bring in a $10K grant here, a $25K grant there. Then you realize you're far short of your goal. So you do what most successful professors do. You start taking DARPA money, DOD money, DOJ money, Amazon or Google or Facebook money. You start building (or facilitating the building of) technology that kills people, that selects people to kill, that monitors populations for trouble-makers or for people susceptible to advertising campaigns. Of course, those aren't the words used in your grant proposals, instead you keep it really abstract. But deep down, you know what your research is going toward.
      - x3tm 8y ago
        I know how academia works. Though being a theoretical particle physicist, I don't have to worry about the societal impact of my research and I can't be influenced by industry. You seem to be unhappy with your situation. And you also seem to suggest that the choice boils down to either work in a hypocritical (re ethics) environment in academia or be openly cynical about it and join facebook and the likes. Well. I think the world is bigger than this. And we always have choice. Be it academic prestige, good salaries, power, ethics, etc. There are plenty of small companies trying hard to make a positive impact in the world (not just with words like Zuck) and which would be happy to have you. But then the price to pay is your academic dream.
- kristianov 8y ago
  Dataset. AI is nothing without high-quality datasets: without ImageNet, there will not be deep learning.
  - poslathian 8y ago
    Isn’t imagenet an academic dataset? Thank Stanford and Princeton, not FANG
    - kristianov 8y ago
      I mean researchers go into FANG to gain access to private, high quality datasets.
- matz1 8y ago
  Simple, not everyone share the same concern regarding privacy or those sjw stuff, moreover fb has vast amount of data and also funding, it's very suitable for AI research. Even if he refuse to work with fb, pretty sure a lot of other people will be happy to replace.
  - x3tm 8y ago
    Science should be above this. Inspired by your comment, I'll make my point more graphically: Nazi camps were also suitable for medical and spychological testing. Nazi and even interned doctors did all sorts of experiments on prisoners. And if they refused to do so, pretty sure other people would have been happy to replace. Not everyone shared the same concerns regarding human life.
    - perfmode 8y ago
      They were able to do a lot of beneficial research because they didn’t have to deal with cumbersome regulations and roadblocks. And if they didn’t do it, someone else would have lined up to take advantage of the opportunities. Edit: If it isn’t clear, I am being sarcastic.
      - lm28469 8y ago
        It depends how you see things. imho some things are intrinsically wrong, doing them because "someone else would have lined up to take advantage of the opportunities" doesn't change the fact that it's wrong in the first place. Just the same way that if something wrong is done by a lot of people it doesn't make it right (smoking, drinking &c.).
        balabaster 8y ago
        What if the alternative is to be shot yourself? Where do you morals stand then? Unfortunately our morals are easily swayed when the alternative choice is death.
        8y ago
- smacktoward 8y ago
  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair)
  - lumberjack 8y ago
    It is not just that. Some people in this field just have questionable ethics, unfortunately. Some are just childish and have this close minded ignorant macho attitude that though men, as they style themselves, should not care about ethics. Then there others who just don't care either way as long as they get paid to play with their toys.
    - aylmao 8y ago
      +1. I'm a foreigner from Mexico-- back there all engineering majors study ethics in school as part of the requirements. I studied abroad in the US, and was surprised at how not only there was no ethics requirement, but many engineering majors actually shunned anything having to do with the humanities in a very "us vs. them", "we do real work", "this is not important" manner. It's hard to measure what impact a couple of classes could have and it would certainly vary from person to person, but it would at least set the stage for conversation and be an acknowledgement to the importance of ethics in engineering.
      - stallmanite 8y ago
        To add an anecdote to the pile, I went to school in the US and had to pass an ethics in engineering course to complete degree requirements for Computer Science in the late 90s.
- jcadam 8y ago
  Facebook recruiters seem more aggressive lately, perhaps they're starting to actually have trouble attracting top talent?
  - beager 8y ago
    Perhaps, but if you notice that anecdotally, it may be that you and your network and becoming more experienced and therefore more attractive to Facebook.
    - jcadam 8y ago
      Nope, I'm in my late thirties. They're so desperate they're approaching old losers like me.
- pesenti 8y ago
  I joined a year ago to lead the AI team (Yann is part of it but I am not answering for him here). It's a choice as I don't have to work any longer. Why am I there? - I believe Facebook's products are good for the world. They have had an extremely positive impact on my family in particular. - It is the one place where AI can have a really positive impact on the world. - It's is the most talented set of people I have ever worked with. Not just the AI team but every single person I meet there. - I believe in Zuck. Despite all the bashing, he is one of the most thoughtful and visionary leader I have worked for. This said I don't agree with everything that the company has done. But Facebook is a place were you are free to disagree openly and so far my team and I have always been able to do what we considered the right thing to do. [Edit: agreeing with the comments that I should have written "is one place" instead of "is the one place"]
  - pul 8y ago
    Could you elaborate on each of those four points? How did you come to these conclusions?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - techelitism 8y ago
    Can we cut the pretense and just admit it’s about the fact that you’re showered with money and the high prestige? No judgement, I’d do it if I was an elite too.
  - x3tm 8y ago
    Thanks for your clear reply. There's only one thing though from what you mentioned that is not vague or subjective: > It is the one place where AI can have a really positive impact on the world. Can you develop on this please? Why do you think a social network (however efficient it may be with e.g. targeted ads) will have a bigger impact on its members versus e.g. AI in healthcare? or finance? or education? which will have a truly global impact.
    - aylmao 8y ago
- mtgx 8y ago
  I feel the same way about Carmack. Such wasted potential that could've been so much better used at a company like SpaceX or even one like Epic Games or Valve.
- techelitism 8y ago
  It’s because they get a lot of money. It’s that simple. I don’t know if people know how much facebookers make because if they did they’d start to riot.
tgb29 8y ago
If he gave away all the profits he made from Facebook and put out the book for free, then maybe I'd consider his feedback.
androidgirl 8y ago
I understand this is a manifesto, but really the dialogue around Facebook and social media has truly become unhinged. Facebook is just a symptom, it seems What is there to be _done_? Pandora's box is open, so to speak. If Facebook disappeared overnight, are we really going to assume the problems they're in are going to go away? Everyone is potentially connected to everyone, everywhere, on the entire planet. There has never been a technology so powerful as the centralized internet. Furthermore, outside of media companies and the HN bubble, people _do not care_. Your average person doesn't care about decentralization, preventing social media addiction, gamification, or polarization of online communities. To the contrary the market shows that companies like FB are massively successful. So what are we to do? The world has been changed, drastically. Were we ready for it? And if we somehow were rid of Favebook, are we ready for what follows?
- m_fayer 8y ago
  FB and friends are selling a product that's pleasurable, possibly habit forming, has big negative externalities, and presents all sorts of non-obvious risks to consumers. This is the textbook case for regulation. Some future iteration of the GDPR (or similar) will eventually outlaw FB's business model, at which point non-toxic social media will hopefully emerge, and we will realize that "potentially connecting everyone to everyone else, everywhere" is something that can be done ethically.
- tossaccount123 8y ago
  >Were we ready for it? No, our brains evolved for millions of years to operate in groups of less than 100. Social media is basically high fructose corn syrup for our dopamine system. Within a span of roughly 20 years the way we live our lives and communicate with other humans changed massively All the MSM hate for Facebook though is simply because they are butthurt that they've lost their spot in society in terms of controlling influence and information
  - aldous 8y ago
    You make an interesting point about expanding social spheres and influence, nice. However, do you really believe in this concept of a conspiratorial all powerful MSM, that spans the political spectrum and co-ordinates efforts to refute viewpoints they disagree with!? How would such a cabal work? With respect, it sounds a bit infowars/trumpian to me.
paulsutter 8y ago
Its curious that the media is going to such great lengths to paint Facebook as villians. My own Facebook stream is travel photos, people saying gushy things about their spouse, plus a few people still obsessed with Trump. Harmless stuff. Our lives must be pretty cushy when this is one of the biggest dangers that we face.
- opmac 8y ago
  Unfortunately I believe your myopic viewpoint is exactly what Facebook has driven to create.
  - paulsutter 8y ago
    What are the sinister threats in your Facebook feed? Or are you just speculating about what the unwashed masses must be seeing?
    - opmac 8y ago
      Not sure about threats, but I've seen plenty of fake news, conspiracies, etc; many of which have been tied to Russian disinformation groups (or other malignant foreign interests). See the Nation in Distress group; https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/11/facebook-purged-over-accounts-pages-pushing-political-messages-profit/?utm_term=.9cdd16851e5f https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/11/faceboo....
      - paulsutter 8y ago
        You saw these in your own feed? Do share
        opmac 8y ago
        Of course. All it requires is some naive (usually older) family members. In this case, my in-laws are in their 70s, and extremely right-wing. They would share stuff from the Nation in Distress group all the time before Facebook banned it. That is just one example; Facebook has been extremely instrumental in providing a platform for disinformation and propaganda. Just because you don't see it in your own bubble, does not mean it is not a threat.
l5870uoo9y 8y ago
It would be a dramatic change of decades of ideological, political and popular sentiment to start breaking up companies or tightly regulating them. I doubt it would happen.
- ardy42 8y ago
  > It would be a dramatic change of decades of ideological, political and popular sentiment to start breaking up companies or tightly regulating them. I doubt it would happen. I think it will. It took a couple decades of dramatic change to get us here (in the 70s and 80s), and the pendulum is now swinging back (and probably has been for the last decade).
lumberjack 8y ago
This debate is needlessly muddled by this fuzzy notion that because it is "the Internet" therefore something different needs to be done, that this is somehow a new situation. But it is not. If it was the 1970s and people were told to sign a contract to allow a company to physically track every single event in their lives, they would not consent to it. If it was the 1970s and some company tried to get exclusive access to people's TV and radio to bombard them with bespoke advertisement and propaganda, they would not consent to it. So then what is so different? Nothing much. What Facebook and Google and others are currently doing is way beyond what a sane society would allow. It is just that people are confused because it is done through a new medium, but nothing much is different.
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
These large dominating companies are monopolies in every sense of the word and need to be broken up. The Bell System was broken up and didn't have a tenth of the tracking and control of people's lives that Google and Facebook do. Ma Bell didn't actively harm its users and cause depression. Ma Bell didn't collude with Russia to influence a presidential election and install a puppet president. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143 https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143 "Association of Facebook Use With Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study"
- dantheman 8y ago
  The bell system was a government granted monopoly, as in it was illegal to compete with them.
- AlexB138 8y ago
  > [Facebook colluded] with Russia to influence a presidential election and install a puppet president. This is a conspiracy theory, and really diminishes the level of the conversation here.
  - bedhead 8y ago
    The right had Obama birth certificate conspiracies, the left has Russian election hacking conspiracies. Different sides of the same idiotic coin for stupid people.
    - r00fus 8y ago
      Except it's not just the left, and there are open indictments against many of the President's team.
      - fromthestart 8y ago
        That so far, two years in, have nothing to do with collusion. Russia has been playing both sides to destabilize the country, and the left's selective hysteria is playing right into the strategy, straight out of the KGB playbook. The easiest man to fool is the one who thinks he cannot be fooled.
danans 8y ago
> Let’s examine the evidence. At its peak the planet’s fourth most valuable company, and arguably its most influential, is controlled almost entirely by a young man with the charisma of a geometry T.A. Does the writer really think a more charismatic founder would have changed the outcome for the better, or that more charisma would have led Zuckerberg to make different choices? Let's not forget that history is scarred from the manipulations of charismatic leaders. This sounds rather like the old nerd/geek/greasy-grime bashing trope trotted out again.
- SilasX 8y ago
  Yeah, that seemed like an unnecessary, irrelevant personal attack. Raise the alarm about what he's doing to privacy, not his social shortcomings.
dkkdjdjsjd 8y ago
Off topic comment here. I remember two years ago when people on HN were arguing people that cared about privacy had something to hide. I am glad the tide is starting to change. Privacy is a fundamental human right.

122 points by smharris65 8y ago

x3tm 8y ago

What I struggle to understand is how could esteemed AI researchers like LeCun and many others work for such a company to give it even more powers and edge? How can they justify this as scientists? The huge influx of money into research (here AI, but could be anything in the future) combined with the disfunctions of academia is very troubling.

jrbuhl 8y ago
Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department
- sjcsjc 8y ago
  https://genius.com/Tom-lehrer-wernher-von-braun-lyrics https://genius.com/Tom-lehrer-wernher-von-braun-lyrics ... for the uninitiated
modzu 8y ago
im not justifying it, but its easier to do research at a place like FB than in a university these days
- stevenicr 8y ago
  This scares me. It's easier because.. FB has access to millions of people that universities do not? Because fbook can manipulate the minds, emotions and money and politics of highly targeted groups without anyone knowing and the universities could never do that, or would never do that? Is it because fbook has less ethics / laws / rules in place? Because universities need to answer to the community they are in and have the fear of pitchforks and loss of funding / donors / non-monopoly and need to think of their future and reputation and fbook does not? What other reasons could there be? This is something that indeed, unfortunately, we probably should have had regulators talking about long ago.
  - vageli 8y ago
    > This scares me. > It's easier because.. FB has access to millions of people that universities do not? Because fbook can manipulate the minds, emotions and money and politics of highly targeted groups without anyone knowing and the universities could never do that, or would never do that? > Is it because fbook has less ethics / laws / rules in place? Because universities need to answer to the community they are in and have the fear of pitchforks and loss of funding / donors / non-monopoly and need to think of their future and reputation and fbook does not? > What other reasons could there be? Money. Lots and lots of money, a scarce resource at most universities.
- x3tm 8y ago
  Well this is true only if your research is well aligned with fb's interests. Not the case in universitiew where academic freedom, albeit not perfect, still exists to a large extent.
spamizbad 8y ago
We need an Operation Paperclip for Facebook talent.
- vibrolax 8y ago
  Well we eventually got two things out of that operation....ICBM's and the Saturn V.
zozbot123 8y ago
What's the alternative? Google? Baidu?
- x3tm 8y ago
  How about universities?
  - throwaway991133 8y ago
    Ha! Let me explain to you how the sausage is made at [American] universities. You're a fresh-faced researcher with a brand new PhD and you got super, super lucky and landed one of the very few tenure-track positions at a research university available each year. On your first day of orientation, your department head hands you a piece of paper with a number written on it. The number varies every year based on the university and the economy. Maybe this year it's $500,000, maybe a few years from now it's $1M. That number is how much money in research grants you need to bring in to the university over the next 6 years. If you bring that money in, congratulations, you get tenure; now you get a chance to work on whatever interests you for the rest of your life. But if you fall short of that goal, you're denied tenue; GTFO. You might think being a really good teacher will save you; it won't. You might think that volunteering for some annoying university committee will save you; it won't. You may think writing some really impactful papers (that nevertheless fail to bring in research grant money) will save you; it won't, unless you're really, really, really close to your monetary goal. So how do you get across the hump? In your first year or two, you think that ethical projects can totally work for you. You bring in a $10K grant here, a $25K grant there. Then you realize you're far short of your goal. So you do what most successful professors do. You start taking DARPA money, DOD money, DOJ money, Amazon or Google or Facebook money. You start building (or facilitating the building of) technology that kills people, that selects people to kill, that monitors populations for trouble-makers or for people susceptible to advertising campaigns. Of course, those aren't the words used in your grant proposals, instead you keep it really abstract. But deep down, you know what your research is going toward.
    - x3tm 8y ago
      I know how academia works. Though being a theoretical particle physicist, I don't have to worry about the societal impact of my research and I can't be influenced by industry. You seem to be unhappy with your situation. And you also seem to suggest that the choice boils down to either work in a hypocritical (re ethics) environment in academia or be openly cynical about it and join facebook and the likes. Well. I think the world is bigger than this. And we always have choice. Be it academic prestige, good salaries, power, ethics, etc. There are plenty of small companies trying hard to make a positive impact in the world (not just with words like Zuck) and which would be happy to have you. But then the price to pay is your academic dream.
kristianov 8y ago
Dataset. AI is nothing without high-quality datasets: without ImageNet, there will not be deep learning.
- poslathian 8y ago
  Isn’t imagenet an academic dataset? Thank Stanford and Princeton, not FANG
  - kristianov 8y ago
    I mean researchers go into FANG to gain access to private, high quality datasets.
matz1 8y ago
Simple, not everyone share the same concern regarding privacy or those sjw stuff, moreover fb has vast amount of data and also funding, it's very suitable for AI research. Even if he refuse to work with fb, pretty sure a lot of other people will be happy to replace.
- x3tm 8y ago
  Science should be above this. Inspired by your comment, I'll make my point more graphically: Nazi camps were also suitable for medical and spychological testing. Nazi and even interned doctors did all sorts of experiments on prisoners. And if they refused to do so, pretty sure other people would have been happy to replace. Not everyone shared the same concerns regarding human life.
  - perfmode 8y ago
    They were able to do a lot of beneficial research because they didn’t have to deal with cumbersome regulations and roadblocks. And if they didn’t do it, someone else would have lined up to take advantage of the opportunities. Edit: If it isn’t clear, I am being sarcastic.
    - lm28469 8y ago
      It depends how you see things. imho some things are intrinsically wrong, doing them because "someone else would have lined up to take advantage of the opportunities" doesn't change the fact that it's wrong in the first place. Just the same way that if something wrong is done by a lot of people it doesn't make it right (smoking, drinking &c.).
      - balabaster 8y ago
        What if the alternative is to be shot yourself? Where do you morals stand then? Unfortunately our morals are easily swayed when the alternative choice is death.
        8y ago
smacktoward 8y ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair)
- lumberjack 8y ago
  It is not just that. Some people in this field just have questionable ethics, unfortunately. Some are just childish and have this close minded ignorant macho attitude that though men, as they style themselves, should not care about ethics. Then there others who just don't care either way as long as they get paid to play with their toys.
  - aylmao 8y ago
    +1. I'm a foreigner from Mexico-- back there all engineering majors study ethics in school as part of the requirements. I studied abroad in the US, and was surprised at how not only there was no ethics requirement, but many engineering majors actually shunned anything having to do with the humanities in a very "us vs. them", "we do real work", "this is not important" manner. It's hard to measure what impact a couple of classes could have and it would certainly vary from person to person, but it would at least set the stage for conversation and be an acknowledgement to the importance of ethics in engineering.
    - stallmanite 8y ago
      To add an anecdote to the pile, I went to school in the US and had to pass an ethics in engineering course to complete degree requirements for Computer Science in the late 90s.
jcadam 8y ago
Facebook recruiters seem more aggressive lately, perhaps they're starting to actually have trouble attracting top talent?
- beager 8y ago
  Perhaps, but if you notice that anecdotally, it may be that you and your network and becoming more experienced and therefore more attractive to Facebook.
  - jcadam 8y ago
    Nope, I'm in my late thirties. They're so desperate they're approaching old losers like me.
pesenti 8y ago
I joined a year ago to lead the AI team (Yann is part of it but I am not answering for him here). It's a choice as I don't have to work any longer. Why am I there? - I believe Facebook's products are good for the world. They have had an extremely positive impact on my family in particular. - It is the one place where AI can have a really positive impact on the world. - It's is the most talented set of people I have ever worked with. Not just the AI team but every single person I meet there. - I believe in Zuck. Despite all the bashing, he is one of the most thoughtful and visionary leader I have worked for. This said I don't agree with everything that the company has done. But Facebook is a place were you are free to disagree openly and so far my team and I have always been able to do what we considered the right thing to do. [Edit: agreeing with the comments that I should have written "is one place" instead of "is the one place"]
- pul 8y ago
  Could you elaborate on each of those four points? How did you come to these conclusions?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- techelitism 8y ago
  Can we cut the pretense and just admit it’s about the fact that you’re showered with money and the high prestige? No judgement, I’d do it if I was an elite too.
- x3tm 8y ago
  Thanks for your clear reply. There's only one thing though from what you mentioned that is not vague or subjective: > It is the one place where AI can have a really positive impact on the world. Can you develop on this please? Why do you think a social network (however efficient it may be with e.g. targeted ads) will have a bigger impact on its members versus e.g. AI in healthcare? or finance? or education? which will have a truly global impact.
  - aylmao 8y ago
mtgx 8y ago
I feel the same way about Carmack. Such wasted potential that could've been so much better used at a company like SpaceX or even one like Epic Games or Valve.
techelitism 8y ago
It’s because they get a lot of money. It’s that simple. I don’t know if people know how much facebookers make because if they did they’d start to riot.

tgb29 8y ago

If he gave away all the profits he made from Facebook and put out the book for free, then maybe I'd consider his feedback.

androidgirl 8y ago

I understand this is a manifesto, but really the dialogue around Facebook and social media has truly become unhinged. Facebook is just a symptom, it seems What is there to be _done_? Pandora's box is open, so to speak. If Facebook disappeared overnight, are we really going to assume the problems they're in are going to go away? Everyone is potentially connected to everyone, everywhere, on the entire planet. There has never been a technology so powerful as the centralized internet. Furthermore, outside of media companies and the HN bubble, people _do not care_. Your average person doesn't care about decentralization, preventing social media addiction, gamification, or polarization of online communities. To the contrary the market shows that companies like FB are massively successful. So what are we to do? The world has been changed, drastically. Were we ready for it? And if we somehow were rid of Favebook, are we ready for what follows?

m_fayer 8y ago
FB and friends are selling a product that's pleasurable, possibly habit forming, has big negative externalities, and presents all sorts of non-obvious risks to consumers. This is the textbook case for regulation. Some future iteration of the GDPR (or similar) will eventually outlaw FB's business model, at which point non-toxic social media will hopefully emerge, and we will realize that "potentially connecting everyone to everyone else, everywhere" is something that can be done ethically.
tossaccount123 8y ago
>Were we ready for it? No, our brains evolved for millions of years to operate in groups of less than 100. Social media is basically high fructose corn syrup for our dopamine system. Within a span of roughly 20 years the way we live our lives and communicate with other humans changed massively All the MSM hate for Facebook though is simply because they are butthurt that they've lost their spot in society in terms of controlling influence and information
- aldous 8y ago
  You make an interesting point about expanding social spheres and influence, nice. However, do you really believe in this concept of a conspiratorial all powerful MSM, that spans the political spectrum and co-ordinates efforts to refute viewpoints they disagree with!? How would such a cabal work? With respect, it sounds a bit infowars/trumpian to me.

paulsutter 8y ago

Its curious that the media is going to such great lengths to paint Facebook as villians. My own Facebook stream is travel photos, people saying gushy things about their spouse, plus a few people still obsessed with Trump. Harmless stuff. Our lives must be pretty cushy when this is one of the biggest dangers that we face.

opmac 8y ago
Unfortunately I believe your myopic viewpoint is exactly what Facebook has driven to create.
- paulsutter 8y ago
  What are the sinister threats in your Facebook feed? Or are you just speculating about what the unwashed masses must be seeing?
  - opmac 8y ago
    Not sure about threats, but I've seen plenty of fake news, conspiracies, etc; many of which have been tied to Russian disinformation groups (or other malignant foreign interests). See the Nation in Distress group; https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/11/facebook-purged-over-accounts-pages-pushing-political-messages-profit/?utm_term=.9cdd16851e5f https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/11/faceboo....
    - paulsutter 8y ago
      You saw these in your own feed? Do share
      - opmac 8y ago
        Of course. All it requires is some naive (usually older) family members. In this case, my in-laws are in their 70s, and extremely right-wing. They would share stuff from the Nation in Distress group all the time before Facebook banned it. That is just one example; Facebook has been extremely instrumental in providing a platform for disinformation and propaganda. Just because you don't see it in your own bubble, does not mean it is not a threat.

l5870uoo9y 8y ago

It would be a dramatic change of decades of ideological, political and popular sentiment to start breaking up companies or tightly regulating them. I doubt it would happen.

ardy42 8y ago
> It would be a dramatic change of decades of ideological, political and popular sentiment to start breaking up companies or tightly regulating them. I doubt it would happen. I think it will. It took a couple decades of dramatic change to get us here (in the 70s and 80s), and the pendulum is now swinging back (and probably has been for the last decade).

lumberjack 8y ago

This debate is needlessly muddled by this fuzzy notion that because it is "the Internet" therefore something different needs to be done, that this is somehow a new situation. But it is not. If it was the 1970s and people were told to sign a contract to allow a company to physically track every single event in their lives, they would not consent to it. If it was the 1970s and some company tried to get exclusive access to people's TV and radio to bombard them with bespoke advertisement and propaganda, they would not consent to it. So then what is so different? Nothing much. What Facebook and Google and others are currently doing is way beyond what a sane society would allow. It is just that people are confused because it is done through a new medium, but nothing much is different.

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

These large dominating companies are monopolies in every sense of the word and need to be broken up. The Bell System was broken up and didn't have a tenth of the tracking and control of people's lives that Google and Facebook do. Ma Bell didn't actively harm its users and cause depression. Ma Bell didn't collude with Russia to influence a presidential election and install a puppet president. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143 https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143 "Association of Facebook Use With Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study"

dantheman 8y ago
The bell system was a government granted monopoly, as in it was illegal to compete with them.
AlexB138 8y ago
> [Facebook colluded] with Russia to influence a presidential election and install a puppet president. This is a conspiracy theory, and really diminishes the level of the conversation here.
- bedhead 8y ago
  The right had Obama birth certificate conspiracies, the left has Russian election hacking conspiracies. Different sides of the same idiotic coin for stupid people.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    Except it's not just the left, and there are open indictments against many of the President's team.
    - fromthestart 8y ago
      That so far, two years in, have nothing to do with collusion. Russia has been playing both sides to destabilize the country, and the left's selective hysteria is playing right into the strategy, straight out of the KGB playbook. The easiest man to fool is the one who thinks he cannot be fooled.

danans 8y ago

> Let’s examine the evidence. At its peak the planet’s fourth most valuable company, and arguably its most influential, is controlled almost entirely by a young man with the charisma of a geometry T.A. Does the writer really think a more charismatic founder would have changed the outcome for the better, or that more charisma would have led Zuckerberg to make different choices? Let's not forget that history is scarred from the manipulations of charismatic leaders. This sounds rather like the old nerd/geek/greasy-grime bashing trope trotted out again.

SilasX 8y ago
Yeah, that seemed like an unnecessary, irrelevant personal attack. Raise the alarm about what he's doing to privacy, not his social shortcomings.

dkkdjdjsjd 8y ago

Off topic comment here. I remember two years ago when people on HN were arguing people that cared about privacy had something to hide. I am glad the tide is starting to change. Privacy is a fundamental human right.