Facebook’s top execs ‘make tobacco executives look like Mr. Rogers’
recode.netClickbait. I think the actual story was already posted a few days back.
I'm pretty sure tabbaco has killed a few more people than Facebook, so this is a ridiculous comparison.
Facebook does a lot for which it should be criticized, but it feels like we're just beating on a dead horse.
It's also hilarious that someone would be so critical of Facebook all while including their share button in the same article. Apparently they're evil, but not evil enough to stop using their service. I think that says a lot about the author.
> Oh, my God. Using an Android phone is like paying for dinner with a Discover card. It’s like saying, “Don’t have sex with me.” It’s the ultimate prophylactic that says “I should be ...”
> “I should be screened out of the gene pool.” If you use an Android phone or have a Discover card, your family tree should come to an end.
Yea I’m gonna go with purposefully inciting reactions online for more clicks.
It's a link to a commentary podcast, not sure which "actual story" you're referencing but there have been several negative stories about Facebook which they talk through and that's kind of the point of the podcast.
> I'm pretty sure tabbaco has killed a few more people than Facebook, so this is a ridiculous comparison.
There are worse outcomes than death.
Like having a shadow profile on Facebook.
Technically true, but smoking-related illness can be one of the more horrible ways to go.
> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
I don't think it's that far apart.
It's pretty far apart to be honest.
What FB and Suu Kyi do in Myanmar is terrible, but they would have to replicate the same genocide in every nation across the globe to match the body count of the tobacco guys.
(Which they may manage to do in the future. Who knows? But to date they are just not there yet to be perfectly frank.)
It really doesn’t make sense to me that the argument is basically this:
“The x military shared anti-y Facebook posts, then caused a genocide of the y people.”
And Facebook is at fault?
Do we really expect Facebook to police speech at that level, or should we not place the blame with the military?
Those posts came from .0000066% of Facebook’s users. If you’re Facebook how do you effectively police that?
Hey those kids chose to smoke those Camels! How's the cigarette company responsible?
You really don’t see any difference there?
Children and militaries will act predictably. How Facebook reacts is the variable under question.
Tobacco has killed more people so far. Facebook accepted a lot of money to help Trump win, so if he were to start a war or something, I think the blood would also be on Facebook's hands. Climate change is a whole other issue with him, though less direct.
Also, I understand the headline to be a comparison of tactics, not of harm.
And as for the share button, writers don't make their site's templates.
Facebook accepted more money from the Clinton campaign though right?
If she had won, people gave her FB strategy (and Russia) credit for her victory, and she started a war, I'd say the same thing about her.
Helping a politician who ends up killing people is arguably helping to kill those people, whether you're a voter or an ad firm or IBM in the 40s.
“People gave credit for”
What should the standard of proof be for accusing an organization of “helping to kill”? Have we met that with Facebook?
Are you f-ing kidding me? Until 90%+ of FB users start dropping dead because of lung cancer then that statement is complete garbage.
EDIT: a lot of people are taking my statement as meaning not to criticize Facebook. That is not it at all! It just means not to lose perspective. At least I still consider tobacco to be far worse, directly causing ~7M deaths annually with no visible benefit.
EDIT 2: Genuine question: has anyone studied the rise of fascism post-FB vs. pre-FB? It's not like dictatorships and far-right governments didn't get elected pre-FB. Obviously I am one of those who doubt FB's direct responsibility vs. it being simply a media narrative against a business threat.
I see what you're saying, but it's also true that cigarettes didn't fundamentally weaken the structure of democratic societies. The long-term consequences of that (heck, even short-term) could be much more severe.
This is one thing I don’t get about this narrative. At this point how do we know how permanent what you’re talking about is? And how much is due to Facebook vs. just generally the unexpected terrible combination of it becoming very easy to distribute information + the fact that humans seek out information that tells them what they want to believe.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t criticize Facebook, or that they shouldn’t be the ones to solve this problem. But I think it’s important to frame it as a problem to be solved instead of growing extremely cynical and saying Facebook is pure evil.
Couldn't agree more. I think Facebook is kind of crappy. But there is basically zero scientific evidence that Facebook is destroying democracies. That's a media narrative at this point. There's a bunch of anecdotal evidence that matches up with a particular view point of the current political landscape. It confirms how people are feeling and therefore is accepted as true. Nevermind that it would be virtually impossible to actual tease out how much misinformation and social division to lay at the feet of Facebook. Nevermind that democratic states throughout history have radicalized, polarized and disinformed themselves without the help of Facebook or even the internet for that matter.
In the case of cigarettes, the companies had the answer to these kinds of questions for decades and used it specifically to mislead the direction of public discovery. In their case, they had to risk their own studies in almost all cases instead of just monitoring their own distribution system.
When Facebook says they don't know something there are a few possibilities, the least likely is that they don't know and don't have a reason not to find out.
I do agree with you that it is not up to them to fix. They should be limited to whatever extent possible in what research they can do on their own discretion to prevent them from staying ahead of public information and misleading research.
No, I wasn’t clear enough. We should be pressuring Facebook to fix this societal problem. They -are- disseminating a ton of bad information.
It's the algorithmic selection of the most shocking posts that aggrevates the problem. They know what ends up getting promoted, and they don't care about the damage.
'democracy' was just not internally robust enough to deal with the lowered barrier to dissemination.
since we've already conceded that votes can be simply bought through advertising, the whole thing was already looking pretty sketchy.
its kind of pointless to rail at the parasites feeding off the open wounds.
I would absolutely disagree with that assertion. While we're hypothesizing about the long-term effects of FB on democracy, I would argue that generations of smokers that die early and impose a huge strain on an already overloaded healthcare system have a much greater effect on the health of our democracy. I think that at this point it's ridiculous to compare FB to those very real and significant effects.
For suggested reading, I recommend reading about the Arab Spring, where social networks were linked to populist overthrow of dictators in the middle east and northern Africa. I also suggest reading about Whatsapp killings in India.
The evidence out there suggests that social networks are being used to great effect to mobilize revolutions, mobs, and other "populist" movements, for better or worse. These days, it seems like largely "worse".
The same way that "flash mobs" were a funny joke in the early 2000's, and then were used as methods to commit mass-anonymous crime. The social cost of being able to organize large groups of people (many of which may not realize they are being used) is going to be a theme for the next decade.
If Clinton had won, FB would have avoided this scrutiny.
The lesson FB execs are learning is that FB must filter all of its content very carefully so that the electorate is nudged more forcefully toward the correct candidate. Either that, or, more likely, just keep doing whatever makes the most money.
Considering the fact that the Times reports that the reason FB had been keeping this stuff secret is because worry of congressional oversight, I think your analysis about Clinton is overly reductionist and factually inaccurate.
In general you should always start with "more money" as your first assumption, not the backup. They don't want to be regulated, that's all.
but we should remember the earlier context. in the days before the election, some focused on how much power Facebook actually had in an election:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/how-f...
but very few serious analysts thought Trump would actually win.
so, Trump's 2016 electoral victory was not just surprising. it was positively shocking, especially to people in the media. the most reliable predictors and conventional wisdom strongly favored Clinton. Trump's campaign was basically a bad joke. so, when he won, we needed to explain it, to understand it, and, yes, to blame someone for it.
journalists continued to focus on Facebook as an explanation right after the election:
https://www.wired.com/2016/11/facebook-won-trump-election-no...
imho, it's reasonable to think that calls for increased scrutiny of FB were amplified and multiplied because of Trump's victory to a far greater extent than would have happened had Clinton won. our explanatory framework expected her victory. if that framework failed, there must be some new factor that confused it.
Facebook is implicated as a major cause of more than one recent genocide. That is, sadly, not hyperbole.
Well you know, that whole enabling genocide thing is arguably as bad as poisoning people. Should we just not criticize corporations until the death count gets to a certain threshold?
How about genocide? Would that work for you?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
How about electing a fascist dictator that wants to genocide the left in his country, and deforest the rainforest by opening it to western companies?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/18/brazil-jair-bo...
Nothing new here really. Propaganda is as old as human communication. Finding new ways to distribute misinformation is the human norm. Afaik Facebook has also been praised for things like Egypt spring (not sure if good actually), Barack Obamas election, etc. It's not as if only bad things came out of new media outlets. Sure, they could do a lot better, but the scape goating of fb is a bit simple minded.
How much of this is attributable to Facebook?
Also yes, Genocide is terrible. But the amount of people that cigarettes kill every year is orders of magnitudes more than this.
That’s the thing: tobacco execs are still around! Making a product that literally kills millions of people every year. The only reason more outrage isn’t targeted at them is I think we believe that with enough backlash, we can change the situation with Facebook whereas cigarettes seem unstoppable.
>Also yes, Genocide is terrible. But the amount of people that cigarettes kill every year is orders of magnitudes more than this.
Many people are dead, the number comparisons don't really matter. They're both evil, that's really it.
I think the world is too complex now to think in such absolute terms. Scale matters a lot. Yes we should try to avoid anyone dying and even a single death is too many. But as evil grows more indirect and subtle, you have to be aware of the details and the scale to pay attention to the right thing. Especially when the role of Facebook in this was more indirect (how much is the Genocide attributable to the Myanmar government and the existence of the internet vs. Facebook?)
The role of Tobacco companies is much more direct (well established link between cigarettes and death), and the scale is far greater.
What if 90% of democracies start dropping dead?
Then maybe people should ask why democracy is so fragile.
Democracy has always been fragile and built on the blood of patriots willing to fight against tyranny. A look at WW2 should remind everyone how quickly dictators can erase that if we are not prepared.
They do. That doesn't make them less fragile.
People are dying because of Facebook and even one death is one too many...
People are also dying because of google (you can search for informations that expose agents p), they die because of apple (iMessage is also used to coordinate killings), they die because of Tesla (cars kill), they die because of Coca-Cola (bad nutrition kills more than tech), they die because of Boeing (huge military contractor), they die because of us government (all the wars fought by the government), they die because of Starbucks (according to California coffee is a killer)
Everything has bad consequences, each technology. Just saying that someone dies as a consequence of a company product isn’t enough to disqualify it. If you want to apply that logic we need to shutdown basically all worlds economies.
A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
I’m not arguing there were no deaths because of Facebook, or that Facebook shouldn’t be hold accountable for bad things.
I’m arguing your statement that one death is too many. That’s very naive metric, as you can apply it to any big company.
So let’s bury your head in the sand, because others are doing it too...
“Oh, my God. Using an Android phone is like paying for dinner with a Discover card. It’s like saying, “Don’t have sex with me.” It’s the ultimate prophylactic that says “I should be ...”
Oh, Scott. Once again.
”I should be screened out of the gene pool.” If you use an Android phone or have a Discover card, your family tree should come to an end.”
Stopped reading after this.
I wish other companies could get the same kind of scrutiny as Facebook. For some reason while most scandals are pushed down and quickly forgotten, Facebook is being dragged around for all its worth. Maybe they weren't planting enough stories.
Which companies do you refer?
I am fine with other companies facing public backlash for their actions just like Facebook is now if they are doing things as shady as Facebook.
Google with YouTube and Twitter? Even though most congressional hearings are a farce, Google didn't even show up to speak with congress. The amount of racist, nazi propaganda I'm exposed to on Twitter every day far outnumbers what I've ever seen on Facebook.
Another commenter mentioned Equifax, which I agree is a good example. They have done a lot more to damage me than Facebook could hope to. (I don't have a choice about being in Equifax's database, but at least I can block the little informants on websites I visit.)
Google.
I feel quite the opposite. Outside of hackernews there is almost no scrutiny as far as I see. (In the eu anyway)
It's probably a deliberate strategy by the carbon industry to distract attention away from them.
Facebook et al all deserve the attention, mind, especially in mobile. The amount of information mining done via apps (and especially by pre-installed apps which you cannot uninstall) is a scandal.
I feel the same way. It regularly frustrates me to see the magnitude of corporate misdeeds that just go unmentioned. Equifax resulted in little to no real action despite, what is in my mind, a far more powerful and privacy-sensitive position. (nearly-mandatory access to my spending habits will tell you MUCH more about my life than a social site or tracking cookie that I can realistically avoid.) And this not even mentioning the passing fancies we get for everything from medical billing abuses to undischargable student debt without showing nearly the level of tenacity we do with FB.
Hell, just comparing them to what the tobacco execs did in terms of physical harm and outright mortality-causing misdirection for almost half a century shows how skewed the comparison is to my eyes. It's like the talking heads on the news who compared <hot button topic> to Hitler. Sure it may be a bad thing but you've just lost all sense of relativism.
Additionally, the complaint that facebook is somehow the threat to democracy (and to our credit, other topics have come and gone to question "how'd we get here" but FB is really the recurring theme) has always sounded to me far too much like a "let's find a scapegoat for an outcome we don't want to blame ourselves for" (Trump) especially given that when many articles have risen to the top showing how _our own executive_ may be taking part in truly criminal action (far beyond just "we're slimy corporate executives") this doesn't even make the front page, but we'll beat the dead horse of FB all day long.
I think this makes light of the fact that lung cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Every year millions of people die. Millions. And this is just one way cigarettes have negative impact. I’ve heard doctors say that we would need far fewer hospitals in the U.S if it wasn’t for all the negative effects of smoking.
We all are going to die, and people prefer to put their dying relatives in hospital just in case they can be saved. So the amount of hospitalized people will not change too much if someone makes lung cancer disappear completely. People will die from other reason, like a heart attack, other cancer, aneurism, ... So banning cigarettes will make people live longer (that is a good thing) but it will not change too much the number of hospital rooms needed.
I would note that they’re not comparing the effects of the two businesses, but rather the PR decisions made under fire.
Not that I necessarily agree that the comparison is completely apt, but it’s certainly a much closer one.
The frustrating thing is that tobacco execs are still around. And that there is no hedging or context given so it’s pretty easy to come away with the impression that it’s something more broad than just the PR tactics. In fact I think that’s pretty open to interpretation.
It’s an absurd comparison by any measure
The FB media onslaught is getting a bit overdone at this point. They aren't the worst company in the world. They probably have figured out that connecting everyone doesn't necessarily make the world a better place immediately but I applaud the effort and I think long term it will make a difference. So they make money selling ads which they display by algorithmically sifting through metadata. Around here I know it's not a popular practice but for the vast majority of FB's 1.5B DAUs I think it matters a lot less than the media would like it to. All ads are annoying but I personally prefer the targeted ads of today to the random banners ads of the late 90s early 2000s. I know they aren't a perfect company but who is? I think the media just smells easy traffic here.
HN has always been super negative towards FB and their products (with perhaps the exception of Whatsapp) because HN has never been FB's target market. It's a lot easier to criticize a product that's never provided any utility to you personally. You don't really hear about the spread of racist, divisive, Russian sponsored content on YouTube or Twitter nearly as much here, and when you do you also don't get comments sections filled with moral grandstanding on how if you work at FB you're human garbage that should burn in hell.
I see some parallels with “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Facebook doesn’t share awful hate speech, people share awful hate speech. Half of us will be like “not enough, take away Facebook” and the other half will be like “some people suck, but I should have Facebook”.
I think the answer is to tag content using ML and then allow users to apply filters. It could be a “protect me” button in settings. I’m assuming most hate speech is in image and video format with text in the image but Facebook can probably figure that out with less than $1B worth of dev hours. It’s easy to delay sharing into “protect me” enabled news feeds until after processing and tagging.
Very few people are against hate speech, most people are only against hate speech that targets groups they feel alligned with. As a result you would see many people turn the switch on only to go and write a diatrabe against a group that they feel is a fair target.
I certainly don’t want hateful media in my news feed. In my proposed solution nothing stops you from posting hate speech but it’s one button to filter all hate speech on the receiving end. I would suspect that hate speech gets fantastic engagement and wider audience than required.
Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Open Society Foundation, just saying, “The notion that your company at your direction actively engaged in the same behavior to try to discredit people exercising their First Amendment rights to protest Facebook’s role in disseminating vile propaganda is frankly astonishing to me. It’s disappointing to see how you have failed to monitor hate and misinformation on Facebook’s platform to now learning that you are active in promoting this distortion is beyond the pale.”
Another "facebook is the devil" propaganda hit piece. This is getting to be so freaking exhausting and so obvious.
You know what's becoming worse than facebook and their execs? The news industry and their editors.
perhaps this is an incendiary comment, but i really do wonder what all of the HN facebook employees are telling themselves to deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by this latest scandal wherein facebook paid for smear campaigns to distract from their own dirty laundry.
every time i have encountered these people on HN, they've portrayed a cultlike naivety regarding their organization's actions. they always allude to the outside world "not knowing the whole story" or something similar. in other words, they've made excuses.
but i really do want to see what the excuses are this time. i imagine they will be particularly entertaining.
more seriously, it's time for facebook to wrap it up. we've known for years that they were abusing the public trust. while i doubt we will see any leadership from congress regarding breaking up the company or degrading their capabilities to hurt the public interest, the intense amount of flak that FB has been getting lately is immensely promising. plenty of people are leaving FB.
while it is true that many of these people are leaving for instagram, it's a critically different product. i think instagram has a much more limited ability to negatively impact the public good via propaganda etc mostly because it isn't as participatory as facebook.
Speaking as a former employee (who left for personal reasons), stories like this which compare facebook to a product that literally causes cancer make it much _easier_ to ignore criticism of the company. Once you see your umpteenth story about how facebook is the biggest force for evil in history its pretty easy to tune everything out.
A. Most people aren't really that worried about ethics. They are more worried about having a job.
B. Humans are really talented at counting the good something does for themselves/their people and discounting the harm it does others. See racism, sexism, nationalism etc.
C. The primary reason FB is getting so much flak is because it's gotten so big. There are many people who derive some kind of benefit from it or it wouldn't be that big.
I wondered about this too. I'm someone who won't work in any adtech at all for ethical reasons.
I asked my friend who works at FB, and he said, "I don't know about all that. I just want to work on cool tech."
I think that's how most humans feel about their role in orgs like Facebook, so I don't judge him at all.
“I was just following orders”...