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I'm finding these two sentences hard to reconcile.

> If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk, they would do it in a heartbeat. But it appears they can't.

> Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large

Imagine yourself as the CEO of a manufacturer that pollutes rivers, and you sincerely want to stop polluting, but if you stop polluting, the company's costs would increase to the point it would no longer be able to compete against all the other companies that continue polluting -- and they're trying to eat your lunch you every day. So, if you stop polluting you would quickly lose relevance, be forced to shut down plants, be forced to fire lots of decent people, and eventually go out of business.

Moreover, when the company was started, no one anywhere realized that polluting rivers was so bad for everyone. No one knew back then; no one thought of it as a problem.

Your choices are: (a) act in the best interest of society and get f#cked by competitors; or (b) remain a dominant force in the market, but as a side effect, f#ck everybody. All your options appear to be a mix of those two horrible choices.

What would you do?

> the CEO of a manufacturer that pollutes rivers, and you sincerely want to stop polluting

Imagine you started a company that pollutes rivers and you're still the CEO.

Imagine people believing you sincerely want to stop polluting.

I can imagine it of course but can't see parallels to Mark Zuckerberg. He hasn't done a substantive thing to show societies health is a priority. A tax break foundation that works on ways to spread Facebook further is not it.

Not just a company that pollutes rivers, but Filthy Frank's River Wreckers Pollution Distribution Specialists LLC, A company who's entire core mission, and reason for existing is the polluting of rivers.

Imagine that you invent the idea of polluting rivers, and you set up a company to monopolize polluting rivers, and you tell people for decades that you want to stop polluting rivers, but every year the rivers get polluted by you.

The logical conclusion of your argument is this - Facebook cannot be operated safely and still make a profit and should shut down as soon as possible.

> The logical conclusion of your argument is this - Facebook cannot be operated safely and still make a profit and should shut down as soon as possible.

sounds great! how soon can this happen?

I would choose to use my skills working for a different company in a different industry.

If Zuckerberg really had a problem with what Facebook was doing, but didn’t feel he could ethically risk the company’s growth and financial performance by changing its direction, he could quit and sell all his shares. He might take a financial hit, but he would still be one of the world’s richest people.

> If Zuckerberg really had a problem with what Facebook was doing, but didn’t feel he could ethically risk the company’s growth and financial performance by changing its direction, he could quit and sell all his shares. He might take a financial hit, but he would still be one of the world’s richest people.

He is one of the world's richest people. He seems to have concern (or at least feigns it) for the problems Facebook is causing. If he resigns and allows someone else, who is more hungry and motivated by money to take over, you believe Facebook's behavior would improve?

If he’s concerned about it why would he pick a successor that doesn’t share his concerns? He still controls the company.

> What would you do?

Personally, I wouldn't even start or be part of such a company, simple as that. I cannot imagine somebody polluting rivers on purpose just to make money but those people exist regardless. So this question is moot for quite a few people (me including) that could never ever get in this mindset and predict what they would do.

I think as many companies have started to do today, one can spin green manufacturing as a PR thing, and possibly market your product towards customers who are willing to pay more for greener manufacturing practices. Along the way, hopefully you could invest in green manufacturing improvements to make the tech cheaper at scale.

I don’t think it has to be an a or b situation. I think the best and brightest could solve the problem without decimating their profits. Perhaps I am not that smart, but surely Facebook is. (They have significantly more resources than their competitors, I imagine.)

Is it really true that Facebook would go bankrupt by being more ethical? I’m not so sure. They have a captive user base. A lot of older folks who aren’t great with tech are on Facebook, and they won’t be going anywhere that quickly. With as many users as they have — a seventh of the world’s population - I can’t imagine people will leave in droves that quickly. One of Facebook’s biggest advantages is the network effect of “everyone you know is already here”.

My opinion is that Facebook does in fact have the resources to be more ethical without loosing so much profit that they go out of business.

I think the problem partially is maximizing revenue at the cost of everything else. I’m not sure I buy into the idea that they must maximize revenue. Couldn’t they be more ethical at the cost of some money, and then that new revenue amount still is enough to cover expenses?

> I don’t think it has to be an a or b situation. I think the best and brightest could solve the problem without decimating their profits.

I hope you're right! But so far, it appears no one at Facebook has figured out how to escape this "tyranny of horrible choices."

> I think the problem partially is maximizing revenue at the cost of everything else.

I disagree. I think the problem, from the perspective of Facebook, is figuring out how to do The Right Thing while remaining relevant and competitive against the many companies trying to dislodge Facebook from its dominant position. Many of Facebook's users are addicted to the social-media-crack; if Facebook stops providing it, they will migrate to other social networks that provide it. And many of Facebook's customers -- advertisers and propagandists -- want Facebook to continue to modify user behavior on their behalf; and if Facebook stops doing that, those customers will migrate to the competition.

> the many companies trying to dislodge Facebook from its dominant position

Such as? Can you find me one company that provides a similar feature set to Facebook (cross-platform messaging & calling, personal & business pages with unlimited media uploads, groups, marketplace, dating and the network effects of everyone you know already being on it with their real name and no usernames to worry about)?

Furthermore, if Facebook stops or tones down paid advertising and unpaid spam/clickbait it will be yet another reason for users to prefer them versus the competition.

> Facebook's users are addicted to the social-media-crack

Are they? Facebook users are primarily there for keeping in touch with their friends, and happen to get sucked down the rabbit hole of bullshit by Facebook's algorithms which prioritizes engagement. Removing the engagement-generating crap won't suddenly remove the need for people to socialize.

> many of Facebook's customers -- advertisers and propagandists -- want Facebook to continue to modify user behavior on their behalf; and if Facebook stops doing that, those customers will migrate to the competition.

These customers want to go where the users are. If Facebook stops advertising but all the users remain (partly because of the lack of advertising), advertisers do not have a magic wand to move people across to another platform where they can advertise, short of paying those people to move (in which case it would be a win-win situation as people would be compensated for their time & attention).

It doesn’t matter to the people forced to drink the polluted river water if the person doing the polluting feels bad about it, or doesn’t. Feeing bad does not absolve the CEO of anything.

This analogy also ignores that Facebook is putting huge amounts of money into lobbying efforts to ensure that they continue to be able to figuratively pollute the river.

Agressively lobby for criminal penalties (as in all the CXOs go to prison) for any company that continues to pollute after <date the law passes + 1year or so>, while loudly telling everyone that you will stop polluting as soon as your competitors are forced to do likewise.

Please cite any privacy legislation supported by Facebook/Zuckerberg under which CEOs or other responsible parties (not disposable middle managers) actually end up in prison (not pittance fines) for violations.

> Moreover, when the company was started, no one anywhere realized that polluting rivers was so bad for everyone. No one knew back then; no one thought of it as a problem.

Zuckerberg called early users “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their data. That’s the demeanour of someone with bad (selfish) intentions from the start. Just because the damage he ended up doing is worse than the initial damage he predicted, it doesn’t excuse his continued morally bankrupt behaviour.

My point is that Oil Companies can improve their behavior only by putting their business at risk.

I don't think it's a justifiable for risk mitigation reasons to act as the oil industry has. What they can do more of is invest in more R&D for moonshot energy products. Or invest into existing green energy areas. I believe there are just better short term returns on PR (deceiving the public as much as possible), buying help & protection from regulators, and the status quo generally. I also believe the powers that be in that industry, like many others, are old, uninspired, and unreasonably resistant to change. Like Zuckerberg, they're more afraid of lost profit than destroying the world, whether by a lot or a little.

Or oil companies could pack up their tent and wander off

Sounds like a job for regulation to me.

Of course it’s profitable to be a monipoly and doing the “right thing” might be to allow competitors in but one could basically never truly do that while the bottom line is the most important thing.

It’s so strange to me that so many truly believe a profit motive is all that’s needed to have good outcomes. It was never so, only starting in the 80s did companies care about shareholder value over everything else.

> It’s so strange to me that so many truly believe a profit motive is all that’s needed to have good outcomes.

Not strange. In the U.S. at least, we're acculturated to this ideology our whole lives through education and media.

That said, many/most of the wealthiest or influential market participants, fortune 500 CEOS, academics from top biz/econ programs understand the importance of trust in the economy and the role that an effective government (contracts, the rule of law, and regulation) play in enabling that trust.

If you or your industry are the target of regulation, though, government BAD, regulation BAD, regardless of what you philosophically believe.

People still think they’re getting a good deal which is mostly laughable. I’ve been in industries while wanting more regulation in them - it’s always shocking for me to imagine the amount of unreturned loyalty businesses will get from their employees.

When you are build on a certain core you can't change who/what you are.

Facebook is built on getting / using user data to determine what to show.

Google is built on geting / using user data to determine what to show.

To betray those goals wouldn't make sense. How they go about it can change. Facebook has always gone hard and fast. They treat you more like a raw piece of meat. They will run ab tests on you and treat you like a variable in a ongoing experiment. Google has such reach that they can make minor changes and capture vast amounts of data.

Other companies are doing the same way but instead of using it to determine what to show you they use it to determine what ads look like so you can buy their product.

Your original point says that they are looking to change for the benefit of mankind...

They aren't. They have no sincerity. They will do what makes money. Period.

They have shown time and again they don't give two fucks about humanity, mental health, regulators etc until they are about to generate bad PR from it.

The government seems to be aiming at them right now although I suspect that once the brown envelopes stuffed with cash start passing around that will be diluted down to "honest gov, we'll start doing right!".

Their clock is about to be cleaned by Apple when they roll out the changes to apps requiring them to tell people the data that's being harvested... Facebook will quite rightly be worried right now.

If Google did the same... well, we'd see some folks bailing quick-sharp I reckon... rats and sinking ships and all that.

I hope governments starts with more evil companies. Facebook should be down the list.

> If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk, they would do it in a heartbeat. But it appears they can't.

I think the point is they literally can't improve Facebook's behavior because their behavior is their business. They don't have any products that can function without their panopticon and Skinner boxes.

It's not that they can't compete by changing their behavior but cease to be a viable business that can even operate.

> If Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et al could improve Facebook's behavior without putting the business at risk, they would do it in a heartbeat.

Based on what evidence do you make this assertion?

> Facebook can improve its behavior only by putting its business at risk. ... They will never voluntarily do anything that would put the business -- their life's work -- at risk.

I don't understand how, given this, you could possibly sincerely open your original post with

> As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large

I can't tell what your position is. Your opening sentence sounds like you think that Facebook should be given the benefit of the doubt because they mean well, when what the rest of what you're saying is that Facebook needs to have costs imposed on it in order to enable it to improve its behaviour

Usually pollution is the result of some other activity that itself results in profit. In this case, the pollution itself is the profit source.