Review: Why Facebook can never fix itself | Hacker News Reader

Review: Why Facebook can never fix itself

technologyreview.com

32 pointsokareaman5 comments

>Once he left, the leadership continued to refuse to address a whole host of profoundly disturbing problems, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the genocide in Myanmar, and rampant covid misinformation.

The so called 'rampant' covid misinformation has nothing to do with Facebook's design as the authors claim. People have been spouting BS on various internet forums/platforms since - forever. The article takes a very real problem (employee accessing users' private data) that actually is a design flaw, and then overreaches by dumping a whole bunch of claims and leaving the reader to connect the dots.

It makes a lot of unsettling assumptions that we the users want zuck and co. to essentially bless facebook posts with truthness scores and prevent people from being wrong on the internet. Sorry, I don't want them to determine the truth of anything anyone says. Facebook is not a nanny!

Aside, is this website actually associated with MIT?

Agree with everything you said.

While Facebook has a lot to fix the article falls into the common assumption that behavioural problems can be fixed with technology.

Your question is probably rhetorical but yet it’s owned by MIT: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Technology_Review

Yes they are associated with MIT and Media Bias Fact Check rates their bias as “pro science” and very highly factual (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mit-technology-review/). Granted, media bias fact check is the least scientific of the bias websites (it’s basically one small team’s opinion), but it is interesting that this is their reputation when they are making such unsubstantiated claims.

Technology Review used to be about the science and engineering aspects of tech, but in the last few years focuses largely on social issues (and advocates a very specific ideological viewpoint). Not unlike how magazines like Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Wired, etc. in recent years went from being industry publications to political outlets.

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