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Comment by samlinnfer | Hacker News Reader

A new car built by my company leaves somewhere travelling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

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I don't think the analogy applies the same way. Meta simply choose to be evil not because it costs less overall but because they're unable to provide/filter actually useful ads to consumers. The rear diff is instead a filthy window but consumers don't sue for better quality because everything else works good enough and those that do crash could have cleaned the windows themselves.

ability "to provide/filter actually useful ads" is a function of moderation budget and not much else

To them it's all an algorithm. Human moderation is completely infeasible at their massive scale.

And if the algorithm can't moderate then what? We should all suffer because doing it right isn't feasible?

Yes. You can choose to drive a broken car, not drive it, or fix with aftermarket parts and then drive it. The company that made it cannot deliver solution.

I think there needs to be some moderation here because Meta clearly does offer useful ads to consumers, otherwise it wouldn’t have so much insane revenue from ads. If people don’t find the ads useful then they won’t click on them or give the company money.

I think the average user on HN (who blocks ads constantly, uses things like AdNauseam, pihole, etc.) is not going to be your typical purchaser. If you look at your typical American, they buy a lot of shit through those ads and a lot of people actually like the ads.

My only complaint with the ads has been the targeting has always been crap. If you allow personalization, they do get more relevant. But, that complaint of mine is my own personal one. I’m like a typical HN user, ads don’t typically read me well due to my blocking on all kinds of platforms.

Ohh, so naïve. They choose inaction because it's profitable, that's it. They can claim they were unaware and they are out either scot-free or with a slap on their gigantic wrist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Fuel_system_fires,_...

Scroll down on that page.

The pinto wasn't any worse that other cars from that time period. It should come as no shock that older products are worse than newer products.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Retrospective_safet...

Not sure the other responses caught the reference there, Tyler.

Recalls happen because they are required by regulators...

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