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Comment by runarberg | Hacker News Reader

Do we really need evidence here? We know Meta is a bad actor, we have plenty of evidence of Meta/Facebook engaging in criminal or otherwise human-hostile behavior (including facilitating a genocide).

When an actor has shown it self to be this malicious, we should be allowed to assume all the worst thing about it. And we should at the very least resist and complaint whenever it shows it self able to cause even more harm to humanity.

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It's definitely faster to just assume that there is evidence to reinforce our existing biases than it is to do the same after succeeding or failing to locate that evidence, so considering that all three methods lead to the same result, the one with the lowest time cost is optimal.

This is terrible logic.

Trump is stripping the White House for copper and selling it!! Well, actually he’s not, but since we know he’s corrupt, isn’t it safe to just assume he might also be doing this other bad thing?

If your decision is to avoid Muse due to Meta’s poor track record, that’s absolutely your prerogative (and a reasonable one!). But specific claims must be evaluated based on their evidence. This article fails that. There’s no story here.

The logic here is that Meta (a company known to be malicious) is putting out a product which is potentially dangerous. There are some anecdotal evidence of said dangers, and it is perfectly rational to believe given the history and dangers involved. Best case regulators step in and ban this product before we know the validity of these anecdotes. Worst case, regulators do nothing, the public starts using the product, and these anecdotes turn out to be valid.

Off course there is space between the worst and the best case. But given Meta’s history it is safest (and the most rational) to assume the worst.

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