aierou

It's funny because Zuckerberg isn't even a public figure. I'm sure someone will make some ethical claim, but I've read all the articles and they are hardly conclusive. It's probably better to just wait for a regulatory decision, otherwise you're just going to be reading someone else's agenda.

Apparently so is HN

What, does public opinion shield you from the burden of proof? These are outrageous claims. I pray for legislation to put this all to rest.

> Facebook ignored and hid the burden it puts on teenagers development

Here, read the leaked document. Does it say what you said? https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Instagram-Te...

Have you ever heard of AlphaFold?

[0]: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/alphafold-a-solution-to-a-...

This claim frustrates me in the same way as the claim that 'video games cause violence.'

Thank you for this article. I was beginning to lose hope that there was anyone with a measured view on this issue.

We are told again and again that correlation is not causation, but we readily ignore this maxim when we are looking for an account that we hope is true. At a time when Facebook is regularly vilified (sometimes deservedly), wanting to believe that its practices have caused teenagers’ mental health to suffer is understandable. But wanting doesn’t make it so.

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/10/opinion/instagram-faceboo...

I really wish we would stop giving so much influence to popular opinion on social media. As of late, it is very undiscerning. Voting websites especially are terrible at selecting for true value at scale.

Personally, I'm much more interested in technological advancement than paying mind to the plodding conservative narrative from media demagogues.

Right. Just like we're currently living in a world where IBM controls all computers.

Your own examples cover a broad range of social and political issues that even the savviest state governments struggle to navigate. How could anyone possibly moderate for such delicate and complex expectations?

100,000 moderators? Perhaps our demands for censorship are what is unreasonable.

Why is this article dated October 9th? Did they release it early to counter a slow news day?

Let me put it this way: how would you go about measuring the harm that Facebook or any other social media company causes?

With cigarettes, oxycontin, or weapons manufacturers, you can look directly at the physical harm they cause. We have statistics and studies that require little effort to interpret.

With social media, it is nearly impossible to connect physical or psychological harm to a platform over the course of someone's life. The papers that draw conclusions in this space are based on limited studies and polls that could be influenced by any number of external factors. We judge these things based on little more than feeling.

Now, I think it would be great to be able to make informed decisions based on diligently collected data (and maybe that's what we should be fighting for) but we don't have that right now. Why, in this case, do we seem eager to throw scientific rigor and frankly due process out the window?

You just compared a social media company to a weapons manufacturer.

Elsewhere, I see comparisons to cigarettes, oxycontin, gambling.

It is easy to see how one might think Facebook to be evil if they are constantly bombarded with these false equivalencies.

Okay, let's break up big tech. Now what? Do you really think people will stop using social media?

The implication that HN is a primary source of knowledge is disturbing.

What you are seeing is a major weakness of platforms like HN and Reddit. This weakness could very well cause more harm than Facebook, but studies or articles that point this out likely wouldn't receive exposure on the platforms they impugn.

We've seen the negative effects of this feedback loop in the past (who else remembers Reddit's role in the Boston Marathon bombing?), but it is clearly a much lower priority than the current Facebook witch hunt.

I don't know about everyone else, but I get most of my hate, arguments, misinformation, angry, and harmful messaging from HN and Reddit.

RE: downvotes

I understand my comment is low effort, but so is the parent comment. I would be more than happy to see both removed.

Right. However, it is my understanding that these glasses in their current form do not stream or publish data to Facebook, and I have no reason to suspect that future AR glasses would do that either. Technology has no inherent morality, and can be used for just as much good as bad.

Sorry, yes, that is poorly worded on my part. I meant to say that there is a class of privacy discussion that essentially did not exist prior to the widespread adoption of social media.

If these were AR glasses first, would we have accepted the cameras as a necessary evil? If that is the case, then the concern seems superficial.

Aren't all recorded breaches of trust (outside of admittedly predatory data collection schemes endemic to the software industry) the result of unprecedented attacks on social networks as a construct? How would one anticipate such attacks?

I think it's fair to say that Facebook grew too quickly to mitigate the issues inherent to social networks at scale. I don't think that makes them abusive or evil, just naive.

From my position, the mobile app shenanigans look like little more than intracompany politics. Where Facebook is not getting data, Apple or Google are still happily collecting.

Overall, I would guess that there is no track record of trust because expectations remain unclear. Concepts of privacy, data usage, and such didn't exist before Facebook and others. I suppose I am not eager to assume malintent outside what is standard for any business operating for the sake of profit.

I don't mean to go too much against the narrative in this thread, but aren't cameras on glasses necessary to achieve AR? Are people concerned about these glasses just because it's Facebook, or is there broader opposition to AR technology?

Isn't it at least part of the problem that data laws/regulations remain fuzzy and complex? I don't think it's surprising to see that companies don't fully comply with a law that was created in 2016.

Unfortunately it doesn't filter out the mindless consumption. A curated front page can help, but even that has become less and less effective in my experience.

I think it's important to recognize that Reset Australia is a traditional media lobby group, and that this report amounts to a zero-day attack on Facebook's automated advertising system. Facebook would never choose to advertise these products to children for a variety of reasons. Reading the sentiment in this thread, when exactly did we create the expectation that Facebook (or any social media entity) must execute as a perfect moral system?

It seems that the term "shadow profile" refers to a feature where Facebook retains contact information uploaded by other users in order to recommend them as friends if/when you create a profile [1]. For all the fear associated with the term, that's pretty benign. Is there any evidence for a link between these "profiles" and some of the more egregious claims of privacy infringement?

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/firm-facebooks-shadow-profiles...