Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-employee-leaks-show-they-feel-betrayed

by uptown • 6 years ago

241 201 6 years ago

"Yaël Eisenstat, Facebook's former election ads integrity lead, said the employees’ concerns reflect her experience at the company, which she believes is on a dangerous path heading into the election.
“All of these steps are leading up to a situation where, come November, a portion of Facebook users will not trust the outcome of the election because they have been bombarded with messages on Facebook preparing them to not trust it,” she told BuzzFeed News.
She said the company’s policy team in Washington, DC, led by Joel Kaplan, sought to unduly influence decisions made by her team, and the company’s recent failure to take appropriate action on posts from President Trump shows employees are right to be upset and concerned."

This is pretty damning stuff, coming from named, authoritative sources inside the company. I'm hopeful that the recent advertiser boycott will help shift priorities with leadership at the company, but I'm not holding my breath.

TechBro8615• 6 years ago

Just to be clear, by "shifting priorities," you mean that you hope the advertiser boycott causes Facebook employees to editorialize posts from politicians and world leaders?

creaghpatr• 6 years ago

This is extremely predictable though, because a sizable segment of Facebook users did not trust the outcome of the 2016 election. Why would it be any different in 2020?

tomrod• 6 years ago

People trust the outcome generally, whether they like it or hate it. The folks aren't trusting the inputs.

2020 is not 2016. Polling is suggesting a large shift. That may cause distrust in the outcome itself if the outcome doesn't align to polling due to voter suppression efforts and other possible issues.

_y5hn• 6 years ago

If people suspect fraud and did nothing about it, they don't deserve to live in a free democratic society, and won't.

shostack• 6 years ago

But wouldn't these people still exist and not trust the outcome regardless? I wonder what the media consumption of these individuals looks like beyond Facebook.

dannyw• 6 years ago

Advertiser boycott is a bit limited in effectiveness as FB's revenues come from its long tail, and direct to consumer brands are snapping inventory up.

vmchale• 6 years ago

I found it funny they were boycotting in the middle of a pandemic.

I assume some have to cut costs, and some (like Purell) hardly need marketing!

chrisco255• 6 years ago

Wait, you think a social media company should be in the business of regulating what politicians or people can say about politics? The damning thing is that people believe a corporation should be in charge of deciding acceptable parameters for speech. Some part of this article is spin. You can take a Trump tweet and spin it in a really horrific way if you like. Is Trump calling for laws to be enforced against property destruction and violent rioters? Or is Trump calling for violence against peaceful protesters? It's a matter of perspective and therein lies the rub. You want censors to wade into these grey areas and declare one perspective to be the one true viewpoint. The real world does not work this way, and what I'm surprised at is the lack of recognition and the overall immaturity at tech companies and perhaps modern society in general that this is the case. Everybody thinks of themselves as the good guys. That is part of the human condition.

paulgb5• 6 years ago

Facebook's corporate spin on this has been that all calls for them to improve behavior come down to calls for moderation, and I've been a bit sad to see HN (not you specifically, but in all of these discussions) buying into that spin.

There are plenty of ways Facebook could improve that are not moderation, starting with removing the incentives that make the most divisive/controversial speech have the furthest reach.

SaltyLemonZest6• 6 years ago

To be clear, Eisenstat's concern here is that Facebook isn't exercising enough editorial control over the content it allows. She argues that Facebook ought to remove content which upsets its employees, its advertisers, or the civil rights community.

andreilys• 6 years ago

The world is a big place, if you take any piece of content it’s bound to offend someone.

Should we ban content that promotes the Big Bang theory because it’s offensive to creationists?

analyte1233• 6 years ago

It's pretty damning, but not in the direction the article wants it to be. Facebook is a very powerful company, so it's more shocking that it can be rocked by politically motivated hysteria over a "https://emojipedia.org/red-triangle-pointed-up/" symbol (the actual subject of most of this article) than that it took an extra few days to delete a highly-debatable usage of that symbol by the US president.

creato2• 6 years ago

I feel like all of this debate is painfully missing the point. The problem is not some content moderation policy, the problem is that social media has changed social conversations from small local interactions into monstrous virtual fight clubs between millions of people simultaneously, and where the most extreme opinions are rewarded with the most attention. Boring level headed opinions used to at least have a chance of rising above the noise. Not anymore.

dr_dshiv2• 6 years ago

Amen. The thing that's funny is it seems relatively straightforward to measure the positive and negative interactions and promote appropriately and transparently.

planb• 6 years ago

This is so right. But are you aware of any ideas what to do about this? It seems like everyone has just accepted that‘s the way it is now.

paulgb5• 6 years ago

Unfortunately this doesn't work unless a massive group of people does it, but: stop sharing things that make you angry. They make you angry so that you share them.

So much toxicity is rooted in exploiting this dynamic.

DoofusOfDeath2• 6 years ago

I'm not sure what your whole list of requirements is for a solution, but: how about simply not using Facebook at all?

airstrike• 6 years ago

Favor moderated communities over "free" communities

Push for ad-free social networks (probably not free to users, then)

koheripbal2• 6 years ago

It's more than just the toxicity of the conversations. These vapid online brawls have engaged millions more people to vote who never would have voted in the past.

Hence, introducing an easily swayed group of uneducated voters into the pool, and debasing politics to their level.

If democracy represents the intelligence of the average voter, then engaging literally tens of millions of uneducated/emotional/immature people to vote significantly diminishes the ability of our government to make decisions and/or speak about problems honestly.

wildmusings• 6 years ago

This is nothing new in kind. The founders were fearful of mass democracy too and sought to avoid creating one. For better or for worse, they failed.

untog2• 6 years ago

I don’t really see anything very different there. Voters have always been easily manipulated: by newspapers, TV, whatever. Though I suppose one key difference is that the source of that manipulation has been hidden: you used to know what newspaper pushed what, now actors hide behind sockpuppet accounts and promoted ads.

heylook• 6 years ago

These vapid online brawls have engaged millions more people to vote who never would have voted in the past.

Voter turnout in presidential elections is the same as it has been for 50 years at least. Voter turnout in the most recent midterm spiked a crazy amount, but I'm not willing to credit social media so much as a natural reaction to the extremism of the current administration. Which sources are you using that I missed?

Nextgrid6• 6 years ago

The other problem is that the business model of social media is based on generating "engagement" at all costs, so the platforms are built to encourage outrage as it generates lots of engagement, among other addictive behaviors (the infinite "algorithmic" feed for example). Social media was supposed to be a tool that serves people but its current business model encourages it to work against people.

There were plenty of other technologies that could've been used to organize large-scale virtual fight clubs (forums, BBSes, chatrooms, maybe even the telephone) but this didn't happen because nobody actually wanted to foster such toxic behavior.

dvt3• 6 years ago

nobody actually wanted to foster such toxic behavior

I think no one realized you could make disgusting amounts of money by fostering it. There have been plenty of flame wars on BBSes and forums, but the tension between "engagement" and "quality" always favored the latter in small, private communities (HN is a good example). However, when it comes to Facebook and Twitter, the former is always favored (due to market forces, shareholder interests, etc.).

montagg• 6 years ago

They certainly fostered toxic behavior. The social interactions we see on social media—even in HN from time to time—are familiar to anyone who frequented forums in the past. The ad-supported business model industrialized it, though.

acdha3• 6 years ago

There were plenty of other technologies that could've been used to organize large-scale virtual fight clubs (forums, BBSes, chatrooms, maybe even the telephone) but this didn't happen because nobody actually wanted to foster such toxic behavior.

“Nobody” is leaving out some pretty notorious sources of toxicity (e.g. 4chan). I think a key difference is that these huge platforms dramatically increase the reach of those communities by giving them much better tools, highly-available servers, etc. and in particular mainstreaming them into the same place everyone else is, making it easier to recruit and share outside those communities.

In the forum era, people had to learn about a particular site, learn the community, maybe create an account, etc. to know these existed — now it's just one Facebook share away and there's an advanced “engagement” system ensuring that anyone who likes something widely shared will continue to see other content from the same source without needing to seek it out. Brigading was most noticeable with a wave new of new accounts and there wasn't something like an ML system making that activity drive unrelated users to see it.

rmrfstar2• 6 years ago

the business model of social media is based on generating "engagement" at all costs

I haven't seen evidence that outrage driven engagement is profitable, though the statement is frequently repeated.

Is it possible that divisiveness is an intended effect?

We know that governments sow discord to achieve selfish ends. Why wouldn't similarly powerful business interests?

Lendal• 6 years ago

Yep, generates outrage, feeds on it and turns it into money. The added insult is that advertising money used to be used to fund investigative journalism and real community news coverage at local newspapers in every city and town in the US. Anyone know what that money is spent on now?

Balgair• 6 years ago

The other problem is that the business model of social media is based on generating "engagement" at all costs (emphasis my own)

Well, FB and the like have been bringing the ban hammer out a fair bit. Most recently was the QAnon kiddos.

If they really were keeping engagement up at all costs then banning a lot of accounts and dumping all that hand-wringing would be a strange thing to do time and time again.

thebigspacefuck• 6 years ago

"The only winning move is not to play."

dvt3• 6 years ago

I feel like all of this debate is painfully missing the point.

Your point also applies to news -- articles these days miss the point by design. You get more clicks by being provocative and hyperbolic. And yellow journalism isn't really new, but its comeback has been triumphant.

AlexandrB2• 6 years ago

That's hardly surprising. Both social media and regular media are now part of the same competition to get more clicks. The whole model of online ad-driven content is rotten and creates the worst incentives.

wott• 6 years ago

Along the last few weeks, Bing's news feed, the one that appears directly on the main page of bing.com, turned into a tabloid cesspool (at least in its French version). Gradually but very quickly, it turned from something reasonable, rather faithful to the range of important events (there could be one 'people' entry here and there, but why not, after all, as long as it remains very minor) into pure clickbait. The titles are clickbait ('incredible', 'exceptional', etc.) and the content behind is crap. It is possible that they put first, the ones that already get more clicks.

If I translate the first entries titles right now:

* Amazing confidences -> an actress

* Big controversy -> a female singer

* Corruption suspicion -> OK, a politician

* Accused of lying -> an actor's wife

* a few trivialities and filler items

* Finally calm -> a dead singer's wife

* Turkish activities -> OK, international news

* from the previous item on, it is only now that you have a regular mix of normally interesting/important news items. You had to click once or twice on the Next arrow to get there, everything or almost everything on what I'd call the front page was clickbait crap.

So, that's a feed, but the content comes from actual newspapers, and if I go to my local newspaper, half of the top content is also oftennational/international 'people' crap.

tsieling• 6 years ago

The policy and the design of the interface is inextricably linked to that change in interactions. A hands-off policy is still a policy for a site that rewarded more inflammatory content in pursuit of certain metrics.

vkou• 6 years ago

Boring level headed opinions used to at least have a chance of rising above the noise.

... Because they were heavily promoted by the people who owned the media platforms. It wasn't because of any of their particular virtues.

Consider your bias when making this claim. What makes an opinion boring and level-headed? That it is squarely in the middle of the Overton window? Who sets the Overton window, in the pre-social-network world where the overwhelming majority of media is state/corporate-sponsored?

It's not some natural evolutionary process that caused boring, level-headed opinions to rise to the top. It was self-serving opinions rising to the top, that, because of their ubiquity, are believed to be boring and level-headed.

When viewed from a different cultural lens, many of those boring and level-headed opinions appear completely batshit insane. For example, the current American model for healthcare seems, for the most part (Everyone has a few minor tweaks they want to make - but setting that aside), boring and level-headed and reasonable to ~half the country. To the rest of the world, it appears completely insane, and anyone proposing switching to it would be a complete lunatic. In the US, however, the converse holds - switching away from it is considered by many to be absolutely crazy.

Which of those opinions is the reasonable, level-headed one? It depends on your current social setting, not on the virtues or drawbacks of the expressed idea.

iamacyborg• 6 years ago

where the most extreme opinions are rewarded with the most attention

Which is amusing given that even here we have to deal with an upvote mechanism that boosts posts from strong extreme opinions.

ehsankia• 6 years ago

Personally, I think the retweet model is slightly more problematic than the upvote model. For one, upvotes have an equivalent downvote (usually), which a retweet doesn't. If a famous account upvotes a post, and a I downvote a post, they basically cancel each other. If a famous account on retweets a post, then millions more will see it thanks to that one button click, and nothing I can do balanced that.

Facebook also thrives on a similar "re-share" model, which leads to the most toxic content spreading extremely quickly and bouncing to new audiences, whereas no matter how many times I upvote this thread, only a few % of the world browses HN.

hodgesrm• 6 years ago

It seems to me HN rewards views that are "interesting" but the most highly rated comments seem to be pretty mainstream nerd stuff. Do you see evidence to the contrary?

rainyMammoth• 6 years ago

This is exactly the point I'm trying to explain to my friends that are outraged that Facebook didn't censor Trump's post. I think Facebook is one of the worst companies out there, but for other reasons.

The issue with Facebook is not about censoring the post that we don't like, it's about removing that polarization that comes with a platform that wants to get you hooked so they can sell you more ads.

Facebook and other social media are making us HATE each other because that's what they make money on. The debate should be around how can you build an ethical social platform that values your time and opinions.

foofoo4u3• 6 years ago

I do agree that the ad-based business model is designed to have us hate each other because that is what drives engagement. So I'd like to get your thoughts on this thought experiment. What if it was illegal for social media platforms to base their revenue stream on advertising? Instead, it is mandated by law that their primary revenue is based on a subscription model? "Want to use Facebook? You'll need to pay $4 a month to use it." What do you suppose the nature of Facebook would be like then and, to an extent, its impact to society at large? Perhaps better? It has been my impression so far that services that require paid subscriptions over free usage tend to respect privacy better, have higher quality content, and are less addicting in usage.

maps72• 6 years ago

I am developing a site where the landing page only shows news about topics from sources you have chosen to see. There will be some limited interaction with those news stories. On a shared page, everything is brought together and you'll see what news sources other people are reading.

I am hoping this allows people to get the news they want, interact with it and see what news other people are interacting with... without the flame wars and hate brigades that Twitter and FB prompt

floatrock• 6 years ago

sounds like Reddit. Or Digg before that. Or RSS feeds before that.

sbussard• 6 years ago

How can I upvote this twice?

aSplash0fDerp• 6 years ago

If you want to stand out from the crowd... Don`t stand in crowds... BLHO`s are nowhere to be found.... Because they have already left the building.

"Die looted" is not referencing the information quality/concentration, but BLHO types know better.

kbenson• 6 years ago

I don't think it's painfully missing the point, it's just studiously ignoring that they've let the cat out of the bag and focusing on ways to mitigate the problem.

Social media is a natural consequence of increased communication of larger groups, and as an emergent phenomenon based on everything else you aren't going to get rid of it. So instead we focus on how to mitigate the problems and live with it, because even if you shut down every single social network today, there would be new popular ones used by almost everyone a year from now.

bhntr3• 6 years ago

Yes, I think some people are becoming uncomfortable with unfettered free speech because the distribution model has changed in ways that are difficult to control and which are elevating what some people view as the "wrong" messages.

Prior to this era in which we're constantly online and connected, for a message to be heard it usually had to go through a professional editor at a newspaper, radio station, publishing company, or TV station. If you had an opinion you wanted to share, you had free speech but you probably didn't have a platform. Now messages are global, immediate, viral, and permanent.

Max Wang's video makes a strong case that Facebook's content policy and Zuckerberg's concern with adherence to it is a stringent ideology which lacks the flexibility to address clear cases that it should cover but doesn't. In other words it lacks good judgement.

I think it's going to be a long time before an automated system can exercise good judgement. Obviously having a professional editor review every tweet is impossible. So in the meantime, I think we will see a continual elevation of tension between people who value free speech at any cost and people who think that certain messages shouldn't be given a platform.

StevePerkins• 6 years ago

Indeed.

I have a theory, that many of the high-profile "advertiser boycotts" recently aren't really about content moderation. I suspect that companies simply don't want to promote their body wash in the middle of a constant screaming match about wearing masks.

Being on Facebook bums me out. It makes me dislike my extended family, and old colleagues or people I knew from school. I've been unable to completely wean myself off it (the "engagement" hooks are strong), but I genuinely feel dirty and unhappy with myself after browsing the site. It certainly doesn't foster a positive view toward brands that I see advertising there.

I wonder if: (1) that perspective is common, (2) large advertisers have figured it out, and (3) their "boycott over hate speech" is really just a clever way to get social-trend-extra-credit for a move they'd like to make anyway?

Nasrudith• 6 years ago

Satanic ritual panic and several other deeply moral panics say hello. Loud and extreme opinions and bullshit have always been rewarded with more attention because the adherents are more passionate.

zarkov992• 6 years ago

You are right, that is the central point. We have not been able to scale the small scale interactions our species evolved with to include thousands, let alone millions of people. Perhaps its impossible to do this, with brains such as ours. Nevertheless, the toxic result we get when we do try to do it is incredibly engaging, which is all that is required for the brokers to make money. This is not very different from a drug addiction. In both cases the victims are compelled, despite themselves, to engage in something that is harmful while the drug-dealers have absolutely no incentive to reduce or eliminate the damage.

pwdisswordfish2• 6 years ago

One of the canned responses we have observed Zuckerberg make to the media in response has been something along the lines of "Facebook gives people who would not otherwise have a voice a chance to be heard" (words are mine, not theirs).

The web already did that. By advocating that the world use only a single website to "speak", we allowed a single website owner to create a business by charging its users for the opportunity to publish their "speech" to segments of the website's audience.

The reason most of those millions of people "joined" Facebook was not to voice their opinions to an audience. It was to communicate with family and friends. A new mode of communication.

If those people who wanted to voice their opinions to audiences had their own websites, who would visit them? Would they have an audience of millions?

(The term "millions" is used here as an expression for "many", not as an accurate estimate of the numbers in question)

I have heard that there is talk in the US media of doing away with the US Postal Service. AKA Ye Olde Mode of Communication. It is unsettling how far things have come in eroding the American's right to be free from commercial or ideological pandering. There used to be a legally recognised principle that an American could say "No more", and then the pandering must stop. Try that with Facebook or any other "tech" company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_Form_1500

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_v._United_States_Post_Of...

RikNieu• 6 years ago

I wonder how social networks would work without sharing and liking mechanism.

joshspankit• 6 years ago

I would argue that the problem started with the introduction of “youth marketing”. Marketers saw “getting them early” as a way to have a customer for life and therefore make more money overall, and they dove in.

This resulted in prioritizing those things that younger people are drawn to, such as novelty and attention.

Imo, this resulted in a huge cultural shift that has now resulted in “boring level headed opinions [based on years of experience]” being lost in the sea of people fighting for more attention through more novelty.

The internet just threw rocket fuel on the problem.

lowdose2• 6 years ago

Does WeChat cause the same problems in China as Facebook & Twitter in the west?

SaltyLemonZest6• 6 years ago

Obviously there's less open dialogue about it, but I think it's fair to say that it must. The CCP censors it very heavily, sometimes explicitly stating they're trying to prevent rumors and misinformation.

Nextgrid6• 6 years ago

I'm pretty sure WeChat has many revenue streams that don't depend on engagement, thus they have no benefit in encouraging toxic behavior. The main problem with toxicity is not just the people but that the mainstream platforms are built to amplify the worst out of people because that's how they make their money.

Lammy3• 6 years ago

Maintaining societal cohesion is the justification for a great many of PRC's actions (I would say 'evils', but that's my judgement), including the Great Firewall, extermination of Uyghurs, etc. It is fundamentally a waste of time to compare that society to America's melting pot on the level we're discussing.

lowdose2• 6 years ago

Non of the solutions China comes up with is worth to discuss?

lallysingh• 6 years ago

WeChat doesn't have a problem deciding policy, it just has to enforce the policies required by the government.

deckar01• 6 years ago

Is there a source for the video? I am only seeing an audio clip in this article and I can’t seem to find the video by googling “Max Wang facebook”.

disgruntledphd2• 6 years ago

It's a leak, so I suspect that Buzzfeed will be the only source.

minimaxir• 6 years ago

The engineer just posted the video themselves to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyBQ1_a70KI

dr_dshiv2• 6 years ago

I think the idea is we need diversity in online social media. I'd like to see human editors come back.

Here's how Benjamin Franklin dealt with his social media platform:

"In the conduct of my newspaper, I carefully excluded all libelling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country. Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind, and the writers pleaded, as they generally did, the liberty of the press, and that a newspaper was like a stage-coach, in which any one who would pay had a right to a place... "

RangerScience• 6 years ago

I mean, isn't that approximately what's occurring that some people ("writers") are up in arms about, except instead of "libel" and "personal abuse" it's things like "hate speech"?

1234letshaveatw• 6 years ago

As long as the editors are "our guys" and not any of "their guys"

SaltyLemonZest6• 6 years ago

On the contrary, I regularly read articles and watch videos edited by "their guys". I don't have much interest in listening to people scream on social media, but I'm genuinely happy to learn the perspectives of people who don't think the same way as me.

dvt3• 6 years ago

I think the idea is we need diversity in online social media. I'd like to see human editors come back.

People have tried. Either highly-moderated networks or "middle of the line" media. Other than a few exceptions (Real Clear Politics comes to mind), they've all failed. It's unfortunately clear that people don't want this.

flixic• 6 years ago

That's the key insight. It's not Facebook's or Twitter's decisions that have lead to a divisive discourse.

It's that given an option to express themselves on social media, people like expressing strong tribalism the most. And then, all you need is to add even a hint of recommendation engine boosting more engaging content to the top (a very reasonable idea, heck, HN does that) and you have a vicious cycle.

52-6F-62• 6 years ago

While it's not a social media platform of any kind, I know Apple News has some of their main user-facing pages actively curated by humans they've hired directly from editorial positions at various traditional media outlets.

I thought it was an interesting idea when it started. I'm not sure how much of a real impact that's had, though.

koheripbal2• 6 years ago

This long article doesnt address the most critical point.

If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit?

This isn't a new dillemma. People working for tabacco companies have always been in the same boat.

paulgb5• 6 years ago

This long article doesnt address the most critical point.
If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit?

The article opens with a story of someone who quit.

DannyB2• 6 years ago

You're right. He quit. However he seems to be the exception.

ciarannolan4• 6 years ago

It took him 9 years of collecting a fat paycheck and enabling Facebook to find his moral compass.

Is it wrong to be skeptical of these millionaire developers who ride off into the sunset to retire but leave a final "oh btw, lots of problematic stuff at my former employer" message?

ciarannolan4• 6 years ago

If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit?

$ > Ethics

notacoward4• 6 years ago

If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit?

Always super easy to say for someone else. Why haven't most of the people in the US government quit by now? In fact, insecurity about getting an equivalent job is a real thing. Not wanting to abandon a project you've worked on and expertise you've developed is a thing. Not wanting to abandon people you've worked with is a thing. Thinking you can do more good from within is a thing.

Even for those who consider quitting in protest, waiting until just after the next bonus/vesting day seems like a reasonable concession to other psychological or financial needs. Then that date rolls around, and all of that inertia is still there. Expecting others to make a hard decision that you've never been in a position to make yourself seems unrealistic and unhelpful.

[ETA: I don't mean to say this particular person has never been in that position. I don't know them. I've even forgotten their name. But I've seen this sentiment expressed many times and it always seems facile.]

mxawng4• 6 years ago

agreed with this. for me personally, leaving FB was a confluence of directional concerns which arose for me in 2019 (as described in the leaked internal post), with a concomitant desire to spend my time on new, more human purposes. this was balanced against me enjoying my time working with the remarkable people on my team, a few logistical considerations, a surprise global pandemic, and also years of trust and good faith that FB had earned from me as both employer and societal phenomenon. i spent a little time scoping out stuff within FB as well (it's a big place), but factoring that out it still took me almost a year. the inertia is clearly there.

but i consider myself lucky! there are many people who experience all sorts of work-related insecurity with real gravitas. folks on work visas. folks paying off student loans or other debt. folks who had been working much worse tech jobs before and feel their FB offer was a lucky break. also the many folks at FB not on the tech side who don't earn stereotypical tech comp.

i have no idea how many people there are who satisfy these conditions or similar ones, but my guess is that if you're ever thinking to yourself, "why don't more people just quit?" it's because you're underestimating the scale of folks in that group.

frostmatthew• 6 years ago

People working for tabacco companies have always been in the same boat.

That's not a very fair comparison - there aren't exactly any huge positives associated with tobacco use. So it's not like someone could work for a tobacco company and say "sure some people die from consuming our product but on the other hand look at all the good we're doing..."

That's very different than Facebook where yes there may be some negatives but there's also positives (e.g. it's certainly raised countless millions for various charities, helped people keep in touch with others and discover (or rediscover) relationships, and spread the awareness of important social issues).

st1ck• 6 years ago

The positives you listed are features of most social networks, not just Facebook. If Facebook disappeared overnight, another platform(s), hopefully more ethical, would quickly take over its role, and it could be a net positive for the world.

justapassenger• 6 years ago

Majority of people stay there. It's likely for one of 2 reasons: 1. They're morally bankrupt and prefer $ 2. This is very complex issue, and there's no simple right or wrong solution.

KaiserPro3• 6 years ago

$1.5 million dollars.

geodel• 6 years ago

FB employees launched very strong virtual protest in recent times. Some had even skipped dessert after their meals. I do not know what further moral courage one can show beyond this.

artfulhippo• 6 years ago

I loved Max Wang’s point that Facebook has chosen to focus on political engagement over social engagement. Like many people who used FB early, I remember when it was more about friends than allies (and opponents).

Facebook profits massively from the politics of outrage, and for Zuckerberg to claim that Free Speech is a moral imperative is for him to take a Strategy Credit[0]. While I strongly believe that Free Speech is a moral imperative, I don’t believe that Facebook makes decisions on a moral basis.

[0] https://stratechery.com/2013/strategy-credit/

jcroll2• 6 years ago

Facebook makes decisions on a profit basis and by that metric is meteorically successful. These Facebook employees that spent years collecting their $500k pay cheques might want to consider this before posting their videos criticizing the company's direction

kccqzy• 6 years ago

Max Wang, the person who posted the video criticizing the company, left the company.

spoopyskelly• 6 years ago

"wrongthink at scale"

boltzmann_• 6 years ago

In that case twitter is way more toxic than FB.

mherdeg• 6 years ago

Facebook's famously tight-knit and tight-lipped engineering organization has become increasingly leaky in the past couple of years, as posts and data make it to the press with surprising regularity.

What changed? Is it morale? Or something that happens at scale? Does the rate of leaks say anything about the health of the company?

xixixao• 6 years ago

Basically everyone in the company has access to stuff that gets leaked, so it’s not eng specific.

What changed is that the company has grown immensely in numbers.

Maintaining a culture among an ever growing group of people is a tough task.

kazinator• 6 years ago

What changed is that people joining Facebook as employees now likely have preexisting intentions to leak information.

throwawaysea• 6 years ago

The same thing that happened at the other tech companies. A newer, younger generation of employees joined. The Gen Z cohort seems to be much more ready to bring politics and ideological wars into the workplace, and really view any institution they're a part of as an opportunity to weaponize that institution. This culture had already taken root on college campuses, and my belief is that they view that as the 'normal' way of operating, including making purposeful leaks. I know this is anecdotal and speculative but I am offering it up as an explanation nevertheless, and would love to hear other theories on what changed.

I do not believe that the change is simply due to the companies growing bigger. They already were big in prior years and had gone through phases of fast growth in employee count previously. Something is different this time, which is why I am pointing to a generational change.

mandevil• 6 years ago

Talk to a reporter about why people leak. The reason people leak is when they feel that the organization doesn't listen to them and they can't steer the organization any other way. If your employees feel respected and listened to- and that their internal warnings are being heeded- they won't leak to an outsider. If they feel that they are a Cassandra, doomed to be correct but ignored, they will leak.

Now sometimes workers are wrong- the problem they were obsessed with wasn't actually that serious, their boss did take their advice into account and decided to resolve it a different way, etc., but in general, lack of respect is why people leak.

The implications for Facebook are obvious.

Lammy3• 6 years ago

What changed?

They shut down the only internal tool employees had to discuss sensitive topics in a safe way: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/facebook-shut-down-anonym...

tijuco2• 6 years ago

Social medias have been silencing every conservative opinion on their platforms, because most of their employees can't stand different opinions. These people are unmanageable and want to make activism using a platform they don't own. At the same time they look the other way when it comes to progressive comments. If he doesn't like different opinions, intrinsic to democracy, maybe we should ask Mr Wang's parents if they miss China.

dang• 6 years ago

Turning this into a nationalistic slur and personal attack is no way to make your case. It also breaks the site guidelines and will get you banned here, so please don't go that route.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

vannevar2• 6 years ago

Facebook is not a "social network" in any meaningful sense of that word. It's a largely unmoderated narrowcast platform accessible to anyone willing to put down the money to use it, regardless of motivation, as long as it isn't obviously pornographic.

notacoward4• 6 years ago

Why can't it be both? I see people using it both ways, every day.

vannevar2• 6 years ago

You see people trying to use it that way, while wading through a morass of paid advertising and promoted memes. I can use a brick as a hammer, too, but that doesn't make the brick a hammer.

EGreg• 6 years ago

We should probably make a 2020 version of this post:

https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-chang...

Another month another 20 reasons to have an open source alternative.

lr• 6 years ago

Social media, and all of the "talking heads" on network news and talk radio, are basically in an arms race, just like advertisers have been for years. For instance, Coke can't stop advertising because then Pepsi or another brand will take over, i.e., they have to keep it up. We are now at that same point with politics: everyone has to keep it up, and even more so; constantly upping the ante. Facebook is the dominant platform for upping the ante, which gives them money, and more importantly, power.

worksmart122• 6 years ago

need a culture that has integrity, transparency, and social responsibility.

nailer2• 6 years ago

a post from President Donald Trump that seemingly called for violence against people protesting the police killing of George Floyd.

This seems very unlikely, and there's no link or screenshot of the actual post to support the statement. Twitter has previously taken statements that laws will be enforced as 'calls to violence' so it wouldn't be surprising if the same thing is occurring here.

bhupy7• 6 years ago

The steel-man argument is that the President's statements practically amount to an indirect call for violence. There's no other way for the state to enforce laws except to use the messy apparatus of the police, which may result in collateral damage/violence.

seneca3• 6 years ago

The steel-man argument is that the President's statements practically amount to an indirect call for violence. There's no other way for the state to enforce laws except to use the messy apparatus of the police, which may result in collateral damage/violence.

Which would mean that literally any discussion of government policy which could result in law enforcement is a call for violence. While I don't particularly disagree with this stance, and Libertarians in general would be overjoyed to see this shift in perspective, I don't expect to see social media companies ban all discussion of political policy.

e.g. "Deadbeat fathers should have to pay child support". If you fail to pay child support you will eventually be arrested. If you refuse to comply with arresting officers, they will use force against you. Therefore calling for child support is an indirect call for violence.

drak0n1c• 6 years ago

The truly steel-man assessment of the President's statement of "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" is that he meant it empirically, not normatively -- describing what inevitably occurs in an environment of sustained looting (shootings committed by people guarding property, looters, and law enforcement).

If you want to be extra charitable, he possibly made that statement empirically to describe a tragic situation he wanted to prevent entirely by dispersing protests early. Such a justification and reasoning would be very authoritarian and is arguably wrong in efficacy, but that interpretation does not involve an indirect or direct threat of shooting.

My grandmother (an English teacher) once castigated email and predicted it would condition people at all levels to not be precise in language, and warned of how communications and ideas would degrade as a result. As a young nerd I thought that was absurd and the opposite would be true, but now seeing Twitter I have changed my mind.

ry4nolson• 6 years ago

The screenshot is there further down the article.

nailer2• 6 years ago

If the screenshot you're referring to is "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" (oddly this isn't placed next to the assertion of threat probably to avoid the comparison):

a) this is not directed at George Floyd protestors as the article suggests, but at looters

b) stating that violence with be responded to with force is a factual statement, and that response is entirely within the remit of law enforcement. The post does not encourage an extra legal or illegal response

c) it is unlikely the BuzzFeed would allege threat for any left leaning world leader suggesting that violence would be responded to by law enforcement.

We should be auto flagging BuzzFeed articles by now.

Regardless of whether you like Donald Trump or do not - and I do not - that doesn't change the facts of this matter.

ktrl• 6 years ago

I have been wondering why Facebook has become the only platform that tolerates right-wing speech. The other platforms took the convenient route and kicked out right-wing voices.

Why exactly is Facebook risking both bad press and a revolt from its overwhelmingly progressive employees?

ciarannolan4• 6 years ago

I had always thought it was to fend off DOJ and regulatory action from the Trump administration.

bhupy7• 6 years ago

Facebook can afford to do so because they have higher margins allowing for more experimentation/risk-taking. Businesses in more competitive spaces are unable to take tough stands.

The New York Times cannot be the New York Times of New York Times v Sullivan anymore, because their ad monopoly has been decimated. But Facebook can be the NYT of NYT v Sullivan, because they have 40% margins on their ad business.

One thing I have been wondering is: why is Google so lacking in conviction?

kgraves• 6 years ago

Twitter still has right wing folks on there.

CM30• 6 years ago

Audience.

Twitter has a more left leaning audience than many social media platforms, hence its creep away from tolerating anything right wing or centrist.

Facebook's audience is predominantly more balanced in that regard, with a larger percentage of conservatives using it in some way (especially those in older generations).

If they tried to go the same way as Twitter or Reddit, a large percentage of Facebook users would be absolutely pissed, and they'd likely lose a lot of traffic.

tyrust2• 6 years ago

I think you're confusing conservative views with hateful ones. Zuckerberg makes the same mistake and it's discussed in the article:

“He [Zuckerberg] uses ‘diverse perspective’ as essentially a cover for right-wing thinking when the real problem is dangerous ideologies,” Brandi Collins-Dexter, a senior campaign director at Color of Change, told BuzzFeed News after reading excerpts of Zuckerberg’s comments. “If you are conflating conservatives with white nationalists, that seems like a far deeper problem because that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about hate groups and really specific dangerous ideologies and behavior.”

Other platforms has plenty of voices from all parts of the spectrum. The difference is that they might actually be making a more sincere attempt at moderating.

sowellecho• 6 years ago

"If a man is not a Socialist at 20 be has no heart, but if he remains one at 30 he has no head." I don't know who said this, but this is a great example of how our minds mature.

The probably unintentional ageism in tech has a major, quite literally civilization changing consequence.

We are creating power centers which have too many young people who haven't really thought a lot of things through, certainly not the unintended economic consequences, and who glibly dismiss people who disagree with their premises as some kind of "ism".

orhmeh09• 6 years ago

That’s a crass dismissal of the people involved here and socialism. You think that the problem really is that everyone at Facebook is too young and is thus more inclined toward recklessness (somehow involving socialism)?

PS: Would you be shocked to learn that some become socialists after age 30?

Talanes3• 6 years ago

That quote is just a way for people who have grown more conservative than they were in youth to excuse their cognitive dissonance. It's not some great truth.

nacho2sweet• 6 years ago

Do people who work at facebook proudly tell people they just met at bar that they work at facebook? cause it wouldn't play well in my circles.

throwgeorge• 6 years ago

lol what circles do you travel in? i was on a call last week where this guy that works for DOD took issue with me working at Facebook. the irony is quite delicious there.

KaiserPro3• 6 years ago

no, my team at least says they got bought out.

tims33• 6 years ago

FB's religion around AB testing for engagement and their views on free speech (which are mostly good) creates a complicated product that brings out much of the worst in people. They need to reevaluate their engagement at all costs philosophy.

seddin• 6 years ago

The media always blames Mark for every bad action that his company does, but what about all the other employees, aren't they just as guilty as him?

site-packages1• 6 years ago

It's possible to be an employee at what you think is an immoral company but be doing some innocuous that's just a part of a bigger whole. Does improving an internal observability tool as your job make you just as culpable as Mark? At what point do your actions become immoral? Just working for the company? Building anything for the company while an employee? Maybe you have to be the last step implementor of some bad policy before the immorality attaches. I don't really know.

But the answers to these questions aren't clear and up for debate. What is harder to argue is whether the person directing everything and with a bird's eye view of the direction of the company is culpable for that company's misdeeds. I think this makes it more clear to blame Mark than "all the other employees."

viklove• 6 years ago

At what point do your actions become immoral?

When your livelihood is funded by this kind of vile deception and manipulation, your actions are undoubtedly immoral.

tyrust2• 6 years ago

The article provides several examples in which many employees have flagged certain content but that Zuck, who was the final decision maker, did not agree or follow through on those flags. As long as he's the one making the final call, he deserves more of the blame.

Miner49er3• 6 years ago

One thing that's interesting is that Facebook has also come under fire for banning/censoring anti-racists and black people for talking about racism: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-whil...

It would be one thing if they didn't censor anything, but censoring anti-racism but not racism seems to show that FB is taking a pro-racism stance.

snthd• 6 years ago

Off Topic: The URL clearly suggests your link was posted last year (and I'm sure I've read it before), but the inline article "date" is Jul 9th 2020.

Miner49er3• 6 years ago

It was published last year, the updated date was July 9th, 2020.

d_burfoot• 6 years ago

From the article:

"White men are so fragile," she fired off, sharing William's post with her friends, "and the mere presence of a black person challenges every single thing in them."
It took just 15 minutes for Facebook to delete her post for violating its community standards for hate speech.

I'm pretty sure that comments like that don't count as "anti-racism".

Miner49er3• 6 years ago

They definitely do.

But anyway, that's only a single example, one women was banned for posting a screenshot of a racist message she received.

xoxoy• 6 years ago

it took Covid for me to really believe how dangerous social media has become to society. it really has made people more divisive and angry and conspiratorial.

didn’t really buy it when the Russia bot thing happened but now I do 100%

room505• 6 years ago

I used to have a Facebook account and deleted it in 2009-2010. This is just me brainstorming, but would it make sense to have to submit a photocopy of your ID card to create a real name account for such a huge company, for the sake of creating something of a safe online forum/community? I would think people would be more responsible with what they post. I had done so for OfferUp, which to me, makes sense because people need to have a sense of safety and security when interacting with each other. I'd like to hear what others think.

moon2• 6 years ago

Brazilian government actually wanted to do it recently, require companies such as Facebook to require that you submit your ID and that you link a phone number to your account. [1] It sure makes things easier for the authorities, since they are also dealing with fake news and hate speech. However, it goes against the LGPD (like a Brazilian version of the GDPR). And it is hard to trust a company such as Facebook to keep data such as your ID. How can you be sure if they're keeping this data safe? How can you be sure they won't sell it?

[1] https://www.uol.com.br/tilt/noticias/redacao/2020/06/24/face... (in Portuguese)

foofoo4u3• 6 years ago

Years ago, Facebook for some reason thought I was a bot and disabled my account. They required that I upload a government issued ID to verify I am a real person. I was finding Facebook to be detrimental to my health at that time, so I felt it a perfect opportunity to leave the platform all together. Plus I didn't exactly feel comfortable giving them that kind of information.

KaiserPro3• 6 years ago

The thing that annoys the living shit out of me are two fold:

1) the content policy for the public is clear, well thought out and easy to understand. but that doesn't apply to politicians. The rules that apply to politicians is hidden, opaque and taken on the fly.

2) the moral compass of the leadership team is fundamentally blinkered and naive. They do not understand or seem to want to understand viewpoints of other people. Unless you are posh & rich and upper middle class, you have to battle really hard to get your point across.

foofoo4u3• 6 years ago

There seems to be a growing consensus here on HN that Facebook's ad-based revenue model is a source issue for why extremity, polarization, toxicity, and usage addition is occurring on the platform. All of these elements drive up engagement. The more engagement you have, the more profit the company makes. It's a feedback loop that's helping the company and shareholders, but at the cost of the stability of society at large. So here's one idea to address the problem that I'd like to get other's thoughts on. What if we declare ad-based revenue streams for social media platforms a form of market failure? What if we made it the law that social networks must charge a premium, a subscription-model if you will, to use their services. "Want to use Facebook? You'll need to subscribe for $2/month". What do you think the experience of using Facebook would be like then and, to an extent, society at large? It has been my experience that services I must subscribe to do a better job of respecting my data, privacy, are less toxic, have higher quality content, and are less addicting. What I am suggesting here is that the desired behavior can be directed through proper incentives.

rbanffy• 6 years ago

I have the impression we invented that Big Machine that drove the Krell to extinction in Forbidden Planet. It's just so that's far less spectacular than in the movie.

Facebook's employees reckon with the social network they've built

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