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Facebook Is a 'Living, Breathing Crime Scene,' Says Former Tech Insider (nbcnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: With more than 2 billion users, Facebook's reach now rivals that of Christianity and exceeds that of Islam. However, the network's laser focus on profits and user growth has come at the expense of its users, according to one former Facebook manager who is now speaking out against the social platform. "One of the things that I saw consistently as part of my job was the company just continuously prioritized user growth and making money over protecting users," the ex-manager, Sandy Parakilas, who worked at Facebook for 16 months, starting in 2011, told NBC News. During his tenure at Facebook, Parakilas led third-party advertising, privacy and policy compliance on Facebook's app platform. "Facebook is a living, breathing crime scene for what happened in the 2016 election -- and only they have full access to what happened," said Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google. His work centers on how technology can ethically steer the thoughts and actions of the masses on social media and he's been called "the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience" by The Atlantic magazine.
In response to the comments, Facebook issued a statement saying it is a "vastly different company" from when it was founded. "We are taking many steps to protect and improve people's experience on the platform," the statement said. "In the past year, we've worked to destroy the business model for false news and reduce its spread, stop bad actors from meddling in elections, and bring a new level of transparency to advertising. Last week, we started prioritizing meaningful posts from friends and family in News Feed to help bring people closer together. We have more work to do and we're heads down on getting it done."
In response to the comments, Facebook issued a statement saying it is a "vastly different company" from when it was founded. "We are taking many steps to protect and improve people's experience on the platform," the statement said. "In the past year, we've worked to destroy the business model for false news and reduce its spread, stop bad actors from meddling in elections, and bring a new level of transparency to advertising. Last week, we started prioritizing meaningful posts from friends and family in News Feed to help bring people closer together. We have more work to do and we're heads down on getting it done."
"Facebook is a living, breathing crime scene for what happened in the 2016 election -- and only they have full access to what happened,"
A couple of questions here.
1) What crime, exactly, was committed?
2) Is Sandy Parakilas, the manager in question, more intelligent or better informed than the average person? (The average person with a full-time job not related to understanding political issues.)
3) It this another example of a liberal who still, 18 months later, can't get over the loss of her candidate and has made a shocking pronouncement to get viewer engagement and generally get noticed?
Is this really a problem?
No one worries about issues of propaganda when it was the MSM's version of fake news.
It's been over and done with for 18 months, Trump isn't literally Hitler, and the country is doing pretty well. All things considered, we seem to have chosen the better of two candidates.
Why is it such a big issue?
It may have that many /accounts/, but it does not have that many /users/. It lists 240m in the US, for instance, when there's only 323m people here; I know a lot of people without a facebook account. Almost everyone I know that has a facebook account, has /multiple/ facebook accounts. I also know that facebook creates shadow accounts for people, attempting to track their activities online, despite those people not really having an opt-in facebook "account." I'd really like to see some data on how they come up with these absurd numbers, and proof that they're figuring out who has multiple accounts and only counting them as one "user."
Facebook was defiantly helpful to Trump getting elected - but not how people like this think.
People are fed Fake News all the time, from all sorts of sources. None of that really matters to what they choose though.
What they choose, is what they like, modulo what is acceptable.
The one thing that Facebook (and Twitter) allowed for, was for lots of conservatives to realize there are lots of conservatives. That may not seem like a surprise but when for decades TV has hardly ever shown you any, people start to think there are very few around.
When able to connect with other like minded people of any group, people start to realize there are more of them than they think, which is very empowering. It's what made the gay rights movement so successful, it's what made the recent wave of sexual assault allegations from Hollywood so successful.
Like them, conservatives realized there were others who felt the same way, and it energized them. They were a bit more open in voicing support than they might have been. They voted in greater numbers than they would have before. They started questioning what was being fed to them and started thinking.
Like it or not, the same engine that has helped people on the left is helping people on the right. Is that really such a bad thing, that people are able to find other people who like what they do? I find it hard to call that a crime.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think that a lot of what happened - which is to say, the fake accounts and such - stem less from malfeasance on FB's part than on sheer institutional inability to deal with scaling. They have scaled up hard and fast in the last several years, and despite having excellent technical staff (I worked for a business supplying some), the business (which is to say, Zuckerberg and the rest of the upper management team) has not really understood the scope of what they were trying to do. Keeping the site online and functional has sucked up a surprising number of cycles, and that left a lot fewer cycles for governance or review behavior.
Hopefully, as they get their config management under control, they'll have cycles to deal with various bad actors. But it's going to take a cultural shift both inside FB (mgt team and memes to the devops staff) and users. I'm curious to see if any of the attempts will work or if it'll become MySpace n, where n is a large number.
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
.....continuously prioritized user growth and making money over protecting users
Except Christianity is criticized for controlling thoughts, while Facebook is being criticized for not doing enough though control.
Do we really want Facebook, or any other corporation, to "steer the thoughts and actions of the masses"?
Is it really Facebook's fault that too many people voted the "wrong way" in 2016? Who gets to decide which thoughts are "right"?
Personally, I prefer to not be steered.
You mean building modest sanctuaries to house the congregations and then giving the rest of the money away to the needy and the homeless?
How much was "given away" to the "needy" sex abuse victims?
"Facebook is a living, breathing crime scene for what happened in the 2016 election."
A year later and the Left still can't admit that Hillary was a horrible candidate who alienated/ignored/insulted so much of the electorate that her loss was on par with "Dewey Defeats Truman."
Unless you want another four years of Trump, get off the soapbox, admit that your candidate lost, reevaluate your positions, and choose another candidate for 2020.
On the other hand, I'm sure that if Hillary runs again in 2020 she will definitely win this time - lol.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/...
https://www.thegospelcoalition...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
The last time i saw a breakdown of the average "use" of religious charities received donations (and yes, it has been a while.. before this prosperity anti-christian gospel blasphemy started), 70-75% went to admin and upkeep, 20% was passed through to other religious groups (with a similar breakdown of those donations), and 5-10% used on actual assistance to ANYONE. That "assistance to anyone" was a mix of the actual members of the organization who had given the donations in the first place, and the general public...weighing more heavily towards the donation givers.
So, while you'd like to cherry pick your own little fantasy land of how churches work, i'll remind you i'm speaking of the US.... where self proclaimed "christians" consider Jesus' teachings to be a horrible excuse for giving out handouts (yes, i've actually had that anti-christian statement made to me from a self proclaimed christian), and where they put all their energy into things Jesus never taught, or even mentioned.... but they're willing to lie every time they open their mouths and say he did.
Jesus taught to feed the hungry, cloth and shelter those in need, help the sick and imprisoned. It's too bad such a large segment of "christians" in the US find those teachings to be abhorrent.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
People joined during the web 2.0 expecting US freedom of speech that every other web site, past web 2.0 brand offered.
Now its all SJW reporting, banning, removing content, links and accounts.
A change away from traditional US web freedoms.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You have Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It's the old problem of capitalism: If you don't put profit at the very top of your priorities, above human life, above the end of the world, then you will always lose to somebody else who is willing to go further than you. It selects for psychopaths and psychopathic behavior. Like Zuckerberg. And kills off everything else.
Which is a disadvantage, because on this planet, the most successful lifeforms are social lifeforms. Those with empathy. It's a strong strategical advantage. ... Except to himself.
But unfortunately, only in the long run.
For short explosion-like bursts, it has no chance against a pathogen that just consumes ALL the things, not caring if it will starve itself or drown in its own excrement in a few generations.
Somebody who has no qualms at all, is invincible.