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Is Facebook Ignoring Our Humanity? (qz.com)
"Facebook really is evil," writes Quartz reporter Nikhil Sonnad. "Not on purpose. In the banal kind of way. Underlying all of Facebook's screw-ups is a bumbling obliviousness to real humans..." An anonymous reader quotes Sonnad's essay:
The imperative to "connect people" lacks the one ingredient essential for being a good citizen: Treating individual human beings as sacrosanct. To Facebook, the world is not made up of individuals, but of connections between them. The billions of Facebook accounts belong not to "people" but to "users," collections of data points connected to other collections of data points on a vast Social Network, to be targeted and monetized by computer programs.
There are certain things you do not in good conscience do to humans. To data, you can do whatever you like.... With Facebook, "life is turned into a database," writes technologist Jaron Lanier in his 2010 book You Are Not a Gadget... Silicon Valley culture has come to accept as certain, Lanier writes, that "all of reality, including humans, is one big information system".... The problem, says Lanier, is that there is nothing special about humans in this information system. Every data point is treated equally, irrespective of how humans experience it. The essay argues Facebook's value system "has diverged from that of the rest of society," adding that Facebook "seems to be blind to the possibility that it could be used for ill."
Facebook needs to "check their instinctive technological optimism against the realities of human life. Absent human considerations, Facebook will continue to bring thoughtless, banal harm to the world."
There are certain things you do not in good conscience do to humans. To data, you can do whatever you like.... With Facebook, "life is turned into a database," writes technologist Jaron Lanier in his 2010 book You Are Not a Gadget... Silicon Valley culture has come to accept as certain, Lanier writes, that "all of reality, including humans, is one big information system".... The problem, says Lanier, is that there is nothing special about humans in this information system. Every data point is treated equally, irrespective of how humans experience it. The essay argues Facebook's value system "has diverged from that of the rest of society," adding that Facebook "seems to be blind to the possibility that it could be used for ill."
Facebook needs to "check their instinctive technological optimism against the realities of human life. Absent human considerations, Facebook will continue to bring thoughtless, banal harm to the world."
Maybe our modern society places too much emphasis on the individual. Maybe that's why we have a society full of selfish pricks who all think they're the center of the universe.
To Facebook, every data point is not treated equally. Some are given more weight than others, based on connectivity, and response from others to something like a post.
Facebook and other things like it act as a substrate on top of which humans are meant to provide understanding and human response. It's not that Facebook the system does not care, it's that Facebook is not in the role to care - in fact wouldn't Facebook be a thousand times MORE creepy if it actually tried to react in a human way to what people posted? Instead it leads people say things and lets others react to that, giving them as much range as it can while trying to balance an interface that doesn't turn away too many people.
Facebook as an entity is just trying to ride just outside that wave of connection and emotion, gleaning enough understanding to help advertisers understand you. If that is a good thing or not is a whole different debate than arguing "Facebook is ignoring our humanity" when it should be doing no such thing to begin with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Let's think about our 'humanity' ... Finished? For all of recorded history and probably beyond we've killed each other as fast as technology would allow. We are not nice by any standard. Millions worldwide are homeless, hungry, diseased. We help them when there's profit to be had. The mass of humanity is turned inward, sometimes for survival, sometimes for Twitter or YouTube. I can't think of any mammal that has the same disdain for others of its species.
Yes, there are organizations and individuals who care. Teachers & firefighters & medical heroes. But there are also politicians, corporate executives and presidents who don't much care for anyone else.
Our 'humanity' leaves much to be desired. Don't blame Facebook.
...omphaloskepsis often...
The whole fucking tech industry ignores our humanity. Flipping people coins for doing things in the 'gig' economy. Tesla and their ignorance of human inability to maintain attention while doing nothing for long periods of time. The list goes on and on, and then we get into political trends.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.