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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."
Mark Zuckerberg is a cylon.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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.
Why do I get the idea that the word "harm" actually means "political ideas I disagree with and believe should be censored"? (reads essay: keywords, Trump, TEH ROOSHINS, Nazis) Yup. Pretty much this.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Or maybe it was war-torn feudalism or imperialism that is ethically superior?
Female nipples. Or ass.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
"Oh, the humanity." (insert scene of airship crashing...)
Facebook is a corporation. They care about money.
Our humanity? Only as far as it makes them money.
Ethics? Only the minimum necessary to keep making money.
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
... AI.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If you don't like Facebook's offerings then offer something better.
Caution: Contents under pressure
perhaps this is more of a question of the people we've become and how we choose to use our tools, rather than a question if the programs we write in and of themselves are inherently evil.
Misinformation has been a problem since before humans could talk. The ancient Romans and Greeks were masters of oratory, persuasion and 'fake news'. Propaganda. Fascists, Trumps, Orwell. Technologies and Media channels will come and go. What to do? Stop complaining about the channel du jour, and learn to think clearly all by yourself. That way, if someone charming tells you to put your head in the oven, you will work out for yourself not to! It's liberating. If you don't know where to start, try reading Plato or Aristotle, or here's an excellent book: 'The Art of Thinking Clearly', by Rolf Dobelli. Or just read. Then ponder, analyze, think. But don't absorb information mindlessly and then say 'The author misled me'. You don't do it with ads, do you? Look at information as a an input, source, not as an automatic truth.
...not the cause. Yes, it emphasises and augments some of the dehumanising aspects of capitalism but that's simply because it's part of our capitalist, consumerist, hyper-individualist, isolated, lonely cultures, and Facebook simply reflects our cultures' values. We're no different to Google, Amazon, Verizon, Exxon, Monsanto, health insurance companies, banks, etc..
Capitalism reduces 99% of us to labour and cost data points.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
that uses free social interactions as bait to place and sell more ads.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'll bet the author of the article finished writing, and immediately went to check her Facebook. If the writing feels insincere, it probably is insincere.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
Humans were always fucked up, that much is true. But Facebook amplifies it by giving it a global showcase. When I was a kid, if someone took a picture of me naked it was easy for 20 people to see it. Social networking makes it easier for 20,000 people to see it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The idea in this story is merely Facebook's plausible deniability. They want you to think that they were so dumb they let this happen but this was exactly how they planned it.
Ignore our humanity? Facebook exploits our humanity. Their whole business strategy is to use psychological features that improved survival rates in prehistory to get users to expose ourselves to advertisements.
It's caring about stupidity and money.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Well, why we are on the subject of unsubstantiated, random accusations... My impression, on the other hand, is that Quartz is evil on purpose.
Not only does Zuckerbook not treat humans like human beings, it treats them intentionally as objects to be manipulated, and 'revenue streams' to be collected on, and anything that stands in the way of that is not allowed -- unless they're faced with a legal challenge that might cost them money, in which case they'll change how they treat their 'individual revenue stream generator objects' so they continue to make as much money as possible.
The article does hit one nail on the head though: Zuckerbook is EVIL. As much as I say it, I can't say it enough: Everyone needs to LEAVE FACEBOOK, permanently. Rest assured, nothing of value will be lost -- and you'll gain so much back that's been taken from you.
Um, it's really ALL faceless, soulless, blood-sucking, parasitic, global-conglomerate, monolithic, for-profit, multinational corporations that are ignoring our humanity. 'S not just Facebook, though they're clearly leaders in the field of ignoring our humanity.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
It's not just facebook. It is prevalent in any design process but looks to be especially bad in software.
Example: I use a popular 3rd party launcher on my android phone. They made an update and for some reason several features that I was using do not exist anymore. It all looks different even though I changed no settings myself and I can't get it to look the same as it was.
Why would developers do that. That seems to be a blatant disregard of your users. Maybe it is driven by monetary designs: you have to pay to get your old version back, maybe it is ignorance of what your users really use, maybe it is stupidity
Whatever reason there is behind it, it is annoying. You keep having to switch between apps because the one you use and like just did a 180 and it looks crap now.