I understand this is a manifesto, but really the dialogue around Facebook and social media has truly become unhinged. Facebook is just a symptom, it seems
What is there to be _done_? Pandora's box is open, so to speak. If Facebook disappeared overnight, are we really going to assume the problems they're in are going to go away?
Everyone is potentially connected to everyone, everywhere, on the entire planet. There has never been a technology so powerful as the centralized internet.
Furthermore, outside of media companies and the HN bubble, people _do not care_. Your average person doesn't care about decentralization, preventing social media addiction, gamification, or polarization of online communities.
To the contrary the market shows that companies like FB are massively successful.
So what are we to do? The world has been changed, drastically. Were we ready for it? And if we somehow were rid of Favebook, are we ready for what follows?
> Furthermore, outside of media companies and the HN bubble, people _do not care_. Your average person doesn't care about decentralization, preventing social media addiction, gamification, or polarization of online communities.
My parents, who are deeply not the HN crowd, are starting to care, and this is not my doing. They didn't two years ago, but they're starting to have the same sense of something being wrong that started to show up here 6-ish years ago. They're behind, but they're on the same arc.
Such a thing would not destroy the advertising industry, but it would do wonders for making it much less worthwhile to deploy massive surveillance technology to make .03 cents more per user per day, and leave only very high-value advertising behind. It would probably anti-decimate it or more, though (leave only 10% behind instead of destroying 10%).
FB and friends are selling a product that's pleasurable, possibly habit forming, has big negative externalities, and presents all sorts of non-obvious risks to consumers. This is the textbook case for regulation. Some future iteration of the GDPR (or similar) will eventually outlaw FB's business model, at which point non-toxic social media will hopefully emerge, and we will realize that "potentially connecting everyone to everyone else, everywhere" is something that can be done ethically.
I agree that facebook is just the most visible dimple. Internet causes a lot of stresses at the personal and social level. We could wipe it out, we could learn how to deal with it.. let it fly so future generation adapt to it for better or worse.
The minds that were behind LiveJournal, Friendster, and MySpace, to name just 3 other social platforms that had monthly active usership in the millions, were not as disgustingly criminal and unethical in nature as the mind of Zuckerberg, so, to answer your question, another online social platform could be more civil and nicer, and not as aggressive (with auto-playing, auto-looped videos, for one thing), and manipulative, and silo-creating in terms of the design and algorithms in the same way, and could be far less ruthlessly greedy, invasive, and devious toward its users in terms of the requiring, gathering, selling, and sharing of those users' data.
An online social networking platform could even take a total different format than one that invites users to upload all their real personal life information and photos; there could be a platform as one where the users are playing ficitonalized characters in a make-believe world, and there isn't the same severe data-mining and harvesting of users' minds and lives, let alone with clear algorithmic and editorial favoring of political-themed content; I'm thinking first of something like the The Sims from 2000 to 2015[0], but there is a now a certain game that has become the de-facto social network of pre-teens to early teens, and that is Fortnite Battle Royale - see these 2 articles from December 2018[1]-[5]. Yes, there are other risks and dangers with such a platform (where gamification is taken to a much further extent: you're playing much more of a character in a game than you are with the "character" you "play"--in the sense of "portray" and "direct" on Facebook)[6], but it's not, in my view, nearly as immoral and irresponsible as what Facebook does.
[0] Sims popularity, as recently as 2014, when the latest version of it was still the #1 computer game:
[1] Charged: Fortnite isn't a game, it's a place - As social media becomes ever more toxic, Fortnite has become the new social network and a place to hang out where you go to talk to friends
[3] See the selected tweets here, including: "Fortnite is the tween generation's Facebook (at least for boys). Spent a few hours last weekend with a friend's 12 YO, Fortnite is the platform for his entire social/academic life. FYI i was labeled an 'old noobie'."
No, our brains evolved for millions of years to operate in groups of less than 100. Social media is basically high fructose corn syrup for our dopamine system. Within a span of roughly 20 years the way we live our lives and communicate with other humans changed massively
All the MSM hate for Facebook though is simply because they are butthurt that they've lost their spot in society in terms of controlling influence and information
There is a solution: all sites (above a scale of say 1m users) must offer a zero advertising, zero tracking account option at a yearly fee of exactly advertising revenue per user per year.
Most people would not take this; but rich people would. The top 1%? Top 5%? This would cripple the monopoly model and open the market.
These large dominating companies are monopolies in every sense of the word and need to be broken up. The Bell System was broken up and didn't have a tenth of the tracking and control of people's lives that Google and Facebook do. Ma Bell didn't actively harm its users and cause depression. Ma Bell didn't collude with Russia to influence a presidential election and install a puppet president.
I definitely don't contest the amount of tracking these companies do. I wouldn't even be surprised if it goes beyond what I can even imagine. But when it comes to control can we at least attempt to quantify it or at least make it a bit more exact. For example I'm positive these companies have influence over what brand of headphones I buy next, but I'm even more positive, at least on a personal level, that these companies have zero influence when it comes to convincing me to take money out of my IRA and using it to buy something I can't afford. Frankly what I'm getting at is I buy into the argument that these companies can influence smaller behaviors, like restaurant A or B but I'm really dubious of their influence reaching to more important decisions like to get a divorce or not maxing out my 401k and/or IRA. So I find myself not really caring about their influence because I don't think it pertains to the big decisions that I really care about.
What I struggle to understand is how could esteemed AI researchers like LeCun and many others work for such a company to give it even more powers and edge? How can they justify this as scientists?
The huge influx of money into research (here AI, but could be anything in the future) combined with the disfunctions of academia is very troubling.
I joined a year ago to lead the AI team (Yann is part of it but I am not answering for him here). It's a choice as I don't have to work any longer. Why am I there?
- I believe Facebook's products are good for the world. They have had an extremely positive impact on my family in particular.
- It is the one place where AI can have a really positive impact on the world.
- It's is the most talented set of people I have ever worked with. Not just the AI team but every single person I meet there.
- I believe in Zuck. Despite all the bashing, he is one of the most thoughtful and visionary leader I have worked for.
This said I don't agree with everything that the company has done. But Facebook is a place were you are free to disagree openly and so far my team and I have always been able to do what we considered the right thing to do.
[Edit: agreeing with the comments that I should have written "is one place" instead of "is the one place"]
I feel the same way about Carmack. Such wasted potential that could've been so much better used at a company like SpaceX or even one like Epic Games or Valve.
Simple, not everyone share the same concern regarding privacy or those sjw stuff, moreover fb has vast amount of data and also funding, it's very suitable for AI research.
Even if he refuse to work with fb, pretty sure a lot of other people will be happy to replace.
This debate is needlessly muddled by this fuzzy notion that because it is "the Internet" therefore something different needs to be done, that this is somehow a new situation. But it is not.
If it was the 1970s and people were told to sign a contract to allow a company to physically track every single event in their lives, they would not consent to it.
If it was the 1970s and some company tried to get exclusive access to people's TV and radio to bombard them with bespoke advertisement and propaganda, they would not consent to it.
So then what is so different? Nothing much. What Facebook and Google and others are currently doing is way beyond what a sane society would allow. It is just that people are confused because it is done through a new medium, but nothing much is different.
Off topic comment here. I remember two years ago when people on HN were arguing people that cared about privacy had something to hide. I am glad the tide is starting to change. Privacy is a fundamental human right.
It would be a dramatic change of decades of ideological, political and popular sentiment to start breaking up companies or tightly regulating them. I doubt it would happen.
> It would be a dramatic change of decades of ideological, political and popular sentiment to start breaking up companies or tightly regulating them. I doubt it would happen.
I think it will. It took a couple decades of dramatic change to get us here (in the 70s and 80s), and the pendulum is now swinging back (and probably has been for the last decade).
> Let’s examine the evidence. At its peak the planet’s fourth most valuable company, and arguably its most influential, is controlled almost entirely by a young man with the charisma of a geometry T.A.
Does the writer really think a more charismatic founder would have changed the outcome for the better, or that more charisma would have led Zuckerberg to make different choices?
Let's not forget that history is scarred from the manipulations of charismatic leaders.
This sounds rather like the old nerd/geek/greasy-grime bashing trope trotted out again.
This is one of the things that individual experience can vary a lot. My Facebook is maybe 30% racist rants, bashing liberals, and a call to arms against the government for taking away guns. Another 30% is people ranting about Trump and talk to about a communist revolution. 30% is memes. 10% is travel photos and news about lives.
androidgirl|7 years ago
What is there to be _done_? Pandora's box is open, so to speak. If Facebook disappeared overnight, are we really going to assume the problems they're in are going to go away?
Everyone is potentially connected to everyone, everywhere, on the entire planet. There has never been a technology so powerful as the centralized internet.
Furthermore, outside of media companies and the HN bubble, people _do not care_. Your average person doesn't care about decentralization, preventing social media addiction, gamification, or polarization of online communities.
To the contrary the market shows that companies like FB are massively successful.
So what are we to do? The world has been changed, drastically. Were we ready for it? And if we somehow were rid of Favebook, are we ready for what follows?
cirgue|7 years ago
My parents, who are deeply not the HN crowd, are starting to care, and this is not my doing. They didn't two years ago, but they're starting to have the same sense of something being wrong that started to show up here 6-ish years ago. They're behind, but they're on the same arc.
jerf|7 years ago
A $0.01 tax per ad impression.
Such a thing would not destroy the advertising industry, but it would do wonders for making it much less worthwhile to deploy massive surveillance technology to make .03 cents more per user per day, and leave only very high-value advertising behind. It would probably anti-decimate it or more, though (leave only 10% behind instead of destroying 10%).
$0.10 per impression if you're feeling feisty.
m_fayer|7 years ago
agumonkey|7 years ago
Personally I have my scissors ready.
InternetUser|7 years ago
An online social networking platform could even take a total different format than one that invites users to upload all their real personal life information and photos; there could be a platform as one where the users are playing ficitonalized characters in a make-believe world, and there isn't the same severe data-mining and harvesting of users' minds and lives, let alone with clear algorithmic and editorial favoring of political-themed content; I'm thinking first of something like the The Sims from 2000 to 2015[0], but there is a now a certain game that has become the de-facto social network of pre-teens to early teens, and that is Fortnite Battle Royale - see these 2 articles from December 2018[1]-[5]. Yes, there are other risks and dangers with such a platform (where gamification is taken to a much further extent: you're playing much more of a character in a game than you are with the "character" you "play"--in the sense of "portray" and "direct" on Facebook)[6], but it's not, in my view, nearly as immoral and irresponsible as what Facebook does.
[0] Sims popularity, as recently as 2014, when the latest version of it was still the #1 computer game:
https://simscommunity.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Screen...
[1] Charged: Fortnite isn't a game, it's a place - As social media becomes ever more toxic, Fortnite has become the new social network and a place to hang out where you go to talk to friends
https://char.gd/blog/2018/fortnite-is-the-new-hangout-spot
[2] WSJ: How Fortnite Triggered an Unwinnable War Between Parents and Their Boys
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-fortnite-triggered-an-unwinn...
[3] See the selected tweets here, including: "Fortnite is the tween generation's Facebook (at least for boys). Spent a few hours last weekend with a friend's 12 YO, Fortnite is the platform for his entire social/academic life. FYI i was labeled an 'old noobie'."
https://www.techmeme.com/181222/p8#a181222p8
[4] The astonishing usership stats (scroll down to the list):
http://www.businessofapps.com/data/fortnite-statistics/
[5] Many more stats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite_Battle_Royale#Player_...
[6] Impact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite_Battle_Royale#Impact
tossaccount123|7 years ago
No, our brains evolved for millions of years to operate in groups of less than 100. Social media is basically high fructose corn syrup for our dopamine system. Within a span of roughly 20 years the way we live our lives and communicate with other humans changed massively
All the MSM hate for Facebook though is simply because they are butthurt that they've lost their spot in society in terms of controlling influence and information
sgt101|7 years ago
Most people would not take this; but rich people would. The top 1%? Top 5%? This would cripple the monopoly model and open the market.
JohnJamesRambo|7 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143 "Association of Facebook Use With Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study"
AlexB138|7 years ago
This is a conspiracy theory, and really diminishes the level of the conversation here.
mycorrhizal|7 years ago
dantheman|7 years ago
x3tm|7 years ago
The huge influx of money into research (here AI, but could be anything in the future) combined with the disfunctions of academia is very troubling.
smacktoward|7 years ago
-- Upton Sinclair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair)
pesenti|7 years ago
- I believe Facebook's products are good for the world. They have had an extremely positive impact on my family in particular.
- It is the one place where AI can have a really positive impact on the world.
- It's is the most talented set of people I have ever worked with. Not just the AI team but every single person I meet there.
- I believe in Zuck. Despite all the bashing, he is one of the most thoughtful and visionary leader I have worked for.
This said I don't agree with everything that the company has done. But Facebook is a place were you are free to disagree openly and so far my team and I have always been able to do what we considered the right thing to do.
[Edit: agreeing with the comments that I should have written "is one place" instead of "is the one place"]
jrbuhl|7 years ago
jcadam|7 years ago
mtgx|7 years ago
zozbot123|7 years ago
spamizbad|7 years ago
modzu|7 years ago
techelitism|7 years ago
[deleted]
kristianov|7 years ago
matz1|7 years ago
Even if he refuse to work with fb, pretty sure a lot of other people will be happy to replace.
lumberjack|7 years ago
tgb29|7 years ago
dkkdjdjsjd|7 years ago
l5870uoo9y|7 years ago
ardy42|7 years ago
I think it will. It took a couple decades of dramatic change to get us here (in the 70s and 80s), and the pendulum is now swinging back (and probably has been for the last decade).
danans|7 years ago
Does the writer really think a more charismatic founder would have changed the outcome for the better, or that more charisma would have led Zuckerberg to make different choices?
Let's not forget that history is scarred from the manipulations of charismatic leaders.
This sounds rather like the old nerd/geek/greasy-grime bashing trope trotted out again.
SilasX|7 years ago
Raise the alarm about what he's doing to privacy, not his social shortcomings.
paulsutter|7 years ago
My own Facebook stream is travel photos, people saying gushy things about their spouse, plus a few people still obsessed with Trump. Harmless stuff.
Our lives must be pretty cushy when this is one of the biggest dangers that we face.
opmac|7 years ago
sgt101|7 years ago
ecshafer|7 years ago