This article just redefines “crisis” to its liking. If only falling profits make for a “real” crisis, then, no, Facebook is not in such a crisis.
Indeed, the author actually agrees that there are legitimate concerns about FB, some of which are new. I don’t quite get why a crises of ethics should be less “real”, or not reported on by journalists. Is it the primacy of the almighty powers of the market?
Even in the latter case, investors and consumers would seem to rely on such information by the media to make market decisions. To require them to act before reporting on their reasons to act seems counterintuitive.
....but at that point the article has long diverged into rehashing 2016 conspiracy theories.
tldr: this is a shallow not-defense of Facebook, with a headline specifically engineered to appeal to HN’s current groupthink hating “the media”.
How do you even define a crisis of ethics without defining the underlying ethics, and how can you ensure that everyone is on the same page when morality is... well I don’t want to argue relative vs absolute morality but people disagree all the time.
Well, sure, “morality” is just a human construct. So is money. That doesn’t stop us from prosecuting bank robbers.
In the specific case of Facebook, the recently released e-mails quite clearly showed they knew they were crossing boundaries of commonly accepted behaviors. They weren’t arguing about the ethics of using loose permissions on Android to read your SMS. They acknowledged the commonly accepted norms of behavior, and knowingly broke them.
True, all are human constructs. Prosecuting bank robbers is done under written laws though, we don't prosecute bank robbers with an appeal to morality. From the emails it seems like fb broke some laws and they can be punished for that, but imo they should be punished for breaking written laws, not based on a nebulous morality which varies from person to person.
To what extent written laws reflect morality is another topic of course.
Not all laws are written, nor do they need to be to be enforced. Robbery was made illegal under common law (in the US, UK, and other common law countries) before it was ever codified or written down, for example. So yes, we actually did jail bank robbers for breaking unwritten laws (although they've since been written down).
Interesting. While I know people could be jailed for most of history for basically no reason, I assumed civilization was collectively moving away from that. It seems to things more predictable if the law is on the books. Do you find my assessment is incorrect when I say that this is the state of US law today in my original reply?
Broke some laws in this case references major violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, stealing user's SMS & Call data.
Facebook's executives need to be prosecuted for this egregious crime committed against tens of millions of Americans, yet its unlikely any prosecutor will take action.
Sounds great, prosecute for these major violations, not for breaking moral ideas the OP is referring to which I may or may not agree with. At least written laws are codified.
Jesus Christ, this blog post posits one of the most blatant and comical strawmen I’ve seen in awhile. The author seems to think the only kind of crisis (“crisis”, as the word is used in the headline of the recent NYT investigation) Facebook could face is one that involves a drop in users. Because the NYT purportedly provides little evidence of such, the author asserts “the whole thing seems imaginary: is there an actual crisis, outside the media narrative?”
The article the author references in his intro is talking about the PR crisis and internal conflict that blew up when Alex Stamos spoke out against FB’s lackluster response to a “Russian infestation”. When Sheryl Sandberg is said by multiple witnesses to have screamed “You threw us under a bus!” at Stamos, it is reasonable to think that FB had massive internal strife, unless the author believes the NYT fabricated the evidence of this conflict, which he provides no evidence of.
The lackluster user growth is said by the NYT to coincide with this strife, it is not claimed by the NYT to be the crisis. Does the author believe that the only crisis a tech company could possibly face is declining usage?
From observing FB over the years, I am of the view that they are effective problem solvers, and know how to regulate the behaviour of the users on their platform to put sustainability first. E.g. when the notifications were going wild on FB for those annoying games that friends played (Zenga days) FB regulated, when a weaker startup might have said "these metrics are going up and showed off engagement statistics!".
My hope is that FB takes this same approach to it's internal culture if there is an issue, perhaps I will be mistaken.
As a side note, I run a virtual telephone receptionist business. It is a very human focused business, with real life receptionists, and real life people calling them up. This creates troubles!! When real people get together issues occur (rudeness, spelling mistakes, taking down a telephone number instead of an email, etc..). FB is used by people, and people bring mess. So FB will always have disruptive stories because it is used by people. I am of the view that FB will get better at dealing with problematic people related problems, but currently it is the consequence of having a platform that people use to express themselves - it is inherently messy because that is what people interacting generates.
My hope is that FB takes this same approach to it's internal culture if there is an issue, perhaps I will be mistaken.
Yes, I think you're mistaken.
The reason why I think that is that we're not talking of a single whoopsie or two, but of a massive laundry list of moral and regulatory failures. This includes being a conduit for genocide for years, despite the fact of knowing it happening since 2013 and the fact that instead of cleaning up their act, hiring a black ops pr outfit to spread some vile, antisemitic shit on their oponents.
And there's so much more. For reference: Just check the list of "apologies" by Mr. Zuckerberg since 2008.
Management of this company is so rotten, foul and morally bankrupt that I just don't see anything changing anytime soon. Except, hopefully, their users voting with their feet.
> every time someone uses Facebook, that person is implicitly showing that they like Facebook more than not and find it valuable more than not.
I know quite a few people who will say they are addicted to facebook, and many more who will at least admit that they use it more than they want to. I was the former until about a year ago when I finally pulled the plug. So I do not think that's a fair statement at all.
That stood out to me too. It’s obviously untrue. There are many reasons people do things they would rather not: necessity, obligation, habit, addiction, switching costs, network effects, and more.
Furthermore, just because people like something, it doesn’t follow that it’s good for them or for society at large. Or that they couldn’t get the thing they like without it being hitched to a lot of things they don’t like.
Facebook’s “crisis” has nothing to do with whether people like the service or not. It’s that more people are realizing that it’s not worth the cost.
Usage is a lagging indicator, yet the author seems to treat it as a leading indicator. Current interactions may not change overnight, but new interactions are more likely to occur elsewhere, and those effects wont be obvious for some time
I don't like Facebook, but I use it for 3 reasons:
1) Events for certain groups of which I am a member, which are advertised elsewhere but to be honest I'm so disorganised so would probably miss out on them without constant reminders
2) Managing my company pages (basically holding pages with very little content)
3) Friends and family who insist on using Messenger
Messenger is probably the main one. I'm sorry but the standard HN answer of "ask your friends and family to switch to Signal" just isn't going to work, and I like them too much to cut them out of my life completely.
I'm certainly not "addicted" and would gladly delete my account if not for these 3 reasons. I don't bother with the newsfeed at all.
(1) Set a ridiculously long passphrase that you'll do your best to memorize. Mine is 42 characters a la FHeCYERKCbdk289!# etc.
(2) Install plugins on your browser that disable Facebook features that you consider pure poison (in my case: Facebook newsfeed).
(3) Log yourself out of Facebook but keep yourself logged in to Messenger (if you're the chatty type like me, I consider it to be ICQ or MSN and as innovative as MSN was back then, yes I used MSN :P I'm from Europe).
(4) Download a slow crappy browser and put your main Facebook account on auto login.
(5) Create a second account with as few friends as possible, and get into the groups / whatever you find important that brings value to you. Set that second account to auto login on your main browser. Don't invite friends, but do let your friends know you want access to the groups they are in as well (if you find that important).
(6) Do the same for mobile.
This system allows you to: use the part of Facebook you consider valuable (in my case Messenger) and will put you in the situation of only using Facebook when you reaalllyyy need to but otherwise won't.
The only discipline you need to have is to not put yourself on auto login on your main browser. You also need the discipline of typing a passphrase every time (have fun on mobile!).
If you only care about making money and see ethical behavior and basic human rights like privacy only as things one talks about, then this is the perfect time for the camel in the sand approach.
The crisis here is not just facebook but the growing realization by the wider world of the scope of betrayal by the tech community. The echo chamber covering up this betrayal is now pierced with increasingly louder external voices that challenge the self serving narratives to justify morally bankrupt behavior.
This will have ramifications that those who are already disengaged from the world have no problem with, but many others will not take this loss of reputation as well. The real crisis seems to be we have large groups of people who are not invested and engaged in their world and see no problem in behaving like mercenaries while affecting normalcy. This kind of behavior is toxic and can only promote an environment of complete distrust, decay and degeneration.
Kara Swisher says "remember AOL". I say "remember Life magazine". Whether there is or is not a crisis at Facebook, there has definitely been an ongoing crisis/decline at magazines and newspapers. Revealed preferences, indeed.
I deleted my Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts just this weekend. It's not that I don't like the service Facebook provides (I liked Insta in particular), but I don't want to be a part of the data harvesting, privacy destroying, democracy usurping empire any more. I don't believe Facebook has your best interests at heart. I don't think Facebook is good for society.
Also I read recently that they have a crisis internally amongst their staff with employees considering jumping ship. Additionally, new graduates no longer consider Facebook as the premium place to work. This may start to hurt them in the coming years.
I posted in another comment about how I believe the author is wrong. But what you mention having “read recently” would arguably count as aspects of a “media narrative”, as there isn’t data (beyond interesting anecdotes and conjecture) that employee discontent is at “crisis” levels. Only FB’s internal metrics could conclusively prove that.
I'm actually not familiar with the "Facebook Crisis" the author alludes to, the one where Facebook is suffering massive losses of users. He only provides one link to a story of this kind. FB is certainly in the news a lot these days, but mostly in relation to its various scandals involving a) the 2016 election and b) its role stoking animus between various disparate ethnic groups. On top of this there is growing mainstream awareness of the effects and reach of surveillance capitalism, and that vague uneasiness is driving people to click on anything FB related because FB is generally singled out as the primary malefactor.
But yeah, I still use Facebook even though I know how bad it is. And even worse, I use a TON of Google products. The simple fact is that we consumers are all in an arms race with each other and these tools that invade our privacy are also critical in managing the complexity of our lives. That's why I think communities like the Amish really deserve more credit for what they've done, which is give up all these weapons of convenience at once, and so live a good life together.
A week ago articles claimed the delete Facebook movement was making substantial impact on Facebooks user numbers and that users left because of this ethical crisis, like the Uber scandals. If the numbers haven’t gone down much then either users care more about using fb than this ethical issue for whatever reason. Fill in your own narrative here.
Indeed, the author actually agrees that there are legitimate concerns about FB, some of which are new. I don’t quite get why a crises of ethics should be less “real”, or not reported on by journalists. Is it the primacy of the almighty powers of the market?
Even in the latter case, investors and consumers would seem to rely on such information by the media to make market decisions. To require them to act before reporting on their reasons to act seems counterintuitive.
....but at that point the article has long diverged into rehashing 2016 conspiracy theories.
tldr: this is a shallow not-defense of Facebook, with a headline specifically engineered to appeal to HN’s current groupthink hating “the media”.