
The Facts About Facebook - gfosco
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facts-about-facebook-11548374613
======
firasd
I don't agree with a lot of the recent anti-Facebook narrative (much of it is
prompted by the 2016 election), but I have always been a bit uncomfortable
with the 'connecting people' thing he talks about here. Although I like when
someone I haven't talked to since high school 'likes' a status update of mine,
I don't actually want to be connected to everyone. If I go to a party I don't
need my Uncle to see the pics. I think that is what is prompting declining FB
usage among young people anyway, the fact that your Mom and your neighborhood
grocery store owner is on there makes it different than what FB was ten years
ago.

I also believe him when he says that Facebook doesn't purposefully host
unseemly material that drives up engagement. Their newsfeed has always changed
to reduce that kinda thing (app notifications circa 2008, clickbait titles
circa 2011, infographics, quizzes, etc... they all have their run and then get
tuned out.) Although Facebook has always been fanatical about growth so I
guess it's more about long-term vs short-term engagement vs. not caring about
engagement at all.

~~~
danamkaplan
Looks like a classic non answer to me:

"Some worry that ads create a misalignment of interests between us and people
who use our services. I’m often asked if we have an incentive to increase
engagement on Facebook because that creates more advertising real estate, even
if it’s not in people’s best interests.

We’re very focused on helping people share and connect more, because the
purpose of our service is to help people stay in touch with family, friends
and communities. But from a business perspective, it’s important that their
time is well spent, or they won’t use our services as much over the long term.
Clickbait and other junk may drive engagement in the near term, but it would
be foolish for us to show this intentionally, because it’s not what people
want."

So are you NOT showing that? Seems like FB has the outrage non-story click
baits to drive the short term engagement with the "it's the ONLY place where
my friends and family communicate" for long term.

EDIT: He says the automated removal can't catch everything. in the following
paragraph.

Great, then remove the newsfeed until it can be AI cleaned to NON society
destroying levels. Will definitely remove that short term engagement Zuck says
he doesn't care about.

~~~
stickfigure
_Great, then remove the newsfeed until it can be AI cleaned to NON society
destroying levels._

I've read a few dystopias centered around the idea that all friends and family
members must be monitored to prevent socially undesirable communication. Some
would argue that China is becoming that dystopia today.

No thanks.

I honestly believe Facebook is turning into scapegoat for the fact that,
simply, your friends suck. "Facebook is full of outrage clickbait", eh? Guess
who put it there.

~~~
danamkaplan
I've read a few dystopias centered around technology corporations inserting
themselves into the majority of communication and media access.

No thanks.

I was pretty sincere though. Just remove the newsfeed. That's the battleground
for your attention and by far the most toxic part of the product.

------
beezischillin
Facebook's been ramping up their censorship of their users to an unbearable
extent. Apart from losing control of the situation when it comes to peoples'
data, they're also losing control of their attempts to purge their own
platform of things Silicon Valley tech giants frown upon on their own
platforms. "Getting Zucc'd" is an internet meme for a reason.

I have friends who got suspended from the platform for 30-some days for
posting pictures of their children to their own profile. Just children, doing
children stuff. Not naked, not doing anything wrong or illegal by anyone's
moral standards. I myself got suspended for 7 days by posting a completely
apolitical, non-offensive joke to a private group that their system deemed
evil. And then caught another 30 day suspension when I posted a screenshot of
my suspension to my friends to laugh at how stupid the situation was. I've had
enough of it. As personal as the experience is, before it used to be that
people who were getting suspended had very easily understandable reasons
behind it: when someone posted stupid, edgy stuff and got punished for it then
at least you knew why it happened and acknowledged that it was fair enough. I
understand that this is all anecdotal, but nowadays it's been very common to
see my active friends be on timeouts. Why?

Facebook does not offer one iota of support for their users, be it when they
get banned or have issues on the platform that a human should see. You're not
getting through, clicking the buttons does nothing. Just like Google.

I have a friend who unfortunately attracted the attention of a mentally ill
stalker, she was harassed and threatened for months by this stalker and his
friends, she almost ended up committing suicide due to this. Our circle of
friends reported this person to Facebook and they deemed it to be completely
acceptable and allowed it to continue.

Not even mentioning the whole psychological experimentation crap they were
doing with the goal of keeping people glued to their platforms by any means
necessary, even if it means driving them into depression.

When people look at Facebook and the things that have been leaking out into
the world, people don't care for any excuses anymore. And it might not be fair
but they're giving Facebook the treatment they received. Even if the media
sensationalises the whole anti-Facebook thing, a lot of people resent it for a
reason.

I simply contacted my friends, left them alternative ways of contacting me and
requested that my account be deleted.

Happy birthday to Facebook, Mr. Zuckerberg. This is the 15th year of hollow
excuses and empty, soulless explanations.

~~~
bertil
The comment point at one of two key aspects of the trouble with the platform.
The company created something that no one could imagine living without, even
as early as five years after the platform was created: a credible social
identity online. In spite of that, people overlooked the benefits and focus on
a deep, personal resentment.

The more widespread is context collapse, the idea that not everyone who knows
you wants to know everything about you. See the comments below. That was
something that Facebook was focused on in 2010-2012. Every attempt at
personalising your audience failed. There was some ambitious effort to
automate clustering of your friends by third-party but no one really cared
enough to take over. Google Plus tried with their Circles. That excessive
visibility led to less candid messages and less activity over the years, about
two-thirds of the drop. Story was meant to compensate for that but didn’t try
to identify problematic relations explicitly. It worked on Instagram but more
as a quality level than anything targeted. Messages and Groups have that role,
and because it’s not harder to create those elsewhere, it’s easier to move
away on Facebook.

The one that you mention is less widespread but indeed had a devastating
effect. Facebook, like every company, has under-invested in “customer service”
or in their case moderation. This had some seemingly isolated effects over
random incidents but it didn’t stop at one person’s anger: their friends got
increasingly disgruntled by the blatant unfairness. That expansion of isolated
injustice explained the remaining third.

Those effects were documented, measured in detail. The first effect was denied
by Mark, on principles. It took a Digital World War to start caring about the
second.

~~~
Fins
Seriously?

While I can think of quite a few companies that have even less utility
(Twitter, Netflix, Juicero, etc. etc.) but living without FB is not only
imaginable, it's quite beneficial.

~~~
bertil
I don’t think that FB itself is necessary, but many services rely on the
ability to have a _cheap identity verification_. Let’s take three examples.

Dating apps now almost all depend on you connecting either \- a social media
account, almost universally Facebook in the West; \- credit card information.
Not everyone is comfortable with that one.

If a user doesn’t connect, most services implement some soft-gating to prevent
abuses of trust. Uber, for instance, let an established user order a ride
without having to input a bank card when their previous card was expired.

A large part of political communication relies on having a reliable proxy for
an identity for campaigns. It doesn’t have to be perfect but it can’t have 50%
of Russian sock-puppets. Even if Facebook Identity has been disputed, it
remains far more reliable than, say, Twitter in that regard.

You might not use any of those services personally but you rely on people who
do. A society where people can’t find a partner because dating conventions are
broken; where everyone has to own a car; where democracy is at the mercy of
press barons -- that would be problematic.

My point was less that Facebook was the best identity, or irreplaceable (which
is certainly not true; more than any other message, Mark Z. repeats all the
time that Facebook will be replaced sooner rather than later). Google offers
one that I think has strong software support, but less social proof. My point
was that most people are unaware of the impact of having that option of a
“Trust API”, even imperfect. You didn’t seem to.

Some people would prefer to have a government-operated identity or a bank-
based one; those are actively developed in Nordic countries. I have used both
and I’m in awe of what they unlock.

Some people (quite common on HN) hate the idea of depending on either and
would prefer to rely on a system that they built or on have a choice of
private solutions around a cluster of standards. OAuth is the best example of
that vision. I’d love to see something more mature emerge (if anything so that
not every website relies on the broken password authentication). But once
again: even if the software works, I think the main benefit is less from token
exchange and more from authenticity. I’m not sure that a cluster of service
can guarantee that.

~~~
Fins
As I've mentioned, I do find Twitter even less "useful" than FB (and possibly
even worse for the society at large), but while Dorsey come across as just a
clueless, out of touch hipster, Zuckerberg comes across as not quite human
automaton that performs experiments on humans. And FB is more valuable
company, so that might be why they get picked on more.

But I am still not convinced that FB provides any service that is actually
valuable, let alone good for society as a whole. I think it could well be
argued that even under press barons et al democracy worked better than it has
been lately. But then the cynic in me says that even robber barons had more
decency in them than Zuck, Dorsey and their ilk.

Do we even need that _cheap identity verification_ especially as provided by
social networks whose incentives are aligned completely orthogonal to societal
good? As anecdata, I actually met my wife on a dating site with no benefit of
any FB authentication (or credit card, for that matter). What would FB
connection do there?

So no, I've never connected anything with any FB account, and I do not see
that I am missing anything that _I_ would find the least bit useful.
Obviously, HN tends to look for technological solutions for problems (or even
in absence of problems) but farming out "trust API" to a commercial entity
that aims to maximise engagement seems to be a prime example of a (bad)
solution in search of a problem.

------
Deimorz
A Pew study released last week showed that (among other things) 74% of
Facebook users did not know Facebook was maintaining a list of their
interests/traits, 51% were uncomfortable with it, and 27% felt the list was
inaccurate: [http://www.pewinternet.org/2019/01/16/facebook-algorithms-
an...](http://www.pewinternet.org/2019/01/16/facebook-algorithms-and-personal-
data/)

~~~
rchaud
This is consistent with what we should expect when most users still use the
same password (or predictable variation thereof) for their bank/email/social
logins.

------
cageface
Hosting user-generated content in general is a mug's game these days. I
wouldn't even consider launching a new startup in this space now and it's only
going to get worse as the regulatory hammer comes down. I'm not a fan of
Facebook at all but a lot of their current troubles are intrinsic to any
platform that lets people post whatever they want.

------
danamkaplan
"People consistently tell us that if they’re going to see ads, they want them
to be relevant."

I am assuming the "people" he is referencing are the advertisers, not the
users.

~~~
ipsum2
Would you prefer to see irrelevant ads instead?

~~~
adoago
I think we need to clarify some terms here. Advertising by its very nature is
disruptive. It's goal is to interrupt you or grab your attention so that you
look at SOMETHING and become aware of it, start to form associations, etc.
There really isn't such thing is "relevant" advertising in the sense that ads
pertain to my current activity, which, by the way, Zuck insists is "connecting
to people."

The real question you're asking is: Would you rather trade some of your data
so we can show you ads that you are more likely to click because we have
ascertained that these value propositions are likely to drive some kind of an
action? (And by the way action is all we really ever know, and is a so-so
proxy for "relevance" or value to the user, c.f., clickbait.)

When you ask this question I'm inclined to say some users wouldn't consider
this an awesome trade. That's being modest.

Disclosure: I make digital ads for a living.

~~~
stickfigure
_trade some of your data_

This seems a wrong and misleading way of looking at it. Facebook has the data
either way, and advertisers aren't getting the data either way. You aren't
"trading" anything; the algorithms can either show you something relevant, or
show you something irrelevant.

Personally, I'd rather see something I might find amusing. I was about to say
"it hasn't happened yet", but I actually have clicked on one FB ad (ever) -
the mysterious package company, which actually does look interesting. Not
enough to give them my money but still, it's a start.

------
bertil
Mark talks about the control that users have. I am disappointed that Mark
didn't take the opportunity to simply link to that page. Too few people know
about
[https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/](https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/).

------
vecnotron
in this PR piece the "political" point (by political I don't mean electoral,
but power above communities and indivuduals) still miss. The algorithms
decides what a facebook user will see. what become viral, what is trustworthy
and what is not. this is never mentioned in the transparency promises, and
still, transparency would not be enough (too many unaccountable variables in
the neural network).

People should get chronological ordered content in machine readable format.
client side, your personalization algorithm would decide which priorities
give. I work for this, and I feel is there where the true challenge is. If you
want to hack on this, please follow up on this comment.

------
happppy
Do I really have to subscribe or sign in to read this article? No, thanks.

------
jaytaylor
Paywall bypass: [https://outline.com/tM3TCU](https://outline.com/tM3TCU)

~~~
brd529
Looks like outline disabled WSJ links, or at least this one. You can get full
text by following the link from Mark's fb post:
[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10106257635829431](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10106257635829431)

~~~
yasp
Works on my local :)

------
paulcole
A little trick I use is to give them my credit card number and they let me
read their articles!

~~~
dang
Could you please not post these? It's off topic, and breaks the rule in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).
Yes, the current situation sucks. But the issue has long been decided on HN
because the alternatives are all worse. Someday that will presumably change
and we'll all be better off for it.

Please review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)
and
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0),
and avoid taking HN threads on tangents that have been repeated ad nauseum
already. I seem to recall that you've done it a lot, and you pretty much
crossed into trolling below.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18994596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18994596)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
paulcole
How does my comment break the rules? I am seeing these statements in the link
you provided:

> It's ok to ask how to read an article or to help other users by sharing a
> workaround. But please do this without going on about paywalls. Focus on the
> content.

> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users
> do so

I am helping others to read an article and sharing a workaround. Can you
clarify?

~~~
dang
That's so contorted an interpretation that I think it's enough to just say
it's not what we mean.

No more of this, please.

------
cryoshon
there are many problems with this article. let us begin to unravel them.

problem one is claiming that this article is "the facts". it is not the facts.
it is a PR piece.

the subtitle of the article is "We need your information for operation and
security, but you control whether we use it for advertising."

but that isn't factual. you don't need my information. you need some people's
information to make money. those people don't get to control how you make that
money.

>Recently I’ve heard many questions about our business model, so I want to
explain the principles of how we operate. I believe everyone should have a
voice and be able to connect. If we’re committed to serving everyone, then we
need a service that is affordable to everyone. The best way to do that is to
offer services for free, which ads enable us to do.

he starts by saying "business model" then starts mentioning non sequitors. he
doesn't want to talk about the business model at all because it will make him
look bad. he is intentionally conflating his product -- people -- with his
customers -- advertisers.

>People consistently tell us that if they’re going to see ads, they want them
to be relevant.

no. nobody says this. nobody tells you this. nobody wants to see ads, ever.
especially not ads which are derived from spying on their most intimate
activities.

>That means we need to understand their interests

no. this is not factual. you need to understand their buying habits.
furthermore, this is still not a discussion of FB's business model.

>The internet also allows far greater transparency and control over what ads
you see than TV, radio or print

once again, this is a non-sequitor. furthermore, "allows" is a lie by
omission. the technological capacity is there. but it is not exercised. and
"transparency" does not equal control. and let's be honest: nobody has any
control over what ads companies try to serve them with via e-stalking.

>On Facebook, you have control over what information we use to show you ads,
and you can block any advertiser from reaching you. You can find out why
you’re seeing an ad and change your preferences to get ads you’re interested
in

a non sequitor, again. they harvest the information either way. blocking the
advertiser does not block them from harvesting your info or finding another
way to monetize it. the user's preferences regarding seeings ads are
irrelevant because their preference is to never see an ad, which is not an
allowed action for them to take because they do not have any control.

>Still, some are concerned about the complexity of this model.

no, incorrect, wrong. nobody is concerned about the complexity. people are
concerned about the way facebook invades their privacy. a bad faith argument
by zuck, to be sure.

>This model can feel opaque, and we’re all distrustful of systems we don’t
understand.

no, incorrect, again a complete whiff of an answer. people are distrustful of
companies who have an incentive to exploit them. everyone understands FB does
not have their interests at heart, there is no ambiguity.

>For example, we don’t sell people’s data, even though it’s often reported
that we do

perhaps the biggest factual inaccuracy in the article; truly this is a titanic
lie which nobody can even hope to unpack. suffice it to say we shouldn't even
give his misrepresentation any consideration.

>In fact, selling people’s information to advertisers would be counter to our
business interests, because it would reduce the unique value of our service to
advertisers.

again, a massive misrepresentation which is intentionally deceptive.

>I’m often asked if we have an incentive to increase engagement on Facebook
because that creates more advertising real estate, even if it’s not in
people’s best interests.

i think we all know enough about the addiction economy to laugh at this
statement.

>And when we asked people for permission to use this information to improve
their ads as part of our compliance with the European Union’s General Data
Protection Regulation, the vast majority agreed because they prefer more
relevant ads.

implying that the users even understood what they were being asked to agree to
is a hilarious mistake of something to say.

the rest is similarly bad.

it will be a joy to see facebook torn to shreds by regulators and abandoned by
users. it is long overdue.

~~~
ankmathur96
This is easily the most vacuous of all the comments here. You just take
statements and call them disingenuous or obvious lies with not even a shred of
backup

------
MattyMc
I'm blocked behind a paywall.

~~~
gouggoug
copy and paste the link in google and load it from the search results

------
seppin
"When I started Facebook, I wasn’t trying to build a global company."

Why is he still saying this? No one is buying the dorm startup story anymore.
You control world media, act accordingly.

~~~
bertil
He is saying that because he is regularly accused of having a financial
objective, which isn‘t true. Like any moral claim, he can’t prove it unless he
gives all his money (which he has done, but somehow that hasn’t worked) so
he’s trying to prove the purity of his intentions by their origin.

He’s been very open about the influence on media and the responsibility that
it gives him. Say what you want about his education, ‘Noblesse oblige’ the
idea that having responsibilities demands that you act in a certain way, was
very much a part of it.

