
Do You Have a Moral Duty to Leave Facebook? - longdefeat
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/opinion/sunday/facebook-immoral.html
======
zekevermillion
I don't use FB for aesthetic reasons not moral / ethical. But to extend this
question, do we have a duty to stop using NYT b/c they use advertising that
violates user privacy? To avoid watching Roman Polanski movies? Or the big
question, do we have a duty to stop paying taxes b/c our money goes to pay for
bombs 'n' guns?

We live in a world where it is very difficult to limit our personal commerce
to avoid indirect support for activities and people we may find repugnant. I
am reminded of the Biblical parable of 'Render Unto Caesar'. While I applaud
those who stand on principle, I do not condemn those (most of us) who find it
necessary to separate personal from political.

~~~
loxs
Yes, we do need to stop paying taxes. The only problem is they put you in
prison if you stop. We are slaves.

------
newscracker
[Note: I have a hatred toward Facebook the company and what it has done with
its products and strategy.]

We have a moral duty to not do or support so many things, but we still do
because of other people, social conditioning, believing that there's no better
way, etc. Making binary decisions in life is not easy most of the time.

On Facebook, my belief is that people ought to quit it on moral grounds, but
there are no comprehensive equivalents to its features on facebook.com for
them to move to. There are plenty of alternatives for WhatsApp and FB
Messenger that are far, far better than those. Instagram could also be
replaced with some adjustment. But the Facebook timeline, news feed, groups,
pages, events, etc., are not easy to replace with a single alternative.

I can't wait for the day when quitting becomes easy because alternatives are
far better and easier to use.

------
jppope
Man, NYtimes has really chilled out on their coverage of the tech companies...

~~~
chronid
Maybe it improves their engagement metric.

------
rdiddly
The Times seems to be on an anti-Facebook crusade of sorts. Which is fine with
me, but morality is usually the weakest & least important argument for doing
anything. That's why so many people - the clergy - have to make a full-time
career out of declaring it to be the _most_ important.

Quitting Facebook benefits you, selfishly and immediately; end of story.

------
lake99
Ugh! This is getting tiresome. Yes, NY Times hates Facebook. I get it. Can we
please stop posting story after story about that here?

------
freediver
I left FB in 2013 because of duty to myself. If anything you should stay on FB
because of duty to others. FB made it clear that they are not able to control
what happens on the platform, so it's on users.

I would not like the idea of FB to fail (connect the world) but would like its
current business model to fail (selling private information to highest
bidder).

~~~
chronid
> I would not like the idea of FB to fail (connect the world) but would like
> its current business model to fail (selling private information to highest
> bidder).

They don't. This is completely _against_ their business model (which is - from
the perspective of the target, aka you and me - the same business model google
has). They don't sell your information, they want _all_ your information to
sell advertisers the ability to target and tailor their ads to you (and
convince advertisers to give them _more_ data so they can target more
efficiently).

I don't understand why and how this trope keeps getting repeated, particularly
among tech people.

Just the fact they are _collecting_ the data is bad (and incentivizing other
business to throw their data in their databases), there is no reason for
spewing FUD about what their business model is, or even touching how good/bad
they are (or were years ago) at preventing that data from leaving their
servers.

~~~
hornetblack
They sell targeted screen space seems more accurate.

------
thrower123
No. You can do whatever you want. Look twice, and then once more hard at
anyone that tells you have a moral duty to do anything.

~~~
Hysterisis
You pretty obviously can’t do whatever you want. From a legal perspective
you’ll be arrested and prosecuted if you commit a crime. From a philosophical
perspective you have a moral duty to do good, by virtue of the intrinsic
definition of good (whatever that may be in your ethical framework). Even if
your ethical system says you should only do what makes you happy, you still
have a duty to fulfill that goal as it is internally equivalent to the concept
of good.

------
bsenftner
This would be an interesting topic for an episode of "the Good Place".

------
waterphone
I'm not going to tell anyone else what _they_ should do, but _I_ am unwilling
to use or associate with any of their services or properties.

~~~
vjeux
Could you explain why?

~~~
waterphone
The article explains why.

Facebook is a genuinely evil company with genuinely evil people doing
genuinely evil things to manipulate the world in negative ways, and I want
nothing to do with them. They've been immoral/unethical from the start.

They manipulate their users, cause genuine harm to people, the world, and
democracy, and should not be rewarded with continued use of their services.

Edit: Because people have been downvoting/flagging my comments, I'm no longer
allowed to reply to people and continue the discussion.

~~~
dymk
Those are some mighty incredible claims. Care to defend them with proof?

~~~
waterphone
[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46302140](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46302140)

[https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/03/facebook-role-
rohingy...](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/03/facebook-role-rohingya-
genocide-180313161609822.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-
cambr...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-cambridge-
analytica-explained.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-
tinke...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinkers-with-
users-emotions-in-news-feed-experiment-stirring-outcry.html)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-
facebook-did/542502/)

Some of these are direct actions by the company. Some are unintended
consequences. And this isn't even getting into the personal harm and unhealthy
behavior that comes from use of Facebook and similar manipulative social
media.

------
peter_retief
I couldn't read the article because it has a paywall but I left facebook
because it was ridiculous, not moral duty

~~~
kyrra
If you open the link in an incognito window, it should work.

~~~
peter_retief
I will try that thanks!

------
vjeux
There seem to be at least one post every day on Hacker News that’s negative
about Facebook. Does anyone here know why?

~~~
StevePerkins
Well first and foremost, there has always been primal hostility on HN and
similar boards toward advertising, and anything with privacy concerns.

Secondly, HN tends toward the far progressive end of the cultural spectrum
(with libertarian streaks). And in the shocked and confused search for
explanations, as to how a boorish game show host could win a Presidential
election, Facebook has emerged as a prominent scapegoat.

Lastly, but not least, HN's demographics seem to skew young, while FB's
demographics are clearly trending older. The more that trend continues, the
more FB will be seen representing a tribal "other".

~~~
codyb
Hmm, I'm not sure they're just a scapegoat.

I think there's very serious concerns to a society which seems to consume most
of it's media as curated by AI and their online friends as opposed to say, a
newspaper editor.

Especially when it seems like, half the time, people don't even read the
articles and just get outraged by the headline which they assume to be true.

And the whole, people being in bubbles with their own viewpoint cannot be a
positive.

~~~
chronid
> I think there's very serious concerns to a society which seems to consume
> most of it's media as curated by AI and their online friends as opposed to
> say, a newspaper editor.

Be careful - AIs may be wrong and manipulated and with authors with agendas,
and newspaper editors can be wrong and manipulated and have agendas. There are
countless example of newspapers being wrong and creating a narrative in the
past (ex: look at "manufacturing consent" book) to either support the
government or cover their (or the government) mistakes, or just plainly hide
facts. And with media concentration, this is just going to get worse and worse
:)

Or look at what the reaction by the NYT (or WaPo, or media in general) was to
the massive social media presence and access of the Obama campaign [1]
compared to what their reaction were after Trump won and they needed a
scapegoat to somewhat make sense of it even after some voices called (on TV)
for a moment of reflection about the dangers of them "being cheerleaders" [2].

Always remember "engagement" is a metric very important for newspapers too -
their business model is _selling ads_ , exactly like facebook does!

[1]
[https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975564499297226752](https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975564499297226752)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY3nRgEZTm8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY3nRgEZTm8)

~~~
codyb
Yes. I know newspapers sell ads. And I'm familiar with the fact that
journalists may have biases and special interests.

I never said anyone should put their full faith in newspapers.

But they're certainly better edited than the Facebook feed.

~~~
chronid
On that, I have to agree.

------
matte_black
We have no more moral duty in leaving Facebook than we do in disabling our ad
blockers.

~~~
robert_foss
Well.. I don't know about your ad-blocker, but mine does not play any role in
genocide. Unlike FB in Myanmar.

~~~
matte_black
Ad blockers are theft.

~~~
dleslie
My refusal to read or view content that has been provided to me is an
exercising of my right to consent.

Those providing the content are free to revoke their consent as well, and many
do when ads fail to render.

It is not theft to refuse to consent.

------
adamnemecek
By the way I think it's possible to leave facebook while keeping messenger. At
this point, I feel like most of the people I know who are on fb use it or
messenger rather than anything else.

~~~
dleslie
I've been encouraging friends to use SMS instead.

~~~
codyb
FB messenger is probably more secure than SMS, especially if you use secret
conversations (although you lose portability of conversations this way).

Signal and iMessage are my favorites personally.

~~~
dleslie
My security conscious friends already use encrypted channels of communication.
It's the ad-adverse and creepy-suggestions-wary that benefit from switching to
SMS.

SMS doesn't require an app that requests invasive access to information.

~~~
icebraining
SMS gives the involved operator(s) access to the content. Depending where you
are, those may be pretty creepy themselves.

~~~
dleslie
Sure, and depending on where you are there may be strong regulation on what
they can do with that data.

------
rotskoff
The article concludes that it is acceptable to stay on Facebook, but I take
issue with its approach.

Underlying the logic is a premise: that because Facebook is used by some to
spread propaganda and promote hate, it is (at least in part) to blame for the
illiberal trajectory of some Western democracies. For many, it is more
simplistic: there is a belief that Facebook is to blame for our election
outcome. Of course, it is extremely difficult to know how much "to blame"
Facebook as opposed to traditional media, and conclusive facts will be
impossible to obtain. Both lines of reasoning, it should be noted, neglect the
possibility that the election was determined by the will of people under a
non-democratic system via the electoral college.

To me, the question is whether or not Facebook is a unique actor in this
capacity. Does Facebook do something substantially different from other social
media platforms or content providers that particularly undermines democratic
values? I don't believe it does: Twitter spreads conspiracy theories, Snapchat
is used for bullying and harassment, Google has comparable troves of data for
sale to advertisers. While it has certainly had some public relations snafus,
on the whole, as a platform it isn't that unique.

------
pfarnsworth
When will New York Times point their Eye of Sauron against the things that you
enjoy? They have no business spreading their version of "morality" lest it
become a slippery slope into a new religion.

Facebook is an ad company. You don't have to use it if you don't want to. And
even if they target you with ads, who cares? After decades of people saying "I
don't notice the ads on web sites" all of a sudden web ads have the ability to
take down countries? Don't dress it up as a "moral" issue, and plus, whose
morality is the one judging this?

If you pick at every single company, you can find things that give you a
"moral duty" to leave. How far will they go? Love video games? It encourages
violence and gambling, you have a moral duty to leave. Do you have moral duty
to not use Amazon anymore because they don't treat their workers the way the
NYT wants them to be treated? Love muscle cars? It kills the environment with
pollution, you have a moral duty to leave. Love cooking? Why aren't you
feeding the homeless instead, you have a moral duty to do that instead of
wasting money on fancy food.

~~~
icebraining
How do you square this view with your public statement about having lost your
respect for Yegge when he joined Grab? Weren't you doing the same thing as the
NYT is doing here - voicing your opinion on what companies one should avoid
for ethical reasons?

~~~
pfarnsworth
Nope, your analogy is deeply flawed.

I'm not telling people that they have a moral obligation to do or think
anything. I gave my opinion that I lost respect in Steve Yegge, because he was
being a hypocrite. I didn't say "People should no longer respect Steve Yegge
because he's a hypocrite". There's a profound difference between the two.

~~~
icebraining
You essentially said Steve Yegge had a moral obligation not to be an
hypocrite, and therefore to not join Grab the way he did.

~~~
pfarnsworth
You have a moral obligation not to misrepresent what I write.

~~~
icebraining
It's my honest interpretation. I don't see how they are not equivalent. Maybe
you could help me.

