
Zuckerberg: I just shared the following note with our employees - tech-historian
https://facebook.com/zuck/posts/10111985969467901
======
boplicity
> I believe our platforms can play a positive role in helping to heal the
> divisions in our society,

Facebook systematically promotes and propogates the most inflammatory content
posted on its platform. Why? Because it is the most engaging. This is part of
the intentional design of Facebook, and is the fundamental reason there are so
many problematic things happening on the platform.

Mark's "thoughts" on the topic do nothing to address this in any way.

In other words, the plan is "business as usual."

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
The vast majority of FB users use it for staying in touch with friends and
family.

The cynical framing we encounter on HN isn't actually representative of the
experience of most FB users.

~~~
boplicity
That gets to the heart of the problem, actually. People use Facebook to keep
in touch with family and friends, yet Facebook still systematically pushes
inflammatory content on them, despite that not being the "reason" people are
there. And, eventually, it gets a surprisingly high percentage of people to
respond to that inflammatory content, thus furthering the cycle.

~~~
danlugo92
FWIW (and it might not be worth much much).

I'm from Venezuela and most of my contacts are too.

Most content that I would consider "bad" that comes up for people are just
memes, and stupid top X/spammy-ish/clickbaity content or recipe videos.

Maybe a different algorithm or just network effects?

~~~
jacobush
It could be any number of things - for one there may not be much advertisment
spend in your region compared to the US.

------
Kapura
He is clearly viewing this as another technical problem to solve. He's a
highly technical person; this follows.

But the issues he's being confronted with aren't technical issues of
permissions and algorithm tuning; they're societal problems of power dynamics
and information manipulation. These are human traits. They aren't problems
that are "solved." They're issues that you have to take a stance on. Do you
believe in letting people lie on your platform? What about advertisers? What
if the advertiser is a political party?

Further, this feels like it's worth precisely nothing, given what he says
right up top:

>I want to be clear that while we are looking at all of these areas, we may
not come up with changes we want to make in all of them.

Zuck has shown himself unwilling to accept the responsibility of controlling
his platform. He is failing every user and employee of Facebook.

~~~
enraged_camel
>> He's a highly technical person; this follows.

Is Zuckerberg even that technical? I’m aware he worked on the site originally,
but never got the impression that he was highly talented (compared to, say,
Google’s founders).

~~~
aspenmayer
Did the Winklevoss twins ever talk about that in interviews? I think they
wrote most of the source code for ConnectU, which Zuckerberg was at the very
least aware of. I don’t recall if he or Facebook was ever found guilty of
misusing ConnectU code in Facebook. In fact, the settlement that was reached
between the relevant parties has had many court cases of its own since the
settlement was reached, regarding lost value of agreed-upon stock value which
had lessened relative to the value suggested by Facebook at settlement. The
court cases may even be continuing to this day, but I couldn’t really tell
from reading a few wiki pages and sources.

I don’t have an answer, sorry. But hopefully someone else can correct me and
fill in the gaps.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConnectU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConnectU)

------
coliveira
Nothing is really being announced. He said they will discuss a few things but
what will come out of these discussions is not guaranteed. Great way to say
you're doing something without doing anything.

~~~
cryptoz
The most-used verb in the numbered list is 'review'. I hope some action comes
of this, but, I dunno, it's Facebook.

~~~
kjs3
I think you have your answer.

~~~
bg4
I think it's just about time for another Zuckerburg apology tour.

~~~
kjs3
I keep waiting for him to him to say "We have our Top People on it...Top
People". I see him saying it with a monocle and white longhaired cat in his
lap.

------
aerovistae
This reddit comment was addressed to the CEO of reddit, but it feels just as
pertinent for Facebook and mark Zuckerberg.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/gw5dj5/remember_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/gw5dj5/remember_the_human_an_update_on_our_commitments/fsw964e/)

There's nothing in this announcement, it's toothless. "We'll think about it!
We'll try to come up with something!"

The man is useless.

\------

This other, short comment from the same thread encapsulates it well, too:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/gw5dj5/-/fstgtta](https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/gw5dj5/-/fstgtta)

------
greatwhitenorth
Unless something is illegal, Facebook or any website should allow the content.
There will always be people who don't like a person or a viewpoint. It's a
slippery slope to start moderating content that is not illegal.

~~~
amanaplanacanal
> It's a slippery slope to start moderating content that is not illegal.

It's nothing of the sort. Moderation is critical, or it would degenerate into
garbage. Dan does an excellent job on this site, for example.

~~~
greatwhitenorth
Why would anyone allow spam in a website? It's nonsensical to assume I meant
that.

------
vz8
I would love to see a set of (enforced) policies that are blind to the user in
question, if such a thing could be. For example:

1\. If a post is flagged for review, the account name/owner, social score,
social graph, ad revenue, all of it, is hidden from the review person, team,
or algorithm. The only history they would have access to is violation history,
influencing some kind of recidivism penalty.

2\. The duration and severity of the consequences of the violation is applied
to the account automatically, and the "judge" is unaware of any backlash from
the user / community.

3\. Any protest or appeal is sent through the process, blind again.

I realize this is isn't nuanced or realistic in the slightest. What about
mistakes? What about gamification of moderation processes? What about revenue
impact? How could #1 be cleaned enough to fool anyone...

Still.

~~~
jacobush
_What about revenue impact_

Write that in cursive on the black board 100 times before you are allowed back
in your cubicle, employee #140932.

------
eebynight
Can I ask an honest question:

For those of your that aren't satisfied with his response, what do you want
Facebook to do?

I haven't really been following this particular news story but I've been
seeing a lot of anger against Facebook here and even on my LinkedIN feed.

~~~
loopz
Decentralize the platform and secure personal data so data can't be brokered.

------
throw7
As someone who doesn't use facebook at all, this reads as so hilarious. Zuck
knows, in this "difficult moment", his internal employee memo would leak, so
he makes it public outside the walled garden.

Hey Mark, let us know when you have something concrete to say to us peons.

------
Texasian
oh good, they’re reviewing their policies. Worth just about as much as an
internal investigation at a police department.

------
quietthrow
The business of fb is measured in MAU and DAU. These are their key metrics.
The only things that drives these metrics are engagement. It’s basically the
core of their business. And controversial items generate the most engagement.
Unless it’s crossing the line in black and white terms for example like a
beheading and most items don’t do that because the world is shades of grey
they are good for business as they have the potential to generate more
engagement. It’s basically good for business. What’s good for business may not
be good for society. Sometime it is. Sometimes it’s not. Some people are ok
with this and some are not.

------
sumnobody
As much of a shit show FB tends to be, it's still a personal choice to create
an account and/or use the one you have. Put simply, don't use it. (I know,
easier said than done, especially for the people that rely on FB to stay in
contact with family and friends.)

We can live without FB as difficult as it may seem for some. We did just fine
prior to the social media paradigm and can certainly do without the hate and
vitriol promulgated through social media platforms, especially FB. Let the
down votes begin!

------
Barrin92
almost every paragraph in that post starts with "we will" or "we have". I'm
sure Mark actually meant to say "I will" given that he more or less has
unilateral control over the entire community of 2.5 billion people. The
world's largest autocracy if you will.

Wild propopsal, if the community and in this case the voices of African-
American members matter so much, why not give up some of that decision making
power

------
blaufast
This contains much too little discussion of the feed algorithms.

------
moron4hire
Delete your Facebook account. Anyone that matters will be able to figure out
how to get a hold of you. It might _minutely_ inconvenience you for a week,
but you'll be much happier thereafter.

~~~
skytreader
Except a bunch of people who matter to me are not as comfortable with
technology as HN's readership and for them the easiest way to get hold of me
(or anyone else) is via Facebook.

> Anyone that matters will be able to figure out how to get a hold of you.

I used to think like this in university and even a few years after but having
grown my social circle beyond tech, I now find this line of thinking snobbish.
On the contrary, since these people matter to me, I don't want them to have to
figure out how to get hold of me. There should be a default option to get to
me and for most of them that is, unfortunately, Facebook.

Yes email didn't suddenly stop working, IRC is still a thing, there are a lot
of other apps out there that respect your privacy, etc., but these people buy
the Android phone that fits their budget, sees that FB is installed by default
and keeps in touch with that. And the UX of Messenger is just, hands down
better and more personal than any email client their phone comes with.

~~~
moron4hire
It's not snobbish. Your way of thinking is insultingly infantilising.

I'm sorry for the disparity between your post length and mine, but there isn't
anything else to say. You view the people around you as fundamentally
incapable. "How ever did those poor, stupid assholes figure out how to talk to
each other before us technical people came along?"

~~~
skytreader
I don't view the people around me as "fundamentally incapable". I am saying
they are _unwilling_ to adopt a mode of communication other than Facebook
because of Facebook's _ubiquity_. And I think it's a big mistake not to
acknowledge how much this ubiquity factors into Facebook's grip in the social
media market.

You are saying: "Delete Facebook. It's easy, you will be happier". And all I
am pointing out is why this is such a gross oversimplification of the issue to
the point that it does not really contribute a viable solution.

> "How ever did those poor, stupid assholes figure out how to talk to each
> other before us technical people came along?"

I don't see how my post comes across as something as condescending as this.
You misread me greatly.

------
caiobegotti
It's incredible that he and his army of PR folks actually thought this post
would convince people they are good guys doing a lot of hard work to fix those
issues by now.

------
dane-pgp
> If a newspaper publishes articles claiming that going to polls will be
> dangerous given Covid, how should we determine whether that is health
> information or voter suppression?

That's a really interesting and tricky question. Now remove the word "how" and
think about it again...

------
sdan
He said that instead of flagging, they’ll take it down entirely. Guess that’s
a step forward.

------
dereferenceddev
It is very apparent that Facebook is wanting to avoid appearing to be an
"editor" of content in almost any shape or form in an effort to reduce their
chances of being regulated by the government.

------
Kiro
I'm surprised that the general sentiment on HN right now seems to be that
Facebook should act gatekeepers, something that traditionally has been one of
the major fears.

~~~
jkaplowitz
A lot of freedom of speech policies and preferences, including US criminal
law, make exceptions for speech that is likely to incite imminent violence.
Look up the "true threat" doctrine. I'm not surprised that HN sentiment has a
similar exception.

~~~
belorn
I am pretty sure US free speech exceptions do not prohibit threats by
government to deploy the military against people, even if that is the very
embodiment of a true threat that is likely to incite imminent violence.

But HN community is not against that. You can have a news article about Nation
X declaring intention to send an army to against Y if people think Y deserve
it. People in general love violence and encourage it when it is the right kind
of violence against the right target.

~~~
loopz
Targeting own population with military is unconstitutional though, with just a
few exceptions.

~~~
belorn
We can define Nation X as the US and Target Y as US citizen and go down
different scenarios and see when it becomes the right kind of violence.

A peaceful protest (this should be universally agreed on as a very bad target
for military use).

Rioters that burn cars and loot stores.

White supremacists marching in the street.

Exact same actions as any above but we call it terrorism.

US citizens doing terrorism but which is indistinguishable from regular crime.

US citizens doing terrorism, where military weapons like bombs are used (we
could also split this up based on what reason the terrorist have).

~~~
loopz
X=Y

Target is not people, but actions in specific time and place.

Measures need to be justified and scrutinized.

~~~
belorn
When people talk treating everyone equal and banning speech that incite
imminent violence, they don't talk about how they want exceptions when it is
justified and scrutinized to incite imminent violence.

What is justified is also very subjective, an aspect which a lot of people
brings up in discussions. Who get to decide when violence is justified? Is it
the people, and if so, how should should we count the votes?

~~~
loopz
It is not decided by direct democracy and not by dictatorship. If people
involved are unable to act responsibly, they are the wrong people for the job.

------
Avicebron
My grain of salt meter just kicked in, here's hoping.

------
bbimbop
Zuckerberg wasting our time as usual. Hope he can shut the eff up. Obviously
he is one of the main weaknesses in our democracy. I hope he gets eaten.

------
elliottinvent
I'm not a fan of Facebook or Trump, but if I were writing the rules for
governing a platform designed to connect people, then refusing to censor the
elected president of the US would seem like a sensible rule.

But it's not a sensible world at the moment.

------
rdiddly
"We have work to do" in the last paragraph is exactly what he's said in every
public apology for this or that.

------
Havoc
That's painfully PR-ish even by PR standards. Lots of words not much
substance. Review this, review that...

------
slantedview
"We're going to review"

"We're going to review"

"We're going to review"

"We're going to work on"

"We're going to review"

There's an old joke in Washington - when you want to look like you're doing
something without doing anything at all, you commission a study (you review
it).

~~~
karmakaze
I hope there's a FB meme "We're going to work on shipping that feature" and "I
want to be clear that while we are looking at all of these areas, we may not
come up with changes we want to make in all of them."

------
circlingthesun
Lots of ideas, few commitments. I guess this is positive.

------
jonstewart
That’s a lot of words for saying nothing.

------
enkid
A whole lot of review of policy and very little clear commitment to action.

------
flipgimble
Facebook is a dying platform, and due to its enormous size and momentum it may
be a decade before its downward trajectory is fully appreciated. Facebook will
also fight like all hell to remain relevant, and the cheapest way is making
empty pronouncement like they can help "heal the divisions in our society".
Helps that they can never be made accountable for it.

Why do I think its dying? Generative youth culture has long left it for other
social media platforms. In the US even the middle aged suburban demographic is
getting tired of the Karens and Boomers spewing their hatred or turning what
could be valuable online community spaces into their culture war battle
ground. Facebook is very good at driving engagement in people that are
susceptible to conspiracy theories, extremist views on any spectrum and
generally excels at turning people into assholes that would not be tolerated
in civil society. Just because its statistically easier to get high engagement
metrics from people that are susceptible to fear tactics and have low critical
thinking ability, their algorithm hyper focused on feeding them exploitative
content. To be honest Fox News perfected this on an older medium. Facebook
claims ignorance and plausible deniability: all they are doing is maximizing
the daily-average-user analytics.

Its no wonder that it was the birth platform for Zenga and genre of games that
exploits dopamine reward system. The games industry was too obvious about it
and now cultural opinion turned them. They'll never go away, much like slots
and casinos. Facebook is going with the same playbook but substituting shiny
coin rewards with confirmation bias newsfeeds and viral factoids.

Only sadder is that most of the executive team has no idea what their critics
are talking about because they have largely no social acumen, empathy or
wisdom. Really good at convention keynotes:"But look, we're also doing VR and
AI! We can't wait to see what you do with it, our free developers!"... They
can point to numbers going up in fancy real time dashboard, they get praise
for shareholders and bosses. They don't understand the what kind of people
they snare up to make their number work. People quitting their platform is a
lagging indicator, at least by years, that they built nothing of lasting human
value, but exploited flaws in human psychology. I could be wrong of course,
cigarette companies are still going strong.

------
trca
Could someone copy / paste the text here for those of us who have blocked
*.facebook.com domains in our /etc/hosts file?

~~~
a-wu
I just shared the following note with our employees, and I want to share it
with all of you as well.

\---

As we continue to process this difficult moment, I want to acknowledge the
real pain expressed by members of our community. I also want to acknowledge
that the decision I made last week has left many of you angry, disappointed
and hurt. So I am especially grateful that, despite your heartfelt
disagreement, you remain focused on taking positive steps to move forward.
That can't be easy, so I just want to say I hear you and I'm grateful.

I believe our platforms can play a positive role in helping to heal the
divisions in our society, and I'm committed to making sure our work pulls in
this direction. To all of you who have already worked tirelessly on ideas to
improve, I thank you. You're making a difference, and together we'll make a
difference. And while we will continue to stand for giving everyone a voice
and erring on the side of free expression in these difficult decisions -- even
when it's speech we strongly and viscerally disagree with -- I'm committed to
making sure we also fight for voter engagement and racial justice too.

Many of you have asked what concrete steps we can start working on to improve
our products and policies. I want to share more about the seven areas I
discussed at Q&A that we're focusing on initially. Based on feedback from
employees, civil rights experts and subject matter experts internally, we're
exploring the following areas, which fit into three categories: ideas related
to specific policies, ideas related to decision-making, and proactive
initiatives to advance racial justice and voter engagement. I want to be clear
that while we are looking at all of these areas, we may not come up with
changes we want to make in all of them.

Ideas related to specific policies:

1\. We're going to review our policies allowing discussion and threats of
state use of force to see if there are any amendments we should adopt. There
are two specific situations under this policy that we're going to review. The
first is around instances of excessive use of police or state force. Given the
sensitive history in the US, this deserves special consideration. The second
case is around when a country has ongoing civil unrest or violent conflicts.
We already have precedents for imposing greater restrictions during
emergencies and when countries are in ongoing states of conflict, so there may
be additional policies or integrity measures to consider around discussion or
threats of state use of force when a country is in this state.

2\. We're going to review our policies around voter suppression to make sure
we're taking into account the realities of voting in the midst of a pandemic.
I have confidence in the election integrity efforts we've implemented since
2016. We've played a role in protecting many elections and now have some of
the most advanced systems in the world. But there's a good chance that there
will be unprecedented fear and confusion around going to the polls in
November, and some will likely try to capitalize on that confusion. For
example, as politicians debate what the vote-by-mail policies should be in
different states, what should be the line between a legitimate debate about
the voting policies and attempts to confuse or suppress individuals about how,
when or where to vote? If a newspaper publishes articles claiming that going
to polls will be dangerous given Covid, how should we determine whether that
is health information or voter suppression?

3\. We're going to review potential options for handling violating or
partially-violating content aside from the binary leave-it-up or take-it-down
decisions. I know many of you think we should have labeled the President's
posts in some way last week. Our current policy is that if content is actually
inciting violence, then the right mitigation is to take that content down --
not let people continue seeing it behind a flag. There is no exception to this
policy for politicians or newsworthiness. I think this policy is principled
and reasonable, but I also respect a lot of the people who think there may be
better alternatives, so I want to make sure we hear all those ideas. I started
meeting with the team yesterday and we're continuing the discussion soon. In
general, I worry that this approach has a risk of leading us to editorialize
on content we don't like even if it doesn't violate our policies, so I think
we need to proceed very carefully.

Ideas related to decision-making:

4\. We're going to work on establishing a clearer and more transparent
decision-making process. This is clearly not the last difficult decision we're
going to have to make, and I agree with the feedback from many of you that we
should have a more transparent process about how we weigh the different values
and equities at stake, including safety and privacy. I think we can provide
more transparency into what goes into the policy briefings and recommendations
that get sent to me. These analyses are done thoroughly by Monika Bickert's
team and take into account many voices. Since I accept the team's
recommendations the vast majority of the time, this process is where I think
we should focus most on transparency. For the most sensitive escalations where
I discuss with the team further rather than just accepting their
recommendation over email, we can try to outline how we incorporate all
perspectives into those follow-up discussions as well, even though that tends
to vary depending on the equities at stake in each decision.

5\. More broadly, we're going to review whether we need to change anything
structurally to make sure the right groups and voices are at the table -- not
only when decisions affecting a certain group are being made, but when other
decisions that may set precedents are being made as well. I'm committed to
elevating the representation of diversity, inclusion and human rights in our
processes and management team discussions, and I will follow up soon with
specific thoughts on how we can structurally improve this.

Proactive initiatives to advance racial justice and voter engagement:

6\. We've started a workstream for building products to advance racial
justice. Many of you have shared ideas in the past few days on product
improvements we can look at, and I've been impressed by how quickly we've
moved here. I've asked Fidji to be responsible for this work, and Ime will be
shifting some volunteers from our New Products Experimentation team to focus
on this as well. They'll have more to share on the first set of projects we're
planning to take on soon.

7\. We're building a voter hub to double down on our previous get-out-the-vote
efforts. At the end of the day, voting is the best way to hold our leaders
accountable and address many of these long term questions about justice. Our
efforts will draw on lessons we learned from our successful Covid Information
Center in order to make our voting and civic engagement efforts as central as
our efforts around Covid recovery. We'll focus on making sure everyone has
access to accurate and authoritative information about voting, as well as
building tools to encourage people to register to vote and help them encourage
their friends and communities to vote as well. In 2016, we ran one of the
largest get out the vote efforts in history. I expect us to do even better in
2020.

To members of our Black community: I stand with you. Your lives matter. Black
lives matter.

We have so far to go to overcome racial injustice in America and around the
world, and we all have a responsibility and opportunity to change that. I
believe our platforms will play a positive role in this, but we have work to
do to make sure our role is as positive as possible. These ideas are a
starting point and I'm sure we'll find more to do as we continue on this
journey. I encourage you all to also check out Maxine’s post about how you can
give direct feedback on product, integrity and content policy ideas as well.
Thanks for all your input so far, and I'm looking forward to making progress
together over the coming weeks and months.

~~~
trca
Thank you!

------
dntbnmpls
Anyone else get a huge pop up with Zuckerburg's smirking face asking them to
sign in?

If facebook is going to release a PR statement to the world/general public,
can they at least remove that sign in pop up for that statement page?

------
BMorearty
TL;DR mostly a bunch of promises about policies they're going to review. Few
decisions made yet.

But I do appreciate "Your lives matter. Black lives matter."

~~~
hyperdunc
Have you noticed how corporations with dubious histories are falling over
themselves right now to tell people "your lives matter and we're listening"?

It's nothing more than opportunistic grandstanding.

------
sacks2k
It will only 'heal divisions' if you are fair to everyone and do the right
thing, instead of listening to demands of the mob.

As an example, saying you want to murder conservatives, white people, the
president, and anyone not progressive should be banned from the platform.

At the moment, you say something that can even be interpreted as hate in an
indirect way toward a minority group or person and it's an instant ban.

You can say you want to outright murder white people, cops, or even the
president (I've seen all of these myself over the past few weeks) and it's not
only allowed, but retweeted/shared and shared millions of times.

Until this changes, it's not healing. It's giving special treatment to a
minority group and allowing them to bully, harass, and threaten their
perceived enemies in the name of equality.

The mainstream news simultaneously tells us that it's only 'white people' that
are the ones agitating, rioting, and looting and then also saying that
'rioting is the language of the unheard'.

I really don't want to live in a dystopian future like this and will do
anything in my power to fight it.

------
lazyant
> I have confidence in the election integrity efforts we've implemented since
> 2016. We've played a role in protecting many elections and now have some of
> the most advanced systems in the world.

You have to be f kidding me. Voter suppression (asking for paid fines, takin
out poll places in particular communities), gerrymandering, foreign
interference etc etc

~~~
bagacrap
Heh, what election did FB protect? Which election was more legitimate due to
the existence of FB?

~~~
lazyant
Exactly

