
Facebook’s Response to the New York Times - imartin2k
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/11/new-york-times-update/
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jimnotgym
This response is a disaster of PR. Facebook are the trolls, the cyber-bullies,
the fake news.

It is time that they learned to respond like grown ups. This is supposed to be
a world leading company, and they write press stuff like a school yard bully
would. I see a fad about to hit it's inevitable decline.

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GreeniFi
I don’t think I’m the only one that finds it a bit weird what a hash FB have
made of this issue. For a long time it was an era-defining company. It’s
employees and even Zuckerberg seemed intent on making the world a better
place. But the machine metastasized into something other than a tool to share
baby pictures with distant relatives. I think we’ve all (re)learned for the
first time that virality seems to favour the bad guys. _Tap our worse nature
and score eyeballs(1)._ In a sense this wasn’t FB’s fault, it’s a feature of
human nature which FB inadvertently facilitated.

As such, I don’t see why FB just didn’t try and own this. They had a lot of
goodwill, even as the platform changed over the years. Why didn’t they just
come clean: we have a serious issue, and we’re going to close down aspects of
the platform until we can deal with it.

I obviously know none of the protagonists of this tale, but I’d love some
insight into their personalities and how these drove their decisions.

(1) I say (re)learned as this as been the profit basis of British tabloids for
30 years and more.

Edit: for formatting and clarification of one point.

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stevenwoo
The movie The Social Network might be half fictionalized, but it portrayed a
way someone like Zuckerberg or Sanders could be out of touch with reality by
not responding to normal social cues or morals, and then getting used to
getting away with things.

The platform has so much volume they refuse to actually hire enough people to
monitor it, they've adapted to this level of profitability and won't change
without being forced to (it's the same issue with Youtube, if it can't be
automated, the platform would have to change) - it's like how in the USA and
even the UK farmers with significant manual labour requirements won't raise
wages, they'll try to get migrant farm workers to do it.

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reaperducer
_out of touch with reality by not responding to normal social cues or morals,
and then getting used to getting away with things._

I like to call this Michael Jackson Syndrome.

People get rich and/or famous enough and surround themselves with enough
sycophants who keep telling them how great they are and they start doing
things that normal people wouldn't do. Then it turns into a destructive
feedback loop.

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rayvy
> I like to call this Michael Jackson Syndrome.

Uhh I definitely wouldn't compare Michael Jackson to a Zuckerbot/Sandberg (the
latter were raised in seemingly wholesome suburban families and just seem to
have ego/greed issues, while the former (not being a saint himself or
anything) was the victim on an abusive/oppressive childhood). Don't really
want to get into this, as it'd be an unrelated tangent.

TLDR: this is a horrible attempt at drawing a parallel

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IOT_Apprentice
And the attacks on George Soros?

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drak0n1c
While pointing out funding from George Soros is an overused trick reliant on
ad hominem, I do not see how it is any more outrageous or racist than the even
more common trope of vilifying projects because they are linked to the Koch
brothers.

I'm part Jewish myself and I don't think criticism of Sheldon Adelson or
George Soros for their political activity is necessarily anti-Semitic.

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pteredactyl
Agreed. To criticize Soros or someone who's Jewish is somehow automatically
anti-semitic. I don't get it. It's frightening.

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snowwrestler
That's not the issue. The issue is that actual, proud anti-Semites have
created and pushed horrible conspiracy theories and gross content about George
Soros for years, and any PR company worth their salt should know that. Knowing
that sort of thing, navigating a message through the broader cultural context,
is job #1 for a PR firm. It is why PR exists as an industry.

So, Definers either consciously played into those attacks on Soros, or are
incompetent.

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pteredactyl
...

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jrnichols
what's driving me (and others I know) away from Facebook is that they are
actively scanning and deleting content that _we have created_ and stuff we
want to see in Secret groups (some are of an adult nature, and Facebook is
very obviously against any "adult content") but straight up fake news, memes
that are borderline racist and inaccurate and inflammatory, and other absolute
clickbait trash remain visible all over the place.

I'd delete it too if so many things I keep track of were elsewhere.

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throwifndmdj
“Tim Cook has consistently criticized our business model and Mark has been
equally clear he disagrees. So there’s been no need to employ anyone else to
do this for us. And we’ve long encouraged our employees and executives to use
Android because it is the most popular operating system in the world.“

They aren’t exactly denying Zuckerberg encouraged his executives to stop using
IPhones.

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chad_strategic
I had a facebook page, maybe for 3 or 4 months in 2009.

Deleted it.

Freedom.

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SirLJ
this is a complete "Zuck you"...

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claydavisss
Feel sorry for people who work there who have to pretend to support the
executive team

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dwd
Yes, I can only imagine the shitstorm that went down yesterday.

They should have called it the Mark and Sheryl rebuttle as this piece was
really only about them. Digging a deeper hole, which is what I took from this,
would seem to indicate that there are stronger calls for a leadership change
than anyone suspects.

