
Facebook wants your children's mind - bloomca
https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2017/12/06/facebook-already-won-the-war-for-your-mind-now-it-wants-your-children
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gfiorav
Jeez I quit Facebook like 6 years ago and never looked back. What’s the real
need here? Old buddies you barely know of? Let them go.

Just drop FB, it’s not that important, and 70% of people are clearly (by
reading all the “I quit Facebook drama posts”) over attached to it.

~~~
acover
It is a red flag to not have social media

~~~
snvzz
I'd never hire someone who has a facebook account.

~~~
cdancette
While I don't agree with the parent comment, this seems a bit extreme.

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acover
I'm not saying I treat it as a red flag. I'm saying there are people that do.
For better or worse.

~~~
snvzz
That was also my intent. Don't go create a fb account to be employable, now.

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deschainz
I dislike Zuckerberg more and more everyday. What a piece of work that guy is,
hiding the reality of FB behind his self-righteous mission of connecting the
world while selling you to advertisers and fragmenting your attention and
happiness potential.

~~~
smt88
I hardly think he's hiding it. He's just succeeded in creating a product so
addictive that people are willing to sacrifice a _lot_ in order to use it.

~~~
userbinator
Indeed, he doesn't really hide it; as his famous quote goes, "They 'trust me'.
Dumb fucks."

~~~
deschainz
True, I just meant that he doesn't really acknowledge the harm that it does.
Oh well, at least people are becoming more aware of it.

~~~
chiefofgxbxl
I guess it's sort of like a fast-food restaurant owner telling the customers
that the food isn't healthy. What's the point? Everyone probably already knows
that, and they'll eat it anyway (for various reasons).

Facebook (and other social media sites) is like the digital version of a fast-
food restaurant. And luckily for them they have 2 billion users eating it, so
there is a lot of peer pressure on others who'd rather not eat to go there
anyway because their friends are there.

~~~
dr1337
I guess a drug dealer also can justify their line of work by saying that they
are merely providing the means for a customer to obtain something that they
like.

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vm
Part of me thinks the the anti-Facebook media sentiment is because Facebook
replaced newspapers/magazines as the highly profitable media aggregator. Old
media struggles for relevance and lashes out at Facebook, the new winner.

Facebook makes fantastic communications tool and gives them away for a
whopping $0. I love staying aware of what's going on with my grandparents, old
classmates, friends, and family, AND not having to directly pay money for
this.

I would love to hear other perspectives.

EDIT: Downvote away, but my point is that people pick on Facebook for privacy
concerns but we all know it's an advertising company (probably the best the
world has ever seen). It also operates the best communications tools the world
has ever seen and it doesn't get enough credit for that. In 2006, the News
Feed was publicly bemoaned because of privacy issues and it's now the core
product. Facebook has built great tools over time, even when people didn't
initially agree. Not trying to incite anger, just pushing toward a debate.

~~~
brian-armstrong
This post is akin to calling Malboro 'the greatest supplements company ever
created' in 1970

~~~
vm
You're implying that Facebook is addictive and, yeah, that seems to be the
case. Good point.

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egypturnash
What if

we declared Facebook to be a monopoly and broke it up like we did Ma Bell in
the 70s?

I dunno. Feels like it's too big, too ubiquitous, and is too much oriented
towards encouraging behaviors that are much better for their pockets than for
anyone using it.

Hell, look at this story: Facebook already has (according to a quick google
search, [citation needed]) about 58% of the US' entire adult population, or
3/4 of all adult Americans who use the Internet. (which is about 81%). Their
user growth rate is going flat, because they're running out of people
_willing_ and _able_ to be online. But they need to keep acquiring new users
no matter what, so now they're turning their eyes to the people who they are
legally barred from giving accounts to.

Gotta find more eyeballs to show ads to.

~~~
emiliobumachar
An interesting idea, which raises a lot of questions:

Along which lines could it be broken up? Datacenters? Subsets of the social
graph? Would you liked to be grouped with your family, your school or your
church?

It seems very plausible that one of them would grow and engulf everyone, while
the others woulg go the way of MySpace. What then?

~~~
Chaebixi
> Along which lines could it be broken up? Datacenters? Subsets of the social
> graph? Would you liked to be grouped with your family, your school or your
> church?

> It seems very plausible that one of them would grow and engulf everyone,
> while the others woul[d] go the way of MySpace. What then?

I've thought about this, and I think the best way to break up Facebook is by
datacenter, staff, AND social graph. However, each successor company needs to
be required to _inter-operate with the others and everyone else_ through some
open standard. That would blunt the network effect and perhaps allow a
decentralized, competitive market to stabilize.

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colordrops
The article speaks of using powerful algorithms and AI to scour Facebook's
dark corners of pedophilia, terrorism, suicide, etc. This led me to a somewhat
scary conclusion. Taking the following premises:

* Community management, AI, and algorithms in general will eventually be powerful enough to do completely eradicate anything considering double plus ungood by Facebook.

* Life on Facebook is a slice of human social life, although admittedly poorly curated.

* Sensor and mobile technology will before long be good enough to have a full annotated and indexed high definition 3D recording of every person's existence at all moments.

With these taken together, it's not hard to imagine a Facebook that becomes
the perfect law enforcer and social control mechanism far beyond anything
thought up by Orwell or Demolition Man, definitely leaning more toward the
Matrix.

~~~
ben_jones
Worst still AI will be used to eliminate any activity which is unprofitable
for the parent entity. Imagine reddit shadowbanning users who hurt ad revenue,
imagine telecoms throttling users based on network activity (oh wait), etc.

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smt88
All advertising is (intended to be) mind control. It wants to get you to take
an action you weren't previously inclined to take.

It follows that any product that's successful at controlling people can sell
that control.

If you consider the implications of Facebook-as-mass-mind-control, then
Russian election-meddling, viral suicides, and all of Facebook's other facets
make a lot of sense.

It also makes sense that Facebook wants to get better at controlling you by
learning more about what motivates you, leveraging social pressure, and taking
over more of your attention.

(That said, I still enjoy and use Facebook. I'm just worried about how
powerful it is.)

~~~
kruczek
> All advertising is (intended to be) mind control. It wants to get you to
> take an action you weren't previously inclined to take.

That is one reason for advertising, but not the only one. Advertising is also
meant to simply notify people of the existence of a certain product. In that
sense, it isn't supposed to force people to buy something they don't need, but
it is supposed to make them choose advertised brand, once they need such
product.

~~~
smt88
In your example, it's still modifying behavior to produce a specific result.
It also introduces thoughts that may arise subconsciously, like thinking
"Kleenex" when my nose is running.

That fits the definition of "mind control", as I was using it. Your definition
might differ from mine.

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tzs
Facebook has a big advantage over other ways to keep in contact with your
social circles: it's not full of people constantly talking about how they have
quit Facebook.

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noir_lord
From their point of view why wouldn't they, children become eyeballs, sorry
adults with money to spend.

I've given up expecting corporations to be nice, I haven't quite given up on
expecting them to obey the law, the bits they haven't written themselves
anyway.

~~~
Fice
The sole purpose of existence of a corporation is to make money, and it would
be strange to expect them to be nice and not use every opportunity for profit.
Thus, enforcing ethics is a consumer responsibility: if you believe that
something is bad, don't use it.

~~~
Pulcinella
The sole purpose of getting a job is to make money and yet we expect our
fellow citizens to have stronger morals than just greed.

~~~
RepressedEmu
People get lots of different jobs for lots of different reasons, some of which
include money. I think your fellow citizens deserve a stronger consideration
for their morals, choices, and concerns than that of a faceless, sociopathic
megacorp like Facebook.

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cdancette
The advertisement on TV is heavily regulated, I hope we'll get the same thing
on the internet before it's too late and a whole generation has lost its
attention capacity.

Governments have a huge work to do in order to analyze what could be harmful
and what is ok, and pass law about it.

~~~
SN76477
A company like Facebook need massive regulations. They are a pandoras box in
my opinion.

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alexanderdmitri
As a parent and someone who has always found social media unpalatable, I think
this isn't new or specific just to FB. The competition to control your
children's mind begins early and never stops when it comes to any
institutionalized power mechanism, that's how power is reinforced and retained
over generations.

This is just another thing you'll need to teach your children about as you do
your best to ready them for the world and help them become independent
thinkers.

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000000000000001
Don't trust facebook. There are so many reasons to not use it, but this imho
is the greatest.

Of all the productive and happy people I have known, none use facebook.

Of all the miserable and lost people I know, most of them do.

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username223
Zuck:

> My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really
> young age.

According to Wikipedia, Zuck has two children. Let's see their public
profiles!

~~~
jansho
_His_ philosophy? That’s a well-known fact to anyone working in education and
child development. What irony that his products are actually _hijacking_ those
crucial early years; lower attention span, need for instant gratification,
potentially unsafe materials, device reliance, overstimulation ... seriously
this is cruel.

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kristofferR
NRK (Norways largest media corp) har a great story yesterday about the how the
highly addictive snapstreaks feature in Snapchat are controlling teen's lives:

[https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av-snap-1.13811834](https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av-
snap-1.13811834)

~~~
placeholderNam
I've been lurking HN for months now, just created an account to thank you for
sharing this link! Google Translate worked well enough. The presentation of
this article was really interesting. Despite being a teenager myself, I'm glad
I don't use any (non-anon) social networks. This is really scary.

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quickthrower2
Every big fat corporation yearning for even more growth wants your child's
mind.

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rhizome
I have to call what they're doing "the open garden" model. They simply want to
be as much of the online context of peoples' lives as possible. It's really no
different than the closed garden, except that people do more online now and
what would have previously gone to LiveJournal and Flickr and any number of
separate sites now all goes into FB, raising the switching costs to the level
of closed gardens. It can't take more than a year or two of MBA to be able to
fall back on this strategy. Beats working for a living.

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philonoist
My question after reading all the comments here is, is there any alternative?
or is there really a choice?

If I have to build a social networking site, say - FriendBook, what features
would you like in it?

So is the case with WhatsApp.

Privacy, if not now, will be unsustainable part of business model later. Look
at Apple Ping[0].

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

~~~
MikkoFinell
Why do you presume an alternative is even needed? We did fine before facebook
(some would argue better) and we will do fine after it.

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zeep
didn't children already move to something else? Amazon and Google also wants
your children...

