
Facebook’s top execs ‘make tobacco executives look like Mr. Rogers’ - crunchlibrarian
https://www.recode.net/2018/11/16/18098008/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-sheryl-sandberg-new-york-times-kara-swisher-scott-galloway-pivot-podcast
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TheAceOfHearts
Clickbait. I think the actual story was already posted a few days back.

I'm pretty sure tabbaco has killed a few more people than Facebook, so this is
a ridiculous comparison.

Facebook does a lot for which it should be criticized, but it feels like we're
just beating on a dead horse.

It's also hilarious that someone would be so critical of Facebook all while
including their share button in the same article. Apparently they're evil, but
not evil enough to stop using their service. I think that says a lot about the
author.

~~~
xfitm3
> I'm pretty sure tabbaco has killed a few more people than Facebook, so this
> is a ridiculous comparison.

There are worse outcomes than death.

~~~
fipple
Like having a shadow profile on Facebook.

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fatjokes
Are you f-ing kidding me? Until 90%+ of FB users start dropping dead because
of lung cancer then that statement is complete garbage.

EDIT: a lot of people are taking my statement as meaning not to criticize
Facebook. That is not it at all! It just means not to lose perspective. At
least I still consider tobacco to be far worse, directly causing ~7M deaths
annually with no visible benefit.

EDIT 2: Genuine question: has anyone studied the rise of fascism post-FB vs.
pre-FB? It's not like dictatorships and far-right governments didn't get
elected pre-FB. Obviously I am one of those who doubt FB's direct
responsibility vs. it being simply a media narrative against a business
threat.

[1] [http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-
sheets/detail/tobacco](http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-
sheets/detail/tobacco)

~~~
_iyig
I see what you're saying, but it's also true that cigarettes didn't
fundamentally weaken the structure of democratic societies. The long-term
consequences of that (heck, even short-term) could be much more severe.

~~~
dontreact
This is one thing I don’t get about this narrative. At this point how do we
know how permanent what you’re talking about is? And how much is due to
Facebook vs. just generally the unexpected terrible combination of it becoming
very easy to distribute information + the fact that humans seek out
information that tells them what they want to believe.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t criticize Facebook, or that they shouldn’t be the
ones to solve this problem. But I think it’s important to frame it as a
problem to be solved instead of growing extremely cynical and saying Facebook
is pure evil.

~~~
yayana
In the case of cigarettes, the companies had the answer to these kinds of
questions for decades and used it specifically to mislead the direction of
public discovery. In their case, they had to risk their own studies in almost
all cases instead of just monitoring their own distribution system.

When Facebook says they don't know something there are a few possibilities,
the least likely is that they don't know and don't have a reason not to find
out.

I do agree with you that it is not up to them to fix. They should be limited
to whatever extent possible in what research they can do on their own
discretion to prevent them from staying ahead of public information and
misleading research.

~~~
dontreact
No, I wasn’t clear enough. We should be pressuring Facebook to fix this
societal problem. They -are- disseminating a ton of bad information.

------
justapassenger
“Oh, my God. Using an Android phone is like paying for dinner with a Discover
card. It’s like saying, “Don’t have sex with me.” It’s the ultimate
prophylactic that says “I should be ...”

Oh, Scott. Once again.

”I should be screened out of the gene pool.” If you use an Android phone or
have a Discover card, your family tree should come to an end.”

Stopped reading after this.

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whatshisface
I wish other companies could get the same kind of scrutiny as Facebook. For
some reason while most scandals are pushed down and quickly forgotten,
Facebook is being dragged around for all its worth. Maybe they weren't
planting enough stories.

~~~
mockindignant
Which companies do you refer?

I am fine with other companies facing public backlash for their actions just
like Facebook is now if they are doing things as shady as Facebook.

~~~
Puer
Google with YouTube and Twitter? Even though most congressional hearings are a
farce, Google didn't even show up to speak with congress. The amount of
racist, nazi propaganda I'm exposed to on Twitter every day far outnumbers
what I've ever seen on Facebook.

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dontreact
I think this makes light of the fact that lung cancer is one of the leading
causes of death in the world. Every year millions of people die. Millions. And
this is just one way cigarettes have negative impact. I’ve heard doctors say
that we would need far fewer hospitals in the U.S if it wasn’t for all the
negative effects of smoking.

~~~
fisherjeff
I would note that they’re not comparing the effects of the two businesses, but
rather the PR decisions made under fire.

Not that I necessarily agree that the comparison is completely apt, but it’s
certainly a much closer one.

~~~
dontreact
The frustrating thing is that tobacco execs are still around. And that there
is no hedging or context given so it’s pretty easy to come away with the
impression that it’s something more broad than just the PR tactics. In fact I
think that’s pretty open to interpretation.

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brentm
The FB media onslaught is getting a bit overdone at this point. They aren't
the worst company in the world. They probably have figured out that connecting
everyone doesn't necessarily make the world a better place immediately but I
applaud the effort and I think long term it will make a difference. So they
make money selling ads which they display by algorithmically sifting through
metadata. Around here I know it's not a popular practice but for the vast
majority of FB's 1.5B DAUs I think it matters a lot less than the media would
like it to. All ads are annoying but I personally prefer the targeted ads of
today to the random banners ads of the late 90s early 2000s. I know they
aren't a perfect company but who is? I think the media just smells easy
traffic here.

~~~
Puer
HN has always been super negative towards FB and their products (with perhaps
the exception of Whatsapp) because HN has never been FB's target market. It's
a lot easier to criticize a product that's never provided any utility to you
personally. You don't really hear about the spread of racist, divisive,
Russian sponsored content on YouTube or Twitter nearly as much here, and when
you do you also don't get comments sections filled with moral grandstanding on
how if you work at FB you're human garbage that should burn in hell.

------
ajcodez
I see some parallels with “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
Facebook doesn’t share awful hate speech, people share awful hate speech. Half
of us will be like “not enough, take away Facebook” and the other half will be
like “some people suck, but I should have Facebook”.

I think the answer is to tag content using ML and then allow users to apply
filters. It could be a “protect me” button in settings. I’m assuming most hate
speech is in image and video format with text in the image but Facebook can
probably figure that out with less than $1B worth of dev hours. It’s easy to
delay sharing into “protect me” enabled news feeds until after processing and
tagging.

~~~
whatshisface
Very few people are against hate speech, most people are only against hate
speech that targets groups they feel alligned with. As a result you would see
many people turn the switch on only to go and write a diatrabe against a group
that they feel is a fair target.

~~~
ajcodez
I certainly don’t want hateful media in my news feed. In my proposed solution
nothing stops you from posting hate speech but it’s one button to filter all
hate speech on the receiving end. I would suspect that hate speech gets
fantastic engagement and wider audience than required.

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SirLJ
Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Open Society Foundation, just saying,
“The notion that your company at your direction actively engaged in the same
behavior to try to discredit people exercising their First Amendment rights to
protest Facebook’s role in disseminating vile propaganda is frankly
astonishing to me. It’s disappointing to see how you have failed to monitor
hate and misinformation on Facebook’s platform to now learning that you are
active in promoting this distortion is beyond the pale.”

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liftbigweights
Another "facebook is the devil" propaganda hit piece. This is getting to be so
freaking exhausting and so obvious.

You know what's becoming worse than facebook and their execs? The news
industry and their editors.

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cryoshon
perhaps this is an incendiary comment, but i really do wonder what all of the
HN facebook employees are telling themselves to deal with the cognitive
dissonance caused by this latest scandal wherein facebook paid for smear
campaigns to distract from their own dirty laundry.

every time i have encountered these people on HN, they've portrayed a cultlike
naivety regarding their organization's actions. they always allude to the
outside world "not knowing the whole story" or something similar. in other
words, they've made excuses.

but i really do want to see what the excuses are this time. i imagine they
will be particularly entertaining.

more seriously, it's time for facebook to wrap it up. we've known for years
that they were abusing the public trust. while i doubt we will see any
leadership from congress regarding breaking up the company or degrading their
capabilities to hurt the public interest, the intense amount of flak that FB
has been getting lately is immensely promising. plenty of people are leaving
FB.

while it is true that many of these people are leaving for instagram, it's a
critically different product. i think instagram has a much more limited
ability to negatively impact the public good via propaganda etc mostly because
it isn't as participatory as facebook.

~~~
smt88
I wondered about this too. I'm someone who won't work in any adtech at all for
ethical reasons.

I asked my friend who works at FB, and he said, "I don't know about all that.
I just want to work on cool tech."

I think that's how most humans feel about their role in orgs like Facebook, so
I don't judge him at all.

~~~
SirLJ
“I was just following orders”...

