
The problem with Facebook - loisaidasam
https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/976563870322999296
======
astalwick
[https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/976783608219279360](https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/976783608219279360)

He goes on to defend his work at Google, arguing that they're similar on the
surface, but Facebook is truly dangerous where Google is not.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Google is quite a bit more distributed across
products and platforms, so Facebook has a simpler loop centered around the
newsfeed. That said, Google can track a user's behaviour across nearly every
website on the internet.

Facebook can run these "reinforcement learning on a global scale" experiments
through its newsfeed. Google, it seems to me, can run them across the web as a
whole.

~~~
petters
Facebook also tracks users across the web, isn't that what the like buttons
are for?

~~~
ecommerceguy
Sure but how about Pixel. Or Google Analytics, Clicky, Alexa (analytics not
the talking thing), Adroll , ... I mean the amount of trackers I can toss on a
website is mind boggling and super easy, all hoovering as much data as
possible. This is not exclusive to Facebook nor do I think they gather the
most data.

After sorting through this guys first half dozen tweets I finally realized
he's talking about AI and advertising. As an ecommerceguy here's my take. I'd
love to be able to upload a product feed, have FB or whomever evaluate those
products and push them to whomever the adbot/algorithm/ai/hall9k whatever
we're calling it today; as long as it returns good ROI, happy customers and
less work for me I'm happy.

This is already somewhat possible with Google Shopping Feed.

So again, besides this helped Trump, why the outrage? All I see is people
freaking out at what has been public knowledge for years albeit obfuscated
under a massive sheen of PRSpeak. FWIW I have always actively stayed away from
Facebook as much as possible to the point I tell my sister to take photos off
her feed of me. But here I am tangentially defending them.

I wanted to add a link to this site, It connects to over 200 trackers.
[https://segment.com/](https://segment.com/)

~~~
simion314
I am not from US so I don't care about republicans or democrats, I am happy
the people got outrage because of Trump connection because it has the side
effect and pulling hidden things into light

Also the fact that you know how Facebook or Google makes money does not mean
that the public knows, so my father does not understand why someone would put
videos on youtube or would put fake articles about things, or click bait ,
most of the people do not know about trackers, about the fact that ads on
pages make money for the website, that ads on the videos make money for
publishers.

I hope this scandal will make some light on exactly what Facebook collect when
I visit a webpage with FB buttons, I want us and the public to find out about
the shadow profiles, about any experiments done on users, it would be good if
we find if similar things happen in other countries elections and I am
wondering how well this things work.

Also it would be good if we could get less crap on FB, I do not use it that
much but I have people in my family that read articles posted in FB and most
of them are fake news(not politics but other crap like medicine)

I hope we get some laws about tracking people outside your webpages and making
shadow profiles illegal.

So even if you don't like Hillary or her party, I think you should desire the
entire truth surfaces and we see all details, elections are done so it is
nothing you can do now but maybe with more information the next ones will be
better with less dirt and fake news in social media and more actual debates.

------
m_ke
He's ignoring the fact that YouTube is as bad if not worse than Facebook.

They might demonetize some radical channels but they're still making money on
users who get to YouTube through those channels.

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-
politics-radical.html?referer=https://t.co/LLAotgmEoG?amp=1)

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/media/youtube...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/media/youtube-
kids-paw-patrol.html?referer=https://www-avclub-com.cdn.ampproject.org/)

[https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/d3w9ja/how-youtubes-
algo...](https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/d3w9ja/how-youtubes-algorithm-
prioritizes-conspiracy-theories)

------
fortythirteen
The work Chollet is doing at Google is reaching an equally nefarious end.
There are studies showing how manipulated search results have the same effects
on perception, and YouTube is manipulating their feed in the same ways as
Facebook.

His analysis is correct, but this:

> If you work in AI, please don't help them. Don't play their game. Don't
> participate in their research ecosystem. Please show some conscience

is a clear cut case of the pot calling the kettle black.

------
t3chn0SchO0lbus
The Twitter essay is my least favorite thing about the future we live in.

~~~
psychometry
Seriously. You can set up a blog in under a minute these days. There's no
excuse.

~~~
kawfey
the other sad reality is that on mobile, the number of people who read the
tweets is arguably going to be higher than people who click to the blog, and a
spam of tweets attracts attention and audience. I can't remember the study,
but people are generally rather unlikely to navigate out of an app to read
something, hence everything having a built in browser.

------
minikites
[https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/976784465245515776](https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/976784465245515776)

>Essentially nothing about the threat described applies to Google. Nor Amazon.
Nor Apple.

>It could apply to Twitter, in principle, but in practice it almost entirely
doesn't.

I don't believe this for one second. Google does the exact same "algorithmic
curation" with its search results. Different people get different results
based on internal profiles that Google has built:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble).
Over time that shift in search result content acts upon people in exactly the
same way as the Facebook example he describes.

------
throwaway84742
A Google employee points out a problem with FB that’s also very much a problem
with Google. That’s rich. Someone is about to receive a STFU email from HR.

------
spdy
For the discussion we have to decouple that he works for Google.

But he is right we are at a crossroad and the path that will be taken is clear
for me. Manipulating/controlling populations is where the money will go and
people will create those tools because those jobs pay well, its that simple.

In the next elections we will see deepfakes videos of candidates instantly
responding to problems or defaming videos will be put out were you cant judge
on the spot if its real or not. The trend of echo chambers will continue as we
see it right now.

The only thing i can see is education if we look back at the recent history
going from only a certain amount of people can who read/write or have access
to books to everyone has to learn and has access to libraries. This is the
next level.

And on the other side we have to fight for our right of privacy and kill some
business models on the way. Right now this is for me on the same scale as
Atomic / Chemical Weapons.

------
jphalimi
It saddens me that someone that brilliantly summarizing the problems of
extensive AI-driven content organization in tech companies does not seem to
understand that the company he works for suffer from the same exact problems.

The real question I am having reading this thread is: is this guy being very
naive, or just dishonest?

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mkrum
As someone mentioned in a comment section elsewhere, "It is very easy to
sacrifice another person's job."

------
dblotsky
I think the nefariousness is overblown. I present to you, a contender: an
elementary school curriculum. No AI, and way more influence over basically
everything you will hold as truth for decades.

------
TACIXAT
The problem with social media is that it isn't social. Telling me which
article to read isn't social. Showing me someone's status isn't social.
Posting a tweet and getting 2 likes is not social. Commenting on HN is
probably the closest thing to social because someone might actually interact
with me.

If you have all this data, make my life more fulfilling. I get more community
out of IRC than I do on any of the major social media sites. They are really
just media sites.

------
antisocial
I agree with everything. Going by that logic, I think we should all celebrate
that Google Plus is not as successful as Facebook. But for all your concerns,
Mr.Chollet, what assurances can you give us about Google being not involved in
something similar?

~~~
isthatart
For my past use Google Plus was far better than FB or Twitter, but I have no
illusions about it. Anecdata:

[https://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2018/03/21/i-deleted-f...](https://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2018/03/21/i-deleted-
facebook-twitter-and-entered-the-invisible-college/)

------
panarky
_We’re looking at a powerful entity that builds fine-grained psychological
profiles of over two billion humans, that runs large-scale behavior
manipulation experiments, and that aims at developing the best AI technology
the world has ever seen. Personally, it really scares me

If you work in AI, please don't help them. Don't play their game. Don't
participate in their research ecosystem. Please show some conscience_

When Facebook does something awful, their defenders rush to say "what about
Google, they're even worse!"

There's a lot of false equivalence in HN discussions, but these two are not in
the same galaxy when it comes to abusing the privacy of their users.

------
kough
I can't take this genre of tech/opticon commentary seriously when they remove
all human agency. Reading this argument, there's an implicit judgement that
(1) humans have no choice but to be influenced by Facebook, and (2) other
methods of information retrieval are somehow neutral. Sure, I agree that
understanding power structures is important – what a novel and interesting
point /s.

~~~
jonathanyc
If you think understanding power structures isn’t novel or interesting, it’s
surprising that you think discussions like this “remove all human agency.”
Agency doesn’t mean you have the freedom to do whatever, it means you are
acting in your own self-interest according to the limitations of your
environment and your knowledge. When we acknowledge the agency of people in
early states, for example, we are saying that they are taking part in the
process of state formation, often to their own benefit, and that it isn’t just
one person magically creating a state. We are _not_ saying that they aren’t to
blame when they get burned at the stake by that same state because they had
the “agency” to just say no.

------
artursapek
I can never take seriously someone explaining something in detail over a long
series of tweets. What ever happened to personal websites for god's sake?

~~~
fenwick67
The impact is also diminished by the fact that they're complaining about the
idea of a powerful social media empire on Twitter.

~~~
Slansitartop
> The impact is also diminished by the fact that they're complaining about the
> idea of a powerful social media empire on Twitter.

Not really, if twitter is a good platform for him to get his message out, I'm
all for it.

I also like the irony of using social media platforms to spread ideas that
could hasten their downfall. Its sort of like in some martial arts where you
exploit the weight and strength of your opponent to _defeat them_.

If you're arguing against social media, social media reaches the exact people
you most need to reach.

------
0majors
And Facebook is selling these capabilities to the higest bidder regardless of
their moral or ethical standing.

------
evc123
Nah, fchollet just doesn't want pytorch to minimize keras:

[https://twitter.com/jekbradbury/status/976612114260357120](https://twitter.com/jekbradbury/status/976612114260357120)

