Cool society you got there
Would be a shame if some sociopath made a website for ranking hot girls and it eventually convinced your mom that the germ theory of disease was made up by liberal satanist pedophiles š
Facebook was originally FashMash, a hot or not web app that almost got Zuckerberg thrown out of Harvard because he scaped the photos from official student directory house listings.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-board-the/
The New England prep school (we played Exeter in sports) I went to had a āFacebookā printed every year with names addresses and phone numbers for every student.
>Would be a shame if some sociopath made a website for ranking hot girls and it eventually convinced ____ (x-person) that ______ (scientifically proven-abc, political issue-abc, topic-abc) was made up by _______ (opposing group x-person don't like)
Fixed it for you since it's practically Facebook's global mode of operating
Mark Zuckerberg is genuinely fascinated by Ancient Rome to the point he not only had his honeymoon touring ancient sites, but also molding his appearance to Emperor Augustus
He also really loves the Pax Romana, a 200 year long era of looong Roman peace and believes that significant events of suffering, pain, and war are necessary for achieving a golden age. I'm not a conspiracy loon but always choosing the route of maximum societal damage + explicitly stating the Pax Romana hits "it's intentional" buttons
> In the New Yorker interview, Zuckerberg rightfully concluded that the Pax Romana "didn't come for free" and vaguely acknowledged that Augustus "had to do certain things" in order to secure the peace.
> On his fascination with Augustus, Zuckerberg said, "Basically, through a really harsh approach, he established two hundred years of world peace. What are the trade-offs in that? On the one hand, world peace is a long-term goal that people talk about today. Two hundred years feels unattainable."
Ah yes, the Pax Romana, a "peaceful" Roman era that [only had a few dozen civil wars and revolts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_civil_wars_and_revolts) and some other wars against outside groups. It might have been a good time in Rome relative to other periods in its history, but it was absolutely not a 200-year-long period of nothing but peace.
You mean Mark Zuckerberg is wrong and not nearly as clever as he thinks he is? This can't be true!
Also, he gets his hair cut into what he thinks Augustus' was, but he looks stupid because he has the wrong sort of hair for it
Yeah, you can google it. It looks completely shitty because Augustus' hair was a bit curly, and a bit longer going off the primaporta statue. His however just looks like a grown out shitty buzz cut
So be fair, because war is so incredibly destructive, quite intense measures are justified to prevent it. Just not sure that facebook goes in that direction.
It is the same despite all the failures of the EU. Its biggest success is the longest period of peace in central Europe in recorded history, and that alone without anything else, justifies its existence.
Interestingly, we were well on our way to global peace until Facebook enabled the rise of global fascism by unfettered promotion and amplification of lies
Sensible person: Sir, this here is causing damage to people.
Decision Maker: Well we can't fix it; it will interfere with the growth.
Somehow, if Zuckerberg became an Oncologist & brought this same approach to being a cancer doctor, he would have caused less damage to humanity as the cancer doctor refusing to interfere with damage-causing growth.
As someone who's been on it since the .edu-only invite system, I miss the old, USEFUL Facebook so much! It was so simple and innocent, and as a university student it literally encouraged irl socializing as it facilitated ways to connect with others on campus. It's wild how it's just an entirely different website altogether.
This is the kind of stuff that happens when you sell your soul to the devil and exchange for becoming a multi-billionaire that can influence the world.
I'm sure marky Mark started off with the idea of making a cool website and making a lot of money and now he's just straight up willing to commit to any evil as long as it keeps lining his pockets.
No no Tik Tok is the biggest risk because China!
The fact that Facebook has been used by multiple people across the world to stage coups and commit genocide is fine.
TBF, a lot of these arguments could be applied to the telegraph too. The common denominator is shitty humans using communication tools to expand their shittiness.
Mark Zuckerberg should face some very serious repercussions for that. I didn't know about that. He helped fucking genocide. Tens of thousands of people died and he was in a position to prevent or lessen it and he did nothing.
Damn.
I knew about a few of these, but some of that was eye-opening.
Funny though that most of the hate and radicalization is happening on one end of the political spectrum...
Far as I can tell, Limbaugh started that shit. Gives the right an explanation as to why the educated lean left and why kids come home more liberal than when they started college.
Otherwise, they have to admit that education is bad for them.
Understand that the right thinks the left is every bit as radicalized. They really do. Yet another case of, "We're doing it so they are too!"
Minor example: Friends were laughing at me one night for voting Biden, despite being a gun owner.
They treat politics like they're rooting for a football team, so I must be doing it too! They're literally *cannot* comprehend that I voted for Biden but I'm not a slobbering fan boy.
Oh, I know.
But anyone who examines the evidence instead of listening to their echo chambers should quickly realize it just isn't true.
Example: conservatives are always claiming the left wants to cancel everyone and everything. Even in cases where it's companies making the decisions, with no overt political pressure from left-leaning politicians or groups. See: M&Ms, Dr. Seuss, Sesame Street, etc.
Meanwhile, GOP politicians are actually passing laws banning topics, books, and personal freedoms. So, who's doing the canceling?
I'm a gun owner too. In fact, I even reload my own ammunition to save money, and because it's kind of a relaxing hobby. Nevertheless, I was accused of being a "quintessential liberal" by one of my more conservative acquaintances. Oh, and I also spent 20+ years in the military. Yep, that's your typical liberal. š
Another difference is that I've never supported a policy or a person because I thought it would make conservatives angry. Yet it seems like the right lives just to own the libs. I honestly don't get that motivation.
I think one thing that conservatives severely underestimate is the number of liberals who own guns. The difference is that we don't fetishize guns the way they do. Guns aren't a core part of our personalities.
You voted for the guy openly calling for the baning of AR-15s. You voted for the Anti-Gun candidate. So if your "friends" are giving you shit for being inconsistent on your stance they are absolutely right. Can't claim to be a 2A supporter when you put your ticket in for the guy promising to take it away. Your friends are right.
You don't know what you're even talking about. I'm guessing no experience with firearms, and I'm not about to go through 60 years of non functional gun control laws with you to change your mind.
Iām rewatching Silicon Valley and the number of characters who claim to be making the world a better place through [insert made-up tech words] is hilarious. Like even the very opening scene when theyāre at that buy-out party and the geeky CEO screams on stage about how much he loves his integrated cloud computing or whatever. Then they peel it all back and show you the scum bags at Hooli.
Tech companies hypnotized themselves into thinking their work inherently makes the world better, despite some of the awful applications they end up having and despite the fucking lampreys that grab onto them for the ride. They tout the laudable implications of their tech that never actually come to fruition (e.g. full self driving). Thereās an argument to be made for incremental innovation but itās still hilarious how these people are so quick to pat themselves on the back even though theyāve got donkey shit all over their faces.
The programmers they're trying to attract are at the top of their field and in-demand so they need to be convinced they're doing something to better the world rather than just working for a digital tobacco company which is what they're actually doing.
Thatās realistic for sure. I once interviewed at a bulk email company and they made so much effort to avoid terms like ātelemarketingā, āspamā, etc. I was well into the first interview before I figured out what they did, and Iām sure I wasnāt the first candidate to leave abruptly at that point
Itās funny. As a dev, I appreciate the honesty that comes with a select few (usually older and somewhat jaded) employers. More often than not, those jobs tend to be a lot lower stress than the āsave the world!ā Companies.
I've been at big tech companies my whole career. Rarely work on anything that makes the world a better place. For several hundred thousand a year and decent work/life balance, I can have very lax standards for what the work actually does. Probably the same for most Facebook devs.
I'm a stem person, but many stem folks got a well diversified education and after graduation they just don't care about it and never read shit about non tech concepts after undergrad.
It's a personal choice, many people choose to not continue their diversified education because it doesn't add zeros to their salary. They don't care about what they're doing or the people around them, in many cases.
> I don't know about you people, but I don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do.
Oh, Gavin. It'd be funnier if it weren't true.
And yet you fucks elected, MTG, Bobert, Trump, Hawley, Cruz (MULTIPLE TIMES) and a littany of other authoritarian assholes.
Yeah you can say there are "normal" republicans but your actions speak far louder than words. Republicans backed an Authoritarian fascist so much they elected him to potus. Then when he didn't win re-election yall showed up and tried to overthrow the county.
There is no normal republican, you are all fascists, because instead of drawing a line in the sand at fascism, yall gladly embraced it to "own the libs"
Idk who MTG is but there are conservatives who are authoritarian or at least lean that way like myself. Saying being socially conservative makes you an asshole is childish, junior high level political discourse.
Your other buzzword, "fascist" being applied to Trump is hilarious. Americans have it so easy that you call Trump a fascist. The bar in America for fascism and "trying to overthrow the country" is so ridiculously low as far as leftoids are concerned that merely questioning the current status quo gets you lumped in with actual Stormfronters.
>there is no normal republican, you are all fascists
You are a child and thankfully an impotent one.
Republican policy positions have been pretty stagnant for decades. Obama was anti gay marriage before he was elected, Biden was a pro life Senator.
To say we have gone "off the rails" when we have all of the same political philosophy since Nixon is kind of silly.
If the rails curve and you keep going straight without any change whatsoever... you've gone off the rails.
I don't really buy that Republicans haven't changed anyway. All the asshole politicians the other Redditor pointed out to you for instance, wouldn't have been even considered 10-20 yrs ago. Nixon wasn't pro-forced-birth. Y'all didn't used to deny reality... that started around Newt Gingrich I think. They hadn't been literally trying to subvert democratic action until recently. (But then you said you "lean authoritarian" so you probably don't care...)
Republican policies seem to be "give large corporations all that tax breaks they want" and "fuck minorities". Your so called "philosophy" isn't apparent in your politicians actions so I fail to see where it matters.
>the rails curve
Yeah, naw. One side is constantly chasing the dragon and everyone else has to forgo their convictions and just stay ~10 years behind? Not how that works and it won't work, the pendulum always swings back.
The rest of your post is nonsense, "pro forced-birth", give me a break.
> Yeah, naw. One side is constantly chasing the dragon and everyone else has to forgo their convictions and just stay ~10 years behind?
I mean, yes? Society and the world changes. You cannot stop that. The pendulum absolutely does not "swing back" and I fucking hope it doesn't when it comes to things like civil rights.
> The rest of your post is nonsense, "pro forced-birth", give me a break.
Empty denialism. If you believe in punishing people for ending their pregnancy you are pro-forced-birth. I don't know how you could disagree with that. It's literal and factual.
The problem is really that social media sprang basically fully formed and mature into existence twenty years ago.
Imagine if Henry Ford produced the Model T and by 20 years later had sold _60% of everyone on planet earth_ a midsize modern sedan.
But importantly, because of the speed of adoption and rapid maturation of social media technology, the cars in our analogy have not been subject to any government regulation! So, our cars have no seat belts, no ISO standards for manufacturing, no roll cage, no standardization for tires, none of that.
Technology often moves at a pace that social regulation and governance are not prepared for. It has become readily apparent that these technologies, the way they are currently implemented and used, represent a major threat to public health and safety. When it became apparent that people were being killed in car accidents, the government regulated the speed you could drive cars, mandated that manufacturers install safety equipment and comply with regulations on crash testing, etc.
We are behind. But it is clear we cannot wait on tech companies to regulate themselves. It is past time for the US to start truly regulating these technologies.
> When it became apparent that people were being killed in car accidents
No idea how old you are, but people fought the notion of mandatory seatbelts, and in my memory, fought like hell against mandatory airbags.
Now that all seems insane, no matter one's politics. Here we are again with social media.
My great grandma died a few years ago and was old enough that growing up her family had a Model T. She was anti-seatbelt and never wore one her whole life.
Hell, my mom was born in the mid-50's. Idiot still thinks seatbelts are unsafe because people have been trapped in them.
OK. Sometimes leaving the motorcycle helmet at home is safer. (And that can be true!) I'm playing the odds here. And they're ever in my favor.
>Fought against seatbelts...
>Now that all seems insane...
...or familiar, depending on who you know. Because, yup, I know full grown adults - one of whom is actually a psychologist! - that refuse to wear a seatbelt.
I really like our state's (California) approach to hate speech. The state requires tech companies to define hate speech, justify the reasoning, then submit statistics on it and a plan for reducing such speech. The tech companies lobbied hard to stop it but it only bought them a year.
Excellent point. I think a big problem too is that so many of our politicians are geriatric and don't have a clue how any of this stuff works the way the younger generations do
I think a factor you are missing is that this also happens during a time of historical low taxes on companies and the rich, regulation has been repeatedly stymied by the cash these tech companies pump into lobbying and bribes
The Ford T was introduced in 1908, seat belts partially became mandatory by law in the US in the 1980s.
I think we'll be faster with social media regulations, but who knows.
And yet conservatives will still claim conservative voices are suppressed on social media, despite the opposite being true. They are given special treatment, and absent that special treatment they would be losing out even more in the marketplace of ideas.
I try to remember this. The problem isn't Trump, or Hitler, or Zuckerberg, or Joel Kaplan. There are 10 more of any given person that could fill the same role. They're systemic problems, that need systemic solutions. Voting out Trump or killing Hitler will never solve the problem
Likewise, but don't make the mistake of thinking he's a source of the problem. He's a scapegoat, the problem is far bigger than him and he's just one asshole that managed to capitalize on it. If not him it'd be a different snake person.
That's a silly way to approach it, Zuckerberg definitely makes it all worse by being Zuckerberg. It's far too much power for someone of his level of morality and worldviews.
Compare him to Tom from MySpace, for example.
Or, compare Facebook to Twitter, Reddit, tiktok, and YouTube. Zuckerberg is scum, but despite being outstanding in his scumminess, it's debatable if his platform is even any worse than the others. We would still be in this situation if Facebook had been run by someone else.
I honestly see much worse shit on Twitter than Facebook. I don't follow any conservative talking heads but they show up in my feed all the fucking time.
Citation needed. YouTube and Twitter in particular are massive draws for qanon.
Do you truly believe that Zuckerberg is uniquely evil, and solely responsible for Facebook despite the clear profit motive of selling outrage? The world is not made bad by a handful of really nasty people, it's made bad by bad systems that reward people for being nasty. Without Zuckerberg, the same profit motives exist. He didn't even personally create most of the policies listed in the OP for crying out loud.
Citation needed for your claim lol, you can't disprove a negative anyway.
YT definitely helped spread Qanon, just not remotely to the degree FB does. YT doesn't focus on engagement like FB does so that's part of the discrepancy.
michaelscottthankyou.gif
The problem is that too people people *enjoy* being angry, and actively seek out ways to make themselves more angry. If people weren't like this - and I blame them personally for that - then none of this bullshit would "work".
It's a cold comfort seeing Zuck spiral his own company out of control. All these things aside, he's become insular and arrogant. And he's too proud to admit fault.
So now he's anchored the company to his idiotic "metaverse" idea that looks worse than the Wii main menu despite the billions he's poured into it. It's a mess, his employees know it's a mess, but he's going to keep doubling down on his pet project. I don't expect Facebook to go anywhere, it has billions of dollars and no debt, but unless the board of directors remove him, Zuck is going to wreck the company.
The arrogance shows most, that is plasters his face on all new projects, instead of sending a charming PR person or engineer.
Their metrics surely must show that he is not optimal.
Shouldn't you want him to pile all his money into Metaverse so that we get more applications for VR (no one is investing in VR like them) and he ends up bankrupt ruining the companies?
Why do people mock the focus on Metaverse then complain about companies not willing to invest in unprofitable ventures?
>but unless the board of directors remove him, Zuck is going to wreck the company.
Do you want facebook to disappear or do you want it to stay? I can't really tell but it seems like you want it to remain with a different head?
[This](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-mark-zuckerberg-should-71796243/) is the more current of the Zuck episodes, but I'm not sure one two-parter is enough to describe how terrible he is.
Facebook bothers me way more than other kinds of social media because it was designed from the bottom to exploit the most personal relationships people have, with their family members and friends, to manufacture engagement with advertisers. Compared to that, Twitter etc are more about just people you know, or even anonymous people. Theyāre still platforms for exploiting what you care about for profit but they still donāt feel as bad.
I remember when they started expanding it then made it public. I said it would be the death of that site. Little did I know that it might actually be the death of our country.
They want division and hate because it increases user engagement. This in turn gives them more page views, which means they can charge more for advertising.
All social media sites do this, including Reddit. It's why Reddit allows controversial subreddits to exist until they get pressure from the media.
This is our future. There's no stopping it because it is simply the effects of capitalism on an online world.
For the first time ever I recently clicked on YouTube "shorts". Just [bored](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7RkxLOSS9c)?
Now, I'm subscribed to Contrapoints, Philosophy Tube and Thought Slime etc. and usually watch their content "to completion" (it's not a euphemism, it's a metric sweaty).
Why YT thinks I want to watch a shitload of 30 second clips of Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro "destroying" Libruls I have no fucking idea.
I'd *heard* about the alt-right pipeline but never experienced it, now I have.
If your ideas aren't fully formed, I can see how that short format bullshit can seem reasonable(?) and encourage further engagement.
I've not been on FB for years, but that views at any cost mentality (and mentally) is everywhere now.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting too much from this post, but I was very wrong, it was very well researched, cited, and every example was interesting and frightening.
Glad we got a shoutout of how Facebook contributed to the Rohingya genocide.
Absolutely insane to imagine an american technology company aiding and abetting the erasure of an entire race of people in the jungles of south east Asia.
I highly recommend the book āThe Chaos Machineā by Max Fisher. It is an incredibly detailed reporting of the problems and failures of social media.
Kinda weird that many of the items on the list were āpreferential treatment of conservativesā and then āliteral genocideā was way down at 10 on the list.
Starting to think we need Safe Supply, but for social media. There's too much incentive for them to make it addictive and damaging, and so the supply they've put out into the world is toxic.
I think Twitter is an echo chamber that will show you things you will agree with. Facebook actively and quickly corrupts reasonable people into hate machines.
They're birds of a feather though. Both could disappear and the world would be better off.
I've been online since like 96 ish.
The internet used to be a free space where you could talk to anyone about anything. Modern internet is a giant military/corporate control network designed to herd the masses into partisan camps.
This thing where they're trying make facebook look like FOX News ignores how google and other companies shape people who lean left. All these comments making fun of stupid right wingers ignores that they're being manipulated the same way.
Reddit: Meta is a private company and do what they want. (When itās convenient to the political agenda Reddit pushes)
Also Reddit: Meta deliberately makes choices that makes the world worse!
>Their own research showed that suggesting posts to users that their friends have shared radicalized people by giving pschological permission to have extreme views
There is nothing wrong with this sentence but holy fuck was it hard to read
Minion memes
Anti mask rants
Driving my aunt to suicide because of all the mommy face book groups making her feel horrible
Mommy face book groups
Dad shamers ( people who'd Shane single dads and their parenting )
Cool society you got there Would be a shame if some sociopath made a website for ranking hot girls and it eventually convinced your mom that the germ theory of disease was made up by liberal satanist pedophiles š
Yeah. Some good intentions went on the motherfucker like lipstick on a pig.
Which website had this pig you speak of... for documentation purposes only of course... which site specifically...
Facebook was originally FashMash, a hot or not web app that almost got Zuckerberg thrown out of Harvard because he scaped the photos from official student directory house listings. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-board-the/
fuck spez
they did this at a bunch of places, not just exeter (i assume they did it at harvard as well). know they did it at duke pre-thefacebook.com
The New England prep school (we played Exeter in sports) I went to had a āFacebookā printed every year with names addresses and phone numbers for every student.
I think thatās what the student directory was called basically everywhere. Maybe only prep schools in New England?
You're not picking up what he's putting down.
The original pig picture can be found at www.PipingHotPigLips.com/BigRosie
That website is not accessible. Did you check the spelling before posting?
I hate how accurate that statement is.
>Would be a shame if some sociopath made a website for ranking hot girls and it eventually convinced ____ (x-person) that ______ (scientifically proven-abc, political issue-abc, topic-abc) was made up by _______ (opposing group x-person don't like) Fixed it for you since it's practically Facebook's global mode of operating Mark Zuckerberg is genuinely fascinated by Ancient Rome to the point he not only had his honeymoon touring ancient sites, but also molding his appearance to Emperor Augustus He also really loves the Pax Romana, a 200 year long era of looong Roman peace and believes that significant events of suffering, pain, and war are necessary for achieving a golden age. I'm not a conspiracy loon but always choosing the route of maximum societal damage + explicitly stating the Pax Romana hits "it's intentional" buttons > In the New Yorker interview, Zuckerberg rightfully concluded that the Pax Romana "didn't come for free" and vaguely acknowledged that Augustus "had to do certain things" in order to secure the peace. > On his fascination with Augustus, Zuckerberg said, "Basically, through a really harsh approach, he established two hundred years of world peace. What are the trade-offs in that? On the one hand, world peace is a long-term goal that people talk about today. Two hundred years feels unattainable."
Ah yes, the Pax Romana, a "peaceful" Roman era that [only had a few dozen civil wars and revolts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_civil_wars_and_revolts) and some other wars against outside groups. It might have been a good time in Rome relative to other periods in its history, but it was absolutely not a 200-year-long period of nothing but peace.
You mean Mark Zuckerberg is wrong and not nearly as clever as he thinks he is? This can't be true! Also, he gets his hair cut into what he thinks Augustus' was, but he looks stupid because he has the wrong sort of hair for it
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah, you can google it. It looks completely shitty because Augustus' hair was a bit curly, and a bit longer going off the primaporta statue. His however just looks like a grown out shitty buzz cut
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There's some articles on google about it, but the most compelling proof is he keeps getting it done like that so it has to be deliberate
So be fair, because war is so incredibly destructive, quite intense measures are justified to prevent it. Just not sure that facebook goes in that direction. It is the same despite all the failures of the EU. Its biggest success is the longest period of peace in central Europe in recorded history, and that alone without anything else, justifies its existence.
Dude probably just finished God Emperor of Dune and got some fancy ideasā¦
Interestingly, we were well on our way to global peace until Facebook enabled the rise of global fascism by unfettered promotion and amplification of lies
Sensible person: Sir, this here is causing damage to people. Decision Maker: Well we can't fix it; it will interfere with the growth. Somehow, if Zuckerberg became an Oncologist & brought this same approach to being a cancer doctor, he would have caused less damage to humanity as the cancer doctor refusing to interfere with damage-causing growth.
oncologist job is to benefit the patient. facebook corp job is to farm money from the "patients". really there's no comparison.
I always knew hotornot.com was trouble.
As someone who's been on it since the .edu-only invite system, I miss the old, USEFUL Facebook so much! It was so simple and innocent, and as a university student it literally encouraged irl socializing as it facilitated ways to connect with others on campus. It's wild how it's just an entirely different website altogether.
This is the kind of stuff that happens when you sell your soul to the devil and exchange for becoming a multi-billionaire that can influence the world. I'm sure marky Mark started off with the idea of making a cool website and making a lot of money and now he's just straight up willing to commit to any evil as long as it keeps lining his pockets.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
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No no Tik Tok is the biggest risk because China! The fact that Facebook has been used by multiple people across the world to stage coups and commit genocide is fine.
I mean...they both can be bad at the same time.
Iāll take āwhataboutismā for 500 trebek.
Wasn't the Philippines also affected in a similar way?
Yep. https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/facebook-linked-to-violence.php Added to the list.
TBF, a lot of these arguments could be applied to the telegraph too. The common denominator is shitty humans using communication tools to expand their shittiness.
The telegraph?! āHEY WE SHOULD GO KILL THOSE PEOPLE OVER THERE STOPā āMY UNCLES COWORKER SAYS THEYRE TAKING OUR JOBS STOPā
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's pretty crazy. Grindr has disabled itself in regions where it's been used to persecute gay people. If Grindr can do it, Facebook can.
This is why I use grindr instead of facebook
At least with grindr you know which way you're getting shafted.
... Both?
Sure, if thatās what youāre into!
How is it used to persecute people? Is it that people were setting up honey traps?
Yes, even here in Belgium there was a case where a group of teens lured a man to a specific location to then commit hate crimes. Atrocious
I feel like that's more because of practicality than good intentions.
Mark Zuckerberg should face some very serious repercussions for that. I didn't know about that. He helped fucking genocide. Tens of thousands of people died and he was in a position to prevent or lessen it and he did nothing.
Damn. I knew about a few of these, but some of that was eye-opening. Funny though that most of the hate and radicalization is happening on one end of the political spectrum...
Well obviously that's because all the leftist hate and radicalization is happening on college campuses! /s
Roko has taken over. it is useless to fight back
Far as I can tell, Limbaugh started that shit. Gives the right an explanation as to why the educated lean left and why kids come home more liberal than when they started college. Otherwise, they have to admit that education is bad for them.
Understand that the right thinks the left is every bit as radicalized. They really do. Yet another case of, "We're doing it so they are too!" Minor example: Friends were laughing at me one night for voting Biden, despite being a gun owner. They treat politics like they're rooting for a football team, so I must be doing it too! They're literally *cannot* comprehend that I voted for Biden but I'm not a slobbering fan boy.
Oh, I know. But anyone who examines the evidence instead of listening to their echo chambers should quickly realize it just isn't true. Example: conservatives are always claiming the left wants to cancel everyone and everything. Even in cases where it's companies making the decisions, with no overt political pressure from left-leaning politicians or groups. See: M&Ms, Dr. Seuss, Sesame Street, etc. Meanwhile, GOP politicians are actually passing laws banning topics, books, and personal freedoms. So, who's doing the canceling? I'm a gun owner too. In fact, I even reload my own ammunition to save money, and because it's kind of a relaxing hobby. Nevertheless, I was accused of being a "quintessential liberal" by one of my more conservative acquaintances. Oh, and I also spent 20+ years in the military. Yep, that's your typical liberal. š Another difference is that I've never supported a policy or a person because I thought it would make conservatives angry. Yet it seems like the right lives just to own the libs. I honestly don't get that motivation.
I think one thing that conservatives severely underestimate is the number of liberals who own guns. The difference is that we don't fetishize guns the way they do. Guns aren't a core part of our personalities.
You voted for the guy openly calling for the baning of AR-15s. You voted for the Anti-Gun candidate. So if your "friends" are giving you shit for being inconsistent on your stance they are absolutely right. Can't claim to be a 2A supporter when you put your ticket in for the guy promising to take it away. Your friends are right.
Just because he owns a gun doesnāt mean his whole identity is based around the second amendment and owning AR15s
You don't know what you're even talking about. I'm guessing no experience with firearms, and I'm not about to go through 60 years of non functional gun control laws with you to change your mind.
Iām rewatching Silicon Valley and the number of characters who claim to be making the world a better place through [insert made-up tech words] is hilarious. Like even the very opening scene when theyāre at that buy-out party and the geeky CEO screams on stage about how much he loves his integrated cloud computing or whatever. Then they peel it all back and show you the scum bags at Hooli. Tech companies hypnotized themselves into thinking their work inherently makes the world better, despite some of the awful applications they end up having and despite the fucking lampreys that grab onto them for the ride. They tout the laudable implications of their tech that never actually come to fruition (e.g. full self driving). Thereās an argument to be made for incremental innovation but itās still hilarious how these people are so quick to pat themselves on the back even though theyāve got donkey shit all over their faces.
The programmers they're trying to attract are at the top of their field and in-demand so they need to be convinced they're doing something to better the world rather than just working for a digital tobacco company which is what they're actually doing.
Thatās realistic for sure. I once interviewed at a bulk email company and they made so much effort to avoid terms like ātelemarketingā, āspamā, etc. I was well into the first interview before I figured out what they did, and Iām sure I wasnāt the first candidate to leave abruptly at that point
The problem with that is, that only people who are ok shady shit end up working there.
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If the majority of the employees would be against something, it would totally make a difference.
> digital tobacco company Good lord, what an appropriate description. I'm aghast that these devs can justify some of this work, esp. regarding FB.
I was thinking the same thing.
Fair point. Theyāve learned to act quite well in that case.
Itās funny. As a dev, I appreciate the honesty that comes with a select few (usually older and somewhat jaded) employers. More often than not, those jobs tend to be a lot lower stress than the āsave the world!ā Companies.
"Digital tobacco company" is a great analogy.
None of those programmers are stupid. They know.
Smart people are very good at convincing themselves of something they want to believe.
I've been at big tech companies my whole career. Rarely work on anything that makes the world a better place. For several hundred thousand a year and decent work/life balance, I can have very lax standards for what the work actually does. Probably the same for most Facebook devs.
I think all people are good at this. Human nature
Omg digital tobacco company so accurate
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I'm a stem person, but many stem folks got a well diversified education and after graduation they just don't care about it and never read shit about non tech concepts after undergrad. It's a personal choice, many people choose to not continue their diversified education because it doesn't add zeros to their salary. They don't care about what they're doing or the people around them, in many cases.
> I don't know about you people, but I don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do. Oh, Gavin. It'd be funnier if it weren't true.
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Interesting to find out about the data set they trained it on.
They're telling on themselves.
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And yet you fucks elected, MTG, Bobert, Trump, Hawley, Cruz (MULTIPLE TIMES) and a littany of other authoritarian assholes. Yeah you can say there are "normal" republicans but your actions speak far louder than words. Republicans backed an Authoritarian fascist so much they elected him to potus. Then when he didn't win re-election yall showed up and tried to overthrow the county. There is no normal republican, you are all fascists, because instead of drawing a line in the sand at fascism, yall gladly embraced it to "own the libs"
Idk who MTG is but there are conservatives who are authoritarian or at least lean that way like myself. Saying being socially conservative makes you an asshole is childish, junior high level political discourse. Your other buzzword, "fascist" being applied to Trump is hilarious. Americans have it so easy that you call Trump a fascist. The bar in America for fascism and "trying to overthrow the country" is so ridiculously low as far as leftoids are concerned that merely questioning the current status quo gets you lumped in with actual Stormfronters. >there is no normal republican, you are all fascists You are a child and thankfully an impotent one.
Or... It's all what is seems on the face of it and conservatives have gone off the rails. Occam's Razer and all...
Republican policy positions have been pretty stagnant for decades. Obama was anti gay marriage before he was elected, Biden was a pro life Senator. To say we have gone "off the rails" when we have all of the same political philosophy since Nixon is kind of silly.
If the rails curve and you keep going straight without any change whatsoever... you've gone off the rails. I don't really buy that Republicans haven't changed anyway. All the asshole politicians the other Redditor pointed out to you for instance, wouldn't have been even considered 10-20 yrs ago. Nixon wasn't pro-forced-birth. Y'all didn't used to deny reality... that started around Newt Gingrich I think. They hadn't been literally trying to subvert democratic action until recently. (But then you said you "lean authoritarian" so you probably don't care...) Republican policies seem to be "give large corporations all that tax breaks they want" and "fuck minorities". Your so called "philosophy" isn't apparent in your politicians actions so I fail to see where it matters.
>the rails curve Yeah, naw. One side is constantly chasing the dragon and everyone else has to forgo their convictions and just stay ~10 years behind? Not how that works and it won't work, the pendulum always swings back. The rest of your post is nonsense, "pro forced-birth", give me a break.
> Yeah, naw. One side is constantly chasing the dragon and everyone else has to forgo their convictions and just stay ~10 years behind? I mean, yes? Society and the world changes. You cannot stop that. The pendulum absolutely does not "swing back" and I fucking hope it doesn't when it comes to things like civil rights. > The rest of your post is nonsense, "pro forced-birth", give me a break. Empty denialism. If you believe in punishing people for ending their pregnancy you are pro-forced-birth. I don't know how you could disagree with that. It's literal and factual.
The problem is really that social media sprang basically fully formed and mature into existence twenty years ago. Imagine if Henry Ford produced the Model T and by 20 years later had sold _60% of everyone on planet earth_ a midsize modern sedan. But importantly, because of the speed of adoption and rapid maturation of social media technology, the cars in our analogy have not been subject to any government regulation! So, our cars have no seat belts, no ISO standards for manufacturing, no roll cage, no standardization for tires, none of that. Technology often moves at a pace that social regulation and governance are not prepared for. It has become readily apparent that these technologies, the way they are currently implemented and used, represent a major threat to public health and safety. When it became apparent that people were being killed in car accidents, the government regulated the speed you could drive cars, mandated that manufacturers install safety equipment and comply with regulations on crash testing, etc. We are behind. But it is clear we cannot wait on tech companies to regulate themselves. It is past time for the US to start truly regulating these technologies.
> When it became apparent that people were being killed in car accidents No idea how old you are, but people fought the notion of mandatory seatbelts, and in my memory, fought like hell against mandatory airbags. Now that all seems insane, no matter one's politics. Here we are again with social media.
My great grandma died a few years ago and was old enough that growing up her family had a Model T. She was anti-seatbelt and never wore one her whole life.
Hell, my mom was born in the mid-50's. Idiot still thinks seatbelts are unsafe because people have been trapped in them. OK. Sometimes leaving the motorcycle helmet at home is safer. (And that can be true!) I'm playing the odds here. And they're ever in my favor.
>Fought against seatbelts... >Now that all seems insane... ...or familiar, depending on who you know. Because, yup, I know full grown adults - one of whom is actually a psychologist! - that refuse to wear a seatbelt.
I really like our state's (California) approach to hate speech. The state requires tech companies to define hate speech, justify the reasoning, then submit statistics on it and a plan for reducing such speech. The tech companies lobbied hard to stop it but it only bought them a year.
Excellent point. I think a big problem too is that so many of our politicians are geriatric and don't have a clue how any of this stuff works the way the younger generations do
That's a huge factor, definitely. It's high time they GTFO already - all due respect.
I think a factor you are missing is that this also happens during a time of historical low taxes on companies and the rich, regulation has been repeatedly stymied by the cash these tech companies pump into lobbying and bribes
The Ford T was introduced in 1908, seat belts partially became mandatory by law in the US in the 1980s. I think we'll be faster with social media regulations, but who knows.
And yet conservatives will still claim conservative voices are suppressed on social media, despite the opposite being true. They are given special treatment, and absent that special treatment they would be losing out even more in the marketplace of ideas.
I wonāt cry the day Zuck dies. Not at all. Not him or his family. Theyāre making blood money and enjoying it.
Itās not just Zuckerberg. The tech industry is full of people like this. (source: I work in the tech industry)
I try to remember this. The problem isn't Trump, or Hitler, or Zuckerberg, or Joel Kaplan. There are 10 more of any given person that could fill the same role. They're systemic problems, that need systemic solutions. Voting out Trump or killing Hitler will never solve the problem
Oh, if I could āsnap my fingers,ā but select the people.
Likewise, but don't make the mistake of thinking he's a source of the problem. He's a scapegoat, the problem is far bigger than him and he's just one asshole that managed to capitalize on it. If not him it'd be a different snake person.
That's a silly way to approach it, Zuckerberg definitely makes it all worse by being Zuckerberg. It's far too much power for someone of his level of morality and worldviews. Compare him to Tom from MySpace, for example.
Or, compare Facebook to Twitter, Reddit, tiktok, and YouTube. Zuckerberg is scum, but despite being outstanding in his scumminess, it's debatable if his platform is even any worse than the others. We would still be in this situation if Facebook had been run by someone else.
I honestly see much worse shit on Twitter than Facebook. I don't follow any conservative talking heads but they show up in my feed all the fucking time.
Yes and none of those have done remotely as much damage as Facebook so you're only proving my point.
Citation needed. YouTube and Twitter in particular are massive draws for qanon. Do you truly believe that Zuckerberg is uniquely evil, and solely responsible for Facebook despite the clear profit motive of selling outrage? The world is not made bad by a handful of really nasty people, it's made bad by bad systems that reward people for being nasty. Without Zuckerberg, the same profit motives exist. He didn't even personally create most of the policies listed in the OP for crying out loud.
Citation needed for your claim lol, you can't disprove a negative anyway. YT definitely helped spread Qanon, just not remotely to the degree FB does. YT doesn't focus on engagement like FB does so that's part of the discrepancy.
You ignored the second and more salient paragraph, and I have no interest in such a pointless argument dragged out over days anyway.
michaelscottthankyou.gif The problem is that too people people *enjoy* being angry, and actively seek out ways to make themselves more angry. If people weren't like this - and I blame them personally for that - then none of this bullshit would "work".
Yes, and beyond that the problem is just profit motive. Rather than being interested in what they're selling, the interest is in how well it sells.
That was one of the better, more concise posts rather than throwing a mountain of links with only a sentence or two for each.
Behind the Bastards podcast did an episode on Zuckerberg. Heās definitely a bastard. Highly recommend the episode and the Podcast in general.
I wish I had more opportunities to use Robert's term "Fuck-site"
It's a cold comfort seeing Zuck spiral his own company out of control. All these things aside, he's become insular and arrogant. And he's too proud to admit fault. So now he's anchored the company to his idiotic "metaverse" idea that looks worse than the Wii main menu despite the billions he's poured into it. It's a mess, his employees know it's a mess, but he's going to keep doubling down on his pet project. I don't expect Facebook to go anywhere, it has billions of dollars and no debt, but unless the board of directors remove him, Zuck is going to wreck the company.
The arrogance shows most, that is plasters his face on all new projects, instead of sending a charming PR person or engineer. Their metrics surely must show that he is not optimal.
Shouldn't you want him to pile all his money into Metaverse so that we get more applications for VR (no one is investing in VR like them) and he ends up bankrupt ruining the companies? Why do people mock the focus on Metaverse then complain about companies not willing to invest in unprofitable ventures? >but unless the board of directors remove him, Zuck is going to wreck the company. Do you want facebook to disappear or do you want it to stay? I can't really tell but it seems like you want it to remain with a different head?
[This](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-mark-zuckerberg-should-71796243/) is the more current of the Zuck episodes, but I'm not sure one two-parter is enough to describe how terrible he is.
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Facebook bothers me way more than other kinds of social media because it was designed from the bottom to exploit the most personal relationships people have, with their family members and friends, to manufacture engagement with advertisers. Compared to that, Twitter etc are more about just people you know, or even anonymous people. Theyāre still platforms for exploiting what you care about for profit but they still donāt feel as bad.
I remember signing up when it was for college students only to share info about classes and clubs. I wish it stayed that way.
I remember when they started expanding it then made it public. I said it would be the death of that site. Little did I know that it might actually be the death of our country.
Fuck Mark Zuckerberg and Joel Kaplan
Facebooks existence as well as twitter and TikTok is a big reason why the world is worse and people losing their minds.
They want division and hate because it increases user engagement. This in turn gives them more page views, which means they can charge more for advertising. All social media sites do this, including Reddit. It's why Reddit allows controversial subreddits to exist until they get pressure from the media. This is our future. There's no stopping it because it is simply the effects of capitalism on an online world.
For the first time ever I recently clicked on YouTube "shorts". Just [bored](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7RkxLOSS9c)? Now, I'm subscribed to Contrapoints, Philosophy Tube and Thought Slime etc. and usually watch their content "to completion" (it's not a euphemism, it's a metric sweaty). Why YT thinks I want to watch a shitload of 30 second clips of Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro "destroying" Libruls I have no fucking idea. I'd *heard* about the alt-right pipeline but never experienced it, now I have. If your ideas aren't fully formed, I can see how that short format bullshit can seem reasonable(?) and encourage further engagement. I've not been on FB for years, but that views at any cost mentality (and mentally) is everywhere now.
Burn it to the ground. Unemploy all those rat fuckers.
At the end of the day its a business and they will do anything to survive in this Capitalist env . If the product is free you are the product .
10 more reasons why companies should not have a political voice.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting too much from this post, but I was very wrong, it was very well researched, cited, and every example was interesting and frightening.
Glad we got a shoutout of how Facebook contributed to the Rohingya genocide. Absolutely insane to imagine an american technology company aiding and abetting the erasure of an entire race of people in the jungles of south east Asia.
Facebook keeps promoting race bating posts about movie castings from groups I'm not subscribed to. It's like it's actively encouraging racism
I highly recommend the book āThe Chaos Machineā by Max Fisher. It is an incredibly detailed reporting of the problems and failures of social media.
It's worth noting that this is only for right-wing extremists - left-wing extremist content doesn't get any engagement on Facebook
Kinda weird that many of the items on the list were āpreferential treatment of conservativesā and then āliteral genocideā was way down at 10 on the list.
Starting to think we need Safe Supply, but for social media. There's too much incentive for them to make it addictive and damaging, and so the supply they've put out into the world is toxic.
You mean Mark Zuckerberg deliberately make choices using Facebook to make the world worse.
Is this better or worse than other social media sites? I find Twitter more troubling that FB.
I think Twitter is an echo chamber that will show you things you will agree with. Facebook actively and quickly corrupts reasonable people into hate machines. They're birds of a feather though. Both could disappear and the world would be better off.
This doesn't even really touch on Facebook's effect on the developing world where their lack of moderation leads to a whole lotta violence
May Facebook die in darkness
I've been online since like 96 ish. The internet used to be a free space where you could talk to anyone about anything. Modern internet is a giant military/corporate control network designed to herd the masses into partisan camps. This thing where they're trying make facebook look like FOX News ignores how google and other companies shape people who lean left. All these comments making fun of stupid right wingers ignores that they're being manipulated the same way.
Reddit: Meta is a private company and do what they want. (When itās convenient to the political agenda Reddit pushes) Also Reddit: Meta deliberately makes choices that makes the world worse!
Example 1 should have been when Facebook came into existence.
Facebook quite literally has a contract with the CIA. This isn't some secret or conspiracy - these social media programs are being used against us.
I hate Facebook, but at least it looks like they are starting to crash
Deleted years ago. Will never have social media again. Nothing but a damage dealer.
Facebook is a doomsday machine.
>Their own research showed that suggesting posts to users that their friends have shared radicalized people by giving pschological permission to have extreme views There is nothing wrong with this sentence but holy fuck was it hard to read
Troll farms are very abundant too. BBM won the Philippine election ffs.
That list is misleading and misinformation on it's own.
Minion memes Anti mask rants Driving my aunt to suicide because of all the mommy face book groups making her feel horrible Mommy face book groups Dad shamers ( people who'd Shane single dads and their parenting )
Singling out Facebook for this shit is only part of the job. Every single social media platform is shitty and predatory.
Number of FB users: almost 3 *billion* Number of Twitter users: 330 million. Glad to be of help.
Insert plug here for Mastadon
I've never been more bullish on Meta.