Is Facebook Evil? #23
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yes |
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😈 👍 |
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@des-des 😂 |
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As a developer, I say Yes. As a marketer that uses Facebook data for targeting, Yes. As an evil scientist that loves playing with data gathered by Facebook Pixel, Ummm No. |
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As a full-time React developer who loves using it, I felt really conflicted when Facebook recruiters contacted me 😄 I basically just told them I would love to work on open-source tools like React etc. but would not be willing to work on Facebook's core product. |
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Also we should all delete whatsapp and use signal / something like riot. (asap) |
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@des-des probs. I believe Signal is currently recommended by most security peeps. Telegram, not so much. Haven't heard of riot. |
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My biggest fear is less whether facebook is evil right now but the unmonitored manipulative power they are amassing for whoever happens to own them in future. If we have watchdogs to watch newspapers why is the far more powerful newsfeed algorithm under less official scrutiny? Do they manipulate elections? Deliberately, accidentally as a side effect? If they don't now, how would we know on the day that they decide to? This chrome extension is worked on by volunteers here in Berlin to try and fill that gap. The idea is that upstanding citizens allow the extension to let a node app scrape their newsfeed so we can reverse engineer with an open, anonymised dataset and spot when facebook make big, manipulative changes. If anyone has good design and copywriting skills I bet they'd welcome help making their promotional pages more attractive at the least. They're open to contributors. |
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@coudrew sounds like Fb have a pretty tight grip on your community of friends... 😞 |
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I really like the use of github issues as a discussion thread. Best part about it is that it weeds out the trolls, since we're all engineers (but then again I've had my fair share of entertaining dev trolls from time-to-time) :) |
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Is anyone surprised by this...? 👥 < 💰 |
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I personally think that people (including a few of people on this thread) are overreacting to the privacy thing. Refusing to use FB would be like staying home because you are too scared to be filmed by traffic cameras. While I agree with the impact FB and other social media can have on crowd opinions, I hardly see why people are so concerned about privacy. I am way more concerned about fake news than editorial filtering. For some context, I worked at Fetlife, a social network where people talked and consumed "deviant" sexual content and topics. There privacy was critical since for some people, a coming out could mean losing their job or even getting killed. So I know a lot about the importance of privacy. But Facebook? Technically, everything you create on FB is ment to be seen by someone else you know, so nothing is really private. Basically, my perception is that if you are using FB in a way that should not be made public, maybe FB is not a the platform that you should use. Concerns regarding tracking pixels is totally justified, but I think it should be moved outside of the FB debate because this is done by pretty much everyone in the web space and should thus be discussed on a broader scale. Obviously, all of this is my own opinion but there are way scarier privacy issues out there (Uber, I am looking at you!) Disclaimer: I own FB stock. |
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@AlainPilon while I agree in principal that what most people share on FB is "meant to be public" to their friends/family, however I'm fairly certain most people don't realise that what they are sharing with their friends is actually being "mined" to create a profile that is sold to advertisers. What people think is reasonably "private" (visible by friends-friends) is used to sell them stuff like sugary drinks, and get-rich-quick-schemes: https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/25-bad-facebook-advertisements
To be clear, it's pretty obvious to anyone who stops to think about this that Google has considerably more data on it's users given the fact that they have access to all Search history, Location Data via Google Maps and Biometrics via Android, etc. Owning FB stock creates an unavoidable cognitive bias which is not your "fault".
Purely from an investment perspective, FB is a solid bet because they have an army of highly intelligent social & computer scientists systematically working to produce a deliberately highly addictive product which induces "FOMO" in it's users. Also, Uber... agreed. creepy amounts of tracking going on there even/especially while app not in use. But for now they appear to be using it for their own "app-improvement" purposes rather than selling it on to advertisers ... but I expect them to "monetise" it somehow... |
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Whisper Systems Replied: There is no WhatsApp 'backdoor' |
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Further explanation of the vulnerability with demo video: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/16/whatsapp-vulnerability-facebook Also, Bruce Schneier addressed the issue: |
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@AlainPilon For me the privacy concern is more about hypotheticals: what an evil government/leaders could do with access to all of that data. Given that governments have killed people with certain political beliefs, and how visible our political beliefs may be online, I would rather it not be so easy for the government to find out such things. |
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@jedwards1211 this is a very valid point. Then again, removing myself from social network has a cost which I am not willing to pay in relation to the risk. But that is a personal choice. |
"what do i do if i'm feeling suicidal", etc etc. I could think of loads. Perhaps I'm missing the definition of personal data, but I find it hard to argue that personal data could not be collected on you from a search engine. In a way it's more personal, it has the capacity to be your own private confessional box of the internet (that's secretly made of glass 😉 ). There are things you might search for -- sexual habits as @AlainPilon said, as an example -- that you might not even share with others (except Google thou omniscient). Even if we argue that one is a tiger and the other is a kitten, or that both are kittens, the danger is that either are poised to become tigers. The amount of information they have on us is far too much power -- that concerns me far more than questions of whether one is evil or not. Even if they don't abuse it, I'm unable to trust that that will always be the case. My Google search history could easily be framed to put me on a government watch-list. |
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Logged into FB because got a notification about my Aunt's birthday party event and wanted to say "can't make it"... Got this Ad in my "Timeline"...
Oh that's right, React.js is the ultimate Recruitment Tool made by the Marketing Machine ... 🙊 Fact is Facebook is inextricably linked to Mark. Which of these two is doing more to give people their Human Rights...? Granted Julian has his issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Allegations_of_anti-Semitism and Edward called his team out:
But I would still sooner sign into a service run by almost anyone other than Facebook!
So many good memes: https://www.google.com/search?q=zuckerberg+meme&tbm=isch 😜 also ... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team-runs-mark-zuckerberg-s-facebook-page loving the soft-focus photo op "official" photos... 👍 |
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You should consider https://keybase.io/ as a commuincation tool |
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@nelsonic I think you're over thinking this... React is not a conspiracy, it's just a very powerful and well-designed tool. It came from Facebook because they tend to pull brilliant devs, much as I hate it, not because it was part of some devious plan. Also FB had the clout to get tools like Babel to support JSX early on... It would be harder for a smaller org to make such a major change to the language. |
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@jedwards1211 I "over-think" things a lot. 🤔 I agree that React is "powerful", but it's not the best at anything it does. Don't confuse Facebook's Open Source with grass-roots efforts. They have a commercial interest in everything they put out. And by heavily marketing their tools (sponsoring meetups and lavish conferences) they are systematically trying to recruit the best "talent" to work for them. |
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I'm surprised you're comparing Ractive.js to React...I don't see much similarity. Curly-brace substitution certainly isn't all that special. The concept of reactive updates is not new, in fact it is decades old (and Meteor also does it in a completely different way than React, and with a template syntax more similar to Ractive.js). Ractive.js doesn't seem to have some of React's main features: 1) generating a virtual dom from templates created in javascript and then syncing those to the real dom, 2) extending JavaScript syntax to include a DOM template language, 3) doing reactive updates at the component level, rather than at the curly-brace level, which is not necessarily as performant but simplifies a lot of things. I'm not sure React was the first have any of these features either, but I bet it's far more elegant than anything that predated it. I think its popularity didn't come solely from FB's promotion, but also from its inherent strengths. (After all, Google, an behemoth, has been promoting Angular for longer than React, but look how popular it is in comparison). You have a point though about FB's goals from promoting React. I thought you were saying the whole reason they created React to begin with was to recruit talent, which I don't believe is true -- I believe it initially just came out of some dev's head as a way to make things easier. Elm may be way better than React/JSX for every single one of your needs...but if it were for my needs, I would be using it 😉 There are no absolutes in programming except the desired behavior. If there were absolutes there would be a lot more agreement among programmers rather than the huge diversity of tools available these days. I definitely appreciate Elm's beauty and influence though. |
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@jedwards1211 agreed. Ractive.js might not be a "best" example. Let's stick with Elm as a comparison ... http://elm-lang.org/blog/blazing-fast-html It used to frustrate me that FB get "credit" for Virtual DOM etc. but now I'm just happy to be using Elm which I find easier to learn and more productive than React, Redux, Immutable, Babel, etc. There isn't much point debating the technical merits of FB or their "stack". |
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I am not defending Zuckerbeg but looking at the figures, he indeed has been greedy since the COVID, expecting sustainable growth that didn't happen. I hope most of those who leave are the last who entered, otherwise it is a bad way to clean his business. Also what shoked (but not surpised) me was this:
I mean I hope they will not discover they are fired by not being able to enter the system. I say this because I experienced this |
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@ndrean this kind of terminating access to internal systems is fairly normal/standard from an info/data security perspective. Companies don't want people accessing (copying/deleting) sensitive data out of rage when fired. 😡 Yes, Zuckerberg expanded the number of employees aggressively these last few years, 📈 The fact remains: Facebook has a mountain of cash and could easily use that money to improve the safety of the most vulnerable people using their product(s). If you haven't already, read into "The Facebook Papers": |
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The world is full of influencers and lobbyists. And what about the algorithms pushing content? Tiktok from China is an example: in China, you mainly receive positive pushes - stories about successful people - while here, it's mainly stupid things. This is received by influenceable kids and is a long-term vicious program. This is also a huge concern I believe. |
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@ndrean 100% agree that TikTok is deeply concerning; it's systematically destroying the attention spans / focus ability of people that use it. If "Social media is like crack; immediately gratifying and hugely addictive." ~ Gary Vaynerchuk |
Cyber bullying and harassment is getting much worse on Facebook:Tens of millions of people are having their lives made into misery on Facebook. |
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https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63938628
😢
This lawsuit will probably be squashed by Facebooks more expensive lawyers or a bribe to the AG. 🙊 |
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Thankfully there is good news https://www.businessofapps.com/data/facebook-statistics/
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Highly recommend watching the Senate hearing where this Meme is from:
Wonder why he was so keen to buy |
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Sincerely speaking, give me one social media that is not "evil". |
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum Before a psychopath created a “social network” that promotes the worst of society, the internet was a promising idea. |
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Facebook is WORSE than You Think: Whistleblower Reveals All https://youtu.be/XYhSUdphPvQ |
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Not just Evil, but actively targeting vulnerable children with addictive features: |
and others
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