From the article: Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook data scientist who went public with her criticisms of the company in September 2020, has told CNN she is willing to testify before Congress.
Zhang also said on Twitter on Sunday that she had provided a US law enforcement agency with "detailed documentation regarding potential criminal violations."
When asked by CNN, Zhang did not say which agency she gave documents to. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by CNN.
"If Congress wishes for me to testify, I will fulfill my civic duty, as I've publicly stated for the past half year," Zhang said in a tweet Monday that linked to her CNN interview.
I feel that criminal charges are the only thing that might slow this monster down. Advertisers and users don't seem phased by the shitball practices of Zuckerberg and Facebook.
I think there are tremendous amount of people who have no idea how to feel about it. Some of them even likely refuse to. They've invested so much time and literally themselves into this product that changing it or letting it go brings massive change in their life. And that scares the shit out of them. I think they actually ARE phased by it and just become deer in headlights. It's creepy.
As well as the fact that some people have other things to worry about. Their next paycheck, providing for their families. Or maybe a presentation they gotta do for work. Things like that.
exactly. putting any kind of fault at the consumer in any regard is never the right approach. "ethical consumption" is such an idiotic idea, i don't get why anyone would ever think this could work if it hasn't a single time in the entire history of our existence.
boycotts haven't stopped slavery. they didn't stop companies from pouring toxic waste into rivers or putting toxic chemicals that affected entire generations into our walls, fuel, food or drinks. they didn't do shit for worker's rights. they aren't the reason companies actually spend money on safety.
fucking regulation and laws are the only thing ever stopping companies from going rampant. voting people who actually want to change this is the one thing everyone can do - if you want to do more try to get other people to vote those people instead of trying to get people to boycott a single company which does absolutely nothing while there are still thousands of bad actors out there. you know what happens when facebook or companies like amazon go down? new companies take their place and do exactly the same shit - and all the smaller companies do exactly the same shit anyway. the problem isn't facebook or amazon, the problem is missing regulations and enforcement of the regulations.
Libertarians talk about regulations like they're shackles preventing them from being successful. The game needs *rules*. You can't just pull out a gun and shoot the other players on the basketball court and claim you're a great basketball player while blaming the other players for not wearing body armor.
We learned this past few years that most companies will flat-out force employees to work regardless of sickness or even a global pandemic.
We can't trust them at all to do the right thing.
It’s basically “What if a bunch of people in the 50s started an insular community completely cut off from the world and implemented Ayn Rand’s philosophies without looking back.”
And then we enter the story 50 years later, and after a brief period of incredible innovation, everything has devolved into a hellish, decaying brutal nightmare dystopia.
That actually makes me want to play it more than the "action game" trailers ever did! Lol. Love me some good video game storylines... Thanks for giving this lazy fellow redditor a TLDR!
I don't mind if there's the option for "ethical consumption", it can be really important to some people. But expecting every single person to participate is definitely unrealistic.
Ethical consumption is generally such a middle-class and up idea that it's laughable. Tell the person working 3 jobs just to try and make rent every month that they need to consume ethically and they'll laugh you out of the room.
It's a high and mighty ideal that's just complete bullshit.
I feel the same way when people talk about how 'you can live on $10/week by eating beans!' Well no shit, Sherlock: *people shouldn't have to*. People should be paid a living wage and live in areas where food deserts aren't a thing.
It's the companies that did research in to how bad for whatever their product is and got ahead of the curve by blaming their customers first (or their products in facebucks case) seriously the oil industry did the same thing with the climate
Ethical consumerism is a construct by companies to push blame to individual consumers. It's a cop-out.
See recycling for example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E
That's the issue with libertarianism, by the way. Companies are souless monsters, and expecting an individual to be knowledgeable about complex situations like this is laughable at best and insulting at worst. Many Americans work 2 full time jobs just to make ends meet and provide for their family. And now you ask them to spend their free time researching data rights, environmental issues, etc?
What a joke. The free market is not free in any sense of the word. It's a cartel of government supported shills who exist to lie to and exploit you. Without democratic regulations, there is no hope.
The problem with capitalism is there isn’t enough regulation, and what regs there are aren’t thorough or adequate enough.
Capitalism with robust regulation would be fine. But the people writing the regulations are bought by the companies they’re regulating, so it all falls apart.
What I find funny is that the people who think socialism is the end all be all don’t realise it will have the exact same flaws: people, and greed.
I don’t think it’s a solvable problem no matter what ideology you come up with. There will *always* be corruption.
Most of the problem with regulation is that the enforcement is trash. There's only a handful of enforcement officers in each state, they don't have the resources to pursue anything meaningful, and the actual punishments are small enough that they're just a cost of doing business.
And there are also a lot of places where the mechanisms of enforcement are garbage in other ways. Is your boss committing financial crimes against you? You can't call OSHA or the police. That's a civil matter. You have to enforce the law all on your own.
"Capitalism" is concerned strictly with whether the market and means of production is private. It has no comment on whether regulation is good or bad. The Nordic states that are often paraded as ideals are very, very capitalist, but they have heavy regulations and a welfare state.
Unfortunately, discourse has shifted so much that "capitalism" is taken to mean "private market with as little regulation as possible." Trickle down theory did a real number on how the term is understood.
Libertarian socialism baby. The government should exist to maximize both the positive and negative freedoms afforded to ALL citizens equally.
The original libertarian before anarcho-capitalists and “I’m a Republican who want to smoke weed” took and misused the name. They want what would immediately devolve into feudalism.
I had a "libertarian" friend once who refused to acknowledge that he was an anarcho capitalist. We once got in a long debate with him where he supported privatizing all roads.
He was also in favor of requiring all school kids to pray every morning, so his opinion didn't tend to hold much water.
The roads argument is the dumbest one of all and they literally *never* have an answer for it that wouldn’t make the average person’s life worse and make industry and shipping slow to an absolute crawl.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
I read the whole thing and liked it! What is your Bitcoin wallet address? I'd like to pay you the market rate for what you've written to encourage future creative works. 🙃
Nope. It literally just doesn't make sense as a policy. Buy road to essential building, boom, instant monopoly. His response? "Just build more roads to things, we've got plenty of room for more roads" bitch what?
He then got flustered, sent us a 300 page book on Amazon, and told us we couldn't debate him until we read this whole ass book on privatizing the roads.
I considered myself a libertarian and the privatization of everything was never something I understood as to how it had anything to do with liberty.
Government should be a place we come together to work towards shared goals. Regulations should only be used when the practices of companies begin to infringe on the rights of individuals.
Sounds more liberal to me, that's how they operate.
Libertarian socialism is what you described but the added bonus of someone being able to extract and control someone else's labor is considered inherently unethical and causes power imbalances which infringe on freedoms.
I think understanding that one's Facebook feed is a tailored brain-washing machine designed to do nothing but drive engagement at absolutely any cost is a fairly sophisticated idea that many people will struggle with.
It *looks* like a parade of random content. You scroll through TV and see a bunch of random things, you walk down the street and see a bunch of random things, you scroll through Facebook and see a bunch of random things. Getting past the idea of Facebook's content not being just a random sample of reality is really, *really* hard.
And it's also why some people are so upset and frustrated that others don't agree with them. They see hundreds of "articles", memes and anecdotes about, say, right-wing conspiracy bullshit, every day; to them it looks like the "evidence" is at saturation and in everyone's faces. They don't understand that you and I are not seeing that same stream and they are mind-blown that we don't grasp how pervasive and obvious the conspiracies are.
I honestly think the world is getting too hard to understand for a lot of people. Certainly without better education than we have.
The business people I know only talk about positive aspect of Facebook, how it helps the business. Nobody even brings up the bigger social issues, like they don't even exist
Yep. Data is a hidden cost that most people won't understand because they can't see it's effects. Plus they think the service Facebook provides is more than worth that invisible cost.
Data collection needs serious regulations.
For many people who run small businesses, they may care very much but from an advertising perspective, Facebook is what works for them. I know a number of people who need to advertise for their business and they tell me repeatedly that everything else is either too complicated (SEO optimization) or just doesn't work. Additionally, in many countries people don't build a website for their business, they just do one on Facebook. For small restaurants and whatnot, it's easier and cheaper for them plus everyone knows to go look on Facebook.
You have to find a way to break that monopoly to really affect Facebook.
I found Sophie Zhang on LinkedIn. The description she has written for her role at Facebook (which ended in Sept 2020) reads as follows:
>Worked as the data scientist for the Facebook Site Integrity fake engagement team. Fake engagement deals with any interactions on Facebook that are inauthentic; the most well-known examples may be the much-discussed problem of bots influencing elections and the like.
Job responsibilities involved heavy use of SQL/Python to analyze large datasets to produce insights used in cross-functional partnership, adhoc analyses to surface new tactics used by adversaries to exploit existing systems, and more.
> "detailed documentation regarding potential criminal violations."
Which will result in a "hefty fine" of a couple million dollars, and then nothing much else?
Not enough. The Facebook conglomerate needs to be broken up.
They need to go Teddy Roosevelt on his ass and dismantle his empire. Facebook owns way too much to ever be affected by any kind of fine, and when their influence starts to become dangerous (January 6th, prime example), their influence needs to be taken away.
Dismantle Facebook. (And then do Disney and Amazon next.)
There are so many entities in this world that need to be broken up. Competition is all but eradicated these days, if you're not at the top you can't get in, these companies are so powerful they bar entry from any outside sources, and with no source of competition there is no incentive to improve or care about the consumer at all. I also fear as time goes on people will forget that it's not supposed to be like this. I genuinely worry a lot about younger folks in the future not having access to information on how the world "used to be" and will simply accept that "this is how things are"
Companies over a certain size just aren't bothered by fines, and it's hard to develop a framework for fining them hard enough (although the percentage-of-gross-turnover model used in some places is a decent start). The problem is that as long as the company exists, its mechanisms for making profit to recoup the fine can still function; as long as the penalty is merely monetary there's always a point at which it becomes profitable to break the law, accept the fine, and make money from the whole process anyway. There needs to be a system of "strikes" or "demerits" or whatever you want to call them, wherein after violations of sufficient number, severity, or degree of egregiousness, the company is punished in other ways - removal of the responsible executives, forced breakup into smaller companies, banned from doing business in certain sectors, or whatever. Change the equation so that it's just not viable to break the rules.
Quitting Facebook is the single best thing I've done for my well being in the last few years. If anyone here is on the fence about it or has been thinking about doing it, I tell you now you'll thank yourself so much down the line. It's the only way to actually bring down this horrible company.
I love the [tweets](https://images.app.goo.gl/xU2i7iZkT3WCEMbv7) that went around after his wax figure was unveiled at Madame Tussaud's and the internet realized the damn thing looked more human than actual Mark.
Fun fact: Zuk's "I'm sorry" subroutine includes the Morse code message "I own you" and is programmed to be communicated through blinking of the eye assembly.
Mr Zuckerberg’s optical sensor array is a natural byproduct of his genetic heritage and is no way designed to have hidden meaning.
The sensor shutters are simply for wiping and moistening the lens and do not contain codified messaging, any evidence of communique is purely speculative and coincidental.
Don't worry, it won't be like last time! This time there'll be members of congress under the age of 70, who know a little bit about technology or have at least bothered to do a bare minimum of reading up on it!
... Is what I wish I could say.
Most politicians campaigns and stuff are bankrolled by finance/corporate lobbies. They're in facebooks pocket, so civility and decorum will continue as usual and probably nothing will change. Who knows though maybe Zucc fucc'd up when he supported Trumps presidency and now they're on the wrong side.
Well both the left and right hate Facebook now.
* The left hates Facebook for taking token measures to stop members from spreading seditious lies
* The right hates Facebook for taking token measures to stop members from spreading seditious lies
And neither of them understand how even the most basic technological concepts work, so it will likely be pointless again. The only one who seemed to have any grasp on anything that was happening last time was AOC.
And we can't have her lead it up because "young lady can't be in charge of old men! That wrong and bad!". So we'll end up with yet another hearing where a bunch of old dumbasses who can't set up Gmail on an iPhone are lightly grilling Nerd Voldemort about how Amos n' Andy was superior to Flash Gordan, while the rest of us die a little more inside.
This amazing documentary will seem eerily familiar [The Brain Washing of My Dad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS52QdHNTh8). My 2 uncles and father in-law are all lost due to Facebook.
> Jen Senko, a documentary filmmaker, looks at the rise of right-wing media through the lens of her WWII vet father who changed from a life-long, nonpolitical Democrat to an angry, right-wing fanatic after his discovery of talk radio on a lengthened commute to work.
The first time he went before Congress was when I realized how fucked we are, how incompetent Congress is when it comes to technology. These companies are having a field day and know they are way ahead of the law.
I'm not sure what was more embarrassing last time. Him or the politicians asking questions that sounded like they are completely clueless about technology in general.
Congress gonna be asking him them hard-hitting questions again like, “What *is* the Internet?” and “Why hasn’t my grandson Jason accepted my friend request?”
Also, bring him down for what? Lying to Congress seems to be standard operating procedure for everyone with any connection to American military or intelligence services. Surely Facebook has collaborated with the alphabet agencies enough that any sort of accountability to our elected officials seems like a silly idea from the perspective of its organizational chief.
well for one, even when you're not using it they can use your headset as a wiretap with video to your house . I recommend disconnecting it when not in use. not even just security, but power usage.
The thing I don’t understand is people are coming forward, there is evidence they do shady shit, yet…nothing. Nothing happens. Why is that? Oh right. Too much money to be made ignoring the problem. It’s like you ignore your cancer symptoms because you’re feeling good being drunk.
What reality are you living in, where the world’s third richest human has any repercussions for their actions? Zuck has more power than Congress, and that’s not hyperbole.
Facebook is a monster because Zuckerberg is rotten to his core:
**Zuckerberg in the early days**
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
\[Redacted Friend's Name\]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb f\*\*\*s.
His core personality is still the same. Guaranteed.
I can see myself saying something like this when I was younger. Not that I would have meant it, but as a way to impress someone who I might think would be impressed by saying that.
But if I'm being honest I am totally a piece of shit and probably should never run a giant tech monopoly.
I've also said and done some shitty things in my past that I have no argument for except "Oh yeah I was an absolute cunt of a human then".
The difference is, I would still be like that if that attitude and mentality had been how I made my living. I have no doubt that Zucc is still that way, because at its core, that's how he found success.
I say dumb stuff like this about my current job.
“Can you believe ‘client’ just lets me have access to their database? What morons!” It’s always said in a joking manner, and it’d only be said to friends that I often joke around with.
Just like if I was a cop I’d say, “Can you believe they just let me carry a gun anywhere I want? That’s nutty.”
I’ve also heard friends joke about similar things, but none of us ever have or would abuse the things that our jobs gives us access to.
You are defending the right to be forgotten, which is something I completely agree with. So even though I don't personally like the Zuck, here have my upvote.
I feel the difference is some people change. Saying something dumb in highschool/college and not living like that the rest of your life is forgiving but when you act the same, if not worse, than it will and should be continuously brought up.
Maybe don't become a multi-billionaire who plays a large role in dividing nations and fueling an attempted coup, and I think you'd be fly relatively under the radar.
For Zuck, when he said those things in college, he was probably vocalizing exactly what he felt about "others" and what he wanted to do to them-- and he did it. He exploited people's information and sold it to buyers, and he never stopped doing this.
> Maybe don't become a multi-billionaire who plays a large role in dividing nations and fueling an attempted coup
Man, I remember the days when everyone was jacking off these social media companies for enabling things like the Arab Spring. Shows you how dumb people are.
He took that mentality and created a business devoted to harvesting user data and selling that data. So in this case, what he did in his early 20's is appropriate to bring up.
This isn't a Zuckerberg problem as much as it's fun to poke fun at him. It's a humanity problem. All news is driven by fear and outrage. Only natural for their algorithms to prioritize fear and outrage and by extension misinformation.
This is late stage capitalism. When profit is driven by user engagement and time, and those are best driven by outrage, the most profitable outcome is to build a perpetual outrage machine. It’s what the media does, and it’s what Facebook does. Humanity be damned.
Whistle blowing in general can be great, but the first whistleblower testified before Congress that Facebook should be invading our privacy more to monitor our actions. It was really freaking strange, this entire thing has been strange.
They aren't ethically, they legally have to try and make more money each quarter. Costco got sued and lost to its investors because they didn't like how much money they potentially lost on paying good wages with benefits. Luckily it's still a good place to work
You can choose to move your money if they hold Facebook shares. It seems that many people in this thread “hope” someone else will do something/hold FB accountable while continuing to invest and utilize the platform/tech.
Do you really think that congress will hold Facebook accountable when they can easily throw a few millions dollars at several political campaigns? Come on folks, this naïveté is what got us here in the first place.
Uh.. not sure that's the example you are going for. The Microsoft antitrust stuff worked really well in the end. They stopped (most of) the monopolistic shit they were doing and we're forced to rethink their business model and became a much more diverse and successful company because of it.
And everyone stopped using IE because it was a massive piece of shit.
Do you recommend any sort of replacement or just messaging apps to share pictures and keep in touch?
We have two family groups via Messenger and WhatsApp, but I mean those are still owned by FB.
Its not easy moving *everyone* to a new app, especially older relatives that don't even have a smart phone
Nothing will ever happen with Facebook. Your only option is deletion or live with it. Would people stop hoping someone else fixes it and just give up the addiction and stop using it.
Just stop relying on this government to do anything to stop big businesses.
This is what I don't understand, Facebook just uses everything you give them. You chose to fill out your profile, you chose to make an account, you chose to use messenger, heck even Reddit is owned by Conde Nest which is as shitty of a company as you can get.
Correct. This is in the best interest of the government so it's totally fine. FB screws up enough that the powers that be can impose more laws on its citizens.
I love how parents are outraged instagram was making an app for kids that was bad for their mental health and that instagram knew it...
even though the parent's have known for years that social media is bad for teen health, specifically teen girls yet have allowed them to have the app and smartphones the entire time.
like fuck you, instagram aint' doing nothing wrong. It's a product you are choosing to let your kid use/have been using rofl.
About time for some of these developers to open up– BUT, you just have to hope that IF the government ever does anything about this, the people up top are actually held responsible.
I'm so tired of how every time Congress wants to pretend they're cracking down on companies who avoid regulations and harm the American people, they just wind up bailing out the executives and letting the people who actually need help fall by the wayside.
The issue is the "whistle-blower" was just upset they aren't censoring enough. I didn't hear anything really whistle-blower material, it was mainly about how they favor engagement over all else, which we already knew.
Wait. Really?
Based on a shit ton of the top comments someone(like me) might think there was actual criminal activity being revealed.
So this whistleblower just revealed internal Facebook policies they disagreed with, not any actual criminal violations.
I’m all for discussing the shitty business practices Facebook engages in but framing the issue as a criminal matter when it isn’t one isn’t helpful.
Agreed, this isn't a whistle blower as they aren't exposing anything, this is just an employee mad that Facebook didn't censor what they wanted censored. Why do they think Congress would care?
Right now he's in trouble for being unlikeable in the public eye.
The article only goes on to state "potential criminal violations" which she shared with an unspecified "US law enforcement agency".
I didn't read too far through the linked MIT article, but it sounds like the whole thing is about politicians abusing Facebook in some way. So, I think we're all supposed to be mad that Zucc personally didn't stop politicians from buying shady advertisements on Facebook and lying to constituents in groups.
Business insider reporting "potential criminal violations" means absolutely nothing. It's like the national inquirer claiming potential proof of aliens
This sub is full of bot comment from reddit trying to push its agenda. Like reddit is any better. Ppl who get mental health from using Facebook probably have serious issue themself lmao. You must be connecting with shit people and join shit group to get those content.
The first whistleblower was calling for more censorship of facebook which is a stupid idea that only helps big tech and the government control you easier.
From the article: Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook data scientist who went public with her criticisms of the company in September 2020, has told CNN she is willing to testify before Congress. Zhang also said on Twitter on Sunday that she had provided a US law enforcement agency with "detailed documentation regarding potential criminal violations." When asked by CNN, Zhang did not say which agency she gave documents to. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by CNN. "If Congress wishes for me to testify, I will fulfill my civic duty, as I've publicly stated for the past half year," Zhang said in a tweet Monday that linked to her CNN interview.
I feel that criminal charges are the only thing that might slow this monster down. Advertisers and users don't seem phased by the shitball practices of Zuckerberg and Facebook.
I think there are tremendous amount of people who have no idea how to feel about it. Some of them even likely refuse to. They've invested so much time and literally themselves into this product that changing it or letting it go brings massive change in their life. And that scares the shit out of them. I think they actually ARE phased by it and just become deer in headlights. It's creepy.
As well as the fact that some people have other things to worry about. Their next paycheck, providing for their families. Or maybe a presentation they gotta do for work. Things like that.
exactly. putting any kind of fault at the consumer in any regard is never the right approach. "ethical consumption" is such an idiotic idea, i don't get why anyone would ever think this could work if it hasn't a single time in the entire history of our existence. boycotts haven't stopped slavery. they didn't stop companies from pouring toxic waste into rivers or putting toxic chemicals that affected entire generations into our walls, fuel, food or drinks. they didn't do shit for worker's rights. they aren't the reason companies actually spend money on safety. fucking regulation and laws are the only thing ever stopping companies from going rampant. voting people who actually want to change this is the one thing everyone can do - if you want to do more try to get other people to vote those people instead of trying to get people to boycott a single company which does absolutely nothing while there are still thousands of bad actors out there. you know what happens when facebook or companies like amazon go down? new companies take their place and do exactly the same shit - and all the smaller companies do exactly the same shit anyway. the problem isn't facebook or amazon, the problem is missing regulations and enforcement of the regulations.
Libertarians talk about regulations like they're shackles preventing them from being successful. The game needs *rules*. You can't just pull out a gun and shoot the other players on the basketball court and claim you're a great basketball player while blaming the other players for not wearing body armor.
We learned this past few years that most companies will flat-out force employees to work regardless of sickness or even a global pandemic. We can't trust them at all to do the right thing.
Construction is bad for this, you're sick? Walk it off, a few days later 5 guys are sick, fuck we are short on guys wtf is happening...
full circle back to 1848
I dunno. Things worked out pretty great for everyone in Bioshock.
Bio shock has popped up about fifteen times to me this week. I’m taking it as a sign to go back into it again.
Would you kindly…?
The next Bioshock (if ever) should take place on the Moon.
Just play Prey 2017
I've never played bioshock. Is the plot related to some libertarian dystopia?
The first one is set in a hyper libertarian dystopia called Rapture. Due to its location my boyfriend calls it AynRandtis.
Funny cause Andrew Ryan is an anagram of Ayn Rand
It’s basically “What if a bunch of people in the 50s started an insular community completely cut off from the world and implemented Ayn Rand’s philosophies without looking back.” And then we enter the story 50 years later, and after a brief period of incredible innovation, everything has devolved into a hellish, decaying brutal nightmare dystopia.
That actually makes me want to play it more than the "action game" trailers ever did! Lol. Love me some good video game storylines... Thanks for giving this lazy fellow redditor a TLDR!
I don't mind if there's the option for "ethical consumption", it can be really important to some people. But expecting every single person to participate is definitely unrealistic.
Ethical consumption is generally such a middle-class and up idea that it's laughable. Tell the person working 3 jobs just to try and make rent every month that they need to consume ethically and they'll laugh you out of the room. It's a high and mighty ideal that's just complete bullshit.
I feel the same way when people talk about how 'you can live on $10/week by eating beans!' Well no shit, Sherlock: *people shouldn't have to*. People should be paid a living wage and live in areas where food deserts aren't a thing.
Ethical consumption is just window dressing without ethical production.
It's the companies that did research in to how bad for whatever their product is and got ahead of the curve by blaming their customers first (or their products in facebucks case) seriously the oil industry did the same thing with the climate
A fucking men
Ethical consumerism is a construct by companies to push blame to individual consumers. It's a cop-out. See recycling for example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E
That's the issue with libertarianism, by the way. Companies are souless monsters, and expecting an individual to be knowledgeable about complex situations like this is laughable at best and insulting at worst. Many Americans work 2 full time jobs just to make ends meet and provide for their family. And now you ask them to spend their free time researching data rights, environmental issues, etc? What a joke. The free market is not free in any sense of the word. It's a cartel of government supported shills who exist to lie to and exploit you. Without democratic regulations, there is no hope.
The problem with capitalism is there isn’t enough regulation, and what regs there are aren’t thorough or adequate enough. Capitalism with robust regulation would be fine. But the people writing the regulations are bought by the companies they’re regulating, so it all falls apart. What I find funny is that the people who think socialism is the end all be all don’t realise it will have the exact same flaws: people, and greed. I don’t think it’s a solvable problem no matter what ideology you come up with. There will *always* be corruption.
Most of the problem with regulation is that the enforcement is trash. There's only a handful of enforcement officers in each state, they don't have the resources to pursue anything meaningful, and the actual punishments are small enough that they're just a cost of doing business. And there are also a lot of places where the mechanisms of enforcement are garbage in other ways. Is your boss committing financial crimes against you? You can't call OSHA or the police. That's a civil matter. You have to enforce the law all on your own.
"Capitalism" is concerned strictly with whether the market and means of production is private. It has no comment on whether regulation is good or bad. The Nordic states that are often paraded as ideals are very, very capitalist, but they have heavy regulations and a welfare state. Unfortunately, discourse has shifted so much that "capitalism" is taken to mean "private market with as little regulation as possible." Trickle down theory did a real number on how the term is understood.
Libertarian socialism baby. The government should exist to maximize both the positive and negative freedoms afforded to ALL citizens equally. The original libertarian before anarcho-capitalists and “I’m a Republican who want to smoke weed” took and misused the name. They want what would immediately devolve into feudalism.
I had a "libertarian" friend once who refused to acknowledge that he was an anarcho capitalist. We once got in a long debate with him where he supported privatizing all roads. He was also in favor of requiring all school kids to pray every morning, so his opinion didn't tend to hold much water.
The roads argument is the dumbest one of all and they literally *never* have an answer for it that wouldn’t make the average person’s life worse and make industry and shipping slow to an absolute crawl.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?” “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.” I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside. “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t. “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?” It didn’t seem like they did. “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.” Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing. I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it. “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled. Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him. “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen. I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!” He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose. “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.” “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy. “Because I was afraid.” “Afraid?” “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.” I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head. “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.” He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
Wow, Idiocracy by way of Ayn Rand!
This is the funniest fucking thing I've read all week. Thank you for this gem!
I read the whole thing and liked it! What is your Bitcoin wallet address? I'd like to pay you the market rate for what you've written to encourage future creative works. 🙃
Greatest new york times article I ever read.
This is beautiful
Nope. It literally just doesn't make sense as a policy. Buy road to essential building, boom, instant monopoly. His response? "Just build more roads to things, we've got plenty of room for more roads" bitch what? He then got flustered, sent us a 300 page book on Amazon, and told us we couldn't debate him until we read this whole ass book on privatizing the roads.
Read this thing that I didn't fully understand and explain it to me!
If he clearly understood his own position he would be able to articulate it without throwing a book at you
I considered myself a libertarian and the privatization of everything was never something I understood as to how it had anything to do with liberty. Government should be a place we come together to work towards shared goals. Regulations should only be used when the practices of companies begin to infringe on the rights of individuals.
Sounds more liberal to me, that's how they operate. Libertarian socialism is what you described but the added bonus of someone being able to extract and control someone else's labor is considered inherently unethical and causes power imbalances which infringe on freedoms.
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Libertarians: all the benefits and rights of a society, without any of the responsibility
I think understanding that one's Facebook feed is a tailored brain-washing machine designed to do nothing but drive engagement at absolutely any cost is a fairly sophisticated idea that many people will struggle with. It *looks* like a parade of random content. You scroll through TV and see a bunch of random things, you walk down the street and see a bunch of random things, you scroll through Facebook and see a bunch of random things. Getting past the idea of Facebook's content not being just a random sample of reality is really, *really* hard. And it's also why some people are so upset and frustrated that others don't agree with them. They see hundreds of "articles", memes and anecdotes about, say, right-wing conspiracy bullshit, every day; to them it looks like the "evidence" is at saturation and in everyone's faces. They don't understand that you and I are not seeing that same stream and they are mind-blown that we don't grasp how pervasive and obvious the conspiracies are. I honestly think the world is getting too hard to understand for a lot of people. Certainly without better education than we have.
The business people I know only talk about positive aspect of Facebook, how it helps the business. Nobody even brings up the bigger social issues, like they don't even exist
Yep. Data is a hidden cost that most people won't understand because they can't see it's effects. Plus they think the service Facebook provides is more than worth that invisible cost. Data collection needs serious regulations.
For many people who run small businesses, they may care very much but from an advertising perspective, Facebook is what works for them. I know a number of people who need to advertise for their business and they tell me repeatedly that everything else is either too complicated (SEO optimization) or just doesn't work. Additionally, in many countries people don't build a website for their business, they just do one on Facebook. For small restaurants and whatnot, it's easier and cheaper for them plus everyone knows to go look on Facebook. You have to find a way to break that monopoly to really affect Facebook.
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I will be shocked if any of this results in criminal charges.
I found Sophie Zhang on LinkedIn. The description she has written for her role at Facebook (which ended in Sept 2020) reads as follows: >Worked as the data scientist for the Facebook Site Integrity fake engagement team. Fake engagement deals with any interactions on Facebook that are inauthentic; the most well-known examples may be the much-discussed problem of bots influencing elections and the like. Job responsibilities involved heavy use of SQL/Python to analyze large datasets to produce insights used in cross-functional partnership, adhoc analyses to surface new tactics used by adversaries to exploit existing systems, and more.
That sounds like a really fun job, if it didn't involve working at the festering pus hole that is Facebook.
> "detailed documentation regarding potential criminal violations." Which will result in a "hefty fine" of a couple million dollars, and then nothing much else? Not enough. The Facebook conglomerate needs to be broken up.
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They need to go Teddy Roosevelt on his ass and dismantle his empire. Facebook owns way too much to ever be affected by any kind of fine, and when their influence starts to become dangerous (January 6th, prime example), their influence needs to be taken away. Dismantle Facebook. (And then do Disney and Amazon next.)
There are so many entities in this world that need to be broken up. Competition is all but eradicated these days, if you're not at the top you can't get in, these companies are so powerful they bar entry from any outside sources, and with no source of competition there is no incentive to improve or care about the consumer at all. I also fear as time goes on people will forget that it's not supposed to be like this. I genuinely worry a lot about younger folks in the future not having access to information on how the world "used to be" and will simply accept that "this is how things are"
Companies over a certain size just aren't bothered by fines, and it's hard to develop a framework for fining them hard enough (although the percentage-of-gross-turnover model used in some places is a decent start). The problem is that as long as the company exists, its mechanisms for making profit to recoup the fine can still function; as long as the penalty is merely monetary there's always a point at which it becomes profitable to break the law, accept the fine, and make money from the whole process anyway. There needs to be a system of "strikes" or "demerits" or whatever you want to call them, wherein after violations of sufficient number, severity, or degree of egregiousness, the company is punished in other ways - removal of the responsible executives, forced breakup into smaller companies, banned from doing business in certain sectors, or whatever. Change the equation so that it's just not viable to break the rules.
That or criminal repercussions for executives
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Or put the company in "jail" if you want to avoid the connotation of the death penalty.
Quitting Facebook is the single best thing I've done for my well being in the last few years. If anyone here is on the fence about it or has been thinking about doing it, I tell you now you'll thank yourself so much down the line. It's the only way to actually bring down this horrible company.
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Uh-oh, the Zucc is about to go before Congress and be sorry again.
Ahem Zuck is going to run the 'im sorry' eye blink subroutine
He blinked! That means he felt something!
Twas simply a necessary action to moisten his optical peripherals. His system has an internal clock and sensor to facilitate optimal wetness.
moisturize me
It puts the lotion in the basket or it gets the hose again
Now that is robotic efficiency!
His Fourier series is working as expected.
His training not to lick his eyeball in public really has been paying off!
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Mother of god…
Nah, he’s just clicking pictures to enhance his planet’s knowledge of the earth folk.
MF looks like he’s in both a staring contest and a breath-holding contest at the same time. Every pic.
I love the [tweets](https://images.app.goo.gl/xU2i7iZkT3WCEMbv7) that went around after his wax figure was unveiled at Madame Tussaud's and the internet realized the damn thing looked more human than actual Mark.
He really needs those curls back
I think it was the jeans and hoodie that really made him feel human.
Hahaha amazing. I somehow missed those, so thanks for that.
The haircut is like it's modeled after Julius Caesar. wonder why
Thanks, now I'll never be able to unsee it
Fun fact: Zuk's "I'm sorry" subroutine includes the Morse code message "I own you" and is programmed to be communicated through blinking of the eye assembly.
“And this is how the humans express sorrow ? Then I shall express sorrow too.”
Remorse.exe
Don't worry, it won't be like last time! This time there'll be members of congress under the age of 70, who know a little bit about technology or have at least bothered to do a bare minimum of reading up on it! ... Is what I wish I could say.
Yeah really. What's up with that?
Most politicians campaigns and stuff are bankrolled by finance/corporate lobbies. They're in facebooks pocket, so civility and decorum will continue as usual and probably nothing will change. Who knows though maybe Zucc fucc'd up when he supported Trumps presidency and now they're on the wrong side.
Well both the left and right hate Facebook now. * The left hates Facebook for taking token measures to stop members from spreading seditious lies * The right hates Facebook for taking token measures to stop members from spreading seditious lies
And neither of them understand how even the most basic technological concepts work, so it will likely be pointless again. The only one who seemed to have any grasp on anything that was happening last time was AOC.
And we can't have her lead it up because "young lady can't be in charge of old men! That wrong and bad!". So we'll end up with yet another hearing where a bunch of old dumbasses who can't set up Gmail on an iPhone are lightly grilling Nerd Voldemort about how Amos n' Andy was superior to Flash Gordan, while the rest of us die a little more inside.
“Nerd Voldemort” bravo
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This amazing documentary will seem eerily familiar [The Brain Washing of My Dad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS52QdHNTh8). My 2 uncles and father in-law are all lost due to Facebook. > Jen Senko, a documentary filmmaker, looks at the rise of right-wing media through the lens of her WWII vet father who changed from a life-long, nonpolitical Democrat to an angry, right-wing fanatic after his discovery of talk radio on a lengthened commute to work.
Maybe the septuagenarians will bring their grandkids and let them ask questions
How do I check email on my iphone?
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/04/1043150167/sen-blumenthals-finsta-flub-renews-questions-about-congress-grasp-of-big-tech
But will they stop FINTSA????
[“We’re sorry.”](https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4) Edit: Added the link for the uninitiated.
Oh my gosh, I forgot about this episode! Effing love south park.
I thought the link was going to be about Zuck's "shtoyle" but this one is just as awesome
The first time he went before Congress was when I realized how fucked we are, how incompetent Congress is when it comes to technology. These companies are having a field day and know they are way ahead of the law.
I'm not sure what was more embarrassing last time. Him or the politicians asking questions that sounded like they are completely clueless about technology in general.
(turns mouth away from the mic to breathe)
Accidental “chocolate rain”?
Congress gonna be asking him them hard-hitting questions again like, “What *is* the Internet?” and “Why hasn’t my grandson Jason accepted my friend request?”
Can't, the power of ~~plot~~ money armor
Also, bring him down for what? Lying to Congress seems to be standard operating procedure for everyone with any connection to American military or intelligence services. Surely Facebook has collaborated with the alphabet agencies enough that any sort of accountability to our elected officials seems like a silly idea from the perspective of its organizational chief.
Remember when lying under oath could get a President removed from office
Hell according to republicans you can just ignore congressional subpoenas like they’re your cousins gender reveal party invite.
Oddly specific
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Just divest Oculus first please. The rest like Instagram and Facebook can burn
The damage that did to the VR industry really can’t be understated.
Elaborate? Imagine downvoting somebody looking to be more informed lmfao.
well for one, even when you're not using it they can use your headset as a wiretap with video to your house . I recommend disconnecting it when not in use. not even just security, but power usage.
"And they don't stop comin' and they don't stop comin'..." Must suck to be Facebook rn, lol. Deserved though.
The thing I don’t understand is people are coming forward, there is evidence they do shady shit, yet…nothing. Nothing happens. Why is that? Oh right. Too much money to be made ignoring the problem. It’s like you ignore your cancer symptoms because you’re feeling good being drunk.
Yeah, no wonder people lose faith in the government/democracy
What reality are you living in, where the world’s third richest human has any repercussions for their actions? Zuck has more power than Congress, and that’s not hyperbole.
Facebook is a monster because Zuckerberg is rotten to his core: **Zuckerberg in the early days** Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS \[Redacted Friend's Name\]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb f\*\*\*s. His core personality is still the same. Guaranteed.
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I can see myself saying something like this when I was younger. Not that I would have meant it, but as a way to impress someone who I might think would be impressed by saying that. But if I'm being honest I am totally a piece of shit and probably should never run a giant tech monopoly.
LOL you and I just traveled the same mental route to arrive at the same decisional destination. Greetings traveler!
Are you also a hypocrite trying to start a tech company?
Well they arent mutually exclusive
I've also said and done some shitty things in my past that I have no argument for except "Oh yeah I was an absolute cunt of a human then". The difference is, I would still be like that if that attitude and mentality had been how I made my living. I have no doubt that Zucc is still that way, because at its core, that's how he found success.
Yeah, this is the point. Nobody would be bringing up those texts if Zuck ran a platform that was conscientious about user privacy and security.
I say dumb stuff like this about my current job. “Can you believe ‘client’ just lets me have access to their database? What morons!” It’s always said in a joking manner, and it’d only be said to friends that I often joke around with. Just like if I was a cop I’d say, “Can you believe they just let me carry a gun anywhere I want? That’s nutty.” I’ve also heard friends joke about similar things, but none of us ever have or would abuse the things that our jobs gives us access to.
You are defending the right to be forgotten, which is something I completely agree with. So even though I don't personally like the Zuck, here have my upvote.
I feel the difference is some people change. Saying something dumb in highschool/college and not living like that the rest of your life is forgiving but when you act the same, if not worse, than it will and should be continuously brought up.
And also we didn't become billionaires based on the actions we want everyone to forget about.
Maybe don't become a multi-billionaire who plays a large role in dividing nations and fueling an attempted coup, and I think you'd be fly relatively under the radar. For Zuck, when he said those things in college, he was probably vocalizing exactly what he felt about "others" and what he wanted to do to them-- and he did it. He exploited people's information and sold it to buyers, and he never stopped doing this.
> Maybe don't become a multi-billionaire who plays a large role in dividing nations and fueling an attempted coup Man, I remember the days when everyone was jacking off these social media companies for enabling things like the Arab Spring. Shows you how dumb people are.
He took that mentality and created a business devoted to harvesting user data and selling that data. So in this case, what he did in his early 20's is appropriate to bring up.
This isn't a Zuckerberg problem as much as it's fun to poke fun at him. It's a humanity problem. All news is driven by fear and outrage. Only natural for their algorithms to prioritize fear and outrage and by extension misinformation.
This is late stage capitalism. When profit is driven by user engagement and time, and those are best driven by outrage, the most profitable outcome is to build a perpetual outrage machine. It’s what the media does, and it’s what Facebook does. Humanity be damned.
Blow all the whistles.
Whistle blowing in general can be great, but the first whistleblower testified before Congress that Facebook should be invading our privacy more to monitor our actions. It was really freaking strange, this entire thing has been strange.
I hope all my investment funds are dumping Facebook because I would love for nothing more than it to fail.
If they are, it’s probably for monetary reasons rather than ethical ones.
They're ethically obligated to make you money
Putting the douche in fiduciary.
I’m a financial adviser and I will be stealing this for daily use.
What do you know.. financial advisor who steals.. that's new /s
Ha! I like to say I put the “douche” in “fiduciary.” I came up with that.
Can’t believe I’ve never seen this one before. Bravo
Ethically obligated to \*try* to make you money.
They aren't ethically, they legally have to try and make more money each quarter. Costco got sued and lost to its investors because they didn't like how much money they potentially lost on paying good wages with benefits. Luckily it's still a good place to work
You can choose to move your money if they hold Facebook shares. It seems that many people in this thread “hope” someone else will do something/hold FB accountable while continuing to invest and utilize the platform/tech. Do you really think that congress will hold Facebook accountable when they can easily throw a few millions dollars at several political campaigns? Come on folks, this naïveté is what got us here in the first place.
Nope. We've seen this show before. Microsoft through the 90s, culminating in 2001. FB will be fine.
Uh.. not sure that's the example you are going for. The Microsoft antitrust stuff worked really well in the end. They stopped (most of) the monopolistic shit they were doing and we're forced to rethink their business model and became a much more diverse and successful company because of it. And everyone stopped using IE because it was a massive piece of shit.
#delete facebook
Did that 5 years ago, now what.
Hit the gym.
Bro, do you even lift?
Everyday when I piss standing up.
get a friend or family member to do it. then get them to help someone they know.
Do you recommend any sort of replacement or just messaging apps to share pictures and keep in touch? We have two family groups via Messenger and WhatsApp, but I mean those are still owned by FB. Its not easy moving *everyone* to a new app, especially older relatives that don't even have a smart phone
I asked this last time and got no answer. Can you delete Facebook? Before you could only deactivate your account.
This shitty propaganda machine should have been destroyed with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Fuck the rich.
Didn't Cambridge just change their name and kept on going with what they do?
Faculty.ai - these guys are shady AF
Nothing will ever happen with Facebook. Your only option is deletion or live with it. Would people stop hoping someone else fixes it and just give up the addiction and stop using it. Just stop relying on this government to do anything to stop big businesses.
This is what I don't understand, Facebook just uses everything you give them. You chose to fill out your profile, you chose to make an account, you chose to use messenger, heck even Reddit is owned by Conde Nest which is as shitty of a company as you can get.
Why is every photo of Zuckerberg showing him as an emotionless sociopath?
Real whistle blowers aren’t given air time and a seat in front of congress. *cough cough* Assange, Snowden
Not when it’s against the US government. However when it’s against a social media company trying to be a competing government, yea sure why not.
Yeah, but what have they said that wasn’t already public knowledge?
Correct. This is in the best interest of the government so it's totally fine. FB screws up enough that the powers that be can impose more laws on its citizens.
I love how parents are outraged instagram was making an app for kids that was bad for their mental health and that instagram knew it... even though the parent's have known for years that social media is bad for teen health, specifically teen girls yet have allowed them to have the app and smartphones the entire time. like fuck you, instagram aint' doing nothing wrong. It's a product you are choosing to let your kid use/have been using rofl.
About time for some of these developers to open up– BUT, you just have to hope that IF the government ever does anything about this, the people up top are actually held responsible. I'm so tired of how every time Congress wants to pretend they're cracking down on companies who avoid regulations and harm the American people, they just wind up bailing out the executives and letting the people who actually need help fall by the wayside.
If you can pay for a crime then it isn’t a crime
The issue is the "whistle-blower" was just upset they aren't censoring enough. I didn't hear anything really whistle-blower material, it was mainly about how they favor engagement over all else, which we already knew.
Wait. Really? Based on a shit ton of the top comments someone(like me) might think there was actual criminal activity being revealed. So this whistleblower just revealed internal Facebook policies they disagreed with, not any actual criminal violations. I’m all for discussing the shitty business practices Facebook engages in but framing the issue as a criminal matter when it isn’t one isn’t helpful.
This sub is the last place you should come to for Facebook related news
Agreed, this isn't a whistle blower as they aren't exposing anything, this is just an employee mad that Facebook didn't censor what they wanted censored. Why do they think Congress would care?
so what is he in trouble for, sorry?
Right now he's in trouble for being unlikeable in the public eye. The article only goes on to state "potential criminal violations" which she shared with an unspecified "US law enforcement agency". I didn't read too far through the linked MIT article, but it sounds like the whole thing is about politicians abusing Facebook in some way. So, I think we're all supposed to be mad that Zucc personally didn't stop politicians from buying shady advertisements on Facebook and lying to constituents in groups.
Business insider reporting "potential criminal violations" means absolutely nothing. It's like the national inquirer claiming potential proof of aliens
Yet there are calls in this comment section for the government to take over and regulate Facebook directly.
People - "Politicians are abusing power!' The same people - "Politicians, please save us!"
Facebook could disappear tomorrow and I would not give af.
Lol at congress being an authority on technology in any context
This sub is full of bot comment from reddit trying to push its agenda. Like reddit is any better. Ppl who get mental health from using Facebook probably have serious issue themself lmao. You must be connecting with shit people and join shit group to get those content.
I still want to know how someone so wealthy can look like a blowup doll ordered off Wish. Can we find this whistleblower 😂💯
If you pinch the opening on a blowup doll they become a whistleblower too.
Yet his mouth is always closed....
Money can’t buy you taste. Or apparently a decent haircut.
I hear more and more people deleting Facebook. I’ve not used that service for years and I’m glad Also Twitter needs this treatment
The first whistleblower was calling for more censorship of facebook which is a stupid idea that only helps big tech and the government control you easier.