Most of your response treats the service and its flaws as an engineering problem, whereas the ramifications in the real world aren't something Facebook gets to absolve itself from. They need to own the problem completely. If they can't solve the issue through engineering, it is their responsibility to hire hundreds of thousands of moderators.
This assumes that facebook creates the problems that exist on their platform.
All of Facebook's problems exist independent of Facebook. Facebook's existence guarantees that those problems will become a part of them.
I'm not saying they shouldn't be held responsible for not doing their due diligence, but the argument that they ought to be charged for "offloading" problems on the "real world" isn't great. That's like saying car manufacturers need to be charged for offloading automotive deaths on society.
Why is it our responsibility to figure out how Facebook can fix their algorithm? They employ thousands of the smartest engineers in the world and pay them absolutely ridiculous amounts of money. If they wanted to fix it, they would. As just random people on the Internet, it’s not our job to figure out how to fix it. It’s our job to complain about it enough to make them fix it themselves.
It will take time to fix the root of the problem, sure, I buy that. What I don't buy is that Facebook has no ability to make it right with the customers before that time.
Not really. This is well-understood problem with well-understood solutions. There is no reason to believe that Facebook doesn't have both the resources and the motivation to get this right.
I agree with that. Companies like Facebook should have a large org responsible for this problem. My point is that the problem is way more complex than some might think.
So you're suggesting that Facebook should try to absolve itself of responsibility, but not actually solve the problem? No offense, but that seems exactly opposite to where you started. We're done.
"If I didn't do it someone else would" is a bit of a straw-man argument and rarely actually true. But to be fair Twitter exposes and presents some of the same problems. I'll admit it's a very hard problem because for Facebook to actually try to fix itself would, by necessity, also reduce its ability to generate revenue. I hate the "decentralized" bandwagon but in a case like this, providing something less centrally controlled would most likely be a huge improvement, but that itself is a very difficult problem too.
Or, to put it succinctly: it's a people problem, and people problems are hard.
yes, but that's the point: it's not a technical problem, it's an institutional problem. Facebook is pure surveillance capitalism. They live by scooping your data. E2EE is hardly a concern or a solution.
I'm not washing my hands of anything. I'm not denying there is a problem. I'm trying to identify the nature of the problem, because that's important to finding solutions.
> Knowing what their system does, they wake up every day and with intent say "We are going to continue with this system".
No. They don't. Please don't pretend to read others' minds. There are a lot of people at Facebook who are trying to improve these things, but it's a very complex problem and a very complex system. There's lots of disagreement about what the solutions are, or even which direction represents improvement. And mindless bashing just doesn't help. If your only answer is that Facebook should die, then you might as well just be going "bla bla bla" because that doesn't move the needle at all.
Doesn't sound like that's facebook's problem to fix, and nor should they be blamed for the consequences of it.
There are significant challenges being presented by the new tools that humanity has built for communication over the last 20 years. I'm not sure that it's the fault of the people who are building those tools that our institutions are failing to get a grip on it.
There is a very simple answer to the problem of "why is facebook getting to choose what's right and wrong" and that's "we're not doing it, so they have to".
Why don't we just step up and start making some rules?
The Engineers at FB should be given product direction, and should not even be making decisions as to what information to ask users for. That's for Product.
Part of product management will involve legal review, risk management. Clearly, FB has a few other concerns that should be thrown in there as well.
This issue basically has nothing to do with technology.
Whether or not Facebook intends to fix itself honestly is completely irrelevant. The incentive structure that Facebook has placed itself into aligns negative mental health impacts with profit.
Because of this conflict of interest, it is impossible for Facebook, or anyone financially aligned with Facebook, to regulate this industry. There are actual human costs associated with the services that these industries provide, and like other similarly impactful industries, an external agency should protect the average joe from their incentives.
One of the many issues with the big platforms (like Facebook) is that the founders and owners are incapable of thinking that the service is no longer a net good and should be shut down. There is never a big enough problem that cannot be tweaked insignificance.
I agree, though to be fair, facebook isn't the only site where third parties have tried to fix privacy issues.
I read once that you know you've really made it when an eco-system grows around your product or service. The same can be said here: you know your product or service sucks if unpaid developers feel compelled to try and fix it.
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