The Facebook outage isn’t the issue we should be talking about, what 60 minutes revealed is
We all had a laugh with Facebook falling over yesterday, apparently handing all our private communications over to a Billionaire on the spectrum wasn’t such a good idea after all, but it wasn’t the outage that we should all be talking about, it is what was revealed hours earlier on American 60minutes…
Facebook putting profit before public good, says whistleblower Frances Haugen
Internal papers show firm is lying about making progress against hate, violence and misinformation, ex-employee says
A former Facebook employee has accused the company of putting profit over the public good, after coming forward as the whistleblower who leaked a cache of internal documents that have placed the tech firm in its worst crisis since the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Frances Haugen, 37, said the thousands of documents she had collected and shared with the Wall Street Journal and US law enforcement showed the company was lying to the public that it was making significant progress against hate, violence and misinformation.
“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money,” she said.
In an interview with the news program 60 Minutes on Sunday, Haugen explained her decision to speak out about the internal workings of Facebook, saying she had become alarmed by what she perceived as company policies that prioritized profit over public safety.
“The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world,” she said.
…The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
Social media algorithms have allowed for a toxicity of debate that is easily manipulated. A symphony of sweaty truths all screaming for attention and no one listening.
We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism uber alles where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.
Millennial woke culture sees macro violence coming from micro aggressions and piously police those micro aggressions with virtue signalling purity mantras.
Alt Right Incel Nazis see white persecution and create some bullshit replacement narrative to justify their powerlessness and feed that resentment online.
Social media outrage is woke righteousness porn for the middle classes. A puritanical razoring where the self elected morality police publicly shame and cancel anyone for not using the language protocols of the conclave.
Facebook’s algorithms have weaponised opinion for corporate profit, amplifying the most extreme voices to manipulate viewers emotional responses to stay watching.
Before social media activists could only face each other off at protests or through letters to the editor or talkback radio. There were constraints of interaction but with social media there are none and it turns out the freedom to insult and dehumanise others is more addictive than nicotine, alcohol and meth combined.
We shouldn’t be laughing at Facebook going down, we should be demanding it never gets up again!
Social media has destroyed public democracy the way smoking has destroyed public health.
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I would be happy for FB to be turned off for good. The pleasant and useful features like keeping in touch with old friends, interest groups and distant family, were compromised from the outset by an ever more powerful commercial model and documented evil algorithms. Some people are driven to extremism at worst, and many to a surly demeanour, mockery as their default, and a judgmental outlook.
It is often self curated bollocks. Life is “all good” in FB land. A woman on RadioNZ today said she was not getting vaccinated as “people die from it”. How did you find that out? “Family told me”, and where did they find that out–“you know, on the news, Facebook”…Facebook is not News!
A non profit world wide app providing the useful features of social networking could replace FB easily–but the billionaires would not allow that to happen on their watch.
Every parent should watch the Social Dilemma – with their kids perhaps, see how the whole system was set up to be addictive. I’d be very happy if it was banned.
Tell us how you really feel!
Drugs are bad ‘mkay? It’s like saying sugar, alcohol, drugs and (in this case) fb are inherently bad. It’s not the thing itself but how it’s used or abused. You paint a very grim picture and I’m sure it’s true for some sectors. There always has been and always wiĺl be those who are easily manipulated. Those who can’t get hold of alcohol to escape will huff gas. MZ et al are mainly motivated by that other drug -money. Again, money is not inherently evil but the desire for it in itself, is evil.
Facebook is Goebbels’s wet dream. The sooner it is disbanded the sooner the youth can unplug their senses from a manipulated dimension ran by the Lizard people.
If everyone else used Facebook like I use Facebook then Facebook would soon be bankrupt, unfortunately the problem is the people with no ambition (maybe there is a better description) to do something useful with their spare time so it gets wasted on mindless social media.
Wait ’til you get started on Twitter. If it wasn’t fb it’d be something else. What are the root causes of all this rage? Marginalisation and poverty for starters. Get a life.
Facebook has/is/will take over all aspects of our lives if we are not aware of its intent. I am somewhat conceerned about the ‘whistleblower’s’ welfare.
As is usually the case, it is the calibre of the user which determines the fate of information gleaned from any SM application. Critical thinking skills are n short supply – especially in the USA. I am on the Leadership Team for a Facebook owned application, whose objective is to ‘bring Communities together’. Frankly, it is even more alarming than Facebook itself. As a moderator one is exposed to the ugliest side of human nature. There is even bullying between moderators during the voting process. Today (US time) there is a nationwide forum for members of Community Leadership Teams. It is beginning to feel like a cult.
Apologies if this double posts. Facebook has/is/will take over all aspects of our lives if we are not aware of its intent. I am somewhat conceerned about the ‘whistleblower’s’ welfare. As is usually the case, it is the calibre of the user which determines the integrity of any SM application. Critical thinking skills are n short supply – especially in the USA. I am on the Leadership Team for a Facebook owned application, whose objective is to ‘bring Communities together’. Frankly, it is even more alarming than Facebook itself. As a moderator one is exposed to the ugliest side of human nature. There is even bullying between moderators during the voting process. Today (US time) there is a nationwide forum for members of Community Leadership Teams. It is beginning to feel like a cult.