[Newsbot]

Title: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp hit by global outage | CBC News
Category: Tech
Posted By: DrCaleb
Date: 2021-10-04 07:55:09
Canadian

[DrCaleb]

And for a time, the world was friendlier, smarter, and less vain.

[xerxes]

And on this day, peace was achieved, for a time.

[bootlegga]

And for a few brief shining moments, anti-vaxxers stumbled in the dark, unable to pass their BS onto each other.

[rickc]

Now if we can only find a way to keep them down permanently.

[bootlegga]

rickc rickc:

Now if we can only find a way to keep them down permanently.

Facebook in its early form would be fine, but in its current incarnation as an advertising/data stealing monster, I'd be fine with it going away.

But that applies to all social media nowadays, not just Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp. Of course, then they wouldn't have a viable business model.

[Scape]

Here are 5 major allegations whistle-blower Frances Haugen has leveled against Facebook

$1:

The whistle-blower whose revelations about Facebook have set off shock waves from Silicon Valley to Washington stepped into the spotlight this weekend.

Frances Haugen, a former Facebook project manager, revealed her identity on “60 Minutes” Sunday as the person who leaked tens of thousands of internal research documents to lawmakers, regulators and the media. She said they showed the social media giant was concealing information about its risks to users, and about its progress in combating hate 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 optimize for its own interests like making more money,” she said in the interview.

She was also confirmed as the source for the Wall Street Journal’s recent investigative series based on the documents, called The Facebook Files.

Here’s what we know about Haugen and her allegations regarding Facebook:

Who is the whistle-blower?
Haugen, 37, is a former product manager at Facebook. Her personal website says she is originally from Iowa City and studied electrical and computer engineering at Olin College, then received her M.B.A. from Harvard University.

She worked at Google, Pinterest and Yelp before landing at Facebook. In the “60 Minutes” interview, she said she was recruited by the company in 2019 and said she would take the job only if she could work against misinformation. She was assigned to the civic integrity team.

In the “60 Minutes” interview, Haugen said the root of the problem at Facebook actually started in 2018 when it changed its algorithms that pick and choose what users see. “Its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it’s easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions,” she said.

Haugen’s own turning point, she told “60 Minutes,” came when Facebook dissolved her civic integrity team after the 2020 presidential election, and turned off safety systems that were used to reduce misinformation. She said she then realized, “I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.”

In response, according to the New York Times, she decided to copy reams of internal Facebook documents, taking them first to John Tye, founder of the legal nonprofit Whistleblower Aid. She shared many of them with the Wall Street Journal, as well as with some lawmakers, and has submitted them in a complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

She submitted her resignation in April and left Facebook in May, according to the Wall Street Journal.

What are her allegations about Facebook?
Haugen has said the internal documents shed light on a number of allegedly harmful practices by Facebook. Among them:

• Misleading the public: According to “60 Minutes,” Haugen’s complaints say the internal documents show that Facebook knows its platform amplifies hate, violence and political unrest, but that it conceals that from its users. She also told the program that she believes Facebook’s reports on its regulation of COVID-19 misinformation and hate speech are not fully transparent.

• Misleading investors: Haugen’s complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission also allege Facebook has deceived investors by making public statements that don’t square with its internal actions, according to the New York Times.

• Harm to teens: The documents also revealed that Facebook knew that Instagram, which it also owns, is harmful to teen girls. These revelations were published in a story by the Wall Street Journal last month.

• Affecting global societies: Haugen said the version of Facebook that exists today is “tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.” The “60 Minutes” report cites 2018’s genocide in Myanmar as an example; Facebook has acknowledged it failed to prevent its platform from being used to “foment division and incite offline violence” there.

• Contributing to political polarization that led to the Capitol riots: Haugen told “60 Minutes” that the dissolving of her civic integrity team and turning off misinformation safety systems contributed to the U.S. Capitol riot in January. She called those actions a “betrayal of democracy.”

[housewife]

Why do people continue to use social media? No matter what platform you use seems to just seems to be a problem. Reminds me of the talking we all got about our loved ones on a UN tour only writing the good stuff. One of the wives phoned the CO and cried at him about her husband doing non deployment stuff and if he wasn’t needed there to send him home cause she needed him! Lots of eye rolls for that meeting. It took years to hear about the bad shit that happened and I have no idea if I know it all.

[Scape]

People use social media as it is the only way we have to be seen online. I wanna talk to my old army buddies I haven't seen in 30 years FB is the only way to find them. Business do much more online and sure they can set up their own site but to get the word out they need the major platforms like Facebook and twitter to do it.

Also, people are lazy. If they can find what they want in one click why would they forage thru hundreds of sites that may or may not be what they are looking for when they have a curated garden that has all their likes catered to?

[Scape]

TDPS on 60 min interview

[DrCaleb]

housewife housewife:

Why do people continue to use social media? No matter what platform you use seems to just seems to be a problem.

I don't know why people use the big sites, but technically this is also 'social media'. But because we have a reputation that develops over time because of our size, it gives us certain expectations of behaviour.

[bootlegga]

housewife housewife:

Why do people continue to use social media? No matter what platform you use seems to just seems to be a problem. Reminds me of the talking we all got about our loved ones on a UN tour only writing the good stuff. One of the wives phoned the CO and cried at him about her husband doing non deployment stuff and if he wasn’t needed there to send him home cause she needed him! Lots of eye rolls for that meeting. It took years to hear about the bad shit that happened and I have no idea if I know it all.

Social media isn't inherently bad, but the like anything US corporations undertake, it eventually becomes all about profit - and that leads to the corporations running them to try and extract every penny they can from their users for the benefit of their shareholders.

Google's motto used to be "Don't be evil", but then they started earning billions of dollars and that went by the wayside pretty quickly.

[DrCaleb]

Evil, it turns out, is more profitable.

[xerxes]

housewife housewife:

Why do people continue to use social media? No matter what platform you use seems to just seems to be a problem. Reminds me of the talking we all got about our loved ones on a UN tour only writing the good stuff. One of the wives phoned the CO and cried at him about her husband doing non deployment stuff and if he wasn’t needed there to send him home cause she needed him! Lots of eye rolls for that meeting. It took years to hear about the bad shit that happened and I have no idea if I know it all.

Because it's still useful. I still use FB because I can keep up with friends I don't have time for day to day or if they live a ways away.

But I also try to use it sparingly. I rarely post anything and I rarely comment. The same is true for me on the social media sites I use, Reddit and Twitter.

Facebook's main evil is that they have monetized an incentivized dischord. Their algorithms promote inflammatory and divisive posts and Zuckerbot doesn't care because it makes him money.

[Thanos]

xerxes xerxes:

And on this day, peace was achieved, for a time.

The sewer was offline for a while, you say? Hmmmm.....