Is Facebook Ignoring Our Humanity? (qz.com) 117
"Facebook really is evil," writes Quartz reporter Nikhil Sonnad. "Not on purpose. In the banal kind of way. Underlying all of Facebook's screw-ups is a bumbling obliviousness to real humans..." An anonymous reader quotes Sonnad's essay:
The imperative to "connect people" lacks the one ingredient essential for being a good citizen: Treating individual human beings as sacrosanct. To Facebook, the world is not made up of individuals, but of connections between them. The billions of Facebook accounts belong not to "people" but to "users," collections of data points connected to other collections of data points on a vast Social Network, to be targeted and monetized by computer programs.
There are certain things you do not in good conscience do to humans. To data, you can do whatever you like.... With Facebook, "life is turned into a database," writes technologist Jaron Lanier in his 2010 book You Are Not a Gadget... Silicon Valley culture has come to accept as certain, Lanier writes, that "all of reality, including humans, is one big information system".... The problem, says Lanier, is that there is nothing special about humans in this information system. Every data point is treated equally, irrespective of how humans experience it. The essay argues Facebook's value system "has diverged from that of the rest of society," adding that Facebook "seems to be blind to the possibility that it could be used for ill."
Facebook needs to "check their instinctive technological optimism against the realities of human life. Absent human considerations, Facebook will continue to bring thoughtless, banal harm to the world."
There are certain things you do not in good conscience do to humans. To data, you can do whatever you like.... With Facebook, "life is turned into a database," writes technologist Jaron Lanier in his 2010 book You Are Not a Gadget... Silicon Valley culture has come to accept as certain, Lanier writes, that "all of reality, including humans, is one big information system".... The problem, says Lanier, is that there is nothing special about humans in this information system. Every data point is treated equally, irrespective of how humans experience it. The essay argues Facebook's value system "has diverged from that of the rest of society," adding that Facebook "seems to be blind to the possibility that it could be used for ill."
Facebook needs to "check their instinctive technological optimism against the realities of human life. Absent human considerations, Facebook will continue to bring thoughtless, banal harm to the world."
Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Mark Zuckerberg is a cylon.
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Gary the Cylon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Yes (Score:1)
What does Battlestar Galactica have to do with Coors beer?
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I can happily agree that Zuckerburg is not a good person, but your single sentence makes that point more convincingly than the author does. The author needs to go read some Shakespeare or something.
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Facebook is bad because it purposefully drives empty digital interactions to feed empty approval for adhering to corporate marketing approved mass consumption means (the government of China basically copied Facebook https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com], seriously basically the core of Facebook). It could be likened to a purposeful psychological disease, a corrupt infection of socio-political norms, to feed insatiable psychopathic greed, with a level indifference to the harm caused and to take that one step fur
Re: Yes (Score:2)
Re: Yes (Score:1)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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The purpose of Fakebook has NEVER been to connect people, but to collect people's personal private data so that it could be sold for a profit!
Re: Yes (Score:2)
Donâ(TM)t be silly. The purpose of Facebook was so hot girls would send a bunch of college dudes pictures.
LATER a suit came along and realised the bycatch Facebook had turned up in their trawl was valuable.
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Frak that toaster!
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Funny, but it's not an inapt assessment. Cylons were, at least in the reboot, AI robots that turned on their creator. Facebook is essentially the same thing. Not AI, of course, but something that has a momentum all its own.
The thing is, at this point, anyone who uses Facebook deserves what they get. It has been revealed time and time again as the sewer of society. A cesspit of extortion, racketeering, and organized social manipulation. Why we are even still discussing it is really beyond me. It needs
Maybe youre wrong and Silicon Valley is right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Maybe youre wrong and Silicon Valley is right. (Score:4, Interesting)
Our modern society cannot emphasize anything but the individual because capitalism makes losers of those who try to focus upon community.
Making America a Giant Asshole, one billionaire at a time...
Re: Maybe youre wrong and Silicon Valley is right. (Score:4, Insightful)
That and if you look at the parts of the world that disallow capitalism or free market principles, it does not appear to me as though they are acting much different or have somehow come together as a community on a large scale. I think it would be a bit of a stretch to lay this at the feet of capitalism, especial as the youth in the west are becoming more socialistic in political belief (see Bernie Sanders rise to popularity) but are not engaging in community-focused behavior either. If you think that the problem is getting worse and countries like the U.S. are becoming less capitalistic, it suggests that the two things are not strongly connected, at least to the extent that you want to suggest.
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Define "harm" (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do I get the idea that the word "harm" actually means "political ideas I disagree with and believe should be censored"? (reads essay: keywords, Trump, TEH ROOSHINS, Nazis) Yup. Pretty much this.
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I believe gay married couples should be able to own guns to protect their marijuana plants. Tyranny?
Our goal in defeating Hillary was to remove the left's hand from our throat, not to put our hand around blue peoples' collective windpipe. We don't care how they live their lives, but leftists care very much how we live ours. Their goal is to lock both hands around our throat and squeeze until we submit to leftist tyranny or die.
We know where the leftists want it to end, with us silenced and subservient for
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Really, Are you so chickenshit you have to post as AC? I thought so.
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" Look who America is now modelling their lives and aspirations after."
Nazis?
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And if you call the police after me, I'll always invoke my first amendment right, my God given right to express my opinion, plain and simple.
You don't have a right to force people to listen.
And modern consumerism was doing better? (Score:1)
Or maybe it was war-torn feudalism or imperialism that is ethically superior?
Facebook doesn't ignore (Score:3)
Female nipples. Or ass.
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Mandatory ... (Score:3)
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This is easy to answer (Score:5, Informative)
Facebook is a corporation. They care about money.
Our humanity? Only as far as it makes them money.
Ethics? Only the minimum necessary to keep making money.
That's the opposite of true (Score:5, Interesting)
To Facebook, every data point is not treated equally. Some are given more weight than others, based on connectivity, and response from others to something like a post.
Facebook and other things like it act as a substrate on top of which humans are meant to provide understanding and human response. It's not that Facebook the system does not care, it's that Facebook is not in the role to care - in fact wouldn't Facebook be a thousand times MORE creepy if it actually tried to react in a human way to what people posted? Instead it leads people say things and lets others react to that, giving them as much range as it can while trying to balance an interface that doesn't turn away too many people.
Facebook as an entity is just trying to ride just outside that wave of connection and emotion, gleaning enough understanding to help advertisers understand you. If that is a good thing or not is a whole different debate than arguing "Facebook is ignoring our humanity" when it should be doing no such thing to begin with.
In other words, Facebook is ... (Score:2)
... AI.
I got a solution (Score:2, Insightful)
If you don't like Facebook's offerings then offer something better.
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who are we (Score:2)
It's about clear thinking, not technology (Score:2)
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And then journalistic integrity was used for a short time so we knew articles were true. And then that went all out the window. All we need to do is maintain the concept of journalistic integrity for the internet.
journalism helped, but a newspaper could be bought at any time (murdoch, sky, fox anyone?) so trusting journalists was hit and miss for the novice. in practice we made our own judgements on which media we trusted and tended to bookmark that as our trusted source. even when reading our most trusted writer, we still need to read critically. that's my point: we should never look for the one true new source, or technical fixes; we need to have the skills to read and absorb all news critically.
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Facebook is the symptom... (Score:3)
...not the cause. Yes, it emphasises and augments some of the dehumanising aspects of capitalism but that's simply because it's part of our capitalist, consumerist, hyper-individualist, isolated, lonely cultures, and Facebook simply reflects our cultures' values. We're no different to Google, Amazon, Verizon, Exxon, Monsanto, health insurance companies, banks, etc..
Capitalism reduces 99% of us to labour and cost data points.
An ad company (Score:2)
our humanity? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, there are organizations and individuals who care. Teachers & firefighters & medical heroes. But there are also politicians, corporate executives and presidents who don't much care for anyone else.
Our 'humanity' leaves much to be desired. Don't blame Facebook.
Re: our humanity? (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s the cynical view, yes. Itâ(TM)s not really true though. Historically wars have been fairly honourable affairs, and technologically conservative. Homerâ(TM)s dislike of archers colours military thinking right up to today, with our distaste for dehumanised video game style drone or over-the-horizon killing. Modern military training was invented to deal with the issue of many soldiers choosing to not actually fire at the enemy.
Psychology, conditioning and propaganda are used to overco
Facebook? (Score:1)
Facebook? What's that. Is it something you use when you don't have a real life?
Everyone ignores humanity (Score:5, Interesting)
I call bullshit on this theory. (Score:1)
The idea in this story is merely Facebook's plausible deniability. They want you to think that they were so dumb they let this happen but this was exactly how they planned it.
Exploits (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it is (Score:2)
It's caring about stupidity and money.
on the other hand... (Score:2)
Well, why we are on the subject of unsubstantiated, random accusations... My impression, on the other hand, is that Quartz is evil on purpose.
He's not going far enough (Score:2)
The article does hit one nail on the head though: Zuckerbook is E
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Not just Facebook (Score:2)
Example: I use a popular 3rd party launcher on my android phone. They made an update and for some reason several features that I was using do not exist anymore. It all looks different even though I changed no settings myself and I can't get it to look the same as it was.
Why would developers do that. That seems to be a blatant disregard of your users. Maybe it is driven by monetary designs: you have to