Mark Zuckerberg is More Interested in the Metaverse Than Election Integrity (yahoo.com) 46
Mark Zuckerberg's intense focus on the metaverse has replaced securing elections as the Meta CEO's top concern, four Meta employees with knowledge of the situation told The New York Times. From a report: Zuckerberg has been public with his desire to transform Meta -- formerly known as Facebook -- into a metaverse company, ploughing billions of dollars into developing metaverse technology.
The New York Times reports Meta's core election team has shrunk significantly since 2020. With the US midterms approaching, a reduced election team at Meta could mean less enforcement against misinformation. Whereas it used to comprise over 300 people, now 60 people spend their time focused on election security and some additional employees divide their time between elections and other projects, sources told The Times.
The New York Times reports Meta's core election team has shrunk significantly since 2020. With the US midterms approaching, a reduced election team at Meta could mean less enforcement against misinformation. Whereas it used to comprise over 300 people, now 60 people spend their time focused on election security and some additional employees divide their time between elections and other projects, sources told The Times.
Makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
Elections are already ruined, but the creative, fascinating, user-driven metaverse with VRChat and independent content creators is ripe for being destroyed
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Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
Securing elections? (Score:2)
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While detecting and preventing foreign government arms from running ad campaigns on their platform designed to influence American voters, at least without the funding being explicit, is a good thing to do, it's not like we really trust Facebook's team to be the arbiter truth on their platform. The best we can hope for is authentication to know who is saying what.
Which is why it's important to know exactly who is paying for what. The US has gone to the opposite extreme not just with anonymised advertising but complex money transfers to avoid showing exactly who is contributing to who.
It's little wonder that Russia thinks it can operate with reckless abandon during US elections... it's because it can interfere without consequence in US elections.
It's only a little better over here in Europe/UK, we know Russian money is going to far-right parties/causes... we ju
Why should he care (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Why should he care (Score:3)
Re:Why should he care (Score:4, Insightful)
He's a CEO of a tech company not an electoral oversight board
Electoral integrity issues are his concern the same way pharmaceutical companies are concerned with drug laws, the societal and ethical consequences of the product they create, and can't just claim they're mere chemical companies.
Facebook peddles a an addictive product too.
Re: Why should he care (Score:5, Insightful)
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Agreed 100%. That's why Fuckbook and the rest of the social media trainwreck should be heavily regulated - exactly like the pharma industry is.
My point wasn't that Zuckerberg should be in a position to arbitrate anything in the public space (he most definitely shouldn't!). My point was that he can't claim he's not concerned about the consequences of his "invention" on said public space.
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Fuckbook and the rest of the social media trainwreck should be heavily regulated - exactly like the pharma industry is.
You mean with bogus regulations which were bought and paid for by big pharma as a means to prevent new players from entering the market and to rubberstamp their malfeasance? For example in the USA if you want to bring a new drug to market which is a revision of an old drug, you don't have to prove efficacy, only that it doesn't kill statistically significantly more people than the predecessor.
Re:Why should he care (Score:4, Insightful)
Zuckerberg had zero interest (Score:5, Interesting)
In the end, I'm fine with this. We're a capitalist society. Businesses are NOT meant to solve societal problems or deal with larger issues. The first reason for a business to exist is to MAKE PROFIT. Their second reason for existing is to MAKE PROFIT. Can you guess what the 3rd through 10th reasons are?
Any larger societal issue is supposed to be decided by the three branches of government, in the form of laws and regulations. Now, our legislature has largely abandoned their post, and our court system is busy dismantling half a century of progress, but those are separate issues. Businesses make $$$$. That's all they do. The current fad of executives who "care" is complete illusion. But it's doing real harm. A lot of people are expecting companies to solve societal problems. The sooner we break that thinking, the sooner we can elect officials with a mandate to actually do their frikkin jobs.
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irrelevant
> The first reason for a business to exist is to MAKE PROFIT. Their second reason for existing is to MAKE PROFIT
This is not a good thing.
in the form of laws and regulations.
And regulatory capture means companies whose job it is to make profit and also to make profit get to change those laws. Expecting less social responsibility from companies is NOT a step toward anything good.
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We're a capitalist society. Businesses are NOT meant to solve societal problems or deal with larger issues. The first reason for a business to exist is to MAKE PROFIT. Their second reason for existing is to MAKE PROFIT. Can you guess what the 3rd through 10th reasons are?
I don't disagree. But it doesn't take much insight to realize that it's easier for most businesses to make money in a stable society. There are, of course, notable exceptions, such as the "defense" industry and the larger energy companies (but not their distributors, who will also suffer from the chaos). Who knows, maybe the company once known as FB is one of them?
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stable society
Define that or fuck off. "Stability" isn't some known quantity and "stability" isn't always the highest virtue. The Soviet's GULAG system delivered stability for the Party for decades.
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stable society
Define that or fuck off. "Stability" isn't some known quantity and "stability" isn't always the highest virtue. The Soviet's GULAG system delivered stability for the Party for decades.
As with all social concepts, stability is always relative to the society. So-called "primitive" societies will have a vastly different concept of it than societies with access to modern technologies. And, no, I'm not talking about the stability of particular groups or vested interests, but of the society as a whole. There was, even during the stablest periods in Soviet history (probably the Brezhnev era), an undercurrent of discontent. Of course, in more open societies such as those in the electoral "democr
Re:Zuckerberg had zero interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Businesses are not meant to solve social problems. But governments are meant to remove those that cause social problems from society.
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The fact you're currently modded Funny says a lot about our society.
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He's ANTI-election integrity
Wrong.
Zuckerberg, like all psychopaths, only cares about one thing: himself. He's not anti- or pro- anything unless it serves his interests.
Re:Zuckerberg had zero interest (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Zuckerberg had zero interest (Score:5, Interesting)
Businesses can exist for other reasons. Profit is almost always amongst the reasons, and usually first, but it's not always first. Some businesses feel that once they've made enough money to pay themselves and the workers and cover expenses, that they can do other things. Now when a company is public, it does change somewhat, because you have public owners. But even then the board of directors can decide that it is indeed worthwhile for the company to not be 100% profit driven. Sometimes this is indeed just the board being cynical (pretend that we like the environment so that they look the other way), but sometimes the board is genuine.
(though the drawback here is that there's often some activist shareholder ready and willing to file a lawsuit if you don't fire enough people to make the stock go up)
As for Facebook, it was getting a ton of slack for letting Trump slide along on his lies, lots of slack for occasionally letting boobies slip through, lots of slack for a variety of things. And keeping the customers happy is better for business profits than pissing them off.
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The first reason for a business to exist is to MAKE PROFIT
Cool, I can dig the Ferengi vibe.
Still, it's really not clear to me how a "Metaverse", even in its most generous reading, would MAKE PROFIT for anyone.
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in election integrity, beyond faking the amount of furrowed-brow concern that was required to get him through the Trump years. In reality, lies and misinformation generate clicks. Trump was good for business. He's ANTI-election integrity. In the end, I'm fine with this. We're a capitalist society. Businesses are NOT meant to solve societal problems or deal with larger issues. The first reason for a business to exist is to MAKE PROFIT. Their second reason for existing is to MAKE PROFIT. Can you guess what the 3rd through 10th reasons are? Any larger societal issue is supposed to be decided by the three branches of government, in the form of laws and regulations. Now, our legislature has largely abandoned their post, and our court system is busy dismantling half a century of progress, but those are separate issues. Businesses make $$$$. That's all they do. The current fad of executives who "care" is complete illusion. But it's doing real harm. A lot of people are expecting companies to solve societal problems. The sooner we break that thinking, the sooner we can elect officials with a mandate to actually do their frikkin jobs.
Yep. 'Murica, the land of the philistines that managed to go from barbarism to decadence & skip civilisation. 'Murica's whole legal system was set up by British colonial slave traders to maximise profits & minimise profiteers' responsibility. Like the thoughts & prayers after every school shooting, you only pretend to care.
Title correction: (Score:5, Insightful)
Privacy Rapist is More Interested in His Ego Than Election Integrity.
There FTFY.
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Privacy Rapist is More Interested in His Ego Than Election Integrity.
There FTFY.
"Privacy Rapist" -- Worst FF extension ever; sticking with Privacy Badger/Possum ...
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Ego? No. Just his business and sharemarket. There's no ego here. Facebook was stagnant, they had to do something. And that something is not Election Integrity, because really why the fuck would they care.
Does that surprise anyone? (Score:1)
This metaverse is the next big scam⦠it will replace crypto (anything) as the top billing for the next batch of greater fools. Zuck knows where he can get his bread buttered⦠after all, he is master at making money off things he is given for free, but used deception to get⦠i.e. your personal data. Itâ(TM)s made him one of the wealthiest people in the world⦠and sees this scam as an extension of that⦠the name change from Facebook wasnâ(TM)t w
Wait (Score:1)
I thought elections were already secured? 2020 was the most secured election in history, I am assured. Why would he need to focus on that?
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Because while it may have been the most secured election in US history (not world history maybe), that does not mean that attacks upon the integrity have stopped or are even subsiding. Russia is going to interfere again. China is going to try to interfere. Absolutely Trump will throw all sorts of wrenches into the gears. But hopefully he's given up on Facebook though, he's too busy on Truth sending out Truths to be re-Truthed (seriously, they call it ReTruth, I couldn't make up something that funny if I
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Why is it okay for us to interfere in other countries politics but not okay for them to buy some ads? Pretty sure free speech is protected under the Constitution for everyone, not just US citizens. Therefore, I don't really see the problem with other nations buying ads. No different then my national media.
Now if Russia or China had actually hacked into the voting machines and then changes the votes, now THAT would be interference. Buying ads is not interference.
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https://www.liebertpub.com/doi... [liebertpub.com]
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If the ads are willfully fraudulent, which they are, and presented with a willful intent not to inform but to disinform and/or just to troll people into fighting, then they are not protected speech no matter who is presenting them. You're standing up for behavior which would be illegal even if an American did it. And an American corporation in fact did do it, on behalf of a foreign government. They should be treated as collaborators, specifically because they collected explicit payment, explicitly to do the
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One could argue most political ads are complete fabrications of the truth, regardless of who is paying for them. So I guess American is fine with complete bullshit, so long as it's our bullshit. Right.
Whatever. We are hypocrites just like everyone else.
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what nonsense, those ads a mixed bag of all sorts of topics, to imagine they in any way influenced elections is nonsense
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
Makes sense (Score:2)
Businesses will focus on business needs. If they don't, they eventually stop existing.
Good (Score:1)
"Election Integrity" (tm) isn't Zuckerberg's responsibility. Only people that want a Ministry Of Truth deleting everything and everyone they don't like believe Facebook and Zuckerberg have any role in elections or "protecting Democracy." And fuck all of those people.
New Knowledge faked Russian Interference (Score:2)
... and even when this was found out, the media didn't retract their stories.
But Facebook ACTUALLY tried to manipulate the election by 'Editorial Trending' non trending articles smearing Trump via fake news websites - like heatstreet.com (check out their DNS transfer history).
So meta not being interested in elections integrity? only as far as it can be involved in manipulating them.
Look up reprobate in the dictionary (Score:2)
It will offer Zuck as an example.
Words are great.
Isn't election integrity already resolved? (Score:2)
Zuck's interests (Score:3)
Zuckerberg was never interested in election integrity. He was interested in defeating Trump. Trump is not running in 2022, hence Zuck is more interested in something else. If Trump runs in 2024, Zuck will discover a refound interest in election "integrity."
Shut down elections 60 days prior (Score:1)