Clickbait. I think the actual story was already posted a few days back.<p>I'm pretty sure tabbaco has killed a few more people than Facebook, so this is a ridiculous comparison.<p>Facebook does a lot for which it should be criticized, but it feels like we're just beating on a dead horse.<p>It's also hilarious that someone would be so critical of Facebook all while including their share button in the same article. Apparently they're evil, but not evil enough to stop using their service. I think that says a lot about the author.
Are you f-ing kidding me? Until 90%+ of FB users start dropping dead because of lung cancer then that statement is complete garbage.<p>EDIT: a lot of people are taking my statement as meaning not to criticize Facebook. That is not it at all! It just means not to lose perspective. At least I still consider tobacco to be far worse, directly causing ~7M deaths annually with no visible benefit.<p>EDIT 2: Genuine question: has anyone studied the rise of fascism post-FB vs. pre-FB? It's not like dictatorships and far-right governments didn't get elected pre-FB. Obviously I am one of those who doubt FB's direct responsibility vs. it being simply a media narrative against a business threat.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco" rel="nofollow">http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco</a>
“Oh, my God. Using an Android phone is like paying for dinner with a Discover card. It’s like saying, “Don’t have sex with me.” It’s the ultimate prophylactic that says “I should be ...”<p>Oh, Scott. Once again.<p>”I should be screened out of the gene pool.” If you use an Android phone or have a Discover card, your family tree should come to an end.”<p>Stopped reading after this.
I wish other companies could get the same kind of scrutiny as Facebook. For some reason while most scandals are pushed down and quickly forgotten, Facebook is being dragged around for all its worth. Maybe they weren't planting enough stories.
I think this makes light of the fact that lung cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Every year millions of people die. Millions. And this is just one way cigarettes have negative impact. I’ve heard doctors say that we would need far fewer hospitals in the U.S if it wasn’t for all the negative effects of smoking.
The FB media onslaught is getting a bit overdone at this point. They aren't the worst company in the world. They probably have figured out that connecting everyone doesn't necessarily make the world a better place immediately but I applaud the effort and I think long term it will make a difference. So they make money selling ads which they display by algorithmically sifting through metadata. Around here I know it's not a popular practice but for the vast majority of FB's 1.5B DAUs I think it matters a lot less than the media would like it to. All ads are annoying but I personally prefer the targeted ads of today to the random banners ads of the late 90s early 2000s. I know they aren't a perfect company but who is? I think the media just smells easy traffic here.
I see some parallels with “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Facebook doesn’t share awful hate speech, people share awful hate speech. Half of us will be like “not enough, take away Facebook” and the other half will be like “some people suck, but I should have Facebook”.<p>I think the answer is to tag content using ML and then allow users to apply filters. It could be a “protect me” button in settings. I’m assuming most hate speech is in image and video format with text in the image but Facebook can probably figure that out with less than $1B worth of dev hours. It’s easy to delay sharing into “protect me” enabled news feeds until after processing and tagging.
Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Open Society Foundation, just saying, “The notion that your company at your direction actively engaged in the same behavior to try to discredit people exercising their First Amendment rights to protest Facebook’s role in disseminating vile propaganda is frankly astonishing to me. It’s disappointing to see how you have failed to monitor hate and misinformation on Facebook’s platform to now learning that you are active in promoting this distortion is beyond the pale.”
Another "facebook is the devil" propaganda hit piece. This is getting to be so freaking exhausting and so obvious.<p>You know what's becoming worse than facebook and their execs? The news industry and their editors.
perhaps this is an incendiary comment, but i really do wonder what all of the HN facebook employees are telling themselves to deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by this latest scandal wherein facebook paid for smear campaigns to distract from their own dirty laundry.<p>every time i have encountered these people on HN, they've portrayed a cultlike naivety regarding their organization's actions. they always allude to the outside world "not knowing the whole story" or something similar. in other words, they've made excuses.<p>but i really do want to see what the excuses are this time. i imagine they will be particularly entertaining.<p>more seriously, it's time for facebook to wrap it up. we've known for years that they were abusing the public trust. while i doubt we will see any leadership from congress regarding breaking up the company or degrading their capabilities to hurt the public interest, the intense amount of flak that FB has been getting lately is immensely promising. plenty of people are leaving FB.<p>while it is true that many of these people are leaving for instagram, it's a critically different product. i think instagram has a much more limited ability to negatively impact the public good via propaganda etc mostly because it isn't as participatory as facebook.