Sounds like social media platforms might end up like cigarette companies, where they finally acknowledge the harm of their product and add a disclaimer to avoid liability: <i>"This product is designed to manipulate you. It will probably make your life worse."</i> Or, like the drug companies: <i>"If you have depression, suicidal thoughts or find yourself screaming at some rando on the internet, stop taking Facebook and consult a therapist."</i><p>Maybe that's already in the EULA??? :shrug:
"She said Facebook takes "the privacy, safety and well-being of all those who use our platform very seriously, ...""<p>The magic incantation.<p>Flawed reasoning: "We take X seriously" therefore there are no problems with X.<p>Contrast "seriously" with "seriously enough".<p>There must be more to it. There must be some science behind the use of the "take X seriously" statements.<p>"We've committed to not retaliating for this individual speaking to the Senate," she said.<p>Do they know who it is. Do they believe retaliation would be legal.<p>"Facebook's brand is bad, and I think Facebook, you know, would freely admit that," said Katie Harbath, a former public policy director at the company. "But, you know, nobody else is gonna come and defend the company besides themselves."<p>Why won't anyone else come and defend the company. Wouldn't advertisers, users (ad targets) and investors want to defend the company.<p>"In this next chapter of our company, I think we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company," [Zuckerberg] told tech journalist Casey Newton this summer.<p>Try to escape bad rep. Social media bad. "We are not social media. We are metaverse."<p>"They've been able to weather these storms over and over again," said Yael Eisenstat, who worked at Facebook on elections integrity for political advertising in 2018.<p>"What I think is different this time is that I don't think they're fully understanding that internal employees have questions now."<p>After Facebook has "connected the world", then what. No more growth. What then.
I can think of no greater waste of human time or energy than these ridiculous Senate "hearings". It's just performance art, on all sides - they should just bring Yoko Ono in and call it a day.<p>The sad thing is that Senators usually call these hearings so they can make tough sound bites against naughty companies, but they usually just end up sounding like idiots (see the other comment about Sen. Blumenthal's "Finsta" nonsense).
<a href="https://twitter.com/morroweric/status/1443628623576109065" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/morroweric/status/1443628623576109065</a><p>> Sen. Blumenthal asks Facebook "Will you commit to ending Finsta?"<p>> Facebook's safety chief has to explain that Finsta is slang for a fake account.<p>Sigh.
Instead of "blasting" how about regulating it?<p>Social media has proven time and again they are unwilling to do the right thing.<p>They perform human experimentation and must be regulated for public safety.<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...</a><p>It is an on going activity.
This is completely subjective but it always seems to me like whenever these sitdowns happen it's nothing but an opportunity for politicians to posture and get their soundbites in to clip and re-use in Twitter shorts and campaign material with not much actually happening afterwards. The only time giant companies actually seem to change course is when rumors of upcoming regulatory pressure from the FCC or something like that start up.<p>I understand that I might be cynical but even when they're not just producing cringe at these hearings, they always seem to do the Ted Cruz thing and so I've stopped expecting anything to actually happen...
To what degree should companies be responsible for goods which, without structured or disciplined use leads to harm, especially when the good in question has an apparently reasonable use case?
Facebook and Instagram employees responsible should be sent off to work in agriculture or be drafted into the military.<p>Military and agriculture are the foundations of every powerful state.<p>The state would become more powerful and those employees reassigned to more productive tasks would be morally progressed.