Does Even Mark Zuckerberg Know What Facebook Is?

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Madness

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« on: October 10, 2017, 04:33:36 pm »
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TaoHorror

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« Reply #1 on: October 10, 2017, 05:39:29 pm »
No.
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« Reply #2 on: October 11, 2017, 05:09:46 pm »
No.

Just wanted to say that. :p
Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing.   
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Madness

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« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2017, 05:41:27 pm »
Lol. Well, I thought the article was interesting beyond the largely rhetorical title question ;).
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TaoHorror

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« Reply #4 on: October 12, 2017, 09:48:53 pm »
The article is ironic with the movie, The Social Network, where several times the character Mark Z says, "we don't know what this is yet" ... appears he still doesn't. It's a monster with a life of it's own and I suspect Z to be chasing his own tail for quite a while minimizing the riff raff - may be an impossible task reconciling free expression with global usage with judgement.
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H

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« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2017, 10:55:08 am »
Pretty sure he knows exactly what Facebbok really is: a way to make money.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

TaoHorror

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« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2017, 05:11:14 pm »
Pretty sure he knows exactly what Facebbok really is: a way to make money.

If that's all it is, then no need for all this fuss
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« Reply #7 on: October 16, 2017, 02:07:12 pm »
If that's all it is, then no need for all this fuss

Well there will be fuss, because it's never "just" that.  But realistically, if it failed to meat that primary objective, it would certainly no longer exist.  So, in some way, no matter what "else" it is, it needs to fulfil that primary criterion before anything else.

I guess we are left to ask then, what is Facebook's ancillary function?  That then, is open to a lot more interpretation.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

Madness

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« Reply #8 on: October 22, 2017, 05:20:17 pm »
- Apparently, as per the article, "helping" countries with large populations of facebook members hold fair and transparent elections.
- Conducting - ethically/consent-questionable - large-scale psychological studies with its data (I've read a few of these and two - I'd have to go digging - seemed inappropriate).
- Selling our data - you can actually figure out how to do this for yourself but obviously the real money is in multiple people. I read something interesting weeks (months?) ago regarding being paid $12 per month (I believe) for selling the same data that facebook/twitter/instagram/etc do (I'm not actually positive that instragram sells its data - why wouldn't they? - but they are their own interesting crux what with "paid influencers").

That's just off the top of my broken brain right now.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2017, 06:24:50 pm by Madness »
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« Reply #9 on: October 23, 2017, 05:28:05 pm »
- Apparently, as per the article, "helping" countries with large populations of facebook members hold fair and transparent elections.
- Conducting - ethically/consent-questionable - large-scale psychological studies with its data (I've read a few of these and two - I'd have to go digging - seemed inappropriate).
- Selling our data - you can actually figure out how to do this for yourself but obviously the real money is in multiple people. I read something interesting weeks (months?) ago regarding being paid $12 per month (I believe) for selling the same data that facebook/twitter/instagram/etc do (I'm not actually positive that instragram sells its data - why wouldn't they? - but they are their own interesting crux what with "paid influencers").

That's just off the top of my broken brain right now.

Well, one is a political function, two and three are just more ways to make money.  I guess two could be literal science, but I really doubt their only intention is the "lean about human beings" but rather more of learn what makes human beings more open, receptive, and responsive to marketing.

So, in the end, it all really comes back to making Facebook money.  And maybe back to being a political entity, that is, to serve the political aims of the people "in charge."  Even in that case, I am doubtful that the "political agenda" isn't just another method to work toward the primary goal of the whole thing: make more money.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

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« Reply #10 on: October 27, 2017, 04:39:01 pm »
Well, one is a political function, two and three are just more ways to make money.  I guess two could be literal science, but I really doubt their only intention is the "lean about human beings" but rather more of learn what makes human beings more open, receptive, and responsive to marketing.

So, in the end, it all really comes back to making Facebook money.  And maybe back to being a political entity, that is, to serve the political aims of the people "in charge."  Even in that case, I am doubtful that the "political agenda" isn't just another method to work toward the primary goal of the whole thing: make more money.

I suppose I'm less curious about there being that bottom line for facebook in specific and more curious about the things they are doing at all.

For instance, a private company based internationally having the capacity to influence the public perception of any given political candidate so long as there are facebook members who also belong to a voting-population is a complicated crux - especially when the only mechanism by which they do this that is obvious and visible so far is simply approving or denying political ads without the same vetting as ones that air on a national television broadcast.

Sure they're making money offering their data-sets (one of the biggest available in the world) so that real science is done but they aren't vetted by the same Research Ethics Boards either as hospitals, universities, or research institutes.
« Last Edit: October 27, 2017, 04:40:40 pm by Madness »
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« Reply #11 on: October 31, 2017, 01:41:15 pm »
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TaoHorror

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« Reply #12 on: October 31, 2017, 09:29:11 pm »
I don't know, guys - maybe I'm way diverged from reality, but I question the "effectiveness" of trolls/bots/mean people leveraging social media and accomplishing something significant. 126 million were "reached", but where they "turned"? I'm skeptical of the actual influence. Not saying it's not a legitimate concern about potential mal-influence, but I didn't see direct relationships between this activity and the polls during the election - the polls moved most dramatically from public/news reported information, if this stuff was effective we would've seen poll swings for no apparent reason, which we didn't see that.
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« Reply #13 on: November 01, 2017, 05:06:47 pm »
I don't think it's really an issue of "turning" or not.  It's just an effort to reduce the level of discourse.  In other words, make people more apt to turn to confirming unsourced information, because it's plentiful and, well, confirming.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

Madness

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« Reply #14 on: November 04, 2017, 04:11:11 pm »
I don't know, guys - maybe I'm way diverged from reality, but I question the "effectiveness" of trolls/bots/mean people leveraging social media and accomplishing something significant. 126 million were "reached", but where they "turned"? I'm skeptical of the actual influence. Not saying it's not a legitimate concern about potential mal-influence, but I didn't see direct relationships between this activity and the polls during the election - the polls moved most dramatically from public/news reported information, if this stuff was effective we would've seen poll swings for no apparent reason, which we didn't see that.

I don't think it's really an issue of "turning" or not.  It's just an effort to reduce the level of discourse.  In other words, make people more apt to turn to confirming unsourced information, because it's plentiful and, well, confirming.

Well, in the case of the doctored Aziz Ansari picture, there was a percentage (however small or large it is) of people who straight up didn't vote because they thought Aziz Ansari was telling them they could vote with a # by text (and that's just the impact of one of some three thousand - I believe - now documented "ads" that were paid for by Russia).

Tao, specifically were there not three states that usually vote red who ended up voting blue? I read a really long piece about all this around Dec last year, though I'd have to go digging for it.

And to what H is saying, what is scary for me is that there's no regulation in place - the discussion of these issues with facebook, google, and twitter's legal counsels are fucking laughably ignorant so far.

I'm all for innovation which leverage our species into more agreeable social interactions but, classically, this showing by the social-tech giants bears all the hallmarks of money-sickness.
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