[schrep]

Our products aren't perfect, and we understand that we have a lot of work to do.

However, the fundamental purpose of our products is to allow people to efficiently communicate with each other. Hard for me to square that with "drain on society." I have many friends who, via Facebook, found a connection that was life changing: from finding a job, a spouse, to a community to deal with the loss of a loved one or support after being diagnosed with a terminal illness.

One of the things that draws AI researchers to come work at Facebook is the opportunity to see their work make a positive impact on billions of people around the world.

The research done by FAIR is helping us do things like deliver billions of translations a day, provide automatic photo captions for people who are visually impaired, and help bring blood donors and people in need together. It also helps us spot when someone is expressing thoughts about self-harm so we can alert first responders.

But we also believe there's even more we can do to help bring the world closer together, to give people a voice, and to open up new opportunities for everyone. AI is a key part of that and we believe pretty deeply in the power of open research to help not just us but the whole industry.

[shmageggy]

> The research done by FAIR is helping us do things like deliver billions of translations a day, etc...

All for the purpose of increasing buy-in to an increasingly Orwellian digital surveillance regime.

> But we also believe there's even more we can do to help bring the world closer together...

What brings people closer together is real human interaction and connection. Face to face communication with visible emotion. Vulnerability. FB's video chat is the only thing serving that interest, but that's better served elsewhere with less tracking. Posts that broadcast one-way to an invisible audience are inhuman. Filter bubbles are toxic. Widespread use of FB is cancerous on the social fabric of society.

[908087]

This post kind of reminded me of one of those drug commercials with old people happily skipping hand-in-hand through a field of flowers. The only difference is that you forgot to quickly list the many terrible side effects of your product at the end.

Tell your PR team the appeal to emotion was a nice touch. If I didn't know anything about your company I might have even been able to get through it without feeling absolutely nauseated.

> the fundamental purpose of our products is to allow people to efficiently communicate with each other

No, the fundamental purpose of your products is to efficiently surveil, profile and manipulate your users on behalf of your customers.

> It also helps us spot when someone is expressing thoughts about self-harm so we can alert first responders

What happens when those first responders bust someone's door down and your "helpful" feature essentially becomes algorithmic swatting?

On a semi-related note, did you guys ever figure out how many of the hundreds of thousands of people you enrolled in an emotional manipulation study without their consent ended up killing themselves as a result? It's a given that the figure isn't zero across that number of people.

[eezurr]

All of these goals are positive. I also assume that's all of the goals that you focus on.

But it's an abuse of power to only look at one side of the equation.

Companies are run by people, and at the end of the day, no person would want to dump their money into a technology that couldn't yield any financial gains. Where do all the large companies get most of their revenue from? From figuring out how to trigger dopamine to be released into our brains, and we're starting to see the negative effects it's having on people.

Also, you aren't giving people voices. You're opening up a door to a world where they have no control over. In their outrage, and futility, they focus more and more time trying to fix something that doesn't exist.

[ychujo]

Is this what you tell yourself in order to sleep at night? From the perspective of an external observer, this talk of "making the world more open and connected (and making billions in the process)" seems shockingly disconnected from the reality of the damage that FB is causing in America and in the world.

You talk about impact. There's no doubt FB is making a big impact. Unfortunately, it's overwhelmingly destructive impact. As someone in position to change that, it would be great for you not to dismiss out of hand the valid concerns of the people in this thread. Personally, it's because of replies like this (in particular zuck's attitude) that I have zero confidence in FB's potential to fix its products in the future. Bye bye democracy I guess.

One day you may be held responsible for your impact on the world. I hope the talk about making the world a better place will work out then.