[prostoalex]

> the long-term societal tradeoff of not developing addictive mental candy

Along with React, GraphQL and a bunch of other technologies with various degrees of popularity https://opensource.fb.com

Along with various startups building around the projects incubated at Facebook - Asana, Interana, Phacility, Qubole, etc.

[tobr]

Ok so React, GraphQL, and good pay. Definitely not short-sighted.

You don't think those technologies could have been developed by people at ethical companies, or even by the same people at ethical companies?

[prostoalex]

So why haven't they been developed by the time Facebook came around?

[tobr]

Why would it be remarkable that a few popular technologies come out of a big, rich technology company? People who create such technologies work at places like that. But there’s nothing about React or GraphQL that makes them only possible at Facebook.

[prostoalex]

A big, rich technology company has the resources to put people on the project full time and a revenue stream to justify such broad architectural project.

There's also financial support for building a community around improving the tech, by encouraging outside contributions via meetups, conferences, social events, better technical documentation, etc.

At smaller scale startup an engineer is surely welcome to work on his skunkworks project, but justifying expensive large-scale architectural undertakings on company's dime is problematic. Especially if a quicker fix is available and buys the company a chance to kick the problem down the road.

With that said, it's not impossible to build a major popular piece of technology within a small company (Joyent and Node.js being a good example), it's just harder.

[tobr]

You’re repeating what I wrote - Big tech is likely to produce new tech, but new tech comes from other places too.

This discussion is mostly irrelevant to the fact that this particular company is completely reckless and unethical. The technology they accidentally produce while building a dystopia to make people click on ads[1] does not justify anything.

1: https://youtu.be/iFTWM7HV2UI

[erikpukinskis]

The same reason Facebook didn’t develop them before they did.

[yaseer]

React + GraphQL < B

Where B is the sum of the set consisting of:

-Breaking democracy in the US and the UK by being _the_ platform for disinformation.

-Disinformation assisting genocide in Myanmar.

-Use correlating strongly with poor mental health

-Manipulating behaviour to encourage poor attention spans for the sake of ad-clicking

-Constantly violating basic standards of privacy

-(I could go on..)

Oh wait, excuse my arithmetic. I forgot to add another JS framework like Relay to the LHS of the equation, that makes it a net positive from Facebook! :D

[justaman]

I don't think its fair to blame FB on the decay of democracy in the information age. Surely Twitter is also to blame them. I think the blame is on the users. Its not possible to be perfectly informed. It is possible to keep your mouth shut if you don't know something for sure. Perhaps its the fact that in real life, to say something you need to say it to someone's face and on social media you don't have that social weight to carry. This brings about people more likely to share misinformation. If this is the case, its not the fault of social media, rather the fault of internet culture. More personal responsibility is the solution. Not an improved ML system to detect fake news.

[yaseer]

Yes, Twitter is also to blame.

It is a problem inherent in the structure of most social media companies. And Facebook is the most significant social media company, and thus contributor to the problem.

[plaidfuji]

I think the sadder part of this argument is that nobody outside of software engineers know or care what GraphQL is, yet it’s being touted as a “societal benefit”. How about the fact that my grandma with limited mobility can still attend church virtually through the Live feature? Regardless of how often the scions of the Valley disavow their own technology (I would /never/ let my children use our products!), there are a billion or so other people who actually use it to real benefit in their quaint little lives.

[yaseer]

This argument I agree is far more compelling than "reductio ad JS library"

[chronid]

> Breaking democracy in the US and the UK by being _the_ platform for disinformation.

Blaming facebook for "breaking" democracy in the US and the UK is ridiculous. I can't understand how this can continue being a claim remotely considered valid. I agree (or may agree, at least in part) on some of the other points, but not on this.

Claiming that Trump won just because of the russians putting ads on facebook is at least naive - and ignores the fears/actual issues a very big* part of the US population experience daily. Isn't failing public schooling a problem there also? Does that give us citizen more or less prepared to actually participate in democracy?

Politicians (of all sides) in the UK have accused the EU of being the root of all evil since they "joined", again and again and again: you lost your job? Blame the EU! We can't cut taxes? Blame the EU! You really want to blame facebook and NOT the politicians themselves because people voted for brexit?

If the Russians tried to manipulate (and for sure they did, oh gosh, I'm pretty sure the US and the EU states never do - or did - anything to manipulate elections abroad! Evil Putin, why you do this to us? :cry:) we rolled out the red carpet for them!

Democracy was broken because actual journalists did not do their job. Stop doing what they (may) want you to do, using social media as a scapegoat for their own (willing, sometimes, for sure, at least if you read what Chomsky has to say) MASSIVE failure of being the "champions of truth" they claim (and blindly believe - I worked on somewhat close contact with them for years, I've seen that) to be.

[bazza451]

OData was developed before Graphql - pretty much does the same thing