[cribbles]

Why are your only comments on this site rebutting negative stories about Facebook?

As a follow-up question, what are your thoughts on this longitudinal study from 2017[1], which found that "the use of Facebook was negatively associated with well-being", such that any form of engagement with Facebook was negatively correlated with a wide range of self-reported mental, emotional, and physical health indicators? Does the Facebook PR page you linked contradict that somehow?

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28093386

[dymk]

The study you linked does nothing to imply a causal relationship.

Do you think it’s a good strategy to try to undermine somebody’s position by “just asking questions” about why they hold an unpopular opinion on HN? Why not address their position directly rather than just sic a downvote mob on them?

Disclaimer because you’ll undoubtably go through my comment history: I used to work at Facebook.

[inflatableDodo]

>Disclaimer because you’ll undoubtably go through my comment history

I have never understood why this is considered to be bad form.

Going through someone's comment history often provides useful context and is often one of the quickest ways to try and find out if they are discussing something in bad faith or not.

Plus it can often just be interesting.

To try and assert that it is impolite for people to read what you have chosen to post on a public forum, purely because it happens to be from a previous discussion, is to attempt to enforce a social stigma on base curiosity.

Luckily it has about as much sway as farting into a thunderstorm, but why try it in the first place?

Nobody would take an author seriously if they tried to insist that people reviewing their new book aren't allowed to read the old ones and I feel the same logic applies here.

[dymk]

"Just asking questions" in the form of "So, why are your comments all <about this>" isn't impolite; it's engaging in bad-faith tactics to silence a point of view, and an implication that the user is a shill.

It's not even a reasonable accusation; the comments from the user supposedly supporting facebook is actually just three fairly thought out, nuanced comments.

[inflatableDodo]

Looking through, seeing as you are now amusingly encouraging me to analyse another person's post history; Only 3 posts, posted over the course of a year, all only in support of facebook. I wouldn't confidently mark the account as subtle astroturfing, could be an extremely lazy but also seemingly enthusiasic facebook fan, but it raises an eyebrow now you draw my attention to it. I mean, shilling does exist. As to your closing point, the existence of some nuance to an argument doesn't have any real bearing on the possibility of a given account indulging in shilling. It may be unreasonable, but if it is, it is not because of that.

[dymk]

I never said it was bad form to just look at comment history. What’s bad form is the users tactic to sic a downvote mob on them for having an unpopular opinion.

[inflatableDodo]

So it's bad because by mentioning someone's comment history it somehow deprives another entirely seperate group of people from having personal agency and tricks them into downvoting? Does this make sense?

edit - also, where is this downvote mob? Are you saying that the comment in question should have far more ego points than it does? The comment is not greyed out. And if so, how do you know?

[JohnFen]

I don't think that a Facebook marketing effort is a reliable source for such counterarguments.