[dogman144]

Many PMs and engineers and laymen knew FB was a rotten product for a long time. I also assume a lot of people at this institute didn’t take the Alex Stamos (ex, short term FB CISO) U-turn either. So…

How is this effort not a virtue signaling by people that made their fortune on the back of this generation’s cigarettes, and now hoping to get traction on being listened to for fixing the mess they created?

[shug2k]

Integrity folks across the industry work on solving these problems, not creating them. It is more of a balance of whether to tackle the problems inside the organization, or outside - depending on which is more effective.

What is not in question is that we should be spending time on tackling these problems.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> Integrity folks across the industry work on solving these problems, not creating them.

Solving these problems is pretty trivially simple. Get rid of the news feed, or perhaps make it just friends, reverse chronological order. All of these "integrity teams" only exist because Facebook isn't content just making boatloads of money, it needs to make 10x boatloads of money by getting people to scroll infinitely.

People try to pretend this is some hard, difficult problem, when it's only a problem because Facebook is just as addicted to their users' mindless scrolling as their users are.

[SrslyJosh]

> It is more of a balance of whether to tackle the problems inside the organization, or outside - depending on which is more effective.

I think you answered your own question already.

[dogman144]

Of course.

Regarding internal solutions: it’s impossible to overlook the significantly misaligned incentives facing integrity teams. They try to solve problems inherently created by the profit model of the company and what also pays their salary. The parallels to the internal scientist teams at Phillip Morris are uncanny.

As I said, this paradox, and the company kicking the can down the road, has been obvious for years externally and also seemed internally per the Slack (or w/e) leaks post 1/6.

So, for these teams, if they’re staying longer than a quick in and out once realities trumped ones idealism at “going where the problem is” (look, I really do get that impulse), continuing to claim the moral high ground in the way this Institute is so tone deaf. Sorry buddy - I’m on levels.FYI as well, we all know what you got paid to (increasingly ineffectually) support this product. Like there’s been leaks for years of PMs discussing Myanmar genocide inflammation via FB/WA for a few years now. Was that not enough to leave?

This is inescapably how a lot of tech is going to judge this period/company. It went on for too long to claim ignorance otherwise.

Edit: You know what, no it's not at all about an external vs. internal balance, that very much misses the point. It's likely that a meaningful change which preserves what FB (and related) intrinsically is will have to come from an internally-driven fix. The technical abstractions are just too much of a problem for outsiders to grok, then suggest a fix for, and etc. etc. ("Senator, we sell ads...").

It's about understanding where the moral and character capital that leadership, especially transformational leadership, comes from, and understanding how the founders of this have none of it. People that have stayed at FB and profited immensely from the experience, integrity team or not, stayed silent about it, and then start coming out with this publicly now vs. years ago (see: Alex Stamos' example), don't have that capital. And it's so distasteful to see them think that they do via efforts like this. That's the problem.

[shug2k]

While at the company, we were busy trying to solve problems during a critical period. The criticism has been fierce for Facebook - but make no mistake, our teams made enormous difference within the company, and the world would look very different than it does today without the work of integrity workers within the company. This continues to be true to this day.

Coming out publicly over the years has done very little. Even now, with all the attention, it is questionable what will actually change. We are much less interested in virtue signaling, taking the high ground, etc. than working with folks who are interested to carve a path forward. We are dedicating our lives to this work to find solutions over the long-term, whether it is in the spotlight, or not.

[dogman144]

Someone else in this thread commented it well - “this is the problem talking to FB engineers.”

I’m not sure how you can read that founders letter, and not see a spotlight grab/virtue signals by people who contributed to and profited from the problem they’re trying now take a leading role in solving. It’s like there is just total refusal to be seen as part of the problem. Blows my mind.

“Coming out publicly has done very little” attitude sort of says all you need to know. Pretty sure the article said also ~”now that Frances came out publicly, we can start this!” Mental gymnastics.

[dogman144]

Correct, the Integrity Institute's cofounder:

"Frances is exposing a lot of the knobs in the machine that is a modern social media platform," Massachi said. "Now that people know that those knobs exist, we can start having a conversation about what is the science of how these work, what these knobs do and why you would want to turn them in which direction."

It seems public discussion does help, and is even a critical input to this effort. It's just better when others do it first.

[sayhar]

We started this back in January, and have been getting our ducks in a row since then. It turns out starting a nonprofit is hard, and takes a long time.

[homo_ergaster]

>now hoping to get traction

Not even just that, they also want us to donate to cover the costs for the good work they’re surely going to be doing