[Leires]

I'm sorry, but honestly fuck Meta. Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent, and enabling psyops from organizations like Cambridge Analytica, is enough for me to never use their services. I hope they implode as a company. I happily said no when people from meta approached me on LinkedIn.

[godelski]

We can condone the good behaviors and condemn the bad ones. It is important to do both because if all we do is condemn then there is no pressure to do the right thing. If all you can do is evil then you'll only ever be evil and criticism will fall upon deaf ears.

A lot of people here agree with you about Meta's faults, even me. But that doesn't mean we can't appreciate the good they've done. Even if it isn't much and even if it is vastly outweighed by the bad. We should still use positive reinforcement to pressure companies to do the right thing.

[digitaltrees]

I agree. Thanks for bringing that to the discussion. The risk is that it creates a false equilibrium where the perception is the good equals, outweighs or justifies the bad.

But you are totally right. We must celebrate with he good in others and life or our critical observations lose all merit.

[godelski]

Yeah I think we just have to recognize that complexity exists in the world around us. I think a lot of problems we face today are directly related to this issue. We're sold simple solutions which fall short. Our brains weren't designed to think in complicated manners and we want simplicity. But as a species we need to move beyond this. After all, one of the unique qualities of humans is being able to override our instinctual behavior (easier said than done).

[dheera]

Well yes, but a good fraction the good they've done would have been done by other companies if they weren't around.

What's frustrating is that they currently have a near-monopoly on friend-to-friend publishing, yet unlike about 5 years ago, they now gatekeep a lot of those communications -- many times I post something on my Facebook or Instagram that I want friends to see, and Meta doesn't show that content to my friends, just because it isn't a "Reel". Friends in my age range (+/-10) who grew up in North America tend to use only Meta's products, so I basically feel like I'm talking to a wall most of the time.

[raleighm]

Well said.

[murat124]

Hear hear.

[betawolf]

Good thing I read today!

[NoPicklez]

Hear hear.

[gfd]

Not saying it makes it okay, but every company in existence does this to some extent. Everyone does A/B testing with the intent to alter user behavior (aka psychology) to increase their profits.

[londons_explore]

And without A/B testing, every product you use would be worse. Not only would it be less profitable, but it would also be harder to use, less useful, and less productive.

A/B testing isn't a new thing - I'm sure the inventor of the wheel experimented with different shapes, and the buyer of the hexagonal wheel probably didn't have the best user experience.

Multiply that by the number of people in the world and the number of products people use, and A/B testing is really up there as possibly one of the most beneficial ideas ever.

I really don't understand those who claim it should be banned - I see no way that testing two different versions of a website with people who desire to use that website can bring sufficient harm to outweigh those massive benefits.

[brundolf]

I'm sorry, you could make this case about some kinds of telemetry, but specifically not A/B testing. Speaking from work experience: A/B testing doesn't look into the nuances of usability or productivity, it looks at easy-to-quantify metrics like conversion rates and money spent. These metrics rarely align with a better experience for the user (outside of like, prettier buttons and stuff), and instead tend to result in less-informative, less-agentic software (information and choice often distract from conversions!)

[costcofries]

This is complete BS. I run hundreds of a/b tests each quarter and I specifically refuse to run the types of experiments you allude to. My a/b testing is all about helping users achieve the things (the outcomes) that they want to achieve by using our product in the first place. If we can help them do that, with more ease, then we are creating a better experience.

Perhaps you should just agree that, "not all a/b testing is the same".

[fragmede]

How is that BS? Other companies don't have you there to say no to them and are definitely running the kind of experiments you're too good for.

[costcofries]

Did you even read my whole comment? It's BS because he/she/they blanketed it without taking any nuance which i tried to do with my comment + an example!

Quote - "Speaking from work experience: A/B testing doesn't look into the nuances of usability or productivity, it looks at easy-to-quantify metrics like conversion rates and money spent"

[andrewmutz]

That's not true. I've done A/B tests in business software on how long it takes the user to get their job done on a data-intensive form.

It's a great tool, and its impact all depends on how you use it.

[g_p]

This is an interesting example, and perhaps pushes part of the blame and dislike for A/B testing onto tech companies' incentives.

If you're building a tool to make life easier for the user, something that gives them a better experience is your optimal outcome. This seems like a scenario where A/B can produce a good outcome.

The challenge is when you throw in an ad-based revenue model, and the A/B testing is then optimized for the opposite (eyeball-hours, linear metres scrolled per session, ad spots passed, ads clicked) - engagement-based business models end up (I'd argue) A/B optimizing for the opposite of what their users want, to get them to spend longer doing a task they could have done quicker.

[MikePlacid]

> The challenge is when you throw in an ad-based revenue model

The funny thing is - the ad-based revenue model is not the only possible variant. Last time I’ve checked Facebook’s profits per user were $7 per quarter, that is $28 a year. At the same time I am paying LiveJournal $25 a year for the ad-free version. Just taking my money looks like a much better model in many respects:

- less overhead: a lot of people doing these studies how to force me to look at something I do not want to look at will be free to do something more useful to the society;

- streamlined relationship between me and my publisher: in this model there is no advertiser who can say “I do not like these texts, no revenue for you”.

That’s why I prefer to pay for some Substack authors, like Matt Taibbi and Glen Greenwald, than to try to fish their texts for free amid some sea of “clever” advertising (hey AI testers, I bought this thing already, what’s the point of forcing it on me again and again?).

I kinda wish that Brave model (my money distributed between sites I visited) got more traction. It looks much more healthy.

[Retric]

There are much better methodologies for speeding up worker productivity than A/B testing. A/B testing is designed to extract information from people you can’t do more complicated tests such as eye tracking or motion studies with.

The major issue with A/B testing in the workplace is it causes confusion and slows people down when you change things. Which makes these tests really expensive even if they are seemingly easy to preform. So, I would call it useful but flawed.

[dado3212]

As someone who’s run literally hundreds of A/B tests, many of them on the backs of UX research with users in the field, people have no idea what they want. The anecdata is a place to investigate, but never the end of the journey.

[judge2020]

The fear with direct user research is that, unless you have a team and budget for getting enough of a sample, one-on-ones might not only be unhelpful but actively harmful if you implement something that solves that customers' problem but otherwise gets in the way for other customers.

[brundolf]

I'm having a difficult time imagining a situation where people's actual productivity using a piece of software can be so easily measured. I'm sure it happens, but I think it's safe to say this is the exception to the rule when it comes to A/B testing

[scott_w]

You can measure the time between two key actions that operate as a proxy for task completion.

[andrewmutz]

Data entry

[fragmede]

The specific test that did it for me, is that Facebook ran this experiment where they logged users out and then wouldn't let them log them back in despite the correct password, just to toy with them to see how long/hard they would keep trying to login, in order to see how addicted they were to Facebook.

I was in the "B" group, and felt so humiliated at how many times I tried to reset my password to get into Facebook.

[anonomousename]

Is there any evidence of this? Especially for people that use a password manager, this seems incredibly stupid on Facebooks side.

[rjbwork]

Wow. That is insanely user hostile and borderline gaslighting/psychological torture. That is truly one of the most insane experiments I've ever hard of someone running.

[anthonypasq]

i agree, Zuck should be put on trial for violating the Geneva convention because some people couldnt log into facebook.

[strulovich]

Never heard of this one. Any articles about it?

[fragmede]

It was a footnote in the wake of the main psychological experiments facebook ran on its users back in 2014*, which is overshadowing my searches for this particular detail.

* https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...

[warkdarrior]

The GP forgot their password, couldn't get back in, and made up a story to mask their shame.

[barrenko]

Others have done it after as well. Hell, it may not have originated at FB.

[andromeduck]

I had this happen to me I think, and another case where half my links/screenshots would randomly get censored. Not just like random blogs/tweets/forums but even to super mainstream stuff like wikipedia/cnn/bbc.

[kuramitropolis]

I still get that sometimes - I think someone left it on for all the Tor nodes in Germany...

[TeMPOraL]

It's a matter of degree and kind.

There's also a neat sleight of hand here. Your inventor of the wheel surely tested multiple variants to optimize for the utility of his invention to the user. The A/B testing that's problematic is about optimizing taking advantage of the user. That doesn't lead to better experience, but the opposite. This is what's increasingly popular, and this is what people complain about or want to see banned.

Related: attention economy is predicated on bad user experience, because it makes money from friction.

[blarghyblarg]

ah yes, the good old "Let's A/B test our capability to influence emotional states using the news feeds."

Totally the same as A/B testing button placement. Totally.

[vippy]

10000% this.

[bumby]

There's a reason Tristan Harris called upon SV to avoid "A/B testing ourselves into the 'gradient descent of mankind'".

My qualms are not so much with the method as the morals that guide it. It's agnostic but when operationalized in a faulty moral framework can definitely lead to bad results.

[xzlzx]

A/B testing crosses a fundamental line when people are the product.

[sciclaw]

Agreed. A/B testing helps you meet a desired goal. The desired goal is where ethical questions come in.

For example, I have used A/B testing to see find ways to help users get a task done with fewer clicks, saving them time.

[r00fus]

> And without A/B testing, every product you use would be worse.

The primary goal of A/B testing is to see what's more profitable.

If that happens to result in better UI that's a side effect.

In fact, it could result in less usability (relevant to this conversation, it probably resulted in the frustrating "algorithm-based" timeline at FB/Twitter/etc).

[milosmns]

> > The primary goal of A/B testing is to see what's more profitable.

Well, I think I'll provide a disagreeing opinion. :)

I assume this opinion probably comes from your past experiences, and I believe it is true in many cases. Since I'm not American and have never worked in an American corporate environment, I can't say what is true over there... but my experience in EU and Canada with A/A/B, A/B/C and typical A/B testing (as well as building such testing tools for others) was not like that.

For example, when building tutorials for users, profitability is far from being the primary objective. Same goes for building documentation, programming languages, open-source software, internal tooling and other such things.

Of course, I get that in the end, profitability is the primary goal of the company (with some exceptions). But I maintain that not all A/B tests have profitability as their primary goal, which makes the previous statement an incorrect generalization IMO.

[SoftTalker]

At least in some cases.

A/B testing lead to the development of effective "dark patterns" in UI that trick users into doing things they don't want or don't understand, and then making it difficult to undo.

[londons_explore]

The hexagonal wheel probably wasn't very profitable either.

[mzd348]

But it comes in handy in the alternate universe where pi=3.

[eecc]

Can you elaborate?

[tomrod]

Certainly, because it probably never existed as a function for wheel. Do you have any evidence that the "well duh" criteria wasn't used, and hex wheels show up in the archeological record?

[SahAssar]

> A/B testing isn't a new thing - I'm sure the inventor of the wheel experimented with different shapes, and the buyer of the hexagonal wheel probably didn't have the best user experience.

Consider yourself that inventor, would you A/B test hexagonal vs round?

[andsoitis]

I could have hypotheses around wheel dimensions (e.g. width, diameter), materials, etc. that are absolutely great targets for A/B testing.

[SahAssar]

That sounds like a clear no, you already know the answer to the hypothesized A/B test.

As for the other aspects they sound like great targets for testing within different use-cases, but I'm not sure why that'd be an A/B test as we think of them now.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> And without A/B testing, every product you use would be worse. Not only would it be less profitable, but it would also be harder to use, less useful, and less productive.

Do we live in the same universe? As far as I can tell, software keeps trending worse. Usability is terrible, options and settings keep getting moved around and hidden, software is less responsive than it used to be...

[londons_explore]

You are free to keep using MS-DOS for your computing needs...

But the majority of people choose to use a modern computer, presumably because they find it overall more useful than their old MS DOS computer and software.

Sure - there are gripes, but they must be outweighed by something pretty big for 99.99% of people to choose a new computer over a 30 year old one.

[NaturalPhallacy]

>And without A/B testing, every product you use would be worse.

Worse for whom? I feel like a lot of the A/B testing results in more revenue, a more addictive app, and less user satisfaction, because they're not testing for anything beneficial to the user, because at least with FB, you're not the customer, their advertisers are the customer.

[ouid]

This is so wrong in its conclusion, that its hard to know where to start. First, we should be clear that we are talking about involuntary, undisclosed A/B testing.

I have not experienced a product become better for the user as a result of involuntary A/B testing in my entire adult life.

Producers and consumer have both an adversarial relationship and a mutually beneficial relationship, and the distinction between these two is essentially the split between voluntary A/B tests and involuntary ones. In the adversarial component, the producer is trying to figure out how to extract more money from the consumer, without improving the product. Alternatively, (and equivalently), how to make the product cheaper, but also worse, in a way that yhe customer doesnt notice (with their wallet). A proactive version of the "market for lemons".

For instance, if you A/B test your cancellation process to minimize the number of people who cancel their subscriptions, you will almost certainly do something that makes you some additional money, and is also unambiguously evil.

Any A/B testing that is mutual benefit to consumers and producers can be done with consent, by volunteers. And the miniscule amount of scientific rigor you would lose by doing so is not worth the tremendous sacrifice we have seen in quality of consumables in the past 2 decades (probably longer, but i do not have the personal experience to go longer)

You might be compelled to describe involuntary A/B testing as a strategy for maximizing evil subject to the constraint that it be legal, but it often dips its toes into seeing what is illegal but still profitable, and is capable of fundamentally undermining our legal system and even our political system.

The technology has grown more powerful. The addition of computers that can optimize essentially arbitrary objective functions has serious existential implications for humanity.

A blanket ban on the practice, incurring the total dissolution of any corporate entity found guilty of the practice of involuntary A/B testing, would be a start.

[dlkf]

> I have not experienced a product become better for the user as a result of involuntary A/B testing in my entire adult life.

If you did, how would you know?

[ouid]

well, for starters, there would have to have been a product that improved at all. Those are already rare enough that I can enumerate them, and in each of those instances involuntary A/B testing can be ruled out for other reasons.

When craigslist added the map that shows you where all of the people are offering the thing you are interested in. That was a very good change, but thats pretty far from how craigslist operates.

When dominos stopped serving hot glue on cardboard, its pretty easy to see how that didnt come about by furtive A/B testing. They were pretty confident people would like the new pizza more than the old pizza. So they told them about it. Boy did that work for dominos.

That actually speaks more generally to my point. If you're making a change that you think people will like, you tell them about it, because even if it turns out that they dont like it more, the fact that they thought they would and you did it generates quite a lot of good will for them.

[epolanski]

> And without A/B testing, every product you use would be worse

Imagine thinking that seriously.

[dlkf]

It’s a completely ubiquitous practice. So either it does generally help, or every software company ever doesn’t know what they are doing.

To me the latter view is the one that’s hard to take seriously.

[joehendrey]

UX is orthogonal to the thing most web-based software companies optimise for. Unless users are paying for the service, what the company cares about is user engagement, not user experience. It's not that every software company ever doesn't know what they're doing, it's just that what they're doing is _at best_ tangentially related to improving UX. It is clearly not in the user's best interest that they feel compelled to check Facebook frequently throughout the day, or spend hours scrolling through their feed. You can spin that as the company just improving the experience so that people want to keep using it, but fundamentally it is intentional psychological manipulation.

Within a university, research with human subjects is required to pass an ethical review before it is allowed to proceed. Given the scale and impact of the research conducted by Facebook on its users, it is entirely reasonable to hold them to the same standard.

[dlkf]

> what they're doing is _at best_ tangentially related to improving UX . . . You can spin that as the company just improving the experience so that people want to keep using it, but fundamentally it is intentional psychological manipulation.

So we agree that ab testing is good for optimizing toward a numerical objective. You then seem to think that either:

A) There are simply no numerical objectives that correlate with good ux or

B) Every software company ever is optimizing toward perverse incentives by which they take more money from their users while making their products worse

It’s probably B that you believe, and this is such a myopic and paternalistic view. There are a couple cases where it’s a problem, eg cancellation flows. But this problem is orthogonal to AB testing (try cancelling your newspaper subscription in 1994). AB testing is mostly just trying to improve the rate at which people sign up or buy something, and in this case, your objection hinges on the hidden premise that people are idiots.

> Within a university, research with human subjects is required to pass an ethical review before it is allowed to proceed. Given the scale and impact of the research conducted by Facebook on its users, it is entirely reasonable to hold them to the same standard.

One man’s ponens is another’s tollens. See: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/

[kat_rebelo]

A/B testing is a completely different thing from hiring Behavioral Psychologists to design your platform to be as addictive as possible

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30962055-irresistible

[pas]

this is a categorical error

obviously "A/B testing" is not "hiring psychologists", because one is in the category of experimental methods the other one is about human resources

yet there are obvious connections. A/B testing is used to increase "conversion", which is profitability. which is the same fuckin' thing as addictiveness in case of a site where you pay with your eyeballs

[cj]

A/B testing compared to creating algorithms that prey on human vulnerabilities to drive “engagement” are 2 categorically different things.

Absolutely, go bananas A/B testing different colors for a “Sign Up” button or testing different pricing models.

But let’s not go bananas optimizing algorithms that are damaging to users mental health at a massive scale.

[mrinterweb]

Let's not confuse or conflate A/B testing with making ethical decisions.

[worik]

> but every company in existence does this to some extent

That is untrue.

A/B testing is not the same thing as seeing how bad your users' mental state becomes if you muck with what they read.

A/B testing is a tool. It can be used for good or evil. That was Facebook's choice how to use it.

[s1artibartfast]

That doesn't make any sense. You decide what they read. You would want to know if it's harming their mental state. Closing your eyes to the impact you have does not negate the impact

[danaris]

The problem is, Facebook didn't do it to make sure they wouldn't cause psychological damage.

They did it to make sure they could keep people's attention, despite the psychological damage.

[s1artibartfast]

Is that the stated goal or your projection?

[lanstin]

It isn’t just the one thing, it is a pattern where when given a choice between respected a sense of ethics and decency or taking more money, Facebook as an org has at every instance that is publically known, has taken the money. The high salaries seem to be justified not by their technical skill but their willingness to do what they are told for momey without regard to conscience.

Read the whistle blower report, witness the evolution from seeing content from your friends posted in less addictive chronological feed to addictive content your friends like in the internet sorted by addictive news. Hell, the site started as a PHP hack to creep on pretty women. They sold a bunch of data to foreign adversaries. For years, they let people sell ads to Nazis. They don’t give the people faced with the psychologically brutal jobs of moderation get benefits. They have been a platform for genocide and government surveillance.

I might be missing some examples of them missing some money to do the right thing, but nothing comes to mind.

[three_seagrass]

IIRC it wasn't a generic A/B test but an experiment intentionally designed to manipulate the emotion of users and measure their reactions.

In research, these types of experiments typically require consent..

[bigbacaloa]

Not every company consciously does unethical things, no.

[zeruch]

A/B testing (which is getting users to respond/react to a UX event, and choosing which outcome is more suited to the business) is considerably different from "can we manipulate users up front, to perceive or react to things assertively and programmatically, even if against their interests?"

[webmobdev]

You have a good point. But let's not forget that the Nazi's and the Japanese used to do incredibly invasive medical tests on human beings in the name of "science". (Even the Americans have done political and medical experiments on their citizens, using the CIA, on African Americans and criminals). All these are condemned today by the scientific community because of it caused great harm (or even death) to the subjects who never gave their consent to such experiments. The psychological experiments conducted by FB on its users was equally bad because it looked to trigger emotions in the users (a useful feature for an advertising platform), some of which could cause users to go into depression. I don't know if the FB people conducting those experiments are aware that even mild depression causes great stress on an individual, and serious depression triggers suicidal impulses.

(This is not an attack on you or your otherwise valid point. Just a reminder that people should be mindful of their ethical obligations to get informed consent and not cause harm to others with their experiments).

[throw827474737]

Nope, not every, really such an ignorant statement.

[Lutger]

I doubt that the mentioned 'psychological experiments' are just A/B testing. There is a very strong case to be made that Trump and Brexit would not have happened without Facebook, and those are just two examples.

[kube-system]

Maybe every company financed by adtech does this. But that's a far cry from "every company in existence".

[dr_dshiv]

That is such a poor reason to not like Meta, among many, many reasons. All meta did was publish their results. The backlash ensured that no other companies shared results—but AB testing is bigger than ever across the industry.

Now if you had said “fuck meta because my feed is filled with an unintelligible mix of baby photos and political screeds,” I’d totally follow.

[ShamelessC]

There's always this, as well -

"On 6 December 2021, approximately a hundred Rohingya refugees launched a $150 billion lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that it did not do enough to prevent the proliferation of anti-Rohingya hate speech because it was interested in prioritizing engagement."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_content_management_co...

[jrm4]

I'm sorry, but the "A/B" responses to this sentiment are some of the worst euphemistic cope I've ever seen. You all really need to get out of your "tech" shells and take seriously this idea that "running nonconsensual psych experiments on humans" is a fundamentally evil thing to do.

[jahsome]

I am interested in this line of logic, but I'm not sure I would go so far.

I feel engaging in commerce in any way at all is impossible without being "evil" under this definition.

Aren't advertisements at their core unconsented psychological manipulation? What about retail store design? Is providing customer service altogether just manipulation?

I think I take issue with the word "evil." It seems to imply a certain malice or intent to harm, which just isn't logical, given the context.

[FridgeSeal]

> Aren't advertisements at their core unconsented psychological manipulation?

Yes. 100% yes.

> What about retail store design?

Also yes.

Advertising exists to try and make you purchase product “x”, regardless of whether you need it, or it meets your requirements. Even “harmless” display advertising exists to gently push to mind into forming the desired emotional association with a product.

Store layouts are well documented for being deliberately anti-efficient: they make you walk past everything else to find the things you need, with the goal of exposing you to more advertising and product placement. Combine that with strategies like putting sweets and other “low friction” products at the checkout, where you’re more likely to make a spur of the moment emotional decision under pressure, or be hassled by your children for sweets, and you have something that is inherently exploitative and morally questionable at a minimum.

Evil is probably too high-modality, but unethical and exploitative are definitely suitable.

[jahsome]

I agree wholeheartedly with everything you were kind enough to share. You even elaborate on the things which I was to lazy to expand on myself. So I think we're on the same page.

I only took issue with the choice of "evil" because I am working on curbing my own hyperbole and sweeping generalizations.

[jrm4]

I don't care much what the word (or any word) means, I care what it does.

Nothing wrong with calling "Facebook" evil. It's not a person, it's an artificial entity. It can take it. (I too would be more reluctant when it comes to people)

[jrm4]

That's a really bad and useless definition of evil, and we should have figured that out a long time ago. Can't just say "we were following orders," or "that's just business."

And no, I can't give you a clear brightline test right now to determine this. It takes homework.

But.

If you want to A/B test whether people prefer blue chewing-gum to green, be my guest.

If you want to A/B test for literal depression and sell stuff to people based on that, you're probably evil.

The line's somewhere in between there. Now we know where Meta has chosen to go on some of this; and again, this is from WHAT IS KNOWN TO BE PUBLIC.

The safest thing is to assume the worst, then. May they rot.

[jahsome]

Thanks for the clarification, specifically the examples. I agree with the spirit of your conclusion, but it's far outside my expertise (psychology) and experience (haven't used FB since about 2012).

"They" is unnecessarily vague I guess. It's not fair to write off the entire population of Facebook staff... There are surely a substantial chunk of employees who were entirely unaware of these tactics.

It's easy to claim an organization is evil. Less so for individuals, and with good reason. There's something to be said for remembering to humanize people, even those most "undeserving."

[jrm4]

But it doesn't have to be outside of your expertise to criticize it anyway, that's the point I want to make.

There is no harm in me saying out loud "Facebook is an evil company" even if I'm completely wrong, because they are so powerful. It would valuable for everyone to scream at Facebook at being evil because that would force them to show and prove that they are not.

We shouldn't get stuck on being "accurate." Throwing rocks is not just okay, it's a good idea if it forces the powerful party to act/respond.

As for the individuals -- it's their job to defend the company. If that hurts their feelings or whatever, too bad. I don't care and neither should you (presuming that Facebook is potentially very harmful.)

[alasdair_]

>"running nonconsensual psych experiments on humans" is a fundamentally evil thing to do.

If a store owner puts two different candy bars at the register to see which one sells more, is that an evil thing?

[joehendrey]

That's not a psychological experiment - it's barely even an experiment. If someone chooses one over the other, what have they learnt? Are they controlling or even measuring any other variables? It's also not non-consensual. If you go to a store you expect to have options of things to buy - that's the entire point of a store. It's not even an A/B test! Everyone sees both options and makes an informed choice.

[concordDance]

Ignore the phrasal connotations and focus on the actual reality. What traits make nonconsensual experiments evil? Do they apply in this case?

When someone tries out a different way of greeting strangers at a party, are they being evil? What if they write down the results?

[aussiesnack]

I'll cede no ground to anyone on loathing the corporate world, to the extent that I've all but abandoned work and the cash economy (at the cost of considerable personal privation).

But humans are complex beings, and it's just realistic to view us all with some nuance rather than casually tossing everyone into good/evil baskets. The gp outlined an example of decent behaviour, and it remains just that regardless of our attitudes on other grounds towards Zuckersnuffles and/or Meta. Even murderers can be kind and decent people given in some contexts (witnessed at first hand).

[jahsome]

I understand the sentiment. I agree there should be accountability.

With that in mind, I'd like to point out root merely expressed an anecdote about above and beyond humane treatment of employees from the CEO. Parent described the hacker-friendly culture. Those appear to be first hand accounts.

How does your comment relate contribute to that discussion?

Further, how does over the top and genericized outrage and harm wishing on a cohort of innocent people advance society in any meaningful ways?

[zaptheimpaler]

Your argument is essentially that the company treated its employees well, so who cares what it did to users. Who gave you the right to decide the discussion is framed around how Meta treats employees rather than what it does for the entire world?

[jahsome]

I made no such argument. It is counter productive and disengenous state otherwise.

I asked a question, no conclusions drawn. If I had a point, it's that the comment was off topic with regard to the comment it replied to, and warrants its own tree of discussion. It was a rant; There wasn't even an attempt at a segue or good faith effort to provide contrast.

What "gives me the right to decide how the discussion is framed" are the hn guidelines (which you violated yourself by presenting a strawman).

[aussiesnack]

But is it compulsory to be so Manichaean? Have you really never seen someone (or group of people, or company) behave well in one context, and badly in another?

[zaptheimpaler]

I understand perfectly well that they are both depending on context.

All I'm saying is that the harm they inflict on billions of people outside the company outweighs the good they do for thousands inside. Just because there's both good and bad doesn't mean the degree of each cannot be weighed at all.

[aussiesnack]

Your redoubled insistence on a clearly irrelevant totalising good/bad judgement as a purported response to a quite specific comment about labour practices is more than a tad onanistic.

[zaptheimpaler]

ouch okay lol good burn. I like your love of the English language you taught me some interesting words.

[webmobdev]

Work culture and values both matter. I found @Leires comment insightful because it jarred me to the reality that while we are appreciating the good in someone, we shouldn't forget their capability to be bad. Can a Gandhian be comfortable working at Hitler's gas chamber? Both had amazing leadership qualities. What attracts us to either of them are the values we think they represent.

[jahsome]

The comments were specifically about Zuckerberg's character. The replies should be about Zuckerberg's character. The reply in question didn't even mention him.

[smsm42]

So, Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has been used as a source of electioneering data for years before that. See for example Eitan Hersh's testimony. In fact, I've read articles bragging about how inventive the political technology using social networking profiles is, for a couple of electoral cycles before that - they may still be somewhere in HN archives even. And of course, selling the very same data to advertisers, maybe repackaged a bit differently but the same source and same data set, is the whole business model of Facebook. And it somehow never bothered anyone until Cambridge Analytica. Why is that?

[artificial]

Most don't have a problem uploading address books and contacts into these platforms. I think it depends which team it is. Companies? Cool! Political Party you agree with, sure! They mined the social graph and Zuck reached out to them and said they're on the same team and didn't restrict access while they mined 50 million people. Don't forget Zygna!

[treeman79]

Bigger concern is Facebook actively blocking stories the government doesn’t like.

[smsm42]

Yet bigger concern is the government blatantly violating the constitution by instructing Facebook to do that, and nobody stopping them. At least Facebook's bad behavior is within the law. The supreme law of the land explicitly prohibits the government from restricting the speech based on their politics. They do it anyway, and no consequences whatsoever. I think it's concerning.

[j0hnyl]

It's naive of you to think that this is a Meta problem. Just by surfing the internet you're subject to all the same psyops by organizations that are arguably even worse than CA.

[smodo]

It doesn't say that's what they think. About Meta though, we know. 'Others are worse' is not a convincing argument.

[mgraczyk]

But hating everything makes your ideology prima facie bad

[rossjudson]

You seem very sure of what you know, and very confident about how the people working at Meta think and act. Do you have any direct experience? Or know anyone who works there?

[jjav]

Not OP but the things OP is saying are well covered in the press, no need to know anyone there.

[sweezyjeezy]

I think they were making a statement about the company not the staff.

[wahnfrieden]

Those are just facts that have been reported credibly. There’s worse they didn’t mention. Why are you being so reactionary?

[rossjudson]

I never stop being amused by lazy oversimplification. I never stop being amazed by the level of trust some have in lazily oversimplified media. Meta is a city, not a person.

[wahnfrieden]

whatever dude

[adamsb6]

Starting around 2016 the New York Times decided that coverage had to be negative: https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192

Consider how this may have helped you to develop your opinion.

[richbell]

They gave specific examples of negative things that Facebook has done. This is a pretty shallow dismissal of their criticism, even if their comment is a bit heavy-handed.

[adamsb6]

I won't rehash the A/B discussion, there's plenty of other people talking about it.

The Cambridge Analytica thing probably didn't have a meaningful impact on the elections. Facebook was dumb to allow partner apps access to so much data and rely on those partners to follow Facebook's policies, but they recognized the mistake and probably overcorrected.

All the other coverage probably serves to reinforce and amplify negative sentiments about Facebook, and a ton of it wasn't deserved. People cite the Rohingya, I remember also a news cycle about Facebook profiting from hate speech.

Those things happened, but Facebook had also built probably the most expensive and effective hate speech filtering operation in the world. That it be 100% effective is not a reasonable goal. With billions of pieces of content even 99.999% effectiveness will result in examples that the press can point to reinforce a narrative about Facebook profiting from hate speech.

I doubt there ever was any profit in serving hate speech. The ad revenue from filter misses would not have been big enough to pay for the filtering operation itself.

[richbell]

> The Cambridge Analytica thing probably didn't have a meaningful impact on the elections.

That's a pretty big claim to make without evidence. At the very least I think we can agree that political parties wouldn't be investing so much money into social media campaigns (analytics, marketing, etc.) if they didn't think it was impactful.

[ahoho]

There is ample evidence that CA had no impact. They were charlatans trying to sell snake oil; IIRC the underlying algorithm was based on a simple factorization of a User x Likes matrix that did not have substantial predictive value.

There is plenty to lay at the feet of Meta, but I've always thought the CA scandal was an overreaction.

[adamsb6]

Their models just weren't that useful:

https://towardsdatascience.com/effect-of-cambridge-analytica...

> Sumpter analyzed the accuracy of Cambridge Analytica’s regression models in his book ‘Outnumbered.’ He used a publicly available dataset created by Michal Kosinski and his colleagues, a psychologist, who created an anonymized database of 20,000 Facebook users. Of the 20,000 Facebook users 19,742 were US-based, and of that amount 4,744 had registered their preferred political party Democratic or Republican, and had also liked over 50 Facebook pages. Sumpter first aimed to test the accuracy of regression models in general, and so created a model which predicted political party allegiance based on Facebook page likes. He concluded that the regression model worked “very well for hardcore Democrats and Republicans” but “does not reveal anything about the 76 percent of users who did not put their political allegiance on Facebook” (Sumpter, pg. 52–53). He also describes how just because the model may have revealed, for instance, that Democrats tend to like Harry Potter, it does not necessarily mean that other Harry Potter fans like Democrats. Therefore, a strategy employed by Democrats to aim to get Harry Potter fans to vote, may not necessarily benefit them.

You'd probably have better spent your money by using party-owned voter databases to create custom audiences based on email addresses. Everything I've seen points to Cambridge Analytica being mainly an operation to grift campaign dollars. From the same article:

> CEO Alexander Nix himself corroborates these results. He claimed in his testimony to members of the British parliament’s ‘Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee,’. He contended that Kogan’s dataset wasn’t very useful and that made up a tiny part of their overall strategy for the 2016 United States presidential election. How do we resonate this admission, with his presentation at the Concordia summit, in which Nix openly bragged about the ability to wield Facebook data to tune an incredibly powerful instrument that significantly impacts elections? The answer to that came from Nix himself in his testimony, claiming that he has in the past used hyperbole when pitching his company to potential clients. This view is corroborated by Kogan who mentions how “Nix is trying to promote (the personality algorithm) because he has a strong financial incentive to tell a story about how Cambridge Analytica have a secret weapon” (Sumpter, pg. 54).

[carimura]

Billions of people use the service for "free". As long as everyone knows they are what's for sale, the rest makes sense. Any company of this size is going to sway discourse so it's time to accept that. I for one do not and thus deleted our family accounts long ago.

[ClumsyPilot]

> I for one do not and thus deleted our family accounts long ago.

I have seen many people brainwashed by highly targeted ads and conspiracies that found them on facebook. Those people vote, break into congress, etc.

deleting your individual account doesn't change that

[hutzlibu]

"deleting your individual account doesn't change that "

It shows, that a life without FB is possible. The more people do it, the easier it gets.

Until the network effect is overcome.

[andirk]

Remember that Facebook "whistleblower" revealed that Facebook "put profits over people"? That will never not be funny.

[blobbers]

Take my downvote. "Psychological experiments" on users is what every company; user and market research. Enabling "psyops" is simply building a platform; this isn't the first platform that his been misused or scraped for other purposes. You get spam robo dialers? It wasn't from meta... etc. etc. etc.

[concordDance]

Do you just fundamentally hate the concept of an A/B test? Or do you just hate the idea of letting people outside the company know the results?

[throwawaymeta4]

Its much much worse than just psychological experiments. Meta currently stands accused as an enabler of a genocide in Myanmar [1], and provides a platform to spread massive hate against Muslims in India and elsewhere [2,3,4,5]. For folks trying to do bothsidesism here and bring out how great they've been, I am sorry but there is no excuse for enablers of Fascism.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... 2. https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-hate-speech-india-... 3. https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-services-are-used-to-s... 4. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/08/985143101/stop-lying-muslim-r... 5. https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg...

[Siira]

Conducting “psychological” experiments without “consent” is the only way to do science. Perhaps in this instance the knowledge gained is used in the ad industry and not benefiting society, but the nature of the research is to be admired and replicated.

[dang]

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33534643.

[PKop]

either they charge for social media or they attempt to grow by ad targeting, or social media is maybe banned through regulation to stop what you describe.

I think maybe your beef is with the nature of technology today and/or our current culture that enables/glorifies it's mass use. What's the solution?

[heavyset_go]

Don't forget that the company profited from being a platform used to organize a genocide[1].

[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

[headhasthoughts]

What's wrong about conducting psychological experiments on users? Everyone who signed up for Facebook agreed to the ToS.

[camdat]

> Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent

Link pls

[WoahNoun]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-...

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1416405111

[camdat]

Anything from newer than 10 years ago?

[worik]

That is when it happened.

[leesec]

>Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent

This is a really malicious way to describe showing two users the same button but in different locations

[prezjordan]

This is not what happened https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...

[vippy]

Yeah, because that's definitely what folks are concerned with. A/B testing of button locations, and not feed algorithms designed to manipulate users.

[metalliqaz]

Oh come on, you know that's not what he is talking about. He is talking about algorithmic engagement-keeping.