Has mark zuckerberg ever expressed any regret for the fact that his platforms have played a role in instigating conflict and lethal violence in many different parts of the world over the years or is this his only regret?
Ultimately to maximize engagement you want to get people obsessed with something. Whether it’s sometimes violent racism, vaccine paranoia, national politics, whatever, you just need to get them obsessed, and then they will spend hours every day on your site feeding this beast and go insane. Then you will sell lots of ads and get rich.
In this case, the government was saying: “Hey we have no problem in general with you driving people insane, but in this particular topic, having a bunch of antivax lunatics ain’t helping with the pandemic.”
IMO the problem is not the content per se, it’s the massive psychological manipulation. It’s incompatible with a free, functioning democracy.
> Ultimately to maximize engagement you want to get people obsessed with something. Whether it’s sometimes violent racism, vaccine paranoia, national politics, whatever, you just need to get them obsessed, and then they will spend hours every day on your site feeding this beast and go insane. Then you will sell lots of ads and get rich.
Yes. This is exactly what Elon is doing with X at the moment.
It looks like there is a come-back of free speech on big tech. Probably because their interests and some government's interests do not align as of lately . Not that I 'm complaining but if this is really a trend, it took way too long to take us back to 2001
Also interesting that the AP article doesn't mention the hunter biden story censorhip that zuck mentions in the same letter.
There's no such thing as free speech on a private platform. If you disagree, go walk on set to make your views known tonight on the 6 o'clock news and see how that works out for you.
There certainly is...Zuck can censor whatever he wants but just because it's a private platform doesn't mean the gov can censor it, or pressure him to do so. You saw the "White House pressured Facebook" part...right?
When the plague struck, I was living in NY city, in a large apartment building. *Every* *single* *day* one of my neighbors was wheeled out the front doors, feet-first, never to return.
Then it was *two* neighbors a day...
The hospital beds were filling up so fast, they were building tent hospitals in Central Park. So many bodies were piling up in morgues that there was serious talk about having mass burials.
It is very easy to armchair quarterback how this should have played out--5 years later, with the benefit of hindsight. Yes, lots of things could have been handled better. Yes, we should do postmortems to find out what could be done better next time.
But FFS, both the government and corporate leaders had to make decisions in real time--decisions they knew would have real consequences, and decisions they knew had the possibility of being wrong. They didn't have the luxury of perfection. It was a once-in-a-century pandemic, and they had to act in the face of partial information.
All things considered, they did a pretty good job.
While I was in NYC, my sister was living in a rural town, population of around 100. She was mystified why our governor was making us wash our hands and wear masks. Why, they weren't doing any of that in her town, and nobody died at all!! How could we just let our civil liberties be violated like that!!!
Friend, I'm only telling you what I saw with my own eyes. NYC was one of the first hit, because it one of the most connected cities with the rest of the world, and it was one of the hardest hit, because of the very high population density.
There was no one-size-fits-all policy--some policies were more apropos for rural places, some were more apropos for dense urban centers. But that doesn't mean that the policies apropos to a farmhouse in a 1,000-acre cornfield would have had better results in NYC.
The use of "some" here in the headline seems dishonest and diminishing of what was done. Like, "some people were effected by the car crash".
Technically true, but effectively more narrative than journalism, especially since among that censored "some" was a lot of true information and experiences.
I wonder if this is coming up just before the election because of the Harris campaign’s suggested policy of capital gains tax on unrealised gains for people who have over $100m in assets? I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax including taking out loans against their own share portfolios.
EDIT: surprisingly aggressive downvoting on this, seems reasonable to make the point that a lot of owners of social media sites have billions of dollars in taxes riding on a Trump win if this policy happens.
>I wonder if this is coming up just before the election because of the Harris campaign suggesting capital gains tax on unrealised gains for people who have over $100m in assets?
say what? If that's the case, then we can expect many wealthy individuals with significant influence to speak out, such as Jeff Bezos with his ownership of The Washington Post.
Of course, but that's what the opposing party should be doing--just like Democrats were correct to point out all the foibles of Trump. Nobody should just get a free pass.
I'm firmly against taxing unrealised gains - for the fact that they are unrealised.
What we should do is re-think the capital gains tax, especially when using securities in lieu of personal income. That's how the C-suite has been avoiding a lot of income tax, and it's not just people having $100M in assets.
Also, the top tax rate should be increased, especially for incomes above $10M.
Likewise, the FICA cap should be increased.
Those few tweaks put us in really good shape, without resorting to taxing unrealised gains.
Sure, I’m definitely not against better solutions but a small sliver of people owning everything and the middle class and poor increasingly owning less and less of the wealth over generations needs to be looked at if we want people to be able to own homes and have consumers to buy things.
Readit News
In this case, the government was saying: “Hey we have no problem in general with you driving people insane, but in this particular topic, having a bunch of antivax lunatics ain’t helping with the pandemic.”
IMO the problem is not the content per se, it’s the massive psychological manipulation. It’s incompatible with a free, functioning democracy.
Yes. This is exactly what Elon is doing with X at the moment.
Also interesting that the AP article doesn't mention the hunter biden story censorhip that zuck mentions in the same letter.
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41365868
Deleted Comment
Then it was *two* neighbors a day...
The hospital beds were filling up so fast, they were building tent hospitals in Central Park. So many bodies were piling up in morgues that there was serious talk about having mass burials.
It is very easy to armchair quarterback how this should have played out--5 years later, with the benefit of hindsight. Yes, lots of things could have been handled better. Yes, we should do postmortems to find out what could be done better next time.
But FFS, both the government and corporate leaders had to make decisions in real time--decisions they knew would have real consequences, and decisions they knew had the possibility of being wrong. They didn't have the luxury of perfection. It was a once-in-a-century pandemic, and they had to act in the face of partial information.
All things considered, they did a pretty good job.
While I was in NYC, my sister was living in a rural town, population of around 100. She was mystified why our governor was making us wash our hands and wear masks. Why, they weren't doing any of that in her town, and nobody died at all!! How could we just let our civil liberties be violated like that!!!
Friend, I'm only telling you what I saw with my own eyes. NYC was one of the first hit, because it one of the most connected cities with the rest of the world, and it was one of the hardest hit, because of the very high population density.
There was no one-size-fits-all policy--some policies were more apropos for rural places, some were more apropos for dense urban centers. But that doesn't mean that the policies apropos to a farmhouse in a 1,000-acre cornfield would have had better results in NYC.
Technically true, but effectively more narrative than journalism, especially since among that censored "some" was a lot of true information and experiences.
EDIT: surprisingly aggressive downvoting on this, seems reasonable to make the point that a lot of owners of social media sites have billions of dollars in taxes riding on a Trump win if this policy happens.
say what? If that's the case, then we can expect many wealthy individuals with significant influence to speak out, such as Jeff Bezos with his ownership of The Washington Post.
What we should do is re-think the capital gains tax, especially when using securities in lieu of personal income. That's how the C-suite has been avoiding a lot of income tax, and it's not just people having $100M in assets.
Also, the top tax rate should be increased, especially for incomes above $10M.
Likewise, the FICA cap should be increased.
Those few tweaks put us in really good shape, without resorting to taxing unrealised gains.