alecb (u/alecb) - Readit News

alecb commented on Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports reuters.com/technology/me... · Posted by u/belter

kelnos · a year ago

It saddens me that taking an ethical stance is now derisively considered "virtue signaling".

I would never work at Meta, not because refusing to do so would make me feel good, but because working there would make me feel like I'm making the world a worse place.

alecb · a year ago

The idea of having a moral compass is antagonistic to the worldview of a lot of people in tech, so they are instinctively dismissive or condescending to anyone who does.

alecb commented on NYC jail complex to be restored into citywide green energy hub movemnt.net/nyc-jail-comp... · Posted by u/geox

spywaregorilla · 3 years ago

What does civilian oversight over conditions and corrections officers mean in practice?

alecb · 3 years ago

it means that essentially the corrections officer union has gummed up any and all reforms passed through legislation (think video cameras in public areas, anti-violence training, etc.). this has led to a situation where there is a preventable suicide about once every 2 weeks in the prison and state officials are calling for federal intervention since they can't effectively change conditions; https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-man-dies-r...

alecb commented on NYC jail complex to be restored into citywide green energy hub movemnt.net/nyc-jail-comp... · Posted by u/geox

alecb · 3 years ago

for those unaware, even in deep blue New York, Riker's has been run as a Guantanamo-style prison camp where there is no civilian oversight over conditions or corrections officers. to me, the most appalling aspect has been the amount of people locked up indefinitely over misdemeanors and thrown into gen pop to basically die

alecb commented on How to succeed at Meta teamblind.com/post/How-to... · Posted by u/donsupreme

ButterBiscuits · 3 years ago

> There's nothing wrong in working at a FAANG for the money

Sure, if you believe that making more money is the only thing that matters in this world. If you take this logic to its extreme you can justify anything if it makes you rich. You're simultaneously criticizing a system while defending your participation in it.

There are lots of things wrong with working at a FAANG for the money. If you don't like how Amazon treats their warehouse workers, don't work at Amazon. If you don't like how Facebook perpetuates fake news, don't work at Facebook. If you don't like Google's search monopoly, don't work at Google. Just because the world is a shitty place doesn't mean you can excuse yourself for being a shitty person.

alecb · 3 years ago

If you believe Facebook is terrible, isn't taking a high-paid position there and gamifying their internal processes in your favor while not helping a floundering business plug the holes in its sinking ship the real way to take direct action? If several hundred people independently did this on their own (and perhaps not even intentionally), it could have a meaningful impact in taking down one of the worst corporations in human history.

alecb commented on Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era axios.com/2022/07/25/suns... · Posted by u/jedwhite

safety1st · 3 years ago

To quote the article Facebook really has "unleashed waves of democratic empowerment" among the youth in certain countries where democracy is not present or is under serious assault and the domestic media is censored. If some random dictatorship has strict anti-speech laws Meta is way more lax about following them than the domestic media (who are just going to get arrested if they don't). This really has created a generation of young people in some places who have a less censored view of the world and have a more pro-democratic, pro-egalitarian, anti-dictatorship bent. The only people who miss this are the ones whose reality is generally confined to an e.g. US-only point of view where democracy is secure and stable and the only "threats" to it are basically a joke, like the whole panic over January 6, and you've never seen tanks roll into the capital and depose your elected officials.

In countries where real threats to democracy like that exist, Facebook and Twitter have played a huge role in communicating suppressed information, aiding protest organization, etc. and by and large the kids are into it.

As for a pivot to a Tiktok-style experience -- that's a hard pass for me, it's like mixing cocaine with television. The kids are into that too and it's pretty scary to watch them switch off their brains, set aside their humanity and obediently wait for the ML algorithm's function calls to twitch_human_thumb() that arise every few seconds. Of course people were saying something similar about MTV, remote controls and the boob tube back in the day and somehow we survived...

Ultimately if you're Meta and the government tells you it's OK for you to sell cocaine, after all they're OK with your Chinese competitor importing it -- who are you to say no?

Under the current climate my only confusion is why we haven't let Coke reintroduce their namesake ingredient to their formula. Or to use your example yes I could totally see Taco Bell lacing their meat with drugs if it was allowed!

alecb · 3 years ago

I agree with most of your point but why be dismissive of the very evident reality of how corroded democracy has become in the Western world in large part because of how Facebook-poisoned certain demographics and their elected representives have become?

https://twitter.com/USA_Polling/status/1552006668514369536

Two-thirds of respondents (67.2%, 95% CI 66.1%, 68.4%) perceived “a serious threat to our democracy,” but more than 40% agreed that “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy” and that “in America, native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants.” Half (50.1%) agreed that “in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States.”

alecb commented on Alphabet Q2 FY2022 Earnings [pdf] abc.xyz/investor/static/p... · Posted by u/ra7

adam_arthur · 3 years ago

Aren't Amazon ads just sellers prioritizing their listing on the Amazon page? Seems totally different from the ad market for Google

alecb · 3 years ago

Amazon has a pretty developed video and display advertising market for publishers called Unified Ad Marketplace; for our business, it's typically in second behind AdX/Adsense for revenue and impressions won. That said, I'm not seeing any revenue breakout from Amazon that specifies how much this side of the business makes.

alecb commented on Alden Global Capital, the secretive hedge fund gutting newsrooms theatlantic.com/magazine/... · Posted by u/Tycho

slownews45 · 4 years ago

As a long time reader of all three I don't disagree. I did think the NY Times and WaPo were pretty much equal in the kind of partisan baiting stuff (note I'm a dem donor but tired a bit of the sometimes comically bad "news" slants). Even though I'm left on the issues I've been enjoying WSJ though I skip opinion section / a bit less raw clickbait type writing. Still vote for the left - but I think it probably could use a somewhat mellower set of media bubbles - but maybe the market is just not there anymore.

alecb · 4 years ago

WSJ's reporting is very good but their editorial board is maybe the most off-kilter in the entire industry; like 1/3rd of their op-eds are asking why the Supreme Court won't take up a case to allow employers to bring whips to the office.