Growth rate is not an excuse for the evils that have been enabled by Facebook. It is perfectly within Facebook's power to slow its growth to a rate it can actually manage.

And don't play the "shareholder" card. Zuck is the majority shareholder, and can do whatever he wants with the company, including making it not be evil.

Is there another app that, indeed, connects the world?

E-mail. The PSTN. Text messages. Actual mail.

WhatsApp, YouTube, and probably several hundred others that I don't know about because I'm not much of an SMS person.

Also, I've had the same cell phone number for approximately 20 years (and I only changed the number then because I wanted one with an area code in the city I was doing business in...which seems like a quaint requirement today). I am legally allowed to take my number with me when I change carriers. I have no legal right, or technical means, to carry my facebook profile URL with me if I move somewhere else. I hate phones, but if we're talking about longevity of connectivity...phones do alright compared to social networks.

It is still a minority in my personal experience (which is what matters for me).

> Also, I've had the same cell phone number for approximately 20 years

I think you're probably a few generations above me, probably none of my friends still have the same phone number, I know I've changed a dozen of times in the last 10 years. It's easy to keep the same cellphone number if you live all your life in the same country, but that's not my life or my friends life.

It looks like most of the election stuff was normal humans reposting things of their own volition. Yeah, there were lots of lies in it, some of it was actual fake newspapers being run out of Macedonia or whatever, but are we making facebook a scapegoat just for being the medium? Before 2016, I never heard anyone saying FB had an obligation to fact-check political speech..

Maybe we, as a society, need to figure out how to handle social media rather than expecting a guy like Zuck to do it for us.

Here's my beef, though: People still did that. Facebook isn't your daddy, and Zuckerberg will never be a different person.

Facebook isn't the problem. We are.

Especially if you go to great lengths to keep the bidders anonymous, or even merely allow them to make themselves unknown to you because “we can’t scale that”.

You make it sound like FB knew that the accounts that "...posed as fans of pop stars and national heroes" were run by a military operation.

> because "we can't scale that"

And how would you scale that?

I don't think there is any easy solution (or even an "ideal" solution).

Not to mention that FB is on now dealing with actual dam military operations by an authoritarian government. How would you defend yourself against that?

If I was Facebook, ot if I was a government?

If Facebook: First idea, probably naive, is to require large minimum spending per advertiser so that all can be checked manually.

If government: I’d pass a law requiring all advertisers be checked to some standard, which is what I care about, and let Facebook invent its own solution.

I want to be clear: I don’t care if that bankrupts them, any more than I care about bankrupting surgeons who can’t afford soap.

Obviously in hindsight some posts should have been censored and accounts banned to prevent violence, but I'm honestly not surprised they failed to.. We're expecting some dweebs in the valley to understand Myanmar social dynamics?

If they do business there? Yes! If they cannot hire people who can understand it for them, that is still a problem. If they merely forget, that is still a problem.

Facebook is directly responsible for mass murder (not only in Myanmar, but feel free to look up Sri Lanke, The Philippines, Cambodia and probably a few other countries).

The "Well, Facebook is only a medium and those evil folks could have performed their genocide with the help of postcards" excuse really doesn't cut it.

They knew for years and didn't do shit! Let that sink in...

Yes. At every social gathering, every online forum, etc. where I mention (or people already know) that I work at Facebook, the most common reaction has gone from "wow cool" to harsh glares. It interferes with all of those relationships. I know a whole lot of people will say "you deserve it you scum I hope you die" but I'm not here to argue deservedness. A question was asked, and I'm answering. Yes, we feel it.

Especially on my way into the office in the morning or after lunch I've been caught up in a problem I'm solving, an approach I just discussed with someone, an idea, etc and have walked into the elevator without realizing there were people inside.

This is in an office building where FB rents multiple floors and is tight on elevators, so I think we might be talking about the same office and I wouldn't be surprised if I maybe I did this before. It's also the first time I'm living in the city, so I did get elevator etiquette wrong a few times when I first moved in.

I never heard any comments about the making the world worse though. The people in the office tend to be quite nice. I did meet someone in the elevator once with whom I had a good conversation about lunch options at the different companies in the building.

In any case, I do suggest pointing it out next time something like this happens. It might be people like me (or me!) who just aren't always aware of their surroundings. And it case this was me, have my retroactive apologies.

Seen lots of groups display inconsiderate behavior in public, to inconvenience others. Most common example - small group spreads across a pathway to force passers by off the pathway to get by. Always thought it was more of a unconscious dominance sort of thing.

Two words: Stock price. A big part of compensation is in stock.

Back in 1998 when a company I helped start was acquired by a publicly traded company, and by 1999 the stock price was over $100 and everyone was feeling "super good" about the future. The internal dialog goes something like this, "This may be an anomaly but damn! even if the stock drops to 50% of its value I'm still doing great!."

In my case the stock dropped in value to below a dollar a a share, 99%+ drop. That feels really really horrible, especially if the future doesn't have anything in it that would rescue or recover the value. Even though there was nothing that I personally could have done (legally) to change the outcome, as an engineer and a person who solves hard problems, it made me feel like a total failure. Like I had let down my family, my friends at work, and people who I knew who had bought stock in the company as a sign of confidence in me.

It is really hard to understand that kind of feeling until you've been through it I think.

That's not an accident: the reason stock compensation is given is to further align employee interests with the long term performance of the company.

Or did you have a specific scenario in mind?

I had to work long and hard to convince a friend of mine to diversify at least half of his investments away from Shopify which was his only asset.

I would argue that Twitter does a much better job of connecting the world than Facebook.

Have you tried quitting facebook? I found it the easiest of all the social networks to leave because there's pretty much nothing to miss about it. Are you really gonna feel distraught over missing the bajillionth picture of your high school friend pretending to like holding a baby? Or fake macedonian garbage shared by your most racist family member?

But Twitter can _not_ replace events, groups and messenger.

My web browser.

I've still had people ask me for referrals, be interested in what I do and think my job is cool-- just not as much as before.

No, they are still rolling in money. If that ever changes, then FB are in trouble.

Until then, carry on everyone.