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Re:The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Mov... by nicoburns on Monday October 28, 2019 @09:20AM (#21376679)
> Now in theory someone asked that could answer without accidentally agreeing that their company is extractive/they are harming young girls/they are recklessly not considering the impacts of their work.

The right answer to this question is to accept that the company is extracting / harming people. And admit that they didn't stop to think about that when they were building it. That's understandable - they had no idea the impact that facebook would have on society when they were building it.

You can then go on to have a productive collaborative discussion about what to do about it (which isn't obvious or easy). The environment is hostile because Zuckerberg isn't engaging in the process, and is stonewalling congress with "we have a process for this".

He's not being honest, and I suspect (and hope tbh) it will eventually be the downfall of his company.

Re:The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Mov... by roenxi on Monday October 28, 2019 @09:48AM (#21376922)
> The right answer to this question is to accept that the company is extracting / harming people.

If the answer is predetermined and known it isn't a question. It is some sort of formal whipping and there is no point giving any answer.

From the peanut gallery it is plausible that Facebook is a net win or a net loss for adolescents and it is possible that the company has a staff psychologist who has actually thought about its impacts. That question is so hard to answer in the negative I seem to have 2 people answering in this comment chain as though the frame is obviously correct and Zuckerberg needs to answer yes then atone for his sins. Public hearings are not the place to engage with these sorts of questions (there might be consequences if he makes a mistake in his answers).

Re:The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Mov... by JohnJamesRambo on Monday October 28, 2019 @10:50AM (#21377486)
I haven’t seen any studies showing Facebook is a net win for anyone. But I search pubmed and see page after page showing it actively harms those that use it. A close analog is the literature for tobacco smoking.
Re:The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Mov... by DuskStar on Monday October 28, 2019 @12:28PM (#21378430)
> The right answer to this question is to accept that the company is extracting / harming people. And admit that they didn't stop to think about that when they were building it. That's understandable - they had no idea the impact that facebook would have on society when they were building it.

The right answer to "have you stopped beating your wife?" is not "yes" if you don't actually beat your wife.

Similarly, the answer to "did you know the thing you were doing was evil?" is not "no" if the thing you did was not evil. Answering like that is conceding the point.

Re:The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Mov... by nicoburns on Tuesday October 29, 2019 @05:16PM (#21392124)
If everyone knows you're in the wrong, then it's better to concede the point than stubbornly go on pretending like everything's ok. If you do the latter then it might help you in the short-term, but it's a great big red flag telling everyone that you can't be trusted.
Re:The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Mov... by criddell on Monday October 28, 2019 @03:52PM (#21380891)
> Answering like that is conceding the point.

But they have conceded the point. I think that's why things like Cambridge Analytica were mentioned so many times during the hearing.

Re:The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Mov... by DuskStar on Monday October 28, 2019 @05:22PM (#21381837)
There's a difference between "yes, Cambridge Analytica used our platform to do bad things and we facilitated that" and "our platform is fundamentally bad for you", though.
Re:The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Mov... by nicoburns on Tuesday October 29, 2019 @05:17PM (#21392140)
But if you can't give a convincing answer to "What are you doing to prevent that happening again?", then everyone's going to make that conclusion anyway.
Re:The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Mov... by setr on Monday October 28, 2019 @09:45AM (#21376903)
Admitting fault, and then retroactively be punished for it at the tune of X million "potentially harmed"? If this were a board meeting and it was simply to say what should be fixed, understood or analyzed going forward, then admission of failure is fine; but this is about meting out punishment, in which case you tell the cops nothing.

Anything you say can and will...