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A comment on Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO. Parent comment

Re:Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO by nicodjimenez on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @05:07PM (#31588148)
The real pivot for FB was their pivot to Instagram, with facebook.com pivoting to a "secret police" business model and shutting down open discussions, which used to flourish there. They've done this very well. FB today is more of a political organization than a business organization especially in the US. The Metaverse is just a distraction from this development that will have no impact on their cash cow Instagram.

The nice thing about Instagram and Twitter, as far as Washington lobbyists are concerned, is that it's influencer driven and there's very little room for bottom up discussion between "normal" people. The original Facebook was a tool where dissent could grow in a bottom up fashion, with friends posting and realizing, "holy smokes! I was thinking that too!". This doesn't happen any more now that everyone knows that big brother is watching.

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Re:Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO by HappyTypist on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @05:23PM (#31588334)
Insightful observation. Arab Spring changed Facebook and social media, across the whole world.

Don't forget the AI moderation-on-post. Just recently, a popular 'influencer' posted a scam. I left a comment saying such, along with a comment that the influencer should be ashamed of himself, and immediately, an AI filter told me that my comment may go against the Community Standards, and that repeated attempts to comment would lead to account deactivation. There is no appeal button.

To those building these technologies, beyond false positives and coverage error, it takes one law or PR incident for you to re-train this model against dissent. And to those building technologies like Apple's CSAM scanning, it takes one DB replacement to make it flag photos of the Hong Kong protests or Tank Man.

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