<story><title>Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-says-she-wants-to-fix-the-company-not-harm-it-11633304122</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bjt</author><text>&amp;gt; A few years ago, some bad actors were successful in convincing Congress of a crazy conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ... They used a platform called The New York Times to spread their lies.&lt;p&gt;Citation needed that this was a knowing conspiracy as opposed to bad intelligence.&lt;p&gt;Setting that aside, there&amp;#x27;s a big difference between an institution like the NY Times getting it wrong on occasion, despite all their research and fact checking, vs an institution like Facebook building a platform that systematically rewards disinformation at massive scale.</text></item><item><author>mrxd</author><text>I think misinformation and conspiracy theories on these platforms are a huge problem. A few years ago, some bad actors were successful in convincing Congress of a crazy conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The results were far-reaching. The US violated the UN charter and launched a disastrous war in Iraq where millions of Iraqis were killed, injured and displaced. They used a platform called The New York Times to spread their lies.&lt;p&gt;All of the problems of Facebook and social media are just problems of the media in general. Misinformation? Conspiracies? Social comparison? Outrage-driven content? Body image issues? All rampant in the mainstream press, but no journalists are calling for regulation of their industry.&lt;p&gt;If you were to propose federal regulation of the New York Times, journalists would object and talk about the first amendment, the 4th estate and the need for a free and independent press. It&amp;#x27;s an elitist double standard with content controls for the masses and first amendment rights for the graduates of Princeton and Columbia with jobs at prestigious publications.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jamestnz</author><text>&amp;gt; Citation needed that this was a knowing conspiracy as opposed to bad intelligence&lt;p&gt;Within hours of the planes hitting the towers on 9&amp;#x2F;11, before any information was in, Rumsfeld&amp;#x27;s aides were drawing up plans for striking Iraq, despite zero evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks. The number one priority for the White House, above finding out who the real culprits were, was to figure out how to use it as a rationale to invade Iraq. This is not really a controversial viewpoint, it is documented fact [1].&lt;p&gt;When the 9&amp;#x2F;11 rationale for invading Iraq became untenable, it was replaced by the idea that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction, that he&amp;#x27;d definitely been procuring uranium from Niger. Except these were lies too (and the WH knew it, because they&amp;#x27;d sent Joe Wilson to investigate and he&amp;#x27;d reported back as such). When Wilson heard them saying it despite knowing it was false, he contradicted them in public [2]. In an act of retribution, the WH leaked his wife&amp;#x27;s position as a CIA agent, burning valuable contacts and networks, and endangering friendly lives.&lt;p&gt;Then they moved onto the argument that regardless of WMDs, the Iraqi people actually wanted the invasion anyway, US forces would be welcomed as liberators by gift-bearing citizens, etc. When that didn&amp;#x27;t pan out either, a final argument became that Saddam was a tyrant and that fact alone provided sufficient moral and legal justification for preemptive war (i.e. The Bush Doctrine) [3].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;plans-for-iraq-attack-began-on-9-11&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;plans-for-iraq-attack-began-on-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-us-canada-49856792&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-us-canada-49856792&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pbs.org&amp;#x2F;wgbh&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;frontline&amp;#x2F;shows&amp;#x2F;truth&amp;#x2F;why&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pbs.org&amp;#x2F;wgbh&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;frontline&amp;#x2F;shows&amp;#x2F;truth&amp;#x2F;why&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-says-she-wants-to-fix-the-company-not-harm-it-11633304122</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bjt</author><text>&amp;gt; A few years ago, some bad actors were successful in convincing Congress of a crazy conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ... They used a platform called The New York Times to spread their lies.&lt;p&gt;Citation needed that this was a knowing conspiracy as opposed to bad intelligence.&lt;p&gt;Setting that aside, there&amp;#x27;s a big difference between an institution like the NY Times getting it wrong on occasion, despite all their research and fact checking, vs an institution like Facebook building a platform that systematically rewards disinformation at massive scale.</text></item><item><author>mrxd</author><text>I think misinformation and conspiracy theories on these platforms are a huge problem. A few years ago, some bad actors were successful in convincing Congress of a crazy conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The results were far-reaching. The US violated the UN charter and launched a disastrous war in Iraq where millions of Iraqis were killed, injured and displaced. They used a platform called The New York Times to spread their lies.&lt;p&gt;All of the problems of Facebook and social media are just problems of the media in general. Misinformation? Conspiracies? Social comparison? Outrage-driven content? Body image issues? All rampant in the mainstream press, but no journalists are calling for regulation of their industry.&lt;p&gt;If you were to propose federal regulation of the New York Times, journalists would object and talk about the first amendment, the 4th estate and the need for a free and independent press. It&amp;#x27;s an elitist double standard with content controls for the masses and first amendment rights for the graduates of Princeton and Columbia with jobs at prestigious publications.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>speeder</author><text>I googled it and found some articles about it, link to one of them:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;22&amp;#x2F;iraq-war-wmds-an-intelligence-failure-or-white-house-spin&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;22&amp;#x2F;iraq-war-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now for more context why I did this: Back then when Bush started pushing for the war, I immediately considered him a liar, I am not from US,  and from my perspective and from many people where I live, it was blatantly obvious  he was lying, for example some of the &amp;quot;evidence&amp;quot; he used was obviously bullshit, like his description of satellite photos on UN, or saying that WMD was found in certain places right after UN inspectors visited those places and said they found nothing there.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I wonder how people from USA don&amp;#x27;t see how evil they country is, for example when Brazil said they would vote against the war in the security council, John Bolton just went and threatened his family (his exact words were: &amp;quot;I know where your kids live.&amp;quot;), while the rest of the world was horrified by the lies spouted by US media, the US public was cheerily supporting the warmongers, in some cases even more than needed, for example some public polls done at the time found out a majority of the population were in favor of the wars, in Afghanistan case some people even agreed with the assertion that USA should &amp;quot;glass&amp;quot; afghanistan.</text></comment>