Oculus consulting CTO John Carmack has been bullish on the idea of “the metaverse” for a long time, as he’ll be among the first to point out. But the id Software co-founder spent a good chunk of his wide-ranging Connect keynote Thursday sounding pretty skeptical of plans by the newly rebranded Meta (formerly Facebook) to actually build that metaverse.

“I really do care about [the metaverse], and I buy into the vision,” Carmack said, before quickly adding, “I have been pretty actively arguing against every single metaverse effort that we have tried to spin up internally in the company from even pre-acquisition times.” The reason for that seeming contradiction is a somewhat ironic one, as Carmack puts it: “I have pretty good reasons to believe that setting out to build the metaverse is not actually the best way to wind up with the metaverse.”

Today, Carmack said, “The most obvious path to the metaverse is that you have one single universal app, something like Roblox.” That said, Carmack added, “I doubt a single application will get to that level of taking over everything.” That’s because a single bad decision by the creators of that walled-garden metaverse can cut off too many possibilities for users and makers. “I just don’t believe that one player—one company—winds up making all the right decisions for this,” he said.

The idea of the metaverse, Carmack says, can be “a honeypot trap for ‘architecture astronauts.'” Those are the programmers and designers who “want to only look at things from the very highest levels,” he said, while skipping the “nuts and bolts details” of how these things actually work.

These so-called architecture astronauts, Carmack said, “want to talk in high abstract terms about how we’ll have generic objects that can contain other objects that can have references to these and entitlements to that, and we can pass control from one to the other.” That kind of high-level hand-waving makes Carmack “just want to tear [his] hair out… because that’s just so not the things that are actually important when you’re building something.”

“But here we are,” Carmack continued. “Mark Zuckerberg has decided that now is the time to build the metaverse, so enormous wheels are turning and resources are flowing and the effort is definitely going to be made.”

Build products, not architecture

Carmack used his own experience creating Doom as an example of the value of concrete, product-based thinking. Rather than simply writing abstract game engines, he wrote games where “some of the technology… turned out to be reusable enough to be applied to other things,” he said. “But it was always driven by the technology itself, and the technology was what enabled the product and then almost accidentally enabled some other things after it.”

Building pure infrastructure and focusing on the “future-proofing and planning for broad generalizations of things,” on the other hand, risks “making it harder to do the things that you’re trying to do today in the name of things you hope to do tomorrow, and [then] it’s not actually there or doesn’t actually work right when you get around to wanting to do that,” he said.

To that end, Carmack spoke somewhat approvingly of concrete Meta products like Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workrooms, which can be clearly judged on how much value they’re bringing to users. Interacting with other avatars in Workrooms, in particular, can be much more enjoyable than staring at a wall of Zoom faces, Carmack said. “You’ve got to actually be using the things to make value from it,” he said. Getting Workrooms to actually work also required some detailed technical problem solving to help with unexpected audio processing and latency issues, solutions that can now be applied to many other metaverse products, he added.

But while Carmack identified some “good things” about the virtual reality co-presence possible in Horizon Worlds, he noted that it’s “a far cry from the metaverse of our visions.” While chatting with 16 people in a Worlds room is nice, he said, it’s a far cry from something like a real-world conference that could have “thousands of people milling about” and wandering into sessions and conversations at a whim. Fully creating that kind of in-person conference experience, without the need to travel long distances, is “what we’ve always been pitching is the value of VR,” he said.

With that vision in mind, Carmack said he is “laying down a gauntlet” that “we should be doing [Facebook Connect] in the metaverse” by next year’s show. “I’ll be really disappointed if I’m sitting here next year in front of a video crew and a camera in physical reality doing this talk,” he said. “I want to be walking around the halls or walking around the stage as my avatar in front of thousands of people, getting the feed across multiple platforms.”

Focusing on a mission of moving Connect into the metaverse, Carmack said, is a concrete goal that will “make sure that we’re doing something that’s valuable to at least us, and then it will very likely be valuable to a lot of other places.”

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1808977

Facebook just won’t stay idle. After announcing on Thursday that Facebook’s parent company will be changing its name to Meta, it seems the tech giant may be planning another big move that it hasn’t even mentioned yet. An image spotted on one of its apps suggests that the company is working on a smartwatch to compete with the likes of the Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy watches.

As reported by Bloomberg last night, an app developer named Steve Moser spotted an image of a smartwatch on Facebook View, an app for controlling the Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses. The publication described the picture as showing a smartwatch with rounded corners, a button on the side, and a white band that is reportedly detachable. Meta has not commented on the report.

On the watch’s face is a notch for an integrated camera, which could allow support for video calls. This would be a standout feature, as Apple and Samsung smartwatches don’t have cameras. In June, The Verge said we will see a Facebook smartwatch with two cameras—one on the front for video calls and one on the back for taking photos and video.

When can we expect a Meta smartwatch?

An unnamed “person with knowledge of the matter” told Bloomberg that there are plans to launch a smartwatch in 2022 or later, but the release date is tentative. The statement affirms The Verge’s June report, which claimed the smartwatch would come out in the summer of 2022. Bloomberg’s source also said Meta is working on three generations of smartwatches with varying release dates.

But without any word from the company, any Meta or Facebook smartwatch is still just a rumor. As acknowledged by Bloomberg, the image in question may not even represent an actual product. Still, a Meta smartwatch isn’t hard to imagine, and it fits with the brand’s interest in emerging hardware categories and tech-driven fitness.

Of course, there are many unanswered questions here. Chief among them, why was there no mention of the product at yesterday’s big Connect event? The company openly discussed its AR smart glasses, even though Zuckerberg acknowledged there’s “still a ways to go” until the product is ready. We also heard about Project Cambria, plans for a high-end VR headset.

Maybe there was too much going on yesterday. Or maybe Meta’s just playing it cool, since smartwatches would be a new category for the company. Only time will tell.

Listing image by Facebook via Bloomberg

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1808768

Last year, Facebook started requiring that new Oculus Quest users log in with their personal Facebook accounts rather than a separate Oculus account. Now, in the face of customer backlash and amid Facebook’s metaverse-focused rebranding as Meta, the company says it is “working on” options for Quest users to avoid that login requirement starting next year.

“As we’ve focused more on work, and as we’ve heard feedback from the VR community more broadly, we’re working on new ways to log in to Quest that won’t require a Facebook account, landing sometime next year,” Andrew Bosworth wrote in a Facebook post following yesterday’s Connect keynote. “This is one of our highest priority areas of work internally.”

“I know this is a big deal for a lot of people,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during yesterday’s Connect keynote when talking about the coming login change. “Not everyone wants their social media profile linked to all these other experiences. I get that, especially as the metaverse expands. I’ll share more about that later.”

Before those planned changes roll out next year, Meta announced that enterprise users of the Oculus for Business program will be able to log in to Quest using their Work accounts rather than their personal Facebook accounts. Users who had an Oculus account before last September had previously been grandfathered in and could avoid using a Facebook login until 2023.

The whys and hows

In an interview with Stratchery’s Ben Thompson, Zuckerberg added that the backlash to Facebook Login on Quest actually played a big role in Facebook’s overall rebranding decision:

The feedback that we got on that was one of the things that made me actually feel a sense of urgency that we did need to make it so that people had a different brand relationship with the overall company than the Facebook app. Right now, I think that there’s just some confusion where when you sign into Quest with Facebook, are you signing in with the social media app, or are you signing in with your relationship to our company overall?

It was not as clear as it should have been before, and I think because of that, people had some concerns of, “Hey, if I’m signing in with a social media app, does that mean that my data from what I’m doing in VR is somehow going to be connected or is going to show up on Facebook?” or like, “If my Facebook account gets deactivated or I want to stop using that, does that mean my device is going to stop working?” I think that from a brand architecture for the company—that perspective—I think it is just very valuable and useful for people to have a different relationship with the company than with each of the specific apps. It’s sort of why in the same way that you have a Microsoft account or an Apple account that’s different from any of the specific products that you have there. I think that that’s a useful thing in terms of the universe of products that we’re trying to build out.”

It’s worth noting that worries about losing Quest content over wider Facebook account issues were not a theoretical concern; the company confirmed such a thing was possible for egregious policy violations. And it’s not just user backlash Facebook was facing; the company had to pause Oculus headset sales in Germany over regulator concerns that “the obligation to create a Facebook account [to access an Oculus headset] is legally extremely questionable” under the European GDPR’s “coupling ban.”

Regardless of the underlying reasons, a lot will depend on the specific shape of the new “Facebook-free” login requirements that the company comes up with. Is the removal of a Facebook account requirement just a prelude to the rollout of a separate Meta account, for instance? That would align broadly with the company’s planned “shifting away from the Oculus brand” and toward a rebranded “Meta Quest” in early 2022. If that’s the case, how much data (if any) would be shared between a Facebook account and a Meta account linked under the same umbrella?

We also wonder if users will be able to use external accounts (i.e., a Google or OAuth account) to identify themselves on the headset. Can Quest users stay anonymous or use pseudonyms when interacting with Meta’s planned metaverse? And how much access will be available to users who want to skip the login and simply sideload their own content without any connection to the online ecosystem?

The answers to these and other logistical questions will be crucial to the wider reception for the upcoming login change. So while it’s nice to see Meta belatedly responding to the backlash over this issue, we’ll reserve final judgment until more details are released in the coming months.

Listing image by Sam Machkovech

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1808810

Facebook is battling its gravest crisis since the Cambridge Analytica scandal after a whistleblower accusing the company of placing “profit over safety” shed light on its inner workings through thousands of pages of leaked memos.

The documents were disclosed to US regulators and provided to Congress in redacted form by Frances Haugen’s legal counsel. A consortium of news organisations, including the Financial Times, has obtained the redacted versions received by Congress.

Earlier this month, Haugen testified in Congress that the social media company does not do enough to ensure the safety of its 2.9 billion users, plays down the harm it can cause to society and has repeatedly misled investors and the public. The Wall Street Journal also ran a series of articles called the Facebook Files.

Here are four surprising revelations the documents contain:

Facebook has a huge language problem

Facebook is often accused of failing to moderate hate-speech on its English-language sites but the problem is much worse in countries that speak other languages, even after it promised to invest more after being blamed for its role in facilitating genocide in Myanmar in 2017.

One 2021 document warned on its very low number of content moderators in Arabic dialects spoken in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Libya. Another study of Afghanistan, where Facebook has 5 million users, found even the pages that explained how to report hate speech were incorrectly translated.

The failings occurred even though Facebook’s own research marked some of the countries as “high risk” because of their fragile political landscape and frequency of hate speech.

According to one document, the company allocated 87 percent of its budget for developing its misinformation detection algorithms to the US in 2020, versus 13 percent to the rest of the world.

Haugen said Facebook should be transparent on the resources it has by country and language.

Facebook often does not understand how its algorithms work

Several documents show Facebook stumped by its own algorithms.

One September 2019 memo found that men were being served up 64 percent more political posts than women in “nearly every country,” with the issue being particularly large in African and Asian countries.

While men were more likely to follow accounts producing political content, the memo said Facebook’s feed ranking algorithms had also played a significant role.

A memo from June 2020 found it was “virtually guaranteed” that Facebook’s “major systems do show systemic biases based on the race of the affected user.”

The author suggested that perhaps the news feed ranking is more influenced by people who share frequently than those who share and engage less often, which may correlate with race. That results in content from certain races being prioritised over others.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1807384

Facebook’s senior executives interfered to allow US politicians and celebrities to post whatever they wanted on its social network despite pleas from employees to stop, leaked internal documents suggest.

Employees claim in the documents that while Facebook has long insisted that it is politically neutral, it allowed rightwing figures to break rules designed to curb misinformation and harmful content, after being stung by accusations of bias from conservatives.

In September 2020, just ahead of the US presidential election, the author of an internal memo wrote that “director-level employees” had “written internally that they would prefer to formally exclude political considerations from the decision-making process.”

The author called for the company’s leadership to create a “firewall” around its content moderation teams to stop this from happening and to make sure Facebook did not keep up or take down posts because of external political and media pressure.

In another internal note, dated December 2020, an employee claimed that Facebook’s public policy team blocked decisions to take down posts “when they see that they could harm powerful political actors.”

“In multiple cases the final judgment about whether a prominent post violates a certain written policy are made by senior executives, sometimes Mark Zuckerberg,” the author added, referring to Facebook’s chief executive. Parts of the note were previously reported by BuzzFeed.

In a further example from 2019, Zuckerberg was alleged to have been personally involved in a decision to allow a video that made the false claim that abortion is “never medically necessary.”

The post, which had been taken down by a moderator, was reinstated following complaints by Republican politicians, the document said.

The documents, part of a wider cache dubbed the Facebook Papers, were disclosed to US regulators and provided to Congress in redacted form by the legal counsel of whistleblower Frances Haugen. A consortium of news organisations, including the Financial Times, has obtained the redacted versions received by Congress.

Facebook declined to respond to queries about the outcome of any discussions about separating its content team from the policy and communications teams.

Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesperson, said: “At the heart of these stories is a premise which is false. Yes, we’re a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of people’s safety or wellbeing misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie. The truth is we’ve invested $13bn and have over 40,000 people to do one job: keep people safe on Facebook.”

Staff told to aim for ‘“unimpeachable neutrality”

A former Facebook executive told the FT that Zuckerberg had long told staff to aim for what he called “unimpeachable neutrality.”

This was important particularly around US political groups, employees were told, because the company did not want to be accused of breaking campaign rules by giving a donation in kind.

But three other former employees said they had observed how Facebook applied its own rules in an inconsistent and haphazard way, with special treatment for celebrities.

One former integrity team employee said: “For the people running Facebook, it seems like they care much more about not appearing biased than actually not being biased. Often their efforts at the former make the latter worse.”

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1807122

Questa settimana forse capiremo se la notizia della ridenominazione di Facebook abbia a che fare con ragioni legali o finanziarie (come nel caso del nome Alphabet, la holding che possiede, fra le altre aziende, Google), con l’intento di riposizionarla concentrandosi sul metaverso oppure se sia dovuta a ragioni reputazionali per separare gli sviluppi della sua attività dalle tante vicende che hanno coinvolto Facebook negli ultimi anni per questioni legate alla sicurezza dei dati ed ai tanti fronti lasciati aperti dalla moderazione dei contenuti e dagli algoritmi che determinano l’esperienza offerta all’utente .

Uno dei fenomeni che destano più preoccupazione è l’amplificazione digitale che se non la causa, è di certo un fattore di accelerazione, espansione e permanenza del tempo di episodi che riguardano il cyberbullismo, il revenge porn e il body shaming. Una circostanza che ben illustra gli effetti dell’amplificazione digitale ha avuto luogo lo scorso aprile quando la giornalista del Guardian Elle Hunt, dopo aver parlato con alcuni amici di cinema al pub, aveva riportato su Twitter la conversazione che ne era scaturita e aveva lanciato il sondaggio se il film Alien fosse un film horror o un film di fantascienza, propendendo per la seconda ipotesi. Il giorno dopo si era ritrovata 120 mila voti e decine di e-mail da parte di sconosciuti arrabbiati con lei: pur avendo poche migliaia di follower, il suo spunto era infatti finito tra gli argomenti “di tendenza” negli Stati Uniti e nel Regno Unito e la vicenda era così esplosa. Questo episodio mette anche in luce perché l’amplificazione digitale rappresenti un rischio poichè determina quello che viene chiamato il “collasso del contesto” in cui si trovano a coesistere molteplici gruppi sociali in un unico spazio e destinato, sostengono i sociologi, ad alimentare fraintendimenti, divisioni, polarizzazione. 

Le tante funzioni che Facebook ha introdotto per rendere possibile la delimitazione agli amici di ciò che si pubblica o per supportare gli animatori dei Gruppi a moderare la propria community sono una risposta alle tante richieste che, da utenti, associazioni e istituzioni, hanno sollecitato l’azienda ad affrontare il problema, ma l’efficacia di queste misura ha a che vedere soprattutto con la velocità e con l’efficacia con cui gli algoritmi possono individuare le criticità e poi supportare chi deve decidere il da farsi a prendere una decisione.

Se il nuovo Facebook ci aiuterà a lasciarci alle spalle questo problema, non sarà probabilmente però il suo renaming a farlo e neppure un suo rinnovato impegno a lavorarci, ma la consapevolezza di ciascuno di noi del ruolo della Rete nell’amplificare i fenomeni ed un senso di responsabilità diffuso degli effetti provocati da chi inizia e chi diffonde parole di odio o violenza in Rete. 

https://www.key4biz.it/facebook-il-cambio-nome-risolvera-il-problema-dellodio-in-rete/379231/

Il fatturato aggregato delle filiali italiane delle Big tech company nel 2020 ha raggiunto i 4,6 miliardi di euro occupando oltre 13mila lavoratori. Il dato, relativo al 2020, emerge dall’indagine annuale sulle maggiori Software & Web companies mondiali redatto dall’area Studi Mediobanca, che ha rilevato come rispetto al 2019 si calcolano quasi tremila dipendenti in più, in massima parte assunti dalle società del Gruppo Amazon che vanta il maggior numero di occupati in Italia (8.193 unità nel 2020).

E il fisco italiano? Nel 2020 le filiali dei giganti del web, spiega l’indagine, hanno versato al fisco italiano quasi 80 milioni di euro per un tax rate effettivo del 31,4%. Considerando anche l’accantonamento per il pagamento della Digital Service Tax, il tax rate salirebbe al 40%.

Per quanto riguarda invece la fiscalità negli altri Paesi, continua l’indagine, nel 2020 circa il 40% dell’utile ante imposte delle 25 multinazionali del web è tassato in Paesi a fiscalità agevolata, con conseguente risparmio fiscale di 10,7 miliardi di euro nel 2020 e di 24,5 miliardi di euro nel triennio 2018-2020. L’aliquota media è pari al 12,8% nel 2020, inferiore a quella media teorica del 22,4%. Nel periodo 2018-2020 la tassazione in Paesi a fiscalità agevolata ha determinato per Tencent, Microsoft e Alphabet un risparmio fiscale rispettivamente di €7,7, €5,4 e €4,5 miliardi di euro,

Le big tech continuano ad accelerare nel primo semestre 2021

A livello globale invece, nel primo semestre 2021 il fatturato aggregato dei maggiori operatori mondiali, segna una crescita a doppia cifra del +31,1% sull’1H 2020, uniforme a livello geografico con Asia & Pacifico, America Latina ed Europa in accelerazione del + 37% e Nord America, già ampiamente presidiata dalle big tech, in crescita del +28%. L’allentamento delle misure di distanziamento sociale e il cambiamento delle abitudini dei consumatori, spiega il report, hanno avuto un impatto positivo su tutti i settori in cui operano i giganti del web, in particolare: food delivery +85,6%, advertising +48,2%, vendite online di viaggi +43,7% e fintech +43,6%.

Non si ferma la crescita della redditività operativa (+49,6% il MON sull’1H2020) e volano gli utili netti (+80,2%) che sfiorano mediamente i 27 milioni di euro di profitti netti al giorno, quasi il triplo rispetto al 2018.

Nei primi sei mesi del 2021 aumenta anche la liquidità, con un ritmo medio di +5,5 miliardi di euro al mese, raggiungendo 639 miliardi di euro a fine giugno 2021 (+6% sul dicembre 2020). Parte di queste risorse (346 miliardi di euro), il 16% del totale attivo, è investita in titoli a breve termine, quota quasi quattro volte superiore a quella di una multinazionale manifatturiera (4,5%). Un’altra parte è stata utilizzata per crescere, sia per linee interne (+33% gli investimenti nell’1H 2021/2020) che per linee esterne, tramite operazioni di M&A (+15% il goodwill).

A livello di singoli gruppi , nel primo semestre 2021 si registra l’impennata dei ricavi delle giovani asiatiche Meituan (+94,8%, operante in particolare nel food delivery) e Coupang (+72,8%, attiva nell’e-commerce), entrambe costituite nel 2010, davanti alla quasi maggiorenne Facebook (+51,7%). Seguono Alphabet (+47,5%), Vipshop (+35,2%) e Amazon (+34,8%). Segno negativo per la sola SAP (-1,9%). Per quanto riguarda la redditività industriale nei primi sei mesi del 2021, Facebook guida la classifica per ebit margin (43,0%), davanti a Microsoft (41,1%) e Oracle (40,5%). A fine giugno 2021, Nintendo, senza debiti finanziari, brilla per solidità patrimoniale, seguita da Facebook (capitale netto pari a 11,5 volte i debiti finanziari) e dalla cinese Vipshop (9,1).

Big tech: guadagno di Usa e Cina

Nel 2020 il fatturato aggregato dei 25 giganti tecnologici, ciascuno con un giro d’affari superiore ai 9 miliardi di euro, ha toccato quota 1.153 miliardi di euro, pari al 70% del prodotto interno lordo 2020 dell’Italia. Stati Uniti e Cina si sono spartite la fetta maggiore dei ricavi: il 65% del fatturato WebSoft è stato generato dai colossi statunitensi, il 27% da quelli cinesi e solo l’8% dai gruppi di altri paesi.

La pandemia ha ulteriormente evidenziato il divario di velocità di crescita tra le WebSoft e le multinazionali manifatturiere: mentre le prime hanno accelerato (+45,5% i ricavi 2018-2020), le seconde hanno tirato il freno (-4,1%). Il mercato è sempre più concentrato: i primi tre player, Amazon, Alphabet e Microsoft, rappresentano la metà dei ricavi aggregati WebSoft nel 2020 e Amazon (314,6 miliardi di euro), in prima posizione dal 2014, ne concentra da sola oltre un quarto.

Le WebSoft primeggiano per redditività industriale. Con un ebit margin al 16,1% nel 2020 sono seconde solo alle multinazionali farmaceutiche (19,6%) e davanti alle Telco (14,8%). Se però ci si focalizza esclusivamente sull’anima digitale (escludendo l’e-commerce), il loro margine operativo vola al 25,8% distanziando di gran lunga tutti gli altri settori industriali.

A fine 2020 la forza lavoro delle WebSoft contava tre milioni di persone in tutto il mondo, in aumento di un milione di unità rispetto al 2018, di cui +650 mila dalla sola Amazon, regina indiscussa per numero di occupati: 1.298 mila a fine 2020.

Le WebSoft e la Borsa

I giganti del WebSoft sono tutti quotati con l’eccezione del gruppo tedesco Otto, a controllo familiare. L’incremento del loro valore in Borsa è stato del +87,8% nel 2018-2020 e del +20,7% dal dicembre 2020 al 15 ottobre 2021. A fine 2020 la loro capitalizzazione aggregata valeva quasi dieci volte l’intera Borsa italiana. Al 15 ottobre 2021 il podio della Borsa è occupato da Microsoft (1.969 miliardi di euro), Amazon (1.488 miliardi di euro) e Alphabet (733 miliardi di euro).

https://www.key4biz.it/big-tech-le-filiali-italiane-generano-46-miliardi-euro-lanno-di-ricavi-ma-pagano-solo-80-milioni-di-tasse/378711/

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Here we go again: Facebook and Instagram are reporting glitches globally causing problems for users to access platforms.

Depositphotos.com

The social network reported the problems through a tweet assuring that its team is working at full speed to reestablish the service.

We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and we apologize for any inconvenience.

– Facebook (@Facebook) October 8, 2021

Bad week for Facebook

This new interruption of services comes after last Monday Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger suffered the longest interruption of service since 2008.

Not only that, on September 13, the Wall Street Journal published a series of stories in which it revealed that Facebook was ‘aware’ of the problems that its products caused, such as the damage of Instagram to the mental health of adolescents and misinformation on issues such as Covid-19 or the riots presented in the United States Capitol in early 2021.

Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product engineer, came out this morning as the informant leaked numerous internal documents last week. He accused the company of “choosing profit over safety.”

On Wall Street, Facebook’s stock price fell nearly 6 percent to cut its value by $ 50 billion. For this reason, in just a few hours, Mark Zuckerberg ‘s personal wealth was reduced by almost $ 7 billion .

In a moment more information …

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/390271

Facebook è troppo grande, troppo opaco, non investe sufficienti risorse per mettere al sicuro i propri utenti e in alcuni contesti mette a rischio la sicurezza nazionale. 

Sono queste le accuse dell’ultimo periodo che stanno coinvolgendo l’azienda di Mark Zuckerberg, in una settimana non proprio da incorniciare, aggravata dal blackout causato da un errore interno commesso durante una procedura di manutenzione che ha fatto perdere 6 miliardi di dollari al suo fondatore.

Le accuse dell’ex product manager Frances Haugen

Le pesanti accuse dell’ultimo periodo arrivano da Frances Haugen, che ha lavorato per due anni come ingegnere informatico addetto ai dati all’interno dell’azienda. Haugen, che ne poteva più delle ingiustizie che vedeva consumarsi sotto i suoi occhi, ha raccolto decine di documenti segreti, li ha passati al Wall Street Journal e infine “ci ha messo la faccia” in un’intervista a “60 Minutes” in onda su CBS News per poi essere chiamata al Senato americano durante un audizione sulla protezione dei bambini online.

“Mi chiamo Frances Haugen. Lavoravo in Facebook e mi sono iscritta perché credo che Facebook abbia il potenziale per tirare fuori il meglio di noi. Ma sono qui oggi perché credo che i prodotti di Facebook danneggino i bambini, alimentino la divisione, indeboliscano la nostra democrazia e molto altro. La leadership dell’azienda sa come rendere più sicuri Facebook e Instagram e non apporterà i cambiamenti necessari perché hanno messo i loro immensi profitti prima delle persone. L’azione del Congresso è necessaria. Non possono risolvere questa crisi senza il vostro aiuto”, ha spiegato Haugen in audizione al Senato Usa.

I’ll be testifying to the Senate tomorrow at 10a ET / 7a PT about @Instagram and @Facebook‘s impacts on children and society at large.

You can watch here: https://t.co/uTPMBwqtx9

— Frances Haugen (@FrancesHaugen) October 5, 2021

Haugen, che ha lavorato in passato anche con Google, Pinterest e Yelp, sostiene che Facebook era a conoscenza dei danni causati da Instagram alla salute mentale delle adolescenti, ha mentito al pubblico sul monitoraggio dei contenuti di odio e minacce, perché erano funzionali all’aumento di traffico, e ha allentato le garanzie contro la disinformazione dopo le elezioni del 2020, scelta che può aver contribuito preparare il terreno alla rivolta del Campidoglio il 6 gennaio.

Haugen: “Facebook è un’azienda da 1000 miliardi che fa profitti sulla nostra sicurezza”

“Lavorando in quattro grandi aziende tecnologiche che gestiscono diversi tipi di social network, sono stata in grado di confrontare il modo in cui ogni azienda si avvicina e affronta le diverse sfide. Le scelte fatte dalla leadership di Facebook sono un problema enorme – per i bambini, per la sicurezza pubblica, per la democrazia – ecco perché mi sono fatta avanti. Siamo chiari: non deve essere così. Siamo qui oggi a causa delle scelte deliberate che Facebook ha fatto”, continua. “Questa non è semplicemente una questione di alcuni utenti dei social media che sono arrabbiati o instabili. Facebook è diventata un’azienda da mille miliardi di dollari pagando i suoi profitti con la nostra sicurezza, compresa quella dei nostri figli. E questo è inaccettabile”.  

La replica del fondatore di Facebook

Il fondatore di Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, ha replicato alle accuse della ‘talpa’ Frances Haugen contro i suoi social media, definendole “illogiche”. In una lettera aperta ai dipendenti, Zuckerberg ha assicurato che il gruppo si preoccupa “profondamente di questioni come la sicurezza, il benessere e la salute mentale”. “E’ difficile per noi assistere a una rappresentazione errata del nostro lavoro e delle nostre motivazioni”, ha scritto, “penso che molti di voi non riconoscano la falsa immagine della società che è stata dipinta”

In una nota la società ha poi passato la palla alla politica: “È tempo di creare regole standard per l’industria di Internet. Tuttavia non devono essere le società a occuparsene, ma il Congresso». Facebook ha quindi evidenziato che le accuse della talpa non si basano su nessuna evidenza scientifica: “Se una qualsiasi ricerca avesse identificato una soluzione per queste complesse situazioni l’industria, il governo e la società le avrebbero risolte ormai da tempo”.

La stretta del Congresso Usa verso i big tech e l’appello di Haugen

Repubblicani e Democratici sembrerebbero d’altro canto aver accolto la chiamata di Haugen, aprendo un dibattito che potrebbe condurre in breve tempo a un irrigidimento delle leggi sulla privacy e sulla concorrenza, a un rafforzamento delle tutele online per i bambini e a un inasprimento della responsabilità delle piattaforme.

“La gravità di questa crisi richiede di uscire dalle precedenti cornici normative. Gli aggiustamenti alle obsolete protezioni della privacy o le modifiche alla sezione 230 non saranno sufficienti. Il centro della questione è che nessuno può capire le scelte distruttive di Facebook meglio di Facebook, perché solo Facebook può guardare sotto il tappeto. Un punto di partenza fondamentale per una regolamentazione efficace è la trasparenza: pieno accesso ai dati per la ricerca non diretta da Facebook. Su questa base, possiamo costruire regole e standard sensati per affrontare i danni ai consumatori, i contenuti illegali, la protezione dei dati, le pratiche anticoncorrenziali, i sistemi algoritmici e altro ancora”.

“Finché Facebook opererà all’oscuro di tutto, non dovrà rendere conto a nessuno. E continuerà a fare scelte che vanno contro il bene comune. Il nostro bene comune. Quando abbiamo capito che le compagnie di tabacco nascondevano i danni che provocavano, il governo è intervenuto. Quando abbiamo capito che le auto erano più sicure con le cinture di sicurezza, il governo è intervenuto. E oggi, il governo sta intervenendo contro le compagnie che hanno nascosto le prove sugli oppioidi. Vi imploro di fare lo stesso in questo caso”, conclude Haugen.

https://www.key4biz.it/e-iniziato-il-declino-di-facebook/376710/

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before a Senate panel yesterday, recommending a slate of changes to rein in the company, including a Section 230 overhaul that would hold the social media giant responsible for its algorithms that promote content based on the engagement it receives in users’ news feeds.

“If we had appropriate oversight, or if we reformed [Section] 230 to make Facebook responsible for the consequences of their intentional ranking decisions, I think they would get rid of engagement-based ranking,” Haugen said. “Because it is causing teenagers to be exposed to more anorexia content, it is pulling families apart, and in places like Ethiopia, it’s literally fanning ethnic violence.”

Haugen made sure to distinguish between user-generated content and Facebook’s algorithms, which prioritize the content in news feeds and drive engagement. She suggested that Facebook should not be responsible for content that users post on its platforms but that it should be held liable once its algorithms begin making decisions about which content people see.

That suggestion mirrors a bill, the Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act, which has been introduced in the House.

Yet despite the call for Section 230 reform, Haugen also cautioned that reform alone would not be enough to adequately oversee the company’s broad reach. “The severity of this crisis demands that we break out of previous regulatory frames,” she said. “Tweaks to outdated privacy protections or changes to Section 230 will not be sufficient.”

“False choices”

The sweeping hearing was called to address tens of thousands of documents Haugen obtained from Facebook before she left the company in May. The former product manager handed over the files to Congress and the SEC and is seeking whistleblower protection. She has filed eight lawsuits with the SEC, including allegations that Facebook overcharged advertisers and misled investors about the size of its user base. The company, she said, is not being upfront about the nature of the problems it’s facing. “Facebook wants you to believe that the problems we’re talking about are unsolvable. They want you to believe in false choices,” Haugen said. 

“They want you to believe that you must choose between a Facebook full of divisive and extreme content or losing one of the most important values our country was founded upon: free speech,” she added. “That you must choose between public oversight of Facebook’s choices and your personal privacy. That to be able to share fun photos of your kids with old friends, you must also be inundated with anger-driven virality. They want you to believe that this is just part of the deal. 

“I am here today to tell you that’s not true. These problems are solvable. A safer, free-speech-respecting, more enjoyable social media is possible.”

Haugen was similarly optimistic about Facebook’s mission, despite its myriad problems. “I believe in the potential of Facebook,” she said. “We can have social media we enjoy, that connects us without tearing apart our democracy, putting our children in danger, and sowing ethnic violence around the world. We can do better.”

Algorithmic choices

Time and again, the hearing came back to the problems posed by the prevalence of algorithms and artificial intelligence in Facebook’s operations. 

Documents that Haugen collected from Facebook show that engagement-based ranking algorithms prioritize divisive and extreme content on the platform. To solve that problem, she said, Facebook uses artificial intelligence to find dangerous content before it spreads. The problem is that “Facebook’s own research says they cannot adequately identify dangerous content. And as a result, those dangerous algorithms that they admit are picking up the extreme sentiments, the division, they can’t protect us from the harms that they know exist in their own system,” Haugen said.

One solution, floated by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) during the hearing, proposes that users be offered a choice between an algorithmic news feed and a chronological one. Haugen did not think that would be sufficient. “I worry that if Facebook is allowed to give users the choice: do you want an engagement-based news feed or a chronological news feed… that people will choose the more addictive option, that engagement-based ranking, even if it is leading their daughters to eating disorders.”

Facebook’s research

In an internal message later posted publicly, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg alluded to research the company has done on its platform. “If we’re going to have an informed conversation about the effects of social media on young people, it’s important to start with a full picture. We’re committed to doing more research ourselves and making more research publicly available.” 

Despite promising a “full picture,” Zuckerberg did not commit to releasing all of Facebook’s research or opening its platforms to study by researchers not employed or funded by the company. Haugen’s documents show that, as recently as last week, the company has released research selectively to paint a rosier picture of what is happening on its platforms.

The company’s lack of transparency has tied regulators’ hands, Haugen said. “This inability to see in Facebook’s actual systems and confirm that they work as communicated is like the Department of Transportation regulating cars by only watching them drive down the highway,” she said. Haugen urged the senators to consider a government agency that would audit social media platforms, giving regulators greater insight into the companies’ inner workings.

“Today, no regulator has a menu of solutions for how to fix Facebook because Facebook didn’t want them to know enough about what’s causing the problems,” Haugen said. “Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been a need for a whistleblower.”

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1801618