Comment by blakesterz

When you have no fear about repercussions of being caught. Case in point, nothing will happen about this.

Maybe, just maybe, Meta bosses aren't even aware that what they're doing is nefarious. Just business as usual.

Now, one wonders what constitutes "nefarious" or a grey zone worth hiding in their minds.

Same reason project 2025 was put in writing. When you have large organizations you need to distribute communication. It's really just about cooperation and logistics

>We weren't doing anything nearly as nefarious

But still nefarious. Thats kinda messed up, to be honest.

>I never understand why a company would put something like this in writing.

Do you believe these companies and individuals will ever see consequences for putting this in writing? I don't think they will, and I assume they believe the same based on their actions. Why waste time being "moral" when you don't lose anything for being immoral and stand to gain something if your gamble wins?

I mean, there's a whole philosophical outlook about being a good person and some people just want to do without needing enforcement, but those people also dont tend to become one of the largest corporations on the planet.

Maybe we'll see the revival of the term "glasshole"

Sometimes analog solutions are the most effective against digital problems.

The long term goal might indeed be unrecognizable designs. Perhaps augmented reality contact lens. It will take a long time but people tend to slowly get used to giving more and more of their privacy away. Mojo Vision made a prototype of this. It's more the display but you can imagine the camera being somewhere else and streaming to the lens in an unobstructed way.

Are there any less obviously aggressive tactics we can use? Wear something that is blinding to the cameras, or something else to obfuscate?

For android users: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pocketpc.ne...

I'm not the kind of person to wear those, but if I was and someone tried to slap them off me I might feel really threatened if you catch my drift. And since I won't be able to see too well, it will take some extra effort... Was that remaining movement the next punch, or death throes? Can't see too well, better safe than sorry!

While I don’t disagree, with the sentiment, is this not incitement of violence?

Gen Z doesn’t seem to carry the millennial “making the world a better place” sensibility. They are all hustle culture, all the time. While I appreciate a lot of their culture this is the aspect that makes me nervous about the future.

The soulless kids who used to go into finance joined tech and are inspired by the current crop of tech billionaires in the way that their predecessors were inspired by Gordon Gecko.

The same can be said about those working in the weapons industry etc.

I'm 37, single, no family or extended family b/c of an...interesting...childhood.

Every day I understand more and more that I have something really priceless and rare, complete luxury of choice, and 99% of people don't. (as with all things, it has its downside: nothing matters!)

I refused to get "stuck" in my hometown, which motivated me from college dropout to FAANG. Once I got there, it was novel to me that even rich people get "stuck" due to inability to imagine losing status, and also responsiblities that come with obvious, healthy, lifestyle choices (i.e. marriage and kids)

> how someone can work for a company like that and maintain possession of a soul

I mean, they don’t. There isn’t a single decent person who has ever worked at Meta, and that started long before this nonsense. The entire company is about the social destruction of its users. Everything anyone there works on drives towards that goal.

The individuals making these decisions are 100% aware of what they are doing. Driving for and implementing stuff like this is for profits, bonuses, and internal recognition.

What do you mean? They're fully aware this would be received poorly by "certain groups" and are applying all that highly-praised brain power to getting around that undesirable issue to keep their RSUs growing.

care-less people, etc...

This is unironically what happens when society rewards sociopaths

Probably a mix of naivety, ignorance, and apathy.

Most people are just trying to get through their day and not worry about ethical questions.

I'd say that's terrible, but I'm not confident I'd be a better person if my livelihood depended on doing that sort of work, though I hope I'd be better.

This is Meta claiming in their internal communications that they plan on doing it while people are distracted with other concerns.

It isn't really "rhetoric", they're talking like they believe this actually happens, this is strategy.

And I tend to agree with them that things like attention and political capital are ultimately finite resources.

I've found that the "we can do two things" and "we can walk and chew bubblegum" line of argument to be simplistic and just wrong (and pretty incredibly patronizing). I think the world works exactly the way Meta thinks that it does here.

It might blow up and turn into a Streisand effect, but more often than not this kind of strategy works.

Much like how people think they can multitask and talk on the phone and drive at the same time and every scientific measure of it shows that they really can't.

> Who has been distracted from Facebook’s shenanigans? Who are they talking about? Is it me? Because I can tell you I have certainly not been distracted on that front.

On September 11th 2001 a UK government department's press chief told their subordinates it was a "good day to bury bad news".

The idea is pretty simple - you might be obligated to announce something that you know will be poorly received, like poor train performance figures, but you can decide the exact day you announce it, like on a day when thousands have died in a terror attack. What would otherwise be front-page news is relegated to a few paragraphs on page 14.

Facebook proposes a similar strategy: Get the feature ready to go, wait until there's some much bigger news story, and deploy it that day.

The facebook execs literally plotted to relaunch their unpopular product while people were distracted by other bad news.

> “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.

American society has a finite aggregate supply of attention. Politicians and megacorporations often exploit this fact. This Verge article is a leak that verifies that Meta is actively and brazenly continuing to exploit it.

Is that a good enough explanation to reduce your feelings of being personally targeted?

I feel the same way every time I read that someone did something "quietly" in a headline.

Less attention on you, less negative press, better sales.

Well to an extent, it does work. Flood the zone.

interesting (respectfully!) take that the "while you were distracted" rhetoric is coming from investigative journalists/commenters - i read this more as Meta's admission that they're betting on critics being distracted than an admonition by outside observers. it's probably easier to sneak up on a person to rob them when it's foggy; that's not victim blaming.

I usually hate this kind of click bait, but I think in this case it's warranted, since their explicit policy was to do this "while they are distracted". Verbatim.