Thread by @dlauer

You know what's terrible and sad? Earlier this year, Facebook's head of AI @ylecun told me, absurdly, that Facebook's "AI" "filter[s] things like ... bullying." All while he knew this to be untrue.

https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1364010548828987393

https://twitter.com/HumaneTech_/status/1437881456462811151

@ylecun Instead of responding rashly on Twitter, I wrote an extensively researched piece exploring Facebook's issues, including issues around harassment and bullying for the Journal of AI and Ethics:
link.springer.com/article/10.100…

@ylecun Facebook's problems are not technology problems, as the WSJ article so clearly establishes. It's problems are that it is a deeply unethical organization from top to bottom, and its business model enforces and supports that.

@ylecun If Facebook's business model depending on connecting people substantively, fostering deep relationships and consumption of good, accurate information, it's algorithms would be designed completely differently.

@ylecun Instead, as @JohnMacIntyre2 eloquently discussed in "Towards intellectual freedom in an AI Ethics Global Community" FB is like Big Tobacco.

They seek to addict us to a dangerous, destructive product while enriching themselves in mind boggling fashion.

link.springer.com/article/10.100…

@ylecun @JohnMacIntyre2 Every time you login to Facebook or Instagram to check your feed, you are supporting these efforts and this organization. You might think that turning it off is hard, but I assure you it's not.

You can disconnect.

@ylecun @JohnMacIntyre2 Studies have shown that disconnecting from Facebook leads to higher levels of happiness and a greater diversity of information consumption.

If we all disconnect, it will strike at their business model. And that is the only thing they will listen to - not a million articles.