alt Hacker NewsI am not weighing in on the fundamental issue you are debating with the other person, but clearly Facebook has provided no benefit to society lol wth
It's just a parasitic, largely useless, and often actively harmful advertising machine. The only possible positive it has done is transfer a lot of money and capital to employees who often come from middle-class backgrounds.
Meta’s primary issue is an alignment problem. They’ve built the most valuable human connection network ever and then added a misaligned algorithm on it.
You’re conflating Meta’s alignment issue with its overall benefit / harm to society. There is a singular, obvious thing that you interact with everyday that is very very bad (unless like me you don’t have it). And the invisible parts of what they do that are extremely beneficial are less obvious.
To be fair say from the list Meta is closest to being a net negative, like they’re the worst of the big tech companies and the only one I would refuse to work at. So I get what you’re saying, but to say they’re largely useless signals that you don’t know what they do and how they impact society at large, other than their very evil algorithms.