Tag Archives: Steven Levy

Facebook: The Inside Story

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I’m at a loss for what to say about Steven Levy’s book, Facebook: The Inside Story. At 500 pages it’s a deep dive into the history of Facebook (the startup and all that’s happened since). The excerpts below are just a few of the things that caught my eye. It would be a mistake to judge the book (or Mark Zuckerberg) based on the passages I underlined.

Soley by analyzing Likes, they successfully determined whether someone was straight or gay 88 percent of the time. In nineteen out of twenty cases, they could figure out whether one was white or African American. And they were 85 percent correct in guessing one’s political party. Even by clicking innocuous subjects, people were stripping themselves naked. […] In subsequent months,Kosinski and Stillwell would improve their prediction methods and publish a paper that claimed that using Likes alone, a researcher could know someone better than the people who worked with, grew up with, or even married that person. “Computer models need 10, 70, 150, and 300 Likes, respectively, to outperform an average work colleague, cohabitant or friend, family member, and spouse.”

A 2012 study found that Facebook was mentioned in a third of divorces.

It was a natural evolution to put (content moderators) in factories. They became the equivalent of digital janitors, cleaning up the News Feed like the shadow workforce that comes at night and sweeps the floors when the truly valued employees are home sleeping. Not a nice picture. And this kind of cleaning could be harrowing, with daily exposure to rapes, illegal surgery, and endless images of genitals.

Between January and March 2019, (Facebook) blocked 2 billion attempts to open fake accounts — almost as many as actual users on the system. […] The company concedes that around 5 percent of active accounts are fake. That’s well over 100 million.

It’s left to the 15,000 or so content moderators to actually determine what stuff crosses the line, forty seconds at a time. In Phoenix (site of one of the moderator “factories”) I asked the moderators I was interviewing whether they felt that artificial intelligence could ever do their jobs. The room burst out in laughter.

A computer-science teacher at one of the big AI schools told me that Facebook used to be the top employment choice. Now he guesses that about 30 percent of his students won’t consider it, for moral reasons.

“We’ve actually built an AI that’s more powerful than the human mind and we hid it from all of society by calling it something else,” Harris says. “By calling it the Facebook News Feed, no one noticed that we’d actually built an AI that’s completely run loose and out of control.” Harris says that using the News Feed is like fighting an unbeatable computer chess player—it knows your weaknesses and beats you every time.” — Tristan Harris (former Google interface engineer)

A few take-aways:

  • Facebook might be the most powerful (influential) organization in the world. And therefore — potentially — the most dangerous.
  • Everyone on the planet is affected by what Facebook does (or doesn’t do). Even those of us without accounts.
  • Mark Zuckerberg is brilliant and has surrounded himself with other brilliant people. He seems to believe he is always the smartest person in the room.
  • Zuckerberg is on a mission to save/change the world. Combined with the above, this makes him very dangerous.
  • People who use Facebook (and those of us who do not) have no idea the extent to which we are influenced by the people running the platform.
  • Users will never —voluntarily — stop using Facebook.

The book has left me a bit shaken. I always considered religion — some religion — the greatest danger to humanity. Facebook seems a greater threat.

“An existential threat to humanity”

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The following quote is from Steven Levy’s new book, Facebook: The Inside Story.

“We’ve actually built an AI that’s more powerful than the human mind and we hid it from all of society by calling it something else,” Harris says. “By calling it the Facebook News Feed, no one noticed that we’d actually built an AI that’s completely run loose and out of control.” Harris says that using the News Feed is like fighting an unbeatable computer chess player—it knows your weaknesses and beats you every time.”

— Tristan Harris (former Google interface engineer)

Apple’s New Campus

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A few of my favorite excerpts from Steven Levy’s tour of Apple’s new campus.

“Jobs discussed the walls he had in mind for the offices: “He knew exactly what timber he wanted, but not just ‘I like oak’ or ‘I like maple.’ He knew it had to be quarter-­cut. It had to be cut in the winter, ideally in January, to have the least amount of sap and sugar content. We were all sitting there, architects with gray hair, going, ‘Holy shit!’”

“At first, we had no idea what Steve was actually talking about with these pods. But he had it all mapped out: a space where you could concentrate one minute and then bump into another group of people in the next,” Behling says.”

“To withstand earthquakes, the Ring is mounted on huge steel base isolators that ensure the building can move up to 4.5 feet in any direction without losing its vital services.”

“The very toughest challenge came from constructing the giant glass sliding doors for the café—they had to extend from the ground to the roof, a full four stories. Each door leaf is about 85 feet by 54 feet. “The only doors I know of in the world that size are on an airplane hangar,” Diller says.”

“It’s not like we’re asking people to be uncomfortable at work,” she says. “We’re asking them to recognize that part of being connected to the outside is knowing what temperature it is. We don’t want you to feel like you’re in a casino. We want you to know what time of day it is, what temperature it is outside. Is the wind really blowing? That was Steve’s original intention, to sort of blur that line between the inside and outside. It sort of wakes up your senses.”

This is why I love Apple Music

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You know I love my Apple Music playlists. And have wondered aloud who puts these together. Steven Levy wondered the same thing:

“Who are those editors putting the playlists together? It turns out they are music nerds who might have otherwise been displaced by technology. People from radio; people who used to work at publications; people who used to work at record companies — hard core passionate music people. They check in to work at offices in Cupertino or LA (though a few work remotely) and perform curation tasks that include making those playlists, which they draft and discuss in meetings that must be more fun than the ones at your job. The important thing is that they are human beings. Apple believes that only flesh-and-blood music lovers can properly select and format these lists, artfully making the segues from one tune to the next.”

“They are very much like those cosmic deejays in the early days or FM, or today’s superstar spinners at Las Vegas casinos and high end clubs everywhere. But without a direct channel to communicate with the audience — no microphone to explain yourself between blocks of song — it’s a weird kind of communication they have with their audience. […] After listening to a lot of these playlists, I feel I almost know whoever it is at Apple who specializes in Americana, Blues, and 60s rock.”

Apple Music has a Connect feature where fans can ‘connect’ with their favorite artists. I have zero interest in doing that but would love to connect with the people who create the playlists.

Steve Jobs

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What can I say about the new Steve Jobs movie other than I really enjoyed it. I came to the Mac late in life so Jobs never had the god-like status he did/does for many. This movie will seem blasphemous for those folks (like The Last Temptation of Christ).

As Aaron Sorkin has said in almost every interview, this is not a cradle-to-grave biopic. If it’s not the Steve Jobs story, it’s i Steve Jobs story and, in my opinion, a damned good one.

I like the way Aaron Sorkin writes. (And make no mistake, this is a talky movie. Noting but talk) And while he could have tried to bunt and beat it out for a single; or pull one hard to left for a stand-up double; he swung for the fence and — again, in my opinion — knocked it out of the park.

If you think the man walked on water, don’t go see this movie. If you go nuts every time Apple sets a new sales record with a product launch (looking at you Android Boy), I don’t think you’ll like it either.

If you enjoyed West Wing or The Newsroom or Social Network, I think you’ll be entertained.

I’m going to again link to a good interview (of Sorkin) by Steven Levy. If you plan to see the movie, read this first.

In The Plex

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The full title of Steven Levy’s book is In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. When I finished it I was pooped and a little depressed but I’m not sure I can explain either. Read the book and we’ll talk. [Good review in the Washington Post]

Looking back at some of the other books I’ve read about the Internet and technology, I think this might be my favorite. Up there with The Facebook Effect, Cluetrain Manifesto, and Cognitive Surplus.

David Kirkpatrick’s Facebook Effect was much kinder to Mark Zuckerberg than The Social Network but that story didn’t move me the way In the Plex did. And I’m sort of dreading the biography of Steve Jobs, though I can’t say why.

I used up some highlighter on this one and will add those passages here in a day or so.

We just don’t know which half

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“Every advertising should be measurable. You should be able to adjust it, right? Then you should be able to tune it, track it, track the right users, and target to the right people.” – Susan Wojcicki, Google Ad Chief (from In the Plex by Steven Levy)

Mel Karmazin calls this “fucking with the magic.” And sixty years ago, it was magic.