Facebook Trades on Human Pain for Profit

My cousin Nige died this past weekend, tragically and unexpectedly.

In light of this, I made two posts over the last five days. One asked for information on Nigel’s whereabouts. The other was my public confirmation of his death.

Facebook decided to send me a ‘congratulatory message’ letting me know, “You got over 50 reactions on your posts last week.” And then, “Way to go!” I was even encouraged to, “Celebrate with a post!” How terrifically tasteless of them.

FB’s ‘super intelligent’ 3.0 algorithms can’t tell the difference between a post made for content’s sake and one commenting on the deeper aspects of human existence, in this case, death. Not bad for a company that prides itself on meaningfully connecting human beings.

Instead of sending messages that offer condolences to users for the loss of human beings from their lives, FB sends us messages about how many likes our posts are getting. Nevermind that a post deals with macabre topics or discusses the agonies of human life.

In other words, their algos know when it's our birthday, but can't tell from the language we use that someone dear to us has died. It's almost like their algorithms are intentionally designed to function as a child without emotional intelligence.

From this, it's become pretty clear to me that FB views users’ output on the platform purely from a metrics standpoint. Their algorithms are created to prioritize views and engagement, not the value of what is uploaded.

This is a sign of what’s to come.

If the emerging artificial intelligence now being developed to control the future of humanity cannot understand the genuine pain and suffering that result from the loss of human life, how could it be trusted with educating our kids, resolving public disputes as law enforcement surrogates, or life or death decisions in the courtroom? How would it know to check for bias, racial or otherwise, in its system when searching for people who have committed criminal violations?

For as much hubris as people like Alex Karp, the co-founder of tech surveillance company Palantir, have, it is not obvious to me that artificial intelligence is being cultivated with humanity’s best interest in mind.

To be clear, I’d never ask for a computer algorithm to send me an automated “condolences” message for the loss of a loved one. Deaths are not birthdays. Plus, there's little, short of time and hugs, that can heal grief.

That said, if I wouldn't ask for automated condolences, I certainly would never ask Facebook to send me a tasteless indelicate faux congratulatory meme celebrating the amount of views two posts about the death of my cousin have gotten; not while it is still such a fresh wound for me and my family.

I'd say do better Facebook, but what I describe is bigger than Facebook. What I experienced won't be resolved without a massive, tech industry-wide prioritization of human beings, not profit, in the creation of new and existing technologies.