[HN Gopher] The Risk Makers: The nuclear, auto, and food industries
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The Risk Makers: The nuclear, auto, and food industries
        
       Author : ColinWright
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2021-01-18 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (onezero.medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (onezero.medium.com)
        
       | jacquesm wrote:
       | Researching the abuse potential of what you put out online is an
       | important step in making sure you remain in control of the
       | narrative around your offering. If you don't do that one day you
       | will wake up to find out that you are now co-founder of something
       | that you abhor.
        
       | karaterobot wrote:
       | If Facebook has 35,000 people working on safety and security, and
       | knows it is now under scrutiny, yet still shits the bed like
       | clockwork, what solution is going to fix this to our
       | satisfaction?
       | 
       | I'm not really sure there is a viable prevention strategy here.
       | The problem of social networks is the problem of human nature
       | multiplied by technology, and the regulatory fixes we're likely
       | to try seem either quaint or dystopian.
       | 
       | The level of oversight and regulation the nuclear, auto, and food
       | industries operate under would be considered crippling in a
       | consumer-facing social network space. Batya Friedman (whose
       | opinion I already respected) alludes to this in the article. If
       | these companies need an impact study to be done and an appointed
       | panel to sign off on new features, they'll just lose out to
       | competing foreign products without that oversight. My government
       | can prevent me from buying an unsafe foreign car, but at present
       | they don't generally stop me from signing up for unsafe foreign
       | social networks. I'm sure I don't want them to get into that
       | practice, either.
       | 
       | I ask myself whether I would want the Trump administration
       | overseeing social networks, and by extension do I want an
       | indeterminate future administration to have that role either?
       | Probably not, nor do I believe any committee or panel would be
       | truly above the reach of politics.
       | 
       | In any case, risk management begins by assuming risks are not
       | entirely preventable, so quick and effective mitigation should be
       | part of any robust solution. Though it may prevent some
       | disasters, I'm skeptical whether more bureaucratic oversight
       | helps quickly address them when they arise. There's even reason
       | for me to think that social media is complex and unique enough
       | from nuclear, auto, and food that the existing oversight model
       | may not even be useful if extended into this space.
       | 
       | In short, I am not confident in the government's ability to come
       | up with something new and brilliant enough to regulate this space
       | effectively.
       | 
       | I think this is the quote that sums up the problem for me:
       | 
       | > "We may decide we're not wise enough for certain kinds of
       | tools, or certain kinds of companies"
        
       | dredmorbius wrote:
       | This should be mandatory reading for all of the tech sector.
       | Engineers, founders, investors, VC, marketing, QA, PMs, counsel,
       | sales, janatorial and cafeteria staff.
       | 
       | Long (~30pp printed) but rewarding.
        
       | LatteLazy wrote:
       | I gave up when the author blamed whitness and maleness for the
       | Burmese genocide...
        
         | cjbenedikt wrote:
         | Author was quoting a piece of research. Why would that stop you
         | from reading?
        
           | LatteLazy wrote:
           | It wasn't a quote, it was something they choose to include.
           | And it was one too many unfounded assumption presented as if
           | it was a fact. Just because someone claims something doesn't
           | make it true. Tying a dozen or so claims together is all the
           | more likely to be untrue overall. And that was the whole
           | article as far as I made it...
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-01-18 23:02 UTC)