Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting
Thanks a lot for an opportunity to look into the world of Facebook employee, that was really interesting and I feel that I do understand it better now.<p>However, I wonder if you&#x27;d agree that maybe the main reason for Facebook problems is their desire to overconnect the social graph basically. All those moderation problems wouldn&#x27;t be there if the newsfeed stayed simple chronological summary of updates by their friends and families instead of an algorithmically generated mess. Reddit AFAIK doesn&#x27;t have problems as huge as Facebook&#x27;s, and the reason for that is that communities tend to moderate themselves pretty well, and moderating communities themselves (e.g. banning drug sale groups) scales way, way better. In a sense FB itself kinda acknowledges that with its recent emphasis on Groups.<p>On the other hand, interpersonal connections between real-life friends and families (what Facebook sold to its audience and the way it keeps the users on the platform) barely need any moderation at all. It&#x27;s quite unlikely your uncle James starts promoting antivax (or child suicide) in your family, and even if he does, he can either be contested (not letting spiral of silence to form) or banned&#x2F;muted&#x2F;unfriended&#x2F;etc. Unfortunately, it&#x27;s not how FB works: it baits you with friends and family and switches to engagement optimised cesspool.<p>It feels like the hyperconnected, algo-driven feed is actually the root of most facebook troubles, despite (obviously) generating massive revenues.