The same could be said of TV networks, Spotify, Twitter, Google photos.
We are the catalyst that turn stories, music, photos into emotional reactions. We control the dials. Facebook makes it incredibly easy to step outside our bubbles. Click the Like button on a Page that challenges your beliefs, interact with that information and you'll see more of it.
If we're not seeing it, it's probably because we don't want to.
My online shopping recommends groceries for me based on my past purchases. If I was to contract scurvy because it keeps recommending donuts instead of orange juice who is ultimately responsible?
Facebook is not a window to the world. It's a mirror of ourselves. Perhaps there should be guidelines on how to consume information - and I thought school served that purpose - but to expect a social network (a blank slate that you populate with your interests) to provide one a healthy dose of diverse opinion is to deny ones agency and responsibility.
That's precisely the problem with it. I'd like to read more on extremists groups and see how and why they exists, what kind of people they are, why do they think the way they do, what their fight is in our society. This is the first step to build a dialog.
However, "liking" their pages is out of question. I will not support them, I will not help them further their propaganda, their hateful rhetoric. I would like to understand them, but in no way do I want to support them.
In that sense, Facebook actively discourage dialog and openness to other ideas, because the only way to receive these ideas is also to make them more relevant than they ought to be.
There should be a way for us to navigate different bubbles, to inhabit different, neutral profiles to explore other niches of population, other ways of life within our own society. In that regard, Facebook is useless because it is not interesting for their business.
Reddit can work, but Reddit also has unpenetrable walls sometimes. However, it is already much better than Facebook or Google.
Twitter is the app for that. Set up lists of different individuals so you can switch between different viewpoints in two clicks. No need to follow anybody on your list.
It's actually fascinating to do so. Watch 'the reality' of a current or political event contort as you switch from 'Liberal', 'Conservative', 'Regressive Left', 'Alt-Right' streams of thought.
In fact, that would make an interesting website. A Twitter version of http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed .
However I think it's unclear what you will get from following a real extremist group, except if you like to see repetitive propaganda. Following a somewhat-reputable news source that's usually opposed to your views may be a better solution.
Consider the possibility that if you and your friends "liked" pages of "extremist" groups that you disagree with, then when they pay to boost a post, part of that money will be wasted on showing it to you. So while you are supporting them (by making it seem like more people like their page), you are also weighing on them financially. Not a huge impact in either case, but worth considering both sides of the coin.
I agree that there should be a way to follow-without-liking. That would make it possible for advertisers to use clickfarms to impair their competitors, by flooding them with fake followers who then suck up the competitors' advertising dollars. There's always an unintended consequence!
.. and doesn't insult the reader or insult their intelligence. That's the hard bit. The stuff that goes round on facebook is often both hyper-partisan and low quality, because people are sharing it for group-belonging purposes not for use as facts.
I'm having this trouble with some of the causes that I agree with; how do I say "I see what you're trying to do and we're on the same side, but this junk is not helping?"
This is only tangentially related.
This is why the pieces lambasting Tomi Lahran saying that views like here don't deserve a platform are, in my opinion, wrong.[0] It was the 2nd second result after searching for that interview, and I've seen it shared around the Internet.
When opposing views that aren't inciting riots, violence, etc. aren't allowed to speak, all you get in an echo chamber of things you want to hear[1]. If everyone agrees, there is no incentive for you to examine your beliefs[2].
[0]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trevor-noahs-interview-w...
[2]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/#JohStuMil...
I don't think there's actually a clear dividing line for this, especially when we consider "dog whistle politics" and things like the notorious "blood libel", Protocols of the Elders of Zion, etc; there's definitely a category of material which is both false/misleading and intended to incite prejudice against a particular group - but stops short of mentioning actual violence.
I guess that's the answer - it's not just "fake" news we want suppressed.
You have to tread very carefully. A better example would be a statement made by Trump's recent pick for National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, in his book "The Field of Fight":
"I don't believe all cultures are morally equivalent"
Just that statement seems to bother many people, enough to have it included in Trevor Noah's Daily Show recently.
But why? Why is that statement such a big deal? I believe Western culture is better than, say, Saudi Arabian culture. I realize there is no objective standard to base this on, but even if it is the same nationalism/tribalism Saudi Arabians judge Western culture, so be it. If you make the argument that we can't judge other cultures, wouldn't it also be true that you can't say they're equivalent, since that is judging them?
In the context of Flynn's other rhetoric, he's clearly referring to American Culture vs Islamic and other non European cultures. So why didn't he just state that directly, like you did? Why the "political correctness" around not using concrete examples of the "cultures" he is referring to? Probably because he is trying to maintain the thinnest possible veneer of plausible deniability of bigotry by avoiding making those references to specific cultures.
However, even if you take his statement in isolation, how do you measure the morality of something as large as a "culture" anyway? Do you take the laws of a country that represses a huge number of it's citizens, like Saudi Arabia? There are huge numbers of individuals who do not subscribe to the "morality" of the culture that the world associates them with.
Over-generalizing about cultures and denying individuals in those cultures moral agency is one step on the path to justification of terrible acts against them.
> how do you measure the morality of something as large as a "culture" anyway?
Well, you can't. At least, not without being in terms of your own culture. That is, culture defines morals, in my opinion.
But I see no problem in pointing out these problems--as long as you don't go as far as pre-emptively accusing individuals or demanding they account for them. Eg., accosting Scientologists over Scientology.
You should be able to see the flagged comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13105342) if you turn on showdead in your HN settings.
It is disappointing that HN isn't able to discuss openly the ways in which true facts are (ab)used to create false beliefs.
As an aside, I frequently see your comments flagged to death and have used you as an example of how a community will create its own bubble. I happen to disagree with 99% of every post I have ever seen by you, but I've yet to flag a post just for being infuriating.
There was a great article on this recently: http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-co...
Some years ago, a friend sent me a shocking article. It said hundreds of British girls were being systematically gang-raped by Muslim gangs. It claimed this was being covered-up. I’ve never had time for conspiracy theories, especially when they look as hateful as those in the article....I wrote a curt reply to my friend: “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t send me made-up crap from neo-Nazi websites”.
Some months later, I read the seminal exposé of the (mainly) ethnic-Pakistani grooming gang phenomenon by Andrew Norfolk in The Sunday Times.
Of all the people pushing for Facebook to suppress "fake news", I've not heard a single one that had a plausible mechanism to make sure true stories like this don't also get suppressed.
It's going to be like Hillsborough or Orgreave but for the right instead of the left: a historical injustice flag to wave for decades. Ignoring it is a massive disaster for race relations.
You are never going to get a system that is 100% accurate so I feel it would be better to focus on being as accurate as possible. This would involve false positives and negatives to some degree. What degree that should be isn't apparent yet, but I don't think that 100% accuracy is realistic
On the contrary, these are the posts you need to examine the most carefully. A strong emotional response is sometimes a defense mechanism against cognitive dissonance. Flagging something because it made you angry is just sticking your fingers in your ears. If it's objectionable, you should be able to articulate why.
I could sift through arrest records in my city and publish a list of Group X (let's pick an established group, like Italians) and make them look like monsters. But that's just a framing exercise.
For instance, the immigrant rape issue. Yes, of course many immigrants have committed sexual assaults. But are they more numerous per-capita, or more vicious? I see sources saying they're rape machines, and others saying it's all made up, but I don't see anything believable that says "Yes, and 2% more than ..."
This is exactly what the mainstream media does in the US. The relatively small number of police shootings of black men get lots of coverage. The much larger category of black criminals harming white people get very little coverage, as does the biggest category of crime (white on white violence).
Stats quoted here: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420565/shameful-libera...
What makes it a less "accurate summary of events" when a non-mainstream source chooses a different small subset of crime to focus on?
As for the "rapefugee crisis" in Europe it's hard to know. Crime statistics tracking these things are usually suppressed and the authorities seem to cover up major incidents. (Even in the US, the Bureau of Justice Statistics stopped publishing it's table of interracial crime stats when Obama took office.) So all we really have are anecdotes and incident reports. Given this level of suppressed information, how can you claim that the white supremacists are less "accurate" than anyone else?
Sometimes unpleasant people are correct about facts. Sometimes their views are just as accurate as anyone else's.
That makes sense though. It's not a competition between the two groups so the amount of black-on-anything violence is irrelevant to the issue of police shooting people when it can be shown that the people being shot weren't acting violently.
Talking about the black community when discussing police shooting is like blaming the prostitutes dressing badly down the block for your sister getting raped. Not only is it victim blaming, but it misses the point that these aren't meaningful groupings. (All black people, your sister and the prostitutes, etc...)
> how can you claim that the white supremacists are less "accurate" than anyone else?
Well, I don't claim that but I think I could, because I see them grasping at straws and forwarding the same tired stories around as if they prove anything. With no effort to dig into the facts behind the case and its selection as news.
Exactly the same as the anti-racist knee-jerk I see which posts the same set of "Immigrants don't rape" refutation articles with the same lack of critical inspection.
> Given this level of suppressed information,
That is a problem. When our government lies to us it throws all semblance of civilian oversight right out the window and instantly becomes a dictatorship.
I'm making a different point. Why discuss a few hundred innocent (and quite a few not so innocent) black people shot by cops when we can instead discuss the tens of thousands of innocent white people harmed by blacks?
I.e., why is police shootings of black men the topic at all?
The answer is the exact same framing exercise you (correctly) accuse white nationalist groups of engaging in. And it's also a framing exercise I find more palatable; I'm just pointing out that you can't distinguish between these based on truth.
Also, the levels of black crime are directly relevant to the topic of police shootings of black people. Assume some fraction of crime prevention results in people getting shot, regardless of race. Assume further that blacks disproportionately commit crimes. Given these two assumptions, you will get disproportionate levels of blacks being shot by cops, even though no one is being racist. That directly contradicts the narrative the media is framing.
Scott Alexander has a great blog post where he dives into the empirical literature on this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-m...
Three reasons.
1) I pay officers, and they aren't doing what I pay them to do and they aren't improving the things I want improved.
2) We can discuss both. But it's pretty obvious when this presumed black violence is trotted out as an answer to police violence rather than a conversation that just happened to be going on.
3) "Black" isn't a voluntary or revokable status. You don't choose your skin-color, nor can it be revoked when you misbehave. You literally cannot control people of your color. You also can't control other gamers, other men, other women, etc. Whereas "Police" is both voluntary and revokable. They can choose not to be police officers if they're upset with the behavior of other officers, and can revoke the status of bad officers. Even if we agreed with your assertion, black people cannot fix other blacks, officers can fix other officers.
> why is police shootings of black men the topic at all?
The discussion about police violence was already ongoing, but the police mistreat blacks disproportionally so it's not a bad place to focus. Fix the big leaks before the smaller ones...
Are you having trouble getting attention for your police violence complaints that you think this discussion is blocking, because you aren't black?
> Also, the levels of black crime are directly relevant to the topic of police shootings of black people.
Actually no, blacks suffer even in non-violent areas. The black professor arrested while breaking into his own house...
Also, it's just tactically not how it works. When police apprehend anyone they're actually afraid of they stay well away, call backup, bark orders through a bullhorn, and approach only once the person is laying down on the ground with their hands visible. Anytime you see an ongoing situation with an officer less than three steps from the person that officer is not afraid. That's intimidation, not safety, they're going for.
In many videos of police thuggery and shootings we see police going out of their way to put themselves in a tactical distance where they will be "forced" to respond by any slight movement. If they were really at all scared they'd be on the other side of their car, radioing for backup.
And again - I don't disagree with your criteria (1). Remember that a few years ago, the only people talking about the issue were Radly Balko and a few of his libertarian readers (e.g. me). But that doesn't mean that every journalist who had different priorities was publishing fake news.
...the police mistreat blacks disproportionally...
This is unclear. Again, read the Scott Alexander blog post I linked to which goes into the gory details.
The reason is because I can fix cop shootings, a little at least. I pay for them, etc. Also, the police are a voluntary grouping and as such, can be fixed. It'd be irrational to try to fix anyone else, even if I agreed that they needed it too, which I don't.
Then you ask "why is police shootings of black men the topic at all", as in versus police violence in general.
As a non-black victim of police violence myself, I heartily second the notion that it's not limited to a racial issue. But I can clearly see in the videos that the blacks involved in these issues are acting more politely than I would and getting treated far worse.
> read the Scott Alexander blog post I linked to which goes into the gory details.
Apples and oranges. I have issues with his statistics as well, such as discounting of entire sets of stats that individually fall below a percentage threshold, etc. Also, being involved one of these incidents that my city minimizes, I'm not entirely happy with a statistical dismissal even if it was correct.
> None of your three reasons are remotely related to truth or accuracy.
No, they are. I'm putting my attention to the topics I can solve, in the areas that are most-in-need of being fixed. I don't care if something worse is happening where I can't see it, I can only prioritize my actions.
At that, I'm happy to ride along with the #BLM group to get the broader issue solved - our employees shooting innocent people.
The right question to ask - assuming you believe that all lives are equally valuable - is to ask the quantitative question of what policies will save more lives. That's a question to be answered with statistics, not values. If you don't believe all lives are equally valuable, that's a difference between your values and mine.
No, they are. I'm putting my attention to the topics I can solve...
The fact that you can't solve a problem doesn't mean it's a lie or inaccurate to say that the problem exists.
And the fact that you continue to pretend it is is exactly why I'm strongly opposed to these attempts to solve "fake news". It's pretty clear that the real goal is just suppressing information that might be politically inconvenient.
We should be talking about how our media, including the social kind, can best convey useful, accurate information and stimulate critical thinking. Throwing up our hands and blaming people for being manipulated by algorithms that are basically designed to put them in "bubbles" simply isn't constructive.
And I don't think this isn't the purpose of feed 'customization' either. It's about making money by assuring advertisers that their ads will be paid some attention to. In order to do that, they need to try and keep people's eyeballs glued to the screen as much as possible.
Instead of reevaluating how our simplified models damage discourse and complex thinking, further simplifying human interaction to better fit over-simplified models only further skews us from the complex reality that our fake world obscures from us.
Ex: many journalists "favorite" tweets to refer back to later for their stories, but an uninformed observer might draw the wrong conclusions from seeing a New York Times journalist's twitter profile "favoriting" incendiary tweets by white supremacists or ISIS propaganda outlets.
If your online shopping kept erroneously labelling the donuts as 'low fat and sugar and high in vitamin C' who would be responsible?
I wouldn't blame people for giving up trying to make sense of what foods are currently considered beneficial or harmful.
Even when the manufacturer posts the claim on the packaging, they have to use specific language indicating the claims haven't been verified by the FDA.
That raises more questions still:
- were those donuts in the health aisle or the bakery?
- was I able to easily test the vitamin C content by comparing with other products?
- why was I trusting this unknown brand of malformed donuts with cheap packaging and flavors like 'purple' for my source of nutrients?
Or is the truth that I just wanted to eat donuts and so sought out the brand that made me feel good about doing so?
Yeah ... not gonna happen. I already use private browsing windows to read anything even remotely controversial. Not going to start building a publicly visible history of 'liking' things that could be seen negatively. Call me paranoid, but I can see that happening some day in a job interview or something similar. I love my freedom, and that includes being able to read whatever I want without being accused of wrongthink at some point in the future. Facebook isn't getting any data from me on that front.
pfft. only if you don't compare it to any other non-walled-garden online communities.
it's places like HN (and many similar tiny islands of interest), I come for the comp.science news, and because of that it does NOT actively select for other criteria (just inherent bias) and I meet people with wildly different views than my own, and I can even expect to have a decent dialogue.
i don't even need to "like" their political values, but i can still upvote their tech expertise.
[ edit: LOL, I hadn't read dang's announcement about HN's political detox week, which pretty much runs exactly counter to what I just said, haha :) though I welcome the experiment and appreciate the irony of circumstance :-) ]
check out the "general discussion" subforum on any random webforum community on a topic that interests you.
it's all already intersecting by default!
and it's Facebook (Google too) taking a very active role crystallising the bubbles into walls. Don't just try to step outside your personal Facebook-bubble, for it's actively working against you. Step outside the big bubble of Facebook itself.
That's fine, but will ultimately kill the brand. Good riddance.
This is the big problem for me. I have struggled with Facebook for years because I really do want my friend's unfiltered feeds. In the end it just became impossible. I would have conversation after conversation where people told me they had posted something but I just never got to see it.
You? Your doctors? Jesus. What kind of world devoid of personal responsibility do you live in?
Give me a break. It's not Facebook's job to tell the truth from the lies. They provide a social network, for profit. They are not a charity or a non profit. They sell ads. If "news filtering" aligns with their bottom-line they'll do it, if it doesn't, they won't, that's business.
Now to anybody who thinks he can control the internet and what people read/think/discuss I say good luck with that.
What kills democracy is people incapable of convincing others that they are being mislead/wrong without insulting them with all possible -ism . What kills democracy is people on both side being so extreme they just can't talk to each other anymore. Facebook isn't responsible for that. The lack of moderation on both political sides is, your politicians are.
People need to stop blaming Facebook for everything. Nobody is forced to use their platform , I don't have a Facebook and never go on Facebook.
This is a technology forum, so I'll warn beforehand that my opinion, although it has political conclusions, is from a systems perspective and not meant to cause a flame war.
Your position, above, is a very common defense of capitalism. Each agent should act on its best interest, and disregard all else. Distilled like that, it's the purest form of capitalism.
While that position has its merits, we should understand its limitations. It prevents capture of companies by the power struggle. On the other hand, in this case, it is failing to act on FB's exploitation of a negative externality.
FB, by keeping users in their comfort zone is preventing society from improving. And is profiting from it. It gains the profit, sheds some costs to the society at large.
Capitalism is the best society optimization mechanism we know. It is not perfect, though. It creates local maximums, it is short sighted and we must always be careful about its limitations.
If the latter, any attempts FB makes will be create an exodus, lose-lose.
No. Each agent should act according to his own will and believes, that often is in his own best interest, but that not always true.
Its a hard case to actually prove this assertion of facebook. I have not spent any time an it or read much research on it.
Is it really that different from all Americans reading the same newspapers that thought the Spanish American War was a great idea?
Yep, that's what is said when saying "Facebook [...] kills democracy for their own benefit". They provide a discourse perceived as the public discourse for a profit.
Some people are considering that this exercise is a threat to democracy, and even though you seem to imply that you are more versed / cynical / aware ("Give me a break"), that's precisely the for profit part that ruffles some feathers.
> What kills democracy is people incapable of convincing others that they are being mislead/wrong without insulting them with all possible -ism .
Offering a platform for misleading news does not help and actually plays an active part in this.
> What kills democracy is people on both side being so extreme they just can't talk to each other anymore. Facebook isn't responsible for that.
Building a bubble is the prime example of how you can stop separated communities from talking to each other. You can say that the separation existed before Facebook, before other online communities, it does not make it any less salient that these bubbles exists and that it is in the monetary interest of Facebook to further them in order to sell better targeted ads. They whole business plan, their whole point of existing is depending on practices and behaviors that are currently a problem in our democracies.
This means that as of now, Facebook will fight for these problems when they fight for their business. Even if you don't use Facebook or other social networks on the Internet, this means that as an individual citizen your country / nation is being influenced by these products. Even if you choose to not use them, it is perfectly reasonable to go out of your way to tell people to stop using them and to fight their influence in your country.
So, people can perfectly continue to blame Facebook for these problems. No one says that they should be alone in being blamed on this, no need to exaggerate the critics to make them appear ridiculous. But acknowledging these problems is absolutely critical these days.
It's just scapegoating. It's useless and a waste of time. The time you spend blaming Facebook is the time you don't spend actually fixing what should be fixed : creating an healthy environment for debate.
Blaming this or that website is easy and it doesn't solve anything. Quitting the extremist views, quitting calling people morons,trolls,douchebags when they disagree with this or that political line and actually engaging them strictly on ideas instead of dismissing their concerns as -ism or -phobia is the only way you're going to make people listen to what you have to say.
If you filter people's news, they'll just go somewhere else that give them what they want. And then you'll wake up again not understanding the result of the last elections because you lived in your own, filtered echochamber.
Fake news exists because they are able to sell ads on their pages, and they are profitable because they attract people, creating feelings, outrage, unreasonable reactions that feeds the pre-existing bias in the whole population.
Fighting these should be cutting their revenue streams. Google did just that, but it is a survival move so as to avoid precisely being in the blast of defense move that ought to be taken by citizens.
However, Google can and will only do the bare minimum for them to show that they somewhat care and that they are in control. They are starting a play of cat and mouse with people that can easily switch platforms.
> It's useless and a waste of time.
Ad-blockers are pretty effective there. If everyone used ad-blockers, fake news website would not have any revenue left, beside some marginal subscription streams. Evangelizing for ad-blockers, against Facebook, against Google and against analytics in general is an effective way to fight against these parasites.
> The time you spend blaming Facebook is the time you don't spend actually fixing what should be fixed : creating an healthy environment for debate.
The time I spend blaming all social networks is a time spent to better the Internet and fight against populisms at large. As for how to foster a healthy environment for debate, I'd quote Sartre:
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.
Replace anti-Semites, which were the populists of the pre-45 era, to whichever populism you want today, be it from the left or from the right. You cannot win with reason against them, because they speak to the guts and then explain that since they have popular support, they have already won. You cannot defend measure and reason because their main weapon is bipartism coloring things in black and white, and this will always be more popular than trying to explain things, to have some critical thinking.
Mass-media in general will always push forward this kind of gregarian thinking. Internet ought to be a way for us to build other ways to consume and produce, to share information. Facebook and Google and Amazon are building empires upon the ashes of the old world, effectively cutting the disruptive factor that Internet was introducing in its infancy. Fighting those mastodons is not vain, it is time spent actually fixing what should be fixed.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology...
Perhaps when major media get so many real stories about democracy wrong and the alt media get them right it's time to stop trusting the people getting things wrong and start trusting the people getting things right.
Fuck, even the NYT had to recommit itself to journalism their reporting this year was so bad.
'As we reflect on the momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.'
When you publish articles saying that the support of a candidate is more important than reporting the truth... well... people stop trusting you as someone who tells the truth no matter how politically unpopular it is, and start thinking of you as the political hacks that they are, and openly admit to being.
'In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues.'
If we want to have healthy democracy, it's up to all of us to figure out how to get every citizen to consume factual information and let them know when they're being lied to. That's a Hard Problem with an incredibly valuable solution. To me it seems like FB is well positioned to play a role here. They've figured out how to get a huge population to consume content on their platform - now they need to figure out how to get people to consume some knowledge along with the cat pictures and avoid outright lies (e.g. dead FBI director [0]). The question is whether that would be counter to their engagement KPIs (maybe some people only want "facts" they agree with). My gut says that eliminating the clickbait/propaganda (internet noise) would make it all the more indispensable as a resource/utility.
[0]: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/02/504155809/episo...
What do you do when the people don't actually care? IMO people don't want their views challenged. They're happier when they accept stuff they agree with and can get up on their high horse about stuff they disagree with (signing the odd petition or two). I've been shocked by people I know who are very well educated that don't know about major news stories, even ones that effect the field they're in. And when I explain the story to them, they don't care.
You're lifting one sentence out of context. The rest of the paragraph reads [1]:
"In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues. But this is not a normal election year. A comparison like that would be an empty exercise in a race where one candidate — our choice, Hillary Clinton — has a record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas, and the other, Donald Trump, discloses nothing concrete about himself or his plans while promising the moon and offering the stars on layaway."
The president-elect's walking back on so many of his promises since the election seem to be vindicating these comments.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-cli...
Shouldn't they instead be saying, 'We got everything right, we reported all the facts, like the polls sampling Dems and women @ 60%, and Hillary lost surprising absolutely no one with a rudimentary understanding that the population of the US is 50/50 male / female'
The context always was that this wasn't a normal election year and for some reason what they'd normally do wasn't an option (because the enemy is Hitler.) The reason why they got everything wrong is because they think that people care about things like 'well, so and so didn't exactly say this or that' rather than figure out what the overall gist of the message is. Alt-media is believed because it resonates with the overall feeling people get from the news, which is why the times had to do a mea culpa on the election because they lied so much that after Clinton lost even their base knew that they were just making shit up with no regard to reality which is why Trump won because proper defenses couldn't be put in place because the NYT was blatantly lying to everyone about Trump's chances in hopes that people would just believe Hillary was going to win and stay home.
I hate to sound like Grammar Clippy, but: consider using more than one comma or breaking all those subclauses into separate sentences.
"Alt-media" convinced a man to go shoot up a pizzeria on no factual grounds whatsoever. This is not just dangerous to democracy, it's inciting violence against innocent people.
In theory, yes. In practice, a lot of people fail badly, to the point major contemporary decisions are now driven by intentionally false or heavily skewed information. That’s a big problem.
Perhaps when major media get so many real stories about democracy wrong and the alt media get them right it's time to stop trusting the people getting things wrong and start trusting the people getting things right.
Here in the Czech Republic the alt media spread lies, hatred and propaganda, with no regard for the society. The state-owned and sane private media aren’t perfect, but are much better.
That's difficult if the publisher (Facebook) only shows them untrustworthy material, and the viewer is not aware that this is the case.
The alt-media links extensively to MSM to point out their lies and inconsistency, I'm sure someone has realized that CNN, and MSNBC, and NYT are a thing.
Even if you're not right wing, you'd probably at some point heard of Noam Chomsky who goes on similar rants about how even highly regarded NYT publishes articles that are pretty much propaganda. And then there's Jason Blair...
When did they do that?
No its not. They need to show all articles to the people that form bubbles is the point here.
> They provide a social network, for profit.
yes, but their influence on the world politics and emotions cannot be ignored simply because they are a for profit company. Business is simply not an excuse to separate people in bubbles. >Nobody is forced to use their platform
Do you really think that everyone decides on how they should use facebook before they do? No. People are not blaming FB for everything. Only about forming bubbles that can bring about significant social changes for humans.
I'm not really worried about Trump but for anyone dying or suffering because of his decisions, FB has a huge part in that. There's no denying in that.
Well Facebook _is_ doing that as we speak, but they don't consider it controlling what people read - they're just giving their users what they think they want. For their bottom-line. Which is their business.
But there's no harm in pointing out that a for-profit entity isn't behaving in a socially responsible manner. Even if you or I don't use the platform.
Now some people obviously welcome this trend, but lets just assume there are a few who see this as quite frightening.
I've been debating the causes of this with friends, and it's actually quite murky. The US is running with the "too much identity politics" and/or "economic stagnation for the white lower class" as explanations.
The problem is that these simply don't work in other places: Germany is doing better than ever, economically. And even if you're unemployed, your basic needs are not in danger. Britain was doing fine, as well. Same for Turkey.
Germany has 1 Million Syrian refugees. But the US only took 10,000 and the UK haa half that.
The one mechanism that's universal is the change in media consumption. The media used to be controlled by the elites, who generally remained within the narrow window that's sometimes called "reality". Now, it's a free-for-all and groups have started to coalesce around any possible ideological bend.
Facebook is probably the central mechanism. People always seek the approval of their peers, and it has become so much easier to get that gratification, even if it's from people you rarely see in person.
Of course it'd be possible to change all that by "not using Facebook". But we all know it's impossible to change human nature. That's why people are grasping at ideas of how to inhibit this mechanism.
What concrete steps would you have Facebook take? What should Facebook's goals be? What tradeoffs are worthwhile that ensure an overall positive experience? And still be a profitable business? Lots of things to balance, in my opinion. I think it's a very interesting and important challenge, but I'm not envious at all of doing it in public under the level of scrutiny that Facebook faces.
Facebook's motto should be changed from 'connecting people' to 'connecting people to show only what they like'.
See we both are arguing something here that is simply avoided so many times in facebook. That is the whole point. The tradeoff they should be allowing is to allow people to see/confront contradictions. Else its not a debate. Nobody gains knowledge or new thoughts. No one progresses apart from facebook.
Is this what you think Facebook should be? Or what you think is a more accurate description of what Facebook is?
What would this look like in concrete steps? How do you manage bullying? Knowingly spreading misinformation and disinformation? What prevents Facebook from becoming one big flamewar? How do you decide how to confront contradictions? What about people who don't want to use Facebook for debate?
It's all well and good to make statements like The tradeoff they should be allowing is to allow people to see/confront contradictions. Else its not a debate. Nobody gains knowledge or new thoughts. No one progresses apart from Facebook. It's another thing all together to put in place the features that make this possible. I challenge you to put forth some concrete features that would address the concerns you have.
The fact that this will kill Facebook is irrelevant. The fact that decentralization is observably very difficult is irrelevant. The hardness of a task does not affect its necessity. There is no solution for Facebook that leaves Facebook recognizably like it is now. It's arguably a fluke of politics and culture that got Facebook to where it is now.
(When I say "decentralize", I don't necessarily mean full on Diaspora-style decentralization. Decentralizing into multiple social networks that are still architecturally centralized is viable, though those social networks will face the same pressures at scale.)
>What would this look like in concrete steps? Taking social responsibility. I dont know the steps because I dont run that business only affected by it.
>How do you manage bullying? >Knowingly spreading misinformation and disinformation? >What prevents Facebook from becoming one big flamewar? FB should be deciding on these. They can if they want to.
>How do you decide how to confront contradictions? By letting people talk instead of hiding them from each other.
>It's another thing all together to put in place the features that make this possible. Yeah of course and its big time they accepted they should.
What steps would you take if you had all the resources at Facebook's disposal and it was your responsibility. Yes, I know it's not really your responsibility but it's all hypothetical.
The police will undoubtedly come and arrest a few of them for what they say, but that's not your problem. Let the legal system handle the issues.
The only thing making this a problem is Facebook's insistence on curating what you see so they can show you ads. They made this problem themselves and could solve it in an instant by stopping the interference.
Yes, Facebook is going to be managing/filtering/curating/policing the site to some extent and yes, they want to show ads, as that's how they make money, not only to make a profit, but to run the site where this activity is happening. And some of the site management is about maintaining some level of decency or decorum, which will likely be inviting to more users, which indirectly leads to more ad impressions. It's not all directly about ad funneling and manipulation. Facebook the company is made up of people, and assuming that everything they're doing is purely to maximize profit at the cost of all else. To make such an assumption would be similar to me assuming everything you're posting has some ulterior motive, something beyond having a civil constructive discussion. I don't think that's a fair assumption to make. Is it?
Perhaps you're arguing that Facebook shouldn't exist? If that's the case, just say so.
Right up until they're spending more time and money on policing that they're benefitting from increased revenue.
> And some of the site management is about maintaining some level of decency or decorum
Yes, in a world where they link everything to everyone's feed, that need that.
But if they didn't do that, instead only linking when specifically mentioned, they wouldn't need to censor anything because you'd just unfollow people who link annoying things.
> Facebook the company is made up of people, and assuming that everything they're doing is purely to maximize profit at the cost of all else.
Right, they have lunch hours, etc. But how do you suppose their work is evaluated if they don't have concrete goals such as 'increase readership', etc?
You think they're all paid just to fiddle with stuff for their own individual desires?
> To make such an assumption would be similar to me assuming everything you're posting has some ulterior motive, something beyond having a civil constructive discussion. I don't think that's a fair assumption to make. Is it?
I'm not a for-profit company. If I was I think it'd be a fair assumption.
> Perhaps you're arguing that Facebook shouldn't exist? If that's the case, just say so.
Nope. I'm arguing that they're making their own problems and could stop if they wanted to. I don't feel like making excuses for them.
Also, let the police/etc read it, so that if you incite violence someone shows up at your door exactly as if you sent a postal threat-letter.
They already give people the tools to cope with this. You choose who to follow and who to block.
This method has its own issues. For example, I run a bunch of of newsfeeds about entrepreneurs, (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos etc) on LinkedIn and fairly often I get people complaining that they don't want to see negative news about the entrepreneur -- they only want to see positive news. They describe themselves as fans. I tell them that the won't understand the subject if they don't expose themselves to news they don't like.
But think about that on Facebook - this negative news does not get shared, and there's no proper way to say, "this is negative but interesting", the best you've got is the "angry" emoticon. And you only see what Facebook want you to see. They turned off the option to view your feed by most recent items, not because it was difficult to follow, but because it made more money for them.
So there are ways to fix these issues, but the cost is that you lose some readers and you lose some money. But for those who remain the experience is better - they are getting informed, not entertained. In its entire life Facebook has always put greed before user experience, so there's no way any of this will change.
I understand the value of this question but it's not the core of the problem as I understand. Consider the progression of facebook as a platform. I hope my lack of eloquence won't hurt my point too much, not a native english speaker. Facebook was a valuable service when keeping track of one's social circle was still an analogic problem. Since we the public saw the value in digitizing the 'book keeping' of socialisation, we invested time into the platform to constitute a social group, architected as we saw fit. This at least was the experience of the early days of facebook for me and people I know. I imagine you share it to some degree. Compare that function to what the same company is pushing now. Their business is still acquiring user's time but they now have pivoted enough that the social book keeping aspect is quite secondary to most of the business layer of the company as far as I can tell.
I have no business analysing whether focusing on information diffusion control is a good strategy for Facebook the company, I have no idea. The point that concerns me is that the users are now chained along because of time invested in the past.
We as users should insist on having the social book keeping available as a low level (open source/GPL/WTFPL) platform on top of which one could choose to enhance that experience as is the business of information outlets. I have no issue with companies choosing profit over UX, but we the public should protest in some form or other while we still more or less have a choice.
Why should they be assured of revenue if their business is bait and switch?
[edit: typing is hard]
And quite frankly their top executives have to be worried about that. Not us.
Maybe they're not working fast enough or in the way you want them to. But it's helpful to recognize that they're human, too. The issues of free speech and privacy and business and how they inter-relate are not solved issues, and things that we've grappled with as societies for at least a couple hundred years. Coupled with the novelty of online communities, it's not something I expect them to figure out overnight.
It's good that you admit that you don't have answers to these questions. I don't either. Which is why I'm very slow to make statements like Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit. It just doesn't recognize the reality of the situation as I understand it.
"We don’t favor specific kinds of sources — or ideas. Our aim is to deliver the types of stories we’ve gotten feedback that an individual person most wants to see."
Of course they could be working behind closed doors, while PR spins its yarn, in which case I wish them best of luck. It would be interesting to see how they solve it.
Don't you think they are bit late in the US? :D
>The issues of free speech and privacy and business and how they inter-relate are not solved issues, and things that we've grappled with as societies for at least a couple hundred years
But this time its much more hurting than before because we know more now and shouldnt let bad things happen because of a company's business decisions.
But should Facebook decide what I should be shown for my own good? Because I mostly just really don't want to see what Facebook doesn't show me.
For example: I "like" Mises posts, I like my "real" friends's music posts and I like the occasional post from The Paris Review.
However I follow a ton of people from interior design and architecture but I rarely see posts from those people/subjects. So my feed looks like a very narrow focus on Austrian economics and electronic music.
My point: the content isn't the problem with Facebook, the problem is the feed algorithm that decides the content I see. I would prefer no algorithm at all: just show me everything my 'friends' are posting. If I get tired of someone, I unfollow them. Facebook has made a conscious decision to behave as a de facto curator of content. I get it, it's my own fault for "liking" things. But I am a relatively sophisticated user -- I am aware of the echo chamber I create; but for hundreds of millions of users the newsfeed is their 'news' and it isn't transparent how their past likes are creating this environment.
Facebook is a business, and real life is not always profitable. When people interact with real life through facebook, they only get to see what's profitable for the company. So yes, fb inherently destroys democracy. Not necessarily on purpose (that's conspiracy territory), but because well-informed people go against their business model.
I was 'attending' a 400 level course on contemporary arts at my local university and the groupthink exhibited by the students was insane. With only 7 students in the class it was intimate and dialogue based. Just for the sake of provoking actual defences and backing to viewpoints I took up a contrarian stance on damn near every topic.
Sure I was labelled a racist, bigoted close minded hoser. But the conversations were integral to proper development of critical skills. The professor told me at the end of the year that the only reason she let me remain in her class (as opposed to booting me out as I wasn't a student or qualified) was because of this generated dialogue.
No it is worse. Misinformation is killing democracy. And that's exactly where Facebook is a problem.
We sell analytics and data about people. This data is more valuable the more people there are to sell. This popularity metric will thus foster popularity contests, where inane content and disinformation is put forward. This is the problem.
I'm convinced this is the key.
However, media outlets (social or otherwise) also have a responsibility of, at the very least, not spreading stories that are demonstrably, factually inaccurate, even if it impacts their "bottom line". Naive and hopeful, I know, but there are two sides to it.
No, people and politicians are killing democracy.
People choose to get their news from unreliable sources. They act like they care about an issue yet only know the headline. But they can sign an online petition and post it on social media so they look and feel good.
Politicians can openly lie on the largest of stages. When called out on it (which rarely happens) they can stick to their lie despite opposing evidence. And they win because of it. A good example of this was the claim during Brexit that £350m per week would go to the NHS if we left the EU. After the referendum was over one of the leading figures admitted on TV that the claim was BS. When you can win by openly lying to the people, why wouldn't you? I think in situations like this elections/votes should be re-run.
My point is that Facebook has nothing to do with democracy. There are plenty of alternative news sources, some that are even reliable, and people instead get their news on Facebook because they don't actually care.
"Now for Italexit! Italian Prime Minister resigns after EU referendum loss" https://twitter.com/MailOnline/status/805670033875726336
.. except that the referendum has nothing to do with the EU, it was about internal constitutional change, and Italy is no closer to leaving the EU.
People read the Mail and Express because they don't care about whether their news is reliable, reasonable or democratic.
I'd argue that most people did that before Facebook, and still do that outside of Facebook. It is your responsibility to get surrounded by different kind of people. It's not easy, and most people won't be able to do it, but if you're living in an echo chamber it has always been your fault.
(I'll admit that geography sometimes doesn't help. For example I live in Chicago and it's not the best place to meet Trump supporters.)
It is, but not only for the reason you provide.
FB is "inclusive of all perspectives and view points", only when it matches its own US-culture-centered-policy (breast-feeding, nudity is just a very obvious hint).
The Republican guy that shot the pizza place in DC today was driven by a conspiracy theory marketed on Reddit.
These social-media sites are literally dangerous.
If the walled garden makes it easy for people to confuse belief and knowledge, it's a problem.
If people with kooky beliefs are repressed, it's also a problem.
When we watched TV news or skimmed a newspaper, we would also selectively focus on our favorite topics. But other topics at least momentarily grazed or attention while we mentally tuned out or skimmed for more interesting headlines. With highly personalized online media (and yes, the social media filter bubble is just one method to achieve that) we are losing that weak connection to out-of-focus topics. The worst part is that we do not even notice, because when our personalized digest contains a certain amount of content that would be on general news we feel our desire stay up to date already satiated.
If real news (as in what would have made it into mainstream mass media) would somehow disappear from our personalized feeds (leaving them with only the necessarily personalized stuff like niche hobbies, friends and very local content), we would go back to consuming more mainstream news channels again, making us less vulnerable to viral fakes and the like. Unfortunately, this is not anywhere close to a solution since there is no way Facebook could do this (and they would not want anyway).
Yes, but their freedoms stop well before lynching people.
The WaPo story made no mention of political party.
Do we say "Democrat guy" when referring to the Orlando shooter? He actually was a Democrat. James Holmes who shot up the Colorado movie theater -- also a registered Democrat and even volunteered for the Obama campaign. Andrew Stack who flew his plane into the Austin IRS building -- was a supporter of communism. John Patrick Bedell who shot police officers outside the Pentagon in 2008 -- registered Democrat and subscriber to the 9-11 "Truth" conspiracy, not to mention an extreme hater of Bush/Cheney.
My point is that assuming facts not in evidence is exactly the problem. Now everyone who tends to agree with anti-Republican sentiment has their view reinforced by your own fake news. It works both ways. Fake news isn't a 'Republican' thing any more than it's a 'Democrat' thing. Plenty of fake stories circulate in places like Marin County about the 'vaccine conspiracies' or how this political or that has secret deals with "big oil" or whomever.
Promoting an unproven narrative of a "Republican" shooter IS fake news unless there is actual evidence otherwise.
Yes. His party registration. https://voterrecords.com/voter/49988317/edgar-welch
The Pizza shop conspiracy was heavily marketed on Reddit, and I'll bet the shooter today got all his info from there.
These platforms have a HUGE problem.
My mum uses FB everyday but she has no idea about reddit whatsoever. She has heard about the name twitter from some news channel. Do you understand the difference?
Facebook has 1.7 billion users; that is more than Twitter's 313 million and Reddit'a tens of millions [1].
I am agreeing with your point, in this limited case, albeit not with how you're making it.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...
The people who actually manage to commit these acts are on an entirely different level of nuts.
Pedestrian example: How many gung-ho teenagers talk about joining the military? How many of them actually go through with talking to a recruiter, going to MEPS, and signing on the dotted line? And that's for a cause that is widely accepted by society and confers actual benefits rather than guaranteed violent death or lifelong incarceration in an elaborate concrete box in rural Colorado.
A lot of people don't share your irrational fear of guns.
The Nice attacker used no firearms and killed eighty-six people. The DC attacker used a firearm and killed no one. Is it possible that firearms aren't really the problem here?
For this reason some bikers carry hammers on their bikes, y'know incase repairs need to be done. In the case of Nice, a truck is inherently a weapon. Can't really regulate every truck though
The idea that "tool" and "weapon" are separated by intent rather than construction is so simple and obvious that apparently no one in certain buildings of Washington, DC, is capable of thinking it.
After you mentioned, I decided to look up news against the effort and I realized there was a lot of news against it but it not only didn't appear on my Facebook, but also on Twitter and Reddit (one of the few places where I expected to see opposing view points).
Media is going through a severe credibility crisis.
appalling, you are.
Simply incredible. They are asserting themselves only as a business and not emotional influencers. The emotional influences that facebook brings in people is very powerful. I have seen so many of my friends just vanishing from my feed and almost all of my feed is filled with a couple of pages that I see/interact often. The bubbles are getting incredibly smaller that its very worrying.
A very good example that I saw is the `demonetisation of higher denominations` in India. I was shocked to see the amount of ignorance my close friends showed on how the poor people of our country were left to suffer. So many never read any sort of arguments against the govt's move. They read only pro posts. They were quite visibly upset when being told about how 70+ people have died because of this and all that. I saw a bubble being burst with my own eyes. When there is no way to argue then its not a democracy at all. It favors fanatics because hate/fear spreads faster than love/acceptance.
Facebook simply kills democracy for their own benefit.