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.